Thomas Pangle's book begins with a flourish: Taking issue with modern rationalists (e.g., Hobbes, Locke) and their claims that Scripture is wholly amenable to and comprehensible by the tools of rational analysis, Pangle argues that “this contention of theirs is in fact a key dimension of a titanic strategy of propaganda, whereby Holy Writ is to be reconceived and in a sense rewritten so as to be subsumed in a vast secular cultural revolution” (p. 6). As opposed to Socratic philosophy, which always recognized and insisted on the knowledge of its own ignorance, such modern rationalists ultimately want “to reduce religious reflection and argument … to the status of a birdlike cacophony of merely private and personal, shallow and shifting, opinions” (p. 11). Furthermore, Pangle insists, any reader of the Platonic corpus will recall that Socrates was prosecuted for impiety, and relied heavily on his daimonin in justifying his public conduct in the Athenian square, thus throwing into doubt all such attempts to subsume the revealed under the rational.

Fortunately—or not, depending on one's interpretive and ideological commitments—this book does not continue in this broadside against all things (theologically) modern. Having framed the larger project as he sees it, Pangle quickly gets down to business in the nine chapters that follow, and they are both remarkably focused and remarkably free of sweeping claims about modernity, the Enlightenment, and decadent contemporary culture. Instead, he treats the reader to a series of carefully conceived and masterfully executed set pieces on the central episodes and events of the book of Genesis. In chapter after chapter, he invites the reader into a process of questioning, hypothesizing, weighing interpretive moves and their significance, and considering the implications of those moves for the ever-present and always-overriding question (common to both philosophical inquiry and the Biblical text), “How ought one to live?”

This is a book to be savored, to be read slowly and carefully, and then slowly and carefully again. It displays vividly the promise of a Strauss-inspired close reading (I say Strauss-inspired rather than Straussian, both because the latter term is too often used polemically and because, while following Leo Strauss on many points, Pangle freely notes his divergences and differing interpretations when they arise [e.g., p. 28]). At the same time, Pangle shows a deep and rich immersion in the rabbinic and philosophic commentary on Genesis throughout the ages. He makes the reader work, and work hard, at the daunting task of making sense (if this is the right term) of the first 22 books. Moreover, I cannot praise highly enough the extraordinary discussion that takes place in the 80-plus-page section of endnotes. This is the rare book in which one may learn as much from the notes (in which the author invites his reader into a conversation about, not merely a recitation of, the main sources: classical, medieval, and contemporary) as from the text itself.

Let me say a bit more specifically what makes Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham so impressive. Pangle interrogates such important philosophical, interpretive, historical, and textual questions as the regnant “documentary hypothesis” regarding the authorship of Genesis; the relationship between the two very different accounts of creation; the differences between biblical covenants and modern social contract theory; and the individual and collective problem of evil. He provocatively claims that the issue of whether God created the universe ex nihilo, a concern that vexed such philosophers as Augustine, Descartes, and Montesquieu, only became significant in light of the confrontation between early Christian thinkers and Greek philosophy: “It would appear that the full, true meaning of God as creator is not available until or unless the Bible and its believers come into confrontation with Plato and the challenge of the philosophic science discovered first by the Greeks. For only then does the believer grasp what is necessarily entailed in speaking intelligibly about divine omnipotence” (p. 39). Chapters 4 and 5 constitute a remarkably extended thinking-through of the story of the fall and its implications for human agency, free will, moral responsibility, and divine omnipotence.

All is not clear and conciliatory in this “philosophic interrogation of the Bible, in unqualified openness to eliciting and hearing its message” (p. 12). The intensely political legacy of the classical tradition represents one potential obstacle to a fruitful dialogue between revealed text and rational analysis; yet it is a stumbling block that promises a wealth of insight. Pangle is forthright about the fundamental tensions between Aristotle on the political nature of humans (and his notion that humans require a city in order to complete human virtue) and the biblical text. True, Aristotle thinks that cities will have their own gods, to point people toward something beyond themselves (pp. 61–62); but in the biblical account, urban life begins with the murderous Cain and is epitomized by human transgression and overreaching that result in God's destructive interventions (e.g., Sodom, Gomorrah, Babel). For Pangle, the politics of Genesis “culminates in monarchy, not in republicanism” (p. 64); his treatment of the sons of Noah further suggests that “tribal patriarchy remains superior to political life” (p. 122).

Deeply connected with its emphasis on the polis as necessary for the good life, of course, classical philosophy thought incessantly about the question of justice. Here, too, Genesis provides an insightful counterpoint and a promising point of intersection between the two traditions. Consider Abram's conversation with God regarding the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Informed of God's intention to destroy the cities, “Abram responds by venturing to remind God, fearfully and in all humility, but with relentless moral insistence, of the requirement that even God—that God above all—must adhere to intelligible justice” (p. 155). Significantly, Abram does not push past 10 as the lowest number of just individuals required in order for God to spare the city, demonstrating that his concern is not merely for his cousin Lot and his family but represents a concern for a principle of justice (pp. 158–59). Ultimately, the character of Abram/Abraham himself provides the best example of what biblical justice might look like: “The Bible certainly implies … that an exemplary faith such as Abram's is inseparable from, and perhaps tantamount to, justice. Such faith is moral, in that it expresses a sense of obligation … [and] bespeak[s] a transcendence of self-concern” (p. 142).

If there is a fault in the text, it seems to lie in the rather hurried treatment of Kierkegaard (Chap. 9) and a conclusion of two and one half pages. Simply put, there is much more to say regarding Kierkegaard's bracing treatment of the Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling (1843), and the account here does not quite measure up to the careful and thorough exegesis of the earlier chapters. Pangle suggestively concludes by taking the presentation of Isaac and Jacob as representing the limits of Abrahamic patriarchy and the need for a broadening into fraternal society governed by a legal code, the rule of law, and eventually monarchy (p. 182). Questions of law—divine, human, natural, and so forth—seem to cry out for at least a partial consideration. But such criticisms almost seem ungrateful, when the author has given us so much food for thought already. Certainly in the “preliminary task” he set himself in this book—“that of probing and clarifying the divine law's foundation, laid down in Genesis” (p. 183)—Thomas Pangle has succeeded admirably.