This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 555: Did Paul Really Subvert Caesar? with Clint Burnett This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. 00:08 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:24 Sean Finnegan Scholars and pastors regularly point to specialized, quote UN quote technical language in Paul's epistles to make the case that Paul was intentionally subverting Roman power by applying to Jesus terms that the ancients commonly applied to the Caesar. 00:41 Sean Finnegan My guest today has done the hard work of analyzing the inscriptions, coins and material remains of several key ancient cities to see how they talked about the Roman emperors in the New Testament period. In our conversation, he shares his own journey to become an independent scholar, as well as how his research offers a corrective to what. 01:00 Sean Finnegan Many are saying about Imperial Divine honors. 01:04 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 555. Was Paul really subverting Caesar with Doctor D Clint Burnett? 01:20 Sean Finnegan Doctor Clint Burnett is my guest today on Restitutio. Welcome, everyone. He's an independent scholar with research interests in early Christianity and Greco Roman material culture. 01:33 Sean Finnegan He holds a PhD in Biblical studies from Boston College. He's a priest in the Anglican church in North America and a full time financial advisor. 01:43 Sean Finnegan Specializing in helping clergy, do I have that right? Welcome to the show, Doctor Burnett. 01:49 Clint Burnett Please call me Clint and you got everything perfect. 01:52 Sean Finnegan OK. So today we're talking about your book, Paul and Imperial Divine honors published by Eerdmans. But first, I'm curious about you. For us, low church folks. What? 02:08 Sean Finnegan What is involved in you serving as an Anglican priest? And while you're at it, how is it possible to also work a full time job as a financial advisor too? Maybe just let us into your world a little bit. 02:20 Sure. 02:22 Clint Burnett Yeah. So what it's like to serve as an Anglican priest is always on call always for the rest of my life. So priesthood is for until I enter into the church. Try. 02:33 Clint Burnett That basically what I'm there to do is to be a pastor and then when need be sort of part-time priests. My parish is blessed with two really good priests. I serve every Sunday doing something, but I'm rarely only one or two Sundays a year in my or one or two weeks a year in my the priest on on call, meaning that you know, if you need anything you can call call me because the two other priests. 02:54 Clint Burnett We're out on vacation, but typically when people need them, so excuse me a busy week for me. 03:00 Clint Burnett So that's my life as a priest. Any questions about that? 03:02 Sean Finnegan So it's not a 40 hour a week job. 03:05 Clint Burnett Yeah, correct. So I'm I'm blessed to be part of a parish who allows me to be part time and knows that I'm part time, you know, the I talked to other because I serve a lot of clergy. I talked to a lot of pastors in East Tennessee, and they're like, hey, I'm part time, but really they have two full time jobs. I'm blessed to be part time. So, you know, I basically preach once a quarter. I'm in charge of youth. 03:26 Clint Burnett Had a key to set my perish overseas. Second grade through up. Mainly focus on 9 through. 03:30 Clint Burnett Upgrade and then lead a theology on tap group with a Deacon. Just a men's group where we get together, drink beer, and talk about either the Bible, something in the tradition of the church, or something distinctively Anglican, which is a great time. So I only do that once a month and I don't read every one of those. 03:50 Clint Burnett And then I try to do one or two, at least one pastoral visit a week. I can do, you know, more past work visits if I need to. 03:57 Clint Burnett But also as part of taking vows of priesthood, I'm committed to prayer, scripture, reading, praying for parishioners, and those types of things. So I guess there's things that I do throughout the day that I do as a priest. Everything I do, I do. As a priest, I believe there's an ontological change that's taking place. But you know, there's some things that I do more than others, and I'm able to work full time job. 04:17 Clint Burnett And still be a part-time priest. 04:20 Sean Finnegan And and why financial advisor? 04:22 Clint Burnett Yeah, great question. So UH-20. 04:25 Clint Burnett 20 I decided that we we wanted to stay, so we had moved to Knoxville, TN, where I could do a interim position in teach part time adjunct at a school here in Knoxville. After we got here, I was in another Christian denomination, actually, but I was going to church in Boston before. 04:46 Clint Burnett I graduated with my PhD and we got down here, decided we wanted to be. 04:49 Clint Burnett Anglican and then my previous nomination didn't really practice coordination. But I wasn't ordained, so I couldn't. 04:56 Clint Burnett Do anything so. 04:58 Clint Burnett I had to find a job and there's not much one can do with a PhD in New Testament. Believe it or not. So I applied to like 50 jobs and I had one place that contacted me back and then like, Oh well, well, you can start. 05:10 Clint Burnett Selling just life. 05:12 Clint Burnett And then from there, I quickly, uh passed all my licenses and securities exams and became a financial advisor. So it was basically by luck. It was a God thing, you know, because everybody else said no. I mean, I even got said no by like UPS. They didn't. They did not even want me. So it was the only place that. 05:30 Sean Finnegan Sorry, I don't mean I don't mean to laugh at you. It's just, you know, I've. I've read your book and it's it's just ridiculously scholarly and, you know, whoever wrote this book is obviously a very important person. And just the thought of UPS turning their nose up at you. 05:33 Sean Finnegan No. 05:50 Sean Finnegan That's really funny. 05:51 Clint Burnett It is comical now, and so the only place so financial advisor by. 05:56 Clint Burnett Accident after I started, you know my my boss said basically I I can start my own own practice and own firm, he said. You know, just figure out some people group that you want to help and I'd always had a heart for pastors and clergy. I wanted to teach in seminary. And so I said, why don't I just, you know, work with pastors and clergy? 06:16 Clint Burnett So now I spend my days, basically four days a week. I take off on Fridays. That's when I usually do visiting for church. 06:23 Clint Burnett As a priest, but I spend, you know, most of my days just helping pastors kind of navigate their taxes #1 because most people don't know how their tax housing allowance. What is that housing tax? All those types of things helping them set up their retirement accounts and then trying to help them maximize their investments and also minimize taxes and make sure they're covered with with life insurance. 06:43 Clint Burnett And are making good sound financial decisions because pastors notoriously don't. So. 06:50 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Yes, that's true. I don't. I don't wanna put you too much on the spot, but what was the decision to not pursue working in the university as a? 06:51 Hey. 06:54 Clint Burnett That's fine. 07:00 Sean Finnegan Sir, what went into that? 07:02 Clint Burnett So several things we decided that we wanted a family and I just did not want to, you know, I could have gotten a job, but it would have been a temporary position. You know, I didn't wanna. I have friends and colleagues or zigzagging all all over the world doing a couple of years here and a couple of years there. It just got to the point where it's so political now, trying to find a job. 07:25 Clint Burnett Just just the facts. You know, whether where you wherever you're at in the political spectrum trying to get a job as a professor right now is so political. And so it we're basically it was the fact that I would see people applying for the same jobs people. 07:40 Clint Burnett Whom I knew well, applying for the same jobs, and I knew their CV and I knew my CV and they would get jobs and I wouldn't. And I said well. 07:50 Clint Burnett That's not fair. It's not. This should be a merit based system in my opinion. We we should want the best people instructing seminarians, future scholars, those those types of things. But the the political climate is what it is. 08:04 Clint Burnett And then 2020 happened and George Ford happened, and I just realized that, to be honest with you, there's no way for me as a white male to find a job that's. That's the truth. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. So I said, well, what can I do now? And that's when I start applying for jobs. And that's when I eventually became a financial advisor. 08:24 Clint Burnett Two. 08:24 Clint Burnett It's just. I also saw, I mean to get really personal, which I'm happy to do cuz my life is an open book. As a priest, I saw really people I loved and respected get dragged through the mud with false accusations of rape or sexual abuse. Their school would do, would put them on leave. 08:45 Clint Burnett And they would do a a complete investigation. They would come back totally innocent and still people did not want them to be there. So I said, why do I want to put myself in a position where my life can be ripped apart by one person taking a dislike to me and accusing me of doing something? 