The Reluctant Parting by Julie Galambush

Author:Julie Galambush
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Philippians

PAUL’S CONGREGATION AT PHILIPPI was a gentile community. Named by Philip of Macedon for himself in 356 B.C.E., Philippi became a Roman military colony in 42 B.C.E. The city was home to many retired soldiers, and devotion to the imperial cult was strong. Paul writes to his Philippian followers from prison—which imprisonment, we do not know—probably late in his life, about 60 C.E.

Paul begins with a standard greeting, followed by an extended and enthusiastic thanksgiving. First expressing his own joy over the community, he repeatedly calls for them also to rejoice: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” This ever-present refrain lends a buoyant tone to the letter but also raises a question: why must Paul so constantly urge these people to rejoice? Are they excessively dreary? In the midst of his congratulations, Paul hints at trouble; he hopes to hear that they are “in no way intimidated by [their] opponents.” What form of intimidation did the Philippian community face, and from what opponents?

The Philippian Christians lived in an environment defined by its identity as a military outpost. The city had been granted special legal status, ius italicum, in recognition of its service to the empire. This was a “company town,” and the Roman army was the company. The Christians, for their part, extolled a man crucified for sedition against the empire. Given the awkwardness of the situation, one wonders how anyone in Philippi found Paul’s message attractive in the first place. The congregation would certainly have been subject to intimidation by neighbors, associates, and even (or perhaps especially) families. First, they glorified a criminal. Worse, loyalty to this seditionist required them to abandon religious duties to the city and the empire. Offending both the emperor and the gods, they constituted a serious liability to the community. For Paul’s followers, the choice to accept voluntary separation from community activities, rituals, and identity must have been excruciating. Paul writes to acknowledge the group’s freely chosen hardships, and to exhort them to joy in the midst of suffering.

Throughout the Roman world, religious associations served to establish a sense of belonging for their adherents. Burial societies, mystery religions, philosophical brotherhoods, all provided a sense of place in the status-conscious but often disorienting social and ethnic mix that was the empire. The brotherhood of the Christians spread partly because, like other religious groups, it created a home for those who found themselves socially, emotionally, or geographically dislocated by the empire. Christianity, however, was something of an anomaly since, at the same time that it provided a sense of place, status, and identity to its adherents, it required that they take on “outsider” status within the larger culture. Unlike cults whose adherents could separate themselves during cultic rituals and then return to their normal life within the society, Christians, both Jewish and gentile, placed themselves in opposition to their normal social networks. For Jews, membership in the movement meant punishment within or perhaps even exclusion from the local synagogue. For Gentiles, membership meant alienation from family, social, and business associations.

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