England’s Israel and the Foundation of Modern Political Thought by MeiravJones (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), + 240 pp.

The foundational narrative of the emergence of modern European political thought in the seventeenth century has long centered on theoretical developments that occurred in dialogue with renaissance and classical themes, and in contrast to medieval Christian notions. In the past few decades, however, a number of scholars have called out two glaring blind spots in this narrative: one, that modern political thought is portrayed as originating in, motivated by, and pointing toward an anti-theological, indeed, secular impulse; and two, that Jewish tradition and ideas are presumed to have had no place or role in its development. Seeking to amend this oversight, historians of political thought have embarked on a corrective effort highlighting the significance of what has been termed “political Hebraism”—the role of ideas and imagery originating in the world of the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical Jewish literature—for modern political theory. Jones's England's Israel participates in, and further develops, this scholarly effort. An expansive and captivating study, it investigates the emergence of political theory in the years 1640–1660 in England, the historically momentous and conceptually pregnant period that saw the Hebraicization of the English political imagination and the implicit and explicit identification of the English with ancient Israel. As Jones demonstrates, the distinct sense that God spoke to the English through the people of the Bible and that the Hebrew Commonwealth, its laws and institutions, holds lasting political wisdom and knowledge to be applied in the present—either as a positive model for emulation or as a cautionary example—became a staple of contemporary discourse. The consolidation of such an expansive “Hebraist” conceptual landscape occurred, as Jones aptly points out, while Jews—who were expelled from England in the end of the thirteenth century and were officially allowed to return by Oliver Cromwell only in 1655—were not part of the actual landscape of English life. The disjunction between the ubiquitous presence of the biblical Israelites and marked absence of actual Jews in English society is striking. To be sure, the impact of the Hebraist revival on political thought of this time is well established, but Jones's book is a much-welcomed addition to this discussion. Her purview is remarkably broad and does not limit itself to intellectual elites, her analysis synthesizes social, religious, and theoretical contexts and reflects a rare expertise in both Christian and Jewish thought, and her arguments intervene in some of the key debates in the scholarship on the subject. After putting forward a general characterization of the mid-seventeenth century Hebraic discourse (Chapter 1), Jones offers a mapping of the different senses in which the terms “Hebrew,” “Israel,” “Jerusalem,” “Zion,” and “Jew” were utilized in the literature from this period (Chapter 2). This mapping shows not only the scope of the engagement with Hebrew and Israel, but the different meanings that the aforementioned Hebraic terms held. On this basis, Jones makes an intriguing, indeed radical, claim: that unlike all other contemporary engagements in the Hebraic discourse, in which evocations of Israel referred either to both “old” and “new” Israel or only to the “new” Israel, political theorists were unique on the landscape for the fact that for them—only for them—Israel was an ancient people, neither replaced nor superseded. By appropriating and redefining the religious terms and sources that were driving politics in a Christian society obsessed with being “Israel,” they sought to pull society away from the messianism and enthusiasm guiding political decision-making, and towards what they saw as more stable theoretical models. The argument in this chapter is developed substantively and quantitively: the evidence culled for the mapping of the general characteristics and ideological avenues of the Hebraic discourse is the high percentage of appearances of the aforementioned specific keywords in contemporary texts. Analyzing the appearance of keywords through a database search engine enables scholars to work with a vast number of texts and helps identify trends and shifts in discourse, but it risks confusing frequency with significance and can downplay the particular usage and context of a term, thereby obscuring its distinct meaning. Jones largely avoids these pitfalls by circumscribing her argument to broad patterns and general conceptual streams. The attention then turns to a series of close studies of specific thinkers—Hobbes (Chapter 3), Grotius and Selden (Chapter 4), and Milton and Harrington (Chapter 5). In each chapter, Jones intervenes in longstanding scholarly debates by demonstrating the benefits of considering the Hebraist discursive background. Thus seeking to circumvent the debate over Hobbes's personal religious beliefs, she argues for the significance of accounting for the readers of Leviathan—who were deeply engaged in the Hebraic political discourse—to understand his treatment and interpretation of the Bible. Seen as such, Hobbes's usage of biblical terminology and vocabulary should be understood as a reaction to and polemic against their common usage. For example, just as he attacks republicanism by redefining the idea of liberty so dear to it, Jones suggests that Hobbes reinterprets “the Kingdom of God,” so dear to contemporary theological political theorists, by concretizing and historicizing it: the only kingdom of God is that in which God