Joseph Wolff, Advocate of “Jews for Jesus”

Home , Arthur Conolly, Joseph Wolff, Nasrullah Khan (Bukhara)

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

PEOPLE OF A WEEK:

REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF, ADVOCATE OF “JEWS FOR JESUS”

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

A WEEK: There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the PEOPLE OF world over, living on anticipation. Wolff, travelling in the A WEEK deserts of Bokhara, says, “Another party of derveeshes came to me and observed, ‘The time will come when there shall be no difference between rich and poor, between high and low, when property will be in common, even wives and children.’” But forever I ask of such, What then? The derveeshes in the deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marlboro’ Chapel sing the same song. “There’s a good time coming, boys,” but, asked one of the audience, in good faith, “Can you fix the date?” Said I, “Will you help it along?” The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. The States have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer cannot get a hearing. Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference. What we need to know in any case is very simple. It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted. They must behave, at any rate, and will work up any material. There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold. We should be slow to mend, my friends, as slow to require mending, “Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety.” The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates? — or whoever it was that was wise. — Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. “Men find that action is another thing Than what they in discoursing papers read; The world’s affairs require in managing More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed.”

REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

A WEEK: It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the PEOPLE OF farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness A WEEK and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astraea, that the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven at the end of the golden age, may have her local habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned her, — for the slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. By such slow aggregation has mythology grown from the first. The very nursery tales of this generation, were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme. This is an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain. This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouching the old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity. All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the missionary, distributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, translated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made a great sensation. “Robinson Crusoe’s adventures and wisdom,” says he, “were read by Muhammedans in the market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya, and admired and believed!” On reading the book, the Arabians exclaimed, “O, that Robinson Crusoe must have been a great prophet!” To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity. In how few words, for instance, the [page 50] Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence for our classical dictionary, — and then, perchance, have stuck up their names to shine in some corner of the firmament. We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which itself is but materials to serve for a mythology. How many volumes folio would the Life and Labors of Prometheus have filled, if perchance it had fallen, as perchance it did first, in days of cheap printing! Who knows what shape the fable of Columbus will at length assume, to be confounded with that of Jason and the expedition of the Argonauts.

REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

And Franklin, — there may be a line for him in the future classical dictionary, recording what that demigod did, and referring him to some new genealogy. “Son of —— and ——. He aided the Americans to gain their independence, instructed mankind in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.” The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere. As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its scenery is the more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, and this day its water was fuller of reflections than our pages even. Just before it reaches the falls in Billerica, it is contracted, and becomes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly bottom, hardly passable for a canal-boat, leaving the [page 51] broader and more stagnant portion above like a lake among the hills. All through the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica meadows we had heard no murmur from its stream, except where some tributary runnel tumbled in, — Some tumultuous little rill, Purling round its storied pebble, Tinkling to the selfsame tune, From September until June, Which no drought doth e’er enfeeble. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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999 CE

We hear stories of an apocalyptic paranoia, a “panic terror,” that must have gripped Europe in the years and months before the year 1000. However, scholars have questioned the accuracy of these stories — we don’t actually know that millennial expectations at this time were any greater than usual or even that ordinary people were aware what year it was. (Refer to Gould, Stephen Jay. QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM. NY: Harmony Books, 1997; Schwartz, Hillel. CENTURY’S END: AN ORIENTATION MANUAL TOWARD THE YEAR 2000. NY: Doubleday, 1996; Randi, James. THE MASK OF NOSTRADAMUS. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

MILLENNIALISM

However, the 9th-century Rabbi Benjamin Nahawendi, interpreting the “thousand three hundred and five and thirty yamim” of DANIEL 8:14 as indicating by “yamim” years instead of days, had predicted that the end of this world was not yet — that indeed this installment of the drama of existence would persist for many additional centuries, coming to completion only during the 1840s. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1795

