Secular Western political thought drew on the Hebrew Bible

Evidence

The paradox is that what we have long recognized as the process of “secularization” in the West coincided with the growing role of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) in the shaping of political thought, national identities, and colonial justifications (Hill 1993). Since the seventeenth century, the ancient Hebrews have become an object of reflection for many discussions on politics and religion. As Jonathan Sheehan has put it, the refutation of divine authority was part of the transformation of the Bible (and particularly the so-called Old Testament) and its reconceptualization as a fundamental “cultural” text (Sheehan 2005; see also Harrison 1998; Nelson 2010; Oz-Salzberger 2008; Sheehan 2009). The debate over various biblical models (the law of the Torah, the Judges, or the kingdoms of Judah and Israel) was at the core of the political discourse and the source of imagination of communal sovereignty both in Europe and in the colonies, in the various cases of settler nationalism. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 328

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader work on how putatively secular national ideology (Zionism as ‘return to history/West’) is actually built on a sacralized sacred text — the Bible functioning as a cultural/national rather than religious document. Relevant to the sacralization-of-politics thesis: secularization did not remove the sacred text but resacralized it as national. — connects to: An unnamed shadow of the Semitic continues to shape Western political thought — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 707; Jewish nationalism adopted the Christian West’s secularized image of the ancient Hebrews — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 335; Modern political-constitutional concepts are secularized theology — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 922

Broader Connections

• An unnamed shadow of the Semitic continues to shape Western political thought #expands (0.85) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 707
• Modern political-constitutional concepts are secularized theology #corroborates (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 922
• Jewish nationalism adopted the Christian West’s secularized image of the ancient Hebrews #qualifies (0.75) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 335