Talk:theocracy

theocracy
I would like to verify the supposed second sense: "rule by God". What does this mean, and is this a real sense? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 08:45, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It sounds very plausible. Rule by God would mean the same Rule by government but instead of a government, God. Whether such a thing exists is irrelevant, because we can have words expressing concepts whether the concept is real or not. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Is Josephus not a sufficient verification? If not, then the OED has "A form of government in which God (or a deity) is recognized as the king or immediate ruler, and his laws are taken as the statute-book of the kingdom, these laws being usually administered by a priestly order as his ministers and agents" as its primary meaning.  Should we modify our second sense to clarify?    D b f  i  r  s   11:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting that the two different-sounding definitions could easily have the same referent. Some of our definitions of democracy, communism, and socialism require some of the same kind of Suspension of disbelief as this one. DCDuring TALK  20:46, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Certain societies (e.g. Rome, Egypt) have believed that their rulers were gods, so I tried searching for "theocracy" + Rome and "theocracy" + Egypt. Results at Citations:theocracy. - -sche (discuss) 23:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I would call this cited if we modify the definition to "rule by a god", since the examples are of a society which displayed belief in multiple gods. bd2412 T 12:50, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've modified the def accordingly and detagged the entry. - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Striking as verified as amended. bd2412 T 18:03, 14 August 2013 (UTC)