A Nation Conceived in Defeat

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Biblical history is the fount of the Jewish people’s collective memory, and the editors and redactors of the Hebrew Bible strategically deployed this history for a distinctly political purpose. In the pages of Azure, biblical scholar Jacob Wright argued that, in addition to celebrating the glory of military victory, the editors of the Hebrew Bible gave meaning to military defeat. The Jewish people’s long history served to constitute them as a nation with an integrity that did not depend on political sovereignty. Even if the Jewish State was temporarily defeated, the Jewish people could be sustained by the experiences that formed them and the shared memories that gave them their national identity–including and especially suffering defeat together. The independence of the nation from the state allowed the Jewish people to sustain itself in exile, and hope to reclaim sovereignty in the future.
With the political order broken down, the monarchies ousted, and the state armies conquered, the Israelite people would be forced to confront the questions, Who are we? and What—if anything—still holds us together?  The biblical authors responded, preemptively, by weaving (selective) fragments of their people’s past into a coherent narrative of its origins. Significantly, much of this historical narrative is devoted to the period prior to the rise of the monarchy, thus portraying the people Israel as existing long before it established a kingdom—or, to use subsequent European political terminology, portraying Israel as a nation long before it became a state.

Read the whole essay in Azure.

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