Speaker 1:	Thank you. I'm going to talk about the Bible today. I don't know how many of you read the Bible. Some years ago, I used to teach a course on the history of political thought, and I would begin my lecture on John Locke's state of nature with a reference to the story of Cain and Abel. Then one day I realized that half the students in the room didn't know who Cain and Abel were, and so I stopped doing that. But tonight, this lecture was announced as a lecture on the Bible and so I will not feel uneasy about referring to the text that I ... I will read the text that I want to talk about in case you don't know them.
	The Bible is a book of books. Its different parts were written by different people at different times for different purposes over a period of some 800 years. There are many different ideas about the covenant, about the law, about war and also about peace. Ideas of peace run through almost all the text, but they aren't the same ideas. They reflect very different understandings, which for some reason the final editors didn't try to homogenize. They allowed the differences to stand.
	There are different ideas about how wars end, and how definitive the endings are and there are different ideas about what peace means and what an international society without war would look like. I'm going to examine some of those ideas today, and try to sketch a comparative ethics and politics on Biblical peace. The comparisons are my own. There's one brief moment when what we call comparative politics makes an appearance in the Bible. When human kingship is compared to the kingship of a God in 1 Sam 8, but I know of now comparisons of different political regimes, of different regimes of peace or war, or of different international systems.
	That sort of thing is a Greek invention and then a modern reinvention, but there is a great deal of material in the Bible from which we can construct our own comparisons and I'm going to do that looking at six different ideas of peace from four biblical books, Deuteronomy, Judges, 1 Kings, and the prophet Isaiah, with a glance at Micah also. The differences among the six are both moral and political. They are by no means small, and they are remarkably like the differences that exist today. In the real world and in the world of modern political theory and of international relations. The six conceptions invite analysis and also evaluation. 
	I'm going to judge them standing where I'm standing, not as a biblical scholar, which I not, but as a political theorist who is by nature and by profession judgemental. I will try and be tentative in my judgements at least until I get to the end. The first of the six texts that I want to read is Deuteronomy 20:10-12. I'm going to quote always from the King James version out of love of the language. If the Bible had not been written in Hebrew, it would've been written in Shakespeare's English, and I don't think there are disputes about any of these translations.
	So, the first one. "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war, then thou shalt besiege it" and then it goes on to describe the rules of the siege. Now this text is sometimes quotes by apologists for the Deuteronomic authors trying to make them sound nicer than they in fact are were. See how quick they were to proclaim peace, but really it isn't  peace that is being offered here but rather a bloodless conquest.
	I think it was Clausewitz who said that every invading army would prefer to be unopposed. It's the people of the invaded country who chose to fight and who begin the fighting. Sometimes no doubt that's a bad choice. Sometimes appeasement or surrender is the more prudent policy, but prudence in the face of overwhelming force is not something we would want to celebrate. It's better, I suppose, to surrender and serve than to fight and die. "A living dog" says Ecclesiastes, " is better than a dead lion." When self defense isn't possible, when the prospects are grim, we will praise the statesman who negotiates his country's surrender.
	Still, the act makes us sad. This is a text, the Deuteronomy text, that reminds me of the Russo-Finnish war about which I've written and just and unjust wars. The Russians invaded Finland offering peace, and it was the Finns who decided to fight even though it was a hopeless fight, but one that we honor today. Their surrender, as I've just said, would have made us sad. If every city to which peace was proclaimed made answer of peace, the result would surely be a quiet, imperial regime, but we would have to acknowledge the losses involved. The freedom and self determination and the sense that we all cherish of being at home in ones own place.
	That loss is obviously less than that of the seven Canaanite nation who were not invited to choose peace and subjection, but in the same chapter of Deuteronomy, were subjected to the Chērem or ban, utter destruction. Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes. The offer of peace is made only to cities that are the biblical text says, "very far off." In fact, not very far off. The Deuteronomic authors are not imagining Egypt or Syria as a tributary of Israel, but rather Edom or Moab. It's also worth noting, they don't seem to be calling for the forcible conversion of these idol worshiping neighbors. They have in mind a small empire, perhaps like David's as it is described in the biblical text where subjection doesn't reach to any totalizing ambition.
