148 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
- Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 152–153.
- Ibid., 20–21.
- Ibid., 22; WZB 26; Moshe, 10.
- MRC 25.
- In argumentation strikingly close to Buber’s, James Scott holds that this process initi-
ates ethnogenesis. Over time, the outsider group is seen as separate because of “ethnic” char-
acteristics distinct from the state dwellers; initially, however, “ethnic” difference simply is the
difference between owing obeisance to a government or not. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Be-
ing Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2009), 125. - MRC 26.
- Ibid., 28.
- Ibid., 22.
- MRC 30. Abraham does differentiate himself from the average Habiru type, by refusing
to be identified as a mercenary (Genesis 14:23) and by identifying the God that leads him and
his men in their wanderings “with that particular one among the gods of the settled people
who is recognized by them as the ‘Most High God’” (Genesis 14:22). - Ibid., 38.
- Ibid., 24–25. No source is provided for the citation here, but elsewhere Buber repeats it
and credits Arnold J. Toynbee; PF 42. - Ibid., 28–30.
- Ibid., 197.
- Ibid., 21.
- Ibid., 171.
- Ibid., 175, 179. The citation here is to Alt, Die Ursprünge des israelitischen Rechts
(Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1934), 65. In associating the Sabbatical year not just with letting land lie
fallow but also with economic redistribution, Buber assumes as correct the view of some
scholars that the Sabbatical was originally as forceful as the Jubilee, which was introduced
only later, after the Israelites persisted in viewing the Sabbatical as impracticable and thus
failing to observe it. - Such a view would naturally bring Buber into conflict with libertarians and so-called
anarcho-capitalists, who criticize redistribution of the kind instituted by the sabbatical as
inherently coercive and counter-productive. Recent protest campaigns have called for broad
debt relief, referred to as a “Jubilee.” David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis,
a Movement (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013). - MRC 179, 181.
- The highlight of this overly serious “scientific” effort occurs when Buber discusses the
chase: “We do not know where the pursuers caught up with the fugitives; whether in the neigh-
borhood of the present Suez or... further north... or even, as some suppose, only at the Gulf
of Akaba (though in that case it is hard to understand why the pursuing chariots should not
have caught up with them sooner).” MRC 75. - Ibid., 75–79. Contrast Schmitt’s account of miracle in Political Theology as a suspen-
sion of natural order, analogous to the power of emergency of the state and ruler. Many see
Schmitt’s conception of miracle as a weak point in his political theology. Cf. Erik Peterson,
“Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in
the Roman Empire,” in Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. Michael Hollerich (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2011), 68–105; Bonnie Honig, Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, De-
mocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). - Buber’s critique applies by extension to Maimonides, and any other medieval rationalist
exegetes who appeal to the principle of accommodation.