Godly Judaizing and Godly Singularity in Thomas Tillam’s The Temple of Lively Stones

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thomas Tillam was one of the most noted Judaizers of the seventeenth century. Together with Christopher Pooley, he established a community of Jewish-Christians at Lobbach on the outskirts of Heidelberg. He argued for the restoration of the Saturday Sabbath, the rite of circumcision, the separation of meats and many other Jewish ritual practices. Typically, the phenomenon of Godly Judaizing has been ascribed to a wider, Protestant philosemitism, to a renewed interest in Jews stimulated by the rise of Judeocentric millenarianism, or simply to over-zealous scripturalism. In this article, I offer a complementary account, suggesting that the rites and rituals that Tillam observed denoted an ethos of Godly “singularity.” This ethos is the primary theme of a work that he published shortly before the establishment of the Lobbach community. This text was entitled The Temple of Lively Stones.