	Still, we should not be too quick to describe even a mild subjection with a word like peace, which is one of the names of our desire. The second of the six conceptions of peace is described in the book of Judges by the reiterated phrase, "And the land had rest forty years." Rest here means peace, and 40 years of peace is indeed something to celebrate. There's been nothing like it, for example, in the modern history of the state of Israel, nor has the United States known 40 years of peace since the Spanish American war, or I think, before. Ever. I don't think we have had a 40 year period without war. In the biblical book, the 40 years are the achievement of people called saviors or deliverers. Raised up by God. Figures whom we call Judges, because some of them judged Israel in the times when the land rested.
	These are not saviors like the Savior promised later on in some of the prophetic books, who would bring eternal peace, or at least the peace that lasted much longer than 40 years. In Judges, the saviors bring only temporary safety. The biblical writers here seem to imagine a cyclical process. The children of Israel sin. They worship idols and engage in forbidden practices and a jealous God punishes them by the hand, say, of the Midianites. So the Midianites come and conquer and oppress. Then oppressed and fearful, the Israelites cry out to God and He raises up a savior. One of the judges, Samson, Deborah, who defeats the Midianites and brings rest to the land and to its inhabitants.
	But then rested and forgetful, Israel sins again and the cycle just repeated. Peace is the time between periods of warfare and oppression. The cycle just goes around. One story follows another. There's no advance, no forward march like the march from Egyptian oppression to the promised land. Oppression is now firmly rooted in the promised land, and it is that land that rests, but only for a time. Rest here is simply relief from war. But in the case, relief is the result however temporary, of military success. Nobody surrenders in the book of Judges. The third conception is described in 1 King 4:25-26, "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen." 
	Now according to modern historians of the biblical period Solomon reigned, if there ever was a Solomon and if he actually reigned, for about 40 years. And so he didn't do any better than the Judges did, but the sequence of sentences in the text that I just read suggest without quite saying that these years of peace are the result of deterrence, not of military victory. Solomon isn't a warrior. He isn't described in the biblical texts as a warrior. He isn't raised up by God. In fact, if you know the story, he's raised by Bathsheba, his mother, I King David's court. He doesn't defeat Israel's enemies the way the judges do. It's the mere existence of Solomon's horses and chariots that ensures the safety of his people.
	The book of Deuteronomy includes a section, chapter 17, that is know as "the law of the king" which seems to rule out this sort of deterrence. It sets limits on the acquisitiveness and power lust of kings, and one of the things it says is, "He shall not multiply horses to himself." Horses were for chariots and horses and chariots were the tanks of the ancient world, a crucial military instrument. "He shall not multiply horses to himself." Yet Solomon is commended for doing exactly that, presumably by historians who had not read Deuteronomy, or at least not chapter 17. Or perhaps Deuteronomy's law was taken to prohibit only the creation of a Praetorian Guard, whereas Solomon's horses were not multiplied to himself, but rather to the nation. They served the safety of the people, rather than the personal aggrandizement of the king.
	This is a very practical view of both kingship and international politics. When the elders came to Samuel to ask for a king in chapter eight of the first book of Samuel, they were looking, they said, for someone to lead them in battle. Like all nations, to lead them in battle. But presumably they were also looking for someone who would guarantee their safety without battle, if that were possible. As we will see soon, the political prudence of Israelite kings dealing with foreign kings, isn't always commended by biblical writers. Indeed Solomon's many marriages, which also made for peace, since they were political rather than personal alliances, were harshly criticized by the biblical writers. He loved many strange women who turned away his heart from Israel's God. But the writer of 1 Kings 4 makes no criticism of Solomon's military strength. 
