Re-Promising “The Promised Land”: Zionism as a Theo-political Body

This article focuses on the question of under what conditions the historical conflict between regimes of theological chosenness and biological superiority produced a common political ground, thereby enabling the emergence of modern Zionism as a theo-political body. The central argument of the study is that modern Zionism is the product of a theo-political compromise established at specific historical junctures between these two forms of supremacy, each possessing distinct sources of legitimacy and regimes of truth. To this end, the article employs a conceptual-genealogical method first to examine how the idea of chosenness produced a regime of supremacy within the Old Testament through the interplay of promise, identity, and land; it then traces the genealogy of the biological regime of supremacy, which took shape through racial theories, eugenics, and practices of biological segregation that developed in modern Europe. The analysis demonstrates that these two regimes existed as rival forms of legitimacy that long sought to invalidate one another, yet converged on a common political ground, particularly through land-centered colonial imaginaries. British Evangelical restorationism, Christian Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, and the Mandate for Palestine are examined as critical thresholds in this transformation. The article argues that as Palestine became both the site of a divine promise and the object of colonial appropriation, the theological and political promises intersected on the same land. This intersection enabled the reproduction of forms of chosenness, colonial domination, and biological separation within a mutually reinforcing network of relationships, giving rise to the theo-political body of modern Zionism.