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9 The Power of Empire and the Rhetoric of Scripture In the past several years scholars have focused on empire—the Roman and the American—and assessed its impact on the rhetorical power of Scripture, which is claimed by Christians to be the authoritative revealed, sacred word of G*d. Scholars concerned about the function of the Bible in people’s lives and seek to read the signs of the times, endeavor to critically evaluate the Bible’s function in inculcating the ethos of domination and submission. We also seek to enable readers to question biblical authority, which has been understood throughout the centuries in analogy to imperial power. Such power of empire is wielded by a few and demands the obedience and submission of the many, either in the name of G*d or in the name of patriotism. Hence, biblical scholars have to explore not only how the power of empire has historically shaped and affected Christian Scriptures but also how it continues to shape cultural and religious self-understandings today. Christian Scriptures and interpretations, I argue, could and can rightly be used in the service of empire, colonialist expansion, and heterosexist discrimination because they have been formulated in the context of Roman imperial power. Therefore biblical language is determined by this rhetorical political imperial context. If people do not become aware of the language of empire at work today, they internalize the ethos of empire: violence exclusion and submission to G*d, the almighty King and Christ the Lord, in and through the process of reading Scripture. In order to avoid such internalizations of the ethos of empire, scholars need to develop an understanding of Scripture that will allow people to deal critically with the scriptural language of empire rather than compel them to repeat and reinscribe it today. Historically, the language of democracy has provided an alternative discourse to imperialism and domination. Although democracy has different shades of meaning that are not always liberating, democracy through the times, has been and still is the discourse that sets the terms for critique of imperial power and institutions and creates the basis for their change. Radical democracy, which I have called the ekklēsia of wo/men, 155 156 Changing Horizons offers the language and space for the imagination to develop a public religious discourse wherein, according to Adriana Hernändez, “justice, participation, difference, freedom, equality and solidarity set the ethical conditions.” The challenge for biblical and theological scholars then today is to develop modes of interpretation that not only can recognize imperial biblical language. We also have to trace languages and imaginations of radical democratic equality equally inscribed in Scripture as well as those scriptural discourses that are different from those of empire. Since Christian fundamentalism draws on the language of empire inscribed in Christian Scriptures, progressive biblical scholarship needs not only to critically make conscious such inscriptions, but also to articulate elements of a radical democratic egalitarian vision that is also inscribed in Christian Scriptures. This is not just a theological problem within Christianity but is a challenge to all those who seek to change the culturalpolitical ethos of empire today. It becomes more and more pressing at a time when in the name of G*d and the Bible antidemocratic tendencies are on the rise. To explore this problem more fully, I will first discuss the contemporary context of our reading of Scripture. In a second step, I will reflect on the rhetorical power ascribed to Scripture and finally indicate an approach to Scripture that is able to recognize the inscriptions of empire and free us from their internalizations of subordination. Empire as the Context of Scripture Today In recent years, New Testament—or as I would prefer, Christian Testament— scholarship has rediscovered or reemphasized the Roman Empire and its impact on early Christian life and literature as an important field of study. Such studies of the Roman Empire have emerged in the biblical academy at one and the same time as publications on contemporary forms of empire and its exploitations have been discussed widely. While the study of the Roman Empire has always been part and parcel of historical Christian Testament scholarship, such studies have often tended to either celebrate Rome’s accomplishments as a great civilizing power in the Mediterranean world of the first century CE, or they have narrowly focused on the persecution of Christians by the Roman authorities. For instance, in the s a debate had ensued in scholarship on...

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