Jewish Christians in Puritan England

Among the proliferation of Puritan sects across England in the seventeenth century, a remarkable number began adopting demonstratively Jewish ritual practices.

From circumcision to Sabbath-keeping and dietary laws, their actions led these movements were labelled by their contemporaries as Judaizers, with various motives proposed.

Were these Judaizing steps an excrescence of over-exuberant biblicism?

Were they a by-product of Protestant apocalyptic tendencies?

Were they a response to the changing status of Jews in Europe?In Jewish Christians in Puritan England, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce shows that it was instead another aspect of Puritanism that led to this behaviour: the need to be recognised as a 'singular', positively distinctive, Godly minority.

This quest for demonstrable uniqueness as a form of assurance united the Judaizing groups with other Protestant movements, while the depiction of Judaism in Christian rhetoric at the time made them a peculiarly ideal model upon which to base the marks of their salvation.