The First Christians in the Roman Empire - Cowards or Revolutionaries?

For a long time, research on early Christianity was shaped by the assumption that the Roman Empire resembled a modern state based on the rule of law in many respects and that the first followers of the Jewish Messiah Jesus had no reason to fear persecution. Correspondingly high, it is claimed, was the opinion of the Roman Empire and its emperor held by, for example, the Apostle Paul when in Romans 13 he seems to call for submission to state authority and dutiful tax payment while also appearing to theologically legitimize capital punishment.

That something is amiss with this picture is already suggested by the fact that this very same Paul was then probably executed a few years later by precisely the emperor whom he seems to praise here. One could still try to explain this with a considerable portion of naivety, simply assuming that at this point the apostle had only had good experiences with Roman imperial administration, and that it only became dangerous for Christians when Roman Caesars like the "mad" Nero then no longer adhered to the rules or even, like Domitian, (supposedly) passed a law against Christians.

The problem with this rescue attempt, however, is not only that such a development in the legal situation simply never occurred - Christianity was never illegal, but also (from the beginning!) never safe, precisely because Roman arbitrariness and thus executions of Christians were always possible (more on this here). This assumption is also simply historically implausible because it presupposes that Paul was unaware that he was following a person who had been executed by the Roman governor Pilate in defiance of any sense of justice. We (by which I mean myself and certainly the vast majority of readers of this blog) in our comfortable situation today, who hardly have to expect to be tortured and killed in the most cruel manner by henchmen of an unjust state, have lost the sense of how shocking the talk of the cross actually was in antiquity. Just imagine if there were a decree to install miniatures of electric chairs in buildings of the Bavarian state...

Since the mid-1990s, opposition to the prevailing paradigm has formed, sensitized among other things by postcolonial insights. However, the main focus was on the reinterpretation of biblical texts that had previously been understood as uncritical acceptance of Roman rule - and on uncovering previously supposedly overlooked criticism of Roman ideology in seemingly harmless passages. The early Christians, according to the thesis, had indeed expressed criticism of the Roman Empire - only in subtext, because open resistance would have been too dangerous and would have been immediately sanctioned.

A main proponent of this new approach, which became particularly virulent in Pauline exegesis, was and is N. T. Wright, then Bishop of Durham, later Professor in St Andrews (where I studied under him). He presented his views in numerous publications, in my opinion best in this small book on Paul from 2005. However, the theses also met with fierce opposition, which culminated in a rebuttal by John M. G. Barclay, then Lightfoot Professor at Durham University, at the annual SBL conference in 2007, which can be read here and was regarded by many as the death blow to anti-imperial Pauline interpretation.

I myself had already noticed as a student, through a certain background in philosophy of science, that while Barclay had raised important objections, the issue was by no means definitively settled. My first monograph, Hidden Criticism? (published in 2015 by Mohr Siebeck, later reprinted in affordable paperback by Fortress, and now also available in Open Access), therefore analyzed the argumentative structures of this discourse and demonstrated that Wright's thesis fundamentally did have some validity, at least with certain modifications. I am very pleased that this first work quickly established itself as a standard work in the view of both supporters and critics of the subtext hypothesis (see, for example, the reviews here). Two years later, in 2017, I then published another monograph, this time with Peeters (Paul's Triumph, more on this here), which demonstrated the exegetical plausibility of the approach using a concrete textual example, the reference to the triumphal procession in 2 Corinthians 2:14. (For the two monographs together I received the 2018 Mercator Award of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which recognizes among other things the innovation and social relevance of the research.)

Since then, I have continued to work on the topic and am pleased to observe an ever-increasing sophistication of the discussion in the field. The fact that the search for criticism of domination in early Christian writings can indeed sometimes yield valuable insights is increasingly recognized. It is certainly not a closed subject. I am particularly grateful that John Barclay wrote the foreword to my 2022 monograph published by Eerdmans, The Apostle and the Empire, in which I updated my position once again. But even from those who search for empire-critical undertones in New Testament writings, one now also hears other critical tones, namely self-critical ones: there is an increasing awareness that one must guard against assuming the Roman Empire as an omnipresent antagonist - and thus as an all-determining interpretive lens - whereby actual pointed criticism sometimes even gets lost in the noise of supposed constant cynicism.

