This chapter reflects on the diversity found in the leadership of the extreme right. It sees leadership in terms of exerting influence and suggests this can be achieved in a variety of ways. It examines issues including charismatic leadership, inspiring stalwart leaders and youth leadership. It reflects on the ways women as well as men have also taken on leadership roles. Moreover, it considers ideological influences, both from British activists as well as American and European ideologues that have exerted influence and inspired activism. In sum, it shows that the movement is diverse and complex, though genuine charismatic leadership is rare in the movement.

This chapter examines the introduction of the calendar ca. 300, which it makes part of the broad reconfiguration of the civic order that took place around this time. The calendar’s structure was probably appropriated from Pythagorean circles in southern Italy. Many of its features were intended to regulate the comitium, one of the most significant places in the city, which was also reconfigured in these years to link it firmly and directly to the heavens. The cycle of market-days or nundinae is also an important element. The logic behind it remains largely unexamined, and it has usually been viewed as having no cultic significance. Instead, the nundinal cycle was linked to formal intercalary cycles of the kind that in the Greek world were often associated with speculation about ideal political orders and their relationships with the gods.

Chapter 7 builds on the work of Jewish theological realists by showing that new theories of reference can resolve numerous longstanding problems in Jewish theology and can refashion Jewish theology as a communicative and social practice with wide participation.

Having examined the nature of Old Testament poetry, we will now explore two books by way of example. Proverbs and Job are unique in that they are most often identified as portions of the Old Testament’s wisdom traditions. Wisdom was a highly valued and enduring concept well attested across the ancient Near East. Here you will learn a general definition of the concept and learn why scholars disagree on whether there existed a distinct literary category, “Wisdom literature,” in the ancient world. Certain literary materials from Egypt’s wisdom traditions represent primarily “standard wisdom,” characterized by proverbial sayings. These aphorisms embody predictable patterns born of everyday life experience and observation. From Mesopotamia, we have wisdom traditions that are generally more speculative and less optimistic, and willing to wrestle with the difficult question of theodicy.

The Old Testament book of Proverbs is a collection of standard expressions of wisdom, presented as an educational curriculum and commonly based on the principle of retribution theology. The book of Job is a literary masterpiece representative of speculative wisdom. Although it displays a critique of retribution theology, Job’s message honors the tension between a loving God, a righteous individual, and retributive justice. In Israel’s wisdom traditions we will observe in particular a distinctive moral and ethical dimension that results from Israel’s relationship to Yahweh.

This chapter will lay some historical groundwork in preparation for our consideration of Old Testament books included in the Primary History. As we attempt to reconstruct Israel’s history, we will discover several challenges. The first is how best to relate the historical accounts in the biblical texts with the evidence of modern archaeology. One example, excavation at the ancient settlement of Jericho (featured in the conquest narrative of Joshua), will demonstrate the difficulty of the endeavor and the need for a balanced interpretive approach.

A second challenge is that of Old Testament chronology, which must be relative since we lack evidence for fixed dates prior to the seventh century bce. Only as we move through the Old Testament to later events can we confirm dates of biblical accounts with parallels in ancient Near Eastern sources. Finally, we will consider what we can know of Israel’s history of religious ideas. Although biblical texts were written and preserved by members of the “official” religion, we can detect the vestiges of “local” and “family” religion from earlier sources used to compile the Old Testament.

Alongside Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx, Kierkegaard is a true master of the hermeneutics of suspicion. However, more than any other master of suspicion, Kierkegaard is keenly aware of suspicion’s potential existential and even epistemic dangers. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard warns that if suspicion becomes an exclusive mode of critique, rather than effectively exposing dogmatism, it can harden into a kind of hermeneutical dogmatism of its own. By contrast, he argues that love sees deeper than suspicion and is less susceptible to deception. This claim seems naive at best and dangerous at worst – something that the masters of suspicion would identify as illusion and internalized oppression. In this chapter, however, I offer extended analyses of Kierkegaard’s “suspicion of suspicion” and two of his most controversial prescriptions: (1) presupposing love and (2) finding mitigating explanations. I argue that, far from dismantling suspicion, these practices are designed to rehabilitate readers from hermeneutical dogmatism and thereby preserve suspicion’s justice-seeking capacities.

This chapter explains and defends Kierkegaard’s conception of neighbor love as a duty against Kant’s well-known claim that a duty to love is “absurd,” because we do not have volitional control of our emotions. For Kierkegaard, neighbor love is a “passion of the emotions” that requires humans to love all other humans. I distinguish short-term occurrent emotions from long-term, dispositional emotions, and neighbor love is the latter kind of emotion, which Kierkegaard calls a “higher immediacy” or “immediacy after reflection.” We do not have volitional control of the former, but the long-term dispositional character of the latter means that over time they can be fostered or inhibited. Emotions are understood using Robert Roberts’s view that emotions are “concern-based construals.” The ground of neighbor love is a recognition of the “inner glory” that all humans possess as creatures made in God’s image. Neighbor love is good because it recognizes the value that humans possess, but it is a duty because it is required by God, who has the standing to make such a demand on humans. God has this standing both because God has created humans from nothing but also because God is love and destines humans for a loving relation with him that “does not end at a grave.” God requires humans to love their neighbors both because it is good, and because God knows that human sinfulness requires that love be a duty. Although neighbor love is a duty, it is also a virtue, though one that requires divine assistance to acquire. It is a virtue not only because of its goodness, but because it contributes to human flourishing by securing three goods humans naturally desire: perseverance of our loves, autonomy, and meaning or significance. To the degree that neighbor love is actualized as a virtue, its status as a duty becomes less important, though it does not cease to be a duty for anyone short of eternity, unless that person is a perfected saint.

