Sandeen On the Millenarians and the Return of the Jews (1804)

‘The origin of the . . . nineteenth-century millenarian revival, renewal of interest in the state of the Jews, can be traced most directly to the intriguing eccentricities of Lewis Way.

Trained as a barrister, he was dramatically enriched in 1804 by the the bequest of £300,000 . . . . “Released from the bondage of an irksome profession,” as Way wrote, he purchased Stansted Park near Emsworth, Sussex, and set about fulfilling the role of the gentleman...

 ‘His interest in the condition of the Jews of Europe was aroused when, in about 1811 while visiting in Devonshire, he was told about a grove of trees which were not to be cut down until the restoration of the Jews to Palestine.

The owner of the wood had left a will which contained a clause, “These oaks shall remain standing, and the hand of man shall not be raised against them till Israel returns and is restored to the land of promise.”’‘. . .

 [T]he restoration of the Jews to Palestine the return of the chosen people to the promised land became firmly established as a plank in the millenarian creed.

Through the monthly issues of the Jewish Expositor, . . . and in dozens of other books, this question was discussed in never-wearying detail. The Zionist cause won rather wide sympathy at this time; the Jews and the Greeks seem to have been classed together as heroic but downtrodden people.

But millenarian interest in the restoration of the Jews stemmed explicitly from the interpretation of prophecy. The prophetic text which described the cataclysmic events apparently fulfilled in the French Revolution also predicted the second advent of Christ and the restoration of the Jews.

The prophetic timetable had joined these expectations inextricably. The millenarian accepted both events as the will of God, prayed for the coming of both, and, if he could not work for the accomplishment of the second advent, did what he could to aid the cause of Palestinian resettlement. Some of this interest appears lunatic in retrospect, such as the many reports of the discovery of the ten lost tribes among the American Indians or in Kashmir, but there can be no question that the millenarian movement played a significant role in preparing the British for political Zionism.’