What is intended
Pharaoh is used here to denote oppressive political authority, that is, the power that exercises rule through coercion and force. The intended meaning is not a particular person, but rather a model of authority based on domination and control.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: political
- Argument movement: making Pharaoh a model of oppressive political authority.
- Central terms: Pharaoh, political authority, oppression, rule, coercion.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
The image of Pharaoh is used to characterize rule founded on coercion, separating authority as organization from authority as domination, and setting a clear critical standard for despotism.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Religion and Authority
- Critique of authoritarianism and monism
- Jurisprudence is historical and civil law is separate from it
Basis
- Supporting text: “Pharaoh: oppressive political authority.”
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Religion and Authority.
- Location: among the opening sections of the book in the presentation of the image of political authority
- Type of basis: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: God’s sovereignty
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it places Pharaoh within the image of political authority entangled with sovereignty and oppression.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom is based on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted verbatim.
Its function in the book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in constructing the idea.
Related to
Editorial note
This atom helps build Shahrur’s representation of oppressive authority.