This book collects and analyzes the evidence for eastern, Hellenized cities of the first through third centuries C.E. that became the sites of their provinces' temples to the cult of Roman emperors, and thus received the title 'neokoroi' (temple-wardens).

Worldwide, most Christians are members of denominations that exclude women from ministry. However, coinciding with the rise of feminism, there has been a strong pushback against this traditional view. Conversely, in some quarters there has been a strengthening of resolve to maintain the status quo, believing that male leadership is God-ordained and valid for all times and places. Is the push for women in Christian leadership a case of the church now conforming to the spirit of the age, or has the church with its male leadership, for the last 1900 years, been guilty of that? Is the present move for inclusion a case of "yet more light and truth breaking forth from God's word"? This book is a defense of women's role in ministry. It looks initially at the condition women lived under when the New Testament was written and their expectation for ministry. Later chapters examine the discord in ancient Ephesus that led to restrictions in ministry for women and then look in detail at 1 Tim 2:8-15, the passage that is commonly quoted to restrict women's roles. My conclusion is that that it does not provide clear evidence of a permanent prohibition of women in leadership roles.

Welcome to the long-abandoned glories of the Greek city of Ephesus in what is now Turkey. While Jerusalem has been called the cradle of Christianity, Ephesus was surely its nursery. For one momentous generation, Ephesus was the literary focus of early Christianity, and by its compilations influenced Christianity more than Jerusalem, Antioch, or Rome. This ancient city played a pivotal part in the formation of the New Testament with at least six of its books having a connection there. Paul ministered in Ephesus longer than in any other city and legend has it that John lived the last of his very long life in Ephesus. These same legends also say that Timothy became the city's first bishop and was martyred, and where the runaway slave Onesimus would eventually succeed him. However, these books were written to a world and culture that was vastly different from our own. Without understanding life situations of the intended recipients that Paul and John were writing into, we can easily read into them a meaning not necessarily intended by the author. This book will give you that understanding without the intrusion of specialist terms.

This book addresses the influence of the imperial cult in first-century AD Asia Minor and its subsequent relevance to the reading of the New Testament. In particular, this work argues, through a contrapuntal reading of 1 Timothy 2:1-7, that the early Christian community strongly resisted the Emperor's claim to be the «mediator» between the gods and humanity. In contrast to this claim, the author shows that 1 Timothy 2:1-7 can be read as a polemic from a minority community, the Christian church in Ephesus, against the powerful voice of the Roman Empire in regard to divine mediation.

While recent publications have explored the relationship between New Testament texts and early Roman imperial ideology, Ephesians has been underanalyzed in these conversations. In this study, Justin Winzenburg provides an original contribution to the field by assessing how matters of the disputed authorship, audience, and date of Ephesians have varied consequences for the imperial-critical status of the epistle. Previously underexplored elements of the Roman context of Ephesians, with a focus on maiestas [treason] charges, imperial cults, and Roman imperial eschatology are examined in light of the two major theories of the date of the epistle. The author concludes that, while there are limitations to an imperial-critical reading of the epistle, some of the epistle's speech acts can be understood as subversive of Roman imperial ideology.

City Government in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor examines the social and administrative transformation of Greek society within the early Roman empire, assessing the extent to which the numerous changes in Greek cities during the imperial period ought to be attributed to Roman influence. The topic is crucial to our understanding of the foundations of Roman imperial power because Greek speakers comprised the empire's second largest population group and played a vital role in its administration, culture, and social life. This book elucidates the transformation of Greek society in this period from a local point of view, mostly through the study of local sources such as inscriptions and coins. By providing information on public activities, education, family connections, and individual careers, it shows the extent of and geographical variation in Greek provincial reaction to the changes accompanying the establishment of Roman rule. In general, new local administrative and social developments during the period were most heavily influenced by traditional pre-Roman practices, while innovations were few and of limited importance. Concentrating on the province of Asia, one of the most urbanized Greek-speaking provinces of Rome, this work demonstrates that Greek local administration remained diverse under the Romans, while at the same time local Greek nobility gradually merged with the Roman ruling class into one imperial elite. This conclusion interprets the interference of Roman authorities in local administration as a form of interaction between different segments of the imperial elite, rejecting the old explanation of such interference as a display of Roman control over subjects.

Michael P. Theophilos explores the fascinating variety of numismatic contributions to Greek lexicography, pertaining to lexicographic studies of the Second Temple period in general, and the New Testament in particular. Theophilos considers previous scholarly attempts to grapple with, and incorporate, critical numismatic material into the emerging discipline of Greek lexicography - including foundational work by F. Preisigke and E. Kiessling - before outlining his own methodological approach. Theophilos' then examines the resources available for engaging with the numismatic material, and presents a series of specific case studies throughout the New Testament material. His carefully annotated images of coins draw readers in to a greater understanding of the material culture of the Greco-Roman world, and how this impacted upon the Greek language and the New Testament.

The ancient site of Colossae in south-west Turkey has been sorely neglected by archaeologists and biblical commentators. It has never been excavated. Modern scholarship in general has been content to repeat nineteenth century assessments, especially those of J.B. Lightfoot and W.M. Ramsay. This is the first modern contribution to gather the archaeological, historical, classical and biblical materials related to the site and its region, some of which is published in English for the first time. It marks a major step forward in scholarship on Colossae, and is designed to restore Colossae to time and space, to its material and comparative significance. Colossae emerges as a site of uninterrupted human activity in dynamic interaction with its neighbours from before the Achaemenid period to beyond the end of Byzantine control. Evidence of a chalcolithic origin of Colossae is presented along with an assessment of the relationship of the site to the modern city of Honaz. An array of international scholars have brought their specialisations in various periods and disciplines to yield a radically new assessment of the history and importance of the site. All future scholarship will be able to use this volume as the necessary foundation for research. The volume includes the first chronology of the ancient site and the first English translation of the key Byzantine text centred on the ancient city, as well as major new insights into the text of the Epistle to the Colossians.

What has gone so terribly wrong in Ephesus that Paul feels compelled to write the longest marriage code in the New Testament? 1 Peter only has seven verses about marriage. Colossians only has two. Titus only has two. Why does Ephesians have thirteen? Did Paul wish to set in stone the nature of gender relationships for all of time? Was he trying to ensure the survival of the emerging church amidst harsh Hellenistic realities of hierarchic marriage? Or did he have something else in mind? This is a book about the Ephesians 5 marriage code, the goddess Artemis, Eve, and the image of God in the believer. It explores the adverse influence of Artemis upon the Ephesian believers’ thought world, why Paul raises up Eve and Adam as the example of loving marriage (5:31), what Paul thought the image of God looked like in the believer, and why some Ephesian believers thought differently. Dr Brennan argues that the primary purpose behind Ephesians 5:21–33 was to evangelize non-believing Ephesian onlookers to an ideal of marriage in Christ’s new kingdom that far surpassed their personal experience in the first-century Roman world, and that Artemis was getting in the way.

To understand the past, we necessarily group people together and, consequently, frequently assume that all of its members share the same attributes. In this ground-breaking volume, Eric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke bring renowned scholars together to challenge this norm by seeking to rediscover the individual and to explore the dynamics between individuals and the groups to which they belong.