Chapter 7 looks at the interaction of Proverbs with other books in the canon, notably Ecclesiastes, Genesis 1-11, Deuteronomy and ‘wisdom psalms’. The parallels with the book of Job are seen to have been overstated and the book is more obliquely related to Proverbs than many have argued. Questions of the place of Proverbs within a broader intellectual tradition are also explored.

Too little scholarly attention has been paid to the paradox that those from the southern kingdom of Judah wrote, collected, and edited a foundational narrative not of Judah but of Israel, the ethnonym more closely associated with the northern kingdom even within the biblical narratives. This chapter argues that, rather than staking their claim to be the sole heirs to the heritage of the covenant with YHWH, the Judahite biblical editors constructed a biblical narrative that emphasizes that Judah is only one portion of a larger Israel that is presently—from the perspective of the editors and their implied audience—incomplete and awaiting reunion and restoration. By constructing an Israel of the past and rhetorically situating the reader in exile, the editors of the Primary History (Genesis–2 Kings) and 1–2 Chronicles establish a perspective of restoration eschatology in which an idealized biblical Israel (of course under the leadership of Judah) does not presently exist, having lost its status due to covenantal disobedience and disunity, but remains a social and theological aspiration.

This chapter explores the ideathat a discernible and Hebraic epistemological process is present, relevant, and persistent across the Christian Scriptures. Moreover, when looking for present-day analogs for biblical epistemology, the scientific enterpriseproposed by Michael Polanyi, Marjorie Grene, Thomas Kuhn, et al. best fits the bill.

In contrast to the cognitively optimal religion in the previous chapter, this chapter examines the theological system in the book of Deuteronomy as an example of cognitively costly religion. Deuteronomic theology is characterized as a highly literate, reflective, and abstract tradition with complex doctrines such as the so-called Name Theology of divine presence, cult centralization, and aniconism or iconoclasm, all of which radically depart from prevailing cultural expectations. Each of these key tenets of the Deuteronomic theology is analyzed within the framework of intuitive and reflective cognition and cognitively costly religion. Moreover, understanding Deuteronomy as a type of costly religion helps to account for the book’s unique emphasis on teaching, repetition, and instruction. Deuteronomic theology is best understood as a form of what Harvey Whitehouse calls the doctrinal mode of religiosity.

This first chapter of Part I examines a series of texts in the Pentateuch that present the fledgling nation of Israel requesting permission to pass through foreign lands on its way to the Promised Land. These earliest encounters with the nation’s future neighbors provide occasions for the biblical scribes to negotiate relations with surrounding peoples. The chapter discusses how these memories are taken up in other biblical texts.

Chapter 6 examines the outcry of the victim of violence. Understanding the formal or informal legal framework and ancient legal discourse around violence also helps us grasp with greater specificity the preoccupation among biblical writers with the ‘outcry’ of violence, the ‘violent witness’, and the receptivity of the responsible party (often Yhwh). These concerns each operate differently, but together highlight a central and driving concern with voicing – or revoicing – the otherwise unnoticed evil of violence, and setting it within a framework of appeal (usually prayer) to one with the capacity or responsibility to intervene and restore order. The preoccupation with verbal appeal via distress signals like the outcry highlight the fact that ancient Israel was not a legislative society. In other words, individuals did not, in the first place, appeal to laws for justice. While the Hebrew Bible does preserve legal codes, they were hardly ever the basis for judicial rulings. Instead, individuals had recourse to individuals who embody legal custom, and who, by community standards, act justly insofar as they fulfil their expected roles. This relational nature of justice meant that cries for justice to a judge or avenger were both morally driven and, to be effective, needed to be rhetorically persuasive.

Chapter 7 analyses legal portrayals of the problem of violence, using the Deuteronomic Code as a case study. Deuteronomy focuses on ‘bloodshed’ (using דם) and its legal and communal consequences. Violence threatens relationships between households in Israel, hence its emphasis on males. But it also creates a problem for the community and its relationship to the land. Deuteronomy communicates that the problem of blood ‘in your midst’ (בקרבך) needs to be ‘expelled’ through judicial processes. The land is always a third party to violent crimes in Deuteronomy. Laws pertaining to refuge cities (Deut 19:1-13), the ‘violent witness’ (19:15-21), unknown perpetrators (Deut 21:1-9), the hanging corpse (21:22-23), and sexual violence (Deut 22:25-27) each reflect a concern to expel violence from the whole community of Israel, and in so doing, from the land. Violence, and the outcry it elicited, signalled the breakdown in the relationships constitutive of a just society, and demanded legal resolution. This is why, at times, the term חמס stands in for a range of potential judicial infractions.