Travel Literature, Pilgrims and Missionaries: A Mid-Nineteenth Century Duel Over the Holy Land

The image of the Holy Land/Palestine and special affinity among Protestant Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century, a period which has received relatively little religious analysis, was directly influenced by the Bible, but also by inaccurate descriptions of travellers in the region. This fact is illustrated by sharp exchanges between two Holy Land enthusiasts, James Silk Buckingham and Eli Smith. Their disagreements in describing famous places fed into divergent narratives about Palestine, one romantic and the other more realistic, both of which, however, were manipulated by the future Zionist enterprise to assert Jewish claims and ascendancy.