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Isaiah 40.3 and the Synoptic Gospels’ Parody of the Roman Road System
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2019
Abstract
This article proposes that the Synoptic Gospels’ pronouncements of Isa 40.3 (Matt 4.3; Mark 1.2–3; Luke 3.4–6) invite a comparison with the Roman road system and its extensive broadcast of Roman imperial ideology. Heralding the sovereignty of a coming king on newly constructed roads through difficult terrain, Matthew, Mark and Luke portray the coming of the kingdom of God in terms analogous to the laying of Roman roads followed by the enforcement of Roman rule throughout the Roman Empire. If Isa 40.3 heralded the arrival of the true God through the ministry of Jesus, as the Synoptic Gospels proclaim, then Rome's pretentions were by implication counterfeit. The engineering feats of raising ravines, levelling heights, smoothing terrain and making straight highways denoted Roman expansion, conquest and the standardisation of Roman imperial ideology. In contradistinction, the Synoptic Gospels’ citations of Isa 40.3 presage the triumph of God, while simultaneously parodying Roman imperial ideology.
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1 I use the term ‘parody’ in reference to ‘any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice’ (Dentith, S., Parody (London: Routledge, 2000) 9Google Scholar). The terms παρῳδία, παρῳδός and παρῳδή share a complex, dynamic semantic history with origins as early as Aristotle (384–322 bce) and as contemporary as post-modernism. The early Christian usage we envision constructs its message upon corrective polemical comparison but without the comic nuances that characterise most literature that has been classified as parody throughout literary history. On the literary and etymological history of parody, see: Rose, M. A., Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 4–47Google Scholar; Dentith, Parody, 39–54; Householder, F. W. Jr., ‘ΠΑΡΩΙΔΙΑ’, Journal of Classical Philology 39.1 (1944) 1–9Google Scholar. On distinguishing the ancient form from its modern iterations, see Hutcheon, L., A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000) 30–49Google Scholar.
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30 Translation from Josephus, The Jewish War (trans. G. A. Williamson, rev. E. Mary Smallwood; Middlesex: Penguin, 1985) 198 (emphasis added). For epigraphical evidence for Vespasian building roads in Syria, Cappadocia and Asia Minor during the mid-70s ce, see Isaac, B., The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992) 34–6Google Scholar.
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37 Chevallier, Roman Roads, 39–47. Polybius (ca. 200–118 bce), describing a distance in north-eastern Spain from Emporiae to the Rhône, comments: ‘this last part of the road has now been carefully measured by the Romans and is marked with milestones every eighth stade’ (The Rise of the Roman Empire 3.39 (trans. I. Scott-Kilvert; London: Penguin, 1979) 212). With approximate measures for the stade being 600 ft and the Roman mile 5,000 ft, every ‘eighth stade’ would be close to a literal mile. Research has identified over 600 milestones in Anatolia (Cimok, F., Roads of Ancient Anatolia: A Turizm Yayinlari: Istanbul, 2008) 13Google Scholar.
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41 See Cooley, Res Gestae, 1–55.
42 See P. Thonemann, ‘A copy of Augustus’ Res Gestae at Sardis’, Historia-Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 61.3 (2012) 282–8.
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45 Cooley, Res Gestae, 58. This paragraph is dependent on Cooley, Res Gestae, 13–16.
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48 D. H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor; Electronic Monograph 2 (2012), at: http://biaa.ac.uk/ckeditor/filemanager/userfiles/3.2%20gal%20final%20optimised.pdf (No. 90 (C) 150–1; No. 94 (B) 160; No. 95 (D) 161–).
49 For translations and abbreviations, see C. Bruun and J. Edmondson, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 787–98. The author wishes to thank Jonathan Edmondson for his translation and explanation of these inscriptions.
50 Wilson, Biblical Turkey, 170. On the dating of the Roman governors of Galatia, see R. K. Sherk, ‘Roman Galatia: The Governors from 26 bc to ad 114’, ANRW ii.7.2, 954–1052.
