# The Politics of the Mitnabot ## *Brit Adam*: The Huma"n Covenant The politics of the *mitnabot* is first and foremost about the huma'n covenant. ![[The Huma'n Covenant|The Huma'n Covenant]] ## Eden: Garden and Covenant The *mitnabot* regarded the story of the Garden of Eden as the root of all politics. Based on the inscriptions, it seems that their version of the story was largely the same as the one that has come down to us, except that in their version, first Adam was a woman, from whom Ish (the man) was separated, so called because he came forth from Isha (a woman). Clearly, as men are born from women and not the opposite, this version makes more sense. Once separated from her male aspect, she became known as Hava, the mother of all life. He was known merely as Ish, and also Adam, because he could not give birth. Another difference between our version and theirs was that what emerged from the separation of Adam-as-mother (Hava) from Adam-as-not-mother (Ish) was a variety of genders, not only two. (See Plato's *Symposium*.) This last point reflects another difference between their version and ours: in their version, Adam is treated as a collective noun, so that there were more than two humans in the garden. This is similar to the first creation story, in which Adam is a collective noun (although the canon of the Mitnabot did not contain the first story of creation as it was written later). In the garden, humans have everything they need and there is no oppressive hierarchy. The *mitnabot* understood this as the definition of society: Society is that place where humans have what they need and live in freedom and security, as in Isaiah's vision. Since the world is filled with adequate natural resources like Gan Eden, and since humans have the requisite abilities to provide everyone with what they need from the bounty of the garden, Gan Eden is the model for a just society. It is a achieved through the enactment of a human covenant, modeled on the covenant at Sinai. If humans lack provisions, security or freedom, then the human covenant has not been upheld. The mitnabot called this *injustice*. ## Isaiah's Vision While in some respects the *mitnabot* found themselves in conflict with the (first) Isaiah, who frequented their shrines and who prophesized in their time, they shared his overall vision of humanity as depicted in his vision for the end of days: ![[Isaiah's Vision]] While the the Mitnabot criticized Isaiah for presenting his vision in a manner that potentially lent itself to a politics of nationalist-religious domination (what does it mean that all peoples will accept Y-H-V-H as their God?), they agreed with the idea of a global human covenant based on consent ("...let us go up to the mountain...") and an end to all violence. They particularly resonated with the end of the Isaiah's vision, which focuses on achieving an adequate standard of living for all people by investing technology in human security rather than warfare ("...they shall beat their swords into plowshares..."). The political means to achieve this vision was in their eyes the expansion of the Covenant at Sinai to all people. This expansion was conceived not as something new but as a return to the Covenant at Eden, known as the Human Covenant, and later called by rabbinic Judaism "The Covenant of Noach". ## Background: Genocide in the Ancient World and the Deuteronomistic History For background, see this excellent overview of the logic of ancient war[crimes]fare: <iframe src="https://www.thetorah.com/article/justifying-war-crimes-in-the-bible-and-the-ancient-near-east" width="100%" height="800"></iframe> ## Dtm., Israel and Supremacism ![[Genocidal Supremacism]] See [[We Witness Silwan]]