In The Beginning Was The State Divine Violence In The Hebrew Bible 1st Edition Adi M Ophir by Adi M. Ophir 9781531501402, 1531501400 instant download after payment.

Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present.

Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.