The People v. Korach

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In Josephus (Ant. 4.11–66) it comes immediately after the abortive attempt of the Israelites to attack Amalek and the Canaanites against the advice of Moses, and hence the connecting link is the Israelite disobedience toward their great leader.

In Philo (De Vita Mosis, 2.33.174–79 and 2.50.275–87) this narrative appears twice, each time following the account of the building of the golden calf, the connecting link, apparently, being the fact that some of the Levites who had remained loyal to G-d and to Moses in that episode now rose up against him

PHILO’S INTERPRETATION OF KORAH* Louis H. Feldman Yeshiva University The Context of the Korah Narrative

Philo

Philo not only does not mention Korah by name even once but he does not present the revolt as led by any particular leader. The fact that Korah is mentioned by name only once (De Fuga et Inventione, 26.145) in all of the works of Philo is presumably due to Philo’s concern to present the rebellion not as that of a particular person but rather as a conflict of principle between those who know how to govern and those who are merely a rabble.

Philo describes the form of government in which the multitude has supreme power as ochlocracy, which he characterizes (De Opifi cio Mundi, 61.171; De Somniis, 2.43.287; De Virtutibus, 34.180) as the worst of all forms of government, as the very counterfeit of democracy, which is the best of them (De Agricultura, 11.45), and as the offspring of anarchy (De Agricultura, 11,46), and where injustice and lawlessness rule (De Confessione Linguarum, 23.108).

In a language similar to that which he uses in his description of Korah’s revolt, he states that ochlocracy is produced by disorder and covetousness (De Decalogo, 29.155). He describes the pogrom in Alexandria in the year 38 as having been carried on by people who wielded the weapon of mob rule (ὀχλοκρατία, In Flaccum, 9.65). Indeed, Philo (De Vita Mosis 2.50.277), as it were, draws a moral, namely that the revolt of Korah illustrates what happens when subjects attack their rulers “to confound that most excellent promoter of the common weal, order”. Likewise, Philo, in his essay De Fuga et Inventione, 26.145, emphasizes the philosophic point that Korah had aimed to overthrow order (τάξιν), “the most beautiful thing in human life”, rather than the political point that Korah had sought to overthrow Moses’ commonwealth.

Philo presents the revolt as a widespread revolt within the Israelite community. In particular, he describes (2.33.175) this tribe as having many adherents among the more thoughtless (εἰκαιοτέρων, “more rash”, “more hasty”, “without aim or purpose”)

Feldman ibid.

Josephus

We may see a marked contrast between the tremendous attention which Josephus gives to Korah compared with the relative neglect of Korah in Philo’s works presumably because Philo was not a priest and had no direct ties to the Temple; secondly, because he personally was apparently not subjected to jealousy on the part of his fellow-countrymen; and thirdly, because in Philo’s day the revolutionaries against Rome were not yet on the verge of serious revolt.

It is Josephus (Ant. 4.14) who introduces Korah to us as one of the Hebrews who was among the most distinguished both in ancestry and in wealth, an able speaker, and most persuasive in dealing with crowds.

The fact that Korah is a most effective speaker in addressing crowds again makes him Moses’ counterpart; but this same quality also serves to associate him with the demagogues whom Thucydides and Plato denounce.

While it is true that the Bible itself gives the names of Korah’s father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather (Num. 16:1), it does not actually say that Korah’s ancestry was distinguished.

The statement that Korah was distinguished in wealth is Josephus’ addition; and he specifi cally adds that Korah was embittered because he felt that he was more deserving than Moses to enjoy the glory of leadership by virtue of the fact that he was wealthier and not inferior in ancestry.

Indeed, Josephus mentions Korah’s wealth on three other occasions (Ant. 4.19, 25, 26). Like Josephus, the rabbis stress the immensity of Korah’s wealth. The statement that Korah was an able speaker, persuasive in addressing crowds is Josepus’ addition and echoes one of the four qualities of the ideal statesman as we see in the speech that Thucydides (2.60.6) ascribes to Pericles.

