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The Hebrew Bible ignited a political revolution. Throughout the ancient world, the truth was self-evident. All men were not created equal. History's first blueprint for a society based on the equality of its citizens, the Bible revolutionized understandings of the law, of political office, of military power, of taxation, of social welfare. It radically reconceived the importance of national narrative, of technologies of communication, and of a culture’s calibration of time. Never, in the annals of human thought, has one document revolutionized so much in such anonymity, and with so little precedent to inspire it. In stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible ignited a political and philosophical revolution.
Focusing upon the books of the Pentateuch, Berman lays bare the
manner in which the Bible appropriated and reconstituted ancient
norms and institutions to create a new blueprint for society.
Theology, politics, and economics were marshaled in an
unprecedented manner to weaken traditional seats of power, and
to create a homogeneous class of empowered common citizens. Much
of this anticipated developments in the history of political
thought that would recur only during the Enlightenment and in
the thought of the American Founding Fathers.
CREATED EQUAL explores how the Bible was world history’s first example of:
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© Copyright 2009 Joshua Berman |
