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Church and State in the New Testament
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
The attitude of the New Testament writers towards the Roman Empire presents a curious picture, varying as it does from a quite remarkable enthusiasm to a violent hostility. The hostility is natural enough in view of the hostility of wide circles of Palestinian Judaism to the supposed oppressors of the chosen people; the earliest generation of Christians regarded themselves as loyal members of the nation, while the later writers of the New Testament had lived through the persecution of some at least of the churches outside Palestine under Nero and Domitian. The enthusiasm is not so easy to explain, especially as it survives both these persecutions.
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- Copyright © Wilfred L. Knox 1949. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
1 For the rabbinical attitude in the matter and for various other points I am deeply indebted to the generous assistance of Dr. D. Daube.
2 For the causes of this hostility and the circles in which it was felt cf. Cambridge Ancient History (= CAH) x, 331 f. and 850.
3 For the political attitude of the Pharisees cf. Schürer, , Gesch. d. judischen Volkes (= GJV) II, 463 ff.Google Scholar; for the Herodians cf. Rowley, H. H. in JTS XLI, part 161 (Jan., 1940), 14 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, W. Otto in P-W Supp. II, 200 ff.
4 Cf. Jos. BJ I, 88 (from Nicolaus of Damascus according to Hölscher in P-W IX, 1944), for the festivals as occasions of disturbances.
5 Attempts have been made to identify the incident with some other incidents of the period (cf. Plummer on St. Luke in Int. Crit. Comm. (= ICC), ad loc.). But the silence of Josephus as to the incident proves nothing; it is precisely for the period from the death of Herod to the outbreak of the rebellion that Josephus gives us least information as to affairs in Palestine, for the simple reason that he had only a very poor source available and was too incompetent collect his own information. Schlatter, Geschichte Israels v. Alex d. Gr. bis Hadrian 277, supposes his source to be a collection of anecdotes of the rule of the procurators, probably correctly. There is no reason to suppose that the incident was important enough to be worth recording, any more than the disaster at Siloam with a death-roll of eighteen. It would certainly not have been worth while for the Church to invent an incident from which it could draw no better moral.
For the vagueness of the meaning of the term ‘Messiah’ at the period cf. Moore, Judaism II, 323 ff. The view of Lake and Jackson (Beginnings of Christianity I, 424) that such rebels as Theudas and the Egyptian of Acts 5, 36, and 21, 38 (Jos. Ant. 20, 97, and 169), were not ‘Messiahs’, and that no rebel claimed to be the Messiah until the time of BarCochba rests on a complete misunderstanding of the situation; no doubt they only claimed to be ‘somebodies’, but they would have become ‘Messiahs’ with a few initial successes.
6 For this academy cf. my Some Hellenistic Elements in Primitive Christianity 30, 1. 10 ff., which should, however, read ‘R. Simeon b. Gamaliel II is reported as saying that his father, Gamaliel II’ held this school.
7 So Herford in Charles' Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha ad loc. For various rabbinical utterances on the proper relations of Jews to the Roman Empire cf. Moore, o.c. 2, 114 ff.
8 For the Persian and Ptolemaic periods cf. Ezra 6, 10, 'Letter of Aristeasth. 45. For the Maccabean period and for the whole practice cf. Schürer o.c., n, 359 ff.
9 And at his expense according to Philo, Leg. ad Gaium 157. Schürer o.c. 11, 361, interprets this as meaning that the cost was borne out of the Jewish taxation paid to the Fiscus.
10 BJ 2, 409 ff. After the fall of Jerusalem the writer of I Baruch (I, 10 ff., and 2, 22 ff.) regards the disaster as a punishment for the sin of the nation in refusing to obey Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and Belshazzar his son (i.e. Vespasian and Titus. Cf. Whitehouse in Charles’ Apocr. and Pseud. I, 574). In the imaginary situation the High Priest at Jerusalem is told to renew the sacrifice. How far there was any considerable party which would have regarded the rebellion as a national sin, if it had succeeded, is another question.
