Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles 9781472551474, 9780567287632

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For Wendy

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Acknowledgements

This book could not have been completed without the invitation of Professor Jörg Rüpke to take up a fellowship at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. The study that follows is a contribution to the College Research Group, ‘Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective’.1 Professor Rüpke was a generous and conscientious host and I am most grateful for his collegiality and friendship. He, together with Dr Bettina Hollstein, assured that I received not only an excellent office, but also access to all the University of Erfurt’s research resources. I am also grateful to Diana Püschel and Ursula Birtel-Koltes for their administrative support. Fr Püschel helped negotiate the layers of bureaucracy that come with being a guest researcher in Germany. Funding for this study also came from the generous support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This was my third Humboldt sponsored stay in Germany and I am most grateful for the Foundation’s generosity and efficiency, as well as its continuing dedication to helping promote research excellence and international academic cooperation. Several of the following chapters were presented to Max Weber Fellows and guests professors. Research seminars at the Max Weber College are a model of disciplined and hospitable interdisciplinary conversation, and the chapters that follow have benefited from the constructive feedback of colleagues. Richard Gordon read multiple drafts of this book and saved me from factual errors, unwarranted historical judgments, misinterpretations of imperial data and grammatical infelicities. Those many that remain are only because I did not take his criticisms seriously enough. At several points Wendy Fletcher invited me to revise and restructure arguments. Her suggestions have made this a far stronger book than it would otherwise have been. Professor Chris Eberhart and Randy Meissner read drafts of a number of chapters and provided excellent feedback. Professor Wolfgang Spickermann suggested several fruitful avenues of investigation of Roman military culture. I am grateful to Shannon Lythgoe for help with some images. My work also benefited from the support of my research assistants,

For a description of the project, www.uni-erfurt.de/fileadmin/user-docs/Kollegforschergruppe/ kfg_dfg_antragsauszug.pdf (accessed 10 January 2013).

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x Acknowledgements

James Magee and Maryann Amor. Both furnished me with excellent bibliographical research. Maryann Amor, in particular, offered invaluable editorial assistance. Kristoff, Stefan, Lukas, Rachel and Anna accompanied their father through ruins and archaeological museums without complaint, notably in the heat and humidity of Turkey in August. They, together with Joshua, encouraged me by showing enthusiasm for my discoveries even though archaeology and ruins do not remotely approach the top of their list of interests. Lukas joined me on a memorable road trip through Naples and took excellent pictures of monuments and artifacts, some of which have made it into this book. I could not have written what follows without Wendy’s encouragement and love. She faithfully companioned me through the long journey of this project, reminded me often of its importance, and championed it when ideas and arguments seemed stale. She gifts me with grace and gentleness, generosity and kindness, welcome and intelligence, thoughtfulness, colour, beauty and passion. I dedicate this book to her, with love and thanksgiving.

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Abbreviations

Primary Sources Greek and Latin Aelius Aristides Or. – Orationes Aphthonius Prog. – Progynmasmata Aristotle Pol. – Politica Rh. – Rhetorica Augustus Res. Ges. Div. Aug. – Res Gestae Calpurnius Siculus Ecl. – Eclogues Eins. – Einsiedeln Eclogues Cassius Dio Dio. – Roman History Cicero Ad Her. – Ad Herennium De Or. – De Oratore Orat. – Orator ad M. Brutum Rhet. Her. – Rhetorica ad Herennium Curtius Rufus History – History of Alexander The Great Demetrius Eloc. – De Elocutione Dio of Prusa Or. – Orationes Dionysius Halicarnassensis Ant. Rom. – Antiquitates Romanae Comp. – De Compositione Verborum De Imit. – De Imitatione Rhet. – Ars Rhetorica

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xii Abbreviations

Euripides IA – Iphigenia Aulidensis Fronto, Marcus Cornelius Ep. – Epistulae Hermogenes Prog. – Progymnasmata Hesiod Theog. – Theogonia Juvenal Sat. – Satires Livy His. – History of Rome Longinus Subl. – On the Sublime Lucian Fug. – Fugitives Par. – de Parasito Rh.Pr. – Rhetor praeceptor Tim. – Timon Menander Synaristosai [Women at Lunch] Menander Rhetor Men. Rhet. Minucius Felix Oct. – Octavius Nicolaus Rhetor Prog. – Progymnasmata Nikolaus Prog. – Progymnasmata Plautus Cist. – Cistellaria Pliny (The Elder) HN – Naturalis Historia Pliny (The Younger) Ep. – Epistulae Pan. – Panegyric Plutarch Ad princ. Inerud. – Ad principen ineruditum Coni. Praec. – Coniugalia praecepta De fort. Rom. – De fortuna Romanorum De garr. – De garrulitate De praec. Ger. Re. – Praecepta gerendae reipublicae (Precepts of Statecraft) De se ipsum. – De se ipsum citra invidiam laudando Plut. Galb. – Galba Lyc. – Lycurgus

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Abbreviations

xiii

Mor. – Moralia Pollux Onom. – Onomasticon Porphyry Marc. – ad Marcellam Pseudo-Aristotle Mund. – De Mundo Phgn. – Physiognomonica Pseudo-Heraclitus Quintilian Inst. – Institutio oratoria Seneca Apocol. – Apocolocyntosis Clem. – De clementia Ep. – Epistulae Suetonius Dom. – Domitianus Theon Prog. – Progymnasmata Theophrastus Char. – Characteres Virgil Aen. – Aeneid Xenophon Cyr. – Institutio Cyri (Cyropaedia) Oec. – Oeconomicus

Jewish Philo Dec. – De decalogo Fug. – De fuga et invention Leg. Gai. – Legatio ad Gaium Spec. Leg. – De specialibus legibus

Christian 1 Clem. – 1 Clement Acts of Paul (and Thecla) Clement of Alexandria Exhort. – Exhortation to the Greeks Paed. – Paedagogus Strom. – Stromateis

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xiv Abbreviations

Eusebius of Caesarea DE – Demonstratio Evangelica HE – Historica Ecclesiastica Or. – Oration Theophany VC – Vita Constantini Ignatius of Antioch Ignatius, Smyrn. – Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaens Justin Martyr Apol. – Apologia Origen C. Cels. – Contra Celsum De. Princ. – De Principiis Polycarp Polycarp, Phil. – Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians Tertullian Adv. Marc. – Adversus Marcionem De Bapt. – De Baptismo De Exhor. Cast. – De exhoratione castitatis De Idol. – De Idololatria

Secondary Sources AGRW

Ascough, Richard S., Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, (eds). Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012.

ANF

Roberts, Alexander and James Donaldson, (eds), The Ante-Nicene Fathers: translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. Revised and chronologically arranged, with brief prefaces and occasional notes, by A. Cleveland Coxe. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ., 1951–57.

ANRW

Haase, Wolfgang, and Hildegard Temporini, (eds). Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1972–.

Aphrodisias

McCabe, Donald F., ed. Aphrodisias Inscriptions. Texts and List. The Princeton Project on the Inscriptions of Anatolia. Princeton: The Institute for Advanced Study, 1991. Packard Humanities Institute CD #7, 1996.

APMS

American Philological Monograph Series

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Abbreviations

xv

Bean-Mitford Bean, George Ewart, and Terence Bruce Mitford. Journeys in Rough Cilicia 1964–1968. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften [DAW], 102. Ergänzungsbände zu den Tituli Asiae Minoris, 3. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1970. BBR

Bulletin for Biblical Research

BDF

Blass, F., and A. Debrunner, (eds). A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 4th edn. Translated by Robert W. Funk. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961.

BHT

Beiträge zur historichen Theologie

BNTC

Black’s New Testament Commentaries

BM

Bibelwissenschaftliche Monographien

BMCRE

Mattingly, Harold, ed. Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Musuem. 6 Vols. London: Trustees of the British Museum: 1966–76.

BM Ionia Head, Barclay V., ed. Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Ionia in the British Musuem. London: Trustees of the British Musuem, 1892. BM Mysia

Wroth, Warwick, ed. Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Mysia in the British Musuem. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1892.

BM Phrygia

Head, Barclay V., ed. Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Phrygia in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Musuem, 1906.

BZNW

Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

CBQ

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Didyma

McCabe, Donald F., ed. Didyma Inscriptions. Texts and List. The Princeton Project on the Inscriptions of Anatolia. Princeton: The Institute for Advanced Study, 1985. Packard Humanities Institute CD #6, 1991.

ExpTim

Expository Times

FAT

Forschungen zum Alten Testament

Fritze

von Fritze, Hans, ed. Die Münzen von Pergamon. Abhandlungen der königlich preussischen Akademie

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xvi Abbreviations

der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Berlin: Verlag der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1910. HDR

Harvard Dissertations in Religion

IBM

Newton, C. T., and E. L. Hicks, (eds). The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum. 1874. Reprint, Milan: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1977–9.

ICC

International Critical Commentary

IDidyma

Rehm, Albert, and Richard Harder, (eds). Didyma. Zweiter Teil: Die Inschriften. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. Berlin: Verlag Gebr. Mann., 1958.

IEph

Engleman, H. H., and R. Merkelbach, (eds). Die Inschriften von Ephesos. IGSK 11–17. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1979–84.

IG II2

Kirchner, Johannes, ed. Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores. 4 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1913–40.

IGR

Cagnat, René, and Ren Louis Victor, (eds). Inscriptiones graecae ad res romanas pertinentes. 3 vols. Paris 1901–27. vol. 4, fasc. 1–9, with Georges Lafaye. Paris 1908–27. Reprint, Chicago: Ares, 1975.

IHierapMir

Miranda E. ‘La comunità giudaica di Hierapolis di Frigia’, Epigraphica Anatolica 31 (1999): 109–56.

IK Knidos

Blümel, Wolfgang, ed. Die Inschriften von Knidos I. Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 41. Bonn: Habelt, 1992.

IKios

Corsten, Thomas, ed. Die Inschriften von Kios. IGSK 29. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1985.

IPergamon

Fränkel, M., ed. Die Inschriften von Pergamon. 2 vols. Berlin: W. Spemann, 1890–5.

IPergamon Suppl

Müller, Helmut, ed. Supplement zum Corpus der Inschriften von Pergamon. Deutsche archäologische Institut. http://www.dainst.org/de/node/23938?ft=all (accessed 15 May 2012)

IPIAO

Die Ikonographie Palästinas/Israels und der Alte Orient

IRT

Reynolds, J. M. and J. B. Ward Perkins, (eds). The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania. Rome: British School at Rome, 1952.

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Abbreviations

xvii

ISmyrn

Petzl, Georg, ed. Die Inschriften von Smyrna. IGSK 23–24/1–2. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1982–90.

JIAN

Journal international d’archéologie numismatique

JBL

The Journal of Biblical Literature

JRS

The Journal of Roman Studies

JRASup

Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement Series

JSNT

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

JSNTSup

Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies

Kaunos

McCabe, Donald F., ed. Kaunos Inscriptions. Texts and List. The Princeton Project on the Inscriptions of Anatolia. Princeton: The Institute for Advanced Study, 1991. Packard Humanities Institute CD #7, 1996.

LIMC

Balty, Jean Chalres and John Boardman, (eds). Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. 8 vols. Fondation pour le Lexicon Iconographicum Mytholigiae Classicae. Zürich, Munich, Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler Verlag, 1981–99.

LBW

le Bas, Philippe and William Henry Waddington, (eds). Voyage archéologique en Grèce et en Asie Mineure ... pendant 1834 et 1844. Paris 1847–1877. III, Part 5, Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grèce et en Asie Mineure (1870–76). Reprint, Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1972.

LCL

Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

LNTS

Library of New Testament Studies

MAMA

Calder, William Moir, Ernst Herzfield, and Sameul Guyer, (eds). Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1928–.

MAMA 8

Calder, William Moir and Jame Maxwell Ross Cormack, (eds). Monuments from Lycaonia, the Pisido-Phrygian Borderland, Aphrodisias. Vol. 8 of Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962.

MLN

Modern Language Notes

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xviii Abbreviations

NDIEC

Horsley, G. H. R., ed. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. Volumes 1–5. North Ryde: The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarrie University, 1981–1989.



Llewelyn, S. R. and E. A. Judge, (eds). New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. Volumes 6–9. North Ryde: The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarrie University, 1981–.

NovT

Novum Testamentum

NTOA

Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus/Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments

NTS

New Testament Studies

OBO

Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis

OCD

Hornblower, Simon and Antony Spawforth, (eds). Oxford Classical Dictionary. 4th Rev. edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

OGIS

Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae

Perge I

Şahin, Sencer, ed. Die Inschriften von Perge. Teil I (Vorrömische Zeit, frühe und hohe Kaiserzeit). Inschriften griechischen Städte aus Kleinasien 54. Bonn: Dr. Rudolph Habelt, 1999.

Pfuhl and Möbius

Pfuhl, Ernst and Hans Möbius, (eds). Die Ostgriechischen Grabreliefs. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1977–9. Textband I and Tafelband I (1977); Textband II and Tafelband II (1979).

PCNT

Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament

PH

Packard Humanities Institute numbers for Greek inscriptions. http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/ (accessed 10 May 2012)

RAC

Klauser, Theodor, ed. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinadersetzung des Christentums mit der Antiken Welt. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersmann, 1950–present.

RIC

Sutherland, S. H. V. and R. A. G. Carson, (eds). The Roman Imperial Coinage. From 31 bc to ad 69. Volume 1. Revised ed. London: Spink and Son, 1984.



Mattingly, Harold and Edward A. Syndenham, (eds). The Roman Imperial Coinage. Vespasian to Hadrian. Volume 2. London: Spink and Son, 1926.

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Abbreviations

xix

RPC 1.1,2

Burnett, Andrew, Michel Amandry, and Pere Pau Ripollès, (eds). The Roman Provincial Coinage. From the Death of Caesar to the Death of Vitellius (44 bc– ad 69). Part I: Introduction and Catalogue. Part II: Indexes and Plates. Volume 1. London: The British Museum Press and Paris: Bibliotheques national de France, 1992.

RPC 2.1,2

Burnett, Andrew, Michel Amandry, and Ian Carradice, (eds). The Roman Provincial Coinage. The Flavians. Part I: Introduction and Catalogue. Part II: Indexes and Plates. Volume 2. London: The British Museum Press and Paris: Bibliotheques national de France, 1999.

SBLSP

Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers

SEG

Supplementum epigraphicum graecum. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1923–.

Side 1948

Mansel, Arid Müfid, George Ewart Bean, and Jale Anin, (eds). Side agorasi ve civarindaki binalar. 1948 Yili kazilarina dair repor [Die Agora von Side und die benachbarten Bauten. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen im Jahre 1948]. Antalya bogesinde arastirmalar 4. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1956.

SIG3

Dittenberger, Wilhelm, ed. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. 3rd edn. 4 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1915–24.

SJSJ

Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism

SP

Sacra Pagina

SNTSMS

Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

SNovT

Supplements to Novum Testamentum

STAC

Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum

TAM I

Kalinka, Ernst, ed. Tituli Asiae Minoris, I. Tituli Lyciae lingua Lycia conscripti. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1901.

TAM II

Kalinka, Ernst, ed. Tituli Lyciae linguis Graeca et Latina conscripti. 3 fasc. Fasc. 1, nos. 1–395, Pars Lyciae occidentalis cum Xantho oppido (1920); fasc. 2, nos. 396–717, Regio quae ad Xanthum flumen pertinet praeter Xanthum oppidum (1930); fasc. 3, nos. 718–1230, Regiones montanae a valle Xanthi fluminis ad oram orientalem (1944). Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1920–44.

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xx Abbreviations

TAM V.1–2

Herrmann, Peter, ed. Tituli Lydiae linguis graeca et latina conscripti. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981.

TDNT

Kittel, G., ed. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Translated by Geoffrey William Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, Mich: W. B. Eerdmans, 1964–76.

TLZ

Theologische Literaturzeitung

WBC

Word Biblical Commentary

WUNT

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

ZNW

Die Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

ZPE

Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

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Introduction: Picturing Paul

Christianity took root and sprang to life in a world saturated with Roman imperial imagery. This book offers a study of Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (the Pastoral Epistles) against the backdrop of the Empire’s visual culture.1 For the writers of these texts, imperial iconography and the claims it represented for the emperor’s rule were a rich resource for their own acclamations of the reign of Christ and the ethical codes that went along with it. The argument is that reading these letters with the help of imperial imagery and with a view to imperial language is indispensable for an understanding of the epistles’ social context, vocabulary and metaphor, strategies of persuasion and communal ideals. It thus seeks to reinforce the growing awareness amongst biblical scholars of the importance of imagery in the interpretation of the New Testament and emergent Christianity. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire were impressed by the ubiquity of imperial imagery. The second century orator, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius, notes the frequency with which he beholds the emperor’s image. ‘You know that in all the banks, booths, shops, and taverns, gables, porches and windows, anywhere and everywhere, there are portraits of you exposed to public view, badly painted for the most part in a plain, not to say worthless, artistic style. Still, all the same, your likeness, however unlike you, never meets my eyes when I am out without making me part my lips in a smile and dream of you.’2 What Fronto says of the emperor’s portrait applies to a wide range of images designed to honour and celebrate the benefits of imperial rule. His description shows how imperial portraits were to be seen at all the chief intersections of urban life.3 They made the emperor present and reminded viewers of his benefactions and the honours owed to him.4 Pliny the Younger, in his panegyric oration to Trajan, describes the erection of statues to the emperor ‘as they were in the past for their outstanding services to the state.’5 What function did

I use of the term ‘Pastorals’ in what follows as a shorthand in full awareness that 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus represent documents in their own right, are arguably different in genre, that common authorship including the dating and order of them is debated and that any statements about the contents must also take into account evidence of diversity. For discussion, Richards, 2002. 2 Marcus Cornelius Fronto, Ep. 4.12.6 (LCL 112; translation Haines). 3 For the ubiquity of imperial portraiture, see Pekáry, 1965, 42–66, 116–30. 4 For discussion of imperial portraits, their public location, and their strategic importance in eliciting loyalty of viewers to the patron whom images honour, Tanner 2000, 18–50, at 36–50. 5 Pliny, Pan. 55.5. 1

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such ubiquitous imperial imagery play in the composition and reception of Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles?

The Visual Culture of the Roman Empire The Roman Empire was a visual culture that furnished a viewing public not only with portraits of the emperor and his achievements, but also all aspects of imperial life. This is especially true of the Empire’s urban culture. Cities were a preferred location to represent political achievements, to promote a shared understanding of a moral order and to give people a picture of the ideals of Roman rule. As Averil Cameron has argued, ‘[T]he imperial system had its requirements, among them an urgent need in so far-flung an empire for the public affirmation and display of the system itself.’6 Temples dedicated to the worship and honour of the emperor were a chief means of such affirmation and display. In the cities of the eastern Empire, where our letters were written, temples transformed the shape and orientation of cities. Imposing monuments placed at the highest points of cities, along the routes of religious festivals, along main avenues, at city gates and close to the theatre oriented the city to its imperial world. Porticoes and even rooms in gymnasia were dedicated to emperor worship.7 But it was not only temples that were instruments of Roman power. Wherever they went – to baths, market places, gymnasia, arenas, on the street – urban populations were greeted with images heralding Roman power. These images offered depictions of the recurring life situations that constituted the daily life of cities (commerce, games, rituals, civic events, war, birth, marriage, death). From villas to shops, from official portraits to graffiti, art at all levels bound a diverse population of ethnicities, socio-economic strata and religious beliefs into a common culture. In this visual world, civic art and architecture were critical means of creating a common ethos and shared set of ideals across the Empire. ‘The Roman city was literally stuffed with political imagery which was, like advertising, ubiquitous, inescapable and subliminally absorbed.’8 That ‘subliminal’ message was critical in creating shared identity. As Jaś Elsner has argued, ‘Images formed a potent means of “Romanization” – of bringing the still ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse communities around the Mediterranean into a single imperial polity.’9 Mass production of artifacts and trinkets related to Roman achievement and imperial rule resulted in what Paul Zanker has

Cameron, 1991, 76. For overview and discussion Price, 1984b, 136–46. 8 Whittaker, 1997, 145. 9 Elsner, 1998, 13. 6 7

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Introduction: Picturing Paul

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described as the internalization of political imagery.10 Taken together such images formed a consistent and often repeated pictorial language. The simple forms and ubiquitous themes of this picture language enabled people of all classes to ‘read’ and interpret the imagery. Christianity emerged in this Roman visual culture. Its canonical documents reveal how much it was influenced by this imperial visual world even as they show remarkable transformations of it. This is the case in the Pauline letters considered here. Like other contemporary texts designed for persuasion, these letters use lively imagery and vivid language to convince listeners to embrace their teachings and follow their ethical codes. The evocative imagery we find in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals is illustrative of the figural language one discovers in the New Testament as a whole. ‘Metaphor is at the heart of Christian language.’11 This is due in no small measure to Jesus of Nazareth himself, who proclaimed his message in the oral culture of his contemporaries through the figural speech of parables, as well with striking metaphor and evocative description. The Synoptic tradition shows that the earliest Christ followers continued to use the same strategies of persuasion. Pictorial language in the contested letters also can be explained by the heritage of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism, whose poetry, prophetic speech and narratives reflect worlds bathed in ancient Near Eastern iconography. But it also reflects imperial developments of rhetoric in the first and second centuries more generally. ‘Roman imperial culture, especially in the cities of the Greek east, in the second century, a crucial time for the incipient Christian faith, had become in political terms a spectator culture.’12 Cameron considers the appropriation of this ‘spectator culture’ in the extra-canonical literature of the second century – in prophetic ‘speech acts’, martyrdoms, and narration.13 It is also recognizable, however, in the contested Pauline literature, much of it written from the late to perhaps the middle of the second century. In Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles, description, metaphor and vocabulary placed before listeners eyes pictures of right belief and conduct. As the letters unfold, they invite their audiences to imagine the apostle in prison, in chains, as having narrowly escaped the lion’s mouth, abandoned and keeping faith. They place before their listeners’ eyes portraits of Paul as civic dignitary, athlete, soldier and ambassador, faithful unto death. From his prison location, ‘Paul’ offers them pictures of Christ’s enthronement, his victory, his triumphal parade of vanquished cosmic powers, the ecclesial harmony brought about by Christ’s

Zanker, 1988a, 1–22. Cameron, 1991, 58. 12 Cameron, 1991, 79. 13 See also, Nasrallah, 2010, 171–212, who takes up the apologists with reference to the visual culture and the Second Sophistic. 10 11

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rule, ethical transformation, and idealized portraits of leaders, of husbands, wives children, and slaves.14 Like other ancient instances of vivid description and visualization for the sake of persuasion, the ability of images to persuade depended on a shared set of cultural meanings and ideals. The social world of these letters’ audiences intersected regularly with imperial language and images. As ancient followers of Paul used their teacher’s name to achieve their rhetorical purposes of persuasion, they searched for recognizable images and vocabulary to affirm the universal claims of their developing Christian religion. This they found in their imperial visual culture and the language associated with it. Central to this world was the honorific culture of imperial display of the emperor, his achievements and the benefits brought about by his rule. To whatever degree early Christ followers were opposed to the Roman Empire and its emperor, they were inescapably intertwined through their daily lives with the Empire’s visual world and the imagery created by and for its ruler. Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles bear vivid testimony to the influence and negotiation of the typical vocabulary and metaphors used to characterize and define that world.

The Figure and the Idea Yet biblical exegetes tend toward an aniconic if not iconoclastic treatment of early Christian texts. This also has a long tradition, steeped in a hermeneutical preference for the spirit over the letter, a focus on the idea, rather than the figure. Thus not all scholars have agreed that attention to imperial imagery and language is important for interpreting New Testament texts. Indeed, the emperor’s portrait did not bring a smile to everyone’s lips in the period this study explores. Fronto’s Christian contemporaries were well aware of the world of imperial images in which they lived. Depending on where statues and portraits of the emperor were placed, they were sacred signs of his presence, designed to honour him with divine titles, worship and religious festivals.15 Clement of Alexandria (third century) very possibly has a cult statue of the emperor in mind when he describes ‘your Olympian Jupiter, the image of an image’ as ‘but a perishable impression of humanity’.16 The second century apologist, Justin Martyr, is a representative voice of the chorus of early Christian objections against the religious For the sake of convenience, I use the name ‘Paul’ as the author of these letters although this study accepts that he was not their author. 15 For discussion of the cultural meaning and character of the emperor’s image, see Price, 1984b, 170–206; for religious language assigned to his images and Christian misunderstandings of it, see Price 1984a, 79–95, 88–95; for the connection between image and presence in the Roman portraiture, see Radnoti-Alföldi, 1999, 16–22. 16 Clement of Alexandria, Exhort. 10.97. 14

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reverence of images of this kind. ‘We consider [this] not only senseless, but to be even insulting to God, who, having ineffable glory and form, thus gets His names attached to things that are corruptible, and require constant service.’17 Claims of apotheosis notwithstanding, Justin argues, the emperor needs to remember that every one of his predecessors ‘died a death common to all’, and for him, like them, awaits divine judgment.18 Tertullian is more pointed when he defies imperial religion as revealing its impiety when it punishes Christians for refusing to participate in the ‘profaning of image, and the deification of human names.’19 This Clement of Alexandria echoes when he writes that those who worship people as gods are ‘more wretched than even the demons.’20 As Elaine Pagels has argued, the apologists in general share the view that the imperial cult with its counterfeit worship of a human rather than God is proof of the governance of the Roman Empire by fallen angels or daimones.21 The third century Christian apologist, Minucius Felix, has his protagonist, Octavius, include amongst the superior features of his religion, not only that it does not worship the emperor, but that its followers have ‘no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images [nullas aras habent, templa nulla, nulla nota simulacra].’22 Contemporary scholars, no doubt persuaded by passages such as these, argue that early Christians were so opposed to the cult of the emperor and the honours associated with the celebration of his rule that they could not have used it as a resource to articulate its beliefs about Jesus and his achievements or to help formulate their own communal ideals.23 The absence of physical images in earliest Christianity until the middle of the second century attests to its aniconic character in general. For them, one should keep one’s focus on the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism to understand New Testament language.24 Even where that language is most figural the emphasis falls on the invisible truths manifested by visual signs rather than the way signs prompt imagination and a way of seeing. The iconographical study embarked upon here, then, is a blind alley. Such arguments are shortsighted. The same ancient apologists cited above also used the ubiquity of imperial ideas and imagery to their advantage when they acclaimed them as unwitting heralds of truth. Thus, Justin, for example represents the glorification of Caesar as son of Jupiter as a pale imitation of the events associated with Christ’s glorification through

Apol. 1.9.1 (ANF translation). Apol. 1.18.1 19 Apol. 27 (ANF translation); similarly De Idol. 15. 20 Clement of Alexandria, Exhort. 10.97. 21 Pagels 1985, 301–25. 22 Oct. 10.2 23 For example, Hengel, 1976, 28; Hurtado, 2005, 92–9. 24 The most forceful representation of this approach in the study of the letters under consideration here is the commentary on the Pastoral Epistles by Marshall, 1999: for example, 293–6. 17 18

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the crucifixion.25 Elsewhere he argues that the image of the tropaeum, or Roman trophy, resembles the shape of the cross and is thus an unwitting proclamation of Christ’s triumph.26 Similarly Tertullian, commenting on the casting out of Legion from the Gerasene demoniac into swine (Mk. 5.9) acclaims, ‘through the trophy of the cross, he [Christ] triumphed.’27 While Minucius Felix abjures ‘nota simulacra’, he makes similar connections when he goes on in the passage cited above to note the resemblance of the cross to the vexillum or military standard. Such forms of reinvention depended on a shared visual world and set of assumptions. They were the means ‘to see through a glass dimly’ the deeper truths of Christian faith. More to the point, however, in developing these kinds of arguments these authors were invoking and imitating the way Paul used imperial imagery and vocabulary as a means of communal and religious self-definition and as persuasion to believe their claims. The Pauline corpus singles itself out as the body of New Testament writings most heavily steeped in imperial language, metaphor and ideas. This has been amply demonstrated by the flood of studies over the last decade dedicated to the investigation of the relationship of the undisputed letters of Paul (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon) to the Roman Empire, especially to the cult of the emperor and the political ideals associated with it. Chapter 1 will consider these studies. We will see that lively debate continues over whether and to what degree Paul resisted, ignored, adapted or accommodated to the ideas and values of his contemporary culture, especially those associated with imperial rule. While much attention has been paid to the presence and use of imperial language and imagery in the earlier Pauline corpus, little attention has been given to the disputed letters that claim Pauline authorship but are often argued as belonging to the generation of Christ followers living after the apostle’s death (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles]).28 The reasons for this are complex. Some, are a result of a history of interpretation of Paul’s letters in the Western tradition in which significantly more attention has been given to certain uncontested letters like Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians and Philippians than to other letters. Other reasons are rooted in the Reformation, when the contents of the earlier letters occasioned doctrinal debates that have sometimes been carried forward under disguise into modern historical-critical and exegetical study. Some of them are polemical: on account of the ethics, gender norms and political views they are seen to promote, these letters

Apol. 1.21–2. Apol. 1.55; compare 16.1. 27 Adv. Marc. 4.20. 28 For important exceptions, see Faust, 1993; Malcolm, 2008; and Canavan, 2013. Fuller discussion of these and other studies will be presented in the chapters dedicated to each of Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals. 25 26

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are demoted as ‘inauthentically’ Pauline or pilloried as a betrayal of Paul. And still others have to do with historical methodology and the need to avoid interpreting the earlier uncontested corpus with the help of the later one. In taking up a study of these letters as pseudonymous or letters whose authorship is contested, what follows is informed by the third, methodological consideration. This study serves to fill a gap in the study of Paul. It presumes rather than argues for the pseudonymity of Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. The arguments for questioning Paul’s authorship of these letters are well known and are regularly taken up in scholarly commentaries.29 Certainly they furnish sufficient warrant for treating them as written by later followers of Paul. The study that follows relates the letters to the later reign of Nero in the case of Colossians, and to the Flavians and Trajan or Hadrian in the case of Ephesians and the Pastorals, respectively. Even if the dating and authorship position argued in the following pages is incorrect, this book will have served its purpose if it encourages Pauline scholars to attend to the evidence of imperial imagery and language and their uses as strategies of persuasion in these later letters.

Empire and Imperial Situation in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles The contemporary scholars who take up the relation of Paul to his social and political context often use the terms like ‘empire’ and associated concepts as a matter of course. But words like ‘empire’, ‘imperial’, ‘imperial culture’, ‘imperial imagery’ and ‘imperial context’ are complex and require elucidation. Do we mean Paul’s relation to the elite culture of his day, to the geographical and political organization of the Mediterranean world of the first two centuries, to the direct and indirect control of the cities of the eastern Mediterranean by Roman provincial governors and fiscal officials, to the influence of privileged Roman/Italian resident communities, of Roman law, tax farmers and other features of provincial life, to a form of state terror and surveillance, to a Roman ethos and code of conduct? Do we mean Paul’s negotiation of the political cultural realities of his time? Or do we refer to the anthropological reality of a collection of societies and cultural groups that came to shares values and ideas to a degree that allows us to portray them? The need for definition is made more complex as a result of the use of the word ‘empire’ to describe the contemporary geo-political order after

For example, Colossians – Sumney, 2008, 1–9; Ephesians – Lincoln, 1990, lix–lxxiii; Pastorals – Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972, 1–5.

29

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the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War of 1991 and especially 9/11. Today, the term ‘empire’ has become a means of promoting a certain kind of political discourse in the Academy.30 Such is certainly the case in the study of the New Testament. Ferdinand Segovia argues that critical biblical study is always conducted in the ‘reality of empire’ which he describes as ‘an omnipresent, inescapable, and overwhelming sociopolitical reality.’31 Richard Horsley in his book Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society – a collection of essays written by members of the ‘Paul and Politics’ group of the Society of Biblical Literature – indicates the critical importance of the category of empire in the book’s first sentence: ‘Christianity was the product of empire.’32 Elsewhere, he notes that the group and its focus won increased scholarly attention and endorsement after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.33 There is no evidence of this interest weakening. Since 2001 there has been an explosion of New Testament studies dedicated to the study of the New Testament and its relation to ‘empire’.34 This study uses the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperial’ in its treatment of the later letters of Paul to explore ways in which these letters represent the negotiation of an irreducibly complex civic and political world rather than a static monolith that Paul and his followers could simply oppose or embrace. As J. C. Barrett argues, ‘[The idea of] The Roman Empire … emerges as a higher order of coherency, a single world which was constituted by, and which continued to give significance to, a diverse range of historical forces which operated differentially upon different groups of people in different places and at different times.’ The phrase, he contends, is ‘an image or model which we and others have constructed out of our desires to give tangible form and coherency to historical processes, events and outcomes, which would otherwise bewilder us with their complexity.’35 Barrett reflects the tendency of ancient historians to avoid sweeping generalizations concerning ‘the Roman Empire’ and the shift in hermeneutical focus

For example, Hardt and Negri, 2000, xi: ‘Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the past several decades, as colonial regimes were overthrown and then precipitously after the Soviet barriers to the capitalist world market finally collapsed, we have witnessed an irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges.’ For the importance of the Gulf War and the criticism of American foreign policy as the extension of a global ‘pax Americana’, see Lull, 2010, 253–4. 31 Segovia, 1998, 56. 32 Horsley, 1997, 1. 33 www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=388 (accessed 4 October 2012). The ‘Paul against Empire’ focus is however much older and in several aspects can be traced to studies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (see Chapter 1). The earlier period is well represented by Wengst, 1987 (German 1986) and Georgi, 1991 (German 1987); for a history and critical review of chief studies, see Lull, 2010, 252–62. 34 For a representative cross-section, see Lull, 2010, 252–62; Carter, 2010, 7–26. 35 Barrett, 1997, 52. 30

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away from grand narratives toward the deconstruction of older paradigms that treat imperial realities from a single point of view or as monolithic whole.36 One feature of this complexity is the moral-religious status of the emperor as guarantor of the well-being of the Empire and the protection and prosperity (swth/ria, salus) of its population, both collectively and individually. This guarantee was most easily summarized in military success: Roman victory was the divine reward for Roman piety towards the gods; as the supreme commander, the emperor was also supreme sacrificant. The gratitude of the population of the Empire for this guarantee was met by unending imperial concern and benevolence for their welfare (providentia; liberalitas; munificentia, indulgentia, patientia, to name the most prevalent motifs).37 This moral-religious complex is the constant theme of imperial self-representation. The ubiquitous celebration of the emperor as pious, victorious and virtuous is just one aspect of imperial rule in the period under consideration, especially in the Empire-wide visual culture that portrayed Rome’s ruler. From the Augustan period onward, emperors gave great attention to the ways in which they wanted to be seen and interpreted and they exploited all available means to do so. Roman emperors sought to display their achievements through symbols that had a clearly defined signification, and they were designed so that even the lowest group could read the language used to represent them.38 Especially important for the interpretation of Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles is the coinage of Nero, of the Flavian emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian and of Trajan and Hadrian.39 This is some of the evidence we have that tells us how these emperors wanted to be understood by the everyday people of their dominion. There were, of course, other means by which the emperor communicated images of himself such as games, processions, parades, placards and festivals that have not survived. The coinage thus represents only one of a wide repertoire of means to communicate ideals of imperial rule to everyday people. We can see how it was used to broadcast achievements like military victories, to advertise benefactions, to represent

Potter, 2010, 1–20. For discussion of their high frequency in the eastern coinage, see Noreña, 2001, 146–68, and for liberalitas and providentia as the leading virtues in the Western coinage, see Noreña, 2011, 37–100. 38 For an excellent orientation to imperial iconography as ‘propaganda’, with discussion of each of the reigns under consideration in this study, see Hannestad, 1988, 9–14. 39 While some have disputed the role of numismatic imagery as a chief means of communicating imperial ideals (for example, Jones, 1956, 13–33; Crawford, 1983, 47–65), most today would share the view of Sutherland, 1951, 173–84 and Blamberg, 1981, 31–39 of both the importance of numismatic iconography to communicate imperial ideals and the ability of the people of the Roman Empire to ‘read’ them. As Blamberg, 1933, argues, ‘That the emperors valued the coins as a medium of propaganda is suggested not only by the range of types and legends, but also by the high number of special types which directed additional attention to various aspects of imperial propaganda’. 36 37

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emperors (not without historical irony in the case of Nero!) as enjoying harmonious domestic relationships, as exemplars of piety and virtuous conduct and to communicate the idea that the emperor was appointed by the gods to bring and preserve worldwide peace and harmony. No less important than this culture of imperial display was the imagery commissioned by the governing elites of provincial cities to express their loyalty and dedication to the emperor.40 Whether initiated by the emperor or local elites, theatres, baths, temples, statues, games and festivals – to name only a few instances – were critical to the production of a shared political culture and the communication of a set of ideals related to the emperor and the benefits of his rule. Whatever they actually did in real life, or believed about the ideals they advertised, emperors and local elites alike exploited these media and civic occasions as a means toward assuring their political legitimacy and social rank. The emperor and civic elites were thus engaged in a mystification of power and domination – what Richard Gordon aptly describes as ‘the veil of power’.41 As we will see in what follows, central to the visual repertoire of iconography initiated by both Rome and provincial elites was the representation of the emperor as triumphant military commander and the subjugation of his enemies. Such imagery was a means both to acknowledge the power and domination that assured Rome’s political domination of its territories and to express to their viewers that they were the beneficiaries of empire through Rome’s maintenance of the power of local elites. The visual world created by public buildings, monuments, temples and statues represents the activities of elites producing art for other elites. But from the perspective of non-elite viewers, amongst whom we should place the readers of the Pauline letters, such visual media played a central role in portraying overarching social ideals and the celebration of imperial achievements, as well as civic hopes and expectations. The popularity of these codes is attested by their penetration to the non-elite levels of society. Freedpersons, for example, imitated the iconography of higher status people by portraying themselves on grave steles with their gestures, verism and dress. They even portrayed themselves sporting the hairstyles of the imperial family.42 Such imagery tells us that these people were social climbers. It also indicates their self-incorporation into imperial visual codes and social ideals. Numismatic imagery was designed to communicate to the predominantly illiterate urban populations of the Roman Empire imperial values and hoped for outcomes. ‘Such images, confronting the empire’s subjects in every mode of their social, economic and religious lives helped to construct a symbolic unity of the diverse peoples who comprised

See especially Ando, 2000, 175–206. Gordon, 1997, 126–39. 42 For discussion with images see Zanker, 1975, 267–315, and D’Ambra, 1998, 45–50. 40 41

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the Roman world by focusing their sense of hierarchy on a supreme individual.’43 This is what Fronto is talking about in the quotation cited at the start, when he speaks of the power of the emperor’s portrait to bring a smile to his lips. Paul’s letters used imagery to focus on a different supreme individual – the crucified and resurrected Jesus. The means to do that had been prepared both by the degree to which imperial imagery had penetrated the daily lives of the Empire’s inhabitants as well as the ways in which that imagery returned to regularly repeated themes, vocabulary and commonplaces. The whole of the Pauline corpus attests a unique appropriation of imperial imagery and vocabulary to construct an order in some ways at home in their imperial world and in other ways opposed to it. The results are analogous to ways other groups in the Empire similarly drew on images and language to construct their own versions of a hybrid social identity.44 The second way in which this study uses the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperial’ is as a means of drawing attention to the honorific culture of visual display in the period under consideration. Some New Testament scholars focus on the violence and military brutality of the Roman Empire as the reality that was foremost in view by Paul and his followers. This is perhaps in part as a consequence of the horrifying images of violence associated with political regime of George W. Bush and his War on Terror as evidenced especially in its ‘Shock and Awe’ bombardment of Baghdad. Or, following the traditional martyrological Christian narration of Roman history, it perhaps assumes too easily that like Paul, early Christ followers were regularly persecuted or harassed by governing authorities and thus were aware of a constant threat of surveillance and the need to communicate in secret codes or hidden transcripts. Without denying the brutal realities of Roman rule, the suffering of Paul at the hands of Roman officials, or the sporadic persecution of early Christ followers, it is important to remember that the Roman Empire did not have the army or military power large enough to create a state controlled by terror and Elsner, 1998, 12. See for example the discussion of Elsner, 2007, 253–87 and Moon, 1996, 283–317, of religious iconography in third century Dura-Europos as hybridized forms of religious resistance through the idiosyncratic appropriation of imperial images as a means of resistance. The iconographical representation of the Tabernacle at the Dura synagogue superimposes Jewish iconography over Roman imperial temple imagery. In the Elijah-Baal iconographic narrative based on 1 Kgs. 18.16–45, a temple, perhaps of the Philistine god Dagon, is depicted with Roman imperial victories on its corners and Greco-Roman nudes on its doors. These representations exemplify a culturally resistant hybridity. Additionally see the study of hybridized Romano-Celtic religion by Webster, 1997, 165–84; 2003, 24–51, which discusses instances of western Celts adapting Roman religious iconography to express their own religious identity. Similarly Aldhouse-Green, 2004, 215–38 takes up first and second century Germano-Gallic appropriations of imperial iconography as an indigenous form of hybridized resistance iconography. My argument is that the writers of the contested letters used imagery also to form unique hybrid identities, but through the medium of letters that were nevertheless also visual in that they used imperial imagery to foster an idiosyncratic religious imagination.

43 44

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surveillance. As J. E. Lendon argues, ‘It is certainly true ... that the Roman empire could not be ruled without force and the fear that force inspired, but the modest provision of force available makes it unlikely that it was the sole operative principle of Roman imperial government.’45 Lendon focuses instead on the rituals of benefaction or evergetism and honour as the chief means by which Rome and the local elites of dispersed cities negotiated their geo-political relationships and allegiances.46 ‘Empire’ and ‘imperial’ thus designate a complicated negotiation of authority and power and not a top-down imposition of order. Nor was this a purely elite enterprise. Cities competed with each other to offer the emperor honours in return for benefactions such as the awarding of priesthoods in the imperial cult. The emperor’s choice of one city over another to host games or to accept the offer of a cult dedicated to him fostered civic pride and allegiance amongst local populations. This is critical for understanding the creative ways in which Paul’s letters manifest in their own ways a negotiation of imperial and civic honour codes. Their use of civic language and imagery was a chief means of drawing upon and redefining the context and meaning of imperial language and ideas. In doing this, again, they were doing nothing especially new. For differing groups all across the Empire were involved in analogous negotiations as a means of self-definition and community building.47 If, unlike other groups, early Christ followers did not seek benefactions and patronage from important Greco-Roman outsiders, the ways in which they used the same categories of honour, civic vocabulary and ethical categories to define their relationship with their chief patron, Christ, and their church officials indicate that, however unwittingly, they were helping to promote honorific ideas displayed all around them. Finally this study deploys the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperial’ to describe a socio-economic order that was designed to benefit a fraction of the Roman Empire’s governing elites (perhaps 1.5 per cent of the total population of the Empire) and to guarantee that the vast majority of its urban inhabitants

Lendon, 1997, 7. In what follows I use ’benefaction’ and ‘evergetism’ synonymously for the sake of convenience and usual usage in New Testament studies. However, evergetism describes a more subtle mechanism of exchange than benefaction does, since it expresses the notion of personal obligation and desire as well as the personal ties of client to patron with honour. Material capital and symbolic capital thus join together as an organizing feature of society. For discussion of this understanding of evergetism, see Veyne, 1990, 5–19, 131–56, which is the appropriation I am intending here. 47 The inscriptions of the innumerable Greco-Roman associations that dotted the urban landscapes of the Empire give testimony to such negotiation. See, for example, the discussion of Harland, 2003, 143–7, of an association of second-century cloth dyers who sought the patronage of a priest of the imperial cult as a means of positioning themselves within and gaining access to important social networks. A result of this was both integration into the fabric of civic life and a means toward promoting the city’s vitality. 45 46

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lived just above or below subsistence.48 Recent work on Christian meals in Greco-Roman households can leave the impression of a middle-class set of Christ-followers joining one another for a common meal and symposium in the comfortable triclinium of a wealthy benefactor, or amidst the garden of a peristyle household.49 Obviously, latter-day followers of Paul, like earlier ones, depended on benefaction to survive. During the period under consideration here, the cities of Asia Minor enjoyed economic benefits that included increased access to consumer commodities (John’s criticism of trade of luxury goods listed in Rev. 18.11–13 reflects this economic climate), full employment and the possibility of a higher standard of living. Evidence of migration into the cities both from the countryside as well as further afield attests to the urban vitality of this period.50 It is important, however, to weigh that reality against the living situation of most of the Empire’s urban population, which lived in rented one or two-bedroom apartments in over-crowded insulae or apartment buildings.51 The later Pauline corpus was composed amidst a dual reality of commercial opportunity and urban poverty. Peter Oakes has used demographic evidence from Pompeii and Herculaneum to construct a model of the size and demography of Roman apartments and shops. His results are instructive for the case made in following chapters. His model assumes that first-century Christ followers were represented by typical demographic realities one can reconstruct from Pompeii and existing Roman evidence. In that case, the ‘house/apartment churches’ Paul addresses in Romans 16 would have contained a very few number of householders, probably artisans and shop owners who possessed both artisan and domestic slaves and who rented an apartment and workshop ca. 300 sq. metres in size. Next to these would have been a slightly larger group whose membership ranged from a tiny group of slave owners living in slightly smaller dwellings (i.e. up to 300 sq. metres). Beneath them were a significantly higher number of non-slave-owning migrant workers and artisans living in crowded one room apartments (20–99 sq. metres). See especially the arguments of Meiggitt, 1998, 62–78; Friesen, 2004, 323–61; 2008, 61–91; 2010, 27–5; and the review of Friesen’s poverty scale by Oakes, 2004, 367–71, which confirms his general conclusions but with caveats. For descriptions with further empirical studies, see Meiggitt, 1998, 62–78. 49 Smith, 2003, 173–218; Balch, 2008, 42–58. For the shared meal as meeting the challenge of poverty, see Taussig, 2009, 67. 50 For an overview, see Alcock, 2008, 671–98; for Ephesus from the reign of Domitian to Hadrian, i.e. in the period and geographical area of Ephesians and the Pastorals, see Scherrer, 2001, 74–9, which he describes as a ‘golden age’ (p. 74) for the city. 51 For insula housing in Hierapolis, Ephesus and Pergamon where domestic housing can be reconstructed in the cities most probably associated with Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals, during the period under consideration, see D’Andria, 2001, 99; Trümper, 2003, 19–43 at 36–7; Radt, 2001, 51; Billings, 2011, 541–69; McCray, 2008. As in other cities, the evidence indicates housing complexes with luxury housing and one-room rented apartments, workshops and tabernae, as well as medium sized-apartments for those of greater means alongside each other. See Oakes, 2009, 69–76, and Gehring, 2000, 135, 140, 150. 48

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The largest group would have been comprised of slaves either from Christ followers’ homes or from other households, as well as the homeless. Typical first and second century households, even of the poorest artisans, were hierarchically organized and we should expect this social organization to have been the case both within the homes of Christ followers, and between those of higher and lower socio-demography strata.52 This assumption is justified by the Haustafeln of the contested letters (Col. 3.18–4.1; Eph. 5.22–6.9; 1 Tim. 3.4; 6.1–2; or Household Rules Tit. 2.3–6). In this light, it is important to consider the choice of letter writers to use imperial language and vocabulary to persuade their listeners, to think about ways such imagery would have been heard differently by differing social strata, and to contemplate how such language would have reinforced or reconfigured existing social hierarchies. As we will see, the choice of imperial language and vocabulary to outline correct beliefs and practices has the effect of endorsing the prevailing socio-economic order, even where it uses imperial images to express a break of Christ followers with the world. The overall effect of this, as we will see, is to form listeners who see themselves at once set aside from others and participants in the vitality of their urban world. The recurring use of imperial images and terms to describe Christ’s rule and his benefits may suggest that the authors of these letters were beneficiaries of the imperial order, and that their use of this language for persuasion indicates that at least some of their listeners were too. This is paradoxical. The letters offer images of a world renovated by Christ’s reign. But since those images are drawn from the visual field of imperial ideals around them, they introduce a strong degree of social conservatism in self-definition and belief structures. As the discussion unfolds, the study will take up this paradoxical aspect of emergent Pauline Christianity with the help of recent socio-geographical thought relating to imagination and space as means of community building and self-definition. The other phrase that requires elucidation at the start is ‘imperial situation’. The phrase here functions as an incentive to recognize the rhetorical construction of both the leading narrative voice of the contested letters – Paul – and to signal that the letters construct their audiences as ideal recipients of his address. As such they share a constructed situation the letter creates and which they are asked to step into as the letter is read aloud.53

Oakes 2009, 80–97. Here I follow the lead of Vatz, 1973, 154–61, who challenges a too historically oriented account of rhetorical situation of the setting of original speaker and hearers as furnishing the need or occasion for persuasion. This more static view is the one represented by Bitzer, 1968, 1–18 (where he coined the phrase ‘rhetorical situation’). Attention to the world and situation rhetoric creates asks that one consider the ideology and point of view that creates a situation and represents it in a certain way. Since imperial ideals are championed or drawn upon in these letters as a means of persuasion, point of view and audience construction become critical for contemporary interpretation and, in the case of religious use, appropriation. This is especially

52 53

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In the first instance, the letters create a situation rather than simply reflect one, though to know as much of the historical background of the letters and their audience as possible is indispensable for a full understanding of the reasons why a particular way of constructing the world the speaker shares with the audience has been chosen. ‘Imperial situation’ builds on Lloyd Bitzer’s notion of ‘rhetorical situation’, but with an important inflection that notes the ideological elements at work in casting a situation with the help of imperial imagery, vocabulary and narratives. ‘Imperial situation’ also functions more broadly to mark the social location of the implied speaker and listeners in a particular social world. In a recent essay, Adela Yarbro Collins argues for attention to the imperial cult as backdrop for understanding early confessions of Jesus’ identity because ‘prior cultural experiences of those who experienced Jesus as risen played a significant role in the shaping and interpreting of the experiences of the risen Lord themselves.’54 A little bit later she argues that the first followers of Jesus ‘adapted non-Jewish religious traditions deliberately and consciously as a way of formulating a culturally meaningful system of belief and life.’55 In both instances she looks to traditions associated with the cult of the emperor as resources early Christ followers used to shape the experiences and interpretive categories related to their confessions of Jesus. By ‘imperial situation’ I aim to define this cultural situation more closely by taking note of key imperial narratives, idiosyncratic vocabulary and formulations of ethics and communal ideals that were part of the larger ideological world of the generation of Christ followers addressed by later letters. Through imagery, imperial iconographers sought to invite viewers into a narrative world, to render them participants in an order that guaranteed a certain set of social and ideological outcomes. For their part, the ‘Pauls’ of the contested corpus similarly invite their listeners into narrative worlds. With the help of imperial imagery and vocabulary they use images and ideas familiar from the wider urban context and inflect them to encourage listeners to inhabit a world in which it is not Caesar but Christ who delivers all the promises and ideals otherwise portrayed in imperial narratives. Since the Empire’s visual world was so critical in communicating these overarching narratives and ideals, it follows that Paul’s listeners were shaped by that visual world to imagine themselves as beneficiaries of a certain kind of order. It is precisely this order that the contested letters use as a means of persuasion. They arise out of a rhetorically charged imperial situation that has already invited urban dwellers to view themselves and the world around them in a certain way, and they draw on visual commonplace in that world to create another one that is at once part of and not part of the dominant order. important, for example, when considering the treatment of gender in these letters, and perhaps no more so than in the interpretation of the Pastoral Epistles. 54 Yarbro Collins, 1999, 241. 55 Yarbro Collins, 1999, 242.

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Exegesis, Imperial Image and Imagination The importance of imagery in understanding the writings of the New Testament is obvious. Who does not know, for example, the example of the Judaea capta coins as a graphic statement of Roman victory in the Jewish War (see Plate 36), or the images on the Arch of Titus of sacred furniture taken as spoils of victory from the Jewish Temple (see Plate 5a)? New Testament introductions are filled with pictures of the world in which the New Testament was written. Recently Neil Elliott and Mark Reasoner published a book entitled Documents and Images for the Study of Paul, designed to be used as a vademecum in introductory and advanced New Testament study. John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed jointly produced a book filled with images to show ‘how Jesus’ apostle opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s kingdom.’56 In the case of Crossan and Reed, imagery serves to reveal the violence of imperial ideology through depictions of victory and subjugation. Such studies, while valuable in bringing to attention the social and ideological world in which the New Testament was formed, tend toward a more impressionistic use of visual evidence and leave it to the reader to draw conclusions from imagery necessary for the case being argued. The present study stresses rather the role of imagery in imagination and persuasion in the ancient world and to demonstrate the critical importance of visual evidence in the exegesis of biblical texts. As such it aims to develop a form of ‘iconographic exegesis’, that is, a disciplined treatment of the texts under consideration in their visual world.57 Much attention has been paid to the use of visual data in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. The ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible programme group of the Society of Biblical Literature, for example, attests to the seriousness with which scholars treat visual evidence in the exegesis of the Hebrew Bible. In his recently published doctoral dissertation, Izaak de Hulster offers a bibliography of several hundred studies dedicated to the interpretation of Hebrew Bible texts with the help of ancient Near Eastern images as well as the academic study of iconography.58 Othmar Keel, Christoph Uehlinger and Silvia Schroer, amongst others, represent a massive scholarly output of iconographically dedicated study that has

Elliott and Reasoner, 2011; Crossan and Reed, 2004. The definition here builds on that of de Hulster, 2009, 18: ‘Iconographic exegesis could be defined as the explanation of texts with the help of pictorial method’ (de Hulster’s emphasis). I avoid the term ‘explanation’ and prefer the term ‘understanding’ to avoid the reductionism implied in de Hulster’s definition. This preserves the historical polysemy of texts that can never be ‘explained’ as much as observed and engaged from varieties of points of view. One might say that iconographic exegesis with the help of pictorial method furnishes one means amongst many of understanding biblical texts. As such it is complementary to existing models of exegesis. 58 de Hulster, 2009, 267–337. 56 57

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been associated with ‘The Freiburg School’ of iconographical study.59 The works by Marlies Heinz and Dominik Bonatz, as well as Brent Strawn and Martin Klingbeil, offer a further representative sample of the application of iconographical-textual study to the study of the Hebrew Bible.60 In the case of New Testament studies, however, considerations of iconography and the ways in which New Testament texts borrow from and develop contemporary iconography are in a nascent stage. Archaeological results, of course, have been indispensable in the interpretation of the Christian Testament since the emergence of biblical archaeology as a scientific discipline in the nineteenth century. Uses of imperial artifacts, such as numismatic and architectural evidence, have repaid attention as biblical scholars have used them to locate New Testament texts in their social and ideological world. These studies belong to a long and distinguished history and attest to a scientific discussion of imagery and culture. They share the conviction of Erwin Panofsky, who argued that art cannot be understood without reference to a knowledge of the chief themes and symbols found the culture in which it was produced.61 The reading and interpretation of New Testament texts in relation to the visual culture of the Roman Empire, however, awaits systematic treatment and hermeneutical theorization. In one of the few volumes dedicated to iconographical readings of the New Testament, Annette Weissenrieder and Friedericke Wendt offer a schematization of iconographical methods in the interpretation of biblical texts.62 They distinguish between the approach of the Freiburg School, semiotic treatments and social constructivist approaches.63 While their essay does not intend an encyclopedic review of approaches, their scheme is useful for the discussion here. A brief treatment of the Freiburg school and the semiotic treatments of Brigitte Kahl and Davina Lopez will set the stage for the constructivist approach the present study promotes. While in the

de Hulster, 2009, 299–301; 323; 329–30, lists over 60 titles of Keel, Schroer and Uehlinger alone, many of them monographs. Schroer, in addition to an encyclopedic catalogue of ancient Near Eastern art in ancient Palestine/Israel (2004; 2008; 2011; www.ipiao.unibe.ch/en/index. html [accessed 10 October 2012]) is significant for her application of iconography to feminist study of ancient Near Eastern texts (2006b). In English the most recognizable titles are Keel, 1997; Keel and Uehlinger, 1998; Schroer, 2006a. 60 Heinz, 2008; Heinz and Bonatz, 2002; Heinz and Feldman, 2007; Strawn, 2005; Klingbeil, 1999. 61 Panofsky, 1939, 5–9. The approach was worked out earlier in his essay, ‘Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’ (1932), and then redescribed in, amongst other places, ‘Ikonographie and Ikonologie’ (1955; both republished in Kaemmerling 1994, 185–206; 207–25. The latter is also online: http://www.uni-kassel. de/~whansman/Texte/Panofsky.htm [accessed 11 October 2012]). 62 Weissenrieder, Wendt, and von Gemünden, 2005, 3–49. 63 Space does not permit discussion of the comprehensive model of iconology developed by Erwin Panofsky, as represented primarily in his study of Renaissance art (1939), but his phenomenological approach informs the social constructivist direction this study takes up. For an overview, see Weissenrieder, Wendt, von Gemünden, 2005, 5–20. 59

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end I do not adopt, and to a degree disagree with, their methods, they offer important insights the following study will take up and develop. The Freiburg School, as represented primarily by the work of Keel, Uehlinger and Schroer, takes as a central focus the iconography of the Ancient Near East and resists the domination of text-oriented approaches in the study of early Antiquity. Keel and Uehlinger make this clear: ‘we reject emphatically the view that it is adequate to limit oneself to working with texts. Religious concepts are expressed not only in texts but can be given a pictorial form in items found the material culture as well.’64 ancient Near Eastern iconography, as Othmar Keel argues, ‘does not serve to explain what they portray, but to re-present it.’ Representation becomes the means of the viewer not so much to understand the signified, but to participate in it. ‘The magical-evocative poetic word and the symbolic, monumental picture are better suited to this task [of re-presentation] than an explanatory fact-book or a naturalistic drawing.’65 In contrast to other models of interpretation in which artifacts are treated as communicating a comprehensive language analogous to texts, the Freiburg School resists semiotic constructions. This is because a purely semiotic treatment presupposes a comprehensive view of iconography. But in ancient Near Eastern art disparate elements are placed side by side in a way that refuses any systematic system or set of relations. Keel rejects any notion of a unified ancient Near Eastern view of the world, pattern of thought or symbolic formulation of the cosmos. What is most noticeable about the iconography of the ancient orient is its non-systematic, irregular composition that gave rise to multiple ways of representation. Art stands alongside texts and offers a different mode and means of communication. Recurring images form motifs, that is, iconographically represented life situations – such as combat, sowing and harvesting, religious sacrifice, birth and death. As such they represent notions that transcend any textual statement about them. Such motifs are at least as important as texts for understanding the ancient cultures of the Bronze and Iron Age. They bear a surplus of meaning beyond any single textual claim that could be made of them and thus become central means of cultural expression and understanding on a variety of levels. Motifs occur in constellations, that is, simple narrative frameworks such as the imminent destruction of what is good by an evil figure that is vanquished by a saviour figure.66 The term ‘constellation’ they borrow from the iconographical study of the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who considers the origins of the elements of constellations as prehistoric if not part of a collective unconscious.67 Cultures rise and fall, texts easily perish or represent only the barest trace of a culture, and religions undergo Keel and Uehlinger, 1998, 10. Keel, 1997, 10. 66 Keel and Uehlinger, 1998, 13. 67 Assmann, 1982, 13–61. 64 65

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complex, not necessarily linear, developments. But motifs arranged by constellations endure over time and across cultures. They preserve and form the framework of those who give voice to cultural ideals, which in time are taken up and developed in new ways. Essays by von Gemünden and Elsen-Novák and Novák apply the Freiburg approach in treatments of the Gospel of John. With the help of ancient Near Eastern iconographic motifs of wisdom, palms and vine branches they show how the Gospel’s sapiential themes (for example, 6.35–8), as well as its portrait of Jesus’ triumphal entry (12.13) and his Vine discourse (15.1–8) appropriate a visual heritage and use of symbols that stretch back millennia.68 Although I am unaware of the application of the Freiburg approach to the study of Roman imperial iconography and the New Testament, one can easily imagine how it might proceed, for example, in an iconographical study of the Book of Revelation.69 Adela Yarbro Collins has argued that the overall narrative of the Book of Revelation has been influenced by the combat myths of the Ancient Near East (for example, Baal vs. Yam/Mot; Marduk vs. Tiamat; Horus vs. Seth; Yahweh vs. Leviathan).70 In Revelation, Jesus conquers Satan, the dragon, who represents the forces of chaos and death. In addition to the texts that describe these myths, ancient Near Eastern iconographers portrayed the king in association with the gods who keep order and his enemies with imagery associated with the powers of chaos.71 In the Hellenistic period, the great frieze of the Altar of Pergamon portrayed the story of Zeus’ triumph over Typhon and the Giants – mighty snake-legged figures from the underworld (see Figure 8) – to celebrate the military achievements of the Attalid dynasty in conquering surrounding groups and consolidating territorial control. Such motifs could in turn be used to liken the Roman emperor’s military victories to Zeus’ triumph over Typhon.72 The Book of Revelation represents a Christian appropriation of a long tradition of iconographical representation. If we look beyond the first century to later instantiations, we see the same basic motif continuing – for example in the Medieval legend of St George and the Dragon. These motifs are with us today in political propaganda, for example, in the ‘War on Terrorism’, and in the imagery of popular culture. The Freiburg approach treats iconography as a form of visual communication irreducible to any single textual meaning. But if we seek to understand

Von Gemünden, 2005, 159–82, 207–27; Elsen-Novák and Novák, 2005, 183–206. Balch, 2008a, 139–68, in his comparative study of cosmic battle imagery in Revelation and on Pompeian frescos shows many parallels with the Freiburg approach. Like the Freiburg School, he does not treat images as a form of visual language but visual evidence that is situated alongside textual data for the interpretation of Rev. 12. 70 Yarbro Collins, 1976. 71 Keel, 1997, 100–9, 291–305. 72 Van Henten, 1994, 496–515. 68 69

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‘re-presentation’ rather than ‘explanation’, do we not need to understand a culture’s system of signification to do so? The semiotic approach, by contrast, breaks iconography down according to a definable series of interlocking signs whose arrangement betrays the ideological interests and prejudices of their creators. Semiotic interpretation ‘concentrates on the unveiling of the deep communicative structures lying beneath the surface structures of images within a given community of communication.’73 If the complexity of ancient Near Eastern iconography challenges any attempt to systematize imagery as a sign system, scholars have been more ambitious in achieving just that with Roman imperial art. Such an identification of embedded codes of meaning and ideology is central to two recent studies by Brigitte Kahl and Davina Lopez.74 Their work focuses on the semiotics of imperial iconography (which extends beyond imagery to include spaces, monuments and public actions), to show how the theological system advanced by the uncontested Pauline letters challenged the imperial semiotic codes of his visual world.75 In order fully to understand this challenge, they promote what Lopez describes as a ‘visually literate’ form of academic study. Such investigation is critical since the Empire’s visual world was the primary means of communication of Roman imperial ideology.76 One gains visual literacy by ‘mapping’ the semiotic codes of imperial iconography.77 With the help of the Semiotic Square developed by the semiotician A. J. Greimas, they understand imperial images and structures as coded signs arranged at once in association with and in opposition to each other. In the superior position, at the top of the square, are linked concepts such as military strength, masculinity, victory, divine blessing, order, inclusion and superiority (to name only a few). These gain their definition and position through their relation to the opposite categories, in the subordinate position, at the bottom of the square: weakness, femininity, defeat, divine curse, chaos, exclusion, inferiority. Kahl and Lopez make a semiotic map of these binary oppositions in their iconographical analysis of imperial images, spaces and performances by noting which portrayals are represented higher and lower, what values are associated with those representations, and therefore how such structural positioning of images expresses ideology. They then compare that visual map with the semiotic map they identify from Pauline passages, to compare and contrast what is high, low, in, out and so on.78 Both Kahl and Lopez describe the goal of a visually literate reading of Paul

Weissenrieder and Wendt, 2005, 28. Kahl, 2008; Lopez, 2008. 75 Kahl, 2008, 4. 76 Lopez, 2008, 168–70. 77 Kahl, 2008, 31–75; Lopez, 2008, 19–25. 78 Kahl applies this to Galatians and Paul’s debates over the Law with opponents; Lopez also takes up Galatians, but specifically to contrast Paul’s treatment of ‘the nations [ta\ e1qnh]’ (Gal. 2.8) with imperial representations. 73 74

