Empire Earth Ii The Art Of Supremacy

[Zee Palmer]

The successful student will be able to recognize cultural assumptions and common knowledge as socially constructed in historical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, and aesthetic contexts by critically speaking, thinking, writing, and reading.

Goal 4: The successful student will be familiar with feminist epistemolgies and methodologies, and will be able to apply appropriate frameworks to evaluate research and to ask and answer their own research questions.

Goal 5: The successful student will be able to discern and critically engage categories of social difference (including gender, sexuality, race, class, language, ethnicity, nation, empire, geography, and disability) as intersectional, transnational, always shifting, and shaped by hierarchies of power, including capitalism, heteropatriarchy, imperialism, and white supremacy.

The successful student will be able to recognize, analyze and critique their social locations and differential privilege within society, and to reflect on their interests and capacities to participate in feminist social change.

The College Breadth requirements are in addition to the University Breadth requirement. Up to three credits from each of the University Breadth Requirement categories may be used to simultaneously satisfy these College of Arts and Sciences Breadth Requirements. Minimum grade C- required for courses used to satisfy College Breadth.

*If the grade earned is sufficient, a course may be applied toward more than one requirement (e.g., breadth and major requirements), but the credits are counted only once toward the total credits for graduation. If all but one course in a group has been taken in one department or program, a course cross-listed with that program will not satisfy the distribution requirement.

The math requirement must be completed by the time a student has earned 60 credits. Students who transfer into the College of Arts and Sciences with 45 credits or more must complete this requirement within two semesters.

A Second Writing Requirement approved by the College of Arts and Sciences. This course must be taken after completion of 60 credit hours, completed with a minimum grade of C-, and the section enrolled must be designated as satisfying the requirement in the academic term completed.

Using postcolonial analysis to account for the Roman Empire's pervasive presence in and influence on early Jesus-follower communities (early Christians), as depicted in New Testament texts, is both evident (given its usefulness for analysing situations of unequal power relationships) and complicated. The complications are due partly to the material and conceptual potential and constraints inherent in postcolonial biblical studies, as well as to the complexities involved in dealing with empire and imperialism. The study of the Roman Empire, as far as its impact on early Christianity and (in this article) on the letters of Paul is concerned, requires attention to Empire's material manifestation, ideological support for Empire, and religious aspects - issues that are identified and briefly discussed. Empire can be understood in many different ways, but it was also constantly constructed and negotiated by both the powerful and the subjugated and therefore attention is required for its possible reach, uses and the purposeful application of discursive power in New Testament texts that were contemporary with Empire.

The materiality of life in the first-century CE Mediterranean context was determined largely by the omnipresent and omnipotent Roman Empire in its various forms and guises. True to imperial ideology, the Empire made its presence felt in tangible and visible ways.1 Regular contact with the material reality of imperial imposition was par for the course for first-century people, constantly reinforced by visual images and verbal and written decrees, through military presence and social systems such as patronage, held in place in ways that reinforced both the Roman imperial presence and the people's sense of submissiveness to Empire. At the same time, but more difficult to account for with immediate references, since it goes beyond citing New Testament texts, requiring attention for the use of discursive power, the context of an all-pervasive Roman imperial presence and practice informed the consciousness and worldview of people around the Mediterranean in the first century CE. In short, material and historical imperialism, as well as discursive imperialism, informed, sculpted and determined the daily lives of people in a myriad of ways, also at the level of consciousness, through ideology.2

During the last decade or two it has become clear that a new grammar and vocabulary are needed to understand first-century power relations and their structural organisations, especially in the light of the strong apocalyptic framework of many New Testament texts, with their bold challenge to the Roman Empire through privileging God's imperial designs. In short, it has become increasingly important to account for the empire as both material setting and as heuristic grid.3 Historical studies have been, and remain, valuable for investigating the nature, reach and impact of the first-century Roman Empire. However, accounting for Empire as a horizon of understanding in New Testament studies has invoked the use of postcolonial criticism and related categories to account for the impact of the Roman Empire on early Christianity,4 given the problematic relationship between texts and socio-historical context (see Whitelam 1998:35-49, for example). The purpose of this short article is to acknowledge the role of Empire as material setting and heuristic grid in the interpretation of New Testament texts in general and Pauline texts in particular, briefly considering the usefulness of a postcolonial approach when using Empire as heuristic grid.

