Hidden Criticism?
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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament · 2. Reihe Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL) · Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC) 392 Christoph Heilig Hidden Criticism? The Methodology and Plausibility of the Search for a Counter-Imperial Subtext in Paul Mohr Siebeck Christoph Heilig, born 1990; 2009–2014 studied theology; 2013 Master of Letters in “Biblical Languages and Literature” at St. Mary’s College, University of St Andrews; since 2014 post- graduate at the University of Zurich (SNF Project) on narrative substructures in the Pauline letters. e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-153796-7 ISBN 978-3-16-153795-0 ISSN 0340-9570 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2. Reihe) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliogra- phie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproduc- tions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Laupp & Göbel in Nehren on non-aging paper and bound by Buch- binderei Nädele in Nehren. Printed in Germany. To Theresa and Anthony – for a magnificent year in St Andrews Preface As creators of texts, we constantly produce associated subtexts. This is even true for “factual” scholarly literature. Often what is important with regard to our communicative aims is not simply what we obviously state, but also what is only implied or hinted at. Reasons for such behaviour are manifold, rang- ing from restrictive social conventions to pure delight in playing with the ambiguous. Strategies for crafting such subtexts do not have to be sophisti- cated; even surprising omissions can be telling in some instances. Identifying subtexts, however, can be all the more difficult. After all, we cannot automat- ically use the lack of clear statements as evidence for the existence of more subtle ones. This book is no exception in being part of a network of texts. There is the scholarly literature that is engaged explicitly, but in those parts that are of good quality, there are also countless implicit “echoes” of the incredible sup- port of others. First and foremost, I would like to use the public transcript of this preface to state that I owe infinite gratitude to my wife Theresa Heilig, who has supported my work in so many ways that her contribution to this project cannot be overestimated. But there are many more who have become part of the process of writing this monograph and to whom I am grateful. The roots of this project go back to my undergraduate studies at the FTH Giessen. I am especially thankful for the encouragement of Dr. Philipp Bartholomä to pursue postgraduate studies and for the dialogue with Dr. Joel R. White, who supervised my thesis on Paul and Empire. When I came to St Andrews, I found research conditions that were simply exceptional, and this book would not have been possible without the opportunities afforded me there. I am especially thankful for the manifold support of Prof. Kristin De Troyer, Dr. Mark W. Elliott, Dr. Scott J. Hafemann, and Prof. N. T. Wright. During the international SBL meeting at St Andrews, I had the opportunity to present my views on “Methodological Considerations for the Search of Counter-Imperial ‘Echoes’ in the Pauline Literature” in the section “Sacred Texts in Their So- cio-Political Contexts” (in conjunction with the third St Andrews Graduate Conference for Biblical and Early Christian Studies). In the wake of this presentation, I was invited to do a postgraduate workshop “On Hays and Bayes: A Workshop on Intertextuality, Criteria and Probability Theory” at St Mary’s College (St Andrews), 25th July 2013, which was initiated by Ernest VIII Preface Clark Jr. I benefitted greatly from the feedback at both events. The iSBL- paper was later published in Reactions to Empire: Proceedings of Sacred Texts in Their Socio-Political Contexts (ed. John Anthony Dunne and Dan Batovici; WUNT II, 372; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 73–92. It offers a very short summary of the argument presented in this book. I am immensely thankful to Prof. John M. G. Barclay for providing me with constructive feedback on this essay and I hope that I was able to do justice to his critique in this book. I would also like to thank Prof. James R. Davila and Prof. Maren R. Niehoff for reading Chapter 1 on Philo and Prof. Barbara Burrell for reading Chapter 4 on Paul’s Roman context. Also, I am grateful to Prof. Vasily Rudich for discussing various aspects of censorship in antiquity with me. Special thanks go to Anthony Fisher, who read the whole manuscript and offered immensely helpful feedback. Dr. Wayne Coppins also deserves great thanks for reading through the whole manuscript in a very short time. I would also like to thank Prof. Jörg Frey for his early interest in this work, helpful feedback, and the acceptance into this series. I am also grateful for the very pleasant experience of cooperating with the Mohr Sie- beck team, including Dr. Henning Ziebritzki, Simon Schüz, Matthias Spitzner, and Kendra Mäschke. Zürich/Göttingen, February 2015 Christoph Heilig Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................................. VII Abbreviations .................................................................................................. XII Chapter 1: Analogy ...................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Point of Departure ............................................................................. 1 1.2 Goodenough’s Proposal: Veiled Criticism of the Roman Empire in Somn. 2 .......................................................................................... 2 1.3 Philo’s Political Theory ..................................................................... 3 2. Analysis of Somn. 2 .................................................................................. 5 2.1 Preliminary Remarks on Procedure .................................................. 5 2.2 Somn. 2 and the Allegory of the Soul ............................................... 6 2.3 Political Allegory in Somn. 2? ........................................................... 8 3. Conclusions ............................................................................................ 17 3.1 Summary ......................................................................................... 17 3.2 Outlook ........................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2: Approach .................................................................................. 21 1. Counter-Imperial “Echoes” in the Subtext ............................................. 21 2. Evaluating Hypotheses ........................................................................... 24 2.1 On the Nature of Criteria ................................................................ 24 2.2 The Structure of Historical Inferences ............................................ 26 2.3 Bayes’s Theorem ............................................................................. 27 2.4 Explanatory Potential and Background Plausibility of a Hypothesis ................................................................................ 28 2.5 Background Knowledge .................................................................. 30 2.6 Comparing Hypotheses ................................................................... 33 X Table of Contents 2.7 Conclusions ..................................................................................... 34 3. “Echoes” of the Empire .......................................................................... 35 3.1 Hays’s Criteria for Identifying Scriptural “Echoes” ........................ 35 3.2 Application to Imperial Ideology .................................................... 36 3.3 Methodological Evaluation ............................................................. 40 4. Excursus: Inference to the Best Explanation .......................................... 46 Chapter 3: Discourse Context ................................................................. 50 1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 50 2. James C. Scott’s Categories .................................................................... 50 2.1 The Public Transcript ...................................................................... 50 2.2 The Hidden Transcript .................................................................... 51 2.3 The Hidden Transcript and the Public Sphere ................................. 52 3. Application to the Pauline Letter ............................................................ 54 3.1 The Pauline Letters as Hidden Transcript in Veiled Form? ............. 54 3.2 Pauline Letters as Hidden Transcript in Pure Form? ....................... 58 3.3 Conclusions ..................................................................................... 65 Chapter 4: Roman Context .....................................................................