Abstract This article analyses how Christian communities in Asia Minor, including Ephesus, respond as religious minorities to the dominance of the Roman imperial family ideology through a study of the Epistle to the Ephesians, specifically the Haustafel of Ephesians. I argue, using an Indonesian postcolonial perspective, Christian communities described in the Epistle to the Ephesians, categorised as minority religious groups, engaged in political discourse with the imperial ideology of family through three strategies. First, Christian communities in Asia Minor adopted the imperial family ideology to support social harmony, namely by making this a part of Christian teachings and by recognising the important position of the paterfamilias in the family. Secondly, they adopted imperial ideology to affirm communal identity by adding an element of Christ and placing it in the context of the ekklesia . Thirdly, Christian communities in Asia Minor critically engage imperial ideology, namely by reducing the power of the paterfamilias and by making weak parties in the family agents of action. These three strategies show how minority groups may survive under a dominant majority ideology.
In 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, Paul describes a troubling situation in which some people have become weak, ill, and even died due to their improper ways of celebrating the Lord's Supper. According to Paul, the impropriety lies in some people arriving early without waiting for everyone and sharing the meal. While those who arrive later remain hungry, this creates a clear causal link between food shortages and deaths. But one important question remains: Were the deaths a punishment by God over the rich or the consequence of malnutrition for the poor? Historians describe cases of severe famine in the region during the relevant period, thus making starvation a plausible and deadly factor that can hardly be ignored. This article examines the views expressed in this passage, together with interpretive options suggested by modern scholars, using the concept of cognitive dissonance (Festinger).
In recent decades, modern scholarship has critiqued anthropocentric and ecologically deleterious readings of Genesis 1:26-8. While these critiques often promote more ecologically attuned visions of human beings' divine image-bearing (as well as their "dominion" over other creatures and their "subduing" of the land), ecological re-readings often fail to reconsider the first-person plural verb and pronouns in the phrase, "Let us make humankind in our image" (1:26). Throughout Gen 1:1-2:4a, however, a meaningful and consistent linguistic pattern suggests that God's speech to "us" is addressed to the land and may be understood as an address to an earthly collaborator (in contrast to an angelic or divine council). Such a reinterpretation directs readers to identify human beings as integrally related not only to God but also to the land and its creatures as well. The human creature, consequently, emerges as a living being who bears not only the image of God but also the image of earth, and the earth appears as God's valued and creative partner in the divine project of making and sustaining life.
