Judeo-Christianity and Conversion to Judaism in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic

In my lecture I will explore a remarkable phenomenon that I encountered in my research project about conversion to Judaism in the early modern Dutch Republic. This phenomenon concerns Christians who adopted Jewish observances and Jewish criticism of Christianity, frequented synagogue services, and sometimes underwent circumcision, yet did not break completely with Christianity by, for instance, remaining church members. Many of these seemed to have been individual seekers, but there is also evidence of more organized forms, an example of which is a late seventeenth century group of proselytes in Amsterdam who were connected to the Jewish community while adhering to Judeo-Christian eschatological ideas and recognizing also the New Testament as sacred scripture. I am particularly interested in what the existence of this phenomena means for understanding the nature of conversion to Judaism in the early modern Dutch Republic.