92 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
One must attempt to establish anew, upon the basis of critical research, the
thesis of an early direct-theocratic tendency in Israel, a thesis penalized be-
cause of its untenable precritical formulation—a thesis by means of which,
allegedly, “a real insight into the folk history of Israel” becomes “impossible.”^32
It will have to stand a double test: whether its taking with historical serious-
ness the Biblical pre-kingly texts of direct-theocratic tendency—in their being
dated contrary to the prevailing opinion and in their interpretations which
likewise diverge from that opinion in many ways—is philologically justified;
and whether this taking-seriously, where... it progresses to historical recon-
struction, attains an historical picture which can be scientifically justified.^33Philological rigor and historical scrupulousness are the primary scholarly tests
to which Buber puts the theopolitical thesis. This passage also reveals Buber’s
sense of another, less “scientific” and more “cultural” obstacle to his endeavor: by
daring to allege that “critical research” could rehabilitate a “precritical formula-
tion,” Buber attacks not the methodological necessity of proceeding critically, but
the assumption on the part of some biblical scholars that the aim of any critical
procedure is to demolish some cherished precritical belief. Rather than pursue
the rejectionism of much traditionalist adherence to “precritical formulations,”
Buber throws in his lot with philological justification.
Of course, this self-identification by Buber as a Religionswissenschaftler is
always ambivalent. Buber immediately reminds the reader just how far he stands
from the general scholarly community on several important points, from the
source-critical distinction between the J and E documents to the methodology of
dating biblical texts.^34 Buber knows that because Kingship of God and its intended
sequel Der Gesalbte deal respectively with the books of Judges and Samuel, they
will be perceived “essentially as a contribution to the problem of the ‘Elohist’ or
‘Elohists’” to whom the source-critical consensus of the time attributed those
books. Buber himself is “not able to believe in a separable, coherent original
document to be regarded as ‘Elohistic,’” and he has great reservations about the
“logograms” J and E, but he nevertheless regards it as securely demonstrated that
there are at least two great types of tradition and compilation represented in their
differentiation.^35
It is in connection with his discussion of J and E as literary or redactional
trends rather than discrete “sources” that the concept theopolitical first appears
in Kingship of God. Buber holds that the texts commonly designated as J mate-
rial originate among early circles of courtly compilers, “resolutely attentive to
religious tradition, but in the treatment of contemporary or recent history prone
to a profane-political tendency.”^36 The E materials, however, originate among the
circle of the nevi’im, the prophets. In contrast to the J circle, they are “indepen-
dent of the court, supported by the people, less gifted in narration, but inspired
in message, experiencing and portraying history as a theo-political occurrence,
contending for the interpenetration of religion and politics against every prin-