Comments on David Rapoport: “Moses, Charisma, and Covenant”

• Author: Reinhard Bendix
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297903200204
• Published date: 01 June 1979
• Date: 01 June 1979
• Subject Matter: Article

COMMENTS ON

DAVID

RAPOPORT:

“MOSES,

CHARISMA,

AND

COVENANT”

REINHARD

BENDIX

University of California, Berkeley

HERE

is much to ponder in Professor Rapoport’s paper, especially by those

who are close students of the Biblical text. My comments are those of

a

T

comparativist with an interest in IYeber’s work who has some misgivinss

about Rapoport’s interpretation. Perhaps alternative perspectives are worth men-

tioning just because Rapoport states his thesis clearly

so

that we must grapple

with it.

The

author emphasizes the double election of

Moses,

by

YHWH

and by Israel.

This phenomenon is not unique, though the Judaism which developed from it

clearly is. Evidence from old Germanic

law,

the Icelandic sagas, and no doubt

other sources suggests that chieftans typically came from kinship groups considered

charismatically endowed

so

that hereditary succession was believed to preserve the

kin-group’s special relation with

the

tribal deity

(or

deities). Since most leading

families had some spccial relations with the transcendent powers,

a

choice among

them (and among their respective descendants) had to be made. That choice fre-

quently involved

a

“double election” like the one Rapoport describes; namely,

a

search for special signs pointing to one kin-group in preference to

all

others and

an

act

of

acclamation by the leading elders of the tribe who presumably debated their

choice before in

a

manner that combined religious

awe

concerning the “sign” with

more pra,matic considerations of suitability.’ Something like this seems reflected

in the endowment of seventy elders with

YHlW’s

special “gifts,” since among

people with

an

acute sense of the higher powers the “right” choice can only be an

inspired one.

Many

writers have commented critically on Weber’s failure to distinguish

between leadership and charisma, but it seems more important to me to emphasize,

as

Rapoport does, the significance of the message rather than the personality.

Whether this more appropriate emphasis is then still

a

critique of \Veber,

I

am

less

sure, since after

all

it

can

hardly be said that he neglected the doctrinal aspects of

religious movements. There is more weight to Rapoport’s criticism that Weber

understates the crucial role of Moses. In the index to

Economy and

Society

there

are

five references to haoses, but eighteen to hliohammad, and over twenty to

Christ, twenty-two to Confucianism, and twenty-six to Buddhism. In Weber’s

whole discussion prophetic lawgivers are understated, not only

Moses,

but Solon

and Lycurgus

as

well.

A

proximate explanation might be that these figures did not

loom large in Weber‘s imagination because the idea of

a

people’s covenant with

God

as

the foundation of

a

politico-religious community is exceptional.

As

a

com-

parativist student of world religions, he was clearIy more interested in the founders

of

different religions who did not

also

found political communities. It is known

that when he died at fifty-six he was planning

a

work on Islam,

a

second well-

documented instance of

a

prophetic founding of

a

politico-religious community;

and one cannot know whether such

a

study might have prompted him to revise

his earlier views of

Moses.

This

brings mc to the most critical point raised by Rapoport. Did Weber mis-

construe

the

concept of “charisma”

by

making it antithetical to tradition? Is not

Moses’ founding of Israel

as

a

politico-religious community based on

a

covenant

‘Relevant

materials

arc

found

in

JVilliam

Chaney,

The

Cult

of

Kingship in Anglo-Saxon

England

(1970),

Fritz

Kern,

Kingship and Law in the hiiddle Ages

(1970),

Jan

de

Vries,

Altgermanirche Religionsgeschichte

(

1956),

and other studies.