thearchy

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek θεαρχία (thearkhía), from θεός (theós, “god”) + -αρχία (-arkhía, “rule, ruling”). By surface analysis, the- +‎ -archy.

Noun

thearchy (countable and uncountable, plural thearchies)

1. A government ruled by God or a god; a theocracy.
   • 1643, Subject of Supremacie, section 42:

     There ends Monarchy as a Thearchie, or divine dynastie.

   • 1643, Maximes Unfolded, section 8:

     Thearchie, or Gods Government in Families, a Nation, and all Nations.

   • 1863, G[eorge] J[ohn] Whyte-Melville, “A Veiled Heart”, in The Gladiators: A Tale of Rome and Judæa. […], volume I (Eros), London: Longman, Green, Longmans, Roberts, & Green, →OCLC, page 254:

     It seemed to human reasoning impossible to convert the Jew from his grand and simple creed, to modify or to explain it, to add to it, or to take away from it, in the slightest degree to alter his belief in that direct thearchy, to which he was bound by the ties of gratitude, of tradition, of national isolation and characteristic pride of race.

2. A system or ordering of deities. (Compare pantheon.)
   • 1839, [Philip James Bailey], chapter XI, in Festus: A Poem, London: William Pickering, →OCLC:

     From rank to rank in Thearchy divine, We angel raylets gladden in thy sight.

   • 1876, W[illiam] E[wart] Gladstone, “On the Egyptian and Foreign Knowledge of Homer”, in Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry into the Time and Place of Homer, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, part II, page 245:

     Pan was one of the younger gods in the Hellenic thearchy.

   • 1899 December 1, Literary Guide, 178 1:

     When Jesus entered upon his ministry, the Olympian thearchy […] was already tottering to its fall.

Related terms

• thearch (1)
• theocracy (1)
• hierarchy (2)

Anagrams

• hatchery