Geopolitics and the Bible

The Bible is the most important piece of classical writing because of its foundational influence on Western Civilization. While people approach the Bible from theological, literary, linguistic, philosophical, or even critical perspectives, there is a dearth of analysis of the text from a geopolitical framework. Empires in the ancient world fundamentally determined biblical history, starting in Egypt and going through the Roman period. Decisions by the various empires directly impacted Israel, the Israelites, and development of religion, and without that geopolitical context, much of the biblical narrative makes little sense. Viewing the Bible through a geopolitical lens also helps analysts value the broader trends of history, which is critical to effectively delineate cause and consequences of major events.

Geopolitics in the Old Testament

To start, why does Israel matter for history? Why did the Israelites have to consistently contend with regional powers? Basically, the land Israel occupied (Canaan) was/is a critical geopolitical point between three continents, and great powers sought to control the area to increase their access to trade and improve their security. According to the Bible, God promised the land to Abraham’s descendants should they keep his covenant of circumcision (Genesis 17:8-10), but his descendants would not take the land until Moses and Joshua (as political and military leaders) rebelled against Egypt and took the land in the 12th century BC. The rebellion against Egypt and conquest of Canaan was likely only possible because of the Late Bronze Age collapse when governments and societies in the Mediterranean and Egyptian power were all in a steep decline. Without the decline of that power and general instability in the region, the Israelites would not have been able to move into Canaan against the various tribes and smaller powers.

[Note: There are challenges to the historicity of the Conquest in the Book of Joshua, but this is focusing on understanding the Bible through a geopolitical lens.]

Summarizing the next several hundred years, the Twelve Tribes would basically be run under a theocracy (the Judges) until they were united politically under King Saul, a warlord whose military success convinced the people to make him the monarch in 1020 BC (1 Samuel 10-11). David and Solomon followed Saul as king of a united polity, but then internecine conflict stemming from oppressive policies by Solomon separated the people into two kingdoms: Israel (ten northern tribes) and Judah (two southern tribes) (1 Kings 12). That split in 922 BC would weaken the Israelites heavily, and in the late 8th century BC Assyria would expand militarily to control the Syrian desert trade routes to the harbors of the Mediterranean Sea (2 Kings 17). Power politics would cause the destruction of Israel in 721 BC, and Judah would follow suit a little more than a century later.

Assyria and Egypt would be challenged in the 600s by the rising Chaldean empire (Babylonians), and the latter would ultimately take victory. The Chaldeans conquered much of the region, including Judah. Because Judah was such a small power it did not stand a chance against the superior military forces of the Babylonians. Despite having no possibility of victory, Judah consistently rebelled, and Babylon put down the rebellion completely in 587 BC by sieging Jerusalem, destroying the temple, and exiling the people for good measure (2 Kings 25). However, Babylon could not maintain its regional hegemony, and Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid empire would supplant them through military victory in 539 BC at Opis. Cyrus is an extremely important figure in the Bible because he would end the Jewish exile, return them to their home, and help rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1-4). This, of course, was not done out of the goodness of his heart, but because the Achaemenids liked to rule with a semi-federalist system (satrapies). Appeasing the local population’s religious inclinations made them significantly easier to rule.

All of the most significant events of the Old Testament took place around geopolitical competition between empires. While the biblical authors interpret these events as God’s punishments or blessings, the history in the text is nonetheless concerned with power politics, rising and falling empires, and territorial conquest.

The Roman Empire and the New Testament

Rome’s republican empire had the greatest military force in history, and they came to dominate the entire Mediterranean. One cannot understand much of the New Testament without understanding the nature of the Roman republic. After the Jews were returned to historic Israel under Cyrus, the area was controlled by various empires over the next several hundred years. In the second century BC, the Seleucid empire imposed Hellenistic culture on the Jews in the area. The most egregious oppression happened under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and this led to the Maccabean revolt in the 160s (1 Maccabees 1:41-50). Simon Thassi, brother of the rebel leader during the revolt, started the Hasmonean kingdom and furthered an alliance with Rome that started under Judas Maccabeus. Over the next one hundred years, Rome expanded its power in the Near East, and then in 63 BC General Pompey took Jerusalem, overthrew the Hasmoneans, and made Herod the king of a client state.

