The Rebirth of Chosenness

Four months after ordering the expulsion of every Jew from his realm in the summer of 1290, England’s King Edward I — better remembered today as the villain from Braveheart — boasted in a letter that he had driven out the “perfidious” Jews “for the honour of Christ.” His infamous Edict of Expulsion, forcing every Jew, perhaps as many as 17,000 souls, out of England, hardly came out of the blue. It was a capstone to an already ugly record of English Jew-hatred. England had pioneered the blood-libel myth in 1144, when the Jews were baselessly blamed for ritually murdering a young boy named William of Norwich; mobs had wiped out York’s entire Jewish community at Clifford’s Tower in 1190; even the Magna Carta, a justifiably lauded milestone for liberty, singled out Jews for ill treatment.

But three and a half centuries later, England would emerge as the most philosemitic country in the world. In 1648, a different Edward, pamphleteer Edward Nicholas, would write with earnest sincerity that “the good or evil usage of God’s people is the greatest state-interest in the world,” arguing for the good. How did one realm travel from boasting of Jewish banishment to treating Jewish well-being as a barometer of national destiny?

England in the 1600s was a society facing, much like the Western world today, war, plague, and political vertigo. Yet somehow it birthed the Scientific Revolution, the modern state, and sustained economic growth. What powered such astonishing accomplishment? For the English, the answer was a burgeoning conviction that the world could — and would — get better, a confidence that stirred new ambitions in science, politics, and philosophy. And that conviction derived from a blazing theological idea: biblical chosenness.

In fact, biblical chosenness became a driving force behind the many innovations that would characterize 17th-century England, a period that economist Tyler Cowen recently called “one of the most important centuries any nation ever had.”

The English turn toward biblical chosenness, and from antisemitism to philosemitism, began with the twin rallying cries of sola scriptura and ad fontes. The Reformation doctrine sola scriptura — Latin for “Scripture alone” — declared that every believer must judge Scripture’s words for himself because Scripture alone is fully sufficient for faith and practice. This meant that every single person needed access to the text in his own tongue. Translating the Bible into English without episcopal license was still a capital offense in 1530 when William Tyndale — a reformer who had earlier vowed to a learned man that soon even “a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost” — printed an English Pentateuch on an Antwerp press and had it smuggled to England. His strangling and burning at the stake in 1536 only intensified demand for an English vernacular version of the Hebrew Bible. The first authorized translation, known as the Great Bible, arrived three years later and was followed by a succession of translations, culminating in 1611 with the King James Version. England was now a biblical society.

Equally important, both during this process and in its wake, was the Renaissance slogan ad fontes — “back to the sources” — which sent scholars to reengage with the Bible in its original languages: Hebrew and Greek. This proved a tall order. While Greek could be dusted off in monastery libraries, Hebrew had to be rediscovered, and in Judenrein England, that rediscovery had to be done by Christians. As scholars — so-called Christian Hebraists — wrestled with the Hebrew biblical text, charting its right-to-left letters in fresh grammars, they realized that interpretive aids were necessary. In the past, of course, they could have just addressed any questions to their priests. No longer trusting the Roman church, Protestants turned to an alternative source: centuries of Jewish commentary that Christian Europe had long ignored. Hebraists soon found that resources from the midrash to Maimonides, from Ibn Ezra to Flavius Josephus, proved substantially helpful in clarifying everything, whether legal questions or historical riddles or prophetic idioms. Lecture halls from Cambridge to Leiden began buzzing with the ascendant idea of Hebraica veritas (“Hebrew truth”).

These trends converged with particular force in England. Henry VIII scoured Leviticus and the rabbinic laws of levirate marriage to justify divorce from Rome; common lawyers mined Deuteronomy and Maimonides’s Code to sketch out monarchical and republican political orders. By 1652, an anonymous English pamphleteer demanded that the nation be “established, as the Commonwealth of Israel was in Mose’s [sic] time.” Top political theorists including James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, and John Selden queried the “Talmudical commonwealthsmen” of ancient Israel for arguments about popular sovereignty, land reform, and religious toleration — proof that the Bible supplied not only individual salvation but national civic architecture.

Science, too, took note of this biblical renaissance. England, in short order, became the scientific center of the world. The legendary Sir Francis Bacon recast empirical inquiry as a second Edenic mandate: “Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over creation,” he wrote in The New Organon. “Both of these losses can in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and science.” Bacon’s merging of religious and scientific advancement was a direct result of his country’s sense of election. Seminal figures in the Scientific Revolution — such as pioneering chemist Robert Boyle and Royal Society founder John Wilkins — treated these as marching orders. In their hands, the laboratory became a covenantal workshop where barometers, water desalination, and cell biology were all steps toward what historian Jonathan Immanuel called “a man-made but divinely ordained heaven on earth.” Eliminating disease and famine would not eclipse Scripture; it would vindicate it, proving that Providence intended human ingenuity to help reverse the Fall of Adam.

