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‘TALMUDICAL COMMONWEALTHSMEN’ AND THE RISE OF REPUBLICAN EXCLUSIVISM*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

ERIC NELSON
ERIC NELSON*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This article makes the case that modern ideological republicanism has its roots, not in Athens or Rome, but in Jerusalem. It begins from the observation that republican political theory underwent a dramatic transformation in the middle of the seventeenth century. Before 1650, republicanism had always been a ‘relative’ position: those who argued in favour of republican government did so because they believed that republics were better than monarchies for various reasons. None of them had any interest in arguing that monarchy was an illegitimate constitutional form. In the second half of the seventeenth century, however, we see for the first time the appearance of what we might call republican ‘exclusivism’, the claim that republics are the only legitimate regimes. This article argues that the ‘exclusivist’ turn was prompted by the Christian encounter with a tradition of rabbinic commentary on two chapters of the Hebrew Bible (Deut. 17 and 1 Sam. 8), according to which the Israelite request for a mortal king was regarded as an instance of the sin of idolatry. It further demonstrates that the English pamphleteers at the centre of this story – John Milton, James Harrington, and Algernon Sidney – were themselves deeply conscious of the degree to which their views had been shaped by the writings of the ‘Talmudical commonwealthsmen’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 809 - 835
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 Susanne Daub, ed., Leonardo Brunis Rede auf Nanni Strozzi: Einleitung, Edition, und Kommentar (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996), pp. 285–6. See the analysis of this speech in James Hankins, ‘Rhetoric, history, and ideology: the civic panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni’, in James Hankins, ed., Renaissance civic humanism (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 151–78. Hankins is also to be credited with having first noticed the turn toward ‘exclusivism’ in seventeenth-century republican thought. I am greatly indebted to his unpublished essay ‘The transformation of the republican idea in the Renaissance’, forthcoming in the proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Conference on Translation, the History of Political Thought, and the History of Concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) (CUNY Graduate Center, September, 2005).

2 The classical text which most closely approximates such a position is Cicero's De officiis, but even here the theoretical possibility of an acceptable monarchy is retained (see, for example, De officiis i.64–5, iii.84–6). Moreover, Cicero offers an unreserved endorsement of Aristotelian constitutional analysis in De republica i.25 (although most of this text was lost until the nineteenth century, this passage was well known to early modern readers because it is quoted in Augustine, City of God ii.21). For a recent discussion of Cicero's anti-monarchism, see Peter Stacey, Roman monarchy and the Renaissance prince (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 23–30.

3 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (rev. edn, Cambridge, 1996), pp. 227–8.

4 Ibid., p. 282.

5 Ibid.

6 Robert Filmer, ‘Observations concerning the originall of government’, in Johann Sommerville, ed., Patriarcha and other writings (Cambridge, 1991), p. 196.

7 Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to church and state, in Mr. Hobbes's book, entitled Leviathan (Oxford, 1676), p. 74.

8 Hobbes, Opera omnia philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia, ed. William Molesworth, iii (London, 1841), pp. 294–8. Hobbes cuts similar material from ch. 38, where the English version records that God was king in Israel ‘till in the days of Samuel they rebelled, and would have a mortall man for their King, after the manner of other Nations’ (cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, p. 309; Hobbes, Opera omnia, ed. Molesworth, iii, p. 324). He also tellingly alters a passage in ch. 36: where the English version has ‘after the people of the Jews, had rejected God, that he should not reign over them’, the Latin substitutes the vague phrase ‘after the Israelites had relieved themselves of the divine yoke’ (postquam autem jugum Dei excusserant Israelitae) (cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, p. 294; Hobbes, Opera omnia, ed. Molesworth, iii, p. 306). Hobbes did not, however, remove all traces of this earlier reading. See, for example, Hobbes, Opera omnia, ed. Molesworth, iii, p. 95. My argument assumes (as I think we must) that Tricaud is mistaken in his view that the Latin Leviathan was written before the English. See Hobbes, Léviathan, ed. and trans. François Tricaud (Paris, 1971). It is also worth noting that Hobbes's discussion in ch. 35 of the English Leviathan is itself milder than the analogous discussion in De cive (1642). There, Hobbes had defended his gloss on 1 Sam. 8 by citing an inflammatory passage from Josephus: ‘It is also the teaching of Judas of Galilee, mentioned at Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.2, in these words: Judas of Galilee was the founder of the fourth sect of seekers of wisdom. They agree with the Pharisees in everything except that they burn with a constant passion for liberty, believing that God alone is to be regarded as Lord and Prince’ (Hobbes, De cive, ed. Richard Tuck and trans. Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 1998), p. 192). Even here, however, Hobbes makes clear that he understands Judas's position to refer only to Israelite governance.

