Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata by Jeff Bach (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press) The long-lived community that was housed at the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, embodied a significant chapter in the extensive American history of religious experimentation. Although dozens, if not hundreds, of books and articles have previously told Ephrata's story and attempted to plumb its mystical theology, Jeff Bach's is the first book to do the job comprehensively, empathetically, and accurately.

Ephrata was grounded in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century radical Pietism of Germany, the wing of the larger Pietist movement that found the existing Protestant establishment hopeless and abandoned it, often amid strong millennial hopes. Ephrata's founder, Conrad Beissel, and others were grounded in that outlook but went beyond it to create a distinctive mystical experience that stood at the spiritual core of a residential community. That monastic community, which emerged in the 1720s and 1730s and had several hundred members at its peak, endured for nearly a century, and the group's church survived noncommunally for more than a century longer.

Finding documentation about the Ephrata Cloister is difficult, and deciphering the mystical prose used by those who created the community is even more daunting. In this long-needed ethnography of Ephrata, Jeff Bach sets out to contextualize and explain the theology that drove Conrad Beissel to establish his community of celibate Protestant mystics along the Cocalico Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the 1730s. To do so, he relies not only on a broad knowledge of early modern Lutheran Pietist movements in Europe and North America but also on archaeological evidence that permits him to look into the daily lives of the Ephrata community with greater insight than strict reliance on written documentation would allow. Primarily interested in asserting the place of Ephrata under the Protestant Pietist umbrella, Bach also aims to correct the work of Julius Sachse in German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, 1694–1708 (1895).

Bach's introduction offers a working definition of terms, including mysticism, a fleeting overview of the development of Pietism in early modern Germany, and a brief narrative history of the Cloister. He then moves on to seven ethnographic chapters. The first two deal specifically with religious thought, one focused on the personal theology of Ephrata's founder Conrad Beissel (1691–1768). His contemporaries and successors share a second chapter. The subsequent five chapters analyze the theological underpinnings of Ephrata's ritual, gender relations, language, art, and magic. The ethnographic format necessarily leads to some repetition, particularly of theological concepts, but the utility of understanding each concept in its particular context makes the repetition worthwhile. 

Beissel emerged from the unstable world of late seventeenth-century Germany. He was born in the Electoral Palatinate, which Bach emphasizes was significantly influenced by Pietism. Like many of those who would eventually flee to Beissel's Cloister on the Cocalico, the group's founder was orphaned; he had to fend for himself as an itinerant baker's apprentice. Part of his itinerancy resulted from a tendency to become involved in radical Pietist circles. And, at least once, Beissel's master's wife desired more than his bread, and the master sent Beissel packing. Critically, Beissel was at best a journeyman, never a master, until he founded his Cloister.

Bach hypothesizes that Beissel likely became familiar with the mysticism of Jacob Boehme while working for a baker in Heidelberg. Although previous authors accepted a link that Sachse drew between Beissel and the amorphous Rosicrucian movement, Bach argues that Boehme's mystic Protestant Pietism served as the fundamental source for the beliefs and practices adhered to by Beissel and others at the Cloister. However, the overlap between Boehmist and Rosicrucian mystic imagery implies that they are not mutually exclusive categories. Could Beissel have been a Boehmist and a Rosicrucian? 

Finding documentation about the Ephrata Cloister is difficult, and deciphering the mysticalprose used by those who created the community is even more daunting. In this long-needed ethnography of Ephrata, Jeff Bach sets out to contextualize and explain the theology that drove Conrad Beissel to establish his community of celibate Protestant mystics along the Cocalico Creek inLancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the 1730s. To do so, he relies not only on a broad knowledge of early modern Lutheran Pietist movements in Europe and North America but also on archaeologicalevidence that permits him to look into the daily lives of the Ephrata community with greater insight than strict reliance on written documentation would allow. Primarily interested in asserting the place of Ephrata under the Protestant Pietist umbrella, Bach also aims to correct the work of Julius Sachse in German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, 1694–1708 (1895).

Bach’s introduction offers a working definition of terms, including mysticism, a fleeting overview of the development of Pietism in early modern Germany, and a brief narrative history o the Cloister. He then moves on to seven ethnographic chapters. The first two deal specifically with religious thought, one focused on the personal theology of Ephrata’s founder Conrad Beissel (1691–1768). His contemporaries and successors share a second chapter. The subsequent five chapters analyze the theological underpinnings of Ephrata’s ritual, gender relations, language, art, and magic.

The ethnographic format necessarily leads to some repetition, particularly of theological concepts, but the utility of understanding each concept in its particular context makes the repetition worthwhile.

Beissel emerged from the unstable world of late seventeenth-century Germany. He was born in the Electoral Palatinate, which Bach emphasizes was significantly influenced by Pietism. Like many of those who would eventually flee to Beissel’s Cloister on the Cocalico, the group’s founder was orphaned; he had to fend for himself as an itinerant baker’s apprentice. Part of his itinerancy resulted from a tendency to become involved in radical Pietist circles. And, at least once, Beissel’s master’s wife desired more than his bread, and the master sent Beissel packing. Critically, Beissel was at best a journeyman, never a master, until he founded his Cloister.

