Ofri Ilany Christian Images of the JewishState

The Hebrew Republic as aPolitical Model in the German Protestant Enlightenment

The past two decades have witnessed aburgeoning interest in political Hebra- ism, namely,Christian, and especiallyProtestant,scholarship on the political model of the .¹ While Greek democracyand the Roman Republic have long been considered the main sources for modern political thought, recent research has highlighted the crucial role that “the Hebrew republic” playedin European thinking. This inquiry has awarded agreat deal of attention to - sophical and political writingsdealing with the alleged Hebrew constitution and state as they are portrayed in the Hebrew . Thebulk of these studies have treated earlymodern Hebraist textsbyDutch, English, and American writers. In this article, Ipresent the Hebrew state as it appears in the works of several writers of the German Protestant Enlightenment,first and foremost among them the renownedBible scholarJohannDavid Michaelis (1717– 1791). In what follows, Iidentify the political themes and ideological contrasts in these descrip- tions of the Hebrew regime, afterwhich Idemonstrate their relation to the mid- to-lateeighteenth-century German-European political agenda. Writingsonthe Hebrew republic [respublica Hebraeorum]drew on an an- cient tradition, inaugurated with ’sreferenceto“’ politeia” al- readyinthe first century CE and continuingwith Renaissance and Baroque . The rise of German Enlightenment historical criticism, however,refashioned the political portrait of the Hebrew state, imbuing it with additional hues. Unlikeearlier depictions, which tendedtoabstract the He- brew regime into apolitical-philosophicalmodel, Michaelis and his students foregrounded the historical dynamics of the Hebrew state’scoming-into-being, focusing on relations between regime, ,and .

 See, especially, Stephen G. Burnett,Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era(1500 –1660): Authors,Books, and the TransmissionofJewish Learning(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012); Alli- son Coudert and JeffreyS.Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas?: Christian Hebraists and the Study of in EarlyModern Europe (Philadelphia, PA:University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Christoph Bultmann and Lutz Danneberg, eds., Hebraistik – Hermeneutik – Homiletik: Die “Phi- lologia Sacra” im frühneuzeitlichen Bibelstudium (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2011).

OpenAccess. ©2020 Aue-Ben-David et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution 4.0 International. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-009 120 Ofri Ilany

Hebraism and the Protestant Tradition

Manyforms of collective identity that developed in the Christian world took in- spiration from the Hebrew model – apolitical phenomenon that Hans Kohn has termed Hebraic .² Adrian Hastingshas suggested that the Bible, by supplying an earlyand influential model of the divinechosenness of aparticular people, was “amirror allowing the imagination and creation of Christian na- tions.”³ Politicaluse of the Old Testament was expressed as earlyasthe in Ethiopia,Byzantium and the Frankish kingdoms, among manyother re- gions. It was in Protestant , however,that the biblical idea of divine chosenness became especiallydominant. ’s(1483 – 1546)relation to political ideas in the Bible contained several fundamental features that influenced the development of later German Hebraism. Unlikecontemporary humanists such as (ca. 1466–1536), Lu- ther granted real significance to the Old Testament,particularlythe Psalms and the Prophets, as well as – albeit to alesser extent – the Mosaic law.⁴ Luther also went further than Catholic theologians in ridding Christianity of the element of the “law,” as embodied in Moses, in favorof“revelation,” as embodied in . Diverging from radical reformers who soughttoreinstateMosaic law, Luther in- sisted thatthese laws pertain to the alone, unless they accord with . ForLuther,Jewish lawhad no religious or political validity:while Christian rulers should govern “accordingtoMoses’ example,” they certainlywerenot be- holden to it. Accordingly, Luther left no real space for political Hebraism, the political use of the idea of the Hebrew state. In his view,the kingdom of the Jews had been supplantedbyJesus’ universal kingdom of heaven, and the prophetic promise of areturn to had likewise lost its earthlyvalidity.Luther reinterpreted al- legoricallyand in relation to the Christian gospel geographical terms found in Psalmsand the Prophets such as ‘Zion.’ The Jews, then,weremistaken in their desire to reinstate theirkingdom of old rather than to aspire to the new kingdom Jesus gave to the world.⁵ Nevertheless, during Luther’slifetime and

 Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: AStudyinits Origins and Background (New York, NY: Macmillan,1944), 41– 7.  Adrian Hastings,The Construction of Nationhood:Ethnicity,, and Nationalism (Cam- bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18.  See, for example, Siegfried Raeder, “The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of Martin Lu- ther,” in Hebrew Bible /Old Testament: The History of ItsInterpretation – fromthe Renaissance to the Enlightenment,ed. Magne Saebø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht,2008): 363–406.  Ibid., 391. Christian Images of the JewishState 121 even more so after his death, German Protestant preachers began attributingbib- lical significations to local events as well as interpreting the Bible through con- temporary political entities.

