 Peace of Christ to all of you. It's such a privilege to be with you tonight to talk a little bit about biblical studies and some of the content of my courses at AMBS. I'm going to share my screen right now so that you all can see a PowerPoint. So my name is Drew Straight. I'm in my fourth year teaching at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and I'm enormously grateful to be a part of this learning community. AMBS, as you likely know, is what we call a historic peace seminary, and this is very unique because there are not very many of us around. In fact, I teach a class called Biblical Foundations of Peace and Justice, and on the first day of that course, we always watch a documentary called The Good War and those who refuse to fight it. Last week, my class was watching this film about conscientious objectors during World War II, and at one point in this film, there is a segment about students at Union Seminary in New York City, which is now considered one of the most progressive seminaries in the world. And during World War II, there was a group of men and women that refused to fight in World War II at Union, and the administration actually wrote letters to their parents rebuking them for their unwillingness to be drafted. After we finished watching the film last week in my class, my students looked at me and thought, that is crazy. I can't believe that Union did that to these students, and I reminded my students that not every seminary is a historic peace seminary, and this is one of the reasons that I am so grateful to be a part of this learning community because as your professor, as a professor here, I can be openly committed to Jesus's way of peace and not have to look over my shoulder and be worried that my president or my dean is going to call me into their office and I'm going to get in trouble for it. So that is truly a distinctive here and something that I deeply value as a professor. This matters a lot because we live in a moment where the Bible is a contested document. It is a contested document that for some has to do with bringing about more violence in the world, and for some it has to do with bringing God's peace and justice to this world. In front of you here, I have an image from the January 6th insurrection last year of an insurrectionist holding up a Bible above his head, perhaps even worshiping it, praying to God, and presumably assuming that this God is on their side as they are inflicting harm on people inside of the United States Capitol building. This is a dark reminder that the work we do in biblical studies matters. It's a matter of life and death in some situations. The Bible can be used for good and also for evil as we are grappling with this ancient text that was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So as we think about the art of biblical interpretation at AMBS, we think about the Bible as a communicative event, an event wherein the God of Israel is communicating to the whole inhabited world about how this God is at work in human history. And to think critically about this document that we call the Bible, we think of the world of the author, the world of the text, and the world of the reader. And specifically, we like to think of the question, where does meaning come from? Does meaning come from the author of these different books? Does meaning come from the text of these books? Or does meaning come from readers from you and I as we're reading and participating in the meaning making process? So as we do biblical studies and interpretation at AMBS, we often find ourselves interrogating these three worlds, the world behind the text, the world of the author, the world of the text, and the world in front of the text, the world of the reader. So for the remainder of this short lecture tonight, I want to take you on a journey back into the world behind the text, back into the world of the authors of early Christian literature or what we now call the New Testament. And specifically, I want to think critically together about what early Christianity's message of peace meant under the power, the colonial power of the Roman Empire. So the word for peace in the New Testament in Greek, the New Testament was written in Greek, is a reine. A reine is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word shalom, which means peace. And the word reine, the word peace in the New Testament can mean a variety of things. It can have to do with reconciliation between human beings and God. It has to do with reconciliation between human beings and one another. It can have to do with God's new creation and alternative community coming about on planet Earth as a contrast to the peace that is on offer by the Roman Empire and other empires in the world. Peace in the New Testament is also a political reality that is incarnated and coming about through the life, death, and resurrection of Israel's Messiah. So it's a political reality. It is a present and a future cosmic harmony where God is at work both now and in the future to bring about a new and just world. In that sense, it is a renewal of the whole created order. God does not just care about human beings. God also cares about the whole created order in renewing this whole Earth. Peace in the New Testament can also have to do with an inner tranquility in the midst of adversity, which might be the dominant understanding of peace in the church in today's world. But to understand peace in its ancient context, we need to know a thing or two about the Roman Empire, because the Roman Empire was also very passionate about a distinctive kind of peace. In front of you here, I have a map of the Roman highway system of the Roman road system during the time of Jesus. As Rome expanded its empire across the Mediterranean world, it built up highways and infrastructure to move its military