Generations of Christians, Janet Soskice demonstrates, once knew God and Christ by hundreds of remarkable names. These included the appellations ‘Messiah’, ‘Emmanuel’, ‘Alpha’, ‘Omega’, ‘Eternal’, ‘All-Powerful’, ‘Lamb’, ‘Lion’, ‘Goat’, ‘One’, ‘Word’, ‘Serpent’ and ‘Bridegroom’. In her much-anticipated new book, Soskice argues that contemporary understandings of divinity could be transformed by a return to a venerable analogical tradition of divine naming. These ancient titles – drawn from scripture – were chanted and sung, crafted and invoked (in polyphony and plainsong) as they were woven into the worship of the faithful. However, during the sixteenth century Descartes moved from ‘naming’ to ‘defining’ God via a series of metaphysical attributes. This made God a thing among things: a being amongst beings. For the author, reclaiming divine naming is not only overdue. It can also re-energise the relationship between philosophy and religious tradition. This path-breaking book shows just how rich and revolutionary such reclamation might be.

Chapter 6 examines the outcry of the victim of violence. Understanding the formal or informal legal framework and ancient legal discourse around violence also helps us grasp with greater specificity the preoccupation among biblical writers with the ‘outcry’ of violence, the ‘violent witness’, and the receptivity of the responsible party (often Yhwh). These concerns each operate differently, but together highlight a central and driving concern with voicing – or revoicing – the otherwise unnoticed evil of violence, and setting it within a framework of appeal (usually prayer) to one with the capacity or responsibility to intervene and restore order. The preoccupation with verbal appeal via distress signals like the outcry highlight the fact that ancient Israel was not a legislative society. In other words, individuals did not, in the first place, appeal to laws for justice. While the Hebrew Bible does preserve legal codes, they were hardly ever the basis for judicial rulings. Instead, individuals had recourse to individuals who embody legal custom, and who, by community standards, act justly insofar as they fulfil their expected roles. This relational nature of justice meant that cries for justice to a judge or avenger were both morally driven and, to be effective, needed to be rhetorically persuasive.