Quote of the day

On the question of whether Judaism was legalistic or not:

"the correct answer is: Of course, and what of it?"

From Seth Schwartz's Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (2001) p.63n36.

Paul and the Imperial Cult

One of the wonderful things about Duke's Graduate Program in Religion is the support and encouragement we receive from faculty to publish while we are still students. Colin Miller, who recently defended his dissertation, has just published a piece entitled "The Imperial Cult in the Pauline Cities of Asia Minor and Greece," in CBQ 72 (2010): 314-32.

Here is a snippet: "[M]y aim has been to survey the evidence for the imperial cult in important Pauline places in Pauline times. I have shown that the evidence for the imperial cult in those cities is not nearly as vast as it has been assumed in recent studies, nor was it nearly as vast at this early point as it was to become later. Moreover, the evidence reveals that, even where the cult did exist, it was marginal. It is thus anachronistic to say that Paul's message was directed at a culture permeated by Roman dominance as evidenced in the imperial cult" (331).