Introduction: A Promised Land: To Bury God? (About Uses and Abuses of Hebrew Bible)

Abstract

In an extraordinary poem, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish lends his voice to “the Indian” to warn us: “So do not bury God in books that promised you a land in our land.” May this book echo this plea. In the following pages, the notion of a Promised Land is put into question: a fundamental biblical figure that has become an apple of discord. The objections are founded on the abuse of biblical figures in order to subdue the inhabitants of that land. A God used to justify dispossession is a buried God. The reading procedure proposed here is intended to exhume some promises in the search for life.