09:03 Clint Burnett So there's a combination of all of those things and just said, man, you know, I'm happy doing the things I do now. And the third thing would would be to, to be honest, on the political side of it too is, you know, I've pulled out of a few writing projects or a project just because I feel like you should use the best scholars in the. 09:22 Clint Burnett Field. 09:23 Clint Burnett And I don't care. 09:24 Clint Burnett Who those scholars are, but to be told that I have to use certain people. 09:29 Clint Burnett Because of their gender or their the color of their skin, I want to use those people, but at the same time, if you're teaching undergraduate course, the goal, in my opinion, and this is probably controversial, probably right to the calls for this, but is we want the best we want. 09:43 Sean Finnegan Well, you that's the benefit of the freedom you have is that you can speak your mind, right? Yeah. 09:46 Right, yeah. 09:47 Clint Burnett Yeah, we want people to be able to have the best education. 09:51 Clint Burnett Table and for for me that's reading the Giants and it's not this particular person because they do this niche thing or they so you know, all of that, just being forced to do some of those things where it's no longer about doing solid scholarship. It's about basically being an advocate for things. 10:11 Clint Burnett I just don't think historians. I I think we should be advocates by the good history that we do not sacrifice the. 10:19 Clint Burnett Historical critical method to things that take us away from learning more about ancient Christianity. So it was a combination of those things. I decided, you know what I wanna be able to be a free agent. Say what I wanna say do exactly what I want to do and no one's gonna fire me. I was gonna accuse me of sexual assault. I'm just gonna be a free agent. 10:37 Sean Finnegan Very good. And today the focus is the book, Paul and Imperial Divine honors and your. 10:48 Sean Finnegan You're a bit of an iconoclast here with this one. You're setting. You're setting out to correct some problems in Pauline scholarship within your own denomination, even one of the biggest names to ever have written on the subject and to right who you interact with a little bit. Specifically you're dealing with. 10:55 Yeah. 11:00 Clint Burnett Yeah. 11:06 Yeah. 11:08 Sean Finnegan Is broadly accepted idea. 11:11 Sean Finnegan I think I must have come across it in the early 2000s, but this idea that Paul's letters are intentionally interacting with and subverting the Imperial cult which is defined as the worship of Roman emperors, whether living or dead, what's wrong with the idea of the imperial cults? Let's just start there. 11:31 Clint Burnett Yeah. So there was no such thing as the Imperial cult. So I direct you not only to this book, but Simon Price. His book, which is called the Imperial Cult in Roman Asia Minor. That's the subtitle of. 11:43 Clint Burnett This one is. 11:44 Clint Burnett Rituals and power and then Roman religions of of Rome by N beard and price. Second volume. They're on like page 346. That's where the quote comes. I think they're or 328I think it is. There is no such. 11:56 Clint Burnett Thing as the. 11:57 Clint Burnett Imperial cult. So it's a scholarly construct that classicists have been using since the late 19th. 12:04 Clint Burnett Century and a little bit before that. What they talk about and you use it as they use it in a much more nuanced way than New Testament scholars typically do or tend to. So there is no such thing as the empirical. What we have are actually grants of Imperial Divine honors that happen in four different levels in the Roman. 12:24 Clint Burnett World you have this city of Rome and also colonies of Rome which are very different from the next three. All of these four are are very different. They share some similarities, but mostly they share a lot of differences. 12:38 Clint Burnett The second type, or what scholars term provincial divine honors, or provincial Imperial Divine honors. These are Imperial Divine honors that provinces get together and bestow upon, and emperor. Then you have civic or municipal Imperial Divine honors, which are divine honors that cities or municipalities in the Greco-roman world. 12:57 Clint Burnett The governing bodies once again get together and bestow those, and then you have individual or private imperial Divine honors, which are the Divine honors that take place in the people's homes or the private spaces of associations. Each one has its own particular context. 13:14 Clint Burnett And each one is unique, so let's just say, like one city typically most often what they do, one city, province person or the OR the city of Rome. Typically one thing that all four share among them is benefaction in some way shape or form. And so the city of Rome, for example, will bestow divine honors only on select few. 13:34 Clint Burnett Tempers yet only half of Julio Claudians were deified, so Julius Caesar, Augustus and Claudius Tiberius wasn't. Caligula wasn't. 13:43 Clint Burnett And Nero wasn't. And so it's if they ruled the Empire well and the Divine honors are always posthumous, they usually consist of a temple and altar or and a priest in the city of Rome. So we know about those also. Those are very similar to what we have in colonies and two of. 14:03 Clint Burnett The cities I focus on in the Booker colony so Corinth and Philippi with provinces. Typically their divine honors bestowed on. 14:11 Clint Burnett Living emperors in the Julio Claudian period. Typically it was not just a single emperor, it was to an emperor, and either the goddess Roma or another time that we know about. It was to Tiberius, his mother, Libya, and the Senate in Rome. And so you typically have several people and they're ones that the province sponsors are typically bestowed on. 14:32 Clint Burnett Emperors or Imperial family members while they're alive. 14:35 Clint Burnett Since. 14:35 Clint Burnett Romans are involved in the direct running of those particular grants of imperial divine. 14:40 Clint Burnett Honors. They're more conservative, so you know, I've just talked about how they weighted all divine honors at the city level. The official level in Rome or posthumous. They don't call emperors who are live gods. The official documents associated with emperors in Rome. We're not talking about what a sycophantic court poet may say. We're talking about the official documents, the inscriptions that we have. 15:02 Clint Burnett They have copious amounts of inscriptions from those are not called the living Emperor. If they're official, they don't call them a God. Same way in provincial Imperial Divine honors, typically people shy away from calling the living in. 15:15 Clint Burnett Or God the third type with cities and municipalities are once again, it's because most often because of benefaction, and these are just local city groups. The governmental bodies politic within those groups getting together and decreeing divine honors most often for a living emperor or his. 15:35 Clint Burnett Family members, in response to a benefaction and those are not controlled by Rome in any way, shape or form, so all bets are off. They're calling the emperors gods, calling them Olympians and those types of things. Sometimes they let Rome know that they're doing this, and the emperor know. And the family members and sometimes. 15:52 Clint Burnett They don't. The emperors may write back and try to curb, you know, some of those things, but it really doesn't work because they give them the ability to live life like they always have. And this was a practice that began in the Hellenistic period. And so they kept on. And then typically, when you have an Emperor's family member who dies, they either. 16:13 Clint Burnett Combine the cult into just a cult of Augustine. 16:16 Clint Burnett Odds or they just do away silently, kind of with the cults. And then you have the private Imperial Divine honors, which are the least studied of all of them. And those are typically once again given to emperors or imperial family members while they are alive. Sometimes they last after their death, but they're typically because given by an individual or association. 16:38 Clint Burnett A group of people, because of some kind of benefaction that's been wrought for. 16:42 Clint Burnett For them, and they'll call the emperor God and Olympians those types of things, and they'll incorporate them into their domestic costs and those types of things. So they're very diverse and there's just not one central controlled imperial cult where you have an emperor in Rome making all the decisions, saying who worships whom and all that. 17:03 Sean Finnegan So what sorts of actions do you have in mind that qualify as divine honors? You mentioned the construction of a temple consecration of a priest or. 17:11 Yep. 17:13 Sean Finnegan Least what else goes? 17:15 Sean Finnegan Along with that, in the practice of bestowing honor upon a deceased emperor. 17:22 Clint Burnett So essentially what Imperial Levan honors consist of would be. 17:28 Clint Burnett Honors that are similar to those that Greeks and Romans gave to their gods, but they differ in degree. So you're talking about any cultic act made to or on behalf of an emperor, which would include priests or priestesses. 17:41 Clint Burnett Typically not always, but typically male. Julio Claudians get priests and female Julio Claudians get priestesses, but that's not always the case. There are exceptions. This would include processions, prayers, sacrifices, so the sacrifices could be as something as big as an ox or a cow. Something as small as just wine or some incense. 