Il racconto di 2Re 5 (la «conversione» di Naaman il Siro) nel suo contesto letterario e storico-religioso

(e in riferimento remoto a Hobbes, “Leviatano” XLII 11)

Abstract

First published in Parrhesia e dissimulazione. La verità di fronte al potere («Politica e Religione», 2012-2013), pp. 197-239.

This paper examines the antecedents, the implications and the aporia of the story in Kings 2,5. The religious codification which characterises the historical setting of the story of Naaman is epitomised in the axiom of Micah 4,5, according to which each people has its own god, and the connection between god and people is to be understood as a function of the land in which that people lives. From this perspective, Naaman’s request to bring home a load of earth from the land of Israel is of great importance in the story. At the moment in which Naaman is converted, he shows himself to be aware that a god is always connected with a land. The conflict shown in the story is not therefore between two geographical lands, one of which might be superior to the other, but between the divinities to which the two lands are intrinsically linked.