[PT 12.

4 (2011) 511-530]
doi:10.1558/poth.vl2i4.511

Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317X

Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719

JAN ASSMANN AND THE THEOLOGIZATION OF THE POLITICAL

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins 1
Graduate Department of History
Fayerweather Hall 413
1180 Amsterdam Ave.
Mail Code 2527
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027-7039
USA
dsj2110@columbia.edu

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses in part on Jan Assmann's interpretation and refutation
of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant
modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. It will be
demonstrated that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of
modern secularization by suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a
revolution by theologizing the political. By briefly exploring Assmann's interpretation of Egyptian religion, it will be argued that a conception of the political as distinct from the theological characterized the political form of ancient
Egypt. This leads to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's conception of the friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration
of the political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of
political illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to
Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is followed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform of the
political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argument for the
intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It will be attempted
throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification to Assmann's notion
of theologization by relating it to the question of political theology currently
taking place in France and the English-speaking world. Towards the end I
offer a number of criticisms of Assmann's notion of theologization.
Keywords: Jan Assmann; monotheism; Mosaic distinction; Carl Schmitt;
secularization; theologization.
1. Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is a Richard Hofstadter faculty fellow in the history
department at Columbia University in the City of New York. He focuses on modern European intellectual history, and is specifically interested in the history of political philosophy
in Germany and France during the twentieth century.
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Jan Assmann is certainly one of the most wide-ranging and ambitious

theorists of religion writing today. Assmann's groundbreaking work on
the history of Egyptian religion, his understanding of biblical monotheism
as the defining psycho-historical event of the West, and his call for a new
perspective on Moses have all contributed to pushing him into the center
of much scholarly debate and inquiry.2 Assmann has played a significant
role in reviving interest in Freud's Moses and Monotheism and he is perhaps
best known in the States for his writings on cultural memory. Though his
work has made him famous in Europe, his American reception has lagged
behind as his works continue to be translated in English.3
This paper focuses in part on Assmann's interpretation and refutation
of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant
modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. Assmann
attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of modern secularization by
suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a revolution by theologizing the political.
By briefly exploring Assmann's interpretation of Egyptian religion,
it will be argued that a conception of the political as distinct from the
theological characterized the political form of ancient Egypt. This leads
to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's conception of the
friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration of the
political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of political illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to
Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is
followed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform
of the political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argument for the intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It
will be attempted throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification
to Assmann's notion of theologization by relating it to contemporary
2. This debate has primarily taken place in Germany where his book Moses the Egyptian was met with fierce criticism, especially by German theologians. For reactions to the
book see Politsche Theologie, ed. Jrgen Manemann, Band 4 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2002); Klaus
Muller, "Gewalt und Wahrheit: Zu Jan Assmanns Monotheismuskritik," in Das Gewalt
Potential des Monotheismus und der dreieine Gott, ed. Peter Walter (Freiberg: Herder, 2005),
74-83; Peter Schfer, "Das jdische Monopol. Jan Assmann und der Monotheismus," Sddeutsche Zeitung, August 8,2004; Jan Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung. Oder der Preis des
Monotheismus (Mnchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), 145-273.
3. The follow-up book to Assmann's Moses the Egyptian entitled in German, Die
Mosaische Unterscheidung: Oder der Preis des Monotheismus (The Mosaic Distinction: Or the
Price of Monotheism) has recently appeared in English translation and basically constitutes
a response to the German critical reception of Moses the Egyptian, which interestingly first
appeared in English before its German publication. See Jan Assmann, The Price ofMonotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
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Steinmetz-Jenkins Jan Assmann & the Theologization of the Political 513

discussions in political theology and philosophy currently taking place in
France and the English-speaking world. This paper concludes by putting
forward a number of criticisms of theologization.
Assmann's book on political theology in Ancient Egypt, Israel and Europe,
entitled Herrschaft und Heil, was published in the year 2000.4 That it remains
without English translation is indeed unfortunate since it contains some
of the most original and creative work written on the subject of political
theology in the last decade. Its introduction provides a brief and useful historical overview of political theology from Marcus Varr to Claude Lefort.
This is followed by Assmann's objective to accomplish nothing less than
the undoing of Carl Schmitt's famous dictum that all significant concepts of
modern state theory are secularized theological concepts. What did Schmitt
specifically mean by this assertion? Schmitt understood the political to be
structured according to a monotheistic and omnipotent conception of God.
As the Schmitt scholar Gyrgy Gerby explains:
The political is structured analogically to theology, especially to monotheism. The decision about the law is analogous to the creatio ex nihilo. The
lawgiver is analogous to the omnipotent deity. The state of emergency, the
exceptional case, corresponds to the concept of the miracle. 5

