Breaking Monotheism

Jeremiah Cataldo is Assistant Professor of History in the Frederik Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University.

• Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Power Politics: Priestly versus Royal Authority, and the Punisment of Both; Chapter 3: Sects and Foreplay(?); Chapter 4: Divine Identity: Religion as Structured Identity (or, My Face or Yours?); Chapter 5: Land, Theocracies, and Wild Utopias; Chapter 6: Law: Dominant Discourse of Self; Chapter 7: From Grave to Cradle: Failed Theocracies, Ephemeral Utopias, and Monotheistic Exclusion.

Cataldo’s interdisciplinary effort is stimulating and potentially opens up new avenues of approach for future work. This book will be most fruitfully enjoyed by those with extensive knowledge of the contours of the monotheism question, be they graduate or postgraduate students, as well as teachers and professors in Biblical Studies, history, or sociology departments of schools with or without statements of faith, Jewish, Christian or otherwise … Cataldo’s informed, nuanced reading of monotheism’s patterns of development leaves one with much to think about, or perhaps, rethink.