Thanks. I’m reading The Arrogance of Nations at the moment. It’s a wonderful book. I doubt that his extreme and thorough-going characterization of Romans as a ‘hidden transcript’ against imperialism will be sustainable, but I think that there is a lot to be learnt from reading the letter in this way. I think probably the anti-imperialist polemic is more tangential to Paul’s central purpose than Elliott seems to be saying, but I agree with him that this is a much more ‘political’ text than Protestant dogmatics allows.

I was particularly taken (though not yet convinced) by his argument that Romans 1:18-32 is specifically written against the Caesars: ‘No others could serve Paul’s argument so effectively by offering, in the own persons, a fitting lesson on the inevitability with which divine punishment follows horrendous crimes’ (79). But still, this would only make the emperors prominent instances of a general condition.