David B. Alexander We’re Back!

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We’re Back!
Searching for a Future for Taiwan
David Alexander, December 2009

After Taiwan’s “pro-China” political party took control of both legislative and executive
branches of the government in elections in 2007 and 2008, the borders have progressively
opened up to more visits by people from across the Taiwan Straits, the nation’s industrial and
commercial sectors have progressively been opened to investment from China, and the “pro-
Taiwan” sectors of society have come to fear the coming day when governing forces from
China itself will install themselves at the center of civil and judicial power saying, “We’re
back!”
When, in 1990, the Federal German Republic and the German Democratic Republic were united
into one country, many around the world rejoiced. A 45-year-old wound was being healed. But some
were not so happy. Residents of apartments, houses and lands in the East whose tenancy was based on
the absence of owners who had spent the post-war decades in exile in the West feared the knock on the
door or the letter through the slot informing them of their need to relocate because the “rightful
owner” had returned to claim what was his (or her) own.
Among the many thorny issues that bedevil the prospects of peace in the Middle-East is the issue
of who owns the land where the modern nation of Israel is located. Within the borders of that state are
lots, plots, fields, orchards, vineyards, houses and buildings now occupied by citizens of Israel which
were vacated by ethnic Arab and Palestinian owners hastily and under force. These former occupants
went into refugee status abroad in conjunction with the wars of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s.
Those who currently occupy the lands demand that any who would claim them produce proper
documentation and other proofs of ownership. Those who claim the lands know that whatever they
produce will be doubted. Counterfeit documentation and specious historical claims are common in
human history.
The Donation of Constantine
The Donation of Constantine was supposedly written by emperor Constantine granting the
Church ownership of vast territories within the Western Roman Empire. The donation stated that
Constantine made this gift out of gratitude to Pope Sylvester I who had converted him to Christianity
and had cured him of leprosy.1
This is perhaps the most famous forgery in history. From the 8th to the 12th century AD it
provided the basis for papal territorial and jurisdictional claims in Italy. It is assumed that the first draft
of the donation was made shortly after the middle of the eighth century to assist Pope Stephen II in
negotiations with the Frankish Nobleman Pepin the Short. When the Pope anointed Pepin as king of
the Franks in 754, the Carolingian family took power de jure (they already held it de facto) from the
Merovingian royal line. Pepin seems to have promised to give to the Pope those lands in Italy which
the Lombards had taken from Byzantium. The promise was fulfilled in 756. Constantine's alleged gift

