Acts of the Apostles and the Rhetoric of Roman Imperialism

By: Billings and Drew W.

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Synopsis: Acts of the Apostles is normally understood as a historical report of events of the early Church and serves as the organizing centerpiece of the New Testament canon. In this book, Drew Billings demonstrates that Acts was written in conformity with broader representational trends and standards found on imperial monuments and in the epigraphic record of the early second century. Bringing an interdisciplinary approach to a text of critical importance, he compares the methods of representation in Acts with visual and verbal representations that were common during the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan. Billings argues that Acts adopts the rhetoric of Roman imperialism found on imperial monuments and in the epigraphic record of the early second century. His study bridges the fields of classics, art history, gender studies, Jewish studies and New Testament studies in exploring how Early Christian texts relate to wider patterns in the cultural production of the Roman Empire.