Assmann believes that this view of God, which forms the basis of Schmitt's
secularization thesis, is the product of the biblical conception of mosaic
monotheism, or what he describes as the Mosaic distinction. In order to
understand the revolutionary political significance of the Mosaic distinction it is first necessary to grasp that Ancient Egypt established a political
order entirely this-worldly, immanent, and legitimated through visible
religious representations. The Mosaic distinction initiated a political
revolution by associating such representations with idolatry. The biblical
figure of Moses inaugurates a new conception of the political by rooting
the legitimacy of political order onto a non-worldly, transcendent, and
non-representable reality. Assmann describes the shift from political order
being secured by worldly representations in Egypt to political legitimacy
being derived from a monotheistic God that refuses all representations as
theologization. Assmann states this thesis as follows:
It will be shown, that the process of secularization also has an opposite
direction. I call this process theologization and would like to demonstrate it by
means of the theological becoming central political concepts, just like Carl

4. Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil. Politische Theologie in Altgypten, Israel und Europe
(Mnchen: Fischer Verlag, 2000). Herrschaft and Heil in this instance designates politics
(Herrschaft) and theology (Heil).
5. Gyrgy Gerby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics: Erik Peterson and
Carl Schmitt," New German Critique 35, no. 10 (Fall 2008): 12.
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514

Schmitt wanted to demonstrate the process of secularization by means of

the political becoming central theological concepts. One could also rewrite
the Schmittian project of political theology: The birth of the political or
better state theoryout of the spirit of theology. I will turn the tables and
deal with the birth of religion out of the spirit of the political.6

In something of a polemic manner, Assmann, arguing in the vein of

Schmitt but with cross-purposes, is suggesting that theologization means
in principle that there are no legitimate theological-political concepts.
Alois Halbmayr, one of Assmann's German critics, remarks that this actually entails that theological concepts "before they became theological concepts were political concepts and even as theological concepts they are still
political."7 It is in this manner that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt
not by appealing to the legitimacy of modernity,8 but the illegitimacy of
political theology by using Schmitt against himself.9
6. "Es soll gezeigt werden, da der Proze der Skularisierung auch eine GegenRichtung hat. Diesen Proze nenne ich Theologisierung und mchte ihn anhand des
Theologischwerdens zentraler politischer Begriffe nachweisen, genauso wie Carl Schmitt
den Proze der Skularisierung anhand des Politischwerdens zentraler theologischer Begriffe. Das Schmittsche Projekt der PolitsichenTheologie knnte man auch berschreiben:
Die Geburt desPolitischenoder besser: des Staatsrechtsaus dem Geist der Theologie.
Ich werde den Spie umdrehen und von der Geburt der Religion aus dem Geist des Politischen handeln." Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 29. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
7.
"Bevor sie also theologische Begriffe wurden, waren sie politische Begriffe, und
selbst als theologische Begriffe sind sie immer noch politisch." Alois Halbmayr, "Monotheismus als theologisch-politisches Problem: Kommentare," Politsche Theologie, ed. Jrgen
Manemann Band 4 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2002), 135.
8. This of course is a reference to Hans Blumenberg, who nevertheless argues that
Schmitt's political theology was itself a product of a secularized eschatology carried out as
the ancient Church became more institutionalized. See Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy
ofModernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 37-51.
9. Clearly Assmann's acceptance of Schmitt's conception of modernity is inseparable
from his critique of biblical monotheism. The connection of Schmitt to the Mosaic distinction is confirmed by Assmann's acknowledged acceptance of Heinrich Meier's thesis
of Schmitt being a political theologian, especially with the revelation of Schmitt's Glossarium. In his book on Carl Schmitt and the "Jewish Question," Raphael Gross singles out
Assmann's acceptance of Schmitt's appraisal of political modernity as entirely problematic. Gross condemns Assmann's transfer "of an entire spectrum of Schmittian positions
intertwined with the jurist's Nazi and anti-Semitic engagement." See Raphael Gross, Carl
Schmitt and theJews: The "Jewish Question, " the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, trans. Joel
Golb (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 240. As Christian J. Emden in
his review of Gross's book explains, "This remark refers in particular to Assmann's theory
of cultural memory, which to a considerable extent rests on the notion that social groups
seek to construct such cultural memory in order to stabilize their own identity. For Gross,
however, this argument ultimately supports the notion of the 'homogeneity of cultures and

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As Gerby explains, Schmitt's conception of secularization leaves itself
vulnerable to this specific type of argument:
Schmitt has elaborated a "theology" of the secular world, conceiving of politics as an immanentist theology in its own right. His argument, however,
can cut two ways: from the idea that politics is a consequence of the immanentist theology of the secular, immanent political order, it follows that it
might not be theology that changes into politics but politics that forms theology and makes it conform to its own shape. Modern politics may be an
heir to theology, but this might be only an instance of theology bluntly displaying its derivation from politics. 10

