[B]oth Jesus and Paul are not so much trapped in a negation of global imperialism as engaged in establishing its positive alternative here below upon this earth.
—John Dominic Crossan, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, 409.
“This is about fixing the world’s attention”, the Israeli leadership says in a meeting portrayed in the movie “Munich”, which is all about the aftermath of the taking of 11 Israeli hostages at the 1972 Olympics. This is so typical of “empire”, down through the ages. “Show them who’s boss”, so everybody knows who NOT to “mess with”.
And so what is OUR “alternative”, as Crossan suggests in the above quote (hat tip to Dan……this quote makes me anxious to reopen this book and read on……other things have jumped into the way of my completing that book. I had become bogged down in al the archeological stuff, but these types of theses make such archeological stuff even interesting, if they contribute to understanding just what sort of “alternative” Paul was writing all these churches about.
