“We the People of Israel”: Covenant, Constitution, and the Supposed Biblical Origins of Modern Democratic Political Thought

Abstract As an originally political term, study of the concept of “covenant” has long demonstrated the intersection of biblical studies and political theory. In recent decades, the association between covenant and constitution has come to the forefront of modern political thought in attempts to find the origins of certain democratic ideals in the descriptions of biblical Israel, in order to garner either religious or cultural authority. This is exemplified in the claims of Daniel J. Elazar that the first conceptual seeds of American federalism are found in the covenants of the Hebrew Bible. Taking Elazar’s work as a starting and end point, this paper applies contemporary biblical scholarship to his definition of biblical covenant in order to reveal the influences of his own American political environment and that of the interpreters he is dependent upon. The notion that biblical covenant or its interpretation remains a monolithic or static concept is overturned by a survey of the diverse receptions of covenant in the history of biblical scholarship from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries, contrasting American and German interpretive trends. As such, I aim to highlight the reciprocal relationship between religion and politics, and the academic study of both, in order to challenge the claim that modern political thought can be traced back to biblical conceptions.