Big Ideas · Introduction
What makes a nation
Members of a nation may share a name, memories of an ancestral land, legal traditions, a calendar, festivals, rival stories of the past, and a literary canon.
A nation is held together by shared memories and solidarity.
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It may claim a homeland without occupying it, and its consciousness may arise after its state is gone. Many historians call nations modern; Jacob Wright finds that view myopic.
Source: Why the Bible Began, pp. 12
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