18:02 Clint Burnett Hymns. It could be a dedicated imperial cultic altar. It could be a festival, it could be games on a typically every fifth year. They would have. Those games could be a cultic. 18:14 Clint Burnett Image of some kind. It could also be divine title that someone just gets hailed on a coin. It could be a shrine which is different than a temple, a shrine just maybe like a a sacred space. It could be a temple. The temple could be really small. The temple could be a massive temple complex like we know existed. In the case for some temples in Rome and Asia. 18:34 Clint Burnett Those types of things. So they're basically all of those things are things in which Greeks and Romans gave to their gods. 18:41 Sean Finnegan Very good and talk about benefaction a little bit. Why would a city for example, want to spend all this money to honor? 18:51 Sean Finnegan Uh deceased emperor, like what? 18:53 Yeah. 18:55 Sean Finnegan Why would they do that? What are they getting? 18:57 Sean Finnegan Out of it. 18:58 Clint Burnett Yeah. So for some, it's not someone who's to see someone who's still alive. So typically with Rome, that's where the focus is on the deceased, Julio Claudians. And those are are basically, I would say, I don't know this for a fact and that's not particularly stated in this way. But you do have references. 19:18 Clint Burnett In Greek and Roman historians, ancient Roman historians, that is. 19:22 Clint Burnett We talk about how this is a practice in Rome, where if you rule the empire well, you will be deified after you die. And so it kind of is in, in sin of I think just as much. There's where the part is where I think I read read into maybe the wrong word, but you know, it seems to be a a thing to encourage people to be a good. 19:42 Clint Burnett Roman. 19:43 Clint Burnett Ember and not a despot and not a tyrant, but definitely when you have provinces and cities and individuals who grant divine honors to a Roman emperor, most often it is because of the benefaction that someone, imperial family member and emperor has brought to them has wrought for them. And that's exactly the reason why people worship the gods. 20:04 Clint Burnett So first and foremost, it's not really, you know, it's not a huge step to go from worshipping a God to worshipping a human who has what seems to be the power of the gods controls life and death and does a few other things like that. But because the system is predicated on a system of gift exchange. 20:22 Clint Burnett So unlike modern forms of Christianity and Judaism where you know we as Christians we worship God because we believe he's the creator and an. 20:31 Clint Burnett Honor and glory. 20:32 Clint Burnett Are due to him and those types of things. So for Greeks and Romans, they're guys that create the world's different generation of gods did that. 20:42 Clint Burnett Their gods brought order out of chaos, and those gods provide, you know, a healthy, growing season. Healthy children, they provide tangible benefactions and in return for that, you offer sacrifice which shows your expression of gratitude for that, but also stores up kind of a future account that you can kind of debit from if you. 21:01 Clint Burnett Eat something and so you have the same thing with Roman emperors. You give to them. You let them know if you can. Some people do and some people don't. We know that a. 21:11 Clint Burnett Lot. 21:11 Clint Burnett Of. 21:12 Clint Burnett Embassies were crisscrossing all over the Mediterranean to find the Roman emperor and his family or wherever they were to let them know that hey, we have offered divine honors to to you and here's why. And sometimes. 21:23 Clint Burnett Will respond and say hey. 21:24 Clint Burnett You're you're you're going overboard. You should not do that. But I mean, obviously I think they use that political and religious capital for the benefit. So it's kind of one of these things where you're showing gratitude because people oftentimes I think don't think about the reality of what it would been like to live in the 1st century BC in in particular. 21:44 Clint Burnett And have gone through the civil wars. That and they they came into Greece, they came into Egypt, they came into Asia Minor. 21:53 Clint Burnett And to have, you know, soldiers running amok, to have inflation, to have divine images being alluded and taken to other places and then now we have a guy who comes in and puts a stop to all that returns to divine images where they to be allows economic prosperity. People began to to go massive building campaigns to build these beautiful. 22:13 Clint Burnett Cities that we can see when we go over there. 22:16 Clint Burnett Remains of them, and so for people who lived at that day and age, I mean it was a a wonderful thing for them. And I think they really appreciated that because they didn't have to build the troops. They didn't have to, you know, pay exorbitant prices for grain. And they could live. They had a better quality of life because of Augustus, physically. 22:36 Clint Burnett You can talk about what other things you want to, but you know on the money level to support their families. 22:40 Clint Burnett It had a better. 22:41 Clint Burnett Quality of life during his reign. 22:43 Clint Burnett Post and so people were very appreciative of that and they taught. They passed decrees to. 22:47 Clint Burnett Talk about that. 22:48 Clint Burnett And so there are more grants of divine honors for Augustus than anybody else, and it's because his take place after 50 years plus of civil war that's spilled all over the Mediterranean. And so people really appreciate about that. But at the same time, just like their gods are sort of storing up. 23:04 Clint Burnett You know, clout or storing up some some credit that they can draw from in case they need because Augustus and the Roman emperors prided themselves on being good lawgivers and good judges. And we have a case, for example, that's an inscription that's in my book on in inscriptions. 23:21 Clint Burnett Where this family on this island? They're prominent. Greek family. Their people were trying to break into their house for three nights. They were defending their property and they they commanded a slave to go up and drop some excrement from a what would you call that? What's the what's the? 23:39 Sean Finnegan Chamber pot. 23:40 Clint Burnett A chamber pot, basically. Yeah, to spill it on top of the people who are trying to break in their house. He actually drops the chamber pot and kills one. 23:48 Clint Burnett Of the guys. 23:49 Clint Burnett Well, that particular city convicted the man and the woman whose house was being broken into. 23:55 Clint Burnett Well, she appeals to Augustus and he appeals to Augustus and says, hey, can you please help us? And Augustus sets it, all right. And even says you need to change the archives that you have in your city to make your degree read the right way. And so you you had, you know, sort of a Supreme Court that you could go to. And so I think people really appreciated that. 24:16 Clint Burnett Then they would, you know, but that also, if they had given divine honors to Augustus, that gave them just a little bit of clout or credit from which they could draw. If if that makes sense. 24:27 Sean Finnegan OK. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes. 24:28 Sean Finnegan Sense. So this whole idea is that. 24:31 Sean Finnegan That. 24:32 Sean Finnegan One, they're kind of just like thank yous. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for your support. Or thanks for investing in the city in some way for the economy and and everything else. So that's that's interesting. Let's talk about some technical terms. I think. I think you'll enjoy this I've got. 24:49 Yeah. 24:52 Sean Finnegan 1234 different ones to talk about and you just let it rip with each one. 24:58 Sean Finnegan Say whatever you want to say, but these are quote UN quote technical terms that polling scholars point to in his epistles to make the case that Paul is very intentionally setting up Christ over against Caesar. You know, those who receive Imperial Divine honors. And so the 1st I'll give it to you as a pair. 24:59 Clint Burnett OK. 25:07 Hmm. 25:18 Sean Finnegan His Lord and savior here knows, and so tears so. 25:22 Sean Finnegan You have to pardon my Greek. I say it like the Greeks, not like the last man. But yeah. So what do you think about Lord and Savior? Everybody knows that. That's that's a strong imperial term, right? 25:25 That's right. 25:35 Clint Burnett Yeah, correct. Well, that's what they say. That's that. That is what they claim. When you look at actually. So, so tear. Absolutely. That is a word since the 3rd century BC and beforehand during the Hellenistic empires gets used for Hellenistic kings for generals. That term has cultic connotations to. 25:56 Clint Burnett So I don't really doubt that part of it. As a matter of fact, Christian habit, I mean, is a phenomenal book, divine honors for mortal men. I forgot the German title, but it was his dissertation which, 50 years later gets translated into English and gets updated because of. So tear is used so often in this context. 26:16 Clint Burnett Of divine honors, even if you don't have evidence, direct evidence of it. If you see so tear, you typically can say that there was probably the mind honors being given to a particular person. So I don't doubt that one. But Lord, the earliest datum that we have for curious outside. 