This belief in the biblical story thus inspired England’s intelligentsia to chart new political philosophies and scientific theories in the here and now.

But as English readers thumbed through their Bibles — Isaiah, Jeremiah, and on to Zechariah — they also encountered clear promises of a tangible future. And these promises were about Israel, not England. In the Bible, God promised He would gather Israel, plant her in Zion, rebuild Jerusalem, and set that restored nation as a light unto the nations. Could such verses be taken straight — no metaphor, no allegory — at face value?

For over a millennium, clergymen had insisted that the biblical Israel referred to the Church, and that terms such as Zion were a symbol of its earthly reality and ultimate perfection. Yet, as England’s theologians, political theorists, and scientists pored over newly minted Hebrew Bibles, the old interpretive scaffolding began to creak and wobble. After all, the text seemed to say exactly what it meant: The Bible was a story about the Jews, and that story was far from over.

Sir Henry Finch, a lawyer and politician, detonated the debate in 1621 with his bombshell book The World’s Great Restauration, or The Calling of the Jews. He insisted that Israel in prophecy means the literal descendants of Jacob, that God will one day “bring them back to their land and ancient seats,” and that once restored, they will “be kings and chief monarchs of the earth [and] govern all” — including England. The pamphlet raced through elite circles; King James, who fancied himself a new Solomon, fumed at the thought of ranking beneath a returning Jewish king, and he briefly jailed Finch and his printer, while a court preacher scoffed that his vision was as likely as “Men in the Moone.” Yet the uproar left two indelible impressions: Scripture might in fact foretell a geopolitical Jewish comeback, and England’s own sense of election would have to reckon with that divine agenda.

Finch’s audacity unsettled England’s most impressive thinkers. If Israel meant something other than Israel — if it meant the Roman Church, or better yet, the English themselves — England could still cast itself as the central focus of salvation history. But if the Hebrew prophets truly promised a flesh-and-blood Jewish restoration, then England — so sure of its own providential mission — had to ask: What part do we have to play?

Into this debate stepped the most celebrated Jew in Europe, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel. Born in 1604 to Portuguese conversos who escaped the Inquisition, he spoke several languages, founded Amsterdam’s first Hebrew press, and wrote for Gentile as well as Jewish audiences. His Conciliador — a tour de force harmonizing apparent biblical contradictions — became a Continental bestseller; Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius hailed him as heir to Maimonides; and the aforementioned Robert Boyle jotted that Menasseh was “one of the most celebrated of the modern Rabbis.” By the 1630s, the modest Amsterdam preacher had become Europe’s go-to Hebrew consultant, a 17th-century Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks whose dinner table was a coveted place for every diplomat or scientist hoping to pick the good rabbi’s brain.

Menasseh’s most daring publication came in 1636 with On the Resurrection of the Dead, a treatise aimed at Europe’s prophecy-obsessed elite on how they could play a part in the biblical story. First, he enjoined them to adopt the Bible’s seven Noahide commandments — universal precepts against idolatry, bloodshed, theft, and so on — which Hebraists would begin to identify as the scriptural root of natural law. Second, he exclaimed, à la Maimonides, that “the righteous of every nation shall have a share in the world to come,” a destiny, the sages added, equal even to that of Israel’s high priest. English thinkers left uneasy by Sir Henry Finch could embrace this synthesis, which brought them into the biblical story of chosenness. Israel’s physical return to Zion would not sideline other peoples; on the contrary, it would invite every nation to embrace virtue and walk the same road with them to redemption. John Selden, who drew upon Menasseh for his monumental On the Natural Law, then marveled that “we may best understand the meaning of salvation from the Jews.”

As it turned out, biblical chosenness and the story of Israel, rightly read, expanded hope for the world rather than constricting it. After decades of religious violence throughout Europe, this message offered hope for a brighter future. To believe in the literal truth of the biblical vision was to believe that God was acting in the world, was invested in it, and that His covenant people were headed home. If you believed this — as an increasing number of influential and powerful Englishmen did — then you could also believe that you, too, were redemption-bound, the sort of sweeping sentiment that fills men with the spirit needed to discover new horizons of human possibility. The very notion of chosenness ignited a yearning to understand God’s plan for humanity and to be a part of it.

