Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society

This book presents a series of essays on Paul in relation the Roman imperial world in which he moved and the result is a refreshingly different view of the onset of 'Christianity', something that didn't really exist yet at the point of discussion. The supposedly 'a-political' Paul focussed on the transcendent is suddenly living and surviving in highly stressed world of the Romans where the response to need, the revolution that is impossible, is met by rising 'ekklesia', which doesn't yet mean church, of the not yet 'Christians'. In the words of the editor, Christianity was a product of empire, but what became the established church of the empire started as an anti-imperial movement.

Good collection of articles on Rome and Paul.

An excellent resource for those who want to get a deeper understanding of the milieu of Paul's day.

Professor Horsley's anthology of essays (primarily by other authors), and his introductions, do much to appropriately redefine Saint Paul's writings within social and political contexts. Explicitly rejecting the notion that Paul is to be read exclusively as religious literature intended for a religious community, Horsley (et al.) painstakingly demonstrates that the preaching of the crucified Christ was a direct challenge to the Roman Empire. Similarly, the building of Christian communities around the proclamation of the resurrection were intentional rejections of secular values and order.Living in an age when religion has too often been high-jacked by fundamentalists of all denominations and faith groups, to serve only petty theological agendas, Horsley's collection stands for us as a useful reminder that faith can be something more.

This book is in two halves, only one of which I was really interested in and enjoyed. I have enjoyed some of Horsley's other books but this one, while having good material was too bogged down in the first section on Roman religious practice, mainly of interest to the academic I suspect. I was also disappointed to discover that much of the material has been published before elsewhere.Nevertheless there is some great material here that should be of value to those interested in the origins of Christianity and the work being done by the Jesus Seminar. Of particular interest to me was the point that Paul was not setting up a religion and cannot be called a Christian by today's definition.

This is a useful anthology on an important subject in Pauline studies. Although the fourteen essays presented here have been published elsewhere, it is very helpful to have them collected in one place. Further, Richard Horsley's introductory material offers a significant synthesis of the material. In short, the collection depicts St Paul as developing an explicitly anti-imperial movement, in opposition to the all-pervasive emperor cult of Rome. Three aspects of this movement are focussed on: Theology (Parts 1 and 3), Patronage (Part 2) and church as an alternative society (Part 4). I would recommend this book to undergraduate students of the Bible, and indeed to anyone who doesn't see what politics has to do with the New Testament. I would also recommend Neil Elliott's 'Liberating Paul', some of which is reproduced in this volume.