26:34 Clint Burnett Of ancient the southern Levant, so ancient Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt. 26:42 Clint Burnett Dates to AD 67. 26:45 Clint Burnett So few years after Saint Paul was probably martyred in Rome doesn't appear, I mean the thousands of inscriptions that we. 26:52 Clint Burnett Have. 26:53 Clint Burnett From all over the place, Asia Minor, mainland Greece, you don't see kurios being used as an imperial tie. 27:01 Clint Burnett So my argument that I had in my first book on inscriptions and it's not just mine, there are a few other people who have noticed this and and gone back. It's really an ancient Near eastern custom. It's one of these. We often think that the influence goes Rome and East where this is the case where influence goes east to West that it's an ancient. 27:21 Clint Burnett Eastern custom to refer to a monarch as a Lord, so go to the Code of Hammurabi for example. You know way back I'm not a specialist in that. I'm not gonna talk about that, but if you just go and you get the context of Scripture out and you look at the inscriptions, it's really customary to call a King a Lord. 27:39 Clint Burnett The earliest attestations that we have of emperors being called Lords Curiosity come from the southern Levant. I don't think in this particular case that it is a title with connotations of divinity. I think it's more of a title. It's a kingly title, and then you don't really see it picking up until the end of of Nero's reign, where 8067. 27:59 Clint Burnett In Bioshock, he gets called in Acremonium, he gets called kurios of the entire world, and that's kind of one of the first ones. And then it becomes part of the imperial titular later, but really post 1st century. So what I did is from those. 28:16 Clint Burnett Their cases I went back and I looked at solitaire and Kurios and their Latin synonyms in the cities of Philippi, Corinth, and Tesla. Anika, the earliest person to be called Lord in an inscription from Philippi is Constantine. And so I mean it's and it's that. 28:35 Sean Finnegan 3 centuries later. 28:36 Clint Burnett Correct. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You don't have anybody called solitaire in philippian inscriptions, and you wouldn't really expect it to be at the public level. 28:46 Clint Burnett Well, because the inscriptions mainly for the first three centuries of the after the birth of Jesus are in Latin and then in Corinth, you don't really see those in in any in inscriptions. You don't really. You don't see curios and you don't see, so terror. And to my knowledge, it's been a while since I wrote that book and. 29:06 Clint Burnett I'm working on that book right now. 29:08 Clint Burnett And I have a lot of other stuff in my mind about financial advising and other stuff that I do. But there there's one inscription, I think from thessalonika that calls the emperor injustice. So tear, but that's it. And so he's a solitaire in Tesla, Anika, but he's not a solitaire in Corinth, and he's not a Sotera in Philippi because by the time. 29:28 Clint Burnett August. 29:28 Clint Burnett There, he's gone from being a human to being someone whom the Senate in Rome is recognized as a divine being. And so, you know, you know he he sort of graduated. So by the time Saint Paul is writing pistols, Augustus is what's called a delist, which was the official title that the Senate in Rome gave to an emperor. 29:50 Clint Burnett When they defied. 29:51 Sean Finnegan Very good. So this exposes to a certain degree your method, which is to instead of. 29:55 Yeah. 29:58 Sean Finnegan Universalizing and generalizing. 30:02 Sean Finnegan Ways of thinking about the emperors. You get specific and you focus on one region and you interpret each within the light of its own local context rather than thinking there was some sort of macro standardized language, I think there. 30:22 Sean Finnegan There are some things that are like that of course, like the like the word Caesar. 30:25 Yeah, yeah. 30:28 Sean Finnegan You know, it's used a lot and plenty of other concepts and words, but your method is really to say, OK, look, we're studying the epistle to the Philippians. It doesn't seem valid to me. 30:44 Sean Finnegan To use something said of Nero in the year 67 when Philippians was written. Before that ever occurred, and then to read that back into, for example, the the Carmen Christie and Philippians 2. 30:51 Yes. 30:56 Sean Finnegan 11. 30:56 Clint Burnett Correct. 30:57 Sean Finnegan You know that he's the Lord overall, you know and and say, OK, this is this is over against Caesar. You're blowing the whistle. You're saying foul can't do that bad exegesis, bad cultural background. 31:03 Clint Burnett Yeah. 31:06 Clint Burnett Yes. 31:10 Clint Burnett Yeah, because those two particular places. So the place where Nero was called was Acmon Mia in Bioship. The context there is he likes to let mainland Greece be. 31:21 Clint Burnett Tax free. No one ever done that, and even boasts about that. And the speech that he gave, which he gave in Corinth where he freed the Greeks and said you don't. 31:29 Clint Burnett Have. 31:29 Clint Burnett To pay taxes anymore. So that's that specific context. That's where the curiosity of the entire world comes from. How curiose too cost me. I think it is. You can't read that context into Philippi, which, if you understand. 31:42 Clint Burnett Philip, people say, what's a colon in your room? They don't understand what that means. 31:45 Clint Burnett It means that Greek Philippi was wiped off the face of the map. The people who owned property in that city, who were Greeks, were disenfranchised. We don't know what happened to them. Soldiers were settled there. Latin was the official language. Roman was the official culture and in the same small group of people, we know this from inscriptions. 32:04 Clint Burnett Had socially conservative people who tried to maintain their own identity were in charge for 300 years. They didn't let outsiders in. That's two totally different situations. And my point is, even if you did want to read curiosity. 32:21 Clint Burnett To Philippians 211 it can't be talking about an emperor because the Greek term that is used to translate dewis, which is the Latin term used to talk about a deified Roman imperial family member or emperor, is not curious. Everyone knows who looks at inscriptions, and you see the bilingual translation. It's theos. 32:43 Clint Burnett It's that term. I mean, I point you if if you're here and you don't believe that Simon Price has a really great article from 1984 called Gods and Emperors where he talks about the language that Greeks used for Roman emperors, and specifically how they translated Deus into Greek, and it's always theos. 33:01 Sean Finnegan Right. And that's and that's not so difficult for us to figure out because we do have bilingual inscriptions. Of course I remember. 33:08 Sean Finnegan Number. 33:09 Sean Finnegan My first encounter with one was the library of Celsus in downtown assists the two sides along the stairs, and that was actually my assigned presentation for that trip. So yeah, and then this past April I I was able to travel again, not in such a scholarly. 33:13 Clint Burnett Yeah. 33:14 Clint Burnett Yeah. 33:17 Yeah. 33:21 Clint Burnett Ohh. 33:23 Clint Burnett Yeah. 33:30 Sean Finnegan Context, but just more as a with a bunch of people, more tours. 33:34 Sean Finnegan See, but I was able to convince the tour guide to let me present on the Library of Celsus again, which I let her speak first. And then I said, well, I have some things to add. She said. OK, so that was fun to do. But yeah, these bilingual inscriptions are around. 33:35 Yeah. 33:42 Clint Burnett I love it. Alright, that's great. 33:54 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you know, I I was. 33:55 Sean Finnegan I was. 33:57 Sean Finnegan Looking I was at Philippi recently too. As part of that trip because. 34:00 Sean Finnegan We did Turkey and. 34:01 Sean Finnegan Greece, and it was exhausting, but in Philippi. 34:05 And. 34:06 Sean Finnegan There were a lot of Latin inscriptions. 34:09 MHM. 34:09 Sean Finnegan You know, like I think there's, like, some Byzantine stuff. There's, there's Greek, and you can always kind of tell with the the font. If I can put it that way, that they use the Byzantines use. But like there, there were actually a lot of Latin inscriptions. And, you know, that's weird. It's weird when you're in the country of Greece. 34:14 Yeah. 34:17 Yeah. 34:19 Yeah. 34:29 Clint Burnett Yeah. 34:29 Sean Finnegan And you're looking at a Greek city, you know, which was Greek. And then there was this Roman colony, period. And then it kind of like gets Hellenized again later. Byzantine lized maybe. You know that there is, there is this Latin influence. So, you know it it is. It is very important to to consider that. 34:39 Clint Burnett Right. 34:42 Yeah. 34:49 Sean Finnegan And also what you write about Corinth, but you know I don't wanna get too into the weeds in in this. I I I wanna throw at you the. 34:55 Sean Finnegan The word gospel, so I imagine you probably went to preen and as part. I know I went, it wasn't too impressive. Anyhow, talk about the word gospel, because some scholars have said that by saying gospel what Paul's doing is coming over against. 34:57 Yes. 35:00 Clint Burnett Yes. 35:04 Yeah. 35:15 Sean Finnegan The Roman Imperial Gospel of peace and you know security that the emperors have. 35:17 Yeah. 35:20 Right. 