was Adolf Deissmann in his Licht vom Osten‚ published in 1908
and translated into English as Light from the Ancient East
(Deissmann 1910). The question has been revived recently by
Peter Oakes in a study of Paul’s Letter to the Philippiansand
Graham Stanton in an analysis of the meaning of the word ‘gospel’
(Oakes 2001; Stanton 2004). They all agree that the echoes of
terms from emperor worship in New Testament writings are
perhaps most significant in terms of how preaching might have
struck the ears of contemporary audiences in the Greek-speaking
eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Deissmann 1910: 342;
Oakes 2001: 174; Stanton 2004: 48). This was, after all, a society
filled with temples, decrees, and inscriptions associated with the
worship of the emperor as a god. For Stanton the relationship
is closer: the Christian proclamation of the ‘good news’ of Jesus
Christ was in direct competition with proclamations of ‘good
news’ concerning the emperors; furthermore, the Christians’
good news was articulated by the singular noun euangelion, and
was therefore thegood news above all, superior to the plural
good news proclaimed about emperors (Stanton 2004: 33–5).
While appeal to inscriptions relating to emperor worship
might explain some elements in the early Christian message, it
would be unwise to push the argument too far (and patently absurd
to assume it might explain everything). For example, one of the
commonest terms used to designate Christ in the New Testament
is ‘Lord’ (kuriosin Greek). While this term is sometimes applied
to emperors, it is rare in public inscriptions before the middle of
the first century AD(Oakes 2001: 171–2). We also need to bear
in mind that so many of the early Christians were, as we have
seen, Jews, for whom these words would have had specifically
Jewish connotations. For example, terms like kuriosandso ̄ ter,
and even the verb euangelizesthai, were found in the Septuagint,
the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and words expres-
sing similar ideas are found in the Hebrew originals and in texts
from Qumran. Comparison with the vocabulary of emperor
worship is instructive, but it provides only one echo of the
original reverberations of New Testament texts.CONTEXTS FOR THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY
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