Why we make kings

As the new King's coronation approaches, Ian Bradley explores the deep roots of kingship as an answer to anarchy and disorder.

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

A medieval illustration of King David being anointed by Samuel

Samuel anoints David king. An early 14th century illumination from the Vaux Psalter.

Lambeth Palace Library.

At the most solemn moment of King Charles III’s coronation on 6 May, the Westminster Abbey choir will sing Handel’s thrilling setting of words from the first chapter of the first Book of Kings:

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king.

It provides a reminder that the anointing of the monarch with holy oil is carried out in direct imitation of a practice described in the Bible in connection with the inauguration of the kings of ancient Israel.

This is not the only link which the coronation will make with stories found in the Bible. Legend has it that the Stone of Destiny, on which Charles will be seated when he is crowned, started life as the pillow on which Jacob slept when he had a dream of the ladder leading up to heaven as described in Genesis. Jacob set the stone up as a pillar to commemorate the place where God had talked to him. Later stories identify it as the pillar beside which Abimelech was crowned king of Israel and King Josiah made his covenant with the Lord to keep his commandments and statutes.

The theme of monarchy looms large in the collection of books making up the Hebrew Bible which tells of God’s dealing with the chosen people of Israel and forms the Christian Old Testament. The word ‘king’ occurs 565 times and ‘kingdom’ 163 times. Six of the so-called historical books have the monarchy as their main subject matter, including the aptly named first and second books of Kings. The life of one particular king, David, occupies more space than that of any other figure, including the great patriarchs, Abraham and Moses.

By popular request

Kingship is presented in the early books of the Old Testament as both the popularly requested and the divinely appointed answer to the anarchy and disorder prevailing under the judges who ruled the people of Israel for the first two hundred and fifty years or so after their arrival in the promised land of Canaan around 1250 BCE. The Book of Judges emphasizes the corruption and lawlessness under this form of government, noting: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel: everyone did what was right in his eyes.’

The inauguration of the Israelite monarchy, which took place around 1020 BCE, is described in the Book of Samuel. A crucial role is played by Samuel, the last of the great judges who becomes the first king-maker and presides over the coronations of both Saul and David, the first two Israelite kings. Samuel is portrayed as prophet, seer and intermediary between Yahweh/God and the people, to whom the elders of Israel come asking for ‘a king to govern us like all the nations’. Samuel puts this request to Yahweh who is initially reluctant to accede to it and tells him to spell out to the people the dangers of kingship in terms of the accretion of private wealth and military might. These warnings are ignored, however, and the people continue to insist that they must have a king ‘to govern us and go out before us and fight our battles’. When Samuel reports this to God, he is told, ‘Hearken to their voice and make them a king’.

On king making

If there is a certain initial unease in God’s mind about the desirability of kingship, the institution is subsequently given divine blessing, with the king been seen as God’s chosen one – Messiah in Hebrew, or Christos in Greek. There is a sense of partnership between Yahweh and the chosen people of Israel in the making of kings. The emphasis is on a three way covenant between God, king and people. This concept of covenant is one of the most distinctive and central features of Israelite kingship, as is the idea that the monarch mediates and represents divine rule and stands for justice, fairness and truth.

During and after the long period of exile that followed the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of Israel in 597 BCE, Jews increasingly pinned their hopes on the future coming of a new Messiah, a king from the house of David, raised up by God to deliver Jerusalem from where he would reign, restoring and re-uniting Israel and bringing about a new world order of justice and righteousness, as looked forward to and promised in the Psalms and the writings of the prophets.

The theme of kingship, so fully explored in the Old Testament, continues to figure prominently in the New Testament, although its central focus is on the kingdom of God, inaugurated and proclaimed by Jesus, with its dethroning of the rich and powerful and exaltation of the humble and meek. All four of the Gospel writers use royal titles and monarchical allusions in their descriptions of Jesus. He is identified as the anointed king, the Messiah or Christos, leading his followers to be known as Christians. From his birth in Bethlehem in the house and family of King David, and his baptism where he is identified by God as his beloved Son, to his trial and crucifixion for being ‘King of the Jews’, the royal theme runs as a clear thread through his life and death.

Jesus himself redefines the concept of kingship. This is signalled most dramatically by his choice of a donkey on which to make his entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. He deliberately opts for an animal associated with humility, humiliation even, rather than a proud charger or stallion more fitting for a king on a triumphal progress. In washing his disciples’ feet on the first Maundy Thursday, he further shows that he is, in Graham Kendrick’s memorable words The Servant King displaying meekness as well as majesty. When Pontius Pilate repeatedly asks him whether he is indeed the King of the Jews, he gives the cryptic answer 'You have said so'. Jesus never repudiates the idea of kingship but gives it a wholly new meaning of humble servanthood which has been the inspiration for Christian monarchy ever since.

Review

America

Culture

Film & TV

Politics

6 November 2024

5 min read

Trump: from apprentice to master of contempt

The Trump biopic is a morality tale for our times

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

An 1980s business man looks contemptuously at the camera.

Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump.

Scythia Films.

He won. Donald Trump is, once again, the President of the United States. The controversial property tycoon, controversial ‘billionaire’, controversial reality TV star, and highly controversial one-term (or so it seemed) President, has done it again! Sweeping not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote, Trump will have another four years to ‘Make America Great Again’…whatever that means. The question on most pundits’ lips today is: how? The man who was written off from the first moments he descended into his campaign on that golden escalator; the man who was guaranteed to lose his first (let alone his third!) Presidential bid; the man who has been mired in sexual, financial, constitutional, and legal scandal…how could he win again!?

