There are several key terms to keep track of here. The author distinguishes between a nation and a state, writing that the former is “a political community held together by shared memories and a will to act in solidarity,” while the latter is “a polity with institutions of government and a territory that can be conquered and destroyed.” He also distinguishes between “national” and “ethnic,” stating that the ancient Israelites consisted of multiple ethnicities, including among the Transjordanian and Negev communities.
But, you might ask, what about religion? What about monotheism, Yahweh or the Ten Commandments? For the author, they are very much part of the narrative – only in a perhaps unfamiliar way. The incorporation of a shared monotheistic religion was one way that biblical scribes preserved a Jewish sense of peoplehood, editing out past references to polytheism as they did so.
With respect to Israel’s national deity, Wright argues that at the beginning, there were many deities bearing the name Yahweh: “Maybe, at some level, they referred to the same god. But they represented rival cities and regions. At some point, and especially after the fall of the Northern kingdom in 722 BCE, many were looking for a new point of unity. Without a palace or a dynasty, the biblical scribes affirmed that Yahweh is the nation’s God, and that there is only Yahweh. ‘Hear O Israel, Yhwh is our God, Yhwh is one!’”
