Surviving by Translating the Power: The Sovereignty of God in Imperial and Apocalyptic Contexts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/ee.v101.i398.y2026.001Keywords:
translation, empire, providence, apocalyptic, sovereignty, powerAbstract
This article explores how Israel’s faith narrative survives and transforms under two imperial horizons—Persia and Greece—through the theological «translation» of power and history. In Isaiah 45:1-7, the Persian king Cyrus is paradoxically called YHWH’s «anointed,» revealing a providential monotheism that desacralizes empire and reads geopolitics as divine liturgy: history becomes Exodus. In Daniel 7:1-14, written amid Hellenistic oppression, the apocalyptic vision unveils the animalization of imperial power and its judgment before the «Ancient of Days,» who restores dominion to the «saints of the Most High.» Between the Persian fixation of memory and the Greek expansion through translation (LXX), Scripture survives by translating itself—linguistically, culturally, and theologically. «Surviving by translating» the power thus names Israel’s vocation: to reinterpret sovereignty, preserve faith across languages, and humanize power within empire, affirming that the world’s history is governed not by the beast or the monarch, but by the God who «opens doors» and «judges the nations».
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