Rather than seek answers in the election coverage of last night I went to an alternative source of information. I popped down to my local cinema to watch The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s biopic of Trump’s rise to power and prominence, focusing on his ‘apprenticeship’ under pugnacious, pugilistic, flamboyant, and flamingly foul-mouthed lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn. Whether consciously or not – and believe me, it’s so consciously on the nose as to feel like a punch to the nose – the film draws a ruler-straight line from Trump’s early days as Cohn’s disciple to his electoral success in 2016…and now in 2024.

How did Trump win, not once but twice…?

…by selling his soul to the Devil.

We meet Trump and Cohn in an exclusive New York Members Club. Trump is shy and awkward – none of the bombast we know him for – clumsily trying to impress his date by mentioning how he is the youngest member to ever be admitted. Cohn is holding court with some mob-coded friends. Cohn stares at the handsome, golden-haired ingénue (Trump, not his date) across the room through sunken domes. He invites Trump to join him for dinner. The date has gone to ‘powder my nose’ and seemingly has made a lucky escape through the lavatory window. Trump joins Cohn. Cohn bloviates, always with his hand firmly gripping Trump’s thigh. Trump is enamoured…smitten…in love. Cohn becomes his lawyer and Trump his protégé.

The film goes on to chronicle how, under Cohn’s tutelage, Trump becomes the man we now know. Cohn is committed to winning – under the guise of being committed to America. He teaches Trump his three rules for success:

Attack, attack, attack.
Admit nothing. Deny everything.
Even in defeat, claim victory.

There is a nice bit of mirroring in the final scene as we see Trump regurgitate these rules, introduced pithily and wittily in the first 30 minutes of the film, in his final exaggerated and bloviated style to a ghost-writer employed to write The Art of the Deal. This is how Trump wins. Throughout the film we watch Trump evolve from the nervous young man, protective of his alcoholic brother and under-the-thumb of his overbearing father, into a monstrous, ad absurdum form of Cohn…a man who will demand absolute submission to his will.

The film, I wager, is partly a morality tale. It gives us a (slightly) sympathetic young Faustus, and chronicles his descent into Hell, but without a hint of real redemption or pity.

The film is sickeningly enjoyable. Sebastian Stan gently invites us to root for Trump in his timidity, and transforms with a subtlety which leaves the audience questioning their own culpability. Maria Bakalova brings a good-natured innocence to Ivana Trump (née Zelníčková) which steals the few scenes she’s afforded. Jeremy Strong – always watchable – brings his magnetic charisma to the screen. His Cohn is akin to Pacino’s John Milton in The Devil’s Advocate: delightfully chewing the scenery and ingratiating himself to the viewer while being hateful. The film is just over two hours long but doesn’t feel it. Never dragging, never boring. The soundtrack revels in the period, and the needle-drops are near perfect. It’s a really rather fun watch.

However.

The film is not nourishing. It is the cinematic equivalent of the junk food that leads to Trump’s expanding waistline (and the liposuction scene that is so difficult to watch). The film painstakingly draws parallels between Trump’s early success and his later political career. Cohn’s rules, Reagan’s campaigning slogans, the arrogance, the (sexual!) violence…everything we associate with Trump today is found in its nascent form in his 1980s career. Yet, none of it really matters because we have no character we want to attach ourselves to. No one, except perhaps Trump’s mother and his first wife, neither of whom have the chance to make enough of an impact, is likable or redeemable. Cohn is slime personified, until a sudden AIDS related conversion to conscience, and we don’t see nearly enough of the pathetic and put-upon Trump to care about his descent into the demonic realm of absolute self-absorption. The script is razor-sharp, but not incisive. The characters are riotously funny, but nowhere near emotionally engaging enough.

The film, I wager, is partly a morality tale. It gives us a (slightly) sympathetic young Faustus, and chronicles his descent into Hell, but without a hint of real redemption or pity. Mortality makes Cohn recognise the monster he has been the Dr Frankenstein to, but in about ten minutes. We see a relative innocent made villain, but barely having had the chance to care for him in his infancy. No amount of slick script or genuinely bravura performance (Jeremy Strong deserves an Oscar) can make up for the cold and emotionless lens that the film has. In a sense, this gives us a more realistic explanation of Trump’s victory than the film seeks to muster…disdain.

Like Trump, I deployed ‘alternative facts’.

I lied.

I did watch some of the election coverage in the early hours of the morning. As the Trump victory became inexorable, I watched pundit after pundit – who had been excoriating Trump supporters as either stupid or malign only 24 hours before – earnestly explain that it was a lack of engagement with middle-America which had lost it for the Democrats. Tony Hinchcliffe may have made a predictably unpleasant joke about Puerto Rico being a ‘garbage island’, but it was Biden calling even reluctant Trump voters ‘garbage’ which swung the election. We live in a new polarised age where the genuine concerns of the ordinary man or woman, if they can be associated with someone as aesthetically and morally compromised as Trump, make them functionally fascist.

The Apprentice, simply by being unable to empathise with anyone not in favour, gives us the secret to Trump’s victory. It wasn’t Cohn’s rules. It was his overactive ability to demonstrate his contempt for everyone, and therefore seem to have contempt for no one. His detractors demonstrated the reverse. In the end Trump hasn’t needed to attack, or deny, or claim illegitimate victory. He simply has had to be himself.

Saaaad.

**** Stars