Wolff ben David was born and circumcised at Weilersbach near Bamberg, Germany, a son of Rabbi David of the tribe of Levi. Rabbi David went to as rabbi in Kissingen, and in the following year to Halle upon Saale und Uehlfeld, and in 1806 to Jebenhausen, Württemberg. David sent his son Wolff to the Lutheran lyceum at Stuttgart, where the boy would be converted to Christianity through reading the books of Johann Michael von Sailer, bishop of Regensburg, and would assume the Christian baptismal name “Joseph” to go along with his Jewish name “Wolff.” As a youth he mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. When only seven years old, Joseph Wolff was boasting to an aged Christian neighbor of the future triumph of Israel at the advent of the Messiah, when the old man said kindly, “Dear boy, I will tell you who the real Messiah was: he was Jesus of Nazareth, whom your ancestors crucified, as they slew the prophets of old. Go home and read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and you will be convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Conviction at once fastened upon him. He went home and read the scripture, wondering to see how perfectly it had been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Were the words of the Christian true? The boy asked of his father an explanation of the prophecy, but was met with a silence so stern that he never again dared to refer to the subject. This however only increased his desire to know more of the Christian religion.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Reverend Joseph Wolff “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1812

September 13, Sunday: Joseph Wolff was baptized by Benedictine abbot Leopold Zolda of Emaus, near Prague.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 13 of 9 M / In our forenoon Meeting D B & C R had public communications to bear. — In the Afternoon we were Silent. - by the kindness of Sister Ruth my H was at meeting This forenoon & in the Afternoon we left the little boy at Aunt Patty Goulds & after Meeting we returned there & took tea with her. & tho very feeble she was very glad to have him. — After tea Brother D Rodman & I took a walk around the Hill & as we were returning up the Mainstreet we saw around Townsends Coffee house a large gathering of People which led me to suspect that some news had arrived. I stepped up to one standing by & inquired what it was. - he informed me that there was a report that three English shipes were seen off between Block Island & Point Judith - We walked up street & extended to the head of the Alms House lane & back thro’ Farwell Street & as we got near the Parade. We found the Town was under General Alarm. Drums beating fifes Playing & People running with their Arms in every direction. Soon a very considerable Military force was underway to Fort Adams & a gard set to Watch the town. The w[h]ole of the evening & forepart of the Night was Noisy - but thru the Whole I can truly say that fear scarcely possessed my mind. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1813

Joseph Wolff commenced to master Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldæan in addition to his Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1815

Joseph Wolff went to study oriental languages (particularly Arabic and Persian) and theology at the university in Tübingen, Germany. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1816

Joseph Wolff went to Switzerland where, among others, he met Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Passing on, he arrived at Rome, where ambassador Count Waldbourg-Truchsess introduced him to Pope Pius VII.

September 5, Thursday: Urged on by his liberal advisors, King Louis XVIII of France dissolved the conservative Chamber of Deputies and called new elections.

In Rome, Joseph Wolff was allowed to become a student at the Collegio Romano.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 5 of 9 M / To me a favor’d meeting tho’ some part of it was a little trying on some accounts — After sitting a little while I felt the quickening spirit run thro’ me in a remarkable lively manner which raised a thankfulness to the great giver of all good things & drew the silent tears from mine eyes — This little rejoicing is quite in humility for such is the discouraged State of my mind with respect to myself & Society, that I hardly know at seasons what to do or Say — Mary Tillinghast & cousin Borden & My Mother & sister Sally spent the Afternoon RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1818

After attacking the doctrine of papal infallibility, and criticising his tutors, Joseph Wolff found himself expelled from the Collegio di Propaganda in Rome (gosh, do you suppose?). He would stay for a brief period in the monastery of the Redemptorists at Val Sainte near Fribourg, Switzerland and pass on to London, where he would enter the Anglican Church and resume, at Cambridge, his Oriental and theological studies. At this point he learned of the interpretation of 9th-century Rabbi Benjamin Nahawendi, that the “thousand three hundred and five and thirty yamim” of DANIEL 8:14 indicated years rather than days, meaning that this world was going to be brought to an end during the 1840s.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1821

William Bullock’s Piccadilly Egyptian Hall in London was the venue for an exhibit by Giovanni Battista HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Belzoni of his recent discovery, the inscriptions in the tomb of Seti I.

(Before) (After)

Presumably, this was the exhibit that Edward William Lane visited that gave him the idea of Egypt and caused him, on his own, to begin to study Arabic. When he would set sail for Egypt, this would be for the hot climate as a corrective for fragile health, as well as in the hope of a career. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Joseph Wolff toured Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Mesopotamia, Persia, Georgia, and the Crimea.