9 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, pp. 280–2. Hobbes's position is that, while God is lord of the universe in general by virtue of his power, he was only the civil sovereign over his ‘peculiar’ people, Israel, by virtue of covenant. This is also Spinoza's view. See Spinoza, A theologico-political treatise and A political treatise, ed. and trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York, NY, 1951), pp. 219–26, 237–8.

10 See the rich analysis of Christian exegesis on these verses in Annette Weber-Möckl, ‘Das Recht des Königs, der über euch herrschen soll’: Studien zu 1 Sam 8, 11ff. in der Literatur der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 1986). I reach different conclusions from Dr Weber-Möckl in several important respects, but I am greatly indebted to her scholarship. See also the able summary in Diego Quaglioni, ‘L'iniquo diritto: “Regimen regis” e “ius regis” nell'esegesi di 1 Sam. 8, 11–17 e negli “specula principum” del tardo Medioevo’, in Angela De Benedictis, ed., Specula principum, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 117 (Frankfurt, 1999), pp. 209–42.

11 ‘Quaeri potest cur displicuit populus Deo, cum regem desideravit, cum hic inveniatur esse permissus? Sed intelligendum est merito non fuisse secundum voluntatem Dei, quia hoc fieri non praecepit, sed desiderantibus permisit’. See J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxiii (Paris, 1844–91). Cf. Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum v.26. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

12 ‘Habitatores terrae constituunt sibi regem contra Dei sententiam.’

13 John of Salisbury, Policraticus viii.18. See John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. and trans. Cary Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 201–2.

14 Aquinas, De reg. 1.5–6. See On the government of rulers: de regimine principum, ed. and trans. James M. Blythe (Philadelphia, PA, 1997). Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae ia iiae q. cv a.1.

15 A. H. T. Levi, ed., Collected works of Erasmus (86 vols., Toronto, 1986), xxvii, pp. 226–7. Another version of this position is found in Henry Ainsworth, Annotations upon the five bookes of Moses, the booke of psalmes, and the song of songs, or canticles (London, 1627). He writes in his gloss on Deut. 17:14: ‘Thus God, who had set Judges over his people, permitteth them also to have a king, if they saw it so meet, and would; and should doe this thing after an holy and orderly manner. But when they sought it amisse, it displeaseth the Lord, 1 Sam. 8.5, 6, 7 and 12.12, 17, 19. Then God gave them a king in his anger, and took him away in his wrath, Hos. 13.11.’ As we will see, Ainsworth's account is influenced in part by Maimonides.

16 I use the term ‘Augustinian’ here to denote the view that all magistrates rule by divine providence, and that there is accordingly a generalized Christian duty of obedience. It is important to note, however, that Augustine himself did not gloss 1 Sam. 8 in this manner (on this, see Quaglioni, ‘L'iniquo diritto’, pp. 217–19).

17 Warren Chernaik is correct to stress that these Protestants tended to read 1 Sam. 8 through the lens of Romans 13:1–2: ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’ See Chernaik, , ‘Biblical republicanism’, Prose Studies, 23 (2000), pp. 147–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian religion, trans. John Allen (2 vols., Philadelphia, PA, 1955), ii, iv.7.

19 Bodin, Les six livres de la république, ed. Christiane Frémont, Marie-Dominique Couzinet, Henri Rochais (6 vols., Paris, 1986), i, p. 10. The English translation is taken from Jean Bodin, On sovereignty, trans. Julian Franklin (Cambridge, 1992), p. 46. A related view is that the Israelites sinned in asking that their king be chosen by Samuel instead of God. See, for example, Balthasar Hubmaier, ‘On the sword’ [1527], in Michael Baylor, ed., The radical reformation (Cambridge, 1991), p. 192.

20 Aquinas, De reg. 2.15.2. See On the government of rulers, pp. 139–40.

21 For a recent discussion of Ptolemy's republicanism, see James Blythe, ‘“Civic humanism” and medieval political thought’, in Hankins, ed., Renaissance civic humanism, pp. 30–74.

22 Josephus, Contra Apionem 2:163–8. See Josephus, The life. Against Apion, ed. and trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (Cambridge, MA, 1926).

23 Josephus, De ant. iud. 6:60. See Josephus, Jewish antiquities, ed. and trans. H. St J. Thackeray and Louis H. Feldman (8 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1930–65).

24 It would be more precise to say that Christian exegetes understood Josephus's position in this manner; Josephus himself may well have regarded Israel as a model for other nations to emulate (although he does not seem to have regarded monarchy as illicit). See, for example, De. ant. iud. 14:38, 18:6; De bello iud. 2:2.

