Before there were commandments, there was order.

Ant colonies coordinate without kings. Bees organise without parliaments. Human beings inherited cooperation, competition, hierarchy and collective survival long before we wrote laws explaining how we ought to live.

Before the Commandments follows that problem from ants and early human communities through Genesis, Exodus, ancient cities, kings, prophets, conscience, democracy, factories, markets, nations and artificial intelligence. It asks a deceptively simple question: if systems can organise us extraordinarily well, what makes an organised system just?

Neither an argument against religion nor a defence of it, this is a book about the space where evolution, morality, scripture, history and modern institutions meet. It treats the Bible as part of humanity’s long argument about power, responsibility and the value of the person, while leaving the metaphysical question open.

The ant can teach us how order emerges. It cannot tell us whether that order is just.

Albert Ingram does not ask the reader to agree. He asks the reader to look again.