Download Look inside - Amsterdam University Press

Contents
Introduction 7
Christians, Jews, and Roman Power
Outi Lehtipuu & Michael Labahn
Part I Jewish Communities in the Shadows of the Empire
The Kittim and Hints of Hybridity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
17
The Politics of Exclusion
33
Μεμορια Iudati patiri
79
George J. Brooke, University of Manchester
Expulsions of Jews and Others from Rome
Birgit van der Lans, University of Groningen
Some Notes to the Study of the Beginnings of Jewish Presence in
Roman Pannonia
Nóra Dávid, University of Vienna
Part II Contextualizing New Testament Texts with the
Empire
Imperial Politics in Paul
Scholarly Phantom or Actual Textual Phenomenon?
Anders Klostergaard Petersen, University of Aarhus
101
Das Markusevangelium – eine ideologie- und imperiumskritische
Schrift? 129
Ein Blick in die Auslegungsgeschichte
Martin Meiser, Universität des Saarlandes
„Ein Beispiel habe ich euch gegeben…“ (Joh 13,15)
Die Diakonie Jesu und die Diakonie der Christen in der
johanneischen Fußwaschungserzählung als Konterkarierung
römischer Alltagskultur
Klaus Scholtissek, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
159
Part III Imperial Ideology and Other Early Christian Texts
The Shepherd of Hermas and the Roman Empire
187
Noble Death or Death Cult?
205
Nero Redivivus as a Subject of Early Christian Arcane Teaching
229
A Selection of Ancient Sources
249
Mark R. C. Grundeken, Catholic University of Leuven
Pagan Criticism of Early Christian Martyrdom
Paul Middleton, University of Chester
Marco Frenschkowski, University of Leipzig
Introduction
Christians, Jews, and Roman Power
Outi Lehtipuu & Michael Labahn
The Roman Empire forms the historical and cultural frame within which
the emergence and rise of Christianity took place. From its beginnings
in Galilee to its gradual expansion all over the Mediterranean, the early
Christian movement was deeply embedded in the Roman world. The Roman
Empire also played a vital role in the development of Judaism after Pompey
appeared on the Palestinian “map” in 64/63 b.c.e. From that time, Rome
became an economic and moreover a political factor that influenced political, religious, and cultural developments within Judaism. Finally, Roman
military power forced Judaism to take new shape after the destruction of
Jerusalem and its temple by Titus, the future emperor, in 70 c.e. Instead of
seeing the formation of Judaism as a prior process to the birth of Christianity, as was often the case in traditional scholarship, several recent studies
emphasize that the two religious traditions evolved in conjunction and in
dialogue with each other. It took several decades, sometimes centuries,
before outsiders were able to see them as separate movements.
The Roman view on Christians and Jews was not always an outsider view.
Another recent emphasis in early Christian studies relativizes the polarity
between “Jewish” or “Christian” on the one side, and “Roman” on the other.
These were not always mutually exclusive categories; according to Luke, a
Roman centurion supported the building of the synagogue in Capernaum
(Luke 7:5), and the apostle Paul held Roman citizenship (Acts 22:25-29) as
did many later Christians and Jews. Moreover, both the developing Jewish
and the nascent Christian movements shared the cultural vocabulary and
concepts with their wider environment. Jewish and Christian discourses
were part of the broader Hellenistic-Roman discursive world and can only
be understood in relation to, not separate from, this context. The categories “Jewish”, “Christian”, and “Roman” were intertwined in several ways,
and their meanings were defined and negotiated differently in various
connections.
From the present-day perspective, however, there is a profound difference between these categories: whereas both Judaism and Christianity
are vibrant religious traditions, the Roman Empire no longer exists but
belongs to the distant past. Perhaps for this reason, it is not always easy to
8
Outi Lehtipuu & Michael L abahn
remember that the relations between the ruling power and the religious
communities were not characterized by reciprocity and symmetry. Even
though Judaism was officially recognized and given a special status that
allowed Jews to follow their traditional practices, early Jewish and Christian
communities were marginal groups that often did not attract any special
attention from those in power. Most other inhabitants of Roman society
probably did not encounter members of such obscure cults and were even
unaware of their existence. There were, nonetheless, signs of mistrust and
prejudice against outsiders that led to political or social pressure. This
naturally varied according to time and place.
