Mike Tolliver (00:00)
What does an Orthodox Jewish historian uncover when he takes a close look at the Puritans? In our episode this week, we speak with Dr. Yisroel Benporat as he sheds light on what the Puritans did and did not think about the Jews, their surprising attempts to subject themselves to the so-called judicial laws of the Old Testament, and their eschatological commitments that could easily be called a sort of proto-Zionism. If you’re interested at all,
In American history, biblical hermeneutics, the intersection of religion and politics, Jewish Christian relations, and or Christian nationalism, this one episode has it all. And if you like what we do here at the Center for Hebraic Thought and the Biblical Mind Podcast, go ahead and like and subscribe or leave us a five star review. And you can always give to the cause at thebiblicalmind dot org slash give. Now on to the show.
Yisroel Benporat (00:58)
So I’m a historian of early America. I went to Yeshiva University for my bachelor’s degree in history. And then immediately after that, I got my doctorate in history at CUNY Graduate Center. I am an Orthodox Jew. I which is interesting given my choice of study. We can certainly talk about that. and I
I worked as an adjunct faculty member at City College and Queen’s College and Yeshiva University. And I also worked in academic administration. And now I work for a nonprofit called the Academic Engagement Network, which is a national organization that mobilizes university faculty to counter anti-Semitism. And I am based in New York City and I
I am still active in my research and writing, even though I’m not working anymore in a university setting. And I
I just found myself drawn by the story of Puritan New England.
Mike Tolliver (02:16)
Okay.
Well tell us a little bit more about that then. What is it exactly that drew you to Puritan, New England?
Yisroel Benporat (02:26)
Someone once said, and I don’t know where this phrase comes from, that all research is me search. And I think there’s some truth to that. That
Mike Tolliver (02:32)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (02:35)
all while scholarship is supposed to be objective and we’re supposed to be finding the truth, which is which is what ideally we’re all trying to do. But there’s a reason why we ask certain questions. There’s a reason why certain topics grab our attention and we choose to focus our energies on those questions. So for me,
I actually hadn’t I didn’t know anything about Puritans before I went to college. And then I took a course on early American history. And I read, as many undergraduates do, Edmund Morgan’s classic book, The Puritan Dilemma, which is a biography of John Winthrop, one of the founders of Massachusetts. And in passing, he mentioned, by the way, adultery was a capital offense.
And I saw that and and I just thought, well that’s interesting.
Not just interesting. It it actually seemed bizarre to me. And and the idea of it seemed shocking, actually. At least from a modern standpoint, from a twenty-first century perspective, it seems unthinkable to have a society in which not only is adultery illegal, but you could get executed for doing it. And th there’s
There’s a famous historian, a cultural historian named Robert Jarnton, who said that the best way to understand a society is by looking at the part of it that seems to make the least sense to you. And his example was this massacre of cats in 18th century France, and trying to try to understand why would a bunch of French peasants decide to take a bunch of cats, put them on a mock trial, and then massacre them and execute them. So
This was my cat massacre moment, as it were. And and I I I thought to myself, like, this is this is something that I need to understand better. And now I’m an Orthodox Jew, so I don’t believe in sola scriptura in the way that in the way that Protestants might, because we have an oral law, an oral tradition that interprets scripture, that expands, that in some ways.
takes out some things or modifies some things in all sorts of creative and interesting ways. So we’re not bound literally to the text necessarily.
Arguably you could say that with the Talmud, maybe there’s a kind of sola Talmudica in in Orthodox Judaism. That’s that’s
Mike Tolliver (05:15)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (05:16)
an interest that’s a phrase that I’ve proposed at one point. But but I think part of me was drawn to this idea of living biblically. What does it mean to live biblically and to follow scripture literally? How would that actually work in practice? And that was just so interesting and fascinating to me that I decided I have to do a PhD on this.
And many, many years later, here I am. And
Mike Tolliver (05:46)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (05:47)
it’s an attempt to kind of try to understand this and and how it worked in practice and historical context.
Mike Tolliver (05:53)
And so, you know, your entryway into that topic might have been know, for lack of a better phrase, maybe a straightforward application of the Ten Commandments to civil life. what what else did you find? Like you know, what other cat massacres were you uncovering? just curious.
Yisroel Benporat (06:17)
So adultery is maybe one of the most shocking examples. What’s interesting is that not only was it on the books, but they actually did execute several people for adultery. So it was something that actually played out in practice. Now the question is: well, why were those few people executed? Why weren’t there more executions? There are other really interesting examples. Sabbath laws were a big thing in early New England. So the
In fact, in some law codes, violating the Sabbath was a capital offense, though that was never applied in practice. There were the biblical law of the rebellious child who is also supposed to be executed, according to the literal reading of the text. That was on the books in some law codes too. Again, never applied in practice. So there’s there are biblical prohibitions that seventeenth century societies
thought deserved capital offense, and that was not seen as unusual. Like witchcraft, you know, certain certain sexual crimes like bestiality and things like that. That was that was not unusual in this period. It was unusual to start applying biblical law in areas where it was seen as something that was no longer
applicable or no longer binding on Christians. They also just kind of viewed political issues in general through a scriptural lens. Now that too wasn’t entirely unique, but I think they to a greater extent, the Puritans to a greater extent than their contemporaries, tried to use the Bible as a political model, as a political text and kind of a framework for constructing their polity and their political system.
