Chapter 7 A Zion in the North: The Jerusalem Code and the Rhetoric of Nationhood in Early Modern Sweden

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the perception of Sweden as a coun-terpart to the Israelite people in the Old Testament played an important part in the construction of Swedish nationhood. The widespread use of biblical parallels in the political discourse of the period has been recognized for a long time, but in recent research the significance of the parallels has been questioned by scholars who have described them as merely a kind of commonplace religious phraseology, with no further implications. In this chapter however, I will argue that the parallels must be taken seriously and that the Jerusalem code provided a cornerstone of the rhetorical construction of early Swedish nationhood. Central to my argument is that the identification with the Israelites should be understood as figural in character, rather than genealogical or translational, and that the Jerusalem code offered a rhetorically flexible mode of representation that united past, present, and future as well as the individual and the society.