ABSTRACT
The competing claims of normative authority, of legitimacy in modern Judaism, serve to set into perspective the religious politics of Talmudic Babylonia in remote times, two fundamentally different theories of authority and legitimacy presented themselves to Jewry. Since both politics and theology speak of ultimate concerns and make normative demands, they share common convictions of meaning or truth based upon all-embracing myth. Rabbinic political theology ran counter to the widespread conviction of Jews that anyone holding political power over them had better be able to claim Davidic ancestry. Anyone who presumed to exercise political authority over Jews had best begin with a claim to derive from the Davidic household. The rabbis were prepared to collaborate with any political leader who would give them power over Jewry to achieve their religious program. Together the rabbis and exilarch might outweigh the competing, centrifugal forces constituted by older, local grandees of various sorts and in various places.