Mike Tolliver (08:17)
So I’m I’m curious then to get a sense of the the Puritan interpretation of these laws, because I’m remembering back to the Bible First Conference, which I know you were at. I think you were you were at the day that Miles Smith presented,
Yisroel Benporat (08:34)
Yes.
Mike Tolliver (08:35)
and he said something that I’m sure jumped out at you. I’d never heard it before. And I’m curious, in the context of this you know, adultery is illegal.
he said, and I don’t know how he came up with this percentage, and maybe we can talk about that, but he had said that forty percent of Puritan women were pregnant on their wedding day. Do you remember him saying that?
Yisroel Benporat (09:01)
Actually don’t remember that specific statistic, but the
Mike Tolliver (09:04)
It was during the Q and
A, so I don’t know if you were there at that point, but he he did say that. And, you know, it could be one of those things that seventy two point eight percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. You know, I’m I don’t I don’t know. But
Yisroel Benporat (09:20)
Yeah, I don’t know where he got the forty percent from, but
Mike Tolliver (09:23)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (09:24)
he is right in that you know, the stereotypes that we have about Puritans being kind of very prudish and against sex is there’s some truth to it, but it’s also more complicated than we make it out to be. So yes, they were against sex outside of marriage, very much so.
sex of any kind outside of marriage. Within marriage, however, they were actually pretty strong in their emphasis on marital intimacy and kind of the marital union. So often it look, and people aren’t angels, right? people people people don’t always follow the laws that their governments set for them and
So yes, there were there were a lot of instances of, for example, births out of out of wedlock, but usually in those cases the authorities would pressure the couple to get married after the fact. And there was a lot of emphasis on that.
Mike Tolliver (10:32)
Okay, but they they would not consider
that like premarital sex as adultery.
Yisroel Benporat (10:39)
Correct. Adultery they actually would have followed the Mosaic definition, which is that it’s only sex between a man and a married woman, which means that the man’s marital status is actually irrelevant to the definition, because in
Mike Tolliver (10:55)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (10:55)
the mos in the Mosaic law it’s entirely dependent on whether the woman is married or not. And so premarital sex, according to this framework, is not great, according to them, but it’s not adultery.
So it’s
Mike Tolliver (11:09)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (11:10)
it’s something else. It’s fornication, that’s probably what they would call it.
Mike Tolliver (11:15)
Gotcha. Okay. So then as it pertained to Sabbath then, maybe as a point of comparison, felt strongly about adhering to the Sabbath, but perhaps not as strongly in practice. Can you talk a little bit more about how that worked out?
Yisroel Benporat (11:36)
So the Sabbath is really interesting. I actually just published an article on this in Journal of the Bible and its reception, which maybe could go in the show notes and listeners
Mike Tolliver (11:45)
Sure.
Yisroel Benporat (11:46)
can check that out. This is an issue that goes back all the way to the beginning of Christianity, because if you look in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, it’s the seventh day of the week, which we now call Saturday.
And there isn’t really anywhere explicit in the New Testament that says, like, actually, now it’s Sunday, and this is what you should do on Sunday, and this is what you shouldn’t do on Sunday. So it’s sort of now there’s one reference to the Lord’s Day in you know in the New Testament, but it’s not clear if that’s the exact same institution as the Sabbath. Now, over this over the early centuries, theologians developed
frameworks for understanding how the Sabbath transitioned into Sunday or the Lord’s Day. And so but the questions remained of well, do we have to follow the Jewish prohibitions? And by the way, what is prohibited on the Sabbath? It’s not entirely clear. Jewish tradition has 39 different categories of work that you’re not allowed to do on the Sabbath. And that’s a list in in ancient rabbinic texts.
But explicit examples in scripture are quite sparse. There’s you know, one about cooking and baking. There’s one about gathering wood. You know, gather like okay, gathering wood, that’s and that’s
Mike Tolliver (13:18)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (13:18)
like a capital offense somehow. Right. So it’s interesting. And and this was a matter of great debate. And now maybe I think it would be helpful actually to zoom out for a second and to
kind of put the Old Testament, New Testament tensions in broader historical context. Right? Because that’s what it what this all comes down to at the end of the day is this problem of you have a unified canon, right? Puritans, like almost all Christians in this period, looked at scripture as a unified text. It wasn’t like they only believed
in the New Testament and not the Old Testament, or only the Old and not the new
For them it was a unified scripture, but how exactly does that work? How do the two fit together? And over the centuries, different answers have been proposed to this. One really influential framework was that we divide the Mosaic law into three categories. And out of those three categories, some survive the advent of Christ, and others are kind of abrogated and ended.
