In the Beginning Was the State

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Staying with the Violence 13
Divine Violence-A Trailer, 13 * A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining
Away, 21 * Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 *
Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36
2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna 45
Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 * The Blind Spot:
Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 * On the
Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 * Kingship, Anarchy,
Theocracy, 79 * Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86
3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities 96
Becoming Political, 96 * From Extinction to Genocide, 99 *
Beyond Destruction, 105 * Separation and Disaster, 113 *
Violence and Law, 124 * The Sovereign's Moment, 130 * Scouts
in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139
4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution 145
Holiness, 145 * Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 * Substitution
and Containment, 178
5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence 193
The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 *
The Covenant and the Curses, 204 * The Weight of the Present, 214 *
The Subjects' Trap, or the People's Irony, 222 * A Midianite Utopia, 230
Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours 241
Notes 257
Works Cited 317
Index 335