Nevertheless, on Assmann's own terms, what does it mean to say that

theological concepts are really political concepts? The answer to this
question is inseparable from Assmann's theory of religion and politics in
ancient Egypt.
Understanding Assmann's rigorous conception of religion and politics
in ancient Egypt is essential to accessing his notion of theologization. To
reiterate, Assmann believes that the "theologization of the political had just
as fundamentally revolutionized the world of its time, as the secularization
of the theological had in the modern age."11 This suggests that Assmann
understands the concept of the political in ancient Egypt to be a category
that in some way is separable from the question of religion. Assmann uses
a number of terms to describe this contrast, but conceptually it is most
easily grasped through the notions of primary and secondary religion:
We must distinguish between religion, which belongs to the basic conditions of human existence, and theology, which came into being as a reflexive and emerging critical form of true worship in Israel and elsewhere over
other religions. Theology in this sense is the hallmark of secondary religion.
The concept, "emergence of theology" does not refer to the emergence of
religion in general, but instead to the emergence o secondary [emphasis his]
reflexive and exclusive religion. 12

nations' and, as such, echoes anti-Semitic conceptions of a German Volk." See Christian J.
Emden, "How to Fall into Carl Schmitt's Trap," -Net Reviews, July 2009. http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782.
10. Gerby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics," 12.
11. "Theologisierung des Politischen hat die damalige welt, ebenso fundamental revolutionert wie in der Neuzeit die Skularisierung des Theologischen." Assmann, Herrschaft
und Heil, 30. Assmann's thought on the theologization of the political are reminiscent of
Marcel Gauchet's The Disenchantment of the World, which suggests that the emergence of
monotheism generated the initial first stage of religion's decay.
12. "Wir mssen also unterscheiden zwischen Religion, die zu den Grundbedingungen des menschlichen Daseins gehrt, und Theologie, die als eine reflexiv gewordene
und sich ber andere Religionen kritisch erhebende Form der wahren Gottesverehrung in
Israel und anderswo entsteht. Theologie in diesem Sinne ist das Kennzeichen sekundrer

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A Heideggarian tone is quite apparent in Assmann's distinction between

primary and secondary religion. For Assmann, primary religion is a nonreflexive and first-order category that defines the basic presuppositions of
everyday existence. It speaks of the day-to-day conditions by which life
is lived and the normalities and regularities of existence that are simply
assumed as reliable. Secondary religion emerges in the place where the
distinction established between true and false is introduced in the context
of religion. It questions the rules and norms that primary religion takes
for granted.
Based on the distinction between primary and secondary religion, how
did the Mosaic distinction carry out a political revolution that defines the
current political form of the West? What is clear is that Assmann's exegetical
analysis of Egyptian texts has led him to the conclusion that Ancient Egypt
possessed, to a qualified degree, a secular conception of political order.
Assmann's argument for this is based on a subtle distinction he makes
between a broad and narrow conception of religion in Egypt. According to
Assmann, the broad conception of religion in Egypt encompassed society
at large. Assmann, reworking terminology developed by the German sociologist of religion Thomas Luckmann, describes the broad conception of
religion as invisible religion. "Invisible religion is responsible for a view
of the world as a whole and is not capable of being institutionalized...
invisible religion determines the relationship of the individual to society
and the world." 13 This is contrasted with visible religion, which speaks
of the institutionalization of religious life and practices. Invisible religion
"articulates a space-time schema overrarching and exceeding the empirical
space-time coordinates in which concrete activities and events occur."14
Visible religions speak of empirically analyzable religious activities and
practices such as festivals and ceremonies.
For the sake of conceptual clarification it will be useful to observe that
Assmann's distinction between visible and invisible religion structurally
Religion." Jan Assmann, "Monotheismus," Politische Theologie 4 (2002): 123-24. It is interesting that in Herrschaft und Heil Assmann does not use the term theology to distinguish
secondary from primarily religion but simply to contrast one form of religion with another.
Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 30-31. Assmann acknowledges the German theologian Theo
Sundermeier for this distinction. In Was ist Religion, however, Sundermeier seems to reserve
primary religions only for small traditional societies: Theo Sundermeier, Was ist Religion
(Mnchen: Chr. Kaiser/Gtersloher, 1999).
13. Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 33. For the idea of invisible religion see Thomas
Luckman, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
14. Fred Dallmayr, "Postmetaphysics and Democracy," Political Theory 21, no. 1 (February 1993): 112.
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parallels what the contemporary French political theorist Claude Lefort
describes as the difference between the political (le politique) versus politics (la politique).15 The political for Lefort is analogous to what Assmann
describes as invisible religion. It speaks of the overarching symbolic
framework that characterizes the form and shape of a given society. As
Charles Taylor notes, "Within this outlook, what constitutes a society as
such is the metaphysical order it embodies. People act within a framework
which is there prior to and independent of their action."16 Taylor speaks
of this as the social imaginary that forms the background conditions for
how a society perceives of its day-to-day existence. According to Lefort,
the political is concerned with how the appearances behind the classifications of politics come to appear. Assmann's conception of visible religion
parallels Lefort's conception of politics. Lefort associates "politics" with
the social sciences, namely such disciplines as political science or political sociology. In this sense politics, like Assmann's conception of visible
religion, is understood as secondary discourse in contrast to the political
which is seen as society's grounding dimension.
Following Merleau-Ponty, the distinction between the political and
politics speaks of the relationship between figure and ground. Politics
arise from a differentiation within the political form of society. As
Marcel Gauchet, a former student of Lefort's, explains, "the political
constitutes the most encompassing level of the organization [of society],
not a subterranean level, but veiled in the visible."17 What is veiled in
the visible is the very condition that gives rise to its possibility, namely
the invisible or political form that generates it. Put differently, politics
should be understood as an objective expression or quasi-representation
of the primal dimensionality of the social imaginary, to use Taylor's
language. As Lefort remarks, "Political science emerges from a desire
to objectify, and forgets that no elements, no elementary structures,
no entities (classes or segments of classes), no economic or technical
determinations, and no dimensions of social space exist until they have
been given a form."18 This means that politics and the political are not
15. For an analysis of this distinction in the work of Lefort and as it relates to the question of political theology, see my "Claude Lefort and the Illegitimacy of Modernity, "Journal
for Cultural and Religious Theory 10, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 102-17.
16. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007),
192.
17. Quoted in Warren Breckman, "Democracy between Disenchantment and Political Theology: French Post-Marxism and the Return of Religion," New German Critique 94
(Winter 2005): 87.
18. Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Minnesota, M N : University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 11.
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two separate realms but rather they are chiasmatically intertwined. What
appears as politics is an extraction and therefore quasi-representation of
the social imaginary. Politics should be understood as a simulacra of the
political form that engenders it.
This brief foray into Lefort's conception of the political and politics
clarifies Assmann's understanding of invisible and visible religion. In
particular Assmann associates invisible religion with what the Egyptians
described as maat.
Maat signifies the principle of a universal harmony that manifests itself in
cosmos as order and in the world of human beings as justice. Such concepts
exist also in other cultures to describe the totality of meaningful order on
the highest plane of abstraction. Examples are the Greek concept kosmos, the
Indian dharma, and the Chinese tao}9