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as ‘(critical) re-imagination’.79 Re-imagination refers, in the first place, to a political orientation to biblical study. To ‘re-imagine’ Paul is a form of retrieval in which one places Paul in his political world, or, better ‘re-places’ him since it was in a world of politics where he emerged in the first place and was co-opted as a voice for ‘empire’ as Christianity emerged as an official imperial religion.80 ‘Re-imagining’, however, has another role that sees Paul’s letters engaged in a direct discourse with his imperial world. Critical re-imagination here refers to Paul’s opposition to Roman imperial ideology and the strategies his letters use to critique tyrannical power and to imagine afresh another world free from the ideological mechanisms of the violence of the Roman order.81 Visual literacy means learning the semiotics of Roman imperial visual discourse and the counter-imperial semiotic strategies of Paul as political strategies for liberation. Re-imagination certainly has attraction as a hermeneutical strategy of retrieval. However, it is not so clear that Greimas’ semiotic system is the best choice since in Kahl’s and Lopez’s application there is a tendency to force Roman imperial art into predetermined categories with already fixed outcomes. By contrast, Tonio Hölscher offers a semiotic analysis of Roman art in which the classical and Hellenistic forms of imperial iconography are related not to a Greimasian system of binary oppositions, but to the codes of signification appropriate to the programmes of state iconography. According to Hölscher, Roman imperial art formed a language of visual communication that centred around ‘fixed formulae, or easily applied patterns of formulation, for every possible theme or subject.’82 These formulae communicated a hierarchy of values that in turn gave rise to a hierarchy of forms. These values were the primary political virtues of virtus, clementia, pietas and concordia. Hölscher argues that imperial art furnished iconographical images as exempla of these virtues.83 It is critical to recognize these exempla in imagery relating to military triumph and subjugation so as accurately to identify how iconographical forms express Roman ideals and ideology. In the chapters that follow I will argue that the vivid imagery of Paul’s letters regularly invokes imagery centred around these virtues, sometimes to inscribe them in traditional ways, and at other times to reconfigure them in paradoxical ones. It is only after recognizing the ways in which exempla rehearse these virtues that one can turn to an analysis of ideology. Both the uncontested and contested letters of Paul do indeed invite re-imagination, but they do so in a way that subtly negotiates Roman imperial realities in complex and subtle, but not always oppositional, ways. Kahl, 2008, 1–29; Lopez, 2008, 17–19 Kahl, 2008, 4; Lopez, 2008, 19. 81 Kahl, 2008, 252–3; Lopez, 2008, 18. 82 Hölscher, 2004, 92. 83 Hölscher, 2004, 88–9. 79 80

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The present book deploys a social constructivist model of iconographical study. As we will see, social constructivism has clear advantages over the Freiburg and semiotic approach because of its wider scope of interpretation and its more sophisticated cultural orientation. Constructivism attends to processes central to the creation of social identity. ‘[W]hile semiotics concentrates on the question “What?” constructivism asks in a much more intense way about the “How?” of the visual process.’84 The social constructivist theorist David Morgan summarizes this orientation in his definition of visual culture. [V]isual culture refers to the images and objects that deploy particular ways of seeing and therefore contribute to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality; as a professional practice of study, visual culture is that form of inquiry undertaken within a number of humanistic and social scientific disciplines whose object is the conceptual frameworks, social practices, and the artifacts of seeing.85 While existing studies seldom take up the methodological orientation or describe the model they are using to theorize their use of imagery in reading and interpreting biblical texts, it would be fair to say that most are inherently constructivist in orientation. They use imagery to help understand the social world and values of ancient society and to show how texts under consideration express, resist or have been influenced by the social ideas and cultural values portrayed by visual artifacts. In the case of uses of imperial imagery, this is also due to the social constructivist orientation of the resources typically used in iconographical study. Paul Zanker, for example, returns repeatedly to notions of picture or pictorial language as central to the creation and expression of Augustan culture, an orientation one encounters regularly in German studies dedicated to considerations of Roman imperial iconography.86 This definition focuses on the socio-cultural aspects of visual culture. Another constructivist approach focuses on the cognitive psychological, epistemological or aesthetic aspects of visual culture. As we shall see directly, the cognitive psychological study of visual culture has taken biblical scholars in different directions than the focus adopted here. A social orientation to visual culture focuses on images ‘as part of a cultural system of production and reception, in which original intention does not eclipse the use to which images are put by those who are not their Weissenrieder and Wendt 2005, 38. Morgan, 2005, 27. 86 For example Zanker, 1988, v, 3, 6, 64, 76, 97, 164. In the German edition ’visual/pictorial language’ appear as ‘Sprache’. For example: ‘Vor allem aber sprechen die zahlreichen Zitate im Ornament eine eindeutige Sprache.’ The treatment of images as ‘visual speech’ or as belonging to a ‘picture world [Bilderwelt]’ is a regular occurrence in German language, due, in part, to the dual meaning of ‘Bild’ as picture and concept. For other treatments of Roman art as picture language, see Radnoti-Alföldi, 1989; Scheiper, 1982. 84 85

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makers.’87 Morgan’s statement cited above is especially important for a consideration of the uses of imperial images and language in Paul’s letters, since it is precisely the redeployment of images in ways not intended by their creators that is of such interest from the point of view of cultural and social interpretation. The social constructivist approach pays close attention to how images function in narratives, perceptions, rituals, commemoration and so on. This has a clear advantage over the Freiburg and semiotic approach because it seeks to unpack the local social mechanisms by which imagery contributes to social identity and self-understanding. It should be stated emphatically that such an approach does not treat visual culture as reducible to social processes of meaning making.88 The stress upon the surplus of meaning of visual artifacts and the long-term survival of images and constellations in which they are embedded is a major achievement of the Freiburg School. The present study also recognizes the relevance of the form and organization of the visual as a central mechanism of communication. The semiotician’s insights help us to see how social meaning and ideology are coded in visual culture. My own preference, however, is to privilege the social as the primary investigation. Sociological, anthropological and cultural theory pay close attention to the circulation of images in society and culture and how they create and reflect social meaning and identity.89 Howard Becker speaks of ‘art worlds’ as the social creation of artists, curators, viewers and consumers through group activities.90 Victoria Alexander defines Becker’s notion more precisely through her use of a ‘cultural diamond’, with creators at one end, consumers on the other, with art on one side and society at the other. At the centre of the diamond are processes of distributors who are brokers of cultural understanding through buying, selling, showing and criticism.91 Cultural theorists investigate how society creates ways of seeing the world. Michel Foucault famously writes of ‘the visible invisible’ when he takes up modern psychiatry as the social construction of the visible through medical science.92 Philip Corrigan extends his ‘archaeological’ approach to culture to show how it shapes our sense of what is worth seeing and what should be ignored, what we should consider as ‘natural’ and what unnatural.93 In

Morgan, 2005, 30. Bryson, 1991, 66–9, in his discussion of the two-way process of creation between artist and society offers an excellent rejoinder to historical-materialist interpretations of art centred on conceptions of base and superstructure. 89 For a general orientation, see Zolberg, 1990; for an excellent overview of varieties of approaches from Kantian, Marxist, Weberian, Durkheimian, functionalist, critical theorist, Heideggerian and post-structuralist perspectives, see Harrington, 2004; Tanner, 2003. 90 Becker, 1982, 34–9. 91 Alexander, 2003, 60–3. 92 Foucault, 1973, 183–213, see also his discussion of ‘seeing and knowing’, 131–51. 93 Corrigan, 1988, 255–81; Corrigan’s essay reveals its debt to Foucault’s notion of seeing in Birth of the Clinic. 87 88

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cultural studies, this ability to make visible and invisible, to decide what is in place and out of place, has been called ‘a scopic regime’.94 John Berger, although he does not use that phrase, analyses what is entailed by it when he considers advertising images as the social creation of viewers and of desire, as well as of time and space.95 In all of this theorization, the focus is on what constitutes recognition and how recognition ‘is learned by interaction with others, in the acquisition of human culture.’96 The work of the cultural anthropologist Marcus Banks offers more definition to cultural constructivist analysis of visual culture when he considers art with the help of cultural narrative. Banks notes the commonplace treatment of images as an iconographical language, as well as the idea of ‘reading’ an image. In the text-oriented culture of modernity and its aftermath, reading as a mode of communication has pride of place. But he argues that it can be misleading to speak of ‘the language’ of images since to ‘hear’ or ‘read’ their language implies a two-way communication embedded in social relationship. ‘[I]t is human beings who speak to one another, literally and metaphorically through their social relations…. When we read a photograph, a film or an art-work, we are tuning in to conversations between people….’97 Conversations have contexts and they imply or give voice to narratives. Banks distinguishes between two kinds of narrative conversation communicated by visual artifacts – internal and external narrative. Internal narrative refers to ‘the story, if you will, that the image communicates.’ The external narrative refers to the story that exists in space and time between image and viewer: ‘By this [external narrative] I mean the social context that produced the image, and the social relations within which the image is embedded at any moment of viewing.’98 For Banks, internal and external narrative are analytically separable but in reality interconnected. The world of the external narrative is always involved in readings of the internal narrative. ‘Good visual research’ Banks argues, ‘rests upon a judicious reading of both internal and external narratives.’99 A critical reading arises when the images of the inner narrative are compared with images of the outer one. Here objects seen in one context find their meaning by comparing them with ‘all other objects in their class’ and by discovering ‘their uniqueness as particular manifestation of that class….’100 As such, this attention to internal and external narrative and

Jay, 1988, 3–23. Jay borrows the phrase from the psychoanalyst, Christian Metz. Berger, 1972, 129–54; also Barnard, 1995, 26–41. Advertising creates a future happiness when the item will be possessed, and space through an invitation of the viewer to occupy the place where it is consumed. 96 Bryson, 1991, 61–73, at 65. 97 Banks, 2001, 10. 98 Banks, 2001, 11. 99 Banks, 2001, 12. 100 Banks, 2001, 12. 94 95

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the way both are entangled in shared representation go beyond a formal semiotic analysis of binary oppositions projected forward by imperial iconography or self-contained in Pauline letters. For, as Clifford Geertz reminds us, ‘exposing the structure of a work of art and accounting for its impact are not the same thing.’101 Indeed, to account for such impact requires an understanding of ‘the matrix of sensibility’ of which representation is a part, not only textually, but also in the cultural mentality in which that sensibility is embedded.102 Nor, as in the case of the Freiburg School, is it enough to notice recurring symbols, themes and images over time in enduring narrative constellations. For the exploration of a cultural sensibility is more than recording recurring motifs organized around enduring narrative structures. It is understanding how a particular culture or group appropriates those motifs and makes them their own in a specific application. The Renaissance art historian, Michael Baxandall, describes the place of iconography in a cultural mentality as ‘the period eye’. This describes both what a viewing public brings to the observation and interpretation of iconography and how iconography shapes interpretation. But it also includes how oral communication and iconography work together to form a certain kind of imagination characteristic of that eye.103 The importance of these anthropological and art historical concepts can hardly be overestimated for an understanding of how text and image in the Pauline letters conspire to express and reconstruct an ‘imperial situation’ for their first listeners. Paul’s letters create an idiosyncratic inner narrative by drawing on ideals and images from the broader external narrative of Roman imperial visual culture. This ‘period eye’ is what Paul Zanker aims to reconstruct through his treatment of imperial iconography as a pictorial language. What Zanker means by ‘pictorial language’ bears close relation to the concept of ‘Bildsprache’ developed by his sometime co-author, Tonio Hölscher, in his book, Römische Bildsprache als semantisches System (poorly rendered, The Language of Images in Roman Art in the English translation). The term ‘semantic’ here is critical since by it Hölscher means that no art is strictly representational, but belongs to a larger horizon of meaning in which art finds its social context. As we have already seen, Hölscher argues that in the case of the Bildsprache of Roman art, a relatively narrow range of constantly repeated Classical and Hellenistic forms and types express a set of cultural and moral ideals hierarchically organized.104 For people

Geertz, 1976, 1498. Geertz, 1976, 1481. 103 Baxandall, 1988, 29–108. Renaissance ideals of symmetry, proportion, colour and so on he sees as part of a larger cultural discourse one finds in sermons, dance and gestures of the period. The ‘period eye’ thus extends beyond an iconographical consideration. See also Witkin, 1995, 62: ‘A way of picturing involves the appropriation of a way of seeing.’ 104 Hölscher, 2004, 20–1; also, Hölscher, 2000, 149. Bergmann, 2000, 166–88 offers a similar 101 102

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who had been shaped by Hellenistic culture, these ideals were immediately recognized and intelligible to their viewers. Even if Roman art originated with elites and was produced for elites, its Bildsprache ‘was a means of communication of universally recognized validity and transparency.’105 The recurring themes and forms of Roman art bear witness to the collective mentality of its society and culture.106 Unlike texts, which are idiosyncratic and represent individual positions, Roman art as a rule represents the collective values and ideals held widely by society.107 In representing Roman art in this way, Hölscher by no means wishes to ignore the obvious ideological powers of Roman art. Rather, he urges that one understand how Roman art makes meaning from the particular perspective of a shared cultural mentality before considering those larger ideological structures. Hölscher and Zanker focus on the flow of meaning from art to viewer and the ability of the viewer to pick up the cues in order to arrive at predictable (i.e. intended) understandings. This, however, tends toward an excessive degree of determination. How one sees and interprets art depends on socio-cultural location. One can agree with Hölscher that Hellenistic culture and Roman politically charged habits of representation prepared viewers to recognize instantly the values represented before them, but it does not follow that these were the only conclusions or meanings viewers drew from imperial art. Indeed, Hölscher has been criticized for constructing his semanstisches System of Roman art based on the images and values that circulated in elite circles. Alongside Hölscher’s system we should also consider art from other non-elite perspectives.108 John Clarke, with the help of constructivist interpretation of art such as that of John Berger, suggest we envisage a ‘kaleidoscopic period eye’ by considering how Roman art ‘might have sent different messages to a range of possible viewers.’ In particular, his interest is in non-elite viewers. ‘Variables such as gender, class, religion, and literacy complicate the notion of viewership and change the effectiveness of visual communication.’109 This is a negative way of describing the surplus of meaning of any visual artifact: iconography is not so much rendered ineffectual by social factors as they furnish means of visual communication completely unintended by artists and patrons. Clarke has shown how differing cultural and social contexts created not one but many ‘Roman viewers’ who ‘used art to express who they were and what they valued.”110 If the argument of this book is correct, Paul’s letters represent ways in which Christ followers used Roman imperial iconography

account of ‘Bildsprache’ as semantic system, with reference to different styles of art. 105 Hölscher, 2004, 126. 106 Hölscher, 2000, 157. 107 Hölscher, 2000, 159. 108 Thus, Bianchi Bandinelli, 1967, 7–19; 1969, vol. 2.; Squire, 2011, 115–53. 109 Clarke, 2003, 9. 110 Clarke, 2003, 12; see also Clarke’s critique (1996, 375–81) of Elsner’s notion of ‘the Roman

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to help create ideas that could never have been intended by its iconographers. Their way of picturing Paul and constructing their listeners represent an appropriation of Roman ways of seeing – not only the reception of a semantic system of meaning, but the adaptation of it for specific social ends. A recent monograph by Rosemary Canavan and the work of Vernon K. Robbins offer a socio-cultural and constructivist account of imagery in the study of biblical texts.111 Canavan develops a method of ‘visual exegesis’ in the investigation of Paul. Her study considers the image of putting on and putting off Christ in Col. 3.1–17, with the help of an iconographical study of the images of the body and clothing on the statues, grave stelai and altars of the Lycus Valley, as well as numismatic imagery and texts that use clothing metaphors.112 By restricting her analysis to a close reading of contemporary imperial representation in the area of Colossae and its imperial trading partners, she offers a thick description of imperial imagery and its socially and culturally coded meaning – the ‘period eye’ formed by Roman picture language.113 She shows that Colossians belongs to a cultural world in which social identity was formed through visual representations of the body and dress and that, in describing the new ethical life of the baptized, the letter writer has adapted those representations. The chief resource for her formulation of visual exegesis is Vernon K. Robbins, who in a variety of books and essays has touched upon the role of visual culture in what he names ‘socio-rhetorical exegesis’.114 For Robbins, considerations of iconography are critical at all levels of interpretation of a text. The visual world implied or created by a text needs to be studied at several levels: the organization of metaphor and imagery of a text, the narrative world created or presumed and the socio-cultural world of composition (i.e. the text’s ideology). Canavan shows the importance of imagery at all these levels of investigation and as such represents the most thorough application to the Pauline corpus of Robbins’ model of interpretation to date.

viewer’ (Elsner 1995). Elsner’s deconstructive account of Roman art, however, contests the possibility of any singular view. 111 Studies by Balch, 2008c, 59–83; 2008b, 84–100, similarly offer treatments in this vein, though more impressionistically. He compares, for example, the representations of emotion and suffering in Pompeian frescos with emotion-laden representations of suffering in Paul’s letters, or hypothesizes that these frescoes can inform us how first listeners might have responded to the ekphrastic Pauline proclamation of Christ crucified (Gal. 3.1). 112 Canavan, 2012, 53–67. I am grateful to Dr Canavan for allowing me to read the proofs of her manuscript before it went to press. 113 For Romanization in the period under consideration here and specifically imperial imagery in the Lycus Valley, see Armstrong, 1998. 114 For example, Robbins, 1996a; 1996b.

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Ekphrasis Robbins is especially important in considering the role of imagery in the task of persuasion. In 2002 he first coined the terms ‘rhetography’ and ‘rhetology’ to signal the importance of attention to imagery in the study of texts.115 Rhetology refers to the rhetorical organization of an argument and its literary strategies of persuasion. Rhetography means two things. First, it designates the rhetorical use of ekphrasis or vivid language to excite listeners’ imagination and to win them over to the rhetor’s point of view.116 Second it refers, more broadly, to structures of communication and understanding: ‘A speaker or a writer composes, intentionally or unintentionally, a context of communication through statements or signs that conjure visual images in the mind which, in turn, evoke “familiar” contexts that provide meaning for the reader or hearer.’117 This broader definition he develops with the help of modern cognitive studies of perception that understand human cognition as a pictorial process. ‘Conceptual blending’ describes the sophisticated ways cognition combines images in understanding and communication.118 Robbins’ work has given rise to a number of studies that consider biblical texts under the aspect of rhetography or ekphrasis, as well as conceptual blending.119 While this study does not use the tools of cognitive blending theory, it deploys Robbins’ twofold understanding of rhetography to mean both the use of vivid pictorial speech and the way language evokes visual images that belong to the wider visual world in which they are at home. It should be clear that in the hermeneutical model developed here, iconographical analysis is indispensable in the study of the New Testament in general, and the Pauline letters in particular. New Testament scholars cannot ignore the visual world in which the texts they study were written. First, to return to the arguments of Banks and Hölscher,

Robbins, 2006 (when the essay was published), 175. He states (175n. 2) that the term is based on Jack Miles’ term ‘theography’ (Miles, 1996, 12). 116 Robbins, 2008c, 81–106; also Jeal, 2008, 9–38; DeSilva, 2008, 271–98. 117 Robbins, 2008c, 81. 118 Fauconnier and Turner, 2002, 17–38. Robbins (2007, 161–95) uses conceptual blending to show how biblical texts blend or combine recurring early Christian ‘rhetolects’ (or, culturally and textually recurring that typify wisdom, prophetic, apocalyptic, precreation, miracle and priestly discourses) as a means of persuasion. 119 For ekphrasis: Webb, 2008, 109–35; 2006; Callan, 2008, 59–90; Jeal, 2002, 160–78, at 162–3, which instead of rhetography uses Ezra Pound’s notion of phanopoeia as ‘a casting of images upon the visual imagination’ (Pound, 1927, 25); cognitive blending: DeSilva, 2008, 271–98. It should be indicated, however, that a number of Hebrew Bible studies have also combined cognitive blending theory and iconographical: for example, de Hulster, 2009, 115–17; Asumang, 2010, 1–24; Van Hecke, 2005, 215–32, where further studies are cited. 115

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as texts communicate pictorially and metaphorically to their audiences, they do so with reference to the larger external narratives of a culture. The metaphors they use and the pictures they evoke as part of their inner narrative find their source and orientation in the world of imagery and imagination that belongs to a culture’s dominant mentality. Even if those texts reject or oppose that mentality through the construction of counter narratives, the metaphors and images they use to do so are a part of the larger social and cultural discourse that makes communication possible. Second, it is critical to understand how imagination and culture function in persuasion, especially in an oral culture of the kind that the listeners of Paul’s letters inhabited. Since imagination and imagery belong together, it is impossible to understand fully Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles without reference to the larger iconographical world that constituted ‘the matrix of sensibility’ (Geertz) of their daily lives. From these two observations comes a third, that it is simplistic to consider Paul ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Roman Empire. The Pauline corpus evidences an entangled imagination whose formulations, couched as they are in the image and metaphor of their authors’ social world, express a complex negotiation with the Roman imperial mentality that defined their cultural horizon. Robbins’ twofold understanding of rhetography draws in part on ancient treatments of ekphrasis, or vivid speech. It is important to take them up in more detail because they are useful both for understanding the uses of figural speech in the letters under consideration, and because of the way they draw attention to the shared world of speaker and listener in persuasion. The ancient world was both an oral and a visual culture. Vivid speech or e0na/rgeia had a critical role in exciting the imagination of listeners so that they could ‘see’ what they were hearing. Rhetorical treatises and training manuals, or progymnasmata, give special attention to the importance and function of ekphrasis.120 The first century rhetor, Theon, in his Progymnasmata, furnishes a definition of ekphrasis that was commonplace in these writings: ‘Ekphrasis is descriptive language, bringing what is portrayed clearly [e0nargw~j] before the sight.’121 In recent years, the term has been associated almost exclusively with descriptions of works of art, or a form of extended and detailed description. This is the orientation of the For example, Aristotle, Rh. 1411b 25; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Imit. fr. 6.3.; Rhet. 10.17; Cicero, De Or. 3.52.202; Orat. 40.139; Rhet. Her. 3.22.37; 4.34.45; 4.55.68; Quintilian, Inst. 4.2.63–5; 6.2.29–36; 8.3.62–72; 9.1.27; 9.2.40; Ps.-Longinus, Subl. 15.1–9; Men. Rhet., Treatise 2.282,31–383, 9; and the Prog. of Theon 11 (Spengel, 1894, 118–20); Ps.-Hermogenes 10 (22–3); Aphthonius 12 (Kennedy, 2003, 117–20); and Nicolaus Rhetor 11 (Spengel, 1894, 67–71); Sopatros, On Commonplace 12 (Kennedy 2003, 218–21). The term finds widespread rhetorical theorization in the Second Sophistic (second century), but as the examples from Quintilian indicate, where the mechanism of ekphrastic persuasion is outlined, it was also an important topic in first century rhetorical theory. 121 Theon, Prog. 11 (Spengel, 1894, 118). 120

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definition of ekphrasis in the Oxford Classical Dictionary: ‘an extended and detailed literary description of any object, real or imaginary.’122 But this is far too narrow. In ancient definitions there is unlimited scope of topics that can be treated ekphrastically. Theon, for example, states, ‘There is ekphrasis of persons and events and places and periods of time.’ Other writers furnish their own lists; taken together they show that descriptive language can be deployed when presenting any topic.123 The definition of ekphrasis as ‘extended and detailed literary description’ applies well to literary treatments such as Virgil’s description of Aeneas’ shield (Aeneid 8.626–731) or Philostratus’ descriptions of artworks in his Imagines. It is this definition that has dominated the understanding of ekphrasis in the Western tradition.124 However, it is not description, but vivid speech (e0na/rgeia) that is the distinguishing feature of ekphrasis. Theon defines it as ‘a vivid impression of all-but-seeing what is described.’ Hermogenes represents it as ‘descriptive speech, as they say vivid [e0na/rghj] and bringing what is being shown before the eyes.’ Nicolaus Rhetor presents it as ‘descriptive speech’, bringing what is described vividly (e0nargw~j) before the eyes. E0na/rgeia is central to every definition of ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata.125 Quintilian cites the word e0na/rgeia in Greek in his discussion of the uses of images in declamation and then comments, ‘It is a great virtue to express our subject clearly [clare] and in such a way that it seems to be actually seen.’ Later, he makes ‘vividness (inlustris explanatio)’ the critical feature: persuasion entails ‘setting forth our facts in such a striking manner that they seem to be placed before our eyes as vividly as though they were taking place in our actual presence.’126 In the handbooks and treatises, vividness as the determining characteristic of ekphrastic pursuasion has ancient theories of cognition and memory as its backdrop.127 In both Aristotelian-Platonic and Stoic theorization, vivid speech, through the evocation of an image, awakens the sense perception associated with the imprinted image. With these images come a host of emotions. Thus Longinus can stress the role of emotion in awakening imagination: phantasia or visualization occurs ‘when under the effect of inspiration and passion, you seem to see what you are speaking

OCD, 495; Aune, 2003, 143–5 helpfully expands this definition by distinguishing between ekphrasis as a constituent literary form, a literary genre and in rhetorical usage. 123 For example, Nicolaus Rhetor 11 (Spengel, 1894, 68). 124 Webb, 1999, 7–18 offers an excellent discussion of the historical processes by which an ancient definition was transmogrified into a term to denote extended description of works of art. 125 Theon Prog. 11 (Spengel, 1894, 118); Hermogenes 20 (Spengel, 1894, 22); Aphthonius 12 (Kennedy, 2003, 117); Nicolaus 11 (Spengel, 1894, 68); Sopatros, On Commonplace 215 (Kennedy, 2003, 218). 126 Inst. 8.3.62; also, 9.1.27 127 For what follows, Webb, 2009, 87–130, where there is a more detailed discussion of and with primary texts. See also Webb, 1997, 112–27; 1999, 7–18; 2001, 289–316. 122

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about and bring it before the eyes of your listeners.’128 Once thus awakened the imagination takes over and starts to fill in details not represented by the speaker. Quintilian describes the power of e0na/rgeia through which ‘[one] imagines for oneself some of those things which are not even mentioned.’129 He advises that the imagination needs to be directed to assure that listeners’ thoughts furnish details consistent with the speaker’s desired outcome. Thus Quintilian stresses that speakers should not depart too widely from commonplace associations and predictable outcomes. Rather they should use metaphor and other evocative devices that are close at hand and readily recognizable.130 ‘The mind finds it easiest to accept what it can recognize.’131 ‘We shall succeed in making the facts evident, if they are plausible; it will even be legitimate to invent things of the kind that usually occur.’132 The Pauline corpus in general, and the letters this study considers in particular, are nothing if not skilled applications of e0na/rgeia or vivid language in the service of persuasion. They rely upon a shared set of common experiences, not only of personal encounters, but also of sociocultural reality. As Paul seeks to make ‘the facts evident’ by placing topics before his listeners’ eyes, it is the recurring world of imperial imagery that forms the visual arena he can rely upon as the resource of the imagination to assure his listeners draw the lessons he wishes them to understand and believe. Paul often draws from the visual world of imperial metaphor and imagery because it is that world he shares with his listeners and which furnishes both writer and listener with a set of predictable outcomes. He can rely on this because of the generalized ‘Bildsprache’ that Tonio Hölscher describes. Paul and his viewers share a way of seeing. But Paul’s letters also involve a way of picturing that appropriates that way of seeing. In other words, Paul’s creativity lies in his ability to draw on ready-made images and syntax and to revise them so as to create new ideals and associations consistent with his Gospel. Both the uncontested and contested letters attest to the negotiation of their imperial visual world as a means of persuasion.

Playing Paul Closely associated with ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata is prosopopoeia: ‘the introduction of a person to whom words are attributed that are suitable to a speaker and have an indisputable application to the subject

Longinus, Subl. 15.1; see also Quintilian, Inst., 6.2.28–32. Inst. 8.3.65. 130 Webb, 2009, 109. 131 Quintilian, Inst. 8.3.71. 132 Quintilian, Inst. 8.3.71. 128 129

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discussed….’133 Theon assigns exercises in prosopopoeia under the headings of ‘consolations, exhortation, and letter writing’. The student who practises prosopopeia, should ‘first of all … have in mind what the personality of the speaker is like, and to whom the speech is addressed: the speaker’s age, the occasion, the place, the social status of the speaker; also the general subject which the projected speeches are going to discuss.’134 We should no doubt avoid forcing the contested letters on to a Procrustean Bed of ancient rhetorical theory.135 Nevertheless, the contested letters offer a kind of epistolary prosopopoeia, and take their place alongside other similar instances in the New Testament, most notably in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.136 The contested letters go much further than Theon suggests, and attest the development by Pauline Christ followers of the instructional and hortatory uses of the letterform pioneered by Paul. A consideration of the letters as creative examples of epistolary speech in character helps one avoid largely anachronistic debates concerning authenticity, forgery and dissimulation. In these letters, writers play Paul to speak to the general subject the writer qua the apostle seeks to address. Nor should we be troubled by the presence of lively and detailed autobiographical narrative, or interpret it as indicative of preserved fragments of earlier letters or strategic verisimilitude to deceive audiences to accept Pauline authorship. It is notable that the Progymnasmata take up discussion of ‘speech in character’ either directly before or after discussion of ekphrasis.137 For both rely upon the ability of a speaker to deploy figurative language and narration to awaken imagination and emotion for the task of persuasion. The contested letters invite their audiences to picture Paul as a prisoner and furnish him with words to speak to the challenge or subject at hand. This is especially the case in the Pastoral Epistles, where ‘Paul’ represents himself as an almost wholly abandoned prisoner who can nevertheless count on his apostolic delegates to keep faith with him, or where with the use of vivid caricature he creates pictures of his opponents as turning families upside down and betrayers of the Gospel, and the women

Theon, Prog. 8 (Spengel, 1894, 115); also, Aphthonius (Kennedy, 2003, 115–17) who distinguishes between ethopoeia, prosopoeia and eidolopoeia; Nicolaus Rhetor (Spengel, 1894, 63–7); Sopatros, On Commonplace (Kennedy, 2003, 213–18). 134 Theon, Prog. 8 (Spengel, 1895, 115). 135 For a discussion of prosopopoeia in the strictest sense, see Aune, 2003, 383. 136 Gospel prosopopoeia include the blocks of teaching placed in Jesus’ mouth by Matthew (e.g. Mt. 5–7) and the long discourses of Jesus in John (e.g. Jn. 14–17). In Acts, alongside the speeches attributed to leading characters, prosopopoeia is represented by the letter of the Jerusalem Church to gentile believers (Acts 15.23–9). For discussion of Acts, see Aune, 1987, 124–8; for Pauline letters, Lampe 2010, 12–16. 137 Similarly Demetrius, Eloc. 265: ‘… “prosopopoeia” may be employed to produce a most powerful energy of style [sxh~ma dianoi/aj pro_j deino&thta], as in the words: “Imagine that you are ancestors, or Hellas, or your native land, assuming a woman’s form, should address such and such reproaches to you.”’ 133

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they influence as straying after Satan. Here the letters use lively stereotype to vilify opponents with immediately recognizable portrayals: they are ‘that sort of people’. The Pastorals represent perhaps the most dramatic use of prosopopoeia and ekphrasis in their presentation of Paul. But the other contested letters also place their listeners in an imperial situation where again Paul the prisoner uses vivid imperial figuration to liken Jesus’ death to a Roman triumph, baptism to enthronement, ecclesial harmony to imperial concord, church leadership to civic honour, harmonious households to imperial unity and the coming of Jesus as an emperor’s adventus and epiphany. The contested letters give Paul ‘suitable words’ for new situations and challenges. The persuasiveness of those words lies in no small measure in their ability to evoke imagination. The chapters that follow offer a study of how the contested letters ‘picture’ Paul and his listeners and place them and their ideals in a recognizable imperial situation. Considerations of imperial iconography and language will show how the letters’ representations of that situation at once reflect a general cultural way of seeing and idiosyncratic appropriations of it. The chapter that follows takes up recent ‘Paul and Empire’ scholarship to show that Paul was neither for nor against ‘the Roman empire’ but a skillful negotiator of his imperial context. Applying ideas from Michel de Certeau, the chapter explores how Paul ‘makes do’ with Roman imperial realities by adapting them for his own purposes. The result is the creation of a form of imperial hybridity. This will then set the stage for the three longer chapters that follow, respectively dedicated to Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. Colossians places its audience in an imperial situation by portraying it as the beneficiary of Christ’s triumphal victory. The listeners belong to a worldwide transformation brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection, realized in a church where there are no longer barbarians or Scythians but Christ is all in all. The discussion of Ephesians focuses on the letter’s portrayal of the church as the place where Christ’s rule achieves the concord of estranged parties. Again, Christ’s death as triumph is celebrated, but now with a view to the gifts distributed as the fruits of victory, for the sake of unity. With the help of Homi Bhabha’s model of imperial mimicry and Edward Soja’s notion of ‘thirdspace’ the chapter explores Ephesians’ ‘strange familiarity of a foreign tongue’ as well as the evocation of a new social geography through the use of civic vocabulary. The chapter on the Pastoral Epistles considers the letters’ use of imperial imagery as polemical strategy. The Pastorals invoke imperial commonplaces centred on gender roles and liken believers to citizens living respectably and in good order as they await the coming of Christ, which they liken to an imperial adventus. Borrowing again from Michel de Certeau, the chapter considers the Pastorals as invoking practices of empire, again with their own improvisations. These practices are enjoined under the dominion of Christ, which the Pastorals describe in ways that offer intriguing parallels with claims made for the Jovian rule of Trajan and Hadrian. These letters create another

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‘thirdspace’, but different from those found in Ephesians and Colossians. The final chapter considers a reading of Paul amidst Roman triumph, first below the apse of the fifth century Roman basilica, Santa Pudenziana, where a female figure representing the gentile nations crowns Paul with a corona civica, and then before a sixth century image of St Paul and St Thecla in a grotto at Ephesus. Santa Pudenziana confronts us with an imperial image of Paul; the image of Paul and Thecla in the grotto invites us to a consideration of the apostle from the perspective of a silenced, ‘underground’ narrative. Throughout the study, picturing Paul in empire means a consideration of the larger world of images in which these letters were composed, as well as the uses of imperial image and text for the sake of persuasion.

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1 Paul: Making Do in the Roman Empire

The surge of interest in the imperial cult by New Testament scholars has been likened to a ‘Columbus-like discovery’ of a new world.1 Sometimes, however, new world discoveries are not new at all. Explorers arrive in a new land only to discover people already there. In the case of ‘Paul and Empire’ scholarship, over a century ago, biblical scholars impressed by new archaeological finds from the eastern Mediterranean were quick to make connections and draw conclusions about the features of the imperial world and its cult of the emperor on New Testament writers, especially Paul.2 The recent imperial turn in Pauline studies continues a long tradition. The purpose here is not so much to explore new territory as to reconnoiter the ground already mapped by scholars who have considered the uncontested letters of the Pauline corpus (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon). This will prepare the ground for a more detailed exploration of the uses of imperial imagery and vocabulary in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. My interest in considering these earlier letters is to discuss some of the ways in which Paul draws upon imperial imagery and vocabulary to place before his listeners’ eyes vivid pictures of the Gospel he proclaims. With the help of Michel de Certeau’s notion of ‘making do’, I hope to show how Paul’s letters manifest a form of imperial hybridity as they draw upon imperial images and then redeploy them for new purposes.

Galinsky, 2011a, 1. For example, Deissmann, 1911; Wendland, 1904; 1912; Harnack, 1906a, 1906b; Lietzmann, 1909; Lohmeyer, 1919.

1 2

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Paul and Entangled History In contemporary treatment, the phrase ‘Paul and Empire’ is usually associated with an exploration of the ways in which Paul opposed the Roman Empire.3 This position, too, has a long legacy. Over a century ago, Adolf Deissmann described ‘a polemical parallelism between the cult of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes it felt where ancient words derived by Christianity from the treasure of the Septuagint and the Gospels happen to coincide with solemn concepts of the Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar.’4 Contemporary scholars largely echo Deissmann. One contrasts ‘the Gospel of Imperial Salvation’ against ‘Paul’s counterImperial Gospel’, and describes Jesus and Paul as leading ‘an anti-imperial movement’.5 Another juxtaposes ‘Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire’, and argues that Paul directly challenged the cult of the emperor, which was ‘not only the dominant cult in a large part of the empire … but was actually the means … whereby the Romans managed to control and govern such huge areas as came under their sway.’6 Others write of ‘Rome’s imperial theology’ which ‘Paul’s Christian theology confronted nonviolently but opposed relentlessly.’7 Still others contrast Paul’s preaching of the ‘peace of Jesus Christ’ as motivated in the first instance by opposition against the ‘pax Romana’, or read passages in Paul’s letters as a form of ‘disguised affront’ against Roman power.8 John C. Scott’s model of resistance in peasant situations of subjugation and control is used to detect evidence of disguise, and even ‘political unconscious’, in Paul’s letters, as he used the resources of his religious and social heritage to express a subversive ‘hidden transcript’ of opposition against the ‘public transcript’ of Roman domination.9 On the other side are those, like Bruno Blumenfeld, who argue that Paul was not interested in opposing the Empire. Paul’s mission relied on the Roman Empire for his success. ‘Paul must not upset – and, more important, does not wish to upset – the Roman political establishment.’ Indeed, the argument of Romans relies so heavily upon the terms and categories of

See Harrison, 2011, 3–14, for a history. Deissmann, 1911, 346. 5 Horsley, 1997a, 1–24, at 1, 3, 5. 6 Wright, 2000, 160–83, at 161. 7 Crossan and Reed, 2004, x. 8 Wengst, 1987; Georgi, 1987, 72–8. 9 Elliott, 2008, 54–7; for ‘hidden transcripts’ in peasant cultures, see Scott, 1990, especially 136–82; for political unconscious in peasant cultures, see Scott, 1985, 28–47. Scott bases both notions on hundreds of hours of field research of peasant society; with only Paul’s letters available as evidence it is methodologically unsound to posit the apostle’s teachings as analogous to such peasant forms of resistance other than in a highly tentative and hypothetical fashion. 3 4

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imperial rule that ‘one could fancy it as a contribution to a Festschrift for Nero, to celebrate the emperor’s quinquennium aureum.’10 Such phrases have a powerful rhetorical effect, especially for those who seek to win from Paul a counter-cultural attitude to contemporary politics and culture, or for those, like Bruno Blumenfeld, who wish to represent him as ‘revolutionary reactionary’ who effectively capitulated to the Roman Empire to achieve his missionary goals.11 But they also ignore the complexity of both ‘Paul’ and ‘Empire’, not to mention the social and historical idiosyncrasies of the imperial cult in Greek and Roman society.12 It is as misleading to describe Paul as ‘relentlessly opposed’ to the Roman Empire as it is to describe him as sympathetic to its aims and political goals. Indeed, as a product of the social and cultural contexts of his urban environment, Paul, the Roman citizen, was as much a part of the Roman Empire as he could have been opposed to it. This can be readily recognized, as we will see directly, in the way Paul frequently applies terms from his political imperial world to describe his communities.13 Paul also exhorts his audiences as he does in 1 Thess. 4.11–12, ‘to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and be dependent on nobody.’ Paul presents himself as a man who is, like his listeners, an artisan (1 Cor. 4.12; 1 Thess. 2.9; cf. Acts 18.3); indeed the churches he founds look remarkably like Greco-Roman associations.14 He plays his part in the economic organization of his day, he travels on Roman roads, he relies on Roman law – if Acts is to be trusted – to adjudicate charges brought against him (Acts 22.25–9; 23.27; 25.21, 25). This is not to say that Paul did not recognize the forms of political intrusion if not terror and threat that accompanied Roman rule, nor can one deny that the logic of his Gospel challenges such an organization of society, nor that at the time Paul was writing the imperial cult was penetrating deeply into the civic life of Asia Minor.15 Indeed, Paul vividly describes the full force of his imperial context

Blumenfeld, 2003, 289, 292. Blumenfeld, 2003, 289–92. 12 For local initiatives, as well as local political and religious influences on differing architectural expressions, officials and relationship to pre-existing deities of the Flavian imperial cult of the sebastoi in Ephesus, see Friesen 1993, 50–75, an argument that he similarly makes (Friesen, 2001, 23–76) for the earlier Julio-Claudian period; similarly, Ando 2000, 303–29. For uneven distribution imperial cults in the cities Paul visited, as well as entanglements of the imperial cult with local cults as part of a complex religio-political landscape, see Miller 2010, 324–32. 13 For an excellent overview of Paul’s appropriations of civic language as a means of organization and self-definition, see Ebner 2012, 85–100, 228–30. 14 Thus Ascough, 2003; Ebel, 2004; 2012, 190–235; Harland, 2003; 2009; Kloppenborg, 1993, 212–38; 1996, 16–30; Theissen, 2007, 221–47; Trebilco, 1994, 291–362, as well as the discussion that follows on the Pastoral Epistles. 15 Gordon, 1990, 199–231. 10 11

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where he recalls ‘imprisonments and countless beatings’ (2 Cor. 11.23), or where he states that the emperor is a ‘terror [fo&boj]’ to bad conscience and ‘does not bear the sword in vain’ (Rom. 13.3, 4). After all, Paul writes letters from a Roman prison, and his final fate attests the brutality of Roman power, as does indeed his proclamation of Jesus crucified ‘by the rulers of this age’ (1 Cor. 2.8).16 For Paul, ‘the form of this world is passing away’ (1 Cor. 7.31), but to the degree it remains very much present, Paul develops and appropriates that form, including its leading metaphors and vocabulary, to suit his ends. The postcolonial notion of hybridity is a properly nuanced way to describe Paul’s relationship to his imperial context. The term speaks neither of relentless opposition to the Roman Empire, nor to a kind of spiritual quietism or political conservatism for the sake of larger theological formulations, but of Paul’s negotiation of the cultural and social arrangements of his urban contexts to make his Gospel persuasive to his listeners.17 Postcolonialism uses the term ‘hybridity’ to describe the complex ways in which colonizer and colonized negotiate and construct identity with one another. When applied to Paul, hybridity urges a formulation that steers away from binary opposition of Paul and Empire, but rather considers Paul and Rome under the aspect of entangled history. Entangled history attends to ‘mutual influences, responses and effects’ in treating the relation of local to global historical analysis.18 Applied to Paul ‘s letters, entangled history concentrates on ways in which the apostle’s Gospel reveals the influences of its imperial location, even in its most dissonant formulation, and how such influences have an effect, however unintended, of legitimating, through appropriation of terms, narratives and values of an overarching civic and imperial order. In the case of Paul, the use of imperial language to articulate the differences of Christ groups from their imperial world and to preach the coming of a lord and saviour, whose victory over death was likened to a military triumph, reinforced imperial understandings.19 But it also deconstructed it in unique ways.20 Hybridity and entanglement rather than opposition describes this mutual relation.

For discussion with literature of the ‘rulers’ as both cosmic and political reference, see Elliott 1994, 114–23. 17 For treatment of Paul, postcolonial study and hybridity, see Punt, 2011, 53–61; Stanley, 2011, 110–26; Hanges, 2011, 27–34. 18 Epple, 2012, 155–75 at 163; Epple relates entangled history to considerations of a modern transnational history that attends to complexities of hybridity in investigating the relation of the national to the global. Entangled history avoids a simplistic cause-effect/dominantsubservient model of history in favour of close analysis of interaction of local politics with larger transnational entities. 19 Schüssler Fiorenza, 2007, 13. 20 For an overview of Paul’s appropriations of civic language as a means of organization and self-definition, see Ebner 2012, 85–100, 228–30. 16

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Strategies, Tactics and Making Do The thought of the social theorist and philosopher Michel de Certeau offers a useful means of observing and analysing this Pauline entanglement and hybridity, and sets the stage for the discussion that will follow in subsequent chapters. He distinguishes between ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ in the regulation and daily decisions of society. ‘Strategy’ or ‘strategic rationalization’ describes the normalizing delineation of place by dominant groups for managing and organizing an environment and making it ‘the place of its own power and will.’21 Tactics, by contrast, describe uses of the elements and values of everyday life as a means of self-definition and social resistance. ‘A tactic insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over entirely, without being able to keep it at a distance.’ Since tactics exist in another’s space, ‘it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized “on the wing.” Whatever it wins it does not keep. It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into “opportunities.” ’22 ‘Making do’ describes the daily uses of objects and meanings that similarly insert themselves into larger models of behaviour and production and become the means to the counter-practice of society and its dominant meanings. de Certeau describes instances of colonization where the colonized have adapted laws, practices and modes of representation for specific and often unintended ends. Those who ‘made due’ in this way, de Certeau argues, metamorphosed the dominant order: ‘they made it function in another register. They remained other within the system that they assimilated and which assimilated them externally. They diverted it without leaving it. Procedures of consumption maintained their difference in the very space that the occupier was organizing.’23 From a postcolonial point of view, de Certeau’s analysis is too static and uni-directional. Hybridity and entanglement focus on the negotiation of both strategists and tacticians in social relations and how both are transformed as a result of it. Nevertheless, his notion of ‘making do’ is useful for understanding how Paul used the categories of his larger civic and imperial context, to metamorphose his social world and make it ‘function in another register’. This he did, as we will see, not only by inviting his audiences to hear in certain ways through the rhetorical performance of his letters, but also by inviting them to see differently. The shared elements of his visual world were close at hand to serve the means of metamorphosis. In deploying such tactics for persuasion he established a legacy for the formulation of his Gospel that was passed on to later generations of Christ-followers, and which resulted in an unfolding history of effects that extended far beyond

de Certeau, 1984, 37. de Certeau, 1984, xix. 23 de Certeau, 1984, 32. 21 22

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what Paul could have imagined, a history this study takes up in its analysis of the contested corpus. Paul repeatedly deploys language at home in his larger imperial political context. As has long been recognized, his letters draw heavily on that social world: saviour [swth/r], salvation [swthri/a], Gospel [eu)agge/lion], peace [ei0rh&nh], Son of God [ui9o\jtou~ qeou~], Lord [ku&rioj], parousia [parousi/a], reconciliation and cognates [katallagh/], ‘ambassador’ [presbei/a] and cognates, as well as ‘church’ [e0kklhsi/a], ‘body (of Christ)’ [sw~ma (tou= Xristou=)], and ‘citizenship’ [poli/teuma], are but a few instances that reflect borrowing and application to his proclamation, instruction and exhortation. Metaphors such as ‘slave of Christ’ [dou~loj tou= Xristou=], ‘going out to meet the Lord’ [a)pa&nthsin tou~ kuri/ou], ‘citizenship in heaven’ [to_ poli/ teuma e0n ou)ranoi=j], ‘lead in triumph’ [qrambeu/ein] similarly reflect Paul’s urban and Roman political context, as does his description of Christ ‘dying for’ others, and language that celebrates the superabundant grace of his Gospel.24 In communicating his Gospel in these ways, Paul reaches for a means to express the length and breadth of his claims. This he finds in the language of philosophical schools such as Stoicism and Middle Platonism, as well as the universalizing elements and narratives of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Most important, however, for proclamation to a religiously varied, if not largely illiterate audience, is the political vocabulary and imagery he adapts as a vehicle to make his claims. In de Certeau’s terms, this was a tactic that borrowed from one domain in order to transpose terms and images into a new register, for the sake of an alternative set of practices and beliefs. Still more critical for Paul’s strategies of persuasion is his use of vivid civic metaphor and narrative to communicate with his churches. Paul strategically used such vivid language to persuade his listeners of the truth of his universal claims. Vivid speech activated his listeners’ imaginations so that they could not only hear Paul’s claims, but also see themselves as inhabitants of the new order that Jesus’ death and the triumph of his resurrection had won. We can see this in Paul’s use of language to describe Jesus’ death as a triumph and the means toward a universal reign, in Paul’s descriptions of his own suffering, in Paul’s vivid eschatological representations of Jesus’ coming and in his descriptions of his churches as the body of Christ and in solidarity with one another. In each case, Paul represents his teachings with the help of imperial image and vocabulary, often only to reconfigure it. Paul makes do with the visual culture and language of the Roman Empire and invites his listeners to imagine themselves in new and striking ways.

For Jesus’ death as ‘for sinners/us/you/all’ as at home in the political language of sacrifice by leaders for their cities, see Eschner, 2010, 2.163–217; for grace against the backdrop of Augustan eschatology, see Harrison, 2003, 226–34; 2010, 185–97.

24

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Powers of Horror ‘Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph [qriambeu&onti], and through us spreads the fragrance [eu)wdi/a] of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing’ (2 Cor. 2.14). ‘God has exhibited [a)pe/deicen] us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle [qe/atron] to the world, to angels and to people’ (1 Cor. 4.9). The image of a triumph is striking and offers an excellent example of Paul’s use of vivid metaphor to evoke imagination and participation on the part of his listeners. The passage offers a provocative example of Paul remaining ‘other’ within a culture associated with military meanings and celebrations but also making it ‘function in another register’ (de Certeau). At the heart of the metaphor is what we may call a power of horror – that is a display of military might in a victory designed to humiliate the vanquished and glorify the triumphator. As such Paul exploits in a paradoxical way imagery commonplace in the Hellenistic world, both of the conqueror who has defeated his enemies, and of the defeated who bow before the victors. The Greek word qriambeu&ein can be translated generally as ‘to triumph’, ‘to lead in triumph’, or ‘to display, or exhibit’.25 Since the verb does not appear in the sense of military triumph in literature contemporary with Paul it has sometimes been interpreted to mean ‘display’.26 But recent exegetical studies have shown that the rhetorical situation and literary context of its appearances in both Corinthian passages indicate that what is intended is almost certainly the second meaning of Roman military triumph.27 Peter Marshall correctly argues that although the verb does not appear in the sense of military triumph in literature contemporary with Paul, the Julio-Claudian period was sufficiently saturated with military iconography celebrating imperial victories to make ‘to triumph’, or ‘lead in triumph’ the meaning Paul intends here. For an audience inhabiting the Roman colony of Corinth, military triumph would have instantly created a visual sense of Paul as a prisoner led in a triumph with Christ as the triumphator or victor. The images that survive today come from monuments, such as the relief on the Temple of Apollo Sosianus (Figure 1), on coins or, as Zanker has shown, on household furniture and private objects. A first-century oil lamp with a relief of a victory (Figure 2), as well as a victory on the ceiling plaster of a Roman palace (Figure 3) show how amongst both rich and poor victory was an ever present image. But we should imagine them spread across the Empire in other forms as well

Delling, 1966, 159–60; Williamson, 1968, 318–22. Egan, 1977, 34–60, and for general review of the literature, see Williamson, 1968, 322–6. 27 Hafemann, 1986, 22–39; 1990, 58; Marshall, 1983, 302–17. 25 26

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Figure 1  Relief depicting a procession of bound prisoners, Temple of Apollo Sosianus, Rome (first century Professor of Classics, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

bce).

© Roger Ulrich,

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Figure 2  Oil lamp with Victory (second century ce), Museum of Bergama, Turkey

Figure 3 Palace ceiling relief of Victories, ‘Villa della Farnesina’ (Augustan period), Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome

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such as placards and posters that were widely displayed as advertisements of the emperor’s success.28 Marshall notes that Paul’s usage conforms to ancient rhetorical theorization of the uses and meanings of metaphor in persuasion.29 As a dramatic metaphor one may add that its deployment fits in with the use of vivid speech to awaken imagination and the emotions associated with striking description. Here Paul’s portrayal of himself would have triggered strong emotions associated with the celebration of the victor and the humiliation of the vanquished. The metaphor is so paradoxical it has led scholars to argue that Paul could not have been using it in the sense of a military parade. Certainly it required Paul’s audience to take in the full force of the image of triumph in order fully to understand what Paul intends in presenting before the eyes of his audience an image of himself as part of the conquered in a triumph. Marshall argues that Paul’s use of qriambeu&ein to describe himself as a shameful figure belongs to a rhetorical strategy of 2 Cor. 2.14–4.18 to win a persuasive hearing with the Corinthians who have found reason to doubt his credibility as an apostle.30 Paul here seeks to win status by turning the charge of weakness into an argument for his true status and dignity. The apostle pillories his opponents as boastful (2 Cor. 1.12; cf. 11.12), underhanded and cunning (4.2), ‘hucksters [kaphleu&ontej] of God’s word’ (2.17), promising teachings greater than his (1.13–14; cf. 11.4), and relying on letters of recommendation (3.1; 4.1–2) to win Corinthian hospitality. By contrast, Paul amplifies his weaknesses, humiliations, and sufferings on behalf of the Gospel and for the Corinthian church (2 Cor. 1.3–11; 6.3–10; cf. 11.7–10, 23–9). He presents himself as a shamed hostage in Christ’s triumph. The vanquished apostle thus becomes the image of the faithful apostle who as a captive in Christ’s victory march – now switching metaphors – has become in fact a sacrificial offering in Christ’s honour and dedicated to the worship of God: ‘a sacrificial offering to the knowledge of him’ [th_n o)smh_n th~j gnw&sewj au)tou~], ‘the aroma of Christ’ [Xristou~ eu)wdi/a] (2 Cor. 2.14, 15). To those who disbelieve his Gospel, his sufferings and humiliations reveal him as little more than ‘fragrance from death to death’ [o)smh_ e0k qana&tou ei0j qa&naton], but to those who believe it, he is ‘a fragrance from life to life’ [o)smh_ e0k zwh~j ei0j zwh&n] (2.15–16). The strong implication is of course that Paul’s opponents belong to the former since they call him into question (2 Cor. 10.10).31 The vivid language of sacrifice, and of execution, similarly evokes pictures of the emperor as sacrificant and the

Ando, 2000, 256–9. Marshall, 1983, 310–-11; similarly Witherington, 1995, 370. 30 Marshall, 1983, 313–17. 31 I assume here that 2 Cor. 10–12 is in direct relationship with the complaints and rhetorical strategies of 2.14–6.13, and that perhaps the later chapters are a later letter fragment; Furnish, 1984, 35–41. 28 29

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execution of his enemies as part of the victory ritual. In all of this, however, Paul inverts meanings since he imitates the one who was himself conquered and executed in crucifixion. Yet to be thus vanquished is, in the apostle’s discourse, to be part of the triumph of Christ in resurrection. Paul ‘makes do’ with these categories and wholly transposes them. He deploys a similar rhetorical strategy in 1 Cor. 1–4, where, again, questions of status and origins dominate a situation that has created faction amongst members of the church due perhaps to competing allegiances to differing apostles (1 Cor. 3.4). Paul challenges them in their competition over status as boastful (3.18–22). Here the language of triumph and humiliation is situated as a part of the apostle’s casting of the Corinthian divisions with the help of rhetorical commonplaces and language associated with civic faction and concord.32 Thus, it is not only 1 Cor. 4.9 that represents his insertion of political language; civic vocabulary and commonplaces form a red thread that runs all the way through the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians. This is again not surprising given Paul is writing to a church in a city very much conscious of its status as Roman colony.33 What is surprising, however, is the way he foregrounds both himself and Christ as the victims of Roman violence in order to persuade the Corinthians to embody in their own e0kklhsi/a all the ideals of harmony and good order that characterize the rightly functioning state. Paul’s response to Corinthian faction and strife is to invite his listeners to imagine the truly faithful as those who bear the humiliation, weakness and foolishness of the crucified Christ. Again, he evokes an image of himself as captive in triumphal procession in 1 Cor. 4.9, but this time with extended ekphrasis. ‘God has exhibited [a)pe/deicen] us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle [qe/atron] to the world, to angels and to people.’34 Here the passage not only describes him as an exhibit, but through vivid description makes the audience see Paul and the apostles as spectacles. There follows then an extended vivid passage that moves beyond the image of humiliation in a triumphal parade to describe the apostles at work in the Roman Empire as fools, weak, disreputable, hungry and thirsty, demeaned labourers, reviled, slandered, indeed the ‘refuse’ [perikaqa&rmata] and ‘filth’ [peri/yhma] of the world (4.8–13). Earlier he has urged his listeners to remember their own low status and how God has used them to shame the strong of the world (1.26–31). Here, as in 2 Corinthians 2.14–15, the strategy is to persuade by prompting factious and boastful Corinthians (1 Cor. 3.4, 18–22) to imagine the truly faithful as those who bear the humiliation, weakness and foolishness of the crucified Christ. Such are the marks not of defeat but of victory (1.27–9; cf. 2.1–10). Wellborn, 1987, 85–111; 1997, 1–35; Mitchell 1991, 68–111. For an account that relates Corinthian factionalism over status with the larger political setting of Corinth, see Pogoloff, 1992, 99–127. 34 For discussion, see Hafemann, 1986, 58–64. 32 33

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To a modern audience untrained in the strategies of ancient rhetoric to win assent through emotion, the emotive dimensions of these texts pass unrecognized. But Paul has carefully represented himself and his sufferings for the highest emotional effect. He places before his audience a picture of himself, and with the picture he expects a particular emotional response associated with his portrait. Again, the result is paradoxical: faithfulness in humiliation and defeat only serves to underscore Paul’s triumph and to secure honour in the eyes of his listeners and thus his reliability as an apostle. Taken together 2 Cor. 2.14–15 and 1 Cor. 4.9, with the larger repertoire of civic commonplaces of 1 Cor. 1.11–4. 18 as whole, reveal Paul ‘making do’ with existing political ideals and features of imperial life. By way of the dramatic inversions, he prompts an imagination of a wholly different civic order, where traditional categories of status and understandings of victory are stood on their head. He inserts his small competing household e0kklhsi/ai into the larger political world of Corinth’s e0kklhsi/a and Rome’s military triumphus but adapts their language of honour and glory for his own ends. We find similar paradoxical adaption of political vocabulary in 2 Cor. 5.18–20, where Paul uses the civic language of ambassadorship (presbei/a; presbeu&w) to represent himself as an agent of Christ’s reconciliation (katalla&ssw; katalla&ghte).35 The – again ekphrastic – description of his abasement that follows in 6.4–10 belongs to the world of diplomacy where ambassadorial trials for the sake of reconciliation were expected.36 Anthony Bash argues that in the case of 2 Corinthians Paul’s ambassadorship takes a dramatic turn as the status rich apostle abases himself by becoming not only agent, but suppliant for reconciliation. Supplication makes the apostle lower himself before the Corinthians even as in cases of diplomatic gestures for reconciliation defeated parties typically sought terms for reconciliation with victors.37 Ferdinand Hahn and Martin Hengel argue that the image here derives directly from the Greco-Roman cult, where the victor imposes the terms of reconciliation.38 In either case, as Bash argues, such an image would have shocked his audience, as Paul overturns all categories of honour and power. Such self-abasement arises because Paul ‘always carries in his body the death of Jesus Christ’ and because he is ‘always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake’ (2 Cor. 4.11). Indeed, the ministry of reconciliation he endures through the trials and tribulations that he describes so vividly to his Corinthian audience is the ongoing revelation of Christ’s reconciling

For the civic understandings of katalla&ssw; katalla&gh and their usage in the language of diplomatic mission, see Breytenbach, 1989. 36 For general discussion, see Bash, 1997, 105–10. Bash points similarly at p. 106 to 2 Cor. 11.22–9 as echoing language used to describe the dangers of ambassadorship and ambassadorial travels. 37 Bash, 1997, 109–10. 38 Hengel, 1967, 75; Hahn 1973, 247. 35

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sacrifice for the sake of others in the sure hope of resurrection and God’s triumph over death.39 Later in the contested corpus, as we will see, the memory of Paul’s sufferings, especially his chains (Eph. 6.20; Col. 4.18; 2 Tim. 1.16), becomes an important source of communal self-definition. Paul’s later followers continued to imagine the apostle with the help of civic language and imperial narratives to articulate their communal ideals and self-definitions.

Carnivalesque Apotheosis and Citizenship The application of the image of Roman triumph and the spectacle of those paraded as vanquished, as well as abasement as honour, is consistent with Paul’s carnivalesque representation of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection as God’s victory over the powers of sin and death. Paul again deploys highly evocative speech drawn from his imperial context. The crucifixion of Jesus is of course already a strikingly political image even if Paul does not invite his audiences to imagine it through vivid description. Rather he furnishes it with paradoxical meanings by relating it, again, to victory and triumph. The so-called Christ Hymn of Phil 3.6–11 overturns crucifixion as the mode of God’s victory. Here self-empyting (‘he emptied himself [e9auto_n e0ke/nwsen] taking the form of a slave [morfh_n dou&lou labw&n]’; Phil. 2.7) and self-humbling in crucifixion (‘he humbled himself [e0tapei/nwsen e9auto/n] and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’; 2.8) expresses the epitome of shame in the honour-shame culture of the Greco-Roman world. The affirmation that follows (‘God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name’ [Phil. 2.9]) arguably echoes Hebrew Bible ideas found in Ps. 110.1 of the faithful exalted king, or the exaltation of the faithful Suffering Servant of Is. 52.12–13.40 More important, however, for an audience inhabiting the Roman colony of Philippi – whose members included those ‘from Caesar’s household’ (4.21) – is the passage’s invocation of imagery associated with Roman rule. Apotheosis on account of great achievements was an honour that had been accorded Augustus and Claudius soon after their deaths. A later second century relief from Ephesus offers a dramatic representation of such apotheosis; the emperor Lucius Verus is carried heavenward on a chariot. Nike or Victory, to his left, and Virtus accompany his ascent. Helios stands at the rear to signify the cosmic and Olympian aspect of the apotheosis, and Tellus, goddess of earth and fertility, reclines below the chariot (see Plate 1). Phil. 2.6–11 has been repeatedly interpreted from the early twentieth century onward as a direct representation of a scene such as this, or as motivated by 39 40

Hafemann 1986, 51–4. See Lohmeyer, 1928 for discussion; also Martin, 1997, xlvi.