The Roman presence was a reality in the lives of all inhabitants of the
empire. In addition to administrative practices, such as taxation and census,
and rituals associated with the cult of the emperor and other civic cults,
Roman rule was understood as an oppressive power through the presence
of its military. Roman rule was also seen and felt through its construction
policy that produced baths, theatres, hippodromes, and other constructions
and through other artefacts, such as statues raised to honor members of the
imperial family and other prominent people or to Roman gods, coins, and
inscriptions praising the emperor, calendars with months named after the
ruling family, and even imperial milestones marking roads.
How did this dominant ideology of the Roman Empire affect the everyday life of Jewish and Christian religious minority communities? The
Christian proclamation about a “Son of God” who was the only true “ruler”
and “savior” of the world served as an obvious challenge to the sovereignty
of the emperor, but what were its practical consequences? Which word
best describes the relations of ancient Judaism and early Christianity with
the Roman Empire: antagonism, adaptation, or indifference? At least since
the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule at the end of the nineteenth century,
attention has been paid to the influence of Roman power on Jewish thinking
and the formation of developing Christian movement(s). Nevertheless, other
cultural and social factors became more dominant, which meant that no
political interpretation of early Christianity and its writings was given – and
only a few studies that dealt with the impact of Roman power have emerged.
Moreover, a special interest in Roman power and its influence on Jesus
and the early Christian movement has arisen in contemporary moments
of political change and crisis. For example, the German student movement
of the late 1970s and the political-religious orientation of the Reagan-Bush
era in the United States encouraged investigations into the social and
political aspects of the teaching of Jesus, the New Testament texts, and
early Christian thinking. Since then, studies on the relations of Jewish and
Introduc tion
9
early Christian writings concerning the imperial culture, ideology, and
political as well as religious claims have been flourishing, mainly focussing
on Jesus, Paul, the Gospel of Mark, and the Book of Revelation. However,
other texts and movements are receiving increasing attention, and a wide
range of hermeneutical methods are used, which makes “empire studies”
one of the most innovative fields of research in early Christian and early
Jewish studies.
There are no simple answers to complex historical questions, nor is it
possible to make exhaustive analyses of the vast phenomena involved in
the study of the impact of Roman power politics on Christians and Jews.
The task of the present volume is to show that the topic is more complicated
than often assumed and that relations between the empire and the Jews
and Christians living within its limits cannot simply be described in terms
of conflict, clash, and opposition. As several recent studies have made
clear, early Christianity and early Judaism were diverse movements that
included various versions of how to be and live as a Christian or Jew. The
attitudes toward the Empire also varied and differed both geographically
and temporally. There is no such thing as the Christian or the Jewish response to imperial rule and ideology. The attitudes of peasants living in
the Roman Galilee, for example, were not the same as those of the urban
dwellers living outside of the region who wrote about them. The further the
Jesus movement expanded, the more diversified it became, while reactions
toward the Roman authorities proliferated. Moreover, the Roman world
was no less diverse; the faces of the empire did not look the same for all its
inhabitants. This profound diversity is mirrored in manifold ways in the
ancient sources and is also reflected in the essays of this volume.
This collection of essays offers insights into the relations of early
Christians and Jews with the dominant Roman power. They address the
question using different methodological approaches and studying a variety
of sources, both literary and epigraphic. Most of these contributions are
based on presentations given in the seminar Early Christianity between
Judaism and Hellenism at several meetings of the European Association
of Biblical Studies (in Tartu 2010, in Thessaloniki 2011, and in Amsterdam
2012). Together, they show how multiform and diffuse the phenomenon in
question is.
Three of the essays focus on Jewish communities living under Roman
power. George Brooke (University of Manchester) discusses the use of the
designation Kittim in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls. The word is usually
understood as referring to the Seleucids, the Romans, or other military
powers. Reading closely the relevant Qumran texts, such as Pesher Nahum,
10 Outi Lehtipuu & Michael L abahn
Pesher Habakkuk, the War Scroll, and other texts, Brooke shows the ambivalent features related to the word; the Kittim are viewed both negatively
and positively. This he explains by borrowing the concept of hybridity from
post-colonial discourse. In addition, Brooke emphasizes the usefulness
of the designation which can serve as a name for changing referents in
changing historical circumstances.
