Chosen Peoples / Being the First "Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture" delivered before the Jewish Historical Society at University College on Easter-Passover Sunday, 1918/5678

The lecture traces the idea of a divinely chosen people and argues that religious vocation rather than racial exclusivity shaped communal identity. It surveys biblical and post-biblical tensions between particularism and universalism, showing how rites, conversions, scriptural choices, and interpretive traditions alternately excluded and embraced outsiders. Competing explanations for election—political necessity, moral mission, or sociological survival—are examined alongside evidence of active proselytism and arguments that a universalist impulse persisted within the tradition. The account emphasizes that conceiving a single just God ultimately pushed the community toward an outward-looking interpretation of its calling.