Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ

by Klaus Wengst, John Bowden

English, German (translation)

Genres: Religion

245 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Komal Mahmood · Rating 4 out of 5]

For too long historians have interpreted the Jesus code as being an extension of the Roman law of justice, victory, and most importantly peace. But that would render the very fact of Jesus’s coming pointless. Why would a Prophet go out of his way to perpetuate a status quo? Who even bothers to work to keep things as they are if they’re already going with the flow?
As such it is held that most Prophets had come to produce a different conception of prevalent paradigms, during the time of Jesus it was the Roman understanding of Peace and Justice which the empire quite visibly obtained through military expansion and subjection of indigenous peoples. The elites who participated in the consuls were speaking from a vantage point of clear bias toward the Empire and should thus be discounted in order to understand the view of the disadvantaged subjects from which Christ himself emerged.

Jesus was obviously critical of the way the Empire handled the people under its rule but decided to take a stance different from both the 'peace party' pro status quo people as well as the divisive, warring zealots. And that way is described in this book as an interruption of the history of violence perpetuated by the Romans and presenting the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection as a singular event which marked the political rift between the Christian conception of Peace and Justice in Jesus as the bringer of the Kingdom of God and the unjust system of peace in the Roman Empire.

Klaus Wengst goes on to reinterpret several sources in terms of Roman legal system and how Jesus perceived it, starting from the incident of the taxation coin (when the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin ask him whether paying taxes is justified), to the incident of Jesus' exorcism of a young boy and his answer to Herod (wherein the demons are expressed to have been euphemisms for Roman Legions), as well as the true meaning behind his 'give the other cheek' speech (which was really an exhortation on his side to practice an active peace which invites the aggressor to forgo his enmity: 'elimination of the enmity rather than the enemy').

The book does digress somewhat (atleast for me), in giving the long accounts of Paul's unfavorable experiences with the Gentiles but their ultimate aim is to support the book's thesis: the Roman Peace and Security is a massively overrated concept.

And there is obvious truth in that, given that it would otherwise have been nearly impossible for a small market town by a ford of the river Tiber to have become the formidable 'imperium' that it did if not through excessive military intervention and subjugation of conquered people.

The fact that Christian scriptures are a literary medium, and all media are susceptible to structural information: therefore as there is a variety of Jesus conceptions; the Jewish conception, the Christian conception, the Muslim conception; there is also a variety in ways the Pax Romana was perceived, which in the context of this book is divided between ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. The former is the view of the Roman soldiers, the generals, the consuls, the governors, the caesars. The latter is obviously the subjected peoples of the empire.

The account is validated by reading certain sestercius and denarius which indicated the close relationship between the gods of war, peace, and victory. That emperor Augustus' altar was a sacrificial altar celebrating his military victories, that the Jewish god or the gentile god was a lesser entity than the very institution of the emperor whose cult it was mandatory to follow.

The instrument of scrutiny is the vantage point of Aelius Aristides, whose 'from above' perspective is vindicated by the fact that he was someone of elite stature and Roman rule would have been of tremendous benefit to him as opposed to someone like Jesus, who even though being as inconsequential as a carpenter's son, was put to death and his rebellion ineffectively weakened. Jesus had a revolutionary impulse for he proclaimed a message which challenged authority as well as the basic family unit which was the primary tool for the reproduction of existing values: the status quo.

A good book indeed, for it offers a different perspective in which the Pax Romana is viewed as well as certain key texts interpreted.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most cursory looks at early Christian history will glibly credit the Pax Romana with enabling the spread of Christianity. From the very beginning, this book bluntly challenges this by pointing out that not only was the Pax Romana founded on oppression and violence, but it also managed to kill Christ and Paul, create innumerable martyrs, and generally exploit and degrade conquered peoples on three continents. What follows is a fascinating textual criticism of both Roman authors and Christian writers from Augustus to around 100 AD, as the author teases apart different viewpoints of the Pax Romana.

The first section (55 pages) examines pagan Roman writers - Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch, Virgil, Aelius Aristides, Juvenal, etc, too see how they address the Pax Romana in their writings. In particular, the book examines the military, politics, economics, law, culture, and religion, applying a critical lens to the classical works to discover why some authors showered praise on the Roman system while others (especially Tacitus!) produced a huge amount of criticism, and what these writings could tell us about how Rome really worked.

The second section is even more fascinating, because it now applies this same critical lens to certain New Testament and general Christian writings to see how different authors approached the problem of Rome. The first sub-chapter focuses on the saying of Christ, with a brilliant exegisis on the "Give unto Caesar" that completely changed my view of this verse as well a fascinating look at the political aspects of demonic possession. The next sub-chapter explores the advice of Paul to various Church communities and how they should respond to the ever-present power of Rome. In the next sesction, the author then contrasts with the fairly positive stance of Luke towards Rome, which to be honest I had never noticed before. The author directly compares lines from Mark vs. Luke to see how Luke has subtly changed the meaning, especially with his account of the Passion where he shifts the blame entirely to the Jews. The next chapter looks at a non-biblical letter from Clement of Rome to Corinth, where Clement is blatantly pro-Roman and tries to model the Church on the Roman system. Finally, the 5th Christian sub-chapter focuses on the entirely-negative portrayal of Empire in John.

This was an absolutely fascinating book. Even if you yourself are not Christian, this would still be a valuable read both because of the examination of Roman power and oppression (which we can turn to view our world today!), and because you can see how the author can deconstruct historical texts to see what they reveal about the author, their background, and their world.

Note: the page count is a lie. Technically there's 245 pages, but 102 of those are notes and appendices. The actual meat of the text is only 143 pages - still dense, but not particularly long.