Religion, Empire and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib
by Bruce Lincoln/University of Chicago Press, 2007
Reviewed by Robin Jarrell
“Empire studies” has taken root as a branch of Biblical scholarship, where the focus of “empire” is usually mapped out using ancient Rome as the ultimate reference. In his postscript to his masterful work Religion, Empire, and Torture, Bruce Lincoln admits that in this study on ancient Persian empire, his “anguish and outrage concerning the American imperial adventure in Iraq frequently bubble close to the surface.”
Lincoln begins his survey of the empire of ancient Persia, the empire of Darius – in 521BCE, of Xerxes, and Cyrus who is mentioned in the Old Testament. He uses the practice of torture used by the Persian empire to examine the relationship between religion and empire – and ends his survey by pointing out the terrifying similarities between the uses of torture by ancient Persia, and that now used by the United States of America – specifically in Abu Ghraib.
Empires tell themselves, by religious discourse, that their acts of brutality are not only warranted for the safety of the empire, for peace and prosperity of the people – they are mandated by the divine. Lincoln argues that the manner, modes and frequency of torture escalate in direct correlation to the breakdown of the empire’s control – physical and mental – of it’s populace. As he puts it, “operations [such as … blurring the issues, invoking the divine, flogging scapegoats, slandering critics, and reasserting one’s devotions to traditional ideals] become increasingly strained with repetition since a people’s capacity to tolerate contradiction is distinctly more finite that is an empire’s capacity to manifest them.” Thus is with Abu Ghraib: the practice of torture only provides evidence that not only is the United States of America an empire, it is an empire on the verge of decline and disintegration.
See Robin Jarrell’s companion review of God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan/HarperSanFrancisco, 2007
Reviewed by Robin Jarell. Robin is rector of a small parish in Milton, PA and an active member of EPF for 4 years.
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