Images de la théocratie à l’époque hellénistique

Abstract

Few ancient texts deal with the theory of theocracy, except a famous extract of Josephus’ Contra Apionem (2, 165). In the Bible and in the Maccabees’ books, theocracy has mostly been expressed through literary developments. Outside the Jewish culture, Oriental monarchs in the Hellenistic period invented their own theocratic iconography whose main theme was the investiture of the monarch by a great god sending an eagle and a crown to his chosen one, giving him a sword or coming down from the sky, like a star, to meet him.

Keywords

• theocracy
• Hellenistic Near East
• Hellenistic monarchy
• charisma
• images of power