“News about Jews” in Puritan New England: Sabbatian Messianism and Judeocentric Millenarianism in Increase Mather’s Mystery of Israel’s Salvation (1669)

Abstract

Abstract The American Puritan minister Increase Mather’s first publication, The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation (London, 1669), originated in a series of lectures he delivered in Boston in 1666 and early 1667. These lectures were occasioned by reports that the twelve tribes of Israel were returning to Palestine under the inspiration of the self-styled messiah Shabbetai Tzvi (d. 1676). This essay explains why Mather and those Anglo-American Protestant contemporaries who shared his vision of the millennium were intrigued by Shabbetai even though they remained convinced that Jesus was the messiah; and why other Protestant contemporaries disliked this particular form of millennialism, which is sometimes termed Judeocentric millenarianism or Judeocentrism. Judeocentric millenarianism was controversial because it explicitly elevated the twelve tribes, upon their miraculous and massive conversion to Christianity, to a position of millennial superiority over gentile Christians. The essay also addresses an important point of chronology: the Sabbatian movement collapsed (but did not vanish entirely) following Shabbetai’s conversion to Islam in mid-1666. Mather edited his lectures for publication after he learned of the movement’s collapse. Thus his Mystery of Israel’s Salvation was not a transcript of his lectures.