Jeremy Rosen
Samuel: the First Religious Politician
Summary
Jeremy Rosen discusses the “Book of Samuel”, which he suggests is interesting for two overriding reasons: Number one, it begins the in-detailed characterization of biblical figures, in much greater depth than we’ve had up to now. In addition to that, it is also the first book that seriously deals with political issues, questions of governance, and the distinction between the secular powers and the religious powers.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
That’s a very good question. I understand this to mean after Moses. Moses, everybody was. Law can be Sahel, commercial, ordinary. There never was, in Israel, any prophet, any leader like Moses. So this phrase that Samuel being the last of the judges and the first of the prophets is saying, “Yeah, after Moses.” Nobody competes with Moses on this one.
Well, Elliot, I think it is because it talks about, all the “Bible” talks about the struggle between good and bad. Between good solutions and bad solutions, between good decisions and bad decisions, between good relationships and bad relationships, between good forms of governance and bad. And it’s all there in the book, and it’s just showing how we grope towards a solution. And here we are, thousands of years later, and we’re still groping. We still haven’t got the perfect form of government. We still haven’t got good relationships. We’re still killing each other. It’s not changed that much, despite the advances of technology.