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Figure 4  Relief depicting Dacians on their knees submitting to Trajan, scene LXXV, the Column of Trajan, Rome (second century ce) © Anger D-DAI-ROM 89.746

resistance to the divine honours the imperial cult ascribed to the emperor.41 But it is the final acclamation that bears the most significant imperial imprint, where it acclaims that ‘at the name of Christ every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father’ (2.10–11). Martin has argued that these verses represent a midrashic expansion of Isa. 45.23.42 He denies, however, any imperial connection. Yet the imagination prompted by such universalistic language from Isaiah could only have been made more vivid by political iconography everywhere present in the world of the Philippians that affirmed the worldwide dominion of the emperor. From Augustus onward, imperial coinage regularly represented Victory and the globe, usually standing (see Figure 34 for a Flavian example that reproduces an Augustan type), or sitting

For apotheosis during the Principate, see Taylor, 1931, 142–80; Fears, 1977, 189–252. Representative treatments of Phil. 2.6–11 in the light of apotheosis include Deissmann, 1911, 345–6; Bornhauser, 1938, 1–35; Lohmeyer, 1919, 1–58; Ehrhardt, 1945, 45–51; Knox, 1948, 233–40; Zeller, 1988, 141–76; Seeley, 1994, 49–72; Oakes, 2001, 136, 132; 147–74; Tellbe, 2001, 253–9; Heen, 2004, 125–53; Fantin, 2011, 252–61. For an overview of the earlier literature, see Oakes, 2001, 129–38. 42 Martin, 1997, lxi. 41

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on it.43 Equally ubiquitous both on coins and monuments were images of people on bended knee before an enthroned or triumphant emperor.44 The Column of Trajan, built to celebrate the emperor’s victory over the Dacians, shows what kind of images such description would have invited listeners to imagine (Figure 4). Here the relief represents the mercy of the emperor who is enthroned in triumph even as Dacians below him hail him and plead for mercy. Such imagery communicated a divinely appointed dominion over the diverse peoples and territories under Roman sway. As Peter Oakes argues, Philippians vs. 9–11 potently juxtaposes these imperial claims. The Emperor regarded every knee on earth as bowing to him. Christ gains the submission of every knee on earth…. This supersedes the Emperor’s authority in the Emperor’s sphere and even presumably includes the Emperor’s own knee bowing. Christ goes on to claim a wider sphere of authority: under the earth and its skies.45 It is here that we should place what Wayne Meeks has called Paul’s ‘utopian declaration’ of the overcoming of all divisions of humanity under the rule of Christ.46 Thus Paul writes in Gal. 3.27–8 that for those ‘baptized into Christ’, ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, no longer male and female; for you are all in Christ Jesus.’ Meeks and others rightly relate this to a long utopian hope of the unity of humankind realized through baptismal ritual.47 Meeks connects this with a cosmic myth of androgynous human origins. But this neglects the political resonance that relates to the kind of imperial victory Philippians describes in the passage above, and it is in this civic domain that one ought to place this utopian imagery.48 This has been confirmed recently in the studies of Brigitte Kahl and Davina Lopez who, in separate studies, have taken up the graphic language of Galatians and related it to a long Hellenistic tradition of female images of the conquered appropriated by Roman iconographers to celebrate the overcoming of all divisions for the sake of a transcendent political unity. Max Mühl has captured such ideology as the Roman idea of ‘cosmopolitanism with power’.49 We will return to the evocative imagery of such cosmopolitanism in our discussion of Colossians and Ephesians, and see how instructive it is for recognizing their strategies For example, BMCRE 1.602–4 (plate 14.18–19); 1.504–5 (plate 12.20–21). For an overview, see Kuttner 1995, 69–93. We reserve a more sustained overview of the literature and the imagery for our discussion of the triumphal imagery of Colossians. For numismatic examples, see BMCRE 1.127–30 (plates 1.7–9; 4.16). 45 Oakes, 2007, 149. 46 Meeks, 1977, 209–21. 47 Meeks, 1974, 165–208. 48 For the political tradition from Alexander onward, see Taylor 1981, 420–567. 49 Mühl, 1975, 82. 43 44

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of persuasion. Again, it is remarkable from an imperial perspective, that it is through the death of Christ not the victory of Caesar that the unity of people is achieved. A little bit later in Philippians, Paul returns to political language where he invites the Philippians to stand firm in the light of Jesus’ coming: ‘But our commonwealth is in heaven [to_ poli/teuma e0n ou)ranoi=j u(pa&rxei], and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things unto himself [kata_ th_n e0ne/rgeian tou~ du&nasqai au)to_n kai\ u(pota&cai au)tw|~ ta_ pa&nta]’ (Phil. 3.20–1). Paul could have drawn the terms ‘commonwealth’, ‘Saviour’, ‘Lord’ and ‘subjection’ from many sources, but it is most probable that he chose his terms carefully for greatest effect in communicating to a church in a city with strong Roman associations. Certainly the political language of commonwealth and subjugation belong to the Greco-Roman political imagination that conceived military power as a means of political incorporation. Paul imagines a ‘commonwealth’ marked by concord and peace that comes from an ethical formulation centred in the order revealed in his Gospel: ‘being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Phil. 2.3; cf. 4.2, 7). This is language that draws directly from commonplace language dedicated to the themes of imperial harmony. The urban landscape of Paul’s listeners was covered with statues and inscriptions that celebrated concord. The use of repetition in 2.3 is evocative not merely descriptive and plays on visual associations. Again, as we will see, later letters continue to deploy vocabulary and imagery dedicated to civic harmony to articulate communal ideals. There is here again, however, a strong contrast with its use in the propaganda that celebrated Julio-Claudian rule. There, peace and concord are the result of Roman military triumph and the right honoring of the victorious by the conquered.50 The ‘mind in Christ Jesus’ expresses an opposite logic of the strong emptying themselves for the sake of others and the common good. In Philippians, civic language and imperial imagery have found a new register; the letter inserts itself into a dominant political discourse and in so doing refashions it in the light of eschatological hopes and expectations. On the other hand, if Philippians transposes civic language into a new register, it very much retains an imperial tonality. Paul offers an alternative politeuma, but as Joseph Machal has argued, it is a commonwealth very much oriented to a territorial expansion of the Gospel throughout the world (1.12; 3.21), and idealization of subject peoples, not under Caesar, but Christ.51 Here

Oakes, 2001, 160–6, 172–4; for the association of Pax and Victoria, iconographically, see p. 211. 51 Machal, 2008, 39–90. Machal’s argument goes further to include an analysis of gender in Paul’s letter and how this similarly reflects a form of imperial mimicry of masculine cultural 50

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Pauline christology retains an imperial imprint and requires an image of the breadth of Caesar’s geopolitical rule for its full persuasive force. Paul draws on powers of horror associated with crucifixion in the case of the Philippians passage or with Roman triumph in the Corinthian letters to proclaim a Gospel with striking and vivid imagery. Paul complains in Galatians 3.1 of Galatian believers who have succumbed to a false Gospel that demands the circumcision of Gentile Christ-followers, ‘O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?’ (Gal. 3.1, my emphasis). The passage is a description of the apostle’s own ekphrastic rhetorical practices of persuasion, and we can expect that he deployed similar techniques in Philippi and Corinth. In fact, Paul continually prompts his audiences to place before their eyes pictures of self-sacrifice and humiliation not to glory in a kind of Nietzschean ‘slave morality’, but to articulate a way of being in an alternative commonwealth on earth, under the rulership of its crucified Lord and Saviour. The power of his persuasion lies in its ability to draw on the world of imperial imagery and civic vocabulary, only to revise it so that the visual world that such imagery usually describes now becomes a vehicle for imagining a wholly different order. Paul thus, in de Certeau’s sense of tactics, diverts the dominant order without leaving it. But if he does not leave it, he nevertheless anticipates its ending.

Endings The eschatological focus of the Philippians passage expresses another aspect of Pauline appropriation of imperial imagery for the sake of communal formation and persuasion. The sebasteion at Aphrodisias offers a powerful vision of the Augustan and Julio-Claudian notion of worldwide renewal, a programme that mystified Roman rule by means of representations of emperors living in harmony both with their family members and the gods. We will return to this monument in our later discussion of the Letter to the Colossians. Here, we pause briefly to note its eschatological dimensions. Aphrodisias was well placed for a temple dedicated to the imperial cult because of Augustus’ and his successors’ claim of descent from Venus. The sebasteion bore images of Augustus’ achievements on its south facing side, as well as reliefs of emperors and princes pacifying nations personified as vanquished and terrified women. Additionally, it represented along its north and south sides statues of women representing the nations and peoples Augustus had conquered. The monument is not only a testament

performance. The chapter that follows on the Pastoral Epistles will offer a similar investigation of the appropriation of imperial imagery as a means of communal self-definition.

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to Augustan and Julio-Claudian achievements, but also deeply eschatological. The sun illuminated images of victory on its north side as it rose and set, and communicated a reign without end to the ends of the globe. Aphrodisias is a dramatic example of imperial claims; there were others, for example at Rome, where the Senate erected an Altar of Peace and arranged for the construction of a mausoleum for Augustus and his family. He had his Res gestae, a list of territorial and diplomatic achievements, inscribed on the temple of Roma and Augustus in Asia Minor, at Ancyra and elsewhere. The Augusteum at Psidian Antioch included representations of Augustus’ military successes on land and sea, captive barbarians, victories and despoiled weapons to celebrate the Pax Augustua, as well, again, as an inscription of the Res gestae.52 Temples such as these were an important means for Augustus to solidify, as well as strengthen loyalty to, his rule. The incorporation of the record of his achievements shows Augustus using these monuments as a means of propaganda.53 However, for those without benefit of the iconological programmes at Aphrodisias, Rome, Ancyra or Antioch, Roman mints communicated idealized features of Roman rule with a series of legends and representations of emperors in relation with Rome patron’s deities: Pax, Felicitas, Securitas, Salus, Potestas, Victoria, Concordia, Iustitia and so on. Augustus and his successors found in coinage a means of advertising the divinely appointed basis of their rule as well as the gifts of the gods in worldwide peace and security that came along with it. It is important not to allow such instances of imperial propaganda to over-determine the interpretation of Pauline texts. It is equally important not to ignore them, for attention to such language and ideals allows one to recognize the ways in which Paul inserts many of the elements of his vivid eschatology within the larger domain of Roman rule and an imperial imagination. Again at the centre of such insertions is a paradoxical retelling of stories of dominion and rule that need the larger political backdrop if one is to understand their full force. Paul is aware of Roman claims of stability brought about by military victory. This is obvious from 1 Thess. 5.3 – another letter addressed to a church in a Roman colony, Thessalonica, the Imperial administrative centre of Macedonia where he quotes the slogan ‘peace and security’ [ei0rh&nh kai\ a)-sfa&leia], each of which were represented on Julio-Claudian issues (See Figs 5 and 6), often in direct association with one another, as the mis-enscène for the Second Coming of Jesus as a thief in the night.54 As James Harrison has argued, the motif of Jesus’ coming must be set against the

For description, archaeological study and discussion with photos, see Rubin, 2008, 30–71, 135–39. 53 Kienast, 1982, 202–14, 217 for propaganda. 54 Harrison, 2011, 51–63; also Míguez, 1990, 47–67; 2012, 145–55; Cortés, 1993, 190–7. For Pax and Securitas, see Simon, 1994, 211; other associations include Concordia, Felicitas, Fortuna and Oecumene (210–11). 52

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Figure 5  Reverse of dupondius with the legend SECURITAS AUGUSTI, Mint of Lyons, 64–6 ce, BMCRE 1.212 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Figure 6 Reverse of aureus with the legend PACI AUGUSTAE, Mint of Rome, 41–2 ce, BMCRE 1.6 © Trustees of the British Museum

background of Roman claims to being guarantors of an idealized political order in order to take in the full force of Paul’s claims here that it is not Caesar’s arrival, but Christ’s that is determinative for the Thessalonians.55 Further, Paul places before his listeners’ eyes a series of vivid images to portray Christ’s coming: the sounds of battle (4.16), a thief coming at night (5.3), a mother giving birth (5.3) and drunkenness at night (5.7). Military imagery of the call to battle and the trumpet places before his listeners’ eyes an evocative picture of Christ’s battle and victory. When he exhorts his listeners to ‘put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation’ (1 Thess. 5.8), he has placed his listeners in an apocalyptic imperial situation. As Christina Eschner argues, the ‘wrath’ Paul describes in the following v. 9 (‘God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ’; 5.9) juxtaposes language recognizable in its imperial context of what she calls a Roman ‘Vernichtungskrieg’ against the idolatrous, and Jesus as coming Saviour, or general victorious in battle.56 The use of the term is potent and evokes images of World War II atrocity; Eschner has put her finger on the power of vivid metaphor to place an idea before one’s eyes. In this battle, however, weapons are not physical, but ethical and spiritual (faith, love and hope), Harrison, 2011, 47–71. Eschner, 2010, 1.337–43.

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and radically refashion the practices of warfare. The complex form of vv. 8–9, together with the imperial ‘peace and security’ of v. 3 use vivid use of military language and imperial ideology to represent a coming final battle of Christ with his idolatrous enemies, and also invites the Thessalonians to reorient themselves by remaining faithful to Paul’s Gospel. Pauline apocalyptic finds a no less vivid civic register in 4.17, where the apostle uses the diplomatic language of the reception of a visiting dignitary to depict those alive at Jesus’ advent as going out ‘to meet the Lord in the air’ [ei0ja) pa&nthsin tou~ kuri/ou ei0j a)e/ra], an image he expects his audience to be able to visualize, and with it, no doubt, to experience all the celebration associated with the reception of a dignitary or even emperor.57 Elsewhere, links with political vocabulary and imagery are less dramatic, but no less instructive for recognizing ways in which Paul ‘makes do’ with images and language drawn from his political world. The other passage where Paul outlines the events of the Second Coming, 1 Cor. 15.20–8, 51–7 is imbued with recognizably imperial imagery and vocabulary. Here again Paul writes for believers in an imperial colony who would have been very familiar with the forms of Augustan eschatology associated with a vision of Roman rule as the arrival of peace amongst humans and the gods. In the case of 1 Cor. 15.23–8 Paul’s eschatology includes a rehearsal of the stages in which all things are put under subjection first to Christ and finally to God. The use of biblical imagery here is apparent, of course (for example, 15.27; Ps. 110.1; Ps. 8.6), but as in the case of the imagery of every knee bowing in Phil. 2.10–11, such description strikingly resembles commonplace imperial iconography that represents an enthroned emperor with the vanquished at his feet. Later in 15.55–7 (‘Death is swallowed up in victory [ni=koj]; O death where is your victory [to_ ni=koj]? O death, where is your sting?’), Paul echoes Hos. 13.14 (‘O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?’), as well as Isa. 25.8 (‘He will swallow up death forever’). The change of ‘plagues’ and ‘destruction’ to ‘victory’ is notable in a passage that not only has depicted all things as being subject to God, but also ends in an acclamation to God ‘who gives us the victory [to_ ni=koj] through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (15.57). Paul’s argument is not here an assault on the Roman Empire, but rather a celebration of the vanquishing of death. Nevertheless, his representation of God’s victory depends on the emotional forcefulness of a vivid picture of imperial triumph: Jesus will deliver ‘the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power’ [pa~san a)rxh_n kai\ pa~san e0cousi/an kai\ du&namin] (1 Cor. 15.24). In representing the abolition of death it is the language of imperial For treatments, see Peterson, 1930, 682–702; Heath, 2009, 18–20; Harrison, 2011, 59–61; Cosby, 1994, 18–20. Cosby, 20–34 rejects this interpretation because of the absence of specific features of the diplomatic arrival and the use of a)pa&nthsin in an apocalyptic passage. Paul, however, is more evocative than precise. A hybrid understanding of Jesus’ coming borrows from one discourse and translates it into another with the help of an apocalyptic narrative.

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victory he invokes, and there is little doubt that Paul means to include the political systems of his day amongst the powers. Such an acclamation as a means of rhetorical persuasion has as its chief target neither Hebrew Bible citation, nor – in the first instance – a claim against the Roman Empire, but the awakening of emotions associated with imagination. Here Paul draws on images and ideas prevalent in the discourse of imperial rule together with the associations that come with triumph, and invites his audience to imagine and to experience the celebration of the coming triumph of God through Christ. Under the Principate, especially Augustus, Victory as iconographical motif was so widely spread that it became synonymous with the emperor himself and the age of renewal of his coming had inaugurated.58 Indeed, as Zanker has argued, the ubiquity as Victory iconographically assured its private internalization. Its widespread presence in households, ranging from oil lamps to ceiling frescos testifies to this internalization. Absorption into households and into Paul reconfigures the association so that the age of peace Victory brings is not the triumph of Caesar over far flung territories and peoples, but that of Christ over death and hostile cosmic powers, especially those associated with the power of Sin and Death.

The Death for Others Paul’s treatment in Rom. 5.1–11 of the peace of God that comes through Christ also works with political language and ideals associated with imperial rule. Here Paul celebrates Christ as the peace of reconciliation between God and those who have been freed from the dominion of death and sin. ‘Therefore, since we are rightwised by faith, we have peace [ei0rh&nhn] with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’59 Christina Eschner has shown how this passage, when understood in the larger context of Paul’s argument from Rom. 1.16 onward, echoes motifs of wrath associated with the ideology of Roman peace. As a treatment of divine wrath against the unrighteous (1.18–32) as well as those who arrogantly boast of possession of the Law but fail to obey it (2.1–29), Paul invokes an understanding of God as a terror to those without the faith of Christ. She argues that the Roman threat of violence against the disobedient furnishes an important backdrop for understanding how Paul’s listeners would have heard his larger apocalyptic narrative of the Saviour who comes as judge. Unlike the apocalyptic developments of 1 Thess. 5. 8–9, however, where divine Balty, 1997, 268. Favouring here the indicative e1xomen over the subjunctive e1xwmen.The argument developed here holds in either instance. If the subjunctive is preferred, as Jewett has shown (2007, 344, 348), the passage retains a political focus. Paul’s Gospel serves as an alternative to the imperial order of civic life and politics, through the overcoming of boastful enmity for the sake of cooperation.

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wrath is emphasized, here in Romans it is reconciliation that comes to the fore. Romans holds up the promise of reconciliation with those it has cast as unrighteous. In distinction to the Roman ideology of violence where the impious are conquered and vanquished by the divinely established Romans, Paul invokes the image of the Son who gives his life for the ungodly (5.6–9).60 There is no war to win peace, but a death for all. Jesus, though ‘righteous’, dies for ‘sinners’ (5.8). Salvation from the wrath of God is not through obedience to laws and decrees, nor a pacifying war or threat of violence, but through the reconciling death of Jesus (5.8–9). Eschner’s analysis represents a groundbreaking application of the understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion as noble death. However it tends toward a too abstract formulation. To write of wrath, of the power of sin and death, and terror is to persuade by placing vivid pictures before listeners’ eyes. Unlike 1 Thess. where the emphasis falls on sudden and swift apocalyptic arrival and judgment, in Romans Paul places before his listeners’ eyes the image of self-sacrifice. Jesus gave himself unto death for others ‘while we were enemies’ (Rom. 5.10). Eschner demonstrates that we must understand Paul’s language of Christ ‘dying for’ as a revision of notions both of the self-sacrifice of the virtuous, of rulers or generals for a citystate or for friends, as well as rituals of sacrifice associated with an end to enmity between estranged parties, especially through the execution of the defeated.61 What Paul invites his listeners to imagine can be seen in several Pompeiian frescos associated with the noble death of the innocent for the guilty. These frescos are representative of depictions that were widespread across the Roman Empire.62 One fresco, based on a scene from Euripides’ play, Iphigenia in Aulis, depicts Iphigenia being taken away after volunteering to sacrifice herself on behalf of her father Agamemnon, who has been sentenced to death for killing Diana’s stag. He stands pensively to the right while Iphigenia’s mother, Clytamnestra weeps (see Plate 2). Other frescos represented the death of Alcestus for her husband Admetus.63 In Euripedes’ version of the story, she volunteers to die for Admetus after he fails properly to sacrifice to Artemis. Paul’s model of reconciliation inserts itself into such notions of the noble death. Christ dies for enemies, and gives himself though without fault to die for sinners, that they might be free from the bondage of sin and death. The strong giving himself for the weak, the righteous for the sinner, invokes again the reversal of normal expectations of the vanquished seeking reconciliation with the triumphant. Paul’s

For Roman notions of peace as pacification, see Rubin, 1984, 21–40; Mazel, 1984, 1–20; Weinstock, 1960, 44–58. 61 Eschner, 2010, 1.274–360, at 291–5, 334–7; also Seeley, 1990, 83–141; Balch, 2008, 84–108, considers the emotion-laden elements of iconographical treatments as a resource for Paul’s treatment of Jesus’ death for others. 62 Hahil and Linant de Bellefonds, 1990, 719–22. 63 For a list, see Surace, 1981, 541, with iconographical examples. 60

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paradoxical motif of reconciliation reverses this honorific code and as such belongs to the other paradoxical notions of a defeat as triumph explored above. The peace that Jesus offers is not then the violent peace of Rome, but a peace based on grace and divine self-giving. Here, again, iconography is important. The force of the reversal Paul invokes gains its force from a clear view Paul can assume his listeners know from the signs of imperial presence all around them: pictures of the violent pacification of Rome’s enemies as a sign of the blessing of the gods. Paul’s later New Testament interpreters continue to deploy language relating to the reconciliation and pacification of enemies even as they transform a future-dominated Pauline eschatology to a more realized one. These authors draw on Roman imperial victory motifs and continue to develop the paradoxes of their predecessor, but in a more ecclesiological direction. As we will see, as they promote communal ideals they draw from a rich repertoire of metaphors and concepts to place pictures of ideally functioning communities before their listeners’ eyes.

Reversals The strong given for the weak, the rich for the poor, the righteous for the unrighteous has as its backdrop benefaction or euergetism. In Paul’s GrecoRoman world, elites or those with enough resources to be patrons donated capital or other forms of material wealth and in return for their gifts they received honour.64 What Géza Alföldy describes as the ‘the epigraphic culture’ of the Greco-Roman world was the public acknowledgement through inscriptions of donations and the means of according honour.65 Recorded honours in return for gifts penetrated through all of civic life, from the benefactions of elites for their cities to the patronage of the wealthy for the many local associations and collegia that gathered together trades people as well as devotees of religious cults. Paul’s representation of ideal community life draws attention to benefaction and the according of honours, but, as in the case of the aspects of imperial and civic life discussed above, not without some surprising reversals. In his discussion of spiritual gifts in 1 Cor. 12, Paul famously adopts the well-worn trope of the body politic as analogy for the church (12.12–27). Personifications of the citizen body or deities such as Concordia or Fortuna were a regular feature of civic art in the cities of the Roman Empire. The statues and reliefs that portrayed deities represent perfectly proportioned

Veyne, 1990, 131–56; also, Schmitt Pantel, 1997, 359–420, for the development of euergetism in the Hellenistic world and its relation to social patterns of exchange in earlier periods. 65 Alföldy, 1991, 289–324. 64

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Figure 7 Livia as Concordia, Pompeii (first century Glyptotek, Copenhagen

ce),

Nys Calrsberg

figures which are properly dressed and whose faces represent all the ideals of Roman self-control, modesty and sobriety. Such visual representation belongs to an elite view of the aristocratic ruling class as displaying a physiognomy that represents the virtuous life oriented to an ethical Golden Mean.66 A Pompeiian statue of Livia as Concordia (see Figure 7), for example, illustrates the union of virtue, ideal form and Augustan rule, and thus portrays sculpturally the harmony of the civic order.67. Paul’s use of the properly functioning body as analogy for the body of Christ is in the context of this visual culture unsurprising. However, when he turns to portray ‘the weaker’ [a)sqene/stera], ‘less honourable’ [a)timo&tera] and ‘indescent parts’ [a)sxh&mona] as given ‘ far greater honour’[timh_n perissote/ran] (vv. 22–3), he vividly revises the prevailing commonplace in a new way. In doing so, he reverses normal indices of honour and shame: ‘God has so composed the body, giving the far greater honour to the inferior See especially Ps-Aristotle, Phgn. 810a14–814b8 and the discussion of Martin 1995, 35–7, which takes up this and related texts as ideological products of elites political culture. 67 For the attribution and for discussion of imperial wives, as well as the imperial household generally, represented as Concordia, see Hölscher, 1990, 493–8; for images 5.2, 332–40. 66

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part [tw|~ u(steroume/nw| perissote/ran dou_j timh&n], that there may be no discord in the body, but that members may have the same care for one another’ (12.24–5). Contemporary treatment of Paul’s ideal of the church as ‘a community of equals’ fails to recognize the vivid picture Paul invites his listeners to imagine. As Dale Martin argues, Paul’s argument is not … a compensatory move on Paul’s part, by means of which those of lower status are to be compensated for their low position by a benefaction of honour. Rather, his rhetoric pushes for an actual reversal of the normal, “this-worldly” attribution of honor and status. The lower is made higher, and the higher lower.68 Paul takes a recurring visual experience in the civic world of his listeners and creates a picture that inverts a traditional visual representation of honour. He inverts the normal beauty/honour/virtue association by privileging an alternative ugly/dishonourable association. His point here is not to replace one honour code with another, but through reversal to destabilize all prevailing honour codes that in Paul’s eyes have brought division and discord to the Corinthian church. In his teachings concerning the Jerusalem Collection, that is, the offering of the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem, described in Gal. 2.10, Paul presents a further revision of duties and obligations associated with the exchange of material gifts and honours. Much attention has been given to the presence in the uncontested letters of technical terms, virtues and obligations associated with benefaction.69 Here we focus on 2 Cor. 8–9, which is possibly a fragment of a letter dedicated to increasing the size of the collection in Achaea. In these chapters, Paul’s does not frame his appeal for Jerusalem according to normal euergistic rituals and gifts and honours. Greco-Roman euergetism or benefaction was centred on an asymmetrical system of reciprocal exchange where the wealthy gave gifts in return for honours. Paul’s collection does not focus on personal gifts in exchange for honours. Rather, he invites the various groups of Christ followers to an act of solidarity with the impoverished believers in Jerusalem with the full expectation that should they be in similar need, those whom they have assisted will in turn assist them. He describes the collection as a ‘fellowship of service’ [h9 koinwni/a th~j diakoni/aj] (8.4). Steven Friesen has related this collection to the sharing of resources of Christ followers who are not wealthy, but are living with low levels of income just above or at subsistence.70 The collection was, then, not Martin, 1995, 96. Danker, 1982; Joubert, 2000; Downs, 2008; Harrison, 2003, 289–32. For the broader Hellenistic backdrop, centred in philotimia and philanthropia, see Schmitt Pantel, 1997, 206–8. 70 Friesen, 2010, 45–54 68 69

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a replication of patronage or euergetism. Rather it was ‘an attempt by Paul to promote financial redistribution among poor people, Gentile and Jewish, in the assemblies of the eastern Mediterranean. It contradicted the normal expectations of patronage and replaced them with an economy of voluntary redistribution among the saints.’71 The Corinthian believers are to follow the example of the Macedonian believers who have given as they have been able from their poverty, not their wealth (8.2–3). Paul imagines a reciprocal arrangement wherein those with resources benefit those in need as an expression of the Gospel (vv. 13–15). Paul revises cultural codes of exchange of material capital and the symbolic capital of honours, by exhorting Christ followers, in imitation of Christ, to show one another love (a0ga/ph; xa/rij; v. 14). Such love is to imitate the abundance that God’s graciousness provides believers, so that ‘you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work’ (9.8). This motif of love functions differently from euergistic codes because it implies a relationship of intimacy of giver and recipient. This is why Paul turns to fictive familial imagery to describe his co-workers in the collection: the brother ‘who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the Gospel’ (8.18), and later (v. 22) ‘our brother whom we have often tested and found earnest in many matters.’ In a similar vein, Sze-kar Wan has drawn attention to the breaking down of ethnic boundaries of the collection. Gentiles care for the Jewish poor in Jerusalem and the poor there, in turn, pray for the Gentiles. There is a solidarity then that transcends not only economic practices of benefaction, but also expresses the unity of Jews and Gentiles under Paul’s Gospel. He describes the collection as an ‘anti-colonial act’. That is, instead of promoting a model of patronage that preserves the asymmetrical social relationships of patron and client, Paul’s ‘collection symbolized an emerging universalizing society that came with its own economic principles and bases for structuring life in society.’ Wan argues that Paul saw the Jerusalem collection as ‘a symbol of resistance and subversion, and it was at heart an anti-imperial and anti-hegemonic protest.’72 This conclusion exceeds the bounds of the evidence, since Paul nowhere contrasts his collection with Roman imperial economics. Still, the effect of the collection is to overcome not just economic but also socio-religious and ethnic distinctions in a way that goes beyond patterns of social exchange customarily associated with benefaction. As in the case of the body image of 1 Cor. 12, in 2 Cor. 8–9 Paul places before his listeners’ eyes vivid images of thanksgiving and joyful giving. The Macedonians gave ‘from their deepest poverty’ [h( kata_ ba&qouj ptwxei/a] (8.2). The Macedonians not only have given liberally, but they

Friesen, 2010, 51. Wan, 2000, 196.

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were ‘begging us earnestly [meta_ pollh~j paraklh&sewj deo&menoi h(mw~n] for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints’ (8.4). With the help of assonance, he places before Corinthian eyes a picture of joyous worship for their support, as though it were already happening: ‘You will be enriched in every way for great generosity [e0n panti\ ploutizo&menoi ei0j pa~san a(plo&thta], which through us will produce thanksgiving to God; for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God’ (9.11–12). In turn, the Christ followers in Jerusalem not only glorify God for the collection, ‘they long for you and pray for you [deh&sei u(pe\r u(mw~n e0pipoqou&ntwn u(ma~j] because of the superabundant grace [(perba&llousan xa&rin] in you’ (v. 14). Indeed, the chapter concludes with an act of thanksgiving: ‘Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift’ (9.15). Elsewhere in Rom. 15.15–16, Paul again deploys vivid cultic language to represent himself as ‘a priest of Christ Jesus to the gentiles’ [leitourgo_n Xristou= 0Ihsou~ ei0j ta_ e1qnh] and asks that the Roman Christ followers pray ‘that the offering of the Gentiles, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, might be acceptable’ [prosfora_ tw~n e0qnw~n eu)pro&sdektoj, h(giasme/nh e0n pneu&mati a(gi/w|.]. Paul asks his listeners to imagine Jesus’ crucifixion as a means by which Jesus though rich became poor, that by his poverty the Corinthians might become rich (v. 9). ‘Those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly; those who sow bountifully will also reap bountifully’ (8.6). ‘He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness’ (v.10). In the agrarian world of the listeners again images are vivid. In drawing on imperial imagery and language for the sake of persuasion, and in revising the practices of benefaction with the help of metaphor and vivid speech, Paul both draws upon and reconfigures his listeners’ visual culture. The apostle communicates his Gospel with the help of political vocabulary and civic imagination. The result is a form of religious discourse that exemplifies hybridity and entanglement; Paul makes do in the Roman Empire. Like other cultures under Rome’s dominion, which adapted its images for their own religious purposes, Paul borrows from the visual world he shares with his listeners and similarly revises it for his own uses. Others cast their images in stone, metal and wood.73 Paul created his through imagination. This left the Pauline Christ followers with a powerful, indeed universalizing, way of expressing belief and practice. The contested letters, Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals, attest to a continuing practice of using imperial image and vocabulary for the sake of persuasion. The writers of these later letters invited their listeners to picture Paul afresh and to listen to him speak again – vividly – to their own context and concerns. Paul’s earlier letters offered a way both of speaking and of seeing that could be redeployed for a later generation of followers. It is to this Paul, both picturing and pictured, that we turn.

Moon, 1996, 283–317; Webster, 1997, 165–84; 2003, 24–51.

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2 Colossians: Not Barbarian or Scythian, Christ All in All

Colossians is a letter charged with imperial picture language. It deploys vivid imagery associated with imperial victory, to persuade Christ followers in Colossae, Hierapolis and Laodicea to avoid devotion to any cosmic powers save that of the raised Son, Jesus, who is enthroned at the right hand of God. In baptism the faithful share his victory. From it, and consonant with the politics associated with Roman triumph, issue a whole new set of social relationships oriented around themes of reconciliation through the subjugation and pacification of enemies. Colossians represents those relationships by drawing on images and metaphors at home in GrecoRoman literature dedicated to civic concord and harmony. In keeping with this overall deployment of political language and themes, Paul represents his Gospel as a universal message of good news of reconciliation to once estranged people. Now as a consequence of this Gospel ‘there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave or free, barbarian, Scythian, slave free but Christ is all in all’ (Col. 3.11). Christ is the triumphator who rules the cosmos and the world.

Letter from a Roman Jail ‘Remember my chains’ [mnhmoneu/ete mou twn desmwn] (Col. 4.18). Paul’s last words in Colossians offer its listeners a vivid picture that speaks a thousand words. The letter places its author in an imperial jail and thereby casts before its audience a potent memory of Paul in Empire. Such memory locates Paul and his audience in an imperial situation. Colossians’ concluding exhortation has produced varying interpretations. Some use it to determine the date of Colossians by assessing which of Paul’s many imprisonments the verse indicates.1 Those who contest Lightfoot, 1875, 26–41; Murphy-O’Connor, 2008, 201–2, 225–31.

1

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Pauline authorship interpret it as a shorthand for all that the apostle did for the community in establishing it, or even as part of an eschatological teaching, that in Paul’s chains the Colossians are to recognize themselves as both belonging to an old order passing away and a new order that is to come.2 Others argue that the image of the suffering apostle, both here and elsewhere in the contested corpus, is an exhortation to audiences to continue the missionary work amongst the Gentiles Paul began, but is no longer present to lead.3 Another commentator observes that it serves a rhetorical aim of winning authority for the apostle’s message, by reminding its audience how he suffered to deliver it.4 Philip Esler furnishes a more compelling account. In an essay concerning the social construction of memory and the role of remembering Paul as prisoner both in Colossians and the later contested corpus (passages we will take up in later chapters), Esler argues that the evocation of Paul’s imprisonment was used to invite a second generation of Christ followers to frame their lives by way of shared social memory.5 As we will see, that shared social memory is constructed with the help of vivid imperial imagery. Esler builds on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, who describes the role of collective memory in securing group and individual identity.6 For Halbwachs, social memory is a communal act of creating a shared past that makes possible a configuration of a group’s past, present and future for the sake of contemporary social needs and challenges. Esler’s analysis extends beyond Halbwachs’ theorization, to explore the mechanisms by which individual memories become communal ones, and to show how autobiographical memory transforms into social self-construction. S. F. Larsen’s social psychological studies, for example, have shown how ‘memories’ of events long before one is born become part of the configuration of the self. Larsen describes this as a move from episodic memory to narrative memory – from historical biography to a self-narration that draws on the events of another life to construct a self in the present.7 The memory of Paul’s imprisonment as a collective memory represents this social process of moving from a biographical episode from an esteemed founder into a narrative self-configuration in the Colossians’ present. Esler argues that the letter’s exhortation to remember Paul’s fetters was a means whereby Pauline Christ followers might make sense of a regular recurrence of local harassment and persecution. ‘Evoking the image of his identity linked to suffering, and imprisonment, they were invoking

Lohse, 1971, 177; Boer, 1980, 368. MacDonald, 2000, 186–7; Boer, 1980, 369; similarly Meade, 1986, 128 (with reference to 2 Tim. 3.10 and 1.8). 4 Sumney, 2008, 282. 5 Esler, 2007, 232–58. 6 Halbwachs, 1992, 37–53. 7 Larsen, 1992, 60–1; Esler, 2007, 246–7. 2 3

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theirs.’8 Thus, the imprisonment that was a part of the concluding episode of the apostle’s life became a source for the social construction of locally harassed and persecuted Christ followers in the generation following Paul’s death. His imprisonment became the narration of their own suffering; episodic autobiographical memory told a communal story. Suffering and imprisonment are certainly central in Paul’s narrative self-construction both in the uncontested and contested Pauline corpus, but it is not evident that the social construction of the memory of Paul in Colossians belongs to a history of shared suffering.9 In Colossians there is no reference to suffering or harassment on the part of the Christ followers.10 To assume the local harassment and persecution of second-generation Christ followers is to risk a circularity. The rhetorical situation that Colossians presumes is not one of persecution and harassment, but of participation in the benefits of the counter-imperial rule of the enthroned Christ. For the heart of Colossians is not a message of comfort in the face of suffering, but a polemic against those who would supplement the rituals and beliefs of the Christ followers with other practices that Paul, the implied author, considers false, demeaning and improper (Col. 2.8–23). Colossians’ chief concern is that its listeners not abase themselves through religious devotion to cosmic powers, but that they understand themselves, through their incorporation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, as co-rulers with Christ above all powers. Autobiographical description of the apostle’s imprisonment is a key strategy in persuading the Colossians of this view. Indeed, it helps to form the chief perspective for listeners to interpret the world around them.11 Paul’s imprisonment invites the Colossians to consider the apostle’s suffering as an imitation of Christ and his dedication to Christ followers. This is what Paul means when he speaks of his completing ‘what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church’ (Col. 1.24).12 But, more critically, to remember Paul’s chains is to inscribe both implied author and audience in a rhetorically charged imperial situation. Colossians places both Paul’s imprisonment and Christ’s afflictions in a larger narrative configuration of Jesus’ death as an imperial victory (2.15). This is not without irony, as I will show. Paul Connerton, in a study of social memory, argues that the way groups remember – the recollections of the past they collectively pass on to others in the acts of memory – helps to legitimate the social world in

Esler, 2007, 253. Kelhoffer, 2010. 10 Kelhoffer, 2010, 73–4. 11 For another approach to Colossians formulation of Paul and narrative world, although without attention to imperial situation, see Wilson, 1997, 183–218. 12 Similarly, Kelhoffer, 2010, 77. 8 9

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which memory recurs. ‘Images of the past commonly legitimate a present social order.’13 Paul’s narrative of imprisonment for Christ is part of the larger story Colossians urges its listeners to remember, that in baptism they have been bound with Christ in a ritual of dying and rising with him (Col. 2.11–13). Enthroned with Christ in his resurrection, they share his dominion over all principalities and powers. Even as Paul’s chains remind listeners of his sufferings for the sake of the Gospel, so the Colossians remember that in baptism they have been buried with Christ (2.12), and that, on account of their baptism, they must continue to put to death ‘what is earthly’ (3.5). By reminding its audience of his chains, the letter binds both author and audience into a shared past established by the death, resurrection and enthronement of Christ, a past made active by means of a continuing putting to death of the self in the present (3.5). Colossians continues with baptismal imagery by invoking Pauline language of putting on and putting off dress. It reminds its listeners that by putting to death what is earthly they remember that they have ‘put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature’ (3.10). To that old nature belongs the dominion of the cosmic powers that once ruled Paul’s Christ followers. To submit to them again is to exchange their freedom for bondage. Connerton argues that ritual performance is a chief means of creating social memory and a shared present.14 In Colossians, the image of putting on and putting off clothing may refer to the literal stripping and re-robing we know from later sources to be a key component to Christian baptism.15 Paul builds on this foundational ritual by reminding his listeners of other ritual performances: ‘teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God’ (3.16). Performative ritual creates a social memory of death and new life, embodied in the renunciation of a polytheistic past (2.20), in dedication to a ritually recreated new life as a Christ follower. To remember Paul’s chains is to remember a present reality and purpose, that one has died in order to rise, and in rising to live a new ethical reality that includes renouncing the past in favour of a new present reality. The institutional reality that this remembered past serves to legitimate is outlined in part by the Colossian Household Rule (3.18–4.1), a hierarchical means of organizing the social life of the community of believers.16 The key factor in linking the imagery of dying and rising to the Colossian Household rule is

Connerton, 1989, 3. Connerton, 1989, 41–71. 15 For discussion of the metaphor of putting on and off and its connections to ritual creation of identity in the Pauline corpus with further literature, see Kim, 2004, 98–101, as well as 150–75 for the Colossian evidence. 16 For an overview and comparison of the Colossian Household Code with similar formulations of household duties in Greco-Roman and Jewish literature of the early Common Era, see Crouch, 1972. 13 14

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not to erect a top-down ethical code centred in domination and submission, but to urge reciprocity centred on ideals of love and justice. Wives obey and husbands love (3.18–19); children obey and parents do not frustrate (vv. 20–1); slaves obey (3.22) and masters treat justly and equitably (to\ dkaion ka th\n so/thta – 4.1). This serves the main purpose of recalling the death and the resurrection of Christ, namely that the audience is to ‘put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (3.14). To remember Paul’s chains then belongs to the larger ethic of death and new life, a way of renunciation of the past and a recreation of the present erected by Paul through a commemoration of baptism, and invocations to practice rituals that will enable the self to emerge through the practices of traditional duties associated with the Household Codes, but reconfigured now by reciprocal love, honour and respect.

Victory in the Heavens Imperial language and metaphor are central to the case Paul makes to persuade his audiences to cease from competing ritual practices dedicated to cosmic powers. The letter deploys a narrative of victory and subjugation to persuade its audiences to resist the beliefs and practices the author considers to be ‘empty deceit’ (2.8). To end the kinds of religious devotion to principalities and powers described in Col. 2.16–23, Paul reminds his listeners that these powers were created through and for the pre-incarnate Son (1.16). He invites them to imagine a ‘vertical’ cosmic order in which the raised and enthroned Jesus reigns above all creation. Colossians represents Jesus’ death as a victory over these same principalities and powers (2.15). Resonant with uncontested Paul’s understanding of baptism, as a ritual by means of which estranged Gentiles die the death of Christ and enjoy even now the fruits of his resurrection (for example, Rom. 6.3–5), Colossians presents baptism as a ritual of transfer out of the kingdom of the principalities and powers – the ‘dominion of darkness’ – to that of God’s ‘beloved Son’ (Col. 1.13). This polemical strategy accounts for Colossian’s transformation of pre-existing Pauline eschatology. In the uncontested corpus resurrection is oriented to the future, but in Colossians the emphasis is on an action already complete.17 ‘Since then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God’

Colossians does of course still retain a futurist eschatology inherited from the uncontested Paul – thus, Col. 3.4. But whereas for the earlier literature future expectation orients belief and practice in the present, in Colossians it is has all but lost its function in positioning Christ followers in anticipation of an order about to break in.

17

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(3.1).18 The shift in emphasis is to convince hearers that because in baptism they have already been raised with Christ, it is inappropriate to serve those principalities and powers vanquished by Christ on the cross. They are thus not below the principalities and powers, but as beneficiaries of Christ’s resurrection, they reign with Christ as co-regents above them. Even as Colossians’ Christology is cosmic, so is its ecclesiology. Again a visual metaphor dominates: Christ is the head of the resurrected body, which is the body of Christ, the church (1.18, 24). As he is ‘the head of all rule and authority’ (2.10), his body, the church, reigns alongside him. To put on the body of Christ thus indicates a ritualistic ascent in resurrection and the embrace of a new set of relationships steeped in a new ethos of love (3.12–17), and to put off the old self means to leave behind a life of the lower regions (2.20–2; 3.9–10). This secures for the hearers of Colossians a pronounced verticality: they are to set their minds on things above (3.2), the elemental spirits of the universe and their associated vices belong to what is below and left behind. And perhaps most important of all, the Household Code (3.18–4.1) establishes as the organizing principle of this new life of co-rulership with the raised Christ the right performance of duties arranged vertically: Husbands, wives, children, slaves, masters. ‘Wives be subject to your husbands’ (Col. 3.18). However much the Colossian Household Rule encourages mutual relationships (husbands for example are to love their wives – 3.19), the hierarchical metaphor of above and below dominates and echoes that of the language of head and body that dominates Colossians. The linchpin of Paul’s argument is the victory that Christ brings his followers and the set of social relations and ethics that go along with it. At the heart of his letter is a theology that makes the death of Jesus a military victory over cosmic powers, through which they have been pacified and reconciled. ‘He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing [qriambeu&saj] over them in it [i.e. the cross]’ (Col. 2.15). Here, like Paul in the Corinthian correspondence where we saw Paul invoke a similar image (see Figure 1), the author seeks to persuade listeners by the use of use vivid imagery, again, to place before their eyes a picture of the procession of the vanquished in military triumph. Triumph is the major key in which Paul composes his letter and the benefits of Christ’s triumphal rule are the spoils the apostle promises his audience. Scholars have of course noticed that this is an imperial metaphor.19 Few, however, have observed the ways in which such a highly charged image of Roman rule belongs with the other imperial vocabulary and imagery of the letter as a whole, and especially how this language evokes a whole series of visual

Interpreting conditional ei0 as a first class conditional, or as a statement with reference to a present reality (BDB 189 §372; Ledgerwood 1991, 99–118) and whose outcome is assumed. 19 Pre-eminently Carr, 1981, 49–52, 58–66, and Yates, 1991, 573–91; also Pokorny, 1991, 141; Breytenbach, 2010, 187–205; Kreitzer, 1996, 123–44; Tanner, 1980, 377–82. 18

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associations.20 Colossians describes the death of Christ as a triumph over ‘principalities and powers’ (ta_j a)rxa_j kai\ ta_j e0cousi/aj) and in doing so it recalls the Son’s creation of all things in heaven and earth: ‘visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or prinicipalities or authorities’ (ta_ o(rata_ kai\ ta_ a)o&rata, ei1te qro&noi ei1te kurio&thtej ei1te a)rxai\ ei1te e0cousi/ai). These then comprise ‘the elemental spirits of the universe’ (ta_ stoixei=a tou~ ko&smou – 2.8, 20) to which Colossians urges its audience not to submit.21 The image of triumph in Col. 2.15 develops the political language introduced earlier in the letter, in the so-called Christ Hymn of Col. 1.15–20. Here again the political language has been largely passed over in traditional exegetical treatments of the passage.22 After describing creation of the thrones, lords, principalities and authorities by Christ (1.16), the hymn states that he has ‘reconciled’ (a)pokatalla&cai) all things (1.20, 22) and ‘made peace’ (ei0rhnopoih&saj – 1.20) by his crucifixion. The verbs a)pokatalla&ssein (‘to reconcile’) and ei0rhnopoiei=n (‘to make peace’), and their cognates, have a strong imperial political valence. The former term, with the prefix a)po- appears only once in Greek, here in Colossians, but its cognates diallalassein/ katalassein are at home in Greco-Roman literature in ancient diplomatic and political contexts to describe the end of hostility and the start of diplomatic relations.23 This is the meaning it has elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, in Rom. 5.10 and 2 Cor. 5.17–20, the latter passage

For a notable exception, Walsh and Keesmaat, 2004, 49–64; the following discussion draws from and builds upon Maier, 2005a, 323–49 and 2005b, 385–406. 21 Both Carr, 1981, 61–6 and Yates, 1991, 579–80, basing their interpretation of the description of the Roman Triumph by Versnel, 1970, have argued that the principalities and powers of Col. 1.15 and 2.15 should not be conflated with the elemental spirits of 2.8, 20, since, they argue, the victory reference of 2.15 does not describe a triumph over the principalities, but rather their presence in a joyous victory procession to acclaim Christ’s victory. Col. 1.20 however links Jesus’ reconciling death with the preceding verses, and specifically the ‘principalities and powers’ with ‘all things in heaven’. There is not then sufficient warrant to parse the ‘elemental spirits’ from other cosmic powers. It is indeed the case that the conquered preceded the victor in the imperial Triumph, but the metaphor should not be pressed too literally (Beard, 2007, 124–8). The context speaks not of a joyous procession, but the cancelling of a slave-debt (2.14) and the overcoming of enmity and hostility. Further, the proposal of Breytenbach, 2010, 201–2, and Hafemann, 1986, 33–9, with reference to 2 Cor. 2.14–16a, where similar exegetical debates have arisen, is useful here: namely that the triumph is not at the same time as the defeat, but rather follows it as a celebration. Hence the verse means that Christ celebrated a triumph after defeating the principalities and powers by means of/with the cross (taking the dative prepositional phrase e0n au0tw| as instrumental (BDB §195). 22 Overviews of the literature show no treatment of this aspect; see, for example, Helyer, 1992, 51–67; Benoit, 1975, 226–63; Francis and Meeks, 1979. This is not to deny other similarities with other literature as well, specifically Jewish texts, for which see Arnold, 1996, 158–94; Dunn, 1996, 92–3. My intent is draw intention to the imperial aspects of the language and imagery. 23 For an encyclopaedic exploration of the semantic range of this terminology and its political uses and contexts, see Breytenbach, 1989, 68–187, as well as Porter, 1994; for criticism, Bash, 1997, 29–32, who nevertheless affirms the political use of the vocabulary. 20

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where Paul also describes himself specifically as an ambassador.24 Col. 1.20, 22 invokes the language of political diplomacy but shifts the earlier Pauline usage toward the metaphor of imperial victory over once hostile enemies. The reconciliation Colossians describes comes about through subjugation. Their pacification concludes with an image of the triumph of Christ (2.15). In using this vivid metaphor, Paul invited his listeners to imagine a victory procession in which the principalities and powers were led as bound captives. This interpretation is confirmed by the presence of the second term directly associated with victory, ei0rhnopoih&saj, used in 1.20 to describe the means of reconciliation. The Roman theology of imperial victory was one of the pacification (or threat of pacification) of enemies and conquered peoples.25 Ei0rhnopoiei=n (‘to make peace’), expresses this notion of imperial pacification, both on a civic level, but more importantly with reference to Colossians, on a cosmic level as well. It was so widely used to describe Roman rule that by the time of the emperor Commodus it had become an imperial title.26 In the theology of victory developed from the Augustan period onward, the peace Rome (pax Romana) brings mirrors the peace of the gods (pax deum).27 The dependence of earthly on heavenly concord is a commonplace in Greco-Roman, as well as Near Eastern religion.28 In the Lycus and upper Menander Valley of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis in the second half of the first century, Colossians deployed it to show how the pacification of principalities and powers by the incarnate Son, Jesus, brought about a whole new order of peace and concord in his body the church. The difference between Roman pacification and the one envisioned by Col. 1.20 is that, in the latter instance, peace comes about through the death of Jesus, not the slaying of enemies. This same idea occurs in the vivid metaphor of Jesus’ triumph in 2.15, where the cross is the site where Jesus has boldly displayed the principalites and powers, and, having subjugated them, now leads them at triumphator. When Paul used these metaphors to persuade his listeners to leave off participation in devotion to lower cosmic powers, the vivid language of pacification and reconciliation through subjugation would have prompted mental images of imperial victory, formed from daily visual experiences of the listeners’ urban world. Exegetical treatments of Colossians pass over the

Breytenbach, 1989, 73, 79, 191–220; Eschner 2010, 321–35. Fears, 1981, 740–52, 804–25; also with further reference to the imperial visual culture of victory, Kuttner, 1995, 86–93. 26 See Windisch, 1925, 240–60, for what remains a thorough discussion. 27 For their relationship in imperial ideology, see Zanker, 1988, 101–35; Galinsky, 1996, 288–312; Fuchs, 1965, 186–204; Weinstock, 1960, 44–58; more recently, Rüpke, 2007, 65–85, and Ando, 2008, 120–48, outline the more general religious outlook and its working assumption, the latter with direct comparison to the cult of Israel. 28 For an excellent overview, see Breytenbach, 2010, 299–309. 24 25

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imperial and cosmic aspects of imperial rule, but once seen they cast into relief a host of other imperial echoes and associations. The imperial visual language of Roman Phrygia is particularly instructive for an understanding of Colossians’ strategies of persuasion. To explore this more fully we take up first the iconography associated with victory in heaven and the harmony of the gods. Then we will turn to a discussion of Roman imperial picture language that signals the benefits of heaven on earth, first, with the help of images of fertility and abundance and, second, in depictions of worldwide concord and civic order. This will then set the stage for a consideration of imperial iconography closer to Paul’s audience at Colossae, Laodicia and Hierapolis, at the sebasteion of Aphrodisias.

Cosmic Harmony A common theme in Greco-Roman literature roughly contemporary with Colossians is that the emperor’s rule mirrors a concord of diverse, sometimes opposing, elemental forces. Philo, Plutarch, Seneca, the author of pseudo-Aristotle’s De mundo, Dio of Prusa and Aelius Aristides describe the rule of Rome over competing nations as a mirror of the gods bringing order to chaotic elements and cosmic powers.29 The Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides, delivered in 155 ce, furnishes an instructive example of such a cosmic political theology. Aristides likens the imperial concord achieved by Antoninus Pius through his defeat of enemies to Zeus’ victory

For example, Philo reflects his imperial backdrop in his depictions of civil order mirroring cosmic concord (Dec. 178; Spec. Leg. 2.188–92; Fug. 10 – here the Augustan order is transparent in celebrating God as ‘the giver of peace [ei0rhnopoio/j], who has abolished all seditions in cities, and in all parts of the universe, and has produced plenty and prosperity; cf. Spec. Leg. 8; 15–19 where the imperial application of cosmic harmony is explicit); for the imperial associations, see Peterson, 1935, 21–31. Plutarch, De fort. Rom. 2.316e–317c, likens Roman imperial pacification of contending powers with a cosmic ordering of opposing natural elements; Ad princ. Inerud. 5. 781f–782a likens the ruler governed by divine reason to the sun, the image of god, regulating the cosmos, free from chance and change. Seneca, Clem. 1.1.2; 1.3.3–4 conceives the Empire as a unity of diverse forces that would descend into chaos were it not for the emperor, the vicar of the gods, as its head, governed by divine reason, and regulating the body of his empire. Ps.-Aristotle, Mund 5 396a 32–6 401a 11, betrays the imprint of its author’s first century imperial culture in its representation of the absolute ruler as bringing about civic harmony mirroring the divine governance of conflicting natural and cosmic forces. Dio, Or. 40.35, urges his fellow citizens of Prusa to seek concord with the Apameans by asking them to consider the harmony of the heavens and the orderly relation of the elements (air, earth, water and fire) as the model after which to govern their mutual well-being. Aelius Aristides, Or. 23.76–8 likens the harmony of emperors with cosmic concord. For the eclectic philosophical backdrop to these ideas, see Chesnut, 1978, 1310–32, and Goodenough, 1928, 55–102. For the image of the emperor as Jupiter’s viceroy ordering the political realm after the Jovian example of heavenly rule, see Fears, 1977, 189–251.

29

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over the Titans.30 Aristides’ comparison represents a development of Jovian theology from Augustus onward. It was a trope familiar in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. In the Augustan period, the imagery of Jupiter (thunderbolt, spear, eagle) and its associations with Olympian victory was adopted in imperial iconography. By the second century, consideration of the emperor’s rule as parallel with Jupiter’s governance of the cosmos was a stock feature of imperial political theology. When Aristides drew his comparison of the emperor with Zeus, he could rely on the ability of his audience to create vivid mental images of the emperor’s role in imposing peace and order over chaos. An important source for this iconography came from outer walls of the Great Altar of Pergamon.31 The precise date, the occasion of the construction of, as well as the forms of religious ritual performed within the Great Altar of Pergamon remain topics of scholarly debate. The altar was erected sometime in the first half of the second century by the Attalid King, Eumenes II (ruled 197–159 bce), perhaps on the occasion of the successful conclusion of a war with the Seleucids and the Galatians in 188 bce, or maybe later as a monument to celebrate the final and decisive victory over the Galatians in 166 ce32 Its external reliefs are of particular interest here because they were readily visible to an illiterate general public and used well-known mythology to communicate dynastic meaning and achievement – much as Aristides would do almost four centuries later in his celebration of Roman rule.33 The north, south, east and west side of the lower perimeter wall of the Altar were covered with reliefs that depicted the victory of Zeus and the Olympians over the Giants. In the Hesiodic version of the myth, the Giants, who represent the forces of chaos and disorder, rose up against the Olympian gods who, led by Zeus, triumphed over them.34 One striking relief on the Altar’s east frieze shows the father of the gods, Zeus, singlehandedly vanquishing three giants who are falling before him (see Figure 8). The Pergamon Altar appropriates victory over rebellious powers to represent political order ordained by and reflecting the divine governance of the cosmos. As such it offered what has been called ‘visual rhetoric’ to publicize the success of the Attalid monarchy.35 In the Augustan period, representation of the emperor as Zeus and in the company of cosmic deities became commonplace.36 In addition to Or. 26.1–2–5. For a discussion of the influence of the Pergamon altar, as well as the Pergamene Temple to Athena, on cosmic Augustan iconography, see Picard, 1957, 289–91. 32 For discussion of the various possibilities, with literature, see Stewart, 2000, 32–57; Sturgeon, 2000, 72–5; Heres and Kästner, 2004, 26–8. 33 For evidence of the general Pergamene populace at the steps and before the external friezes of the altar, see Stewart, 2000, 49; Kuttner, 2005, 136–201. 34 Hesiod, Theog., ll. 664–735. 35 Kuttner, 2005, 299–300. 36 Fears, 1977, 210–19; for a discussion of imperial Jovian iconography and its importance in 30 31

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Figure 8  Relief depicting Zeus’ defeat of the Giants, Altar of Pergamon (second century bce), The Pergamon Museum, Berlin

depicting him as vice-regent of Zeus/Jupiter, the pax Romana was likened the cosmic peace of the heavens. Both of these themes can be seen on the Gemma Augustea (c. 10 ce; see Figure 9). In the upper register, on the right, Augustus is seated as Jupiter Capitolinus. Roma is to his right, and behind him are Neptune, Tellus with cornucopia, and Italia who crowns him. The emperor dispatches Tiberius, on his chariot accompanied by Victory behind him, to pacify Rome’s enemies. The lower register shows Roman soldiers erecting a tropaeum and subjugating barbarians to bring about divinely ordained Roman rule and peace. The gemma is a luxury item for private display. But it depicts what was described in inscriptions across the Empire, which similarly likened the emperor to Jupiter/Zeus. A decree from Halicarnassus immediately after Augustus’ death, which establishes a cult to the divine emperor, identifies Augustus as Zeus Patroos.37 And an earlier (9 bce) inscription from Priene uses Jovian imagery to celebrate Divine Providence for granting a ‘Saviour [Augustus] who has made war to cease and who shall put everything [in peaceful] order.’38 Fragments of similar

signalling the link between cosmic and earthly rule, see Alföldi, 1970, 186–276. 37 Ehrenberg and Jones, 1976, 83–4, no. 98a, ll. 6–7 (IBM 4.1, no. 894). 38 Ehrenberg and Jones, 1976, 82, no. 98, ll. 37–38 (OGIS 458).

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Figure 9  The Gemma Augustea (first century Vienna

ce),

Kunsthistorisches Museum,

inscriptions have been discovered in Phrygia, at Apamea, Eumeneia and Dorylaion.39 A later decree commissioned to thank Nero for his declaration to the entire province of Achaea of freedom from taxation, announces the establishment of an altar to Nero next to the temple of Zeus Soter and celebrates Nero as ‘the lord of all the cosmos [o9 tou= pa/ntoj ko/smou ku/rioj], Supreme Imperator.’ It directs that his altar be inscribed, ‘To Zeus Liberator forever.’ 40 Similar affirmation of Nero’s Jovian rule can be seen on an inscription from a funerary monument in Akmonia in Phyrgia, which celebrates Nero as ‘father of the fatherland and of the cosmos.’41 Panegyric deployed similar Jovian metaphor, as did Seneca when he likened Nero’s earthly rule, as vice-regent of the gods, to Zeus’ heavenly rule of the gods.42 Imperial monuments represented the cosmic dimensions of this theology of military victory. For example, at Turbie, near Monaco, in 6 bce the For inscriptions, see MAMA 6.174, 175 (Apamea); CIG 3.3902b, CIL 3.12240 (Eumeneia); CIL 3.13651 (Dorylaion); also Laffi, 1967, 5–98, for discussion. 40 Smallwood, 1967, 35–6, no. 64, ll. 31, 49 (SIG3 814 ll. 30–1). Wendland, 1904, 335–53 offers further examples. 41 MAMA 6.254. 42 Thus, Calpurnius Siculus, Ecl. 4.142 – Nero is Jupiter come down to earth; Seneca, De clem. 1.1.2, Nero having found favour in heaven has been selected to rule as vicar of the gods; for discussion of Jovian aspects of Nero’s vicariate, see Fears, 1975, 486–96. 39

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Figure 10  Model of the tropaeum Alpium (first century bce), Museo della civiltà Roma, Rome

Roman senate inaugurated a monument to honour Augustus’ subjugation of 46 tribes in the Alps (see Figure 10). The so-called tropaeum Alpium, the ‘Victory of the Alps’, was built as a rotunda divided by 24 columns on its upper level. According to Medieval and sixteenth-century descriptions, a statue of Augustus, no longer extant, possibly represented as Jupiter, with bound figures at his feet, surmounted the rotunda.43 The form of the monument in the round, as well as the 12 bound figures placed around its circumference, are suggestive of the celestial sphere and the zodiac. Augustus surmounted on the top likens Augustus’ reign on earth to Jupiter’s rule of the cosmos. Later, Nero likened his rule to the cosmic governance of both Jupiter and Helios.44 Lucan offers a probably ironic account of Nero’s association with Helios when he depicts Nero’s inevitable apotheosis as the sun under whose bright sky all earthly conflict comes to an end (Civil War 1.57–63). Seneca satirizes Nero with a similar representation in Apocolocyntosis 4.45 The emperor’s self-stylized cosmic Formigé, 1949, 74–5, with sources. For a renaissance in Jovian imagery under Nero, see Fears, 1975, 486–96; 1981, 69–74. 45 Grimal, 1971, 205–17; Arnaud, 1987, 167–93; L’Orange, 1982, 57–63. Günther and Müller, 43 44

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associations with Helios were reflected in a wide iconographic repertoire, including, perhaps, numismatic images of him with a radiate crown (an image usually reserved for emperor’s posthumously deified; see Figure 19 below).46 The throneroom of Nero’s famous Golden Palace, (Suetonius, Nero 31), has been interpreted as a visual expression of the emperor’s cosmic/political power as incarnate Helios governing the heavens and the earth.47 It was through such imagery that viewers were to be persuaded that they were living as the beneficiaries of a concordat between the gods and their earthly vicar. It communicated to diverse peoples that they belonged to a greater trans-ethnic, global order, and that this order was established thanks to a divinely elected nation and its emperor, Jupiter’s vice-regent and in some cases his embodiment, to meld otherwise competing nations into a harmonious order.48 Upon an emperor’s accession, one of his first acts was to disseminate his image across the Empire. Amongst these were images of his military victories, and specifically victory in the company of the gods. These included of course monuments, such as the one at Aphrodisias, which we will discuss directly. But they also included military standards, trophies and panels depicting decisive victories.49 Trophies in the provinces represented emperors as gods or their regents. Emperors celebrated triumphs in Rome, but they were also honoured with images of their military successes at popular urban gathering places across the Empire – the circus, hippodrome and theatre. In the arena, gladiatorial combat advertised imperial victories by pitting barbarian captives against wild animals. Under Nero, the Senate voted that feriae, or festival days, be held to commemorate the day decisive military victories were achieved or announced. There is good evidence that these were observed outside Rome, especially by the army, of course, whose official calendar is exemplified by the third-century Feriale Duranum, and that they were also celebrated in the provinces by the local populace who enjoyed them in the arena.50 Bakers’ moulds from the Danube survive for flat cakes with the legend CONSERVATIO AUG(usta) for the celebration of these days, as well as board games replaying conquests over barbarian nations (see Figure 11).51 In Pompeii, a mosaic from the Macellum or meat market, perhaps from the end of Nero’s reign, portrays a prince alongside a trophy, seated on military arms and crowned by victory.52 1988, 121–55. 46 Fears, 1977, 235–7; for example, BMCRE 1.44–6. 47 L’Orange, 1953, 28–34. 48 Ando, 2000, 206–73, offers an excellent account of emperors’ uses of iconography as a means of persuasion, as well as the various urban locations that images of the emperor and his achievements were displayed. 49 Picard, 1957, 285–342. 50 Thus McCormick, 1986, 31–7. 51 McCormick, 1986, 32–4. 52 Picard, 1957, 338.

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Figure 11  Bread mould with reliefs of the emperor (centre), victory (left) and soldier (right), and inscription CONSERVATIO AUG(usti) (early fourth century ce), Torténeti Museum, Budapest

There are no surviving examples of the images just listed from the cities Colossians names, but the evidence that does survive is consistent with this general pattern. Less than 100 kms away from Colossae, at Aphrodisias, at the imperial temple dedicated to Augustus and his successors, the statues and reliefs of the sebasteion or imperial temple translated into stone the cosmic rule of the emperors and its benefits for the world’s inhabitants. The site of Aphrodisias for a temple dedicated to the worship of the emperors was important because they traced their ancestry to Aphrodite/Venus. Completed at precisely the time Colossians was composed, the sebasteion of Aphrodisias represents the fullest surviving programme of Roman imperial art dedicated to the cult of the emperor from the first-century.53 As such it is especially instructive for helping to capture the kind of imperial See Smith, 1987, 88–113 for reproductions and discussion.

