Abstract

My thesis analyzes selected biblical passages to argue that the zero-sum logic formed an integral part of people’s understanding of conflict in the Bible. The characters in these passages perceived the world to exist in finite quantities and already fully distributed so that one person’s gain meant another’s loss. This logic often influenced how conflicts unfolded in biblical times, and why they broke out in the first place.
In the process of the dissemination of the Bible, the same logic has shaped the worldview of many people who have looked to the Bible as the inspired word of God and the primary source of instruction for daily living. This worldview has largely influenced the negatively defined way of thinking about identity, ethnicity, religion and Nationalism in terms of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ and the all or nothing nature of religious conflicts. Informed by the zero-sum logic, religiously defined groups tend to perceive themselves to have mutually incompatible interests with other groups. This fosters an insider/ outsider ideology which creates a marginalized other who is perceived as a threat to the existence of the group and as such any violence orchestrated against this other is justified as necessary for the survival of the group.
My study further contends that the perception of a limited universe nuanced in the selected biblical passages is fundamentally rooted in and influenced by the cultural and socio-economic realities of the Agrarian world in which the Bible was born.