310 Joel White This leads to a second problem, since much of the vocabulary in question was already part of the early Church’s idiolect before Paul took up his pen. The term kurio" was certainly already being used with v reference to Jesus in the Jerusalem church (21), and it is difficult to imagine that it or other terms in use there in 30’s and 40’s were chosen for their anti-imperial implications. With regard to Paul, this means we have to be careful about arguments that rest too strongly on his choice of vocabulary. Any terms that were part of the standard repertoire of earliest Christian quasi-technical terms were not chosen by Paul due to their anti-imperial or, for that matter, any other connotations. They were chosen for him by others, and he could hardly have avoided using them, even if he had wanted to. The problem here, of course, is that we have no direct recourse to pre-Pauline Christianity except via Paul, unless one dates the Letter of James early, as an increasing number of scholars, not to mention myself, are inclined to do. In that event, many characteristically Pauline terms, including pivsti", eijrhvnh, and even dikaiosuvnh suddenly evidence a pre-Pauline pedigree which, of course, further weakens the argument from vocabulary. Still, it is best not to build an elaborate case on the presumption of an early dating of James. Third, the argument from vocabulary needs to be shored up methodologically. To a certain extent, scholars have begun to address this deficit. Neil Elliot, for instance, has attempted to construct a more solid methodology for the identification of subtexts (22). Drawing on the political theory of James C. Scott (23), he posits the presence of “hidden transcripts” behind Paul’s public utterances. While existence of such “hidden transcripts” is hardly open to doubt, definitively identifying them in ancient texts is no easy task. To that end, Elliot appropriates Richard Hays’ criteria for identifying intertextual “echoes” in Paul(24) to the task of identifying subtexts, but this assumes an interchangeabi- lity between “subtext” (or “hidden transcript”) and “pre-text” (or “im- (21) Cf. J.D.G. DUNN, Beginning from Jerusalem (Christianity in the Making 2; Grand Rapids, MI 2009) 217. (22) Cf. N. ELLIOT, “‘Blasphemed among the Nations’: Pursuing an Anti- Imperial ‘Intertextuality’ in Romans”, As it is Written. Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (eds. S.E. PORTER – C.D. STANLEY) (Symposium 50; Atlanta, GA 2008) 213-233. (23) Cf. J.C. SCOTT, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT1990). (24) Cf. R. HAYS, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT 1989) 29-32.