The Introduction sets the stage for the detailed intellectual history of salafism to follow by introducing key analytical concepts in political theology and Axial theory. It frames modern salafī theonomy within a general understanding of the developed Abrahamic traditions as a meeting-ground for two competing conceptions of transcendence. Both the ancient Israelite and Greek Axial revolutions are described as differing responses to the model of sacral kingship characteristic of the archaic states in the region: The former assigned true kingship to God alone, who then stands in competition with mundane sovereigns and demands exclusive allegiance to Himself, while the latter, in a process starting from the Late Bronze Age collapse, dissolved issues of sovereignty and power into ontological and metaphysical formulations. These originally distinct conceptions are analyzed through their contrasting tenets in five categories, the most important of which is the distinction between ‘monolatry,’ on the one hand – the restriction of worship to one God – and conceptual monotheism, on the other. This analysis provides the basis for the typological study of Taymiyyan theology undertaken in Chapter 1, and more generally for the treatment of monolatry and theonomy in the salafī tradition throughout the book.