A01=Bruce Lincoln
abu ghraib
achaemenian persia
ambition
Author_Bruce Lincoln
Category=JPVR
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=QRS
conquest
cosmos
divine election
dualism
dynasty
empire
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics
expansion
government
history
imperialism
invasion
iran
land rights
middle east
mission
morality
nonfiction
paradise lost
politics
power
purpose
religion
salvation
territory
theology
torture
violence
wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780226481968
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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How does religion stimulate and feed imperial ambitions and violence? Recently, this question has acquired new urgency, and in Religion, Empire, and Torture, Bruce Lincoln approaches the problem via a classic but little-studied case: Achaemenian Persia. Lincoln identifies three core components of an imperial theology that have transhistorical and contemporary relevance: dualistic ethics, a theory of divine election, and a sense of salvific mission. Beyond this, he asks, how did the Achaemenians understand their place in the cosmos and their moral status in relation to others? Why did they feel called to intervene in the struggle between good and evil? What was their sense of historic purpose, especially their desire to restore paradise lost? And how did this lead them to deal with enemies and critics as imperial power ran its course? Lincoln shows how these religious ideas shaped Achaemenian practice and brought the Persians unprecedented wealth, power, and territory, but also produced unmanageable contradictions, as in a gruesome case of torture discussed in the book's final chapter.
Close study of that episode leads Lincoln back to the present with a postscript that provides a searing and utterly novel perspective on the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
Bruce Lincoln is the Caroline E. Haskell Professor of Divinity at the University of Chicago, where he is an associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and sits on the Committees on the History of Culture and the Ancient Mediterranean World. He is the author of nine books, including Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship and Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