1
Christopher B. Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constatnine. New Haven, Yale,
1922. p. 35.
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made it possible to interpret Pepin's grant not as a benefaction but as a restoration.2 The document was
very likely created by a cleric either in Rome or the Frankish court to allow the King to claim that he
was returning, not giving, the papal lands to the Church. The fiction of the Donation added legitimacy
to a convenient political marriage between the Catholic Church and the Frankish state.
The Donation was revealed to be a forgery in 1440 by Lorenzo Valla in his Discourse on the
Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine. Its dubious character was exposed through the
enumeration of multiple historical anachronisms that pervaded the work. For instance, it referred to
Byzantia as a province when in the fourth century it was only a city, it referred to temples in Rome
that did not yet exist, and it referred to 'Judea' even though in Constantine's time the Romans referred
to this territory as 'Palestina.' The Church suppressed Valla's work for years. Centuries later, it publicly
conceded that the Donation was a fake. Eventually, in 1929, the Church ceded the Papal States to
Italy.3
Hernando Cortez and the Conquest of Mexico
In 1519, when a band of adventurers under the command of Hernando Cortez arrived in Mexico
from Cuba, the emperor Moctezuma II reigned over the confederation of aboriginal peoples there who
formed the Aztec empire. A very religious man, Moctezuma beileved that Cortez was actually the
Aztec god Quetzacoatl, who was prophesied to arrive that very year from the east and to have white
skin. Moctezuma II was playing it safe according to his religion when he welcomed the conquistador,
and Cortez, taking advantage of the coincidence, played on the “we’re back” angle to advance to
positions from where his military resources would be of best use to assert the divine claim to the land
and effect the eventual conquest.
The Hebrew Bible and the “Persian Western Frontier Colonization Corporation”
The Hebrew Bible is “home” to three separate narrative documents (or collections of documents)
produced in times later than the history they purport to narrate, laying claim by the “documenters” to
rule over, control, or tax the persons, groups or nation to which the documents were presented as
ippisima verbum dei. The three documents (or collections of documents) are known as 1) the Torah,
2)the Deuteronomistic History and 3) the Chronicler.
1-The Torah
The contents of the Torah are legendary in form, and arguments that they narrate actual events
are the purview of the Orthodox among the Jews and the Fundamentalists (and conservative
Evangelicals and Pentecostals) among Protestant Christians. Though the term “Torah” as used today
includes the book of Deuteronomy, it most properly fits with the second set of documents. For the
purpose of discussion here, the Torah includes only the first FOUR books of the Hebrew Bible. The
lack of historicity in these documents in no way hinders their use by God in communicating the grace
of salvation to people of all races, places and times, but it does prevent anyone from standing on any
particular point and proclaiming, “thus it is written, so thus it happened.”
2-Deuteronomistic History
The second collection of documents, known as Deuteronomistic History, is presented to us today
2
Marc van der Poel, “Review of Bowersock (trans.) Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine”. Bryn
Mawr Classical Review, 2008.01.31.
3
Coleman, op. cit.
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in much the form as it was presented to a group or “nation” of people some centuries B.C.E. It
comprises the biblical books from Deuteronomy through 2nd Kings. Martin Noth, writing in 1943,
dated it in the time known as the exile, located the writer among those Judeans who had been taken to
Babylon, and posited that the entire corpus was the work of one hand.4 Later scholars have discerned
different hands at work and different revisions of the corpus of Deuteronomistic history, some more
optimistic and others less so, depending on the supposed time of composition and condition of the
nation/people from whom the corpus emerged.5
The themes of Deuteronomistic history include 1) the right of the royal family founded by David
to continue to rule, 2) the centrality of Jerusalem in national life 3) the importance of the temple and
its cultus, and 4) national disaster as a natural consequence of the king and/ or the people straying
from faith in Yahweh.
By these contents, the people who originally received the history were told to obey the Davidic
king or ruler, build up the city of Jerusalem, obey the laws of God interpreted to them through the
royally endorsed priesthood, and pay their tithes for the maintenance of the temple and those who
served in its staff and operations. Much of the Deuteronomistic history “fits” this system, if not as a
true recording of facts then as an interpretation set down so that future generations might have a clear
idea of their forebears’ journey.
But let us try a different historical possibility. What if a group of people, a “colonization
company” in the Persian empire, sponsored by the emperor, set out to the west to settle a land, much
as a company from England set out to settle Virginia in what is now the USA in 1609. This “Persian
Western Frontier Colonization Corporation” needed something beyond a royal charter to be able to
govern a population of immigrants and take control of lands and local populations only nominally
under imperial control. Making use of fragments of legend and history from the region (the Torah,
Assyrian History, Babylonian History and Caananite folklore), a “history” was created. David, a
“Robin Hood” style bandit, was provided with a background, a foreground, and an enduring legacy.
Alternate claims of right to rule were dealt with through the creation of the Saul/Jonathan Saga and the
Northern Kingdom Narratives. A monotheistic religion was molded and shaped to give divine approval
to the immigrant group. The contrived history was spun to include previous immigrations and seasons
of residence under a divine land-grant system so that the immigrant group could claim to be the
descendants of those earlier immigrants. The reason for this group’s absence from the land was
provided so that the “Persian Western Frontier Colonization Corporation’s” arrival, announced as
“We’re back,” would hold water. Much like the later Aztec prophecy of a white god coming from the
east, a promise and prophecy of return from Babylon was part of the religion. And the claim was
reinforced by the notion that these who had returned were not only the offspring of those who had
gone away, but that they were the “purified” offspring, ready to do it right this time.
The function of Deuteronomistic History was to construct an identity for the colonizers who
would take over a land and rule its people. The “history” worked its magic on both the colonizers and
on the colonized. But eventually its deficiencies began to show. It needed a revision to be applicable to
4
Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History. JSOT Sup 15. 2nd ed. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981/1991 pp14-15.
5
Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History Minneapolis, Fortress, 2000,
p.2-3.
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a settled population which, having taken control of lands and peoples, now faced the problems of
governing themselves. The stage was set for a new set of “ancient” documents to roll off the presses
(or off of the pens of the scribes).
3-The Chronicler
Chronicles does not function in the genre of a history book, but as a scrapbook with some aspects
of the genre of a yearbook. Chronicles was written to give encouragement to the leadership and
population of the immigrants who traced their ancestry to Babylon. In glorifying Judaism and the Jews
through the centuries, the Chronicler rewrote the history from David to Cyrus, omitting inconvenient
material from the sources, adding new things or modifying old in order to make points glorifying the
Davidic royal family and the temple.6 Beyond the Deuteronomistic history books of Samuel and
Kings, often quoted verbatim though never mentioned by name, the author or authors (and editor or
editors) of Chronicles used parts of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua and Ruth.7
Beginning in 1832, biblical scholars held that the two books of Chronicles plus Ezra and
Nehemiah were the work of a single author or group of authors. More modern study challenges the
idea of single authorship while maintaining the dating of their composition far later than the events
that the books purport to narrate.8 External evidence shows that Chronicles had been written and
circulated by the second century B.C.E. Internal evidence enables the books to be dated sometime in
the late fifth century B.C.E. Explicit reference to the Persians in 2nd Chronicles makes it clear that
these books date from the Persian period. Quotes from Torah (likely brought into final form early in
the Persian period) and from the prophet Zechariah (in 2nd Chronicles 16:9 and Zechariah 4:10) point
to composition in the Persian or Hellenistic timeframe.9
The scope of Davidic genealogy, the use of the Persian word daric in reference to finance and
other factors indicate a mid-fourth century to early-third century composition in Jerusalem.10 Some
scholars date them as late as 250 BC, but the lack of material indicating Greek influence on the corpus
leads others to adopt an intermediate compositional date of 350-300 B.C.E.11
Internal evidence reveals a concern to link up with the Babylonian exile as a decisive turning
point in the religious history of the people.12 The sojourn in Babylon was seen as a situation of
purification for those who appeared in the newly colonized lands claiming to be returned former
residents. Not only had they been purified during their absence from the polluted land, but the land