"Your anger towards me cometh not unlooked for, for the cause of it I know. And I have called this assembly, therefore, to remember you and reprehend you for those things wherein you have either been angry with me or given way to your adversity without reason. For I am of this opinion, that the public prosperity of the city is better for private men than if the private men themselves were in prosperity and the public wealth in decay. For a private man, though in good estate, if his country come to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarrieth in a flourishing commonwealth shall much more easily be preserved. Since then the commonwealth is able to bear the calamities of private men, and every- one cannot support the calamities of the commonwealth, why should not everyone strive to defend it and not, as you now, astonished with domestic misfortune, forsake the common safety and fall a-censuring both me that counselled the war and yourselves that decreed the same as well as I? And it is I you are angry withal, one, as I think myself, inferior to none either in knowing what is requisite or in expressing what I know, and a lover of my country and superior to money. For he that hath good thoughts and cannot clearly express them were as good to have thought nothing at all. He that can do both and is ill affected to his country will likewise not give it faithful counsel. And he that will do that too yet if he be superable by money will for that alone set all the rest to sale. Now if you followed my advice in making this war, as esteeming these virtues to be in me somewhat above the rest, there is sure no reason that I should now be accused of doing you wrong.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.60

Bar-on Dasberg tried in vain to find the source of the expression, "Rich as Korach" in Tehillim. The original source of the expression that appears in the Midrash is not related to Korach in the Torah but rather to Croesus, King of Lydia, who lived in the sixth century before the Common Era, and who was very rich. After his death he became part of Greek mythology. See the article about Croesus in Wikipedia. In Hebrew, his name took on the form Korach, and this is the source of the error. (Rabbi Israel Man, Toronto)

See: As Rich As Korach, Or As Rich As Croesus?

and see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus

Spinoza

The Levites were chosen to serve as the temple’s courtiers and their sustenance fell on the other tribes. This, Spinoza claims, led to a „continual murmuring, and a weariness with feeding men who were idle, envied, and not related to them by blood“ (cf. TTP XVII, 277). Spinoza provides no textual source to support this claim, which is very central to his explanation of the fall of the Hebrew state. As far as I can see, there is no trace in the Bible of this resentment, which Spinoza describes as „continual.“ The only evidence that Spinoza cites for his chief explanation for the decline of the Hebrew state – the election of the Levites and the ensuing resentment toward them – is the story of Korah (Num 16), but this event occurred right at the beginning of the Hebrew state. Furthermore, the value of this evidence is highly questionable, since Korah, the leader of this rebellion against Moses, was a Levite himself, and in his complaint he does not at all mention the alleged idleness of the Levites. At the center of Spinoza’s explanation of the dissolution of the Hebrew state lies his interpretation of two extraordinary verses in Ezekiel 20, 25 f.: „Moreover, I gave them statutes which were not good, and laws by which they would not live, for I defiled them with their own gifts, by rejecting everything which opened the womb, so that I might destroy them, that they might know that I am God.“ Unlike his usual custom, Spinoza does not quote the Hebrew original here, but rather provides his own, quite reasonable, translation. Spinoza understands these two verses as alluding to the choice of Levites to serve as the courtiers of the temple. Here Spinoza is referring to the claim that originally these were the firstborns who were supposed to serve as priests in the tabernacle and temple; only after the sin of the Golden Calf (Ex 32, 25–29), were the firstborn rejected („rejecting everything which opened the womb“) and replaced by the Levites, the only tribe that did not partake in the sin. The biblical text alludes to this issue (Num 8, 6–18), but it is far more developed in rabbinic literature.11 It is noteworthy that according to many rabbinic sources the Levites were chosen much earlier. Indeed, quite a few sources suggest that the tribe of Levi was not enslaved in Egypt,12 and according to some the descendants of Levi were elected to replace the firstborn following the sin of Reuben – Jacob’s firstborn – who defiled his father’s bed (Gen 49, 3).13 Regardless of these reservations, Spinoza’s explanation of the election of the Levites as God’s response to the sin of the Golden Calf fits well with the mainstream of rabbinic sources. Yet, unlike the rabbinic sources, Spinoza presents the election of the Levites as a curse, the response of an angry God who was intent on punishing the Hebrews and destroying their unique state (cf. TTP XVII, 278).

See: Yitzhak Y. Melamed Spinoza’s Respublica divina The Rise and Fall, Virtues and Vices of the Hebrew Republic (Chapter 17–18)

"A commonwealth holds and exerts the power of a multitude led as though by a single mind,[

141. Spinoza, Political Works (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus), 276–78. Compare Hobbes, De Cive, VII, 1, 106–07.] a union of minds (animorum unio) which does not make sense unless the commonwealth itself (civitas) aims to the highest degree at what seems, to sound reason, useful for all men.

Dunn, John. Setting the People Free (p. 43). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

[Michael] Walzer goes deeper here than the more commonplace discussions of whether or not the Bible approves of monarchy. Yet Walzer does weigh in on this as well, viewing the Bible as ultimately ambivalent. In the process, he makes a thought-provoking - though not necessarily convincing - argument that when there is much disagreement about a topic within Jewish tradition, it is a sign that the Bible did not care enough about it to give a clear verdict (p. 204).

