Judaism and the Jews in the British Deists' Attacks on Revealed Religion (original) (raw)

This article deals with the conceptualization of Judaism, Jewish history, and the Jewish people that characterized the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century British deists' criticism of revealed religion, from Herbert of Cherbury to Peter Annet. Although all the British deists aimed at setting aside revelation and at asserting the primacy of natural religion, they developed various epistemological methodologies in their analyses of positive religions. This article hence points out the similarities and differences in the deists' works concerning revealed religion, with special focus on their considerations of Judaism.