11 In Greek practice the priest εὔχεΤαι ΤἄΥαθα: for this as a sacral formula cf. Lobeck, Aglaophamus II ff. In Thucydides 6, 32, the Athenian fleet as a whole offers εủΧἁς Τἁς νομιƷομἐνας led by a herald; cf. the prayer prescribed in the decree for the festival of Zeus Sosopolis at Magnesia (Kern, Inschr. von Magnesia am Mæander 98, 11. 26 ff., and for a parody, Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 295 ff. Apuleius (Metam. II, 17, 789) gives the prayer at the Ploiaphesia at Corinth; it is merely a prayer for the emperor, senate, knights, and Roman people and for the sailors and ships of the Empire uttered by a herald. Cf. also the brief taurobolic formulae in Graillot, Cybelé 128. It may be noted that the libelli of the Decian persecution make no allusion to any formula to be uttered by those who want certificates of having sacrificed (cf. Dict. d'Arch. Chrét. IV, 310 ff.); but some formula seems to be implied in Pliny's ‘cum praeeunte me deos adpellarent’ (Ep. x, 96, 5). For Roman prayers on public occasions cf. Appel, De Romanorum Precationibus.
12 In the Pirke de R. Nathan the saying of R. Hanina referred to above reads ‘Pray for the peace of the ruling power, which rules for ever’. Bacher, Agada der Tannaiten 54, suggests that it ought to read ‘that it may rule for ever’ and that we have here the remains of a formula. Clearly this is at best a very long-range conjecture.
13 The Levites accompanied the offering of the daily Tamid with the singing of Psalms, but there seems to be no suggestion that there was any singing to accompany other sacrifices (for the singing cf. Mishnah, Tamid 7, 3 f.). For hymns, aretalogies, etc., as accessories of Greek worship cf. Kern, Rel. der Griechen I, 153.
14 Probably in the early months of AJJ. 58 (so Sanday and Headlam in ICC XXXVII).
15 Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter 59, argues that the allusions to the civil power in this letter show that it cannot have been written just after a persecution; but I Clement I alludes to a recent persecution, yet 61 is equally cordial. The Domitianic date has been prejudiced by attempts to combine it with an argument for the Petrine authorship of the Epistle. But the work probably represents two baptismal homilies(cf. Streeter, The Primitive Church 124 ff.), with a postscript added on the imminent persecution. Beare, The First Epistle of St. Peter 15, argues for a date under Trajan on the ground that there is no proof of a persecution under Domitian, apart from the Apocalypse.
But the evidence of the Apocalypse is very hard to explain otherwise; we know from Suetonius (Domitian 15) and the epitome of Dio Cassius 67, 14, that Flavius Clemens was put to death by Domitian; the charge of atheism and Suetonius' ‘contemptissimae inertiae’ would both apply to a Christian, though they need not do so. For further evidence cf. below, n. 16 ff. In view of the general lack of evidence for the history of the Church at this period, it would be hard to find better evidence, though there is no doubt that in this, as in other cases, sporadic local persecutions have been exaggerated into official attempts to extirpate Christianity throughout the Empire.
If cordiality to the civil power is incompatible with a date after the beginning of the persecutions, we should have to put Tertullian ad Scap. 2 and Orig. c. Cels. 8, 73, before the beginning of persecution.
16 Pliny, Ep. X, 96, 6, writes of Christians who had abandoned their faith twenty years before, which would suit the period of a Domitianic persecution (cf. Diet, d'Arch. Chrét. IV, 1397). For this persecution cf. CAH XI, 42, and 255. But we have no evidence for it outside Rome, Asia, and Bithynia, and it seems unlikely that it would have extended beyond Rome except for the reasons suggested above. The story of Hegesippus ap. Eus. HE 3, 20, implies that Domitian was not seriously concerned to persecute the Church : but it may be no more than a Christian expansion of his other story of Vespasian's search for descendants of David (ib. 3, 12).
17 See below, n. 21.
18 For the date cf. Harrison, Problems of the Pastoral Epistles 85 (after A.D. 95); but the date can hardly be later than A.D. 110, since it has furnished words to the vocabulary of Ignatius martyred in the second decade of the second century (cf. my Acts of the Apostles 40 f.).
