This book provides a systematic commentary on the first two books of the Bible: Genesis and Exodus. Drawing on these two essential books, it subsequently offers new readings of several issues relevant for today's economic and social life.

Western Humanism has its own founding cultural and symbolic codes. One of them is the Bible, which has for millennia provided a wealth of expressions on politics and love, death and economy, hope and doom. Biblical stories have been revived and reinterpreted by hundreds of generations, and have informed many of our most beautiful works of art, not to mention the dreams of children and adults alike. And they have given us hope during the many painful times of exile and oppression that we have gone through, and are going through still.

Among the books of the Bible, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, Genesis and Exodus represent the true foundation of biblical theology and anthropology, but in them we also find the roots of the culture of markets, money and commerce, which would go on to flourish during the Middle Ages and ultimately form the 'spirit of capitalism' (Max Weber) or the 'religion of capitalism' (Walter Benjamin) in the modern era.

This book examines the Biblical foundations of our conception of social relations, and offers new insights on the present economic and social discourse.

Autorentext

Luigino Bruni is professor of Economics at Lumsa University, Rome. He studies ethics and economics, philosophy, history of ideas, and the links between economics and theology. In the last years he started to work in the biblical tradition from an anthropological point of view.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Acknowledgments.- Part 1 Genesis.- Chapter 1 Saving Glances in Times of Exile.- Chapter 2 Counterparts - From the Very Beginning.- Chapter 3 The Way Home: Inhabiting the Realm of the Human.- Chapter 4 We Are All Abel's heirs.- Chapter 5 And Noah Rebuilt the Rainbow.- Chapter 6 Heaven Is Not Above Babel.- Chapter 7 Towards the Land of the children.- Chapter 8 Hagar and her many sisters.- Chapter 9 Faithfulness Throughout the Unexpected.- Chapter 10 The Promise Has no Owners.- Chapter 11 The Word That's Irreplaceable.- Chapter 12 The Gate of Heaven Is a Voice.- Chapter 13 The Way: To State and Cultivate the Alliance.- Chapter 14 Forgiving is a Blessing Struggle.- Chapter 15 Why the World Doesn't End.- Chapter 16 Full of Days But Not Fulfilled Any More.- Chapter 17 The Gift of the Dreamy Brother.- Chapter 18 The Word That Upturns the World.- Chapter 19 Without Price or Clamour.- Chapter 20 The Honest Eyes of the Prophet.- Chapter 21 Brotherhood Cannot be Bought.- Chapter 22 Brothers, but never without their Father.- Chapter 23 Beggars of Blessings.- Chapter 24 At the End of the Night - and After.- Part 2 Exodus.- Chapter 25 Love does not give in to power.- Chapter 26 Enriching Cries.- Chapter 27 Thorn Bushes and Liberations.- Chapter 28 Where Real Freedom Begins.- Chapter 29 Loyalty Makes Even the Sky Open.- Chapter 30 The Plagues of Our Invisible Empires.- Chapter 31 The Greatest Liberation.- Chapter 32 Gratuitousness Speaks.- Chapter 33 Salvation is Dance and Eyes.- Chapter 34 The Law of Daily Bread.- Chapter 35 The Different Words of Equals.- Chapter 36 Words of Heaven and Earth.- Chapter 37 The Only True Image.- Chapter 38 The Dowry of the Earth Is Pure Gift.- Chapter 39 The Treasure of the Seventh Day.- Chapter 40 The Desire to Entrap God.- Chapter 41 The Weight of Common Words.- Chapter 42 The Back and the Face of God.- Chapter 43 The Veil that Reveals the False Ones.- Chapter 44 Work is already the promised land.- Chapter 45 No Liberator Is Crowned King.