In previous chapters, we focused on the structure and content of the books in the Pentateuch. Here, we will explore the religion of Moses that emerges from these materials. Specifically, we will observe the way in which divine revelation developed from direct communication with individuals such as Abraham and Moses to mediated revelation through a written Torah and the priesthood. We will explore the significant concepts of holiness, covenant, and practical monotheism, particularly as compared to the religion of the ancestral narratives (Genesis) and that of surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures.

It will be important that we consider the characteristics of Mosaic religion against the backdrop of the ancient Near East at a time when certain polytheistic cultures are known to have elevated a single deity above their other gods – known as a “theology of exaltation.” Furthermore, we will explore some possible influences and origins for the Yahwistic faith – the religion so foundational for the remaining Old Testament and whose roots belong to monotheistic religions down to the present.

First and Second Samuel narrate Israel’s transition from a tribal confederation to a dynastic monarchy, beginning with the leadership of the prophet Samuel. Saul is anointed Israel’s first king, and although eventually rejected, his reign functions to define kingship under Yahweh, including submission to Torah and to the authority of Yahweh’s prophets. David becomes Israel’s second king and eventually the “ideal” for all kings in the Old Testament. We will also observe during David’s leadership an emerging understanding of Yahweh as “God of Israel.”

Since early Israel was a theocracy under Yahweh, we will explore the issues surrounding Israel’s need for and the legitimacy of a human king, the person and role of a suitable king, and finally, the importance of the prophet in assessing the king. Although Israel’s transition to statehood is somewhat difficult to reconstruct historically (ca. 1050–970 bce), we will examine evidence for similar transitions in other cultures. Archaeological evidence from Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer suggests the notion of a state and its correlating centralized administration.

With this chapter, we arrive at five final books in our Old Testament collection. They have been brought together in the Jewish canon as the “five scrolls,” related to each other by their use in the Jewish liturgical calendar.

Our survey will begin with the Song of Songs, a collection of Israel’s love poetry. We have numerous ancient parallels, but we will note in these the particular imagery drawn from everyday life in Syria–Palestine. Second, Ruth is an exquisite narrative about ordinary Israelites. Their uncommonness is on display in their exemplary characters and their genealogical connection to Israel’s beloved King David. A third book, Lamentations, is a collection of five poems presented in acrostic form. Recounting the tragedies incurred in Jerusalem’s destruction, the poetry nevertheless exhibits some of the Old Testament’s most glorious expressions of Yahweh’s mercy. Ecclesiastes, another unique poetry collection with ancient Near Eastern parallels, offers reflections on the human experience. Finally, we will examine Esther. God is never mentioned in the book of Esther, yet this story merited inclusion in the canon, and we will note its subtle but important contribution to Old Testament theology.

This final discussion comments briefly on the main findings of each chapter. It offers some key ‘takeaway’ points summarising the central arguments made throughout the book.

In this chapter we turn from the Primary and Chronistic Histories to the books that make up roughly the second half of the Old Testament. We will observe a dramatic shift in content from historical narrative to largely poetry. Furthermore, these books are much less linked editorially to one another. Rather, we will discover that superscriptions and content help us to group them literarily and, in most cases, to relate them chronologically to one another and to the Primary History.

Because of the preponderance of poetry, we will spend time in this chapter on the nature and characteristics of ancient Hebrew poetry. There are certain aspects that we do not know, such as original pronunciation or meter. However, we will readily observe one major feature – that of parallelism. This “symmetry of thought” is recognizable in three primary types: synonymous, antithetical, and synthesizing parallelisms. We will explore plenty of examples and discover along the way that ancient Hebrew poetry is rich in content and artistic skill.

Extra Help introduces you to the remaining two variations on the -ω verbs, and the -μι verbs. In the Extra Material you’ll meet the few contexts in which the future tense can be found.

This chapter focuses on the development of British fascist and extreme right politics in the 2000s and 2010s. It documents the rise and fall of the British National Party and identifies its ability to develop a new language steeped in prejudice focused on Muslim communities. It also explores the rise of the English Defence League, another group capitalising on similar concerns yet developed in a very different manner. Finally, it reflects on the impact of the collapse of both of these larger organisations, then maps the highly diverse range of fascist and extreme right groupuscules active in Britain in the early 2020s. This culture includes street marching groups, political parties, vloggers, publishers, and a range of alternate cultural spaces.

Explores various Jewish conceptions of an afterlife: immortality of the soul; resurrection; reincarnation; and the legacy concept—that immortality consists in one’s impact on the future. Working through a wide range of reasons for and against each position, the chapter notes the variety that exists in the kinds of reasons advanced. It then discusses whether an afterlife has value and why there is death.

In Extra Help you will see that we can save a lot of effort in understanding the middle and passive voices, because of the way that we have understood the Greek verb so far. In the Extra Material you’ll think further about the middle voice.