Archeology and Mission: The British Presence in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem

Abstract

In 1834, James Cartwright, secretary of the London Society for the Conversion of the Jews, composed a pamphlet entitled “The Hebrew Church in Jerusalem,” in which he discussed the impetus for his organization’s activities in Palestine. “It is well known,” he explained, “that for ages various branches of the Christian Church have had their convents and their places of worship in Jerusalem. The Greek, the Roman Catholic, the Armenian, can each find brethren to receive him, and a house of prayer in which to worship. In Jerusalem also the Turk has his Mosque and the Jew his Synagogue. The pure Christianity of the Reformation alone appears as a stranger.” This brand of evangelical Protestantism, which viewed itself as competing primarily with “degenerate” forms of Christianity like Catholicism, represented the driving force behind British activity in Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem, for much of the nineteenth century. It manifested itself especially in two fields: missionary activity and archeological pursuits. The British who poured into Palestine during the nineteenth century, undertaking missionary work, archeological research, or both, took as their primary frame of reference a Protestant evangelical theology that situated itself in direct opposition to the ritualistic practices and hierarchical organization of Catholicism and, by extension, the Eastern Christian churches. This theological approach led the British to focus their energies on the small local populations of Christians and Jews, to the almost total exclusion of the Muslim community. It also determined a pattern of cooperation with other Western powers who shared an evangelical Protestant outlook, especially America and Germany, and the development of hostile relations with Catholic and Orthodox powers, notably France and Russia. It led archeologists to focus on Palestine’s biblical past, and to view its Ottoman and Muslim history as a minor and temporary aberrance not worthy of serious consideration.