This ingenious, political theology of covenant paved the way for

the development of monotheism, and an expanding sense of kinship.

Monotheism and kinship belong together.

If the covenant, covenantal model was to work,

the biblical authors hard to unify competing deities.

Deities that perhaps, each had the name Yahweh,

but were not understood to be the same God.

And they, this explains the, what is a central text in Judaism, the Sh'ma.

Hero Israel, Yahweh is our God.

Yahweh is one, meaning, all these Yahwehs, there's just one.

And this one God is over the entire nation.

We know that there is a Yahweh in Sumaria in Shumlon, and

a Yahweh in Yerushalaim, and a Yahweh in Arad and various other places.

But the Biblical authors are, through the Sh'ma,

saying there's really, all these Yahwehs are one Yahweh.

And this move towards one national deity is, as many of

my colleagues now agree, the point of departure for the formation

of one people, one capital, one temple, one law, one history,

one narrative, one story, in the fullest sense of the term.

The covenant does not stand at the beginning of Israel's history.

It represents rather the culmination

of the biblical authors intellectual achievements.

With the help of the covenantel model, the biblical authors

unified diverse communities into a single political community, into one nation.

Rival groups, in so far as they claim to be members of the covenant

had to admit that they were all equal under one deity and one law.

In this manner, covenant creates people hood, and a sense of kinship.

And kinship brings with it wide-ranging obligations of solidarity and fraternity.

We speak of this in terms of fictive kinship.

One of the things that treaties do is that they create a relationship of brothers.

When we enter into a treaty, two kings, we are brothers.

If a larger king makes a treaty, a treaty with a

smaller king, he's the father and the smaller king is the son.

There's family relationships, and they speak of family relationships.

So does the covenant too in the Bible.

That the whole nation comes together as one family.

And thus rival communities who probably never

would have wanted to see each other as

real kin are now forced to acknowledge

each other as equal under Israel's one God.

And therefore obliged to take care of each other in the way

that they would otherwise not take care of, take care of each other.

This is what we call neighborly love.

The ethos of this neighborly love, the

command to love your neighbor as yourself, figures

prominently through out the Bible, and it's closely

connected to this larger project of people hood.

So today in society, we might call each other

hey brother, hey sister and so forth, but we

really don't feel an obligation perhaps always to take

care of each other as real brothers and sisters.

That's not the way of the covenant.

It's not just about whom you feel connected to

or happen to call brother today but then forget tomorrow.

It's about recognizing the bonds that connect you even when you're not

inclined to want to view others as part of your extended kin.

Going back to my favorite figure Nehemiah, he tells in his memoir how in the

midst of rebuilding Jerusalem, he instituted several

reforms relating to the abuses in the community.

Many were charging very high interest rates on each other, and others

were seizing properties that had been pledged in security, and on loans.

And some were even forced to sell their own children,

their own sons and daughters into slavery in order to survive.

When Nehemiah takes the community members to task for

their mutual mistreatment, he appeals to their sense of fraternity.

As can all ought to act in solidarity and be ever mindful of the common good.

He admonishes to remem, them to remember that they

are actually [FOREIGN] which are, means brothers or kin.

If they are disinclined to accept such

admonishment a leader could appeal to the covenant.

And to the threat to be removed or cut off

from the covenant for failure to act in accordance with it.

This is not about just whether I feel like it today, but rather if you're a

member of the covenant and benefit from it

then you have to act in accordance with it.

Otherwise you risk being cut off from it.

So, let's take a look at another text brief look,

at one that is from the rarely read book of Leviticus.

In Chapter 19, we have God speaking to Israel and saying

to Moses, here's what you should declare to the whole congregation.

And what follows are obligations both to God, God's

self but also, between each other in the community.

And some of them are the most progressive things you could imagine.

This is where we find that law that, when you reap the harvest of your land,

you shall not reap the very edges of

your field, or gather gleanings from your harvest.

You shall not strip the vineyards bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard.

You shall leave them for the poor, and for the stranger.

For I am the Lord, your God.

And from there we have laws that command you should not defraud your neighbor.

You should not steal.

You should not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.

And you should not revile the deaf, or put a stumbling block before the blind.

You shall fear the Lord your God.

A very wide range of laws that relate

to basic ways of behaving and treating each other.

Why is that so important?

Because the community has to work together.

They have to be fair and treat each other well.

Otherwise the community fall apart, falls apart.

This is all the more important in a situation where the

community is small, and it needs to really feel solidarity and

fraternity with each other so that it can come together and

grow, and expand, and thrive in a situation of foreign rule.

And what we find within Leviticus, and legal collections like Deuteronomy,

and in narrative like Genesis, we also find in collections of wisdom.

Like the book of Proverbs, which really relates how to

be a wise person, and not to create conflict in society.

And how wise people can actually bring harmony to their society.

And also in the Song of Solomon.

Song of Solomon is one might ask the question, why is this in the Bible?

If my thesis is correct that the Bible is very much about building community.

This is a love story.

A song that is sung between male and female voices, and it's very

counter-intuitive that that's really something that

would be important in a communal collection.

Well, the intuition, it seems, of the

biblical authors is that communities consist of individuals.

And individual relationships are the basis for all others.

So when lovers are happy, that everything else

works together for good, and all nature really blossoms.

And that's described in this wonderful book.

The Interpersonal Ethics of Covenant

The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future

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