Maat (abstract principle of universal harmony) on earth is facilitated and

manifested into two opposing culture realms of law and religion. Paradoxically, "these are the spheres in which maatwhich is otherwise a higher,
invisible form and as such is not capable of being institutionalizedis
made visible."20 Maat veiled in the visible (the domestic) divides itself into
the spheres of religion and law that facilitate order. Visible religion in Egypt
involves engagement in worship, sacrifices, offering and the observance of
festivals. This is religion narrowly defined and must be contrasted with
the domestic sphere of social and legal order which is also instantiated
by maat yet is distinct from religious practices. The social and legal order
involves adhering to the law, administering justice and providing welfare
for the poor. In other words, maat accounts for and legitimates both legal
and religious activities, but these spheres do not institutionally overlap
and reside in two distinct jurisdictions. This leads to Assmann's interesting conclusion that a form of secularism was present in Egyptian religion
and politics:
The "moral and political cosmos" is contrasted with the "religious cosmos"
as something else, something that is not religion in the narrower sense. This
sphere too has a religious foundation, but it has nothing to do with placating
the gods, with cults, theology, and the priesthood. Instead it forms its own
"sub-universe of meaning"... This, incidentally teaches us that in Egypt the
law was not a sacred institution, as it was in Israel, nor was it a medium to
"satisfy the gods." On the contrary, the law was kept outside the sphere of religion
proper [italics mine], which was exclusively concerned with communicating
with the divine.21

19. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 33.

20. Ibid., 34.
21. Jan Assmann, Of God and gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (Madison,
CT: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 11.
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With the conceptual framework in mind, an attempt can be made to
give a proper account of Assmann's understanding of theologization. It
specifically takes place when the distinction between the spheres of law
and religions are merged into one. When this occurs a secondary religion
arises that pushes back the visible basis for political order into the invisible
in which justice is now assimilated into a relationship with the divine.
Theologization takes place "when concepts that had previously belonged
in the sphere of justice are now inscribed theologically in this process
of de-differentiation."22 Out of the inscription of the political within the
theological emerges the birth of a lawgiving deity.23
What is important here to grasp is that the semantic universe of secondary religion comes into existence by a stark break with the primary
religion.24 In this sense secondary religion is understood by Assmann as a
counter-religion that defines itself in opposition against the primary religion it rejects. The tenor of Egyptian religion is inclusivity, integration,
compatibility, reciprocity and plurality. These notions are the product of a
cosmotheistic25 worldview by which the divine does not stand in opposition between the world, human beings or society, but instead constitutes a
principle that permeates and arranges them. This is a world of continually
developing synergistic processes. The sources of legitimacy that facilitate
these processes are the pantheon of deities that represent and maintain
political and religious order in the world. As Assmann states:
In the political-religious dimension, a polytheistic world structured the
political arrangement of society. It determined the membership of each to a
city, festival and religious community. It decided the relationship of settlements to states, states to districts and districts to residency and defined in
this manner the political identity of the land and all of its subdivisions down
to the individual citizen. 26

22. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 36.

