Editing Theocracy (section)

==Religious Rule in Antiquity==
Flavius Josephus is credited with the term, where ''Against Apion'' was casting about to explain the (idealised) Jewish religio-political system to Greek-speakers. For him (and keep in mind this guy was a famous traitor) YHWH is sovereign, and His people follow Divine Torah. Day-to-day operations default to the interpreters of the Law. This means if there's a king all he does is law-enforcement and war, and if there's a priesthood they're just caretakers of the Temple.

In practice the term gets expanded beyond that. Josephus professed rabbinical Judaism and, being extremely educated and intelligent, interpreted this with a heavy dose of Hellenistic rationalism. (It certainly didn't hurt Josephus' case, since he was a traitor, that all this allowed that Vespasian Caesar be G-d's secular Messiah over his fellow Jews.) In antiquity most religions had a serious byline in mumbo-jumbo, and if they could fool the people with their tricks, they could claim to be speaking for whatever God resided in that particular temple. So usually "theocracy" is applied to hierocracy: rule by priests.

In settings where divine magic is a thing, and in our own Bronze Age there was little distinction between "magic" and "miracle", theocracies can overlap with the concept of [[magocracy]]. After all, surely the most powerful wielders of divine magic are those closest to the divine, and if your entire leadership structure is based on proximity to the divine, those are the people with the best claim to the throne.

This isn't necessarily always true, but usually, theocracies where power and authority aren't tied to magical power despite divine magic being a thing are ''supposed'' to come off as hypocritical villains - see the infamous Cult of Entropy in the [[Forgotten Realms]].

Theocracies tend to be either ''monotheistic'' - holding to the belief that is only a single god, or else they are ''henotheistic'' -- don't worry if you've never heard that one, it's pretty obscure outside of religious studies. Basically, henotheists acknowledge that there are multiple gods, but hold a single god as either supreme over those other gods (as in [[Vodun]]) or otherwise as the only god worth worshipping for whatever reason (as in LDS).

Polytheism actually doesn't tend to work out so well for theocracies. Dirty little secret: ancient temples doubled as ''banks''. (Guess who had all the scribes and accountants?) When Sumerian citystates accumulated too much wealth into Temple A, Temple B would cry foul. The usual end was for the major temples to unite into a cartel. Then the ''commoners'' would cry foul and a tyrant would arise, like Urukagina, declaring the annulment of debts (''amargi''). Josephus would say these temple-cartels weren't true theocracies but pff.

Which isn't to say that monopoly Temple rule works out all wonderful either. These are subject to outsiders, usually disgruntled insiders by origin, setting themselves up as "prophets" with a better claim to Divine favour than the insiders do. The examples in Islam are innumerable; we can recommend Ibn Khaldun for details.