Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia.

• Author: Seri, Andrea
• Position: Book Review

Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. By DALE LAUNDERVILLE. Grand Rapids, Mich.: WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO., 2003. Pp. xvii + 407, maps. $75.

The study of the dynamics of royal authority in Homeric Greece, biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia is a challenging undertaking into the ways in which rulers legitimated themselves through writing and deeds. This requires the mastery of the history of different societies, the thoughtful selection of ancient sources, as well as the deployment of a comparative method that considers both differences and similarities. Comparing and contrasting allows us to grasp those peculiarities distinguishing any given society from others while searching for those general features that make them alike or distinct. This task, however, poses several difficulties. One of the major risks is that of oversimplification, usually the result of our poor understanding of ancient institutions. Other problems relate to the kind of evidence at our disposal, and the absence of facts that were either unrecorded or that remain unexplored. In Piety and Politics, Dale Launderville studies the relational dynamics working within the traditional pattern for legitimating authority, and the ways this pattern helped shape royal authority in Homeric Greece, biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia.

The book consists of an introduction, seven chapters, conclusion, three maps, bibliography, and indexes. The bibliography is most useful, because it is thematically arranged and shows an extensive survey of theory, hermeneutics, and literature. In the introduction, Launderville explains his theoretical premises and method, as well as the native sources under consideration. Chapter one is an overview of the traditional patterns for legitimating authority operating in the three cases. The second chapter focuses on the speech and action of kings to show the process of constructing royal power. The third chapter addresses the centralization of the community in the person of the king. The role of memory and tradition in legitimating authority is the subject of the fourth chapter, and the fifth is dedicated to the mechanisms of communication and discernment of the divine will. Chapter six deals with tension and equilibrium in counteracting the exercise of local authority. It is perhaps here that the lack of a historically anchored approach is most...