Professional Documents
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ISSN0142-064X
Justin J. Meggitt
Corpus Christi College
Cambridge CB2 1RH
1. See, for example, my 'Sources: Use, Abuse and Neglect', in D. Horrell and
E. Adams (eds.) Christianity at Corinth (forthcoming).
2. I did indicate this in a number of places. See, e.g., p. 99 n. 118.
The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2001, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SEI 7NX and 370
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86 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001)
basic thesis is that these believers, including Paul, like virtually all
other inhabitants of the Roman empire who were not members of the
political elite or their associates,3 lived subsistence or near subsistence
lives, in which their access to necessities was inadequate and precari-
ous. Like their neighbours, none was potentially more than a few weeks
away (and many far closer than that) from a life-threatening crisis, with
little call on material resources when in such need. They suffered from
what we would term absolute poverty. As a consequence of this bleak
economic context we should rethink the place of the theological and
ethical motif that I believe can be labelled 'mutualism' in Pauline
literature. Intentionally or otherwise, the material consequences of this
motif represented a distinctive and effective form of support for
individuals faced by endemic privation.
As I note at the outset of the book, the concern with the material con-
text makes the analysis that follows rather undifferentiated (p. 5). But
this lack of differentiation is deliberate. The central dichotomy between
those economically vulnerable and those not is helpful for bringing into
view the universality of the experience of privation for the Pauline
Christians that, in material terms, a more differential analysis, even if it
were possible, would obscure. Such an undifferentiated analysis cannot
explain everything, or describe everything, nor does it assume that the
Pauline churches lacked social stratification (pp. 5, 106) (although the
grounds on which current conceptualizations of this are based are not, I
believe, possible to sustain). There is, I contend, a great deal of value in
using such dichotomies as long as we recognize their limitations.4
Before I turn to specific issues raised by Martin and Theissen, I
would like to make two further points that I think are significant. First,
the picture of wide-scale material deprivation presented in the book has
recently been confirmed by the first comprehensive study of nutrition
experience in antiquity, a work that has argued that chronic mal-
turning to more substantive issues. While I am sure his errors were not
intentional, they cannot be allowed to stand.
Martin maintains that I often misrepresent the scholars with whom I
disagree, and in particular the leading advocates of the 'new consen-
sus', Wayne Meeks and Gerd Theissen. However, this is not the case.
For example, I am perfectly aware that Meeks does not accept that the
members of the highest level of ancient society belonged to the Pauline
churches, and say as much (p. 100 n. 123). Nor do I misrepresent these
scholars in asserting that their reconstructions are, as they stand,
incompatible with the picture that I present (p. 99). It is hard to see
how Meeks's description of the Pauline communities including indi-
viduals 'high in income' and 'wealthy'11 concords with mine,12 and
Theissen's article in this journal demonstrates that his reconstruction is
also obviously at variance with that in PP&S. As Martin himself says,
if I am right that all the Pauline Christians lived 'brutal and frugal
lives, characterised by struggle and impoverishment' then it 'does
indeed provide a sharp contrast to what may fairly be called a current
consensus on the socio-economic realities of the Pauline churches'.
The criticism of the use of ancient written sources in PP&S is like-
wise unfair. Elite-authored texts are not used in the arbitrary and parti-
san manner he asserts but treated cautiously and critically as indirect
evidence, with attention paid to issues of authorial biography and genre
(pp. 24-25). More specifically, I certainly do not deduce from Lucian
that 'in a sociological sense' household philosophers are no different
from day labourers but rather, in a material sense, that the former could
be as vulnerable as the latter (p. 59). Nor is my use of Apuleius's
description of the brutalized mill slaves naive.13 This evocative scene is
a commonplace in studies of slavery of the period14 (even if it is absent
11. Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the
Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). p. 73.
12. Although I will concede that n. 65 on p. 54 is not a model of clarity, contra
to the positive (if qualified) picture Martin paints of (primarily) urban slave life at
the outset of Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) (one in which 'many [slaves] controlled
quite a bit of property and money' [p. 10]), slave experience was almost universally
one of abuse and vulnerability. It is also not the case that I summarily dismiss
Hock's workrather I recommend it, with qualifications (p. 75 nn. 4, 7).