25 See Julian Franklin, ed., Constitutionalism and resistance in the sixteenth century: three treatises by Hotman, Beza, & Mornay (New York, NY, 1969), p. 116.

26 See ibid., pp. 158–9.

27 It is worth noting that certain sixteenth-century Protestant radicals read 1 Sam. 8 (in conjunction with Hosea 13) to suggest that earthly, secular rule itself was the object of God's displeasure. See, for example, Thomas Müntzer, ‘Testimony of the first chapter of the gospel of Luke’ [c. 1524], in Peter Matheson, ed. and trans., The collected works of Thomas Müntzer (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 283.

28 Here it is important to note the central rabbinic distinction between pshat (the literal meaning of the Biblical text) and drash (interpretive exegesis). This gloss is clearly an instance of the latter. My thanks to Shulamite Valler for prompting me to focus on this issue.

29 This is, importantly, how the Vulgate renders the line: ‘cum ingressus fueris terram quam Dominus Deus tuus dabit tibi et possederis eam habitaverisque in illa et dixeris constituam super me regem sicut habent omnes per circuitum nationes’.

30 There are, however, exceptions to this rule. One is Salmasius, to whom I will turn below.

31 Rav and Rav Yehudah are ‘Amoraim’, writing two centuries later.

32 Not to be confused with Rav Yehudah, who lived over a century later.

33 I have drawn from two English translations of this discussion. The first is that of Jacob Shachter in the Soncino Hebrew-English edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London, 1994); the second is that provided in volume i of Michael Walzer and Menachem Lorberbaum, eds., The Jewish political tradition (New Haven, CT, and London, 2000), pp. 141–2. For the rabbinic debate over monarchy, see Blidstein, Gerald, ‘The monarchic imperative in rabbinic perspective’, Association for Jewish Studies Review, 7–8 (1982–3), pp. 15–39Google Scholar.

34 ‘Observarunt Hebraei tria praecepta fuisse Isrealitis cum ingressuri essent Terram promissionis, nempe ut super se constituerent Regem, exterminarent semen Amalec, & exstruerent Domino Templum. Quaestionem quoque hic movent Hebraei, Cur Dominus aegre tulerit quod tempore Samuelis Regem postularint, cum tamen hoc loco aut praecipiat, aut ius faciat eius constituendi? Ad hoc quidam respondent, Seniores quidem qui eo tempore erant, non male & impie Regem postulasse, cum dicerent ad Samuelem, Da nobis Regem, qui iudicet nos, &c. sed vulgus peccavisse, quod nollet audire vocem Samuelis, sed dicebat, Nequaquam: sed Rex erit super nos, ut & nos simus sicut caetera gentes.’ See Critici sacri, sive, Doctissimorum virorum in ss. Biblia annotationes (London, 1660), p. 1247. This nine-volume work is a compendium of famous Biblical commentaries.

35 ‘Tradunt Iudaeorum magistri, tria injuncta fuisse Israelitis quae facere eos oporteret postquam introducti essent in terram sactam, regem sibi constituere, exscindere Amalechitas, templum exstruere.’ See C. L. Salmasii Defensio pro Carolo I (Cambridge, 1684), p. 63. This work was originally published in November 1649. Maimonides also repeats this dictum in his Mishneh Torah; as a result, various Christian authors atttributed it to him. For example, Peter van der Cun (Cunaeus) writes in his De republica hebraeorum (1617): ‘Ait Rabbi Maimonides in parte postrema Misnae, Israelitas tria mandata accepisse a numine, quae exequerentur cum Palaestinam tenerent. e quibus primum erat, uti regem sibi constituerent; alterum, uti memoriam obliterarent Amalekitarum; tertium de templi aedificatione fuit.’ See Petrus Cunaeus of the commonwealth of the Hebrews, trans. C. B. (London, 1653), p. 124.

36 ‘Plurimi eorum scribunt recte & ordine Seniores illius temporis regem postulasse, sed in eo peccasse vulgus hominum quod ad instar regum quos haberent caeterae nationes, sibi dari eum petierint’ (Salmasius, Defensio, p. 63). See also Filmer's remarks in the Observations: ‘The sin of the Children of Israel did lye, not in Desiring a King, but in desiring such a King like as the Nations round about had.’ Filmer, Observations concerning the original and various forms of government (London, 1696), p. 191 (cf. Filmer, Patriarcha (London, 1680), pp. 51–2). This view was endorsed earlier by the Scottish Hebraist John Weemes, who tried to harmonize it with the Augustinian position: ‘They [the rabbis] say, that he [God] gave them three things in commandement when they entered into Canaan; first, to choose a King; secondly, to roote out the Canaanites [sic] and thirdly, to build a Temple for his worship: God was angry with them that they sought a King so long as good Samuel ruled over them; he was angry with them because they would have a King to reigne over them after the manner of the Nations’ (Weemes, An exposition of the iudiciall lavves of Moses (London, 1636), p. 12).

