God against Messiah | 121- Ibid., 158.
- Ibid., 154–156.
- The citation is from Karl Budde. Buber is no doubt glad to discuss a source considered
early by consensus. - Ibid., 151.
- Avishai Margalit, “Prophets with Honor,” New York Review of Books, November 4, 1993;
Sufrin, “History, Myth, and Divine Dialogue in Martin Buber’s Biblical Commentaries,” Jew-
ish Quarterly Review 103.1 (Winter 2013): 74–100; Kotaro Hiraoka, “The Bible and Political Phi-
losophy in Modern Jewish Thought: Martin Buber’s Theocracy and Its Reception in an Israeli
Contex t,” Journal of the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions (Isshinkyou Gakusai
Kenkyu), 6th issue (CISMOR: Doshisha University, 2010), 53–66. - The debate is still live: “Gideon’s refusal to rule as king is interpreted by scholars in
different ways. Some see it as an early text connected to the ideology that God alone may be
king; others claim that it is a later interpolation critical of the monarchy; still others suggest
that... Gideon is simply offering a polite refusal, although the text then depicts him as a king.”
Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael Fishbane, eds., The Jewish Study Bible (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 529; cf. Dennis T. Olson, “Buber, Kingship, and the Book of
Judges: A Study of Judges 6–9 and 17–21,” in David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J. J. M
Roberts, eds. Bernard F. Batto and Kathryn L. Roberts (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004),
199–218; Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 368–369. - KG 59.
- Ibid., 61. Buber uses the German walten to render mashal, although Scheimann departs
from this consistency in his English translation. - Ibid., 62. The Leitwort technique assumes that the Bible uses repetitions of roots in dif-
ferent forms to emphasize particular concepts; this only emerges in oral readings. - Ibid., 74.
- Ibid., 73.
- Ibid. Scheimann alternates between “commission” and “authority” to render Auftrag,
which for Buber refers to a divine commission to a circumscribed task. To attempt to continue
the commission beyond the task betrays it; to institute permanent authority forfeits true au-
thority. In a compound, Auftrag has uses both nontechnical (as in Lehrbeauftragter, the “ad-
junct lecturer” position Buber held at Frankfurt) and technical (as in Volksbeauftragter, the
“people’s delegate” position Landauer held in the Bavarian Council Republic). - Ibid.
- Ibid., 70–71.
- E.g., Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 208.
- Ibid., 71.
- Ibid. “Cannot understand,” 166n9; destruction of a Baal cult, 73, 168n32; “splendid apho-
rism,” 73. - Ibid., 63–64. My italics.
- Ibid., 68.
- Ibid., 83.
- “Lively opposing power” is Scheimann’s rendering of widerspruchslebendige Gewalt. I
might suggest something like “the vitally contradictory force.” - Ibid., 67–68.
- The charge has recently been leveled at Buber himself. Olson writes that Buber’s hy-
pothesis of an antimonarchical book, made up of Judges 1–16, can be sustained only at the cost
of admitting “that several parts and details of the book did not deal with kingship at all and