In her contribution on the expulsions of Jews and other groups from the
Roman community, Birgit van den Lans (University of Groningen) expresses
a contrasting view: what did the Romans think about the Jews and other
expelled groups? Why did imperial Rome order Jews to be expelled from
the city? What did it mean in practice? Earlier scholarship has taken the
expulsions as signs of a general anti-Judaism, but a comparison with other
expelled groups – such as Egyptians, astrologers, philosophers, and actors
– suggests that they can be treated as part of Roman power politics, that is,
promoting social order by means of rhetorical force. This means that the
expulsions were not necessarily enforced but were manifestations of the
boundaries of Romanness properly understood. Sources are suspiciously
silent about any concrete actions taken against these groups. Moreover, the
city limits were not specified and some of the expelled philosophers, for
example, seem to have retreated to suburban areas. Even if not carried out
in practice, the expulsion orders were an important means of constructing
the proper Roman moral community.
The third article focusing on a Jewish community is a study on the Jews
in the Roman province of Pannonia by Nóra Dávid (University of Vienna,
Institute for Jewish Studies). She discusses what can be known of the earliest
Jewish settlers in the region based on the epigraphic evidence. A major
methodological question is how an inscription can be identified as Jewish. A newly discovered inscription from Carnuntum that can be dated to
the time before the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 c.e. suggests that there were
Jewish inhabitants in the region earlier than is often presumed. However,
it was during the Severan period (193-235 c.e.) that the presence of Jews in
Pannonia intensified. Pannonia enjoyed a special status in the eyes of the
Emperor Septimius Severus. When he was acclaimed emperor, he was the
governor of Pannonia Superior and his Pannonian legions helped him in
the consolidation of his power in the civilian wars between 193 and 197 c.e.
As emperor, he granted the region a wide range of privileges and developed
the province significantly. This encouraged new settlers, people from Judaea
among them.
The next three essays aim at contextualizing New Testament texts with
the Roman Empire and its ideology. If Rome was an ever-present reality,
Introduc tion
11
how is its presence reflected in the New Testament and the social practices
of early Christians? Anders Klostergaard Petersen (University of Aarhus)
analyzes Paul’s perspective on imperial politics, particularly the imperial
cult, and asks whether it is the imperial cult that provides a relevant frame
of reference for the study of Paul’s letters. Paying special attention to some
apocalyptic passages in Paul’s letters, Petersen argues that many of the
questions and problems of the contemporary debate on the New Testament
and the imperial cult are already visible in Adolf Deissmann’s classic study
of the subject (1911). While maintaining that “Paul and his peers would have
had to be rather blind in order to overlook the omnipresence and ubiquity
of the imperial cult” and, thus, acknowledging that the imperial cult and
related practices offer an important contextual frame for Pauline texts,
Petersen questions whether Paul’s letters exhibit a deliberate engagement
with the cult and whether early Christ-followers attempted to create an
anti-imperial ideology.
The starting point for Martin Meiser (University of Saarland) is the Gospel
of Mark. His particular viewpoint is the reception history of Mark’s text. If
Mark’s gospel is critical toward the empire and its ideology, how was this
criticism understood and continued in the texts of subsequent Christian
writers? Meiser takes a closer look at three Markan texts: the beheading of
John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29), Jesus’s teaching on serving others (Mark
10:35-45), and the question about paying taxes (Mark 12:13-17). Strikingly,
the early interpreters of these texts seldom understand them in political
terms. The scene of the beheading of John the Baptist mainly arouses critical comments on luxury, and Jesus’s words on servitude are taken as an
exhortation to personal humbleness. The criticism toward the empire also
remains mild in the case of Jesus’s teaching concerning imperial taxes, as
most commentators emphasize obedience and the duty to give Caesar what
rightly belongs to Caesar.
