History Commons^™

American Proto-Zionism And The "Book Of Lehi": Recontextualizing The Rise Of Mormonism, Don Bradley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Although historians generally view early Mormonism as a movement focused on restoring Christianity to its pristine New Testament state, in the Mormon movement’s first phase (1827-28) it was actually focused on restoring Judaism to its pristine “Old Testament” state and reconstituting the Jewish nation as it had existed before the Exile.

Mormonism’s first scripture, “the Book of Lehi” (the first part of the Book of Mormon), disappeared shortly after its manuscript was produced. But evidence about its contents shows it to have had restoring Judaism and the Jewish nation to their pre-Exilic condition to have been one of its major …

Jews And The Sources Of Religious Freedom In Early Pennsylvania, Jonathon Derek Awtrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historians’ traditional narrative regarding religious freedom in the colonial period and early republic focuses on Protestants and sometimes Catholics to the exclusion of other religious groups; the literature also emphasizes the legal dimensions of freedom at the expense of its cultural manifestations. This study, conversely, demonstrates that Jews, the only white non-Christian minority group in early Pennsylvania, experienced freedom far differently than its legality can adequately explain. Jews, moreover, reshaped religious freedom to include religious groups beyond Protestant Christians alone. But such grassroots transformations were neither quick nor easy. Like most of the Anglo-American world, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” excluded …