35:20 Clint Burnett Kind of. Once again, it's one of the in this particular case, I would say this is not a technical term because of the technical term. We would find it used in official Roman documents or official documents by Greek cities. And if you come through inscriptions that have been published, for example, I think there's like 240,000 and counting on a bigger fee dot pack home, it appears in three inscriptions. 35:42 Clint Burnett Three out of 240,000 plus. And that's not every inscription. And I'm not saying doesn't appear in more because, you know, the inscriptions are not published yet or they're not on the pakun database, but still 3 inscriptions that have to do with Julio Claudians or an in person. 36:02 Clint Burnett Capacity and. 36:05 Clint Burnett To me, I mean one particular case I think I talk, I talk about all three of those inscriptions and I think the chapter on Tesla, Nika, one of those, is an actual good news. Gods, gods and the goddesses and so. But it's related to an imperial victory. The other is the birth of the emperor Augustus. 36:25 Clint Burnett From inscription from prior enay. Yeah, but three is not enough. And if if you look how the words used elsewhere, it's just a common term for good news. And so it's even used within the Thessalonica. 36:38 Clint Burnett But it's used. 36:39 Clint Burnett Tessmacher for good news that has been received of those good news gods that are, they've sacrificed to the good news gods after the city of 1000. Like I've heard positive news about their city from. I think it's the emperor Hadrian. But it's in the 2nd century and so it's just not it's not a word you find use all the time and the and it's used in one place. 36:59 Clint Burnett Now I was preparing for a class that I'm I'm doing that's just free for anybody who wants to take it on Imperial Divine honors. And you know, this is the only inscription that. 37:08 Clint Burnett Into right sites, and he notes that it's the only inscription. But he says we need to give it more weight than we give other things, basically. And to me, I just don't think you can do that. And so if you look at how you want, Leon is used across the board, it's non-technical term. It's used in a variety of different contexts and a variety of different ways. And the other thing is there is. 37:29 Clint Burnett No. 37:29 Clint Burnett An equivalent thing that struck me as I was doing research and I did not know that at the time I assumed there was a Latin equivalent. I think probably in most the reason that the word came over is just a transliteration, probably by Christians, because in the 1st century BC, and if someone can correct me if I'm wrong, if if that's not the case, but it seems to me probably. 37:49 Clint Burnett The most likely explanation for the word in Latin because when Cicero, who is, you know, famous orator, knows the Latin language when he writes and wants to use good news, he uses the Greek Yuan gelion. 38:03 Clint Burnett So he's writing in Latin or dictating. He didn't write well. He wrote some letters very, very few as. 38:09 Clint Burnett He's dictating. 38:09 Sean Finnegan I had that famous secretary who could write down as fast as Cicero could talk, what was tyro, was his name or. 38:11 Yeah. 38:14 Yeah. 38:17 Clint Burnett I think it was Tiro. Yes, like tyro tyro. 38:18 Sean Finnegan Zero. 38:19 Clint Burnett So when he's speaking and dictating, he switches when he gets to good news. 38:23 Clint Burnett And says you angelia the pool. So that tells me that probably you angelum didn't exist in Latin in the 1st century to be seen 1st century. 38:31 Sean Finnegan Yeah. I mean, yeah, if somebody was gonna know it, it would be Cicero for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So with Lord, we're not looking at that as a technical term or gospel savior. 38:34 Clint Burnett So that's what seems to. 38:35 Clint Burnett Me. 38:44 Sean Finnegan Could. 38:45 Clint Burnett Yeah, it could be salary from technical because it's most often used of gods. So there's a book that was published the last couple of years about Soteria basically savior gods and I forgot the name of the individual, the scholar who published the book. But there is a chapter in there on the in talks about Christians as as as well. But most often it it is used in the context of. 39:06 Clint Burnett Gods being savior gods, but it's also going to be used of humans, and it's typically because they've done something concrete that it has resulted in the well-being of a particular person. That's what they call it, is a very contextual term. So it is a term that I would. 39:19 Clint Burnett It's not. It is not technical, but it is a term that has cultic connotations, and if an emperor is called that he's probably receiving some kind of honors. 39:27 Sean Finnegan OK, let's talk about another pairing of words, Parecia and Aponte, ISIS. So coming and meeting. Yeah, as used in first Thessalonians 4. The coming of Christ and then meeting him in the air. The argument is that these are terms that are specifically used for Roman emperors. 39:47 Sean Finnegan Visiting and so maybe you could help us with that a little. 39:48 Yep. 39:51 Clint Burnett Yeah. So when I hear technical term, I think of a term that is used only for one specific thing. That's how I interpret. 39:59 Clint Burnett Technical this is a technical term that we use for this particular thing, but if you just read the Bible that that army kind of falls apart. So Patricia and Aponta, as is used in the old Greek in the Septuagint and the old Greek for people that's coming to meet or people coming and going, Saint Paul will use. 40:19 Clint Burnett Heresies for him, coming and going for his Apostolic colleagues. Coming and going. I don't see anyone when it comes to those particular passage and commentaries that are reading that are anti imperial. Picking up on those types of things. It's usually typically on this first Thessalonians 4 and if you just look at how it's used in broader. 40:39 Clint Burnett Direct Roman literature and culture. Once again, we have a word that is used for for various things in various contexts. 40:46 Clint Burnett And to me, you can use the term and it's how you use the term in what context that you use the term that determines whether or not you're referring to an emperor or not. But for most of the cities that Saint Paul wrote to, an import never went to those cities in the 1st century AD, especially during Julio Claudian period. So I kind of understand I'm more sympathetic to that. 41:07 Clint Burnett But it's definitely the technical terms I wanna push back against that and just say, you know, context determines what it means. It does mean the coming and this the. 41:16 Clint Burnett Coming of Jesus, it's not necessarily. It's also used the coming of gods. You know the pharisee of a deity. It's not a term that specifically says Ohh this is anti imperial because this is a term that's only used of the emperor. 41:29 Sean Finnegan Scholars maybe don't do it quite as much, but certainly my brothers, the the pastors. Yeah, you know, you you find this among preachers. 41:38 Sean Finnegan A lot where we just run with this stuff. It's like candy to a preacher to be able to say, you know, this is you're reading the text and you're like this. This word is a word that was used also to refer to meeting the emperor when he came to visit. So therefore, you know, it's just seems like something you're trying to correct and say, look, this is. 41:55 Yeah. 42:00 Sean Finnegan Parallels, maybe? Or it's just a word that means this thing? It's not. It's not a specialized use. 42:05 Yeah. 42:07 Which? 42:08 Clint Burnett Yeah, I mean, I definitely think you're right. I mean, I have pastors that will ask me questions, some of whom are clients, some who are friends, you know, ask me questions, and it's typically, you know, they're the Mr. Sermon prep. And they got a really good point that they want to make. And if they could just make it to this particular way that if you have, you even asked that, well, can I make at that point in this way? I'm like, I wouldn't. 42:27 Sean Finnegan Exactly you want to. 42:28 Clint Burnett Never. 42:28 Clint Burnett Do. 42:29 Sean Finnegan Yeah, as those who are speaking in churches, I think it is important to get this right, you know, because whether it sounds good or whether it lands well rhetorically. 42:36 Clint Burnett I think it's. 42:41 Sean Finnegan Should not be the decisive factor in whether or not we use something. Its veracity obviously would be more important. You could tell a great lie and everyone's very impressed, but it's still a lie, so maybe I'm I'm being too harsh here because I don't think most people are like, oh, I know this is an exaggeration because. 42:54 Right, right. 43:01 Yeah. 43:01 Sean Finnegan It's in. It's in the commentaries, so therefore it must be. 43:04 So. 43:05 Clint Burnett Right. Yeah. And I don't fault them, you know, and I don't really necessarily fault new New Testament scholars because they don't have the tools. They haven't been trained. I feel like I've been blessed. God has provided me with the tools necessary that most New Testament scholars don't get trained with. And spending my time learning about justification by faith and reading 1000 books on the subject. 43:26 Clint Burnett I was reading inscriptions and I was touring around. I was excavating for four years, seeing how archaeologists gather their material. I was just exposed to a whole world that textual scholarship focus on texts where. 