Meirav Jones England’s Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought University of Pennsylvania Press 248 pages, 6 x 9 inches, ISBN: 978-1512827804
Meirav Jones
On England’s Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought
Interview of
January 3, 2026
picture by Tamar Abadi
In a nutshell
England’s Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought explores how foundational ideas of modern politics that are usually considered secular were, in fact, born out of deep conversations and negotiations with religion.
To unpack a little, mid-seventeenth century England was a hotbed in which some of the most important ideas of modern politics were conceived: Thomas Hobbes conceived of his social contract, John Selden wrote major legal treatises which were foundational for modern natural and international law, and England participated—in theory and in practice—in the wave of republicanism that swept over Europe. This was also the period of the English Civil War, which has been portrayed by historians as a “war of religion” and a “revolution of saints,” characterized by religious ends and motivations guiding politics.
The book demonstrates that the political theory published in the period was significantly related to the religiously motivated politics of the time through the Hebraic language and imagery that was shared by theorists and saints. In the twenty-year period of 1640-1660, when Hobbes, Selden, and their contemporaries were active, over 40 percent of all texts published in England contained one or more of the terms “Hebrew,” “Israel,” “Jerusalem,” “Zion,” or “Jew.” Further, all known works of political theory from the period employ this language and imagery. When Presbyterian and Church of England ministers, including preachers in parliament, addressed England as “Israel,” the English were to see themselves as God’s chosen people, and there was a sense of urgency or apocalyptic expectation expressed in the language. When foundational theorists of the modern state used the same language, they explicitly rejected the destabilizing identity of England as Israel. They turned English readers, who were intimately familiar with the biblical narrative and the Old Testament people, towards the exemplary structures of Israelite laws and institutions, that in their interpretations were both more conducive to stability and more pleasing to God than the structures of Greece or Rome.
Ultimately, the book argues that it was through a sweeping revival of Hebrew in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that the foundations of modern politics were laid in conversation with Hebraic thought and action and in negotiation with Jewish ideas and ideas of the Jews as understood by Christian thinkers and actors. Modern politics did not develop from within a conversation among elites, and was not conceived as a Godless enterprise, even by its most renown secular architects. Modern—even secular—state politics did not only speak the language of religious politics but was conceived in its terms. As such, modern politics does not only have the tools to speak to religion but can do so in its native tongue. Understanding this has implications for how liberal and modern ideas can exist in conversation with religious and even apocalyptic political thought and action in our time.
The wide angle
We tend to think of modernity as a time when religion could be set aside without this having a major effect on public discourse. But this understanding of modernity is actually a remnant of a time, not so long ago, when there was consensus that religion was in decline and had been since the onset of the modern era and that it would ultimately disappear from public life. This consensus held strong at least from the 1960s until the twenty-first century, with 9/11 often cited as a rude awakening. Today – with evangelicals in the white house and religious Catholics, Muslims and Jews setting political agendas worldwide – few would argue that religion is in decline.
Yet even if we recognize the place of religion in public life today, most of our textbook studies of key thinkers and ideas of modernity were written from the perspective of that now debunked myth of secularization, and this matters. The narratives we tell about how we got from there to here are narratives of how we moved from religious to secular times; from medieval or dark ages to modernity and enlightenment. In studies of early modern Europe we have compelling accounts of Calvinists as proto-secular revolutionaries, explorations of the millenarian idea of progress as prefiguring the scientific idea of progress, and accounts of seventeenth-century political theorists writing outside of any religious context, constructing ideas and institutions inspired by the revival of classical—Greek and Roman—thought. These works all present paths to secular politics, either through translation from the theological to the political, or through the construction of an entirely non-theological political discourse. They also reify a divide we see today, when secular or liberal thinkers seem to lack any grounds for conversing with religious political actors.
In the big picture, then, this book can be read as an intervention. By demonstrating that modern ideas emerged in conversation with theological politics, it presents the possibility that there is a conversation to be had today between theory and theology that could be transformative in terms of the possibilities for political and even just human life. It also supports, from a “history of ideas” perspective, movements that have emerged to counter some of the political damage that interpretations of religion have done and are doing. One example of this is Pope Francis’ work to reinterpret Christianity as supporting environmental stewardship, acknowledging the ecological damage done by the church’s traditional interpretation of the idea of subduing the earth. Another example is The Halachic Left’s work in Israel, interpreting Jewish texts to support Palestinian rights to counter supremacist readings of Jewish texts offered by right-wing religion. Such efforts appear, following the history of political thought presented in this book, as taking part in the same project foundational thinkers of modern politics were engaged in; not rejecting religious texts and images for the harm they cause in public and political discourse, but reinterpreting these same texts and images to do better.
