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Prophetic Histories: Time, Theology, and Theocracy in Solomon Islands

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Series
Volume 16

ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology

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Prophetic Histories

Time, Theology, and Theocracy in Solomon Islands

Jaap Timmer

208 pages, 9 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-277-0 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (December 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-276-3 eBook Not Yet Published


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Reviews

“This is a thought-provoking and insightful book. It does a good job of analysing theological and secular-political impulses and projects within the same frame, recognising that each set of interests shapes the others and never insisting that one determines the other.” • Matt Tomlinson, Australian National University

Description

On Malaita in Solomon Islands, an evangelical Israelite-inspired movement centers on a distinctive time-consciousness that reads the historical past and present as prophetic signs of an imminent future. This book examines how these ‘prophetic histories’ interweave biblical narrative, theological reflection, local accounts, kastom practice, spiritual journeys and Old-Testament political theory. Michael Maeliau, the movement’s foremost leader, casts the resulting stories as divine messages. His theological reasoning transcends time, space, hierarchy and surface identity, to uncover the true essence of Malaita and establish a theocracy on the island. At the movement’s core lies a prophetic order that integrates events, scripture and kastom while foregrounding the agency of God and divine revelations.

Jaap Timmer is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney and a former Senior Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies. He has published numerous articles on religion, history and sovereignty in Indonesian Papua and Solomon Islands. His recent research explores historicity, heritage and the notion of a ‘cosmic polity’ among the Asmat of Papua.

Subject: Anthropology of ReligionDevelopment Studies
Area: Asia-Pacific


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