Prof: Last time we
talked about the Book of
Revelation,
and I ended up by trying to
place Revelation in the context
of Roman politics in the
imperial cult.
 
Clearly this author,
whoever wrote Revelation,
and it is somebody named John,
although as we said it's not
the same John who wrote the
Gospels or wrote the letters,
it's not John son of Zebedee,
it's just some other guy named
John.
 
John was a very common name for
Jews in the first century,
so it's not uncommon that we
have a guy named John but don't
know exactly who he is in
relation to anybody else in
early Christianity.
 
One of the things that I ended
was by saying,
let's imagine his politics.
 
This is clearly an anti-Roman
document.
That's the one thing we can say
about it for sure.
Who would write this and why
would he write these seven
letters to these seven churches
that we have in Revelation?
One way to think about this is
if this document was written
toward the last part of the
first century,
as a lot of scholars think it
is, he may--
and I said remember his Greek
is bad.
He doesn't write Greek well,
sometimes it's even
grammatically wrong in places,
and it's just bad Greek--even
though we don't have really good
Greek in most of the New
Testament,
but this is the worst.
What do you think of someone
who is against eating meat
sacrificed to idols,
seems to think of himself as a
true Jew,
and the Jews who are occupying
synagogues in different parts of
Asia Minor as not true Jews,
and is anti-women as far as
their roles in the churches?
There's nothing we know about
this woman he calls Jezebel
except that he's using this
nickname from the Old Testament
for a whore-like idolatress
woman,
Jezebel, and labeling some
Christian woman,
who's a leader in one of these
churches.
He's labeling her with this
terrible term.
I suggested maybe he's actually
writing against the kind of
Christianity we see represented
by Paul's churches,
which were right there in these
places such as Ephesus and
Smyrna that he's writing too,
because Paul's churches
actually have people in them who
are fairly well off in some
cases.
 
They seem to be fairly
comfortable with Roman culture.
They may have their own
businesses, they have their own
slaves, there are women leaders
in Paul's churches.
Paul allows that sort of thing,
as some of you have pointed out
in your papers on that,
and they believe it's okay to
eat meat sacrificed to idols,
which this author seems to
think is idolatrous in itself.
 
I've suggested that maybe this
guy is writing Revelation
precisely to attack the kind of
Christianity we see represented
in Paul's own letters.
 
What kind of person might this
be?
One way is just to imagine,
and this is pure speculation,
pure imagination,
what if this guy had come from
Palestine himself?
 
Maybe he lived through the
Jewish war of 70 C.E.,
remember it was 70 C.E.
 
when the temple of Jerusalem
was destroyed and Jerusalem was
overrun by the Romans.
 
Thousands of Jews were taken
into slavery and taken to Rome
and sold off to be slaves,
and the land was devastated to
a certain extent.
 
Maybe he lived through that war
and that increased his hatred of
the Romans.
 
He gets to western Asia Minor,
he's travelling around other
parts of the eastern
Mediterranean,
he gets to western Asia Minor,
and here he doesn't see
followers of Jesus who are,
like him, poor,
not very well educated perhaps,
hateful of the Roman Empire and
see themselves as being
oppressed by the Roman Empire.
He sees Christians who think
that they're followers of Jesus
also but they're fairly
comfortable in their world.
They live in comfortable Greek
and Greco Roman urban
environments.
 
So he writes Revelation to try
to shake them up,
to get them to hate Rome as
much as he hates Rome.
To get them to be just as wary
of the imperial cult as he is.
So that's one picture
definitely of early Christianity
that we see an anti-Roman kind
of politics.
The live question this week,
and the question you'll be
talking about in your discussion
groups on Thursday and Friday,
and some of you will be writing
papers about,
is what is the politics of
early Christianity?
In the old Hollywood days,
the idea was that early
Christianity was a movement of
slaves,
or all completely poor people,
and Rome was always going
around persecuting early
Christian groups,
and there was these little
bands of early Christians
huddled in dining rooms
somewhere,
or huddled in the catacombs in
Rome,
or huddled in caves.
 
Well, that's Hollywood.
 
The Romans actually didn't pay
that much attention to the early
Christian groups at all until
much later than this.
There was no coherent
persecution attempt by the
Romans against the Jesus
movement at any time until much
later in history.
 
You don't have Rome even taking
notice of most of these little
house churches founded by Paul
and other Christian missionaries
for the first several decades.
 
You had actually a variety of
ways that these people
themselves related to Rome as an
empire, and so we see that.
With Revelation we see this
heavily anti-Roman view.
But remember what Paul said in
Romans 13:
Let every person be subject to
the governing authorities,
for there is no authority
except from God,
and those authorities that
exist have been instituted by
God.
 
Therefore whoever resists
authority resist what God has
appointed.
 
[God has appointed the Roman
governors,
according to what Paul is
saying here.]
Those who resist will incur
judgment,
for rulers are not a terror to
good conduct but too bad.
Roman governors are a threat
only to people who are bad not
to good?
 
The writer of Revelation would
have disagreed with at
completely.
 
He would think this is crazy.
 
