Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

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King David and Uriah the Hittite in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes by Thomas S. Schrock

October 27, 1992

The most neglected aspect of Hobbes's attempt to solve the theological political problem is his reliance on divine punishment of the iniquitous sovereign. By turning that matter exclusively over to God or? what comes to the same thing? by immunizing such a sovereign against accountability to his subjects, Hobbes radicalizes a Christian motif and fragments what for Aristotle had been an integral political whole. This essay is about that fragmentation, with special attention to the text in which Hobbes makes his intention partially clear? his discussion of King David's murder of Uriah the Hittite.

The Bible and Intra-Jewish Politics: Early Rabbinic Portraits of King David

April 2, 1991

This essay explores some of the concerns which might have influenced early rabbinic reconstructions of the private life and public career of King David. David and his monarchy were treated as vehicles for constitutional polemic, transposed into symbols of a particular type of ruler and regime. Three specific instances recorded in the Babylonian Talmud which lend themselves to political interpretation are discussed. When linked to allied early rabbinic dicta on the exercise and distribution of political power, they illustrate separate facets of what appears to have been an integrated constitutional doctrine. That doctrine is outlined and the purposes to which it was put are demonstrated.