1. The books of the Bible constitute myths of the founding of a highly idiosyncratic culture--idiosyncratic because it was monotheistic as opposed to polytheistic and because it articulated a moral vision of the cosmos. The unique relationship of the Jews to the god of the universe is articulated in many places in the Bible. As God promises Abram, later Abraham: "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you" (Gen. 12.2-3).
The divine compact with Abram shows the relevance of God to human experience in general and the Jews in particular. God "will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates" (Exod., 23.31). However, God has a condition, to wean the Hebrews away from polytheism and devote worship exclusively to him:
You shall not bow down to them [other gods] or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me (Exod., 20.5).
The mythic narrative of the Jews is problematized repeatedly in the Bible because in book after book for various reasons the Jews abandon monotheism. By the time of Hosea and Amos, the Jews have disregarded the compact altogether: "There is no fidelity, no mercy, no knowledge of God" (Hos. 4.1). They have started worshipping Baal and other desert godlets. Amos quotes the Lord's word that "time is ripe to have done with my people Israel; I will forgive them no longer. . . . I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentations" (Amos 8.3). Justice will "roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5.24).
Abandonment of Yahweh helps explain the marginalization of the Jewish kingdoms, bu...