Do you wish to have no fear of
the authority?
Then do what is good and you
will receive its approval.
For it is God's servant for
your good, but if you do what is
wrong you should be afraid,
for the authority does not bear
the sword in vain.
 
It is the servant of God to
execute wrath on the wrongdoer.
The Roman governor,
from Paul's perspective,
at least as he puts in there in
Romans 13, is actually God's
servant to punish wrongdoing.
 
Completely different view of
Roman power than we had in
Revelation.
 
So where do the different
documents of early
Christianity--
remember we've stressed in the
whole course the diversity of
early Christianity,
its different Christianities in
the first century.
Where do the different
documents line up on their
politics?
 
Are they revolutionary or are
they accommodating to power?
Are they pro-Roman or are they
anti-Roman?
We've already got now two
seemingly opposite positions.
Except look over at 1
Corinthians now.
Remember, you have to have your
Bible's with you,
1 Corinthians 2:6:
Yet among the mature we do
speak wisdom,
though it is not a wisdom of
this age or of the rulers of
this age who are doomed to
perish.
 
But we speak God's wisdom
secret and hidden,
which God decreed before the
ages for our glory.
None of the rulers of this age
understood this,
for if they had they would not
have crucified the Lord of
glory.
 
Now Paul knows that the Romans
crucified Jesus.
Crucifixion is not a Jewish
punishment, that would be
stoning.
 
So when the Jewish leaders
wanted to punish somebody with
death in Jerusalem they got a
mob together and they stoned the
person.
 
Stoning was the Jewish means of
capital punishment;
crucifixion was the Roman means
of capital punishment,
and Paul knows this.
 
Is he here talking about these
authorities who crucified Jesus,
that is the Romans?
 
Pilate obviously is the
governor of Judea at the time,
but Pilate was simply the
representative of the Senate and
the emperor.
 
Is Paul blaming the Senate and
the Emperor for the crucifixion
of Jesus here?
 
What does he mean by rulers?
 
You have some scholars who use
this text to say,
well even in spite of what Paul
says in Romans 13,
Paul doesn't have any great
love in his heart for Rome.
He still believes that they are
evil powers who crucified Jesus;
they're in the process of
perishing as we speak,
and they will certainly be
destroyed by God when Jesus
comes back on the clouds with
his holy angel army.
Other scholars say no,
the word here for
"ruler,"
archon in the Greek,
could refer to superhuman
angelic kinds of powers,
what we would call supernatural
powers.
Is Paul talking here about sort
of satanic angelic powers that
ruled the cosmos?
 
Because remember we talked
about apocalyptic world view,
and one of the aspects of an
apocalyptic world view is that
different countries have these
angelic forces,
these angelic leaders that are
the true power behind their
government,
behind their nation.
In Daniel we've got the Prince
of Persia is understood as this
angel who runs Persia.
 
Every nation has these angelic
powers or satanic powers,
because of course Satan is
himself depicted as an angel in
the Jewish Bible.
 
So is Satan just one of many
kinds of powers like this or
rulers of the cosmos,
and is Paul actually talking
angelic superhuman powers here
that crucified Jesus rather than
the Romans?
 
Or, as some scholars would say,
and I'm in this last camp,
maybe he's talking about both.
 
Maybe Paul is including the
Romans in these rulers who
ignorantly crucified Jesus and
so will be destroyed,
but maybe Paul also believes
that the Romans are themselves
controlled by superhuman satanic
angelic powers.
If that's how you read I
Corinthians 2,
then Paul's view of Rome isn't
quite as positive,
just straight forwardly
positive, as you would get from
Romans 13,
right?
When you ask scholars this
question, is early Christianity
politically revolutionary
against Rome or is it
politically accommodating?
 
You're going to get scholars
lining up on both sides of this.
Some of them say,
no, they read early
Christianity for the most part
as revolutionary and anti-Rome.
Others say, no,
it was accommodating;
they were fairly conservative
and comfortable.
We assign this topic for your
papers this week because this is
actually something where there's
a live debate that goes on among
scholars themselves.
 
There's not one correct answer
to this question.
It's complicated,
and so it's a good thing for
you to look at.
 
Of course we've already read
Luke and Acts,
too.
 
In Luke and Acts that author
seems to present Rome in kind of
a strange ambiguous way.
 
On the one hand,
the author goes out of his way
to have Roman governor after
Roman governor say that Jesus is
innocent.
 
Paul is innocent,
this movement is innocent,
and they're not revolutionary.
 
Paul is eventually taken to
Rome, but it's after the
governor said,
well I could release him,
I don't see anything that this
guy has done,
it's just a dispute among Jews.
 
Yet Paul appeals to the
emperor, so he is sent to Rome
in the Book of Acts.
 
All these Roman governors
declare that Christianity is not
politically insurrectionist.
 
It looks like the author is
actually writing almost a more
apologetic book about the
Romans,
except in that,
and as other people have
pointed out,
all of these Roman rulers come
across looking like they're
rather incompetent and
powerless.
 
They almost can't seem to
control the mobs that are around
them.
 