around the empire so that it could enrich itself off of distant people's economies and also dominate distant peoples. If you're like me, though, growing up in the church, I was taught that this infrastructure, these Roman roads and highways, were put there by God's design so that the gospel could then go and be preached to the ends of the Earth. When we start to think about that critically, though, that becomes highly problematic because it suggests that God allowed the Romans to build these roads, to dominate and pacify people so that then the gospel could then go out easily into the inhabited world. So I'd like to challenge that idea today and suggest that these Roman roads were not placed there by God in the strict sense, but rather by the Romans in order to enrich their empire and to send their military across the Mediterranean in order to pacify, or what I call, peace-ified distant peoples. The Romans called this the Pax Romana. It was a political ideology known as the Roman peace. So the Latin word here for peace is Pax, and that is translated into Greek as a reine. Both words had similar meanings, but the Pax Romana was a peace through pacification, or what I call, peaceification through coercion and violence. And so in this sense, the Roman ideology of peace was closely and intimately associated with imperialism. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, put it this way. He wrote that, we make war that we may have peace. And this was a common idea in the Greek and Roman worlds that war was the primary mechanism in the world for bringing about peace in the empire. So this was a kind of peace through coercion over the whole world. And there's a coin on this slide here on the bottom right where you can see the God of victory in the Roman religion system standing with their foot propped up on the globe. And that is an image of Roman domination where the whole globe has come under their power through coercion. So to maintain this kind of power over distant peoples, Rome policed them through military domination by again using this infrastructure to send their military out into the far reaches of the empire to peaceify and pacify these peoples. The first Roman emperor named Caesar Augustus, right before he died, he wrote a eulogy for his own funeral. In that eulogy he wrote that all land and sea was at peace under the Romans. So again, peace was a very important idea for him as he interpreted his own role in the world as someone who had pacified the whole inhabited world. Interestingly crucifixion, Roman crucifixion was a very important part of Rome's political propaganda around peace and peacemaking. Crucifixion was a strategy to pacify dissident voices. By dissident voice, I mean someone who is talking about revolution, someone who attempts to resist the power of Rome and its ability to pacify peoples. So crucifixion was a torture apparatus that was reserved especially for dissident peoples living in distant lands, bandits and different revolutionaries who were going about the countryside trying to stir up revolts against Rome. These were the kinds of people who were crucified. So it's interesting that Jesus of Nazareth II was crucified on a Roman cross, a symbol of the Pax Romana in its attempt to pacify and peaceify distant peoples who had a subversive voice. Jesus of course rises from the dead making a public spectacle and showing God's power over the Pax Romana through the resurrection of the Son of God. But Rome legitimated its power over distant peoples through peace and peacemaking with three primary metaphors. The first metaphor was military domination and the Romans had their own Bible. It was Virgil's Ionid. The Ionid was considered the Bible of the Roman people. In Virgil's Ionid at one point it says this, you Roman remember this, to rule your empire, the peoples of the earth. These will be your arts and make peace their custom. In other words, pacify them through coercion. To spare those who submit and crush the proud in war. Again, if you are submissive to Rome's peace, they'll spare you. But if you resist at all, either through word or indeed, they will crush you through violent pacification. The second way Rome legitimated its domination of the empire of the whole Mediterranean world was through the metaphor of enslavement. In fact, after Rome enslaved the entire nation of Israel after it destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE after Jesus died, they minted coins. And on the bottom right here, you can see this coin. On one side it has the emperor Vespasian's face looking sideways with divinizing attributes, meaning that he's portrayed by artists as a kind of God, human figure. But then on the backside of that coin is an image of Israel personified as a woman underneath a date palm. The date palm was considered a primary part of Israel's economy. And this image here juxtaposes this date palm, Israel's economy, with Israel personified as a woman hunched over with her chin on her hand in a very solemn sitting position. And then a Roman soldier is standing over her with a dagger coming out of his hip threatening to pacify her. This is a very provocative image, very misogynist image showing Rome's domination of Israel as this personified woman. And then the inscription around the coin says Judea capta or Judea conquered, Judea taken captive in Latin. So again, this is a very provocative window into ways that Rome enslaved distant peoples both literally and metaphorically through their media, through coins and art within their urban spaces. The third way that Rome legitimated its domination of distant peoples was through racism and xenophobia. By xenophobia, I mean fear of strangers, fear of people who look different than you or I do. There were two forms of racism in the ancient world. The first was what we call