The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought

This article discusses a reorientation of supersessionist postures in German and Dutch Protestant reflection on emerging nation states in the nineteenth-century. Historically, Christian thought often othered “the Jew” as the “nascent Christian.” Since the seventeenth-century, Protestant theologians...

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Main Author: van der Tol, MDC
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2021
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author van der Tol, MDC
author_facet van der Tol, MDC
author_sort van der Tol, MDC
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description This article discusses a reorientation of supersessionist postures in German and Dutch Protestant reflection on emerging nation states in the nineteenth-century. Historically, Christian thought often othered “the Jew” as the “nascent Christian.” Since the seventeenth-century, Protestant theologians also entertained the possibility of theological othering on the basis of the legalism of the Mosaic covenant, of which ancient biblical Israel and its cultural liturgies were regarded as a token. In the context of the modern nation, German and Dutch Protestant thought entertained this typological othering of biblical nationhood to construct the modern Jew as “Gentile” to the modern nation. As “Gentile,” “the Jew” remains the embodiment of the ultimate other, yet as “nascent Christian,” modern Jews begin to face an unrelenting demand to assimilate. This conundrum contributed to a fundamental tension in the imaginary of the nation, namely between patterns of othering and structures of belonging, echoing far beyond antisemitism, and especially in patterns of othering that are inherent to racism and Islamophobia.
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spelling oxford-uuid:04248fc4-79b9-4100-96f8-957e8fcc448d2023-03-31T09:54:42ZThe “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thoughtJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:04248fc4-79b9-4100-96f8-957e8fcc448dEnglishSymplectic ElementsDe Gruyter2021van der Tol, MDCThis article discusses a reorientation of supersessionist postures in German and Dutch Protestant reflection on emerging nation states in the nineteenth-century. Historically, Christian thought often othered “the Jew” as the “nascent Christian.” Since the seventeenth-century, Protestant theologians also entertained the possibility of theological othering on the basis of the legalism of the Mosaic covenant, of which ancient biblical Israel and its cultural liturgies were regarded as a token. In the context of the modern nation, German and Dutch Protestant thought entertained this typological othering of biblical nationhood to construct the modern Jew as “Gentile” to the modern nation. As “Gentile,” “the Jew” remains the embodiment of the ultimate other, yet as “nascent Christian,” modern Jews begin to face an unrelenting demand to assimilate. This conundrum contributed to a fundamental tension in the imaginary of the nation, namely between patterns of othering and structures of belonging, echoing far beyond antisemitism, and especially in patterns of othering that are inherent to racism and Islamophobia.
spellingShingle van der Tol, MDC
The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title_full The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title_fullStr The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title_full_unstemmed The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title_short The “Jew,” the nation and assimilation: the Old Testament and the fashioning of the “other” in German and Dutch Protestant thought
title_sort jew the nation and assimilation the old testament and the fashioning of the other in german and dutch protestant thought
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