CHAPTER XI. THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION.
Writers of the present day play with the expressions "theocracy," and "theocratic" without making it clear to themselves what these words mean and how far they are entitled to use them. But we know that the word theokratia was only coined by Josephus; /1/
— Footnote 1. )OUKOUN )APEIROI MEN (AI KATA MEROS TWN )ETHWN KAI TWN NOMWN PARA TOIS )APASIN )ANTHRWPOS DIAFORAI. )OI MEN GAR MONARXIAIS, (OI DE TAIS )OLIGWN DUNASTEIAIS, )ALLOI DE TOIS PLHTHESIN )EPETREPYAN THN 'ECOUSIAN TWN POLITEUMATWN. (O D' (HMETEROS NOMOQETHS )EIS MEN TOUTWN OUD' (OTIOUN )APEIDEN, (WS D' )AN TIS )EIPOI BIASAMENOS TON LOGON QEOKRATIAN )APEDEICE TO POLITEUMA, QEW| THN )ARXHN KAI TO KRATOS )ANAQEIS (contra Apion ii. 17). (" There are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among mankind; some have intrusted the power of their states to monarchies, some to oligarchies, and some to democracies: but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordered our governmernt to be what I may call by a strained expression a theocracy, attributing the power and the authority to God." Compare also, on this whole chapter, Die Pharisaer und die Sadducaer, Greifswald, 1874. — Footnote
and when this writer speaks of the Mosaic constitution, he has before his eyes, it is well known, the sacred community of his own day as it existed down to the year 70 A.D. In ancient Israel the theocracy never existed in fact as a form of constitution. The rule of Jehovah is here an ideal representation; only after the exile was it attempted to realise it in the shape of a Rule of the Holy with outward means. It is perhaps the principal merit of Vatke's Biblical Theology to have traced through the centuries the rise of the theocracy and the metamorphosis of the idea to an institution.