From this year into 1829, with significant outside assistance –literary philhellenes included Lord Byron and Victor Hugo, and foreign militaries involved included the British and French navies and the Russian army– the Greeks would be freeing themselves from Ottoman Turkish rule. A heroine of the war would be Lascarina Bouboulina, a Spetsiot woman who commanded ships in battle against the Turks and Egyptians, and took pride in being able to take and discard lovers like a man.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1822

Joseph Wolff declared Pope Pius VII to be the Antichrist.

A first in photography, Joseph-Nicephor Niépce’s photogravure etching of an engraving of Pope Pius VII (we can no longer look at this because he would ruin the image during an attempt to duplicate it).

A total of 48 obelisks had been removed from Egypt over the centuries (counting an unfinished one that still lies in the quarry, that’s more than half the total), and for what this is worth Rome has become the obelisk capital of the world. Four of these had been restored and made again vertical by Pope Sixtus V toward the end of the 16th Century, one by Pope Innocent X in 1651, one by Pope Alexander VII in 1667, and in this year one was made vertical by Pope Pius VII (in addition, one would be made vertical at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris on October 25, 1836). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1824

MISSIONARY JOURNAL AND MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOSEPH WOLFF, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF; REVISED AND EDITED BY JOHN BAYFORD (London: J. Duncan).

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Reverend Joseph Wolff “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

Joseph Wolff returned to England and was introduced by Edward Irving to Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole, descendant of Prime Minister Robert Walpole.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

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THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1827

Another edition of MISSIONARY JOURNAL AND MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOSEPH WOLFF, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF; REVISED AND EDITED BY JOHN BAYFORD (London: J. Duncan).

February 6, Tuesday: At St George’s Church in Hanover Square, Joseph Wolff got married with Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole (her married name became Wolff; the couple would produce a child, in 1830).

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

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1828

Joseph Wolff set off on a search for the Lost Tribes of Israel, preaching his way through Anatolia, Armenia, Turkestan, and Afghanistan and on to Simla and Calcutta. He would visit Madras, Pondicherry, Tinnevelly, Goa, and Bombay before returning home by way of Egypt and Malta.

(In Kábul, Afghanistan he was so thoroughly plundered that he needed to journey some 600 miles nearly as naked as the day he was born.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

Yet another edition of MISSIONARY JOURNAL AND MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOSEPH WOLFF, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF; REVISED AND EDITED BY JOHN BAYFORD (London: J. Duncan). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1830

October 12, Tuesday: An infant was born to the Reverend Joseph Wolff and Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole Wolff, that was to become the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Drummond Charles Wolff.1

1. Embarrassed by his father’s origins and ideas, he would never speak of him, and would adopt the surname “Drummond-Wolff.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1831

The Reverend Joseph Wolff began preaching that because the “thousand three hundred and five and thirty yamim” of DANIEL 8:14 were years rather than days, this world was going to be brought to an end during the 1840s by the 2d coming of Jesus Christ on the clouds of heaven. MILLENNIALISM

The August Edward carried two John A’s to adventure in the New World. On this ship were members of a Prussian and German emigration society led by John Augustus Roebling, to set up a farm community, Saxonburg, near Pittsburgh PA, and one of the members of this society on board was John Adolphus Etzler. Roebling would spend his life making small practical improvements; he was a bridge builder. Etzler would spend his life creating dream castles; like Bronson Alcott, he was an advance man.

