Exile and Kingdom
History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America

This book explores the ideological origins of the Puritan migration to and experience in America.

Avihu Zakai (Author)

9780521403818, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 November 1991

276 pages
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.554 kg

"...an intriguing, challenging book with a close textual analysis and a focus on 'geographies of the mind' that bear important implications for understanding early Purital society and its putative theocracy." Jon Butler, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

This book explores the ideological origins of the Puritan migration to and experience in America, and shows how Puritans believed that their removal to New England fulfilled prophetic apocalyptic and eschatological visions. An apocalyptic ideology of history, as a mode of historical thought, enabled Puritans to reconstruct their removal to America within the confines of sacred, ecclesiastical history. By tracing the ideological origins of the Puritan migration within the context of the English apocalyptic tradition, Dr Zakai shows how Puritans transformed the premises of that tradition by rejecting the notion of England as God's elect nation and by conferring that title upon the American wilderness. The Puritan migration is analyzed further within the wider context of Western colonization of America. Dr Zakai shows that the unique characteristics of the Puritan settlement in New England derived from identification with the 'Errand of the Church of the Wilderness' as described in the Book of Revelation.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The creation of sacred time
2. The creation of sacred space I
3. The creation of sacred space II
4. The creation of sacred space III
5. The creation of sacred errand
6. The creation of a sacred Christian society
7. The creation of a holy Christian commonwealth
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]