What do Milton, the Talmud and the Coronation have in common?
Debating the Hebrew republic in the 17th Century
There has been disquiet in Britain this week over the arrest of anti-monarchist protesters at King Charles’s coronation. Although the police have since said that they will not be pursuing charges against those who were arrested, their action has nevertheless been characterised as an assault on free speech and as a political attempt to silence those campaigning for a parliamentary republic.
Demands to replace the monarchy with a republican government in England are not new and by historic standards the current debate in Britain is very mild indeed. The new King’s namesake, the first King Charles, was beheaded in 1649, during the Civil Wars between Royalists and Parliamentarians. For the next 11 years, for the first and only time in its history, England was a republic. (Possibly uncoincidentally, it was during these eleven years that Jews were first allowed to return to England, having been expelled from the country by Edward I in 1290).
The English Civil War took place against the backdrop of a European-wide intellectual debate about the nature of politics and the ideal form of government. During the 16th century the role of religion in political thought had gradually diminished but it returned to the fore in this debate, largely as a result of the Protestant desire to literally interpret the Bible and understand its original intentions.
The thinkers in the debate, who included some of Europe’s most renowned theologians, philosophers and writers, treated the Bible as a political work, depicting the ideal society towards which the Israelites were expected to aim, a society that was to be constituted according to God’s design. They discussed the purpose of the modern state, the nature of the ideal political constitution, religious toleration, freedom of worship, personal autonomy and similar topics. The 16th century theologian Petreus Cunaeus dubbed this model society The Hebrew Republic.
One of the chief questions was which form of government was the most theologically acceptable? Did God want the world to be governed by kings, or was republicanism the divine ideal? The answer was to be found in the Bible, but exactly what that answer was depended upon one’s point of view.
Instrumental in the debate was a small group of scholars who we now call Christian Hebraists; experts in the Hebrew language of the Bible and its interpretation in the later rabbinic tradition. It was they who provided the translations from Hebrew and Aramaic that the less erudite would rely on in shaping their arguments.
The debate as to whether God preferred monarchy to republicanism hinged primarily on two apparently conflicting passages in the Bible. One came from Deuteronomy, the other from the Book of Samuel. The one from Samuel supported those who argued in favour of republican government. Although the elderly prophet Samuel had ended up anointing two kings, Saul and David, he had made no bones about what he really thought of the monarchy. He told the people what he thought when they had asked him to give them a king ‘to judge us, like all the nations’ (1 Samuel 8,5). His words resonate even today, though they are more applicable to dictators and autocrats than to kings:
This will be rule of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons for himself and place them in his chariots and as his horsemen, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will appoint to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his servants. He will tithe your seeds and your vineyards and give it to his officials and servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and he will put them to his work. He will tithe your flocks, and you will be his slaves. (1 Samuel 8.11–17.)
When Wilhelm Schickard, the Professor of Hebrew at the University of Tubingen wrote his legal treatise The Hebrew King’s Law, he marshalled all the relevant biblical, Talmudic and rabbinic sources that he could find on the subject. Like all monarchists at the time he believed that the mandate for the institution of royalty came from the other key biblical passage, that of Deuteronomy. At first sight it does seem to advocate the rule of kings:
When you come to the land the Lord your God gives you and have taken possession of it and settled there, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us’, you may (or you shall) appoint a king whom the Lord your God chooses. (Deuteronomy 17.14–15).
The problem with this passage is that it hinges on the correct translation of the verb that means either ‘you may appoint’ or ‘you shall appoint’. According to the opinion of one rabbi in the Talmud, this passage indicates that the Israelites had a duty to appoint a king when they left the wilderness and entered the Land of Israel. The French scholar Claudius Salmasius, who had written an impassioned defence of the monarchy after the execution of England’s Charles I, seized on this view in his book Defensio Regia. He was in no doubt that the Bible demanded that the Israelites appoint a king.
But Salmasius, who had based his book on the sources that Shickard had identified, was selective in those that he used. The same Talmudic passage contained a second opinion put forward by a different rabbi. The passage in Deuteronomy, this rabbi said, did indeed give the Israelites permission to appoint a king. However, permission was not the same as obligation. They were allowed to appoint a king without contravening divine law. This didn’t mean that they were obliged to do so. Indeed, it would be better if they didn’t.
In 1651, John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, wrote a detailed riposte to Salmasius. He called his book Pro populo Anglicano defensio and laid out a systematic argument to support the view that republican government was divinely mandated. Also relying on Shickard’s work, he cited the second opinion in the Talmud, that the Israelites were allowed to appoint a monarch, but that they had not been obliged. It was true, argued Milton, that despite his warning to the people, Samuel had subsequently anointed two successive kings of Israel. But God had insisted that he do so because he was angry about the manner in which they had asked for a king. They had incurred divine wrath by asking for a human king so that they could be ‘like all the nations’ around them. In other words their demand for a king implied a rejection of their covenant with God. They did have had the right to choose but the way in which they expressed their choice showed that their intentions were suspect. Samuel’s lengthy warning to the Israelites about the perils of choosing a monarch was a last chance attempt to get them to change their mind.
It is unlikely that most of those actively engaged in today’s arguments know much about the debate in the 17th century. The Bible’s view on the relative merits of monarchy and republicanism in modern society are not relevant, even to most religious people. Today we appear more interested in the ethics and behaviour of governments than in their structures. But if the 17th century debate interests you it is worth taking a look at Eric Nelson’s masterly 2010 book, also called The Hebrew Republic. It is an easy to read treatment of a fascinating and, at the time, controversial subject.
Thank you for your fascinating deep dive into the history of the dialectical dance between monarchy and republicanism. It occurred to me during the recent coronation ceremonies involving both 'church and state' that Charles III's reign as a 'constitutional monarch' devoted to service is a model in sharp contrast to the role of dictator/kings like Putin and Hitler. The current global backdrop is the struggle in many nations to challenge the sole power invested in dictators even as 'the people' themselves are divided in how to generate a vibrant democracy. It reminds of Jesus' warning that "a house divided will fall."