I’ve talked about the Biblical Argument against Monarchy before. But I want to revisit it.
I own Eric Nelson’s book The Hebrew Republic which I recommend. The section on debates about Monarchy focuses on how Christian debates about it drew on older Jewish arguments about it.
What bugs me is how all of them phrase it as about resolving an apparent Bible Contradiction between a supposedly Pro-Monarchy Deuteronomy 17 vs Anti-Monarchy 1 Samuel 8 (the material involving Gideon and his Sons is oddly not brought up as further witness to the Anti-Monarchy position).
But to me, even if The Pentateuch were the entire Bible I would still interpret Deuteronomy 17 especially verse 14 as obviously Anti-Monarchy. It’s not the only time in The Torah God allows the Israelites to do something he’d rather them not do. And nowhere in The Torah is a desire to be like the nations around them treated as a positive, Israel being unlike the nations around them as much as possible was the entire point of many of these Laws.
Meanwhile secular scholars believe Deuteronomy has the same human author, or group of authors, as not the prior four books but the following ones, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. This passage in Deuteronomy 17 is recognized even by non believers as a Prophecy fulfilled by 1 Samuel 8, not a passage in ideological conflict with it.
