This chapter, Everything Christianity/the Bible Represents is being Attacked on the Internet!”: The Internet and Technologies of Religious Engagement, studies public contestation of power with powerful pastors through a crucial aspect of asserting power: money. This chapter illustrates a revolt against pastors through the critical examination of the aftermath of “The Great Tithe Debate” between online air presenter Ifedayo Olarinde (known as Daddy Freeze), and most of the famous Pentecostal pastors. If the identity of Pentecostals is power, then the rise of modern technology has provided the means for ordinary people on social media to duel with religious authority. Pentecostal pastors’ influence has been frequently studied in Pentecostalism, and one of the focal points of analysis is their ability to build immense financial power through skillful solicitation. With the ubiquity of technology, contenders are rising and threatening pastors’ authority to build financial capital. These contenders stage their own shows demonstrating how they have equally been empowered to tap into the same symbolic instruments that generate power for their leaders. This development troubles not just the Pentecostal pastorate but their followers as well.

Babylonia held a crucial position in a network of overland and naval routes, connecting Arabia, India, and the Graeco-Bactrian empire with the Levant, Syria, and Anatolia via the Fertile Crescent in the west. This network enabled the royal administration to combine the functions of trade and communication with settlement politics, the melioration of agriculture, and the supply of war zones. In this latter role, the Babylonian economy might have played an important part in Seleucid warfare, despite Babylonians never being actively involved in military campaigns. A new Graeco-Babylonian elite with particular demands, the dynamic development of settlements, the network of trade routes, communication, mobility connecting the western parts of the empire in the Aegean with the east, and increased monetization may have provided the conditions for some economic growth in Hellenistic Babylonia. Nevertheless, Babylonia had already been a very productive and economically dynamic region in the Achaemenid period. There were certainly great continuities from the Persian and Seleucid empires, and one may wonder whether the efforts of the early Seleucid kings to improve lines of communication, temple economies, and monetary exchange aimed at regaining the levels of prosperity that had already been achieved before Alexander’s conquests.

This chapter, Everything Christianity/the Bible Represents is being Attacked on the Internet!”: The Internet and Technologies of Religious Engagement, studies public contestation of power with powerful pastors through a crucial aspect of asserting power: money. This chapter illustrates a revolt against pastors through the critical examination of the aftermath of “The Great Tithe Debate” between online air presenter Ifedayo Olarinde (known as Daddy Freeze), and most of the famous Pentecostal pastors. If the identity of Pentecostals is power, then the rise of modern technology has provided the means for ordinary people on social media to duel with religious authority. Pentecostal pastors’ influence has been frequently studied in Pentecostalism, and one of the focal points of analysis is their ability to build immense financial power through skillful solicitation. With the ubiquity of technology, contenders are rising and threatening pastors’ authority to build financial capital. These contenders stage their own shows demonstrating how they have equally been empowered to tap into the same symbolic instruments that generate power for their leaders. This development troubles not just the Pentecostal pastorate but their followers as well.

On the one hand, the tyrants of the archaic age are considered to be demophagoi, the ‘eaters’ of common goods; on the other hand, their reign is praised as the Golden Age of Kronos. This chapter deals with the relationship between tyrants and the people and discusses the connection between dues and benefactions. It establishes the notion that the reign of tyrants as well as the reign of succeeding aristocratic houses were rooted in the tradition of Homeric kings. The garden of the Phaeacian king Alcinoos, where the citizens drew their water, symbolizes ideal ruling. Exactly the same kind of benefactions, the securing of the water supplies, has been attributed to the archaic tyrants. The chapter aims to present the lines of tradition as well as the discontinuities in the early Greek conceptions of generosity and dominion.