Divine Honors

Rowe, C. Kavin. Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xii+320 pp.; Hb.; $69.99. Link to Eerdmans

Rowe, C. Kavin. Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xii+363 pp.; Hb.; $75.99. Link to Eerdmans.

C. Kavin Rowe is the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament and vice dean for faculty at Duke Divinity School. In 2009, he published World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press). This book challenged a longstanding consensus in New Testament studies that Acts argues that the church and Rome can coexist harmoniously. Luke paints a positive picture of Rome and demonstrates the empire has nothing to worry about from the growing Christian movement. Instead, Rowe argued that Acts is a sophisticated political document that constructs an alternative way of life that runs counter to the Greco-Roman world. In the book, he argues, “rigorous historical thickening of the biblical text helps create the necessary hermeneutical conditions for the kind of analogical thinking required by sensitive readers of the New Testament today” (World Upside Down, 9). The book was not simply a study of Roman politics and the Book of Acts (although it certainly contributed to that discussion). Rowe was interested in how we might “think along with Acts” to answer pressing questions for today (World Upside Down, 176). For the most part, the essays in this collection continue that project. A few of the essays in these two collections pre-date World Upside Down, but many are only a few years old.

Method, Context, and Meaning collects Rowe’s work on Biblical Theology and essays on other theological topics, including four on Christianity and the Human. The first essay in the collection is one of the more controversial journal articles in recent memory. “What If It Were True? Why Study the New Testament” (originally published in New Testament Studies 68 [2022]) generated far more popular buzz than journal articles typically do. Bloggers, Twitter users, and even Reddit all had something to say about the article. To a certain extent, Rowe is responding to Stephen Young’s 2020 article, “‘Let’s Take the Text Seriously’: The Protectionist Doxa of Mainstream New Testament Studies (Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 32, 328-363).

Rowe suggests New Testament Studies needs to refocus its work on the question of truth. He selects five passages from the New Testament that make some assertion about the truth. For example, in Galatians 4:4-6 Paul claims that Jesus’s arrival “when the fullness of time came” marks a fundamental shift of the ages. The problem in Galatia is that the opponents insist on living according to the old age, not the new one defined by Jesus’s death. Rowe asks: is time affected by Jesus Christ? To what degree is Paul’s statement true? At the end of the article, reading the New Testament for truth does not entail acceptance of the claims of the New Testament (19).

Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul. This collection of essays focuses on Luke and Acts (part one, eleven essays) and Paul (part two, four essays). I will highlight just one for this review. “Luke-Acts and the Imperial Cult” was originally published in JSNT 27 (2005) before World Upside Down. Rowe suggests several difficulties with studying the imperial cult and Luke-Acts. The first difficulty is the provincial nature of the Roman Empire. What might be true in one area of the empire is not necessarily true in another part of the empire. Clint Burnett makes a similar point in his recent monograph on imperial honors found in inscriptions (Paul and Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel; Eerdmans, 2024). Rowe’s Point is that the imperial cult looks different in the West than in the East. It also may look different depending on the emperor.

Another problem is the exact background for Luke-Acts. Should we read the book in the light of Augustus-Tiberius (when the events take place in Luke) or perhaps Nero (when the book of Acts takes place), or should we read the books when they were written (under Domitian)? This makes a difference since the imperial cult is quite different in A.D. 30-60 than in A.D. 85-95. Rowe suggests our ignorance about the destination of Luke-Acts is a serious problem. Not only is there uncertainty about when they were written, but to whom the books are addressed is unknown. We do not know the precise conditions of the imperial cult for the author or the recipient.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the imperial cult is never directly mentioned in Luke-Acts. Anyone traveling throughout the Empire would encounter the imperial cult in virtually every city. It is, therefore, impossible that Luke knew nothing about it, but he also says nothing. Does this imply that Luke is pro-Roman? Or is he just trying to suppress any talk of the imperial called to avoid discussing how the church in the empire relate? All this is exasperated by Luke’s clear goal of situating the story within the Roman world by mentioning locations, locations we know were dominated by the imperial cult at the time. Rowe cites C. K. Barrett: “No Roman official would have filtered out so much of what to him would be theological and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a grain of relevant apology” (Luke the Historian [1970], page 63 cited by Rowe, page 12).

