C. Kavin Rowe, Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies and Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul

Rowe, C. Kavin. Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xii+320 pp.; Hb.; $69.99. Link to Eerdmans

Rowe, C. Kavin. Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xii+363 pp.; Hb.; $75.99. Link to Eerdmans.

C. Kavin Rowe is the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament and vice dean for faculty at Duke Divinity School. In 2009, he published World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press). This book challenged a longstanding consensus in New Testament studies that Acts argues that the church and Rome can coexist harmoniously. Luke paints a positive picture of Rome and demonstrates the empire has nothing to worry about from the growing Christian movement. Instead, Rowe argued that Acts is a sophisticated political document that constructs an alternative way of life that runs counter to the Greco-Roman world. In the book, he argues, “rigorous historical thickening of the biblical text helps create the necessary hermeneutical conditions for the kind of analogical thinking required by sensitive readers of the New Testament today” (World Upside Down, 9). The book was not simply a study of Roman politics and the Book of Acts (although it certainly contributed to that discussion). Rowe was interested in how we might “think along with Acts” to answer pressing questions for today (World Upside Down, 176). For the most part, the essays in this collection continue that project. A few of the essays in these two collections pre-date World Upside Down, but many are only a few years old.

Method, Context, and Meaning collects Rowe’s work on Biblical Theology and essays on other theological topics, including four on Christianity and the Human. The first essay in the collection is one of the more controversial journal articles in recent memory. “What If It Were True? Why Study the New Testament” (originally published in New Testament Studies 68 [2022]) generated far more popular buzz than journal articles typically do. Bloggers, Twitter users, and even Reddit all had something to say about the article. To a certain extent, Rowe is responding to Stephen Young’s 2020 article, “‘Let’s Take the Text Seriously’: The Protectionist Doxa of Mainstream New Testament Studies (Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 32, 328-363).

Rowe suggests New Testament Studies needs to refocus its work on the question of truth. He selects five passages from the New Testament that make some assertion about the truth. For example, in Galatians 4:4-6 Paul claims that Jesus’s arrival “when the fullness of time came” marks a fundamental shift of the ages. The problem in Galatia is that the opponents insist on living according to the old age, not the new one defined by Jesus’s death. Rowe asks: is time affected by Jesus Christ? To what degree is Paul’s statement true? At the end of the article, reading the New Testament for truth does not entail acceptance of the claims of the New Testament (19).

Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul. This collection of essays focuses on Luke and Acts (part one, eleven essays) and Paul (part two, four essays). I will highlight just one for this review. “Luke-Acts and the Imperial Cult” was originally published in JSNT 27 (2005) before World Upside Down. Rowe suggests several difficulties with studying the imperial cult and Luke-Acts. The first difficulty is the provincial nature of the Roman Empire. What might be true in one area of the empire is not necessarily true in another part of the empire. Clint Burnett makes a similar point in his recent monograph on imperial honors found in inscriptions (Paul and Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel; Eerdmans, 2024). Rowe’s Point is that the imperial cult looks different in the West than in the East. It also may look different depending on the emperor.

Another problem is the exact background for Luke-Acts. Should we read the book in the light of Augustus-Tiberius (when the events take place in Luke) or perhaps Nero (when the book of Acts takes place), or should we read the books when they were written (under Domitian)? This makes a difference since the imperial cult is quite different in A.D. 30-60 than in A.D. 85-95. Rowe suggests our ignorance about the destination of Luke-Acts is a serious problem. Not only is there uncertainty about when they were written, but to whom the books are addressed is unknown. We do not know the precise conditions of the imperial cult for the author or the recipient.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the imperial cult is never directly mentioned in Luke-Acts. Anyone traveling throughout the Empire would encounter the imperial cult in virtually every city. It is, therefore, impossible that Luke knew nothing about it, but he also says nothing. Does this imply that Luke is pro-Roman? Or is he just trying to suppress any talk of the imperial called to avoid discussing how the church in the empire relate? All this is exasperated by Luke’s clear goal of situating the story within the Roman world by mentioning locations, locations we know were dominated by the imperial cult at the time. Rowe cites C. K. Barrett: “No Roman official would have filtered out so much of what to him would be theological and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a grain of relevant apology” (Luke the Historian [1970], page 63 cited by Rowe, page 12).

A way through these problems is the description of Jesus Christ as Lord in Peter’s sermon to Cornelius in Acts 10:36. Depending on the English translation, the words “he is Lord of all” appear in parenthesis, suggesting these words are Luke’s, not Peter’s. Rowe points out the use of the demonstrative οὗτος (“this one,” often translated as “he” (NRSVue; ESV; NIV2011 has “who”) intentionally contrasts Jesus Christ as Lord with the Emperor who claimed to be the lord of all. The use of κύριος in imperial inscriptions and other propaganda is well-known.   The context is the conversion of a Roman soldier of some rank in Caesarea, the heart of imperial propaganda in the region. Rowe argues any reader in the Empire “would have heard the stress of this claim in connection with the Roman Empire and his cult” (15). For Rowe, Acts 10:36 is a “tiny grain” that can be magnified beyond its intrinsic significance. The article then points to other examples of κύριος in Luke-Acts. However, there was no compulsion to participate in the Imperial Cult until Decius in the middle of the third century, even if Pliny’s letters suggest some confusion in imperial policy toward Christians at the time of Trajan.

Conclusion. Essay collections like these two volumes are always welcome since it is often difficult (or expensive) to find journals and obscure essay collections. I have always found Rowe’s work to be helpful to my work, so these are valuable contributions to New Testament studies. By reprinting these essays, Eerdmans provides easy access to a wealth of scholarship on the New Testament.

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of these books. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.