So the three categories are the moral, the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the judicial law. That’s the terms they used.
Mike Tolliver (14:37)
Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (14:38)
So the moral law is like the Ten Commandments, natural law. Those are eternal. Those never change. Thou shalt not murder. That’s not going to change. Thou shalt not commit adultery. That’s not going to change. The ceremonial law are the ancient Israelite rituals, the kind of more obscure stuff, the
You know, the ceremony of the beheading of the of the calf, you know, the scapegoat ceremony, the the elaborate like holidays and ritual those things those are abrogated under this framework. Then there’s the judicial laws. By that they mean civil and criminal laws detailed torts, you know, property,
judicial system, legal, those those kinds of civil things. So there the approach was you don’t have to follow them, but you’re allowed to follow them if you want. So insofar as it’s useful to a Christian polity to follow the judicials, go ahead and do that. But you don’t have to. Now Puritans, that was I would say the nature approach, but what was unique about Puritans was their emphasis on the judicial laws exceeded
That of their contemporaries. And from their standpoint, they wanted to follow the judicials, as they called them, as
Mike Tolliver (16:01)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (16:02)
much as possible. And so that’s where adultery and Sabbath come in as their kind of unique contributions, if we can call it that, in this space, which was: hey, like adultery in the judicial law is a capital offense.
In 17th century England, in 16th century England, the punishment for adultery was you do penitence in the church. Right? It wasn’t something that you could be executed for. And and Sabbath violations were generally not treated as harshly. By Sabbath, in this case, we’re talking about Sunday. And so they said, We gotta reform this. Meanwhile, there were people who were getting executed for theft. And they’re like, Well, wait a second, in theft, the
Punishment in scripture is double restitution, not execution. This is not something we should be doing. So that was kind of what motivated their interpret
that was their interpretive framework. And that’s also what kind of motivated them to reform the existing laws that they had been used to in England to kind of reshape it along scriptural lines.
Mike Tolliver (17:12)
Okay, so they were seeing sort of a a cultural disconnect in the comparative laws of England that in this new context they wanted to kind of set that right, is is what you’re saying. That was the motivation.
Yisroel Benporat (17:24)
Exactly. To s to some extent. Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (17:27)
Okay, okay. Now I’m I’m curious because in that distinction of the moral, civil, and judicial, or pardon me, ceremonial and judicial, my understanding of
Of Calvin is that when he uses those categories, he’s actually looking at the Ten Commandments as exemplars of the moral law. But you’re you’re saying then the application of you know, the prohibition against adultery into civil life was considered judicial. Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (18:02)
Yeah. It often
the categories bleed into each other. So something could be, you know, moral have moral aspects, something could have judicial aspects and ceremonial aspects. Adultery has ceremonial aspects too. For example, the ritual of Sota in Numbers five, for a woman suspected of adultery, she goes to the temple, she drinks bitter water, like that’s not something the Puritans were going to do. That was ceremonial.
Mike Tolliver (18:27)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (18:28)
Whether or not adultery is
Permitted is a is a moral issue, but then how to prosecute it is a judicial question, a political question, in a sense.
Mike Tolliver (18:39)
It’s a it’s a fascinating way to slice the the Torah. do you find it convincing? I’m curious.
Yisroel Benporat (18:49)
To be honest, the tr this tripartite framework itself doesn’t really have so much textual evidence in scripture. It feels
Mike Tolliver (18:58)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (18:58)
like a sort of later conceptual framework that was kind of superimposed to post facto explain why some things made it in and some th some things didn’t. So I’m not I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that framework myself, but
I’m a I’m just a historian, so you know, it made sense to the it made sense to the people I’m studying, which is what’s which is what matters
Mike Tolliver (19:24)
Sure.
Yisroel Benporat (19:24)
for the for the purpose of, you know, but if if you’re asking me like with my theologian’s hat on, I don’t think it’s a it’s actually such a convincing way of dividing up Mosaic law. There’s there’s lots of different ways you can conceptualize it. Like Jewish tradition has does distinguish between you know what we what we might call sort of laws by divine fiat.
versus like the rational laws. So so the the category of the morals, you know, is sort of similar to the idea of like, okay, things like you shall not commit you shall not commit adultery, you should not commit murder, those we would assume that even if God hadn’t told us to do that, that like we wouldn’t be doing that anyway. Right. There’s a kind of this natural law idea of these are very rational. And whereas there are some biblical laws that
We only follow because God told us to do it. And otherwise, like we would never
Mike Tolliver (20:20)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (20:21)
have thought to do it. So that’s like one that’s one way of categorizing it. There’s other ways of thinking about how to how to categorize different laws and different typologies of the law. So I’m I’m not a hundred percent convinced that, you know, these three categories and again they bleed into each other, right? So how useful is that when you kind of when they’re all kind of mixed?