We have no idea when Etzler had been born: Biographically speaking, John Adolphus Etzler suddenly emerges from a blankness of years and just as abruptly withdraws behind an opaque obscurity that is both frustrating and puzzling. About the years prior to his appearance on the American shore in 1831 as a member of the Muhlhausen Emigration Society (under the leadership of the man who would later build the Brooklyn Bridge, John Augustus Roebling), we know only that he once previously immigrated to America for about eight years in the 1820s, returned to Germany, and was jailed for inciting emigration. Shortly after its arrival in America, the Mulhausen Emigration Society split into two groups — one loyal to Roebling and one ready to follow Etzler westward on what a recent student of Etzler, Patrick R. Brostowin, has called “his messianic journey in search of the right conditions under which ... to re- establish the Paradise that Adam lost for mankind.” As would happen many times during the next decade and a half, however, Etzler’s visionary schemes ran smack up against practical exigencies. According to a long letter written by Roebling in November 1831, Etzler’s failure to establish a communal society in the West was due to a number of factors — all of which could perhaps be boiled down to hubris: Etzler’s demagogish character; his impatience with those who could not understand, much less accept, his views; his dewy-eyed optimism and impracticality (which, among other things, let him to push past the rich soil of eastern Pennsylvania to lands too distant from profitable markets); and his inability to accept the essential human weaknesses of his followers or of man in general. Most importantly, as Brostowin points out, Etzler’s followers were basically German peasants looking for a piece of land and moderate creature comforts; they were not out to change the world —as was Etzler— only their own lives. Failure to receive further financial backing from Frederick Rapp (who evidently had lent Etzler money previously) forced Etzler to abandon his efforts to establish a community in the area of Cincinnati and to accept the editorship of the newly established HDT WHAT? INDEX

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German newspaper Der Pittsburger Beobachter in Pittsburgh. FUTURE-WORSHIP HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1835

Joseph Wolff’s RESEARCHES AND MISSIONARY LABOURS AMONG THE JEWS, MOHAMMEDANS, AND OTHER SECTS (London: J. Nisbet & Co.). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

According to Tom McIver’s THE END OF THE WORLD: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY (Jefferson NC: McFarlane & Co., 1999 #269), the originator of Methodism, the Reverend John Wesley, had foreseen the Millennium as beginning in this year, the year in which the Beast of Revelation would rise from the sea.

MILLENNIALISM

Joseph Wolff found the Anglican missionary Samuel Gobat ill in Axum, Ethiopia and took him to Jeddah, and himself visited Yemen and Bombay, going on to the United States of America where at the instigation of John HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Quincy Adams, former president, he would preach before a joint session of the federal Congress about the personal reign of Jesus Christ. In these travels the Reverend Wolff had come upon a remote and isolated tribe in Yemen who believed in the soon appearance of the Messiah. Their book SEERA announced the coming of Christ and His reign in glory, and they were prognosticating that the great events would take place four years hence, in the year 1840. In Yemen I spent six days with the Rechabites. They drink no wine, plant no vineyards, sow no seed, live in tents, and remember the words of Jonadab, the son of Rechab. With them were the children of Israel of the tribe of Dan, ... who expect, in common with the children of Rechab, the speedy arrival of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1837

Joseph Wolff’s RESEARCHES AND MISSIONARY LABOURS AMONG THE JEWS, MOHAMMEDANS, AND OTHER SECTS (Philadelphia: O. Rogers). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 26, Tuesday: Joseph Wolff was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England at Newark, New Jersey (he would preach about the personal reign of Jesus Christ for a month before boarding ship for England).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 26th of 9 M / Attended the funeral of Doctor John P Mann aged 82 Years or thereabout, he Married Hetty Clarke an own cousin of my Mothers being the daughter of Joseph & Rebecca Clarke & were buried in Friend burying place, which induced the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Doctor to request to be laid by the side of his wife & her father & Mother in our burying ground, this request he made to me many years ago - his funeral was plain that is his Coffin was without a Pall over it & tho’ his widow who is a member of the Church had their service read in her room, there was none at the grave, at which time we were favoured with Solemnity.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

December 16, Saturday: The National Intelligencer reported a motion by former President John Quincy Adams that Joseph Wolff be allowed to lecture before a joint session of the federal Congress.

Henry Thoreau to his journal:

FROZEN MIST Dec. 16. The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor, — the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel, — which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold. In some places it was spread out like gauze over the tops of the trees, forming extended lawns, where elves and fairies held high tournament; “before each van Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears, Till thickest legions close.” The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sector- wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated. Mere accumulators of facts — collectors of materials for the master-workmen — are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”

December 18, Monday: The Congressional Globe reported that Joseph Wolff had lectured before a joint session of the federal Congress.

Lidian Emerson made a record of the fact that “Mr. E.” was taking to “Henry” with great interest, finding him to be “uncommon in mind & character” by way of contrast with his brother John Thoreau, Jr. — whom Waldo Emerson had evaluated as “good but not uncommon.”

