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John Locke and the Jews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Nabil I. Matar
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Extract

In 1813, a century after the death of John Locke, an anonymous pamphleteer in London, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Abraham, saac and Jacob’, complained about the restrictions which were placed on the Jews. In The Lamentations of the Children of Israel representing the Hardships they suffer from the Penal Laws, the author recalled John Locke as a defender of the Jews, and quoted one of the philosopher's favourable comparisons between Jews and Gentiles. The author evidently felt that Locke's advocacy of toleration for dissenters in the second half of the seventeenth century could be applied to the Jews of nineteenth–century England: having argued in defence of non–Anglicans, Locke was believed to have argued for non–Christians too.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Abraham, , Isaac and Jacob, The Lamentations of the Children of Israel, London 1813, 29.Google Scholar

2 For a study and an edition of Locke's text, see Two Tracts on Government, ed. Philip Abrams, , Cambridge 1967.Google Scholar

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34 Correspondence, i. 237;Google ScholarLocke's Travels in France, 1675–1679, ed. John, Lough, Cambridge 1953; 12.Google ScholarPerhaps his advocacy of religious freedom for the Jews was also inspired by Surinam where the status of the Jews had been changed in 1665: in that year, an act was passed to the effect that Jews be ‘considered as English born’, and that they be granted land to ‘build thereon places of worship and schools’.Google ScholarLocke, who had been active since the mid–1660s in projects for colonising the neighbouring Bahamas, was aware of all legal developments in the area.Google ScholarSee Act of Surinam (17 Aug. 1665) in Lindo, E. H., History of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, London 1848, 381–3.Google ScholarOn Locke and the Bahamas, see Bourne, , John Locke, i. 292.Google Scholar

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55 See Nabil, I. Matar, ‘The idea of the Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant thought: 1660–1701’, Harvard Theological Review lxxviii (1985), 115–48;Google Scholar also Richard Popkin, ‘Jewish Messianism and Christian millenarianism’, in Perez Zagorin, (ed.), Culture and Politics, Berkeley 1980, 67–90.Google Scholar

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62 Peter, Allix, An Examination of Several Scripture Prophecies, London 1707, 46 : ‘The Jews since their destruction by Vespasian, having mistaken the sense of the 38th and 39th Chapters of Ezekiel, have confounded the Ideas of that description of the Temple, and have applyed it to a time to come. But there is still among them one part of their Commentators who believe the Prophecies never promised them a 3rd re–establishment in their own Land’.Google Scholar

63 Although Daniel Whitby, disapproved of Locke's view on the resurrection, he shared with the philosopher belief in the Restoration of the Jews, and in his A Critical Commentary and Paraphrase of the Old and New Testament and the Apocrypha (1 st edn, London 1703) sharply criticised the position of John Lightfoot and Henry Hammond: see the ‘appendix’ to Romans xi containing ‘A Discourse on the Calling of the Jews to the Christian Faith’.Google Scholar

64 See Bodl. Lib., MS Locke c. 27, fos 25gv–26or.Google ScholarSeder Olam was first published in Latin and was translated by J., Clark in London 1694: Seder Olam: or the Order, Series, or Succession of all the Ages, Periods, and Times of the Whole World. Locke was taking his notes directly from the English version.Google Scholar

65 For Henry, Hammond's opposition to Restoration, see his A Paraphrase and Annotation Upon all the Books of the New Testament, 1st edn 1653, London 1659, esp. pp. 49 iff (commentary on Romans xi).Google Scholar

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72 Correspondence, vi. 614; ii. 56–7.Google Scholar For other references to Judaic texts, see . ii. 137, 427; to Jewish coins, vii. 90–1.Google Scholar

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76 Menassah Ben, Israel, The Hope of Israel, London 1655.Google ScholarFor Locke's familiarity with Ben Israel's work, see the reference in a letter by Nicholas Toinard to Locke in Correspondence, ii. 277.Google Scholar

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