Together in various ways. but that’s that’s they were they were trying to work this out in their own writings, the Puritans. They were trying to come up with systems for determining, like how do how do we determine which judicial laws make it in and which ones don’t. And they had to come up with rules. And there were s elaborate kind of systems for explaining things. But often it it seemed to be like,
A little bit ad hoc at times.
Mike Tolliver (21:13)
So I mean, this is kind of where my mind was going because to to even be in a position where you esteem the judicial laws, you have to be coming with a hermeneutic of strong continuity. And yet there is this like you I think the word you used was,
you know, abrogated. some things persist, some things don’t, which ones are they? can you talk a little bit about kind of what what were the Puritans bringing to the table in terms of
hermenutic with respect to that continuity.
Yisroel Benporat (21:47)
Look, if if you want to be fully continuous, you should probably do the Sabbath on Saturday, right?
Mike Tolliver (21:54)
Ha ha.
Yisroel Benporat (21:54)
I mean, by that logic, you could always take the logic further and further up to the point where, well, you know, you should just be Jewish then. Right? Because at some point you have to say something doesn’t make it into the there’s something that changes between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The question is, what exactly? Now what’s interesting is
If you go back to now, I’m not a historian of early Christianity, but from what I understand, if you go back to the early centuries, you have competing approaches here. Like there’s the Marcionites, who essentially said the Old Testament is actually a different God, it’s a different canon, it doesn’t even belong at all in scripture. And on the other hand, you have people like the Ebionites who were embracing the Old Testament and
And favoring that over the new. So this is the ebb and flow of this tension of how do you preserve continuity? It does at times seem to be they seem to be in in contradiction or in tension with each other. And so, you know, one way of resolving that tension is to say that the Old Testament is a is a type or a shadow, as they called it, of Christ. And that the Old Testament is a sort of sort of a symbolic metaphor and prefiguring.
what what you see in the new. That’s that is one way that they explained it and looked at it.
But they so that you know, there’s a difference between Old Testament and Jewish. And I think that distinction is is important. Someone can embrace the Old Testament without necessarily even liking Judaism or Jews. You can you can be someone who wants who s sees scripture in a unified way and
But thinks thinks the Old Testament has wisdom and relevance for you and eternality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you think Judaism is a valid religion, or that you want to have Jews in your midst. Right?
Mike Tolliver (24:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yisroel Benporat (24:11)
And that’s that goes to the whole question of well, what did Puritans think of actual, real-life contemporary Jews who lived
In the 17th century. And and you know, ca d is it actually fair to call them anti-Semitic,
Mike Tolliver (24:31)
Is it?
Yisroel Benporat (24:31)
Ethan? Well, I don’t think they were philo I mean look, they they weren’t philo-Semitic in the sense that
Mike Tolliver (24:38)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (24:40)
they
The best Jew in their mind was a a Jew who converted to Christianity. The Jews who who visited New England, like their their they constantly tried to convert them. That was their deepest desire and ambition. And when they couldn’t succeed in that, they were disappointed. When they did succeed, they were elated. There’s a reason why fewer than fifty Jews traveled to Boston before seventeen seventy six.
Mike Tolliver (25:10)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (25:11)
That’s and
that’s a small number, right? There’s a reason why there wasn’t a a synagogue in Boston until the 1840s. Now, it’s funny because there’s this myth actually, because people misunderstand Puritan biblicism, and they think that because they embraced the Old Testament by adopting some of the Mosaic law, that they were pro-Jewish and that they were Philo-Semitic, and this myth has actually
Escalated to the point where people imagine the Puritans as kind of quasi-Jews. So you have this myth that Cotton Mather wore a kippah like this and called himself
Mike Tolliver (25:49)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (25:50)
called himself a rabbi, which is not true. There’s no evidence for that. There’s the idea that the first Thanksgiving was actually like a Jewish prayer. Not possible. This vi violates basic basic understandings of Puritan theology, right? They would, they didn’t even like they didn’t even like
Anglican or Catholic liturgy, let alone Jewish. Right? They didn’t even celebrate Christmas or Easter, right?
Mike Tolliver (26:17)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (26:18)
So, so they wouldn’t, right? So, but the the that stems from this confusion of of Old Testament biblicism, and people sort of see Old Testament and they think Jewish. It’s actually two different things. So they were about as anti-Semitic as as most people were in the 17th century. I don’t I don’t think they were.
