God against Messiah | 93ciple of partition which would place them in opposition.” Thus the dichotomy
between the profane-political and the theopolitical is introduced in connection
with the J-E distinction, that is, with editors, even before it is ascribed to specific
Israelite figures and factions described in the text.
Against the trend toward late dating of biblical materials, even to the Per-
sian or postexilic periods, Buber asserts that the material upon which he draws
reflects ancient tendencies in the life of Israel. He carefully qualifies his formu-
lations: “No dating has yet been decided, since we are dealing here not with a
source, but with a manner of manipulating traditional material, and indeed with
a manner which is already established in the oldest formation of tradition. The
question about dating was therefore to be established by itself with every text.”^37
When Buber questions dating proposed by other scholars, he first confronts the
most recent dates suggested for particular texts, and he counterposes those to a
reading that either discerns a “manner of manipulating traditional material” that
allows the text to be dated earlier, or suggests that the “traditional material” that
forms the core of the text may antedate the text’s final literary form. Frequently,
he associates his opponents on a particular philological or historical question
with one of the inner-textual or editorial factions he has identified, thus reenact-
ing with them the conflict between the theopolitical thesis and its antithesis.
Buber expounds the theopolitical thesis starting with a discussion of Judges,
emphasizing the “Gideon passage” in 8:22 and offering a textual analysis of the
redaction of Judges as a whole. Then he entertains possible objections to his the-
sis. These fall into two categories: (1) the theopolitical thesis must be false because
the era to which Buber assigns it was not intellectually “advanced” enough, so
that the idea of YHVH as king, for example, could not have developed prior to the
historical human monarchy; (2) the theopolitical thesis must be false for lack of
a textual basis. Buber addresses the first objection in two ways: first, by using the
tools of comparative religion (cultural studies, Semitics, philology) to discuss the
concept of YHVH as exclusive folk king in the context of the political theologies
of Israel’s neighbors in the ancient Near East, and second, by enlisting historical-
critical biblical studies in his argument for the continuity of the theopolitical idea
from Sinai to the Judges. Finally, he addresses such topics as sacrifice, holy war,
and prophecy, in his effort to ground the theopolitical thesis in texts.
Kingships of the Gods: The Theopolitical Thesis
and Comparative Religion
Of Kings, Gods, and Covenants: Ancient Israel in Context
Buber seeks to defend the possible historicity of the theopolitical thesis against
charges of inconsistency with the “religio-historical level of that epoch.”^38 Both
Buber and his opponents take for granted the notion of “the character of a folk-
epoch.” The history of ancient peoples is often conceived according to the idea