PoliticalTheoryand the Hebrew Model

As previouslymentioned, discussions of the “Hebrew republic” wererooted in an ancient tradition that goes back to Josephus’sreference to “Moses’ politeia” in his Against Apion.⁶ Beginning in the Renaissance,and especiallyfollowing the Reformation, some of Europe’smost influential political thinkers,including the seventeenth-century philosophersThomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Baruch Spi- noza (1632–1677), and (1632–1704), discussed the Hebrew regime. Several jurists even devoted whole bookstosingingits praises. Both Hugo Gro- tius (1583–1645), in his De republica emendada (1599) and (1586–1638), in his De Republica Hebraeorum (1617)promotedwhat they termed “the Hebrew theocracy” as an ideallytemperate regime: not democratic, oli- garchical, or monarchical.⁷ The historian Frank Manuelhas claimedthat the corpus of Hebrew republic literatureinthe seventeenth century was marked by asecularizationofthe discourse on the Hebrew constitution. According to Manuel, duringthe Renais- sance and the Baroque period, forms of humanist readingthat had originated in Greek and Roman Classical Antiquity percolated into arealm previouslyre- served for theologians. He further argued that,since the Renaissance,scholars have turned the Old Testament into aconsecutive secular story.The political vo- cabulary of ’s ,inthis line of thinking, was the seedbed for con- ceptualizations of the Hebrews’ .⁸ Recent research, however,has undermined Manuel’ssecularization model. Eric Nelson, for example, has claim- ed that,quitetothe contrary,seventeenth-century Protestant-European political

 Josephus,Against Apion, trans. John Barclay(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 263; Hubert Cancik, “Theokratie und Priesterherrschaft:Die mosaische Verfassung bei Flavius Josephus, c. Apionem 2, 157–98,” in Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, ed. JacobTaubes, vol. 3: Theokratie (Munich and Paderborn: Fink, 1987): 65– 77.  See Guido Bartolucci, “The InfluenceofCarlo Sigonio’s ‘De Republica Hebraeorum’ on ’‘De Republica Emendanda,’” Hebraic Political Studies 2(2007): 193–210.  Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism throughChristian Eyes (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 192),118–120. And see also Kalman Neuman, “Political Hebraism and the Early Modern ‘Respublica Hebraeorum’:OnDefiningthe Field,” Hebraic Political Studies 1(2005): 57–70. 122 Ofri Ilany discourse underwent aprocess of sacralization and theologization.⁹ In Nelson’s view,the Reformation’sreligious zeal brought theologyinto the mainstream of political thought.Accordingly, the Bible became increasingly important as an au- thoritative sourceofthe divine constitution. ForNelson, the biblical model of the Hebrew republic influenced several key aspects of seventeenth-century political theory,not least among them the loss of the of the monarchic regime and the promotion of the idea of agrarian reform for the redistribution of wealth.¹⁰ Nelson went so far as to suggest that seventeenth-century political thinkers celebrated the Hebrew regime’stheocratic aspect.¹¹ It seems to me that readingsofthe Hebrew Bible facilitated the development of the modern political vocabulary.Political conceptslike ‘,’‘the- ocracy,’‘,’ and ‘agrarian reform’ shaped the interpretationofbiblical history and, in turn, wereshaped by it.AsAnthonySmith argues, the transition from religious to modern national self-identification wastortuous but continu- ous, with biblical images resonatinginthe self-perceptions of modern nationalist movements.¹²

The Debateon“Hebrew Theocracy”

The term “theocracy,” one of the most controversialwords in earlymodern po- litical theory,has been tied to the discussion of the Hebrew republic ever since it was coined by Josephus. AccordingtoJosephus, rather than choosing to confer governance on asingle ruler,asinmonarchy, or on anumber of rulers, as in , Moses chose “ascribing to the rule and power.”¹³ It is hard to tell whether Josephus meant arule of the priestsoraregime in which control is, in fact,inthe hands of God himself.¹⁴ The idea of theocracy preoccupied European political philosophythrough- out the earlymodern period. After the Reformation, certain Protestant political writers in England and the Netherlands leveraged the ideal of Hebrew theocracy

 Eric Nelson, The HebrewRepublic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Polit- ical Thought(Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 4–5.  On this point,please see below.  Nelson, The HebrewRepublic, 4–5.  AnthonyD.Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxfordand New York: OxfordUniversity Press,2003), 9–19.  Josephus,Against Apion, trans. John Barclay, 263.  Cancik, “Theokratie und Priesterherrschaft,” in Taubes,ed., Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, vol. 3: 65 – 77. Christian Images of the JewishState 123 as acritique of monarchyaswell as adesirable model.¹⁵ Other seventeenth-cen- tury philosophers analyzed Hebrew theocracy politically without positing it as an ideal. John Locke, for example, referred to this regimeinhis discussion of re- ligious . Lockecharacterized Judaism as areligion based on submis- sion to law, in contrasttoone basedonconscience. This feature, he claimed, was an outgrowth of the Hebrews’ ancient regime, which knew no separation be- tween state and religion:

[T]he Commonwealth of the Jews,different in that from all others,was an absolute Theoc- racy:Nor was there, or could therebe, anyDifferencebetween that Commonwealth and the Church. The Laws established there concerning the of one Invisible ,were the Civil Laws of that People, and apart of their Political , in which God himself was the .¹⁶

