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Did The Hebrew Bible
Give Birth To Democracy?

Scholars begin to challenge view that the rise of democratic values
is attributable solely to Western secular thought.

$27.95), details the ways in which 17th-
century British and Dutch thinkers parsed
Eric Herschthal
the Hebrew Bible and even rabbinic com-
New York Jewish Week
mentary to justify ideas like toleration
and the legitimacy of democratic rule. The
hen the Texas Board of
idea that the rise of democracy was born
Education recently voted
from secularization, Nelson added, "is
in favor of a proposal that
deeply misleading?'
would emphasize the religious origins of
Of course scholars are hardly arguing
democracy in high-school curricula, many
that religion has a role to play in political
liberals were outraged. It seemed to fly in
institutions — either then or now Rather,
the face of the long-held assumption that
they are giving a much
Western political ideas
more nuanced picture
— toleration, the
into how our political
separation of church
institutions developed
and state, indeed the
over time. In fact,
genius of democratic
many of them go great
rule itself — was
lengths to show how
born from the steady
strongly held religious
secularization of the
beliefs, rather than a
West. It was the age of
lack of them, spawned
Enlightenment, after
the idea of separating
all, that produced
religion from politics.
America's great exper-
It was, in effect, mutu-
iment in democracy.
ally beneficial to keep
But in recent
church and state apart.
years a small but
Protestants, for
significant number
instance, emphasized
of respected scholars
that faith was to be
have begun challeng-
arrived at individu-
ing this view, arguing
ally — and not medi-
instead that several
ated by clergy or the
fundamental tenets
In The Hebrew Republic, Eric Nelson
church. It stood to
argues that 17th-century thinkers
of modern political
reason then that if
relied on rabbinic interpretations of
theory stem explic-
priests shouldn't tell
the Bible to inform their ideas.
itly from religious
you what to believe,
ideas. What's more,
then certainly politi-
they are increasingly
cians shouldn't either. "That would mean
focusing on the century that preceded the
that we're imposing our views of God on
Enlightenment — a period sometimes
someone else said Gordon Schochet, a
called "the Biblical Century" — in which
professor of political science at Rutgers
many seminal thinkers from Hobbes to
Harrington to Locke turned to the Hebrew University, who co-edits the journal
Hebraic Political Studies.
Bible for insight.
The journal, originally funded by the
"My view is that if we take the influ-
Shalem Center in Jerusalem and launched
ence [of the Hebrew Bible] seriously, it
will challenge the traditional story we tell',' five years ago, grew out of the conviction
that there was enough scholarly interest in
said Eric Nelson, a professor of political
the Jewish influence on political theory to
science at Harvard. His new book, The
justify a regular periodical, Schochet said.
Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the
In 2004, the Shalem Center announced a
Transformation of European Political
call for papers for a conference on political
Thought (Harvard University Press;

W

Hebraism and "the enthusiastic response
convinced us there was a need for a jour-
nal.... It was an attempt to pull together all
these different efforts?'
Indeed, it would be hard to identify
any one reason for the recent focus on
religion's role in political theory, Jewish or
otherwise. Naturally, many scholars point
to current events, from the challenge polit-
ical Islam has posed to Western democra-
cies to the best-selling atheist manifestoes
published in response. But changes have
occurred within academia that predates
the latest cultural trends, too, scholars say.

political Hebraism. That term, which is
the focus of Nelson's book, came into being
about two decades ago. While scholars of
the late-16th and 17th century have long
known that political thinkers — almost
all of them Christians — had an abiding
interest in Hebrew texts, they did not spend
much time thinking about the influence
this might have had on their political ideas.
But when widely admired intellectuals
like Michael Walzer, of the Institute of
Advanced Study in Princeton, began taking
these ideas seriously, skeptics began taking
notice.

"I do think that Hebraic arguments,
particularly about monarchy, played
an important role in the ideological
origins of the American Revolution
— most spectacularly in [Thomas]
Paine's Common Sense." - Eric Nelson

The erosion of Marxist thought, which
dominated scholarly discourse in the 1960s
and '70s, has allowed scholars to take reli-
gion more seriously without being scoffed
at, for instance. The practice of "histori-
cism" — or, reading documents strictly
within the context that they were written
— has also encouraged scholars to look
more closely at biblical references in classic
political texts that have long been ignored.
More recently, scholars have also been
rewarded for working across disciplines,
such as when political scientists with an
interest in Jewish thought, say, explore the
connections between religion and politics.
"There's always been a ghetto-like men-
tality to Jewish studies:' said Schochet,
"like, 'Oh, that's where they do the Jew
thing!" But he recognized a change of
attitude in recent years and decided to
capitalize on the work of disparate schol-
ars coalescing around a similar theme:

"For many, many years scholars paid
a lot of attention to Aristotle and Cicero
and the references to the Bible were deco-
rative, pro forma," Walzer said. In order
to show the lengthy history of Jewish
thought on politics, however, he began
editing a four-volume edition called
The Jewish Political Tradition, published
by Yale University Press, which began
appearing in 2000. It collected critical
Jewish texts dealing with political rule,
many of which have formed the back-
bone for political scientists' recent work
in political Hebraism.
Until very recently, however, political
Hebraism was mostly discussed among
Jewish scholars alone. Political scientists,
for their part, tended to downplay its
significance, emphasizing the influence
of secular Greek and Roman thought

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July 1 • 2010

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