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imagination Colossians triggered in its audience when it celebrated the triumph of Christ over the principalities and powers, his heavenly reconciliation of them, and for helping to recognize the visual aspects of the imperial metaphor the letter adopts and adapts to persuade Christ followers to accept its teachings. The temple was built on an east-west axis, and organized around a rectangular paved temenos or courtyard, (approximately 14 3 90 metres). Three tiers (c. 12 metres high) formed the north and south side of the courtyard. The ground level on each side comprised an evenly divided set of empty porticos. Sculptural reliefs comprised the second and third stories of both the north and south side. At its eastern end was a temple (no longer surviving) built on top of a flight of stairs. The first impression one gains when beholding the site is its vertical programme. The three stories draw the eye upward even as the long and narrow temenos draws it eastward, where prayers and sacrifices were made to the emperor and his family. Thus the vertical and the horizontal merge; the architecture brings ritual and the gods together with their focal point set on the celebration of Julio-Claudian rule. As a whole the iconographical programme was designed to demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Roman Empire owed whatever benefits of peace and prosperity they enjoyed to the imperial dynasty, which the gods had appointed to pacify the nations and bring order to the world. Our interest falls first on the third tier of the north side and the second and third tiers of the south side. Here we see the emperors associated with earthly and cosmic power, and with heavenly concord. The north and south side of courtyard on the third and second tiers comprised a sculptural programme that included representations of emperors and their family members depicted as Olympian deities associated with reliefs of personified nature and cosmic powers, female representations of conquered nations, and sculptural reliefs dedicated to scenes from Greek mythology and the story of Aeneas. Only three of the 50 panels from the third tier of the north side have survived, but they are nonetheless instructive. Two represent allegories of Day and Ocean, Hemeros and Okeanos; alongside these probably stood allegorical panels representing their respective opposites: Night and Earth.54 The third presents the enthronement of Nero. Bathed by light from the rising and setting sun, the allegories express the global reach and cosmic dimensions of Julio-Claudian rule – over earth and sea, from rising to setting sun.55 On the second south-facing tier of the sebastion were 50 female statues, each representing a different nation or people conquered by Augustus and added to the Empire.56 For a discussion of these allegorical features, see Smith, 1990, 91–2. For discussion of the cosmological affirmations of this portraiture, see Rose, 1997, 168. 56 Thus Reynolds, 1981, 317–27; Smith, 1988, 58–9, notices that the nations personified represent those conquered by, added to, or reconquered by Augustus. 54 55

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Figure 12  Relief of Germanicus with tropaeum and bound child, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

Figure 13 Relief of Claudius crowned by senate with captive, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

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On the north-facing side of the courtyard, on the second tier, were reliefs clustering around episodes from Greek myths. The third tier reliefs depicted Roman emperors and their victories. Interspersed among them were panels given over to Olympian gods represented as individual figures. Surviving reliefs depict the emperors in the company of the gods, with divine qualities, or in association with Greco-Roman myths. One depicts Augustus with a Victory, a bound captive, and a tropaeum (See Plate 3a). To Augustus’ right, symbolizing Jovian power, is a large eagle; the spear or scepter Augustus holds similarly evokes themes associated with Jupiter/Zeus. This is reinforced by the tropaeum to Augustus’ immediate left, behind the head of the bound captive below. Beside the tropaeum stands Victory. Thus even as the relief invokes military victory on earth, it recalls mythology associated with heavenly rule. Another relief invokes both mythic and cosmic elements together. Here a nude Augustus in forward stride is flanked by personifications of earth and sea (See Plate 3b). A cornucopia at his right symbolizes the abundance of harvest. A prow in his left hand designates his power over the sea. Here, Augustus is a divine figure who has his place alongside the gods who govern the cosmos, to rule land and sea, as well as usher forth their abundance. Other reliefs signify association with divinity in more subtle but equally instructive ways. They represent the emperors as nudes in order to assimilate them to heroes, as in the case of Germanicus who stands, globe in his left hand, in a classical pose beside the trophaeum and bound barbarian child at his right (see Figure 12). Or their achievements are represented as the deeds of heroes, such as in the case of Claudius, again a classical nude, crowned by a personified Senate or Roman people to his left, and a bound female captive below a trophy to his right (see Figure 13). Aphrodisias was not, of course, in the Lycus Valley, and, though relatively proximate to Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis, it is impossible to know whether the author of Colossians ever saw the sebasteion or was directly influenced by it. The argument here is not one of cause and effect, but to help locate Colossian imagery and metaphor in its contemporary visual world. Evidence from the cities Colossians names as well as other cities of Roman Phrygia is fragmentary but complementary with imperial cult imagery from the sebasteion.57 A cult of Roma was present in Laodicea at least from the late second century bce, and there is reason to believe another was present in Hierapolis.58 The most common coin issues from Laodicea associate Nero with Zeus Laodiceus, perhaps on account of his reconstruction of the temple to Zeus destroyed in an earthquake in 60 ce.59 One aes represents Nero obverse with the inscription For an overview of the numismatic evidence from Phrygia, see Armstrong, 1998, 155–78; Mitchell, 1993, 1.80–117 presents an overview of the steady Roman urbanization and growth of the imperial cult in Anatolia more generally. 58 Mellor, 1975, 75–6. 59 RPC 1.1, 2917–2919, 2926, 2928. 57

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Figure 14  Reverse of aes, Mint of Laodicea, (first century

ce),

RPC 1.2923

NERWN SEBASTOS QEOS and Zeus Laodiceus reverse (see Figure 14).60 Hierapolis issues present Nero, obverse, with Apollo on horseback, reverse, or again with Zeus, with eagle and sceptre.61 Nero’s mother, Agrippina Minor appears on the obverse of a coin from Eumenia, near Hierapolis, with, on the reverse, Cybele enthroned holding patera and cornucopia, symbols of agricultural plenty. The association of empresses iconographically with divinities signifying fertility and agriculture was commonplace in provincial issues.62 The association of emperors with local deities represents evidence of the assimilation of traditional religious devotion to imperial culture. Again near Hierapolis – at Siblia – images of Augustus and Tiberius, obverse, with, on reverse, the Phrygian deity, Men, have been discovered.63 Similar issues have been found further afield, at Julia, where coins representing Agrippina with an enthroned deity (perhaps Zeus) were discovered. Elsewhere, at Julia, issues associating Nero with the Phrygian

RPC 1.1.2923. RPC 1.1, Apollos: 2975–76; Zeus: 1978. 62 Rose, 1997, 75–6. Parallel, though earlier, is a coin published under Gaius (37–41 ce) from nearby Apamea. On the obverse are Drusus and Nero; reverse are the emperors’s sisters Agrippina and Drusilla, each with cornucopia (www.asiaminorcoins.com ID # 1644, accessed 21 February 2012). 63 von Aulock, 1980, 152–3, nos. 876–86; for Nero and Men, 112, nos. 320–1. 60 61

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deity, Men, have been discovered.64 Perhaps most instructive, though as yet still unpublished, is a report from the excavations at Laodicea of the discovery of a statue of the deified Augustus, in the prima porta manner, with Aphrodite.65 This is consistent with Laodicea’s (unsuccessful) bid in 29 ce, alongside 11 other cities, to build a temple dedicated to the worship of Tiberius.66 These examples offer us a repertoire of imagery to help understand the ways in which Colossians, through vivid language, invited its first-century listeners to imagine and ‘see’ Christ’s cosmic power and his victory over the principalities and powers, and the reconciliation that has come about through his pacification of them. This is not to deny other influences on this imagery, but it is instructive to consider the way Colossians draws from the visual culture and beliefs embedded in the social world of its audience, in order to persuade listeners of Christ’s supreme authority and the benefits that have come from his victory. Colossians, of course, does not name Christ as a god, or a son of god, numbered amongst a series of deities, in a cosmic/natural/political order. It acclaims Jesus the Son of the only God, who has brought creation into being and sustains it.67 Nor is Christ a kind of emperor who is one in a series of rulers destined for deification. He alone is deity; indeed, in him the fullness of God dwelt bodily (Col. 1.19; 2.9). Tom Wright has described this as Christological monotheism.68 Such Christological monotheism leaves room only for one cosmic power in the heavens to be worshiped and asserts that all other powers are in submission to it. Nevertheless, it contains and affirms recognizably imperial ideals. Indeed it draws upon them in order to make Pauline theological affirmation more compelling. In the Christological monotheism of Colossians, reconciliation unfolds on earth as in heaven. The letter depicts Paul in ambassadorial language as the messenger of the Gospel that is going forth into the whole world bearing fruit and making the nations one under the enthroned Christ’s dominion. It is to this earthly rule we now turn with eyes open, again, to Colossians’ imperial picture language.

von Aulock, 1980, 1.119, nos. 401–14; Agrippina, nos. 395–400. Simsek, 2010, 34–5; www.world-archaeology.com/features/laodicea/(accessed 20 February 2012). 66 Friesen, 1993, 17–18. 67 Similarly, Zeller, 1988, 173. 68 Wright, 1990, 459. 64 65

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Fertility and Abundance Paul invites his audience to imagine itself as the beneficiaries of a cosmic rule that brings renewed life on earth. The enthroned Son heads the cosmos by which all things are held together (Col. 1.17). From his ‘empire’ [basilei/a] (1.13) comes growth and renewal: ‘you have come to fullness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority’ (2.10). The Colossians are to ‘hold fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together, through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God’ (2.19). The letter celebrates the Gospel Paul’s associate, Epaphras, brought to the Lycus Valley ‘bearing fruit and growing in the whole world’ (1.6), inviting its audience into a recognizable imperial situation of growth and vitality. This Gospel, again, is one of pacification. ‘And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death’ (1.21–22). Now reconciled, Colossians exhorts, ‘Put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which you were called in one body’ (Col. 3.15). Colossians expands the repertoire of imperial text and image dedicated to imperial pacification where it states, ‘Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all’ (Col. 3.11). Even as imperial panegyric and iconography expressed the worldwide reconciling reach of an emperor’s pacifying rule, so Colossians invokes imperial language and imagery to celebrate the Gospel of Christ’s universal and reconciling reign. As with the emperor, whose rule is represented as bringing about worldwide moral transformation, so, too, Christ’s reign and baptism into his body, the church, marks the putting off of an old life of vice and the putting on of a new life of virtue.69 Colossians’ imagery of growth and fertility, wedded with cosmopolitan affirmations of the unity of humankind under Christ’s reign, build on similar ideas found in Paul’s earlier letters, and, in part, find their source in biblical as well as philosophical traditions. Such imagery also has imperial origins. Their use belongs to the persuasive strategy the author uses to convince their audience of the benefits of Christ’s rule. Colossians seeks to persuade its audience of the necessity of sole and exclusive allegiance to Christ by convincing them that his rule alone can bring them abundance and growth. Again the persuasiveness of Colossians’ claims rests in part on the audience’s ability to visualize the bounty associated with Christ’s sole sovereignty.

Thus it is the application of an imperial logic, not adaptation of Cynic reasoning that motivates the author to include barbarians and Scythians in his list of distinctions; for the Cynic theory, see Martin, 1996, and Campbell, 1997, for his criticism of Martin as taking up a too wooden and inaccurate interpretation of the phrase.

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Here, imperial picture language played a key role, since images of abundance and plenty were a commonplace representation of the divine reward and blessing springing forth from the emperor’s reign. The Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace), to which we will return directly, testifies vividly to this association. The vegetative frieze, a relief that decorates the bottom half of the monument’s exterior walls, celebrates Augustus’ reign with images of fertility, natural harmony, and super-abundance, the sign that along with the emperor’s pacification of enemies, the gods have awarded the Empire fertility and peace. (See Figure 14a.) Roughly contemporary with Colossians, Calpurnius Siculus has Nero inaugurating a second Golden Age as a ‘very god’ [deus ipse] who brings ‘peace in her fullness’ [plena quies].70 At the sound of his name, he states, ‘the sluggish earth has warmed to life and yielded flowers…. As soon as the earth felt his divine influence [numina], crops began to come in richer abundance…’.71 Another panegyrist describes how, since Nero’s pacification of the world, no woman gives birth to an enemy; the untilled earth yields rich produce.72 And in a

Figure 14a  Detail of the Vegetative Relief, Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome, 9  bce, Museo dell’ Ara Pacis, Rome

Ecl. 1.46, 63. Ecl. 4.109, 112. For Nero, the second Golden Age, and this and other cosmological imagery, see Zechinni, 1999, 187–244. 72 Eins. 2.15–35. 70 71

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way most strikingly similar to the Christ of Colossians whence his body the church receives growth and nourishment, Seneca famously makes Nero the head of the Roman Empire. Through the emperor’s own health and dedication to a life of virtue and good conduct, Seneca advises (drawing a long political tradition), he assures that health passes through to the rest of the body of his imperial rule.73 In this literature the earth’s fertility and the empire’s health is the outcome of the emperor’s divinely appointed victory over enemies. The listeners of Paul’s letter were not readers of Seneca or the poetry of Calpurnius Siculus. But they were viewers of the imagery such texts described. At the Aphrodisias sebasteion, a north portico relief of Nero’s enthronement, Agrippina holds a cornucopia which personifies her as Fortuna/Tyche and crowns the young prince dressed in a cuirass with a victory crown. At his feet is a helmet (see Plate 4a). The fertility-military theme recurs on the south-portico relief of Augustus triumphant by land and sea (see Plate 3b). There again, as we have already seen, is a cornucopia. Attention to imperial imagery that unites iconography of military victory with that of fertility and natural abundance enables us to recognize Colossians’ persuasive strategy of invoking Christ’s death as a triumph that brings to the world a Gospel that is bearing fruit and growing, even as his body, the Church, is nurtured and thrives under its head.

Cosmopolitanism with Love A recurring motif of imperial iconography was its representation of the unity of the dispersed ethnicities and nations that comprised the Empire. A world flourishing under the world’s divinely appointed Roman guardians was celebrated in imperial text and image as bringing about a cosmopolitan unity of people. Max Mühl coins the phrase ‘cosmopolitanism with power’ to describe the imperial idea of the unity of humankind by way of force or the threat of violence.74 Anchises’ prophecy of global Roman rule in Aen.

For Nero as head of the body of his empire, through whom all are united, see Seneca, Clem. 1.3.4; 1.5.1; 1.13.4; 2.2.1–2. Seneca reflects a widespread application of this notion to imperial rule, especially in the Flavian period – for example, Curtius Rufus, History, 10.9.1–4; Plutarch, Galb., 4 1054E; the cosmic application of head and body is presented by pseudo-Aristotle, Mund. 7 401a 29–401b 7, where the civic body and cosmic body of Zeus are likened. For the empire as body with the emperor at its head in imperial ideology, see Kienast, 1982, 1–17; for a discussion of the tradition in general, see Béranger, 1953, 218–37; Schweizer, 1971, 1038–44, offers discussion of Greek and Jewish usage of the body as metaphor for the civic assembly but without sufficient attention to the general political and specifically Roman imperial tradition. 74 Mühl, 1928, 82. For example, Dio (Or. 44.49.2) describes Julius Caesar as o9 ei0rhnopoio/j,

73

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6.847–53 expresses this cosmopolitanism with power: ‘But you, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud.’ This global cosmopolitanism was celebrated in imagery as well as text. The Ara Pacis in Rome is instructive. It was built on the Campus Martius – formerly the field where the military and cavalry did their exercises as part of a larger plan that included a Mausoleum dedicated to Augustus and his family. Augustus wedded image and text together by placing a bronze tablet inscribed with the autobiographical record of his achievements and honours – his Res Gestae –- at the monument. In them, Augustus dedicates a whole section (4.25–6.35) to his acts of pacification: ‘The provinces of the Gauls, the Spains, and Germany… I reduced to a state of peace [pacavi]’ (Res. Ges. Div. Aug 5.26). Taken together, mausoleum, altar and tablet expressed the worldwide reach of the emperor’s rule. The monument was strategically placed long before the emperor’s death on the Via Flaminia so that all who passed along the way into the city would remember the emperor’s worldwide achievement.75 For the everyday passer-by it offered a lesson for how to interpret the rich visual political culture that followed as one progressed further from the Campus Martius into the built environment of the city proper.76 The Ara Pacis is a good example of the wedding of iconography and epigraphy on imperial monuments. Such structures were dispersed across the Empire. Pliny (HN 3.136) records that the tropaeum Alpium included an inscription listing the names of 44 tribes Augustus subjugated.77 In Asia Minor, fragments of the Res Gestae discovered near temples of Augustus in Apollonia, Pergamon and Pisidian Antioch further attests advertisement of Augustus’ achievements on monuments.78 An almost complete text in Latin and Greek survives on the inner and outer walls, respectively, on the pronaos of the Temple to Augustus and Roma in Ancyra, in northwestern Phrygia.79 The text states in words what the monument marks by sight: the triumph of Augustus over Galatia and its annexation as a Roman province in 25 bce. There is evidence of iconography dedicated to victory and pacification of enemies at the Augusteum at Psidian Antioch and the Sebasteion at Apollonia, where, again, fragments of the Res Gestae have been discovered. The temple of Augustus at Psidian Antioch was decorated and Philo (Leg. Gai. 145) remembers Augustus as guardian of peace (ei0rhnofu/lac) because he restored civic harmony by pacifying ‘unsociable, hostile, and brutal’ nations. 75 For its conspicuousness and relation to the Via Flaminia, see Clarke, 2003, 22–3. 76 For the architectural persuasion and narration of the Mausoleum, as well as visual lesson for the passer-by entering the city, see Favro, 1993, 232–57. 77 For discussion of the inscription and its iconography, see Picard, 1957, 291–301. 78 For a summary, see the comments of Shipley in his introduction to the Loeb edition of the Res. Ges. Div. Aug, 332–5. 79 For a general discussion of the Augusteum in contemporary Ankara, Turkey, see Botteri and Fangi, 2002, 84–8.

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with sculptures and reliefs celebrating the spoils of the Pax Augustua.80 The surviving inscription from Apollonia indicates the monument included Tiberius and his sons, Germanicus and Drusus, each represented in equestrian statue type – a symbol of imperial victory.81 As Rubin states, ‘This elaborate program of text and images made a compelling visual statement designed to articulate the legitimacy of Roman colonial rule at Antioch by emphasizing both the futility of resistance and the benefits of cooperation to the local population.’82 These monuments represented cosmopolitanism with power by representing dispersed people and political entities as belonging to a new multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural imperial mosaic, with the divinely-established emperor assuring its cohesion and stability. Closer to Colossians in time and space, the imperial temple at Aphrodisias similarly affirmed the success of the emperor in incorporating pre-existing cultures and political regimes into an overarching divine-political order. The monument helps us to consider the visual imagination Colossians’ potent affirmation of the unity of peoples in Col. 3.11 would probably have prompted as a strategy of persuasion. The 50 female statues, mentioned above, personifying nations under imperial rule offered a vivid representation of the incorporation of diverse people under Roman rule. R. R. R. Smith has suggested that these were created to demonstrate amongst other things the furthest reach of the Roman Empire.83 Each stood on a base inscribed with the name of the nation or geographical location to identify it. Not all are identical. Some, like the statue representing the Thracian Bessi, stand in classical pose with arms free, hair properly coiffed, head covered and peplos properly arranged, to signify full incorporation and civilization under Roman rule (see Figure 15). Others, like the female figure representing the Dacians signifies a pacification still under way: arms are bound, head is uncovered, hair is uncoiffed and, most dramatically, the peplos falls off one shoulder (see Figure 16). The personification of these nations as female figures intensified the communication of masculine military prowess celebrated in the Roman theology of victory. The lower tier statues hide the forms of subjugation, massacre, forced resettlement and slavery associated with Roman pacification of enemies. The northern topmost reliefs are more forthcoming, however. Two reliefs dedicated to Claudius and Nero place the emperors in mythic narrative by representing each as Achilles slaying the Amazon queen Penthisileia.84 As such they rehearse a well-known scene from the Trojan War cycle, but also turn the emperors into mythic heroes, and so associate them with Olympian Rubin, 2008, 27–71. MAMA 4, no. 142; Rose 1997, 169. 82 Rubin, 2008, 31. 83 Smith, 1988, 77. 84 Erim, 1982, 280. 80 81

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Figure 15  Statue of female personification of Thrace, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

Figure 16  Statue of female personification of Dacia, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

deity. Here images of female humiliation and subjugation portray a brutal ideology of military subjugation. One (Figure 17) relief depicts Claudius’ victory over Britannia by representing the province as a slain woman. Her bare breast, unbound hair and expression contrast sharply with the image of Claudius who towers above her: he is nude to communicate his divine power and his expression is serene. The pattern recurs in the relief dedicated to Nero’s victory over Armenia (Figure 18), though in this instance Armenia is being pulled to her feet and may symbolize the integration by Nero of Armenia into the Roman Empire after his defeat of Tiridates I.85 Female humiliation and lack of civilization contrast as well in a third tier relief (see Plate 4b). The classical serenity of Claudius crowned by a properly coiffed and dressed matron who represents Rome contrasts with the terror of the subjugated female depicted in Hellenistic style, who kneels, with bare breast and falling hair. The mixture of styles as well as size of the bound woman is significant. As Hölscher has argued, the Hellenistic and Classical style in imperial pastiche communicate transformation from an energetic to a pacified state, from immoderation and passion toward regulation

Smith, 1987, 119.

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Figure 17  Relief of Claudius vanquishing Britannia, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

Figure 18  Relief of Nero victorious over Armenia, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

and self-mastery.86 The relatively diminished size of the bound woman is a commonplace feature of Roman iconography to represent ‘small barbarians’ as symbolic of imperial power.87 These reliefs offer dramatic examples of images designed to celebrate and make manifest an imperial ideology of victory in which the Roman people and their emperors are appointed by the gods to subjugate and transform the world. Colossians also celebrates a cosmopolitan vision, what we may call a cosmopolitanism with love. Here again victory transforms. Col. 3.11 celebrates Christ’s triumph and rule ending social division based on ethnicity, religious practice, socio-economic status and geopolitical location. The reference to Scythians and barbarians in this list has received various interpretations, including that its presence implies that literal Scythians were numbered amongst Colossians’ addressees.88 It is more likely that their

Hölscher, 2003, 1–17; Maier, 2011, 217–25. Levi, 1952, 25–40 with reference to ‘small barbarians’ in later second-century iconography, but applicable to the imagery at Aphrodisias Sebasteion, which had not then been discovered. 88 Campbell, 1996, 120–32. 86 87

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presence has a semantic rather than literal meaning, intended to celebrate Christ’s victory and limitless rule.89 Wayne Meeks has rightly identified Col. 3.11, as well as other similar passages in the Pauline corpus and beyond (in Gal. 3:28, 1 Cor. 12:13, Eph. 2:11–22, Ign. Smyrn. 1.2) as ‘utopian declarations’ that affirmed that ‘the many small men [sic]’ of the Roman Empire belonged to an overarching unity of humankind, and lived as though at home ‘in a large and cosmopolitan world’.90 Certainly it is recognizable as belonging to a long tradition of such utopian imagination.91 Indeed, here the pair ‘barbarian, Scythian’ excites that imagination. Scythia, a term used in the first century to represent a large northern frontier area around the Black Sea, was conceived from Herodotus onward as the uttermost horizon of civilization, quite literally at the world’s edge, and what one author called a mythic ‘fantasy space’ in the ancient imagination.92 The utopian declaration of Col. 3.11, that includes barbarians and Scythians, is a powerful geopolitical representation of the universal reach of Christ’s rule and its power in turning enemies into friends. As seen above in the case of the personification of the Dacians and the imperial reliefs representing peoples as subjugated women, the Roman imperial iconographic treatment of barbarians was to represent them in postures of submission or defeat. Colossians places an alternative cosmopolitan vision before its listeners’ eyes. It portrays a unity of humankind brought about through the crucifixion of Jesus, a victorious death that triumphs over those ‘estranged and once hostile in mind’, no longer enslaved to the now subjugated principalities and powers, and now joined them together in love and perfect harmony, and governed with peace (1.21; 3.13–15). Like the varying statues of the ethnes at varying stages of incorporation, Col. 3.11 celebrates a transformation. The list comes at the end of a passage that depicts the old life of the Colossians before their baptism (3.5–11) and just before a series of verses exhorting listeners to pursue the dispositions, behaviours and social norms that mark the new life (3.12–4.6). Affirmation that under Christ there can no longer be barbarians and Scythians presents the Colossian audience with a charged image from an imperial point of view. Where the peace of Christ rules hearts, there are no longer barbarians – people estranged from his all-encompassing reign. Paul uses political language to describe this transformation as a transfer from ‘the The imperial nature of the formula has not gone unnoticed, thus Hermann, 1930, 106–8; Campbell, 1996, 120–32. 90 Meeks, 1977, 209. 91 For an excellent account, see Taylor, 1981, 519–30; see also Taylor, 1992, 6:746–53. 92 Braund, 1986, 36–8. For Greco-Roman ethnology associating Scythians with extreme otherness, remoteness and intractability as a rhetorical strategy in creating communal identity and celebrating the civilizing ideals of Greece and Rome, see the discussion of the Greek presentation in François Hartog, 1988, 61–111; Hall, 1989, 101–200; Shaw, 1982, 5–31; and of the application of this tradition in Roman imperial ethnology in Mattern, 1999, 70–80. For literary depictions of Scythians more generally, see Bieder 1942, 447–9. 89

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dominion of darkness [e0k th~j e0cousi/aj tou~ sko&touj] … to the kingdom of his beloved son [ei0j th_n basilei/an tou~ ui9ou~ th~j a)ga&phj au)tou~]’ (1.13). Once they were under the power of ‘the elemental spirits of the universe’ (2.20), now they are enthroned, as his body the Church, with Christ above them (3.1). Once they were ‘estranged and hostile in mind’ [a)phllotriwme/nouj kai\ e0xqrou_j th|~ dianoi/a|], and now, reconciled, they are ‘holy and blameless’ [a(gi/ouj kai\ a)mw&mouj] (1.21–2). This is the outcome of ‘the gospel which you hear, which has been preached to every creature under heaven’ (1.23). The audience now is to put on love ‘which is the bond of perfect harmony’ [su&ndesmoj th~j teleio&thtoj] (3.14). Walter Wilson has related these cosmic and hortatory passages to the literary conventions of Greco-Roman moral philosophy. The author of Colossians ‘participates in specific and contemporaneous conventions governing moral education and exhortation such as those also reflected in the philosophic materials, and that the activity of the text’s theology is directed at least partly in accordance with and in order to meet expectations associated with these sorts of conventions.’93 Additionally, the kind of Greco-Roman moral training Wilson considers is often with respect to education of individuals for the larger civic good on an imperial stage, indeed with an imperial scenery that was often shifting and changing.94 In the light of Wilson’s treatment, it comes as no surprise that the language in these passages draws on a repertoire of political terms, specifically from rhetorical vocabulary associated with ideals of reconciliation and commonplaces associated with the rhetorical treatment of political concord or homonoia.95 Thus being ‘hostile in mind’ [e0xqrou_j th|~ dianoi/a] is an antonym to o9mo/noia even as ‘the bond of perfect harmony’ [su&ndesmoj th~j teleio&thtoj] is a synonym for it.96 Colossians exhorts listeners in a decidedly imperial way to transform from allegiance to an old world of principalities

Wilson, 1997, 263. The moral philosophers that Wilson, 1997, 132–84, draws upon (Plutarch, Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Pseudo-Heraclitus, Porphyry and Epicurus) for his comparison of Colossians’ strategies of moral exhortation with those of contemporary Greco-Romans, without exception dedicate themselves to moral formation for civic ends. Foucault, 1986, 81–95, following Veyne, 1978, 35–63 (also 1992, 95–116) considers these authors as offering a creation of a moral self on an imperial stage of shifting fortunes. Colossians offers an analogous form of moral exhortation that would have contributed to the stability of the social order. 95 Breytenbach, 1989, 46, cites Pollux, Onom. 1.150–4 to furnish examples of the range of rhetorical vocabulary relating to the treatment of reconcliation. Here it is important to notice that the passage cited lists as terms associated with enemies (e0xqroi) and enmity (e1xqra) foreigners, aliens, barbarians and strangers (h)llotriwme/noi, a)llo&fuloi, tou_j de\ barba&rouj kai\ ce/nouj), as well as the unreconciled (a)kata&llaktoi, a)dia&llaktoi), precisely the register found in Colossians. 96 For o(mo&noia as su&ndesmoj, see Pollux, Onom. 8.152.1, where they are listed alongside each other as synonymous: su&ndesmoj, o(mofrosu&nh, o(mo&noia, o(mognwmosu&nh, o(mologi/a, sumfwni/a o(mofwni/a. We will return to a fuller discussion of these terms in our treatment of Ephesians, in which the language of civic concord dominates the letter more fully than in Colossians. 93 94

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and powers whose rule has wrought social divisions and moral evils. They now follow the rule of Christ whose triumph creates a new order where social divisions and civic enmity are overcome through a reign that brings harmony and good order. At Aphrodisias one could literally behold this transformation. There the serenity of imperial powers juxtaposed with the terror and immoderation of those subjugated displayed, alongside female personifications of the conquered nations as modest and traditionally dressed matrons, the imperial power to transform those ‘once hostile in mind’ through pacification. Again, Colossians depends on such parallels in order to persuade its listeners. For the Christ followers listening to Colossians, a declaration that included Greek and Jews, slaves and free, alongside barbarians and Scythians may well have celebrated the demographic diversity and, more importantly the ethnic divisions, their assemblies had overcome.97 As such these house churches would have represented a means of integration amidst city life marked by ethnic diversity. Demographic study of the ethnic diversity of the Lycus Valley cities of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis awaits scholarly attention, but specific studies reveal important details for the case being argued here. Tullia Ritti’s analysis of names recorded on inscriptions from Hierapolis and Laodicea argues that the population of Roman Phrygia included Greek colonists, a variety of indigenous Asia Minor populations, Roman colonists and Jews.98 Philip Harland in his study of two associations – the guilds of purple-dyers and carpet weavers – at Hierapolis in 200 ce is also instructive. Epigraphic evidence reveals that while these guilds were predominantly non-Judaean, they did include a few ethnic Judaeans or gentile worshipers of the Judaean god. Their presence reveals a multiple affiliation of ethnically identifiable co-religionists with other individuals from one or more different ethne. This is important when compared to evidence of associations elsewhere in the Empire that consisted solely of members from the same geographical location or ethnos.99 A trade guild that enabled members to overcome religious and ethnic divisions in favour of economic interests would have been an important means of facilitating the integration of diverse peoples into the fabric of civic life. A second inscription from Colossae points in a similar direction. The inscription is important for it offers evidence of ethnic diversity during the period Colossians was written. After the earthquake of 60 ce, one Korumbus repaired the Colossian bath and the demos commissioned a bemos to honour his benefaction.100 The inscription includes the full or fragmentary names of 30 subscribers from a list that originally comprised For the hierarchisation of ethne in imperial society generally, see Harland, 2009, 119. Ritti, 2013. I am grateful to Professor Ritti for allowing me to see a draft of her forthcoming monograph dedicated to a demographic study of Roman Phrygia. 99 Harland, 2009, 104–16. 100 Cadwallader, forthcoming. 97 98

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more than 100 persons. As such it offers us a snapshot of the ethnic diversity of the Colossians. Alan Cadwallader notes that the surviving names indicate diverse geographical origins – indigenous, Phrygian, Lycian, Thracian, Roman, one possibly Scythian and another possibly from the Greek island of Keos.101 He argues, further, that the names have been reduced to a Greek onomastic pattern. In other words, while attesting to diverse locations, they have been homogenized. The inscription is evidence of a move toward Greek assimilation of diverse cultures and that in turn points to an integration of peoples more generally, away from ethnicity toward a shared imperial culture. ‘The increase of Hellenistic identification during the early Roman principate turns out to be a key element in the transition and remodeling of Asian cities into Roman conformity.’102 The inscription thus indicates the marking out of an overarching civic identity that trumps any ethnic origins. But it also points in another direction – namely of the union of diverse ethne around a single project, for which there are multiple examples elsewhere in the Roman Empire.103 The two examples from Hierapolis and Colossae thus represent differing aspects of urban participation and acculturation – one following a model that preserves identity within association and the other that encourages assimilation. Both of them occur in urban environments that are overcoming ethnic and religious identity in favour of cooperation. They both reveal the vitality of urban life in first-century Phrygia as well as the willingness of city-dwellers to participate in the civic good. When read against this backdrop, the Colossian affirmation becomes more than an intriguing theological example of Paul’s universal Gospel or, as is sometimes argued, a recapitulation of arguments taken up in Galatians and Romans.104 It rather points to urban cooperation and integration. Even as guilds and cities found means of overcoming distinctions for the purpose of an overarching goal, so the household assembly of Christ followers discovered a means toward unity. All of this unfolded within the context of the larger imperial claims of the integration of diverse peoples into one imperial order. Colossians presents a model of civic integration by other means, and attests to dynamics of the imperial acculturation of the Lycus Valley Christ followers, even as it forcefully makes claims of a radical break with former lives of polytheistic religious practices and beliefs (Col. 2.20; 3.5–7).

Cadwallader, 2013, forthcoming. I am grateful to Professor Cadwallader for allowing me to see his manuscript prior to publication. 102 Ratté, 2002, 7. 103 For example, the participation of Jews in the government of Sardis, and the contribution of non-Jews as patrons of the synagogue, for which, see White, 2011, 179–81. 104 Thus Lincoln and Wedderburn, 1993, 10, who make Colossians into a continuation of Galatians’ renunciation of a Judaizing application of the Law: ‘Col. 3.11 would have added point if the Colossian church were exposed to Judaizing pressures.’ 101

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The Aphrodisias Household Rule Conspicuously absent from the ‘utopian declaration’ of Col 3.11 is the abrogation of distinctions between male and female (compare Gal. 3.28). That absence is particularly noteworthy since Nympha as patron of a house church no doubt had a role of leadership amongst the Laodicaean followers of Christ (Col. 4.15). The absence of the male-female pair in the declaration is probably due to the use of the Household Rule as a chief means of encouraging a picture of household harmony that serves the imperial orientation of the letter as a whole. If Col. 3.11 is a utopian declaration, it is a recognizably traditional one, both in its overcoming of ethnic distinctions, and its making room for men and women to practice traditional gender roles. We will discuss more fully the imperial aspects of the household rule tradition when we consider its role in depicting harmonious political relations in the Letter to the Ephesians. Here the interest is in recognizing how the household rule of Colossians helps to represent its audience in an imperial situation of concord arising as a result of imperial rule. We confine ourselves to the representation of harmonious household relations by considering visual representation in imperial iconography as well as on funerary imagery contemporary with it.105 The Household Rule, as James Crouch as noted, belongs to a long tradition of political thought. Its imperial aspects, however, have only recently begun to be noticed.106 Since the most basic unit of the state was considered by ancient political and moral philosophers to be the household, right relations in the household were seen to preserve the correct functioning of the civil order. The second century rhetor, Dio of Prusa, draws from this long tradition when he likens civic concord to a well-governed household in which husband and wife are like-minded and slaves obey their masters.107 Plutarch describes the ideal ruler as one whose house is so orderly it can be open to view by neighbours (De praec. Ger. Re 800F). Aelius Aristides in his slightly later speech praising Rome (Or. 26.102) celebrates the empire for ‘ordering the whole inhabited world like single household’, a description that perhaps refers to the emperor’s honorary title as pater patriae – father of the fatherland. Augustus’ laws mandating marriage, punishing adultery and promoting the birth of children through tax incentives were central strategies in his programme of cultural renewal.108 It comes as no surprise, then, that during the Roman imperial period this ideology was promoted as iconographers returned to representations of the imperial family in

See pages XXX MacDonald, 2010, 79–84; Sumney, 2008, 235–8; Martin, 1990, 148; Maier, 2011, 226–9. 107 Dio Or. 38.14. 108 For a general discussion of the implementation of family laws and their role in Augustus’ political programme and public profile, see Galinsky, 1996, 128–40. 105 106

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Figure 19  Reverse of aureus with the legend AUGUSTUS AUGUSTA, mint of Rome, 64–5 ce, RIC 1.44 © Spink & Sons

domestic harmony.109 Imagery representing the female members of the imperial family in postures and dress displaying modesty and self-control through correct dress, hairstyle and arm position were a widespread means of broadcasting and imagining the harmony of the imperial household. In addition to exploiting pro-family ideals current in the populace at large, it affirmed that imperial concord flowed forth from the harmony of the ruling household, the mirror of divine concordia. Julio-Claudian mints repeatedly issued coins depicting the concord of the imperial family. Throughout the period Concordia was associated with marital harmony within the imperial family. Of relevance for recognizing the imperial connections with the Colossian Household Code are the contemporary Augustus Augusta issues celebrating Nero’s marriage to Poppaea in 62 ce (Figure 19).110 Here the radiate Nero with scepter and patera – symbols of Jovian rule and generosity – stands beside the traditionally veiled Poppaea, represented, through cornucopia and patera, as Concordia. Radiate, Nero is given almost supernatural stature. Closer to the Lycus Valley, less dramatic but nonetheless instructive, an issue from Apamea from the reign of Nero, depicts the emperor and Drusus with the emperor’s sisters Agrippina, Drusilla and Julia, depicted as Securitas, Concordia and

Dixon, ‘The Sentimental Ideal of the Roman Family’, in Rawson, 1991, 99–113, at 107. RIC 153, nos. 44, 48, 56; similarly the Concordia Augusta issues, where again Poppaea appears as Concordia (RIC 1.48). See Rose, 1997, 49, and Grant, 1972, 133–48, for discussion and other examples of numismatic depictions of Nero’s allegedly harmonious family relations.

109 110

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Fortuna, and each holding a cornucopia.111 Here again the mints represent the imperial family as a harmonious domestic unit and personifications of the leading imperial deities whose cornucopiae associated fertility with peace, good order and prosperity. As Susan Wood has noted, images of the harmony of the imperial family – especially the virtues of imperial wives, and usually associated with fertility – were a chief means by which emperors communicated civic values and ideals. Such portraits visually acclaimed that the good functioning of the Empire was due in part to the proper functioning of the imperial family household.112 At Aphrodisias these elements appear again to celebrate the dynastic unity and harmony of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. We see this in the portrait of Agrippina crowning Nero at his enthronement (Plate 4a), where, not without historical irony, domestic concord is displayed through the close relation of mother and son. Another panel (Figure 20) offers a similar portrayal, this time between Agrippina and Claudius. Here husband and wife join right hands, an iconographic symbol of concord. The relief idealizes Agrippina as a properly dressed matron. Her tightly fitting garment and arms close by her body are pictorial elements typical of the representation of pudicitia – the self-regulation and modesty of the ideal Roman wife.113 She holds ears of wheat in her left hand to symbolize her fertility.114 Elsewhere conqueror and the household role of master are brought together in a panel that presents a nude Germanicus with a boy slave (see Figure 12). These representations unite a worldwide rule of the scattered peoples of a vast Empire together with an image of domestic harmony. The sebasteion reinforces this portrayal in its depictions of the properly coifed and dressed women who represent Augustus’ conquered peoples and nations. The women are presented as properly clothed and their dress echoes that of the empresses depicted opposite them above. The improperly dressed woman (Figure 16) signifies the incorrectly governed household, mirrored again on the south portico by improperly dressed barbarian women, with unkempt hair (see Figure 13). Their lack of self-control is symbolized by their open displays of grief. The decision to depict Claudius and Nero as conquering Amazonian women is significant in this regard, since nothing could contrast more with the regulated Greek matrons RPC 1.2014. Wood, 1999, 1–3; also 77–87, where she comments specifically on the portraiture of Augustus’ wife, Livia, as a means of communicating her virtues as an ideal matron; for portraiture of Agrippina as idealized matron, see 290. See also D’Ambra, 1993 for a more general account, as well as the discussion of Winter, 2003, 32–7, of images of the traditional wife as symbols of domestic harmony. For imperial wives associated in portraiture with fertility, see Rose 1997, 75–6. 113 For discussion of the pudicitia type and its presence here and elsewhere in Aphrodisias, see Canavan 2011, 98; Lenaghan 2008, 50. 114 For the imagery and its appearance first with Agrippina in imperial portraiture, see Wood, 1999, 290. 111 112

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Figure 20  Relief of Claudius and Agrippina, Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (first century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

personifying the nations of Augustan rule than the mythic Amazon women who battle with men. Reliefs and portraits idealizing the family were of course not confined to imperial imagery. They were readily seen on funerary monuments as well. A second-century stele from Hierapolis (Figure 21), erected in memory of Adragathos, depicts a scene of domestic harmony at a funerary banquet. Husband and wife recline beside each other in front of a table with three loaves of bread. Adragathos’s arm around his wife represents marital concord. To the left and right of the table are probably family members, an adult female and a child; both are reaching for a loaf of bread. The meal symbolizes the bonds of family life and domestic harmony. The stele represents to the viewer contemporary cultural codes of women and the household: the properly arranged peplos, coiffed hair and arms close to the side communicate modesty and right regulation. Here is an idealized family portrait that is not visibly imperial but whose representation would have furnished a visual cue for the kind of household relations outlined in Colossians. Images of this type would have reinforced, as Michael Trainor has argued, the ideals of domestic harmony and marital concord Colossians invites its listeners to imagine with the help of vivid language. Paul could assume this iconography as belonging to a shared culture

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Figure 21 Funerary Stele of Adragathos (second century), Hierapolis Archaeology Museum, Dinizli

that the rhetorical use of vivid speech depended upon for its persuasive power.115 What links the Household Code of Colossians to an imperial situation is its location in the letter’s larger hortatory design, which itself takes place in a text that manifestly draws upon imperial vocabulary and imagery. Thus as Colossians moves from a representation of an old life of vice toward a new life of virtue, in which social and ethnic distinctions are no obstacle to the spread of a triumphal and global gospel, the appearance of a household rule to outline right relations is part of the letter’s repertoire of political language and imagery. The Haustafel functions to persuade its audience that they are the beneficiaries of a rule that is universal. Later, Pliny, as we will see, celebrates Trajan for making the whole world his household. Here Colossians promotes a similar vision by celebrating a Gospel of the enthroned Christ that is steadily making the world his own, one rightly governed household at a time. As we will see, Ephesians expands these elements by linking them with language centring on ideals of political concord (Eph. 2.19). Later, 1 Timothy make these associations stronger

Trainor, 2011, 239–40.

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still as they make imperial virtues the preeminent sign of the properly functioning Christian family and house church – the household of God (1 Tim. 3.15).

Colossians as Counter-Memory The preceding argument has shown that Colossians constructs an imperial situation in order to dissuade its audience from participating in rival religious rituals and beliefs. The principalities and powers belong to an old order that has been conquered, pacified and reconciled. Their triumphal and enthroned ruler, Christ, alone rules the universe and as a consequence enables a worldwide renewal as his Gospel spreads through every part of the Roman Empire. Christ is the benefactor of Colossians’ audience and to him they owe honour and singular devotion.116 If this is an imperial situation it is one in chains; in Colossians the triumph of Christ is by way of the cross. The letter uses imperial language to portray its audience and the benefits of Christ’s rule, but in doing so it revises traditional categories of imperial reconciliation and pacification. For it is not by subjugating others that Christ reconciles, but through his own subjugation. Elsewhere I have called this, borrowing a phrase from Homi Bhabha, ‘a sly civility’.117 That is, Colossians deploys vivid imperial language and imagery as an incentive to imagination as a strategy of persuasion. But if it mimics the categories and ideals of contemporary politics, it does not leave them where it found them.118 As such Colossians reveals both an imperial situation and a colonized one in that the imperial ideology it mimics returns that ideology slant. Michel Foucault uses the term counter-memory to describe the uses of history as a way of contesting the uses of memory in traditional history.119 Traditional history uses memory as a means of preserving formulations of knowledge and power for the sake of rulers and their dominion, the establishment of a past that is in the service of a vision of a harmonious present free from conflicting interpretation. For Foucault, such a harmonious present never has or will exist except in the ideological imaginations of those whose positions it serves. Counter-memory describes another form of memory that is attentive to the combative nature of history and the role of conflict in marking differing uses of the past for the sake of For benefaction in Colossians, specifically with reference to a worldwide Gospel and response with thankfulness and honour, see Danker, 1982, 439. As they have received the benefaction of the Gospel (Col. 1.6), they are in turn benefactors of others in their ‘love of the saints’ (1.4). 117 Maier, 2005a; for ‘sly civility’, see Bhabha, 1994, 93–101. 118 For mimicry in a colonial situation, see Bhabha, 1994, 85–92. 119 Foucault, 1977, 139–64. 116

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present interests.120 A letter from a Roman jail that celebrates a worldwide spread of a Gospel centred around the memory of a crucified triumphator and a chained apostle, that overcomes all distinctions, including those of barbarian and Scythians, is indeed a form of imperial counter-memory. The memory of an apostle who writes in shackles and urges his audience to chain themselves, like him, together in love, is, to use Foucault’s description of counter-memory, a means of ‘seizing the rules, to replace those who had used them’. The chained apostle is disguising himself as an imperial agent of a strange counter-Gospel and as a consequence perverts an imperial Gospel, or, better, reveals the perversion of the so-called Gospel the emperor represents. Colossians presents the site of victory as the place of execution – the cross. The imagery in 2.15 of disarming/stripping (a)pekdusa&menoj) makes this vivid. Crucified victims were of course stripped for execution. Also, in triumphs the conquered were stripped and paraded for public display. The object of a)pekdusa&menoj is usually translated as the principalities and powers: ‘he disarmed the principalities and powers…’. In this translation, Jesus’ death is an imperial triumph that parades stripped enemies. However, Roy Yates suggests an alternative rendering that has the benefit of capturing the paradoxical uses of Colossians’ imperial imagery that have been explored here.121 He argues that the verb is better translated as a reflexive participle: ‘disarming/stripping himself’. In this case’ the verbal construct that follows (e0deigma&tisen e0n parrhsi/a|) refers to the dramatic public exposure of the principalities and powers, and the conquering of them on the cross.122 The Aphrodisias sebasteion we have cited in the discussion here offers ample visual evidence of this form of public humiliation; images of half-dressed men and women in postures of bondage and slavery recur as means of emphasizing imperial success. The depiction of bound prisoners beneath a tropaeum on the relief of Apollo Sosianus offers an example of such public humiliation (see Figure 1). Here, however, in Colossians, the formulation inverts the Roman imperial model of pacification, so that it becomes a giving up of self in death rather than the stripping of others. The humiliation of Christ on the cross has become the site of victory and the exposure of all the principalities and powers that have conspired to execute him. It is difficult not to interpret this as including an unmasking of the imperial forces that murdered Jesus. The victory model of atonement Colossians presents then is not one of deploying an imperial model to a

Foucault, 1977, 151. Yates, 1991, 573–91. Thus, ‘Stripping himself, he made a public spectacle of the principalities and powers, triumphing over them in it [i.e. the cross].’ This is in contrast to the NRSV: ‘He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.’ 122 e0n au)tw|~ here refers then, by way of context, to the cross, the place of Christ’s being stripped. 120 121

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Christian cosmos where the enthroned Christ is a mightier emperor than Caesar. It rather revises notions of victory and turns them upside down. The enthroned Christ of Colossians has been crucified and humiliated. His bold exposure of the principalities and powers is simultaneously a demystification of imperial force and violence. From this it follows that the author’s use of the identical verb at 3.9 to describe the shedding of a life of vice (a)pekdusa&menoi to_n palaio_n a!nqrwpon – ‘having put off the old nature’) returns us to this imperial appeal of slavery and triumph. The letter joins its audience with the chained Paul in a paradoxical victory. The rule of Christ chains them together (su&ndesmoj; 2.14–15). The dissolution in Col. 3.11 of slave and free suggests not so much an elimination of the category as its reversal. This of course has implications for the exhortations that come in the Household Rule that follows (3.18–4.1), for while household relations remain perhaps the organizing vertical principle of the communities addressed in Colossians, as an image of concord they emphasize reciprocity, fairness and love. If there cannot be in Colossae slave and free, this does not mean the abrogation of slavery so much as the elimination of humiliation and subjugation. Margaret MacDonald has argued that such reciprocity would have implied the elimination of the customary treatment of slaves as sexual objects.123 This picture must be balanced of course with the very hierarchical principles the Household Rule nevertheless endorses. Colossians eliminates humiliation and subjugation, but not slavery. From the perspective of these inversions and the reconstitution of basic social relations, again following Foucault’s understanding of countermemory, we can say that Colossians’ imperial image and text ‘functions so as to overcome their rulers through their own rules.’124 Yet, on the way toward such a dismantling it also engages in its own version of imperial reconstruction. For Colossians reinstates the complex imperial mechanisms it dismantles by using them as a means of persuasion through vivid description and metaphor. If it marks a break with the world, it encourages an ethos and attitude toward the world well suited to the practices of urban life of its listeners. A letter that encourages the overcoming of ethnic and economic distinctions for the sake of a universal Gospel also has the effect of encouraging the manifestation of an imperial order, however much it is presented in other terms. Even as the Colossians are enthroned with Jesus in their baptism, they exercise a power of dominion shared with him. Again, the Gemma Augustea (Figure 9) reveals graphically how this looks, as the enthroned emperor, Tiberius, and personifications of imperial abundance enjoy the tranquility and peace of the upper register even as a scene of subjugation unfolds below. Colossians places its audience in such an upper register. Three centuries later, in a Christian Empire, the imperial picture

MacDonald, 2007: 94–113, especially 110–13. Foucault, 1977, 151.

123 124

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language of Colossians would prove especially useful to help support a vision of an emperor appointed to be God’s vice regent to realize on earth what had been accomplished in heaven. We will return to the recurrence of imperial iconography in this later period in our epilogue. The next chapter explores another use of imperial iconography and text as a means of persuasion, in Ephesians’ celebration of ecclesial concord.

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3 Ephesians: The Uncanny Fluency of Another’s Language

Even as Colossians summons its audience to envision utopia, Ephesians invites imagination of heterotopia. Colossians uses imperial imagery and language to persuade listeners to reject false teaching. The writer of Ephesians creates another imperial situation, to celebrate Christ’s rule and its benefits of concord and civic harmony. The ambiguity of Ephesians’ precise purpose notwithstanding, its contents portray a community living amidst the tensions that arise from multiple association – on the one hand, as Christ-followers who in the church have discovered new models of sociality, and on the other hand, as participants in the civil order. Paul draws on images of imperial concord to celebrate the end of enmity between Jews and non-Jews and their unity under Christ’s rule in the church. As Colossians, Ephesians uses imperial victory language and metaphor to describe the benefits of Christ’s reign. The imperial situation Ephesians creates imagines the church as the place where the social goods of concord and moral transformation are achieved. As we will see, Flavian iconography associated with victory in the Jewish War is instructive for recognizing Ephesians’ celebration of Christ as bringer of worldwide peace and concord. In Ephesians, Paul places his audience in narrative worlds that at once imitate and reject the imperial world around them, creating what the social urban geographer Edward Soja calls a ‘thirdspace’. Soja coined the phrase ‘thirdspace’ to describe creative, marginal social practices of place and normative ideological structures. Thirdspace creates, in the words of Michel Foucault, a heterotopia – that is, place outside of all places. As Ephesians simultaneously mimics and rejects its imperial world, it does just that. Later in this chapter we will explore how Soja’s notion of thirdspace offers a heuristic means for understanding Ephesians’ representation of the church as the place practicing a new social paradigm. As a space for using imperial language and imagination to celebrate an emerging Christian identity, Ephesians has sometimes been invoked as marking the advent of a ‘third race’, no longer ‘Jews’ or ‘Gentiles’ but inhabitants of a new ecclesial group of

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Christ followers. However, in that such an interpretation is only theological, it is limited. The imperial setting of Ephesians also demands consideration of its social geographical representation. Such an exploration reveals the letter’s use of its imperial urban location constructively, as a means of self-definition and as a source for its ethical exhortations. In the case of Ephesians, we see a thirdspace practice of urban geographical location and imperial ideology used to create and express unique civic identity.1 The church of Christ-followers celebrated and exhorted by Ephesians casts before its audience a thirdspace imperial situation through unique appropriations of imperial image and civic text while at the same time encouraging an identity separate from its Greco-Roman contemporaries. Taking up the postcolonial analysis we ended with in our discussion of Colossians, we will see that Ephesians reveals itself to be both within the ancient cityscape of the Roman Empire and at some remove from it. This is not so much a spiritualization of Paul as it is a reconfiguration of him in a new imperial situation. Ephesians, like Colossians, offers civics by other means. Mimicry that takes the form of borrowed imperial image and text becomes, in Ephesians, the ‘representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal.’2

In Search of a Life Setting Ephesians is famously ‘an epistle in search of a life setting.’3 As one scholar aptly summarizes the problem, ‘The trouble with Ephesians can be summed up quite simply: it has no setting and little obvious purpose.’4 Another describes it as a ‘a stranger at the door.’5 The proposals to account for Ephesians are as numerous as the scholars who make them. These include that Ephesians was a circular letter not exclusively addressed to the Ephesians; an introduction and primer in Pauline thought; a theological tractate in the form of a letter; a wisdom discourse; a composite of hymnic fragments; a liturgical document or baptismal liturgy in the form of a letter; an extended prayer; a homily; a letter composed of diverse rhetorical genre and style; the ‘lost letter’ of the Laodiceans mentioned in Col. 4.16; an attempt to shore up waning religious commitment and ethical discipline; an attempt to avoid the fracturing of a Pauline community after Paul’s death; an exhortation to avoid the religious practices of the cult of Demeter/Cybele Soja, 1996. Bhabha, 1994, 86. Smith, 2011, 251–4 rightly argues that Ephesians expressly offers neither support for nor resistance to the Roman Empire. But he fails to recognize the importance of vivid imperial imagery in helping to achieve the rhetorical aims of the letter and how it helps to turn listeners into viewers in a shared imperial situation. 3 Martin, 1968, 296–302. 4 Muddiman, 2001, 12. 5 Barth, 1959, 13. 1 2

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in Hierapolis; a warning against the magical practices associated with the cult of Artemis in Ephesus; a polemic against ‘Judaizers’ who, in the wake of the Jewish War, had arrived as refugees from Roman Palestine and were unsettling the Pauline Church in Asia Minor; and an admonition against Gentile arrogance toward Jewish Christ-followers who in the course of time have come increasingly to form an ethnic minority.6 Margaret MacDonald uses sociological theory to describe the letter as a means of communitystabilizing institutionalization after the crisis occasioned by Paul’s death. More recently she has linked the letter’s exhortations to reject the world to what she alleges was increased persecution and harassment of Asia Minor Jews/Christ followers under Domitian.7 Taken together, these represent attempts to make the Ephesian stranger at the door more recognizable. Remarkably, however, the recent turn in New Testament study to ‘Paul and Empire’ has all but ignored Ephesians.8 This may be due to the fact that Ephesians resists traditional methods of historical-critical exegesis that read texts in the light of historical situation. Or perhaps it is because of the ranking of the contested corpus in general by the guild as the poor cousin of the uncontested letters. Or maybe, again, it is because it has been viewed as a spiritualization of what has been taken to be the down-to-earth and pointed critique of the Roman Empire in the so-called genuine corpus.9 Nevertheless, an imperial reading of Ephesians is remarkable. Like Colossians, Ephesians offers its audience an identity steeped in imperial political language, metaphor and imagery. Like Colossians, again, this results in a particularly paradoxical relationship of the document to its wider imperial culture. In this respect Colossians and Ephesians are cousins, even siblings, in a broad transformation of Paul’s thought after

Thus, Verhey and Harvard, 2011, 24–6 (circular letter); Goodspeed, 1933, 3; Mitton, 1951 (primer), 45–54; Käsemann, 1958, 517, 520 (tract); Schlier, 1930, 21–2 (wisdom discourse); Sanders, 1966, 214–32 (hymn); Dahl, 2000, 325–7, and Schille, 1962, 20–3, 102–7 (baptismal; liturgical document); Kirby, 1968, 125–49, 165–72 (prayer); Gnilka, 1996, 33, and Lincoln, 1990, xxxix (homily); Hoehner, 2002, 76 ( letter of composite rhetorical style); Muddiman, 2001, 21, 24–6 (Laodiceans); Lincoln and Wedderburn, 1993, 82 (lack of resolve); Meade, 1986, 152 (fragmentation of Pauline Christianity); Kreitzer, 2007, 74–92 (polemic against the Demeter/Cybele cult); Arnold, 1989, 123–4 (polemic against magical practices of various Ephesian religions); Gnilka, 1971, 46–8 (Judiazers); Käsemann, 1971, 109–10 (Gentile arrogance). For discussion and critique, see Hoehner, 2002, 74–6. 7 MacDonald, 1988, 85; 2004, 260–80. 8 Exceptions include Gupta and Long, 2010, 112–36; Mussner, 1982, 32–3; Talbert, 2007, 17–28; Muddiman, 2001, and Faust, 1993, the only sustained imperial treatment of Ephesians. Lotz, 1999, 173–88, explores numismatic evidence concerning homonoia as imperial background for Ephesians 1.21. Danker, 1982, and Hendrix, 1988, read Ephesians as imperial decree. MacDonald, 2004, 419–44, relates Ephesians to imperial identity and Jewish relations under Domitian. Perkins, 1997, 27–32, compares the universal language of Ephesians to imperial geopolitical claims. Ubieta, 2001, 260–80, using social geography, treats Ephesians as an anti-imperial reterritorialization. 9 Thus, for example, Elliott, 2006, 121. 6

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the apostle’s imprisonment and death. Their resemblance is best explained by common origins rather than direct literary dependence, or perhaps by their being a common product of a centre of Pauline thought probably located somewhere in the western Asia Minor, possibly at or near Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae in the Lycus Valley where Colossians originated, or further west nearer to Ephesus (which would explain its title).10 Despite a common genetic heritage, however, Ephesians demands a distinct treatment of imperial themes.

Ambassador in Chains Like those addressed by Colossians, Ephesians invites its audience to remember Paul with the help of a vivid imperial imagination. Paul is ‘the ambassador in chains [presbeu&w e0n alu&sei]’ (Eph. 6.20). As in Colossians, the memory of Paul’s imprisonment is striking and attests to the ancient rhetorical ideal of setting before the listener’s eyes images ‘that are effective and sharply outlined, with the capacity of encountering and speedily penetrating the mind.’11 Again, there is no reference in the letter to suffering or harassment from outsiders. A text contemporary with Ephesians, the Book of Revelation, reflects an urban situation shared by seven churches of Asia Minor named by him, including Ephesus, in which too little, not too much, imperial persecution is the besetting problem.12 The message to the Laodiceans criticizes its audience for lukewarm love, not a passion for suffering faith, for the pursuit of wealth, rather than a love of martyrdom (Rev. 3.14–22). So then we see that Ephesians, as with Colossians, is not a community under persecution, but one which remembers Paul’s chains for other reasons. The ambassadorial chains of Eph. 6.20 invoke the imprisonment of Paul to illustrate vividly Paul’s role in being set aside by God to announce good news of the end of enmity between estranged people and the civic concord, peace and reconciliation that comes from Christ’s rule.13 As Ephesians unfolds, it offers an ‘effective and sharply outlined’ representation of that concord and reconciliation. Paul’s chains are those of an imperial diplomat, who like other diplomats of the period, has been sent to create or reinforce

For discussion of various theories of the relation of Colossians to Ephesians, as well as geographical location, see Witetschek, 2008, 213–18; Muddiman, 2001, 7–11. For a ‘Pauline School’, see Lohse, 1971, 181; Schnelle, 1998, 350–3; Best, 1998, 36–40; Trebilco, 2004, 92–4. 11 Cicero, De or. 2.87.358. 12 For discussion and literature, see Maier, 2002, 30–9. 13 For ambassadorial language in connection with missions of reconciliation, see Breytenbach, 1989, 65–6; 2010, 172–6; Bash, 1997, 70–1. 10

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an order in which civic unity and peace reigns, and parties once estranged – specifically Jews and non-Jews – now enjoy harmonious relations.14 Paul creates an imperial situation that invites listeners to celebrate and pursue the ethical goals his letter urges. He casts before their eyes pictures of the bonds of unity to awaken enthusiasm for following a harmonious life under Christ’s rule. Ephesians celebrates the Christ who has brought estranged parties together through the proclamation of his ambassador, Paul, in return for which listeners are to respond by ‘lead[ing] a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called’ (Eph. 4.1). This invocation of reciprocity draws its audience into an orbit of political and civic ideals shared by its Greco-Roman contemporaries, where honours, dedication and allegiance in response to benefaction were basic elements of cultural and political transaction. Scholars have noticed the way Ephesians echoes the imperial language and style of Roman imperial honorific culture, especially that of the rhetoric of inscriptions. The celebration of Christ’s benefaction in Eph. 1.3–14, for example, a single sentence with multiple periods and cola, has been likened to a Greek honorific inscription. Exegetes single out Ephesians for its ‘chancery’ style and even describe it as ‘an epistolary decree’ analogous to inscriptions raised to honour imperial benefactors.15 Even if these analogies cannot be pressed too far, as Charles Talbert insightfully notes, Ephesians ‘breathe[s] the same air of benefaction and reciprocity’ of imperial honorific language. ‘It is difficult to think that the Gentile auditors in western Asia Minor would have heard it otherwise.’16

Ephesian Homonoia: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism The image of the chained ambassador speaks volumes. Diplomats and the language of diplomacy featured heavily in the social world of Asia Minor cities.17 In the Hellenistic and imperial period, myths of city origins and acts of public benefaction promoted the allegiance of inhabitants to their cities and prompted inter-city competition.18 The advent of Roman power Similarly, though without discussion of homonoia, see Bash, 1997, 133. For Ephesians, 1.3–14 as echoing inscriptions in celebration of imperial benefaction, see Danker, 1982, 451–2; Hendrix, 1988, 3–15. For Ephesians as chancery language, see Danker, 1982, 326; for ‘epistolary decree’, see Hendrix, 1988, 9. 16 Talbert, 2007, 24; for discussion of critical differences in Ephesians from decrees and letters celebrating benefaction, see 20–5. 17 For the range of meanings associated with the term presbe- and its cognates and its meanings in the uncontested Pauline corpus, see Bash, 1997, 38–80. 18 For civic pride and identity, as well as the role of patronage in creating popular allegiance to and competition between cities, see Mitchell, 1993, 206–17. 14 15

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fuelled this rivalry as cities competed for imperial honours. The Empire discouraged destructive competition and division even as it encouraged social stratification by creating new hierarchical divisions through imperial honours and titles.19 Civic elites pursued policies independently from Rome to create treaties marking the end of rivalry. This allowed them to express a degree of political self-determination independent of their imperial masters.20 In the context of this world of civic rivalry and treaties of cooperation, Ephesians’ repertoire of political language is remarkable. With the help of political language it also promotes the end of rivalry and describes the reconciliation of parties once hostile to one another. A number of rhetors contemporary with or slightly later than Ephesians dedicated speeches to concord or homonoia to rival cities in order to end division and promote the ideals of shared civic identity.21 Plutarch expresses this goal of diplomacy in his Precepts of Statecraft, when he names as the chief goal of the politician, ‘only this – and it is the equal of any of the other blessings: – always to instill concord and friendship [o9monoian…kai\ fili/an] in those who dwell together [sunoikou=sin] with him and to remove strifes, discords, and all enmity’ (De praec. Ger. Re. 824D). Rival cities delegated ambassadors to negotiate mutually satisfactory treaties that embodied the ideals Plutarch outlines. This is the aim of the speeches on the theme of concord by Dio of Prusa (ca. 40–ca. 120 ce) and Aelius Aristides (117–181 ce), rhetors dispatched or delegating themselves as presbeutai/– ambassadors – to conclude treaties or overcome civic rivalry and enmity.22 Throughout these speeches they deploy a series of topoi or rhetorical commonplaces designed through vivid imagery to place before listeners’ eyes the ideas declaimed upon. These include pictures and vocabulary that typify harmony: rightly ordered households, the architectural beauty and symmetry of temples, rightly constructed buildings, music, the army, ships, nature and the cosmos, bee colonies, the body and its members, Zeus’ rule, a shared humankind, imperial rule and the imperial household and the virtuous citizen body. Dio of Prusa in his speeches works with these metaphors repeatedly. Important for our discussion of Ephesians are his treatments of the unity of humankind as a means of appeal for civic concord. In his Oration to Nicomedia and Nicaea, rivals for imperial honour under Domitian, Dio For inter-city rivalry and competition in the pursuit of civic and individual imperial honours, see Price, 1984b, 126–32; Friesen, 1993, 156–60. Kampmann, 1998, 375–93, and Merkelbach, 1978, 287–96, furnish the Sitz im Leben of these rivalries as sacred imperial games, processions, festivals and provincial councils, at each of which rank and position were on public display. 20 For the dual function, see Kienast, 1995, 276, 278. 21 For a general overview, see Sheppard, 1984–6, 229–52; Thraede, 1994, 176–289. For extensive study, see Moulakis, 1973. 22 These speeches include Dio’s Or. 24, 32, 34, 38–41, and Aristides’ Or. 23 and 24; his panegyrical Or. 26 and 27 similarly draw on commonplaces associated with homonoia. 19

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celebrates homonoia as ‘both friendship and reconciliation and kinship’ (Or. 38.11). He urges an end to rivalry, envy and strife – the three vices that in these rhetorical traditions typify the opposite of homonoia. Instead, he exhorts his audience to ‘share in things which are good: unity of heart and mind [o9monoou/ntwn]’ (Or. 38.43). In Oration 39, this time in celebration of the end of strife in Nicaea, he invokes similar metaphors concerning social unity: Dio rejoices that the Nicaeans reveal civic unity in ‘wearing the same costume [e3n me\n sxh=ma], speaking the same language [mi/an de\ fwnh/n], and desiring the same things [tau0ta\ boulome/nouj]’ (39.3). ‘To whom’, he goes on to ask, ‘are blessings sweeter than those who are one heart and mind [o9monoou/ntwn]?’ He concludes his speech by invoking the blessing of the gods – Dionysus, Heracles, Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Homonoia – as well as the god of the city’s fortune, Nemesis, to ‘implant in this city a yearning for itself, a passionate love, a singleness of purpose, a unity of wish and thought [mi/an gnw/mhn kai tau0ta\ kai\ fronei=n]; and, on the other, hand, that they may cast out strife and contentiousness and jealousy [sta/sin de\ kai\ e1rida kai\ filoniki/an]’ (Or. 39.8). Dio asks the rival cities of Prusa and Apamea to

Figure 22  Statue of Flavia Julia as Clementia, Rome (first century Museum © Lukas Maier

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ce),

Vatican

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Figure 23 Sarcophagus of Euthius Pyrrhon (third century Archaeology Museum, Dinizli

ce),

Hierapolis

recognize their common ties: ‘you are almost one community, one city, only slightly divided [e0ste dh=moj kai\ mi/a po/lij e0n ou0 polw|= diasth/mati]’ (Or. 41.11). In a similar vein, Aelius Aristides, writing later during the Antonine period, and reflecting his imperial location under a homogenizing Roman rule, sums up the orientation of this emphasis on unity: ‘if imitation of the gods is an act of people of good sense, it would be the part of people of good sense to believe that they are all a unity, as far as is possible’ (Or. 23.78). Literary treatment was one aspect of the promotion of homonoia in this period. Concord was also a recurring visual theme in civic and imperial culture. We have seen the imperial aspect of this in the visual programme of imagery on the Aphrodisias Sebasteion (see Plate 4a and Figure 20). There, ideals of harmony and unity were represented by images of the imperial family as models of domestic and political unity. Emperors’ mothers and wives were idealized by way of posture and expression as matrons dedicated to self-control and moderation, the virtues necessary for the harmonious operation of the state. In Ephesus, as well as Laodicea, Colossae, and Hierapolis, we can expect there were statues of leading citizens and emperors, and their wives, represented through posture and clothing as

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Figure 24  Reverse of aes homonoia coin, Mint of Laodicea, reign of Nero, RPC 1.2928 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 25  Reverse of aes homonoia coin, Mint of Ephesus, 91–5 ce, RPC 2.2.1085 © Trustees of the British Museum

citizens who embodied the virtues necessary for the achievement of civic well-being and concord. This, as we have seen, is represented where Livia is represented as Concordia (see Figure 7), and, closer in date to Ephesians, in the representation of Flavia Julia, the daughter of Titus, this time as Clementia (Figure 22). Across the Roman Empire, local elites similarly represented their households as models of concord. The sarcophagus of the Asian Archon, Euthius Pyrrhon (Figure 23), for example, depicts husband and wife in concord on the kline, above reliefs depicting their domestic harmony. More critical, however, for the everyday life of the promotion and celebration of political harmony was the coinage issued during the first two centuries. It has been debated whether it was issued to mark the ratification of city treaties, or, as is now more commonly argued, as the recognition of the assuaging of conflict after intense rivalry for prominence.23 Through it the imagery and ideals of civic concord were spread widely and penetrated everyday life. Almost 80 cities issued coins with more than 100 types of homonoia representations. Together they reflect the emphasis placed on civic cooperation, and the attempt to limit rivalry. Coins issued during the reign of Nero and later Domitian to celebrate concord between rival Asia Minor cities are instructive.24 In the example from Nero’s reign (Figure 24), the coin depicts the divine Fortune that oversees Smyrna and Laodicea; each holds a scepter in her left hand and joins her right hand as a symbol of harmony. Another coin type (Figure 25) issued during the reign of Domitian, celebrating homonoia between Franke, 1968, 24. Franke and Nollé, 1997, nos. 1162–97, 1213–14.

