Lots of interesting stuff in here to respond to. First, a book I'd highly highly recommend for 2nd Temple Judaism is EP Sanders Judaism: Practice and Belief. It's sort of hard to get, but just fantastic and fascinating from cover to cover.
I have read some scholarship about how textuality killed prophecy in the HB period, and that was really germaine to my main research interests when I was involved in this sort of stuff. Jeremiah's line about the law being written on people's hearts really captures this moment so well. There has been some fantastic scholarship on the impact of literacy and textuality on human thought, I'd just mention Eric Havelock, Alfred Lord, Millman Parry, Walter Ong, and one of my personal favorite all time scholars Jack Goody.
One of the books Bart used a lot was called "Books and Readers in the Early Church" which sounds like it my be up your ally.
All those examples you cite in the HB are interesting. I'd throw in the fact that so many of those books were added on to during (or maybe after) the Exile, by people "updating" the original texts/prophets by writing in their own thoughts and perspectives. I remember at one time wondering if there was any book that did *not* have an additional later appended text.
In any event, the Axial Age more or less coincides with the spread of alphabetic script, which does not seem coincidental. (China is a partial exception, though there were significant simplifications during this time that pushed the script in the direction of a syllabary). And I guess I do tend to see this emphasis on doctrine, creed, belief, etc, and sort of connected to literate consciousness.
I neglected to tag you in the previous post. But I've enjoyed reading the previous exchanges too much to let this thread slip, so here goes nothing.
I am a masochist (safe word: "more"), so I occasionally listen to (hard) right-wing podcasts, the better to have some sense of how my political opponents understand the world. Some of these podcasts are explicitly Protestant--American Reform, Forge & Anvil, Hard Men (yes, hard men)--with hosts and/or frequent guests from the pulpit. I am often deeply confused by these Christians.
The Good
I do not reflexively disagree with every right-wing talking point. For example, one of these podcasts argued that there are conceptual and/or methodological problems within contemporary therapeutic approaches to mental health. I agree that our "feelings" are not the best barometer of how the world works. And I agree that contemporary usage of the word "trauma" cheapens it.
I also agree with a general impulse towards talking about human flourishing on these podcasts. Yes, liberalism stumbles to the extent that it struggles to formulate notions of human flourishing, though I think most post-liberalism (cf. Patrick Deneen) overstates the case: at the very least, liberalism formulates a notion of human flourishing inasmuch as it makes claims about the conditions for such flourishing (tolerance, secularism, individual freedom, public-private divides, etc.).
The Bad
I often deeply disagree with many of the basic stances--political, religious, or otherwise--of these podcasts: in particular, stances on taxation, public schooling, political violence, liberalism, abortion, LGBQT, etc.
While I agree that modern therapy is not perfect, and may be overweighing certain conceptual approaches, the Hard Men argue that therapy is anti-biblical. Because therapy insists on the ubiquity of trauma as a premise, for instance, the Turgid Men contend that it substitutes victimhood for sinfulness. "Biblical counseling" thus offers an alternative that tells the patient (would-be disciple?) to sack up, stop the sin, and put into play the tenets of "biblical patriarchy," most of which do not seem to reflect a desperate, hand-to-mouth subsistence lifestyle. Likewise, I do not know how people can root biblical patriarchy in the nuclear family when I'm pretty sure that actual biblical families were more akin to clans or tribes.
Right-wing protestant podcasts are resolutely anti-immigration and anti-feminist. Whatever else they are, I think these anti-immigrant and anti-feminist positions represent a bonkers approach to how modern institutions (in particular, educational ones) did, in fact, start to fail boys and men starting in the early 1970s. Here I cite the sociologist Richard Reeves--prior to Title IX, women were approximately 15 percentage points behind men in college attendance; now that number has been reversed. The job market has likewise shifted from manufacturing jobs (Tumescent Men!) to "caring" jobs that men customarily do not perform. Confronted with a radically changing working world, these conservative evangelical men turn to "biblical patriarchy" to reform labor market institutions in the dumbest way possible: keep out immigrants; keep women in kitchens. For these fellas, there is no political and/or institutional problem to solve, but only a radical evil to be expunged. Really, I'm astounded that capitalism never really comes up as an obstacle to the Christian vision--if anything, the problem is "woke" capture of corporations.
I understand the basis for anti-feminism in various Pauline epistles (pastoral ones, to boot), but what is the biblical basis for anti-immigrant positions? These men--these sweaty, hard men with exquisite cum gutters--often hand-wave at "Anglo-American culture," so I guess white separatism and/or cultural provincialism are the simplest explanations.
The Ugly
These podcasters use the word "gay" as a pejorative, like I would've used the word when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s. They also denounce therapy as a conspiracy on the part of Jews to emasculate men, which is to say, to shrink their massive engorged members, pulsing with righteousness. "Edgy," unbelievably dumb, and immoral stuff for anyone, much less these self-righteous folk.
These Christians also platform new crazies like Charles Haywood, a self-declared "Maximum Leader" with plans to become a future American warlord [?]. He is casually xenophobic and racist. He would excuse the former as a response to what he describes as widespread immigrant violence; he would sidestep the latter charge on the grounds that anti-white racism is the real problem. As for Christianity, he primarily prizes it, it would seem, for its capacity to order the world. And his vision of human flourishing, as far as I can tell, invites violence against his political enemies to the left, though he is eager to deny such attributions.
I get the apocalyptic (which is to say, Christian) basis for this good-and-evil vision of the world. But I always understood the apocalyptic to designate a "trust the plan"-style faithfulness. As such, where does the political activism come from?
