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The Beginning of Politics - Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel (Hardcover)
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The Beginning of Politics - Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel (Hardcover)
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New insights into how the Book of Samuel offers a timeless
meditation on the dilemmas of statecraft The Book of Samuel is
universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of
biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than
an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute
observer of political life and the moral compromises and
contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The
Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings
to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new
reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western
political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the
beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of
politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power
is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder
of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the
book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity
of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is
intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from
the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as
the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for
power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the
sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the
isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action
through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict
between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the
ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important
continuity of sovereign power. The Beginning of Politics is a
timely meditation on the dark side of sovereign power and the
enduring dilemmas of statecraft.
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