Foreign Kings as Theological Playthings within Biblical Explanations of Violence

Abstract

As a case of “tradition inheritance,” I consider select agents of violence, namely foreign kings as featured in the biblical anthology. This special issue inquires how inherited traditions are repurposed, and I address several aspects of such repurposing. First, Judean story-tellers participated in discourses that were common to the ancient cultural milieu, both contributing to socio-political discourses and incorporating themes, figures, and motifs from their surroundings. In the case of foreign kings, for example, Judean authors incorporated real, historical kings from neighboring states as well as larger empires into their stories, historiographies, prophecies, poetry, and theologies. In so doing, Judean authors also contributed to the reputations of Assyrian Sennacherib, Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, and Persian king Cyrus, the three kings of focus in this article, as well as other royals. To discuss a second sort of repurposing, I address how repurposing entails claims of “inheritance” as well as post-biblical modes of interpretive reuse that both generate and are built upon the concept that biblical phenomena are “inscriptured.” Judean treatments of Assyrian king Sennacherib, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and Persian king Cyrus exhibit dynamic and creative theological play, because when they appear as both aggressors and agents of Yahweh their violence is “sanctified.” In post-biblical interpretive contexts, how is the “inscriptured” paradigm of Yahweh utilizing foreign kings for his purposes reused in response to changing geopolitical events within new historical and confessional contexts? What power dynamics are at play? For whose enfranchisement? At whose expense? I propose that understanding of “tradition inheritance” within post-biblical contexts, whether at the start of the common era or in contemporary settings, ought to begin with analysis of the ancient data.