11 October 2011

Neither palace nor cult

Claims to land are claims to participating in the nation's self-sufficiency. 
Neither the palace nor the cult can make such a claim in ancient Israel. In the biblical regime, the palace and the cult can claim residences and cities but not landed real estate; only God and the tribes and the clans that constitute those tribes are so empowered. 
Under the biblical regime, the economic power of the people may neither be centralized nor aggregated. 
(Egypt under Joseph accomplished just such an illegitimate, centralizing apportionment of the land to both the palace (Pharaoh) and the cult (the priests of Egypt), where the cult functioned as a state temple and the court functioned as a sachral monarchy.) 

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