19 For Aqiba's attitude cf. Schürer, GJV I, 682 ff.
20 For these apocalypses cf. Dodd, in JRS XXXVII (1947), 47 ffGoogle Scholar. For rather dubious attempts to find a Caligula-apocalypse, originally of Jewish origin in Rev. 13, cf. Charles in ICC I, 338, and 349 f. It is of course possible that Mark 13, 14, was originally Jewish; but the close relations between the Church and the orthodox Jews is shown by the fact that Christians either composed or adapted Jewish apocalypses on the occasion. I cannot trace any allusions to the event in Jewish apocalyptic, but it must in the nature of things have elicited many prophecies.
21 Or. Sib. 3, 46 ff., which looks suspiciously like an allusion to the burning of Rome, the year of the four Emperors and the (expected) coming of the Messiah (for the currency of such prophecies at this period cf. Tac. Hist. 5, 13; Jos. BJ 6, 312 f.). See also Or. Sib. 3, 350 ff., perhaps of non-Jewish origin (cf. Tarn, in JRS XXII, 1932, 135ff.Google Scholar), but adopted by the Jewish compiler.
22 For Antipater cf. CAH IX, 402, where, however, I cannot follow Bevan in accepting Schlatter's hypothesis that his Nabataean wife, Cypros, was probably daughter of a Jew settled in Arabia, since it is unlikely that he would have married a pagan; the proprieties would have been amply satisfied if she had become a nominal proselyte. Antipater's father had close connections with Gaza and Ascalon (Ant. 14, 10), both ‘Greek’ cities (cf. Schürer o.c. II, 110 and 119 ff.). (Gaza was indeed in ruins during the period B.C. 96–61.) It is reasonable to suppose that he had some measure of the superficial Hellenism of the Herodian dynasty.
23 Note here the significant statement that the knowledge of the favour shown to the Jews by Augustus acted as a deterrent to anti-semitism throughout the Empire. For a Christian parallel to the view that it cannot be the Emperor but his bad advisers who are responsible for persecution, cf. Melito of Sardis ap. Eus. HE 4, 26, where it is assumed that so good an Emperor as Marcus Aurelius must be acting under bad advice, as only monsters like Nero and Domitian ever persecuted the Church.
24 For the style as originally Oriental rather than Greek, cf. Norden, Agnostos Theos 203; for the structure of the whole passage cf. Weber, , ‘Der Prophet u. sein Gott’, Beih. z. Alten Orient 3 (1925), 155Google Scholar, n. 3. For the pagan nature of the passage cf. my Hellenistic Elements 48 f.; for the conception of Ares cf. the ‘Homeric’ hymn (VIII, 5 ff.), held by Kern, , Rel. der Griechen 3, 229Google Scholar, to be early Hellenistic showing astrological influence; in both Ares is a god who stands for peace and justice and the protection of the oppressed.
25 Weber l.c. and 88 n. I, rightly sees that 140 ff. are from a semi-official aretalogy of Augustus, but fails to note the pagan elements in 114. It is, of course, possible that Philo has conflated two documents, but more probable that they came to him already united. Weber remarks on the absence of any allusion to the divine origin of Augustus and his exaltation to godhead; but this may well be due to excision by Philo, who like all ancient compilers is liable to notice some points which are inconsistent with his general outlook and to overlook others.
It would seem that Caligula was popular with the Alexandrian mob (Philo Leg, ad G. 164 f., cf. Vogt, ‘Romische Politik in Aegypten’ Beth. z. Alten Orient 1924, 19). In this case the lampoon is likely to have come from a Stoic source, not from popular propaganda. Naturally, however, the popular leaders would have a smattering of popular philosophy; and the lampoon may well have been put out after Caligula's death in order to enlist the sympathy of Claudius in the subsequent controversy between Alexandria and the Jews.
26 Apion was a member of the Alexandrian deputation to Caligula (Jos. Ant. 18, 257). It should be observed that in fact no sacrifices were being offered, though the Latin translation (the Greek is missing here) reads ‘facimus’, since Josephus alludes to his Antiquities published in A.D. 93 (Schürer GJV 1, 89). He also implies that they are going on in Ant. 3, 224 ff., cf. Heb. 5, I; I Clement 40, 4. The interruption could still be regarded as temporary and the renewal of the Temple-worship as a mere matter of time, cf. the prayer of R. Aqiba in Mishnah, Pesachim 10, 6. Naturally, Josephus ignores Claudius' rejection of the Jewish claim to the citizenship of Alexandria, for which cf. Bell, Jews and Christians in Alexandria, 15.