23. "[Monotheism] had made justice for the first time into a direct concern of God's.
The world until this point had not known a lawgiving God." "er hat sie erstmals zur unmittelbaren Sache Gottes gemacht. Einen gesetzgebenden Gott hatte die Welt bis dahin nicht
gekannt." Assmann, Mosaische Unterscheidung, 75.
24. Assmann's multiple dualistic pairings can lead to confusion. It appears that all primary and secondary religions are visible but not all visible religions are secondary religions.
A secondary religion is defined as a counter-religion.
25. For a philosophical engagement with Assmann's notion of cosmotheism see
Jrgen Werbik, "Absolutistsicher Eingottglaube? Befreiende Vielfalt des Polytheismus," in
Ist der Glaube Feind der Freiheit?: Die neue Debatte um den Monotheismus, ed. Thomas Sding
(Breisgau: Herder, 2003), 142-75.
26. "In der politisch-kultischen Dimension strukturiert eine Gtterwelt die politische
Struktur der Gesellschaft,bestimmt die Zugehrigkeit eines jeden zu einer Stadt-, Festund Kult-gemeinschaft, bestimmt das Verhlnis der Siedlungen zu den Stdten, der Stdte
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In Moses the Egyptian Assmann argues that cosmotheism not only ordered
society down to the lowest sum of its parts, but also allowed for the
"ecumen" of interconnected nations. This affirms that not the names
or shapes of deities, but their similar functions allowed for their translation between disparate cultures. "Thus they functioned as a means of
intercultural translatability. The gods were international because they
were cosmic. The different people worshiped different gods, but nobody
contested the reality of foreign gods and the legitimacy of foreign forms of
worship."27 Translation is made possible by a commensurability of function that allows for an overlapping consensus amongst the gods. The basic
premises of this commensurability are guaranteed by cosmotheism. This
would suggest that ancient Egyptian religion interestingly possessed much
in common with John Rawls's political liberalism. Rawls's notion of an
overlapping consensus is made possible by "certain fundamental intuitive ideas implicit in the political culture of a democratic society."28 This
is to affirm that contained within the various comprehensive doctrines
of democratic societies are functional equivalents than can be translated
into a public conception of reason allowing for an overlapping consensus. An overlapping consensus is derived from divergent comprehensive
doctrines operating within the restraints of a democratic culture. Vis--vis
Assmann, if translation in primary religion is guaranteed by the premises
of cosmotheism then translation in the Rawlsian sense is guaranteed by the
premises of a democratic culture allowing for an overlapping consensus.
Functional equivalents, translation and even the idea of a romantic polytheism are all notions that contemporary political theorists have espoused
that share a deep affinity with the tenor of Assmann's project.29
The Mosaic distinction derives its semantics from the rejection of Egypt.
By juxtaposing Egypt with true religion it "cut the umbilical cord which
connected [Moses'] people and his religious ideas to their cultural and
natural context."30 Assmann describes this as semantic relocation by which
the concepts and rhetoric of loyalty were transferred from the political to
zu den Gauen und der Gaue zur Residenz und definiert auf diese Weise die politische Identitt des Landes und aller seiner Untergliedergungen bis hinab zum einzelnen Brger."
Assmann, "Monotheismus," 124.
27. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3.
28. John Rawls, "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus," New York
University Law Review 64, no. 2 (May 1989): 240.
29. For an example of romantic polytheism see Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism," in The Rival ofPragmatism, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N C : Duke University Press, 1998), 27.
30. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 209.
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the divine sphere, where they acted as models between the relationship of
god and man:
Relocation means that something is withdrawn from one sphere and transferred to another. Thus, protection was no longer sought on the "mundane"
plane, from kings and patrons, but on the divine plane, from a deity... It
means the transfer of the political institutions of alliance, treaty and vasseldom from the mundane sphere of politics to the transcendental sphere
of religion. In Israel we are dealing with the "semiological divinization" or
theologization of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian, and especially Assyrian foreign politics.31

This passage suggests that at the heart of semantic relocation is the emergence of political theology. The carrying out of this relocation is most
clearly seen in the prohibition of images. Representations establish conduits for the divine by which political and religious authority is legitimated.
In this sense idols are sacraments which secure the gods real presence on
earth. As such, "the state's most important task is to ensure divine presence under the condition of divine absence, and thereby to maintain a
symbiotic relationship between man, society and cosmos."32 Therefore,
the prohibition against idols must be construed as a counter-politic that
sets itself directly against the very core of Egyptian political authority. As
such, Egypt offers not a false religion but a false politics.
The parallels between Israel as possessing a true politics versus Egypt as
possessing a false politics demonstrates strong affinities with the explicit
language of a certain strand of American post-liberal political theology.
Exemplary of this is the theologian Stanley Hauerwas who portrays liberalism as offering a seductive "false politics" of the world that the true
politics of the church must set itself against.33 Furthermore, Assmann's
reading of the Exodus brings him very close to liberation theologians when
he argues that freedom for Israel could only mean freedom from political
oppression through divine deliverance: "Monotheism appears as a political
movement of liberation from pharaonic oppression and as the foundation
of an alternative way of life, where humans are not ruled by a state, but
freely consent to enter an alliance with God and adopt the stipulations of
divine law."34 From this angle, political authority is no longer represented,
but rather is grounded by entering into a covenant with an unrepresentable
31. Jan Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs and Semantic Relocations in Ancient Egypt
and Israel," in Religion and Politics: Cultural Perspectives, ed. Bernhard Giesen (London: Brill
Academic, 2005), 44, 45.
32. Ibid., 47.
33. See, in particular, Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (South
Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997).
34. Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs," 48.
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and transcendent God. The result is a world made strange by an inversion

