126 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
On Methodology and Radicalism
In one approach to historical-critical biblical scholarship, the words “conserva-
tive” and “radical” denote the degree to which methods and conclusions diverge
from the Hebrew Bible’s self-representation.^5 In this view, Moses is the most “con-
servative,” perhaps even reactionary, of Buber’s biblical writings, even though he
promises us an “unprejudiced critical investigation, dependent neither on the
religious tradition nor on the theories of scholarly turns of thought.”^6 He intends
to separate older from newer passages, to isolate original reports from later accre-
tions, and to hypothesize about the “historical nucleus” of those reports, which
to his mind stem from even more ancient oral traditions. But unlike in Kingship
of God or The Prophetic Faith, where he deals with the “historical books” of the
Bible, Moses is concerned primarily with the Pentateuch—the five books of Mo-
ses. Buber’s interest in salvaging historical information through inspired inter-
pretation of legends and sagas thus takes on a more contentious, rearguard cast.^7
While Moses contains several footnotes in which Buber battles regnant scholarly
opinion, he largely confines his polemics to one methodological chapter, “Saga
a nd Histor y.”
Even readers lacking expertise in biblical scholarship can discern that there
is no necessary connection between historical-critical “radicalism” and political
radicalism.^8 Buber proves this by placing his “conservative” faith in the possibil-
ity of gleaning historical information about Moses from the Pentateuch in the
service of his “radical” theopolitics. What he says about Moses can usually be
read as a microcosm of what he says elsewhere about Judaism. Even when en-
gaged in typical historical-critical moves, as when he accepts the proof that six
hundred thousand Israelites could not possibly have left Egypt, he neutralizes
the importance of this fact by claiming that “the inner history of Mankind can
be grasped most easily in the actions and experiences of small groups.”^9 Lest oth-
ers perceive incongruity between his method and his theopolitical conclusions,
Buber justifies his method in a political way:
The historical song and the historical saga exist as spontaneous forms, not
dependent upon instructions, of a popular preservation by word of mouth of
“historical” events; such events, that is, as are vital in the life of the tribe....
[T]he saga is the predominant method of preserving the memory of what hap-
pens, as long as tribal life is stronger than state organization. As soon as the lat-
ter becomes more powerful... the unofficial popular forms are overshadowed
through the development of an annalistic keeping of records by order of the
governing authority.^10Thus Buber simultaneously affirms that sagas predate annals, an assumption that
enables venturesome dating of legendary narrative texts, and that this sequence is
itself bound up with transition from the anarchic, nomadic, tribal way of life (and
the acceptance of the kingship of God) to the sedentary, agricultural, nation-state