More anti Semitic than their than usual. But most Christians in this period did not you know d did not look kindly toward Jews. And there is the broader question of well, is it is supersession itself anti Semitic? Which is, you know
Mike Tolliver (26:54)
Well, and yeah,
so I when you were talking about the the application of laws as the Puritans viewed it, I was curious if there was any conscious distinction between what was required of Jews and what was required of non Jews in the law. Like is there a distinction under the law that they acknowledged? Or was there like you said, a supersessionist, like everything
That applied to the Jews applies to us now, except what’s been abrogated because we are the new Israel.
Yisroel Benporat (27:29)
So that’s literally the le the that last way you phrased it. Literally how they would phrase it. There’s this really striking quote where they almost it they’re almost exactly saying what sounds to me like replacement theology, explicitly, because they say
God who was then bound up this is a quote from a a really interesting manuscript called How far Moses Judicials Bind Massachusetts? Which is
Mike Tolliver (28:00)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (28:01)
it it’s literally dealing with this question and so it’s the opinions of three different ministers on this question of well, how much of the Mosaic Law do we have to follow? And one one of the reverends says as a as a reason for why they should follow the Mosaic Law.
God, who was then bound up in covenant with the Jews, hath put us in their stead and is become our God as well as theirs. That’s a really interesting phrase to say, as well as theirs. I
Mike Tolliver (28:32)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (28:33)
think he’s suggesting that Christians have replaced Jews as good to God’s chosen nation, but he’s also saying, I think, that the advent of Christ inaugurated a new universal divine covenant, which still includes.
the Jews, but only because it’s universal covenant, not because there’s I don’t think he’s saying dual covenant theology that that God is still has a covenant with the Jews and a covenant with the Christians. I think he’s he’s saying Christians have replaced
Jews, but it’s a universal covenant now.
Mike Tolliver (29:04)
There is no longer anything special about ethnic Israel.
Yisroel Benporat (29:11)
Well, there’s I guess they’re still yeah, they’re they’re still special in the sense that whatever whatever arrangement God had with them is is supposed to be replicated with with Christians now. So it’s like
Mike Tolliver (29:24)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (29:25)
they would say things like, Whatever the Jews had to do, we have to do. So
Mike Tolliver (29:30)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (29:30)
for the Sabbath, like John Cotton wrote, what time should the Sabbath start? was the question that, you know, also came up.
Does it start in the evening or does it start in the morning? So he said, Well, in the old testament, it’s it says, and there was there was night, there was evening, and there was day, and right in the creation. So it starts in the evening and and so the Sabbath should start Saturday evening and go until Sunday evening, which was not the mainstream position actually in in England at the time. And he says, and that’s the Jews still do that to this day.
But he’s like, but
Mike Tolliver (30:09)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (30:09)
the real evidence the real evidence is scripture, not you know, not human testimony.
Mike Tolliver (30:15)
Okay, so so then would you say for the Puritans the uniqueness of ethnic Israel was a matter of historical importance, but not necessarily contemporary importance?
Yisroel Benporat (30:30)
Yeah. that said, a contemporary Jew would be still fascinating to them and useful to them in the sense that there’s it gives access to understanding Hebrew as a language and as the original language of the Old Testament. And also Rabbinic literature can still shed light on the New Testament because it’s the same period.
So they would have been interested, yes, as a historical matter, looking at Hebrew Hebraic texts and rabbinic texts as a way to help them understand scripture better.
Mike Tolliver (31:11)
Okay. all fifty of those Jews would have been interesting, is yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (31:14)
Yeah, yeah.
yeah. There was there’s actually a Jew. This was not in the sub seventeenth century, this was in the seventeen hundreds, the eighteenth century. There was a Jew who converted in seventeen twenty-two named Judah Monas, and he taught Hebrew at Harvard for several decades. And so that was part of the reason why he had that job and that position was because of his background.
And his r his
Mike Tolliver (31:42)
Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (31:43)
rabbinical background and his his ability to which offered, as Cotton Matter called it, you know, unique treasures that no one else could offer.
Mike Tolliver (31:53)
So you mentioned Hebrew and access to the you know, Jewish traditional writings. Did did they study the Mishnah at all? Were they looking at the Talmud?
Yisroel Benporat (32:08)
So that would be a small minority. I mean, someone like Cotton Matherer did. He did have access to rabbinic texts and he he was fluent. He could read fluently in in Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. And I think it was more common for preachers to
study Hebrew and be able to read the Hebrew Bible in the original, much less common to have facility in rabbinic texts. That’s also not so easy in the Americas.
where copies of these works are not readily available. So I mean many of them were were Cambridge or Oxford educated and they got their Bachelor of Divinity and then they came over and so they may have had access there. But for the most part, you know, when I see like when I look at sermons and other sources, there’s occasional references to Hebrew terms, but references to rabbinic literature are are extremely rare, to be honest.
Mike Tolliver (33:04)
Okay.
so there was at least then a an awareness that the access to the Hebrew of the Old Testament text is va is valuable.