6
R. H. Pfeiffer, “Chronicles” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, New York: Abingdon, 1962, vol 1, p.
577.
7
"Introduction to Chronicles," in Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, editors. The New Oxford Annotated
Bible With the Apocrypha. New York. Oxford University Press. 1977 p. 495
8
Stephen S. Tuell, First and Second Chronicles Louisville: John Knox Press, 2001 p. 8
9
Ibid. p. 10.
10
John W. Wright, “Those doing the work for the service in the Hours of the Lord: 1 Chronicles 23:6 and the
Socio-historical Context of the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem in the Later Persian/Early Hellenistic Period” in
Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers and Rainer Albertz, eds. Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns: 2007 p. 379. See also Williamson 1 and 2 Chronicles NCB Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans 1982 pp15-17 and Knoppers1 Chronicles 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary:
Anchor Bible 12, New York: Doubleday, 2004 pp 101-117
11
Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible With the Apocrypha. New
York: Oxford University Press. 1977 p. 495
12
Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Development of Jewish Sectarianism from Nehemiah to the Hasidim” pp 389” in
Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers and Rainer Albertz, eds. Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns: 2007
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itself was purified while they were gone. With their return and under their rule pure would meet pure.
This was all presented as according to the will of God as prophesied and promised in the work of the
ancient ones, whose written works (the Deuteronomistic History with attendant prophetic documents)
the colonizers conveniently carried with them.
The purified people in the newly purified land needed a worship center so that their purified
leaders could perpetuate purification on and for both the “returned” immigrant colonizers and those
persons resident in the colony before their arrival. A temple was built. Though it was the first temple to
Yahweh on the site, it was called the “second” in order to maintain the fiction of the “We’re Back!”
Intermediate Conclusion
The Deuteronomistic History corpus got the immigrant group organized in Persia and carried
them through the initial stages of colonization of the western frontier. It installed them as masters over
the local peoples whose land they occupied and whose lives they ruled. It provided the needed
background for the building of a temple for the new community on the foundations of what, according
to the history, was the foundations of a splendid ancient temple dedicated to Yahweh. But as the newly
settled colony matured a revised history with different emphases was required for the sake of
governing a settled society. When the urban elite of that that society needed public works beyond a
temple (whether city walls, country roads, water supply lines or sewerage drains, things that benefit
the city but did little for those who lived on farms) authority for taxation was necessary.
Having proved themselves adept at producing “ancient” documents including prophecies, royal
geneaologies and priestly prerogatives in the past, the ruling class rolled out another book, and
attributed it to a dead prophet whom they named Haggai.