51 Wilson, Biblical Turkey, 206, 270. See also Burn, L., The British Museum Book of Greek and Roman Art (London: British Museum, 1991) 42Google Scholar, Fig. 29.
52 For Paul's walk from Troas along the sacred way to the Smintheum, see Thompson, G. L. and Wilson, M., ‘Paul's Walk to Assos: A Hodological Inquiry into its Geography, Archaeology, and Purpose’, Stones, Bones, and the Sacred: Essays on Material Culture and Ancient Religion in Honor of Dennis E. Smith (ed. Cadwallader, Alan H.; Atlanta: SBL, 2016) 269–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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55 Translation from Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. i:Books 1–8 (trans. F. J. Miller; LCL 42; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966) 15. The NT counterpart to the Roman myth is the heavenly Jerusalem disclosed in Revelation 21, whose one street (πλατεῖα) is pure gold, like transparent glass (Rev 21.21), and whose temple is ‘the Lord God, the Almighty (παντακράτωρ) and the Lamb’ (Rev 21.22).
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57 Probably aware of both the Babylonian festival and its OT correspondences, the NT author of Revelation contextualised the pseudonym ‘Babylon’ to symbolise Rome, the city of contemporary pagan triumphs that marginalised Christians as Babylon had once marginalised Jews – parody being a major literary feature of Revelation. That the ‘Babylon’ of Revelation 17 is Rome is virtually beyond doubt as the reference to the seven mountains in 17.9 is clearly a reference to the celebration of Septimontium (‘seven mountains/hills’) held each December in ancient Rome. Beard comments, ‘“Septimontium” was the name of Rome before it became “Rome”’ (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, 80).
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59 Num 20.19; 1 Kings 5.20; 20.31, 2, 45; 21.19; 2 Kings 18.17; 1 Sam 6.12; 2 Sam 20.12 (2x), 13; 1 Chron 26.16, 18; 2 Chron 9.11; Ps 84.6; Prov 16.17; Isa 7.3; 11.16; 19.23; 33.8; 36.2; 40.3; 49.11; 59.7; 62.10; Jer 31.21; Joel 2.8. The related term מַסְלוּל is used in Isa 35.8.
60 Koch, K. (‘דֶרֶךְ’, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. iii (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 270–93, at 278)Google Scholar and, similarly, Dorsey, D. A., The Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991) 229)Google Scholar. Tidwell, ‘MESILLÂ’, 256–8, 63, 69.
61 Tidwell, ‘MESILLÂ’, 258.
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63 Westermann, K., Isaiah 40–66 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 38Google Scholar. Diodorus Siculus (writing ca. 60–30 bce) transmits the divine associations of road building through the myth of the goddess Semiramis, the Assyrian/Babylonian queen who became the prototype for every goddess and female cult figure in the ancient world: ‘she became ambitious both to leave an immortal monument of herself and at the same time to shorten her way; consequently she cut through the cliffs, filled up the low places, and thus at great expense built a short road, which to this day is called the road of Semiramis’ (The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus (ed. C. H. Oldfather; LCL 279; 1.1–2.34; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933) 397).
64 However, the association of the building of a highway with the return from exile does appear in Isa 35.10, which has clear parallels with Isa 40.3–5.
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68 Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 183.
69 See Evans, ‘Mark's Incipit’, 67–81.
70 Luke 1.79; 2.14, 29; 7.50; 8.48; 10.5, 6; 11.21; 12.51; 14.32; 19.38, 42; 24.36.
71 Luke 1.19; 2.10; 3.18; 4.18, 43; 7.22; 8.1; 9.6; 16.16; 20.1.
72 For further development of imperial correspondences in Luke, see Brent, ‘Luke-Acts and the Imperial Cult in Asia Minor’, 411–24.
73 Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, lxxxix: ‘Christians well understood that their confession that Jesus was “Lord,” “Savior,” and “Son of God” directly competed with and challenged the Roman Emperor and the cult that had grown up around the office.’
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