John Selden and the Biblical Origins of the Modern International Political System

John Selden, one of seventeenth century England's foremost jurists and legal scholars, wrote many monographs treating the interrelationship between the universe of the Hebrew Bible and that of contemporary Protestant Europe. As we demonstrate, Selden analogized relations among the states of Europe to relations among the biblical nations. Indeed, in defining and in applying the concept of sovereignty to the modern world, Selden relied heavily on the biblical ideal of artificial boundaries and separations in international relations, even locating the very origins of sovereignty in the biblical narrative's affirmation of the principle of boundaries.