State of Change: Concept Metaphor of Pauline Principalities and Powers for a Political Theology of Peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

This essay responds to the need for a constructive account of the state that does not over-determine religious community-state relationships in peacebuilding scholarship and practice because experience and historically embodied stances towards the state defy affirmations about the state that produce a static formula. It offers a concept metaphor rooted in the three-fold eschatological reality of the state at home in a world of pluralism that emerges from reflections on fieldwork in Colombia. The metaphor stresses the need to break the state’s claim to ultimacy as the initial movement of engagement that allows for redemptive transformation. The notion of the state as a dynamic process is consistent with the stance Colombian communities have embodied in an ever-changing environment of conflict and peace.     

Slavery in Africa: Interpretation and illustration

Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. xvi + 349 pp. including maps, bibliography, and index. $39.50 cloth; $12.95 paper.

Bonner, Philip. Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and Dissolution of the Nineteenth Century Swazi State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. x + 315 pp. including maps, bibliography, appendix, and index. $49.50 cloth.

Ross, Robert. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. xi+160 pp. including glossary, bibliography, maps, and index. $19.50 cloth.     

The Decline of the Shepherd Metaphor as Royal Self-Expression1

In the Old Testament, shepherd is a common metaphor of kingship, and this metaphor is sometimes also used to denote the Israelite god as a ruler (See for instance HALOT entry ??? ). In Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek works this metaphor is remarkably more common in pre-exilic literature than in the later Greek and Roman literature, where it is almost absent. In this article I argue that shepherding was central to Assyrian and Babylonian ruling class identity, while absent as royal self-expression in the Persian, Achaemenid Empire. The imageries of these empires were influential as models for court life throughout the Ancient Near East, and beyond.