A third area of insight is Walzer’s discussion of the anti-hierarchical motif in many Biblical texts, narrowing Korach’s mistake in proclaiming that all Jews are holy ( Num 16:3) to one of timing rather than substance. He accordingly identifies several messianic prophecies (for example, Jer 31) as heralding a “realization at last of Korah’s premature vision” (p. 180). Since Korah’s claims are rarely mined for their revolutionary political content, Walzer contributes much in exploring this side of the equation.

See: Nataf, Francis. Reviewed Work: In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Michael Walzer Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 48, no. 2/3, 2015, pp. 82–89. JSTOR,

Thomas Hobbes

And so it was: for "the people when they saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die."²¹⁷ Here was their promise of obedience; and by this it was they obliged themselves to obey whatsoever he should deliver unto them for the commandment of God.

²¹⁶ John, 5. 31

²¹⁷ Exodus, 20. 18, 19

And notwithstanding the covenant constituteth a sacerdotal kingdom, that is to say, a kingdom hereditary to Aaron; yet that is to be understood of the succession after Moses should be dead. For whosoever ordereth and establisheth the policy as first founder of a Commonwealth, be it monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, must needs have sovereign power over the people all the while he is doing of it. And that Moses had that power all his own time is evidently affirmed in the Scripture. First, in the text last before cited, because the people promised obedience, not to Aaron, but to him. Secondly, "And God said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the people go up with him."²¹⁸ By which it is plain that Moses, who was alone called up to God (and not Aaron, nor the other priests, nor the seventy elders, nor the people who were forbidden to come up), was alone he that represented to the Israelites the person of God; that is to say, was their sole sovereign under God. And though afterwards it be said, "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel, and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone,"²¹⁹ etc.; yet this was not till after Moses had been with God before, and had brought to the people the words which God had said to him.

Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes, Chapter XL Of the Rights of the Kingdom of God, in Abraham, Moses, the High Priests, and the Kings of Judah

In the great seventeenth-century struggles which it is natural for us to see as blazing a trail for democracy …. the term democracy plays no public role. Where it does begin to appear, more and more insistently, is in anxious conservative responses to the great seething mass of rebellion which shook England’s state to its foundations. Thomas Hobbes himself placed the blame for the Great Rebellion and the regicide itself on many different factors, not least the translation of the Christian Bible into the vernacular, the development of Protestant theology, and the endless proliferation of priestly ambitions.

Dunn, John. Setting the People Free Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

We live under a form of government which does not emulate the institutions of our neighbours; on the contrary, we are ourselves a model (paradeigma, or paradigm) which some follow, rather than the imitators of other peoples.

For we alone regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing; and we Athenians decide public questions for ourselves or at least endeavour to arrive at a sound understanding of them, in the belief that it is not debate which is a hindrance to action, but rather not to be instructed by debate before the time comes for action.

The speech [by Pericles] which Thucydides gives us is a historian’s presentation of a dutifully partisan and highly political performance. It is also an epitome of the ways in which the citizens of Athens had come to wish to conceive themselves as a community.

Especially striking is the figure whom British classical scholars, for reasons now largely forgotten, have come to call the Old Oligarch, author of a terse study of The Constitution of Athens, long attributed to Xenophon. For the Old Oligarch, writing in all probability before the Peloponnesian War even began, Athens’s democracy was no occasion for applause;17 but it certainly was a coherent political order, with many elements well calculated to sustain and strengthen it over time.

For the Old Oligarch, in stark contrast, the democracy of Athens was a robust but flagrantly unedifying system of power, which subjected the nobler elements of its society to the meaner, transferred wealth purposefully from one to the other, and distributed the means of coercion clear-headedly and determinedly determinedly to cement this outcome and keep the nobler elements under control.

“For the people do not want a good government under which they themselves are slaves; they want to be free and to rule.”

But all of it is still very much in the shadow of a relatively small number of extremely striking texts, above all works of history, philosophy, drama, or oratory. All of these, in one way or another, press upon us their own picture of that very distant reality, and do so for purposes of their own, many hard, or even impossible, now to identify.

Democracy in Athens arose out of struggles between wealthier landowners and poorer families who had lost, or were in danger of losing, their land, and who therefore risked being forced into unfree labour by their accumulated debts.

