How have certain specific societies or cultures tended to view the Essay

How have certain specific societies or cultures tended to view the individual person, his or her relationship to government, and the concept of individual freedom - Essay Example We can analyze these legacies and identify the most probable reasons why they have gone extinct through the ages. One strain of individual/state relation that has since left us is the truly God-centric view of the state and its justification. The Enlightenment, with its secularization of society, attempted to move the reasoning behind state power away from the dictates of an all-powerful creator, and move it to the realm of man. What is not so clear in our present age is how the individual related to the state in a time when God was indeed the central philosophic focus of all government and social power, when priests and religious men made all decisions under the watchful eye of God. One such society was that of Judah and Israel with the Hebrews upon their Exodus from the sands of Egypt. How was the individual seen then as opposed to now? In the Israelite society, government was seen as the intermediary between man and God, enforcing God’s will. Any governing force not acting on God’s will was portrayed as malicious and evil. Individuals, of course, serve the state as they serve God, for the state is a surrogate for divine power. 1 Maccabees, the deuterocanonical Jewish book, begins after Alexander the Great has conquered Judea and his empire has been split on his death. The entirety of the book encompasses the events after the suppression of Jewish rites in Judea, ordered by the Greek Seleucid Antiochus IV. Antiochus imposes his will on Jerusalem, extracting objects from the Jewish temple, slaughtering worshippers, and enforcing a tax and building a fortress in the city. To make matters worse, Antiochus smothers the observance of Jewish laws, desecrates the temple and forbids the practice of circumcision. Antiochus establishes an idol in place of the Jewish god, forcing members of the community to make sacrifices to it. This all comes in an attempt to reestablish the Hellenistic culture and, in some respects, the Greek polis in