Ebook: The Valley of Vision: or the Dry Bones of Israel Revived

The Valley of Vision: or the Dry Bones of Israel Revived. An attempted proof (from Ezekiel chap. xxxvii. 1-14) of the Restoration and Conversion of the Jews. By George Bush, Professor of Hebrew, New York University.

Little noted in the remembrances of former President George H.W. Bush, including his loving eldest son’s, former President George W. Bush, is their namesake ancestor, professor George Bush (1796-1859), the distinguished 19th-century pioneer of Christian Zionism.

The scholar said of the Jewish people: “The dispersed and downcast remnant shall, one after another, turn their faces to Zion … find their way to the land of their fathers. … This will not only benefit the Jews, but all mankind, forming a link of communication between humanity and God.”

Professor Bush asserted this vision long before the activities of the founder of the modern Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, and before the rise of the Zionist movement among world Jewry.

Bush was an ordained Presbyterian minister who became a professor of Hebrew and Oriental literature at New York University. His biblical scholarship convinced him of the prophecies foretelling the people of Israel’s return to their land.

In 1844, the professor published his studies in a landmark book, “The Valley of Vision: or, The Dry Bones of Israel Revived,” rooted in the prophecies of Ezekiel in the Bible. “The Valley of Vision” sold more than 1 million copies, a publishing rarity before the Civil War. It turned Bush into a national voice calling for the restoration of the Jewish people to their historic homeland.

His writings had a deep impact in shaping the public’s views about the Jews and their ancestral homeland, including informing author Mark Twain and Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.

Bush and other courageous voices of Christian Zionism set the stage for America, a century later, to be the first country to recognize the reborn State of Israel and to remain its steadfast ally in the decades since.