Hermeneutics and the Jews in Protestant Thought

Abstract

This chapter examines the roots of puritan debates on eschatology and hermeneutics by providing an overview of the development of both apocalyptic and hermeneutic thought from the early church to the Reformation. It traces the development of hermeneutical thought and the fluidity and shifting meaning of the “literal sense”, particularly within eschatology. It highlights the development of the analogia fidei (analogy of faith) as a tool for understanding the literal sense and an increasing emphasis on the literal as the “historical” sense of the text into the early modern period. This helped lead to a growing interest in Jews and Judaism in early modern England, with a number of complex ways of viewing contemporary Judaism developing in the period. The chapter opens by examining ideas of millennialism and Jewish restoration in the early church, before showing how Augustine’s hermeneutics (based on the analogia fidei) condemned millennialism in mainstream Christianity. Yet millennialism and Jewish restoration remained a theme in controversial figures (such as Joachim of Fiore) and heretical movements (such as the Lollards). Turning to the Reformation, the work of the major reformers is shown to have adopted an increasingly historicised hermeneutic, leading to an increased belief in a great end times conversion of the Jews. Promises of restoration were, however, still largely dismissed.