American Zion
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
The Bible has always been an integral part of American political culture.Yet in the years before the Civil War, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament, that pervaded political rhetoric.From Revolutionary times through about 183, numerous American politicians, commentators, ministers, and laymen depicted their young nation as a new, God-chosen Israel and relied on the Old Testament for political guidance.
In this original book, historian Eran Shalev closely examines how this powerful predilection for Old Testament narratives and rhetoric in early America shaped a wide range of debates and cultural discussions—from republican ideology, constitutional interpretation, southern slavery, and more generally the meaning of American nationalism to speculations on the origins of American Indians and to the emergence of Mormonism. Shalev argues that the effort to shape the United States as a biblical nation reflected conflicting attitudes within the culture—proudly boastful on the one hand but uncertain about its abilities and ultimate destiny on the other.With great nuance, American Zion explores for the first time the meaning and lasting effects of the idea of the United States as a new Israel and sheds new light on our understanding of the nation’s origins and culture during the founding and antebellum decades.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shalev, a history professor at Haifa University, convincingly demonstrates how the language of the Hebrew Bible was pervasive in political culture and politics during the creation of America and in its earliest years. The identification of the U.S. as a new Israel circulated in political discourse, speeches, pamphlets, private correspondence, sermons, poetry, and newspapers, providing Americans with critical perspectives on Britain's management of the colonies and invoking biblical sanction for nation-building. At times, the use of biblical language channeled anxiety about whether America's union might falter like that of ancient Israel. Deists such as Franklin and Jefferson imagined the revolution as an Exodus-like deliverance from slavery. Books described George Washington as the American Gideon who was able to defeat an enemy, despite being outnumbered and having fewer resources. Early Americans theorized that American Indians were remnants of the Lost Ten Tribes to make sense of them in their world view. During the Civil War, this "pseudobiblicism," as Shalev calls it, morphed into a language of mission and lost cause. Shalev's analysis shows how Old Testament biblical language, particularly the idea of chosenness, lingers in contemporary political discourse.
