Jewish Christians in Puritan England

Aidan Cottrell-Boyce is a research fellow at St Mary's University in London. He is the author of Israelism in Modern Britain (2020).

1. "An original and innovative contribution to our understanding of a neglected tendency within Puritanism. A compelling work that has implications that go well beyond its subject matter and opens up new ways of thinking about Christian interpretations and appropriations of Judaism." - Justin Meggitt, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Researcher, Stockholm University.2. "Aidan Cottrell-Boyce takes his readers on a fascinating journey, exploring the significance of \lquote Judaizing\rquote trends among English Puritans. Operating at the intersection of theological and sociological analysis, he presents an innovative and convincing account in which the adoption of \lquote Jewish\rquote practices enabled individuals to take on a stance of distinctiveness and separation from the surrounding culture of the dominant majority. The book\rquote s argument has implications beyond its seventeenth-century focus, illuminating a broader historical pattern of scripturally shaped resistance-identity that can be traced through early Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, the rise of Protestantism, and the Radical Reformation." - Daniel H. Weiss, Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies, University of Cambridge.3. "Jewish Christians in Puritan England is as comprehensive a study of its subject matter as readers can ever hope for. It does not engage the increasingly transatlantic context within which seventeenth-century Puritans and Jews remade their worlds. Developments in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities of northwestern Europe and the Americas also escape the attention of the author. Those points being made, its clear-eyed and insightful treatment of the Puritan context makes up for those omissions. Two thousand years of history tell us that people's fantasies about Jews are greater shapers of world history than actualities ever will be." - Michael Hoberman, Fitchburg State University In Church History, Volume 92, Issue 3, September, 2023, pp. 734 - 735.4. "Cottrell-Boyce's thesis is undoubtedly interesting and persuasive, and his argument is informed by an impressive range of scholarship. This study will be of value to anyone interested in the 'Judaising' phenomenon, and the culture of English Puritanism more broadly." - Stephen Hampton in Scottish Journal of Theology, 77/3, 2024, 298-299pp

• Introduction1. Singularity and Puritanism2. Judaizing and Singularity3. ‘A Jewish Faccion’: Anti-Legalism, Judaizing, and the Traskites4. Thomas Totney, Judaizing, and England’s Exodus5. The Tillamites, Judaizing, and the ‘Gospel Work of Separation’ConclusionBibliographyIndex