37 ‘In hanc sententiam recte omnino de R. Iose in Gemara Sanhedrin scriptum est, ita illum senisse. Quidquid dicitur in capite de rege, eum regum ius habere’ (Salmasius, Defensio, pp. 48–9).

38 Cunaeus, ‘The commonwealth of the Hebrews’, p. 273. The English translation is from the edition of 1653. ‘Sed illis erudite respondit Maimonides, atque indignationem numinis ex eo esse ortam ait [Hebrew text follows], quia regem concupivissent per ambiguas querelas, seditiosasque voces, non uti legis praeceptum peragerent, sed quod displicebat illis sanctissimus vates Samuel, ad quem vox illa numinis extat, Non te illi, sed me fastidiverunt.’ The quotation is from Maimonides, MT, Melakhim 1:1–2.

39 ‘Cur igitur haec petitio displicuit Domino? Quia malo animo eum petierunt, non propter praeceptum … per murmurationem, non tam ut iudicaret eos quam ut bella eorum bellaret’ (Critici sacri, p. 2255). Drusius's commentary was written about 1600.

40 Edmund Bunny, The scepter of Iudah: or, what manner of government it was, that unto the common-wealth or church of Israel was by the law of God appointed (London, 1584), p. 130.

41 ‘Leges autem de Rege, de Templo, & excidio Amalecitarum pertinent ad tempora possessae Terrae’ (Critici sacri, p. 1247).

42 ‘Alio tempore Regem sibi facere sine culpa potuissent’ (Critici sacri, p. 2255).

43 ‘Licebat ergo ipsis Regem expetere, sed non quo tempore Interregem habebant a Deo constitutum’ (Critici sacri, p. 1247). Grotius's view seems to follow an argument of Nahmanides's, which appears in the latter's gloss on Genesis 49:10.

44 See John Locke, Two treatises of government and A letter concerning toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven, CT, 2003), p. 150.

45 Once again, I have drawn together elements from two different translations of this text. The first is that of Rabbi J. Rabbinowitz in Midrash rabbah, ed. Rabbi H. Freedman and Maurice Simon (10 vols., London, 1939), vii, pp. 109–13. The second is the excerpted version found in Walzer and Lorberbaum, eds., The Jewish political tradition, pp. 148–9. The Hebrew text is taken from S. Lieberman, ed., Midrash debarim rabbah (Jerusalem, 1940); however, it is important to note that the Lieberman version reproduces a different recension of the text (although with no significant differences for our purposes). There are also other Midrashic passages which suggest the same orientation: Bereshith Rabbah, for example, has R. Samuel b. Nahman claim that Abraham declined the title of king, declaring ‘Let the world not be without its [true] king.’ See Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, eds., Genesis Rabbah (2nd edn, 3 vols., Jerusalem, 1965), i, p. 419, ii, p. 624. I should also note that, in the penultimate paragraph, the phrase translated as ‘idolatry’ is avodath kokhavim, which literally means ‘worship of the stars’. It is a rabbinic idiom which often stands in for the more conventional term for idolatry: avodah zarah (lit. ‘strange worship’). Early modern readers were well aware of this fact. John Selden, for example, makes the point as follows: ‘Pro culto extraneo in Maimonidis editis aliquot libris aliorumque saepitis occurrit …  Cultus astrorum & Planetarum’. Selden, De synedriis & praefecturis iuridicis veterum Ebraeorum, i (London, 1650), p. 9. For Selden's Hebrew scholarship, see Jason Rosenblatt, Renaissance England's chief rabbi: John Selden (Oxford, 2006).

46 It is important to note that the rabbis of the Midrash never explicitly state that, as a juridical matter, monarchy is equivalent to idolatry; that would have committed them to the view that defenders of monarchy had to be put to death.

47 See, for example, Blair Worden, ‘Milton's republicanism and the tyranny of heaven’, in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, eds., Machiavelli and republicanism (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 225–45; Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Milton's classical republicanism’, in David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton and republicanism (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 3–24; Thomas N. Corns, ‘Milton and the characteristics of a free commonwealth’, in Armitage, Himy, and Skinner, eds., Milton and republicanism, pp. 25–42; and Quentin Skinner, ‘John Milton and the politics of slavery’, in Visions of politics, ii (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 286–307.

