Subordinated King

This book offers a comprehensive study of the authority and status of the king in early rabbinic literature and analyses three concep-tions of kingship in biblical literature.The first approach denies kingship, maintaining that God is the King (in Buber`s terms: direct autocracy). The second approach offers a mild version of royal theology, according to which the king is divine (or at least has a unique connection to God). The third approach holds that although the monarchy is necessary, the authority of the king is significantly limited. The author`s study of all the halakhic sources that relate to kingship in Talmudic literature reveals that the early rabbis adopted the third approach, remodeling the status'of the king in a new and innovative way. Finally, the author deals with aggadic sources relating to kingship. While the halakhic sources in'early rabbinic literature subscribed clearly to the third'approach, many aggadic sources adopted the two other approaches offered in the Bible.