Yisroel Benporat (33:19)
For sure.
Mike Tolliver (33:19)
over and against maybe the Greek you know, version that you know you learn the Greek New Testament, it’s easy enough to hop over to the Greek Old Testament, but th so they they were making a conscious choice there.
can you give any insight into what what led to that choice? Or I’m I’m just curious.
Yisroel Benporat (33:42)
Well actually they you know pro Protestants and and Puritans were very keen on vernacular translations of scripture because before I mean there were Bibles before the King James Bible, but before the King James Bible really took off and gained, you know, widespread public reception and and access, Scripture was mainly out of reach.
For ordinary people, because it was the Latin Vulgate, people didn’t read Latin. And so vernacular translation was actually kind of hand in hand with sola scriptura, that it was a way of allowing the people to hear the word of God and in a way that they could understand. So, you know, I’m not suggesting that ordinary attendees at church in early New England are going to have facility with the
original languages of scripture. It was more
Mike Tolliver (34:43)
Sure.
Yisroel Benporat (34:43)
that the preachers and the the people who were tasked with conveying God’s word, they wanted to study it properly. But then
Mike Tolliver (34:51)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (34:52)
at the end of the day, it’s going to be English language Bibles that are in every household and that are being sold and popularized.
Mike Tolliver (35:00)
They they were more just tapping into that broader Protestant disposition as opposed to anything unique
Yisroel Benporat (35:09)
Yeah, I think that’s accurate.
Mike Tolliver (35:11)
Okay. Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (35:15)
They also like John
Mike Tolliver (35:16)
Gotcha.
Yisroel Benporat (35:16)
Elliott translated the Bible into a native language to try to reach Native American audiences. And actually the language that he translated into is no longer, I think it’s no longer spoken. so it’s sort of like
Mike Tolliver (35:32)
Interesting.
Yisroel Benporat (35:33)
this preserved written record. And of course, there’s no alphabet, there’s no native
Mike Tolliver (35:39)
Mm.
Yisroel Benporat (35:40)
alphabet, so he had to transliterate all the words into.
Mike Tolliver (35:44)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (35:44)
English or English orthography, and it’s so it’s kind of hard to it’s hard to read, like even to enunciate. and that’s and that’s just a simple ch you know, the the challenge of trying to reproduce a language in one sound on paper. Like try transliterating Hebrew and it’s it it’s awkward. All it’s always awkward.
Mike Tolliver (36:08)
It is always
awkward. It’s true. so I’m I’m curious then as the Puritans are applying you know, Torah to daily life in you know, maybe this unique way from their you know, the the the other Protestant
traditions during their day. I’m curious if there was any sort of how do I say it? Any of the
eschatological vision from the Old Testament that they would have then applied to their current circumstances and or how does that relate to the New Testament eschatological vision?
What what did they do?
Yisroel Benporat (36:55)
This is
yeah, there’s been a lot of literature on this. You know, the a term that’s often used is millennialism, which refers to the you know, the millennium described in the book of Revelation and whether you know whether that’s is that literal, a literal millennium, and if it’s if it is literal, is it you know, i is the a thousand years
Is it does Christ come before the a thousand years or does he come after the a thousand years, right? Amillennial, post-millennial, premillennial. And then there’s Romans 11, right? All Israel shall be saved. What does that mean? All Israel shall be saved, which they understood to be a precursor for the second coming. So this is actually really interesting because people have looked at Puritan eschatology and
Said that the way that they conceptualize the restoration of Israel could be seen as in some ways prefiguring Christian Zionism in America. Because the restoration
Mike Tolliver (37:58)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (37:58)
of Israel, according to, for example, a famous treatise by Increase Mather, doesn’t just mean a spiritual salvation. It doesn’t just mean that all that all the people of Israel will convert and that national conversion to Christianity will then herald the second coming. In his view,
Saved salvation also means what he calls a temporal salvation, meaning this worldly salvation,
Mike Tolliver (38:22)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (38:23)
which means in practice, a return to the land of Israel. And the restoration of the polity of Israel as a political entity, which sounds a lot like the Jewish kind of view of.
Returning to Zion, the longing to return to Zion and to and ultimately Zionism to build a state and to sort of re-establish Jewish sovereignty and statehood. Now, to be clear, there’s important differences here because Increase Mather is imagining this as a as something on the way to a national conversion. So it’s like, okay, they’ll build up a state, you know, they’ll build up a a Jewish polity which then converts and then
Christ will return. As opposed
Mike Tolliver (39:16)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (39:16)
to like I as opposed to simply supporting, you know, Jewish statehood on its own terms. Right. That’s that’s an important distinction. And there’s also the specific form of the polity that he envisions isn’t like modern liberal democracy, to say the least. He
Mike Tolliver (39:34)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (39:34)
thinks, and this is a remarkable statement because he’s writing this like during the restoration period after the
English monarchy, there was an interregnum and Charles had been King Charles the first had been executed. This is when like the monarchy’s back in full force and he says, you know, everything was great until they cast off the theocracy and had kings.
