Rome, Religion, and Power

[Bootstrap]

I could contest a few details but the fact I am challenging is that Rome acknowledged the distinction between religion and power. The word religion didn't even exist yet because to Rome worship was power and power was worship, they claimed authority because their gods were stronger. To suggest Jesus was apolitical because his kingdom was spiritual is to intentionally overlook the revolutionary potential of his Kingdom. Indeed, in a few hundred years the roles were reversed and Pilot, in the form of the emporer, was asking, hat in hand, for an audience with Jesus in the form of his church.

Exactly. Tom Holland makes this point really powerfully in Dominion: in the Roman world, there was no clear separation between religion and political power. Worship and authority were all mixed together. The emperors themselves were often treated as semi-divine, with temples, sacrifices, and titles like “Son of the Divine.”

So when early Christians said “Jesus is Lord,” it wasn’t just a personal spiritual confession—it was a direct challenge to Rome’s claim to ultimate authority. It was saying that Caesar was not the true Lord.

That’s also why Herod felt threatened when the Magi came asking, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” He immediately saw that as a threat to his throne and tried to kill the child. And it’s why the Sadducees, who held power by cooperating with Rome, saw Jesus as a danger.

The message of the Kingdom of God was spiritual, but it was also profoundly subversive. Over time, it turned Roman values upside down—so much so that, as Holland points out, the emperors eventually had to come, hat in hand, to seek legitimacy from the church. It’s a mistake to treat it as if it were only “spiritual” with no challenge to the existing order.

[JohnH]

Yet the Roman Empire was never concerned with or cared much about Jesus' claims. They allowed the Jewish religious hierarchy to engage in a degree of self-rule, and were reluctant to carry out said hierarchy's request to execute Jesus - with the designated Roman ruler making it clear he was simply doing what they requested and respecting their self-government.

I don't see the Roman Empire being concerned much at all about Jesus' authority over even kings and kingdoms and empires and emperors until long after his death and resurrection.

The message of the Kingdom of God was spiritual, but it was also profoundly subversive.

The Kingdom of God, by definition, is not subversive, because it represents the highest and ultimate authority. It's like claiming that my authority as a parent over my children is "subversive" vs my older child trying to tell my younger child what to do.

[Ken]

I could contest a few details but the fact I am challenging is that Rome acknowledged the distinction between religion and power. The word religion didn't even exist yet because to Rome worship was power and power was worship, they claimed authority because their gods were stronger. To suggest Jesus was apolitical because his kingdom was spiritual is to intentionally overlook the revolutionary potential of his Kingdom. Indeed, in a few hundred years the roles were reversed and Pilot, in the form of the emporer, was asking, hat in hand, for an audience with Jesus in the form of his church.

Exactly. Tom Holland makes this point really powerfully in Dominion: in the Roman world, there was no clear separation between religion and political power. Worship and authority were all mixed together. The emperors themselves were often treated as semi-divine, with temples, sacrifices, and titles like “Son of the Divine.”

So when early Christians said “Jesus is Lord,” it wasn’t just a personal spiritual confession—it was a direct challenge to Rome’s claim to ultimate authority. It was saying that Caesar was not the true Lord.

That’s also why Herod felt threatened when the Magi came asking, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” He immediately saw that as a threat to his throne and tried to kill the child. And it’s why the Sadducees, who held power by cooperating with Rome, saw Jesus as a danger.

The message of the Kingdom of God was spiritual, but it was also profoundly subversive. Over time, it turned Roman values upside down—so much so that, as Holland points out, the emperors eventually had to come, hat in hand, to seek legitimacy from the church. It’s a mistake to treat it as if it were only “spiritual” with no challenge to the existing order.

I think there are two separate questions here that got conflated in the previous thread.

1. Was Jesus himself as a religious leader seen as a threat to the Romans or Roman Empire? Clearly not. Jesus is not even mentioned in any imperial records from the time. Neither Herod nor the Sadducees were Roman or Romans. Herod was the Jewish client king of Judea appointed by the Romans and who maintained his power by being good at keeping the tax dollars flowing to Rome and maintaining peace in the region. So while Herod may have seen Jesus as a threat to his rule, and the Sadducees may have seen him as a treat to their religious authority, he was not viewed as a threat to Rome. All one has to do is zoom back out to the entirety of the Roman Empire in the 1st Century to realize how insignificant Judea was in the larger picture.

