“The contradictions in modern understandings of nationhood are obvious.
On the one hand, the notion of nation-sates that matured in Europe in the
nineteenth century was based on a romantic ideal of matching ethnic,
linguistic, and cultural boundaries with political borders. At the same time, these
same nations were caring the rest of the world up into subject states in which
state boundaries often bore no relationship whatsoever with ethnic boundaries.
But this raises the question: What does it mean to be a nation? Modern Western
answers to this question tend to be as inconsistent as the perceptions of the
ANE. Several factors that contributed in varying degrees to the ancients’
national self-consciousness may be identified.
1. Ethnicity. The importance of this factor varied. In the territorial states of northern Syria (encompassing the Phoenicians and Aramaeans) this element appears to have been inconsequential in the determination of national boundaries. In the national states farther south ethnicity was one of the primary determinants of nationality...
2. Territory... In territorial states membership was determined simply by residence within the territory of the state [גּוֹי], without consideration of ethnic origin or affiliation [עָם]. The size of such states tended to depend on the political, military, and economic power of the king ruling in the capital city. Accordingly, a single ethnic or cultural group [עָם] could be divided into a series of states [גּוֹיִם], a pattern evident in Aramaean and Phoenician regions (e.g., Damascus, Hamath, Tyre, Sidon). In national states membership was determined by affiliation with an ethnic group, and ethnic borders tended to coincide with political boundaries (e.g., Israel, Ammon, Moab, Edom...The boundaries of territorial states fluctuated, depending on the ability of the king to control his region or incorporate more land. For both types of states territory played a critical role in national development...
3. Theology. In the ANE, nations tended to be identified with their own distinctive patron deity...In the minds of Phoenicians and Aramaeans, like the Mesopotamians, a people related to a specific god by virtue of residence in that god’s land. The Hebrews, by contrast, viewed their association with Yahweh as primary; the land of Canaan represented his grant to them after he had established himself as their God by covenant...But this notion of national deities was not absolute. The gods of the nations outside Israel tolerated the worship of other divinities by their subjects, even within the homeland or city, and the subjects felt free to worship other gods at home, and especially when they traveled to a new land...
4. Kingship. In both territorial and national states the institution of kingship served as a glue holding the subjects of a nation together...
5. Language. Several types of evidence in the OT suggest that people of the ANE recognized a link between language and nationality...However, [other evidence] suggests that the relationship between language and nationality may not have been the subject of much reflection...The OT traditions imply that all the nations of southern Syria (the Philistines, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Israel) gave up their native tongues in favor of the Canaanite dialect without any loss of national self-consciousness...
From Daniel I. Block, “Nations/Nationality,” NIDOTTE 4:966-972.