13. Golden Ass 9.12
14. See, for example, the work of K.R. Bradley, 'Review Article: Problem of
Slavery in Classical Culture', Classical Philology 92 (1997), pp. 273-82, and in
particular ' Animalizing the Slave: the Truth of Fiction', JRS 90 (2000), pp. 110-25.
15. E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1981), pp. 329-32.
16. See, for example, the harrowing description of the skeletal remains of a
young slave girl in Sara Bisel, 'The People of Herculaneum', Helmantica 37 (1986),
pp. 11-23.
17. He may well be a bankrupt equestrian (Juvenal, Satires 3.154) although this
is not necessarily the case. Despite the Lex Roscia (Otho) in 67 BCE, it seems that
others in addition to equestrians sat in these seats and had to be evicted (Suetonius,
Domitian 8.3).
18. Something that can be demonstrated in other sources, e.g. P.Oxy 51.3617
(which refers to the high esteem of an enslaved weaver).
19. His description of my discussion of the cost of slaves is not adequate, and on
a number of other occasions he misrepresents what is actually said in PP&S For
example, I do not say on 139 that the scholars I refer to assume that the designa
tion TTJs is evidence that Erastus was a powerful civic func
tionary, but that they hold that this designation encourages identification of the
Erastus of Rom 16 23 with the aedile in the Corinthian inscription Interestingly,
some commentators do make the deduction that Martin finds so improbable (see, for
example, J Ziesler, Paul's Letter to the Romans [London SCM Press, 1989],
356 and C Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, [Edinburgh T. &
Clark, 1979], 808)
20 I actually say that the ability to travel cannot be used as an indicator at all
(p 134), contra Martin' s presentation of my view
21 See, e g , my use of C Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions
(Cambridge Cambridge University Press), 1984
22 See, e g., my remark on the ways in which indicators are employed by advo
cates of the 'new consensus' (PP&S, 101 129)
23 Philo, Omn Prob Lib 79; Vit Cont 70. See Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slav
eryfromAristotle to Augustine (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1996).
24. The well-documented Skoptsy cult, for example, lived lives identical to their
Russian peasant brethren but adopted a degree of self-mutilation completely
unprecedented in western history as a result of the influence of certain charismatic
leaders; Laura Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folk-
tale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) (the title of the book does not
reflect the severity of their behaviour).
25. Nor, by the way, do I argue that all economic relationships in the Pauline
churches, particularly those relating to his own support, can be characterized in such
a way (p. 77).
26. PP&S, p. 99 n. 120; p. 121 n. 227.
27. Bryan R. Wilson, Social Dimensions of Sectarianism (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990), pp. 105-27. See, e.g., Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), and J. Beckford, The Trumpet of
Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah 's Witnesses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1975).
28. For remarks on collegia in PP&S, see p. 136 n. 320 and pp. 170-71. For a
discussion of the implications of current scholarship on the subject, including the
contribution of Schmeller, see Richard S. Ascough, What Are they Saying about the
Formation ofPauline Churches? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998).
29. In PP&S, p. 138 n. 332 I was not taking general life expectancy as a base in
making this statement, which, as he quite rightly notes, includes high mortality in
early childhood, but was assuming that the comparative life tables used to make
such conjectures underestimate the age-specific mortality rates in the first century
because they underestimate the environmental stress onfirst-centuryurban popula
tions. See Walter Scheidel, 'Progress and Problems in Roman Demography', in
Walter Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 24.
30. Titus 3.15; Col. 4.14.
31. Lk. 13.14; Acts 13.15; Justin, Dialogue 137.2. See also m. Sot. 7.7-8;
m. Yom. 7.1; also Epiphanius, Panarion 30.18.2; Z?. Pes. 49b; Codex Theodosianus
16.8, 13.
32. Indeed, even the apparently impressive donation of a synagogue may not
imply the level of wealth he assumes. See Lk. 7.5.
33. A significant virtueRom. 16.7; cf. also 1 Tim. 3.6.
34. We must not overestimate the likely size of this church (p. 121 n. 227). Acts
18.10 is not a reliable indicator of the numbers in this period.
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