ABSTRACT
This chapter looks first at the experiments in theocracy in Israel starting with Martin Buber’s analysis of the book of Judges and the request of the elders of Israel for a king. The establishment of a national covenant with Israel and then with the household of David brought formidable ambiguity to the theocracy in Israel. The issue is tracked forward into earliest Christianity of the New Testament documents and beyond to the point at which Constantine incorporated the church into the vocation of the Roman Empire. Thus was the church colonised and its thinking changed. Thus came the first and most notorious christendom. But this was only one of a number of christendoms as a study of Bardaisan of Edessa makes clear. Moreover Peter Brown also has demonstrated that there were numerous christendom even in the West and in the process drew attention to micro christendoms in the far northwest of the then world. This was the English Christendom with its own particular characteristics.