A close-up
Pages 53-54 frame Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, usually read as a work of secular political thought, as an intervention in the theological-political of his time:
Hobbes was explicit, in his autobiography, about the extent to which his publication priorities were set not by academic or “republic of letters” considerations but by his concern about what was being done with, and attributed to, God’s word in England: “Although this was the moment at which I had resolved to write my book De corpore, the materials for which were completely ready, I was forced to postpone it because I could not tolerate so many atrocious crimes being attributed to the commands of God, and decided that my highest priority was to absolve the divine laws.” How Hobbes responded to the “atrocious crimes” he found being attributed to the commands of God was to conduct his own inquiry into the commands of God and their place in politics, through the sources of his opponents. Hobbes turned to scripture, but his reading was so unconventional that in the dedication of Leviathan he anticipated that of all the controversy Leviathan would conjure up, his reading of scripture would be the most controversial aspect of the work.
Hobbes’ participation in the theological-political context of seventeenth century England by taking the terms of his opponents and redefining them for his own purposes resembled his mode of participation in other contemporary conversations. On page 55I offer an amusing take on this:
John Wallis, in a sympathetic letter to Robert Boyle sent in response to his hearing that Boyle had been challenged by Hobbes about his claim to have created a vacuum [wrote]: “Mr. Hobs is very dexterous in confuting others by putting a new sense on their words rehearsed by himself: different from what the words signifie with other Men. And therefore if you [Boyle] shall have occasion to speak of chalk, he’ll tell you that by chalk he means cheese: and then if he can prove that what you say of chalk is not true of cheese, he reckons himself to have gotten a great victory.”
Among the terms Hobbes redefined when he participated in the theological-political discourse of his time, was “Israel” which he defines as a historic people “in the wilderness,” and not the Church or the English, and the “kingdom of God,” which he removes from the present or future and places in the past. Hobbes’ definitions draw his readers to read the Bible as an ancient model that offers stable and long-lasting political frameworks, on a par with Greece and Rome, rather than a prophetic text breeding instability. This was such a powerful move that republican theorists who despised Hobbes’ politics shared—and some consciously adopted—his approach when it came to responding to theological politics that they saw as no less threatening than Hobbes did. The way seventeenth-century political theorists worked together to counter “new Israel” politics by redefining its terms made space for the thriving of ideas we consider secular today.
Lastly
England’s Israel was not unique in the early modern world, with the Dutch and other European nations also seeing themselves as “Israel,” or God’s chosen, and with political theorists conceiving lasting political and legal structures grounded in the language, sources, and images of the Godly in the political. We are used to thinking of Hobbes and his contemporaries as thinkers through whom politics became secular, but there is no indication that they themselves intended to end the conversation with religion, and quite the contrary. The political structures proposed in Leviathan, for example, presume a society in which the Bible is canonical. While religion may be set in a separate, non-political realm, this is justified through the tenets and sources of Christianity that is engaged, and its centrality to the lives of believers is acknowledged.
This book, then, is an important corrective to the history of ideas for reasons that anyone concerned with the fate of modern politics should find compelling. First, it allows us to better understand the foundations of contemporary laws and institutions such as rule of law and modern sovereignty, and the extent to which they were conceived in a manner far less detached from messy politics than we may otherwise have presumed. Second, it reveals a mode of conversation that was crucial at the dawn of modernity and that modern theorists considered crucial in an ongoing manner, between religious political actors for whom politics is a vehicle to higher ends, and those concerned with stability and the preservation of life in this world. Third, this mode of conversation may not only be relevant to understanding the past, but it may open possibilities for effective political theory in the present. Just as acknowledging the centrality of religion to so many and finding value in the sources, language, and imagery of religious political actors was key to founding modern politics, so too in our time, acknowledging and finding value in that which fellow citizens find sacred could be key to moving productively past deep social and political divides.
