Jacob Goren

Anarchic Elements in Proto-Judaism

The points I want to make in the communication concern some facts and trends which have developed lately in Biblical research, about the formation of the monarchy and its institutions in ancient Israel. It seems that contrary to other cultures the monarchy in Israel developed mainly through external pressure and not as an internal cultural development. Many tribal and even clanish institutions remained therefore and withstood pressure from the State and its servants, the prophets being the main agents of the struggle for survival of anti-monarchial, so to say proto-anarchial sets of beliefs and customs.
The prophets gave those beliefs a new and distinct flavour, keeping the bias against human authority by imbueing it with new contents of human values. In this form they consisted a main part of the cultural development in the Jewish commewealth of the second Temple, forming the background to the resistance to Hellenistic culture and Roman imperialism. By this, they were also influential in giving a distinct anti-authoritarian flavour to the early institutions of the ancient Christian Church. Therfore I think that these trends of ancient Biblical history should be of interest for everyone who is concerned with non-authoritarian traits in human culture.