Bret Devereaux

I am reluctant to over-conflate Biblical Rome with the Rome that actually existed in fact. What Rome actually was and did isn't particularly relevant to what biblical Rome actually was and did. (Unless you want an extra-textual guilty party to blame the Crucifixion on.)

Er, no. The Biblical Rome is the Rome that actually existed, on account of the New Testament being written entirely by people who lived within the Roman empire during the period of existence. These are primary sources. I often find that the public sense of the dating...

...and thus potential primary-source usefulness of the New Testament is *really* out of step with the scholarship. The synoptic gospels all probably date from the first century (the only real first century authorship question is John). And of the Pauline epistles...

...seven are generally accepted as written *by Paul* (or more correctly, written by a single author who, Occam's razor, ought to be identified as Paul). To be clear, I'm not saying this is the religious tradition, but rather the secular scholarly position.

So as a matter of just simple Roman history, you're dealing with primary sources to the Roman Empire. Of course, all sources to be read critically, but in terms of the question "what is it like to live in the Roman Empire" the New Testament is fairly reliable...

...as the accounts of people who did, in fact, live in the Roman Empire, relating their experiences (or recent accounts of the experiences of others) of living in the Roman Empire. Historians use them as such - there is little hesitation in using daily-life facts from the NT...

...If the New Testament narratives about Roman rule and Roman power differ from other accounts, it is more because the NT represents a narrative from the perspective of the imperial subjects, rather than the imperial rulers (and unlike figures like Josephus....

...ones that have no particular need or reason to flatter the Roman authorities). The British India of the G-G and Viceroy's dispatches was probably rather different than the one that Indians wrote about. Both were quite real (although the latter certainly effected more people)