A way through these problems is the description of Jesus Christ as Lord in Peter’s sermon to Cornelius in Acts 10:36. Depending on the English translation, the words “he is Lord of all” appear in parenthesis, suggesting these words are Luke’s, not Peter’s. Rowe points out the use of the demonstrative οὗτος (“this one,” often translated as “he” (NRSVue; ESV; NIV2011 has “who”) intentionally contrasts Jesus Christ as Lord with the Emperor who claimed to be the lord of all. The use of κύριος in imperial inscriptions and other propaganda is well-known.   The context is the conversion of a Roman soldier of some rank in Caesarea, the heart of imperial propaganda in the region. Rowe argues any reader in the Empire “would have heard the stress of this claim in connection with the Roman Empire and his cult” (15). For Rowe, Acts 10:36 is a “tiny grain” that can be magnified beyond its intrinsic significance. The article then points to other examples of κύριος in Luke-Acts. However, there was no compulsion to participate in the Imperial Cult until Decius in the middle of the third century, even if Pliny’s letters suggest some confusion in imperial policy toward Christians at the time of Trajan.

Conclusion. Essay collections like these two volumes are always welcome since it is often difficult (or expensive) to find journals and obscure essay collections. I have always found Rowe’s work to be helpful to my work, so these are valuable contributions to New Testament studies. By reprinting these essays, Eerdmans provides easy access to a wealth of scholarship on the New Testament.

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of these books. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

Burnett, D. Clint. Paul and Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xxvii+332 pp. Hb; $49.99.  Link to Eerdmans

In his Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions (Hendrickson Academic, 2020, reviewed here), Burnett hoped that “one day more New Testament students who use inscriptions in their interpretation of his documents and the historical reconstructions of early Christianity” (p. 165). Paul and Imperial Divine Honors is his first step toward reaching that goal.

Burnett describes an inscription from Gythium (modern Gytheio) in his nineteen-page introduction to the book. The inscription is the sacred law of Gythium and includes the fullest known portrait of an imperial festival ever discovered. This was an eight-day festival honoring five Julio-Claudians (Augustus, Tiberius, Augustus’s wife Livia, and two of Tiberius’s sons). The festival also honored a Roman general and two local benefactors. The festival included sacred process sessions and sacrifices on each day devoted to the various dedicatees. This is a grant of divine honors to certain Roman rulers by an individual city. Although this illustrates what an imperial festival may have looked like, Burnett is clear: this inscription does not describe every imperial festival, nor can it be used to describe the granting of imperial honors in every Roman city.

Burnett must define what he means by “divine honors” clearly. He avoids using the phrase “imperial cult” because it implies that there was some centralized form of worship. Instead, he focuses his attention on individual local grants of divine honors. To define these divine honors, he proposes studying the material culture in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth to demonstrate how each city gave divine honors differently. In doing so, Burnett demonstrates that there is no evidence that terms like kurios and soter were used as imperial titles, nor was euangelion in these inscriptions when Paul wrote his letters. But this does not mean Burnett is “an apologist in favor of imperial divine honors” (238). He wants to reconstruct early Christianity as accurately as possible. The divine honors granted by these cities are still arrogant and blasphemous, but it goes beyond the evidence to include kurios and soter among those honors.

This challenges the assumption among many New Testament scholars that when Paul uses language like kurios and soter he does so subversively, using “anti-imperial rhetoric.” Scholars as early as Deissmann (and more recently, N. T. Wright) assume all Divine imperial honors are the same. If a divine honor (such as kurios in Pergamum, referring to Trajan, for example) is found elsewhere, it is often assumed to apply in other Roman cities, such as Philippi or Corinth. In his commentary on Romans and Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Wright states that kurios and euangelion echo imperial rhetoric. Wright suggests, “Caesar is guilty of giving himself divine.” Burnette points out that the earliest evidence for this comes from A.D. 67 in Greece, after Paul’s death. Aside from Caligula, there was no Julio-Claudian demand for divine honors, and several specifically declined those honors when offered while they were still alive. This includes Nero, who did not want to divine honors while he lived. Burnett concludes, “Most Julio-Claudians tried to curb such honors for themselves from communities under their dominion while they were still alive” (233). Therefore, Cesar was never guilty of giving himself divine honors. With respect to the title kurios as a divine honor, Burnett concludes “There is no evidence that the city [of Thessalonica] hailed any Julio-Claudian, dead or alive, by that epithet, even though Thessalonica called Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius gods after their deaths, and Livia a goddess during her lifetime” (147).

