The nar­ra­tives of the Torah dif­fer deci­sive­ly from con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous tales from the Near East. Ancient Flood sto­ries before Gen­e­sis begin as a caprice of the gods and end by explain­ing society’s sta­tus quo. By con­trast, the sto­ry of Noah begins as a response to evil in the world, and cul­mi­nates in the first com­mand­ment (“Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply”) and a mes­sage that the world is the col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty of all of human­i­ty. Accord­ing to author Joshua Berman, those val­ues are part of a con­sis­tent social and polit­i­cal world­view that is elab­o­rat­ed through­out the Hebrew Bible. 

In a learned overview that is very acces­si­ble to the lay read­er, Berman makes the case that these sto­ries amount to a con­scious, sus­tained, and fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal shift. He argues that the Torah chal­lenged the rights of kings and made human beings God’s part­ners in a covenant at a time when, in the sur­round­ing cul­tures, kings ruled and their sub­jects paid them trib­ute. The Torah’s eco­nom­ic order pro­vid­ed for the for­give­ness of debts, the redemp­tion of land, and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of sur­plus­es. Its polit­i­cal order called for judges inde­pen­dent of rulers; its cul­ture pro­mot­ed uni­ver­sal lit­er­a­cy. In short, it rep­re­sents a kind of egal­i­tar­i­an­ism avant la lettre. 

Berman, an Ortho­dox rab­bi with a Ph.D. in Bible, has a deep knowl­edge of ancient Near East­ern texts and of mod­ern schol­ar­ship. He is con­ver­sant with Late Bronze Age suzerain­ty treaties and con­tem­po­rary soci­ol­o­gy, with Akka­di­an King Man­ish­tushu and with Claude Levi-Strauss. His meth­ods, how­ev­er, depart from those of acad­eme in one impor­tant way. Aca­d­e­m­ic schol­ar­ship in this field focus­es large­ly on recon­struct­ing source doc­u­ments, sit­u­at­ing them in time and place, and explain­ing them in a his­tor­i­cal con­text. Berman treats the Torah as a uni­fied doc­u­ment rather than a redac­tion of mul­ti­ple antecedents, and sees its polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy as a coher­ent moral plan. 

The author is care­ful to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the Bible’s ​“egal­i­tar­i­an” thrust from the polit­i­cal move­ments since the Enlight­en­ment, which are much more far-reach­ing. His sub­ject is specif­i­cal­ly the sharp con­trast between the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social val­ues of the Torah and those of the civ­i­liza­tions sur­round­ing ancient Israel. This con­cise, per­sua­sive study makes his­to­ry come alive, vivid­ly evok­ing the dis­tant era when the Torah was new. Index, notes, selec­tive bibliography.