{"id":56661,"date":"2019-06-02T17:49:49","date_gmt":"2019-06-02T14:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=56661"},"modified":"2022-12-26T15:21:49","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T13:21:49","slug":"the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fine-Grained Phenomenology Of Political Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[767,423],"acf":{"old_id":"56661","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56443,"related_cahpter":"233","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Insights into the dynamics of power contested, gained, abused, and lost","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The prestige and authority of the Bible in general and the Book of Samuel in particular have inspired numerous readers, past and present, to seek the origins of modern Western political ideas, including republicanism and egalitarianism, in the ancient biblical tradition. We have not joined this worthwhile search for precursors of modern moral ideas in the political culture of an ancient kingdom. We have chosen instead to concentrate on the fine-grained phenomenology of political power so astutely elaborated by our anonymous author. What makes the book so alive to the touch even today are not its normative teachings, if any, but rather its analysis of political power, an analysis that we believe to apply not only here and now but whenever and wherever structures of power exist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such a rich and subtle grasp of politics finds few antecedents in the literature of the ancient Near East or in biblical literature prior to the Book of Samuel. Unlike other dimensions of biblical religion, the book\u2019s relentlessly observant and critical gaze into the dynamics of power was neither an elaboration on, nor a repudiation of, themes and concerns present in the myths and narrative of Israel\u2019s neighbors. In the Book of Samuel we hear a fresh and original voice. It is not merely the earliest extant document of its kind, but arguably the earliest ever written, and one that exhibits a startling maturity of insight. When first encountering its prescient grasp of political reality, one immediately realizes that the stories the text graphically recounts are anything but tentative steps in an inchoate thought process awaiting a more sophisticated elaboration and refinement. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rather, the book\u2019s insights into the dynamics of power contested, gained, abused, and lost possess that rare clarity, completeness, and depth that can probably be achieved only at a moment of origin, that is, only when a new reality bursts forth in a way that cannot be repeated. Even today, the book rivets its readers with an overwhelming sense of revelation. It conveys something utterly new and unprecedented. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Excerpts from <em>The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp.2-3.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Re-printed with permission of the author.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":56668,"id":56668,"title":"halbertal-book cover.jpg","filename":"halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power\/halbertal-book-cover-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"halbertal-book-cover-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":56661,"date":"2019-06-02 14:58:58","modified":"2019-06-03 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