Burnett aims to create a localized, contextual profile of divine honors, using inscriptions, coins, archaeology, and literary sources when available. Each chapter briefly sketches how New Testament scholars describe imperial honors in their commentaries. For example, Karl Donfried considers inscriptions and other evidence to argue that some terms Paul uses have a political connotation. This includes words like basileia (βασιλεία, kingdom; 2:12), parousia (παρουσία, coming, 4:15), and apantēsis (ἀπάντησις , meeting; 4:17). Burnett is used that this generalizing approach to divine honors is inadequate and problematic. Evidence from first-century Thessalonica does not support the idea that parousia and apantēsis are technical terms for a royal imperial visit (109).

For Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth, Burnett catalogs the divine honors granted by the local government for each of the Julio-Claudians. This includes inscriptions, coins, and archaeology (usually statues portraying the emperor as a god). Each chapter includes a list of imperial cult officials known from inscriptions and the location of the imperial divine honors (when known). Following this data, he suggests how the imperial divine honors surveyed in the chapter shed light on Paul’s letter to that city. Terms like kurios, parousia, and apantēsis were not used in imperial honors, and euangelion was not a technical imperial term. Nevertheless, he suggests that a study of divine honors indicates that Christians were mistreated by their non-Christian counterparts for more complex reasons than a “Christ-versus-Caesar paradigm (148). 1 Thessalonians 1:6-9 states that Christians faced “much affliction” because they have turned away from idols and were eagerly awaiting the return of the Lord.

Burnett knows that these conclusions differ from those of other Pauline interpreters who see Paul using subversive, anti-imperial rhetoric in Romans 13. However, this does not mean Paul was pro-empire. How could Paul, who clearly abhors any sort of idolatry, ask Christians in Rome to submit to those who celebrate imperial divine honors? For Burnett, the answer lies in Paul’s apocalyptic theology (236). This Jewish perspective is most clearly presented in Daniel. In Daniel 6, for example, the emperor demands a divine honor: to receive prayer from the entire Empire. Daniel refuses, and he faces execution in the lion’s den. Burnett makes a startling observation: “Nowhere in the story does Daniel accuse Darius of blasphemy because he desired divine honors for himself” (237).  Daniel was able to maintain his devotion to the god of Israel, all the while serving an empire that demanded divine honors for itself. How is this possible? For Paul, the Empire is under the cosmic power of sin. Like Daniel, Paul considers the rulers of this age to have already been defeated. Although Burnett does not mention 3 Maccabees or 4 Maccabees, these apocryphal books also illustrate similar attitudes toward blasphemous rulers.

The book includes a fifty-four-page appendix of inscriptions mentioned in the book, including the Greek and Latin transcriptions and English translations. Burnett provides provenance and date with the source in the inscription collections. This is extremely helpful for scholars looking to read the evidence directly. The book is richly illustrated with black-and-white photographs of coins, inscriptions, and other archaeological evidence.

Conclusion. Burnett certainly achieves his goal of providing a database of inscriptions for three Greek cities that are important for interpreting Paul’s letters to Philippi, Thessalonians, and Corinth. His challenge to popular writing on Paul’s relationship with the Roman Empire should convince most to abandon generalizing comments about imperial divine honors or the imperial cult. This correction is helpful. However, he has limited his study to Julio-Claudians from the years that Paul wrote. His conclusions may look different for later divine honors in another location, such as Asia Minor, rather than Greece. However, his point is clear: evidence from the late century Ephesus or Pergamum should not be used to interpret Philippians, Thessalonians, or Corinthians.

Burnett blogs on inscriptions and the New Testament. Follow @DClintBurnett1.

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.