What makes a nation a nation? What forms their common identity, holds them together, leads their lives? What are they looking at? What should they strive for?
These questions have arisen in our turbulent times, while controversies are swirling about the goodness of the nation-state and the meaning of ‘nationhood’. Cosmopolitan elites celebrate globalization, increasingly viewing themselves as ‘citizens of the world’. Many citizens who value their own country’s ways view their parent identities and view them as threatened by foreign ideologies and immigrants who do not assimilate. Even in our long-established American republic, the country has become an urgent question that defines and unites the country.
For help in reflecting on these issues, I turned to the book of Exodus. Why Exodus? This biblical book not only tells the political foundation of one of the world’s oldest and most consequent peoples. It also invites us to reflect on the moral significance of communal life, the requirements of political self-government and the standards for judging a social order better or worse.
Many great thinkers, religious and not, studied Exodus for his political wisdom. In the 17th century, political thinkers took the lead in reforming the ancient ‘Hebrew Republic’, while jurists saw the foundation of universal principles of justice in the Hebrew Bible. The idea that the best body policy is based on the biblical understanding of covenant entered the American colonies with the Mayflower Compact, and the American tradition of civil republicanism is largely due to the Puritans’ devotion to the Hebrew Bible.
The case for the examination of the political doctrines of Exodus was perhaps very eloquently and concisely stated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the late 18th century: ‘The Jews offer us an astonishing spectacle: the laws of [Greek and Roman lawgivers] is dead; the much older laws of Moses are still alive. Every human being, whoever it is, must acknowledge it as a unique miracle, the causes of which, divine or human, certainly deserve the study and admiration of the sages. ‘