They can't seem to really
resist the Jewish leaders who
want to accuse Paul of being
insurrectionist.
So is Rome presented in the
Book of Acts,
and the Gospel of Luke,
as a good force or a bad force,
or an ambiguous force?
 
Now what we've got is the
documents we're going to look at
here.
 
First let's look at 2
Thessalonians.
We've looked already at some of
these documents that seem
clearly to be anti-Rome such as
the Book of Revelation.
2 Thessalonians is one of these
letters of Paul that some
scholars believe Paul actually
wrote and other scholars believe
he did not write.
 
I tend to be in the camp that
said he probably did not write 2
Thessalonians.
 
But unlike Ephesians and
Colossians and the Pastoral
Epistles,
where it's much clearer that
they're written in a very
different style of Greek than
Paul's seven undisputed letters,
the Greek of 2 Thessalonians
actually looks pretty much like
Paul's Greek.
So you can't throw 2
Thessalonians out of the
authentic Epistles of Paul on
the basis of the Greek style
like we can I think some of the
other letters that claim to be
by Paul.
 
Why is it that I say I don't
think 2 Thessalonians is by
Paul?
 
Well, for one thing,
this is not so important,
but we'll get to it a minute,
he actually has a message in 2
Thessalonians about the coming
of Jesus that seems to
contradict what he had been
saying in 1 Thessalonians.
In 1 Thessalonians he says,
it's coming very soon,
get ready, don't go to sleep,
Jesus is coming back,
and the parousia will
happen--
is all going to happen very
soon.
He says, now we don't know
exactly when it's going to
happen but it's going to happen
very soon.
In 2 Thessalonians,
as we'll see,
he actually says,
no, no, no, no don't quit work
or anything,
don't quit your day job,
because some of the people in
Thessalonica,
according to this author,
seem to have quit their jobs
because they're ready for Jesus
to come back so soon.
He says, no,
no you should still be working,
there are going to be a few
things that will happen first
before the end comes,
and then he lays out a timeline
of what he's expecting to
happen,
and I'm going to walk you
through that timeline in a
minute.
 
Some scholars have said what 2
Thessalonians teaches about the
end time and the coming back of
Jesus differs enough from what
Paul had actually said about it
in 1 Thessalonians that it might
be written by a different person
at a different time in a
different situation.
 
That's one argument.
 
I think the more convincing
argument,
to me, is if you take the
beginning of 2 Thessalonians and
the end of 2 Thessalonians,
and put them side by side with
parts of 1 Thessalonians they
look very,
very much alike.
 
Now wait a minute,
they look alike,
so that means they're
not by Paul?
This is what I'm thinking.
 
If Paul is going to sit down
and write another letter to 2
Thessalonians is he going to do
so with the copy of 1
Thessalonians in front of him?
 
Is he going to do so even
recalling the same words and
phrases that he used in the
previous letter?
I don't think so.
 
In other words,
I think 2 Thessalonians,
in certain parts of it,
look suspiciously too much like
1 Thessalonians to be an
authentic letter by Paul.
Because when people write
another letter they use
different words,
you don't sit down and
basically repeat words and
phrases and things from your
previous letter.
 
The one place where you don't
find those words and phrases
being the same is precisely in
the second chapter of 2
Thessalonians,
that middle part,
where this author is teaching a
different time line for the end
time than 1 Thessalonians had.
 
In my mind I'm thinking okay if
you want to write a pseudonymous
letter and claim to be Paul,
how do you make it convincing?
Well if you knew 1
Thessalonians as a letter you
might actually take that as a
model.
Read 1 Thessalonians carefully
and imitate the style and
imitate even what's said,
but then you stick in the
second chapter of 2
Thessalonians where you give
your own timeline to what you
think is going to happen.
That's why I think it's
probably not by Paul.
But scholars kind of divide up
on 2 Thessalonians in a lot of
different ways,
with many scholars,
even critical scholars who
don't believe Paul wrote all the
letters that are in his name in
the New Testament,
and they'll say they still
think Paul did write 2
Thessalonians.
 
Now what's the goal of writing
and let's look at the chapter 2,
the first twelve verses of
chapter 2.
Now read along with me so
you'll know I'm not lying to
you, because every time I get a
chance I like to lie to students
and lead them astray.
 
As to the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ,
and our being gathered together
to him,
we beg you brothers [again,
it doesn't say sisters in the
original Greek]
not to be quickly shaken in
mind or alarmed,
either by spirit or by word,
or by letter as though from us
to the effect that the day of
the Lord is already here.
 
He's mentioning there may have
been a letter circulated in
Paul's name claiming that the
resurrection has already
happened,
the day of the Lord has already
come.
 
Notice how if this letter is
pseudonymous as I claim,
there's a reference to a
pseudonymous letter in the
pseudonymous letter.
 
That's actually not unusual in
the ancient world.
Sometimes if you're writing a
pseudonymous letter you'll put a
reference saying,
well now some people have been
circulating pseudonymous letters
by me and I condemn them for it.
Of course it's in a letter that
probably itself is pseudonymous.
That's an irony we see in some
of these ancient letters.
Let no one deceive you in any
way.
For that day will not come
unless the rebellion comes first
and the lawless one is revealed,
[Okay, the lawless one,
what's he talking about here?]
the one destined for
destruction.
 