48 It is indeed very striking that, even in the heated environment of 1649, radical republican pamphleteers continued to defend the basic legitimacy of monarchy. Consider, for example, Eleutherius Philodemius, who states in The Armies vindication (January 1649) that ‘it is an unquestionable truth, that Monarchy, Democratie, and Aristocratie, are the powers of God, each in it self a lawfull form of Government’, arguing only that ‘it is as unquestionable, that so the case may be, as the use of one may be laid aside, and another set up, and God much seen and honoured in the change’ (p. 5). Even at his most incendiary, when he claims that ‘we know, and experience shews it, that there is no kind of civil government more averse and opposite to the Kingdom of Christ and lesse helpful to it than Monarchie’, he nonetheless immediately adds that ‘we grant that true religion is not inconsistent with monarchie’ (p. 15). Marchamont Nedham likewise aims only to vindicate ‘the Excellency of a Free State above a Kingly Government’, by arguing that ‘it is the most commodious and profitable way of government, conducing to the enlargement of a nation every way in wealth and dominion’ (Philip Knachel, ed., The case of the commonwealth of England, stated (Charlottesville, VA, 1969), p. 117). Although his anti-monarchical rhetoric is often quite strident, he never actually claims that monarchy per se is unacceptable. Nedham's pamphlet was published in 1650.

49 Merritt Hughes, ed., Complete prose works of John Milton, iii (New Haven, 1962), p. 207. This had become a standard monarchomach reading of the verses. See Quentin Skinner, Foundations of modern political thought, ii (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 206–38. For Milton's use of this topos, see Walter S. H. Lim, John Milton, radical politics, and Biblical republicanism (Newark, DE, 2006), pp. 41–68.

50 Hughes, ed., Complete prose works of John Milton, iii, p. 208.

51 Ibid., p. 236.

52 Ibid., p. 256.

53 This is not to suggest that Milton never reverts to his previous position. There are several instances in his later writings in which he entertains the possibility of an acceptable monarchy (see, for example, Robert Ayers, ed., Complete prose works of John Milton, vii (New Haven, CT, 1980), pp. 377–8). The point, rather, is that he is the first to make the exclusivist argument, and that it remains a dominant feature of his political theory.

54 For a similarly emphatic presentation of this view, see Filmer, Patriarcha (1680), pp. 80–1.

55 ‘Deo irato, non solum quod regem vellent ad exemplum gentium, et non suae legis, sed plane quod vellent regem.’ Milton, Pro populo anglicano defensio (London, 1651), p. 43. Most English translations from Milton's Defensio are taken from Don Wolfe, ed., and Donald Mackenzie, trans., Complete prose works of John Milton, iv (New Haven, CT, 1966). In this instance, however, I have had to replace Mackenzie's with my own. His version is found on p. 347.

56 ‘Idem Theologi omnes Orthodoxi, idem Iurisconssulti, idem Rabbini plerique, ut ex Sichardo didicisse potuisti, de explicatione huius loci sentiunt; ne Rabbinorum enim quisquam ius regis absolutum isto loco tractari dixit’ (Milton, Defensio, p. 46). Wolfe, ed., and Mackenzie, trans., Complete prose, iv, pp. 349–50.

57 ‘nam caput illud de rege in quo R. Ioses ius regium aiebat contineri, Deuteronnomii esse, non Samuelis, manifestum est. Samuelis enim ad terrorem duntaxat populo iniiciendum pertinere rectissime quidem & contra te dixit R. Iudas’ (Milton, Defensio, p. 50). Wolfe, ed., and Mackenzie, trans., Complete prose, iv, p. 353.

58 Schickard created a mechanical calculating device, which he described in detail to his friend Johannes Kepler. Neither of the two prototypes survived his death in 1635; it was not until 1955 that scholars reconstructed a working version of his machine.

59 Don M. Wolfe, ed., Complete prose works of John Milton, i (New Haven, CT, 1953), p. 460.

60 ‘Reges autem Hebraeorum iudicari posse, atque etiam ad verbera damnari fuse docet Sichardus ex libris Rabbinicis, cui tu haec omnia debes, & tamen obstrepere non erubescis’ (Milton, Defensio, p. 52). Wolfe, ed., and Mackenzie, trans., Complete prose, iv, p. 355.

61 ‘Ut omnes autem videant te nullo modo ex Hebraeourm scriptis id probare, quod probandum hoc capite susceperas, esse ex magistris tua sponte confiteris, qui negant alium suis majoribus regem agnoscendum fuisse praeter Deum, datum autem in poenam fuisse. Quorum ego in sententiam pedibus eo’ (Milton, Defensio, p. 62). Wolfe, ed., and Mackenzie, trans., Complete prose, iv, p. 366. The third and fourth lines reproduce Salmasius's words almost verbatim.

