usual, conventional understanding, both of ancient Hellenistic and of the modern Cartesian modes of reality. The ongoing process of life is to come to terms with this other who will practice mutuality with us, but who at the same time stands in an incommensurate relation to us. It is the tension of mutuality and incommensurability that is the driving force of a biblical notion of life. Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews have known something odd and peculiar about this agent and subject of otherness. Abraham