Contributions to a history of the concept of Hope in seventeenth-century millenarianist expectations: Esperança de Israel, Esperanças de Portugal, and Door of Hope

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Luis Filipe Silverio Lima

Abstract

This article seeks to discuss the concept of Hope and its semantic shifts in the Seventeenth Century, looking into the millenarianist expectations build upon three intervention texts, Esperança de Israel, Esperanças de Portugal e Door of Hope. Written in 1640s-1660s in the Netherlands, Portuguese America, and England, they have as a possible common axis the agency of Menasseh Ben Israel, an Amsterdan Portuguese-Jewish rabbi with links to Spinoza's family. In order to reflect upon Hope's conceptual changes and its centrality in the political-religious struggles, it will: 1) trace the semantic field of the concept, and 2) focus on the connections among the three sources and their producers.

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