In my view, this increasing sophistication of the situation feeds on a steadily growing appreciation for the complexity of the lived reality of the first Christians on the one hand, and greater methodological care on the other hand, which better brings out the multifaceted nature of the examined texts. Against this background, it is now my particular pleasure to announce a publication that in my view represents a milestone in the study of the negotiation of early Christian existence in the Roman Empire - an edited volume with the deliberately ambiguous title Empire Criticism of the New Testament, which I proudly present here:

This volume edited by me - motivated primarily by informal discussion rounds on the topic of the Roman Empire at the annual SBL meetings - has just been published by Mohr Siebeck and is freely accessible in Open Access on the publisher's website (namely here)! What the book is about is well clarified by the product description:

The question of how early Christians navigated their daily existence within the Roman Empire, and to what degree they expressed criticism of their imperial surroundings, has become a subject of heated debate in recent years. This volume gathers experts who focus on one methodological approach each to shed new light on this question. In doing so, this collection moves from simply debating whether or not early Christians expressed criticism of the Roman Empire to offering detailed analyses of complex dynamics. It turns out that precisely by applying empire criticism as an analytical lens to these texts - critically sifting through them from various angles with an eye to all kinds of interaction with the Roman sphere - empire criticism within these texts becomes visible time and again. Each contribution offers an important perspective to a multifaceted image - one that allows for variegated forms and fronts of critical interaction by early Christian writers. The volume thus shows that situating these texts within their imperial contexts by considering material culture and up-to-date theoretical frameworks is a crucial task for New Testament and early Christian studies. Due to its distinctive layout, with each specialist first introducing an analytical tool before then applying it in a nuanced way to primary texts, this volume not only provides both a definitive account of where the field stands and charts new territory for future research but also serves as a textbook for advanced students.

The methodological approaches covered in separate chapters are the following:

• Myself: Narratology

• Justin Winzenburg: Speech Act Theory

• Laura J. Hunt: Semiotics

• Erin M. Heim: Metaphor Theories

• Christopher A. Porter: Social Identity Theory

• Nils Neumann: Historical Psychology

• Laura Robinson: Hidden Transcripts

• Najeeb T. Haddad: Ancient Rhetoric

• Gillian Asquith: Papyrology

• D. Clint Burnett: Epigraphy

• Michael P. Theophilos: Numismatics

• Harry O. Maier: Iconography

  
  

It was important to me, especially against the background of my research on AI and specifically in view of the upheavals I expect in the humanities (which I also briefly address in the foreword), that the volume not only makes a contribution at the cutting edge of research and significantly expands our field of knowledge in various directions, but that the structure of the volume and the design of the individual chapters are geared toward enabling the book to be used for teaching seminars at the university level. I am therefore grateful to the contributors not only for managing in an excellent way, often through true pioneering achievements, to apply fundamental methodological approaches to the question of empire criticism, but also for taking the effort to provide readers without extensive prior knowledge of the respective approaches with a good introduction to the respective tools.

I have great hopes that this volume will (in the manner elaborated in the foreword) reignite the discussion in a completely new way and shape it positively over decades as an important impetus that will hopefully be followed by many more. In conclusion, I would like to quote the very kind assessment by John Barclay, now emeritus Lightfoot Professor, which is one of the reasons I harbor this confidence:

This outstanding set of freshly commissioned essays brings nuance and methodological rigor to an important debate, providing both accessible introductions to relevant methods and tools, and full case studies from the New Testament.  The compilation creates a superb resource for both scholars and advanced students, and takes analysis of the critical interaction between the New Testament and its Roman environment to a new level.  This is the kind of scholarly project - open, critical, nuanced, and deeply researched - that gives one hope for the future of our discipline.