Lockewas neutral on the general notion of Hebrew theocracy,onlyasserting its inapplicability as apolitical model for Christians: aChristian commonwealth was impossible, as it would counter the separation of church and state inherent to Christianity itself.¹⁷ At the sametime,Enlightenment criticism of led to much less favorabledepictions of Hebrew theocracy. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico- Politicus offers one such expansiveanalysis of the Hebrew regime.According to Spinoza, Moses’ constitution was aworldlypolitical one, with no special reli- gious significance.The Israelites,who weremired in the state of nature following their Egyptian bondage, elected God as theirsovereign in aprocess similar to the signingofasocial contract.Thus, God became the Lordofthe slaves, and His laws became the statutes of the state.¹⁸ Spinoza went on to enumerate the advan- tages of the Hebrews’ theocratic model but stressed the corrosive influenceofthe priestsand Levites in its actualization, aclear jab at his owncountry’sCalvinist

 See Adam Sutcliffe, “The Philosemitic Moment?Judaism and Republicanism in Seventeenth- Century European Thought,” in Philosemitism in History,eds.Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,2011): 67– 90;Miriam Bodian, “The Bib- lical ‘Jewish Republic’ and the Dutch ‘New ’ in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Thought,” He- braic Political Studies 1:2(2006): 186–202.  John Locke, ALetter ConcerningToleration (London: Awnsham Churchill, 1690), 39.  Ibid., and see, for example, Allan Arkush, and the Enlightenment (Al- bany, NY:SUNY Press, 1994), 252–3; on political Hebraism in Locke,see also Fania Oz-Salzber- ger, “The Political Thought of John Locke and the SignificanceofPolitical Hebraism,” Hebraic Political Studies 1(2006): 568–92.  BenedictusSpinoza,Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Jonathan Israel and trans. Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,2007), 74. 124 Ofri Ilany establishment.Heevenwentsofar as to claim that God himself established the clerics’ rule to chastise His people following the sin of the Golden Calf.¹⁹ Spinoza’smultifarious impact on the Enlightenment’sRepublic of Letters has been extensivelyinvestigated.²⁰ His twentieth-century commentators are at odds as to whether his account ought to be read as awholesale negation of He- brew theocracy or as an ambivalent – or even favorable – one.²¹ Be that as it may, in Spinoza’stime, Hebrew theocracywas being reevaluated in away that would sever this term from its earlier meanings within the Christian tradition.²² In the writingsofDeists and radical Enlightenment authors, theocratic rule went from being avaunted humanistic ideal to being apolitical slur.Assworn ene- mies of the on the one hand,and of the Old Testament on the other, these writers considered theocracy the worst of all possibleregimes,one in which the state was abandoned to the hands of corrupt clerics.²³ Following attacks in the 1730s by anti-clerical and Desist writers, European scholars began composingapologies of theocracy.²⁴ Prominent among these texts was TheDivine Legation of Moses,published in 1737 by the English bishop William Warburton (1698–1779). In the book, Warburton claims that God himself established theocracy to deter the Israelites from practicing idol worship. Be- cause the Israelites were used to Pharaonic rule in Egypt,heexplained, God

 Ibid., 226.  On German reactions to Spinoza, see Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philoso- phy, , and Human ,1750 – 1790 (Oxfordand New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2013), 690 – 703; Willi Goetschel, Spinoza’sModernity:Mendelssohn,Lessing, and Heine (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,2004), 147– 69; MenachemLorberbaum, “Spinoza’sTheological-Political Problem,” in Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in EarlyModern Political Thought,eds.Gordon J. Schochet,Fania Oz-Salzberger, and Meirav Jones (: Shalem Press: 2008): 167–88;David Bell, Spinoza in Germanyfrom1670tothe AgeofGoethe (London: University of London, 1984).  See, for example, RichardPopkin, “Spinozaand the Three Impostures,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions,eds.Edwin Curley and Pierre-FrançoisMoreau(Leiden, New York, and Købnhaven: E.J. Brill, 1991): 347–58;Theo Verbeek, “Spinoza on Theocracyand ,” in EverythingConnects:InConferencewith RichardH.Popkin. Essays in His Honour,eds. James E. Forceand David S. Katz (Leiden: Brill, 1999): 325–38;Ronald Beiner,Civil Religion: ADialogue in the HistoryofPolitical Philosophy(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2010), 133–40.  See Ernst Michael Dörrfuß, Mose in den Chronikbüchern (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994), 28–29.  Foradetailed survey,see Reiner Hülsewiesche, “Theokratie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, eds. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer (Basel: Schwabe &Co., 1984), vol. 10:1075 – 80.  Wolfgang Hübener, “Die verlorene Unschuld der Theokratie,” in Taubes,ed., Religionstheor- ie und Politische Theologie, vol. 3: 29–64,here at 55–6. Christian Images of the JewishState 125 took on the title of alocal deity,ruling over Judah.²⁵ Theocracy thus transposed : instead of monarchs becomingdeities, the deity became amonarch.²⁶ Eighteenth-centuryEnglish texts dealingwith the Hebrew state tended to follow the conventions of the Renaissance-Baroque Respublica Judaica tradition, the chronologicalperiodization of the different forms of Israelite governance in accordancewith astructure originating in Aristotle’s Politics. This traditional scheme divided the period between the birth of Abraham and the Babylonian exile into four epochs: patriarchyinthe pre-Mosaic period; republic or theocracy duringthe time of Mosesand Joshua; duringthe time of the Judges; and monarchyfrom Saul to the destruction of the First Temple.²⁷ As Ishow later in this article, this periodizationwas maintained in manymid-to-lateeighteenth- century texts. The rise of Enlightenment-erahistorical-ethnographic criticism, however,shifted the political characterization of the Hebrew state, adding new elements to the debate.