27 For evidence of the influence of popular philosophy on the liturgical and homiletic language of early Christianity cf. Lietzmann, Gesch. d. Alten Kirche 1, 181 ff. It is instructive to note the way in which the argument from design—the heavenly bodies, the seasons, the suitability of earth, air, and water for the creatures that inhabit them—appears in Cicero De Nat. Deor. 2, 39 (98) ff. (here in the reverse order); Ps. Arist. De Mundo 5, 396, 27, Philo De Spec. Legg. I (De Mon.) 34 (again in the reverse order), I Clem. 20, I ff.; Epist. Apost. 3 (a quasicredal formula; for its liturgical nature cf. Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern 270). The theme is, of course, found in Job 38, but with no attempt at logical order.
28 So Knopf in Gebhardt and Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen NF 5, 188, probably rightly. Cf. also Hermas Vis. 1, 3, 4, rightly regarded as liturgical by Windisch in Lietzmann's Handkommentar z. N. T. ad loc.
29 Philo (Vit. Moys. 2, 17) points out that the alleged admiration of the Gentiles for the Torah, or some parts of it, reflects honour on Israel; that it educates and brings honour on them is a commonplace in rabbinical literature, cf. Strack-Billerbeck 3, 115 ff., and 126 ff.
30 For the Jewish character of the prayer cf. Lietzmann o.c. 209. Knopf, in Lietzmann's Handkommentar z. N. T. ad loc, regards the prayer as a cento of ideas drawn from the Septuagint, Jewish liturgical sources, Christian prayers, and Hellenistic religion. The last-named ‘source’ is simply a reflection of the common confusion of ‘ideas drawn from Hellenistic religion’ with ideas drawn from current popular philosophy, which was used impartially by Jews, pagans, and Christians. It is surprising that he does not notice that the Christian elements are superficial insertions into a Jewish original, as they are in the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions 7, 33, 1, for which see Bousset in Gött. gel. Nachr. (1915), 435 ff.Dugmore, The Influence of the Synagogue on the Divine Office 23 and 107, rightly rejects attempts to see in the prayer the Amidah of the later synagogue. The resemblances are due to the presence of similar ideas inspired by the language of the O.T. and the situation of Jews and Christians in the Hellenistic age. It is possible that 59 was originally a separate prayer from 60 and 61. But the general coherence of thought and the superficial nature of the Christian elements indicate that we are dealing with the revision of one or two older prayers, not with a Christian imitation of the Jewish tradition.
31 In T. B. Berakhoth 58a the blessing to be said on seeing a Gentile king is ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hast given of thy honour to flesh and blood’, which closely resembles the opening of the Clementine prayer.
32 For ὁμόνοια cf. Tarn, Alexander the Great II, Appendix 25, pp. 399 ff. and 409 ff. For εúστἀθΕια Epictetus (Schenkl) F IV, p. 406 : Philo, In Flaccum 135; Leg. ad G. 113, 161. OGIS 662 11, 4 and 45.
33 Lietzmann ad loc. in Handkommentar z. N. T. regards the attitude as Jewish; but, apart from I Bar. I, II, and R. Jose b. Qosma noted above, his parallels are entirely drawn from Hellenistic Jewish writings. For the ruler as God's minister cf. Plutarch, Ad trinc. inerud. 3 (Mor. 780d). In Rom. 13, I f., note the assonance Ùποτασσἐσθω, τεταγμἐναι, ἀντιτασóμενος, διαταγῇ and for the passage as a whole cf. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa 505.
