122 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
had to be ignored in determining the book’s structure”; Olson, “Buber, Kingship and the Book
of Judges,” 203.
- Ibid., 78–80. This narrative order has a philosophical-normative dimension as well,
namely the priority Buber always gives to speech over writing. - Buber supposes that the narrative of Samuel’s resistance to the people’s demand for
a king corresponds to a real historical tension, between groups, if not between a real judge
named Samuel and the entire people; ibid., 82. He later speaks of “the religio-political group
for which the ‘Elohistic’ narrative knows only the person-like designation ‘Samuel’”; ibid., 159. - Ibid., 82.
- Ibid., 80.
- Ibid., 78.
- Ibid., 82.
- Ibid., 75. The phrase “commonwealth without government” refers to Wellhausen’s 1900
address Ein Gemeinwesen ohne Obrigkeit. - The term recalls Immanuel Kant’s “invisible church,” itself taken from Lessing’s “On
the Education of the Human Race,” and stems from Joachim de Fiore. I speculate that the
reference is not coincidental, though perhaps unintentional. - Ibid., 83–84.
- Cf. Landauer’s exegesis of Étienne de La Boétie in Revolution, to the effect that after one
generation surrenders its freedom, subsequent generations no longer remember it. - Putting words into the redactor’s mouth, Buber uses Anarchie here in a negative sense,
similarly to how he contrives an accusation for the monarchical authors to hurl at the theocrat-
ic authors. Buber uses Anarchie negatively in his own voice to describe the Jotham fable, when
he contrasts the anarchistisch reading of the fable with the unsichtbare Obrigkeit it actually
advocates. However, this instance is outweighed by Buber’s positive uses of the term, especially
when he speaks of the “anarchic psychic foundation” (anarchischer Seelengrund) on which the
ancient Israelites erect their theocracy; ibid., 138, 161. - Ibid., 161.
- Ibid., 162. Christos kuriou means “anointed of the lord.” The shift to Greek at the con-
clusion, at the moment the partisans of the monarchy betray the theocracy, is no accident. It
recalls the position of Kingship of God as the first in the Das Kommende trilogy, focusing on
messianism and “the christological question.” - Ibid., 84. Politeia is the Greek title for the work of Plato usually translated as Republic.