172 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
Roman Catholicism and Political Form, trans. G. L. Ulmen (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1996), 34.
- Ibid., 323. Buber’s use of Feindesnot (enemy-emergency) suggests an oblique reference to
Schmittian discourse; however, he avoids an explicit link by not using Ausnahmezustand. - I treat the three chapters of Der Gesalbte as telling a coherent story about Samuel, Saul,
and the rise of the monarchy, and I reconstruct Buber’s interpretation of the core narrative
and its likely historicity from all three. There are some inconsistencies between the chapters.
For example, “Das Volksbegehren” implies that the elders’ complaint about Samuel’s sons is a
post facto rationale, irrelevant to the true motivation for requesting a king, whereas “Samuel
und die Abfolge der Gewalten” holds that Samuel attempted to endow his sons with some
kind of power, and that this offense against the primordial Israelite love of freedom partially
motivated the elders’ request. The discrepancy is likely due to the incomplete nature of Der
Gesalbte, or else the claim in “Das Volksbegehren” may intend only the interpolation of the
textual mention of Samuel’s sons at 8:5, not the oral tradition that Samuel somehow violated
the antihereditary bias of premonarchical Israelite political culture. - SM 282.
- Ibid., 354.
- Ibid., 359.
- Ibid., 358.
- Ibid., 379.
- Ibid., 361. In other words, the taking of the ark so runs against the grain of the usual
naïve patriotic belief in divine protection that a mere legend about it, unsupported by memory,
would be rejected as fiction and would not be handed down. - Primary interlocutors here include Alfred Jepsen, Sigmund Mowinckel, and Paul Volz.
Buber enlists Rudolf Kittel and Abraham Kuenen to support his thesis regarding Samuel’s
leadership of the nevi’im. - Ibid., 370. The specific term Geheimbund appears in Buber, We rk e II, 833; earlier edi-
tions had Bund. That Buber chose to play up the “secret” nature of the early prophetic society
seems significant. - Ibid., 370–371.
- Ibid., 372.
- SM 299.
- Ibid., 302.
- Ibid., 374.
- Ibid., 375.
- Ibid.
- SM 285. A “concordat” is an agreement between the Vatican and a secular government.
The Reichskonkordat signed between Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church in 1933 was af-
terward referred to in the singular as “the Concordat.” The use of the term here is suggestive,
as though there were an Urkonkordat, setting a precedent for all the others. - N.B.: Buber refers to the elders as the “representative body” of the people, the Vo l k s-
vertreterschaft, and the task of the king as Aufgabe. These are distinct from the terms he uses
when referring to the nevi’im—the commissioned ones, the delegates, Beauftragten. Buber
knew another situation in which the “people’s delegates,” including Landauer, stood against
the “people’s representatives,” namely the SPD and its allies in and outside of parliament. Then,
too, initial cooperation collapsed when the people’s “representatives” seized all power from the
“delegates.” Then, too, the delegates relinquished their program and their power, though they
remained committed to “meting out critique, struggling with personal dedication, and where
it is necessary, preparing for martyrdom.” SM 376.