In addition, R.A. Horsley proposes that (i) the prohibition of food-
offered-to-idols in 1 Corinthians 8–10, (ii) Paul’s refusal to accept eco-
nomic support from the Corinthians, and (iii) the collection for the poor
among the saints in Jerusalem, all manifest the same “anti-Roman-impe-
rial” stance (1997, 247–51). Most of this, however, simply represents a ten-
dentious or erroneous reading of the evidence. Regarding Paul’s refusal to
accept economic support, R.A. Horsley seems not to recognize how thor-
oughly he contradicts his own argument with the admission:
Paul did not come up with anyvision of an alternative political economy
for his alternative society—which would have been extraordinary for
antiquity. In his explanation of why he did not accept support, he sim-
ply resorted to the imagery of household administration...with the
implied image of God as the divine estate owner and himself as the
steward. Such imagery fits with similar controlling metaphors, such as
God as a monarch, Christ as the alternative emperor, and himself as
the Lord’s ‘servant’ or ‘slave.’ He used his overall controlling vision of
the ‘kingdom’ of God as a basis for rejecting the patronage system, but
remained within that traditional biblical vision. (R.A. Horsley 1997,
250–51; emphasis mine)InPaul and Empire, R.A. Horsley repeatedly claims: “in his mission Paul
was building an international alternative society (the ‘assembly’) based in
local egalitarian communities (‘assemblies’)” (1997, 8; further, R.A. Hors-
ley 1998, 163, 176). The picture supposedly emerging from the Corinthian
correspondence is “not one of a religious cult, but of a nascent social move-
ment comprised of a network of cells based in Corinth but spreading more
widely into the province of Achaia. That is surely indicated when Paul,
writing later in coordination of the collection ‘for the poor among the saints
in Jerusalem,’ refers not to Corinth alone but to Achaia more generally,
just as he refers not simply to the Thessalonians or Philippians but to ‘the
assemblies of Macedonia’ in general (2 Cor. 8:2; 9:2, 4)” (R.A. Horsley 1997,
245). R.A. Horsley, however, fails to consider the philological fact that Paul
uses the singular ekklêsiaonly to refer to what Paulhimself once sought to
harass and destroy before his subsequent encounter with Christ (1 Cor.
15:9; Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6). Otherwise, Paul always refers to early Christian
groups either as the local association or in the plural. The contrast, in this
regard, with the vision of thechurch in Colossians and Ephesians could
hardly be more striking or instructive. The difficulties, moreover, which
Paul encountered in raising hiscollection for the poor in Jerusalem, suggest
precisely not a sense of class solidarity or international consciousness on the
part of the Pauline communities but, rather, the usual human reluctance