The Primacy of Distributive Justice: G 1:1 -2:42. The creation of the world in 6 days with the 7th day to rest. This day of rest is distributive justice, pg 53. Everyone rests, it requires equality, Rest as Worship, pg 54.

Responsibility of Human Morality: The story of the Eden. [Interestingly this story is very similar to an earlier tradition from Sumeria - The Epic of Gilgamesh.] It is the story of the human movement from nature to culture. There are two trees one of eternal life or immortality and the other of moral knowledge (good and evil). Animals have no sense of mortality, they are immortal in that they do not know they will die. By eating of the tree of knowledge the human becomes aware of life as beginning and ending, they are mortal, Eve and Adam choose moral knowledge. "the lesson of Genesis is morality, not instinct, stands between us and extinction" pg 58.

The tragedy of inaugural fratricide: The story of Cain and Abel also echos earlier stories as it depicts the dawn of civilization. It is the story of the Neolithic Revolution in which farming replaces the nomadic, hunter/gather life. Abel, the shepherd is killed by Cain the farmer, who then builds a city and names it after his son Enoch. He quotes Robert McElvaine "agricultural surplus led to an increase in individualism, aggression, warfare, and greed" pg 61.

Divine punishment and Divine Promise: Noah and Abraham. In the Noah story God sees the world as becoming corrupt and so destroys it with the flood but the regrets this and promises to never do it again, G 8:21-22. In the Abraham story the world is again becoming corrupt but God reverses his action as he shows Abraham a new land in the hope of eventually converting "all the families of the earth" The Noachic solution exterminates the many for the few, the Abrahamic solution converts the many by the few, pg 65.

Distributive vs Retributive Justice: Crossan next presents the case for the existence of both forms of justice in the text. Distributive justice is seen in Exodus and Deuteronomy in many passages on forbidding interest, controlling collateral, freeing slaves, remitting debts, and reversing dispossession. However he notes there are many cases of God as "divine punisher". He points out that the distributive vs retributive God is not a Hebrew Bible vs. New Testament difference. In fact both views of God are present in both books.

Some prophets [the word means foretelling the future and speaking for God], Elijah and Elisha were speaking of a violent God. Later prophets (Amos, Micah, Isaiah..) spoke of a non-violent God.

Eschatology: study of the end times
Apocalyptic: special revelation

How does the divine clean up of the world come about? Crossan feels the King James translation of "end of the world" [Matthew 13:39 and 49] is incorrect and should be "end of an era" (my NRSV reads end of an age). He states that God will transform rather than destroy. pg 78/9

When this Divine Cleanup occurs what will happen to the current empire? The bible seems to present two solutions 1) the Noachic solution, extermination, Armageddon, pg 83-85 or 2) the Abrahamic solution, conversion, the final banquet "they shall beat their swords into plowshares...neither shall they learn war any more" Micah 4:1-4. Crossan asks is it conversion to Judaism or to God (pg87) and states it is conversion to God.

Read pg 88

Finally he asks should resistance be violent or non violent? Based on the writing of Josephus, Judas the Galilean invents non-violent resistance backed by readiness for martyrdom. Crossan proposes that "the Christen Bible presents the radicality of a just and nonviolent God repeatedly and relentlessly confronting the normalcy of an unjust and violent civilization". pg 94. The bible records the struggle between the normalcy of religion, war, victory peace and God's alternative program of religion, nonviolence, justice, peace. Read end of page 94 through 95.

From Answer.com search: Neolithic Revolution - The Neolithic Revolution is the term for the first agricultural revolution, describing the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, as first adopted by various independent prehistoric human societies, in various locations. The term refers to both the general time period over which these initial developments took place and the subsequent changes to Neolithic human societies which either resulted from, or are associated with, the adoption of early farming techniques and crop cultivation. The first agricultural revolution spurred major social changes, including a high population density, the organization of a hierarchical society, specialization in non-agricultural crafts, a standing army, barter and trade, and the expansion of man's "control" over nature.

From Summary of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates in modern Iraq; he lived about 2700 B.C. Although historians (and your textbook) tend to emphasize Hammurabi and his code of law, the civilizations of the Tigris-Euphrates area, among the first civilizations, focus rather on Gilgamesh and the legends accruing around him to explain, as it were, themselves. Many stories and myths were written about Gilgamesh, some of which were written down about 2000 B.C. in the Sumerian language on clay tablets which still survive; the Sumerian language, as far as we know, bears no relation to any other human language we know about. These Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated into a longer poem, versions of which survive not only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English, spoken in Asia Minor). All the above languages were written in the script known as cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped." The fullest surviving version, from which the summary here is taken, is derived from twelve stone tablets, in the Akkadian language, found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 669-633 B.C., at Nineveh. The library was destroyed by the Persians in 612 B.C., and all the tablets are damaged. The tablets actually name an author, which is extremely rare in the ancient world, for this particular version of the story: Shin-eqi-unninni. You are being introduced here to the oldest known human author we can name by name!