62 The literature on this question is quite large, and is motivated by the desire to explain Milton's frequent use of Midrashic material in Paradise lost. Important contributions include Harris Fletcher, Milton's rabbinical readings (Urbana, IL, 1930); Kitty Cohen, The throne and the chariot: studies in Milton's Hebraism (The Hague and Paris, 1975); Jason Rosenblatt, Torah and law in Paradise lost (Princeton, NJ, 1994); Golda Werman, Milton and Midrash (Washington, DC, 1995); and Jeffry S. Shoulson, Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellensim, & Christianity (New York, NY, 2001). That Milton knew Biblical Hebrew and the Aramaic Targums is certain; the question is whether his command of the language was sufficient to enable him to consult rabbinic commentaries in the original, and in conventional italic script (as they appear, for instance, in Johannes Buxtorf's 1618 Rabbinical Bible).

63 ‘non is populum increpabat, quia Regem peterent sed quia non legitime peterent’. See Wilhelm Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, Jus regium hebraeorum e tenebris rabbinicis (Strasbourg, 1625), p. 6.

64 ‘tamen non desunt inter Judaeos qui contradicunt & putant, Regibus majores suos minime indiguisse. Rationes illorum diversae sunt, quas distincte videbimus’ (Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, p. 4).

65 ‘R. Bechai existimat, deum Opt. Max. sufficere ipsis; nec nisi poenam Reges indulsisse. forte ut ranis Jupiter Ciconiam apud Aesopum. sic autem ille ad Parsch. Schoph. col. 6 [Hebrew text follows] Non erat voluntas Dei O. M. ut esset Rex in Israel aliusque ipsemet. Ipse enim Altissimus est Rex ille, qui ambulat in medio castrorum & provide attendit ad particularissima quaeque. Nec opus erat illis Rege alio. Nam populus electus, cuius Rex est Dominus universi, quid faceret cum Rege qui caro tantum est & sanguis? … Scriptum est (Hos. 13.11) do tibi Regem in ira mea’ (Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, p. 4). For the way in which the fable Schickard mentions made its way into seventeenth-century politics, see Mark Kishlansky, ‘Turning frogs into princes: Aesop's Fables and the political culture of early-modern England’, in Susan Amusssen and Mark Kishlansky, eds., Political culture and cultural politics in early modern England (Manchester, 1995), pp. 338–60. Bahya's commentary on Deut. 17:14 can be found in Midrash Rabeinu Bahya ‘al Hamishah Humshei Torah, ii (Jerusalem, 1988).

66 This is an erroneous attribution. The figure Shickard has in mind is certainly not the great thirteenth-century scholar Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (Nahmanides), since the latter endorses the majority view in the Talmud (and Schickard, a good Hebraist, would have known this). The most likely explanation for the mistake is that Schickard is referencing a tradition, exemplified by a gloss to the Sefer ha-Kabbalah of the twelfth-century scholar Abraham Ibn Daud (translated into Latin in 1527), which incorrectly attributed primary authorship of Bereshit Rabbah and the other Rabboth to Rabba bar Nahmani, a Babylonian rabbi of the Talmud (who, in fact, had no connection to these texts). That is, this tradition took the title Bereshith Rabbah to mean ‘Rabba's commentary on Genesis’, rather than what it actually means: ‘The great commentary on Genesis’ (see Gerson Cohen, ed. and trans., Sefer ha-Qabbalah (Oxford, 2005), p. 123). This explanation seems particularly plausible because Grotius likewise attributes authorship of Devarim Rabbah as a whole to ‘Barnachmon’ in the De iure belli ac pacis (for Grotius's attribution, see Lachs, Phyllis, ‘Hugo Grotius's use of Jewish sources in On the law of war and peace’, Renaissance Quarterly, 30 (1977), esp. pp. 196–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar). If this is correct, then Schickard here is likely quoting directly from the Midrash, and not from an excerpted version in another commentary.

67 ‘Rabba B. Nachmoni arbitratur hoc pugnare cum libertate populi Judaeci, quorum conditio non sit regi ab alio, ut a pastore pecora. Sed instar ferarum liberrime circum vagari. paulo ante loc. supra citat. [Hebrew text follows] ait deus O. M. Israeli, mi fili! Sic cogitavi, ut essetis liberi ab imperiis. unde hoc? quia dicitur (Jerem. 2.v.24) Onager asssuetus deserto. Sicut ergo asinus sylvestris adolescit in deserto, nec timet ullam hominem super se: sic reputavi, ne esset metus regni super vos. At vos non hoc quaesivistis. Sed (ut in textu sequitur) in desiderio animae suae sorbuit ventum. non est his ventus aliud quam Regnum. unde hoc? quia dicitur (Dan. 7.2) ecce quatuor venti coeli pugnabant ad mare magnum’ (Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, p. 4).

