Introduction

Summary

Knowledge in the Tanakh is not politically dangerous or philosophically dismissible. Why has the West thought otherwise? The aims of secular democracies for religion are more likely to obtain if extremist Jews, Christians, and Muslims become not less but more religious. Why does this surprise? Modern concepts and identities of religious and secular were formed in sociopolitical conflicts shaped by views of biblical and philosophical knowledge that led eventually to postmodernism – and, contrary to the assumptions of western thought, knowledge in the Tanakh joins modernity and postmodernism in critiquing the religious and secular abuse of power. To understand Tanakh epistemology is to newly understand the West.