He opposes and exalts himself
above every so-called god or
object of worship so that he
takes his seat in the temple of
God declaring himself to be God.
 
This is something like another
sort of antichrist figure that
we've seen in the Book of
Daniel,
Jesus and his own little
apocalypse in Mark 13,
and other places talk about the
abomination of desolation being
set up in the temple.
 
This author is saying this
person is going to call himself
God and set himself up in the
temple in Jerusalem.
Do you not remember that I told
you these things when I was
still with you?
 
And you know what is now
restraining him so that he may
be revealed when his time comes.
 
The thing restraining him comes
from one Greek word,
katecho,
and it means something holding
back or something holding back
something.
We can't tell necessarily here
whether this is talking about a
thing, a power,
or a person.
Is there a person who's keeping
this guy back in the wings,
who's not letting this divine
self-promoter set himself up in
Jerusalem?
 
"For the mystery of
lawlessness is already at work,
but only until the one who now
restrains is removed."
This restraining force or
restraining thing,
or restraining person is at
some point going to be removed
from the political scene and
then this other character is
going to come in.
 
And then the lawless one will
be revealed whom the Lord Jesus
will destroy with the breath of
his mouth,
annihilating him by the
manifestation of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one
is apparent in the working of
Satan,
who uses all power,
signs, lying wonders,
every kind of wicked deception
for those who are perishing
because they refused to love the
truth and so be saved.
 
For this reason,
God sends them a powerful
delusion,
leading them to believe what is
false so that all who have not
believed the truth but to
pleasure in unrighteousness will
be condemned.
What's going on here?
 
Well, to some extent your guess
is as good as mine,
except that I know a bit more
about ancient Jewish
apocalyptic,
and so I have a few resources
to draw on.
 
For one thing,
though, I think what's going on
here is this author is referring
to some kind of antichrist
figure.
 
He doesn't use the term here
but he's clearly saying this is
someone who's setting himself up
as divine as God,
he's going to take a seat in
the temple in Jerusalem,
and he's going to proclaim
himself to be God,
or perhaps he's also referring
to a messianic pretender.
Maybe he's thinking that this
will be another Messiah,
a false Messiah of sorts,
that is, the antichrist.
If that's true then what was he
imaging going on?
I think what he's doing,
and this is my speculation,
I think he's actually imagining
a Jewish false messiah that's
somewhere hidden,
he knows not where,
there's some guy somewhere in
Palestine or someplace else
who's hiding in the wings,
waiting for the moment when he
can come out,
declare himself as the messiah,
and enter the Jerusalem temple
and set himself up as the divine
messiah figure.
 
If so, what's keeping him from
doing it now?
Well maybe it's just some
supernatural force,
maybe it's even God,
and maybe God has just decided
it's not yet time for this to
happen.
What if the thing that's
keeping him from doing it now is
precisely the Romans?
 
In other words,
the force that's keeping any
Jewish messiah figure down now
would be the Roman Empire.
They're not allowing kings,
look what they did with Jesus.
They also executed other
messiah figures in the first
century.
 
The author therefore sees the
Roman emperor at work,
and the Roman Empire,
and that's the thing
restraining this false messiah
from setting up shop in
Jerusalem.
 
But he says,
that's going to be taken away.
How is that going to happen?
 
Again we don't know.
 
But in my mind,
it's the idea that somehow the
Roman emperor is going to be
moved out of the way by God when
the time comes for this all to
happen,
and then this Jewish messiah
will set himself up and then
Jesus will come in,
destroy the false messiah,
and that's when we'll have the
setting up of the real Kingdom
of God.
 
Now, as I said,
that's speculation,
but what I'm doing is saying,
what kind of scenario is he
possibly imagining?
 
The reason I do this little
scenario is because what would
be this guy's view of Rome and
the relationship between the
Christian movement,
the Jesus movement, and Rome?
If my little scenario is right,
he doesn't see Rome as simply a
wholeheartedly negative thing.
 
Rome actually has a purpose in
God's plan.
Rome's purpose is to keep back
this false Jewish messiah from
appearing,
and then when that purpose is
done God will remove the Roman
Empire from being a geopolitical
force and then the real
beginning of the end time
schedule will kick into gear,
and Jesus will come through,
destroy this lawless one,
the false messiah,
also destroy the Romans,
perhaps, and set up the Kingdom
of God.
 
What that does is that gives us
another look at what an author
may have conceived Rome to be.
 
It's not nearly as negative as
the Revelation author.
It may not also be completely
positive either because he still
sees Rome apparently as being
destroyed in the end.
2 Thessalonians,
therefore, looks like a case
where someone's writing a letter
in Paul's name,
precisely to counter the idea
that Jesus is coming back
tomorrow.
 
Because he believes you have to
have a certain number of things
that are going to happen.
 
It still is fairly soon in the
future,
he's not expecting a thousand
years or anything like that,
but he seems to believe that
there's going to be a timeline
of geopolitical events that take
place before Jesus comes back.
So that's II Thessalonians.
 
