"The cult was a major part of the web of power that formed the fabric of society. The imperial cult stabilized the religious order of the world. The system of ritual was carefully structured; the symbolism evoked a picture of the relationship between the emperor and the gods. The ritual was also structuring; it imposed a definition of the world. The imperial cult, along with politics and diplomacy, constructed the reality of the Roman empire."
S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: CUP, 1984), 248.
2 comments:
The ideological hegemony of the imperial cult seems to be the consensus now. My question is whether this necessarily means that Paul's explication of the Gospel is shaped by an attempt to stick his finger in the eye of the Roman Empire. I think in certain texts, the answer to that question is clearly "yes." In other texts, the answer is not as clear as many would like to imagine.
(How's that for carefully calibrated qualification of an assertion?! But it's not nearly as fun as just saying, "The fresh perspective folks are by and large full of hooey!" :) )
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