2. Did Christianity become a threat to traditional Roman paganism in the centuries to follow many generations after Jesus’ death? Yes, of course. But that was not a development that anyone foresaw during the time of Christ himself. Cults and religious movements were prolific across the Roman Empire and the Romans tolerated all of it provided it wasn’t part of any sort of insurrection. Constantine converted the Roman Empire to Christianity in the early 300s. At that point in history, Jesus was 300 years in the past. So the New Testament was describing events that in the time of Constantine would have been the equivalent to events from the 1720s relative to today. Stuff that happened half a century before the American revolution.

[Ken]

Exactly. Tom Holland makes this point really powerfully in Dominion: in the Roman world, there was no clear separation between religion and political power. Worship and authority were all mixed together. The emperors themselves were often treated as semi-divine, with temples, sacrifices, and titles like “Son of the Divine.”

That was the case with every government everywhere on earth up until about the Enlightenment when truly secular regimes like the American Republic and the French Republic began to emerge. Monarchs and governments throughout all of history sought to legitimate their rule by appealing to the divine. Whether it was the Aztecs and Maya, the ancient Egyptians, or the Medieval European dynasties.

In Rome this didn’t really accelerate until the fall of the Republic. While Rome itself as a nation was religious, the authority of the individual consuls were based on elections. It wasn’t until Augustus that this changed. And it wasn’t until later emperors like Diocletian that rule by divine right was really established in the Roman Empire as the basis for appointing emperors. As opposed to say the power of the army and which particular general could wield the most legions.

[Szdfan]

John 19:1-23 is an overtly political passage about Jesus's crucifixion, which suggests that Rome (or at least Pilate) saw Jesus in political, not spiritual terms. In this passage, Pilate shows a complete lack of concern about Jesus's spiritual claims, but focuses on the political connotations of Jesus's claim that he is the Messiah.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

This is political humiliation that Pilate and the Romans inflict on Jesus, not spiritual or religious. They clothe him with political symbols. They mock him as the "king of the Jews," which is overtly political, not spiritual language.

4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

The question here is, who has power? Who has authority? Pilate is willing to let Jesus go, but receives pressure from the Jewish religious authorities to go crucify him anyway.

7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace.“Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.

Why is Pilate afraid when the Jewish leaders tell them that Jesus claims to be the Son of God? Is it spiritual? Is it religious? Is it political?

10 “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Again, the question -- who has power? Who has authority?

12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

Again, this is overtly political. Jesus's claim to be the Messiah is not just religious, but also a political one. In order to pressure Pilate, the priests overtly and directly connect the crucifixion to Rome's imperial concerns. They argue that Jesus's messianic claims are not just spiritual, they are disloyal to Caesar. They pressure Pilate with the claim that if he doesn't crucify Jesus, he's committing treason against Caesar.

13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaicis Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

Again, that's political, not theological language.

19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

The sign above Jesus is a political statement. The priests want Pilate to make it less political, but he refuses.

22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

That’s Rome making a political judgment. While Pilate may not have believed Jesus was a serious threat, his language (capitalizing "King") shows that he's thinking about Jesus in political terms, not spiritual or theological ones.

So I don't think it's correct to say Rome wasn’t concerned about Jesus’s claims until long after his death. The political dimensions are right there in the text.

[Ken]

John 19:1-23 is an overtly political passage about Jesus's crucifixion, which suggests that Rome (or at least Pilate) saw Jesus in political, not spiritual terms. In this passage, Pilate shows a complete lack of concern about Jesus's spiritual claims, but focuses on the political connotations of Jesus's claim that he is the Messiah.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

This is political humiliation that Pilate and the Romans inflict on Jesus, not spiritual or religious. They clothe him with political symbols. They mock him as the "king of the Jews," which is overtly political, not spiritual language.

4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

The question here is, who has power? Who has authority? Pilate is willing to let Jesus go, but receives pressure from the Jewish religious authorities to go crucify him anyway.

7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace.“Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.

Why is Pilate afraid when the Jewish leaders tell them that Jesus claims to be the Son of God? Is it spiritual? Is it religious? Is it political?

10 “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Again, the question -- who has power? Who has authority?

