The roots of the modern difficulty may be traced back to the Bible. No book can match its status in Western spiritual life, yet the Bible itself has no word for “religion.” Its authors use a term from everyday legal affairs, berit, covenant or contract, to describe the relationship between God and humankind, many of their concerns hardly seem religious. Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are about kings and politics. The books of Proverbs convey wisdom regarding getting along in society; Ruth tells a pleasant love story; Ecclesiastes pessimistically tells us nothing many matters.

When the biblical writers talk about the Jews as some biblical scholars, often explain them in much the same way biblical scholars do the Ammonites or the Edomites, or other groups biblical scholars knew. Biblical scholars consider the Jews (more accurately, the Hebrews) one of the many “nations” of the ancient Near East. This folk had…