SOURCE: Shoulson, Jeffrey S. “‘Proprietie in this Hebrew poesy’: George Wither, Judaism, and the Formation of English National identity.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 98, no. 3 (July 1999): 353-72.

In the following essay, Shoulson examines Wither's writings on the Hebrew Psalms as part of the seventeenth-century discourse on the opposition between Hellenism and Hebraism.

Spenser introduces his enigmatic and polyvalent representation of Arthur in The Faerie Queene with a detailed description of the legendary king's attire. In his depiction of the crest of Arthur's helm, Spenser writes that a bunch of colored hairs seemed to dance “Like to an Almond tree ymounted hey / On top of greene Selinis all alone.”¹ Spenser's contemporary readers would have recognized the image of the almond tree from Numbers 17, which describes Aaron's rod blossoming and bearing ripe almonds as a sign that he had been chosen by God: “And the Lord said unto Moses...