Liberal Hermeneutics of the Spectacular in the Study of the New Testament and the Roman Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-183
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Zeichmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Military

AbstractSince 9/11, there has been a surge in interest in the topic of violence both among scholars of religion and in the humanities more broadly. This article suggests that such works operate with a “hermeneutics of the spectacular” that functions to legitimate the liberal status quo by concentrating its focus upon the most visibly heinous forms of state violence under the aegis of a politics of “resistance.” This article uses the New Testament and its depiction of the military as a site for thinking about how folk definitions come to classify certain activities as “violent” and not others, both today and in antiquity. If biblical scholarship—or the study of religion more broadly—is to be something other than an ideological repository for late capitalism, it is necessary to reconsider the issue. This article, by point of contrast, discusses three theoretical approaches to violence that may be useful: Objective-Structural Violence, Symbolic Violence, and Violent Subjectivities.

Anti-Imperial Rhetoric in the New Testament

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Diehl
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Interpretive Methods ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Common ◽  
Book Of Acts ◽  
Common Era

The first of a series of three articles, this essay introduces current scholarship concerned with the use of anti-imperial rhetoric in the New Testament Gospels and the book of Acts. In the first century of the Common Era, if the powerful Roman Emperor was considered a god, what did that mean for the earliest Christians who committed loyalty to ‘another’ God? Was it necessary for the NT authors to employ subversive language, words and symbols, to conceal their true meanings from the imperial authorities in their communications to the first Christian communities? The answers to such key questions can give us a clearer picture of the culture, society and setting in which the NT was written. The purpose of this complex study is to observe how current biblical scholarship views anti-imperial rhetoric and anti-emperor implications found in the NT, assuming such rhetoric exists at all. This initial article reviews recent scholarship with respect to the background of the Roman Empire, current interpretive methods and research concerning anti-imperial rhetoric found in the NT Gospels and Acts.

Roman Empire in the Synoptic Gospels

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Diehl
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
First Century ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Literature Reading ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
And Control

This article introduces past and current scholarship that uses postcolonial criticism as an approach to the interpretation of the New Testament (NT) Synoptic Gospels. Historically, the NT was written primarily during the colonization and control of the Roman Empire; therefore, it is not strictly “postcolonial” literature. Reading the NT through the lens of postcolonial interpretation, readers can see that experiences connected to modern colonialism are apparent in the ancient texts. Did the Gospel writers find it necessary to employ subversive language and symbols to conceal their true meanings from the imperial authorities? This chapter offers a brief review of the biblical scholarship that recognizes anti-imperial rhetoric within three biblical accounts of Jesus and his countercultural message to the first-century Jewish and Gentile world.

Roman Imperial Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 256-276
Author(s):  
Davina C. Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Imperial Culture ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Imperial Ideology

This chapter discusses several aspects of Roman imperial culture that offer resonances with the study of the New Testament. Herein several gendered and sexualized tropes of Roman imperial ideology, which serve to discursively naturalize power relationships and differences in hierarchy, are considered. These include the impenetrable manliness of the Roman emperor, the link between military conquest and sexual violence and feminization of conquered barbarian “others,” and the characterization of the Roman Empire as an endlessly fertile family. Special attention is given to the rhetorical and representational dimensions of Roman imperial culture, and particular emphasis is afforded to visual representation. Finally, the article considers several areas wherein the intersection of gender, sexuality, Roman imperial culture, and the study of the New Testament might further be explored.

scholarly journals The figure of Jesus Christ in the context of religious studies

2003 ◽  
pp. 146-157
Author(s):  
Pavlo Yuriyovych Pavlenko
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Bruno Bauer

The study of the origins of the Christian religion has always been one of the most difficult problems. This is due, first of all, to the almost complete absence of specific historical evidence of early Christianity and of its founder, which in turn led to the emergence of the so-called "mythological theory" according to which Christianity emerged "spontaneously" in Palestine and is unknown in any way. F. Engels, who borrowed from Bruno Bauer the date of writing the Book of the Annunciation of John the Theologian, the last book of the New Testament canon, played a significant role in the formation of such views. In accepting this date, understanding of Christianity as a "spontaneous" phenomenon, initially representing the movement of the underprivileged masses of the Roman Empire, played a role. In this sense, any "spontaneity" automatically excluded the historicity of virtually all evangelical characters (according to Engels, all of them are nothing but mythological images). If neither Jesus nor his apostles existed, then the gospel narrative of Christ evolved from the myth of Christ as God to the myth of Jesus as God-man.

The Church of the Reigning Lord

1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Louden
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Four Square ◽  
The Church

We can trace a revival of theology in the Reformed Churches in the last quarter of a century. The new theological interest merits being called a revival of theology, for there has been a fresh and more thorough attention given to certain realities, either ignored or treated with scant notice for a considerable time previously.First among such realities now receiving more of the attention which their relevance and authority deserve, is the Bible, the record of the Word of God. There is an invigorating and convincing quality about theology which is Biblical throughout, being based on the witness of the Scriptures as a whole. The valuable results of careful Biblical scholarship had had an adverse effect on theology in so far as theologians had completely separated the Old Testament from the New in their treatment of Biblical doctrine, or in expanding Christian doctrine, had spoken of the theological teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine writings, and so on, as if there were no such thing as one common New Testament witness. It is being seen anew that the Holy Scriptures contain a complete history of God's saving action. The presence of the complete Bible open at the heart of the Church, recalls each succeeding Christian generation to that one history of God's saving action, to which the Church is the living witness. The New Testament is one, for its Lord is one, and Christian theology must stand four-square on the foundation of its whole teaching.

THE CANONICAL FUNCTION OF 2 PETER

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wall
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
1 Peter ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Status ◽  
2 Peter

AbstractDuring the modern period, the authority of 2 Peter for Christian theological formation has been challenged by the reconstructions of historical criticism. The verdict of biblical scholarship has been largely negative: the theological conception of 2 Peter comes from a person and for a setting that does not easily cohere with the rest of the New Testament writings. The present essay seeks to rehabilitate the status of 2 Peter for use in biblical theology, independent of the historical problem it poses for the interpreter, by approaching its theological subject matter within the setting of the New Testament canon, where its theological perspective functions as complementary to and integral with 1 Peter in forming Scripture's Petrine witness to the faith.

Hedgehog and Fox: Anderson as Historian and Philologist

2010 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-382
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The One

To sin or transgress, according to one dictionary definition, is to go beyond a limit, to cross what is supposed to be a clear border. In this sense, one can say that Gary Anderson has succeeded in writing a very sinful book. Like Sennacherib as the rabbis describe him, Anderson is (he “erases boundaries between nations”)—only I use this phrase to describe Anderson in rather a more positive sense than the rabbis intended it when they applied it to the Assyrian emperor.2 Throughout this book we are discussing, Anderson crosses boundaries between academic disciplines: biblical criticisms that study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Qumranic scholarship, rabbinics, patristics, the study of both medieval Catholic and early Protestant theology. He crosses boundaries within some of these fields, as well: for example, by attending to modern Israeli biblical scholarship in a way that is, alas, all too rare among non-Jewish scholars in North America and Europe; or by showing scholars of rabbinics what they can learn from the study of the New Testament, especially when that study is conscious of its roots in medieval and early modern theology. Most importantly, Anderson tears down artificial barriers that separate historical, philological, descriptive scholarship on the one side from constructive theology and inter-religious dialogue on the other.

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