Klaus Scholtissek (University of Jena) studies the Gospel of John and
particularly the foot washing scene in John 13. His analysis of the literary
features of the text reveals the exemplary role of Jesus’s action for Christian
diakonia. He places this finding into an imperial critical frame: by placing
himself in the role of a slave, Jesus introduces a counter-cultural practice
to the dominant imperial social practice. Much in line with Klostergaard
Petersen’s argument, Scholtissek analyzes the Johannine thought world as
mostly ignoring categories and practices of the Roman ruler cult, in contrast
to studies that view the Fourth Gospel as a more critical reflection of Roman
political power. According to Scholtissek, the anthropology, imagery, and
ethics of the Fourth Gospel include universal elements and offer a variety
12 Outi Lehtipuu & Michael L abahn
of connecting factors for different philosophical, cultural, and religious
concepts. Although John seems to represent universal soteriology, it is worth
asking whether even such an exclusive system as the Johannine narrative
can work without being in critical dialogue with other systems of meaning,
such as is represented by the emperor ideology.
The last three contributions focus on other early Christian texts and on
how they reflect the interactions between imperial ideology and the early
Christian movement. Mark Grundeken (Catholic University of Leuven) deals
with the Shepherd of Hermas, a text often excluded from studies on the relation between early Christianity and the Roman Empire. The text, however,
was probably written during the second century in or near Rome, which
means that its author must have experienced the influence of the empire
in all aspects of its sociocultural, economic, and political life. Grundeken
suggests that, compared to several contemporary texts, the views on Roman
authorities in the Shepherd of Hermas are quite moderate. The supreme
power of this world may rest with God, but the earthly rulers may rightly
expect their Christian subjects to obey their laws. Confrontation, let alone
active resistance, should be avoided. At the same time, however, Hermas’s
criticism of idolatry and other features of the text seem to contain a hidden
critique of the emperor veneration. These critical views can be seen as
attempts to strengthen the identity of the Christian community.
It is not possible to study the relations of early Christians and the Roman
authorities without commenting on martyrdom. The topic is taken up by
Paul Middleton (University of Chester), who investigates how non-Christian
Romans viewed Christian martyrdom. While it is now generally recognized
that prior to the middle of the third century, official actions taken against
Christians were local, sporadic, and short-lived, experiences of suffering
and being persecuted form an important part of several early Christian
writings. Suffering was not only unavoidable, it was also a sign of true
discipleship. Christians understood martyrs’ deaths as examples of heroic
deeds which showed the courage, endurance, and bravery of the virtuous
sufferers. They saw martyrdom in line with the Roman tradition of Noble
Death, as exemplified by Socrates or those who died heroically in battle.
Much to their puzzlement, non-Christians did not see the same nobility in
Christian martyrdom. In pagan eyes, Christians were too eager to die, and
their martyrdom was “too unreflective, too spectacular, and too messy”,
not a solution to shame but rather a cause for shame. Thus, instead of Noble
Death, martyrdom was considered a repulsive Death Cult.
The collection closes with an essay by Marco Frenschkowski (University
of Leipzig), who focuses on the legends of the emperor Nero, one of the
Introduc tion
13
most fascinating Roman figures in the early Christian imagination. In
non-Christian tradition, Nero had an ambivalent reputation but, in early
Christian sources, he unambiguously became the epitome of evil. According to a popular belief, Nero would return to power after his death in 68
c.e., and sources depict several false Neros pretending to be the emperor
leading rebellions. In Christian circles, Nero was often identified with the
figure of the Antichrist, even though in some texts, Nero redivivus and the
Antichrist are clearly two separate figures. Regardless of this, Nero still plays
a role in the eschatological scenario. Revelations concerning Nero and other
eschatological events was not open knowledge but rather part of arcane
teaching often restricted to an inner circle of a few trusted individuals.
According to Frenschkowski, this arcane character of the eschatological
teaching might explain why so many early Christian writers so quickly
forgot the role of Nero in the Revelation of John.
A compilation of these essays would not have been possible without
the co-operation of all our contributors, to whom we would like to express
our sincere thanks. We are also grateful to Amsterdam University Press,
especially to Simon Forde and Erin Thomas Dailey, for their willingness
to accept our collection for publication and for their help in all practical
matters. Last but not least, we would like to thank Christian Seppänen, who
helped with technical editing and compiled the indexes.