Tribalism

I noticed that in Matthew’s gospel in the last chapter just before Jesus took off for heaven he is supposed to have said, “Make disciples of all nations.”  I doubt he said that exactly.  Why?  Because there was no such thing as a nation.  That came with the second millennium.  There was no France, England, Germany, Iraq or Iran.  But there were tribes of blood relationships.  The Jews were a tribe and they were amongst Arab tribes, and Persian tribes.  So what I think is that the disciples, all Jews, were supposed to get out of their tribalism, and enter into relationship with other tribes, telling them about what Jesus taught.  As Jesus said, “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  Like in love your enemy and do good to those who hate you, and forgive.  He did not spend time talking about being Divine.  But when religions get institutionalized, they tend to spend a lot of time and energy “converting” people to their particular dogmatic creed.  And then when nations did form they spent a lot of ammunition trying to get other nations or peoples to buy into their particular culture, and economic beliefs.  And so it goes.