68 ‘abi & disce quid contigerit nobis sub manu regum. sic enim concionatur Doctores nostri p.m. Saul cecidit in monte Gilboah, David causatus est plagam, sicut dicitur (2 Sam. 24.15) deditque Dominus pestemin Israel. Ahab cohibuit pluvies ab eis, ut scribitur (i Reg. 17.1 vivit Dominus) si erit hisce annis ros aut pluvia &c. Zidkiah desolari fecit sanctuarium’ (Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, p. 4).

69 ‘tandem fuerunt Reges illi causa deceptionis Israeli, ut alienarentur a Domine Deo, usque dum abducerentur in exilium a terra sua’ (Schickard, Mishpat ha-melekh, p. 5). Another author who clearly uses Schickard to cite this Midrash is John Weemes. Weemes, like Schickard, defends monarchy, but also feels compelled to note (confusing rabbinic authorities) that ‘Levi ben Gerson upon the 1 Sam. 8. holdeth that Aristocraticall Government is best, and to be preferred to Kingly Government; learne saith hee what hath befallen us under the hand of Kings; David caused the plague to come upon the people, 2 Sam. 24.15. Ahab restrained the raine for three yeares, I King. 17. and Zedekiah caused the Sanctuary to be burnt, 2 Chro. 36.14. and the Iewes apply the saying of Hosea, I gave them a King in mine anger, and tooke him away in my wrath, Hos. 13 11. That is, I gave them their first King Saul in mine anger, and I tooke away their last King Zedekiah in my indignation' (Weemes, Exposition, p. 5). As we have seen, Weemes is actually quoting Bahya; the confusion derives from the fact that Schickard quotes Levi ben Gershom in the adjacent sentence.

70 The editio princeps of Devarim Rabbah dates to 1512 (Constantinople), and it was frequently reprinted thereafter. An important edition for our purposes is that printed in Amsterdam in 1640 (Sefer Rabot: … midrashot ‘al Hamishah Humshe Torah (2 vols., Amsterdam, 1640)), which employed standard Hebrew lettering rather than italic script. There is also uniform agreement that Milton knew the Midrash to Genesis (Bereshith Rabbah), which echoes the relevant paragraph in the Midrash to Deut. 17:14 quite clearly in places. He also quite probably knew the Midrashic Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, which had been translated into Latin in 1644. A description of the Messianic age in chapter 11 of that work explains that it ‘will restore the sovereignty to its owner. He who was the first king will be the last king, as it is said, “Thus saith the Lord, the King … I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6); and it is written, “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9) and the sovereignty shall return to its (rightful) heir and then, “The idols shall utterly pass away. And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isa. 2:18–19).’ See George Friedlander, trans., Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (4th edn, New York, NY, 1981), p. 83. On Milton's Midrashic materials, see Werman, Milton and Midrash, pp. 27–41, 42–92. It is interesting to note that the Midrashic view is not canvassed in Menasseh ben Israel's extensive gloss on Deut. 17:14 in the Conciliator; Menasseh does, however, include copious quotations from the Biblical commentary of the fifteenth-century scholar Isaac Abravanel – an anti-monarchical exegete whom Schickard neglected. See Menasseh Ben Israel conciliator: sive, de convenientia locorum S. Scripturae, quae pugnare inter se videntur (Amsterdam, 1633).

71 The closest thing to a precedent I have been able to find is John Lilburne's Regall tyrannie discovered (London, 1647). Lilburne writes that ‘Monarks assume unto themselves, the very Soveraignty, Stile, Office, and name of god himself, whose Soveraign Prerogative it is, only, and alone, to rule and govern by his Will’ (p. 11), and then offers the following piece of evidence: the Israelites, not content with God's bounty and protection, ‘Would have a King to reigne over them, when (saith Samuel) the Lord your God was your King: therefore [1 Sam.] chap. 10.19 saith Samuel, ye have this day rejected your God, who himself saved you out of all your adversities, &c. yea, and (in the 19. verse of the 12. chap.) the People acknowledged that they had added unto all their sins, this evill, even to ask a King; Whereby we may evidently perceive, that this office of a King, is not in the least of Gods institution; neither is it to be given to any man upon earth: Because none must rule by his will but God alone; And therefore the Scripture saith, He gave them a King in his anger, and took him away in his wrath, Hosa 13.11’ (pp. 13–14). Lilburne's analysis certainly resembles Bahya as quoted by Schickard (note the identical use of Hos. 13.11); nonetheless he sharply distinguishes between lawful kings (who rule according to law) and tyrants (who rule according to their own will). It is the second category only that he is discussing here. As a result, Lilburne's reading is not ‘exclusivist’ in the Midrashic and Miltonic sense. See also John Goodwin, Anti-cavalierisme (London, 1642), esp. pp. 4–5.

