Family implies kinship, while nation implies the same but in a more abstract manner, and one that connotes physical boundaries, that a “‘nation’ is a society of territorial kinship.” Christians needed to look to the Old Testament for guides to these concepts and their development. Nations became the ‘new Israel,’ and their people the ‘new people.’ Grosby claims that “The nation, with its bounded territory, becomes, as it was for the Israel of the Old Testament, the vehicle for that righteous conduct, legal development, freedom of self-government, and historical revelation.” A new Christian ‘national monotheism’ was created that was very different than anything found in the New Testament. And while salvation and the afterlife were still of great importance, the commission of good deeds and bettering of humanity in this life took on greater import.

If Christianity were now to be developed in nations, this meant by necessity a return to, or renewed interest in, matters of law and politics. And for the Christian Hebraists this meant a return to the Old Testament rather than towards Rome or Athens; this stimulated a review of lawmaking and of the governing structures found in the rule of the Davidic line of kings within the bounded land of Israel.

Along the way, both Matthew Arnold’s and Herman Melville’s interest in this subject are noted as examples of this path. Arnold called the Protestant Reformation a ‘Hebraising revival’, given his understanding that a culture is a coming together of different aspects of human experience into something quite singular. Melville spoke of Americans as the Jews of their time, coming into freedom. The image of the Exodus was used for a different people, in this case, those who became Americans. At the same time, there is the image of a territory with borders that also has a universal mission, the exploration of liberty in a new political context: “The new Israel is no longer the true church but the nation, albeit the Christian nation. The nation with its bounded territory, becomes, as it was for the Israel of the Old Testament, the vehicle for that righteous conduct, legal development, freedom of self-government and historical revelation.”

What Grosby denotes as the third culture (in strengthening Frank Manuel’s passing reference to it in his book The Broken Staff: Judaism Through Christian Eyes) is to now find an equal footing with that of Athens and Rome, because both the ancient and medieval models of the city-state and the empire bear little resemblance to the new nation-state. Nowhere is this more important than in the appropriation of the idea of a ‘chosen’ people, that was now applied to the population of a nation-state, be it England, America, or any other; and that this people has a ‘mission’ given by a providential Being. Grosby notes that while this may have come to the fore during the Reformation, there were numerous antecedents already in medieval and early modern Europe. Also crucial for Hebraism was the rise of the individual in relation to the state and his obedience to both moral or natural law, as well as that of the state. This is a reflection of the Jew living in the holy land in early monarchical times. Hebraic culture is thus formed of elements “theological, political, legal, and social.”

The new nation-state needed to find its way in relation both to natural and common law. Namely, it must accommodate the found practice of a people in relation to universal law. This had rarely been a problem in the time of empires, be they secular or religious. Or if accommodations had to be made, they were made on a case-by-case basis, with a systematic procedure or schema to which to refer. Thus, in the Roman or Christian empires, Roman, ecclesiastical, or canon law prevailed. Or they were perceived to operate on separate planes of function and idea. Medieval Christianity, with its predilection for envisioning the present in relation to the afterlife, rarely heeded or had interest in law that pertained to the day-to-day activities of humans, let alone to citizens of the nation-state. It is for this reason that early modern Hebraist Christian thinkers looked to the Old Testament and its commentaries for guidance in this realm, for how to order this world with regard to “custom, tradition, and law.”

Central to the story of Christian Hebraists are the Englishmen John Selden (1584-1654) and Edward Coke (1552-1634). They looked at the unique nature of English law: that it had its own local history; that the king was also subject to the law; and that there was already a history of judicial practice and thinking. This “prototype of national law was that of the ancient Israelites and Jews.” It therefore combined laws of nature or reason, which were seen as God-given, with the laws of a particular land or people, which had simply been agreed upon by this people. It also allowed for disputation, or an ongoing process of re-evaluation of existing law and the creation of new ones to fit new situations, always reliant on the tradition for its justification. This was, and is, analogous to the Jewish Rabbinic process of the creation of commentaries and new law, which is nevertheless always based on what is seen to be the underlying premise of a fixed and holy text. Coke and Selden understood that law is also to be understood as part of a nation’s history. “This historical turn, in the service of not only understanding a particular body of law specific to a nation but also as justifying that law, is a characteristic of Hebraism.” While imprisoned for offending the King, Selden actually studied Talmud! Why? It is a story of one people’s creation of an ongoing discussion of law, much analogous as to how Selden understood English common law in relation to its people. This process may be seen as working out an ongoing relationship of humans and the Divine, where human rationality, understood as a god-like trait, takes over from the Biblical world of miracles; humans chart their own course by the will of the majority opinion, but where the minority position is also always reflected. What Selden and Coke so clearly understood, is that “[W]hat is germane is that the rabbis have a legal framework where the universal laws are a part of, more accurately borne by and conveyed through, a developing national body of common law.”

Christian Hebraists needed to reconcile different definitions of citizenship within the new nation-state. For example, Paul the Apostle is identified as a Jew by birth, or by the participation of family and kin, or a Roman by location and the ruling government, and then finally a Christian or a universalist (Catholic), by self-definition. The Hebraists added, as had the Jews, the identification to a land within specified borders. And within those borders certain laws applied to its inhabitants, although in different ways, according to their status. There are three categories of inhabitant: the “native born…the resident alien who resides permanently in the land… and the foreigner.” Thus, another characteristic of Hebraism is that a people and a (holy) land go together, with a legal system that binds them to it. Jews in the land would be obligated by civil and Jewish law, and the resident alien and foreigner only by the former. Finally, the fact that a person could convert to Judaism allowed for the full and complete integration, from a legal standpoint, into the body politic, as if the convert were native born. This is the power of law that is found at the center of Western civilization, particularly in modern times.

In making the case for the category of Hebraism, Grosby closes the argument noting that while all of this is rather dialectical, in fact no synthesis may be in the offering. We are beings of this world, governed by our own laws and those of God. Which is to say, these conceptual tensions “…arise because national sovereignty coexists with monotheism, resulting in a paradoxical national monotheism, or, as described previously, monolatrous monotheism.” We recognize both our power and our weakness, even more so now that we know the vastness of the heavens.

I will note one possible small omission that Grosby might have mentioned. It seems that the Jewish Sanhedrin might be viewed as a proto-formulation of a parliament or parliamentary body. Is there any Old Testament influence in this development? While it is unclear exactly what its formulation and purview was, the Sanhedrin certainly seems to have been a democratic body of sorts whose duties included law, religious matters, legislation, and the election of high leadership, both secular—–a king, and religious- the high priest.

Having said this, the scholarship and erudition on display in this book is formidable. The language is elegant and the arguments are long yet precise. All avenues are pursued to make the case that Hebraism, or more precisely, Christian Hebraism, the third culture, is a potent rubric for exploration of modernity. And a very strong case it is.