82 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
Here, I address the theopolitical dimension of the text rather than the extent
to which its arguments “hold up” today as claims about the Bible. My focus is
on Kingship of God as a work produced in late Weimar Germany, in the context
of the theological and political debates of the time. Examining Buber’s readings
of biblical evidence requires understanding the relation of those readings to the
scholarship of his time, as well as his own interpretive strategies.
The Title, Origin, and Structure of Kingship of God
Sacred Kingship and Political Theology
The title Kingship of God situates Buber simultaneously in two conversations. The
first is about sacred kingship in comparative perspective. Starting with James
George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890), a huge literature emerged on the theme
of religious legitimation and the justification of kingship as an institution. Many
anthropologists and historians of religion hold, in the words of one recent author,
that “in terms... of its antiquity, its ubiquity, its wholly extraordinary staying
power, the institution of kingship can lay strong claim to having been the most
common form of government known, world-wide, to man.”^2 Once we recognize
that “it is not the interpenetration in public life of what we in the West have
become accustomed to classify as the ‘political’ and the ‘religious’ that needs ex-
plaining, but, rather, the novel Western distinction between the two,” interest in
sacred kingship may be seen as expressing a desire to explain as much as possible
about human political life by focusing on a single phenomenon.^3 The idea of sa-
cred kingship also offers a range of case studies, principal among which for West-
ern scholars is the ancient Israelite monarchy. That Buber’s Königtum Gottes was
meant to reflect this current of thought can be inferred from some of the other
titles contained in his copious footnotes, such as Die sumerischen und akkadisch-
en Königsinschriften (The Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions) and Die
Vergöttlichung der babylonisch-assyrischen Könige (The Divinization of Assyrian-
Babylonian Kings).^4 He kept abreast of the scholarship in this field after the first
edition of the book. However, the title Kingship of God announces that Buber will
be discussing divine kingship itself—the kingship of God, not a human monarchy
considered divine by its subjects; that is, not how kings are thought of as gods, but
how one particular god is thought of as a king.
Beyond this discourse, Kingship of God may also be related to Carl Schmitt
and Political Theology. As we have seen, Buber and Schmitt share many assump-
tions but proceed in radically different directions. This proximity is uncom-
fortable, given the likelihood that Schmitt’s critique of liberalism was intended
to undermine the intellectual bases of the nascent Weimar Republic.^5 Schmitt
joined the Nazi party and curried favor with Nazi elites before running afoul of
official dogma around 1936, never repenting for his actions once the war ended.
Buber clearly states that he thought Schmitt exemplified the problems he saw in