THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF DIVINE WARFARE AND THEOLOGY OF WAR IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF DIVINE WARFARE AND THEOLOGY OF WAR IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

Summary/Abstract: In the first available Sumerian royal inscriptions describing warfare (king of Lagaš Ur-Nanše, ca. 2520 BC), no divine principle is mentioned. The next preserved Sumerian texts (Eanatum ca. 2470 BC) clearly express the idea that military campaigns are undertaken following divine orders from the gods who demand that the divine justice that was overruled by the enemy state Umma be restored. It seems that a certain concept of warfare as a theologico-political matter has evolved in the royal ideology. Those texts can be considered the first recorded evidence about the “holy war” or “theology of war” in human history. A similar concept of the “theology of war” remains throughout the history of the Ancient Near East and is also present in Old Testament Israeli sources. Similar attitudes are also common in Christian thought. Islamist perspectives about the “holy war” seem to differ in the sense that religious text is imperative and it is not the actual political situation which demands the war.

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