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Monday, January 22, 2007

Christian proto-Zionism redux

I started reading "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present" by Michael Oren. It will be a while before I finish it and review it completely, but so far it seems to be an incredible book, meticulously researched, describing America's involvement in the Middle East.

From an early article about this book I was inspired to look up George Bush, an early proto-Zionist, professor of Hebrew and Christian scholar, to see which of his writings I could find on-line. I found a number of scholarly commentaries on the Old Testament as well as a biography of Mohammed that he wrote, but I wasn't able to find the book Oren refers to about the "restoration of the Jews" to Zion (and their conversion.)

Today I did, as a part of a much larger book of Christian pamphlets:

From skimming through it one can see his undeniable scholarship, as he takes apart Ezekiel in English, Hebrew and Greek and spins it towards his thesis.

While I can't tell how influential Bush was compared to the other proto-Zionists I discovered in that same era, I am very much looking forward to reading the rest of Oren's book.