	Instead he praises it in the strongest terms. "Every man under his vine and under his fig tree" is a favorite biblical trope. We find it again in Micah and in Zachariah, where it refers to an indeterminate future. "In the days to come" says Micah, "the people of Israel will sit safely under their vines and fig trees, and no one will make them afraid." In the days to come, which means not in these days. Not yet. Not now. But in 1 Kings, 1 Kings described the people of Israel sitting safely in realtime. In historical time. In Solomon's time. This suggests that any king, if he has enough horses and chariots, can produce the same sense of safety. But safety of this sort, depends on the horses and chariots and so it is always threatened by kings who have more of both as the Assyrians and the Babylonians soon did.
	Deterrence only works sometimes, and so we might reasonably look for other foundations of peace with ones neighbors. But before I move on to my next text, my fourth text, which suggests one alternative foundation of peace, I want to remind you that George Washington used that line about vines and fig trees in Micah's version of it in his famous letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. He was also talking about realtime, not historical, but present time. Today and tomorrow. He hoped, he said, that in the American republic Jews would continue to live safely under their vines and fig trees and none shall make them afraid. The reference here is not to international peace, but to religious freedom in a pluralist society. Peace at home.
	I find Washington's use of the line especially moving, for this is a peace that doesn't depend on military might and that has no time limit. It has already lasted much longer than 40 years. My fourth text is also from 1 Kings, from a narrative in chapter 20 that describes a war between the northern kingdom of Israel led by Ahab. You remember Ahab is the husband of Jezebel, made famous by his wife. The northern kingdom of Israel led by Ahab and the kingdom of Aram, which is Syria, led by a king named Ben-Hadad. This is before Ahab covets Naboth's vineyard and Jezebel contrives to get it for him. That's story comes in the next chapter. So here, Israel's army prevails in the war with Syria, with a great slaughter, and Ben-Hadad kneels before Ahab.
	And Ben-Hadad said onto him, "And Ben-Hadad said unto him, the cities, which my father took from thy father, I will restore; and thou shalt make markets for thee in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him, and sent him away." The covenant between the two kings is a treaty of peace. It follows upon military victory, but it seems to rest also on economic benefits for both parties. At any rate, the text does not suggest that Ben-Hadad's markets in Samaria will shut down, only that Ahab will set up markets in Damascus. This sounds like an excellent treaty, but in truth the peace lasted only three years and it was Ahab who broke it, looking for territorial rather than economic gains.
	Still, I like the picture of the two kings who called each other brother, negotiating a peace treaty that is also a trade agreement. Adam Smith would've thought that this was indeed the way to a peaceful world. A peace founded on mutual benefit, is better than a peace founded on the fear of 12,000 horseman and chariots. But I have to note that an unnamed prophet disapproved of the agreement between the two kings, speaking to Ahab with passion and a hint of violence. "Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his, and thy people for his people." Ahab's doom seems overdetermined. He's condemned to death here even before Elijah's challenge in the culmination of the story of Naboth's vineyard, "Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?"
	This prophet who is Elijah's contemporary, but not his equal, is committed to holy war and to the chērem, the ban, which requires the utter destruction of Israel's enemies. Ahab has what is surely a better idea. He chooses secular peace over a holy war, but being Ahab, he doesn't honor his covenant for long. There's a Jesuit scholar named J.P.M. Walsh, who's written a book called, "The Mighty from Their Thrones" who argues that Ahab was trying "to make Israel an expansionist, imperialistic nation state, and so he incurred the judgment of Yahweh, pronounced by the prophet."  That's his version of the story that I just read you. This is, I suppose, a liberationist reading of the text, but I hope it's an uncharacteristic one since Prof. Walsh seems to prefer genocide to international trade.
	I would rather see in Ahab's covenant with Ben-Hadad, the realization of the request that Israel's elders made to Samuel, that they be given a king to lead them like all the nations. Ahab and Ben-Hadad, brothers in arms, and least for a time brothers in peace, are indeed two of a kind. This is the biblical version of what Zionist writers many centuries later, yearned for normal nationhood. That still seems to me a good idea, if it means normal interest based relations with neighboring states. The fifth conceptions of peace, comes from the prophet Isaiah 11:6-9. This is should be entirely familiar. It is perhaps the most beautiful description of messianic time, which arrives, in this case, along with the true Messiah who's described as, "a rod out of the stem of Jesse" that's David's father. "Righteousness the girdle of his loins, the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him."