The Image of MosesasLawgiverinMichaelis

JohannDavid Michaelis was the leading Bible scholar of eighteenth-century Ger- many. His Mosaisches Recht (1775) crystallized anew narrative regardingthe Is- raelites’ origins.Michaelis and his followers replaced the typological interpreta- tion of the Old Testamentasasymbolorpresaging of Jesus’ arrival with a historicist interpretationthat situatedthe Hebrew people within the concrete context of an ancient oriental people. Significantly, critical-historical investiga- tion was not meanttoundermine the Bible’sauthority but rather to buttress its authenticity on new grounds.²⁸ In Michaelis’ work, the juridical-historical analysis of Mosaic lawwas inter- woven with acomprehensive debate on the Hebrew regime and the figureof Moses as apolitical personage.AsDavid Wisnerhas noted, the Enlightenment worldview prominentlyfeatured “the cult of the legislator,” who appears in con- temporary essays as ahero and afounderofthe nation.²⁹ During the course of

 William Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of aReligious Deist (London: Gyles,1738), vol. 5: 51;and see also Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment,44–5.  Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses,vol. 5: 37.  See, for example, Adam ErdmannMirus,Politica Sacra (Dresden: Zimmermann, 1717).  See also Ofri Ilany, In Search of the Hebrew People:Bible and Nation in the German Enlight- enment (Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press, 2018).  David AWisner,The Cult of the Legislator in France, 1750 –1830:AStudyinthe Political The- ology of the FrenchEnlightenment (Oxford: Foundation, 1997), 36–8. 126 Ofri Ilany the eighteenth century,however,the debate went from beingabout laws’ ration- ality and morality to centering on its efficacy. Agood legislator was one who suc- ceeded in imposing his judicial system upon his people, demonstrating political aptitude.³⁰ As noted above, prior to Michaelis, the Hebrew regime was perceivedasa stable political-philosophical model. Taking adifferent approach, Michaelis stressed the coming-into-being and the dynamism of the Hebrew state as well as the narration of the shifting relation between regime, society,and culture. In- fluenced by the figure of the enlightened legislatorinMontesquieu’s of the Laws,Michaelis fashioned Moses as apolitical genius, designing laws that suited his people’snational character,customs,and traditions. Moses himself, however,inMichaelis’sdescription, was not the subject of these national traits. As alegislator, he towered abovethe limitations of the peo- ple’snational sentiments. While the Hebrews’ beliefs and practices werecondi- tioned by national character as well as by constraints of time and space, Moses formulated his ordinances from an absolute, rational point of view.Moses, we recall, wasnot aregular Hebrew but one educated in the Egyptian kingdom. The Egyptians weredepicted as amature, prosperous people quite unlike the childish Israelites. Moses’ perspective was thus afunction of his higher vantage point: he looked over his people from the heights of the largest and most power- ful oriental , aculturefamed for its sophistication and refinement.Jan Assmann has shown that European scholars of the period presented Egypt as the fount of all oriental wisdom and the birthplace of all other oriental people’spo- litical philosophy.³¹ Thus, as scholars began to turn away from the Bible and to- ward the of otherancient peoples, alternative genealogies that soughtdifferent,pre-Mosaic sources for wisdom and religion began to appear. The sourceofwisdom was identifiedwith, among other peoples, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Chaldeans – and, of course,with the Egyptians.³² Michaelis positedtwo distinct elements as workingintandem within Mosaic law: ahigher stratum of Egyptian juridicalprinciples and alower stratum, orig- inating in customs developed in astate of natural law. Each of these realms re- quired its own interpretive toolkit,and each wastobecarefullycontextualized. The Egyptian stratum of Mosaic lawwas an edict imposed upon the Hebrews from without.Incontrast,the ancient customs could be construed through the

 Ibid., 51–5.  JanAssmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western (Cam- bridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press,1997), 94–111.  On this,see Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the (New York, NY: Atheneum, 1967), 70 – 1. Christian Images of the JewishState 127 prism of the mindset of the Arabs – who supposedlydescended from the ancient Hebrews. Ethnographic reconstruction of the Hebrews’ ancient wayoflife,based on travel descriptions by European travelers, thus served as an aid for under- standing the text.