72 ‘Passim enim testatur Deus valde sibi displicuisse quod regem petissent. ver. 7. Non te sed me spreverunt ne regnem super ispos, secundum illa facta quibus dereliquerunt me & coluerunt Deos alienos: ac si species quaedam idololatriae videretur regem petere, qui adorarise, & honores prope divinos tribui sibi postulat. Sane qui supra omnes leges terrenum sibi dominum imponit, prope est ut sibi Deum statuat alienum; Deum utique haud saepe rationabilem, sed profligata saepius ratione brutum & belluinum. Sic 1 Sam. 10.19. Vos sprevistis Deum vestrum qui ipse servat vos ab omnibus malis, & angustiis vestris, cum dixistis ei, regem praeponens nobis … plane ac si simul docuisset, non hominis esse dominari in homines, sed solius Dei’ (Milton, Defensio, pp. 66–7).

73 ‘Populus denique resipiscens apud Isaiam 26.13. calamitosum hoc sibi fuisse queritur, quod alios praeter Deum dominos habuerat. Indicio sunt haec omnia regem irato Deo Isrealitis fuisse datum’ (Milton, Defensio, p. 67). I have altered the translation here.

74 I owe this point to Bernard Septimus.

75 Wolfe, ed., Complete prose, i, p. 432.

76 Hughes, ed., Complete prose, iii, p. 343.

77 On this, see Lewalski, Barbara, ‘Milton and idolatry’, Studies in English literature, 43 (2003), pp. 213–32Google Scholar, esp. pp. 220–2.

78 Ayres, ed., Complete prose, vii, pp. 360–1. Calvin directly attacks this reading of Luke 22:25 in Institutes iv.7.

79 Ibid., p. 374.

80 Ibid., p. 387.

81 ‘Diodati’ is the Swiss Calvinist and Hebraist Giovanni Diodati, who translated the Bible into Italian in 1603. He renders the verse as follows: ‘Quando tu sarai entrato nel paese che'l Signore Iddio tuo ti dà, e lo possederai, e v'habiterai dentro: se tu vieni a dire, Io voglio constituire un rè sopra me, come hanno tutte le genti che son d'intorno a me … .’ See Michele Ranchetti, ed., and Giovanni Diodati, trans., La sacra Bibbia tradotta in lingua italiana e commentata da Giovanni Diodati (3 vols., Milan, 1999), i, p. 577. It is important to note, however, that Diodati himself did not adopt the Midrashic reading of Deut. 17 and 1 Sam. 8. See, for example, Diodati, Pious and learned annotations upon the Holy Bible, trans. R. G. (London, 1648), p. 168. Diodati's Hebrew scholarship is discussed in Milka Ventura Avanzinelli, ‘Giovanni Diodati, traduttore della Bibbia’ in Diodati, La sacra Bibbia, i, esp. pp. lxxx–xc.

82 J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The political works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977), p. 575.

83 Ibid., p. 574. Harrington here seems to be paraphrasing Carlo Sigonio's analysis from the De republica hebraeorum (1585), itself shaped by rabbinic materials. He glosses Deut. 17:14 as follows: ‘Significavit enim aperte, Iudicibus rerum summam ex lege habentibus regnasse Deum super Hebraeos, quia lex dominata esset; imperio vero ad regem gentium more translato, Deum non regnaturum, cum non penes legem, sed penes voluntatem unius hominis summa rerum esset futura. probe. etenim, ut optime dixit Aristoteles in Politicis, Qui legem vult imperare, Deum vult imperare, qui regem, id est hominem, belluam: quod non semper ratione, sed plerunque cupiditate ducatur’. Caroli Sigonii de republica hebraeorum libri VII, ad Gregorium XIII pontificem maximum (Frankfurt, 1585), pp. 40–1. The quotation at the end is from Aristotle, Pol. iii (1287a). Aristotle here is discussing tyranny, which he sharply distinguishes from monarchy – as Harrington well knew.

84 Algernon Sidney, Court maxims, ed. Hans Blom et al. (Cambridge, 1996), p. 65. Even Sidney, however, was not always consistent. Earlier in the same treatise he writes: ‘Let us have such kings [as described in Deut. 17:14] and we will not complain; and that we may have none but such, let us have means of punishing them if they be not so and I am content with that government’ (p. 49).

85 Ibid., p. 48.

86 Ibid., p. 188.

87 Sidney Hook, ed., The essential Thomas Paine (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp. 29–30. For Paine's use of the Israelite example in his polemical writings, see Maria Teresa Pichetto, ‘La “respublica Hebraeorum” nella rivoluzione americana’, in Il pensiero politico, 35 (2002), esp. pp. 497–500.