23 24

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Ephesus and Smyrna, places Artemis at the centre with the Nemesis, goddess of Fortune, of Ephesus and Smyrna on either side.25 One notes the prevalence of homonoia coinage dedicated to treaties concluded between Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Hierapolis and Laodicea. These cities were rivals for imperial favours even as they were aligned through trade and commercial interests. These issues depict rivals restoring concord with one another with a sacrifice to Artemis. They invite a striking analogy to Ephesians overcoming of division between non-Jews and Jews through Jesus’ sacrifice. While the Ephesian theme of unity has sometimes been interpreted as evidence of ethno-religious divisions, the fact that the letter celebrates rather than exhorts unity is suggestive of a different reality. The imperial situation the letter creates for its listeners is one in which they see themselves as beneficiaries of the conclusion of rivalry. The prevalence of homonoia coinage amongst cities named in Colossians is important. Christ followers in these centres could hardly have been ignorant of inter-city rivalry and competition. If Ephesians circulated amongst Christ followers through networks of trade connecting cities that were often rivals, we can imagine the epistle offering another means of concord, established in an alternative community of the reconciled. The letter invokes civic unity with reference to the Jewish and non-Jewish Christ followers, but that vision of cooperation and harmony as well would have had the effect of binding together believers dispersed amongst cities traditionally in rivalry with one another.

Figure 26 Reverse of dupondius, Mint of Rome, 80 ce, BMCRE 2.240. pl. 52.5 © Trustees of the British Museum

25

Figure 27 Reverse of denarius, Mint of Ephesus, 71–4 ce, BMCRE 2.453 pl. 16.6 © Trustees of the British Museum

Franke and Nollé, 1997, nos. 153–5, 162–6.

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Iconography celebrating political concord was also a major theme of Flavian imperial coinage. This was a consequence of a new Flavian dynasty seeking to legitimate itself after it had emerged from relative obscurity to win control of Rome after the bloody civil war of 69 ce. The Flavian project of presenting itself as divinely sent restorer of the Augustan order was massive. It involved the transformation of Rome into a Flavian monument – what A. J. Boyle aptly calls Figure 28 Reverse of denarius, Mint of Ephesus, 80–1 ce, BMCRE a Flavian ‘semiotic disturbance’ 2.224 pl. 100.224 © Trustees of the of the monumental text of the British Museum Julio-Claudian city.26 In addition to monuments, the Flavians embarked upon an ambitious programme of issuing coins. Whereas earlier imperial coinage was issued with reference to specific occasions, carefully selected for a particular target audience, the Flavians used images that took on a canonical form and produced them for a mass audience. An additional change from earlier coinage was the careful selection of legends to assure a simple and straightforward meaning. Through these means the Flavians exploited coinage as a chief means of ‘image control’, that sought ‘to keep on message’.27 This was aided by the close attention they gave to producing a larger variety of coin types in lower denominations. This enabled a wider distribution of Flavian propaganda.28 It also had the advantage of furnishing more surface for detailed representation.29 The twin themes around which Flavian numismatic iconography revolved were concordia and pax – the restoration of the pre-Neronian order of civic

Boyle, 2003, 32, and more generally 29–35. Thus, Blamberg, 1981, 43; for Flavian control of mints generally, 43–51. 28 Blamberg, 1981, 32–3, with a view to the western Empire. The numismatic evidence for the east indicates a similar programme. There the imperial mints issued coins relatively infrequently (in Ephesus 70–4, and perhaps 76, 81–2 and possibly 95). For discussion of the Ephesian mint, its issues and dates, see Carradice, 2012, 377. The result was a centrally controlled mint and direct management of imperial imagery throughout the Empire. Methodologically this allows considerations of numismatic imagery in the west as well as the east as part of the Flavian iconographical programme on coinage. 29 During the ten years of Vespasian’s rule, the imperial mints issued 100 different legends and almost 230 coin types. Only 26 were repeatedly issued for three or more years. Titus and Domitian, during the same period, were represented in nearly 50 legends and 100 types, and 20 legends and 40 types respectively. For discussion, see Blamberg, 1981, 32. 26 27

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Figure 29  aes of Domitian and Domitia, obverse, and imperial temple, reverse, Mint of Laodicea, 81–3 ce, BM Phrygia 307.185 pl. 37.6 © Trustees of the British Museum

harmony and a global peace.30 Here we take up concordia in our consideration of the themes of o(mo/noia that are instructive for noticing the imperial situation of Ephesians. In our discussion of Flavian peace, below, we will consider the imagery dedicated to pax. Images dedicated to civic concord have pride of place in the Flavian coinage issued from Rome as well as in the provincial issues during the periods when the imperial mints were producing them. An aes issued in Bithynian Apamea presents Vespasian obverse and Concordia reverse, seated and holding patera and cornucopia with the inscription CONCORDIA AUG.31 This is a variation on several similar images issued in Rome, as for example a dupondius issued under Titus (Figure 26) and reflects the widespread circulation of the Concordia image.32 Ephesian issues confirm this. Several denarii issued 71–4 ce represent Concordia in association with peace and prosperity. In one issue (Figure 27), for example, Concordia appears with Ceres seated holding corn ears and cornucopia.33 Another (Figure 28) presents clasped hands before a winged caduceus and the legend FIDES PUBL(ICA), an image and ascription of public trust and political harmony.34 In addition to acclaiming a new era of political harmony secured by the Flavians after the civil war of 69 ce, Concordia imagery also marked the end of hostility in Judaea For the Flavian resurrection of Julio Claudian imagery and its wider dissemination on coins, see Kouser 2008, 66–80; Jones, 1984, 121–2; Blamberg, 1981, 198–232. For the twin themes, see Burnett, Amandry, and Carradice, 1999, 126, with reference to the aureii and denarii. 31 RPC 2.619.1 32 For a listing of the diverse types issued in Rome throughout the Flavian period, see s.v. ‘CONCORDIA’, BMCRE 2, p. 461. 33 BMCRE 465 (Titus); 471 (Domitian). For further examples, see RPC 2.809, 823, 830, 837, 842, 847. 34 RIC 2.484 (Vespasian); 224 (Titus). 30

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and was associated with an imperial victory that restored peace and good order to the world.35 This imagery reflected also divine honours offered the Flavians. An aes from Laodicea (Figure 29) represents Domitian and his wife Domitia face to face, obverse, and a temple, reverse, with emperor and empress standing alongside each other, and the emperor holding a victory.36 The image of the Flavians as restorers of concord to the worldwide order found expression in an inscription from Lepcis Magna in 92 ce offering divine honours to Domitian. It celebrates him as ‘amator patriae amator civium ornator patriae amator concordiae [lover of the fatherland lover of citizens adorner of the fatherland lover of concord].’37 Attention to the strong echoes of the political language and imagery of concord has all but been ignored in exegetical treatment of Ephesians.38 As a consequence, the rhetorical uses of commonplaces and their role in awakening a lively participation by means of striking political vocabulary and imagery has not been recognized. Whatever precise life-situation prompted the composition of Ephesians, its author adapted language and ideals characteristic of contemporary treatments of civic concord. One immediately recognizes this, for example, in one of Ephesians’ most ekphrastic passages, in which the author celebrates the unity of Christ believers and exhorts them to ‘maintain the unity [th_n e9no&thti tou~ pneu&matoj] of the Spirit in the bond of peace [e0n tw|~ sunde/smw| th~j ei0rh&nhj].’ He continues, ‘There is one body and one Spirit [E4n sw~ma kai\ e4n pneu~ma], just as you were called to the one hope [e0n mia|~ e0lpi/di] that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all [ei[j ku&rioj, mi/a pi/stij, e4n ba&ptisma, ei[j qeo_j kai\ path_r pa&ntwn], who is above and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4.3–6). Here the author deploys the often recurring commonplace of the body politic in treatments of homonoia, together with repetition of the word ‘one’. In a recent study, Jospeh Fantin accounts for this striking acclamation of ‘one Lord’ and the repeated use of ‘one’ by interpreting it as a means to oppose attribution of divinity to the emperor.39 Given the absence of such polemic elsewhere in the letter, however, it is more likely that the passage is dedicated to a celebration of concord that comes from unity. The second-century Lexicon of Pollux, which lists synonyms and antonyms for rhetorical use in declamation, shows that the author of Ephesians seems to have been well versed in This also included reference on the coinage to Securitas, Felicitas, Salus and Aeternitas, for which see Blamberg, 1981, 92–4; Scott 1936, 25–39. 36 Also, RPC 2.2.1285–6. Another Pergamene bronze depicts Domitia and Domitian, obverse, with the Pergamene temple of Augustus, reverse (RPC 2.2.918). 37 IRT 347 (McCrum and Woodhead, 1961, 58, no. 157). 38 Important exceptions are Lotz, 1999, 173–88, Lau, 2010, 76–156, and Yee, 2005, 89–96. Lotz, 2007, 307–24, applies the commonplaces and imperial uses of homonoia to his study of Ignatius of Antioch’s letters. None of these studies explore Roman visual culture as furnishing a backdrop for Ephesians’ imperial situation. 39 Fantin, 2011, 231–4. 35

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the uses of such vocabulary.40 The lack of connecting particles makes this passage also a rhetorical example of asyndeton, which, according to Longinus (Subl. 20.1–3), was to be deployed to increase tempo and emotion, as well as, according to Quintilian, to ‘impress the details on the mind and make them appear more numerous than they actually are’ (Inst. 3.3.50). Additionally, rhythmic assonance creates a lively ringing style that invites participation through hearing. Eph. 4.3–6 creates a unifying experience even as it celebrates unity. Further, like Dio who hails homonoia as ‘both friendship and reconciliation and kinship’ (Or. 38.11), Ephesians celebrates and enjoins an identity and ethos created through the recognition of kinship and friendship. Its listeners thus share a common family under the one father who is father of all, and they belong to one people and nation thanks to reconciliation through the death of Christ. Homonoia created through Paul’s preaching of the Gospel makes them ‘sons’ [ui9oqesi/an] (Eph. 1.5), sharers of ‘the riches of the glory of his inheritance’ [o( plou~toj th~j do&chj th~j klhronomi/aj au)tou~] (1.18). With Paul, the audience bows in worship ‘before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named’ [pro_j to_n pate/ra e0c ou{ pa~sa patria_ e0n ou)ranoi=j kai\ e0pi\ gh~j o)noma&zetai] (3.14). Ephesians’ application of a Haustafel (5.21–6.9) similarly expresses this unity in kinship, especially where it adapts the Pauline biological metaphor of the body and its members to speak of marital unity (5.28–9) and the dominical saying of husband and wife becoming one flesh (5.31 cf. Mk 10.8–9 par; cf. Gen. 2.24). Here Ephesians adapts a familiar political topos of the rightly ordered family but couches it in characteristically Pauline terms in order to give a word picture of an overarching unity that arises through the reconciling power of Christ in the church. Paul offers the same basic model of organic unity earlier in 4.15–16. There, the familiar political metaphor of head and body, as it is in Colossians, is turned into a portrait of the church as Christ’s body, but now with the new development that the whole body is an organic unity dedicated to mutual nourishment and growth. There is a dual function to this language as Gregory Dawes has pointed out – husband and wife exhibit unity, but that unity is the expression of their overarching organic union in Christ as members of the body of the church.41 Pollux, Onom. 8.151–152, lists together with the terms associated with homonoia su&ndesmoj, o(mofrosu&nh, o(mo&noia, o(mognwmosu&nh, o(mologi/a, sumfwni/a o(mofwni/a ) – mi/an gnw&mhn e1xein, i1sa bai/nein, i1sa pnei=n, e3na qumo_n e1xein, e9ni\ qumw|~ xrh~sqai and e3na dh~mon ei]nai. 41 Dawes, 1998, 195–216, a case which builds to some degree on Sampley, 1971, 113, who similarly argues for an emphasis on organic unity in the broader context of ecclesiastical harmony. Fleckenstein, 1994, similarly reads the Ephesian Haustafel with a view to considerations of organic unity in the context of the larger ecclesial context. None of these authors, however, sufficiently relate their insights to civic or imperial considerations of political concord and unity. Dawes, 1998, 211–12, comes closer to this when he considers Plutarch’s Coni. Praec. 142E in specific reference to the subordination of wives to husbands and the rulership by husbands of their wives. Important to note here is that Plutarch’s treatise written 40

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Another dramatic application of ideals and outcomes associated with homonoia comes in Eph. 2.11–22. Here Ephesians brings together several elements of civic vocabulary. Active verbs and participial phrases help to increase vividness of description as a means of placing before listeners’ eyes what they hear. The number and density of political terms in 2.11–19 is remarkable and form the densest occurrence of imperial and political vocabulary in the New Testament. It is worth listing them here to make that most obvious: ‘alienated from the citizenry’ [a)phllotriwme/noi th~j politei/a] (v. 12), ‘foreigners’ [ce/noi], (2X – v. 12, 19), ‘(making) peace’ [poiw~n) ei0rh&nhn] (4X – vv. 14, 15, 17 ), ‘(ending) hostility’ [a)poktei/naj th_n) e1xqran] (vv. 14, 16) ‘announced good news (of peace)’ [eu)hggeli/sato ei0rh&nhn], (v. 17), ‘resident aliens [pa&roikoi]’ (v. 19), ‘co-citizens’ [sumpoli=tai] (v. 19), ‘reconcile’ [a) pokatalla&ch|] (v. 16). The contrasting vocabulary that structures the passage semantically is also noteworthy. Vocabulary of alienation and hostility and the opposite language of co-citizenship and reconciliation appears in Pollux’s lexicon to describe and contrast civic peace and enmity.42 Alongside this we may place the architectural imagery of the household, building and temple as these belong to the rhetorical topos of political stability, and expressly homonoia: ‘household members’ [oi0kei=oi] (v. 19), ‘built upon the foundation’ [e0poikodomhqe/ntej e0pi\ tw|~ qemeli/w|] (v. 20), ‘cornerstone’ [a)krogwniai/ou] (v. 20), ‘dwelling harmoniously joined together’ [oi0kodomh_ sunarmologoume/nh], ‘grows into a holy temple’ [au!cei ei0j nao_n a#gion] (v. 21).43 Even the motif of ‘creating one new person in

to the aristocrats of Delphi, Pollianus and Eurydice, offers its marital advice with a view to assuring right marital relations for the sake of civic order and rule. For their identification, see Bowerstock, 1965, 267–70. Gombis, 2005, 317–30 and Smith, 2011, 235–38 offer similar discussion to the one offered here, of the political backdrop for the Ephesian Haustafel, but without reference to imperial imagery. 42 Thus, for example, Pollux, Onom. 1.150–54 (second century ce). Pollux lists amongst the terms for civic hostility and war – enemies, barbarians and strangers, the alienated, unreconciled, over-throwers of peace: e1xqrai, barba/roi kai ce/noi, h)llotriwme/noi, a)kata&llaktoi, a)dia&llaktoi, ei0j ei0rh&nhn r(e/pontej (1.151.3, 5). Opposite to these, Pollux lists (1.151.1–2) as the language of friendship and concord: those who possess the ‘same habits’ and ‘same kinship’, o(moh&qeij and o(mo&fuloi, together with ‘reconciliation’, diallagh/ and katallagh/ (1.53.6–7), and ‘agreement’, w(molo&gein and o(mologi/a (1.154.2). At 4.29.5–6 and 30.1 he associates ei0rh&nhn, o(mologi/aj, fili/aj with political terms associated with co-citizenship and shared community: i0sopolitei/an, sunagoreu~sai, suneipei=n, sunagwni/sasqai. 43 For examples of architectural metaphor in rhetoric dedicated to themes of political concord, see Dio of Prusa, Or. 24.24; 48.14; Aristides, Or. 23.31; 27.40–1. For architectural metaphor in political discourse to celebrate stability, order and right relations, see Fridrichsen, 1946, 316–17; Shanor 1988, 461–71, both with reference to 1 Cor. 3.10–16; also Mitchell, 1993, 99–111. As with study of the building metaphor and vocabulary in 1 Cor. (for example, Vielhauer, 1979, 74–81; Pfammater, 1960; Kitzberger, 1986, 64–72, 154–64), analysis of their use in Ephesians has been focused too exclusively on incidences of the use of building language in purely religious terms and with consideration to uses of Hebrew Bible texts, intertestamental Jewish literature, inter-Pauline usage, or Gnostic texts (for example, Vielhauer, 1979, 115–36; ; Kitzberger, 1986, 306–39; Lincoln, 1990, 152–59; Barth, 1974, 314–22; Gnilka, 1971,

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place of two as a means of peace’ [i3na tou_j du&o kti/sh| e0n au)tw|~ ei0j e3na kaino_n a!nqrwpon poiw~n ei0rh&nhn] has political resonances and representation in rhetorical handbooks, which associate concord with language descriptive of a common ethnos, tribe, city and so on.44 These terms create a vivid word picture of the overcoming of estrangement, hostility and political marginalization in favour of belonging, peace and full citizenship. As such, they echo Dio’s idealization of the properly functioning political body as oriented toward making aliens into citizens. In a passage that is significant for our discussion more generally, Dio celebrates the civic concord and benevolence of Rome as one that asserts the right of citizenship for all, and where no one is an alien. That city, while so superior to the rest of humankind in fortune and power, has proved to be even more superior in fairness and benevolence, bestowing ungrudgingly both citizenship [politei/aj] and legal rights and offices, believing no one of worth to be an alien [a0llo/trion], and at the same time safeguarding justice for all alike (Or. 41.9).

The Wall of Hostility Justifiably, Paul’s representation in Eph. 2.14 of Christ as ‘our peace, who has made us both one, and broken down the dividing wall of hostility’, has remained at the centre of scholarly focus on Ephesians. Specifically, the most attention has been given to the meaning of ‘the dividing wall of hostility’ [to_ meso&toixon tou~ fragmou~]. Scholars often interpret this phrase as a reference to the wall of the Court of the Gentiles that separated Jews from uncircumcised Gentiles on the Temple Mount, with even the reference to the ‘breaking down’ as a direct allusion to the destruction of the Jewish Temple by Titus in 70 ce.45 Others have related the phrase to different views of the Law that resulted in religious enmity because of its creation of doers 152–60). This is not to deny that Ephesians is drawing on Hebrew Bible imagery, or developing earlier Pauline uses of language. It is rather to notice that the deployment of that imagery with a view to their uses in rhetorical topoi dedicated to the representation and ideals of political concord. Kitzberger offers a promising starting point in taking up oi0kodomh/ / (e0p)okodomei=n with reference to linguistic word field theory, but his focus relies exclusively on the inter-relationships of building language in the (deutero-) Pauline corpus. The results are nevertheless telling in that the terms that he discovers associated together in the Pauline linguistic field in fact parallel exactly the field of terms in the vocabulary dedicated to ancient treatments of homonoia. For a study of the linguistic field of homonoia with reference to 1 Clem., see Bakke 2001, 63–326. 44 Pollux, Onom. 1.151.2 for associations of o(moh&qeij and o(mo&fuloi with ei0rh&nh and o9monoi/a; also, 3.30.1–2: kai\ tau~ta me\n e0k tou~ ge/nouj ta_ o)no&mata, e0k de\ th~j suggenei/aj koino_n me\n oi0kei=oj, o(mogenh&j, kai\ suggenh&j, ka2n qh&leia. 45 For example, Temple dividing wall: see Hanson, 1946, 143; McEleney, 1969, 108; Jewish War and Flavian peace: see Faust, 1993, 315–20.

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and non-doers of the Law.46 Still others try to connect the phrase directly to a dispute or the memory of a conflict between Jews or non-Jewish ‘Judaizers’ and those who represented the Pauline view that Greco-Romans did not need to be circumcised to be grafted into Israel. Or, more generally, they infer from this metaphor that Ephesians seeks to resolve divisive claims of Jewish superiority over inferior gentiles. The letter reflects an ongoing conflict between different factions, which it seeks to overcome through Pauline theology.47 Others interpret the phrase as evidence of the opposite scenario: it is Gentiles, not Jews, who act in a superior manner; they have forgotten their debt to Israel and are arrogant toward ‘Jewish Christians’, or even that a ‘Jewish Christian’ is urging the audience to recall its Jewish origins as a means of reinforcing a waning Pauline religious identity.48 John Muddiman offers a different interpretation which the following discussion adopts and develops. He steps away from theories relating to debates over the Law to consider the text in the light of ethnic rivalry more generally. Perhaps … ‘the dividing wall’ of partition is not exclusively either the barrier in the Temple itself or the palisade of the Jewish Law. It is rather constituted by all the expressions of social enmity, familiar to any Jew or Gentile in the Hellenistic world, the difference in place of residence, manner of worship, food and dress, politics and ethics, and above all the blank wall of mutual incomprehension, fear and contempt between the two groups. And this apartheid between Jews and Greeks is understood here not as a legitimate peacekeeping measure, but on the contrary the institutionalization of mutual antipathy. For real peace involves the abolition of social barriers. (Muddiman’s emphasis).49 Muddiman goes on to draw attention to the unity first-century Christfollowers sought to nurture between people of differing social, ethnic and religious location by the creation of an overarching religious and institutional identity. The chief strength of this interpretation is that it draws attention away from particular Pauline debates over the Law that were supposed to have spilled over from the period of the uncontested corpus into a generation

For example, Lincoln, 1990, 141–2. For example, Gnilka, 1971, 46–8, who explains the dispute as a consequence of the arrival of Jewish refugees in Asia Minor and the resulting resurfacing of questions of Gentile identity in Judaism; more recently, Yee, 2005, 32–3, who reads Ephesians as the uses of the categories of allegedly predominant Jewish ethnocentrism in order to dismantle them by appeals to an inclusive Christian order. 48 Thus Käsemann, 1966, 288–97; 1971, 109–10; MacDonald, 2000, 253–9; Lincoln, 1990, 159–65. 49 Muddiman, 2001, 128. 46 47

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living as much as 30 years after the composition of Galatians and Romans. Further, it avoids highly speculative hypotheses concerning the impact of an alleged advent of Jewish refugees after the Jewish War during the second half of the first century. In addition, it turns away from equally hypothetical theories that read Ephesians as a resolution to Jewish claims of superiority, or, conversely, Gentile ones. By stepping back from such theories, and instead offering a reading that considers Ephesians in a larger social world characterized by rivalry and division, Muddiman orients the letter toward its imperial context. In favour of this orientation is the presence in Eph. 2.11–20 and 4.1–3 of language and commonplaces associated with treatments of civic concord. Ephesians couches its description of the end of enmity and creation of concord in decidedly Jewish terms, where it describes the non-Jews once alienated from the commonwealth of Israel as ‘Gentiles in the flesh’ [ta_ e1qnh e0n sarki/] (Eph. 2.11). While this text has been used to support the theory of a divided readership along religious and ethnic lines, it only demonstrates that Ephesians’ author is working within his own socio-religious orbit to describe an end of traditional divisions and rivalries. Its chief point, as Muddimann argues, is to celebrate the breaking down of walls of division the Christ event brings. With Paul’s Gospel the end of division spreads through the world and now establishes an order of peace and concord achieved by other than Roman diplomatic or military means. Attention to the imperial situation of Ephesians shows how a group of second generation Christ followers have adapted the civic metaphor, imagery and vocabulary of their imperial urban context to locate and understand themselves, and to express prevailing imperial ideals with the use of their own idiosyncratic language. Ephesians couches its vision of this universal achievement uniquely as the revelation (1.9), fulfillment (3.3–4, 9) and proclamation (6.19) of mystery (to\ musth/rion). In each case, expressly or implicitly, Paul associates to\ musth-rion with celebration of the unity between Jews and Gentiles. The most direct use of to\ musth/rion in this regard appears at 3.3–4, 9 where Paul celebrates the revelation that gave him insight into this mystery (vv. 3–4) – namely ‘the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (3.6)’. Coming as it does after the vivid exposition of 2.11–19, Eph. 3.5–6 continues to develop the theme of concord in a way that is only fully recognizable in the Greek text: ta_ e1qnh sugklhrono&ma kai\ su&sswma kai\ summe/toxa th~j e0paggeli/aj e0n Xristw|~ 0Ihsou~ dia_ tou~ eu)aggeli/ou. Here again the assonances created by the prefixes sug--, su/s--, sum – joined together with a series of genitive nouns increases tempo and creates the sense of a list of words describing unity that is far greater than its members. Later in 6.19 Ephesians represents Paul as one who desires ‘boldly to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel’ [e0n parrhsi/a| gnwri/sai to_ musth&rion tou~ eu)aggeli/ou]. Again the political metaphor dominates where Paul represents himself as ‘an ambassador in

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chains’ [presbeu&w e0n a(lu&sei 6.20], a paradox the imperial meaning of which is reinforced by the vivid image of the armour of God in vv. 10–17. These instances help to clarify the meaning of the language of mystery at 1.9, where Paul celebrates with his audience their shared ‘insight into the mystery of his will’ [gnwri/saj h(mi=n to_ musth&rion tou~ qelh&matoj au)tou~]. The civic language here recurs in v. 10 with a pregnant phrase: ‘a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ [ei0j oi0konomi/an tou~ plhrw&matoj tw~n kairw~n, a)nakefalaiw&sasqai ta_ pa&nta e0n tw|~ Xristw|~, ta_ e0pi\ toi=j ou)ranoi=j kai\ ta_ e0pi\ th~j gh~j e0n au)tw|~]. Here cosmic unity and earthly unity echo – as is the case in Colossians – a social order that reflects a cosmic pax dei, a peace that later comes to be represented by way of vivid description of descent and ascent as the filling of all things (4.9). The final reference to mystery (5.32) – in the Ephesian Haustafel where to_ musth&rion refers to Christ and the church – again draws on a civic association by relating the body politic motif to the image of marital unity. Marital unity between husband and wife and devotion of the members of Christ’s body one to another express the reconciliation of Christ who breaks down all dividing walls and calls forth the love of all for one another. Ephesians’ striking uses of rhetorical topoi and vocabulary centred around political concord, deployed with a view to celebrating or achieving unity amongst Christ-followers offers an intriguing repetition of imperial civic ideals. If Ephesians borrows from civic language to celebrate and promote ecclesial concord, it does so with Jewish terms.50 As we saw, GrecoRomans are ‘Gentiles in the flesh’ (Eph. 2.11); they were ‘alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel’ (2.12), ‘strangers to the covenants of promise’ (2.12), ‘having no hope without God’ (2.12); they are ‘no longer to live as the Gentiles do … alienated from the life of God’ (4.17–19). They enjoy and pursue homonoia, ‘no longer as strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens’ (2.19). The remarkable aspect of this language is that it does not return Gentiles to Israel, but rather uses the language and vocabulary of Israel’s self-identifying markers to constitute a way of understanding identity in the church. Homi Bhabha offers an intriguing description of the uncannily familiar aspect of Ephesians in his description of political DisemmiNation [sic] – that is the way in which scattered peoples such as émigrés, refugees and peoples gathering on the edges of culture in their imitation of larger cultural patterns express both an inside and outside identity at the same time. He writes of the colonized as speaking ‘in the uncanny fluency of another’s language; gathering the signs of approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses, disciplines.’51

For full discussion, see Best, 1997, 87–102. Bhabha, 1994, 139.

50 51

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We cannot speak with any confidence of the audience of Ephesians as composed of refugees or even as the colonized. However, Bhabha’s formulation of ‘an uncanny fluency’ does apply in a number of ways to Ephesians. First, it uses the language of Israel to speak of a new civic identity that is neither Greco-Roman nor Jewish, but rather describes a third reality of a new community in the ‘one new man’ (Eph. 2.15). Second, while the letter works with the cultural coin of reciprocity shared by benefactor and recipients in important aspects it revises traditional codes of benefaction. In the first place, Christ the benefactor offers his gifts without merit. Indeed, there is no way for the recipients to earn his benefaction: ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not because of works, lest anyone should boast’ (Eph. 2.8–9). Nor is God the benefactor obliged to continue acts of benefaction in return for honours. If Ephesians emphasizes anything, it is the sovereignty of a God who does not enter into negotiation with humans centred on obligation or a return for favours (Eph. 1.5–6).52 As such, Ephesians draws on the Hebrew Bible notion of the divine initiative in a gracious covenantal relationship even as it couches that relationship in terms that are strongly civic. The third place where this ‘uncanny fluency of another’s language’ appears is in the shift of application of terms from city to church. In Ephesians, the church is where new possibilities of sociality emerge in order to achieve ideals associated with concord. Church here replaces the city as the chief context for finding social harmony, through incorporation into the concord of the one new man, the raised Jesus.

Paci orbis terrarum augustae Like Colossians, Ephesians invites its listeners to imagine themselves as beneficiaries of imperial victory. ‘He came and announced good news to you who were far off and peace to those who were near’ (Eph. 2.17). The word ei0rh/nh (‘peace’) appears in Ephesians eight times, second in frequency in the New Testament only to Romans, where it appears ten times in a letter that is longer than it by two-thirds.53 Peace and the overcoming of enmity have rightly been placed at the heart of scholarly investigation of Ephesians. Scholars often account for letter’s emphasis on peace by reference to alleged ethnic tensions that erupted as a consequence of the Jewish War, by hypotheses concerning shifting demography due to the

Similarly, Talbert, 2007, 24. Eph. 1.2; 2.14; 15, 17 (2X); 4.3; 6.15, 23; Rom. 1.7; 2.10; 3.17; 5.1; 8.6; 14.17, 19; 15.3, 33; 16.20. See also Eph. 2.14 and 2.16 where there is reference to the cessation of hostility (e1xqra); predictably, Romans also takes up the theme of hostility, but specifically with reference to God (Rom 5.10; 8.7; 11.28), or in a dominical saying (Rom. 12.20).

52 53

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arrival of refugees from Roman Palestine, or by Gentile arrogance over an increasingly diminishing number of Jewish Christ believers.54 Alternatively, it has been accounted for by referring to Jewish arrogance, even ‘covenantal ethnocentrism’.55 ‘We will simply fail to grasp the import of Ephesians 2.14–18 unless we appreciate that the author wrote those encomiastic statements about Christ to be set in comparison with the small-mindedness of certain Jews or Judaism [sic!]’ (my emphasis).56 In both respects, whether as counteraction of Gentile or of Jewish impetus to rivalry, Ephesians’ emphasis on peace aims to lessen intercultural tensions. As we have seen, readings of Ephesians as antidote to ethnocentrism are circumstantial and often circular. They attempt to discern the reason for the letter from phraseology and vocabulary – phraseology and vocabulary that have been used to imagine directly opposing circumstances.57 Alternative explanations are equally unsatisfactory. With respect to a theory of harassment of Jews on account of the Jewish War, or that of Jewish ‘smallmindedness’, material evidence from the area and time usually assigned to the letter suggests a different picture. Thus an inscription from Flavian Akmoneia near Hierapolis, in Phrygia, reveals social cohesion of Jews and non-Jews during the very period when tensions were allegedly driving Jews and non-Jews apart. An inscription honouring the patronage of Julia Severa – a priestess of the imperial cult, no less – donated a building to the local Jewish community, which was in turn renovated as a synagogue, and then decorated by its wealthier members.58 She was also a municipal archon, honoured by the governing assembly or gerousia for an act of patronage to support a local building project.59 In the case of local Jews, in return for her patronage, the synagogue community honoured her with an inscription and a gold shield, both of which were no doubt displayed on the building. The inscription reflects an important act of social reciprocity, of a patron to a Jewish community – probably comprised of her clients – and of beneficiaries publicly honouring their patron. The inscription does not reflect

For theories centring on increased hostility as a consequence of the Jewish War, see Faust, 1993, 360–415; Roetzel, 2009, 152; for rivalries as a consequence of the arrival of Jewish refugees, see Gnilka, 1971, 46–8; for dwindling Jewish believers and threats of Gentile arrogance, see Chadwick, 1960, 145–63; Fischer, 1973; Käsemann, 1968, 291. 55 Yee, 2005, 71–2. See also Gombis, 2004, 412–14; 2010, 99–102. 56 Yee, 2005, 217. 57 Thus MacDonald, 2000, 252, offers exactly the opposite account that Yee does: ‘One of the most popular and plausible proposals concerning the circumstances of 2.11–22 is that emphasis on the unity between Jew and Gentile in the text stems from a need to remind Gentile Christians of their Jewish heritage.’ MacDonald shrewdly observes the hypothetical nature of any conclusion based on these passages since ‘the work simply resists being pinned down to any one historical situation’ (252). 58 MAMA 6.264 (synagogue); 6.263 (imperial cult). Harland 2003, 219–18. 59 MAMA 6.263 – the inscription breaks off so the precise structure she helped erect cannot be determined. 54

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public tensions arising from conflict in Roman Palestine. As L. Michael White argues, it reveals that ‘the Jewish community was actively engaged in brokering its relationship to this [Akmoneian] local elite to increase and placard its own social status. At the same time, Julia Severa’s acts of patronage would have served to increase her prestige locally, by insuring a regular flow of honours and obligations from the city and from her Jewish clients.’60 Urban integration rather than antagonism is similarly attested by funerary evidence from Hierapolis itself. There Jewish graves follow the standard form of burial inscriptions from Hierapolis and broader Asia Minor, with little to distinguish them other than references defining religious identity or geographical origins in Judaea, and iconographical symbols such as the menorah. The presence in these inscriptions of vocabulary associated with civic and ethnic associations is further evidence of acculturation.61 On the other hand, the grouping together of Jewish graves in one area of the city’s necropolis, as well as communal identification on a very few inscriptions, reflects an integrated and self-defined Jewish community in the city.62 Taken together, surviving Phrygian archaeological data supports a portrait of Jewish integration with civic life during the Flavian period, rather than one of local antagonism. There is possible further confirmation in the puzzling reference in the message to the church of Smyrna in Rev. 2.9. John describes ‘those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.’ White argues that the apocalypticist refers to Diaspora Jews who have integrated fully into the civic life of the imperial city and are guilty of accommodating the Empire. Revelation on this account again reveals harmony not discord between urban Jews and their imperial social world.63 It is at another level, then, that Ephesians’ emphasis on peace brings us into an imperial situation and that is the link between political concord and peace, and expressly the pacification of enemies through the empirewide end of hostility. In Ephesians 2.14–18, as Colossians 2.15, Jesus’ White, 2011, 179; similarly Harland, 2003, 219–28. Harland, 2009, 124–8 (also 2011, 387–93); for an overview of epigraphic evidence, see van der Horst, 2006, 287–320. For discussion of integration, see Kraemer, 1986, 183–200 – though the evidence she cites is later. For the importance of this data for interpreting Ephesians, see Strelan, 1996, 192–9, who presents a picture of the Jewish community in Asia (i.e. Ephesus) as integrated if at times tenuous. In Phrygia, where the Jewish population was presumably far smaller, there is no evidence of similar tensions; what evidence survives rather points in the other direction. 62 Evidence of self-definition of Jews/Judaioi in Hierapolis is confirmed by the uses of terms analogous to those commonly associated with ethnic associations. Thus, the funerary inscription of the couple Aurelia Augusta and Glykonianos are included in a reference to ‘the Judaeans who are settled in Hierapolis’ [th|= katoiki/a| tw=n e0n I0erapo/lei katoikou/ntown I0oudai/wn] (IHierapMir 16). However, it should be noted that only three of the surviving 23 Jewish burial inscriptions designate membership of a Jewish community. For discussion, see Harland, 2009, 124–8. 63 White, 2011, 199–200. 60 61

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death is a pacifying death: Jesus is expressly one who makes peace (poiw~n ei0rh&nhn – Eph. 2.15); he reconciles (a)pokatalla&ch – v. 16); he announces good news of peace (eu)hggeli/sato ei0rh&nhn – v. 17) to those Gentiles who are far from and those Jews who are near to God’s promises to Israel. Later, adapting Ps. 68.19, Jesus ‘leads captivity captive’ [h|)xmalw&teusen ai0xmalwsi/an] (4.8). Implicit in this formulation is a victory theology that is similar to Colossians’ treatment of Jesus’ death as a triumph following his pacification of ‘the principalities and powers’ [ta_j a)rxa_j kai\ ta_j e0cousi/ aj] (Col. 2.15), and ‘the elemental spirits of the universe’ [tw~n stoixei/wn tou~ ko&smou] (Col. 2.20). As we have seen, Colossians associates pacification with the reconciliation of cosmic powers (Col. 1.15, 20). The imperial situation Ephesians creates is similarly one in which victory imagery and ideas are central. Christ is enthroned ‘above all rule and authority and power and dominion’ [u(pera&nw pa&shj a)rxh~j kai\ e0cousi/aj kai\ duna&mewj kai\ kurio&thtoj] (Eph. 1.21). The Ephesians once followed ‘the prince of the power of the air’ [to_n a!rxonta th~j e0cousi/aj tou~ a)e/roj] (2.2), but now, thanks to Christ’s leading captivity captive, they are enthroned together with him in power (2.6). On the other hand, unlike Colossians where the ‘even now’ of eschatological fulfillment is emphasized, Ephesians points to the ‘not yet’. Colossians emphasis on a more realised eschatology is no doubt due to its polemical orientation against those the letter alleges as abasing themselves before these already defeated powers. In Ephesians, though the evil powers have been defeated, the audience continues to battle against ‘the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ [ta_j a)rxa&j, pro_j ta_j e0cousi/aj, pro_j tou_j kosmokra&toraj tou~ sko&touj tou&tou, pro_j ta_ pneumatika_ th~j ponhri/aj e0n toi=j e0pourani/oij] (Eph. 6.12). And so Ephesians places its audience in a directly imperial situation of battle through an extended ekphrastic description of military equipment (6.14–17), as it exhorts listeners to ‘take the whole armour of God’ [a)nala&bete th_n panopli/an tou~ qeou~] (6.13). The Christ who comes and preaches peace to those who are far and to those who are near urges both far and near to engage in a battle the outcome of which is the pacification of all hostile powers. The victory is as certain as the threat is real. Ephesians adopts a military tone in its representation of ecclesial concord. One of the few scholars to notice this is Eberhard Faust, who has related Ephesians to an imperial theology of victory.64 His argument centres on an alleged Flavian policy of assimilation of Jewish groups into the Roman Empire on account of the revolt of 66–70, which he believes prompted a reversal of earlier Roman policy of peaceful co-existence. This he sees in the Flavian imposition of the fiscus judaicus, the Empire-wide

Thus, Faust 1993, 360–415. Similarly Smith, 2011, 19–242, 251–54, who broadens the discussion of victory theology to include the Hebrew Bible and Jewish literature.

64

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tax exacted from Jews as punishment for the defeat in Roman Palestine. For evidence of this Empire-wide policy of enforced integration he cites Suetonius’ description that Domitian enforced the tax acerbissime (‘very harshly’ or ‘with the utmost rigour’; Seutonius, Dom. 12.2), Cassius Dio’s account of Domitian bringing charges of ‘atheism’ against those who ‘who drifted into Jewish ways’, (67.14.1–2) and Flavian era anti-Jewish polemic. Faust’s argument that Ephesians is theologically homologous with an alleged imperial policy of enforced assimilation is not sustainable from the evidence either within or outside the letter. Indeed, as we have seen, the physical earth of Flavian Phrygia is suggestive of peaceful co-existence if not integration between Greco-Romans and Jews. Nor can one generalize from conflicts in one city or part of the Roman Empire to another since Greco-Roman harassment of Jews in this period was local and sporadic.65 Suetonius’ and Dio’s descriptions refer exclusively to actions in Rome. Even so, while Domitian certainly enforced the tax vigorously, he was probably not motivated by an anti-Jewish policy. Marius Heemstra relates the emperor’s close attention to the proper collection of taxes, as well as his punishment of non-Judaoioi who practiced Judaism, to Domitian’s taking up of the office of Censor in 85 ce. Tax implementation reflected his desire to strengthen a flagging economy thanks to recent devaluations in currency.66 Suetonius’ and Cassius Dio’s descriptions, he argues, indicate the Censor’s responsibility for supervising religious observance and morals amongst the populace, in order to avoid incurring divine punishment on the city for impiety and immorality. It is unclear how widely such policies were or could have been implemented across a vast empire, especially the supervision of conduct and morals, and so generalization from Rome to the eastern Mediterranean is difficult. As Ephesians contains no evidence that there was discord between Jews and non-Jews on account of the exercise of imperial policies, it is best to seek alternative interpretations of the presence of imperial language in Ephesians.67 Both Ephesians and Flavian political propaganda make concord the outcome of the successful pacification of enemies. Both treat the pacification of enemies as a worldwide achievement of peace. Even as

For the difficulty in generalizing from the situation in Rome to other parts of the Empire, see Barclay, 1999, 279, 312; Barclay, 2011, 12; Williams, 1990, 196–211; Smallwood, 1981, 376, all of whom argue that Suetonius’ and Cassius Dio’s descriptions refer to the situation in Rome and cannot be generalized without further evidence. Other accounts (for example, Sanders, 1993, 166–80) require significant generalization in a way that ignores the differing relations of Diaspora Jews to their civic contexts. 66 For Domitian’s implementation of the fiscus judaicus and supervision of morals as censor in 85 ce, see Heemstra, 2010, 26–34; similarly, Wilson, 2004, 13, though without reference to Domitian’s new role as Censor. 67 These arguments also weigh heavily against MacDonald’s arguments (2004, 432–7) that Ephesians’ strong language impugning the world outside the church (e.g. 5.6–9) reflects Domitianic policies applied to the Ephesian audience. MacDonald gingerly attempts to sidestep these objections: 436n. 40. 65

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Figure 30  Model of the Temple of the Sebastoi and Temple of Julius and Roma, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ephesians acclaims the death and resurrection of Christ in imperial terms, as the preaching of peace to those far and near, so Flavian iconography celebrates an imperial peace that stretched across the whole world. As Christ distributes gifts universally, so Vespasian, on a statue at Eresus, is heralded as as ‘benefactor of the world’ (eu0erge/thj ta=j oi0koume/naj).68 The Flavian image of cosmic and worldly peace is graphically illustrated by the Temple of the Sebastoi in Ephesus (Figure 30). The temple (left) was built under Domitian in 89/90 across from the Temple of the Divine Julius and Roma (right), and was dedicated to the veneration of the Flavian family – Domitian, his wife Domitia, his dead brother, Titus, and probably Vespasian. Associated with the temple were 13 inscriptions from cities of Roman Asia, each identifying itself hierarchically by reference to its location and ranking as a free or subject city. The presence of the inscriptions at the temple and in the company of statues of emperors and their family members proclaimed the concord of cities under imperial rule, but also continued to assert a struggle for prominence by representing cities as benefactors of Ephesus and naming whatever imperial rights had been given them.69 Surviving iconography from the temple is fragmentary but instructive for constructing the visual language of Flavian peace and rule. It included a colossal statue, most probably of Titus.70 A two-storey stoa IGR 4.14. The inscription probably went on to acclaim him as ‘saviour’. For other similar inscriptions, see Scott, 1936, 20–1. Gombis, 2004, 403–18 and 2010, 85–106, notwithstanding his account of parallels with ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew Bible victory theologies, overlooks entirely the immediate imperial political resonances in Ephesians. 69 For discussion of cooperation and rivalry via these inscriptions, see Friesen, 2001, 44–50. 70 For the identification, as well as detailed discussion, of the history of excavation of the site and its interpretation, see Friesen, 1993, 59–75. 68

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Figure 31  Reliefs of Isis and Attis and façade of the Temple of the Sebastoi (first century ce), Ephesus

Figure 32  Base relief from the Temple of the Sebastoi (first century ce), Ephesus Museum, Selçuk

that formed a part of the temple precincts included 35–40 gods on the second storey of the north façade. Two of these – Isis and Attis – survive (Figure 31). Accompanying statues of the imperial family acclaimed Flavian rule as divinely appointed. The altar that accompanied the temple was surrounded at ground level with reliefs. These included, on one side, images of despoiled weapons along with that of a subjugated enemy below a Roman trophy (Figure 32). On the other side was a relief of a bull tied up between garlands, ready for sacrifice. The altar represented the successful pacification of enemies and a civil order in harmony with the cosmic order, achieved and perpetuated through right religious practice and devotion. This monumental message was reinforced by the strategic location of the temple, conspicuously elevated above the slope of Mt Koressos, along

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Figure 33a  Reverse of aes, Temple of the Sebastoi lower left, Mint of Ephesus (third century ce), BM Iona 91.305 pl.14.6 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 33b  Denarius with legend PAC ORB TERR AUG, Ephesus, 71 ce

the route of the civic festival procession of Artemis. In addition to creating associations with the cult of Artemis, as Steven Friesen has noted, the monument was built and positioned in a way that would make the most powerful impact on the everyday passerby.71 It was built at the centre of the city on its main artery, ‘Kuretes Street’, facing the upper agora. A plaza built before a monumental stairway leading into the temple precinct offered viewers unrestricted view of northern side of the interior, a view dominated by the gods set above on the stoa surrounding the complex. An Ephesian coin (Figure 33a) depicts the temple with a colossal statue of Titus visible. The overall impression was of the deified emperor in the company of the gods, who has brought peace to the world. At Laodicea was another temple, dedicated to Domitian (see Figure 27). No longer extant, it reflects the same programme of imagery at the Temple of the Sebastoi in Ephesus. The Temple of the Sebastoi at Ephesus, as the image of the temple dedicated to Domitian and Domitia at Laodicea, offers dramatic visual images of a theology celebrating the rule of a dynasty that has brought peace to those far and near. Iconographers used coins and other visual means to spread this image to the furthest reaches of the empire. As we have seen, the imperial mints, made pax and concordia the chief planks of Flavian numismatic propaganda. Vespasian capitalized on his recent victory in both the capital and in Judaea to acclaim a worldwide restoration of peace. The Ephesian mint in 71 acclaimed Vespasian’s recent successes with a coin with the inscription

Friesen, 1993, 70.

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Figure 34  Reverse of aureus, Mint of Rome, 70–76 ce, BMCRE 2.63 pl. 2.1 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 35  Reverse of aureus, Mint of Ephesus, 71 ce, BMCRE 2.457 pl. 16.9 © Trustees of the British Museum

PACI ORB(IS) TERR(ARUM) AUG(USTAE) (see Figure 33b). In the same year, this was applied to Titus and Domitian.72 These are the more dramatic affirmations of the mints, which issued a host of related types heralding Flavian peace.73 Closely associated with them were victory types and legends. Several types commemorate the Flavian victory in the Jewish War. Rachel Kousser interprets the numismatic imagery of the victory coin types as representative of the Flavian canonization and mass distribution of a classical image, adapting the image of Aphrodite/Venus to spread a message of worldwide accomplishment through imperial military success. During the first year of Vespasian’s reign alone, 20 different versions of the Victoria coin type were issued. Through mass production on denarii, the vision of Flavian victory was relentlessly promoted. One coin reverse type (Figure 34), issued in Rome under Vespasian, depicts a draped Victory standing on a globe with the inscription VIC(TORIA) AUG(USTAE). Another (Figure 35), also issued in Ephesus, depicts a draped Victory advancing with the wreath with the inscription PACI AUGUSTAE.74 Of special importance for Flavian coinage as a whole, and for our interpretation of Ephesians here, were coin types marking Flavian victory in the Jewish War. The Judaea Capta/Devicta issues are the best-known examples of this. These were issued under Vespasian and again, a decade later, under Titus (Figure 36), to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the BMCRE 2.459–61; RPC 2.813; 2.105; 2.474 For the diversity of types, see BMCRE index, pp. 2.474–5; RIC index, pp. 2.1344–5; RPC index, pp. 2.2.380, 383. For discussion of these issues and their development, see Levick, 1999, 70–1. 74 BMCRE 2.63; BMCRE pl 16.9, # 2.457. 72 73

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Figure 36 Reverse of denarius, Mint of Rome, 80–1 ce, RIC 153 pl. 94.153 © Spink & Sons

Figure 37 Reverse of sestertius, Mint of Rome, 86 ce, RIC 2.1.274 pl. 140.271 © Spink & Sons

military victory in Roman Palestine. Less known, is that the iconographical representation of victory in Judaea was canonized as the image of Flavian military success in general. It came to function as an abstract and universal vision of the emperors’ divinely appointed pacification of enemies.75 A common repertoire and relatively narrow range of Flavian iconographical themes centred on celebration of victory in the Jewish War facilitated this process of canonization. The victory in Roman Palestine became the poster child of a universal Flavian achievement: the pacification of enemies and the restoration of civic order at home and abroad.76 Even Domitian’s victory over the Chatti on the German frontier was celebrated in 86 ce with coinage that bears a striking iconographical similarity to the representation of victory in Roman Palestine (Figure 37). The mints also shrewdly resurrected Claudian numismatic imagery to communicate the Flavian restoration of a lost order.77 On several issues Victory inscribes words on a shield (the clipeus virtutis, or ‘shield of virtue’), but with the significant addition of a palm tree on which the shield is fastened, and an abject Jewish figure leaning against the tree. On one type, the inscription reads VICTORIA AUGUSTI (Figure Figure 38 Reverse of sestertius, 38). Again, the image was canonized Mint of Rome, 71 ce, RIC 2.1.221 pl. through duplication. Domitian 24.221 © Spink & Sons For the history of the coin type and its uses in Flavian coinage, see Cody, 2003, 103–23, and for the prevalence of imagery relating to the Jewish War throughout the Flavian period, see Picard, 1957, 342–8. 76 Picard, 1957, 343–64 77 For the Claudian type, see Koussser, 2008, 67–9. 75

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Figure 40 Detail of Cuirass of Vespasian

Figure 39  Cuirass Statue of Vespasian (Flavian period), Sabratha Museum, Sabratah, Lybia © Brian McMorrow

deployed the same imagery to celebrate his own military successes on the German frontier.78 Empire-wide distribution of imagery reminiscent of the Judaea capta types was not restricted to coinage.79 A cuirassed statue from Sabratha in North Africa (Figures 39 and 40) depicts Vespasian with Victory inscribing the clipeus virtutis mounted on a palm tree, with the image of a subjugated, undoubtedly Jewish female, below. A similar statue of Titus stood nearby bearing the same iconographical relief on his cuirass. At the other extreme of the Empire, this time on the northern frontier at Mainz, and also in Illyricum, the same imagery appears on military equipment, on a sword hilt and the silver chek guard of a helmet, respectively (Figure 41).80 The same imagery has been discovered on military equipment from Pompeii.81 Kousser follows Helmut Schoppa in hypothesizing that the striking homogeneity of iconography should probably be accounted for by reference to origins

For example, RIC 2.285, 405, 475 (85/86, Sestertii, Rome). Kousser, 2008, 66–74. 80 For the chek guard, see Kousser, 2008, 72. 81 Ulbert, 1969, 97–128. 78 79

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in a single workshop.82 But it is also possible that the image penetrated the Empire through artisans accompanying legions, who followed an aggressively repeated common image to portray military success.83 The movement of armies was a means of spreading this imagery across the Empire. This imagery also penetrated into households, as in the case of an example from Vindonisa in Switzerland, where gems and glass plates bearing the same victory type have been discovered.84 As in the Augustan era, where imagery associated with imperial victory was adapted for domestic use, the passage under the Flavians of military iconography into the households of every stratum of society reflects the internalization of Flavian ideology.85 The appearance of Flavian representations of victory in Judaea in a variety of Sitzen im Leben – the army, public monuments, households – attest to the function of such imagery in shaping consciousness and worldview. By such means, one could, to borrow a phrase from Ephesians, describe such means of transmission and processes of internalization as the proclamation of the ‘gospel’ of Flavian victory to all – both to those near and far – with the consequence of harmony and peace for all.

Figure 41 Detail of scabbard, Mainz (Flavian Period), until recently part of the Guttmann Collection, Berlin

Thus Schoppa, 1974, 108. I am grateful to Wolfgang Spickermann and Max Weber Kolleg for this suggestion, who observed that military camps included their own artisans who could be commissioned to execute engravings and so on. 84 For the gem, see von Gonzanbach, 1952, 69; for the image, Tafel, 27, no. 15, and Tafel, 29, no. 15 (http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/view?rid=zak-003:1952:13::116 and http://retro.seals.ch/ digbib/view?rid=zak-003:1952:13::118 (both accessed 30 March 2012); plate – Vindonissa Museum, Bragg, Switzerland, no. 3583, cited by Kousser, 2008, 164n. 88. 85 Zanker, 1988, 274–84 82 83

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The Flavian iconographical programme depicted victory as the means of establishing a worldwide homonoia. It is important not to force Ephesians on to a Flavian Procrustean bed. The argument offered here is not one of cause and effect, but of a common repertoire of images that create a shared imperial situation with the result – however unintended – of integration and participation in an overarching civic order. Ephesians deploys a vocabulary remarkably at home in the civic vocabulary and ideals of its larger imperial context, but it centres acclamations of Jesus’ death as victory around a series of images drawn from the Hebrew Bible. As such, it revises those notions by asserting, again, ‘the strange fluency of a foreign tongue’, a decentring of prevailing imperial ideals through the currency of a sacred tradition of Israel’s biblical narrative. Two passages show this. The first, Eph. 1.20–23, celebrates Jesus’ resurrection as a heavenly enthronement beside God’s right hand by citing Ps. 110.1 (‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.’), a text that celebrates the power of the Jewish king to rule those whom God gives him to conquer. The passage echoes representation of Jesus’ resurrection in the uncontested Pauline corpus (1 Cor. 15.25; Rom. 8.34), and reflects similar uses in roughly contemporary canonical literature (Acts 2.4; Heb. 1.13; Mk. 12.35–7). Also like Paul in 1 Cor. 15.27, Ephesians goes on to associate Ps. 110.1 with Ps. 8.6 (‘You have put all things under his feet’; cf. Heb. 2.8). Unlike Paul, however, Ephesians brings these two texts together to make the enthronement ‘in the heavenly places’ already completed. Whereas Paul proclaims an event that is still to come at the end of history, Ephesians (as Colossians) offers a more fully realized eschatology. Further, unlike Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.25–8, where the dominion of this resurrection order is applied universally for all creation, Ephesians emphasizes the rule of Christ in the church (Eph. 2.23) and thus transforms an original apocalyptic vision about the completion of history into an ecclesiocentric confession. The second passage, Eph. 4.8 – perhaps the most complex one in the letter – echoes Ps. 68.18 (‘You ascended the high mount, leading captives in your train, and receiving gifts among all, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.’). Here, however, the focus changes from an acclamation about God vanquishing enemies and receiving spoils of war, to a statement about the ascent of Christ in victory and his giving gifts: ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to people’ [e1dwken do&mata a0nqrw/poij]. The passage goes on to describe Jesus’ ‘descent to the lower parts of the earth’ (v. 9) and then to explain that the Christ who descended ‘is he also who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things’ (v. 10). No little attention has been given to the exegesis and interpretation of this complex passage, including that 4.8 is a reworking of a Moses motif couched as mystical heavenly ascent and that the descent motif is a confirmation of the doctrine of Christ’s descent to the dead/Hell, or a statement of his incarnation, or even the descent

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of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. Recently, however, John Muddiman has suggested that the passage may refer rather to the death of Christ and its benefits, namely that Christ’s glorification (ascent) was also his death (descent to death), with the outcome of a distribution of gifts.86 Muddiman here relates Ephesians to the representation of Jesus’ death as his elevation/ glorification in the Gospel of John (Jn. 3.13–14; 12.23–4). Ephesians is not John, of course, but Muddiman’s reading has the advantage of taking seriously Ephesians’ emphatic grammatical wedding of the ascending and descending motif.87 As such the Ephesian motif of leading captivity captive through ignominious death is strikingly resonant with Colossians’ image of Jesus’ death as a victory that ends in triumph. Even as Ephesians revises Ps. 68.18 to make God the giver of gifts, it also changes the imperial notion of triumph. Roman triumphs included the lavish display of the spoils of war.88 Livy’s accounts of triumphs have the triumphator delivering plunder to the treasury and then distributing coin or bullion to the army, and also using them to build temples in thanksgiving for victory as well as public monuments.89 This is the significance of the relief on the Arch of Titus, which depicts a procession of objects plundered from the Jerusalem Temple (see Plate 5a). The Arch of Constantine weds a pastiche of reliefs and sculptures taken from a variety of Roman monuments to depict the liberalitas of the emperor in close association with military victory (Figure 42). The Northwest attic shows Marcus Aurelius demonstrating his liberalitas in the left relief, and his clementia toward supplicant barbarians in the right one. At the front, from the period of Trajan, is a statue of a Dacian captive. Together they depict a composite image of subjugation, pacification and distribution of gifts to the victorious. In the case of Vespasian’s spoils, they were used to build the so-called Temple/Forum of Peace, which was used in part to exhibit publically the spoils of victory in the Jewish War. It is probable that Titus used the wealth and Jewish slaves won in the war to build the Colosseum. In the case of Ephesians, the distribution of the spoils the letter invites its audience to imagine is carnivalesque: it offers a portrait of an abject death that is simultaneously a glorification, and the plunder, the spiritual gifts that come

Muddiman, 2001, 189–97 who discusses the various options and intriguingly likens the verses to the Johannine notion of Jesus’ crucifixion as also his glorification. 87 Thus, 4.9: to_ de\ a)ne/bh ti/ e0stin, ei0 mh_ o#ti kai\ kate/bh: ‘But what is the ascent if not that it is also the descent’; 4.10, chiastically parallel with 4.9: kataba_j au)to&j e0stin kai\ o( a)naba_j: ‘he who descended is also he who ascended.’ 88 Beard, 2007, 163–73, cites and offers discussion of the primary texts, and argues that the amount of spoils is usually exaggerated. That a distribution occurred can be seen from images detailing stages of the Triumph; see, Ryberg, 1955, 141–62. 89 For example: Livy Hist. 34.10 – delivery to treasury; 35.10 – distribution to army; 9.40 and 10.46 – embellishment of temples with spoils of war. Livy 37.57 also offers an account of a triumph by Acilius Glabrio, who was in turn accused of not delivering to the treasury all that was captured. 86

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Figure 42  Reliefs of Marcus Aurelius’ liberalitas (left) and clementia (right), and statue of Dacian captive (front right), Arch of Constantine, Northwest Attic (second century ce), Rome © Dr. Ronald V. Wiedenhoeft, SASKIA, Ltd.

with his subsequent enthronement: ‘And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ…’ (Eph. 4.11–12). These texts present a vivid, if paradoxical, account of Jesus’ death with the help of imperial imagery and Hebrew Bible metaphor. Ephesians develops this word picture further when it enlists listeners as foot soldiers in an on-going battle (Eph. 6.13–17). Here the metaphor of the church triumphant as Christ’s body raised along with its head in the heavenly places over all enemies (1.22–23) combines with another ecclesial vision of the church militant. Again, as in the case of Colossians, the political analogy is instructive. In Colossians, we saw that Christ as head of the body of the church is parallel with accounts of Nero as head of the body of the Empire. Ephesians reworks the metaphor in a more cosmic direction. Enthronement over cosmic powers and the continuing battle ‘against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places’ (6.12) are the simultaneous reality for believers. They find themselves in 6.11–17 caught up in an imperial situation by means of vivid speech designed to help them imagine themselves in a battle and to persuade them to action and devotion.90 The vividness of Eph. 6.10–17 is impossible to capture in translation as the passage displays assonance as is usual for Ephesians through the piling up of genitive constructions, but also

90

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Ephesians draws on imperial image and vocabulary to encourage faithful confession and obedience.

Ephesians as Thirdspace Ephesians depicts non-Jewish and Jewish Christ followers united together through their union with Jesus’ death and enthronement. ‘For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace’ (2.13–15). Interpreters sometimes interpret this text to mean that Ephesians envisions Christ-followers as a ‘third race’.91 This metaphor, however, through its association of peace, enmity and unity also bears an imperial resemblance. Widely distributed and repetititive Flavian iconography invited its viewers to imagine themselves as belonging to a single whole. It established a foundation, as we will see in our discussion of the Pastorals, for Trajan and Hadrian to develop this notion of imperial unity further. In the case of Ephesians, the ideal of a unity created through Christ offers a different means toward unity and a picture of the church as a place where cosmopolitan unity can be enjoyed under a different form of imperial rule. The notion of ‘thirdspace’, developed by Edward Soja, as well as Michel Foucault’s conception of ‘heterotopia’ offer useful tools for analyzing Ephesians’ representations of the church. Soja defines ‘thirdspace’ as ‘an-Other way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate to the new scope and significance….’92 Thirdspace describes the improvization of urban space and representation for ends different from those they are usually used to achieve, with the result of idiosyncratic practices of place.93 In a similar vein, Foucault describe ‘heterotopia’ as an imaginary place outside all places, in which new modes of sociality can be through the repetition of terms, as well as prepositional and grammatical constructions. Together these help to create a sense of highly charged description that conforms to rhetorical ideals of short, vivid phrases in the context of a larger description. When heard in Greek the effect is particularly striking. 91 For example, Lincoln, 1990, xciii; Boyarin, 1997, 308n. 20, with reference to Eph. 5.32; for a shrewd discussion, see MacDonald, 2000, 251–9, who views Ephesians as falling just short of this notion. 92 Soja, 1996, 10. 93 Soja, 1996, 10, defines ‘thirdspace’ as ‘an-Other way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate to the new scope and significance being brought about in the rebalanced trialectics of spatiality – historicality – sociality.’ By ‘“trialectics’ (as opposed to dialectics) he means (pp. 8–10) that conceptualization of space and time is always instantiated in practice and that social analysis must always be done with a view to all three together.

