Another little immigration problem

I'm reading some Roman history these days:

The opening scenes of the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator are based on the victories of Marcus Aurelius over the Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe of south-central Europe, in the third quarter of the second century. Two hundred years later, the Romans were still at it. In 357, 12,000 of the emperor Julian’s Romans routed an army of 30,000 Alamanni at the battle of Strasbourg. But within a generation, the Roman order was shaken to its core and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, ‘vanished like shadows’. In 376, a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire’s Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens – the one who had received them – along with two-thirds of his army, at the battle of Hadrianople.

Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire (p. xi). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Larry Hurtado lecture on “Destroyer of the Gods”

Published on Oct 14, 2016
Lecture by Larry Hurtado “A New and Mischievous Superstition: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World” given September 10, 2016 at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, TX.

Why does anyone become a Christian?

"Why does anyone become a Christian?" by Tim Keller.

Details about the ancient Roman “honor” system

Larry Hurtado, commenting on Peter M. Head, “‘Witnesses between You and Us’: The Role of Letter-Carriers in 1 Clement, in Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Michael W. Holmes on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, eds. Daniel M. Gurtner, Juan Hernandez and Paul Foster (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 477-93:

After reviewing major matters widely accepted about the letter among scholars, Head focuses on the named individuals who were apparently sent with this letter from the Roman church to the Corinthian church: Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Bito, and Fortunatus (1 Clem. 65:1). He argues (cogently to my mind) that they are not simply letter-carriers, but important emissaries of the Roman church, who likely had a role in amplifying further the concerns of those who sent them, and may have been intended to have a role also in the resolution of the problem in the Corinthian church.

With previous scholars, Head notes also that the names of these individuals suggest that Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito were likely freedmen of the imperial household. Their names reflect the family name of Claudius (emperor, 41-54 AD) and his wife Messalina (from the family of Valerius). Such individuals would have had “a prominent social position” (492), illustrating the early inroads Christianity was beginning to make in somewhat higher levels of Roman society.

I’ve argued elsewhere that it was the presence of the Roman “honor” system that gave the Roman church its own sense of importance. Details like this help us to flesh that out – not only in terms of “who” was in the church, but “what” they were doing, and “why” they were doing it.

See also: Background on the ancient Roman church.

How Rome Became an Empire

It took centuries for Rome to dominate
its neighboring cities in Italy (c. 300 B.C.)

“Rome wasn’t founded in a day”, or so the saying goes, but the city of ancient Rome, and eventually the Roman empire, became what it was because of a definite pattern of activity that was traceable through the centuries.

This is from F.F. Bruce’s “New Testament History” (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., ©1969):

[In 66 B.C.], the Roman Senate decided to make an end of the Mithridatic war once and for all [it had been dragging on for several decades], and entrusted the conduct of operations to Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), who was given an unlimited command over all the Roman forces in the east in order to press the war to a successful conclusion. …

The reputation of the Romans for rapacity [“aggressive greed”] had preceded them in the new areas which they now occupied. Mithridates had done his best, during his twenty-five years of intermittent war with the Romans, to prejudice his allies and neighbours against them. One sample of his anti-Roman propaganda is preserved in his letter to Arsaces XII, king of Parthia (c. 69 B.C.):

First Clement vs the New Testament

A number of the comments at the Green Baggins thread on the Papacy have turned to “evidence in the second and third centuries”. I’ve written a number of things about 1 Clement over the last several years; I’ve cobbled together some of them and I’ve posted them as a series of comments over there.

In short, it seems to me that 1 Clement relies far more heavily on Roman and Greek cultural elements. He relies heavily on the Roman military as a model for church authority structure – but he is a “wanna-be”, he does not seem to have actual authority. His concept of “grace” as I’ve written, is borrowed more heavily from the Hellenistic understanding than the New Testament understanding. And in an effort to bring in elements from Judaism, he contradicts the writer of Hebrews.

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The origins of the churches at Rome

http://bible.org/article/origins-church-rome#P108_30687