In 1650, Menasseh pushed the story further with his publication of The Hope of Israel, translated into English in 1652 by the English Puritan scholar, and John Milton’s close friend, Moses Wall. Menasseh dedicated the English edition to “the Parliament of England.” Drawing on Deuteronomy’s prophecy that the Jews would be scattered “to the end of the earth” before God restores them, he pointed out that medieval Hebrew writers routinely rendered the old French name for England, Angleterre, as ketzei ha’aretz — the very term in Deuteronomy meaning “the end of the earth.” Because no openly Jewish community lived there, the dispersion was literally unfinished; the curtain of salvation could not rise.

The remedy, Menasseh argued, was clear. England must welcome the Jews — treat them generously and protect them — to facilitate the coming redemption. Readmission would therefore serve a double hope: It would crown England as the final link in Israel’s exile and position the nation to assist when the summons to rebuild Jerusalem came.

By conceiving chosenness in this new way, the thinkers of this time and place transformed their pursuits from ones of self-interest to ones concerned with the flourishing of others. It caused a nation on the threshold of global expansion to reconsider itself in view of a small, persecuted people that it itself had banished. It persuaded English politicians, philosophers, and scientists to think of themselves and their choices in light of a much larger story.

In the early 18th century, rationalist philosopher John Toland argued that assisting the Jews to regain Palestine would serve England, reasoning that a nation built on such an “excellent constitution” would become “more populous, rich, and powerful than any other,” and that it was Britain’s Christian duty to support it. Isaac Newton, history’s preeminent scientist, filled page after page with intricate calculations projecting the very year he thought God would regather the Jews. He even allowed himself to wonder patriotically whether restoration “may perhaps come forth not from the Jews themselves, but from some other kingdom friendly to them.” William Whiston, Newton’s successor at Cambridge, posited that Noah’s flood had been caused by a comet, and he translated the works of Josephus, “the Jewish historian,” into English. He, along with Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and radical champion of dissent, and William Wilberforce, the driving force behind British abolition of the slave trade, preached that human progress and Jewish restoration rose or fell together.

The impact was, if anything, more intense, once it leapt the Atlantic to colonial America. By that time, it had already found its chief philosopher in John Locke, who drew directly and powerfully upon the Hebraic tradition to argue for religious toleration, natural rights, and government by consent. These liberal, Enlightenment ideals would soon spread westward. John Adams thus wrote that the Jews had “done more to civilize men than any other nation” and confessed, “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” Abraham Lincoln spoke of Americans as an “almost chosen people” and reportedly told his wife, Mary, that he longed to tour the Holy Land after his second term. Ulysses S. Grant fulfilled that pilgrimage in 1878 during his post-presidential world tour. And, of course, Harry Truman would eventually cast himself as chosen for the role of Israel’s restorer, quipping at a meeting with Jewish dignitaries, “I am Cyrus!”

From republican constitutionalism and abolition to scientific innovation and modern diplomacy, the Anglo-American surge of achievement and human progress repeatedly drew energy from the idea of chosenness.

Fast-forward to today and America stands where 17th-century England once did: wealthy yet anxious, powerful yet unsure of its script. Fortunately, we are heir to the very same tradition of Hebraic republicanism that the English used to power one of the most consequential centuries in human history. The lessons they learned ring just as true for contemporary America: When a nation grafts itself into the Bible’s storyline — honoring the Jewish covenant while embracing its own calling in service to God — it gains a forward-leaning confidence that fuels discovery and progress. In turn, whenever that covenant consciousness fades, cynicism rushes in and despair crouches at the door.

Happily, the cultural weather shows signs of shifting in that direction. Gen Z is turning back toward faith, according to a 2023 Springtide study: Two-thirds now say they are at least “slightly religious.” Research has found that the decades-long rise of the religious “nones” has stalled and possibly even begun to reverse. Well over half of young Americans already identify somewhere within Christianity, and social media metrics show “Christian TikTok” exploding in reach. You might call this young cohort Steph Curry Christians — public, innovative, culture-shaping believers who treat Bible study in NFL locker rooms, viral worship singles on Billboard’s Hot 100, and prayer clips on Snapchat as normal life. They are desperately searching for meaning and are increasingly finding it.

That renaissance of belief is an open invitation. The same Hebraic hope that once propelled England to its golden century — and later powered Adams’s constitutional vision, Lincoln’s longing for the Holy Land, Truman’s recognition of Israel, and more — can again inspire the United States. If this rising generation latches onto a God who keeps His promises to His covenant people, and calls every nation into His drama, it will recover faith not only in Providence but in America’s own capacity for scientific ingenuity, technological breakthroughs, moral leadership, and public virtue.

We can sneer at the very notion of divine election, dismiss Israel’s role, and watch despair corrode our civic spirit. Or we can imitate 17th-century England’s better instinct and Menasseh’s grandest insight by welcoming the Jewish story, accepting our own task, and wagering once more that history bends toward blessing.

The hour is ripe: Embrace chosenness, and our republic’s future can be as audacious as its past.