Moses’ Farmer Republic

In Michaelis’ thought,the constitution of Moses, that Hebrew-born Egyptian scholar, was not rooted in the negation of imperial-universalEgyptian lawbut rather in its mixing [Mischung]with nomadic customs.One further notes this ten- dency to combine and assimilate opposing political elements in Michaelis’s characterization of the Hebrew constitution’scontent and goals. In his view, the two fundamental elements of the Mosaic constitution, namely, the suppres- sion of contact with other nations and the outlawingofidol worship, represented awise melding of the ideal and the practical. Moses realized the first principle through agrarian reform and the second through theocratic rule. The effort to curb mixing with other nations sprang,according to Michaelis, from afundamental principle of :the main goal of the “Israelite state” was to secure the interests and of its natal citizens. This was cou- pled by asecond goal: ensuring the Israelites’ might as acollective.Accordingto Michaelis, the entrance of foreigners into the land hindered the achievement of the first goal, but the main threat to the people’spower was the migration of in- dividuals and groups beyond the boundaries of the land.³³ Michaelis argues that Moses took two steps to stop the Israelites from inter- mingling with other peoples: first,helegislated asystem of laws meant to dis- tinguish the state’scitizens’“wayoflife” [Lebensart]from thoseofthe surround- ing peoples. To do so, he turned into lawmanyofthe Hebrews’ distinguishing customs [Gewohnheiten]. In Michaelis’sunderstanding, this was the sourceof the dietary and impurity laws, meant to discouragecommunal life with other peoples. He supported this idea with the verse “for Ithe Lordamholyand have severed youfrom other people” (Leviticus 20:26), which appears in textual proximity to the dietary laws. Thesecond step, which was intended to firmlyim- plant the Hebrews in their land, granted each head of household an estate. For Michaelis, agrarianreform, which aimed to transformthe Israelites from mi- grants to peasants, layatthe very coreofMoses’ political revolution. It was pre-

 Johann David Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1(Frankfurt a.M.: J. Gottlieb Garbe, 1775), 176 – 7. 128 Ofri Ilany ciselybecause the Israelites had been apeople without aland that their legisla- tor sought to forge an exclusive,irreversible, and reciprocal bond between them and the land they wereabout to conquer.Inthis move,each of the Israelites was to receive an estate thathewas barred from selling permanently.According to Michaelis, this land-based constellation was unknown in otherstatesduring Moses’ time, when sovereigns would regularly invite foreigners to settle uninhab- ited tracts of land. However,Michaelispointed out,itwas similar to the situation of the Teutonic tribes at theirarrival in .³⁴ Thus, in Michaelis’ work, the itinerant Hebrews become akind of national precursor of the Germanic tribes. Moreover,Michaelis uses this notion of apri- mordial political structure as ameans to criticize the absolutist state of his own time. In his view, “the goal of the state thatMoses established wasthe hap- piness of the people [die Glückligkeit des Volks], and not the ’saccomplish- ments.” Moses, then, functioned as areal father to his people – recalling the na- tion’sancient patriarchs, Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob.³⁵ Absolutist mercantilism, which subjugated the economyand society to the needsofthe monarch, wasMi- chaelis’ manifest target.Asagainst this ,heposited the model of an organ- ic-patriarchal economy, in which the society as awhole functions as an extended household and acts for the greater .³⁶ In Enlightenment-era social theory,anagricultural lifestyle was deemed more advanced than that of nomadic herding. One findsinmanyGerman essays on the Hebrew state the idea that the course of Hebrew history featured dynamic sociopolitical development.³⁷ Just as the history of humanity wasdepicted as a gradual development from barbarism to political and cultural organization, He- brew history was portrayedasunfolding in aseries of stations along the people’s Bildung. Historicalprogress took place in the transition between social stages of development,from to herdingtoagriculture and then to commerce.³⁸ Importantly, the discussion of peasants’ legal and economic standingwithin the state alsotouched on contemporary issues. The question of agrarian reform was on the agenda in German states as earlyasthe 1760s, becoming