43:37 Clint Burnett Not. And so you know, they just don't have the tools to adjudicate claims and they just pass them on because it is the standard scholarly accepted position. And I'm just trying to bring some clarity to it, to to say, hey, listen, I wish it were the case, but it. But it's really. I used to think it was, but it wasn't like it got in the sources to see. 43:58 Clint Burnett Went back to the sources. 44:00 Sean Finnegan Yep, add fontes. 44:01 Clint Burnett Amen. Like a good Protestant. That was the whole thing. Yeah. 44:04 Sean Finnegan Desiderius Erasmus, baby. 44:07 Sean Finnegan So let's talk about a couple of quick ones in Corinthians. And then I I think we do have to wrap it up, but. 44:13 Yes. 44:14 Sean Finnegan In first Corinthians 26 through eight, we have this statement. Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are being destroyed, but we speak God's wisdom, hidden wisdom which God decreed before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age. 44:34 Sean Finnegan Understood. For if they had, they would have not crucified. 44:38 Sean Finnegan The Lord of glory. So you don't see the rulers of this age in this passage as referring to the Roman emperor or his governor who executed Jesus, right. So how do you interpret this section? Because I think this is another one of these where people are thinking, you know, Paul's coming against the Roman imperial. 44:55 Clint Burnett Yeah. 44:59 Sean Finnegan Mindset here. 44:59 Clint Burnett Yeah, yeah, I do not think it is. Well, first and foremost asked the question of if they knew who Jesus was. 45:06 Clint Burnett Why it doesn't make sense to me. 45:07 Clint Burnett That they wouldn't crucify. 45:09 Clint Burnett Because they're not Christians, they're not Jews. I mean, like, it doesn't make any sense to me to say that if these people actually knew the identity of Jesus and who Jesus was, I think they still would have crucified they they would not have have heared not to have crucified him. Just logically, that doesn't make sense to me. 45:26 Clint Burnett And maybe that's a limitation on my part, so my reading of that passage is we're talking about the spiritual beings, and I think people don't like to talk about them as much. And it's because we live in a post Christian world. 45:38 Clint Burnett And most people think that spiritual beings do not exist, you know? And so the swing from interpreting as spiritual beings to more imperial rulers is the fact that people just don't want to have to deal with discussing about spiritual beings. Do you, do they exist? If they do exist, then. 45:59 Clint Burnett You know, how do they affect us now? Did Paul think they existed? So it's kind of a way for us to present a more sort of rational post Christian post Enlightenment version of the gospel, more of a demythologized. 46:12 Clint Burnett I forgot what? 46:13 Sean Finnegan Do you mythologization? 46:14 Clint Burnett Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It it seems to me to be on that path, but I I know great people who hold that position, that and who don't believe that. But it seems to me that that is one of the things that it does. So I think it's the spiritual beings. 46:26 Sean Finnegan OK, there are spiritual powers behind the earthly or our huntes behind the earthly rulers. 46:34 Clint Burnett Correct, yes. Yeah, sort of. You know from Daniel with the Prince of Persia with Dan? Yeah. I mean all of that. So, you know, that's what I mean. I think that is Paul's frame of reference. That's what he thinks. It's not very. It's not a Western modern thought. People kind of, you know, shy away from it. But that. Yeah, I. 46:39 Sean Finnegan Yes. Yeah. 46:54 Clint Burnett I don't know what that means nowadays. I've always thought about that it's. 46:59 Sean Finnegan Well, it sure seems that there's something. 47:00 Sean Finnegan Going on, you know where there are these? We're old enough to to have seen significant cultural shifts occurring that. 47:09 Yeah. 47:09 Sean Finnegan On their surface don't really make sense, right? And and you can, you can say, well, you know what's what's the cause is it is it just chaos? Is it just randomness? Is it just a popularity like what? What makes an idea go viral? And another idea doesn't go viral, you know these are these are all legitimate. 47:12 Yeah, yeah. 47:18 Right. 47:23 Clint Burnett Yeah. 47:28 Sean Finnegan Because I think. 47:29 Clint Burnett Yeah, I don't doubt that spiritual forces exist. I just don't know how to make the jump from the spiritual forces being over individual nations, which is what you have in Daniel and what you have in the Old Testament to what it means now. Because we just created a bunch of. 47:45 Clint Burnett Nations after World. 47:46 Clint Burnett War One and World War Two carved up the maps. 47:49 Clint Burnett So like I I really don't know what to do with that, but I think you're right. Yeah. I mean you, you, you, you see stuff that that is happening in our world sometimes you know, you can feel the presence of of the evil in places. And if I feel the presence of evil, you know, I'll just leave and try to get as far away from. 48:05 Clint Burnett If possible. 48:06 Sean Finnegan Well, let's talk about First Corinthians Eights 5 and six, which says indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as in fact there are many gods and many Lords. Yet for us there is one God the father, and then he talks about 1 Lord Jesus Christ. Now I personally strongly. 48:08 OK. 48:15 No. 48:26 Sean Finnegan Disagree with the the recent trend to say that Paul is doing something with the shamai here. I just don't see enough dependence to to make that case. But I don't want to get distracted by that. Anyhow, I want to get into asking you when he says there are many gods and many Lords. 48:34 Yeah. 48:36 Yeah. OK. 48:39 Yeah. 48:42 Sean Finnegan Is that referring to Roman emperors or how do? 48:44 Sean Finnegan You see that? 48:45 Clint Burnett It could, but it doesn't single them out. So the argument I pushed back against is one from winter and right. Right will say something. The effect of the of gods on Earth can only be Roman Empress. And I don't understand why anyone would say that. It seems to me if you look at the inscription. So that's kind of how this started. I was taking the course on. 49:04 Clint Burnett And not how that started. But that's one of the six significant parts of this book was a term paper that I wrote for Lord Nasralla in her class on 1st Corinthians. 49:12 Clint Burnett Published because I kept coming across this idea that these, you know, Lords. 49:16 Clint Burnett And gods that. 49:17 Clint Burnett The Lords in particular are Roman emperors within Chlorinate, so I said, well, what did the Corinthians call them? And it's really easy to see. We have a lot of inscriptions from Corinth. They've been published, has been excavated, you know, since the early 20th century. And I went back through the inscriptions and. 49:33 Clint Burnett There's not a single Julio Claudian that's called a curious. 49:36 Clint Burnett They're called Dewey, which is a plural of duelists. And then there are a few Greek inscriptions associated with the games that Corinth oversaw. The pan. It's me in games it came. 49:48 Clint Burnett To me, that gets. 49:49 Clint Burnett Talked on the Imperial webinars. Get gets called on to that and then those scripts are typically in Greek and. 49:56 Clint Burnett In those cases, what they'll do is they'll call a Roman emperor or Empress in one case, which is Libya. Dios or. 50:04 Clint Burnett The but they don't call them curious because Kurios is not the Greek translation of the list, it's theos. Once again, it seems to me people in Corinth would have missed the boat if Paul intended them to see, because the inscriptions that people put up that people read don't have curiosity in them. For a Roman emperor or someone within the Imperial family. 50:25 Sean Finnegan So what do you think it refers to gods and Lords? 50:28 Clint Burnett I think it refers to various. 50:29 Clint Burnett Deities Sarapis is a tradition of sarapis being called Lord. You know it was great and put pirates documents that are invitations to, you know, the Lord Sarapas invites you to come to dinner at his temple. Those types of things have been found that oxy rinkus. 50:45 Sean Finnegan So the Lords and gods probably refers to deities and not Roman emperors. That's the point. So one more question about Corinth. You know, obviously you wrote a lot about Philippi, Thessalonika and Corinth, your Corinth chapter. 50:51 Yeah. 51:00 Sean Finnegan Probably twice as long as the others, and you kind of get into a really interesting question that I have. 51:07 Sean Finnegan And I haven't seen others raise, I just haven't thought about it either. But it's the question of why didn't the Christians in Corinth really suffer persecution much, or why, you know, you, you talk about all the different ways in which Christians were interacting with pagans that are mentioned in just first Corinthians alone and. 51:26 Clint Burnett Yeah. 51:27 Sean Finnegan Is is quite extensive. Well on my way to asking you about. 51:31 Sean Finnegan Not that you know the Erastus inscription. Do you think that's the Erastus mentioned in other places in the New Testament or do you think it's a different guy? 51:34 Clint Burnett Yes. 51:42 Clint Burnett OK, I started a podcast a couple years back and then I got jobless. Financial advisor had to abandon. 51:46 Clint Burnett The podcast, but. 51:47 Clint Burnett I did a podcast on it. It's called bibliography. I think it's the rest inscription. Also, did the Nazareth inscription. And then I did an update on the nation inscription because the suggestion that I made was proven right. So I would just make sure that people knew that. But I don't think. 