Ophir In the Beginning Was the State

Divine Violence in the Hebrew Bible
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5315-0143-3
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten

Reihe: Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory

This book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Ophir shows how the Bible’s varied formations of divine violence anticipate the main outlines of the modern European state. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ophir, Adi M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Transzendentalphilosophie, Kritizismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Bibelwissenschaften Altes Testament: Exegese, Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1. Staying with the Violence 13
Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining
Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 •
Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36

2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna 45
Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot:

Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the
Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy,
Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86

3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities 96
Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 •
Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 •
Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts
in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139

4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution 145
Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution
and Containment, 178

5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence 193
The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 •
The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 •
The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230

Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours 241

Notes 257

Works Cited 317

Index 335

Über Autor(innen)

Ophir Adi M.:
Adi M. Ophir is a Visiting Professor at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University and Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Among his works are Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile, co-authored with Ishay Rosen-Zvi (Oxford University Press, 2018); Divine Violence: Two Essays on God and Disaster (The Van Leer Institute, 2013); The One-State Condition, co-authored with Ariella Azoulay (Stanford University Press, 2012); and The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals (Zone, 2005).Adi M. Ophir is a Visiting Professor at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University and Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Among his works are Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile, co-authored with Ishay Rosen-Zvi (Oxford University Press, 2018); Divine Violence: Two Essays on God and Disaster (The Van Leer Institute, 2013); The One-State Condition, co-authored with Ariella Azoulay (Stanford University Press, 2012); and The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals (Zone, 2005).