Table of Contents
Introduction vii
Technical Notes and Glossary xii
Part I The Foundations of Judaism
Chapter 1 Early Myths: Creation, Exodus and Conquest 2
Chapter 2 The First Israelites 13
Chapter 3 Class Differences in the Israelite States 30
Chapter 4 Exile and Return 57
Chapter 5 The Hasmonean Dynasty and Rome 76
Part II The Foundations of Christianity
Chapter 6 Christian Tradition and the Evidence 104
Chapter 7 The Early Christian Communities 124
Chapter 8 The Gospels and the Church Bureaucracy 144
Chapter 9 Judaism Lite 158
Chapter 10 The Class Basis of the Early Church 177
Chapter 11 The 'Conversion' of Constantine 196
Part III The Foundations of Islam
Chapter 12 The Traditional Story of the Prophet and the Problem of Sources 208
Chapter 13 Critique of the Koranic Tradition 226
Chapter 14 The Revisionist Scholarship 243
Chapter 15 The Early Seventh Century and the Origins of the Arab Empire 256
Chapter 16 Abd Al-Malik's Centralised State 275
Chapter 17 The Class Character of the Arab Empire 289
Chapter 18 Class Struggle, Civil War and the Abbasid Revolution 303
Appendix I The Genesis Enigma 315
Appendix II Two Separate Noah Stories 317
Appendix III The Christian Insertions into The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, by Josephus 321
Appendix IV Slavery in Ancient Judaism, Christianity and Islam 322
Postscript 327
Bibliography 329
Index 334