By Bruce Lincoln
ISBN-10: 0226481964
ISBN-13: 9780226481968
How does faith stimulate and feed imperial pursuits and violence? lately this query has got new urgency, and in faith, Empire, and Torture, Bruce Lincoln techniques the matter through a vintage yet little-studied case: Achaemenian Persia.Lincoln identifies 3 middle parts of an imperial theology that experience transhistorical and modern relevance: dualistic ethics, a idea of divine election, and a feeling of salvific undertaking. past this, he asks, how did the Achaemenians comprehend their position within the cosmos and their ethical prestige in terms of others? Why did they believe referred to as to interfere within the fight among sturdy and evil? What was once their feel of historical goal, in particular their wish to restoration paradise misplaced? and the way did this make them care for enemies and critics as imperial strength ran its path? Lincoln indicates how those non secular principles formed Achaemenian perform and taken the Persians exceptional wealth, strength, and territory, but in addition produced unmanageable contradictions, as in a ugly case of torture mentioned within the book’s ultimate bankruptcy. shut research of that episode leads Lincoln again to the current with a postscript that offers a searing and completely novel viewpoint at the pictures from Abu Ghraib.
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Additional info for Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib
Example text
His people were under the yoke without rest. He ruined them all. On their complaints, the Lord of the gods became enraged and left their region. (CB §§2–3) This passage describes a situation of crisis, in which a whole series of grave offenses—religious above all, but also political and economic—have accumulated and compounded until the people cry out to their national god, a god as dissatisfied with the king as they are. In response to this expression of general misery, Marduk abandons his city, which is a way of saying (and understanding), first, that the city has lost its order, support, and security and, second, that the ruler is no longer a proper king, that his relation to Marduk is definitively broken.
He set him on the road to Babylon and marched at his side like a friend and companion. . Without conflict or battle, he let him enter Babylon, his city. He saved Babylon from oppression. Nabonidus, the King who did not worship, fell into his hands. (CB §§4–5) God’s Chosen 39 This passage can be understood as a strategic reworking—and aggressive redeployment—of anti-Nabonidus propaganda developed by the Marduk priests, together with motifs that Cyrus found in the “Dream of Nabonidus,” the text that first cast him in the role of Marduk’s darling.
Zoroastrian texts denounce those who would do such a thing as “liars to Mithra” or “those who lie when making a compact” (Avestan Mithro¯-drug). Their deeds create havoc, but they also bring retribution. When, for example, treaties are violated, wars follow, and in those wars Mithra and associated gods punish those responsible for the violation. The Achaemenian inscriptions do not articulate such a view, although Mithra is well attested in theophoric names. It thus fell to the king, aided— as always—by the Wise Lord, to set right such offenses.
Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib by Bruce Lincoln
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