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imagined and practised.94 Heterotopia represents ‘counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found in the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’ This ‘thirdspace’/‘heterotopia’ is evident in where Ephesians uses civic terminology of co/citizenship, reconciliation and the incorporation of resident aliens and stranger (Eph. 2.19). Representations of Jesus’ death and glorification as enthronement and the Ephesians as beneficiaries of his imperial-looking rule, or foot soldiers in his divinely appointed campaign, continue in this vein (4.8; 6.12–17). Ephesians weds a notion of gathering place as church together with an imperially charged civic imagination to promote the formation of a contra-civic heterotopia that invokes urban identity even as it abjures it.95 The church established through incorporation into the ‘one new man’ is a thirdspace. Ephesians does not intend to establish a ‘third race’, but to promote a cosmopolitanism of love centred in a contra-imperial vision of unity and confession. Like Colossians 3.11, Ephesians notion of the creation of ‘one new man in place of two’ celebrates the transcendance of ethnic boundaries. Ephesians develops what is left implicit in Colossians. It understands the church as a new social location for the emergence of a unity idealized with the help of images also found in descriptions and images of political concord. This is emphasized in Ephesians’ ethical exhortations in 4.1–6.20, where, more than in Colossians, vivid language describes the break with a Greco-Roman past. Ephesians dramatizes this break when it exhorts listeners to have no dealings with outsiders: ‘[D]o not associate with them, for once you were darkness but now you are light in the Lord; walks as children of light’ (5.7). MacDonald has identified this as highly sectarian language, the presence of which she hypothesizes as because of either persecution or the threat of it.96 Whereas this language does indeed mark a sharp break with the world, it is not evident that persecution is the reason why Ephesians uses it. As the letter formulates vivid portraits of what the world outside looks like, and contrasts that with how the church looks inside, it shares with contemporary Greco-Roman civic orators and philosophical teachers a rhetorical strategy of highlighting the need for getting rid of vice in order to achieve a civic concord and the rightly governed ethical life. Dio of Prusa, for example, in a speech that aims to achieve homonoia in Tarsus writes,

Foucault, 1986a, 22–7. For another treatment of Ephesians with the help of social geography, see Ubieta 2001, 260–80, who uses the work of Sacks, 1981, to describe the evocation of political terminology in Eph. 2.19 as exemplary of a new social territoriality where indices of citizenship and identity are recast from a civic form into an ecclesial one under the dominion of Christ. 96 For sectarian language and analysis using sociological study of sectarianism, see MacDonald, 1988, 85–158; 2000, 321–4. For an account of the language as reflecting threat or harassment of Jews under Domitian, see MacDonald, 2004, 434–7. 94 95

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Only by getting rid of vices that excite and disturb people, the vices of envy, greed, contentiousness [fqo&nou, pleoneci/aj, filoniki/aj], the striving in each to promote one’s own welfare at the expense of both one’s native land and the common weal [th_n patri/da kai\ to_ koinh|~ sumfe/ron]– only so, I repeat, is it possible ever to breathe the breath of harmony [sumpneu~sai/] in full strength and vigor and to unite upon a common policy [tau)ta_ proele/sqai] (Or. 34.19). In the case of Ephesians’ treatment of the way of darkness, the author deploys language familiar to the repertoire of rhetorical commonplaces that represent the vices that destroy the civic common good: for example, ‘silly talk’ and ‘levity’ (mwrologi/a, eu)trapeli/a – 5.4), deception with ‘empty speech’ [kenoi=j lo&goij]” (v. 6), ‘greed’ [pleoneci/a] (v. 5) and drunkenness (v. 18). Ephesians shares here a larger Greco-Roman ethical and philosophical tradition of portraying opponents and their ideas as championing false beliefs that lead to mistaken views of reality, or of the gods, and whose fruit is vice and immorality. ‘Do not associate with any one whose opinions cannot profit you, nor join with him in converse about God. For it is not safe to speak of God with those who are corrupted by false opinion’, Porphyry teaches his wife, Marcella, and goes on to describe those who think wrongly about the gods as ending in lives of vice.97 Most of Ephesians’ representations of Gentile unrighteousness are familiar from the earlier Pauline corpus as are Jewish polemical treatments of Gentile transgressions. These have occasioned close comparison with analogous descriptions of outsiders in the Qumran literature. They also draw on slogans of speech dedicated to Greco-Roman treatments of hybris and stasis – that is, the source and outcome of improperly conducted civic life – and link impiety with ignorance and wickedness.98 The other picture of virtue in the church is also strikingly resonant with behaviours consistent with the promotion of concord. Yet, for all of its insistence on breaking with the world, Ephesians marks difference by drawing on language and metaphor very much at home in

Porphyry, Marc. 15; for those who believe wrongly demons enter and work wickedness – 21; pseudo-Heraclitus 4.1.4. For discussion with further examples of use by Greco-Roman moral philosophers of polemical negative examples of vice to contrast the life of virtue arising from right philosophy, see Wilson 1997, 151–69. Wilson applies these insights to a discussion of the representation of ‘false philosophy and empty deceit’ in Col. 2.8f. In Ephesians ‘following the prince of the power of the air’ (2.3) results in wickedness, whereas worshiping rightly ‘in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart’ (4.19) is to live the ethical life of the children of light (4.8); similarly, Darko, 2008, 31–70. 98 For language that echoes Jewish description of Gentile transgression, see Dahl, 2000, 441–50; for parallels with the Qumran literature, see Kuhn, 1968, 115–31. For a full discussion of immoderation in speech, covetousness and impurity associated with stasis as a rhetorical commonplace, see Maier, 2004, 503–19; 1997, 136–42. 97

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its larger civic world. This not only sounds strangely familiar, the vivid language it deploys to provoke the imagination to see an outside world of vice and darkness also looks strikingly familiar. As we have seen in reliefs from the Aphrodisias sebasteion, images of piety, of properly coifed and dressed women, and of the gravitas of emperors contrast sharply with representations of immoderation displayed by men and women whose impiety and turpitude has guaranteed their defeat. Soja’s conceptualization of thirdspace and Foucault’s notion of heterotopia have great potential for locating Ephesians in time and space, and for understanding how in an urban cosmopolitan environment gatherings of Christ followers created a unique socio-geographical opportunity for the particular performance of an imperial situation. Building on the work of Henri Lefevbre, Soja distinguishes thirdspace from first and secondspace.99 First and secondspace refer to representational and interpretive practices that shape social behaviour and, through ideology, make them self-evidently true and natural. Thirdspace ruptures first and secondspace, through the introduction of new practices and understandings of space and behaviour that contest ideological formulations, ‘natural’ behaviour and conventional spatial practice. Thirdspaces function as heterotopic ‘counter sites’ for imagination and social practice.100 The preceding arguments have shown that Ephesians marks a particular mode of self-representation and individual practice that mimics a larger imperial world even as it seeks to distance itself from, and at the same time practice, it. ‘The Epistle in search of life setting’ becomes transformed into an Epistle that attests to a lively set of social performances as thirdspace. Ephesians depicts ecclesiological ideals in an imperial urban context that is subject to multiple modes of representation and practices of geographical location for varying outcomes and ideals. There is a twofold thirdspace/ heterotology at work in Ephesians – the reformulation of imperial language and symbol systems, including a visual world, for a new imagination, and a similar reformulation of a Pauline legacy for the sake of a later Flavian imperial setting. As such it is a creative negotiation of its imperial world and a recreation of it under a different Lord who brings about concord by other means. Ephesians represents its listeners with a variety of metaphors drawn from differing lived spaces. It invokes civic, domestic, military, imperial, cultic and extra-worldly spaces even as it enjoins behaviours, duties and roles that are consistent with the performance of each space. Together with these spaces and practices are narratives in which members are to insert and understand themselves as characters in an unfolding story – as citizens,

Soja develops, specifically, the distinction of Lefebvre, 1991, 40–1, between perceived, conceived and lived space. 100 Foucault, 1986a, 24. 99

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household members, soldiers in battle, beneficiaries of a triumphator’s gifts, worshipers, those who break with a dark world and who are enthroned in the heavens. Each of these spaces and stories imply a set of representational spatial practices: the practices of civic concord and peace, domestic duties, battle with principalities and powers, faithful practice of ecclesial roles, proper worship of the true God, the pursuit of right ethics, learning and keeping pure and saving heavenly mysteries. The location for these spatial practices are readily identifiable: probably house churches like the one at Laodicea hosted by Nympha in Col. 4.15, or perhaps of Philemon if he was still alive when Ephesians was written (Phlm. 2). These ‘real’ places, however, become counter-sites where the usual representational practices of space are reconceptualized and in some cases inverted. In the case of household relations, for example, imagination overwrites pre-existing codes associated with domestic duties and furnishes them with new warrants. Wives are subject to husbands and husbands love wives not in order to assure the right functioning of the city, but because of the church’s subjection to Christ and Christ’s love of the church (Eph. 5.22–6). More paradoxically, the death of Jesus is a triumph through which the spoils of victory in the form of spiritual gifts are given the church. This kind of paradox recurs where Ephesians deploys similar forms of carnivalesque: slaves, for example, are also citizens; women are soldiers; masters are beloved children; those whom Ephesians exhorts to labour and do honest work with their hands (4.28) do not associate with their non-Christ following Greco-Roman compatriots, the ‘sons [and daughters] of disobedience’ (5.6–7). Ephesians, through the deployment of imperial image and text, mimics Roman imperial ideals and language even as it promotes the disavowal of its larger Greco-Roman world. The thirdspace Ephesians creates draws on the imperial imaginary of the Flavian pax orbis terrarum even as it disavows it as a world of darkness and disobedience. The result is an ambivalence Homi Bhabha describes when treating the colonial subject as ‘almost the same but not quite.’101 In his discussion of the mimicry of their colonizers by the colonized, he discusses the slippage between mimicry and mockery. Probably the best New Testament example of such slippage can be found in the Book of Revelation, where imperial language evokes an image of the Second Coming as an imperial victory even as it mocks that victory by making the triumphator of the narrative the slain lamb, the crucified Jesus (Rev. 19.11–16; see also 5.6; 7.13–14).102 Ephesians dissembles in a similar way by making the one who delivers imperial triumph, worldwide peace and reconciliation not Caesar, but Christ. He has led captivity captive by being simultaneously ascended and descended to death (4.8–9). Here is

Bhabha, 1994, 86. For a full discussion with literature, see Maier, 2002, 164–97.

101 102

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the place that is no place, the mimicry that flirts with mockery of imperial victory theology. In its theology of the cross, invocation of imperial image and text is at the same time evidence of its disavowal. Paul offers his audience vivid representations of concord and peace with the help of imagery drawn from their imperial world. Although it spurns that world, it preserves its language and images in its celebration of Christ’s ecclesial rule. As such, Ephesians is not so much anti-imperial, but, to borrow from Galinsky, ‘supraimperial’ – it uses imperial language and imagery to promote a confession of Christ that surpasses whatever claims can be made about the emperor and the harmonious social order he has achieved.103 This supraimperial view leads the writers of both Colossians and Ephesians to focus on the heavenly aspects of Christ’s rule and its achievements in bringing concord and peace through the preaching of the Gospel by the chained apostle. Perhaps, ironically, both in the end served to endorse a later empire that would unite Caesar and Christ.

Galinsky, 2011b, 222.

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4 The Pastoral Epistles: Practices of Empire

In the previous two chapters we have related Colossians and Ephesians to their Julio-Claudian and Flavian contexts. We turn now to a consideration of the Pastorals in their imperial world – most probably in the area of Ephesus – during the reigns of Trajan (98–117 ce) and his adopted son, Hadrian (117–38), the general period usually assigned for these letters by those who accept a theory of pseudonymity.1 As we will see, use of vocabulary and imagery from the imperial cult in Asia Minor where Jovian titles were increasingly being ascribed to Trajan and Hadrian influenced the pronounced movement toward ‘Christological monotheism’ in the

The urban geography is of course very hypothetical. Trebilco, 2004, 206–8 reflects a broad consensus that the Pastorals were written from Ephesus and represent a strong continuing Pauline tradition there in the first decades of the second century. In support of an Asia Minor provenance are: evidence of literary dependence in Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians (Mertz, 2004, 114–40); patterns of leadership consistent with those described by Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, as well as descriptions of opponents (Aageson, 2008, 127–40); overlap with the opponents 1 Tim. describes with ideals championed in the Acts of Paul (and Thecla) – a writing whose author knows the geography of Asia Minor very well (Wilson, 1965, 351); and Tertullian’s ascription (De Bapt. 17) of the Acts’ authorship by a presbyter in Asia Minor. Based on use by Polycarp, I would place them in the area of Ephesus, Smyrna and possibly as far afield as Pergamon. The dates are customarily determined by evidence of institutionalization and episcopacy, as well as vocabulary, contemporary with other Christian literature of the period. For discussion, see Maier, 2002, 43–54. The later limit is determined by evidence of borrowing by Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians, a letter whose dating and literary integrity have been the topics of great debate (for example, Harrison, 1921, 143–206, 267–84: after 135 ce; Campenhausen, 1963, 197–52: ca. 150 ce), The traditional dating of Ignatius’ sojourn in Asia Minor, ca. 113–117 ce (Schoedel, 1967) has increasingly been called into question and placed in the late 130s to early 140s (for example Barnes, 2008, 119–30; Brent, 2006, 318). If we can date the letters of both Ignatius and Polycarp later into the second century, there is no reason to question composition of the Pastorals during the reign of Hadrian, or perhaps even early in the reign Antoninus Pius (137–161 ce). The case that follows does not require us to determine under which emperor the letters were composed; all of the iconographical observations and examples presented here are consistent with the themes found from the Trajanic through to the Antonine period.

1

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Pastorals. The letters reveal their urban imperial context in their vivid pictures of the civic harmony associated with right leadership and of factions connected with opponents. The Pastorals offer another ‘thirdspace’ through contrasting portraits of opposition and faithfulness to Paul’s heritage. Here, thirdspace places listeners on the streets and thoroughfares of their urban world, even as it dis/places them through a Christological imperial deployment of image and text. The Pastorals’ development of Christology and their narrative configuration of Paul and his supporters result in a heterotopic hybridity as their author draws on Pauline tradition and the honorific language of imperial urban culture to promote his vision of the rightly functioning and governed church.

Bürgerliches Christentum? Consideration of imperial language and metaphor in the Pastorals is nothing new, even if conclusions that arise from their study are seldom satisfying. Scholars have long noticed parallels between the language of the Roman imperial cult and representations of Jesus in the Pastoral Epistles.2 Over a century ago, for example, Adolf Deissmann returned to them repeatedly to demonstrate the extent to which New Testament writers drew from imperial culture to formulate religious and ethical teachings.3 Recently scholars have again taken up evidence of imperial cult language and imagery in the Pastorals, but have come to opposite conclusions about it. Authors such as Neil Elliott conclude from apparent parallels with patriarchal ideology of the Roman Empire that the Pastorals represent the canonical betrayal of Paul, specifically of his counter-imperial vision of justice and equity.4 This assessment represents a long tradition. Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, in an oft-cited formulation, argue that with the Pastorals good citizenship or bourgeois Christianity – bürgerliches Christentum – has replaced the paradox of eschatological ethics of the uncontested Paul.5 Similarly, Ernst Käsemann reads the Pastorals (along

For example, Easton, 1932, 41; Spicq, 1947, clxiii–iv; 1969, 2.573; Mohrmann, 1953, 646–9; Ehrhardt, 1959, 2.36–44; Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972, 100, 104; Cuss, 1974, 143–4; Hanson, 1982, 186–8; Roloff, 1988, 1.363; Dufraigne, 1994, 124; Oberlinner, 1995, 41–2; Weisser, 2003, 114–18; Gill, 2008, 133–62. For influences of Jewish literature, see Marshall, 1999, 293–5; Lau, 1996, 226–59. For Hellenistic influence, including the ruler cult, see Brox, 1989, 161–6, 232–4. 3 Deissmann, 1911, 508: the index lists 27 different cross-references to such parallels; also, Wendland, 1904, 349; Lohmeyer, 1919, 31–2. 4 Elliott, 2006, 38; later, 85, he cites the Pastorals as evidence of ‘accommodation within oppressive societies’. Similarly, Broadbent, 2009, 327–8, who wonders whether they should be excluded from the canon. 5 Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972, 8–10; Dibelius, 1928, 9–30. 2

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with Acts) as evidence of steady movement of Pauline theology toward “early Catholicism” – the replacement of kerygma with tradition, of spirit with office – in account of the delay of the Parousia.6 Recently, Raymond Collins has argued that the Pastorals ’reflect an ecclesial situation in which the communities for which they were written were trying to find their niche in the Greco-Roman world.’7 That pressure to accommodation, Lillian Portefaix argues, is reflected in the letters’ adaptations of patriarchalism for self-definition as a response to conditions created by an allegedly oppressive regime under Trajan.8 Others come to opposite conclusions. Ceslas Spicq rejects Dibelius’s formulations of embourgeoisement in the Pastorals and argues instead that they present ‘the pure Gospel taught to Christians living in society, in the church, making an open confession of their faith, expressing it in a new language and translating it into works.’9 Others read imperial language in the Pastorals as evidence of faithful witness and confession in resistance to Rome.10 Malcolm Gill, for example, interprets them as Christian polemic against ‘the powerful voice of the Roman Empire....’11 Similarly, Willard Swartley argues that the Pastorals’ Christological adaptations of imperial titles ‘functioned to strengthen believers in their stance against the imperial cult.’12 Directly opposed to Elliott’s ideas, Frances Young interprets the letters’ Christological uses of imperial titles as ‘a deliberate placing of this Christ-cult against the Caesar-cult, as the universal gospel to which beleaguered aliens bear witness, and suffer for it….’13 Consistent with arguments formulated in earlier chapters, this discussion avoids simple binary oppositions of accommodation and resistance, or unwieldy abstractions like ‘Church’ and ‘Empire’. Rather it interprets the Pastorals as evidence of a complex negotiation of their imperial world.14 It moves the discussion away from debates about the ultimate origins of vocabulary and Christological titles, to consider the Pastorals’ uses of vivid language and description as a strategy of persuasion. To borrow from the social geographer and urban anthropologist Michel de Certeau, negotiation is not so much the following of a blueprint imposed from above, but an appropriation of space and ideology from below, the creation of a mythic space that is neither here nor there, but exists in the practices of daily life the letters urge with the help of imaginary autobiography and depiction

Käsemann, 1964, 239–52. Collins, 2002, 9. See also, Roloff, 1988, 1.382–5. 8 Portefaix, 2003, 147–58. 9 Spicq, 1969, 243 (translation Kidd, 1990, 27; for full discussion, 25–9). 10 Gill, 2008, 163; Swartley, 2006, 251–3; Spicq, 1969 1.251–4; Kelly, 1963, 269. 11 Gill, 2008, backmatter; also, 158–62. 12 Swartley, 2006, 251. 13 Young, 1994, 65. 14 For a similar focus on negotiation, D’Angelo, 2003, 163–4; Winter, 2003, 120–2. 6 7

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of enemies. The author of the Pastorals is a kind of civic bricoleur who, through vivid language, creates an imaginary space called ‘the household of God’ and, with the help of imperial imagery, fills it with practices and beliefs, metaphors and stories, heroes and villains, right practitioners of civic virtues and offending transgressors. That space, as we will see, is a gendered male one that hints at competing practices of the household that the letters repudiate.

Paul’s Imperial Cloak The author of the Pastorals is a weaver of tales. He accuses his opponents of the promotion of “myths and endless geneaologies” (1 Tim. 1.4), but he can spin a few yarns of his own. Like Colossians and Ephesians, the Pastorals present Paul in prison and in chains (also 2 Tim. 1.16). ‘Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David, as preached in my gospel, the gospel for which I am suffering to the point of wearing fetters like a criminal [e0n w|{ kakopaqw~ me/xri desmw~n w(j kakou~rgoj]’ (2 Tim. 2.8–9). In Colossians, Paul’s chains are remembered for polemical purposes. In Ephesians, they invite listeners to imagine Paul as an ambassador who announces a universal Gospel of reconciliation and imperial concord. The Pastorals offer a much more elaborate and sustained version of Paul’s autobiographical statements. Paul usually associates them with those who have either abandoned or remained with him. Accordingly, some have hypothesized that the Pastorals use autobiographical statements polemically against rivals who were remembering Paul in differing ways, for the sake of more ascetic formulations. As counter-memory, the Pastorals remember a Paul who exhorts the passing on of a set of teachings preserved through institutional arrangements entrusted to males who correctly govern their households. At the margins of this memory is the apostle’s imperial cloak, a metonym that ultimately signifies a whole set of practices and meanings with which the ideal readers of the Pastorals ultimately cloak themselves. The Pastorals are exemplary of the use of memory to construct communal identity.15 By recalling Paul’s faithfulness to his Gospel, the letters create shared identity. As Steen Larsen has argued, as narrative memory passes from one generation to another it takes on new autobiographical uses.16 The narrative of a definitive past event or person becomes, as it were, one’s own story to repeat. Memory is not stenography, it is the reconstruction of the past for the sake of present uses. Groups who have an interest in one memory over another construct a past to serve their goals. As pseudepigraphy, the Pastorals create persuasive memories with the help of vivid images 15 16

For a constructivist account of social memory, see Connerton, 1989. Larsen, 1992, 53–71.

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of Paul in prison. Through ‘autobiography’ and teaching Paul becomes what David Meade calls an ‘archetype’, u(potu&pwsij, of right conversion and belief (1 Tim. 1.16; 2 Tim. 1.13).17 Double-pseudonymity reinforces this archetype.18 ‘Paul’ writes under a pseudonym, and his co-workers, ‘Timothy’ and ‘Titus’, preserve archetypal memory in the letters addressed to them. In the course of the letters they become idealized disciples who can be relied upon to implement all that Paul commands, even as he prepares to die. Further, as Meade argues, the Pastorals repeatedly enjoin Timothy and Titus to adhere to and preserve faith, which in the Pastorals is predominantly the faith (for example 2 Tim. 1.13, 14 [h9 pi/stoj, h9 a)lh&qeia]) – a series of orthodox beliefs.19 The letters reinforce these beliefs in exhortations to ‘guard the [good] deposit’ [th_n kalh_n paraqh&khn fu&lacon] (1 Tim. 6.20; 2 Tim. 1.14; also 1.12), as well as by contrasting the ‘sound [u9giai/nontej] words/teaching/faith’ (1 Tim. 6.3; 2 Tim. 1.13; Tit. 1.3; 1 Tim. 1.10; 2 Tim. 4.3; Tit. 1.9; 2.1; Tit. 1.13; 2.2) with the ‘false teaching’ [e9terodidaskalei=n] (1 Tim. 1.3; 6.3) of opponents. Timothy and Titus play a critical narrative and institutionalizing role in belief and practice. It is through them that the Pastorals’ ideal listeners overhear autobiography and so learn how to make that autobiography their own – what virtues to pursue, what teachings to oppose, what institutional structures to confirm and strengthen. The Pastorals marshal memory to limit the intrusions of what may well have been counter-memories. As we saw in our discussion of Colossians, counter-memory refers to the invocation of memory to deconstruct prevailing norms and institutional structures.20 In Colossians, for example, the memory of Jesus’ death as Triumph deconstructs the Roman ideas by making Jesus’ cross the site of imperial victory. It is very possible that the Pastorals create a memory of Paul as a response to a counter-memory of Paul as ascetic. MacDonald and Merz have argued that the way in which the Pastorals represent their opponents and the women who follow them mirrors the roughly contemporary portrait of Paul in the apocryphal acts.21 The Acts of Paul and Thecla 7 depicts the apostle as an ascetic who teaches women to reject marriage and child-bearing and to purse continence.22 As we will see below, the Acts furnish a defensible Sitz im Leben for understanding the Pastorals exhortations to women to remain submissive and to Meade, 1986, 124. For the term, see Fatum, 2005, 176; also Marshall, 2008, 781–803, who notes the fictive geographical setting of the letter as an element of its strategy of persuasion. 19 Meade, 1986, 122–30. 20 Foucault, 1977, 151 21 MacDonald, 1983, 34–77; Merz, 2004, 218–22, 318–33, 374–5. 22 See Davies, 1980, 50–94, and Burrus, 1987, for the recurring life situation of the apocryphal acts amongst women who have rejected traditional female roles by enrolling themselves in the church as widows to pursue ascetical devotion. Notwithstanding Cooper’s, 1999, 55–60, persuasive argument that the Acts do not reflect female but male interests, the narratives belong to a social world in which women practice continence as ascetic discipline. 17 18

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bear children in resistance to those who ‘invade homes’ (2 Tim. 3.6), ‘upset households’ (Tit.1.11) and forbid marriage (1 Tim. 4.3). The Pastorals represent Timothy and Titus as the true preservers of Paul’s memory, a memory that will be carried on through correctly instituted leaders, who will in turn pass it on through right teaching and, more critically, the correct interpretation of the apostle’s legacy. The Pastorals thus not only remember Paul, they also use speech in the form of personal letters to persuade those left behind to keep memory alive through obedience to what has been passed on to them. By such means Paul is not just remembered, he is constructed to meet the demands of specific local challenges. The battle for the right memory of Paul helps to understand the Pastorals’ representations of Paul (2 Tim. 2.8–13) and his delegate Timothy suffering for the Gospel (2 Tim. 1.8–12) and of promises of persecution to those who live devoutly (2 Tim. 3.10–12). Sometimes it is argued that, since the Pastorals remember Paul as bearing faithful witness before imperial persecutors, they must be exhorting their hearers to a similar task.23 However, as we will see, since there is no evidence of Roman persecution of the audiences of the Pastorals, it is unlikely that the memory of Paul’s imprisonment functions as an incentive to faithfulness in the face of imperial oppression. We must look in another direction to understand how the memory of Paul’s suffering functions in the letters. The Pastorals remember Paul’s suffering to show how those who are faithful to his teaching can expect to be opposed by enemies of the Gospel even as Paul is represented as abandoned and left alone in prison by those who have rejected him.24 In each of the texts that name the suffering of Paul, Timothy or the audience, the Pastorals associates it with abandonment or opposition to the apostle’s teaching (2 Tim. 1.11, cf. v 15; 2.8, cf. v 14; 3.11,12, cf. v. 13). Paul is not a model for endurance of imperial persecution, but of steadfastness and faithfulness in the face of abandonment and disputation over his Gospel. The enemies from which one should expect suffering are not imperial authorities, but those guilty of false teachings, and who have as a result ‘abandoned’ Paul. These letters recall Paul’s teaching and conduct, and above all his steadfastness, persecution and long-suffering (2 Tim. 3.10–11). ‘Indeed’, Paul writes, ‘all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while degenerates and swindlers [ponhroi\ de\ a!nqrwpoi kai\ go&htej] will go on from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived themselves’ (vs. 12–13). 2 Timothy remembers Paul as one who lives a godly life, imprisoned and abandoned (2 Tim. 1.15) and whose Gospel is threatened by enemies (2 Tim. 2.17). The memory creates both a past and a present. As such it is a highly instructive memory made more potent by way of vivid recollection

Gill, 2008, 111–32, 137–62; Swartley, 2006, 251, and Young, 1994, 65. Similarly, Kelhoffer 2010, 90–1.

23 24

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and narrative. The Paul who addresses Timothy is one who, though in chains and abandoned, nevertheless can count on his supporters, distant as they may be from his Roman jail. This is the function of the puzzling instruction to Timothy to remember to bring with him ‘the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments’ (2 Tim. 4.13), a passage that has been cited as evidence weighing heavily against later authorship, and has thus spurred many hypotheses to account for its presence in a pseudonymous letter.25 What is Paul’s cloak doing in a letter arguably written as much as almost a century after his death? Whatever else such a reminder does, and whatever its origins, it urges faithfulness to Paul’s presence as represented by the teachings he has left behind him. The cloak, however, is not so much a code as it is a means of making listener and speaker present to each other. Paul’s biographical remarks recorded in 2 Timothy evoke striking if mixed memories. They are pictures of the past that ‘turn listeners into observers’ through vivid treatment of places, times, people and things.26 As such they fulfill a chief function of ekphrasis, to arouse emotion through imagination prompted by vivid mental images. Vivid speech in the uncontested letters achieved one of Paul’s chief aims – to speak to the audience as though present.27 This was central to his development of the advisory or paraenetic formulation of deliberative rhetoric – namely to exhort an audience to continue along or desist from the way it is going.28 The letters’ use of vivid verbs, nouns and adjectives to accompany the narrative descriptions of Paul and his opponents help audiences to ‘see’ the apostle and his delegates and to follow right teaching. On the one side are those like Phygelus and Hermogenes, only two of ‘all followers in Asia’ [pa/ntej oi9 e0n th=| | A)si/a] who ‘turned away’ [a0pastra/ fhsan] from the apostle (2 Tim. 1.15) – where ‘all’ is stylistically emphatic;

For representative accounts, see Trummer, 1978, 78–87, and Witherington, 2006, 379 (the cloak weighs against pseudonymity); Oberlinner, 1995, 172–4, and Collins, 2002, 263 (the cloak is theologically coded language in a pseudonymous letter); Harrison, 1921, 12 (the request for the cloak attests to fragments of a letter composed by Paul integrated into a pseudonymous letter); Richards, 1990, 192–8 (a secretary wrote the Pastorals; the request for the cloak represents a remark inserted by Paul before he sent 2 Tim.). 26 Thus, Nicolaus Rhetor (fifth century ce), Prog., Felton, 1913, 68, ll.11–12: [ekphrasis] peira=tai qeata\j tou\j a0kou/ntaj e0rga/zesqai. 27 Koskenniemi, 1956, 35–47. See Funk, 1967, 249, for applications of this to the Pauline letter as a form of apostolic parousia; similarly Harding, 1998, 104–6, who builds on and systematizes Koskenniemi’s and Funk’s articulations, but without reference to the role of ekphrasis in the Pastorals . 28 Thus pseudo-Demetrias (second century bce – Third Century ce; Malherbe, 1988, no. 11): the ‘advisory’ [sumbouleutiko/j] letter seeks ‘either to exhort or dissuade someone from a course of action’. Similarly pseudo-Libanius 5 (fourth century ce; Malherbe, 1988, 5): ‘The paraenetic style is that in which we exhort someone by urging him to pursue something or to avoid something. Paraenesis is divided into two parts, encouragement and dissuasion.’ For the paraenetic letter as a subset of deliberative epistolary rhetoric, see Stowers 19, 86, 94–106 (97, with reference to the Pastorals). 25

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or Hymenaeus and Philetus ‘who have swerved from the truth [oi3tinej peri\ th_n a)lh&qeian h)sto&xhsan] by holding that the resurrection is past already’ (2.17); or Demas in Rome who ‘in love with the present age’ [a)gaph&saj to_n nu~n ai0w~na] has ‘deserted’ [e0gkate/lipen] him (4.10); or again ‘Alexander the coppersmith’ who did Paul ‘great harm’ [kaka_ e0nedei/cato], and perhaps can be accounted amongst those ‘all’ whom Paul describes leaving him deserted: ‘pa&ntej me e0gkate/lipon’ – again emphatic (2 Tim. 4.14). Paul at his first defense was alone, ‘since nobody was present with me’ [ou)dei/j moi parege/neto] (4.14, 16). On the other side, the Pastorals use vivid portrait and narrative in the service of ‘philophronesis’, that is, exhortation through creating friendly relations, and – as is typical of letters of advice – a hierarchical teacher-student/parent-child relationship that makes present the absent letter writer.29 Paul remembers Timothy’s ‘sincere faith’ [a)nupokri/tou pi/ stewj], which ‘first dwelt’ [e0nw|&khsen prw~ton] in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Tim. 1.5). He addresses Timothy as ‘my true child in faith’ (1 Tim. 1.2), ‘my beloved child’ (2 Tim. 1.2), ‘my son’ (1 Tim. 1.18), and Titus as ‘my true child’ (Tit. 1.4). 1 Tim. 1.18 letter casts Timothy in a vivid liturgical setting of inspired worship when ‘prophetic utterances’ pointed to him; accordingly, ‘inspired by them’, he is to ‘wage the good warfare’. Elsewhere, Paul vividly remembers ‘the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me; he was not ashamed of my chains’ [polla&kij me a)ne/yucen kai\ th_n a#lusi/n mou ou)k e0paisxu&nqh] (2 Tim. 1.16), indeed he came to Rome and searched ‘eagerly’ [spoudai/wj] for Paul (v. 17). Opposite to those who abandoned him, ‘Luke’, Paul says, ‘alone is with me’ [mo&noj met0 e0mou~] (4.11). 2 Timothy 4.16–17 reinforces the power of right teaching when it casts Paul as successful evangelist even in the face of death: ‘At my first defense, no one took my part; all deserted me…. But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.’ Here, as Annette Merz argues, evocative language prompts memory of faithful legendary heroes – Daniel (Dan. 6.21), David (1 Macc. 2.60) and, more distantly, the faithful protagonist of LXX Ps. 21.22.30 In addition to being vivid descriptions, these passages awaken a sense of belonging and solidarity against Paul’s opponents, who now – no doubt to their surprise – find themselves allied with the likes of Pilate, if not chief antagonists of biblical legend. By contrast, those named in the letter’s closing greetings (4.19–21) evoke provocative memory of belonging and allegiance. Koskenniemi, 1956, 35–47; for philophronesis and hierarchical relationship as strategy of epistolary paraenesis in the Pastorals, see Harding, 1998, 123–31; Malherbe, 2004, 298–9; for presence ‘parousia’,Collins 2002, 129; Koskenniemi 1956, 38–42. For a full discussion of epistolary theory with literature, see Harding 1998, 85–179. 30 Merz, 2004, 46–57. 29

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To remember Paul’s cloak, then, is a vivid detail that evokes a larger story of solidarity and abandonment, of faithful teaching and the ‘swerving from the truth’. As epistolary rhetoric in pseudonymous and vivid narrative form, the Pastorals equate the apostle’s continuing presence with adherence to his teaching. Consistent with the passage of narrative memory from one generation to the next, the biography of a past event becomes transformed to fit the biographies of new actors in a new time and place. Paul who suffered for his Gospel now becomes the story of those opposed for preserving his teachings. We might say that if Paul has forgotten his cloak, by the time Paul concludes his address, his audience has become cloaked in his apostolic mantle.

Athletes and Soldiers The Pastorals depict the faithfulness of Paul and his co-workers with the help of vivid imperial imagery. Two metaphorical representations, those of athlete and solider, place the letters’ leading characters in a recognizable imperial situation. The metaphor of Paul as athlete echoes earlier Pauline usage (1 Cor. 9.24–7; 3.12–16). ‘I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing’ (2 Tim. 4.7–8). This vivid description locates Paul first in the sporting arena and then as receiving the corona civica for his faithful service. They invite listeners to picture Paul with the help of descriptions immediately recognizable to an urban audience in Asia Minor. Pauline scholars have related representations in the apostle’s letter to the use of a topos frequently deployed in Greco-Roman moral philosophical discourse, where progress in philosophy and living ethically is represented in the agonistic terms of contest, battle and so on.31 However, the athletic imagery in 2 Timothy is more than a commonplace – it transforms listeners into observers and makes them witnesses to the prize about to be received. Philip Esler has argued that 2 Tim. 4. 6–8, as other Pauline references to athletics, should be understood anthropologically as evocative of the honorific culture of the ancient Mediterranean world where athletics was a central social ritual in the construction of personal and group identity.32 The passage wins a more precise imperial location when placed against the backdrop of athletic games inaugurated at Ephesus first by Domitian, and then again by Hadrian – that is the period when the Pastorals were composed arguably in a city at or near Ephesus. From the Augustan and 31 32

Pfitzer, 1967, 38–72, offers an overview. Esler, 2005, 356–84.

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Julio-Claudian period onward, games dedicated in honour of the emperor were increasingly common among the cities of Asia Minor and were an important means for cities to advertise their relative status in competition for imperial honours.33 They were first introduced in association with the Augustan imperial cult in Asia Minor; later the Ephesian Olympics were briefly revived in connection with the Flavian cult to the emperors. Finally, after Hadrian’s visit to Asia Minor in 123/24 ce they were again started and regularly conducted at least into the third century.34 Contest and games were a chief means of display of location, allegiance and devotion as cities engaged in fierce rivalries not only by way of athletic competitions, but also through display of social hierarchies in processions, sacrifices and gifts. The presence of the games at Pergamon – celebrated every five years in association with its two imperial temples, to Augustus and Trajan – prompted Pergamon to strike coins to display its rank and privilege over its chief rivals, Ephesus and Smyrna.35 The imperial nature of the ‘games’ in which Paul competes is communicated through the description of the reward he is going to receive from ‘the Lord, the righteous judge’ on account of his having loved ‘his appearing’. The second metaphorical description of Paul and his co-workers, that of the soldier, shares a similar imperial association. Paul is not only an athlete; Timothy is not only ‘to train [himself] for godliness’ (1 Tim. 4.7; also 2 Tim. 2.5), they are also in imperial service. As elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, military language supplements athletic metaphor to describe the apostolic agon for the Gospel (for example, 2 Cor. 10.3–5; Phil. 2.25; Phlm. 2).36 Paul writes Timothy and preaches the Gospel ‘by command of God our Saviour’ (1 Tim. 1.1; Tit. 1.3); he likens Timothy to an enlisted soldier (2 Tim. 2.4): ‘Wage the good warfare’ [strateu&h| … th_n kalh_n stratei/an]; ‘Fight the good fight of faith’ [a)gwni/zou to_n kalo_n a)gw~na th~j pi/stewj] (1 Tim. 1.18; 6.12). Thus an overarching notion of imperial contest and battle draw Paul and his audience together in a shared contest/campaign, and together place both letter and audience in a shared imperial culture.

An Imperial Epiphany and Adventus Another way in which the Pastorals place their listeners in an imperial situation is through their use of ideas connected with epiphany and

For the increasing frequency of the games and their associations with the imperial cult, see Price, 1984b, 104–6. 34 Friesen, 1993, 114–21. 35 Weisser, 2005, 140–2. 36 For discussion, see Pfitzer, 1967, 157–64, and for discussion of their association in the Pastorals, 165–86. 33

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adventus. The letters uniquely describe the Christ event as an ‘appearing’ [e0pifanei/a] (1 Tim. 6.14; 2 Tim. 1.10; 4.1,8; Tit. 2.11 [e0pefa&nh], 13), a term that occurs in only one other place in the Pauline corpus, in 2 Thess. 2.8 – another contested letter – with reference to Jesus’ Parousia. The Pastorals use the term e0pifanei/a in two ways – in association with Jesus’ first ‘appearance’ in history (2 Tim. 1.10; Tit. 2.11) and his second one in the Parousia (1 Tim. 6.14; 2 Tim. 4.1; Tit. 2.13, perhaps, 2 Tim. 4.8). Exegetes have closely scrutinized the passages associated with Jesus’ historical e0pifanei/a to detect evidence of belief in Christ’s divine pre-existence.37 In both Jewish and Greek literature, e0pifanei/a can refer to the revelation or manifestation of a divinity.38 However, the Hellenistic/ Roman imperial ruler cult offers another fruitful avenue of investigation.39 The most striking parallel with the imperial notion of divine manifestation occurs in 2 Tim. 1.10 where multiple terms redolent of imperial usage appear: God’s own purpose and grace [xa/rij] ‘has been manifested [fanerwqei=san] through the appearing of our Saviour [dia_ th~j e0pifanei/aj tou~ swth~roj h(mw~n] Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel [dia_ tou~ eu)aggeli/ou].’ The passage contains striking parallels with the oft-cited imperial inscription of Priene (and parallel versions) inaugurating an imperial cult dedicated to Augustus and honouring his birthday as the start of the new year: … ‘beneficence has granted a saviour [sw=thra xarisame/nh] who has made war to cease and Caesar, and who is ordering all things for peace, Caesar when he was made manifest [e0pifanei/j] exceeded all hopes of all who anticipated good news [eu)ange/lia].’ A few lines later the inscription further honours the epiphany of Caesar as ‘the birthday of our god,’ which ‘signaled the beginning of Good News for the world [h9 gene/qlioj h9me/ra tou= qeou= h1rcen de\ twi= ko/smwi tw=n di’ au0to\n eu0angeli/wn].’40 The parallels in vocabulary between the description of Jesus in 2 Tim. 1.10 and that of Augustus in this inscription (xa/rij – xarisame/nh; fanerwqei=san, e0pifanei/aj – e0pifanei/j; swth~roj – sw=thra; eu)aggeli/ou – eu)-ange/lia/wn) are striking and urge recognition of the imperial valences they carry in 2 Timothy. Later, under Hadrian, e0pifanei/a appears on altars built to mark the coming of Hadrian in 123 ce at Ephesus, Pergamon and other Asian cities. One, that links the emperor with Asklepios, is dedicated to 0Adrianw|= swth=ri O0l[u/mpiw|] pa/ntwn a0nqrw/pwn despo/thj basileu\j tw=n th=j gh=j xwrw=n epifane/statoj (‘To Olympian Hadrian saviour master of all people most manifest emperor of the nations of the earth’). More rarely

For example, Lau, 1996, 226–60, who summarizes the literature. Pax, 1962; 1955. 39 Marshall, 1999, 292–6 for Jewish literature; Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972, 104–5, for references to the ruler cult; also Vermeulen, 1966, 16–18. 40 Ehrenberg and Jones, 1976, 82, no. 98, ll. 36–8, 40–1. 37 38

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inscriptions use e0pifa/neia as a synonym for Hadrian’s adventus.41 These parallels leave little doubt that the author of the Pastorals drew on imperial language to communicate Christological ideas and that when listeners heard the coming of Jesus represented as an e0pifa/neia he could rely on them to make those associations. The second way the Pastorals use e0pifanei/a to place their audience in an imperial situation is by associating Jesus’ parousi/a with imperial adventus (1 Tim. 6.14–15; Tit. 2.13, and perhaps 2 Tim. 4.8). Strictly speaking, e0pifanei/a – the manifestion of divinity – is conceptually distinct from notions related to imperial notions of parousi/a/adventus. But in imperial usage, e0pifanei/a and parousi/a belong to the repertoire of civic vocabulary that describes the arrival of an emperor.42 As Cuss argues, the association of parousi/a/adventus with e0pifanei/a ‘conveyed the glory of the visit of the emperor to the city.’ He goes on to describe how the term could invoke both a single visit, as well as ‘a prolonged epiphany, the god manifesting himself in the person of a man, whether he be Hellenistic ruler or Roman emperor.’43 This prolonged meaning is what is meant in the inscription from Priene cited above. From Augustus onward, the adventus of emperors were often commemorated by imperial coinage. In the case of Trajan, for example, a relief from Trajan’s Column shows the emperor’s arrival, during his campaign against the Dacians (Figure 43). Here adventus and military achievement are a central focus in the depiction of the arrival of a soldier emperor who has imperial rule firmly in his hand. By the time of the Pastorals, a rich iconographical tradition had developed to represent differing aspects of the imperial adventus: as arrival, sacrifice, benefactions and address to troops. Under Hadrian, adventus received its fullest treatment. Hadrian spent 12 of the 21 years of his rule

For inscriptions, Weber, 1973, 134n. 483. See similarly Smallwood, 1966, 62, no. 144, for Hadrian as Olympian ‘saviour and creator’ [soti=ri kai\ kti/si], as well as Sabina, the empress, as ‘new Hera’ [Ne/a Hra|], erected at Thasos. 42 Similarly, Spicq, 1969, 1.572. While rarer in connection with parousia, Weber 1973, 196 n. 697, furnishes an inscription that describes Hadrian’s adventus at Actium-Nicopolis as e0pifanei/a. For terminology to describe imperial arrival, see Dufraigne, 1994, 41–94, especially in reference to triumph; also Vermeulen, 1964, 16–18, with reference to the joyous reception of a Hellenistic king; Pax, 1962, 844–6; 1955, 52–7; Roddy, 2000, 157–70. Pax, however, dismisses the imperial usage and looks exclusively to Hebrew Bible and Hellenistic religious provenance. In the light of existing evidence, it is imprudent to draw such rigid lines of demarcation. Arguably both Hebrew Bible and imperial models conspired to create a potent notion of Jesus’ arrival for judgment and his appearing as divinity. 43 Cuss, 1974, 135; for general discussion, 134–44. Further, adventus entailed not only the ceremony of arrival, but prolonged presence for dispensing justice, benefaction, assuring good order, and making the imperial presence available to more subjects otherwise excluded from it. For discussion, Halfmann, 1986, 111–42; Lehnen, 1997, 63–9; Millar, 1977, 28–40 and Stutzinger, 1984, 286–307. 41

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Figure 43  Relief of adventus of Trajan, scene LXXIX/XC, Column of Trajan (second century ce), Rome © Anger D-DAI-ROM 89.558

visiting imperial provinces. He used these visits to inspect the army, to visit cities, hear civil cases and to offer benefactions in the form of monuments and other privileges. Sometime after the completion of his final tour in 134 ce, the Roman mint issued coins whose types commemorated his visits to provinces. Amongst these was the adventus type (see figures 44, 45 and 46).44 In one coin type (Figure 44), the prescribed ritual of adventus is narrated by showing Hadrian in an act of sacrifice before a female figure personifying Asia, with the legend ADVENTUI AUG[USTI] ASIAE. Another (Figure 45), illustrative of the ‘restitutor type’, depicts the emperor raising a female figure, again personifying Asia, to her feet, with the legend, RESTITUTORI ASIAE. A third (Figure 46), the ‘exercitus type’, portrays Hadrian exhorting his troops and as such carries forward themes prevalent on the Trajanic coinage.45 Adventus was also marked by inscriptions as we saw in the dedication to Hadrian as Zeus most manifest; another, again associated with his adventus at Pergamon, hails him as Zeu\j O0lu/mpioj e0pifanh/j. For discussion of this and the other types, see Toynbee, 1934, 1–7, with plates. For Trajan and military numismatic iconography, see Blamberg, 1976, 117–29.

44 45

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Figure 44 Reverse of sestertius, Mint of Rome, after 134 ce, BMCRE 3.1638 pl. 92.1 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 45 Reverse of sestertius, Mint of Rome, after 134 ce, BMCRE 3.1798 pl. 96.5 © Trustees of the British Museum

1 Tim. 6.14–15 and Tit. 2.13 apply an imperial understanding of e0pifanei/a and adventus in a way similar to that discussed earlier in our treatment of 1 Thess. 4.15–17 and 2 Thess. 2.8. As with the Thessalonian literature, the Pastorals orient adventus to judgment. In Tit. 2.11, (‘For the grace of God has appeared Figure 46 Reverse of sesertius, for the salvation of all people’), Mint of Rome, after 134 ce, Hunterian ‘appearing’ [e0pefa&nh] and ‘salvation’ Museum Numismatic Collections [swth&rioj] are paired to describe GLAHM 26336 © University of Jesus’ first adventus, and echo the Glasgow inscription from Priene cited above. In 2.13, the author turns to Jesus’ future coming with the use of imperial vocabulary at home in honorific acclamations of the imperial cult: ‘awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ’ [e0pifa&neian th~j do&chj tou~ mega&lou qeou~ kai\ swth~roj h(mw~n 0Ihsou~ Xristou~].46 Similarly, in 1 Tim. 6.14–15, the author invokes adventus when he exhorts Timothy, to keep the commandments unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ [me/xri th~j e0pifanei/aj tou~ kuri/ou h(mw~n 0Ihsou~ Xristou~]; and this will be made manifest at the proper time by

For mega\j qeo/j in imperial titles and with reference to inscriptions, see Mueller 1913, 394–5; for mega/j/magnus as imperial epithet in panegyric to Domitian, see Sauter 1934, 96–105.

46

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the blessed and only Sovereign [mo&noj duna&sthj], the King of kings and Lord of lords [o( basileu_j tw~n basileuo&ntwn kai\ ku&rioj tw~n kurieuo&ntwn,], who alone has immortality [o( mo&noj e1xwn a)qanasi/an] and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion [w|{ timh_ kai\ kra&toj ai0w&nion]. Amen.’ Here, again, the resonances are a complex union of Hebrew Bible language of praise, the Hellenistic ritual of divine kingship, and the imperial cult.47 Possibly, the twin use of ‘alone’ [mo&noj], is targeted at imperial claims.48 Certainly, as both Willard Swartley and Frances Young note, it would be difficult for a first century listener to hear these terms and not make imperial associations.49 Indeed the inscription hailing Hadrian as Olympian saviour pa/ntwn a0nqrw/pwn despo/thj basileu\j tw=n th=j gh=j xwrw=n epifane/statoj is excellent evidence for that argument. Vivid language of e0pifa/neia and adventus locate the Pastorals’ readers on the urban stage of Roman imperial Ephesus and its neighbouring cities. As we will see, the Pastorals’ lively profiles of rightly governed churches and households – and their opposites – reinforce associations with the arrival of a divine ruler. Rightly to await the arrival of the imperial Christ is to keep one’s house in order and to manifest all the civic goods he will scrutinize, even as he comes to honour the faithful with rewards and bounty. However, before we turn to that discussion, we take up another imperial aspect of the Pastorals’ formulations: their Christological monotheism.

Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ Usually the letters present a binitarian theology (1 Tim. 1.1, 2, 16–17; 2.5; 2 Tim. 1.2; 2 Tim. 4.1; Tit. 1.4). But at several points they resolve this binitarianism into a notion of Jesus as God (1 Tim. 6.15–16; Tit. 2.13; 3.4, 6). The grammatical ambiguity and textual emendation of Tit. 2.13 is instructive in this regard: ‘the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ’ [e0pifa&neian th~j do&chj tou~ mega&lou qeou~ kai\ swth~roj h(mw~n Ihsou~ Xristou~]. The ambiguous ‘our’ can mean either ‘our great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ’, or ‘our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ’. A later hand emended the text by omitting ‘Jesus Christ’, undoubtedly to resolve an ambiguity that might infer modalism. Evidence for omission is weak; the strong majority of textual witnesses include it. This is consistent with surrounding texts that assert Christ as ‘our Saviour’ (Tit. 1.3; 3.4). Scholars have come to conflicting conclusions concerning this text – that

Spicq, 1947, 199–202. Similarly, Young, 1994, 65. 49 Swartley, 2006, 252; similarly Cuss, 1974, 143. 47 48

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it asserts di-theism, monotheistic subordinationism, modalism or even gnosticism. Others resolve the difficulty by interpreting the text – anachronistically – as proto-orthodox evidence of an incarnational theology of Christ’s pre-existence, in anticipation of the Christological doctrine of the hypostatic union.50 However one understands its Christological teaching, there is a broad consensus that the formulations of Jesus whose deity has appeared for salvation derive from the Hellenistic and imperial ruler cult, an argument we have adduced strong evidence to support.51 More critical for our purposes here is the relation of this language to images of divine rulership in the imperial visual urban culture of early to mid second-century Roman Asia Minor. The Pastorals attest an imperial Christological monotheism that parallels a type of imperial monotheism associated with the cult of the emperor that developed late in the first century and was refined through the second century. Starting with Domitian and continuing under Trajan and Hadrian, imagery and titles associated with the imperial cult became increasingly dramatic and monotheistic. J. Rufus Fears has charted the steady rise of ‘an absolutist theology of imperial power’ throughout these reigns as ‘the Augustan image of the emperor as agent of the Roman people was transformed into one of the image as ultimate source all administrative and legislative power.’52 Associated with this rise was increasing attention to the Jovian aspects of the emperor’s rule. Under Domitian, for example, games inaugurated in honour of Zeus Olympios, coincided with the striking of a coin with a reverse image of Olympian Zeus, and, obverse, the head of Domitian.53 As Steven Friesen argues, Domitian’s intentions are revealed in another coin that portrays Artemis standing on Zeus’ outstretched hand: the father of the gods/Zeus rules over the patron goddess Artemis even as Domitian rules over Ephesus. That idea, he goes on to argue, was already apparent in the Temple of the Sebastoi – also completed under Domitian – ‘where the emperors, housed above the ranks of the deities, presided supreme over the world.’54 These visual representations find a literary form in panegyric linking Domitian with Zeus/Jupiter.55 Trajan continued this development.56 His panegyrist Pliny, as well as speeches by Dio of Prusa, reflect the emperor’s desire to associate his reign

For an overview with bibliography of these various possibilities, see Marshall 1999, 287–96; for incarnational pre-existence, 295–6; Lau 1996, 260–3; for proto-orthodox Christology, see Hurtado, 2005, 518. 51 Hurtado, 2005, 517–18; similarly Young, 1994, 65. 52 Fears, 1977, 153. 53 BM Ionia 75, no. 215. 54 Friesen, 1993, 119. 55 For discussion with examples, see Sauter, 1934, 54–78; Fears, 1981, 79–80. 56 For Trajan and his relationship to Jupiter in imperial propaganda, see Fears, 1981, 77–85. 50

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Figure 47  Model of the Temple of Zeus Philios and Trajan, Pergamon (second century ce), Pergamon Museum, Berlin

with Jupiter’s rule. Pliny, for example, noted Nerva’s adoption of Trajan in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the new emperor’s role as Jupiter’s vice-regent in overseeing the Empire.57 Dio draws links between Zeus and Trajan by naming the god’s roles as father, city protector and guardian of the human race, as well as outlining virtues necessary for being the god’s son.58 However, more critical for an understanding of the Pastorals’ imperial situation are the visual aspects of imperial rule first under Trajan and later under Hadrian. At Pergamon, during the reign of Trajan, the imperial vision of political monotheism was given a visually spectacular monument with the construction of an imperial temple near the pinnacle of the Acropolis, dedicated to the imperial cult and the worship of Zeus Philios/Jupiter Amicalis (Figure 47).59 The construction of the Temple of Trajan coincided with the creation of a new Roman street-grid in the plain below. The pax romana removed the need for fortification walls; as the city spread across the plain, the new temple determined the orientation of the grid.60 This new urban orientation represented a key ideological claim of

Pliny, Pan. 8.1–2; also 1.3–5; 5.2–9; 8.1–2; 80.4; for commentary, see Fears, 1981, 80–4. Dio Or. 1.39–48, 73–84; 2.63–78; 4.27–35, where Heracles/Trajan is also represented as Zeus’ son. 59 For a discussion of the monument, see Nohlen, 2011, 159–66; for evidence of these temples as reflections of developments in the imperial cult and associations with Zeus and the propaganda of a united Empire, see Bonz, 1998, 251–75. 60 For the relation of street-grid to temple, see Radt, 2001, 49–53. 57 58

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Figure 48  Reverses of Aeses, Mint of Pergamon, Pergamon (second century ce), von Fritze 1910, pl. 8.33

imperial rule. Dominating the landscape for miles around, the Traianeum made visible the emperor’s role as the Jupiter’s vice-regent and his divinely appointed task to keep watch over the nations. This association of Trajan with Zeus Philios was further advertised through Pergamene coinage, published in four coin types in three denominations.61 For example, two types represent Trajan obverse; on the reverse of the smaller is an image of Zeus Philios’ head; on the larger, Zeus, enthroned. The two largest denominations depict the new temples of Zeus and Trajan with their cult statues (Figure 48). Zeus Philios is seated and beside him stands Trajan in military costume. The coinage makes similar associations in issues depicting Trajan as Jupiter holding a thunderbolt in his right extended hand.62 Hadrian vigorously furthered these ideas. He completed the temple to Zeus Olympios in Athens. Cities in Greece and Asia Minor erected a number of statues dedicated to Hadrian; behind the temple to Zeus at Athens that he completed, Hadrian built a second one dedicated to his cult in which was a colossal statue of the emperor. The epithets Olympios, Soter and Panhellenios celebrate him as the earthly counterpart of Zeus.63 Closer to the geographical provenance of the Pastorals, in Asia Minor, Hadrian completed the Traianeum at Pergamon, built two new temples to Zeus Olympios at Smyrna and Ephesus and began a third one at Pergamon, where he was to be worshiped alongside Zeus Philios/Jupiter Amicalis and

For discussion, further examples and citations, see Schowalter 1998, 240–3; also Weisser, 2005, 139–41, with plate 11.4, 29–32; Fritze Tafel VIII, 11, 12, 17, 18. 62 BMC 3 no. 825 (p. 174), pl. 30.4 (sestertius); no. 899 (p. 190), pl. 34.7 (dupondus), 104–11 ce. 63 For the centrality of Jupiter/Zeus in Hadrian’s reign, see Fears 1981, 86–9. 61

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Trajan.64 Multiple Ephesian inscriptions name him as Zeus Olympios, a title that accompanied the introduction of Ephesian Olympics during his reign.65 As J. Rufus Fears notes, these increasingly dramatic associations of the emperor with Jupiter/Zeus from the reign of Domitian onward reflect a tendency toward monotheism that was at work in the larger religious and philosophical thought of the period.66 It is not surprising, then, that we should find in a New Testament document so charged with imperial association a similar tendency toward a Christological monotheism, perhaps as counterclaim to imperial developments, or perhaps as an adaptation of them by second century Christ followers. This visual culture and development of monotheistic notions applied to the Trajanic and Hadrianic imperial cult offer an important backdrop for assessing the Christological claims of the Pastorals and their possible relations to the worship of the emperor. As Fears noted over 30 years ago, 1 Tim. 2.5, which represents Jesus as ‘mediator’ [mesi/thj], is at home in this development.67 Most recently, Malcolm Gill has surveyed the use of this term in the imperial cult, and related 1 Tim. 2.1–7 to emperor worship in Asia Minor.68 Indeed the pericope orients the treatment of Jesus as mediator to a larger imperial world by having it appear in a passage that exhorts obedience to the emperor and rulers (2.2). The invocation of ‘God our saviour’ in v. 3 and the benefit of good government so that ‘we may lead a peaceful and quiet life pious and respectful in every way’ [h!remon kai\ h(su&xion bi/on dia&gwmen e0n pa&sh| eu)sebei/a| kai\ semno&thti], further emphasizes this imperial dimension. Jesus as saviour and mediator, Gill argues, echoes descriptions of the emperor in the imperial cult. What Gill does not notice fully enough, however, is the visual display of imperial mediation with the gods in the monumental civic culture of the cult of the emperor just described. The attic of the Beneventum Arch depicting the emperor offers an image of Trajan as Jupiter’s vice-regent and mediator (Figure 49). The relief depicts the emperor in the company of, and as the same size as, the gods, as well as Hadrian, Roma and the Senate, whereas the consuls who stand around him display their inferior status through depiction in smaller size. The relief carefully orchestrates the role of Trajan as mediator by making him appear simultaneously superior to his companions, but nevertheless of their company. In the east, in the daily round of economic transaction a less nuanced image penetrated into the lives of imperial subjects through the imperial coinage, on which the emperors were represented firmly and unqualifiedly in the company of the

Radt, 1999, 240; for Hadrian’s temple of Zeus Olympios in Ephesus, see Karwiese, 1995, 311–15. 65 For the inscriptions, see Friesen, 1993, 118. 66 Fears, 1981, 89–97. 67 Fears, 1981, 95. 68 Gill, 2008. 64

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Figure 49 Relief of Arch of Beneventum, Trajan and Hadrian with Senate (second century ce), Beneventum

gods, as well as in their mediating roles of sacrifice.69 On a theological and local level, the imperial cult promoted the belief that prosperity and peace were testimony to the emperor’s successful mediation of divine power for the benefit of the Empire, as a consequence of which he was rightly to be worshipped. These notions are attested, again, by the location of images of the emperor in cities. As Simon Price has noted, temples dedicated to the imperial cult were placed at sites that made the emperor’s presence most conspicuous, and accordingly came in due course to transform the civic landscape of cities.70 The strategic positioning of the temples of the Sebastoi in Ephesus and of Trajan in Pergamon are excellent cases of this. The For discussion and examples, see Schowalter, 1993, 99–100. For penetration into everyday life and the less nuanced conclusions that followed along with it, as well as emperors’ varying degrees of direct involvement in creating the message, see Manders, 2012, 33–7. 70 Price, 1984b, 136–69, for discussion with examples. 69

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Ephesian temple dominated the main street into the city from the southwest and created a massive plaza from which could be seen the colossal statue of Titus housed within the precinct (see figures 30 and 33). The Traianeum of Pergamon, as we have seen, could be seen from miles away. Such sites were chosen both to celebrate the emperor’s role of divine mediation on behalf of his subjects and to be seen to be doing so. A similar message was made visible in Ephesus with Hadrian’s construction of an Olympeion, a temple to the Olympic Zeus.71 Jesus’ divine power of mediation in 1 Tim. 2.5 should be related to these kinds of monumental structures and aspects of imperial visual culture. Gill argues that the instances of imperial vocabulary in 1 Tim. 2.1–7, as well as elsewhere in the Pastorals, should be understood polemically as Christian opposition to the divine claims of the cult of the emperor.72 This, he contends, is the intent of 1 Tim. 2.5, which states, ‘there is one God and there is one mediator between God and humans, the man Jesus Christ’ [ei[j ga_r qeo&j,ei[j kai\ mesi/thj qeou~ kai\ a)nqrw&pwn, a!nqrwpoj Xristo_j 0Ihsou~j]. The passage, he argues, functions to put the emperor in his place while at the same time urging Christ followers to pray for his well-being and thus show themselves his loyal subjects. As we have seen, Young similarly argues that the Pastorals deploy such imperial language to comfort Christians persecuted for their refusal to worship the emperor. 1 Tim. 2.5 polemically names who their true emperor is and the enduring benefits of his reign.73 These arguments fail on several counts. First, while 1 Timothy and Titus are in general polemical letters, they never engage in opposition to the emperor or his cult.74 It is curious that in letters otherwise strident with reference to opposing points of view they should suddenly be so sanguine about the cult of the emperor. Second, there is no evidence from the cities associated with the Pastorals in the period under consideration of the persecution of Christ followers, and certainly none for opposition to the imperial cult. While Pliny’s and Trajan’s correspondence describes the torture of people denounced as christiani – a typical component of imperial interrogation of peregrini – Trajan expressly forbids the rooting out of them.75 The Book of Revelation, roughly contemporary with the Pastorals, descries Ephesian and Pergamene believers for their willing participation in their

For discussion with bibliography, see Oster, 1990, 1694–5; also, Metcalf, 1974, 59–66, who discusses Ephesian coinage that relates Zeus Olympius to Hadrian Olympius, issued in conjunction with the temple. 72 Gill, 2008, 111–32, 137–62, for the imperial usage and polemical deployment. 73 Young, 1994, 65–8. 74 Gill, 2008, 145–52, detects a further polemic against divine attribution to the emperor in 1 Tim. 1.17 and 6.14b–15, but the argument is perilously circular. 75 Pliny the Younger, Ep. 10.96, 97. 71

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civic world, rather than comforting them for their opposition to it (Rev. 2.4–6, 14–15).76 The Pastorals do not use language analogous to the imperial cult to polemicize against the emperor. Rather, they employ it to invite their listeners to picture themselves as participants in the civic order, albeit as Christ followers. In this respect, the church the Pastorals seek to create and govern is a kind of empire in miniature; as the presence of the emperor and the rule of law he represents can be relied upon to bring good order and harmony wherever his image and the government that embody it are present, so Christ can be expected to bring virtue and concord wherever he is rightly worshiped and believers, rightly organized, conduct themselves according to the instructions laid out by Paul. The readers Paul enjoins to live pious and respectful lives, to pray for their rulers and to await the adventus of their great God and Saviour Jesus Christ do not distance themselves, as the Apocalypse does, from the Roman Empire. Nor do they suffer within it. Rather they imitate it and, through imitation, seek a common good that could be seen pictured all around them on monuments, reliefs and inscriptions representing the ideals of harmonious civic life. If the Pastorals polemicize against anything, it is against those who would disrupt this civic order.

Pictures of Harmony The Pastorals present the harmoniously functioning household as the blueprint for faithful religious practice and belief. It is here that many modern interpreters have expressed their greatest discontent with these letters. If Colossians and Ephesians place audiences in an imperial situation, the Pastorals locates its listeners – especially its female ones – in an imperial domestic situation. The letters return repeatedly to traditional female gender performances as emblematic of the rightly worshiping and behaving household of God. Rosemary D’Angelo has shown that this is especially the case in the Pastorals’ exhortations to women to marry and to bear and raise children (1 Tim. 2.15; 5.4; 14; cf. 1 Tim. 4.1–5; Tit. 1.11). She has linked these exhortations to Augustan era marital legislation, as well as idealization of the household of Trajan in Pliny’s Panegyric.77 Such textual evidence illustrates how emperors and their supporters used traditional

For discussion of Revelation as opposing accommodation to civic culture, see Thompson, 1997, 122–4; Duff, 2001, 51–5. 77 D’Angelo 2003, 141–5, focuses on Augustan legislation, but more critical for her case is that both Trajan and Hadrian revived and extended Augustus’ pro-family policies, especially tax relief, to include non-elite populations across the Empire; see Rawson, 2001, 25–36, for an overview and literature. 76

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domestic ideals to present themselves as upholders of a rule of patriarchal virtues. A more profound influence on the Pastorals’ listeners was the visual representation of the imperial family during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, as well as the idealizations of proper gender conduct on civic monuments and commonplace funerary iconography. As we will see, the letters portray ecclesial ideals with the help of commonplaces and images drawn from treatments of political concord. Vivid portraits of rightly regulated women and households help listeners to see, not only hear, about the properly governed church. In sharp contrast, the author draws from commonplaces associated with civic faction to place before his listeners’ eyes vivid pictures of discord and improperly governed women, and to portray opponents who conspire with them to upset the church. Daily visual exposure of portraiture on the imperial monuments and grave steles of urban Asia Minor would have reinforced the picture of concord the letters create. This iconography regularly extolled the virtues of imperial women and the harmonious household. Ancient Greek authors defined the rightly governed household as the most basic element of civic rule and harmony.78 It is this tradition that lies behind the Household Codes in both the New Testament and extracanonical literature.79 The Pastorals expand and adapt the Haustafel topos in a new way by equating the properly governed church with the rightly regulated household (1 Tim. 3.1–12; Tit. 1.5–9).80 Indeed, in these letters, the church is the rightly governed household: ‘I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God [e0n oi1kw| qeou~], which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of truth’ (1 Tim. 3.14–15; cf. 2 Tim. 2.20–1). Faith is itself ‘divine household management’ [oi0konomi/an qeou~] (1 Tim. 1.4); it preserves true instruction against those who offer ‘different teaching’ [e9terodidaskalei=n] (1.3). In the properly conducted church, only men who govern their households, especially wives, properly can aspire to take up roles of leadership. The Haustafeln of 1 Timothy and Titus vividly portray the respectable household to create a picture of it for listeners to see. Indeed, the whole of 1 Timothy and Titus may be thought of as a rhetorical means to create observers socialized into a proper grammar of seeing what makes for a good community of believers, and for discerning vices that undermine it. Vivid household description extend beyond the Haustafeln to include a variety of similar portraits to describe the right conduct of older and younger women, wives, widows, men/husbands, slaves and masters (1 Tim. 2.8–15; 5.1–5; 17; 6.1–2; Tit. 2.3–10). The Pastorals are so dominated For discussion, see Crouch, 1972, 18–31; Balch, 1981, 23–49; Verner, 1983, 27–81. For an excellent overview of the literature and scholarly consensus, see MacDonald, 2010, 65–90. 80 For adaptation, see Verner, 1983, 92–111. 78 79

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by attention to the scrutiny of women because, as suggested above, they oppose those who would challenge female gender norms, very possibly in the name of Paul himself. The letters develop these portraits in full awareness of the goals and aspirations of their larger urban world. The right candidate for bishop ‘must be well thought of by outsiders’ (1 Tim. 3.7); slaves are to be obedient ‘so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed’ (6.1). The letter to Titus exhorts that young wives are to follow the letters’ domestic teachings ‘that the word of God may not be discredited’ (Tit. 2.5), and listeners in general are ‘to be submissive to ruler and authorities, obedient, ready for any honest work’ (Tit. 3.1). 1 Timothy exhorts listeners to pray for emperors and governing authorities ‘that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way’ [i3na h!remon kai\ h(su&xion bi/on dia&gwmen e0n pa&sh| eu)sebei/a| kai\ semno&thti] (1 Tim. 2.1–2). This ‘is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (vv. 3–4). To adopt prevailing social norms is both to limit ‘other teaching’ [e9terodidaskalei=n] (1 Tim. 1.3) and to make the church attractive to outsiders. In contrast to Colossians and Ephesians, where there is a strong demarcation between the former life of devotion to Greco-Roman gods and the new life of worship of Christ, the Pastorals all but avoid such a distinction. Only once, in Titus 3.3–7, does Paul invoke the break with a polytheistic past, but as a polemical means to stave off intrusions by opponents (3.8b–11). Where 1 Timothy describes conversion, it is to contrast Paul’s former life of persecutor (tellingly ‘in unbelief’ [e0n a)pisti/a|]) with that of true confession (1 Tim. 1.13–14, 15). In the Pastorals, threats to the church come not from outsiders, but from those who would disrupt or dispute its efforts to be pleasing to emperor and city-dweller alike (4.1–3; 5.11–15; Tit. 1.10–11). Without Tit. 3.3–7 one would not know that the Pastorals’ addressees had a religious past they had renounced! By the time we come to the end of these descriptions, the Pastorals have so successfully wedded household, church and imperial ideals that good citizenship, traditional gender performance and being a Christ follower have become identical. This is only reinforced by the Pastorals’ imperial Christological monotheism discussed above. Scholars have long studied the Pastorals’ lists of virtue and vice in the context of the moral training of Hellenistic philosophical schools and the uses of paraenetic rhetoric.81 Less noted, however, is the degree to which the letters invoke the values and vocabulary of Asia Minor’s honorific culture to articulate the virtues required of leaders and community members. Danker and Kidd show that the Pastorals’ depiction of ideal leaders mirrors

For example, Karris, 1973, 549–64; Malherbe, 1989, 121–36; Donelson, 1984, 94–9, 154–62, 171–97; Johnson, 2001, 255–7, 323–4; Stowers, 1986, 97; Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972, 50–1.

