Table of Contents 
Acknowledgements									vi
Introduction										1
Chapter One	Roman Religion and Sacrificial Practice				18
		Why Discourse Matters						19	
		Roman Religious Discourse ?Order, Power, and Balance		28
		Roman Religious Sacrifice						56
	
Chapter Two	The Roman Imperial Cult						63
		Religious Change in late Republican Rome				65
		The Military Hero as ?god?						73
		Hellenistic Ruler Cults						78
 	Divus Iulius								90
		Divus Augustus							99
		The Imperial Cult after Augustus					106
Chapter Three	The New Testament and the Discourse of Sacrifice			114
		Sacrifice in the Letter to the Hebrews					116
		Sacrifice in the Letters of Paul					130
		Sacrifice in the Synoptic Gospels					141
		The ?Lamb of God? in John and the Book of Revelation		154
		?Spiritual? Sacrifice in the New Testament				165
		Excursus ? Ren¿ Girard and the Non-sacrificial Death of Jesus	170
Chapter Four	The Sacrifice of the Martyr						180
		
 The Rhetoric of Martyrdom						183
		?Noble Death? and Martyrdom: the Debate				192
		The Jewish Notion of ?Noble Death?					207
		A Specifically Christian Discourse of Martyrdom			210
		The Theologians and the Martyrs? Sacrifice				224
		Cyprian of Carthage ? ?The Baptism of Blood, the Crown of
					 Virtue? 					231
Summary and Conclusions								241
Bibliography										260