12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

Again, this is overtly political. Jesus's claim to be the Messiah is not just religious, but also a political one. In order to pressure Pilate, the priests overtly and directly connect the crucifixion to Rome's imperial concerns. They argue that Jesus's messianic claims are not just spiritual, they are disloyal to Caesar. They pressure Pilate with the claim that if he doesn't crucify Jesus, he's committing treason against Caesar.

13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaicis Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

Again, that's political, not theological language.

19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

The sign above Jesus is a political statement. The priests want Pilate to make it less political, but he refuses.

22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

That’s Rome making a political judgment. While Pilate may not have believed Jesus was a serious threat, his language (capitalizing "King") shows that he's thinking about Jesus in political terms, not spiritual or theological ones.

So I don't think it's correct to say Rome wasn’t concerned about Jesus’s claims until long after his death. The political dimensions are right there in the text.

What I get from reading that passage, is that absent fanatical agitation from Jewish authorities and the Sanhedrin, the Romans would have likely paid little or no attention to Jesus. Jesus wasn’t a Roman Citizen and executions were common in the Roman Empire so from the Roman perspective there really wasn’t all that much to be concerned about here. Their priority was maintaining political stability across the empire so that tax revenues would keep flowing. If the locals want to persecute some of their own, no big deal as long as order is maintained.

[Bootstrap]

Yet the Roman Empire was never concerned with or cared much about Jesus' claims. They allowed the Jewish religious hierarchy to engage in a degree of self-rule, and were reluctant to carry out said hierarchy's request to execute Jesus - with the designated Roman ruler making it clear he was simply doing what they requested and respecting their self-government.

I don't see the Roman Empire being concerned much at all about Jesus' authority over even kings and kingdoms and empires and emperors until long after his death and resurrection.

The message of the Kingdom of God was spiritual, but it was also profoundly subversive.

The Kingdom of God, by definition, is not subversive, because it represents the highest and ultimate authority. It's like claiming that my authority as a parent over my children is "subversive" vs my older child trying to tell my younger child what to do.

A lot of this is true. The Roman authorities weren’t especially concerned about Jesus as an immediate political threat. Pilate’s reluctance to execute him shows he didn’t think Jesus was leading an insurrection, and mostly wanted to keep peace with the local religious leadership.

But over time, the message that Jesus is Lord and that his kingdom is above every earthly authority did become profoundly subversive to Rome’s system. That’s why Christians eventually faced persecution for refusing to sacrifice to Caesar or call him Lord, and why the empire saw them as undermining the social order.

I get what you mean about the Kingdom of God representing the ultimate authority rather than being subversive “from below.” But from the perspective of the empire, any claim that ultimate loyalty belongs to someone other than Caesar was inherently subversive. That’s part of why the church’s witness was so challenging to Roman power later on.

[Szdfan]

What I get from reading that passage, is that absent fanatical agitation from Jewish authorities and the Sanhedrin, the Romans would have likely paid little or no attention to Jesus. Jesus wasn’t a Roman Citizen and executions were common in the Roman Empire so from the Roman perspective there really wasn’t all that much to be concerned about here. Their priority was maintaining political stability across the empire so that tax revenues would keep flowing. If the locals want to persecute some of their own, no big deal as long as order is maintained.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no politics involved. Allowing the locals to persecute one of their own to maintain order is political. Rome’s whole model of control depends on knowing when to intervene directly and when to let local power structures handle things. Pilate isn't ignoring politics; he's managing it. The religious authorities know this, which is why they effectively back him into a political corner by invoking loyalty to Caesar.

I think there’s a tendency to separate “politics” and “spiritual” into two buckets and pretend they never overlap. One of the basics of political theology is that politics isn’t limited to laws, armies, or rulers. Claiming something is apolitical is itself a political stance.

For example, claiming that the Church has no place to speak or witness to power isn’t just a moral or theological claim. It’s also a political one.

We know Jesus wasn’t the only messianic figure wandering around in Judea during the First Century. We know there was a real Jewish messianic hope that a Davidic king would emerge to drive the Romans out. Neither Pilate nor the Romans had to believe that Jesus was a serious threat, but the fact that Jesus's messianic claims had political dimensions is baked into the context. Jesus confronted the earthly powers by who he was, regardless of whether or not those powers took him seriously.

[Ken]

A lot of this discussion really depends on one’s frame of reference.

