Samantha Lee: (Making Nature 1)

I found Bradford's parallelism of the Puritan's New England experience to the promised land of ancient Israel very surprising. Bradford describes the Puritan hostility toward the New World of Plymouth and Cape Cod similar to the hostility that the Hebrews faced in the wild desert. The Puritan expansion was likened to the Hebrew advances into Canaan. The Puritan reason was to improve and cultivate the land. In the same way, Judeo-Christian doctrine sets man apart from nature. Man is seen a higher than nature and therefore, given the right to subdue and improve the land as well. However, Bradford never refers to the Puritans as the "chosen people" like the Jews were called. I found a correlation with all his reasons and similarities, and agreed with his choice not to go as far as to call the Puritans by the title the Jews were given.