ABSTRACT
If for Christianity Christ represented the Last Adam, restoring humanity to Eden, for Rabbinic Judaism, Israel the holy people stood for the counterpart of Adam, the Land of Israel for Eden, the expulsion by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE for Adam’s fall from grace. Then the challenge of politics was to restore Israel to grace and hence to the Land, thus bringing Adam back to Eden once more. Through its political theory, exposed in the Mishnah, c. 200 CE, Rabbinic Judaism made the statement that Israel had lost its land by reason of sin but could regain it by means of atonement and reconciliation, so restoring Adam to the place that the Creator had prepared for him and her. That is why the initial document of Rabbinic Judaism set forth a theoretical politics that focused upon the sin of rebellion and reconciliation through humble atonement. What the Mishnah presents is not merely a mythic and theological picture but also a political structure, and authority mediated through that political structure would shape the public life of this Israel into Eden. To make that statement politics provided an ideal medium, since the issues of polit ics-the formation of institutions to define and preserve the social order-encompassed the inherited model of the ideal state, Israel under God’s rule en route to and ar r ived in the Land, under Moses and Joshua, respectively. When people would speak of “a state of (being) Israel,” therefore, they would also address “a state of (constituting) the State of Israel,” the Judaic State, such as the Torah recorded for the age of Moses.
