Berkley Center

The Letter to the Romans is contained within the Christian Scriptures, written by the apostle Paul in the mid-first century CE. By exploring the ancient archaeological context of the city of Rome, it is possible to reconstruct aspects of the political and theological situation of those who first received the letter. But that archaeology comes to us via Mussolini’s “excavations” of the city of Rome.

At this Religion, Culture, and Politics Workshop, Laura Nasrallah, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, drew on a chapter from her forthcoming book to discuss how to reconstruct history and monuments (monuments in Rome, the monumental nature of the Letter to the Romans) which have been produced by or used for racist purposes.