	So we have a Davidic king, and what is more important for my purpose here, a world transformed. This is the text, "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Taken literally, this is a description of a time to come that is radically unlike our own time. A total transformation, not only of human life, but also of the natural world.
	The Jewish philosopher Maimonides, the great medieval philosopher, in the last book of his mission Mishneh Torah, warns us not to read the text that way. This is what he says, "Let no one think that in the days of the Messiah, any of the laws of nature will be set aside or any innovation be introduced into creation. The world will follow its normal course." And he then quotes the lines that I've just read to you, and insist that Isaiah's words "are to be understood figuratively" meaning that Israel will live securely among the wicked of the heathens who are likened to wolves and leopards. And he goes on to give us an entirely worldly account of what living securely means. His account is not unlike the story of the covenant of peace and international trade negotiated by Ahab and Ben-Hadad, though it begins in characteristically Maimonidean fashion with an intellectual agreement.
	"The heathen nations" he says, "will all accept the true religion, and will need plunder, nor destroy." And then "together with Israel, they will earn a comfortable living in a legitimate way as it is written, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." The lion will eat straw like the ox. Lions will cease to be carnivorous, and the nations of the world will in like manner cease to be warlike. I will come back to this version of the days to come, which has its own attractions, but I don't think that Maimonides has captured the true meaning of Isaiah's lines. At any rate, the reading that he warns us against, is the common reading. That's why he thinks the warning necessary. Over many centuries Jews and Christians too, have taken Isaiah to be saying that peace between Israel and its neighbors is as unlikely, and therefore as miraculous, as the friendship of wolves and lambs. 
	Only Good can bring about so radical a peace. Those of you familiar with contemporary Israeli politics will recognize this position, which can serve as an excuse for not even trying to make a realistic worldly peace. Peace on this view can't be a human contrivance, the product of anything so mundane has to turn power or commercial interest. Think of the interpretation that Maimonides opposes, as the strong reader of this text. What it suggests is that the messianic age will be entirely different from anything we now know. It invites us to imagine days to come that are virtually unimaginable today. We wait for miracles and long for a life radically unlike the life we have. The future is a beautiful fantasy. There is indeed something to be said for prophesy of this sort, in much the same way as there is something to be said for utopian imaginings. 
	Both these genres encourage a free spirited, open ended speculation about what is conceptually though not practically possible. And so we invent in our heads what we cannot produce with our hands, and perhaps the mental invention leads us to do things with our hands in the real world, that we never imagined we could do. But I think the outcome that I hinted at a moment ago, is far more likely. The fantasies about the future, deter us from undertaking small but feasible improvements right now in our common life. There is another outcome that we have seen again and again in human history. False messiahs and messianic movements, and later on revolutionary movements promised to fulfill the fantasies and failed to do so, leaving disappointment and despair in their wake.
	The sixth and last of my regimes of peace will also be familiar to most of you. It comes again from Isaiah 2:1-4, and I'll quote the text at length, "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peoples: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
	This lovely vision also occurs in the book of Micah where it leads to the line about vines and fig trees that I quoted a minute ago, and then to another couple of lines that I will talk about in a minute ahead. I can't join the scholarly arguments about who first described the many nations flowing toward Jerusalem, Isaiah or Micah, or some unknown prophet who was the source for both of them, nor will I try to figure out when the description was first spoken or written down. Those issues are not relevant here. Isaiah 2 is clearly a messianic text for it describes the last days, not our own days. Yet, it's prophecies don't suggest the radical break described in Isaiah 11 given the strong reading, instead it is a vision of a world that is different, but not all that hard to imagine. It certainly isn't an unnatural or a denatured world.
	Though the text may not sound realistic on first reading, or first hearing, it's a vision after all. I want tonight to defend its realism. I also want to try and pursued you that this is the best of the biblical conceptions of peace and that it is an account of international society that we might well aim to realize. The Maimonidean description of messianic time, his alternative to a literal reading of the lines about wolves and lambs, probably follows from a close reading if texts like this one. Isaiah's vision however, doesn't begin with the acceptance by all humanity of the true religion. In this sense it's like Ahab and Ben-Hadad's treaty of peace, which doesn't require Ben-Hadad's conversion. Isaiah 2 begins modestly, with many people, not all people. Urging one and other to learn the ways of God. "Come ye, and let us go up ... and he will teach us of his ways." 
