An Ephesian interlude (5): a reflection for Day 13 of Lent

 

“Paul lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” (Acts 28.30-31)

     The book of The Acts of the Apostles comes to an “end” with Paul under house arrest, proclaiming that Yahweh’s kingdom has been established by kurios Iesous Christos…in Rome, under the very nose of kurios Nero kaisar (Lord Nero Caesar).[1]  It is completely understandable if readers of the book of Acts – or the New Testament as a whole – don’t realize that this entire book was written, and describes events which occurred, under the pervasive shadow of the Roman empire.  Most readers of the NT will notice that Jesus was crucified by Roman soldiers, after having been condemned by a Roman provincial governor (Pilate).  However, beyond the explicit references to the imperial apparatus that we find in the Gospel narratives, most readers who don’t take the trouble of researching the historical background of the NT simply don’t realize that every word of this collection of books is intimately related to the “primary reality” in the lives of both the authors and their original readers – the empire of Rome.  Rome is “the elephant in the text”.

     Indeed, the fact that Rome and its imperial stratagems are rarely explicitly mentioned in the text of the NT is deliberate.[2]  Though the NT authors are careful not to attract unnecessary hostility from the empire, it remains the case that these texts are deeply subversive.[3]  The “kingdom of God” is a revolutionary notion in regards to any earthly kingdom.  This is because the Creator-God claims the entire world as his own – he made it, after all.  Also, as has been said, the Jewish Scriptures had foretold that the anointed king (Messiah) of Israel would rule all the nations as God’s regent (e.g. Ps. 2).  Since the New Testament was written by people who both believed that Jesus of Nazareth was Israel’s “Christ”/Messiah (and thus, the world’s Lord) – Jesus had spent his prophetic “career” announcing the arrival of Yahweh’s kingdom – and believed that the composition of their books contributed to making Jesus’ reign a reality, this collection of books was political/religious dynamite.

     Yes, Luke is a sneaky “amanuensis” (literary assistant) of a sneaky God.  He avoids antagonizing the empire through anything he puts “into print”.  He goes out of his way to portray roman authorities in a favorable light, showing them to be fair and, on the whole, unopposed to the early Christian movement (e.g. Ac. 18.12-17).  Also, Luke takes pains to record declarations by imperial power-players of the blamelessness of his protagonists (Jesus: Lk. 23.4, 14, 22; Paul: Ac. 26.30-32).  There is even a scholarly theory that the book of Acts consists of “evidence” of Paul’s innocence of any capital charges that Luke intended to submit during Paul’s trial before the imperial tribunal in Rome (cf. Ac. 25.10-12; 28.30-31).  If this is true, then Luke, with his two-volume work, is doing for Jesus and Paul what Plato had done for Socrates following Socrates’ condemnation by the “council of 500” of Athens to die by poisoning in 399 B.C.  That is to say, Luke is – in the case of Jesus – seeking to rehabilitate someone whom he considers to have been unjustly condemned; in the case of Paul, Luke is mounting arguments in an attempt to avoid just such a condemnation.[4]

     All this to say that the first thing that Paul would have seen upon entering many of the cities of the Eastern empire – for example, Ephesus – was a temple(s) dedicated to the worship of the “divine Augustus” (and perhaps his successors).  When Augustus had become emperor, he had replaced Pergamum with Ephesus as the capital of the province of Asia.  Ephesus’ new status made it both the seat of the governor and a major centre of commerce.  Ephesus was the guardian of Artemis’ temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World as well as guardian of the Roman imperial cult (worship of the emperor).  Indeed, ever since Augustus’ transfer of the governor’s seat to Ephesus, there had been an intense rivalry between the new capital and Pergamum to see which city could outdo the other in its architectural demonstrations of loyalty to the Caesars.  Both cities contained numerous temples dedicated to the goddess Roma and her divine rulers.  Not content to wait for an emperor’s apotheosis before worshipping him as a god, subjects/citizens of the Eastern empire quickly got into the habit of according divine honours to living Caesars!  As he will do later in Rome itself, the fact that Paul spent two whole years teaching every day, presumably, “about the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ” in the Ephesian lecture hall of Tyrannus (Ac. 19.8-10; cf. 28.30-31) is not only subversive, but also quite humorous.  Luke must have been aware of the tongue-in-cheek nature of his narrative.  Paul is consistently arguing (“dialoguing”) in favor of the Roman empire’s being upstaged by the reality of the kingdom of the Creator (to great effect!) – and the imperial authorities remain happily oblivious!  “Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves” (cf. Mt. 10.16).  Sneaky indeed.  Amen.

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[1] Paul would be executed around 3 years later, on Nero’s orders.

[2] Revelation, the most obviously anti-imperial book in the NT, refers to Rome as “Babylon”.

[3] This point can also be obscured by the NT passages which seem to encourage a “status-quo” approach to the Roman emperors (cf. Rom. 13.1-7; 1 Peter 2.13-17, etc.).  However, the simple fact of worshipping Israel’s Messiah was an implicit claim that the Messiah was the only true “Lord” of the world, which was a clear slap in the face to the Caesars…add to that the early Christians’ refusal to perform acts of worship in front of statues of the emperor, and you have an obvious motive for imperial authorities to crack down on members of the Jesus-movement in their jurisdiction (e.g. Pliny the Younger in Bithynia, 2^nd century).

[4] Indeed, the book of Acts is replete with “catch-phrases” from Plato’s Apology of Socrates (e.g. Ac. 4.18-20).  Of course, in the case of Paul, Luke ultimately failed.