Abstract:
This research studies the political-religious elements used as instruments of political and ideological domination during the period of the kings of Israel and Judah. The proposal is to understand the historical, religious, ideological and global political conceptions that constitute the historical background of the Book of Kings. In order to do so, considering the vast library of epigraphic and iconographic materials found in archaeological research in the Ancient Near East, the intent is to approach the Hebrew Bible in the light of iconology, comparing texts and artifacts, that is, illustrating the biblical texts with the iconographies corresponding to that time and place. The perspective of this study is to understand how the images reflect the cultures that produced them. The thesis is developed in four chapters. The first introduces a historical overview of the political-religious context that marked the beginning of the Iron Age, the wars of conquest and their impact on the Syrian-Palestinian region. The second chapter will address the inter-influence that has been established between Egypt, Assyria, Syria, Phoenicia, Israel, and Judah and, also, the political ideologies and iconic religious practices shared by Israel and Judah in this context. The third chapter will deal with understanding the main agents of Josiah's anti-iconic reform: the king, the priests, the court scribes, masters of the art of reading and writing, and above all, the "finding" of the Book of the Law as a document that served as a basis to make the religious reform. Finally, the program that attempted to implement Josiah's anti-iconic reform will be analyzed, which was a political-religious scheme, whose purpose was to legitimize an official religion, and then to ban all other "foreign" worship systems: sanctuaries, priests, divine representations, intending to establish a single worship dedicated exclusively to Yahweh.