ruled over Israel, his people, until its eventual fall. No subsequent form of government or kingdom—even the first coming of Christ—is entitled to the name. One consequence of this appropriation and redefinition is the opening up of a sphere of politics untouched by past or future visaged kingdoms of God in which human civil sovereignty governs absolutely. Another is that it is the Old Testament, not Christianity, that can serve as a vital resource for political theory. And when one focuses on Leviathan's engagements with biblical narrative, laws, and institutions, which span the work's entire theoretical apparatus, the common reading of Leviathan as divided between secular (Books I and II) and theological (Books III and IV) parts is essentially repudiated. The conviction regarding the importance of the Jewish tradition for understanding this period's political innovations is also applied to the debate over what separates scholastic and modern natural law. For Jones, it is not so much the introduction of neo-Stoic elements, as it is often argued, but of a new notion of the will (human and divine) and its link to reason and to the laws of nature that is borne out of engagements with Hebraic sources. More specifically, Grotius's presentation of the sphere of human activity in this world as reflecting a divinely ordained and meaningful order is extracted from Hebraic texts. For her, the key source in this regard is not the Talmud, as already hinted by John Selden in the seventeenth century, but the writings of Philo. The link between the natural order, divine volition, and reason in Philo's understanding that the human's goal is to arrive at the natural order as constituted by God, is picked up and developed by Grotius as the task and end of human activity and politics. Admittedly, given Philo's own deep conceptual ties with Stoicism, this claim does not refute the view highlighting neo-Stoic undercurrents in the shift to modern natural law. But it does make a robust case for Grotius's undeniable dependence on the Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher and provides further evidence for the importance of ancient Jewish sources in the history of modern political thought. Jones then asks how the understanding of seventeenth-century English Republicanism changes if the Hebraic discourse of the time is taken into account. Focusing on John Milton and James Harrington, she shows that for them, the model of God's rule over biblical Israel served to justify a vision for an England ruled not by a monarchy but by a commonwealth chosen by the people, which can draw inspiration from, but not live up to, the standards of the earthly kingdom of God over the Israelites. This republican alternative, advancing restrictions on the absolute power of human kings and subjugating the monarchy to the rule of law, itself participated in the broader Hebraic discourse and utilized Biblical, Talmudic, and other Jewish sources, marking the debates over the existence and legitimacy of the monarchy in seventeenth-century England. Indeed, the demand for rule of law is repeatedly framed as paralleling God's rule over the Israelites, a form of natural law rather than direct revelation. This does not imply a rejection of monarchy but a moderate, indeed conservative, approach that accepts it but subjects it to the rule of law. Beyond its penetrating and nuanced analysis, England's Israel showcases the great importance of theology for intellectual and political history—and the great need for experts in these fields to familiarize themselves with its contours and to integrate them into their work. Doing so will no doubt lead to more historically-sound scholarship and it may challenge existing narratives—in both fields. A case in point is Jones's aforementioned claim that the central role of Israelite laws and institutions in the contemporary political discourse reflects an implicit—and at times explicit—rejection of Christian supersession. The “old” Israel is not replaced by the new Israel; Christianity has not made the Hebrews obsolete. This claim is at once historical and theological, and together with shining new light on the intertwined nature of politics and religion in the early modern period, it urges us to rethink some of the stories we tell about twentieth-century innovations in Jewish-Christian understanding. One key question looming in the background of Jones's wide spanning and insightful analysis is whether the engagement with the Hebraic discourse was the “reason” or the “justification” for a given view. Are these sources the (or a) reason for development of new political theories? Or were they used to justify these innovative but independently developed theories? Naturally, in many cases it is difficult to determine this with certainty, and the distinction itself is not always mutually exclusive. But we arrive at a dramatically different depiction of a given thinker, movement, or theory if Hebraic sources are the origin of their ideas or if they are only brought as prooftexts. In both cases, it is significant, but what precisely the significance is is not the same. On occasion, Jones alludes to this. Her discussion of Grotius leans toward the side of “reason” while Harrington and Hobbes tend to appeal to Jewish sources as justification. But a more consistent and systematic examination of this question would lead to a better understanding of the nature, scope, and purpose of the engagement with these sources, and hence of the momentous period in the history of modern political thought. Either way, the fields of intellectual history, political theory, Jewish studies, and theology are all deeply enriched by this important work.