	The prophet imagines a willingness to learn that obviously didn't exist in his own time, but it is willingness and not belief that his words describe. This is not quite religious triumphalism, though it may come close. What is of greater important for us, there is nothing here of political triumphalism. Israel is neither victorious in battle, nor imperially dominant in Isaiah's version. There are prophetic passages actually in other Isaiah texts, that describe Israelite kings receiving the tribute of their defeated neighbors, but nothing like that is suggested here. Indeed it would be difficult to formulate a biblical account of universal imperial dominion, even for a Davidic king, since it is only God who can be, as the prophet Zachariah says, "King over all the earth".
	Maimonides gets this text of Isaiah's right, when he insists that the prophets "did not long for the days of the Messiah so that Israel might exercise dominion over the world, or rule over the heathens, or be exalted by the nations." In this text, the God who teaches and the law that is taught, are singular in nature. But the people who go up are plural, and their plurality is the key, I think, to the deep meaning on this text. The plural is in its strongest in Micah's version of the prophesy, which concludes with a passage that has provoked much, when you hear it you can imagine how much, commentary. "For all people will walk every man in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever." Everybody will walk in the name of their God, and Israel will walk in the name of its God and that is okay. That is pluralism.
	It does seem inconsistent with the earlier line in same text, "and we will walk in His paths" where His refers to the God of Jacob. By contrast in these lines of Micah's, his definitely refers to other Gods. We have to imagine people following different Gods, waking simultaneously in different directions, which is impossible even in messianic time so long as the world follows its normal course. Micah offers what is surely the most radical recognition of religious pluralism in the whole of the Bible, but I'm going to focus here only on Isaiah's text where the pluralism is not religious, but ethnic or national in character. There will still be many nations in the messianic age, in the time to come, in the last days. This fact follows from the refusal of the prophet to grant universal dominion to Israel.
	Given the arms reduction program that Isaiah describes, swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, these nations will have to live in peace, not because they will be deterred from fighting, but because they won't have any weapons with which to fight. But they will not live in harmony. There will still be conflicts and disputes among them, which will require God's judgements and rebukes. The text says, "You shall rebuke many peoples." This is an extraordinary line. What are they doing that requires God's critical attention? We don't know what Isaiah is thinking about here. Probably not about international trade, though the trading business might well provide occasions for judgment and rebuke. In any case, Isaiah is certainly not imagining the harmonious coexistence of wolves and lambs. Yet we are asked to believe that this isn't just a better condition than the one we currently know, this is God's promise for the last days. This is as good as it will get.
	When I read contemporary politic scientists describing the coming transcendence of the nation state, and arguing for the development of one or another form of global governance, I always think of Isaiah 2. The prophet does describe a kind of universal government, but it includes only one of the conventional three branches. God functions from Jerusalem as a judge in a world court. I suppose that we have to imagine him enforcing His rulings, that must be what rebuke means, but He acts only after the fact as courts always do. He leaves first order decision making and executive authority in the hands of the many nations, which is just what contemporary advocates of the end of sovereignty don't want to do. In Isaiah's vision, pluralism is a permanent feature of human life and of international society, and all the many nations are and will be even in the last days, sovereign and self determining. 
	They must be sovereign and self determining, else they could not rightly be rebuked for what they do. Though this is not in any explicit way a text about freedom, freedom is its deep subject. The plurality of nations and the freedom of nations go together. Isaiah's vision is voluntarist from the beginning. "Come ye, and let us go up" is an invitation, not a command. The conflicts that require God's judgment must also be the work of free peoples. Isaiah is a universalist, but his universalism leaves a lot of room for particularity. Many different nations, living freely under one law, that is his vision. We might do well to consider making it ours. Thank you.