Bach hypothesizes that Beissel likely became familiar with the mysticism of Jacob Boehme while working for a baker in Heidelberg. Although previous authors accepted a link that Sachse drew between Beissel and the amorphous Rosicrucian movement, Bach argues that Boehme’s mystic  Protestant Pietism served as the fundamental source for the beliefs and practices adhered to by Beissel and others at the Cloister. However, the overlap between Boehmist and Rosicrucian mystic imagery implies that they are not mutually exclusive categories. Could Beissel have been a Boehmist and a Rosicrucian?

Bach dismisses any parallels between Ephrata and medieval Catholic monasticism. Although he focuses on the early Christian origins of Ephrata’s monastic practices, including tonsure, Bach notes that some celibates objected to aspects of Ephrata’s ritual life they considered overly Catholic.

Additional social history would add clarity to this aspect of Bach’s analysis. Beissel and many of his followers came to Ephrata from the Palatinate, where Catholics and Protestants lived cheek by jowl.

Bach identifies Catholic Pietist movements and argues that Beissel may have migrated to Pennsylvania to avoid renewed confessional conflict in the Palatinate. How committed were Beissel and his cohort to an overtly Protestant identity? How exposed to Catholic theology and practice were they? Was Beissel’s mystic devotion sufficiently ecumenical that he would adopt practices he understood to be Catholic, if he thought they would help him achieve his spiritual goals?

Bach’s detailed exposition of Ephrata’s gender theology makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the Cloister. Beissel’s desire to form a spiritual union with the mystic Virgin Sophia is beyond doubt. First Boehme, then Beissel and his followers, believed that Adam was androgynous before the fall. Indeed Adam’s fall was twofold. He fell first when he observed the animals and wished that he too could have a carnal mate. Until this desire overcame him, Adam contained in him the feminine element and its inherent wisdom: the Virgin Sophia. While Adam slept, not only did God make Eve from his rib, but he also removed the Virgin Sophia through the same incision and left Adam a gendered male. The second fall, involving forbidden fruit, was merely the nail in Adam’s spiritual coffin. Adam and Eve then had gendered bodies and knew how to use them. To Beissel, the rest of human history was a quest to restore humanity to its androgynous prelapsarian state. Beissel believed that Jesus uniquely regained Adam’s androgyny when the Virgin Sophia entered his body through his side wound. While other European Pietists engaged in free love in their attempt to reunite the genders, Beissel’s Cloister was dedicated to wooing the Virgin Sophia with celibacy and asceticism.

External responses to the Cloister fall outside the scope of Bach’s study. Nonetheless, this reader would like to know how Ephrata’s neighbors and contemporaries reacted to the idea of an androgynous Adam and a community of celibate men and women hoping to achieve the same state through a mystic, quasi-erotic union with the Virgin Sophia. Aaron Spencer Fogleman’s recent essay on the Moravians’ feminized conception of Jesus and the vitriolic response it evoked from eighteenth-century Lutheran and Reformed clerics and congregants indicates how these same Protestants might have reacted to the equally radical theology of Beissel’s Cloister.

Jacob Boehme by Jakob Boehme, edited by Robin Waterfield (Western Esoteric Masters Series: North Atlantic Books) As a cobbler in Gorlitz, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) came into contact with many great thinkers who sought refuge from the Roman Church and Reformation groups in post-Luther Germany. Gradually he became one of the most influential mystics of the Reformation era. This anthology provides an introduction to Boehme's wide-ranging thought and his wisdom grounded in revelation, as well as newly translated Boehme letters. Highly regarded among Christian mystics, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) was famous for his inspired and provocative analysis of the nature and being of God.

Grounded in Paracelsus, the Kabbala, astrology, alchemy and the Hermetic tradition, Boehme articulated a revelatory theology which emphasized the process whereby God comes to know Himself. Boehme reasoned that from His illimitable oneness, God was unable to truly apprehend Himself as God in all His splendor. Thus, God had to become an incarnated, limited being, for only through experience could He satisfy His need for self-understanding. Driven by a series of spiritual epiphanies, Boehme boldly proclaimed his new revelations, rejecting the narrow dogmatism and bibliolatry of mainstream sentiment. His subsequent prosecution by church authorities led to banishment from his home town of Goerlitz, and continued harassment by more orthodox thinkers. After his death in 1624, his writings continued to provoke debate among mystics and scholars investigating the nature of good and evil, creation and God's will.

This anthology serves as an introduction to Boehme's thought and will bring readers deeper into his philosophy. Part One gives biography and context of Boehme's writings and their influence on later scientists, alchemical researchers and poets. Part Two contains selections from Boehme's works grap­pling with his main themes including the birth of God and the vindication of His goodness. Of particular interest are a number of letters from Boehme which have never appeared previously in English.