Political Intrigue In The Holy Land Two Centuries Ago

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Jonathan Parry – Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East.

An excerpt from, “Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East” by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 219 – 223:

One additional complexity of Jerusalem was that between five and seven thousand Jews lived there. Many had travelled from Russia or Poland to die in Palestine, either in Jerusalem or in other favoured settlements such as Safed or Tiberias. The presence of Jews was a major part of Jerusalem’s appeal to missionaries. In 1809, a separate society had been founded for Protestant mission work among the Jews, the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, usually known as the London Jews’ Society. It relied on the enthusiasm of former Jews, mostly from northern continental Europe, who had converted to Christianity and wished to persuade others to accept the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus; eleven of the first fifteen LJS missionaries were Germans. In the 1820s, the movement’s profile was helped by the publicity generated by the former Jewish (and former Catholic) Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff, another German. He travelled extensively, flamboyantly, and foolhardy in the Middle East and Asia, keen to argue theologically with anyone who rose to his bait. Wolff was an eclectic eccentric who was drawn to the Middle East for many reasons: to prove the accuracy of the Bible, to find the scattered tribes of Abraham, to challenge the grip of the papacy and the mosques, and to encourage local Christians to commune with the Anglican Church.

. . .In the 1820s, the LJS benefited from financial support from a few very wealthy Englishmen, such as Henry Drummond, Sir Thomas Baring, and Lewis Way. Such men read biblical prophecy literally, as forecasting the return of the children of Israel to their homeland, leading the way for the Second Coming of Christ. Their influence focused LJS activities on Jerusalem—rather than, say, Damascus, where there were at least as many Jews. Biblical literature was on the rise in the early nineteenth century, and expectations of Ottoman collapse after 1821 fed apocalyptic hopes for the sudden, dramatic fall of Islam in the Holy Land. Nonetheless, their hopes for the return of the Jews to Palestine and their conversion to Christianity were always a minority enthusiasm in Britain—the biblical references to Jews returning to their homeland were more generally assumed to be allegorical allusions to Christians. Most of those who toyed with such hopes did not emphasise them much in public, appreciating that they appeared far-fetched and were easily satirised.

. . .Yet it was the LJS’s very triviality that made it significant. It was a standing reminder of the problems facing British religious activity in the Middle East compared with other sects: the lack of established religious institutions, of a building to show off Protestant services, and of great-power protection. Nicolayson was concerned with all these issues, not just with the Jews. He began as a privately funded missionary, but he quickly saw, as did many Anglicans at home, that the established Church needed an institutional presence in Jerusalem if it were to be taken seriously. Increasing numbers of Englishmen were visiting Jerusalem and did not want to stay in the convents. They wondered why Christianity in its pure apostolic form was not represented there as well as Romanism and Orthodoxy.

. . .So it was that British power first appeared at Jerusalem in a different guise—in the shape of William Young, who was appointed the first European consul to the city in 1838, and arrived in March 1839. The decision to appoint a consul had been taken by Palmerston in October 1836 and was unconnected with the LJS mission; Young became a member of the society only after being appointed.

. . .The arrival of a British consul in Jerusalem and the movement for a church were driven by general concerns about British influence, much more than by the specific interests of the LJS. This is often not understood, because of Palmerston’s ambiguous letter of appointment to Young, of January 31, 1839, which stated that “it will be part of your duty . . . to afford protection to the Jews generally.” Around this sentence a large historiography has arisen, which reads it as suggesting that Britain wanted to create a sectarian Jewish interest, and to encourage Jews to settle in a homeland in Palestine. If there was such a policy, the natural explanation for it would be that Palmerston’s son-in-law was Lord Ashley, one of the most active political evangelicals. Ashley was delighted with Young’s appointment for showing that Britain was “the first of the Gentile nations that has ceased ‘to tread down Jerusalem‘!” At this point, however, it is unlikely that even Ashley thought a Jewish homeland could be a practical political endeavor.