in which the discourse of incommensurability now becomes essentialized in the concept of the political on account of theology. On this basis
Assmann is able to argue that as a result of the prohibition against idols
the discourse between true and false religion first emerges since loyalty to
the one true God affirms not denying the existence of other deities, but
denying loyalty and allegiance to a false politic.35
In an article entitled, "Monotheismus," Assmann asks the question
what this distinction has meant for the history of political theology. This
question is raised in light of Assmann's assertion that semantic relocation is sufficient but does not necessitate the potential for violence. The
propensity towards violence arises not from the idea of the One God
nor with distinction between truth and untruth. It instead is linked with
the persecution of untruth when the distinction between true and false
is conflated between "us" and "them" and thus construed in terms of
friends and enemies. It is at this juncture that he suggests Carl Schmitt's
conception of friends and enemies can be accounted for within the
semantic field of the Mosaic distinction, and specifically the ban on
images:
Is there a correlation between the distinction of true and false and that
between friends and enemies? This relationship is obvious and connected
with the prohibition of images. The prohibition of images directed the theological distinction between truth and untruth, god and gods, into the political and interpreted it in the sense of friends and enemies. It defines who
God's enemies are and where they stand. With the banning of images it is
a matter of defining an enemy in light of the distinction between true and
false.36

35. "The political meaning of monotheism in its early stage does not deny the existence of other gods. On the contrary, without the existence of other gods the request to stay
faithful to the lord would be pointless." Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs," 50. They are false
not because they are non-existent but rather because they signify an oppressive political
alternative. Of course this conception of the political is inseparable from a sharp distinction
between God and the world. In Mosaische Unterscheidung, Assmann makes the interesting
argument that Karl Barth's dialectic theology and its radical transcendence vis--vis the liberal Protestant culture of its day is analogous to the Mosaic distinction and Egyptian culture
and religion. Mosaische Unterscheidung, 53.
36. "Gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Unterscheidung von wahr und
falsch und derjenigen zwischen Freund and Feind? Dieser Zusammenhang liegt auf der
Hand und verbindet sich mit dem Bilderverbot. Das Bilderverbot wendet die theologische
Unterscheidung zwischen Wahrheit und Unwahrheit, Gott und Gtzen, ins Politische und
interpretiert sie im Sinne von Freund und Feind. Sie definiert, wer die Feinde Gottes sind
und wo sie stehen. Beim Bilderverbot handelt es sich um eine Feindbestimmung im Licht
der Unterscheidung von wahr und falsh." Assmann, "Monotheismus," 131.
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What might present itself at this moment is one particular charge against
Assmann suggesting that his argument is potentially anti-Semitic.37 From
this angle the levelling of anti-Semitism at Assmann involves the claim
that Judaism is ultimately responsible for establishing a turn not for the
better, but for the worst by abolishing the golden age of primary religion.
It seems Assmann has responded to this charge in a variety of ways. The
following interaction focuses on two of his responses to this criticism.
Foremost, Assmann argues that of the three Abrahamitic religions,
"Judaism is the only one that has never turned the implications of violence and intolerance into historical reality precisely because it has relegated the final universalizing of truth to eschatology and not to history."38
In light of this statement, it should be asked how Assmann views the
modern state of Israel. It is interesting that in Herrschaft und Heil Assmann suggests that the very identity of ancient Israel was predicated as
being against the Egyptian state in a manner analogous to Pierre Clastres'
notions of Socit contre l'tat?9 This could suggest that Assmann makes
a direct link between the monotheistic revolution and a rejection of the
state. Assmann further remarks that, though Judaism constitutes a culture established fundamentally on difference historically, this distinction
has not been predicated on a division between friends and enemies. Judaism draws and maintains this boundary in the form of self-exclusion.
Self-exclusion necessitates no violence and is to be contrasted with Islam
and Christianity that historically have not recognized a boundary of this
nature. This leads to Assmann's conclusion regarding the specific link
between counter-religion and Schmitt's political theology:
God is truth; the gods of others are lies. That is the theological basis of
the distinction between friend and enemy. Only on this ground and in this
semantic context has political theology actually become dangerous. The
political theology of Carl Schmitt also stands in this tradition of revelational
theology's propensity towards violence. Here lies, in my opinion, the actual
"political problem" of monotheism. 40
37. For Assmann's reaction to this charge, see Mosaische Unterscheidung, 25-26.
38. Assmann, God and gods, 111.
39. See Herrschaft und Heil, 49.
40. "Gott ist die Wahrheit, die Gtter der anderen sind Lge. Das ist die theologische Basis der Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind. Erst auf diesem Boden und in
diesem semantischen Rahmen ist die politische Theologie der Gewalt wirklich gefahrlich
geworden. In dieser Tradition offenbarungstheologischer Gewaltbereitschaft steht auch
noch die politische Theologie Carl Schmitts. Hier liegt m.E. das eigentlich politische
Problem des Monotheismus." Monotheismus, 132. Assmann has responded in a number
of other ways to this charge as well by suggesting that he interprets Moses not as a figure
of history, whose existence is questionable, but rather as a figure of memory. Constructing
how Moses is remembered is part of Assmann's project of mnemohistory, which "analyzes
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Political Theology