GOETHE Dec. 18. He required that his heroine, Iphigenia, should say nothing which might not be uttered by the holy Agathe, whose picture he contemplated.2 IPHIGENIE AUF TAURIS

IMMORTALITY POST 2. Thoreau would have accessed this in Emerson’s 55-volume copy of the 1828-1833 German edition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s WERKE (unfortunately, electronic text is presently available only for the 1840 German edition of the WERKE). IPHIGENIE AUF TAURIS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The nations assert an immortality post as well as ante. The Athenians wore a golden grasshopper as an emblem that they sprang from the earth, and the Arcadians pretended that they were , or before the moon. The Platos do not seem to have considered this backreaching tendency of the human mind.

THE PRIDE OF ANCESTRY Men are pleased to be called the sons of their fathers, — so little truth suffices them, — and whoever addresses them by this or a similar title is termed a poet. The orator appeals to the sons of Greece, of Britannia, of France, or of Poland; and our fathers’ homely name acquires some interest from the fact that Sakai-suna means sons- of-the-Sakai.

Undated 1837-47: I hate museums; there is nothing so weighs upon my spirits. They are the catacombs of nature. One green bud of spring, one willow catkin, one faint trill from a migrating sparrow would set the world on its legs again. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than all this death. They are dead nature collected by dead men. I know not whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust or those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre outside the cases.

December 21, Thursday: The gag resolution of Representative John Patton of Virginia, a resolution similar to the ones which had earlier been offered by Representative Henry Laurens Pinckney of South Carolina3 and by Representative Hawes, was enacted in the US House of Representatives. This gag rule included the territories.

In Liberty, Missouri, on Elizabeth Jane Thornton’s 17th birthday, she got married with a man who was serving with her father in the state legislature, Alexander William Doniphan.

Joseph Wolff, Missionary to all the nations, sent an open letter to the Honorable Members of Congress to thank them for the opportunity that they had provided for him to preach “the truth of the ever lasting Gospel, and illustrate that great truth as experienced by me during my peregrinations from the Thames to the Oxus, to the Ganges, the wilderness of Arabia, and the mountains of Abyssinia.”

3. Note the famous name. Henry Laurens, a Huguenot, had been the biggest slave trader in Charleston, and while we were establishing our freedom had served in the Continental Congress. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

Joseph Wolff was ordained priest by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor, and received the rectory of Linthwaite in Yorkshire (Trinity College in Dublin awarded an honorary LL.D.).

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart, a British officer, was taken prisoner by Emir Nasrullah Khan of Bukhara on the Silk Road.

January 2, Tuesday: Joseph Wolff boarded ship in New-York harbor.

January 28, Sunday: Joseph Wolff arrived at Southampton upon the completion of his Atlantic crossing.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 28th of 1st M 1838 / Our Meetings were both silent -but I thought both were solemn & very quiet seasons. — Recd a kind letter from my friend John Farnum now in Philad. accompnaying a Book oriention[?] which was very acceptable — In the evening we had a short call from our young friends Thomas Nichols, Thos Gould & Thos B Buffum & have in the course of the Day & remainder of the eveng written an Answer to a letter recd some days ago from Ephriam M Huntington respecting a periodical he proposes publishing - my views are that the time has not yet come for him to proceed in it — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1839

JOURNAL OF THE REV. JOSEPH WOLFF, LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN; AND DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL COLLEGE OF ST. JOHN’S, ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, IN THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA; CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD VISCOUNT LORTON; INCUMBENT OF LINTHWAITE, NEAR HUDDERSFIELD, YORKSHIRE; AND LATE MISSIONARY TO THE JEWS: IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO SIR THOMAS BARING, BART. CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF HIS MISSIONARY LABOURS FROM THE YEARS 1827 TO 1831; AND FROM THE YEARS 1835 TO 1838 (London: James Burns, 17, Portman-Street, Portman-Square: and may be had of all country booksellers). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1841

November: Captain Arthur Conolly, a British officer, arrived in Bukhara on the Silk Road to attempt to negotiate with Emir Nasrullah Khan for the release of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1842

June 24, Friday: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, British officers in the custody of Emir Nasrullah Khan of Bukhara on the Silk Road, were executed as spies.

Elizabeth Sewall Alcott’s 7th birthday. A shed at Dove Cottage was draped with sheets and with green boughs and furnished with vases of flowers for the occasion, and there was a candlelight supper in this bower, attended by Waldo Emerson and others.