environmental determinism. This is the idea that the climate you grew up in or the geography that you grew up in shaped your collective characteristics. And people would use this to scapegoat you, depending on whether you grew up in a warm or a cold climate. The second tradition or scapegoat mechanism was the physiognomic tradition. This was a huge deal in the ancient world. In fact, I would argue that the authors of the Gospels in the New Testament were deeply familiar with the physiognomic tradition. This was the idea that you could judge someone else's character based on their facial or bodily features. In fact, I would argue that when Luke portrays Jesus healing people with bodily disfigurements, he's pushing a back against this racist physiognomic tradition to say that, hey, it doesn't matter how you look. All of humanity is included in God's family. It doesn't matter what size your nose is or what facial features you have. All of humanity is included in the people of God. So peace was a core political ideology of the Roman Empire, to the point that it was monumentalized in art and in statuary and in dramatic reliefs by the time of Jesus. In fact, by the time when Jesus was born, the Roman Emperor Augustus was honored with a peace monument, a monument to the Augustan peace. This monument has survived to this day, and archaeologists have actually reconstructed it in Rome and covered it with a roof. You can go and see it today. And on a number of the dramatic reliefs on the sides of this monument that we call the Arapacas are images of famous Roman gods sitting on top of the spoils of war and the weaponry of distant nations to communicate to the world that Rome has again peaceified the militaries of these distant peoples. So it's also interesting to note that there are a number of inscriptions, places where people wrote on stone in public honoring Augustus's peace and other Roman Emperor's peace. If you don't mind taking a moment with me to actually read through this inscription, we call this the preane inscription. Five copies of it survive from the ancient world both in Latin and in Greek. It's an inscription that honors the Emperor Augustus for bringing peace to the world through violence and honors his power as a benefactor. As we're reading through this inscription, I want to invite you to be thinking critically about language in the New Testament that might overlap with the content of this inscription. Let's read this carefully together. Since Providence which governs all things in our life in divine manner has with eager generosity bestowed the most beautiful ornament on our life by bringing forth Caesar Augustus, whom it has filled with virtue to the good of the human race as the savior for us and for our descendants, the man who ends war and creates peace. And since by his appearing the Emperor has now super abundantly fulfilled the hopes of all earlier times and that he has not only towered over all the benefactors who lived before him but has also robbed all future benefactors of the hope of doing more than he has done. And since finally the birthday of the god Augustus meant for the world the beginnings of the gospel which has him as its author. If we were together in person in a classroom right now I would hand the microphone over to you and invite you to make some observations about this text right now. So I've made those observations for you by bolding and underlining some key words in this inscription. One of those words is savior. Augustus is celebrated and honored as savior of the world. He's honored as someone who ends war and creates peace through pacification, through military domination, enslavement, and racism and xenophobia. He's also honored as a benefactor that has towered over all benefactors who went before him. In the ancient world all of life was built around what we now call the system of benefaction, a system of power where the emperor was at the top of society and everyone else was a subordinate authority under the emperor. Interestingly at the end of this inscription Augustus is also celebrated as someone who brought the beginning of the gospel the same word that is used in the new testament to talk about the good news of the coming of Christ the king, Israel's messiah. So with this window into Roman power, Roman peaceification, the Roman peace, I want to shift gears now and think a little bit about how Jesus of Nazareth the son of God negotiated his own life as a citizen of Israel living under the Roman peace, the colonial power of the Roman emperor. As a matter of fact when Luke the evangelist prepares his audience for the birth of John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus in Luke chapter two verse one, he synchronizes his those historical events with the reign and rule of Caesar Augustus this year when Caesar Augustus sent a census out over the nation of Israel for taxation purposes. I think that Luke is doing that intentionally to invite his audience, the world of the author, the world behind the text to grapple with a peace ideology of the Roman empire what we call the pox romana and the peace theology of Jesus of Nazareth the son of God the true bringer of the gospel of peace. So there are a number of examples where these two world views come into conflict with one another in the gospels and letters of Paul and also the book of Revelation. We obviously don't have time to look at all of those instances tonight but I do want to draw your attention to one example where the the peace ideology of Rome and the the gospel of peace come into conflict one another with some of Jesus' teaching. The example I want to look at is from Luke chapter 22 right after the last supper in Luke's gospel. It's a remarkable narrative Jesus has just broken bread and poured wine with his disciples symbolically inviting them to to