Furthermore, Assmann suggests that one primary purpose of Moses the

Egyptian was its ecumenical intent.41 By interpreting Moses as an Egyptian,
Assmann hoped to accomplish something like what the second temple
Judaism scholar E. P. Sanders achieved by emphasizing the Jewishness of
Saint Paul, namely the mitigation of traditional theological distinctions.42
the importance which a present ascribes to the past... The task of mnemohistory consists
in analyzing the mythical elements in tradition and discovering their hidden agenda." Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 11.
41. This is perhaps what separates the tone of Assmann's project from that of Regina
Schwartz and Jonathen Kirsch's works on the connection between monotheism and violence; see Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Case of Monotheism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996); Jonathen Kirsch, God against the Gods: The History of War
between Monotheism and Polytheism (London: Penguin Press, 2005). The recent work of Peter
Sloterdijk on monotheism can also be read in this context: God's Zeal: The Battle of the Three
Monotheisms (New York: Polity Press, 2009). For the so-called "new debate" on religion and
monotheism that has arisen in Germany see the edited volume: Fragen nach dem einen Gott,
ed. Gesine Palmer (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). Assmann's Moses the Egyptian provides a historiography of this debate starting from the seventeenth century up until his own
work, with major consideration of Freud's Moses and Monotheism. See Moses the Egyptian,
55-167.
42. The similarities between Assmann and E. R Sanders' motivational concerns and
comparative textual analysis are striking. Published in 1977, E. R Sanders' Paul and PalestinianJudaism remains the pivotal event in post-World War II Pauline studies. Sander's book in
part initiated what the New Testament theologian James D. G. Dunn later described as the
N e w Perspective on Paul. Undeniably, the New Perspective, as represented by Sanders, was
motivated by the attempt to mitigate traditional binary interpretations of Paul, which made
significant salvific distinctions between faith and works, law and grace, etc. that historically
gave rise to anti-Semitism. At a level of scholarship that perhaps remains almost unrivaled
in the English-speaking world today, Sanders' comparison of Palestinian literature from
200 BCE to 200 CE with Pauline literature concluded that election and salvation in Judaism
is based on God's mercy and is not a human achievement. Sanders' argument is more complex than space allows, but the ultimate implication is that Paul understood in the context of
the Judaism of his time actually embodies what is common to both Judaism and Christianity. The N e w Perspective on Paul is now directed at a variety of agendas, but what must be
stressed here is its original concern with traditional Pauline scholarship's semantic potential
for anti-Semitism and thus the need to reconsider it on exegetical grounds. It is in this light
that Jan Assmann's call for a new perspective on Moses must be seen. In particular Assmann
suggests that understanding Moses as an Egyptian parallels the New Perspective's emphasis
on Paul as a Jew: "Paul the Jew embodies what is common to Judaism and Christianity. In
the same way, Moses the Egyptian embodies what is imagined to be common to Ancient
Egypt and Israel. Whereas Moses the Hebrew is the personification of confrontation and
antagonismbetween Israel = truth and Egypt = falsehoodMoses the Egyptian bridges
this opposition... He personifies the positive importance of Egypt in the history of humankind." Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 11. Assmann, in a manner similar to Sanders, provides
detailed textual analysis of ancient Egyptian texts that suggests a form of monotheism that
mitigates against untranslatable truth claims thus providing an alternative to a tragically lost
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Assmann states that "monotheism derives its crucial semantic elements
from a construction of the rejected other.. .it depends on the preservation
of what it opposes for its own definition."43 It appears that the resources
of primary religion are made available but veiled in secondary religion.
Assmann's new perspective on Moses is an attempt to recall a cultural
memory and thus an alternative tradition that remains present but in a
theologized form. This "simultaneity makes it possible to identify with the
forms of expression of a past going back thousands of years."44 This would
suggest that Assmann appears to be advancing not simply a remembrance
but rather a possible recovery of political legitimacy. By invoking an alternative memory of the past, Assmann is attempting to revive an alternative
political tradition.
There are a number of difficulties with Assmann's conception of the
theologization of the political. Foremost, Assmann's wholesale acceptance of Schmitt's conception of political theology is problematic. In
particular, by embracing Schmitt's conception of secularization he sets
himself up for the very same charges that the German philosopher
Hans Blumenberg levelled at Carl Schmitt's conception of history. In
the Legitimacy of Modernity Blumenberg argued that "there were no real
transformations of religious into worldly concepts in the areas where
advocates of the secularization thesis saw them."45 His main argument
suggested that the transposition of theological categories into secular
ones was philosophically untenable. This is a consequence of secularization thesis's inability to produce in any satisfactory manner a demonstration of transformation in a substantialistic sense. Both Schmitt
and Assmann's understanding of historical change posits an underlying
substance that provides continuity in the underlying content of changing ideas. This is most clearly represented in Assmann when he suggests that monotheism depends on the preservation of what it opposes
for its own definition. This means that secondary religion is indissolu-

memory that nevertheless does not remain beyond the threshold of remembrance. What
separates Assmann from the New Perspective on Paul is the ambitiousness of his project
that sees the fate of the West as something like the tragic consequence of the biblical representation of Moses the Hebrew. What unites them is their attempt to uncover forgotten or
overlooked traditions that call into question the narrowness of received tradition that have
engendered anti-Semitism. It should be noted that Assmann does not describe his project
as the "new perspective on Moses."
43. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian ,211.
44. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 28. Assmann discusses the notion of the
"theologizing of culture memory" in the same book. See ibid., 37-42.
45. Quoted in Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European
Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 159.
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bly bound up with primary religion.46 As such, Blumenberg's remarks