Haggai
Like much in the Bible, “it’s not about what the words say.” When we insist on literal
understanding and interpretation of the words on the page we make a mistake akin to that attributed to
Nicodemus who, when Jesus told him that he must be born again, countered with words about re-
entering his mother’s womb. In that conversation Jesus was not talking about wombs but about
something else.
The message of Haggai, which the words set in the year 520 BCE, is NOT about people who had
returned from an exile and built fine houses while neglecting the temple of the Lord. The message is
about an entire nation, dominated by an immigrant regime from the east, the leading class of which
held the right by means of royal fiat from a Persian emperor. This immigrant group constructed an
identity based on the claim to be the ancient inhabitants and rulers of this land by a grant from the very
God whom they introduced to the local scene upon arrival. Any assessment of the internal affairs of
the colony, its political and religious parties and its social stresses must take into account the endemic
states of 1) warfare, of 2) passing armies living off the land, with 3) attendant social and economic
disruption. These conditions are compatible with complaints of inequality, poverty, and social abuses
of different kinds in late biblical sources.13
The immigrant leadership, during a time of national economic hazard, sought to divert the
13
Ibid. p. 387
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attention of the people from their economic plight by diagnosing the reason for the malaise,
prescribing a treatment, and carrying out public works projects which would give people something to
do. Early in the colonizing enterprise a Temple had been built as the center for the religion that the
immigrant leaders had carried from Babylon and imposed upon their subjects. The house of Yahweh at
Jerusalem was like the house of the city gods at the center of a late Babylonian city. It provided a
patronage hub for kinship groups of Yehudian ancestry—the ethnos. By the time of the early
Hellenistic period, The Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem had 1) taxation authority, 2) a personnel
structure, and 3) an economic distribution system that established the social and economic matrix for
the central historical struggles of early Judaism during the following centuries. Control of the temple
meant control of the economy of the ethnos. Power was given to temple personnel to mediate between
the small province and the larger imperial forces during the centuries to come.14
Temple tithes and offerings collected from the families of Yehud were the sole source of supply
for the centralized gathering and redistribution of goods. Without a temple endowment, the temple and
its god in Jerusalem had to achieve the primary place of allegiance for its Yehud constituency in order
to sustain the cultural and economic life of Yehud. Temple personnel regulated the economic flow of
goods and resulting status by means of their offices in the temple and their allotments.15
The particular crisis (whether real or perceived) that precipitated the production of the book of
Haggai is not known. Economic times were hard, crop yields were disappointing, wine was in short
supply and other economic indicators were down. A public works project to absorb idle labor and
stimulate economic activity was needed. But it had to be paid for. Since responsibility to pay taxes was
part of the religious contract that the people had with their God, the route to recovery was through the
temple organization. The book of Haggai was drafted and “discovered” to serve as a reminder to the
people that the way through troubled times had been discovered in the past. “Look not to your own,
but to the community’s need and get to work under the direction of the priests and the Levites.”

Taiwan
Taiwan is an orphan nation. Its orphan status within the idea of a “wider China” was
acknowledged during the 18th century when it was regarded as of no interest to the imperial
government in Beijing. In the late 19th century it was given in perpetuity to the Japanese empire as a
prize of war. But, perpetuity, as they say, “isn’t what it used to be.” China’s imperial government was
overthrown in 1911 and the nation sank into internal conflict and civil war until 1949. In 1945, after
Japan’s second world war defeat, the United Nations, needing a temporary custodian for the island and
its dependencies, asked one faction involved in China’s civil war to take charge. That government sent
civil and military authorities who arrived, much as the “Persian Western Frontier Colonization
Corporation” in Palestine, loudly proclaiming “we’re back.”
In 1972, at the mid-point of the rule of this despotic immigrant military government, in a move to
retain its legitimacy to rule here, Taiwan’s government withdrew from the United Nations rather than
admit that it did not have the right to rule all of China, Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang as well.

14
Wright, op. cit. p. 381.
15
Ibid. p. 381.
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Subsequent attempts to re-enter the United Nations, made by governments that came to power after the
immigrant military despotic regime was ushered off the stage, but crashing like waves on the bulwark
of a Chinese sea-wall, all have failed.
Now, in Taiwan, political life is divided and divisive. Social life is constrained by these divisions.
Economic life is tied to global systems of production, consumption, finance and debt. Taiwan seems
not to be in control of itself. Though Taiwan’s leaders cannot produce or uncover any newly minted
“ancient” document, as the descendants of the original Persian colonizers did with the book of Haggai,
yet perhaps there is a lesson in Haggai for us.
In hard times, look to common good. Become involved with each other, in projects that may not
seem to have any particular relationship to the problem at hand. Beyond issues of personal fitness, let
us focus on public health. Beyond properly disposing of our personal garbage, let’s get together and
pick up what is strewn about. Beyond putting bars on the windows to see to the security of our own
homes and possessions, let us watch out for the security of our neighborhoods. The togetherness of
these projects, much as the togetherness which resulted from the prescription found in Haggai,
purporting to be about a Temple sometime in the past but actually being about public works in its
“present”, will pull us, if not OUT of the situation, at least THROUGH it. When we next hear the
words, “we’re back” they won’t come from an immigrant group having come into a “new” land, but
will be about ourselves, back in control of our lives, of society and of our future.