Loading…

God and Earthly Power: An Old Testament Political Theology: Genesis–Kings is unavailable, but you can change that!

In God and Earthly Power, J. G. McConville considers the nature of human power in the light of belief in God. The Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is relevant to the question, not least because perceptions about the use of power in relation to God are often derived correctly or incorrectly from it. This book thus aims to address a world in which God’s power is often invoked, from quite...

unfolded. But we have hints already from this preamble. The creation of humanity as ‘the image of God’ (Gen. 1:26) makes two distinct but related polemical points: the ‘image’ (צלם, tselem) of God is to be found not in manufactured idols but in humanity, since Hebrew tselem is a standard word for such idols; moreover, it is humanity as such and not kings that enjoys ‘royal’ status (since the Akkadian counterpart of Hebrew tselem, ṣalmu, ‘representative’, is used for the king in Assyria).61 And in
Page 26
Buy this book at Logos.com