20 December 2010

Not for every nation

The biblical regime is not meant for every nation nor for any nation other than the Israelite nation. Had the biblical regime in the ancient world remained in effect, the Christians and the Muslims likely would not have developed as they did. The rabbinic regime instead laid down the groundwork for the other daughter religions’ development because, as opposed to understanding the Bible's teachings as being applicable uniquely to the Israeli nation and the Israelite state only, the rabbinic regime had already framed the biblical teachings in terms of universal values that could apply to all nations and all states. 
As it happens, the biblical regime is only applicable to mature societies that need to struggle with surplus and excess. The biblical regime does not apply to a nascent ethnic grouping that wants to develop into a recognizable nation-state. 
Tribal nationalism attempts to replicate the biblical regime, only it attempts to do so without the nuances of the Bible's covenantal teachings and narratives which temper it and support it. Most obviously, the tribal nationalisms that formed the basis of the pan-nationalisms (Slavic/Russian and Germanic/Austrian out of the decaying corpus of the Hapsburg dual monarchy) of Eastern and Central Europe did not have any sense at all for the mitigating sacred institutions of shabbat and miqdash. Those sacred institutions served to mitigate the hubris their secular imitators would fail to do. 

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