On This Rock
When Culture Disrupted the Roman Community
by E. A. Judge
Edited by A. D. Macdonald
Imprint: Cascade Books
The command of the risen Christ was to make students of all nations: "On this Rock I will build . . ." But the spread of the Pentecostal gospel disrupted the national values of eternal Rome, with her increasingly international citizenship. Loyalty to the Caesars, obligatory in the Roman world, could not break the Christians' trust in their Christ. In despair the government gave in to the unimaginable: Galerius tolerated the Christian "alternative communities" and their divergent outlook on life. One must now tolerate living in two incommensurate communities at once. This is at the heart of Late Antiquity. The Rock remains, but masked in the antique ceremonial of "religion." That late antique compromise has laid the foundation for the interaction of church and state in the modern West.
Successor to Paul and the Conflict of Cultures (2019), this seventh collection of Judge's historical essays explores the development of Christianity in Roman society from the New Testament era to the time of Constantine and beyond--always with a view to the modern situation.
E. A. Judge is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney. He is a member of the Order of Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Recent publications include The Failure of Augustus: Essays on the Interpretation of a Paradox (2019) and Paul and the Conflict of Cultures: The Legacy of his Thought Today (Cascade, 2019).
A. D. Macdonald is an early career researcher who has held research and teaching positions at Macquarie University and the Australian Catholic University in Sydney.
“The doyen of social history of the early Christian period, E. A. Judge now provides us with a seventh collection of his seminal essays. . . . I know of no scholar who better traverses all the ancient evidence and more clearly understands the role early Christianity played in turning the world of antiquity upside down.”
—Ben Witherington III, Asbury Theological Seminary
“This volume brings together updated versions of some of Edwin Judge’s most influential papers and some less well-known, with a particular focus on the pivotal developments of the fourth century. Immensely readable and engaging in style, they offer a wealth of thought-provoking insights for anyone interested in the interactions of imperial Roman society with Christianity.”
—A. D. Lee, University of Nottingham
“Edwin Judge once again offers a characteristically learned and challenging series of studies and reflections on the ways terms like ‘religion,’ ‘cult,’ and ‘community’ are used or, better, abused when studying antiquity. In particular, his ideas on the exact nature of the early Christian communities are highly original.”
—Jan N. Bremmer, University of Groningen, Netherlands
“In masterful brevity, with admirable knowledge of ancient sources and analytical clarity, Judge presents trailblazing essays on various aspects of interdependence between emerging Christianity and their Roman provincial context.”
—Cilliers Breytenbach, Humboldt University of Berlin
“Largely the inevitable product of our training, most NT scholars, as it were, engage with the ancient world like tourists on ninety-day visas, taking selfies in front of monuments that vaguely remind us of ourselves. Edwin Judge, who emigrated there long ago, is one of the best tour guides in the business. Sparkling, insightful, and regularly thought-provoking. Tolle lege.”
—Rikk Watts, Alphacrucis College, Australia
Related Titles
