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Did defeat turn a nation into a religion?
The great scholar Wellhausen argued that Assyria and Babylon crushed Israel as a nation, leaving only a religion behind. Many scholars still assume he was right.
Defeat didn't end the nation; it invented one.
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Wellhausen believed that in a world of empires there could be no nations, only religions. Why the Bible Began argues the opposite: the biblical writers responded to defeat by showing that a dispersed, kingless population could still be one people.
Source: Why the Bible Began, pp. 9–12
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