Secular Zionism’s biblical narrative itself drives the apocalyptic impulse to rebuild the Temple

Evidence

Accordingly, we can say that the understanding of the differences between Zionism and the legacy of Safed as one between a secular and religious approach is evidently wrong. These are two political theologies, each referring to a different period in ancient history: the Zionist to the Bible; Safed to the postbiblical, to Palestine after the Roman conquest and the destruction of the Temple. Focusing on the question of the Temple clarifies the essential contradiction of the so-called secular position and demonstrates that the Zionist secular perception is the apocalyptic among the two models: When redemption is conceived as the restoration and imitation of the biblical narrative, the growing desire to rebuild the Temple logically follows. It is impossible to expect a narrative of exodus, conquest, and settlement and to stop there – for the biblical story continues. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 369

Categorization

• XREF: A striking instance of how a ‘secularized’ political narrative retains its sacred telos — the internal logic of the founding myth inexorably produces maximalist demands that resist compromise. — connects to: Zionism’s professed secularism carried hidden messianic theology — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 300; It is the secularization of messianism, not messianism itself, that makes it dangerous — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 350; Suppressing messianism produced a secular national theology that erased the land’s non-Jewish history (+1 more)
• STORYSTEM: The idea that ‘you cannot stop the biblical story midway’ — a national founding narrative whose own internal logic drives escalation past the founders’ stated endpoints — could structure a story about any modern movement unable to contain its founding myth.