 Ibid, 177.  Ibid.  See for instanceHelen Liebel, Enlightened Bureaucracyversus EnlightenedDespotism in Baden 1750 –1792(Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society,1965), 9.  See Ilany, In Search of the HebrewPeople, 59–62.  Ronald L. Meek, Social Scienceand the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1976); John Greville AgardPocock, Barbarism and Religion: , Savagesand Em- pires (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 99–110. Christian Images of the 129 acentral topic of discussion among the educated classes.³⁹ Ruralpoverty and backwardness prompted clerics, bureaucrats, and scholars to discuss the better- ment and education of the peasantry.Fierce criticism was levelled at the eastern Junkers,who still employed the infamouspolicy of peasant smallholding expro- priation[Bauernlegen].⁴⁰ In the lastquarter of the eighteenth century,the idea thatonlythrough the modernization of its agricultural farming structure and the acculturation of the peasants could acivil society emerge in the German municipalities began to gain ground among the educated classes. As Rudolf Vierhaushas shown, significant efforts wereput into the foundation of commoner and peasant “patriotic societ- ies,” meant to transformthe peasants into citizens [Bürger]. Formanyeducated members of the bourgeoisie, onlyawell-established of freecitizenswould feel patriotic pride and fight for its homeland.⁴¹ It is against this background that we oughttoread the portion of Mosaisches Recht dealing with the “ways of life” [Lebensarten], upon which the Israelite state wasallegedlydependent.Inthis sizeable section, Michaelisjuxtaposed the structure of Hebrew society to that of contemporary Germany. UnlikeGerman society,hestated, the social organization of the Israelites was not basedona class of independent craftsmen [Handwerker]. Thus, the Hebrew state had no real citizen class [Bürgerstand].⁴² Michaelis’sanalysis of the Mosaic lawdetected no division of labor among freeborn Israelis. In fact,this was the case in all of the Bible’shistorical narratives. Such asituation was expresslyset up by Moses: by giving every male memberofthe people ahereditary estate,tobepassed on to his descendants, the legislatorsoughttoprevent them from practicing anyoc- cupation but agriculture.⁴³ By the sametoken, Moses tried to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, commerce with other lands. The autarkic ideal and opposition to anyeconomybasedonforeign com- mercewere, yetagain, acontemporaryconcern. One notes these themes in es- says by other contemporary writers,among them (1744 – 1803).⁴⁴ Like Michaelis, Herder claimedthat, of necessity,externalcom-

 See Werner Troßbach, Bauern, 1648–1806 (Munich:OldenbourgVerlag,1993), 47– 50.  Walther Hubatsch, Das Zeitalter des Absolutismus:1600 –1789 (Braunschweig: Wester- mann, 1975), 186.  Rudolf Vierhaus,Germanyinthe AgeofAbsolutism (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20.  Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1: 179.  Ibid., 180.  See for instanceHarold Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies:Cultural Identity in Franceand Ger- many, 1750 –1914(Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2004), 24–5. 130 Ofri Ilany mercebrought about agrowinginfluencefrom abroad,encouraged citizens to leave their lands, and finallyaccustomed the people to luxuries, thus throttling their bellicose spirit.⁴⁵ AccordingtoHerder,the citizens of the Israelite state re- nounced luxury and supplied their ownnecessities;traders enjoyed no special privileges; and craftsmanship, handledinthe houses of the rich by slaves, was deemed alowlyoccupation. Therefore, no distinction between peasants, citizens, and noblesexisted among the Israelites. Discussion of Moses’ agrarian law[leges agrariae]appeared as earlyasthe seventeenth century in Hebraists’ work. Cunaeus, who explicitlybased his book De Republica Hebraeorum (1617)onMaimonidesand even praised the me- dieval Jewishsage, is an excellent example of this trend. Following the Jewish philosopher,the Dutch Hebraist stressed the fact that the lawofthe Jubilee, which ordered the return of land to its original owner every fifty years, prevented the acquisition of large swaths of land by asingle person.⁴⁶ He also claimedthat the Mosaicconstitution managedtodistance citizens from trade, laying the groundwork for an agrarianrepublic. In his opinion, these agrarianlawsresult- ed in stability,thus contributing more than anyother regime to the ideal society depicted in the sixth chapter of Aristotle’s Politics. While Michaelis made no explicit reference to Cunaeus, it is likelythat he was influenced by the latter’stake on agrarian law. Michaelisargued that agri- culturewas the sole basis on which Moses sought to construct the Israelite state, understood by bothscholars as asmall-landowner peasant republic.⁴⁷ Cel- ebrating the model of freepeasantsloyal to their homeland,Michaelisheld that Moses’ agrarian state safeguarded not simplyits citizens’ loyalty but also their equalityand social cohesion. The distinguishedstronglybetween the aristocratand the peasant but,asthe Hebrews had no such division, the word ‘peasant’ [Bauer]was not aderogatory one in the Hebrew political culture. The Israelites knew neither lowlypeasantry nor higharistocracy:all wereof equal stature. mayhaveexperiencedstratification by virtue of status and wealth, but there was no estate of hereditary aristocracy that enjoyed priv- ileges abovethe rest of the people. This structure endowed the Hebrew state with a “tendency to democracy” [Hang zurDemocratie].⁴⁸ Michaelis certainlystopped short of positing Moses’ agrarianlaw as amodel for the German state.Throughout his discussion of the matter,and in keeping

 Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1, 183–9.  See Jonathan R. Ziskind, “Petrus Cunaeus on Theocracy, Jubilee and the Latifundia,” The Jewish QuarterlyReview,New Series,68:4(1978): 235–54;Nelson, The HebrewRepublic, 57–87.  Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1: 192.  Ibid., 163. Christian Imagesofthe Jewish State 131 with his work’sgeneral system, he scrupulouslydistinguishedbetween Moses’ and modernlegislators’ starting points. However,itishard to overlook the fact that he used Moses’ politics to castigate the social institutions of the German . Against the backdrop of the contemporary debate regardingthe peasants’ civilbetterment,hepresented amodel of acivil society not based on the urban classes but constructed as an agrarian republic. The depiction of the Hebrew regime as a “peasant republic” [Ackerbaurepu- blik]was assimilated into Germanpolitical discourse via, among otherchannels, Michaelis’sinfluence. Moses’ agrarianlawsalso inspired other important polit- ical thinkers of the period, especiallyJustusMöser (1720 –1794). In an extensive discussion on the subject of defense, included in his Patriotische Phantasien (1775), Möser claimed thatMoses, “the great legislator,” put in place the best legal system to safeguard liberty and property.Nonetheless, he presented Moses’ political model differentlythan Michaelis did. While the latter sawthe distribution of land to citizensasthe basis of the Hebrew state, Möser stressed that Moses strove to make all land the property of God, i.e. of the theocratic state.