Rome’s occupation would be as welcomed as the Seleucids, and ethno-nationalist terrorists tried to oust the occupiers (see Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism). The Zealots (Sicarii) were infamous for using sica knives to stab Roman officials or Jewish sympathizers in the middle of crowds before surreptitiously disappearing. Interestingly, one of Jesus’s disciples, Simon, was a part of this extremist group (Luke 6:15). Jesus of Nazareth’s messianic claims could easily be interpreted as a political statement against Rome akin to the Zealots, which helps explain the ease with which Pontius Pilate supported executing him.

There is also a brilliant episode in Acts when Paul of Tarsus does not tell his jailers that he is a Roman citizen until after they have beat him without a trial (Acts 16:37-40, and another incident in Acts 22:22-29). Stemming from Cicero’s In Verrem, Roman citizens declared Civis Romanus sum ("I am a Roman citizen") to guarantee their legal rights. Allegedly, retribution for harming a Roman citizen or violating their rights was so feared because Rome would decimate any groups that violated those rights. Citizenship was much rarer in those days and would not be universalized until Caracalla in AD 212, which is why the republic took violations so seriously.

Christianity would spread throughout the empire because in AD 70 Rome grew tired of the Jews’ revolt and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, leading to the Jewish diaspora and transfer of the center of Christianity to the political capital of the Mediterranean. Altogether, the New Testament makes little sense without incorporating the power politics of the age. Jesus, Paul, and the early Church all existed and were formed by the geopolitical calculations of Pompey, Octavian, Vespasian, Titus, and others. Terrorism, revolts, and occupation all formed the backdrop of this period, and Christianity rose in the greatest historical empire due these political issues.

[Note: To answer the question of the internet craze… yes, I do think about the Roman empire almost every day…]

The Bible’s Influence on Geopolitics

Geopolitics informed much of biblical history from 1200 BC – AD 70, but the inverse is also true. Biblical ethics and theological claims determined how both the Catholic Church and Christian leaders saw power politics. Christianity is a universalist religion (Matthew 28:16-20), and the merging of the political and religious under Constantine's vision of In hoc signo vinces developed the premise of a universal Christian empire. Rome was the center of Christendom, and as such (according to this belief) was the sovereign over other kings. The Holy Roman Empire (AD 800-1806) embodied this idea for a millennium even though it consistently lacked the capabilities to create a true universal imperium (or even conquer all of Europe). Yet this idea would permeate the geopolitical calculations of major powers that wanted to establish that universal Christian rule.

Interestingly, though, Christianity would also so the seeds for what would become the Westphalian system because of Jesus’s declaration, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). In those words, Jesus separated spiritual and temporal power, and Medieval theologians would explicate on the relationship between church and state when it came to sovereignty. From Augustine’s civitas terrena and civitas caelestis to Pope Gelasius I’s Famuli vestrae pietatis to Pope Gregory VII and the Two Swords Doctrine, a variety of theologians dealt with the secular versus religious authority. That bifurcation would culminate in the geopolitically important Peace of Augsburg in AD 1555 that declared Cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, their religion"). It would take the Peace of Westphalia in AD 1648 to truly solidify the concept in the international order, but the Western world would not have its concept of sovereignty and the subsequent balance of power without the foundation of Christian views separating the spiritual and political based on Jesus’s words (see Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Sovereignty: God, State, and Self).

Learning from the Ancient World

A motivation for this newsletter is examining the complexity of geopolitics through different frameworks or seemingly minor variables, and the Bible offers a useful exploration of those issues. Great powers and empires of the ancient world cared little (if at all) about the religion of the Jews, but they did care about controlling strategically important areas and maintaining political stability. Their choices about strategy and politics deeply impacted Jewish history, and ironically the Jews’ stories of occupation, liberation, destruction, exile, and redemption are better known than those of the empires that ruled over them. Analysts can learn much by reengaging the ancient world to see how geopolitics impacted, and is impacted by, the stories we think we know.