Archive for January, 2008

Professor George Bush, Early American Hebraist

Friday, January 25th, 2008

President George Bush is making his first trip to Israel as president and his first ever to Palestinian-controlled land as he attempts to effect change in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has vowed to work hard as peacemaker, promising additional trips to the area in an all out effort to conclude an accord between the two sides before his second term as president ends. Although declaring publicly that the Palestinians are entitled to a state of their own, critics suggest that his policies skew too much toward Israel. Most Israelis trust him as a caring friend. Some say that his Mideast efforts have come too late and it is an attempt to effect a more favorable legacy as he leaves the presidency. Can his late charge actually play any role toward this legacy or, has his legacy caught up with him?

Webster’s Dictionary defines legacy thusly: “Something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past”. Let’s explore.

The son of an old colonial family, George Bush was born in Norwich, Vermont, in 1796. At age eighteen he enroled in nearby Dartmouth College. He had gained, in his high school years, considerable proficiency in Greek and Latin, and having then read widely in the classics. At Dartmouth, Bush found in the study of religion a focus for his intellectual energies. Upon graduation he entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry and later became a tutor. He had received a thorough grounding in the study of the Bible in it’s original languages and early translations. In addition to Hebrew, he mastered Aramaic and Syriac. He would later use his knowledge of these languages to produce a multivolume Notes on the Old Testament, published in the 1840s.

In 1824 Bush was ordained and installed as pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. In his new post his independent and inquiring spirit asserted itself. He was soon making statements from the pulpit to the effect that there was no scriptural authority for the Presbyterian form of church government. The ensuing controversy led to Bush’s removal from the pulpit. This was not the only time he would become embroiled in religious and academic controversy.

For some time Bush had been interested in Islam, a subject then little known in the United States. In 1830 he published The Life of Mohammed, which was issued in the popular Harper Family Library series. It was the first American book about Islam. Islam was presented as an “invention” by a former merchant “constitutionally addicted to religious contemplation.” Bush offered various explanations for Mohammed’s motives in “palming a new religion upon the world.” All in all, The Life of Mohammed was an anti-Islamic polemic typical of its time.

In 1831 the board of New York University invited George Bush to become its professor of Hebrew and oriental literature. NYU was a secular institution with no denominational ties. Bush accepted the position and remained at NYU for fourteen years (1832-46).

In 1833 Bush wrote A Treatise on the Millennium, in which he questioned the notion, then popular in some Protestant circles, that the second coming was imminent. This would later place Bush in direct opposition to William Miller, leader of the Aventists. As Bush saw it, there was no scriptural  basis for Adventist belief. It was in his opinion, “one of the most baseless of all the extravaganzas of prophetic hallucination.”

The year 1835 saw the publication of Bush’s A Grammar of the Hebrew Language. More than a century before, Judah Monis, a Jew of Marrano extraction, whose story I covered in a lecture entitled “Our Hebrew American Heritage”, had chosen to convert to Christianity in order to receive an appointment as instructor of Hebrew at Harvard College.

In 1844 George Bush was at it again. He produced Valley of Vision; or,The Dry Bones of Israel Revived: An Attempted Proof of the Restoration and Conversion of the Jews. He argued against a spiritual interpretation of the prophecies concerning “the end of days” and advocated instead “the literal return of the Jews to the land of their fathers.” In the tradition of the European humanist scholars however, Bush did not have much regard for the Jews as a people. He believed that they would be restored to life and land and would accept Christianity in the end.  

The realism of Bush’s call for the return of the Jews was underscored by the inclusion in the book of a map of Palestine with areas marked for the settlement of the returning tribes. This geographic realism exemplifies a shift from the Puritan concept of American Zion to an advocacy of American support for the renewal of the Biblical Zion. The advocacy is scripturally based, but not apocalyptic in nature. The Adventist/Millerite claims are rebutted, but the support for a renewed Zion remains.

While formulating his view of the coming redemption and of the place of the Jews in it, Bush was deeply influenced by the Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a man whose all-encompassing mystical system exerted enormous influence in European esoteric circles. By the mid-1840s Bush had become a full-fledged Swedenborgian, a convert to the Church of the New Jerusalem. Because of his increased involvement with the Swedenborgian church, Bush abandoned his university post and stopped writing and publishing scholarly works.

George Bush (1796-1859), though now well-nigh forgotten, was once considered one of the most profound and ingenious scholars of the mid-nineteenth century, and his more than thirty volumes of polemic, biblical commentary, and interpretive history of religion enjoyed great popularity. His views on the Hebrew language, the Jews, and his statements about the possibility of a restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land is noteworthy. His life and work have to be taken into account in any evaluation of the early study of Hebrew and Judaism in America.

One wonders today whether Bush would have been surprised by the realization of the dream of the Return to Zion, then advocated only by a small group of “Christian Zionists”? Could he have imagined that two of his relatives would someday become presidents of the United States?

Nineteenth-century scholar George Bush saw history through a biblical lens. Today, as the younger President Bush formulates his own Middle East policies and contemplates his own place in history, the writings of his ancestor may hold renewed relevance and an answer to a legacy. 

Ralph Buntyn 

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George Washington, an American Joshua

Friday, January 4th, 2008

The Israelites cried out to the YHVH, and the YHVH raised a champion for the Israelites to deliver them….Judges 3:9.

