In Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire: Mutual Recognition Niko Huttunen challenges the interpretation of early Christian texts as anti-imperial documents. He presents examples of the positive relationship between early Christians and the Roman society. With the concept of “recognition” Huttunen describes a situation in which the parties can come to terms with each other without full agreement. Huttunen provides examples of non-Christian philosophers recognizing early Christians. He claims that recognition was a response to Christians who presented themselves as philosophers. Huttunen reads Romans 13 as a part of the ancient tradition of the law of the stronger. His pioneering study on early Christian soldiers uncovers the practical dimension of recognizing the empire.

Billings demonstrates that Acts was written in conformity with broader representational trends found on imperial monuments and in the epigraphic record of the early second century.

The Roman empire extended over three continents, and all its lands came to share a common culture, bequeathing a legacy vigorous even today. A Companion to Roman Imperialism, written by a distinguished body of scholars, explores the extraordinary phenomenon of Rome’s rise to empire to reveal the impact which this had on her subject peoples and on the Romans themselves. The Companion analyses how Rome’s internal affairs and international relations reacted on each other, sometimes with violent results, why some lands were annexed but others ignored or given up, and the ways in which Rome’s population and power élite evolved as former subjects, east and west, themselves became Romans and made their powerful contributions to Roman history and culture. Contributors are Eric Adler, Richard Alston, Lea Beness, Paul Burton, Brian Campbell, Arthur Eckstein, Peter Edwell, Tom Hillard, Richard Hingley, Benjamin Isaac, José Luis López Castro, J. Majbom Madsen, Susan Mattern, Sophie Mills, David Potter, Jonathan Prag, Steven Rutledge, Maurice Sartre, John Serrati, Tom Stevenson, Martin Stone, and James Thorne.