IF AMERICA did not exist, Russia would have to invent it. In a sense it already has: first as a dream, then as a nightmare. No other country looms so large in the Russian psyche. To Kremlin ideologists, the very concept of Russia’s sovereignty depends on being free of America’s influence.
via Russia and America: The dread of the other | The Economist.
I need to file this away for later use, but the idea of building your identity not just away from another, but in opposition to other is an old one, a real one, and one that needs to be explored in a wide range of sciences, including Biblical Studies.
Anyway, read the article. Good stuff.
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Do you expect Americans to learn what we do by watching the same behavior in others?
Lemche discusses the Canaanites in biblical literature as an invented “anti-people” meant to promote a specific view of Israelite identity (The Canaanites and Their Land: The Traditions of the Canaanites [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991]).