Hebrew Theocracy in the German Enlightenment

Michaelis identifiedEgyptian traces in both Moses’ agrarian lawand other legal fundamentsofthe Old Testament.Heclaimed that Egypt was the model of an autarkic state that did not trade with foreign lands. As Jonathan Hess has shown, Michaelis was censuringthe of his contemporaryWestern European and preachinganautarkic politics, that is, aself-sustain- ing state model.⁴⁹ Egypt,heclaimed,did not seek to conquer foreign lands but rather based its residents’ income on the tilling of their own lands. Michaelis, in fact,bemoanedthe fact that his contemporaries wereunaware of the Egyptians’ advanced legal philosophy, which he thought could aid in modern politics. Michaelis recognized Egyptian influenceinMoses’ political strategy [Strata- gem], namely,the methodsheusedtomake his ideas areality – by which he meant the wayMoses combined religion and politics.Harnessing his political know-how,thus Michaelis, Moses used his people’sreligious beliefs to put them on the road to sustainable freedom.⁵⁰ Thismarked the birth of aregime

 Jonathan Hess, Germans,Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Havenand London: Yale University Press, 2002), 64.  Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1: 36. 132 Ofri Ilany identifiedasa“theocracy”–as alreadynoted, aloadedterm in Enlightenment political thought. PresentingtheocracyinMosaisches Recht,Michaelis wrote that the term “has been discussed manytimes in the past but has never been properlyunder- stood.”⁵¹ His readingofitfits his general understanding of Mosaic law. More than as aform of regime, Michaelis regarded the establishment of God’srule as the main political move Moses had taken to eradicate idol worship, which had been so deeplyrooted in the people. By crowningJehovah as king over the peo- ple, Moses made idol worship arevolt against the monarchy:

Moses represented this matter to the Israelitesinyet another point of view,which givesit peculiar importance in their polity.Bytheir own free consent,hemade God their king; and thus idolatry became adirect rebellion against the state. God was the founder of their state, havingdeliveredthem out of Egypt and led them by works of wonder into his own sacred land. He thereby acquired all possible right to be their peculiar sovereignthat anyman could have had.⁵²

The invention of theocracy,likeMoses’ other moves, was intended to overcome the Hebrews’ recalcitrance and limited . Knowing his people intimately, Moses understood that they would not be able to comprehend the idea of an ab- stract God.⁵³ He therefore described as the godoftheIsraelites but never deniedthe existenceofother gods. Michaelis further claimed that the command- ment of circumcision aimed to turn the Israelites into Jehovah’s “kingdom of priestsand holynation”–like Egyptian , who werealso circumcised as part of the dedication to their god. Moses even declaredCanaan as the land holytothe godJehovah, taking advantage of the fact that worship of that deity was alreadybeing practiced there. The religious characteristics of Mosaic lawwerethus subjugated to the lawgiver’spragmatic political considerations, and the Hebrew religion wasdepicted as akind of state-. As historian Ernst Michael Dörrfuß has shown, this description of the He- brew regime was an answer to the Deists’ and ’ attacks on theocratic rule.⁵⁴ ForMichaelis, since Josephus, the Jewish state had been incorrectlyclas- sified aspecial priestly regime. The storied theocracy was nothing but acamou- flage – anational rite or anationalreligion enacted by the legislatortoenable

 Ibid., 165; and see also:Dörrfuss,Mose in den Chronikbüchern, 30 –32; Rudolf Smend, Die Mittedes Alten Testaments:Exegetische Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2002), 57–8.  Johann D. Michaelis,Commentaries on the Laws of Moses,trans.Alexander Smith (London: Rivington,1814), 188.  Ibid.  Dörrfuss,Mose in den Chronikbücher,32. Christian Images of the JewishState 133 the establishment of aunified, autarkic state. By establishingthe communal worship of Jehovah, Moses wasable to transcend the divisions among the tribes, bringingthem together under asingle political rubric. In Michaelis’saccount, the Hebrew republic was made up of twelve tribes, each of which operated in accordancewith its owngoals but which wereunifiedthrough ashared cove- nant.Michaelis compared this structure to the Troglodytes’,Arabs’,Scots’ and ancient Germans’ tribalchieftaincies, as well as to the Swiss confederacy, wherethirteen cantons wereunified into one republic but were allowed to wagewar independently. He called the tribes’ council a Landtag – like the Ger- man Reich’srepresentative assembly.⁵⁵ And he further statedonthe subject:

Amongtwelverepublics connected with each other,jealousies could not but sometimes arise; and lesser interests thereby stand in the wayofthe general welfare.The examples of Holland and Switzerland authorize us to believethat such would be the case; and I need not appeal in confirmation of it to the constitution of the German , which, from the inequality of its constituent parts, is perpetuallydistracted by divisions,and often the sceneofintestine hostilities.Itwill then be granted that this jealousy was at anyratepoliticallyprobable.⁵⁶

Michaelis identifiesthe main weakness of the federative Hebrew structure as the power imbalance of the different political units, namely,the tribes. This, he held, was well-known to everyone familiar with German Reich politics. Asimilar com- parisonappeared in abook by the Helmerstadthistorian Julius August Remer (1736 – 1802), Handbuch der algemeinen Geschichte. It contained few original ideas but was publishedinmultiple editions, and it allows us to follow the changingimageofthe Hebrew regime. In the first editions of his book,published in the 1780s, Remer characterized the Hebrew regime as aristocratic.⁵⁷ In later ed- itions, however,basing himself on Michaelis, he portrayed the regime as aunion of twelve tribes under Jehovah’srule.⁵⁸ It seems that this spotlighting of the He- brew state’sfederative structure was not incidental. Juxtaposingthe Hebrew the- ocracy to the political organization of the ancient Germans, Remer claimed that the German nations’ [die Deutschen Nationen]form of government was identical to that of the Hebrews, the sole distinguishing factor being that the former did not receive acode of written lawfrom their gods.⁵⁹

 Michaelis,MosaischesRecht,vol. 1, 258.  Michaelis,Commentaries on the Laws of Moses,237.  Julius August Remer,Handbuch der allgemeinen Geschichte vol. 1(Braunschweig: Fürstl. Waisenhaus-Buchhandlung,1783), 54.  Remer,Handbuchder allgemeinen Geschichte vol. 1(Braunschweig:Schul, 1802),102.  Ibid. 134 Ofri Ilany

The use of the Old Testament as apolitical model was one of the most im- portant aspects of German Bible reading in the eighteenthcentury.German his- torians and political thinkers extracted central elements in the Hebrew Bible to leveragefor their purposes apolitical system integratedwith religion; aconser- vative constitution basedonthe people’sorganic traditions; and afederative regime maintaining the liberty of its constituent tribes. PoliticalHebraism con- stituted one of the means they employed to integrate and fashion apolitical identity in the German-speaking space.

Conclusions: Old-New Nation

Eighteenth-centuryGerman biblical scholarship pursued atwo-prongedproject: to reform methodsofBible research, particularlythrough the historicization of interpretive methods, and to reassert the of the Bible in responsetoat- tacks by the radical Enlightenment.The power of theologyfaculties waned, and fields of studythat had earlier been undertheir jurisdiction weretaken up by other faculties. From auxiliary subjects in support of , history and phi- lologybecame independentfields of knowledge.Subsequently,evenquestions pertainingtothe Bible were increasingly addressed through the use of historical and juridical tools,whereby biblical events wereexplained in circumstantial and natural terms. Michaelis and his students strovetodemonstrate thatthe Hebrews’ customs and laws werenot uniquebut rather had developed in anatural manner, in a similar fashion to those of other nomadic peoples. Yet, it is not the case that Mi- chaelis viewed biblical lawashaving merelyarchival value and nothing more. In fact,the German scholar’sinterpretation oscillates between the biblical world and European society of his own time. In the comparisons and analogies he draws, biblical customs are paralleled with European ones. Biblical lawisnot necessarilyinterpreted as an “archeologicalremnant” of adifferent time and place; the dilemmasraised by biblical laware at times debated as issues on con- temporary European and Germansociety’sagenda. Biblical serves here as amedium for debating timelyquestions; investigation into Mosaic lawbe- comes asort of debate on social reform in which Moses is construed as siding with enlightened social reformers. In fact,Mosaic lawistouted as the model of alegal codex perfectlyadapted to the “national ” of its subjects. Michaelis’sportrait of the Hebrew regime is mainlydrawn from earlier texts dealing with this subject – from Josephus to Warburton. However,hestands apart from his predecessorsinhis portrayal of Moses as the quintessential polit- ical reformer.Inthis understanding,Moses undertook to transformthe Hebrews Christian Imagesofthe Jewish State 135 from apopulation of lawless migrants into asedentary people whose livesare organized around agriculture, , and monotheism. Although national identity was not Michaelis’sfocal point,nationaland eth- nic categories do feature in his writing.Asopposedtoearlier Enlightenment legal interpreters,hecontendedthatthe substance of the state was not the lawbut rather the people. Under the influenceofMontesquieu, Michaelis makes ethnographical distinctionsbetween various peoples, taking into account local variables – aboveall, climate.Yet these distinctionsservetoindicate the relativity of all laws and to demonstrate that they are suited to the conditions of their legislation. Every legal system is preceded by the entity that establishes and cultivates it: the people itself. And, as much as he tries to identify the char- acteristics of an ‘Oriental mentality’ in the Mosaic law, Michaelis seeks to deci- pher in this lawthe of national mentality or,more generally, the traces of its people.