Founder and president David Horowitz wrote an article in the first issue of United Israel Bulletin dated July 1944, entitled “Washington and Ezekiel’s Vision”. He opened by saying that very few Americans are aware of the fact that George Washington was a Godly man who had been inspired with visions of truth and there can be no doubt that Jehovah guided him in his actions and deeds. The article gave an account of the most important of Washington’s visions which was the one he personally related to Anthony Sherman who in turn related it to Wesley Bradshaw. Following this mysterious experience, a troubled Washington felt that he had seen a vision wherein it had been shown to him the birth, progress and destiny of the United States. It is a remarkable accounting, the majority given in Washington’s own words.

washington_delaware.jpgI would like to recount for you another of Washington’s inspirational thoughts and actions. Coming at a time in our struggle for independence in 1776, it was the closest the Americans ever came to disaster.

The year opened with the British evacuating Boston. Then both the American Penobscot Bay Expedition and invasion of Canada failed. General Washington’s Continental Army moved to protect New York, but was routed by superior forces that outmaneuvered them at every engagement. Only by luck and British ineptness was Washington able to keep his forces relatively intact during the long retreat through New Jersey into Pennsylvania.

Then in mid-December when the weather turned extremely cold General Howe made one of the fateful decisions of the war. He suspended military actions until spring, establishing a string of outposts on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River and retired most of his army to New York.

Things were drastically different for Washington’s forces across the river from Trenton, a village of a hundred homes, two mills and iron furnaces and most of the townspeople had fled. Some 2500 Hessians occupied the town. Hessians were mercenary German soldiers supplied to the British army in it’s fight against America. They were employed by George III who simply did not have enough soldiers in his own army to supply the needs of his commanders in America. In total nearly 30,000 German soldiers fought for the British in North America. A stronger outpost was at Brunswick, 20 miles away.

Washington had about 6,000 troups, hundreds fell ill, and all suffered from the cold. The period of enlistment would expire for more than a third of Washington’s army in January. Congress had fled from Philadelphia and two members had gone over to the enemy. It was reasonable to presume that the war was essentially over and the Americans had lost.

On December 14, Washington told key members of his staff that “a lucky blow” against the enemy would “most certainly rouse the spirits of the people, which are quite shrunk by our misfortunes.” Later he confirmed plans for an attack on Trenton to begin on Christmas night.

On Christmas Eve, Washington went over the final details. The army would cross the Delaware and attack at three places, a force of 1,500 would cross downstream and advance on Burlington, and a smaller force would attack directly across the river at Trenton. The largest force of 2,000 led by Washington would cross upstream and come back south.

The first step, crossing the river, would commence at midnight, and all forces were scheduled to arrive at Trenton and attack at six. In spite of Christmas Day weather deteriorating: wind, snow and sleet, the river was up, and filled with broken ice, the password was still: “Victory or Death.”

The crossing was made on big flat-bottomed, high-sided boats that could carry 40 men standing up. The troops, with horses and 20 cannon began moving during the afternoon. Washington crossed early and observed the slow process. Near midnight a major storm arrived and temperatures dropped. It was three in the morning before all of Washington’s contingent was across.

Downstream both forces encountered so much ice that they were forced to abort their mission. Washington’s forces were behind schedule and the storm got worse, with rain, sleet, snow and violent hail. They had six miles to get to Trenton and got there about eight. The attack began.

The Hessians rushed out of their quarters and attempted to form up. Henry Knox’s cannon scattered them and their commanding officer was killed. Being surrounded, most of the Hessians lay down their arms and surrendered. It was all over in 45 minutes. Twenty-one Hessians were killed, 90 wounded, 900 became prisioners and another 500 escaped.

Only four Americans were wounded, including Lieutenant James Monroe, the future president of the United States. No Americans were killed.

Washington had prophesied that some “lucky blow” would “rouse the spirits of the people” and it did have a stunning effect on the morale of the country.

The war for independence would continue, endlessly it would seem for some, for another six and a half years before the Treaty of Paris formally ended the war in 1783.

Practically all of us have seen one of the most-recognized paintings in history: that of Washington crossing the Delaware in an 1851 oil-on-canvas work by Emanuel Leutze, a German-American painter, commemorating the attack by George Washington’s Continental Army on Hessian forces encamped at Trenton, N. J. on Christmas Day, 1776.

Dr. Ezra Stiles the seventh president of Yale College, often spoke of America as a “modern Israel.” In referring to George Washington, Dr. Stiles made this significant statement: “Whereupon Congress put at the head of the spirited army, the only man on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed. Posterity, incredulous as they may be, will yet acknowledge that this American Joshua was raised up by God for the great work of leading the armies of this American Joseph-now separated from his brethren-and conducting these people to liberty and independence.”

Later as president, George Washington would write letters of welcome and reassurance to Jewish congregations at Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, Richmond, and Newport, Rhode Island, the latter of which has become the classical expression of religious liberty in America.

None however revealed Washington’s sense of providential guidance quite as much as the following statement taken from a letter he wrote to Congregation Mikve Israel in Savannah, Georgia in 1789.

“May the same wonder-working Deity who, long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land-whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation-still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessing of that people whose God is Jehovah.”

Ralph Buntyn

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