The Christian Bible combines the literatures of two religious communities, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The second claims to inherit, perfect and supersede the first, yet the relation between the two remains in constant tension and reinterpretation within Christianity. One of these themes of reinterpretation is the idea of an elect nation, God's chosen people. For the ancient Hebrews, as well as the Jewish people through the ages, the chosen people are Israel, a particular people created by a religiously defined ethnicity. Israel is those who covenant with the God of Israel to be his people, yet Jewishness is also an inherited ethnicity. This national God gave his people the law as a way of life through whose observance obedience to God is fulfilled.

This God also promised his people a land and a flourishing future in relation to all the other nations in the Middle East. But these promises remained continually postponed. The people of Israel were a small nation or federation of tribes, who only in brief periods were politically independent and ruled over a few neighboring tribes. For most of their history to the first century BCE they were ruled by other empires. After the Jewish Wars of 66-73 CE and 132-36 CE, the Jews were scattered in or migrated to other areas within and beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.