ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys Dutch and some English vernacular publications, most of them from the Reformed perspective, as a means of discerning attitudinal shifts toward Jews and Judaism from 1570 to 1648. It examines the works of various nonconformists in the Dutch Republic on the subject in order to see how internal confessional disputes affected Christian perceptions of Jews. The Dutch Republic’s treatment of Conversos and Jews was in complete contrast to its cross-Channel neighbour, England, where there were perhaps as many as 35 Jewish men living in London by the middle of the sixteenth century. An important factor in the disputes among various Christian groups and Jews was the level of doctrinal precision insisted on by religious leaders. As Peter van Rooden has noted of Dutch Calvinist theologians’ views of Judaism, a high dogmatic obsession could cause people to read the religious Other through the lens of their own doctrinal definitions.
