Chapter 4 surveys modern Jewish thought in terms of realism and reference and charts the efforts of prominent Jewish thinkers to restrict or eliminate theological language.

This chapter explores the connections of a species-exceeding neighbor love with self-love, love of God, and the imitation of Christ. By defining the neighbor in Works of Love beyond merely the human being, it provides an alternative to the entrenched dichotomy in ecological thought that sets loving the planet and self-love in opposition. Such a dichotomy suggests that the measures necessary to avert a planetary catastrophe include a radical change in the Western way of living – a change usually understood as unattractive asceticism. The interpretation of Kierkegaard’s exposition of Matthew 22:39, however, proposes that sacrificing the egocentric self leads to a flourishing of the neighbor as much as one’s "deeper self." Furthermore, the chapter demonstrates that such an understanding of neighbor love is compatible with recent arguments in eco-theology (e.g., Sallie McFague’s concept of a kenotic "universal self"). Finally, the chapter discusses the challenges of an ecological reading of Works of Love. It brings Works of Love into a constructive dialogue with Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist ethics of zoe, pointing out the strong resonances with Braidotti’s non-religious eco-philosophy.

How is monastic law practised in modern-day Sri Lanka? How do contemporary monastic jurists reckon with multi-legality? This chapter draws on archival and ethnographic research with Sri Lanka’s third-largest monastic community, the Rāmañña Nikāya, to answer these questions and explore the operation of monastic law today. It introduces readers to the Rāmañña constitution, court system, judicial training materials, jurisprudential texts and other features of monastic legal practice. It argues that monastic judges practise legal pluralism in ways that both resist and embrace the parallels between monastic and state law, engaging in a form of ‘double speak’ that, on the one hand, places monastic law ‘on the scale’ of Sri Lankan law while, at the same time, highlighting its superior, more-than-human status.

How should scholars and policymakers think about legal pluralism? In this Conclusion, I reflect on that topic, insisting that analysts should move beyond the question of whether laws, themselves, are or are not compatible. Instead, they should look at the practices of legal pluralism that make such compatibility seem natural or permissible, exceptional or impossible. I argue that inter-legal harmony is not a technical feat, but a social, political, and emotional achievement – one that is often precarious. Legal pluralism, therefore, implicates more than just the ‘stuff’ of law, but involves the shifting and recursive processes that help us to assemble normative worlds, reckon with diverse obligations, and find meaningful pathways forward through a changing and complex life.

In the books of Joshua and Judges, God’s gift of land to Israel takes center stage. The first book recounts Israel’s conquest and division of the land under the leadership of Moses’ successor, Joshua. Judges highlights governance in the land by a succession of twelve leaders. Connected by a recurring cycle – Israel’s disobedience to Yahweh, foreign oppression, repentance, and deliverance – the Judges stories narrate the end of one era in Israel’s history and serve as introduction to the next.

Alongside these Primary History accounts, we will consider archaeological evidence for a significant population increase in Canaan during Iron Age I and look at three theories that attempt to explain the appearance of new populations in the region at that time. In addition to observing the nature of religion during Israel’s early history in the land, we will address the difficult subject of the land today. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers all have varying responses. Joshua and Judges should not and need not be used in the debate, but they remind us how very ancient is the issue of land.

This chapter examines a wide range of rabbinic sources and demonstrates that the rabbis gave considerable attention to God’s independent existence and strongly affirmed our capacity to refer to and speak truthfully about God.

How did colonialism affect the content and practice of Buddhist monastic law? This chapter answers this question from the perspective of colonial legal sources, considering the ‘practices of legal pluralism’ employed by British officials starting in the early 1800s. Drawing on colonial correspondence, court decisions, draft laws, government transcripts, and newspaper reports, I explain how and why the British concretised legal concepts, such as ‘ecclesiastical succession’, ‘Buddhist temporalities’ and ‘temple lands’, while also generating new bodies of law: a body of civil-court case law governing monks called Buddhist Ecclesiastical Law; and an influential ordinance regulating the use and administration of ‘Buddhist properties’, called the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance. I show how colonial jurists mapped Buddhism onto particular spaces, issues and communities, such that Buddhism acquired, in law, English-style qualities of jurisdiction across three dimensions: territorial jurisdiction, subject-matter jurisdiction, and personal jurisdiction.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis – and of the Old Testament – constitute the Primeval History. This carefully arranged collection of traditions detail God’s good creation of the cosmos, the nature of humanity in the created order of the universe, and God’s relationship with humans. In this chapter, we will explore various genres such as cosmogony, theogony, myth, and history, all of which will help to demonstrate ways in which Israel’s Primeval History resembled the traditions of its ancient neighbors and ways in which Israel’s form and content were unique.

Importantly, Genesis 1–11 prepare the reader for the rest of the Bible. They also function as an explanation for Israelite readers of why things are the way they are. Furthermore, they introduce themes that will be important throughout the remainder of the Old Testament: the concept of creation, the unchallenged sovereignty of God, the central importance of humanity, and the first mention of covenant.