Christians in Caesar’s Household

Christians in Caesar’s Household PDF

Author: Michael Flexsenhar III

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2020-02-28

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 0271084073

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In this volume, Michael Flexsenhar III advances the argument that imperial slaves and freedpersons in the Roman Empire were essential to early Christians’ self-conception as a distinct people in the Mediterranean and played a multifaceted role in the making of early Christianity. Scholarship in early Christianity has for centuries viewed Roman emperors’ slaves and freedmen as responsible for ushering Christianity onto the world stage, traditionally using Paul’s allusion to “the saints from Caesar’s household” in Philippians 4:22 as a core literary lens. Merging textual and material evidence with diaspora and memory studies, Flexsenhar expands on this narrative to explore new and more nuanced representations of this group, showing how the long-accepted stories of Christian slaves and freepersons in Caesar’s household should not be taken at face value but should instead be understood within the context of Christian myth- and meaning-making. Flexsenhar analyzes textual and material evidence from the first to the sixth century, spanning Roman Asia, the Aegean rim, Gaul, and the coast of North Africa as well as the imperial capital itself. As a result, this book shows how stories of the emperor’s slaves were integral to key developments in the spread of Christianity, generating origin myths in Rome and establishing a shared history and geography there, differentiating and negotiating assimilation with other groups, and expressing commemorative language, ritual acts, and a material culture. With its thoughtful critical readings of literary and material sources and its fresh analysis of the lived experiences of imperial slaves and freedpersons, Christians in Caesar’s Household is indispensable reading for scholars of early Christianity, the origins of religion, and the Roman Empire.

Slaves of Christ

Slaves of Christ PDF

Author: Michael A. Flexsenhar

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13:

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This project examines the relationship between early Jesus groups and the Roman emperors’ slaves and former slaves (the so-called familia Caesaris) from the first to the third century. The apostle Paul, a first-century Jew, once referred to “saints in Caesar’s household” in his letter to the Philippians (Phil 4:22). Traditionally it was thought Paul wrote this from Rome, and that Christians continued to serve Caesar in Rome over the next several centuries, thus raising Christianity to socio-political prominence as the religion of the Empire. I challenge this traditional narrative by analyzing literature, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence from across the Mediterranean. Although, as I show, the imperial slaves Paul references were in Asia Minor (modern Turkey)–not Rome as traditionally thought–Paul’s reference was nonetheless crucial for Christianity in antiquity. In the second and third century Christians from Asia Minor, Gaul, North Africa and Italy capitalized upon Paul’s famous reference–especially the idea of Christians serving Caesar in Rome–to construct a new social memory and cultural geography across the Mediterranean. I use insights from cultural geography to illuminate how Christian writers coopted Christians in Caesar’s household to create a place for their communities in the Mediterranean’s cultural landscape. Yet, what was lost from memory was how those imperial slaves in Rome who were Christians by the third century defied traditional Christian ideals by participating in the worship of the divine emperor. I uncover this reality by interpreting imperial slave and freedperson inscriptions in the context of new archaeological and anthropological frameworks. Christian communities, I conclude, fostered a sense of ‘worldwide Christianity’ by claiming as Christian those imperial slaves and freedpersons who had, paradoxically, accepted a conflicting, imperial cosmology. Against traditional explanations, therefore, this project thus presents new ways of understanding Christianity’s ostensible rise in the Empire while shedding important new light on the social context of Paul’s early reference to Caesar’s household (familia Caesaris).

Christians in Caesar's Household

Christians in Caesar's Household PDF

Author: Michael Flexsenhar III

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780271082349

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Examines the role of the Roman emperors' slaves in the rise of Christianity, and how imperial slaves were essential to early Christians' self-conception as a distinct people in the Mediterranean.

Christ and the Caesars

Christ and the Caesars PDF

Author: Ethelbert Stauffer

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2008-06-01

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1556358180

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A Christian universalist, Stauffer believed and professed that God's irresistible grace would eventually save all people, and that divine punishment, while real, was a remedial measure meant to bring about salvation. Much of Stauffer's writing (including Christ and the Caesars) is based on his extensive research into the way Roman sources influenced early Christianity. He died in 1979, at the age of 77, in Erlangen, Germany. Book jacket.

