The last decade has brought a host of really interesting engagements with the topic of Paul and empire. I sense we’re still in a “trying things on” stage – in which people are trying out different readings of Paul, with “anti-imperial” lenses. Some of these readings will bear fruit, and others won’t. I think at this point it’s worth offering two humble cautions:
1) Be really careful about arguments based on vocabulary. Just because certain terminology was sometimes used in certain contexts in the first century, that doesn’t mean that Paul’s usage necessarily aims to subvert those connotations. I heard a conference paper last year that cringingly used this logic as though it were an inflexible rule: If we can find any usage of Pauline vocabulary in what might be thought of as “imperial propaganda,” then Paul’s meaning can be comprehensively understood in anti-imperial terms. I don’t mean to say that we should never hear subversive echoes of empire in Paul’s language; simply that we should be careful. Does Paul only proclaim the “resurrection” of Christ because it subverts Roman claims to imperial immortality? Surely not – and yet I’ve heard a paper claiming as much. For more on this, see the paper by Joel White on Anti-Imperial Subtexts in Paul.
2) Be careful about turning “Rome” into the new “Judaism.” Since the holocaust, theologians have rightly become aghast at the way “Judaism” or “the Jews” have been viciously caricatured in Christian theological rhetoric. We have become much more sensitive to nuances in the New Testament’s presentation of these categories, and have recognised that it is neither accurate nor winsome to present Judaism as Paul’s big enemy. And yet it seems that we’ve transferred the vicious caricature to Rome - while we used to say “Judaism = works” we now say “Rome = violence.” I worry that some presentations of anti-imperial sentiment in the New Testament involve a highly skewed reading of history, as well as a lack of sensitivity to nuance in the New Testament itself.
I don’t mean to deny the usefulness of trying on these lenses; I just want to urge care in the way we go about it. So let me end on a positive note by suggesting one “anti-imperial” reading which I think is fruitful – in relation to 1 Corinthians 11:23-26: Associations were expected to make a libation for the emperor in the context of their common meal. The fact that the Corinthians were rather called to make a libation (“drink from this cup”) for one who had been crucified by the emperor was presumably supposed to be an act that was starkly subversive of Rome’s values. So Paul’s reminder that in the libation they are “proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes” may well have evoked disjunction with the usual practice of proclaiming Caesar’s lordship.
Matthew, your points are well made. I heard Crossan talk on Paul and empire and I felt he was making too much of certain cherry-picked word-associations.
The literature on Paul and Empire that I have read misses the mark. It would have been very foolish for Paul or Luke to openly express opposition to the empire in their texts, since the authorities could get wind of it. To do so would have exposed the recipients of their texts to persecution, to say nothing of themselves.
Moderns like Crossan and us are rarely in a position to spot anti-empire rhetoric that had to be coded to escape the attention of first century informers. It is very difficult to know what Paul and Luke really thought about the empire, but we should keep in mind the possibility that they censored themselves severely for protective reasons.
In fact, I think we have good evidence that Luke censored himself. There are quite a few things that we find in Paul’s letters that are conspicuously absent from the account in Acts. In most cases Luke’s silence serves to hide sensitive information from government informers. I think we need to read Acts from the perspective of the intended audience, who would have been aware of the need for self-censorship and would have compensated for it.
I feel that we can discern the relationship of Paul and Luke to the empire only when we have background information that was not available to potential informers. We have the advantage over such opponents of the church only by comparing Acts with Paul’s letters since such a person who overheard Acts being read, for example, would not have had access to Paul’s letters. So I think that “Paul and Empire” research should start at the intersection of Paul’s letters and Acts.
Did you ever hear that SBL session where John Barclay and N.T. Wright debated this topic? I think Barclay had the better arguments and made me more convinced that Paul wasn’t criticizing the Roman empire as much as Wright liked to think he was.
Richard: I agree that we’re in a tough position, trying to imagine what sentiments would have been implied or hinted or evoked in a situation for which we have only partial knowledge. As you say, the possibility of protective rhetoric is just one factor complicating things!
Bryan: I heard about it, but I’ve never heard it – so it’s available on the interweb somewhere?
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2007/11/audio-from-a-fe.html
Go down a bit and you’ll find the audio
Thanks
[...] at Cryptotheology has had a couple of interesting posts on 1 Corinthians recently, including drinking the Lord’s cup (1 Cor. 11:13-26) as subversive action, and an interesting interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:6-8 [...]