Abstract

Since the late 17th century, when the story of the destruction of Jerusalem was added to the Swedish Prayer Book, it was read aloud or mentioned on the 10th Sunday after Trinity, the latest examples dating from the early 20th century. In Bengt Lider’s oratorio on the subject, the motive was dramatized in the style of the Sturm-und-Drang-period. Different versions of The Wandering Jew was spread in the early 19th century. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, when Jewish faith still was not allowed in Sweden, explicit anti-Jewish themes had been rare in Swedish theology and church life. When Johan Olof Wallin in 1816 published his hymn on the destruction of Jerusalem, he officially accepted presence of Jews in Sweden formed a new context to church hymns as well. Wallin’s rearrangement of C.C. Sturm’s “Jerusalem, voll frecher Wuth” was included in the Hymn Book of 1819. The rearrangement was made in a dramatizing way, inspired probably both from Lidner and The Wandering Jew. In his first verse, Wallin mixed different Bible quotations with non-biblical arguments and what may be understood as a curse on the Jewish people. The treatment of the destruction of Jerusalem in a hymn on the passion of Christ was new to Swedish hymnal tradition, it weakened the passion theme, and gave a new context to the destruction. The old Lutheran theology had emphasized the religious continuity with the pre-Christian Israel, even regarding the patriarchs as Christians. Wallin instead applied a historical view of development and contrast. While the old Lutheran theology had been a theology of continuity and identity, the new one was a theology of evolution and replacement.