52:02 Clint Burnett The Erastus inscription. 52:04 Clint Burnett I I don't think it's a clear cut case where it refers to the arrests from Romans Chapter 16 and verse 23, and also just mentioned nothing in second second Timothy. Yeah. And the reason is it hasn't been published. OK, and that's that's the hard part is. But the excavator, I did a lot of back and forth to excavators from Corinth too. 52:11 Sean Finnegan Second Timothy 420. 52:24 Clint Burnett And other people who knew that ex Raiders from Corinth Steve Friesen was so generous with his time. He actually has a better relationship with his last name is Williams. I forgot his first name. The guy who's publishing it. There's still gonna be published. It really hasn't been published in the sense of the archaeological context floor has been. 52:40 Clint Burnett But basically, archaeological context seals the deal for me in that it dates after the 1st century as I recall, but it dates it's post Pauline basically. And to the extent where if this Arras is mentioned in Romans and Second Timothy is Arras, you'd have to been like a small child. And I don't think that was the case. 52:59 Clint Burnett So it was the archaeological. 53:01 Clint Burnett Evidence that sealed the deal for for me, however, the epigraphic evidence on the face of it. 53:06 Clint Burnett Does argue for a mid 1st century date because you've got the same type of inscription that's in Philippi. Same type of inscription that's at the city in Antioch because it's basically bronze letters that were put into the floor or the. 53:19 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you can tell that the letter spaces are really wide. 53:22 Yeah. 53:23 Sean Finnegan Which makes it a little harder to read, so bronze would bring a lot more clarity to it. 53:28 Clint Burnett Yeah. And so that part of it argues for an early date because most of those inscriptions are like mid 1st century AD. The the thing though that steals deal for me is but unless that document gets published or the book ever gets published. 53:41 Clint Burnett With the other context of the inscription itself, and we can, you know, we see that there's flawed then now we change my mind. But as of right now, the archaeology I've been told by people who know it and are that it, it takes to into the 2nd century. 53:55 Sean Finnegan OK, so if that's the case, then let's just put Erastus to the side. Let's just say there's another individual who is a high status citizen, maybe of decurion rank or maybe what's the other one, Augusta? 54:05 Yeah. 54:09 Hmm. 54:13 Clint Burnett You got it. Could be a decurion. It could be an eye dial. It could be a do a Weir or or or do umm Weir. 54:22 Sean Finnegan No, I'm thinking of like a a Freedman who rose very high. 54:26 Clint Burnett It could be. 54:27 Clint Burnett A cluster. 54:28 Sean Finnegan OK. Yeah. So whatever I mean, somebody from that upper level that is him or herself a Christian and is in some way protecting offering some sort of measure. 54:33 Yeah. 54:37 Clint Burnett Yes. 54:42 Sean Finnegan Of Benefaction I guess to the early Christian movement in Corinth such that they just didn't need to worry about it because somebody big had their back. Is that a possibility? You think it's just the only thing that kind of came to my mind is I was thinking about it over against just like thinking of the over realized eschatology. 55:02 Sean Finnegan Position that you mentioned. 55:04 Clint Burnett Yeah. I mean, I think it's definitely possible. I personally think circumstantial, anecdotal evidence within acts, because I do think that's kind of. 55:13 Clint Burnett A reason why non crash confessing Jews go after Paul is he seems to be taking more upper members of society who can benefit and have the back of the Jewish communities in these cities. So I don't think it's unheard of and I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility I but there's no hard evidence from Cora. 55:33 Clint Burnett To suggest that that I know of other than the Erastus inscription, if it is in fact dated to the mid first. 55:39 Sean Finnegan Century, right. So let's kind of summarize it. 55:42 Sean Finnegan Little bit. 55:43 Yeah. 55:43 Sean Finnegan You established without question that in Flippa in Thessalonika incoherence, these cities were bananas for bestowing divine honors on Roman emperors and their, you know, their Julio Claudian Roman families. No question there. 56:00 Yes. 56:03 Clint Burnett Correct. 56:03 Sean Finnegan How could you summarize, I guess, how Christianity interfaced with that in light? You know, obviously you've got multiple hundreds of patients doing this, but like in in a short summary, like what could pastors reasonably use in sermons? 56:08 MHM. 56:15 Yep. 56:19 Sean Finnegan To say in light of the fact that Roman Imperial Divine honors did happen in the context in which early Christianity was coming on the scene. 56:21 Yeah. 56:25 Clint Burnett Correct. 56:29 Clint Burnett Yeah. So I think, Pastor, it would be helpful for pastors to know that most often Imperial Divine honors were talked on to and offered alongside of honors to traditional. 56:39 Clint Burnett Not we come from a very Christian perspective where we think, you know, you gotta choose just one way. You know, it's either God's way or not, you know. But if you live in a world where you're not a monotheist and you think that all God's equally exist, then you don't really care. So there's just a lot of lack of their term tolerance. 56:59 Clint Burnett And so I think pastors need to realize that the evidence that we have, and I try to show in the book, is that Imperial Divine honors are not separate alone, separated by themselves, that they're intertwined with the larger society. And so we cannot isolate them as the sole reason. 57:15 Clint Burnett And if Christians experience persecution or hostility within a city, it's because they're so intertwined within the culture. And So what you really have is you have Christianity trying to overturn large aspects of the culture, and that's typically where the rub comes when you have Christians. 57:35 Clint Burnett Trying to overturn centuries of tradition and trying to do away with the gods that people really think bring protection and bring the growing seasons and those types of things, and so trying to introduce piety back into the conversation. The whole anti imperial thing to me is focused more on politics and power. 57:53 Clint Burnett Power and I don't think everything boils out of politics and power. I'm just sorry. Some people I know I've gotten to know pastors as a financial advisor who make decisions based on piety and they are suffering because of it. They're not eating I and other guy right now, but I know that he goes and sells plasma to pay the bills because he's so committed to this. 58:14 Clint Burnett Church. And so to to me, you gotta bring piety back into the conversation. So I don't doubt that people reacted with hostility against Christians because of the fact that they're overturning their gods, their gods, that their family members have worshipped and have been acclaimed in their city for centuries. And so I would just hope that people could see that, that. 58:35 Clint Burnett Basically, society is just a mesh. 58:39 Clint Burnett And you can't really isolate Imperial Divine honors from them. So anything that is restored and anti imperial, you're anti Greco Roman culture. And I say Greco first because it is a Greek culture that has a Roman veneer attached to it and we forget that it's not. There's a lot of aspects of Greek culture that Paul's opposing that are not necessarily. 58:59 Clint Burnett Roman. 59:00 Sean Finnegan Right, although that veneer might be a little thicker in Philippi, Corinth. But, well, let me just summarize what I think you just said first and then I'll ask another question. So what I think you just said is that. 59:04 Clint Burnett Amen. 59:06 Yeah. 59:15 Sean Finnegan The question of Imperial Divine honors is really a subset of the question of how Christianity interacted with the Greco Roman belief in the gods in general. So it's just like kind of a subset within that same umbrella rather than something to be considered like on its own as like the secret key to unlock. 59:35 Sean Finnegan The true meaning of the Epistle, the church epistles. 59:38 Clint Burnett Correct, correct. Yeah, that's exactly that's. That's a great way to. 59:41 Sean Finnegan Think about it. OK, you know, you're probably not gonna like this question, but I'm. 59:44 Sean Finnegan Gonna ask it anyhow. 59:46 OK. 59:47 Sean Finnegan Feel free to just just ignore it, but how does this inform you of how to think about America today and the modern context? And like you said, everyone's obsessed with power. It's the postmodern interpretive lens for everything, and I agree it's annoying. 59:55 Clint Burnett Yeah, yeah. 1:00:03 Clint Burnett Yeah. 1:00:08 Sean Finnegan But. 1:00:08 Sean Finnegan It is, it is what it is. And so how does your work bear on how to be a Christian in America today? 1:00:16 Clint Burnett Yeah, I mean, I actually thought in the conclusion to try to address this issue, but I I tried and tried. I know I well it was taken out. It was definitely take it out. So it's a great way. I don't mind to answer it because I think it's the job of a historian, especially a historian who is Pastor Priest, to be able to speak into these things. 