34 For the facts and the recognition of them by Christian writers cf. Friedländer, Sittengesch. Roms 9 II, 4, Harnack Mission u. Ausbreitung des Christentums 12 ff. For the thought of I Tim. 2, 2 f., cf. Philo, QRDH 285. The reverse argument, that if there ought to be only one ruler on earth, as Homer has said (Il. 2, 204 f. is quoted), there must a fortiori be only one God, appears in Philo, De Conf. Ling. 170. In De Agric. 44 f. Moses' prayer that God may not leave his flock without a shepherd (Num. 27, 16) is interpreted as a prayer that ‘the flock of desires in each of us may not be left without a ruler and develop into ochlocracy, the worst of governments which leads to tyranny, but be subject to the rule of Mind and so become a true democracy, the best of all governments’. Obviously the argument does not work; desires ruled by Mind are not a democracy, unless we assume that true democracy is freedom under an autocrat. I suspect that some such argument was being used to support the principate of Augustus when Philo's source was written; Augustus appears as the liberator of mankind in Philo, Leg. ad G. 146 ff. from his pagan source; Aristides 26 (14), 60 (Keil II, 108), claims that the Roman Empire has establshed a common democracy of states.
35 Titus 3, 1, on the other hand, seems to be simply a conventional reproduction of Rom. 13, I.
36 It would be a dangerous argument from silence to suppose that there was no anti-semitism elsewhere. According to Josephus there was none at the Syrian Antioch until it was stirred up by a Jewish renegade (BJ 2, 479, and 7, 41 ff.). But apart from the communal hatred of Jews and Gentiles in or on the borders of Palestine, which is a different matter, the claims of the Jews to citizenship, coupled with immunities from various public duties, based on real or alleged grants from Julius Caesar (Jos. Ant. 14, 223 ff.), would produce a similar hostility (note especially the letter of L. Antonius in 235, where apparently πολĩται Ùμἐτεροι should be read, and the decree of 259 in which they are recognized as citizens (at Sardis). Cf. Schürer GJV I, 345 ff., and III, 126 f.).
37 Cf. Bell, ‘Juden u. Griechen im römischen Alexandria’ (Beth. z. Alten Orient 9, (1926), 7 ff.).
38 For the consciousness of failure to make Alexandria the capital of the Empire in the struggle between Octavian and Antony as one of the grounds of the Alexandrian opposition, cf. Mitteis and Wilcken, Grundzuge u. Chrestomathie I, 44; and Tarn, o.c, in n. 21 above. For the heathen ‘Acts of the Martyrs“ cf. von Premerstein, A., Z.d. sog. alexandrinischen Märtyrerakten in Philologus Supp. B. XVI, ii (1923)Google Scholar. Cf. also Wilcken, , in Abh. d. säcks. Ges. d. Wiss. 27 (1909), 783 ff.Google Scholar, who notes that Alexandrine anti-semitism may have been largely due to Jewish support of the Empire, Weber, in Hermes L (1915), 47 ff.Google Scholar, and Bell, o.c., in preceding note 34 ff.
39 The name seems fairly certain in P. Cair. 10448, I, 13, but it does not appear that he is on trial.
40 Seneca ap. Augustine De Civ. Dei 6, II (Frr. 41 and 42 Haase); Tac. Hist. 5, 3 f.; Juv. Sat. 14, 96 ff.; Pliny NH 13, 46.
41 For the sources of Tac. Hist. 5, 3, cf. Spooner's note ad. loc.; for Posidonius as the source of Strabo 16, 2, 34 ff. (760–5), see P-W (2 Reihe) IV, 99, where Reinhardt's view is accepted, though not his ascription of it to Posidonius' account of Pompey's campaign in Judaea. There would seem to be some difficulty in reconciling the very favourable, though inaccurate, account of Moses (circumcision and the Jewish food-laws are ascribed to the superstitious High Priests who followed after a period in which the true Mosaic piety was preserved; Strabo's source seems to have jumped from the Pentateuch to the Maccabean era, and it may be that only the Pentateuch was available to him in Greek), with Josephus' accusations of anti-semitism (c. Ap. 2, 79). But it is possible that Posidonius condemned with some vigour the Jews for not abandoning their food-laws and circumcision.
42 For the attitude of the opposition under Augustus, cf. Syme, The Roman Revolution 479 ff.; under the Flavians, Charlesworth, in CAH XI, 7 ff. Horace (Sat. I, 4, 143; 9, 68) does not like Jews, but he can hardly be called anti-semitic.