interpret and help them understand his coming death and resurrection on the cross. Soon after the last supper Luke tells us that a dispute broke out among the disciples about which one of them is the greatest. Let's read this together. It comes from Luke 22 verses 24 through 27. Luke writes that a dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest but he said to them the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those in authority over them are called benefactors the same word that was used in the praying inscription to honor Caesar Augustus as the sole major source of power and benefaction over the world. Luke writes but not so with you don't be like them rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves for who is greater the one who is at the table or the one who serves is it not the one at the table but I am among you as one who serves. When we go back real quickly and look at this inscription honoring Caesar Augustus as the greatest benefactor who's ever lived and then read that side by side looking at how Jesus here is critiquing the kings of the Gentiles who lord their power over others who are honored and celebrated as benefactors. We get a very powerful message of the ideology or the peace theology I should say of the early Jesus movement. We get an image into the ways that the early Jesus movement is interrupting the Pax Romana inviting and calling the whole empire to repentance to think differently about God to be thinking differently about power to be thinking differently about human relationships and the true source of peace and peacemaking in this world which is through Christ and Christ alone. This of course comes to a climax if you remember in Acts chapter 10 when the apostle Peter goes into a Roman centurion's household to preach the gospel and that's 1036 Peter says that peace is through Jesus Christ in a Roman centurion's household who is overseeing the empire's peace over Israel. This again is a reminder of the ways that the early Jesus movement is contesting Rome's understanding of peace through the Pax Romana. A couple of years ago I was actually literally two years ago to this day I was with our President David Beauchart and a number of other friends and alumni from AMBS in Egypt. We were going on a tour of Egypt with my former colleague Safa Marzouk and at one point toward the end of our trip we were about 500 miles south on the Nile River south of the Mediterranean Sea and when you get to the first waterfalls of the Nile River there is a famous temple to the emperor Augustus there, a chapel that was set up there to give him honors to worship him effectively as a god for bringing about peace in the world. On the ground I took a picture while I was there and there's an inscription on it that says to dictator Caesar Augustus to the savior and benefactor. It would not be difficult to find hundreds of other examples of this where Roman emperors both during and after the life of Jesus during the missionary travels of Paul where they're being celebrated as savior and benefactor. So when Jesus is critiquing the benefaction of the empire Luke 22 he's speaking to a very particular understanding of peace and power in the world of the author. In his pastors and leaders in the church the more we can get to know about that world the more the message and teachings of Jesus comes alive for us in our preaching and teaching. So I want to close today tonight I should say by looking at a diagram of power in the Roman world. In the Roman world all of power was concentrated at the very top of the social hierarchy. In biblical studies to talk about social hierarchy we use the word cosmology. So in biblical studies when I use the word cosmology I'm not talking about the moon and the stars and outer space I'm talking about social relationships between human beings and the hierarchy of those relationships in the world around us. So in the Roman empire its cosmology was centered on the Roman emperor at the very top of the created order. Underneath the ruler was a governing class and then businessmen and peasants and artisans and then at the very bottom of society was the unclean and degraded and the expendables and you can see where the numbers of these different people groups expand as you move downwards and then they kind of contract again together at the very bottom of society. The point here is that those that held the the majority power being the emperor Augustus Pontius Pilate the Herodian dynasty the Herod's who oversaw Israel these people had an enormous amount of power overseeing subordinate peoples. So when Jesus is critiquing the ways that they are thinking about lording power over others he's really flipping the script on this cosmology of empire. He's turning it upside down as he is proclaiming the peace of God being incarnated through the good news of the gospel of peace where the the the the the poor and the expendables the unclean and the degraded are being liberated into new life in the kingdom of God as both a present and a future reality. So that concludes some of what I want to share tonight when I conclude with this thought one of the things that makes me really excited as a Bible professor is inviting students into the world behind the text to try to make sense of how these ancient texts would have been interpreted and understood for the author's audiences and speaking very personally the more I have learned about the Roman world the more I have learned about the Jewish world of Jesus the more radical the teachings of Jesus have come for me and the more important Jesus's message of peace and peacemaking has has become for me in my understanding of what it means to be a minister of the gospel and also for the church's witness. So thank you so much for your time as a privilege and a blessing to be with you all tonight.