When Weber insists that scholars must choose between Stories, he is promoting what he calls an ethics of responsibility. Nowadays, liberal scholars are hard pressed to make such choices, because they do not share Stories of their own. They are humanists but, unlike the Founders, they are not united by commitment to, for example, a framework of natural law principles. In these circumstances, Judith Shklar proposed that instead of favoring a particular Story, liberals should make common cause by opposing instances of cruelty and tyranny. In this sense, they should be “philosophes” rather than philosophers.

This chapter looks at a variety of early Jewish narrative texts, showing that "Israel" language is preferred in texts from the pre-exilic past or when explicitly referring to northern Israelites, while "Jew" (Ioudaios) language is avoided in these texts. The converse is true in texts set in the post-exilic past not explicitly dealing with northerners, where Ioudaios appears frequently and Israel language tends to be limited to prayer or cultic contexts. The chapter pays special attention to the book of Tobit, which tells the story of God's continued faithfulness in preserving the lineage of a faithful family from Naphtali, the first tribe to be taken into exile by Assyria. Tobit's concern for the continued existence of faithful Israelites to be included in the final restoration provides a critical witness for the continuation of pan-Israelite sentiments—and the continued distinction between Israel and Judah—well into the Second Temple period. Other books such as Judith, Jubilees, and the Letter of Aristeas further witness to the persistence of the distinction between Israel and Judah and pan-Israelite restoration eschatology.

This fourth chapter of Part IV turns to the gender of wartime contributions. A common cultural construction draws a sharp distinction between men who leave their families to go to fight and women who wait for their men to return. As demonstrated in this chapter, the Song of Deborah and the prose account that precedes it do not partake in the gender polarity that informs the cultural productions of so many societies, modern and ancient. By subverting the status quo and repudiating the conventions of male heroism, they do much the opposite. In addition, the investigation reveals that women, although rarely having opportunities to take up arms in defense of their communities, played a central role in war commemoration as “memory makers.”