No Tolerance for Tyrants is a lucidly written guide for students who wonder about the Bible's relevance to modern political life. . . . Gnuse shows that an anti-royal bias is far more widespread in the Bible than scholars have thought, and he brilliantly uses ancient Near Eastern texts to illuminate the biblical polemic even in books like Genesis. [This] book is a wonderful mixture of historical scholarship, perceptive literary analysis, and serious concern to grasp the Bible's message for modern readers. It is biblical theology at its best.Stuart Irvine Associate Professor of Religious Studies Louisiana State University Weaving together in an accessible style the fruits of current scholarship with excerpts from democratic writings drawing upon the Bible in the 17th and 18th centuries, Gnuse argues convincingly that the biblical critique of kingship is pervasive and revolutionary for its time and ours. Reminding us that many of these texts are so familiar that we cannot see how radical they were, he uncovers the satire, humor, suppressed historical memories, and editorial tweaking that shaped the egalitarian vision of our biblical ancestors in the faith. Surveying biblical texts from the Garden of Eden to the Roman Empire, he calls us to reclaim the Bible as a vehicle of liberation, rather than repression. Like the prophets of old, Gnuse inspires us to look beyond the world's definition of power to the source of that power-God.Dr. Denise Dombkowski Hopkins Woodrow and Mildred Miller Professor of Biblical Theology Wesley Theological Seminary Washington,