81

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Figure 50  Statue of a leading citizen wearing a priestly crown (second century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

the virtues celebrated in epigraphy dedicated to the honour of civic leaders and urban benefactors.82 Such inscriptions were sometimes accompanied by visual representation, as in the case of a late second-century dedication to a leading citizen and priest in Aphrodisias. Here proper dress and verism – facial marks and lines designating age, the marks of prudence, self-control and modesty – indicate the figure’s worthiness of honour (Figures 50 and 51). D’Angelo’s study of parallels between the virtues the letters prescribe for female members and the idealization of imperial women in literary culture similarly indicates the way in which the Pastorals mirror their civic culture. Her insights can also be extended to include epigraphy.83 We can

Danker, 1982, 317–91; Kidd, 1989, 120–4. D’Angelo, 2003, 157–62; for epigraphic examples, see SEG 28 (1978), 953 [PH 288713]; IGRR 4, 144 [PH 288709] (both later first century). In the former, the merchants of Kyzicus, Mysia honour Apollonis, priestess of Artemis, for ‘her parents’ virtue, her husband’s virtue, and her own moderation’ [διά τε th\n gone/wn kai\ th\n tou= a0ndro\j a0reth\n kai\ th=n i1dion au0th=j

82 83

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Figure 51  Detail of leading citizen (second century ce), Aphrodisias Archaeology Museum, Aphrodisias

now expand this evidence to include the honorific inscriptions of urban clubs and guilds, as well as Greco-Roman religious associations – probably the closest analogy to the gatherings of Christ-followers of the period – dedicated to the patronage and/or memory of benefactors and officials.84

swfrosu/nhn (ll. 55–6) as well as ‘as a witness of her piety concerning sacred things’ [εἰς μαρτυρίαν τῆς περὶ τὰ ἱερὰ αὐτῆς εὐσεβήας] (l. 60). In the latter, Asian merchants, again from Kyzicus grant honours to Antonia Tryphaena, a priestess of the imperial cult, for her ‘piety toward the gods’ [εὐσέβειαν τῶν θεῶν] and for treating local inhabitants and foreigners ‘with a natural love of humanity so that the foreigners were amazed with favour at her piety, holiness, and love of glory’ [τῆι δὲ ἐνφύτωι φιλανθρωπίᾳ πρός τε τοὺς ἐνχωρίους καὶ τοὺς ξένους ἐχρήσατο ὡς ὑπὸ τ[ῶν ἐπιδη]μού των ξένων μετὰ πάσης ἀποδοχῆς ἐπί τε εὐσεβείαι καὶ ὁσιότητι καὶ φιλοδοξίᾳ] (ll. 5–6, 8–9). 84 An application anticipated by Danker, 1982. See inscriptions 20–4, pp. 152–72 with commentary and New Testament texts. For parallels between associations and guilds and the Pauline Christ-followers, see Judge, 1960–1, 4–15, 125–37; Wilkin, 1971, 268–91; Harland, 2009, 25–46; and especially Harland, 2003, 178–82, 211–12, who astutely moves the discussion toward analysis of parallel patterns of honour and benefaction amongst synagogues of Judaioi, Christ-follower congregations and Greco-Roman associations; also, Ascough, 2000, 311–28; 2002, 3–19; and 2003, 15–109. Seesengood, 2002, 217–33; Stowers, 1998, 287–310; Barton and Horsley, 1981, 7–41, offer comparison between the ethical teachings from an inscription that records the foundation of a second or first century bce religious association dedicated to the worship of Zeus, in the house of the cult’s founder, Dionysius

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It falls outside the scope of this discussion to offer a full account of the many echoes between the Pastorals and their larger urban culture of benefaction and honours. It will suffice to consider the four cardinal virtues that recur in inscriptions honouring benefactors and elected officials: a0reth/ – a0ndrei/a, swfrosu/nh, dikaiwsu/nh, fro/nhsij – eu0se/beia.85 These correspond in imperial Latin to virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas, the virtues typically extolled of the Roman emperor and his family, especially numismatically during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, as well as through inscriptions, monuments and panegyric.86 Attribution of these virtues was not reserved for elites; the language recurs in inscriptions honouring association patrons and officers, and, as Alicia Batten has argued, reflects the democratization of these ideals through their penetration into guilds.87 All of these terms appear in the Pastorals. Swfrosu/nh, eu0se/beia and the

(for inscription SIG3 985). For analogies with various churches in Ephesus through to the Hadrianic period, see Trebilco, 1999, 325–34. 85 A prominent example is an inscription listing honours dedicated to the Lycian benefactor, Opramoas of Rhodiapolis, on account of his actions spanning several decades from 114–152/53 ce (TAM II 905 [PH 284795]; Danker, 1982, 110–41). The inscription returns dozens of times to his a0reth/, swfrosu/nh, dikaiwsu/nh, and eu0se/beia as warrant for civic honours. See similarly, Kaunos, 4, 16, 18–19 [PH 259542], where the governing assembly of Perdeiklia, Caria, honours Agreophona, a second century governor and patron, for demonstrating ‘excellence of soul and character’ [τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τῶν ἠθῶν φιλαγαθίαν], and for being ‘just in matters relating to the citizenry, pure and in public matters faithful, eager in self-control, pious and affectionate to family members, blameless with friends, gentle and benevolent to his larger household’ [δίκαιος ἐμ πολιτείᾳ, ἁγνὸς καὶ περὶ τὰς δημοσίας πίστεις, ζηλωτὸς τῆς σωφροσύνης, εὐσεβὴς καὶ φιλόστοργος πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους, ἀμείμητος πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ἐπιεικὴς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος πρὸς τοὺς οἰκέτας]. For further representative instances in Asia Minor, roughly contemporary with the Pastorals: see MAMA 8.410 [PH 256911], 4, 8, (Aphrodisias); Bean-Mitford 12b [PH 275946], 11, 12, 16; Aphrodisias 29 [PH 256907], 2, 6, 15, 24–5; Side 1948.51 [PH 276411], 8, 10–11; LBW 1221 [PH 283806], 13, 18, 22, 39–40, 47; Didyma 557 [PH 247553], 6; TAM II.174 [PH 284064], Db.1, 5, 7; IK Knidos I.52 [PH 258448], 5, 6; 53,4, 5; also Kearsley, 1994, 235–41. 86 Charlesworth, 1937, 105–33, with discussion of the material evidence, as well as of Pliny’s Panegyric. For frequency of citation of imperial virtues revealed from surviving hordes, see Norena, 2001, 146–68. During the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian imperial virtues receive their highest frequency: 25 per cent and 23 per cent respectively, followed by that of the Antonine period (p. 155). Included amongst these terms, in addition to the cardinal virtues, are Aequitas, Indulgentia, Liberalitas, Munificentia, Patientia, Providentia and Pudicitia. The terms derive from the virtues inscribed on a golden shield displayed at the senate house or Curia Iulia to describe Octavian’s virtues after being acclaimed ‘Augustus’ by the Senate in 27 bce. Each of the terms represent a wider linguistic field. Virtus includes, for example, ‘fortitudo, labor, vigilentia, diligentia, cura, industria, and prudentia’; clementia (e0piei/keia) includes moderatio (swfrosu/nh); eu0se/beia (pietas) includes semno/thj (gravitas; castitas). For discussion of the range of meanings and their uses in political culture, see Galinsky, 1996, 83–90; Quinn, 1990, 288–9. 87 Batten, 2007, 142, with examples. Chief amongst the virtues Batten identifies as recurring are eu0se/beia, δίκαιος, dikaiosu/nh, filotimi/a, a0reth/ and fila/gaqoj. For further examples, from first and second century ce Asia Minor, IKios 22 [PH 277701]; TAM V.2, 972 [PH 264402]; V.2, 1002 [PH 264433]; V.2, 978 [PH 264420]; IEph 728 [PH 249108]; IDidyma 107 [PH

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closely related semno/thj – with cognates – can be found in the Pauline corpus, with the exception of Phil. 4.8, only in the Pastorals. Swfrosu/nh recurs nine times; eu0se/beia/semno/thj 12 times.88 Dikaiwsu/nh and cognates, a term that of course does appear throughout the contested and uncontested corpus, takes leave of its more technical theological associations and becomes connected with civic virtue when used to describe the qualities of a right leader or community member (1 Tim. 6.11; 2 Tim. 2.22; 3.16). Finally, the Pastorals do not directly name a0reth/, but this is the virtue they invoke periphrastically when they require leaders to be ‘without reproach’ [a)ne/gklhtoi/oj] (1 Tim. 3.2; Tit. 1.6–7) and a ‘lover of good’ [fila&gaqoj] (Tit. 1.8), or where they urge ‘purity’ [a(gnei/a] in speech and conduct (1 Tim. 4.12), intercession from a ‘pure heart’ [kaqara~j kardi/aj] (2 Tim. 2.22) and a ‘pure conscience’ [kaqara\ suneidh&sij] (1 Tim. 3.9; also 1.5, 19; 2 Tim. 1.3).89 These virtues come together where Paul instructs Titus that the grace of God has appeared to train Christ followers to lead ‘self-controlled, righteous/just, and godly lives’ [swfro&nwj kai\ dikai/wj kai\ eu)sebw~j] (Tit. 2.12). Earlier he instructs that a bishop should be ‘a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled’ [fila&gaqon sw&frona di/kaion o#sion e0gkrath~] (Tit. 1.8). Familiarity with the typical English translations of these passages (here, both NRSV) tempts one to bypass these virtue lists without noticing the striking association of language associated with civic virtues second-century listeners would have immediately recognized. Again audiences hearing these paraenetic letters would have discovered themselves immediately placed in the world of urban imperial and honorific culture. Such vocabulary would have prompted them to recall and envision the innumerable honorific inscriptions and monuments that were a part of their daily lives. Two excellent visual examples come from grave monuments. The first, concerns the tomb of Julius Zoilus, a first-century bce freedman and benefactor of Aphrodisias (see Plate 5b). In one panel a0ndrei/a (courage) honours Zoilus with a shield and timh/ (honour) crowns him. In another panel a0reth/ honours him with a civic crown. When Paul in 2 Tim. 4.8 looks forward to being awarded ‘the crown of righteousness’ [o( th~j dikaiosu&nhj ste/fanoj] by the Lord, ‘the righteous judge’ [o( di/kaioj krith&j], it is this kind of image the vivid language prompts listeners to envision.90 Around Zoilus

247174], all of which are now in English translation (Ascough, Harland, and Kloppenborg, 2012). 88 Eu0se/beia – 1 Tim. 2.2; 3.16; 4.7, 8; 6.3, 5, 6, 11; eu0sebw=j – 2 Tim. 3.12; 2.12; eu0sebe/w – 1 Tim. 5.4; qeose/beia – 1 Tim. 2.10; semno/j – 1 Tim. 3.8; Tit. 2.2; semno/thj – 1 Tim. 2.2; 3.4; Tit. 2.7; also, a0se/beia – 1 Tim. 2.2; 2 Tim. 2.16; a0sebh/j 1 Tim. 1.1. swfrosu/nh – 1 Tim. 2.9,15; sw/frwn – 1 Tim. 3.2; Tit. 1.8; 2.2,5; swfronizi/zw – Tit. 2.4; swfrone/w – Tit. 2.6; swfro/nwj – Tit. 2.12. 89 Similarly, Danker, 1982, 320, 355. 90 See Danker, 1982, 253; for inter-relation with athletic imagery, 365–6.

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perfectly proportioned personifications of the demos as well as Roma and Aion reflect the swfrosu/nh and eu0se/beia Julius Zoilus himself exhibits by association. The second grave monument, from the second century (170–180 ce) – though outside Asia Minor, from Mantua – offers a striking application of these virtues to empire and family alike91 [see Plate 6a]. The sarcophagus honours a Roman with three scenes commemorating his leading virtues. The left scene portrays his clemency to conquered supplicants and hence his iustitia. The central one, with its image of sacrifice, foregrounds his pietas by making him the chief observant of the ritual. The third depicts his marriage; Concordia stands in the background joining the couple together. Together the three reliefs represent the officer’s virtus. Zanker and Ewald give particular reference to the presence of iconographical motifs associated with the emperor and his family. Indeed, here is a picture of imperial rule appropriated visually in the representation of the life of one of its leading citizens. This is the kind of image the Pastorals invite their listeners to imagine before their eyes when they offer word pictures of the right leaders of the community. Each of these monuments offers pictures of civic and domestic virtues and reflects the relation of those virtues to concord in both state and home. While the Pastorals never use the term o9mo/noia, they share with contemporary political treatments the association of virtue with proper social regulation and harmonious relations in church and family alike. The letters express the political dimensions of a desire for concord where they urge prayers for and submission to governing authority (1 Tim. 2.1–2; Tit. 3.1). In the speeches of Dio of Prusa and Aelius Aristides dedicated to o9mo/noia, right submission to authority is a recurring motif. In Oration 36.21, Dio describes the city that is governed by prudence and wisdom as one where people obey good government, and in his Roman Oration (26.63–71) Aelius Aristides offers a panegyric celebrating the worldwide harmony and peace that have arisen through Roman supremacy and obedience to its rule. Tit. 3.1 exhorts its audience to ‘submit themselves [e0cousi/aij u(pota&ssesqai] to governing authorities.’ In a way similar to Aelius Aristides (Or. 26.69) who likens the worldwide imperium of Rome as ‘a most pleasant calm like a silently flowing stream’ [u3dwr a)yofhti\ r(e/on h3dista h(suxa&zousin], 1 Tim. 2.1–2 conceives of Roman rule as a means toward a quiet and peaceable life [h!remon kai\ h(su&xion bi/on]. The Pastorals’ first cousin, 1 Clement, a text suffused with commonplaces found regularly in rhetorical treatment of homonoia, offers a similar application.92 In 1 Clem. 61.1, a prayer for authorities requests that the ‘power of imperium’ [th\n e0cousi/an th~j basilei/aj] be given them, as well as ‘health, peace, concord, firmness’

91 92

For discussion with literature, see Zanker and Ewald, 2004, 227–9. For the homonoia commonplace in 1 Clement, see the studies of Magne, 2001; Bowe, 1988.

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[u(gei/an, ei0rh&nhn, o(mo&noian, eu)sta&qeian], and thus makes the link of obedience with homonoia explicit. Finally, of course, the Household Rule exhortations to wives, children and slaves properly to carry out their household station through proper submission (1 Tim. 2.11; 3.4; Tit. 2.9) echo ideals invoked in speeches and treatises concerning household concord and good order as the precondition of the harmonious state (Dio Or. 38.15; Aristides Or. 24.7–8, 32–5; Plutarch De praec. Ger. Re 800F; Coni. Praec. 139D). Again, 1 Clement (1.3; 21.6–8) echoes the Pastorals in its invocation of the household members rightly submitting to their superiors in its representation of the harmonious Corinthian church. Likewise, eu0se/beia/qeose/beia, as well as semno/j and cognates, recur in treatments of civic concord. This is amply attested, again, in 1 Clement, where these terms find the highest frequency in second-century extracanonical literature, and thus share the emphasis found in the Pastorals. In the prayer for the emperor, following the invocation for ‘health, peace, and concord’ [u(gei/an, ei0rh&nhn, o(mo&noian], Clement goes on to petition that they may administer with ‘piety in peace and gentleness’ [e0n ei0rh&nh| kai\ prau%thti eu)sebw~j] (61.1,2). In 50.3, 5, the ‘concord of love’ [o(monoi/a a)ga&phj] wins one a place amongst the ‘pious’ [eu)sebw~n]. In the orations of Aelius Aristides and Dio dedicated to concord it is semno/j that finds its greatest association with concord. A similar association appears with swfrosunh/swfrwn, and their cognates. In political literature, from the Classical through to the Hellenistic period, swfrosu/nh describes the ‘self-knowledge and self-control that the Greek polis demanded of its citizens, to curb and counterbalance their individualism and self-assertion.’93 In contemporary Greco-Roman authors swfrosu/nh is a commonplace virtue that attends the harmoniously functioning state. Thus, for example, Aelius Aristides in his ‘Rhodian Oration Concerning Concord’ (Or. 24.48) speaks of the ‘concord derived from moderation’ [th~j o(monoi/aj kai\ tou~ swfronei=n]. Elsewhere in his ‘Oration to Athena’ (Or. 37.27) he cites swfrosu/nh as well as ‘courage, concord, good order, success and honour of the gods and from the gods’ [fro&nhsij de\ kai\ swfrosu&nh kai\ a)ndrei/a kai\ o(mo&noia kai\ eu)taci/a kai\ eu)pragi/a kai\ timh_ qew~n te kai\ e0k qew~n] as the gifts of Athena. Temperance and homonoia are similarly associated in Dio, as well as contemporary authors, including 1 Clement.94 The Pastorals draw on the vocabulary and commonplaces associated with o9mo/noia to articulate the ideals and values addressees are to pursue. Jerome Quinn has argued that the prevalence of terms representative of honorific imperial culture – especially those related to eu0se/b- se/b - semn- – marks the degree to which author and ideal listeners attempted ‘to identify North 1966, 258. For example, Dio Or. 48.2; 1.6; 32.37; Dio Cassius 44.2.4; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.181; 2.74.1; Plutarch, Lyc. 3.1; 1 Clem. 1.2,9; 62.2; 63.3; 64.1 – in texts that are part of a larger rhetorical treatment according to the concord topos.

93 94

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themselves in terms of the society in which they lived.’ He explains their presence by arguing that the letters ‘are missionary documents produced by a missionary religion and the use of seb/m- terminology support this view.’95 Quinn is correct on the former point, but not the latter. Paul uses this language as part of a polemical, not evangelistic, strategy. The letters exhort members to behaviours attractive to outsiders to contrast the virtues of those who belong to the household of God with the vices of opponents outside it.

Portraits of Discord The opposite of o9mo/noia is sta/sij and e1rij – faction and dissension.96 With the help of language and commonplaces associated with discord, the Pastorals create vivid pictures of opponents. Robert Karris argues that most of the vices the Pastorals accuse their opponents of belong to commonplace polemical caricature of sophists.97 He detects evidence of a ‘schema’ of stock representation of the parasitic philosopher.98 The Pastorals’ use of caricature should be broadened to include what Philip Harland calls the ‘anti-association’ language of detractors of foreign associations, ethnic cults, and mystery religions. This language pillories suspect associations as guilty of indecent practices ranging from sacrifice of babies and cannibalism to drunken debauchery at banquets – accusations that were carried forward into later second-century anti-Christian polemic.99 In the Pastorals analogous ‘anti-association language’ is in the service of intra-group rivalry. Debate continues over what social realities, if any, are behind the Pastorals’ representations of opponents. Some, like Lone Fatum, see them as pure rhetoric; others as more or less empirical description of social division, and still others as rhetorically fashioned representations of historical opponents and their interests.100 My interest here is not to separate fact from fiction, but

Quinn, 1990, 289. Thraede, 1994, 243; Gehrke, 1985, 7; Bakke, 2001, 86–92. For homonoia and stasis together as antonyms, see Dio Or. 38.11, 15, 48; 39.2; Aristides Or. 34.4; 24.47; also 23.31, 40, 48, as well as the general orientation of 1 Clement, a study in the application of the technical vocabulary of these topoi. For homonoia and eris together, see Plutarch Mor. 824C-D; Dio Or. 41.8; 48.6; Arist. Or. 23.28; for stasis and eris together, see Dio Or. 39.8; Arist. Or. 23.40; 23.57–8; 1 Clem. 3.2. 97 Karris, 1973, 549–64; Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1974, 22–3, 83. 98 Karris, 1973, 551. 99 Harland, 2009, 161–81. Less colourful descriptions of disorderly conduct appear in secondcentury ce constitutions of associations that prescribe certain fines and punishments for disorderly conduct at banquets and during meetings (IG II2 1368 [PH 3584]; IG II2 1369 [PH 3585]; SEG 31 (1981), no. 122 [PH 293233]; AGRW nos. 7, 8, 9). 100 Fatum, 2005, 186; for an empirical reading of the Pastorals’ opponents and ‘new Roman women’, see Winter, 2003, 97–169; similarly, Bassler, 1984, 31; Merz, 2004, 333–757; for 95 96

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to describe how the Pastorals’ portraits of opponents awaken imagination as a strategy of persuasion. They represent opponents as suffering from a wide repertoire of failings that typify civic faction and strife, even as they deploy commonplace representations in satire and comedy of the parasitic philosopher. As the letters outline the failings of their opponents with the help of picturesque and vivid language they turn their listeners into observers. The letters deploy the term e1rij twice (1 Tim. 6.4; Tit. 3.9), both in lists of vices, to describe opponents. More usually they associate them with faction by denouncing them as quarrelling, controversial, disputatious, chatterers and empty talkers (1 Tim. 1.6 [mataiologi/a]; 6.4 [logomaxi/a], 5 [diaparatribai/]; 2 Tim. 2.14 [logomaxei=n], 16 [kenofwni/a], 23 [ma&xaj; also 24]; Tit. 1.10 [mataiolo&goi]; 3.9 [mwra_j zhth&seij; ma&xa nomika/]). ‘Disputes about words’ [logomaxi/a] cause ‘dissension’ [e1rij] (1 Tim. 6.4) and ‘foolish and senseless controversies’ [ta_j de\ mwra_j kai\ a)paideu&touj zhth&seij] … ‘breed quarrels’ [gennw~sin ma&xaj] (2 Tim. 2.23). With immoderate speech comes a host of other vices: ignorant assertions (1 Tim. 1.7), lying and perjury (1 Tim. 1.10), hypocrisy (1 Tim. 4.2); myths and old wives tales (1 Tim. 4.7); slander (1 Tim. 6.4); quarrels over the law (Tit. 3.); and talk that ruins hearers and eats away like a gangrenous disease (2 Tim. 2.16–17) – an especially vivid image! In addition to possessing these vices, the Pastorals charge opponents with being ‘puffed up with conceit – RSV [tetufwtaime/noi] (1 Tim. 6.4; 2 Tim. 3.4), ‘arrogant’ [a)lazo&nej] (2 Tim. 3.2) and ‘proud’ [u(perh&fanoi] (2 Tim. 3.2). Around these representations of faction the author places a whole series of community-destroying vices that include murder of parents, fornication, slave trading, homoerotic behaviour (1 Tim. 1.9), ‘insubordination’ [a)nupo&taktoi] (Tit. 1.10 ), ‘corrupted mind and conscience’ (memi/antai autw~n kai\ o( nou~j kai\ h( sunei/dhsij – Tit. 1.15), ‘ungodliness’ [a)sebei/aj] (2 Tim. 2.16) and self-loving devotees of pleasure who are disobedience to parents (1 Tim. 3.2). The Pastorals allege the forbidding of marriage (1 Tim. 4.3) as their opponents’ chief vice, which spreads through ‘worming their way into households’ [e0ndu&nontej ei0j ta_j oi0ki/aj] and ‘capturing weak women’ [ai0xmalwti/zontej gunaika&ria]’ (2 Tim. 3.6), and ‘turning whole families upside down’ [o#louj oi1kouj a)natre/pousin] (Tit. 1.11). All of this is consistent with the charge of using ‘godliness as a means of gain’ [porismo_n ei]nai th_n eu)se/beian (1 Tim. 6.5). Those who welcome them ‘will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth’ (2 Tim. 3.7). The Pastorals return repeatedly to these vices in its defamation of opponents as teaching ‘myths and endless genealogies’ (1 Tim. 1.4; also Tit. 3.9), ‘giv[ing] heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons’ (1 Tim. 4.1), promoting ‘the godless chatter of and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge’ (1 Tim. 6.20); ‘those who hold the form of

rhetorically charged representations of historical figures, see MacDonald, 1996, 164–5, as well as the excellent overview by Kartzow, 2009, 129–30.

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religion but deny its power’ (2 Tim. 3.5); and those who ‘give heed to Jewish myths’ (Tit. 1.14). Although rarely it ever commented upon, the vivid language in these descriptions is striking. Robert Karris has linked these portraits of ‘home-invaders’ to the influence of Second Sophistic polemic against Cynics, especially as represented in the satirical sketches of Lucian of the parasitic rhetorphilosopher who by way of immoderate speech talks his way into a free dinner, and takes sexual advantage of patrons and their wives alike.101 Typical in this respect is Lucian’s treatise, Professor of Public Speaking, where the parasite is pilloried for invading homes and seducing wives, as well as Juvenal’s satirical treatment of the gigolo Naevolus who offers sexual favours to both male and female patrons in return for dinner.102 The influence of Second Sophistic and literary satire on the Pastorals presumes a highly literate writer and audience. But the resources for the portrait can be broadened in two ways. First, closer to every person was theatre, specifically comedy and mime. The parasite was an oft-recurring character in comedy; amongst the list of comic masks Julius Pollux describes in the Onomastikon (second century ce) is that of the parasite, which is cheerful, with a hooked-nose and broken ears.103 The parasite worms his way into the homes of the well-to-do for a free dinner, and disrupts households by making clients of their patrons, or, as in the case of the parasite in the ‘Adultery mime’ from Oxyrhynchus, joins with his mistress in a plot to kill her husband, and then exhibits Schadenfreude at his patron’s death.104 The Pastorals describe disputatious homeinvaders upsetting families not by seduction and sexual license but through promoting abstinence. Still, the visual experience of the comic parasite would have furnished a striking and immediately recognizable template for the author to build the vivid profiles of opponents’ vices catalogued above. The further concern with women’s celibacy in the Pastorals is that it is unreliable. The author contends that ‘young widows’ should not be enrolled ‘since they feel sensuous impulses against Christ’ [katastrhnia&swsin tou~ Xristou~] which leads them to marry and thus violate their oath of life long widowhood (1 Tim. 5.11–12). This is a sanitized version of an ancient, and in the Greek Mediterranean modern, commonplace of the sexually experienced, seductive widow, who is a threat to decent society so long as she is left without the domestic control and supervision of a husband. Again, ancient satire and comedy furnish examples of the stereotype and the

Karris, 1973, 533, 554; for example, Fug. 18–19; Tim. 55; Par. 56. Lucian, Rh. Pr. 23; Juvenal, Sat. 9.22–38, 70–2; Damon, 2000, 184–8. 103 Pollux, Onom. 4.1.148.1–6. For description and material examples from Asia Minor, see Webster, 1969, 17, 20, 82 (MT 19); also 57 (AV 11–24); 126 (NT 6). 104 For discussion and overview of Roman and Latin comedy, see Damon 2000, 23–37, with examples; for the mime, see Oxyrhynchus 431 in Wiemken, 1972, 97–105. 101 102

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author could count on his listeners instantly to envision such uncontrolled widows and come to right conclusions.105 Second, Lucian’s satirical vilification of the Cynic rhetor belongs to a long civic tradition that took up the vices of immoderate speech and their socially erosive consequences.106 The vices the letters single out as emblematic of its opponents – being puffed up, arrogant and proud [tetu&fwtai/me/noi, a)lazo&nej, and u(perh&fanoi] – are regularly connected in ancient political thought with improper speech and its outcome, faction and strife.107 When the letters describe opponents as using piety for gain (1 Tim. 6.5; Tit. 1.11), they deploy the stereotype that greed breeds faction.108 The Pastorals’ emphasis that comes on the heels of this charge, on the proper use of wealth and admonitions to avoid love of money (1 Tim. 6.6–10, 17–19: cf. Tit. 1.7), is consistent with this concern and continues to deploy the caricature of the dissembling opponent using piety as a mask for home invasion and material gain. The Pastorals’ version of these commonplaces is one in which women are accused as the dupes of false teachers who persuade them to avoid marriage (1 Tim. 4.3). It is probable that on account of these teachers some women were persuaded to register themselves as ‘widows’ in the community (1 Tim. 5.3–16) – that is, celibate women who kept themselves apart from traditional domestic roles of wives and mothers. It is very probably the success of these teachers amongst ‘widows’ that prompts the command that only women married once and over 60 years of age be registered as ‘widows’ in the church. Together with Paul’s command to all widows under 60 to re/marry (1 Tim. 5.9–15), this would have effectively eliminated the presence of any registered widows in these churches. The Pastorals use stereotype to descry improperly registered widows as wanton gad-abouts. They vividly represent these women as abandoning traditional gender roles and going about from house to house ‘babbling things they should not be talking about’ [lalou~sai ta_ mh_ de/onta] (1 Tim. 5.13).109 Marianne Kartzow names this passage ‘the gossip scene’ and links it with a larger ‘gossip discourse’ the Pastorals deploy to vilify

For the stereotype and its presence in theatre and satire, Wolcot 1991, 11–21; for its modern prevalence, du Boulay 1974, 135. 106 As such they represent an analogous deployment of Greco-Roman political commonplaces found in Paul’s complaints against the Corinthian factionalism; Marshall 1987, 182–216, 364–812; Mitchell 1991, 68–110, 180–2 and Forbes 1986, 1–30. 107 Thus, for example, Dio Or. 57.3 and 61.13–14, where Agamemnon, brings strife through u9perh/fanoj and a0lazonei/a; similarly, Plutarch, De se ipsum 539A, where u9perh/fanoj and a0lazonei/a are evidenced in self-praise – e0pai/romenoj; au0tolo/gia – and breed faction. For a lengthy discussion with literature, see Maier, 2004, 503–19. 108 For example, Aristotle, Pol. 5.2.3–4; Dio. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.58.3; Dio Chrys. Or. 76.7; 1 Clem. 3.2 109 For an excellent discussion, see Kartzow, 2009, 67–116. 105

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opponents and their patrons.110 She notes how the stereotype of women as gossips and babblers recurs throughout ancient literature and that they are typically assigned to households in which husbands fail to govern to their wives.111 Again, comedy is an important resource for understanding the persuasive force of these portraits. Alongside the comedic mask of the parasite, Pollux lists those of the young and old garrulous woman, as well as those of seductive women who masquerade as maidens.112 A mosaic from Pompeii (see Plate 6b), probably depicting the opening scene of Menander’s Synaristosai, offers an image of the kind of female garrulousness the Pastorals invited its audience to imagine and to reject.113 By contrast, the Pastorals’ ideal male manages his own household well (1 Tim. 3.4, 5). The ideal wife in such a house learns from her husband ‘in silence with all submissiveness’ [e0n h(suxi/a| manqane/tw e0n pa&sh| u(potagh|~] (1 Tim. 2.11). She is a listener, not a talker. This, again, reflects a long ethical tradition that includes amongst the duties of husbands in governing their wives the task of training them as to when and where and how much to speak.114 The woman properly disciplined in speech in this tradition represents the male who uses his masculine powers of self-mastery to rightly regulate those in his household. Further, the Pastorals’ invective against opponents who promote faction and division are gendered profiles of the immoderate babble of opponents. Here again we must look further afield than Second Sophistic treatises rightly to understand how the Pastorals pillory opponents. Maude Gleason has shown how prolix speech in second-century rhetoric is associated with a lack of masculine self-control, and betrays a feminized

Kartzow, 2009, 6–7, 155, 208–9. Also, Cooper, 1996, 63–4; Bremmer, 1987, 191–216, for ancient views; Bremmer, 1995, offers a full discussion of the Christian evidence; for the Pastorals, 42–3. 112 Pollux, Onom. 4.1.151.1–5; Webster, 1969, 22–3; garrulous woman: 127 (NT 12); 133 (IT 25); false maiden: 50 (AJ 60); 58 (AV 13); 115 (ST 15). The profile is perhaps a female expansion of the prattler and chatterer portrayed in Theophrastus, Char. 3 (a0dolesxi/a) and 7 (lalia). 113 The old garrulous woman appears in both Old and New Comedy: for example, Plautus’ probably based the ‘tattler and tippler’ [multiloqua et multibiba] in Cist. (1.1–2, 1–148; 1.3, 148) on Menander’s Philanis, a bawd in Synaristosai. Terence’s Philotis represents a young gossipy courtesan in Heclya (cf. 96, 104–10). The link between being wanton and being a gossip in the Pastorals is strikingly coincidental with these comedic characters. 114 The wife trained by her husband to silence recurs from the Classical period onward: Aristotle, Pol. 3 1277 24–5; Xenophon, Oec. 7.4–10, especially 7.14, 27, 41; 10.10–13; Cyr. 4.1; Plutarch, Lyc. 19.1, 3; Coni. Praec. 142E; 145E; Musonius Rufus 3 (Lutz 1947, 42, 10–17); Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 32.2, 4, 8; also Paed. 2.7; also, Perictione, On the Harmony of a Woman, Thesleff, 1965, 143, l. 11–45, l. 5; Phyntis, On Women’s Moderation, Thesleff, 1965, 151, l. 19–26. For an excellent general discussion, see Karzow 2009, 67–97. 110 111

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self.115 Both Dio of Prusa (Or. 66.23) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Comp. 18.2–5), for example, caricature their male opponents as feminized or emasculated males due to their nonsensical speech. In keeping with this treatment, as Kartzow argues, the Pastorals’ ‘gossip discourse’ feminizes their antagonists.116 The unregulated, prolix and quarrelsome speech of the opponents betrays their lack of masculine self-control.117 A feminizing gender construction also appears in the charge of 1 Tim. 4.7 against widows who pass along ‘old wives tales’ [graw&deij mu&qouj] (see also 2 Tim. 4.4). That accusation echoes the complaint against opponents for purveying ‘myths and endless genealogies’ [mu&qoij kai\ genealogi/aij a) pera&ntoij] (1 Tim. 1.4; also Tit. 3.9; 1.14). Opposing male teachers promote old wives tales because they are in this discourse ‘old women’. When the Pastorals describe these males who ‘swerve’ [a)stoxh&santej] and quite literally ‘turn away into vain babble’ [e0cetra&phsan ei0j mataiologi/an] (1 Tim. 1.6), they mirror the unmarried widows who have succumbed to their influence, ‘gadding about from house to house, and not only idlers but gossips and busybodies’ [manqa&nousin perierxo&menai ta_j oi0ki/aj, ou) mo&non de\ a)rgai\ a)lla_ kai\ flu&aroi kai\ peri/ergoi] (1 Tim. 5.13). The implication is that the men who teach abstinence from marriage are feminized males unable to regulate those women they influence. They require the masculinizing and disciplining law that limits all forms of immoderate behaviour (1 Tim. 1.9). Again, instructive in these profiles and complementary to Kartzow’s arguments is the stereotypical garrulous old woman of Greek and Roman comedy. Indeed, the ‘gossip scene’ of 1 Tim. 5.13 is an excellent example of evocative speech and description designed to elicit an emotional response – here laughter at the ridiculous ‘girly-men’ who promote gibber-gabber amongst insubordinate women. By contrast are rightly governed widows regulated and cared for by the church or occupying the right place in a proper domestic order (1 Tim. 5.3, 8, 16; Tit. 2.3). Their regulation reflects ideals of civic benefaction for the socially disadvantaged and implies the typical social ritual of patronage and honours.118 In this case, governance means proper ‘enrolment’ (v. 9) – an ecclesiastical order of things in direct opposition to enemies’ mismanagement and implied chaos. Kartzow’s treatment of feminized speech and opponents should be set against their opposite, what we here call ‘the regulated speech discourse’. Ancient rhetorical handbooks represent this speech where they discuss

Gleason, 1995, 21–83 Kartzow, 2009, 180–201, building on Glancey, 2003, 235–63. 117 This is a long tradition: Theophrastus, Char. 7.3–7 satirizes lali/a (chatter) as undermining the common good and interrupting due civic process; Plutarch, De Garr. returns to this theme repeatedly – for example 505A–F; 506B–508B. 118 For the civic ideal of care of widows in inscriptions, see Harrison, 1998, 106–16; for the Pastorals’ exhortations as supervision, see Thurston, 2003, 159–76. 115 116

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disciplined rhetorical ability as well-placed and controlled talk that seeks to accomplish much with few words, and is the expression of the selfcontrol and discipline of the properly formed male.119 The Pastorals reveal appropriation of these rhetorical-civic conventions where they contrast the disputatious babble of their opponents with the right speech of ideal leaders and disciples. As contrast to the opponents’ babble, the Pastorals invoke the brief and encapsulated ‘faithful saying/speech’ [pisto_j o( lo&goj] (1 Tim. 1.15; 3.1; 4.9; 2 Tim. 2.11; Tit. 3.8). These belong with the ‘the glorious gospel [to_ eu)agge/lion th~j do&chj] of the blessed God’ (1 Tim. 1.11, my emphasis) entrusted to Paul, or refer to the ‘sound speech and good teaching’ [o9i lo/goi th~j pi/stewj kai\ th~j kalh~j didaskali/aj] he presented (1 Tim. 4.6). Right teaching agrees ‘with the healthy speech of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness sound teaching’ [u(giai/nousin lo&goij toi=j tou~ kuri/ou h(mw~n 0Ihsou~ Xristou~ kai\ th|~ kat0 eu)se/beian didaskali/a] (1 Tim. 6.3). This is in direct contrast to the opponents’ ‘speech that eats away like a gangrenous disease’ [\o( lo&goj au)tw~n w(j ga&ggraina nomh_n e3cei]. Or, again, ‘the prophetic utterances’ [profhtei/ai] that came with Timothy’s appointment by the laying on of hands (1 Tim. 4.14; also, 1.18) contrasts with ‘the teachings [plural!] of demons’ [didaskali/aij daimoni/wn] (1 Tim. 4.1) that instructs opponents. Invoking the masculine power of regulating speech in the governance of households, Paul exhorts Titus ‘to silence’ [e0pistomi/zein] false teachers ‘since they are upsetting whole families’ (Tit. 1.11) and ‘rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith’ [u(giai/nwsin e0n th|~ pi/stei] (Tit. 1.13). As opposed to the undisciplined disputatiousness of the opponents, the Lord’s servant is ‘not quarrelsome, but kind to all, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting opponents with gentleness’ (2 Tim. 2.24–5). ‘Show yourself’, Paul exhorts Titus, ‘in all respects a model of good works [tu/pon kalw~n e1rgwn], and in teaching [e0n th|~ didaskali/a|] show integrity, gravity, and sound speech [a)fqori/an, semno&thata, lo&gon u(gih~] that cannot be censured’ (Tit. 2.7).

Family Portraits The Pastorals return their audiences repeatedly to portraits of the ideally governed Greco-Roman family. Through their gossip and regulated speech discourses they generalize that portrait to describe ‘the household of God’ (1 Tim. 3.15) – namely, the rightly governed church. As we have seen,

For example, Quintillian, Inst. 11.1–3; 12.1–2; Cicero, Orat. 17.55–64; 20.70–4; De or. 3.543–174–53.205; Ad Her. 3.11.19–25.27; Demetrius, Eloc. 7, 9; Seneca, Ep. 40.2–3; Clement of Alexandria Paed. 2.7.58.1–2. For self-controlled speech as prerequisite for good rulers, see Plutarch, De garr. 506C–D. For a full discussion of these and other texts, see Maier, 2004, 506–12; Gleason, 1995, 55–130.

119

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that portrait seeks to persuade by drawing on ethical vocabulary and imagery used to celebrate emperors and civic officials alike. They place the household of God firmly in the context of a properly governed Empire. If they replace Trajan or Hadrian with Christ and thus promote a civic Christological monotheism, they reveal nevertheless their acceptance of civic ideals of the social world around them. This is especially evident in their portraits of rightly governed households. It is no accident that Paul remembers Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice: Timothy is the third generation of the ‘sincere faith’ [a)nupokri/tou pi/stewj] of the believing household (2 Tim. 1.5). This is not nostalgia – these are place-oriented memories with profound social meaning. Lois and Eunice also function as counter-memory for those female patrons who have hosted the writer’s opponents and perhaps have thereby created competing house churches. This is why the Pastorals’ invective returns repeatedly to questionable domestic reputations and the trope of the parasitic home invader who upsets families for personal gain. Concord in the Pastorals is always a family matter. Timothy and Titus are not only Paul’s delegates, he describes each of them as his ‘(loyal) child’ (1 Tim. 1.2; 2 Tim. 2.1; Tit. 1.4; cf. 2 Tim. 3.15), and thus himself takes on the role of the father who governs his household well. Images of domestic harmony were a central component of ancient visual culture. A recurring motif in imperial iconography was portraiture idealizing the emperor’s wife and the concord of the imperial family. As we have seen, empresses’ virtues were recurring themes in Julio-Claudian and Flavian coinage, as they were on public monuments.120 This was not confined to Rome. More than half of the statues and inscriptions celebrating the women of Trajan’s and Hadrian’s courts come from imperial shrines and mostly from the East.121 Portraits of imperial women had a central role in affirming political power and promoting cultural goods. Wood argues that a woman living in any city or town of the Roman Empire would have known the faces and appearance of members of the ruling family and more importantly that ‘the married women of the imperial family would provide her with examples of appropriate ways for a wife to behave.’122 Images of imperial wives were used for moral and cultural purposes and were a central means in creating an image of the imperial household as the embodiment of time-honoured civic traditions viewers were to imitate.123 These images were circulating at precisely the same time when women – including it would appear some of the women in the audience that would

D’Ambra, 1993, 78–103, who relates the mythological scenes of virtuous women on the frieze of Domitian’s Forum Transitorium in Rome both to his own concerns for female virtues, and to pre-existing Julio-Claudian iconography on monuments. 121 See the documentation of Boatwright, 1991a, 513–40, especially 528. 122 Wood, 1999, 1. 123 Wood, 1999, 17–20. 120

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have listened to the Pastoral Epistles – were breaking out of traditionally assigned roles.124 Imperial iconographers dedicated themselves to associating female members of the imperial household with images personifying concord and traditions of female virtue.125 As Beth Severy notes, ‘over time many members of the imperial house used the politically charged by also now familial concept of accord to define public roles for themselves out of family relationships.’126 Images of Concordia, for example, issued by the imperial mints accompanied anniversaries of marriage in the imperial household as well as of assumption of political power. Iconographical association with female domestic virtues was especially exploited by Trajanic era iconographers to promote an image of the imperial family as the embodiment of state-preserving family harmony. Alongside Concordia, the imperial wives of Trajan and Hadrian were regularly depicted in the company of Vesta, Venus Genetrix, Ceres, Magna Mater or as mater patriae, or with inscriptions or personifications dedicated to chastity and modesty or pudicitia (Figures 52, 53 and 54).127 This imagery communicated not only that emperors could be relied upon to govern their households – and hence the Empire – rightly, but that marriage, right governance of domestic affairs and child-bearing were chief aims to be pursued in daily life. Pliny, in his Panegyric, celebrates Trajan and his wife Pompeia Plotina as the ideal couple: ‘This is the work of her husband’, he acclaims, ‘who has fashioned and formed her habits; there is enough for a wife in obedience; When she sees her husband unaccompanied by pomp and intimidation, she also goes about in silence, and as far as her sex permits, she follows his example of walking on foot’ (Pan. 83.7–8). His account of Plotina coincides with the picture of women in contemporary political discourse as the wife properly governed by her husband and eager to sustain the harmony of household as mirror of civic concord more generally.128 Imperial iconographers represented the emperor’s wife Plotina in ways consistent with these ideals. Most usually she was represented as Vesta, goddess of chaste matrons, seating and holding a palladium and a scepter (Figure 53).129 Associating the emperor’s wife with Vesta affirmed the primary domestic role of Plotina as materfamilias who dutifully preserved the household of the emperor. Another coin associates her with an ara pudicitiae, confirming her dedication to modesty and chastity (Figure 54).130 Images of Plotina’s

For new roles and opportunities, Winter, 2003, 17–5; Osiek and MacDonald, 2006, 144–63, 225–43. 125 Severy, 2003, 131–9. 126 Severy, 2003, 137–8. 127 For discussion with plates, see Temporini, 1978, 23–78. 128 See the discussion of Roche, 2002, 41–60. 129 BMCRE 3.525–58 – Plate 18.12. 130 For Plotina, BMCRE Plate 18.15. 124

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Figure 52  Denarius of Sabina obverse and Venus reverse, Mint of Rome (reign of Hadrian), BMCRE 3.944 pl. 65.19 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 53  Denarius of Plotina obverse and Vesta reverse, Mint of Rome (reign of Trajan), BMCRE 3.528 pl. 18.14 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 54  Denarius of Sabina obverse, Pudicitia reverse, Mint of Rome (reign of Hadrian), BMCRE 3.911 pl. 65.1 © Trustees of the British Museum

domestic virtues went hand in hand with other portraits associating her with Felicitas and Fides. These affirmed her role in securing the stability of the state. Such issues communicated the harmony in Trajan’s household and its role in securing a harmonious worldwide dominion, an ideal that was rehearsed iconographically in representations of children as well as legends describing Trajan as pater patriae. A similar iconographical programme

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occurs in Hadrianic coins dedicated to the emperor’s wife, Sabina. Here again she is associated with fertility where she appears (obverse) with Ceres on reverse, or where she is portrayed wreathed in corn-ears, or as Venus Genetrix (see Figure 52).131 As Natalie Kampen has shown, such iconography associated imperial wives in traditional domestic roles to show that their lives embodied the time-honoured mores maiorum.132 Children figure large in the iconographical programmes in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, as symbol of plenty and the emperor’s liberality. Plotina and Trajan, however, did not have children of their own. From 112–17, when the mints issued coins depicting imperial women, they represented Trajan’s sister, Marciana and her children, and Marciana’s daughter, Matidia and her children to depict the harmony of and fertility of the imperial family.133 One issue (Figure 55) represents Trajan’s elder sister Marciana on the obverse and her daughter, Matidia with two children at her knee.134 Elsewhere (Figure 56) they represent Matidia as a traditional matron – also perhaps personifying Pietas – with two children at her side.135 In other issues she appears with reverses depicting Concordia, Pietas and Pudicitia.136 In addition to portraying the women of the imperial court, Trajan’s mints included images of children alongside adults in coinage celebrating his congiaria and annona – the public distributions of money and grain.137 As Beryl Rawson has noted, Trajan was careful to orchestrate his congiaria for optimum effect in Rome – for example by preregistering family recipients before his triumphal entry in 99 ce, a means of assuring an enthusiastic reception.138 The alimenta he extended outside Rome to include all of Italy. Such representations reflect Trajan’s extension of earlier Augustus’ pro-family legislation to senatorial families to include the populace of Italy more generally. These included, for example, relaxation of taxation on inheritances, as well as the provision of allowances for those bearing children. In doing so, he set the stage for Hadrian to expand these policies to offer tax relief to families across the Empire as well as alimenta. Upon his arrival as emperor in Rome in 118 ce, Hadrian extended Trajan’s distribution, which he marked with imagery adapted from his predescessors

For the types BMCRE 3.893 (Rome, aureus); 919 (Rome, denarius); RIC 2.396 (Rome, denarius). 132 Kampen, 1982, 63–78. 133 See Woytek, 2010, 1.163–7, for discussion of the iconography, and 2.Tafeln 124–7, nos. 701–30/2 for images. 134 BMCRE 3. Plate 18.17. 135 BMCRE 3. Plate 21.12–14. 136 Concordia: BMCRE 3.894 (Rome, aureus); Pietas: 910 (Rome, denarius); Pudicitia: 913 (Rome, denarius). Upon Hadrian’s accession he similarly issued coins associating Matidia and Marciana with these legends; Strack 1933, 67–8. 137 For discussion and images, Woytek, 2010, 1.133–5; 2.Tafel 78–9, nos. 354–8; Strack, 1931, 188–92. 138 Rawson, 2001, 25–36. 131

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Figure 55  Denarius of Marciana obverse, Matidia with two children, reverse, Mint of Rome, 112–13 ce, BMCRE 3.531 pl. 18.17 © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 56 Denarius of Matidia obverse, Matidia with two children, reverse, Mint of Rome, 115–17 ce or later, BMCRE 3.661 pl. 21.4 © Trustees of the British Museum

issues.139 These were concerted attempts by Trajan and Hadrian to represent their reigns as creating the conditions for the procreation of children and their flourishing. Significant as well is the presence of children on monuments.140 Their inclusion on reliefs of the Arch of Beneventum, erected in 114–18 offers a picture of Trajan enjoying a divinely appointed rule that guarantees plenty.141 Although debate continues whether the Arch’s images celebrate the emperor’s extension of annona to all of Italy, it is clear that their meaning extends beyond a strictly historical reference to include larger cosmic claims. In a relief significantly situated on the side of the arch that faces the provinces, Trajan stands with two small children, alongside a Strack, 1933, 59–64; Tafel IX.630. For discussion, see Kampen, 2009, 38–63. 141 For images of children in iconography depicting imperial distributions, see Uzzi 2005, 35–44; for the imagery at Beneventum 41–4; Brilliant 1963, 107–8; for the allegorical features taken up here, see Kampen, 2009, 55–8. 139 140

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Figure 57  Relief of Alimenta, Arch of Trajan, Beneventum (second century ce), © Messerschmidt D-DAI-ROM 29.479

cornucopia and prow that symbolize fertility and fecundity. Here Mars behind the prow and probably Tellus in the background forcefully give both a geo-political and pro-family message. It was at the Temple of Mars Ultor on the Roman forum that young men were registered who had completed their coming of age ceremony – the replacing of the boyhood toga praetexta with the adult toga virilis. Another panel on the inside of the arch passageway (Figure 57) presents allegorizing personifications of cities with crenellated crowns on their heads. Children surround them and one city/mother holds an infant in her arms. ‘Real’ fathers are also present: one in a working man’s tunic with a child on his shoulders looks on at Trajan as another with a child on his shoulders strides to the right with her sister in tow. This is the kind of imagery Pliny had in mind when he celebrated Trajan as an emperor who created the conditions for procreation. ‘Above all,’ Pliny states, ‘you are a prince whose reign makes it both a pleasure and profit to rear children’ (Pan. 27.1). Here the fact that Trajan had no children of his own becomes not a liability but incentive to successful propaganda. As Natalie Kampen suggests, fatherless Trajan emerges solidly as ‘pater patriae, father to no one and to everyone.’142 Indeed, Pliny never tires of casting Trajan in the role of parens or parens noster (2.3; 3.2; 21; 29.2; 53.1; 57.5; 67.1; 87.3; 89.2; 94.4), parentem publicum (26.3; 87.1), Kampen, 2009, 40.

142

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Figure 58 Relief from the sarcophagus of Publius Aelius Pompeius and Procope, Sinope (second century ce), Istanbul Archaeological Museum, Istanbul

communis omnium parens (‘common father of us all’; 39.5), and even pater Traiane (89.2). Such imagery and ideology belong to a large civic repertoire that combines the themes of civic flourishing, political concord, domestic harmony, female virtue and fertility. It is a long way from Beneventum to Asia Minor of course, but such themes were not limited to iconography originating with the emperor. They belong to a long iconographical tradition suggestive of domestic virtue and harmony, often in the company of children. The virtues of faithful wives and devoted mothers are regularly cited in grave inscriptions from the Classical period onward, as are idealized portraits of harmonious families. A second century sarcophagus inscription (Figure 58) celebrates Procope, the wife of Publius Aelius Pompeius, for being ‘piissimaeq[ue] pudicitiae castitatatis’ [most pious and modest [and] chaste]. Such family imagery on Roman era grave steles reflects what Suzanne Dixon has aptly called ‘the sentimental ideal of the Roman family’ – the marital harmony of husband and wife, and the dutiful obedience of children and slaves.143 Indeed, the civic elites who could afford it cast themselves as the leading characters in scenes drawn from Greek mythology as a means of representing in story form an idealized portrait Dixon, 1991, 99–113

143

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Figure 59  Relief of grave stele, Philadelphia (second century Möbius 1977, Tafelband I/Textband I, Tafel 105, no. 701

ce),

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© Pfuhl and

of husband and wife.144 The funerary steles of those of less means are less elaborate but nevertheless draw from a repertoire of virtues relating to faithful performance of domestic roles by husbands and wives, or portray them enjoying marital harmony and domestic concord. Again, this iconography often includes children. Asia Minor banqueting scenes that recur in high frequency throughout the Greek east from the Hellenistic period through to late Roman antiquity are particularly instructive. A stele from Philadelphia (Figure 59), for example, portrays a veiled matron with a child on her lap and a slave at her side; she sits before her deceased husband who reclines at the banquet. Below is a depiction of right household relations as father/master governs children/slaves. The

Zanker and Ewald, 2004, 201–24.

144

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grasped right hand of master and slave at the left, as well as the dog at the right, signify proper domestic stewardship and faithful obedience.145 These images from emperors and non-elites alike indicate a picture-world the Pastorals promote in their own invocations of the dutiful child-bearing wife. Here, of course, it is God the Father who is guarantor of domestic thriving and familial abundance, but the virtues, ideals and gender codes promoted by the Pastorals offer images very much at home in their civic imperial context. The terms and metaphors the letters draw upon to exhort their audiences to familial ideals and obedience would have created in the minds of their readers a rich association of images with which to visualize and thus instantly recognize the rightly functioning and ordered family.

‘Women Who Stray After Satan’? The Pastorals promote the ideal of the domestic matron in order to curb allegedly deviant belief and behaviour. As many scholars have noted, this is a sharp reversal of what appears in the earlier Pauline corpus. There, not only are women teachers and almost certainly apostles (Rom. 16.3, 7 [reading I0ouni/a]; cf. Acts 18.1, 26), but patrons of house churches who welcome Paul and his co-workers into their homes (Col. 4.15; cf. Acts 12.2; 16.14–15) and carry messages of Paul to other churches as they travel to conduct their own business (Rom. 16.1–2; possibly 1 Cor. 1.11). Far from being instructed to marry and bear children, Paul exhorts women if possible not to marry (1 Cor. 7.25–35) and even permits divorce from unbelieving husbands (1 Cor. 7.12–16). These images are in marked contrast to the Pastorals’ depiction of the ideal woman as silent, obedient wife enjoined to (re)marry, saved by child birth and forbidden to teach.146 Further, even as the command in 1 Tim. 5.14 to younger widows to marry flies in the face of Paul’s earlier exhortations, it contradicts prevailing social realities and ideals. It has been calculated that, consistent with other pre-industrial societies, as many as 65 per cent of widows in the ancient world never remarried; in the first and second centuries, the univirate wife was the idealized image of a woman’s dedication to her predeceased husband and gave rise to satirical sketches of the seducing and prostituting widow.147 The fact that the Pastorals depart so widely from normal custom is noteworthy. For other illustrative banquet steles, see Pfuhl and Möbius, 1979, Tafelband II/Textband II, no. 1980 (Smyrna, first century); 1850 (Pergamon, second century). 146 Bassler, 2003, 122–46, argues that the widows of the Pastorals are in fact those who follow Paul’s advice concerning marriage and divorce. If so, this again reflects competition over Paul’s legacy. 147 For the statistic, see Brenner, 1995, 34n. 21; for the univirate ideal, see Lightman and Zeisel, 1977, 19–32; for satire, see Petronius Satyricon 110.6–113.4 in the so-called ‘widow of Ephesus’ scene, and Günther, 1993, 308–10; Brenner, 1987, 201–5; early Christian authors 145

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What accounts for these reversals? The uncontested corpus, the Book of Acts and the Pastorals invite an analysis of changing female roles and opportunities in the first and second centuries of the Roman Empire. Osiek and MacDonald, in their discussion of patronage by women in the GrecoRoman world of this period, show that at the same time the Pastorals were written, imperial women were breaking out of prescribed traditional roles and were acting as patrons of associations and synagogues, and, in rarer instances, officials of civic assemblies and clubs.148 A statue and inscription (124–5 ce) honouring Plancia Magna (Figure 60), for example, that once stood at the Southern city gate of Perge, surrounded by other statues of priests of civic deities, celebrates Plancia’s benefactions and names her functions as deimourgos, urban priestess of Artemis and Magna Mater, and high priestess of the imperial cult, as well as her virtues of eu0sebh= kai\ filo/patrin.149 She is testament to the evergetism of women who had broken free of traditional domestic roles to Figure 60 Plancia Magna full hold civic office, perform liturgies and body, Perge (second century ce), Antalya Archaeological Museum, offer benefactions.150 Antalya, Turkey, photo by David J. It was not only elite women who Lull, Professor of New Testament, were able to break free of traditional Wartburg Theological Seminary, roles. Reliefs and paintings of female Dubuque, Iowa, USA, 18 May 2005 artisans commemorating their business and advertising their wares show enterprising women active in public life, far removed from the traditional gender roles of hearth and home.151 A first century fresco from Herculaneum

like Tertullian (De Exhor. Cast. 9.1) directly contradicted the Pastorals’ command to remarry when they described second marriage as adultery; for full discussion, see Walcot, 1991, 22–4. 148 Osiek and MacDonald, 2006, 194–219. 149 Perge I, 120 ll. 9–10; for other inscriptions (117–26) honouring Plancia Magna, see 153–64, with discussion. 150 For discussion SEG 41 (1991): 1332; Boatwright, 1991b, 249–72. 151 For discussion with plates, see Kampen 1982, 63–78.

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depicts a female artisan selling her shoes (see Plate 7) and a contemporary relief from Ostia Antica: (Figure 61) portrays female merchants at work in their butcher shop. The Pastorals paper over this demography of enterprising women, as well as the history of patronage and leadership amongst female Christ followers. Women like Phoebe (Rom. 16.1–2), Prisca (16.2–5; Acts 18.2–3), Junia (16.7), and (possibly) Chloe (1 Cor. 1.11) are the Pauline examples of these socio-demographic realities.152 The references to Mary and Lydia in Acts 12.2 and 16.14–16, as well as Tavia and Valens and his wife by Ignatius (Smyrn. 13.2) and Polycarp (Phil. 11.1–4) – temporally and geographically close to the Pastorals – indicate the pattern was well-established in the second-century Asia Minor churches.153 John’s highly rhetorical vilification of ‘Jezebel’ at the church of Thyatira in Rev. 2.20 is best explained by reference to an otherwise unnamed woman who offered teaching in house churches if not direct patronage of them. What these women have in common is the economic power of benefaction and patronage, the ability to host travellers and house-churches, as well as to teach and/or preach. Far from the Pastorals’ portrait of the domesticallybound, submissive, child-bearing wife, these other texts reveal women inviting teachers into their homes, breaking away from traditional gender roles, and most probably using social networks like their male and female counterparts in contemporary literature to circulate amongst households. Bruce Winter has related the Pastorals’ concerns with women to contemporary anxieties over what he calls ‘the Roman woman’. These were women able to enter the public arena thanks to new access to wealth, public office and education in the first and second century. Juvenal satirizes them as circulating amongst the households of elites, breaking into a world traditionally reserved for men and taking part in banquets and symposia (Sat. 6.448–56). Such women were the brunt of comedy, which stereotyped them as immodest, wanton and cuckolding wives. Musonius Rufus, Plutarch and Seneca reveal such women’s new social location when they include them in philosophical instructions hitherto reserved for men.154 Winter relates this evidence to the portrait in 1 Tim. 2.9–11 of the ideal wife dressed not in gold, jewelry and costly apparel, but in piety and argues that the Pastorals seek to restrict the circulation of new Roman women and to confine them to traditional roles.155 If I understand Winter correctly, he reads the reference to jewelry and costly attire in 1 Tim. 2.9–11 as material evidence of the presence of ‘new Roman women’ amongst the Pastorals’ listeners.

For comparison of Pauline/New Testament female patrons and benefactors with epigraphic examples of similar contemporary Greco-Roman women, see Kearsley, 1992, 24–7. 153 Lydia, a merchant of purple, is especially instructive: probably a freedperson, very possibly widowed or divorced, who sells luxury clothing: Horsley 1982, 25–32. 154 For an overview with texts, see Winter, 2003, 23–31, 59–74. 155 Winter, 2003, 97–109. 152

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Figure 61  Grave relief of female butchers in their shop (second century Ostia Antica, Ostia Museum, Ostia

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ce),

It seems unlikely, however, that the audience would have comprised such wealthy women. It is more likely that the description functions as foil to the description that follows (vv. 13–15) of the silent, submissive and childbearing wife who dresses ‘modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel’ (1 Tim. 2.13–15). As Kelly Olson notes, Greco-Roman moral treatments castigate ‘the adorned woman … as deceptive, wasteful, and frivolous’, at best a seductress and at worst a prostitute.156 If the Pastorals reject women with economic power, it is probably the enterprising ones found in earlier Pauline and contemporary texts, and represented on the iconography dedicated to female artisans discussed above. The Pastorals are not so much a rejection of ‘new women’, as they are a refusal to recognize the demographic realities of enterprising ones. Who then are these ‘women who stray after Satan’ (1 Tim. 5.15) that the Pastorals denounce? The Pastorals uses stereotype and caricature of women as a strategy to end or discredit female patronage of teachers the letters oppose. As in the case of the apostles in the second-century Apocryphal Acts, these teachers persuade women who have welcomed them into their homes to renounce marriage, child bearing and traditional female roles. Wealth enables these women to act as patrons of these teachers. Through the teachers’ instruction women have discovered new roles no longer related to domestic duties, but to forms of ascetical discourses and practices

Olson, 2008, 96, 80–95; also Walcot, 1991, 24–7, and Judge, 1992, 18–23.

156

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grounded in an alternative set of teachings. Female asceticism functions to widen the repertoire of roles already open to enterprising women of the period. We find in the Pastorals conflicting appropriations of civic realities – on the one side, those that orient themselves toward a traditional practice of gender and household duties on the part of the leisure classes; on the other side, those that very possibly reveal behind vivid vituperative description, a practice of emerging Christian religion that is also a reflection of a larger set of social possibilities for women who are their contemporaries. The Pastorals forbid such possibility. It is possible that the teachers represent an ascetical application of Pauline ethics of the type one finds in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and that this has prompted the creation of pseudonymous letters to present Paul’s true view. One cannot help but wonder whether the fierceness of their protest reflects a minority report. In any case, the Pastorals’ presence in a Bible that has shaped and will continue to shape the lives of women is a sobering exhortation to steady socio-historical research and exegesis.

