In the Beginning Was the State: Divine Violence in the Hebrew Bible (Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory)

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Staying with the Violence
	Divine Violence—A Trailer
	A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining  Away
	Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch
	Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence
2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna
	Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus
	The Blind Spot: Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence
	On the Attribution of Power and Authority
	Kingship, Anarchy, Theocracy
	Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes
3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities
	Becoming Political
	From Extinction to Genocide
	Beyond Destruction
	Separation and Disaster
	Violence and Law
	The Sovereign’s Moment
	Scouts in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations
4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution
	Holiness
	Rebellions in the Wilderness
	Substitution and Containment
5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence
	The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It
	The Covenant and the Curses
	The Weight of the Present
	The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony
	A Midianite Utopia
Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author
Series