Towards Structural Marxism as a Hermeneutic of Early Christian Literature, Illustrated with Reference to Paul’s Spectacle Metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15:30-32

Abstract

This essay explores the potential of the structural Marxist theory of Louis Althusser to provide a path beyond the mechanistic and expressive models of causality that have dominated comparative studies of early Christianity in the Greco-Roman environment. The essay analyses representational forms of the self in the “society of the spectacle” that characterized imperial Rome, drawing upon the work of Guy Debord. The potential of a structural Marxist hermeneutic is illustrated by a comparison of Paul's spectacle metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15:30-32 with the eighth discourse of Dio Chrysostom.