Lizzie declared:

My life shall be one constant act of love. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1843

The Reverend Joseph Wolff went to Bukhara on the Silk Road, homeland of the Bukharan Jews, to seek a couple of British officers, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, who were being detained by Emir Nasrullah Khan. However, they had already been executed as spies and Wolff himself avoided execution only because the Emir, upon seeing this guy decked out in full canonical garb, burst into uncontrollable laughter. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1845

The Reverend Joseph Wolff’s 2-volume NARRATIVE OF A MISSION TO BOKHARA, IN THE YEARS 1843-1845, TO ASCERTAIN THE FATE OF COLONEL STODDART AND CAPTAIN CONOLLY (London: J.W. Parker). A 2d, revised edition would appear in the same year.

The Reverend Wolff was presented to the vicarage of Isle Brewers in Somerset, England.

Henry Thoreau would write of this in his journal in 1848 and it would appear at a couple of points in A WEEK:

REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF HDT WHAT? INDEX

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REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1847

The year came and passed and Jesus Christ in glory failed to make His appearance. The Reverend Joseph Wolff announced that it had indeed happened, and that Christ was indeed in charge of the earth — it was merely that He was ruling in glory invisibly (from Heaven, through His influence on men’s hearts).

John Humphrey Noyes proclaimed that the Spirit of Jesus Christ, which had had its Second Coming to the earth within a generation after the crucifixion of Jesus, had passed into his society in Putney, Vermont.

“Lie down, I need to for you to worship with me.”

The hostility of the community at the society’s practice of multiple marriage (all male members married to all female members) caused the group to relocate to Oneida in central New York, in Madison County on Oneida Creek near Oneida Lake. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

Harriet Livermore’s Parousia prediction #2 (McIver, Tom. THE END OF THE WORLD: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. Jefferson NC: McFarlane & Co., 1999 #699).

MILLENNIALISM

HARRIET LIVERMORE

The city of Jerusalem was obviously of importance to Harriet, for on slender funds she would make five separate trips, often traveling alone. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1848

Fall: Edgar Allan Poe returned to Lowell, Massachusetts to repeat his lecture on “The Poets and Poetry of America” and to continue his interest in the flirtatious Nancy Richmond, a local wife he had met. For some reason the poet decided this young Nancy’s first name ought to be “Annie,” and in the next year he would write a poem “For Annie.”

During this season, and continuing into the winter, Henry Thoreau was drafted journal entries on reformers, great men, the East, Greece, and Rome that he would eventually use in A WEEK.

After July 30: I find that I conciliate the gods by some sacrament as bathing –or abstemiousness in diet –or rising early –and directly they Smile on me. These are my sacraments. We fall in love with some good spirits whose bodies we see — how many many good spirits do we fall in love with whose bodies we never see? The states of the mind answer to the states of the body and every part of the body has its thought– When that part is soundest that thought thrills us What do the hands think? what the feet–? the loins? –the back? They should all be thoughtful–

After July 30: All men are children and of one family. The same tale sends them (all) to bed, and wakes them in the morning. Fame forces the barriers of dialect & custom How could any nation of human children do without its Robinson Crusoe & –“Monarch of all I survey”–? It is such an interesting story –as will carry captivity captive. Oh it is all in the bible, {MS torn} it in the Koran– If it is in{MS torn} The Missionary Wolff says “All the Brahmins I met with had an unlucky habit of affirming that what I said was in the Shastar, and used no further argument.” Christians do the same. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1859

January 16, Sunday: The Reverend Joseph Wolff’s wife Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole Wolff died at the age of 63.

