Americans during the Revolutionary era and the Early Republic lived in a world suffused with the Hebrew scriptures. That reality, already charted by many historians (including Mark Noll, who once termed the Old Testament (“the common coinage of the realm”), is only the backdrop to Eran Shalev’s remarkable American Zion: The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War.
Most expansively and simply, Shalev argues that “political Hebraism” led Americans — both those more and less religious) to identify their new nation as a second Israel, a nation chosen by the Almighty for special purposes should it remain true to its founding principles. In his conclusion, Shalev observes that because “the United States was created in the shadow of the biblical Israelite nation … [it] should not surprise us that so many of its citizens still ardently believe that God regards their nation with special favor.” During the revolutionary years, Americans read the Old Testament through the filter of Whig republicanism (and vice versa). For instance, Gideon became a noble, republican military leader who refused offers of kingship (a la Cincinnatus and George Washington). Americans saw their own polity (or desired polity) reflected in pro-monarchical Israel, their desired leaders in the judges chosen by the people for their virtue.
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