Imperial Politics in Paul: Scholarly Phantom or Actual Textual Phenomenon?

Summary

Ends and Means of the Essay

As recent scholars working on the relationship between the New Testament texts and the imperial cult have noticed, the renewed interest in the topic has an important pre-history in scholarship. Almost a century ago, Adolf Deissmann was among the first scholars to emphasize the importance that should be attributed to the imperial cult for a proper contextualizing cultural framework for the interpretation of the New Testament texts in general and the Pauline letters and the Apocalypse of John in particular. Before I approach the specific topic of this essay, namely to raise the question on the bearing of the imperial cult for an appropriate historical appreciation of the Pauline letters, I will take a closer look at Deissmann's original contribution. This is germane not only to antiquarian interest in the history of scholarship but also with regard to the current discussion. Many of the questions and problems that loom large in the contemporary debate on the New Testament and the imperial cult may be already seen in Deissmann's work. A return to Deissmann's work on the imperial cult may, therefore, help us to attain a more lucid understanding pertaining to the discussion of contemporary scholarship on the relationship between New Testament texts and the imperial cult.

I have divided the essay into three main sections. In the first section, I take up the question of the imperial cult and the New Testament in light of the previous history of scholarship. In the second main section, I proceed to take a closer look at some Pauline passages that appear particularly apt for the subject under scrutiny. In the third and final main section, which also constitutes the conclusion, I aim to provide an answer to the question whether, in fact, the imperial cult constitutes a particularly relevant contextualizing framework for the analysis of the Pauline letters, or whether it should be conceived of as a scholarly phantom stemming from particular perceptual filters of modern scholarship that primarily pertain to contemporary debates over the relationship between religion and society, politics and Christianity. In other words, I want to evoke a more thorough response to the germaneness of the imperial cult as an appropriate frame of reference for interpreting texts of the early Christ-movement, in this case with a particular focus on Paul.