concerning Schmitt's secularization theory apply to theologization as
well: "the genuine substance that was secularized is wrapped up in what
thus became worldly, and remains wrapped up in it."47
Unlike with Schmitt, however, this criticism of Assmann is the consequence of his imbibing the philosophical holism of the phenomenological tradition that does not allow him to make an ontological distinction
between visible and invisible religion. Using the language of MerleauPonty, visible and invisible religion are not two separate realms but rather
they are chiasmatically intertwined. As such, Assmann's understanding
of theologization lends itself to conceiving of history as a totality of substances and is entirely absent of a conception of alterity In this regards
Blumenberg's critique of Schmitt is again valid for Blumenberg:
The world is not a constant whose reliability guarantees that in the historical
process an original constitutive substance must come back to light, undisguised, as soon as the superimposed elements of theological derivation and
specificity are cleared away.48

A Blumenbergian position would also reject the notion that the original
political substance of Egyptian society can come back to light as soon as the
superimposed elements of political derivation are cleared away. Nevertheless, it is clear that Assmann's conception of political legitimacy, and his
call to remember an alternative political memory that still remains with
us, espouses just this very notion. As he remarks in Moses the Egyptian:
A counter-religion can be compared to a palimpsest, a reused papyrus or
parchment. The old text is erased, and the new text is written on the cleaned
surface. The more care has been taken to clean the surface, the less of the
old text is available. But some faint trace of the told text usually remains.
It is viewed with hatred and abomination. This is the old paradigm. The
new paradigm focuses on the old text, which is still visible under the new
49

inscription.

These observations led to the conclusion that Assmann's understanding

of theologization can be reduced to a Left Hegelian projection theory of
religion. This is most clearly apparent in Assmann's notion of semantic
relocation by which the concepts and rhetoric of loyalty are projected
from the "mundane" sphere of kings and patrons to the transcendental
sphere of an Almighty God. In this context, the constructive aspect of
46. For the interaction between primary and secondary religion, see Sundermeier, Was
ist Religion, 37.
47. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy ofModernity, 17.
48. Ibid., 8.
49. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 209.
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Steinmetz-Jenkins Jan Assmann & the Theologization of the Political 527

Assmann's work presents itself as nothing more than the modern attempt
to de-theologize the political.
Viewed in this light, Assmann seems entirely unaware of contemporary critiques of the concept of religion, which demonstrate that universal
definitions of religion, such as Assmann's, are problematic. Talal Asad
specifically argues that "religion" must be seen within
the context of Christian attempts to achieve a coherence in doctrines and
practices... [and that as a result] there cannot be a universal definition of
religion, not only because of its constituent elements and relationships are
historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes. 50

Asad would argue that the difficulty with Assmann's conception of religion is that once it is posited in universal terms it establishes a measuring
stick that places all religions outside its narrative and in the position of
never being able to advance to that standard. Asad maintains that
ethnographers and others ought to limit themselves to description, reserving critique to those who participate firsthand in the language and culture
under discussion: that is, people who offer their criticism on the basis of
shared values and are prepared to engage in a sustained conversation of giveand-take. 51

This would mean that the very bifurcations Assmann hopes to overcome
appear inherently necessary to the alternative political form he seeks to
remind us.
It could also be said that Assmann's negative rendering of theism
appears reminiscent of a particular formulation of secularism that marginalizes or attempts to privatize comprehensive religious doctrines in
the name of securing political and social equality. As such, Assmann's
conception of the political seems out of touch with the recent turn
in political theory to a post-secular conception of the theological and
the political.52 From this angle, the theological and the political are no
longer viewed as incommensurable spheres of discourse, but instead as
potentially overlapping discursive frameworks that possess the semantic
50. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and
Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 29.
51. Quoted from Bruce Lincoln, Review of Genealogies ofReligion: Discipline and Reasons
ofPower in Christianity and Islam," History of Religions 35, no. 1 (August 1995): 83-86 (85).
52. See, in particular, William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Jrgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion:
Philosophical Essays (New York: Polity, 2008); John Caputo, On Religion (London: Routledge,
2001).

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possibility for the securing of a democratic society. From a post-secular

perspective, the fact that Assmann can so easily reverse the Schmittian
narrative implies a common jointure that enables a solidarity to exist
between them. The opposition between the political and the theological
"can be asserted only as long as both parts are compelled to be in one and
the same place.. .the greatest antithesis is possible only where the greatest
identity is present."53 This parallels the recent claim of Giorgio Agamben,
who argues that this site of convergence "constitutes the secret point
of contact where theology and politics communicate unceasingly and
exchange roles."54 In the end Assmann remains prisoner to a narrative
that prevents him from seeing that the very place where the theological
and political appear locked into a relation of antagonism also constitutes a mutual site of engagement between them. In this sense both the
political and the theological should be understood as rival categories of
legitimacy in their mutual and often overlapping attempt to articulate a
vision of society.
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