Accounting for the Roman Empire5 as material setting during New Testament times is of course more complicated6 than listing some categories of overt manifestation in imperial structures, systems and mechanisms. Such material aspects of Empire are important, but the complex nature of each of these entities, as well as their entanglement with a range of other (related and, for our context, unrelated) items, often make their description difficult. A particular challenge in adequately acknowledging the reach and impact of the Roman Empire is related to the imperial presence and power already involved in or at least intimately related to various other social and economic structures and systems on different levels in first-century society. The wealth and diversity of various studies on Empire ancient and modern has made an important contribution to a better understanding of the materiality of the Roman Empire in New Testament times.7

The Roman Empire was propped up by a number of important supports, including military conquest, the system of patronage, the rhetoric of peace,8 prosperity and concord and the imperial cult (see Horsley 1997:87-90, 2000:74-82 in this regard). However, Empire's pervasive influence was probably at its strongest on an ideological level9 and interconnected with various dimensions of first-century life across the spectrum of communities spread out geographically, thus requiring a broad-spectrum approach when discussing Empire during the time of the New Testament.10 In fact, subsequent to the success of military conquest, it would be the rhetoric of Empire that continuously inscribed and replicated the language of power and domination required for its continuance. Discussing these and other elements separately is not intended to deny that materiality and ideology feed off one another.

The overt manifestation of the Roman Empire is a good place to begin an investigation of its nature and the impact it had on New Testament texts. The basis of Roman power was most evidently and forcefully situated in its vast military might, a force of generally well-trained and well-resourced legions, which generally operated efficiently and ruthlessly. Punishment for dissention and sedition was harsh and the cross11 was the ultimate symbol of Roman power and cruel brutality. Roman justice was not limited to foreigners and the lower classes; at times even those Roman provincial governors accused of wrongdoing were held accountable before the courts.12 Roman taxes cut a broad swathe and while legitimised as recompense for the privileges provided by Empire, such as peace and security, or freedom and justice, they mostly served to increase the magnificence and opulence of the elite, who ultimately benefitted from imperial machinations.

For the majority of people in New Testament times, the local elites were predominantly the cutting edge of Empire, its public face and an important aspect of the imperial machinery.13 Through their 'government without bureaucracy' (Garnsey & Saller 1987:20-40) the Roman Empire yielded administrative authority to indigenous elites.14 This had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the local elites kept the imperial wheels turning in many ways, for instance ensuring the collection of tribute, organising business and politics and generally garnering support for Empire through bestowing benevolence and undertaking public-works programmes. On the other hand, the elites were an important aspect of the imperial divide-and-rule politics (Moore 2006b:199), since popular resentment and even uprisings could be blamed on them while the imperial powers retained ultimate authority by remaining remote and unavailable.15

A vital component of the first-century imperial footprint was, secondly, its ideological framework.16 By the beginning of the first century, the Roman Empire had established itself as the supreme political power, after it had some decades before conclusively dealt with its main rival, Carthage, and largely stabilised internal divisions, consolidating its power, influence and wealth. Imperial ideology was intimately and reciprocally connected to symbols of its power, with the symbols informing ideology and the latter sustaining and providing purpose and justification for the former.17 The Roman imperial ideology was built on revisiting the ideals of the old republic and presenting itself as a democratic institution -this pretence being underwritten by notions of liberty and justice.18 Moreover, following the civil war, Augustus was often deemed the one who brought peace to the Roman Empire and therefore to the world at large.19 In the end, '[f]reedom, justice, peace and salvation were the imperial themes that you could expect to meet in the mass media of the ancient world, that is, on statues, on coins, in poetry and song and speeches' (Wright 2005:63). The claims to such values and achievements were ultimately ascribed to the benevolence of the emperor and were individually and collectively presented as euangelion or 'good news', the same word used, of course, by the early followers of Jesus in describing his life, work and message. Poets and historians like Virgil, Horace, Livy and others created, in their different ways, a grand narrative of Empire - a long eschatology that had reached its climax.20 In the court of Augustus, the story of Rome was told as a narrative of culmination - a long process of training and preparation that would see the Empire assume its destiny as ruler of the world.21

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