Bible and Sword by Barbara Tuchman (Review)
Barbara Tuchman added a prologue to the anniversary edition of Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, her 1956 book on England’s relationship with Jerusalem and the Jewish people. In between her original publication and the reprint, Israel had formed an independent state, and Tuchman considered adding commentary regarding the happenings. Yet she concluded that it is not the role of a historian to provide real-time commentary on political events, despite her familiarity and interest in the subject. I appreciate Tuchman’s discretion, but the effect is a large hole in the story—the missing finale. I would have preferred that Tuchman entrust the task of complementing her book with an update filling in the decades that followed the conclusion of her book. That said, I still enjoyed better understanding some of the foundational reasons for England’s original connections to Jerusalem.
Tuchman opened her book by claiming that the ancestor search is a trait common to mankind. Britain has a legacy for searching out its creator in the spiritual sense and the traditional accounts of who first settled Britain. Brutus, grandson of the Trojan Aeneas, and Gomer, grandson of Noah, served as the mythical fathers of Britain. During the reformation and the writing of the Venerable Bede, Gomer usurped the tradition of treating Brutus as the progenitor. Regardless of Greek, Roman, or Hebrew tradition, an emigrant from the cradle of civilization serves this function, and the British later claimed it as their birthright. Be it Phoenician sailors—highly regarded in the Old Testament—or the connection to Noah, the English delighted in its antiquity.
Much like the British search for their national origin, Tuchman identified Joseph of Arimathea as the spiritual ancestor of Christianity in England and the actual ancestor of the legendary King Arthur. Other countries claimed characters: Rome chose Peter, Spain had James, and France had Phillip. And so Great Britain identified Joseph as its original Christian apostle. This is fable more so than historical record, but it is one agreed upon at the Council of Basel in the 1400s.
The historical record of pilgrims traveling from Britain to Palestine as early as the 4th Century. They walked to Edinburgh and made their way Jerusalem. Saint Jerome even complained about the excessive numbers of pilgrims in his writing. During these pilgrimages, Muslim countries occupied Jerusalem and then attributed holy status with the building of the Mosque of Omar.
After her summary of the crusades and English efforts to occupy Jerusalem, Tuchman moved to King Henry VIII’s proclamation in 1539 that every church in England must have a Bible available for all to read. The Great Bible relied largely on William Tyndale’s translation. Between the Great Bible and the King James Bible, the English people soon had a deep understanding of the Hebraic history.
A second story that shaped English access to the Bible was William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English while living in Germany. Despite the illegality, Tyndale helped smuggle the books into England.
The Levant Company formed in 1592 after a merger between the Venice Company and the Turkey Company to facilitate trade with the Ottoman Empire. Queen Elizabeth approved the charter, and it led to broader exposure to the holy lands, which were occupied by Turkey. The Levant Company gave way to the East India Company, which further grew the trade routes and thus exposure to Palestine for a broader range of English citizens.
In 1649, Johanna and Ebenezer Cartwright, an English mother and her son, were two Baptists living in Amsterdam. They submitted a petition to Lord Thomas Fairfax seeking repeal of Jewish banishment from England. The idea was that once Jews had been scattered to all lands, then Christian prophesies could begin being fulfilled. The end goal was to hasten the return of Jesus. There was much debate on whether to recall Jews. One argument in favor of recalling the Jewish race was increased trade and prosperity coupled with the prospect of conversion to Christianity. Some argued against their recall by noting how often God chastised the race for disobedience coupled with their crucifixion of Jesus. Parliament finally agreed to Jewish re-entry but with many prohibitive restrictions.
For all their faults, Puritans introduced republicanism. Their emphasis on freedom of worship—independent of a pope or king—had far-reaching effects.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the first to propose a restoration of the ancient nation of Israel. Bonaparte had no religious belief and even declared himself a Mohammedan when he landed in Egypt. But he sought the wealth and power that would come with dominion over the entire Middle East. Jewish support would help with this pursuit of France’s goal for dominion. But with Napoleon’s objective in sight, his army was fenced off by Admiral Sidney Smith, who defeated France at Jaffa (ancient Joppa), which sent Napoleon and a decimated French army back to their home. Said Bonaparte of Smith, “That man made me miss my destiny.”
France’s attack pulled England more strongly into the Middle East and left the country asking who should control the road to India. Mehmed IV was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1648 to 1687, and he ruled vast lands. Mehmed’s efforts to grow his empire led to an agreement with Russia, which England could not tolerate due to the risk of losing trade access. This tug-of-war wrangling with England and Russia occurred as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling. As such, Turkey sought Jewish resettlement in hopes that the influx of wealth would prop of the failing empire.
The Bible and Sword grew more interesting once Tuchman started on Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli focused on trumpeting Israel’s heritage rather than its future. According to Tuchman, Disraeli abandoned his Jewish faith and adopted Christianity for political expediency with no meaningful religious fervor. What Disraeli emphasized was empire, and Israel played a role in this pursuit.
The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was a British society founded in 1865 to survey Jerusalem and the surrounding region for Jewish resettlement. It was during this exploration that the historical records of Israel’s former greatness became known. It also discovered that the land had once been fertile until Turkish occupation when Bedouin shepherds replaced crop cultivation.
England’s purchase of the Suez Canal ushered in an era of tremendous colonial expansion. Though Palestine remained technically under Turkish rule, England’s control was clear. England became an empire to protect and expand trade routes. All was done under the belief of manifest destiny—God’s will that England prevails.
By the late 1800s, Jewish societies acquired thousands of acres of land near Jaffa. They were primitive communities due to poor planting soil. This early effort led to the Zionist movement and an influx into Palestine. Leaders in the Zionist movement believed that they could come to a financial arrangement with Turkey to settle land.
England was the first country to interact with the Jews as a political entity by making an offer of land for colonization. The land was not particularly hospitable, but the action was nevertheless significant. Joseph chamberlain saw this action as an opportunity to develop unoccupied English territories.
The Balfour Declaration was in some ways an effort to justify the conduct of annexing Palestine. If Great Britain had simply claimed Turkey’s former land, then there was little moral backing to do so. But restoring the land to the Zionists gave Great Britain a moral backing in its own mind and the world in support of the strategic benefit of possessing the land. Tuchman maintained that the British could not act unless they believed there was a moral duty to do so.
One point that is unmentioned during discussions on Israel and Palestine is that the land represents less than 1% of the land divided between Arab nations after the great wars. Yet the land represents the entirety of statehood for the Jewish nation. This context does not alleviate the deep-rooted fighting over the land, but it does add a perspective I hadn’t considered prior to Tuchman’s book.
Prior to Bible and Sword, I read Guns of August, Proud Tower, and Distant Mirror. I found all three engrossing. Bible and Sword was a bit slower in pace and not quite as engaging. Still, Tuchman pulls together a breadth and depth of stories that combine for a history worth knowing. I rank Bible and Sword well below my three previous reads, but that has more to do with the great heights Tuchman achieved in the other books more so than a harsh critique of Bible and Sword. As such, I would give this endorsement to a narrower audience—specifically those who have a particular interest in the subject. The other Tuchman books I’ve read I would recommend to anyone, irrespective of historical interest, but this book is unlikely to receive casual interest from readers.
