전쟁이라는 삶의 자리에서 살펴본 열방신탁의 담론적 기능

Abstract

"Oracles against the Nations"(hereafter OAN) appear in all the prophetic books, except the book of Hosea. Just as every prophetic book had never been divorced from its international and national politics, so had OAN been produced in the concrete and real political situation around Israel. OAN as a literary genre contains the literary tradition of the ‘holy war.’ Yet it becomes a rhetoric inextricably related to the real and concrete context of war. This paper examines the discursive and rhetorical function of OAN of which context almost always represents a real war situation. For this purpose, this paper deals with four OAN units (Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) out of many different prophetic OAN, since the four OAN are relatively clear in terms of their historical backgrounds and are separated as a unit within each respective prophetic book. By examining these OAN, this paper proposes that OAN should be read as resistant literature, resisting against both Israel and nations. In order to reach double resistance, OAN deconstructs such binary divisions as colonizers/colonized. invaders/invaded, and nations/Israel. Therefore, prophets rejected a simple equation that to resist against nations would be nationalistic. Prophetic OAN first resist not only the nations, but also the power elites of Israel. The nations considered military power to be the only and absolute power. In the same way, the local power elites of Israel tried to mimic military power of nations. The local power elites also accepted military power as the only real power to save Israel, by limiting the divine warrior as an old literary tradition. Confronting this notion, prophetic OAN clarifies that military power of nations is merely a divine instrument to judge Israel. Second, OAN projects diasporic experiences of both Israel and nations. As a result of war, both Israel and nations experienced voluntary/involuntary diaspora and dissemi-nation. The projected experience of diaspora/dissemi-nation is transformed into ‘remnant theology.’ Through the experience of exile, prophets deconstruct racial and ethnic identity, and introduce ‘remnant theology’ as a new identity of being Israel. Prophetic OAN thus transforms the exilic experience into a theological momentum and by establishing ‘remnant theology’ OAN functions as minority discourse.