Judaism as a Historical Miracle

[Beet]

If you look around at the states of the world today, there are not many that can say they are descendants of a state that existed 3,000 years ago. China is often said to have the longest continuous civilization, but the United Monarchy predated the First Emperor by some 800 years. And in my opinion, the fact that the nation of Israel is politically discontinuous and geographically minuscule makes it all the more impressive. How many tiny states from the ancient world are even known today, let alone would ever exist? It would be like having a Hittite state today, or a Phoenician state, a Babylonian state, or an Assyrian state. And these were the relatively large empires of the time. It seems to me that Judaism has achieved, regardless of what one think from a religious perspective, the singular historical result of the fact of a civilization that has endured without a political shell around it; and the consequence of this, is a civilization that is uniquely able to endure across the millenia. In this, the difference between Judaism and less insular religions such as Christianity is that the latter, being a prosthelyzing religion and hence giving up the strict requirement of adherents to obey Mosaic law, is adaptable to be grafted on almost all sorts of civilizations and cultures. As a church, the Patriarch of Rome has lasted 2,000 years (which is impressive in itself), but it has not constituted a civilization.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I've often thought of said miracle myself. Even beyond that is the fact that the Israelites were moved, oppressed, and so on by a number of civilizations including Egypt, Babylon, & Rome yet still managed to maintain its identity. It's not like this is a people/religion/state with a history of being strong & unassailable.

[Benj]

The Zoroastrian Persians achieved something similar, at least until very recently (post-Iranian Revolution), in the sense of surviving as a distinct culture despite loss of independent statehood an extremely long time ago. Obviously they aren't as old as the Jews and were stronger at their peak, but still relevant.

The same could be argued with maybe more force about the Basques. There are also other, more recent losses of independent statehood like those of various native American cultures. The Maya have existed as a distinct culture for an extremely long time but have been incorporated into foreign states since early colonization.