Item Detail
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12465
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0
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English
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American Christian Travelers to the Holy Land, 1821-1939
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Temple University
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Ph.D. diss.
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"American Christian travelers to the Holy Land sought to see at first hand the places they knew of through Bible study, photographic views, archaeological reports, and the eyewitness accounts of preachers and popular authors. Most studies of travel accounts have focused on their literary qualities or on their value as evidence of socioeconomic conditions in Palestine. The approach of this study is to highlight recurring patterns of religious thought and images of the Jews and Zionism. To that end, a typology of travelers is presented. "Genteel" Protestants were accustomed to meditate on nature as a sacred "text." They tended to believe in the prophecies of an eventual return of the Jews to their homeland, yet sometimes expressed fears that Zionism would ruin the romantic land of Jesus. To the extent that genteel travelers thought of themselves as "American Israel," a chosen people with a special code of behavior, they could not declare the Holy Land to be central to their lives. "Debunkers" infused their travel accounts with satiric laughter. They contrasted their free, vigorous and "masculine" approach to travel with the sentimental, passive, "feminine" way of the genteel travelers. However, the debunkers sometimes found it necessary to tone down their sarcasm. Many "millenarian" travelers, especially Mormons and dispensational premillennialists, were more attracted to space than to time. They saw no contradiction in constructing their own "Zions" in America while supporting Jewish efforts in Palestine. Millenarians naturally tried to align their experience of the Holy Land with their theology and were therefore sometimes led into travel exaggerations. Only the black elite could afford to travel. Perhaps because they sought white readers for their accounts, black writers adopted many of the conventions of white travelogues. There were surprisingly few signs of identification with the suffering and striving of the biblical Hebrews. Catholics, especially the Franciscan order, advocated pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a means of promoting piety and church discipline. However, as headquarters of the world church, Rome was probably primary as a pilgrimage center. Catholic travelers were sometimes more extreme than Protestants in their stereotyping of the Jews and Zionism." [Author's abstract]