Any questions,
comments, or outbursts about
that before I move on?
 
Yes sir.
 
Student:  Is it possible
that given the cult of the Roman
emperor he might be referring to
the Roman emperor here?
Prof: That he might be
referring to the Roman Emperor
here?
 
It could be.
 
In fact that's possibly the way
some things have been set up.
The reason I don't think it's
the Roman Emperor here is
because he talks about this
character as if he's hidden for
the moment,
it's a mystery and he's not
revealed.
 
The Roman emperor,
you could have never said here
was not revealed.
 
The Roman emperor was visible
everywhere you looked in the
Mediterranean at the time:
statues,
inscriptions,
temples so I think he's
probably not talking about the
Roman emperor as the lawless one
because the Roman Emperor wasn't
hidden at the time.
Any other questions?
 
Now, though,
let's look at 1 Peter.
So we're going to another
little text that's asking again
the same question,
what is the politics of the
early Christian movement,
the early Jesus movement?
Most of us scholars don't
believe Peter actually wrote 1
Peter.
 
The reasons are,
again, numerous,
and, notice,
this is not an anonymous letter
like the letters of John are
that don't claim to be written
by John.
 
This one actually claims to be
written by Peter the Apostle,
as does 2 Peter.
 
Why do we think Peter,
the actual apostle,
didn't write it?
 
Well for one thing Peter was,
even as the New Testament
several times lets us know,
an illiterate fisherman.
He probably couldn't read or
write.
If he could read or write it's
almost certain that he couldn't
read or write Greek at the level
of Greek that this letter is
written.
 
There are all those things in
the letter that make us think
that it looks like a
Christianity in a little bit
later stage than the very
primitive area of Christianity.
The development of doctrine,
the development of the notions
of Peter himself,
the idea that certain theology
of the letter seem to look later
than the most primitive time of
early Christianity.
 
Most of us would just,
say simply on the basis of the
language itself,
we don't believe Peter,
the actual Apostle,
wrote this letter.
Look what he's writing,
he says:
Peter an Apostle of Jesus
Christ to the exiles of the
dispersion in Pontius,
Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia, and Bithynia.
 
Again he's writing too--he
calls them exiles of the
dispersion, so some people might
think, well, he's talking to
Jews then, the dispersed Jews.
 
But he's clearly including
Gentile Christians in this too,
so he's talking about followers
of Jesus who live in all this
different geographical area,
and again, this is sort of what
we would now call Turkey,
the area of Turkey.
Both Asia Minor,
which proper was just the
western side of Turkey,
but pretty much all that area
that occupies Turkey now.
 
He calls them exiles,
though, and I don't think he's
talking about this in an actual
political sense.
He's spiritualizing the notion
that followers of Jesus are
exiles in our world.
 
We don't belong here, he says.
 
He says also in 1:17,
"If you invoke his father,
the one who judges all people
impartially according to these,
live in reverent fear during
the time of your exile."
Again, followers of Jesus are
exiles--
2:11 "Beloved I urge you
as aliens and exiles to abstain
from the desires of the flesh
that wage war against the
soul."
 
These are Greek terms that
would have mean in the ancient
context precisely what illegal
alien means in contemporary
American context,
you're here illegally.
All the followers of Jesus,
according to this writer,
live in the Roman Empire as
illegal aliens basically,
or not illegal aliens but
definitely as aliens.
Maybe they're legal aliens but
they don't really belong.
I said he's talking not just to
Jews, he says in 1:18:
You know that you were ransomed
from the futile ways inherited
from your ancestors not with
perishable things like silver
and gold with the precious blood
of Christ.
The ancestors referred to here,
he's clearly referring to
Gentiles who have come into the
church as Gentiles and then now
occupy their role as part of
this alien people too.
Now what's this guy's politics?
 
Look at 2:13:
"For the Lord's sake,
accept the authority of every
human institution."
Now we're pretty clear that
authority here is not at least
just referring to angelic type
supernatural authorities,
but he's referring to the human
rulers,
"Whether of the emperor as
supreme or of governors,
as sent by him to punish those
who do wrong,
and to praise those who do
right."
Of course the governors of the
different parts of the Roman
Empire were appointed either by
the Senate or by the emperor
himself.
 
This author is not too neat
about the actual politics of the
first century so he seems to
believe that all Roman governors
are appointed by the emperor,
which was in fact not the case,
but some of them were,
and many of them were appointed
by the Senate.
 
He doesn't care about those
kinds of niceties.
For it is God's will that by
doing right you should silence
the ignorance of the foolish.
 
As servants of God live as free
people yet do not use your
freedom as a pretext for evil.
 
Honor everyone,
love the family of believers,
fear God, honor the emperor.
 
Can you imagine the author of
Revelation saying that?
It would have broken his jaw to
say "honor the
emperor."
 
He also doesn't seem to have a
whole lot of love for just
people in general.
 
The Book of Revelation seems to
have a lot of loyalty for the
people who are in the group,
but there seems to be a lot of
despising for pretty much
anybody outside the group.
That's the political
conservatism of 1 Peter,
he's writing a letter to
followers of Jesus who live
throughout the area of Turkey,
and he's trying to get them to
see that they don't really
belong to Rome,
they're not Romans,
and he doesn't address them as
Romans.
 
