This Fathom eBook collects three essays by Philip Earl Steele published in Fathom Journal between 2019 and 2022: ‘George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda’, ‘The Work of Laurence Oliphant’, and ‘Reverend William Hechler: From Hovevei Zion to Herzl and Beyond’.
19th-century British Christian Zionism did more than to shape thinking across British society and to hone the aims of a host of political figures including Lord Shaftesbury, prime ministers Palmerston, Disraeli and Salisbury, and Princess Helena and her brother Edward, the later King Edward VII. Its impact was also crucial to the coalescence of the first Zionist movement, Hovevei Zion, in the early 1880s. British Christian Zionism’s impact was also significant on the second Zionist movement – that of Theodor Herzl, which he launched in 1896 with his booklet The Jewish State. Indeed, as the historian Arthur Hertzberg underlined, Zionism was ‘twice born’ in the 19th century. And in each case British Christian Zionists played significant roles. This eBook examines the contribution to early Zionism of three such outstanding British Christians, none of whom ever sought to convert Jews to Christianity: George Eliot, Laurence Oliphant and Reverend William Hechler.
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