Solon was an Athenian nobleman (Eupatrid), chosen magistrate (Archon) for the year 594 BC, and given full power to reorganize the basis of land ownership, credit, and personal status amongst the Athenians, and give it lasting legal form. He codified the laws, revised the levels of property on the basis of which wealthier Athenians were eligible to hold public office,37 modified the structure of law courts, greatly improving access for the poor, freed those already enslaved for debt, and abolished debt bondage for the future. He firmly refused to redistribute the land.

What was different about his solution was that the framework he established was from its outset a way of organizing political choice which took it outside the ranks of the well-born and relatively wealthy, and assigned it clearly and unapologetically to the Athenian demos as a whole.

As it continued to work, it acquired a name of its own (demokratia—rule of, or by, or, more literally, strength or power in the hands of, the demos—the people as a whole, or, in the eyes of its enemies, the common or non-noble (non-Eupatrid) people).

As we peer back towards the democracy of Athens, through the murk of history, and quarrel endlessly about what was ever really there, we largely recapitulate Greek arguments. We do so partly because of an obvious continuity in subject matter: because the reality we are trying to grasp was to such a large degree what those arguments were about; and partly too because recapitulating Greek arguments was what for almost two thousand years Europeans, and later North Americans, were tirelessly trained to do.

The survival of democracy as a word, its penetration from ancient Greek into a wide range of later languages, and still more its enforced translation over a much briefer time-span into the language of every other substantial human population across the globe, came less from its continuing capacity to elicit enthusiasm than from its utility in organizing thought, facilitating argument, and shaping judgment.

What survived from ancient democracy, for at least the next two thousand years, was not a set of institutions or practical techniques for carrying on political life. It was a body of thinking which its creators certainly envisaged (whatever else they may have also had in mind in fashioning it) as an aid in understanding politics. Its most powerful elements can be found principally in three books, by three separate authors who overlapped with one another in time: the historian Thucydides, and the philosophers Plato and his pupil Aristotle.

Each, accordingly, judged the democracy of Athens and found it to some degree wanting, because its principal elements and natural operating dynamics laid it wide open to purposes of which they keenly disapproved, and largely closed it to considerations and forces which they valued far more highly.

For far the larger part of this span of time, the conclusions drawn remained more or less sharply negative.

Plato saw democracy above all as a presumptuous and grossly ugly idea, whose demerits could be read clearly in its erratic passage through the Greek world. The chaos of the idea itself was realized in the political disruptions of the communities to which it came, and the disorder of the ways of life which it sanctioned. While not a reliable recipe for the worst life, as tyranny was, it all but guaranteed a bad life to any community that chose to adopt it, and effortlessly subverted every attempt to lead a good life together in close association with a community of others.

The real question is not why we feel more warmly towards democracy today, or why our greater warmth has crept into our vocabulary choices. It is why we have chosen, somehow, out of the entire prior history of human speech, this single, for so long so baleful, Greek noun to carry this huge weight of political hope and commitment.

Where there has proved to be something very special about democracy is in the lonely eminence it has now won.

the embrace of this one word, has, for all its intricacy, a single relatively clear shape in space and time. It is, we have already noted, a story with a beginning. It is, too, a story with a single heroine. (Demokratia is a feminine noun.) Or, if that seems too literal-minded a way of putting it, a story with a single collective hero, the demos, first of Athens and now, potentially, of anywhere in the world where a set of human beings cares to think of themselves as belonging together by right and responsibility, and through and because of who they are.

For him [Plato] democracy (demokratia) was not itself one of the good forms of rule, since it amounted to government not in the interest of the community as a whole but merely of the poor (ton aporon).

Aristotle’s decision not merely to contrast a healthy with a pathological version of rule by the multitude, but also to reserve the term demokratia for the pathological version.

Politeia for Aristotle we might say (using a device of Hobbes) was simply democracy liked, while demokratia (democracy to you and me) was democracy keenly misliked.

As we peer back towards the democracy of Athens, through the murk of history, and quarrel endlessly about what was ever really there, we largely recapitulate Greek arguments. We do so partly because of an obvious continuity in subject matter: because the reality we are trying to grasp was to such a large degree what those arguments were about; and partly too because recapitulating Greek arguments was what for almost two thousand years Europeans, and later North Americans, were tirelessly trained to do.

The survival of democracy as a word, its penetration from ancient Greek into a wide range of later languages, and still more its enforced translation over a much briefer time-span into the language of every other substantial human population across the globe, came less from its continuing capacity to elicit enthusiasm than from its utility in organizing thought, facilitating argument, and shaping judgment.

Dunn, John. Setting the People Free Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.