They don't really belong to the
political situations they're
living in.
 
They should see themselves as
aliens,
as exiles, and yet they should
see themselves as properly
subservient,
honorable, well behaved exiles
in a Roman context.
 
That plays itself out also in
some of the other social justice
issues in this,
in the politics.
Look at 2:18 right where we
stopped, after he says honor the
emperor:
Slaves accept the authority of
your masters with all deference.
 
Not only those who are kind and
gentle but also those who are
harsh.
 
For it is a credit to you if
being aware of God you endure
pain while suffering unjustly.
 
If you endure when you are
beaten for doing wrong what
credit is that?
 
If you endure when you do right
and suffer for it you have God's
approval.
 
This is ideologically very
problematic.
Telling slaves,
just submit,
and if you're being beaten
don't blame your master for
beating you, just endure it.
 
I mean, if you do wrong and
your master beats you then you
deserve to get beaten,
but you should endure it even
when you get beaten for things
you don't deserve.
Talk about "the opiate of
the masses"!
This is precisely the kind of
religion that classical Marxism
critiques: a religion that
exists to keep the slave the
slave, to keep the poor,
poor;
to keep the downtrodden,
downtrodden.
Part of the honoring of the
emperor is to teach slaves just
to submit, and if you can't
enjoy it when you're being
beaten, at least put up with it.
 
Look at 3:1-7,
"Wives,
in the same way except the
authority of your
husbands."
 
My mom used to always hate it
when they would read out these
passages in church.
 
We'd have a very loud
discussion of such passages over
Sunday dinner.
 
Then, after this.
 
Wives in the same except the
authority of your husband's so
that even if some of them do not
obey word,
they may be won over without a
word by their wives conduct.
Some of these women are
followers of Jesus,
and their husband's are not
Christians.
They should still obey them
though he says,
he doesn't allow women to use
their Christian allegiance and
the Lordship of Christ over them
to get out from under the
lordship of their husbands.
 
Do not adorn yourselves
outwardly by braiding your hair,
by wearing gold ornaments,
or fine clothing.
Rather let your adornment be
the inner self with the lasting
beauty of a gentle and quiet
spirit, which is very precious
in God's sight.
 
My mom especially hated that
"gentle and quiet
spirit" part;
she had no intentions of being
a very gentle and quiet spirit.
 
"It was in this way long
ago that the holy women who
hoped in God used to adorn
themselves by accepting the
authority of their
husbands,"
and then it goes on like that.
 
Now look at 5:5:
In the same way you who are
younger must accept the
authority of elders and all of
you must clothe yourselves with
humility and the dealings with
one another.
 
For God opposes the proud but
gives grace to the humble.
In all of this stuff,
this author is basically
telling people,
stay in your place.
No revolution,
no rebellion,
don't even resent the people
who are over you and have
authority over you.
 
This is quite clearly political
quietism,
political accommodation,
and one of the reasons he's
doing this,
as scholars will point out,
is that he seems to believe
that Christians can help their
reputation if they don't rock
the boat,
so you get verses like this,
2:12: "Conduct yourselves
honorably among the
Gentiles."
Now notice these are converted
Gentiles themselves,
but he doesn't call them
Gentiles because "the
Gentiles"
is still a term for those
people outside the body of
Christ,
outside of Christianity.
 
Conduct yourselves honorably
among the Gentiles so that
though they malign you as evil
doers they may see your
honorable deeds and glorify God
when he comes to judge.
And in 3:15:
In your heart sanctify Christ
as Lord,
always be ready to make your
defense to anyone who demands
from you an accounting for the
hope that is in,
yet do it with gentleness and
reverence.
 
He's basically very
conservative in his politics and
his ideology.
 
For one reason,
he wants these groups of
followers of Jesus not to be
disrespected by outsiders.
He wants them to develop a good
reputation so that they can't be
persecuted, so that they can't
be opposed by local authorities.
Here we have a clear case of a
totally different ideological
take on early Christianity,
but it's still apocalyptic.
This is what's interesting.
 
This author hasn't thrown away
the Christian apocalyptic that
we saw working so much in
Revelation to be anti-Roman.
He still has it.
 
You can see places.
 
He says in 4:7,
"The end of all things is
near," well that's
apocalyticism,
and the end is near.
 
"Therefore be serious and
discipline yourselves for the
sake of your prayers."
 
In 4:12:
Beloved do not be surprised by
the fiery ordeal that is taking
place among you to test you as
though something strange were
happening to you.
Any suffering that you have,
he says, chalk it up to the
suffering that comes with the
apocalyptic fire,
this is testing you,
again just endure it.
In 4:17:
For the time has come for
judgment to begin with the
household of God,
if it begins with us what will
be the end for those who do not
obey the Gospel of God?
 