So like but before that, like during the book of judges, it was great. And like
Mike Tolliver (40:06)
Really?
Yisroel Benporat (40:07)
got God appointed God appointed the le the the the judge and the judge ruled Israel and like that they didn’t have any tyranny or oppression until until the period of the kings. And he’s like that system of judges, that’s what it’s going to be in the days to come.
Mike Tolliver (40:26)
Are we quite sure that he read Judges? Is that I I don’t know.
Yisroel Benporat (40:33)
There’s I mean, look, there’s there’s conflicting evidence in the book of judges, right? On the one hand you
Mike Tolliver (40:37)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (40:38)
have the you have the phrase of like, and every man did what was right in his own eyes, which kind of sounds like,
Mike Tolliver (40:41)
Right in his own eyes. Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (40:43)
you know, it would have been better if there were a king. But then you also have like Gideon, right, refusing the monarchy, and that’s kind of an anti monarchical sentiment there. So there’s mixed evidence to say the least. And you could look at you could look at Samuel, you know, first Samuel eight and have
have different conclusions as to whether monarchy is a good thing or a bad thing. This has has been endlessly debated. So yes, I think it’s it’s selectively
Mike Tolliver (41:10)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (41:12)
it’s a selective reading of judges, for sure.
Mike Tolliver (41:15)
I I feel like he wanted to say Joshua. And like I just let me let me help him here
Yisroel Benporat (41:21)
Ha ha.
Mike Tolliver (41:22)
get where he wants to go. okay, I’m curious though, because I feel like there is a disconnect here, and I’m hoping that you can help me connect. because if the Puritans saw themselves as the new Israel, why would there be any desire to see?
Any sort of Jewish, like ethnically Jewish revival, like why would they make that connection? because I feel like modern supersessionism is going to say that Romans 11 applies to the church, not Israel. So it seems like they maintain that distinction with Romans 11, but they get rid of it in in other areas. Can can you help?
Connect those dots for me or what what’s going on there? Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (42:15)
It’s almost like a paradox or saying, because
on the one hand, if you are Israel, if you are the new Israel, then
then the what does it mean for Israel to convert
Mike Tolliver (42:31)
Right.
Yisroel Benporat (42:32)
if you are Israel? So I I I guess the way you have to square it is
even though under this sort of replacement theology, Christians are as as Reverend George Phillips put it, like in their stead, they’re still around. They still like there’s the Jews haven’t disappeared, right? They’re still they still exist. They’re still alive in the seventeenth century. They haven’t gone away. So the question is what how do you account for them theologically?
And there has to be some sort of role for them in the story. And I think the way the only way for the story to make sense is if they join. Because otherwise they’re kind of they’re a reminder, maybe, an uncomfortable reminder of
The origin story and kind of where things came from. And you know, and and Jewish refusal to convert to Christianity historically was was something that produced a lot of enmity and kind of frustration. There have been a lot of efforts throughout the centuries.
by Christians to convert Jews. Thankfully, you know, that’s in the past. I I think today ju Jews and Christians are are really good allies and you know and and and that’s and I’m very grate we’re very grateful for the allyship and and and the friendship that and and the peace that we enjoy today. but historically it was it was a lot darker and I’m just gonna be real about that. And so
Mike Tolliver (44:15)
Sure.
Yisroel Benporat (44:16)
it a lot of it I think just
stems from this need to account for the continued presence and and endurance of real life Jews. And that’s something that theologically is needs to be explained from a Christian standpoint.
Mike Tolliver (44:40)
Gotcha. So hearing you talk about the Puritans’ view of the Jews, and I’m I’m just kind of processing as as you’re sharing all this, would would you s go so far as to say that the the Puritans had sort of like this objectification or like fetishization of Jews?
Yisroel Benporat (45:04)
Maybe, yeah. I you know, it’s it’s interesting because their opponents accused them of Judaizing. And and
Mike Tolliver (45:11)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (45:12)
they s they they called them Judai. Now, that’s the that goes back to the myth of the Judaic Puritans, which is maybe where it all comes from, of like, well, you guys love Jews too much, you know. the the future Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgiff, accused the Elizabethan Puritan Thomas Cartwright.
Of playing the Jew. Now,
Mike Tolliver (45:35)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (45:36)
Cartwright and Puritans generally accused their opponents of being Marcionites. So there’s something there’s something there, which is yes, they were they were 100% Christian, Protestant. They did not identify as Jewish in any way. But there was something about the Old Testament and something about Jews that
Hold their fascination and that grab them. And you could call calling it a fetish is maybe, maybe a bit too far, but maybe not so far off, because there’s something about that objectification, as you put it. There’s something about the Jew, right? Think of the Cotton Mather’s comment about the treasures that the Jew can offer. It sort of goes to that, which is that this is this is a a living, breathing embodiment of
the stories that they read in the Old Testament. It’s the same reason why I think I think what you know it’s a powerful experience from what I understand for Christians today to visit the land of Israel to walk on the earth that, you know, that the patriarchs walked, that that that to walk where Jesus walked too, but but also where the Jews did, the Israelites did.