1:00:21 Sean Finnegan I didn't see it there. If you put it in, it was real subtle. 1:00:37 Clint Burnett And so I'm not going to shirk it. I think it kind of helps us with several things #1. 1:00:42 Clint Burnett And just broadly speaking, the project and the book is trying to deconstruct something that shouldn't been. 1:00:49 Clint Burnett In the first. 1:00:49 Clint Burnett Place and so thinking about the fact that we all, regardless of the political party that we're in, don't need to take what someone says at face value. We should always do the digging and go back to the sources like I did in the book. 1:01:02 Clint Burnett And what it didn't looking specially is in case you have a question, I put the sources in the. 1:01:08 Clint Burnett So you have every source that I ever consulted, sources that I let you know looked at and you got pictures and you have all throughout the book. So I wanted someone to be able to basically recreate a thesis similar to my own. So I would encourage people to, I think it it it encourage us to do that just first. 1:01:25 Clint Burnett And. 1:01:26 Clint Burnett Foremost, you know you've got. 1:01:28 Clint Burnett Fake news or you got, you know, AI generated stuff, which is in my opinion, I stay far away from a people call me all the time and ask me, I want to help grow my financial practice with a I'm like, no. 1:01:39 Clint Burnett Oh man, stay away. We need more humanity in the world, not less. And. And so the number one is we need to do. We all need to to do especially this in the in this election cycle the hard work of going and figuring out what exactly the person that we are thinking about voting for said not to see snippets taken out of context. 1:02:00 Clint Burnett Here because I think what this book shows is people can take that one inscription from enay that says gospel and use that out of context to argue something that in my opinion is not. 1:02:11 Clint Burnett True. And so we all just need to do the hard work of actually going back to the sources that I would say that was the first thing I think if we can go back to the source and actually see what people are saying as opposed to the medium through which we receive it and and hearing what they say that people are saying, I think we would have a much more civil election cycle. 1:02:31 Clint Burnett Fire. 1:02:32 Clint Burnett And foremost, so that's the main thing that I that I hope that I think that just the project in and of itself. Now the content of the book helps me to see and I hope that maybe people get encouraged by it is that it seems that Saint Paul wasn't really concerned about politics. It doesn't matter who's in charge. I think he thinks. 1:02:52 Clint Burnett Everything that is not in the hands of Christ, to think about what Theresa Morgan's work on in Christo means but thinking as are not under the authority or in the hands of Christ immediately not what I like to call within the vanguard of new creation. Things that are not there are in the sphere of the evil 1. 1:03:10 Clint Burnett And there in the in the sphere of Satan and those spiritual powers that are in in, in charge. And so I think people need to always remember that and that, you know, the systems in this world are corrupt. The systems in this world are evil. Satan is, is the God of this world according to the Saint Paul in second Corinthians. Right. I think people need to always. 1:03:32 Clint Burnett Remember that I'll see a tweet awful tweet about, you know, saying hey. 1:03:38 Clint Burnett You Christians, you need to remember that you worship and arrested, crucified, criminal and support of Donald Trump. What are? 1:03:46 You doing? 1:03:47 Clint Burnett You know, I I have seen that tweet. Well, what people need to know that it doesn't matter who's in the White House. They don't have your best interest at heart. So I think people need to, you know, regardless of what. 1:03:58 Clint Burnett Happens in 2024. Saint Paul wouldn't really care. I think that's kind of what I as I have come to terms of because he couldn't control who's on the throne in Rome. Yeah. So I don't think he really cares. And I think people just get too upset about it because really it doesn't. 1:04:12 Clint Burnett Matter. 1:04:14 Sean Finnegan Very good. Well, you know, I just so appreciate your your time today. How can people follow your work? You got a a website or a social media or what would you refer people to? 1:04:23 Clint Burnett Yeah, you can find me an X at D Clint Burnett one I think, and then Clint burnett.com is my website. I try to blog about once a month. I don't have a ton of time. 1:04:34 Clint Burnett And then I'm also on Facebook, but people can also e-mail me or send me messages. I've got people that respond to. I think if someone takes the time to read my work. 1:04:42 Clint Burnett Purchase my work, or even just read my work and they send me an e-mail. I'm happy to respond and to let them know so you can send me an e-mail specifically about this book to davidcleburne@gmail.com and I'm happy to answer your e-mail. But yeah, I'm so I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Sean. It was a pleasure. It was fun. Let's just hope that I didn't offend. 1:05:04 Sean Finnegan No, it's a browsing conversation. I appreciate not only your time, but also your transparency. You know, it takes courage and I appreciate it. 1:05:13 Clint Burnett Well, I appreciate you. Thank you. 1:05:15 Clint Burnett Much. 1:05:24 Sean Finnegan Well, that brings to an end this interview with a very fascinating scholar. I hope you enjoyed it and learned from it. You can get his book wherever you get your books. It's called Paul and Imperial Divine honors. It's a fairly easy read for a scholarly book. 1:05:40 Sean Finnegan He doesn't use a ton of technical jargon or anything like that, but what he does is explain very carefully what remains of Philippi, Corinth and Thessalonica exist, and how those remains relate to the question of what people thought about the Emperor. 1:06:01 Sean Finnegan And what kind of honors they gave to the Emperor, especially Divine honors, honors that are also given to gods. 1:06:08 Sean Finnegan And so take a look at that. I think this is really a corrective to so much New Testament scholarship and pastoral preaching, myself included, because I have certainly used that Praina inscription. I think that's how he said. I said preen, which. 1:06:28 Sean Finnegan Just obviously it was wrong, but hey, nobody's right all the time, are they? Anyhow, that inscription about the gospel that anti right makes a big deal about. I just finished reading a book by a prominent New Testament scholar. A popular level book. I won't name the person or the title of the book, but he has a whole chapter in it. 1:06:38 Right. 1:06:49 Sean Finnegan Where he basically makes all of the moves that Burnett just disprove. 1:06:54 Sean Finnegan Furthermore, I just did an interview with a gentleman, which you won't hear for a couple of weeks where he does the same exact thing he's like. Well, when they said Jesus is Lord, what they were really saying is that Caesar is not Lord. So I in the moment I didn't really feel like it was appropriate to correct this. 1:07:14 Sean Finnegan Old Testament PhD on that. You'll have to listen to future episodes to hear when that happens. But this is a common place idea and it is something that shows up certainly in 2nd century and beyond. And so we just assume that it's there in. 1:07:29 Sean Finnegan The time of the apostles and the early missions and the beginning of the church in the New Testament period. But as Bernie has pointed out, this is not what Lord was used for. There's only one inscription from the year 67, which was after Paul's already dead, and Peter was already dead. That we get the first usage. 1:07:49 Sean Finnegan Of somebody using the word Lord to describe a Caesar. So really some fascinating stuff here, really some interesting correctives that we do well to consider. 1:08:00 Sean Finnegan Here, as we continue to restore authentic Christianity and we want to present it accurately as we continue to study and learn, and as archaeology improves, I mean it's incredible. I was just over there in Turkey and Greece and they're finding new stuff and there are plenty of cities that are still unexcavated where treasures. 1:08:20 Sean Finnegan Lie and future generations will be able to benefit from them, so as we always say here, the truth has nothing to fear. If you end up getting corrected by the facts of the matter, and you believed in what turned out to be an overemphasis on politics and in Paul's. 1:08:40 Sean Finnegan Thistles hey, this is a great opportunity to reconsider and reapproach this in light of the evidence. 1:08:47 Sean Finnegan Well, that's going to draw to an end our conversation today. I'm actually out of town this week. And so I'm not going to be inserting any comments from the website or from other sources today, but if you do want to join in on that, you can make comments on restitutio.org. You can make comments on the YouTube channel. You can make comments on Facebook, you can make comments on Spotify feed. 1:09:10 Sean Finnegan You can write a review in Apple Podcasts whatever you want to do to get in touch. Would love to hear your thoughts about this interview. 1:09:21 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks for listening to the end. If you'd like to support this ministry, you can do that at restitutio.org. I'll catch you next week. And remember, the truth has nothing to fear.