He does believe that the people
who are persecuting them now,
or dissing them now,
I'm not so sure that sometimes
it was actual physical
persecution these communities
were enduring,
he may just believe that
they're being disrespected,
that they're being
discriminated against in some
way.
But his solution to this is for
them not to rock the boat,
not to rebel,
not to fight back,
but actually to just be good
boys and girls,
be submissive slaves,
be submissive women to your
husbands,
and then, if possible,
people will see your submission
and it'll make them respect the
message of the Gospel.
 
If not, those people will be
destroyed, but we have to endure
our own punishment and serving
now also.
The apocalyptic material there
serves a different purpose than
it did in Revelation and some
other Christian and Jewish text.
It's not particularly to
explain your suffering,
it's just there to be endured,
and it's just there because
it's part of the message of
early Christianity.
It doesn't really help fight
against injustice in any way,
as you might be able to see it
do in other texts.
Now how does this happen in 2
Peter?
We'll just look at this briefly
because we're almost out of
time, but I want to show you one
more thing.
I believe 2 Peter was written
by someone else,
not Peter again,
for some of the same reasons,
but I also believe it was not
written by the same person who
wrote 1 Peter because it's
rather different.
In fact, I believe 2 Peter was
written sometime in the second
century,
maybe even decades after the
letters of Paul and the Book of
Revelation and these others were
written.
 
It seems to me to show a
different stage in the
development of Christianity.
 
Christianity now looks
different in the second century
than it did in the first
century,
and I'll walk you through this
and show why I say that and how
it works.
 
First look at 2 Peter 3:2.
 
We'll start reading right at
the beginning of chapter 3.
This is now beloved the second
letter I am writing to you.
[He seems to know about the
existence of the first letter of
Peter.]
In them I am trying to arouse
your sincere intention by
reminding you so that you should
remember the words spoken in the
past by the holy prophets and
the commandment of the Lord and
Savior spoken through your
apostles.
 
This is already something like
a post-apostolic letter.
He's harkening back to the
beginning of the Christian
movement when there were
prophets and apostles.
Even though he's setting
himself up as Peter the Apostle
in the letter,
the tone of the letter makes it
sound like the apostolic era is
somewhere in the past for this
guy's version of Christianity
for his community.
We read 2 Peter as actually a
really good example of
post-apostolic New Testament
writing.
He also has references to the
Gospels themselves.
Look at 1:17,
I'll start reading at 1:16:
For we did not follow cleverly
devised myths when we made known
to you the power and coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of
his majesty.
For he received honor and glory
from God the Father when that
voice was conveyed to him by the
majestic glory saying,
"This is my Son,
my Beloved,
with whom I am well
pleased."
We ourselves heard this voice
come from heaven when we were
with him on the holy mountain.
 
What is he referring too?
 
What's the event?
 
Student:  The
transfiguration.
Prof: Exactly,
the transfiguration.
He's read his Gospels,
at least one of them,
and he's harkening back to the
story of the transfiguration of
Jesus on the mountain with Moses
and Elijah there,
and of course who were the
apostles,
the disciples that were with
Jesus at the time?
Peter was one of them,
there were three of them,
so Peter was there,
and he's recalling that scene
from the Gospels.
 
There's reference to Gospel
traditions here,
and he's even actually read
some written Gospels that we
have in our text.
 
He also says something like a
reference to 1 Peter,
as I already said that,
but he says I've already
written to you once,
that could be a reference to 1
Peter.
 
Then he talks about Paul's
letters, so he knows Paul's
letters.
 
3:15.
 
Start reading at 3:14:
Therefore beloved while you are
waiting for these things,
strive to be found by him at
peace without spot or blemish
and regard the patience of our
Lord as salvation.
 
So also our brother Paul wrote
to you according to the wisdom
given him speaking of this as he
does in all his letters.
There are some things in them,
hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable
twist to their own destruction
as they do the other scriptures.
 
You therefore, beloved ...
 
So he goes on to admonish them.
 
Notice what he's doing,
he actually calls Paul's
letters scripture.
 
Now Paul, when he was writing
his letters,
he thought he was writing
authoritative letters,
but they were authoritative
because he was an apostle who
had founded the churches.
 
Most of the time he was writing
to churches he himself founded,
so he felt like he had
authority over these churches to
write authoritative letters.
 
But Paul didn't think he was
writing scripture.
When Paul talks about scripture
in his letters he's talking
about Jewish scripture,
the Greek translations of the
Hebrew Bible.
 
This guy, though,
is far enough removed from
Paul's own day that he can
actually refer to Paul's letters
as themselves part of scripture.
 
That's one of the reasons we
think this took awhile to
develop.
 
You just don't have in early
Christianity,
the automatic acceptance of
Paul's occasional letters,
because they were letters
written to real situations,
being elevated now to the
status of holy writing,
scripture.
 
This author is living now in a
post-apostolic age and a
post-Pauline age,
and he obviously--he's probably
by this time--
they don't have a New Testament
yet,
but probably by this time he's
already familiar with maybe a
collection of Paul's letters
that are being circulated as
scripture among different
churches in Asia Minor.
 
He also may,
as I said, be familiar with
some Gospels that are being
circulated as authoritative
texts in early Christianity.
 
He's clearly living in a later
time, like I said,
maybe in the second century,
when these things have
happened.
 