January 16. P.M.– To Walden and thence via Cassandra Ponds to Fair Haven and down river. There is still a good deal of ice on the north sides of woods and in and about the sheltered swamps. As we go southwestward through the cassandra hollows toward the declining sun, they look successively, both by their form and color, like burnished silvery shields in the midst of which we walked, looking toward the sun. The whole surface of the snow the country over, and of the ice, as yesterday, is rough, as if composed of hailstones half melted together. This being the case, I noticed yesterday, when walking on the river, that where there was little or no snow and this rough surface was accordingly dark, you might have thought that the ice was covered with cinders, from the innumerable black points reflecting the dark water. My companion thought that cinders had fallen on that part of the ice. The snow which three-quarters conceals the cassandra in these ponds, and every twig and trunk and blade of withered sedge, is thus covered or cased with ice, and accordingly, as I have said, when you go facing the sun, the hollows look like a glittering shield set round with brilliants. That bent sedge in the midst of the shield, each particular blade of it being married to an icy wire twenty times its size at least, shines like polished silver rings or semicircles. It must have been far more splendid here yesterday, before any of the ice fell off. No wonder my English companion [Thomas Cholmondeley] says that our scenery is more spirited than that of England. The snow-crust is rough with the wreck of brilliants under the trees, – an inch or two thick with them under many trees, where they last several days. When, this evening, I took a split hickory stick which was very slightly charred or scorched, but quite hot, out of my stove, I perceived a strong scent precisely like that of a burnt or roasted walnut, – as was natural enough. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1860

DR WOLFF’S NEW MISSION: BEING THE REV. WOLFF’S DETERMINATION TO SET OUT AGAIN ON A MISSIONARY TOUR IN ARMENIA, AND YARKAND IN CHINESE TARTARY, RETURNING TO ENGLAND VIA KAMTSCHATKA AND MOSCOW, AS SOON AS HIS CHURCH, NOW BUILDING AT ILE-BREWERS, IS COMPLETED, AND HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOW IN COURSE OF PUBLICATION IS FINISHED (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co.). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1861

TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF THE REV. JOSEPH WOLFF, D.D., LL. D.: VICAR OF ILE BREWERS, NEAR TAUNTON; AND LATE MISSIONARY TO THE JEWS AND MUHAMMADANS IN PERSIA, BOKHARA, CASHMEER, ETC. (London: Saunders, Otley and Co.).

May 14, Tuesday: The Reverend Joseph Wolff remarried with Louisa Decima, daughter of James King, rector of St. Peter-le-Poer on Broad Street in London.

“Traveled to Niagara.” In traveling through Albany to Niagara, Henry Thoreau’s train had been roughly following, and Thoreau knew it had been following, the foot-wide to foot-and-a-half-wide beaten track which had been known as “the great central trail of the Iroquois.” For he had read and had copied lengthy excerpts from Lewis Henry Morgan’s LEAGUE OF THE HO-DÉ-NO-SAU-NEE, OR IROQUOIS, in which this trail was described.

I began to notice from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me, that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple.

That night Thoreau and Horace Mann, Jr. would stay at the New York Central House.

May 14. Albany to Suspension Bridge. Albany to Schenectady a level pitch pine plain with also white pine, white birch, and shad-bush in bloom, with hills at last. No houses; only two or three huts on the edge of woods without any road. These were the last pitch pines that I saw on my westward journey. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1862

May 2, Friday: The Reverend Joseph Wolff was planning another grand missionary tour to proclaim the imminent return of Christ Jesus, when he died at Isle Brewers. HERE COME DA JUDGE! HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1903

Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto of Riese became Pope Pius X.

Randall Thomas Davidson became Archbishop of Canterbury.

W.T. Gidney’s JOSEPH WOLFF was issued in the BIOGRAPHIES OF EMINENT HEBREW CHRISTIANS series by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1935

Felix Henry Price Palmer’s JOSEPH WOLFF. HIS ROMANTIC LIFE AND TRAVELS, ETC. (London: Heath Cranton). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1938

The Reverend Joseph Wolff’s early journey through Bukhara was retraced by Fitzroy Maclean, a junior diplomat, travelling incognito. He would write of this missionary in a memoir EASTERN APPROACHES, and almost fifty years later he would contribute a foreword to a biography of Wolff. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1949

Sir Fitzroy Hew Royle Maclean’s EASTERN APPROACHES characterized the Reverend Joseph Wolff as an “Eccentric Missionary.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1969

THE REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF’S A MISSION TO BOKHARA. EDITED AND ABRIDGED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GUY WINT (London: Routledge & K. Paul). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1984

Hugh Evan Hopkins’s SUBLIME VAGABOND: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH WOLFF – MISSIONARY EXTRAORDINARY, foreword by Sir Fitzroy Maclean (Worthing: Churchman).

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FABULATION: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Reverend Joseph Wolff HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: November 6, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK:REVEREND JOSEPH WOLFF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK