Millenarian ideas of the approach of the…

Millenarian ideas of the approach of the Messianic time, and more especially of the redemption of the Jews and their return to the land of Israel, with their own independent sovereignty, have been popular during the first half of the seventeenth century.

Belief in the apocalyptic year, identified by Christian authors as 1666, is so dominant that Manasseh ben Israel, in his letter to Oliver Cromwell and the Rump Parliament, will not hesitate to use it as a motive for his plea for the readmission of the Jews into England, remarking "the opinions of many Christians and mine do concur herein, that we both believe that the restoring time of our Nation into their native country is very near at hand".

Apart from this general Messianic theory, there had been another computation, based on an interpreted passage in the Zohar (a famous Jewish mystical text), and particularly popular among the Jews, according to which the year 1648 was to be the year of Israel's redemption by their long-awaited Jewish Messiah.

Mordecai Zevi had been a poor poultry dealer in the Morea until, when in consequence of the war between Turkey and Venice under the Sultan Ibrahim I, Smyrna became the center of Levantine trade, Mordecai became the Smyrnan agent of an English house.

As a consequence, he has acquired considerable wealth.

His son, eventually to gain fame and notoriety as Sabbatai Zevi (also spelled Shabbetai Tzevi, Zebi, or Zvi) has steeped himself in the influential body of Jewish mystical writings known as the Kabbala.

His extended periods of ecstasy and his strong personality have combined to attract many disciples.

The twenty-two-year-old Sabbatai in 1648 proclaims himself as the true Messianic redeemer, designated by God to overthrow the governments of the nations and to restore the kingdom of Israel.

His mode of revealing his mission is the pronouncing of the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew, an act which Judaism emphatically prohibits, except the Jewish high priest in the Temple in Jerusalem on the Day of Atonement.

This is of great significance to those acquainted with rabbinical, and especially kabbalistic, literature.

However, Sabbatai's authority at the age of twenty-two does not reach far enough for him to gain many adherents.