Then one last thing that is
interesting to talk about,
keep your finger there in 2
Peter but we're going to look at
Jude,
so flip over to Jude which is
right before Revelation.
 
Jude is a short little letter,
Jude 14,
"It was also about
these," he's talking about
evil angels or angels of some
sort,
"that Enoch,"
remember Enoch is that
character in the very,
very early part of Genesis who
was only a few generations from
Adam,
but there were apocalypses
written in Enoch's name and
published just in the century or
so before this,
two or three centuries before
this.
So we have different documents
called the Apocalypse of Enoch
or the Revelations of Enoch,
or Enoch itself.
Enoch, in the seventh
generation from Adam,
prophesied saying,
"See the Lord is coming
with ten thousand of his holy
ones to execute judgment on all,
and to convict everyone of the
deeds of ungodliness that they
have committed in such an
ungodly way,
and of all the harsh things
that ungodly sinners have spoken
against.
 
Notice what he's doing,
he's quoting Enochic
literature, which isn't in our
Bible, as if it is also true
prophecy and scripture from
Enoch.
Now that's what Jude does,
it's important because he's
having a debate about angels.
 
Now look over at 2 Peter 2:10.
 
I'm not going to read all of
this but if you read 2 Peter
2:10-22, you have a bunch of
material that 2 Peter is getting
out of Jude.
 
In other words,
the author of 2 Peter doesn't
only know the letters of Paul,
he knows Jude also,
and he's using Jude as a
source,
and he copies some of that out.
 
What's interesting enough,
he takes out the quotation from
Enoch, he doesn't have that.
 
In other words,
he takes Jude as a good
Christian source but he takes
out the stuff he found in Jude
that he doesn't consider good
Christian material and Christian
scripture.
 
He edits out of Jude stuff,
that by that time,
he believes is not really part
of Christian scripture.
Again, what this shows us is
that the author of 2 Peter is
living in a time when we
actually see the beginning of
Christian scripture coming
about.
This is a very different time
from the apostolic period when
they were just writing letters,
occasional letters for
different purposes--
not having any idea that they
were creating a New Testament
themselves.
This author is not living in
the time by which we have a New
Testament.
 
That'll take another few
centuries to come about,
as I talked about the first
lecture, when I talked about
Canon development.
 
That's going to happen.
 
But he's certainly living in a
time that's between the
apostolic period,
when everything is much more
chaotic,
and there's not any Christian
scripture,
and now you do have Christian
scripture on its way to becoming
its own Canon.
This is in a post-apostolic
period.
So the last thing is:
what does the apocalyptic do
here?
 
Look at 2 Peter 3:3,
because there is apocalyptic
here also.
 
First you must understand this,
that in the last days scoffers
will come scoffing and indulging
their own lust and saying,
where is the promise of his
coming?
For ever since our ancestors
died all things continue as they
were from the beginning of
creation.
Notice that's got to be
post-Peter,
Peter in his own time would
never have talked about the
beginning of the Jesus movement
as happening way,
way--with our ancestors."
 
They deliberately ignore this
fact that by the Word of God,
the heavens existed long ago,
and an earth was formed out of
water and by means of water,
through which the world of that
time was deluged with water and
perished.
By the same word,
the present heavens and earth
have been reserved for fire,
have been kept until the Day of
Judgment and destruction of the
godless.
He believes this end is coming,
this end of fire,
the destruction of the current
world.
But do not ignore this one
fact, beloved,
that with the Lord one day is
like a thousand years,
and a thousand years are like
one day.
The Lord is not slow about his
promises as some think of
slowness, but he is patient with
you not wanting any to perish
but all to come to repentance.
 
But the day of the Lord will
come like a thief,
and then the heavens will pass
away with a loud noise,
the elements will be dissolved
with fire,
and the earth and everything
that is done on it will be
disclosed.
 
He does have an apocalyptic
scenario.
What does it do for him?
 
Nothing, it's just something
that's part of Christian
doctrine that he's passing on.
 
There's no franticness here,
there's no idea that it's going
to happen right now.
 
In fact he says it could happen
in a thousand years.
We're no longer with this
letter in a kind of Christianity
that has apocalyptic fervor to
it.
We're in a kind of Christianity
that is starting to have its own
Christian scripture,
that's fairly conservative
again politically,
that you don't see a lot of
stuff against Rome,
and that sort of thing,
and the function of the
apocalyticism here is simply
it's just something you believe
if you're a Christian.
Again, it's another example.
 
Apocalyptic is a political
ideology, but what kind of
politics it teaches in the early
times of Christianity can vary.
Apocalyptic can be something
that strengthens you against
Roman oppression,
that labels Rome for you as a
whore,
and Jezebel,
and a monster,
or it can teach you to be quiet
and go about your business.
 
One of the things that you're
going to be talking about in
your sections is,
which kinds of text in early
Christianity that we've looked
at function what way
politically?
 
Apocalyptic is one of those
political kinds of forces in
early Christianity,
although certainly not the only
one.
 
You're supposed to look at
these texts and say,
what politics is assumed by
these texts?
See you next week.
 
