You Shall Not Bow Down and Serve Them

Economic justice is the core of the biblical tradition. In this innovative volume, Horsley takes the reader deep in examining how Jesus' economic project was shaped in opposition to the Roman imperial order and how Paul's development of communities around the Mediterranean was part of creating an alternative society among those subject to Rome. This analysis sets in the foreground the fundamental issues of food security, access to resources, and liberation. These movements emerged in opposition to Roman violence, political oppression, and economic extraction. This ultimately leads the author to consider how these issues are more relevant than ever in confronting the most recent form of empire in global capitalism. While we are not living in a Roman imperial world, we must strategize to confront the ways in which the new empire uses violence, oppression, and extraction to the detriment of the vast majority in the world, but especially those who are most vulnerable.


About the Author
Richard A. Horsley is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, emeritus. His numerous publications include these works from Cascade Books: Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, 2nd ed. (2021), Jesus and Magic (2014), Text and Tradition in Performance and Writing (2013), After Apocalyptic and Wisdom (with Patrick A. Tiller, 2012), Wisdom and Spiritual Transcendence at Corinth (2008), and Empowering the People (forthcoming).