Mike Tolliver (47:03)
Well, Dr. Earis Royal, Ben Perat, we thank you for your wisdom. this has been eye-opening to me. I had n no idea just how deep this rabbit hole goes. And you know, hopefully
Yisroel Benporat (47:17)
Ha ha ha.
Mike Tolliver (47:18)
there there’s more to learn. And you you’ve actually shared even a couple of resources that I think would help us
you know, go deeper down this rabbit hole. So I’ll I’ll connect with you and and you can share those links. We’ll include them in the show notes for anybody who’s interested to to learn a little bit more. But thank you for your time.
Yisroel Benporat (47:38)
Thank you. Yeah, and maybe if I could share a final thought. I think
Mike Tolliver (47:43)
Sure.
Yisroel Benporat (47:44)
Puritans have lately been there there’s been a resurgence of interest in Puritans. It’s not the first time this has happened. You know, there was the twentieth century Christian Reconstruction movement, which kind of tried to revive the Mosaic law and publish books, you know, I outlining what a
Christian polity should look like on biblical grounds and all that. But it I think there’s a resurgent Christian nationalism right now. There’s even a resurgent kind of advocacy for theocracy. It’s it’s still it’s it’s still on the fringes. It’s still, you know, it’s not mainstream yet, but it’s becoming more mainstream, I think. It’s becoming more mainstream enough that.
one of these proponents actually made it onto Ross Douthat’s podcast for a conversation.
Mike Tolliver (48:42)
Okay.
Yisroel Benporat (48:42)
So but there’s also at the same time a resurgent Marcionism, I think. and and anti-Semitism is I think fueling this notion of like the old testament should be rejected, the old testament should be is not relevant to Christians. And so I think the Puritans are
Look, I’m a historian, right? I should I don’t tell people what to do. I I just sort of tell what happened. I don’t tell right. So like but per personally, you know, you can look at this story and you could read it you could look at the story of early Newman and read it as an exemplar of a bygone
era or as a cautionary tale of what goes wrong when you try to mix religion and government. Personally, I’m not a fan of theocracy. I I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t even want a Jewish theocracy like in the state of Israel either, to be honest.
But I think also the Puritans are useful as a reminder that the Old Testament is just as much a part of the Christian canon as the New Testament. And for them it was a unified scripture. So, yes, they had elaborate systems of explaining which parts are abrogated and which parts are eternal. But it would be not only against the American tradition.
of the Bible and not only against Puritanism, but pretty much you know every mainstream denomination, as far as I can tell in this period and for most of Christianity, that rejecting the Old Testament is is it’s un American and it’s un
unchhristian too. And
Mike Tolliver (50:28)
Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (50:28)
I I’m saying this as a as a Jew, so I can’t, you know, I can’t really I can’t speak for Christians. So I can only I can only speak for myself and say, you know, it’s fine if you want to believe every religion believes it’s the true religion and that all other religions are false. Like I’ve I have no issue with people who want to believe that. Like that that’s not something that I find personally offensive. But
If you’re rejecting the Old Testament because there’s something about Jews that makes you think it can’t this can’t be this can’t be part of the canon because it must be a different God, because it’s just that’s then that’s I think that’s problematic. So the you know,
Mike Tolliver (51:10)
Yeah.
Yisroel Benporat (51:11)
so so what I’m saying is don’t don’t cast the Puritans as these kind of quasi-Jews, as proto-Jews, but also at the same time, I think they
Help us understand the Hebraic help us appreciate the Hebraic roots of Christianity, Christianity’s origins in Jewish scripture, and ultimately America’s tradition of use of using the Old Testament and and understanding the Old Testament as a source of moral and political wisdom.
Mike Tolliver (51:47)
So just like all of us.
Yisroel Benporat (51:47)
So I don’t know if you wanna put that
if you wanna put that in the i i in the in the podcast too, but I just wanted to share that.
Mike Tolliver (51:52)
Yeah.
Yeah. No, no, no. I I mean, I think it is a a helpful caveat to say that nobody belongs on a pedestal, us included. We’re all a mixed bag and there are lessons to be learned from the positive and the negative. And so I I appreciate you kind of you know, contextualizing us and orienting us to engaging with the Puritans as a thought tradition. I think that is helpful. So
Yisroel Benporat (52:19)
Thank you. And it’s it’s a bit it’s it’s been an honor and pl and a pleasure to join you on the podcast and to have the opportunity to share about my research. So thank you for that.
