Paul and Empire: Studying Roman Identity after the Cultural Turn

Harrill, J. Albert

doi:10.1628/186870311797406958

Cited by 37 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, we need to dismantle the dichotomous social models for the Roman world that pervade biblical studies, especially when social analysis is tied to political exegesis directed more to modern theologizing against empire than historical reconstructions of ancient social structures, as in much postcolonial biblical scholarship (e.g., Elliott 2006; Taubes 2004; cf. Sugirtharaja 2006; Punt 2017, 2015; and, for a more qualified use of imperial language in Paul, see Harrill 2011). We need to be careful not to politicize Paul when a political perspective is not clearly present, as if we were anachronistically conflating Paul with Karl Marx or Martin Luther King, Jr – or perhaps imposing our modern postcolonial values about class conflict and political oppression onto the ancient world (cf.…”

Section: Reassessment Of Early Christian Socio-economic Analysis and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roman Diet and Meat Consumption: Reassessing Elite Access to Meat in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10

Tite

2019

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A persistent exegetical tradition exists linking the Pauline controversy over the consumption of idol meat in the Corinthian correspondence to social and economic assumptions about the Roman world. Specifically, there is the assumption that access to meat was limited to the elite within the Roman world. According to this exegetical tradition, the lower classes only had access to meat through public religious festivals or as derivative through cultic sacrifice by means of the marketplace, resulting in the view that non-elites were sustained on a diet of legumes, grains and wine. Roman access to meat along such class demarcations, furthermore, is founded upon an economic dichotomy of elite and non-elite. This article challenges these social assumptions regarding meat consumption in, especially, Corinth by engaging recent scholarship that re-evaluates Roman diet in regard to access to meat and other animal products. Specifically, methods in archaeological science (especially stable isotope analysis) are used to supplement literary reassessments. What arises is a new picture of Roman diet, wherein meat consumption was not limited to the elite, but was prevalent in nearly all levels of Roman society. With this fresh perspective on Roman dietary practices, Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 must be re-evaluated.

show abstract

Section: Reassessment Of Early Christian Socio-economic Analysis and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roman Diet and Meat Consumption: Reassessing Elite Access to Meat in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10

Tite

2019

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is this pose of denial that itself constitutes the dominant feature of imperial ceremonial.' 9: 1-18) as a version of/reference to the refusal of honours by Augustus; see Harrill 2011. suggests that when Octavian offered to return full authority to the Senate and People of Rome, he did so by citing the 'superhuman' precedent of his father Julius, who had so famously refused the crown offered to him by Mark Antony in front of an awe-struck crowd at the Lupercalia of 15 February 44 B.C.E.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the structuring of Paul's refusal of various honours (I Cor. 9: 1–18) as a version of/reference to the refusal of honours by Augustus ; see Harrill 2011.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recusatioas Political Theatre: Horace's Letter to Augustus

Freudenburg

2014

J. Rom. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Among the most potent devices that Roman emperors had at their disposal to disavow autocratic aims and to put on display the consensus of ruler and ruled was the artful refusal of exceptional powers, or recusatio imperii. The practice had a long history in Rome prior to the reign of Augustus, but it was Augustus especially who, over the course of several decades, perfected the recusatio as a means of performing his hesitancy towards power. The poets of the Augustan period were similarly well practised in the art of refusal, writing dozens of poetic recusationes that purported to refuse offers urged upon them by their patrons, or by the greater expectations of the Augustan age, to take on projects. It is the purpose of this paper to put the one type of refusal alongside the other, in order to show to what extent the refusals of the Augustan poets are informed not just by aesthetic principles that derive, most obviously, from Callimachus, but by the many, high-prole acts of denial that were performed as political art by the emperor himself.

show abstract

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the year 64 during the Principate of Nero, in the night between July 18 and 19, a fire broke out in Rome that within nine days destroyed or badly damaged a substantial part of the City, leaving many dead or homeless. Rumors circulated that the fire had been set by Nero, who, it was claimed, sought to divert blame from himself by holding responsible a new sect of aggressively proselytizing Jews, known as Christians. Most recent scholarship has rejected the popular view of Nero as an arsonist "who fiddled while Rome burned." 1 Largely ignored, however, has been the question of whether the Christians, generally regarded as innocent scapegoats of Nero, might in fact have played some role in the fire. This chapter considers the problematic nature of Christianity and Roman attitudes toward Christians in the first century CE and suggests based on this evidence that Christian involvement is not out of the question. NERO AND THE FIREOf the few surviving ancient accounts of the Great Fire of 64, the most detailed is that of Tacitus (Ann. 15.38-44), who wrote in the early second century. Most sources contemporary with Nero say nothing * Too late to be incorporated and discussed in extenso in my essay is a new article by B.D. Shaw, "The Myth of the Neronian Persecution," JRS 105 (2015) 73-100. I do not agree with Shaw's major premise that it is most unlikely that Christians were specifically targeted as arsonists, but that they instead suffered punishmentor rather "persecution"for their faith. Tacitus notes that Christians were punished for arson, but carefully and skillfully leads us to deduce that the real culprit was indeed Nero. In my opinion, the reason that other elite post-Neronian authors omit reference to early "Christianized Jews" in connection with the conflagration is that they were intent upon laying the blame for it at the feet of the tyrannical Nero, rather than the new heretical Jewish sect.

show abstract

Paul and Empire: Studying Roman Identity after the Cultural Turn

Cited by 37 publications

References 0 publications

Roman Diet and Meat Consumption: Reassessing Elite Access to Meat in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10

Roman Diet and Meat Consumption: Reassessing Elite Access to Meat in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10

Recusatioas Political Theatre: Horace's Letter to Augustus

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About