Practices of Empire The Pastoral Epistles represent the latest witness to Pauline theology in the New Testament. Their uses of civic language and imagery reflect their location in the urban world in which they were composed. Paradoxically the letters construct a social memory of Paul the prisoner not to criticize the political order, but to use its institutional arrangements, vocabulary and ideals to polemicize against opponents. As we saw at the outset, the Pastorals have prompted sharply opposed responses. Some have interpreted them as a ‘bourgeois’ betrayal of the uncontested Pauline vision; others discern a shrewd reformulation of the reigning civic and imperial ideologies in order to harmonize them with central concerns of the ethical teaching and Gospel inherited from Paul. Regie Kidd, for example, argues that the Pastorals do not conform to, but rather transform imperial civic values through the presence of eschatology, reversals of codes of benefaction as the rich are exhorted to use their wealth not to win honour on earth, but reward in heaven, and exhortations to superiors to care for those below them in the household hierarchy.157 He thus resists Dibelius’ judgment of the Pastorals as bourgeois, and instead urges a more precise formulation of the Pastorals in their urban and imperial context. In a similar vein, Paul Trebilco resists a simplistic assessment of the Pastorals as capitulation to the Roman Empire by considering the letters

Kidd, 1989, 195–203, offers a summary of his elegant and nuanced arguments.

157

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under the three aspects of assimilation, acculturation and accommodation.158 Here he works with John Barclay’s model for determining measurement of Jewish identity in its ancient Hellenistic contexts.159 Assimilation refers to social integration or the degree to which one is similar to others by way of social contacts, interaction and practices. Acculturation refers to ‘the linguistic educational and ideological aspects of a given cultural matrix’ – that is the degree to which there is evidence of the language, values and teachings of the broader social world.160 Accommodation concerns ‘the use to which acculturation is put’ – that is for the outcome of merging with or opposition to the wider culture.161 Barclay’s model calibrates each term as high or low depending on more refined criteria that include evidence of education, parallels in vocabulary and teachings in the Hellenistic setting, and norms determining the type and quality of contacts with outsiders. According to Trebilco, the Pastorals reflect high levels of each index. The letter writer is motivated first by polemic: the Pastorals condemn their opponents by drawing on the cultural formation of listeners and then showing how the enemies fail to conform to them. That polemic, he further argues, reveals a community seeking to preach the Gospel to outsiders by speaking their language while at the same time resisting their larger culture through a Christology formulated in direct opposition to the cult of the emperor and his salvific claims. They are thus in the first instance evangelical documents. I have argued that readings that seek to find in the Pastorals polemic against the imperial cult, or the uses of ethical codes to win outsiders, risk importing ideas the letters nowhere present. Even where they demonstrate the greatest distance from their imperial world – in their Christological monotheism – the uses of that monotheism for the sake of communal concord and traditional codes of conduct reveal a church seeking not to avoid offense and win attraction, but to vilify opponents as anti-social and anti-civic. Further while Trebilco’s analysis offers a far more nuanced way of locating the Pastorals in their Hellenistic urban world, it remains too static. The social theorist Michel de Certeau, in his discussion of the practices of everyday life, offers another more subtle means of assessing the Pastorals’ appropriations of civic identity.162 According to de Certeau cultural codes are never imposed from above, but are idiosyncratically appropriated in the daily practices of routine living. For de Certeau, theorizing about social identity ‘from above’ neglects the complex negotiations of space and time ‘from below’ – the means by which daily practices renegotiate and Trebilco, 2004, 351–422. See Barclay, 1996, 2–102, for the model. 160 Barclay, 1999, 93. 161 Barclay, 1999, 96. 162 de Certeau, 1984, in what follows, especially 91–130. 158 159

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create new formulations of space and time nowhere envisioned by elite authorities and the formulators of social blueprints. de Certeau likens the practice of daily life to bricolage – an improvisational reassembling of the cultural materials of quotidian living into new configurations and ways of imagining.163 In an essay on reading, he describes how the practice of reading becomes a form of ‘poaching’ [braconnage] – that is, the drawing together of things never intended by an author that arise in the imagination of the reader in a poetic act of meaning making.164 This he applies more broadly to the uses of rules and products that belong to any given culture, but in a way never completely determined by those rules. In this view, all people and all groups are always and in varying degrees engaged in processes of acculturation, assimilation and accommodation to prevailing social codes and values which concentration on texts alone can never fully approximate or apprehend. Practices of everyday life imply daily negotiations rather than reified codifications of social life. Daily appropriation brings with it plurality, creativity and imagination. Grids and typological schemes while heuristically fruitful for generating questions about the Pastorals in their social world risk reifying them into a one-to-one correspondence between typology and reality. Or they threaten to use texts as windows on to social realities, rather than a rhetorical means of representing social dynamics and convincing their audiences to embody particular roles and practices in new configurations. In the case of the Pastorals, we encounter a moment and a space for imaginative configurations of daily life in a highly polemical situation of competing social practices. A wide repertoire of civic virtues, terms at home in the imperial cult and in a broader politico-religious culture, as well as commonplaces and rhetorical topoi join together to fill the space the letters celebrate as ‘the household of God’, and to vilify the space outside its walls, as a ‘straying after Satan’ (1 Tim. 4.15). This world is identifiable empirically by those ‘households of God’ that have been unearthed by archaeologists – structures adapted for religious use, rooms utilized for sacred purposes in the households of patrons or even rented apartments and halls. The Pastorals reveal such empirical sites as thirdspaces – imaginative recreations of places dedicated to traditional gender roles and domestic behaviours for populating with heroes and villains. Here is the heroic mother and grandmother of Timothy, Lois and Eunice, and here also are the women who stray after Satan. Geography and imagination conspire to create opportunities for invocations of virtues and vices in an emerging religious tradition and space. The legend of an apostle and his teachings create conflicting and competing practices of urban life. The rhetoric of the

de Certeau, 1984, 30. de Certeau, 1984, 165–77.

163 164

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Pastorals illustrate excellently Foucault’s notion of heterotopia – the place outside all places where new configurations of self and space are imagined. The Pastorals take pre-existing gender codes and pictorial celebrations of imperial harmony and family domesticity, and transform them into a new space for Christian practices of urban ideals and aspirations. The letters do not merely apply civic terms and concepts, nor are they simply mirrors of prevailing values. If they create a civic imperial heterotopia, as the preceding argument has tried to show, it is also a hybrid one where its chief hero has escaped the lion’s mouth to proclaim his Gospel to those who would kill him, where Christ and emperor begin to bear a striking resemblance, but one has the outline of cross and execution. The Pastorals embrace domestic ideals advertised on the imperial coinage, monuments and acclaimed in panegyrical literature. These ideals are realized in the innovative space of an emergent Christian church that legitimates practices of Empire with new religious warrants: women not only bear children in obedience to prescribed gender scripts, but find their salvation by doing so (1 Tim. 2.15), and men who rule their wives, children and slaves well ‘hold the mystery of faith with a clear conscience’ (1 Tim. 3.9, 12–13). It is here, however, that the Pastorals’ own normalizing procedures of exhortation and instruction begin to break down and fall apart under the weight of the paradox that an imprisoned apostle offers such imperial sounding teachings and seeks to legitimate control by such imperial looking institutions of governance. The Pastorals are pulled in opposite directions. The result is a dynamic hybridity as the letters use Paul’s name and vivid imagery on the one hand to persuade listeners to lead lives consistent with the ideals of their urban contemporaries, and on the other hand assign imperial titles and descriptions to their crucified God.

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Epilogue: Constantine’s Triumph Santa Pudenziana and the Crowned Apostle Perhaps predictably, the apse of the Roman basilica, Santa Pudenziana, completed under Pope Innocent I (401–17 ce), portrays Christ surrounded by his apostles (see Plate 8a).1 Christ holds a book on which are written the words DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE (Lord preserver of the church of Pudentia). Not as predictably we find Christ enthroned in the image of the great gods of the Greek pantheon, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. In an important twentieth-century account, André Grabar described the apse’s representation of Christ as God enthroned in this form ‘in majesty, as the omnipotent and omnipresent lord forever.’2 The image draws portraits of significant Greek gods, ‘to signify the all-powerful sovereignty of Christ.’ In support of that description he noticed that next to Christ, at his left and his right, are his apostles, dressed in senatorial costume. To the left, a female figure, personifying the ECCLESIA EX GENTIBUS (the Church of the Gentiles), crowns Paul; to the right, another, symbolizing the ECCLESIA EX CIRCUMCISIONE (Church of the Circumcision), crowns Peter. Indeed, the imperial associations are unmistakable. We have repeatedly encountered similar female personifications in the previous chapters of this study, where we have seen leading citizens and emperors alike crowned with the civica corona, or the crown of victory, the aurum coronarium, in recognition of patronage and triumph. Had Origen or his disciple, Eusebius of Caesarea, been alive to see the apse, they may well have found in its adaptations of imperial iconography to represent Christian claims confirmation of their belief that God had timed the coming of Christ to coincide with the Augustan era so as to enable the preaching of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Origen had argued that God providentially arranged the simultaneous advent of Augustus and Christ to accomplish divine triumph on both earth and in heaven.3 And Eusebius had gone several steps further to liken the churches constructed by Constantine as imperial victory monuments. He hailed the Christian

For discussion of the apse with literature, see Hellemo, 1989, 39–64. Grabar, 1968, 34. 3 Oct. 29; Origen C. Cels. 2.30; 8.73–5; see also De. Princ. 4.1.5 1 2

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emperor as the earthly counterpart to Christ’s rule over the heavens; as Christ vanquished the cosmic forces of wickedness and made peace flourish in the cosmos, so Constantine has conquered barbarians and pacified the Empire.4 Where once emperors built arches to commemorate their victories, Eusebius argued, Constantine now built churches, triumphal monuments dedicated to Christ’s victory. The coinage, on the other hand, proclaimed the emperor’s subjugation of enemies and the peace of his dominion. In making these kinds of arguments, these authors were continuing a long imperial tradition of re-inventing itself to speak to contemporary meaning while retaining a sense of shared continuity with the past.5 Eusebius might well have quoted from Virgil, to acclaim that, with the Christian emperor, God has ‘set no bounds in space or time; but [has] given empire without end’ (Aen. 1.278–9). But he did not need to: the Psalter furnished him with all the prophetic texts he needed. With Constantine the Psalmist’s vision of a divine reign from sea to sea (Ps. 72.8) had been realzsed. God’s reign amongst the Gentiles had been achieved (DE 9.17). Indeed, the apse of Santa Pudenziana is suggestive of the realization of eschatological hope in its placement of the scene of the enthroned Christ with his apostles against the backdrop of Jerusalem and the four living creatures of Rev. 4.7. The churches built by Constantine in Jerusalem form the city’s horizon. The Empire is the place where Christian eschatology finds its fullest realization.6 Grabar interpreted the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana as a typical representation of Christianity’s new imperial status under Constantine and his successors. ‘It is to the image of the theme of the supreme power of God that Imperial art contributed the most, and naturally, so, since it was the key theme of all the imagery of the government of the Empire.’7 In offering this interpretation, Grabar helped to create a twentieth century consensus regarding the development of Christian iconography in the Late Antiquity as the adaptation of imperial forms to express a new imperial location.8 It is a tradition that is alive and well. In a conspicuously titled monograph, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, Jas´ Elsner presents a view that echoes Grabar’s. ‘Just as the Roman empire would eventually be Christianized, so – through borrowings and references of many kinds – Christianity itself was profoundly Romanized.’9 For Elsner, the appropriation of imperial iconographical forms to represent Christian teachings belongs to a historical process of Christian triumph over the mystery and

A repeated refrain: for example, Or. 11.2; 17.4, 14; 18; VC 3.33; HE 10.4.16, 20; see also, DE 1.10; 8.1; Theophany 5.42 5 For the process in general, specifically with reference to the Augustan age, see Elsner, 1998, 3–10. 6 For discussion of the apse’s eschatological elements, see Hellemo, 1989, 50–63. 7 Grabar, 1968, 31–54, at 42. 8 For a review, see Mathews, 1993, 3–22; for a more recent example, see Hellemo, 1989, 3–17. 9 Elsner, 1998, 259. 4

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unofficial cults with which it competed during the first two centuries, to become the Empire’s sole official religion.10 Robin Jensen, amongst others, has criticized this account as ignoring ways in which imperial Christian iconography revises pre-existing ideologies of imperial triumph and resists them.11 The discussion of the previous chapters also challenges the traditional account, but in different ways. At the most general level, their arguments have shown that the adaptation of imperial imagery as a means to visualize and make persuasive Christianity’s claims was not a process that emerged after the Constantinian era, but was already a means of religious self-definition and teaching in the New Testament itself. Origen’s and Eusebius’ interpretation of God’s providential arrangement of history in uniting Christ and Caesar, as indeed the work of Pope Innocent’s iconographers on the apse of Santa Pudenziana, would not have been possible without the imperial language and imagery of the New Testament, and, more specifically, their absorption and reconfiguration in the Pauline corpus. The incorporation of imperial themes to communicate Christian teachings in a visual form did not emerge after Constantine’s accession, but before it, in the picture language of emergent Christianity’s proclamation. More precisely, the appropriation of imperial image and text for the sake of persuasion in the Pauline corpus reveals a complex process of negotiation and redefinition. Following the lead of Karl Galinsky, the preceding discussion has tried to show that even as the imperial cult and its religious claims for the emperor were a complex matter, subject to local initiatives, religious customs and social interests, so adaptation of imperial language and metaphor by Paul and his successors was similarly complex, neither a simple rejection of Paul against the Empire, nor a straightforward strategy of borrowing to show support for it. Rather, the claim for a ‘supraimperial’ (Galinsky) reign of Christ both adopted and revised existing forms of imperial iconography and language to describe Christ’s rule and its benefits. Those who heard the letters of Paul proclaim that reign found themselves placed in an imperial situation that reconfigured the Empire’s ideals and ideas even as it resembled them. The religion they followed was a confession entangled with local urban culture and the civic and imperial meanings associated with it. The emerging religion of the first generations of Christ followers manifested hybridity. Paul set in motion a tradition of the appropriation of imperial imagery and language when he adapted it to proclaim his Gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection as the means of God’s universal achievement amongst the Gentiles and the fulfillment of prophetic expectation. In Colossians, Paul’s teachings and historical identity were reconfigured for the sake of

Elsner, 1998, 199–235. Jensen, 2011, 153–71, building in part on Mathews, 1993, 3–22; see also Nakashima Brock and Parker, 2008, 85–114, who rely heavily on Mathews.

10 11

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polemic. The letter developed Pauline tradition to present a vivid picture of the supraimperial reign of Christ that incorporated all – slave, free, barbarian and Scythian – into a universal dominion. It did so by drawing on the language and metaphor of Roman victory to show how Christ followers were not subservient to conquered principalities and powers, but that they were co-rulers with Christ above them. The iconographical programme of the sebasteion at Aphrodisias showed a world in a process of transformation from barbarian immoderation toward Roman sobriety. So too, under Christ’s victory, the Colossians’ listeners were enjoying a transformation inaugurated by their baptism and continuing under the rule of their cosmic head, Christ, in his church. Ephesians remembered Paul as ambassador of reconciliation to once estranged people on behalf of a God who had again won a decisive cosmic victory, and dispensed the spoils of victory to faithful followers, joined together in a new civic unity. Even as the Flavians had transformed their victory in Roman Palestine into a proclamation of peace and concord for the whole world, so the writer to the Ephesians represented Jesus’ victorious death as the means by which all were united into a single harmonious rule. In the Pastorals, competition over Paul’s teaching resulted in a configuration of the apostle’s message to show how his Gospel, rightly interpreted, encouraged the faithful to pursue lives that included the performance of household roles praised and promoted in urban society. Not to follow the teachings the letters outline in Paul’s name was to be guilty of all the social evils and ills that accompanied anyone guilty of non-conformity to respectable society. The appropriation and redeployment of imperial images and ideas to develop and promote Pauline teachings for later generations of Christ followers reveals that there was no singular set of meanings, nor a one-way flow of meaning, from imperial iconography and political claims to their recipients. As other groups in the Roman Empire, early Christ followers adopted and adapted imperial images and ideas for their own ends. Again, Paul established this trajectory when he appropriated the language of imperial victory in often paradoxical ways to describes the achievements of Christ’s crucifixion, and proclaimed a ‘gospel’ of the crucified raised Christ as lord, whose imperial advent was imminent. In Colossians, as Ephesians, although Pauline eschatology has been revised from a futurist to a realized formulation, Jesus’ crucifixion is a similarly paradoxical means of imperial victory and pacification of hostile powers. In Ephesians, civic minded ideals of concord, co-citizenship and the incorporation of resident aliens and strangers into a new ecclesial polis abjures extra-ecclesial contact with the children of disobedience and darkness of the larger urban world. Even the Pastorals, where the division between the supraimperial reign of Christ and the rule of Caesar are harmonized, Paul is remembered abandoned in prison, and for his narrow escape from the lion’s mouth. In each case, mimicry of imperial ideas, in the words of Homi Bhabha, marks

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a difference that is its own form of disavowal. If there is here the curious fluency of a foreign tongue, it is one that does not hide its accents. By placing their listeners in an imperial situation, and adapting civic language to define religious identity, the letters had the effect of legitimating a certain form of imperial discourse and integrating listeners into their urban world. However, even as they did this, they deployed the memory of the imprisoned apostle to help bring about idiosyncratic ‘thirdspaces’ and urban practices of everyday life. Again they continued a tradition that had begun with Paul. As in the case of Paul’s earlier letters, it is important to note that the later ones written in his name should not be read simplistically either as forms of resistance or capitulation to ‘Empire’, but appropriations of Roman imperial realities and ideas that in some ways conformed to and in other way resisted prevailing ideologies and ideas. The apostles crowned on the apse of Santa Pudenziana bear the civic or triumphal crown. But the crown is, as in the case of other examples of crowns in early Christian iconography, simultaneously the crown of martyrdom. Originally, before the sixteenth-century restoration, that was dramatized by the depiction, below the image of the enthroned Christ, of the slain Lamb of Rev. 22.1–2, on a small green hill from which flowed the living waters of Paradise. What remains after the restoration retains the same doubled vision of imperial majesty and the cross. Christ is seated on Jupiter’s throne, but it is the cross that stands above him. He holds not a scepter but a book. The mosaic is a hybrid affirmation of Christ’s ­supraimperial reign. As with Colossians and Ephesians, the triumph proclaimed is with the cross.

Looking Underground Our discussion has been limited to a study of the presence and uses of imperial imagery in the contested Pauline letters and their meanings in the urban contexts of their first listeners. Alongside these letters, and even contemporary with them as we saw in the case of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Paul’s heritage was developed in different ways.12 Across the Mediterranean in a cave at Ephesus, the trace of such an alternative development is preserved on a fresco of Paul and Thecla (see Plate 8b) that has been dated to a period roughly contemporary with the apse at Santa Pudenziana.13 Here Paul preaches to Thecla (left) who watches from her window, while Thecla’s mother, Theocleia (right), opposes the apostle. It is possible that

For an overview of the many extracanonical developments of Paul and his teachings, see Pervo, 2010. 13 See Pillinger, 2000, 16–29, for the archaeological evidence and history of research and the fifth or sixth century dating; Ohm Wright, 2004, 227–42, takes up the iconography and its relation to the Paul and Thecla legend and its dispersion across the ancient world. 12

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Theocleia’s eyes have been gouged out because of that adversarial role she plays in the story in opposing Paul’s preaching because it has convinced Thecla to break off her engagement with Thamyrus and to pursue a life of continence (Acts of Paul and Thecla 7). The popularity of the Thecla story in the early church is attested by numerous iconographical depictions of her in Asia Minor and as far away as Egypt. The cave offers a glimpse of another picture of Paul in Empire. Legends, martyrological accounts, cosmic developments of Pauline thought by second-century theologians like Valentinus, Marcion’s juxtaposition of Paul’s Christ over against the just God of the Hebrew Bible – all of these represent further applications of Paul and his theology in Empire, and await a thorough investigation of the uses of imperial imagery and text for the sake of persuasion to embrace alternative accounts of Pauline belief and practice. This portrait of Paul and Thecla in the grotto at Ephesus reflects the continuing reach of our theme into apocryphal literature and tradition. And so in our ending place we find a new beginning – an invitation to look beyond the New Testament to the extended trajectories of Paul’s imperial appropriations, where the apostle’s legacy was taken up, developed and even redirected in emerging, often competing, Christian traditions.

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources Biblical References Genesis Gen. 2.24– Eph 18

116

Psalms Ps. 8.6 54, 134 Ps. 68.18 134, 135 Ps. 68.19 125 Ps.72.8 198 Ps. 110.1 47, 54, 134 Isaiah Is. 25.8 Is. 45.23 Is. 52.12–13

54 48 47

Daniel Dan. 6.21

150

Hosea Hos. 13.14

54

1 Maccabees 1 Macc. 2.60

150

LXX- Psalms Ps. 21.22

150

Matthew Mt. 5–7

32n

Mark Mk. 5.9 Mk 10.8–9 Mk 12. 35–37

6 116 134

John Jn. 3.13–14– Eph 41 Jn. 12.23–24 Jn. 14–17

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135 135 32n

Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts Acts

2.4 12.2 15.23–29 16.14–15 18.1, 26 18.2–3 18.3 22.25–29 23.27 25.21, 25

Romans Rom. 1.7 Rom. 1.16 Rom. 1.18–32 Rom. 2.1–29 Rom. 2.10 Rom. 3.17 Rom. 5.1 Rom. 5.1–11 Rom. 5.10 Rom. 6.3–5 Rom. 8.6 Rom. 8.7 Rom. 8.34 Rom. 11.28 Rom. 12.20 Rom. 13.3, 4 Rom. 14.17, 19 Rom. 15.3, 33 Rom. 15.15–16 Rom. 16.1–2 Rom. 16.3, 7 Rom. 16.20 1 1 1 1 1

Corinthians Corinthians 1–4 Cor. 1.11 Cor. 1.11–4.18 Cor. 1.26–31

134 188, 190 32n 190 188 190 37 37 37 37 122n 55 55 55 122n 122n 122n 55 56, 69, 122n 67 122n 122n 134 122n 122n 38 122n 122n 61 190 188 122n 45 188, 190 46 45

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor. Cor.

1.27–29 2.1–10 2.8 3.4 3.4, 18–22 3.10–16 3.18–22 4.8–13 4.9 4.12 7.12–16 7.25–35 7.31 9.24–27 12 12.13 12.12–27 15.25 15.27 15.20–28, 51–57 15.24 15.23–28 15.27 15.51–7 25–28

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Corinthians Cor. 1.3–11 Cor. 1.12 Cor. 1.13–14 Cor. 2.14 Cor. 2.14–16a Cor. 2.14–15 Cor. 2.14–4.18 Cor. 2.14–6.13 Cor. 2.15–16 Cor. 2.17 Cor. 3.1 Cor. 4.1–2 Cor. 4.2 Cor. 4.11 Cor. 5.17–20 Cor. 5.18–20 Cor. 6.3–10 Cor. 6.4–10 Cor. 8–9 Cor. 8.2 Cor. 8.2–3 Cor. 8.4

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45 45 38 45 45 117n 45 45 41, 45, 46 37 188 188 38 151 57, 60 90 57 134 53, 134 54, 134 54 54 54, 134 54 134

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Cor. 8.6 Cor. 8.9 cor. 8.10 Cor. 8.13–15 Cor. 8.14 Cor. 8.18 Cor. 8.22 Cor. 9.8 Cor. 9.11–12 Cor. 9.14 Cor. 9.15 Cor. 10–12 Cor. 10.3–5 Cor. 10.10 Cor. 11.4 Cor. 11.7–10, 23–29 Cor. 11.12 Cor. 11.22–29 Cor. 11.23

44 44 44 41 69n 44, 45, 46 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 46 69 46 44 46 59, 60 60 60 59, 61

Ephesians Eph. 1.2 Eph. 1.3–14 Eph. 1.4 Eph. 1.5–6 Eph. 1.9 Eph. 1.10 Eph. 1.19 Eph. 1.20–23 Eph. 1.22–23 Eph. 1.21 Eph. 2.2 Eph 2.3 Eph. 2.6 Eph. 2. 8–9 Eph. 2.11 Eph. 2. 11–19 Eph. 2.11–20 Eph. 2.11–21 Eph. 2.11–22 Eph. 2.12 Eph. 2.13–15

Galatians Gal. 2.8 Gal. 2.10 Gal. 3.1 Gal. 3.27–28 Gal. 3:28

61 61 61 60 60 60 60 60 61 61 61 44n 152 44 44 44 44 46n 38 20n 59 27, 51 49 90, 94 122n 107, 107n 116 122 120, 121 121 116 134 136 105n, 125 125 139n 125 122 120, 121 120 120 117 90 121 137

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Eph. 2.14 Eph. 2.14–18 Eph 2.15 Eph. 2.16 Eph. 2.17 Eph. 2.19 Eph. 2.23 Eph. 3.3–4, 9 Eph. 3. 5–6 Eph. 3.14 Eph. 4.1 Eph. 4.1–3 Eph. 4.1–6.20 Eph. 4.3 Eph. 4.3–6 Eph. 4.8 Eph. 4.8–9 Eph. 4.9 Eph. 4.11–12 Eph. 4.15–16 Eph. 4.17–19 Eph. 4.19 Eph. 4.28 Eph. 5.4 Eph. 5.5 Eph. 5.6–7 Eph. 5.6–9 Eph. 5.7 Eph. 5.18 Eph. 5.21–6.9 Eph. 5.22–26 Eph. 5. 31 Eph. 5.32 Eph. 6.10–17 Eph. 6.11–17 Eph. 6.12 Eph. 6.13 Eph. 6.13–17 Eph. 6.14–17 Eph 6.15 Eph. 6.19 Eph. 6.20 Eph. 6.23 Philippians Phil. 1.12 Phil. 1.27–30 Phil. 2.3 Phil. 2.6–11

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

118, 122n 123, 124 122n, 125 122, 122n 122, 122n 98, 121, 138, 138n 134 120 120 116 107 120 138 122n 115, 116 134, 138, 139n 142 121 136 116 121 139n 141 139 139 141 126n 138 139 14 141 116 121, 137n 121 136, 138 125 125 136 125 122n 120 47, 106, 121 122n 50 151 50 47, 48n

Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil.

2.7 2.8 2.9 2.9–11 2.10–11 2.25 3.6–11 3.12–16 3.20–21 3.21 4.2, 7 4.8 4.21

239

47 47 47 49 54 152 47 151 50 50 50 170 47

Colossians Col. 1.4 99n Col. 1.6 99n Col. 1.9 83 Col. 1.13 91 Col. 1.15 69n, 125 Col. 1.15–20 69 Col. 1.16 69 Col. 1.17 83 Col. 1.18, 24 68 Col. 1.19; 2.9 82 Col. 1.20 70, 125 Col. 1.21 90 Col. 1.21–2 91 Col. 1.22 69, 70 Col. 1.24 65 Col. 2.8 67 Col. 2.8f 139n Col. 2.8–13 67 Col. 2.8–23 65 Col. 2.20 91 Col. 2.10 68 Col. 2.11–13 66 Col. 2.12 66 Col. 2.13 67 Col. 2.14 68 Col. 2.14–15 101 Col. 2.15– Col 13 67, 69, 70, 124, 125 Col. 2.16 67 Col. 2.20 66, 69n, 93, 125 Col. 2.20–22 68 Col. 3.1 91 Col. 3.1–17 27 Col. 3.2 68 Col. 3.3 67

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Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. Col. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

3.5 66 3.5–7 93 3.5–11 90 3.9–10 68 3.10 66 3.11 63, 83, 87, 89, 90, 93n,  94, 101, 138 3.12–4.6 90 3.12–17 68 3.13–14 90 3.14 67, 91 3.15 83 3.16 66 3.18–4.1 14, 66, 68 3.18–19 67 3.18 68 3.19 68 3. 20–21 67 3.22 67 4.1 66 4.15 141, 188 4.16 104 4.18 47, 63

Thessalonians Thess. 2.9 Thess. 4.11–12 Thess. 4.15–17 Thess. 4.16 Thess. 4.17 Thess. 5.3 Thess. 5.8 Thess. 5.8–9 Thess. 5.9

2 Thessalonians 2 Thess. 2.8 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Timothy Tim. 1.1 Tim. 1.2 Tim. 1.3 Tim. 1.4 Tim. 1.5, 19 Tim. 1.6 Tim. 1.7 Tim. 1.9 Tim. 1.10 Tim. 1.11

9780567287632_txt_print.indd 240

37 37 156 53 54 52, 54 53 54, 55 53 153, 156 152, 157, 170n 150, 157, 180 147, 166 146, 165, 174, 178 170 174, 178 174 174, 178 147, 174 179

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim.

1.13–14, 15 1.15 1.16 1.16–17 1.18 2.1–2 2.1–7 2.2 2.5 2.8–15 2.9–11 2.9,15 2.11 2.10 2.13–15 2.15 3.1 3.1–12 3.2 3.4 14, 3.5 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.9, 12–13 3.14–15 3.15 3.16 4.1 4.1–3 4.1–5 4.2 4.3 4.6 4.7 4.7–8 4.9 4.12 4.14 4.15 5.1–5, 17 5.3–16 5.4 5.9–15 5.11–12 5. 13 5.14 5.15 5.16

166 179 47, 147 157 150, 152, 179 166, 171 161, 163 170n 157, 161, 163 165 190 170n 172, 177 170n 191 164, 195 170, 179 165 170n, 174 170n, 172, 177 99, 177 166 170n 170 195 165 179 170n 174, 179 166 164 174, 176 148, 174 179 152, 174, 178 170n 179 170 179 194 165 176, 178 170n 176 175 176, 178 188 191 178

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim.

5.17 6.1–2 6.3 6.3, 5, 6, 11 6.4 6.5 6.6–10, 17–19 6.11 6.12 6.14 6.14–15 6.15–16 6.20

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Timothy Tim. 1.2 Tim. 1.3 Tim. 1.5 Tim. 1.8 Tim. 1.8–12 Tim. 1.10 Tim. 1.11 Tim. 1.12 Tim. 1.13 Tim. 1.14 Tim. 1.15 Tim. 1.16 Tim. 1.17 Tim. 2.1 Tim. 2.2 Tim. 2.4 Tim. 2.5 Tim. 2.8 Tim. 2.8–9 Tim. 2.8–13 Tim. 2.11 Tim. 2.12 Tim. 2.14 Tim. 2.16 Tim. 2.16–17 Tim. 2.17 Tim. 2.20–21 Tim. 2.22 Tim. 2.23 Tim. 2.24 Tim. 2.24–25 Tim. 3.2 Tim. 3.4 Tim. 3.5

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165 14, 165 147, 179 170n 174 174, 175 176 170 152 153 154, 156 157 147, 174 150, 157 170 150, 180 64n 148 153 148 147 147 147 148, 149 146, 150 150 180 150 152 152 148 146 148 179 170n 148, 174 170n, 174 174 148, 150 165 170 174 174 179 174 174 175

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim.

3.6 3.6 3.7 3.10 3.10–11 3.10–12 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.15 3.16 4.1 4.1, 8 4.3 4.4 4.6–8 4.7–8 4.8 4.11 4.13 4.14 4.14, 16 4.16–17 4.19–21

241

174 148 174 64n 148 148 148 148, 170n 148 180 170 157 153 147 178 151 151 154, 170 150 149 150 150 150 150

Titus Tit. 1.3 147, 152, 157 Tit. 1.4 150, 157, 180 Tit. 1.5–9 165 Tit. 1.6–7 170 Tit. 1.7 176 Tit. 1.8 170, 170n Tit. 1.9 147 Tit. 1.10 174 Tit. 1.10–11 166 Tit.1.11 148, 164, 174, 176, 179 Tit. 1.13, 14 147, 179 Tit. 1.14 175 Tit. 1.15 174 Tit. 2.1 147 Tit. 2.2 147, 170n Tit. 2.3 178 Tit. 2.3–10 14, 165 Tit. 2.4 170n Tit. 2.5 166, 170n Tit. 2.6 170n Tit. 2. 7 170n, 179 Tit. 2.9 172 Tit. 2.11 153, 156

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Tit. Tit. Tit. Tit. Tit. Tit. Tit.

Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

2.12 2.13 3.1 3.3–7 3.4, 6 3.8 3.9

Philemon Phlm. 2

170, 170n 153, 154, 156, 157 166, 171 166 157 179 174, 178 141, 152

Hebrews Heb. 1.13 Heb 2.8

134 134

Revelation Rev. 2.4–6, 14–15 Rev. 2.9 Rev. 2.20 Rev. 3.14–22 Rev. 4.7 Rev. 5.6 Rev. 7.13–14 Rev. 12 Rev. 18.11–13 Rev. 19.11–16 Rev. 22.1–2

164 124 190 106 198 141 141 19n 15 141 201

Citations Classical Aelius Aristides Or. 23 108n 23.28 173n 23.31 9 117n 23.31, 40, 48 173n 23.40 173n 23.57–58 173n 23.76–78 71n 23.78 110 24 108n 24.7–8, 32–35 172 24.47 173n 24.48 172 26 108n 26.1–5 72n

9780567287632_txt_print.indd 242

26.69 171 26.102 94 27 108n 27.40–41 117n 34.4 173n 37.27 172 38.11 109 38.43 109 39 109 39.3 109 39.8 109 41.11 110 Aristotle Pol. 3 1277 24–25 177n 5.2.3–4 176 Augustus RG. or Res. Ges. Div. Aug 4.25–6.35 86 5.26 86 Calpurnius Siculus Calp. Ecl. 1.46, 63. 4.109, 112. 4.142

84n 84n 74

Eins. 2.15–35. 84 Cassius Dio Dio 44.2.4 172n 67.14.1–2 126 Cicero Ad Her. 3.11.19–25.27 179n

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

De Or. 2.87.358. 106n 3.52.202 29n 3.543–174–53.205 179n Orat. 17.55–64 179n 20.70–4 179n 40.139 29n Curtius Rufus History 10.9.1–4 85n

243

57.3 176n 61.13–14 176n 66.23 178 73–84 159n 76.7 176n Dionysius Halicarnassensis Ant. Rom. 2.181 172n 2.74.1 172n 6.58.3 176n Comp. 18.2–5 178

Demetrius Euripides Eloc. 7, 9 265

179n 32n

IA

56

Hesiod Dio Chrysostomus Or. 1.6 172n 1.39–48, 73–84 159n 2.63–78 159n 4.27–35 159n 24 108n 24.24 117n 26.63–71 171 26.63–78 159n 32 108n 32.37 172n 34 108n 34.19 139 36.21 171 38.11 173n 38.15 172 38.11, 15, 48 173n 38–41 108n 39.2 173n 39.8 173n 40.35 71n 41.8 173n 41.9 118 48.14 117n 48.2 172n 48.6 173n

9780567287632_txt_print.indd 243

Theog. ll. 664–735

72n

Juvenal Sat. 6.448–56 190 9.22–38, 70–72 175n Livy Epit. 9.40 10.46 34.10 35.10 37.57

135n 135n 135n 135n 135n

Menander Synaristosai [Women at Lunch]

177

Lucan Civil War 1.57–63 (Col pg 19)

75

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

Cist. 1.1–2, 1–148 1.3, 148

Lucian Fug. 18 19

175n 175n

Pliny (the Elder)

Par. 56

175n

HN 3.136

Rh. Pr 23

175n 175n

Musonius Rufus 3

177n

Nero 76

Nicolaus Prog. Pastorals 11

149n

Oxyrhynchus 431 (Pastorals 47)

175n

Perictione On the Harmony of Women l. 11–45 l. 5

177n 177n

Ep. 10.96 10.97

Plutarch

Satyricon 110.6–113.4 188n

Ad princ. inerud. 5. 781f–782a

Phyntis

Coni. Praec. 139D 142E 145E

Plautus

9780567287632_txt_print.indd 244

177n

163n 163n

Pan. 1.3–5 159n 2.3 185 3.2 185 5.2–9 159n 8.1–2 159n 21 185 26.3 185 27.1 185 29.2 185 39.5 186 53.1 185 55.5 1n 57.5 185 67.1 185 80.4 159n 83.7–8 181 87.1 185 87.3 185 89.2 185, 186 94.4 185

Petronius

On Women’s Moderation l. 19–26

86

Pliny (The Younger)

Tim. 55

Nero 31

177n 177n

71n 172 116n 177n

De fort. Rom. 2.316e–317c 71n

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

De garr. 505A–F 178n 506B–508B 178n 506C–D 179n De praec. Ger. Re 800F 824D De se ipsum 539A

Mund. 5 396a 32–6 401a 11 7 401a 29–401b 7

245

71n 85n

Phgn. 810a14–814b8 58n 94, 172 108 176n

Pseudo-Heraclitus 4.1.4

139n

Quintilian

Mor. 800F 94 824C–D 173n

Inst. 4.2.63–5 29n 6.2.28–32 31n 6.29–36 29n 8.3.62–72 29n 8.3.71 31n 9.1.27 29n 9.2.40 29n 11.1–3 179n 12.1–2 179n

Pollux

Seneca

Onom. 1.53.6–7 117n 1.150–54 91n, 117n 1.151.1–2 117n 1.151.2 118n 1.151.3, 5 117n 1.154.2 117n 4.1.148.1–6 175n 4.1.151.1–5 177n 4.29.5–6 117n 4.30.1 117n 8.151–2 116n 8.151.1–5 177 8.152.1 91n

Apocol. 4

Galb 4 1054E

85n

Lyc. 3.1 19.1, 3

172n 177n

75

Clem. 1.1.2 71n, 74n 1.3.3–4 71n 1.3.4 85n 1.5.1 85n 1.13.4 85n 2.2.1–2 85n Ep. 40.2–3 179n Suetonius

Porphyry Marc. 15 21 Pseudo-Aristotle

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Dom. 12.2 139n 139n

126

Terence Hecyra 96 177n 104–10 177n

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Index of Biblical and Ancient Sources

Theophrastus Char. 3 7 7.3–7

177n 177n 178n

21.6–8 172 50.3, 5 172 61.1 171 61.1, 2 172 62.2 172n 63.3 172n 64.1 172n

Virgil Aen. 6.847–53 85–6 8.626–731 30

Acts of Paul (and Thecla) 143n, 192, 201 7 147 Clement of Alexandria

Xenophon Oec. 7.4–10 177n 7.14, 27, 41 177n 10.10–13 177n

Exhort. 10.97

4n, 5n

Paed. 2.7 177n 2.7.58.1–2 179n

Jewish Strom. 32.2, 4, 8

Philo Dec. 178 (Col pg 15)

Ignatius of Antioch 71n

Fug. 10 (Col pg 15)

71n

Spec. Leg. 2.188–92 (Col pg 15) 8; 15–19 (Col pg 15)

71n 71n

Leg. Gai. 145

86n

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Smyrn. 1.2 13.2

90 190

Polycarp

Christian 1 Clem 1.2, 9 1.3 3.2

177n

172n 172 173n, 176n

Phil143n 11.1–4 190 Tertullian De Bapt. 17

143n

De Exhor. Cast. 9.1

189n

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Index of subjects

Page references in italics denote a figure 1 Clement 171–2 accommodation 193–4 acculturation 193–4 Acts of Paul and Thecla 147, 192, 201–2 Adragathos 97, 98 adventus 152–7 Aelius Aristides 71–2, 94, 108, 110 ‘Oration to Athena’ 172 ‘Rhodian Oration Concerning Concord’ 172 Roman Oration 71, 171 Agrippina Minor (empress) 81, 85, 95–6, 97; Plates 4a and 4b Altar of Pergamon 19, 72, 73 Alexander the coppersmith 150 ancient Near Eastern iconography 16, 18–20 ancient Near Eastern myths 19 ‘anti-association language’ 173 Antoninus Pius (emperor) 71 Aphrodisias and Augustus 51–2, 80; Plates 3a and 3b and cult of the emperor 77–80, 79 and ethnic diversity 87, 88 and fertility 85 and homonoia 110 and military subjugation 88–9, 89, 92 and public humiliation 100 and representations of family 96–7, 97 and vice 140 Aphrodite see Venus Apollo 81

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Apollonia 86–7 apotheosis 47 Ara Pacis Augustae 84, 84, 86 Arch of Beneventum 161, 162, 184 Arch of Constantine 135, 136 Arch of Titus 16, 135; Plate 5a ‘archaeological’ approach 23 archaeology 17 Armenia 88, 89 ‘art worlds’ 23 Artemis 105, 129, 158 assimilation 193–4 athletic games 151–2 Augusteum, the 52, 86 Augustus (emperor) see also Augusteum; Ara Pacis Augustae; Plates 3a and 3b and Aphrodisias 51–2, 77–8, 80, 85 and coinage 81 and cult of the emperor 51–2, 73, 77, 80–2, 153 domestic laws of 94 and Gemma Augustea 73 and households 94 monuments to 51–2, 75, 77, 82, 86 and Res Gestae 52, 86 and tropaeum Alpium 75, 86 and victories 75, 78, 80, 85–7 barbarians 89–90 benefaction 12–13, 57–61, 107, 122, 190 ‘Bildsprache’ 25–6, 31 body politic 57–9, 115, 122 Book of Acts, the 189 Book of Revelation, the 19, 106, 141, 163

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Index of subjects

bricolage 194 Britannia 88, 89 bürgerliches Christentum 144–6 Calpurnius Siculus 84–5 Campus Martius 86 carnivalesque, the 47, 135–6 Cassius Dio 126 de Certeau, Michel 33, 39–40, 51, 145, 193–4 and ‘making do’ 33, 35, 39 and tactics 39 children, portrayals of 182–8, 184, 185, 187 Christianity 1, 197–201 see also bürgerliches Christentum and imagery 3–6, 15 and persecution 11 Christological monotheism 82, 143, 157–61, 193 Claudius (emperor) 79, 80, 87–8, 89, 96, 97; Plate 4b Clement of Alexandria 4–5 clipeus virtutis 131–2 coinage 9–10, 48, 52 and children 183 and Domitian 158 and family 95–6, 183 Flavian imperial 113–15, 130–1 and Hadrian 155 and homonoia 111–13, 111 and imperial adventus 154–5 and imperial cult 80–1, 158, 161–2 and Jewish War 130–2 and peace 129–30 of Pergamon 152 and Pompeia Plotina 181, 182 and Sabina (empress) 182, 183 and Trajan 160, 182–3 and Vespasian 129–30 and victory 16, 130–2 and women 180–1, 182–3 and Zeus 158, 160 Colossians 27, 33, 63, 199–200 and baptism 66–8 and barbarians 90–1 Christ Hymn of 69 and Christological monotheism 82 and cosmic political theology 82

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and cosmopolitanism with love 89–91 and counter-memory 99–101 and crucifixion, the 69, 90, 100, 200 and ethnic diversity 92–3 and fertility/abundance 83–5 and gender roles 94 Household Rule of 66–7, 68, 94–5, 97–8, 101 and imperial language 67–71, 99 and imprisonment 63–7 and pacification 83 and political language 69–70, 90–1 and public humiliation 100–1 and ritual 66–7 and Scythians 90–1 and slavery 101 and ‘sly civility’ 99 and social memory 64–6 and suffering 64–5 and vertical cosmic order 67–8 and victory 68–70, 100–1, 200 Column of Trajan 48, 49, 154, 155 ‘conceptual blending’ 28 concord 94–8, 112–15, 118, 120–2, 171–2 see also homonoia; peace concordia 113–14, 129 Concordia 95, 114–15, 181 Constantine (emperor) 197–8 constellations 18–19 cosmic political theology 71–82 cosmopolitanism with love 89–91, 138 ‘cosmopolitanism with power’ 49, 85–7 counter-memory 99–101, 146–7, 180 Court of the Gentiles 118 crucifixion 47, 51, 56, 100, 200 see also crucifixion; Colossians cult of the emperor 36, 77, 158, 163 see also imperial cult ‘cultural diamond’ 23 demographics 13–14, 92 De Mundo (pseudo-Aristotle) 71 Dio of Prusa 94, 108–10, 138–9, 172, 178 and cosmic harmony 71 and homonoia 116, 118

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Index of subjects

Oration to Nicomedia and Nicaea 108, 171 and Trajan 158–9 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 178 discord 173–9 DisemmiNation 121–2 Documents and Images for the Study of Paul (Elliott and Reasoner) 16 Domitia (empress) 114, 115, 127, 129 Domitian (emperor) 105, 115, 126–7, 129–31, 158 and athletic games 151, 158 and coinage 9, 111, 114, 158 Drusilla (sister of Nero) 95 Drusus (son of Germanicus) 87, 95 ekphrasis 28–30, 33, 45–6, 149 see also prosopopoeia emperor, the 9–10, 49 empire 7–13 see also Roman Empire entangled history 38–9 Epaphras 83 Ephesus 127, 151, 162–3, 201–2 Ephesians 33, 103–4 and architectural imagery 117–18 and benefaction 107, 122 and body politic, the 115–16, 121, 136 and carnivalesque, the 135, 141 and Christ, death of 124–5, 127, 134–5, 141, 200 and ‘dividing wall of hostility, the’ 118–21, 137 and ethnocentrism 119, 122–3, 139 and Haustafel 116, 121 and heterotopia 103–4, 137–8, 140 and homonoia 115–18, 121 and imperial language 103, 107, 117, 126–7, 141–2 and imprisonment 106–7 and Jewish terms 121–2 and language of mystery 120–1 and military language 125, 136 and mimicry 104, 141–2 and outsiders 138–9 and peace 117–18, 121–7, 137 and political language 108, 115–18, 120–1

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249

and reconciliation 106–7, 116, 121 and spaces 140–1 as ‘supraimperial’ 142 and ‘third race’ 103–4, 137–8 and ‘thirdspace’ 103–4, 137–8, 140–1 and victory imagery 122, 125, 134–5, 136, 200 and unity 112, 115–16, 120–1, 137–8 ‘epigraphic culture’ 57, 167–8 eschatology 51–4, 198 ethnic diversity 60, 85–7, 92–3, 119 external narrative 24–5, 29 Eumenes II (king) 72 Eunice (mother of Timothy) 150, 180, 194 Euripedes Iphigenia in Aulis 56 Eusebius of Caesarea 197–8, 199 family, portrayals of 94–9, 110, 165, 171, 179–88 ‘fellowship of service’ 59–60 fertility 81, 83–5, 96, 183, 185 firstspace 140 fiscus judaicus 125 Flavia Julia (daughter of Titus) 109, 111 Flavian dynasty 113–15, 127–8 and coinage 113–15, 130–1 and Jews 125–6 and military victory 130–1, 133–4, 200 and peace 126–7, 130, 137 Forum of Peace 135 Fortuna 85, 96 Freiburg School, The 17–19, 23 funerary monuments 97, 98, 124, 165, 187 see also grave monuments Gemma Augustea 73, 74, 101 Gentiles 60, 118–20 George, Saint 19 Germanicus (son of Tiberius) 79, 80, 87, 96 global order 76 Gospel of John 19, 135 grave monuments 10, 170–1, 186,

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Index of subjects

187, 191 see also funerary monuments Great Altar of Pergamon 19, 72, 73 Hadrian (emperor) 153–5, 157, 160–1, 162, 183–4 Haustafeln, the 14, 98, 116, 121, 165 see also household codes Hebrew Bible, the 47, 55, 157, 202 and Ephesians 122, 134, 136 interpretation of 16–17 and language 3, 5 and Paul, Saint 40 Hermogenes 30, 149 heterotopia 103, 137–8, 140, 195 Hierapolis 80–1, 92–3, 112, 124 history, traditional 99 see also entangled history homonoia 91, 108–12, 115–17, 138–9, 171–2 honorific culture 4, 11, 107, 151, 166–73 honour 12, 47, 57–9, 167 honour codes 12, 59 household of God 146, 164–5, 179–80, 194 household codes 68, 95, 98, 165 see also Haustafeln household rules 66–7, 68, 94–9, 101, 172 see also Haustafeln; household codes households 13–14, 94–9, 141, 164–5, 187–8 see also household rules imperial 180–2 government of 180 and men 177 housing 13–14 hybridity 11, 33, 38–9, 61, 144, 195 Hymenaeus 150 iconographic exegesis 16 iconography 9–11, 49, 54, 57 study of 16–27, 198–9 and semiotics 20–1 Ignatius 190 Iphigenia in Aulis (Euripedes) 56 Imagines (Philostratus) 30 imperial cult 5–6, 12, 15 see also cult of the emperor

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and Pastoral Epistles, the 144–5, 153, 158–64, 193 imperial family, the 94–6, 110, 165, 180–1, 183 imperial language 14, 23, 199 and Colossians 67–71, 99 and Ephesians 103, 107, 117, 126–7, 141–2 and Pastoral Epistles, the 144–5, 154, 163–4 Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph (Elsner) 198 ‘imperial situation’ 14–15, 25, 33, 53, 199, 201 and Colossians 63, 65, 83, 94, 98–9 and Ephesians 103–4, 112, 114, 120, 124–5 and Pastoral Epistles 151–4, 159, 164 imperial virtues 98, 169 imprisonment 3, 38, 63–6, 106, 146, 148 internal narrative 24–5 Iphigenia in Aulis (Euripedes) 56 Jerusalem Collection 59–60 Jewish War, the 16, 103, 120, 122–3, 135 and coinage 130–2 Jews 105, 118–20, 123–4, 125–6 ‘Jezebel’ 190 John 124, 135, 190 ‘Judaizers’ 105, 119 Julia (sister of Nero) 95 Julia Severa 123–4 Julius Zoilus, tomb of 170–1; Plate 5b Jupiter 72–3, 75, 80, 158–61 Justin Martyr 4–6 Juvenal 175, 190 ‘kaleidoscopic period eye’ 26 see also ‘period eye, the’ Korumbus 92 language 3–4, 40, 44–7 see also ekphrasis; imperial language of civic virtues 170 of civil concord 120–1

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251

and discord 173 Jewish 121–2 military 53–4, 152, 200 in Philippians 50 political 54–5, 69–70, 117 sectarian 138 Language of Images in Roman Art, The (Hölscher) 25 Laodicea 80, 82, 112, 129, 141 Law, the 118–19 Lexicon of Pollux 115, 117 see also Pollux, Julius Livia (empress) 58, 58, 111 Livy 135 Lois (grandmother of Timothy) 150, 180, 194 Longinus 30, 116 Lucian 175–6 Professor of Public Speaking 175 Lucan 75 Lucius Verus 47; Plate 1

Nero 10, 74–6, 80–1, 136; Plate 4a and Aphrodisias 78, 87–8, 89, 96 and coinage 80–1 and family 95–6 and fertility 84–5 Nerva (emperor) 159 New Testament and empire 8–11, 35, 199 imagery in 16–17, 199 language in 3–6, 199 Nicaea 108–9 Nicomedia 108 Nympha, Saint 94, 141

‘making do’ 39, 46 Marcella (wife of Porphyry) 139 Marciana (sister of Trajan) 183, 184 Marcion 202 Marcus Aurelius 135, 136 Matidia (niece of Trajan) 183, 184 ‘matrix of sensibility, the’ 25, 29 Menander: Synaristosai 177; Plate 6b men (god) 81–2 men, portrayals of 177–9 military language 46, 53–5, 125, 152, 200 military monuments 52, 74–6, 135 see also Aphrodisias military victories 41, 85–9, 130–3, 135 see also military monuments and coinage 9, 130–2 and Jesus, death of 68 mimicry 33, 104, 141–2, 200–1 Minucius Felix 5–6 monuments 2, 41, 74, 87, 161, 184 see also funerary monuments; grave monuments; military monuments Musonius Rufus 190

Panegyric 74 Panegyric (Pliny the Younger) 1, 158–9, 164, 181 parasitic philosopher, the 173–5, 180 Pastoral Epistles, the 143–5, 194–5 and accommodation 193–4 and acculturation 193–4 and adventus 152–7 and ‘anti-association language’ 173 and assimilation 193–4 and athlete metaphor 151–2 and autobiographical statements 146–7 and bürgerliches Christentum 144 and Christological monotheism 143, 158, 161, 183, 193 and Christology 157–8 and concord 171–2, 180 and counter-memory 146–7, 180 and deliberative rhetoric 149 and discord 173–9 and ekphrasis 33, 149 and epiphany 152–4 and family, the 150, 165, 179–88 and heterotopia 195 and honorific culture 166–70, 172–3

narrative conversation 24–5, 29

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Onomastikon (Pollux) 175 ‘Oration to Athena’ (Aelius Aristides) 172 Oration to Nicomedia and Nicaea (Dio of Prusa) 108 Origen 197, 199 Oxyrhynchus 175

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and household, the 164–6, 172, 177, 179–80, 200 household codes of 165, 172 ‘household of God’ 146, 164, 165, 180–1, 194 and imperial cult 144, 145, 158–64, 193 and imperial language 144–5, 153, 163–4 language of 149 and memory 146–51, 201 and men 177–8 and persuasion 145, 174 and philophronesis 150 and rhetoric 149, 179 and Roman Empire, the 145, 164, 192–5 and soldier metaphor 151–2 and suffering 32, 148–9, 200 and ‘thirdspace’ 144, 194, 201 and women 147–8, 164–7, 175–7, 178, 188–92 ‘Paul and Empire’ 35–9 Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Horsely) 8 Pauline letters see also Colossians and Ephesians and Pastoral Epistles, the authorship of 6–7, 32 and ekphrasis 31 and imagery 3–4, 6, 11, 14 and semiotics 20–1, 25 pax 113–14, 121, 129 see also peace peace 55–7, 69–70, 122–7, 129–30 see also Ara Pacis Augustae; pax Pergamon 152, 155, 159, 159–60, 160, 162–3 Great Altar of 19, 72, 73 ‘period eye, the’ 25, 27 see also ‘kaleidoscopic period eye’ Philemon 141 Philetus 150 Philippians 48–51 Philo 71 ‘philophronesis’ 150 Phygelus 149 pictorial language 3, 22, 25 Pilate 150

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Plancia Magna 189 Pliny the Elder 86 Pliny the Younger Panegyric 1, 158–9, 164, 181, and Trajan 1–2, 98, 158–9, 163–4, 181, 185 Plutarch 71, 94, 190 Precepts of Statecraft 108 political imagery 2–3, 40, 54, 115 political language 45–6, 50, 54–5 and Colossians 69–70, 90–1 and Ephesians 107–8, 115, 117–18, 120–1, 135 Pollux, Julius 115, 117, 177 Onomastikon 115, 117, 175 Polycarp 190 Pompeia Plotina (empress) 181–2 Pompeii 13, 56, 76, 177; Plate 6b Poppaea (empress) 95 Porphyry 139 postcolonialism 38–9, 104, 141 see also DisemmiNation Precepts of Statecraft (Plutarch) 108 Procope (wife of Publius Aelius Pompeius) 186 Professor of Public Speaking (Lucian) 175 progymnasmata 29 Progymnasmata (Theon) 29–30, 32 propaganda 9–10, 19, 126–7 and Augustus (emperor) 52 and coinage 52, 113, 129 and Trajan (emperor) 185 prosopopoeia 31–3 pseudo-Aristotle De Mundo 71 Publius Aelius Pompeius 186, 186 Pyrrhon, Euthius 110, 111 Quintilian 30–1, 116 reconciliation 46, 55–7, 70, 82, 99 see also homonoia ‘regulated speech discourse, the’ 178–9 re-imagination 21 re-presentation 18, 20 Res Gestae 52, 86 rhetography 28–9

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rhetology 28 Rhetor, Nicolaus 30 rhetoric 44–7, 149, 177–8 ‘rhetorical situation’ 14n. 53, 15, 65 ‘Rhodian Oration Concerning Concord’ (Aelius Aristides) 172 Roman Empire 2, 7–15, 76, 108, 201 see also ‘Paul and Empire’ Roman imperial art 20–1, 77 Roman Oration (Aelius Aristides) 71, 171 Roman political virtues 21 Roman power 2–3, 10–12, 37–8, 107–8 Romanization 2 Sabina (empress) 182, 183 sacrifice 44–5, 112 see also self-sacrifice Santa Pudenziana 34, 197–9, 201; Plate 8a ‘scopic regime’ 24 Scythia 90 Scythians, the 89–90 secondspace 140 self-construction 64–5 self-sacrifice 56–7 ‘semiotic disturbance’ 113 semiotic interpretation 18, 20–2 Semiotic Square, the 20 Seneca 71, 74–5, 85, 190 Smyrna 111–12, 124, 152, 160 social constructivism 22–3, 27 social memory 64–6, 192 Society of Biblical Literature 8, 16 socio-economic order 12–14, 26 ‘socio-rhetorical exegesis’ 27 spectator culture 3 ‘strategy’ 39 Suetonius 126 Synaristosai (Menander) 177; Plate 6b Tarsus 138 Temple of Apollo Sosianus 41, 42, 100 Temple of Augustus 86 Temple of Mars Ultor 185 Temple Mount 118 Temple of Peace 135 Temple of Roma and Augustus 52, 86

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Temple of the Divine Julius and Roma 127, 127 Temple of the Sebastoi 127–9, 127, 128, 129 158, 162–3 Temple of Zeus Philios and Trajan 159–60, 159, 162–3 temples 2, 52, 162 Tertullian 5, 6 theatre 175 Thecla, Saint 34, 201–2; Plate 8b Theocleia (mother of Thecla) 201–2; Plate 8b Theon 29–30, 32 Progymnasmata 29 ‘thirdspace’ 103–4, 137–8, 140–1, 144, 194 Tiberius 73, 81, 82, 87, 101 Timothy 147–50, 152, 180 Titus 127, 129–30, 147–8, 150 see also Arch of Titus Arch of Titus 16, 135, Plate 5a and Colosseum, the 135 and Jewish Temple, the 118 statues of 127, 129, 132, 163 Trajan 143 and Beventum Arch, the 161, 162, 184–5, 185 and Christians 163 and coinage 160, 160 and Column of Trajan, the 48, 49, 154, 155 and families 181–5 and imperial cult, the 158–61 and marriage 181–3 and taxation 183 and Traianeum of Pergamon, the 159–60, 159, 162–3 triumph 41–7, 54–5, 68–70, 135 tropaeum Alpium 75, 75, 86 urban culture 2–4 see also visual culture ‘utopian declaration’ 49, 90, 94 Venus 130, 182 ‘Vernichtungskrieg’ 53 Vespasian 127, 129–30, 132, 132, 135 Vesta 181, 182 viewers 26

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Virgil 30, 198 ‘visible invisible, the’ 23 visual culture 2–4, 22–7 see also Roman imperial art ‘visual exegesis’ 27 visual literacy 20–1

women, life of 188–92 women, portrayals of 165, 175–8, 186, 188–92, 197 and D’Angelo, Rosemary 167 imperial 180–3 wrath 53, 55–6

War on Terror 11, 19

Zeus 19, 72–4, 73, 158–60

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Index of Names

Page references in italics denote a figure Alexander, Victoria 23 Alföldy, Géza 57 Ando, Clifford 34, 37, 44, 70, 100 Arnold, Clinton 203 Ascough, Richard 168, 170 Assmann, Jan 18 Aune, David 30, 32 Bakke, Odd Magne 118, 173 Balch, David 13, 19, 27, 56, 165 Banks, Marcus 24, 28 Barclay, John 193 Barrett, J. C. 8 Bash, Anthony 46 Bassler, Jouette M. 173, 188 Batten, Alicia 169 Baxandall, Michael 25 Becker, Howard 23 Berger, John 24, 26 Best, Ernest 121 Bhabha, Homi 33, 99, 121–2, 141, 200 Billings, Bradly S. 13 Bitzer, Lloyd 15 Blumenfeld, Bruno 36–7 Bonatz, Dominik 17 Boyarin, Daniel 137 Boyle, A. J. 113 Breytenbach, Cilliers 46, 91, 68, 69, 70, 106 Broadbent, Ralph 144 Burrus, Virginia 147 Bush, George W. 11 Cadwallader, Alan 93 Cameron, Averil 2, 3 Canavan, Rosemary 27 Carr, Wesley 68, 69, 114

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de Certeau, Michel 33, 39–40, 51, 145, 193–4 Clarke, John 26 Collins, Raymond 145 Connerton, Paul 65–6 Conzelmann, Hans 144 Cooper, Kate 147, 177 Corrigan, Philip 23 Crossan, John Dominic 16 Crouch, James 94 D’Ambra, Mary R. 10, 96, 180, D’Angelo, Rosemary 164, 167 Danker, Frederick W. 166 Dawes, Gregory 116 Deissmann, Adolf 36, 144 Demas 150 Dibelius, Martin 144–5, 192 Dixon, Susan 186 Donelson, Lewis R. 190 Elliott, Neil 16, 144, 145 Elsen-Novák, Gabrielle 19 Elsner, Jaś 2, 198 Eschner, Christina 53, 55–6 Esler, Philip 64, 151 Ewald, Björn Christian 171 Fantin, Joseph 115 Fatum, Lone 173 Faust, Eberhard 125–6 Fears, J. Rufus 158, 161 Foucault, Michel 23, 99, 100, 101, 103, 137, 140, 195 Friesen, Steven 59, 129, 158 Galinsky, Karl 142, 199

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Index of Names

Geertz, Clifford 25 Gehring, Richard 13 von Gemünden, Petra 19 Georgi, Dieter 8, 36 Gill, Malcolm 145, 161, 163 Gleason, Maude 177 Gombis, Timothy L. 117, 123, 127 Gordon, Richard 10 Grabar, André 197–8 Greimas, A. J. 20–1 Hafemann, Scott 41, 45, 47, 69 Hahn, Ferdinand 46 Halbwachs, Maurice 64 Hanson, A. T. 144 Harding, Mark 149, 150 Harland, Philip 92, 173 Harrison, James 52 Heemstra, Martin 126 Heinz, Marlies 17 Hengel, Martin 46 Hölscher, Tonio 21, 25–6, 28, 31, 88 Horsley, Richard 8 de Hulster, Izaak 16 Hurtado, Larry 5, 158 Jeal, Roy 28 Jensen, Robin 199 Johnson, Luke Timothy 166 Kahl, Brigitte 17–18, 20–1, 49 Kampen, Natalie 183, 185 Karris, Robert 173, 175 Kartzow, Marianne 176–8 Käsemann, Ernst 144 Keel, Othmar 16, 18 Kelhoffer, James A. 65, 148 Kidd, Regie 145, 166, 167, 192 Klingbeil, Martin 17 Kloppenborg, J. S. 37, 170 Kousser, Rachel 130, 132 Kreitzer, Larry L. 68, 105 Larsen, S. F. 64 Larsen, Steen 146 Lefevbre, Henri 140 Lendon, J. E. 12 Lincoln, Andrew T. 7, 93, 105, 117, 119, 137

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Lopez, Davina 17, 20–1, 49 Lotz, John Paul 105, 115 Lull, David J. 8, 189; Plates 4a and 4b MacDonald, Dennis Ronald 147 MacDonald, Margaret 101, 105, 138, 189 Machal, Joseph 50 Marshall, Peter 41, 44 Martin, Dale 59 Martin, Ralph P. 48 Meade, David 147 Meeks, Wayne 49, 90 Merz, Annette 147, 150 Morgan, David 22–3 Muddiman, John 119–20, 135 Mühl, Max 49, 85 Novák, Mirko 19 Oakes, Peter 13, 49 Olson, Kelly 191 Osiek, Carolyn 189 Pagels, Elaine 5 Panofsky, Erwin 17 Parker, Rebecca Ann 199 Portefaix, Lillian 145 Porter, Stanley E. 69 Price, S. R. F. 2, 4, 108, 152, 162 Quinn, Jerome 172–3 Radnoti-Alföldi, Maria 4, 22 Rawson, Beryl 183 Reasoner, Mark 16 Reed, Jonathan L. 16 Richards, William A. 1 Ritti, Tullia 92 Robbins, Vernon K. 27–9 Rubin, Benjamin B. 87 Sampley, Paul J. 116 Schoppa, Helmut 132 Schroer, Silvia 16, 18 Scott, John C. 36 Segovia, Ferdinand 8 Severy, Beth 181 Smith, Dennis 13

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Index of Names

Smith, J. 104, 117, 125 Smith, R. R. R. 87 Soja, Edward 33, 103, 137, 140 Spicq, Ceslas 145 Strawn, Brent 17 Sumney, Jerry L. 7, 64, 94 Swartley, Willard 145, 157 Taussig, Hal 13 Tellbe, Mikael 48 Trainor, Michael 97 Trebilco, Paul 192–3 Thurston, Bonnie 178

257

Webb, Ruth 28, 30, 31 Wedderburn, A. J. M. 93, 105 Weissenrieder, Annette 17 Wendt, Friedericke 17 Wengst, Klaus 8, 36 White, L. Michael 124 Williamson 41 Wilson, Walter 91 Winter, Bruce 190 Wood, Susan 96, 180 Wright, Tom 82

Uehlinger, Christoph 16, 18

Yarbro Collins, Adela 15, 19 Yee, Tet-Lim N. 115, 119, 123 Young, Frances 145, 157, 163

Wan, Sze-kar 60

Zanker, Paul 2, 22, 25–6, 41, 55, 171

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