ABSTRACT
Modern political authority is based (so it tells us) on writing, on logos: on the word and the law. Modernity has given itself scriptural origins. Modern authority sees in itself the triumph of the word, and gives itself a scriptural genealogy. “In the beginning was the word.” Contract and the sign carry divine authority in scripture. God signs the body of Cain. The covenant of God with Noah is marked by a sign in the sky, the covenant with Abraham by another sign on the flesh. The deity declares, “I will write my law on your inmost parts”; the prophet swallows the honeyed text. Among Christians, “the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That flesh becomes a sign. The sign consumed transforms human bodies into a scriptural community. Among Protestants, the community is formed not by the body of Christ consumed but by the word of God. The divine would no longer enter the flesh through the flesh but through the reading eye, the listening ear, the believing mind. Scripture was the dictate of a silent but nevertheless legible divinity. Submission to the rule of laws rather than the rule of men marked the progress of the word in the world.
