Constitutional Law

Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”

Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”

125. Inventing God and Law: The Flip Side of Faith

TITLE: Part S: The Flip Side of Faith

Panel 1: An aerial view of the city of Jerusalem as it looked in the final centuries B.C., with the original city and temple mount to the right, and hills and mountains away in the distance.  Hovering high above in the sky is a gargantuan tube of superglue, fading as it curves away to the horizon, with the label “OMG BRAND SOCIAL CEMENT.” A great dollolop of superglue pours out of the tube and glops over the city below.

NARRATION:

On the flip side, faith is a fantastic social cement!

VARIOUS VOICES:

Together we proclaim our faith, and reinforce it with practically everything we say and do…

With every meal…

Even with every stitch of clothing…

…And with what we don’t do—as in, we don’t sacrifice to the gods of our imperial overlords.

(The Worth-O-Meter loves virtue signaling!)

MORE VOICES:

We believe together!

Together we believe in our god and our scriptures…

Even without evidence…

Or in the face of contradictory evidence…

Even when the whole rest of the world says we’re wrong…

And if our imperial overlords punish us for living by our faith?

NARRATION:

Faith guarantees shared identity, and intensive, daily, shared sacrifice—could anything bond us better?

-=-

Panel 2: Narration box.

NARRATION:

It’s odd, when you consider how important monotheism is to the Abrahamic religions, that it’s barely mentioned in the Old Testament. But of course that’s because it came late in the writing of scriptures. Originally meant as a persuasive device, it worked better than its authors dreamed. They’d persuaded, all right!

When all the dust had settled, they’d well and truly invented monotheism. Yahweh had started out as a local god of wind and war, and now he was the god of everything. The only god.

But that’s not all…