Voices of the Turtledoves

Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (16911768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penns land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community Ephrata, after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata. In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephratas manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrataits architecture, manuscript art, and social organizationis the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.