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Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
119. Inventing God and Law: Theocracy
TITLE: Part M: Theocracy
Panel 1: The high priest in Jerusalem, wearing his ceremonial breastplate, hat, and robes, mumbles an incantation while placing a golden crown on a new king’s head.
FEZ GUY (offscreen):
The Persians did let us try kings again.
-=-
Panel 2: The new king, wearing his golden crown, is crazed with power.
FEZ GUY (offscreen):
But, you know?
NEW KING:
BWA HA HA HAAA!
The power is mine!
All mine!
-=-
Panel 3: The high priest slaps the crown off the new king’s head, making him go bug-eyed.
FEZ GUY:
It just didn’t take.
Besides, isn’t Yahweh supposed to be our sovereign?
-=-
Panel 4: Sis and Joe, as talking heads, with a backdrop of an eastern fairy-tale castle in a mountainous land.
SIS:
Hold up.
What does that even mean?
JOE:
I’m glad you asked.
SOVEREIGNTY means ultimate political authority.
A sovereign is that person or entity in which all of a society’s political authority is vested. Every power of every government institution, of every government official, is delegated from the sovereign.
This is important: There is no higher power that you can appeal to, to limit or constrain or overrule a legitimate sovereign’s exercise of political power.
“Ultimate” really means ultimate!
(More on this later, I promise)
-=-
Panel 5: The high priest, in full regalia, raises an “aha!” finger. Three other officials look skeptical.
NARRATION:
This presented the priestly elites with a conundrum: How to get regular folks to really and truly accept that a heavenly deity was—really and truly—their political ruler on Earth?
HIGH PRIEST:
I have it!
Remember that law code we had to copy out back in Babylonian scribe school?
OFFICIAL 1:
Eh?
You don’t mean…
OFFICIAL 2:
Hammurabi?
OFFICIAL 3:
Ugh, don’t remind me. The first year, they scared us to death… the second year, they worked us to death… then the third year, they bored us to death.
*Old law student refrain.
-=-
Panel 6: Repeat of panel 7 from page 104, with the two Mesopotamians reading a law code stele. Next to it is a repeat of panel 6 from page 106, with Yahweh seated on his throne.
NARRATION:
Thus the Covenant Code, with which we began this discussion!
As the Mesopotamian law codes had symbolically imbued a king’s authority with the legitimacy of the gods…
…so now the Covenant Code imbued the Yehudites’ god with the legitimate political authority of a king!
-=-
Panel 7: A stick figure man and woman stand beside an empty throne. The man looks at a bright light shining where a king would normally be, and the woman makes a sassy gesture.
NARRATION:
The result?
A kingdom without a king!
MAN:
Not one we can see or hear, anyway.
WOMAN:
Or petition…
Or persuade…
-=-
Panel 8: Three bright lights rise from the bottom left to the top right, in rhythm with the text.
NARRATION:
This was a radical new reality. To regain their identity, the Yehudites had made a covenant—and a Covenant Code—which had then transformed their god into something humankind had never before imagined:
A god that was singular… supreme… and sovereign!
NARRATION (below “singular”):
No father,
no consort,
no pantheon.
NARRATION (below “supreme”):
There was no greater deity in all the spirit world.
NARRATION (below “sovereign”):
Their god—that is, nobody on Earth possessed ultimate political authority.
-=-
Panel 9: The Persian emperor, in a golden headdress and purple robes, stands before bas-relief figures of four-winged celestial beings.
NARRATION:
What did the Persian emperors think of this?
EMPEROR:
Meh.
So long as they pay their taxes and stay out of trouble, who cares what they believe?
-=-
Panel 9: Turban Guy looks askance at Fez Guy, who makes a confident gesture.
NARRATION:
True, gods and government had always gone together—both created at the same time, to solve the same social need for cooperation, and by the same human necessity of narrative.
But thus far, it had naturally been people who issued commands and made the rules.
What now, when the commands and rules could only come from a—let’s face it—fictional character? From a being you couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and above all couldn’t question?
TURBAN GUY:
And who doesn’t seem to be making any new rules, either.
FEZ GUY:
Oh yeah?
That’s what you think.
Fictional character? *watches Nathan be flamed to death*
But yeah, this is getting to the good part! Law becoming sovereign in its own right!
If law originated from monotheism, how did it take in areas that are not monotheistic? Didn’t Rome, India, and Japan have laws?
As amazing as they are, I’m leaving out all of the civilizations east of Persia in this section. Mainly because they didn’t significantly affect the political development that leads to Philadelphia in 1787. But also because, though they all had their own idiosyncracies (and China goes a bit beyond mere idiosyncracy), they generally follow the same pattern we’ve been tracing, and this digression of a digression is already going to be long enough as it is without repeating it all over again.
As for Rome… wait a little. We’re getting there.
Also, remember this monotheism story is about the development of “law as we know it,” which implies that it’s somehow different from law as the ancients knew it. Speaking of which, when are these Yehudites going to get around to inventing monotheism? They sure are taking their sweet time.
My interpretation is that the guy in the hat in the first panel is a Persian official crowing a subordinate Judean king, then revoking the king’s authority when he goes too far. But I see Hat Guy in panel 4. Was I wrong in panel 1?
I think the one crowing (and de-crowning) the king was a priest, as permitted by the Persians.
It’s the high priest in Jerusalem. Worth looking up, it’s a pretty interesting job with some nifty symbolic attire.
When we get back to the United States, I would like to see an explanation of how Indian tribes are sovereigns, and how federal/state/tribal laws operate on reservations. Precedent under the Assimilation Crimes Act, which I learned about five minutes ago, seems to contradict itself with every other court case. Is there any conflict related to Indian tribes being “tribal” in the sociological sense, while the federal government is a state, or meta-state?
The modern system of “Indian tribes” is an artificial construct established by white men. They are formerly tribal groups required to adopt the structures of a sovereign state to make it easier for the US to deal with and control them. Sometimes this leads to unusual results; for example, until 2017 the Cherokee Nation refused to admit the descendants of Cherokee slaves, until the District Court ruled that the descendants of freedmen were entitled to citizenship within the Cherokee nation.