 One
of the most important books to emerge in New Testament Studies
recently is Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman
Imperial Society (Richard Horsley, ed.), in which Horsley and
biblical scholars and classicists from the United States and
Europe discuss the Apostle Paul's relationship to the Roman
Empire. For the most part, they suggest that Paul was not an
apologist for, or accomodationist to, the Empire, but rather he
was anti-imperial in the way he organized his mission, established
his congregations and preached his gospel. Similarly, Fernando
Segovia, in Decolonizing Biblical Studies, suggests that a
"postcolonial" approach to biblical studies, including
the New Testament, challenges the biblical reader to explore the
imperial contexts of much of the biblical narrative, and thereby
draw out implications for understanding politics, religion and
spirituality in our own postcolonial world today.
These two recent works are very important in my own
research on leadership and status in the New Testament,
particularly in Paul. |