Piso Christ

Piso Christ PDF

Author: Roman Piso

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2010-07-22

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1426939515

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Evidence shows the New Testament texts were not written by simple, non-royal subjects, but instead were created by extremely well-educated, royal Romans. In Piso Christ, author Roman Piso, with Jay Gallus, presents a new perspective to show that the creation of Christianity has different origins than previously taught. Through this collection of essays and articles, Piso shows that only a few individuals invented and built the Christian religion, and these same individuals authored the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Piso Christ addresses the issues of how these few people wielded that much power and how they were able to succeed. In this new book, Piso contends that the royalty wanted to protect their centuries-old institution of slavery upon which the empire functioned, lived, fed, and gained wealth. The royal people understood that knowledge was power and, therefore, did what they could to keep the masses ignorant and superstitious. Through research, Piso Christ shows that the god concept did not originate in what is represented in the Bible. It demonstrates how millions of people are being misled into accepting the concept of a god and how they live in fear of an unnatural belief.

Caesar's messiah : the Roman conspiracy to invent Jesus

Caesar's messiah : the Roman conspiracy to invent Jesus PDF

Author: Joseph Atwill

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781461096405

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"Caesar's Messiah," a real life "Da Vinci Code," presents the dramatic and controversial discovery that the conventional views of Christian origins may be wrong. Author Joseph Atwill makes the case that the Christian Gospels were actually written under the direction of first-century Roman emperors. The purpose of these texts was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. Atwill uncovered the secret key to this story in the writings of Josephus, the famed first-century Roman historian. Reading Josephus's chronicle, "The War of the Jews," the author found detail after detail that closely paralleled events recounted in the Gospels. Atwill skillfully demonstrates that the emperors used the Gospels to spark a new religious movement that would aid them in maintaining power and order. What's more, by including hidden literary clues, they took the story of the Emperor Titus's glorious military victory, as recounted by Josephus, and embedded that story in the Gospels - a sly and satirical way of glorifying the emperors through the ages.

Christ and Caesar

Christ and Caesar PDF

Author: Seyoon Kim

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2008-10-07

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0802860087

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This title looks at what kind of responses Paul made to the Roman Empire. The author subjects the methods of current interpreters to critical scrutiny and discusses what makes an anti-imperial interpretation of Pauline writings difficult.

Creating Christ

Creating Christ PDF

Author: James S. Valliant

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Published: 2016-09-07

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13:

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Exhaustively annotated and illustrated, this explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world’s great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the 1st Century. The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered. After 30 years of research, authors James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy present irrefutable archeological and textual evidence that proves Christianity was created by Roman Caesars in this book that breaks new ground in Christian scholarship and is destined to change the way the world looks at ancient religions forever. Inherited from a long-past era of tyranny, war and deliberate religious fraud, could Christianity have been created for an entirely different purpose than we have been lead to believe? Praised by scholars like Dead Sea Scrolls translator Robert Eisenman (James the Brother of Jesus), this exhaustive synthesis of historical detective work integrates all of the ancient sources about the earliest Christians and reveals new archeological evidence for the first time. And, despite the fable presented in current bestsellers like Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, the evidence presented in Creating Christ is irrefutable: Christianity was invented by Roman Emperors. I have rarely encountered a book so original, exciting, accessible and informed on subjects that are of obvious importance to the world and to which I have myself devoted such a large part of my scholarly career studying. In this book they have rendered a startling new understanding of Christianity with a controversial theory of its Roman provenance that is accessible to the layman in a very powerful way. In the process, they present new and comprehensive archeological and iconographic evidence, as well as utilizing the widest and most cutting edge work of other recent scholars, including myself. This is a work of outstanding and original scholarship. Its arguments are a brilliant, profound and thorough integration of the relevant evidence. When they are done, the conclusion is inescapable and obviously profound. Robert Eisenman, Author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code "A fascinating and provocative investigative history of ideas, boldly exploring a problem that previous scholarship has not clearly or credibly addressed: how (and why!) the Flavian dynasty wove Christianity into the very fabric of Western civilization." -Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler

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