In the 1st Century the Roman Empire was a vast expanse stretching from Britannia and Morocco in the west to Mesopotamia in the east. It had been expanding more or less relentlessly and consistently for 250 years and by the 1st Century had more or less reached its natural boundaries: The Atlantic in the west, the Rhine and Danube rivers in the north, the Sahara desert in the south, and the Parthian Empire (Persia/Iran) in the east. Across all of this vast stretch of empire there was really no retreat at all up until centuries later when the Romans started to abandon the most far-flung reaches of the empire like Britannia and started to break apart into eastern and western empires.

So when a particular province revolted like the Brits did under Boudicca or the Jews did in the 1st Century the Romans just sent in a couple of legions and an ambitious general to put it down. And if that meant razing cities to the ground and wiping out a significant percentage of the population, so be it. That’s just the cost of empire. That was how ambitious Roman politicians made their name as Agricola did in Britannia or Vespasian and Titus did in Judea. You put down a rebellion, go home to Rome, hold a triumph, and then get elected console or position yourself to become emperor. Roman elites actually needed the occasional war or rebellion to make their name and if one didn’t exist they would have to create one.

So the notion that the Jewish zealots in the first century had even the slightest chance of carving out an independent Judea free of Roman rule was pretty ridiculous. No other peoples anywhere else in the Roman Empire had pulled that off for centuries including far more warlike peoples like the Germanic tribes. It would be centuries into the future that the Roman Empire would start to get rolled back. And that was mostly an administrative retreat rather than military defeat.

From the point of view of local Jewish authorities in Judea, Jesus with his large followings might have been a threat and competitor to deal with and clearly he was. But to the Romans at the time he was insignificant. Every corner of the empire had its own local religions and beliefs. Christianity during the time of Jesus was so un-notable that it didn’t make it into any Roman historical records from that time.

History is 20/20. We now know that Jesus and his Crucification was historically one of the most seminal events of the past two millennia. But no one really knew it at the time other than perhaps Jesus’ disciples.

[Szdfan]

A lot of this discussion really depends on one’s frame of reference.

In the 1st Century the Roman Empire was a vast expanse stretching from Britannia and Morocco in the west to Mesopotamia in the east. It had been expanding more or less relentlessly and consistently for 250 years and by the 1st Century had more or less reached its natural boundaries: The Atlantic in the west, the Rhine and Danube rivers in the north, the Sahara desert in the south, and the Parthian Empire (Persia/Iran) in the east. Across all of this vast stretch of empire there was really no retreat at all up until centuries later when the Romans started to abandon the most far-flung reaches of the empire like Britannia and started to break apart into eastern and western empires.

So when a particular province revolted like the Brits did under Boudicca or the Jews did in the 1st Century the Romans just sent in a couple of legions and an ambitious general to put it down. And if that meant razing cities to the ground and wiping out a significant percentage of the population, so be it. That’s just the cost of empire. That was how ambitious Roman politicians made their name as Agricola did in Britannia or Vespasian and Titus did in Judea. You put down a rebellion, go home to Rome, hold a triumph, and then get elected console or position yourself to become emperor. Roman elites actually needed the occasional war or rebellion to make their name and if one didn’t exist they would have to create one.

So the notion that the Jewish zealots in the first century had even the slightest chance of carving out an independent Judea free of Roman rule was pretty ridiculous. No other peoples anywhere else in the Roman Empire had pulled that off for centuries including far more warlike peoples like the Germanic tribes. It would be centuries into the future that the Roman Empire would start to get rolled back. And that was mostly an administrative retreat rather than military defeat.

From the point of view of local Jewish authorities in Judea, Jesus with his large followings might have been a threat and competitor to deal with and clearly he was. But to the Romans at the time he was insignificant. Every corner of the empire had its own local religions and beliefs. Christianity during the time of Jesus was so un-notable that it didn’t make it into any Roman historical records from that time.

History is 20/20. We now know that Jesus and his Crucification was historically one of the most seminal events of the past two millennia. But no one really knew it at the time other than perhaps Jesus’ disciples.

I think you’re framing things purely from a top-down, imperial scale, but politics isn’t only top-down. Defining something as "political" based on whether or not the Empire noticed it is a "thin" definition of politics that doesn't take local politics into account. What happened in Judea was a political reality too, regardless of whether the power center in Rome noticed.

It's a bit like saying that political comments I make here aren't political unless the FBI comes to my door. Politics doesn’t only happen when empire-level power gets involved. It happens anywhere when questions of authority and loyalty are at stake.