---

Up against Caesar
Jesus and Paul versus the empire

The “kingdom” of God and “gospel” are usually thought of as terms unique to Christianity. And who else but Jesus was called not only “the son of God” but also “Lord” and “Savior”?

In fact, say biblical experts, these terms and concepts were already familiar to residents of the Roman Empire who knew them as references to the authority and divinity of the emperors, beginning notably with Caesar Augustus before the dawn of the first century.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC. When a comet was later visible on July nights, Octavius, the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar, promoted the idea that it was a sign that the divine Caesar was on his way to heaven. When Roman law in 42 BC deified Julius Caesar, the status of Octavius, who took the name Augustus, was strengthened by adding the phrase “son of God.” Poets celebrated the divinity associated with Augustus, and across the empire coins, monuments, temples and artwork promoted the cult of Augustus and other emperors who adopted Caesar as an honorific title.

To many in the empire, Roman civilization brought stability and wealth. And the people were urged to have “faith” in their “Lord,” the emperor, who would preserve peace and increase wealth. “In the Roman imperial world, the ‘gospel’ was the good news of Caesar’s having established peace and security for the world,” wrote Richard A. Horsley in Jesus and Empire.

Christians gave secular words associated with the empire a new meaning. The Greek word parousia referred to the triumphant arrivals of emperors into cities. In churches it meant the expected return, or second coming, of the heavenly exalted Christ. Churches, literally “assemblies,” were the Christian counterparts to the Roman ekklesiai where Caesar was celebrated, according to Horsley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “Caesar was the ‘Savior’ who had brought ‘salvation’ to the whole world.”...

...But didn’t Jesus himself, on the question of paying taxes, advise inquirers to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s and to God what was God’s? For some scholars, Jesus’ answer indicates that the kingdom of God can coexist with the Roman power structure. But Horsley and some others view Jesus’ response as a clever, indirect way to foil his foes’ attempt to entrap him. In Israelite tradition, everything belongs to God and nothing to Caesar, said Horsley in Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel.

One evident slap at Roman rule in Mark is the story of Jesus healing the demoniac that no one had the strength to subdue. Jesus asks the man’s unclean spirit for its name. “My name is Legion; for we are many,” replies the man, using the Latin word for a large unit of Roman troops. The demons beg Jesus not to send them out of the country, but instead into a herd of swine; when he obliges, they promptly rush down a steep bank into the sea. Horsley believes the symbolism is unmistakable: Jesus takes control of the Roman forces who have brutalized people and foretells the army’s demise. ...