FOR 1986 - SP01: The Tamed Powers of Chaos and the Divine Gift of Fertility: Motifs of Nature in the Ancient Hebrew Ideology of Kingship and their Transformation in the History of Salvation in the Old Testament (FOR 1986)

Basic data for this project

Description

The project covers two fields of research that are thematically closely connected but related to different phases of the history of Israel. The first main area is the ambivalent interpretation of nature in the cultures of the ancient Near East, symbolized in the motif of the tamed powers of chaos. The project seeks to demonstrate that the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah shared this concept and, like other monarchies in the ancient Near East, used it to formulate an ideological justification of political power. The project reconstructs the ancient Hebrew ideology of kingship, based on Old Testament texts originating in the monarchic period and on textual and iconographic sources from the monarchic period. The leading motif of reconstruction is the idea of the tamed powers of chaos. The project investigates this idea and its ideological implications, focusing on the motif of the synergism of the divine king with the human king. The second main area of the project addresses the transformations of this idea in the wake of the downfall of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies. It analyzes the processes of transformation resulting from the successive catastrophes of kingship in the 8th to the 6th centuries B.C.E., based on key texts of Deuteronomy, since this book originated in the transition from the late monarchic period to the post-monarchic era. The main emphasis lies on such texts in the framework of Deuteronomy that contain motifs of nature (esp. Deut 32 and 33). The fact that at least the final form of these texts is related to the theology of the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte) in the narrative of the Pentateuch – a theology focused on Israel as God’s people – greatly influences the conceptualization of nature in these texts and minimizes the weight of the traditional motif of the divine battle against the powers of chaos (Chaoskampf). However, striking continuities in tradition history can be observed as well (e.g., in motifs related to the imagery of the divine weather-god in Deut 28 and 33). The theological meaning of these continuities has hitherto scarcely been described yet. By reconstructing these processes, the project helps to describe the theology of Deuteronomy, especially in its later layers, in a perspective of religious history.