Horizons in Biblical Theology 38 (2016) 133-136

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Introduction to Reviews of Roland Boer, The Sacred

Economy of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2015)1
Davis Hankins
Appalachian State University, 287 Rivers St., Boone, NC 28608 USA
davis.hankins@gmail.com

As Ward Blanton notes, Roland Boer’s dazzlingly wide-ranging corpus is surely

unique within an increasingly atomized discipline and academy. Boer exempli-
fies engaged critical scholarship that advances knowledge about areas of mate-
rial concern to the humanities and biblical scholarship in particular. He writes
with wit and humorous prose that clearly and consistently conveys the stakes
of his projects. This book is much more (and also a bit less) than an analysis of
ancient Israel’s economy. Boer offers a new account of what Marx infamously
christened the Asiatic mode of production. As is well known, Marx periodized
history by referring to different, conflictual constellations of means, forces, and
relations of production such as capitalism and feudalism. Prior to the emerg-
ing significance of slavery in the ancient mode of production that we broadly
associate with Hellenization, Marx used the controversial notion of an Asiatic
mode of production to characterize the political economy in southwest Asia.
Boer offers a new term, the sacred economy, and a fresh analysis that promises
to revitalize research into the economy of the ancient Near East.
All reviewers agree that Boer’s analysis makes a landmark contribution to
our understanding of ancient Israel’s economy, and each offers constructive
criticism aimed at advancing Boer’s project in two directions. At times they
push back on some of Boer’s particular claims. At other times, they focus on

1 These reviews were initially presented on 21 November 2015, at the annual meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature in the Ideological Criticism program unit. I extend my gratitude
to HBTH and Lewie Donelson for publishing these reviews of Roland Boer’s recent book,
to the participants for devoting their time and expertise to begin a critical conversation
around this landmark study of ancient Israel’s economy, and to Boer himself for his book and
his thoughtful response to these reviews.

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elements of Boer’s analysis that, in their judgment, were insufficiently treated

or avoided. Regarding the latter, although Boer attends at length to the patri-
archal family and household, several reviewers (e.g., Adams, Sharp, Keefe)
indicate that his analysis would be improved by greater attention to the conse-
quences of gender constructions for the division of labor and power dynamics
in the sacred economy.
More than one reviewer (e.g., Erickson, Keefe) also voiced a general sense
of dissatisfaction with the role of religion in Boer’s analysis. The concept of
religion and the role of the sacred in the sacred economy seem to them
inadequately specified or appreciated. Boer typically refers to modes of
régulation—from the Marxist theoretical orientation known as Régulation
theory—to refer to particular cultural and religious forms, beliefs, assump-
tions, and institutions that offer ideological support for any specific organi-
zation of the economy. More work could certainly be done to illuminate the
various and inherently ambivalent consequences of different modes of régula-
tion on the sacred economy.
Finally, multiple reviewers (e.g., Adams, Brueggemann) were not satis-
fied with Boer’s reticence to view—and suspicion of those who do so­—the
struggles and conflicts in the ancient socioeconomic conditions of the sacred
economy as relevant resources for understanding and responding to contem-
porary experiences and conditions of global capitalism. While his final chapter
does briefly consider what normative claims might be possible in light of his
analysis of the sacred economy, Boer rejects attempts to make the Bible speak
directly to contemporary conditions on the grounds that it was formed in such
a different mode of production. Thus he is reticent to allow the prophets, for
example, to voice contemporary grievances. If they complain about economic
exploitation, it’s not the same kind of exploitation experienced in contempo-
rary capitalism. Instead he hints at a more modest yet constructive proposal
for reorganizing socioeconomic life in light of what worked best for human
and nonhuman life in the subsistence regime of the sacred economy.
I appreciate Boer’s desire to be clear and explicit about the many historical
differences between our capitalist political economy and the ancient sacred
economy, but I think Boer draws too rigid a line between now and then with
regard both to modes of production and the meanings of the biblical texts.
As Boer notes, there are numerous, deeply significant features such as class
conflict that are shared across modes of production. And, as Boer knows, each
mode of production preserves and projects the sequence and vestiges of ear-
lier modes of production out of which it emerges. This is not to say that history
is “homogeneous, empty time,” as Walter Benjamin nicely puts it, history is

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Introduction to Reviews of Roland Boer 135

instead “time filled by the presence of the now [ Jetztzeit].”2 With regard to the
historical context of the biblical text, we are increasingly aware—thanks largely
to the Dead Sea Scrolls—that the biblical texts existed well into the common
era in multiple forms with significant instability, which makes it very difficult
to constrain their significance within a particular ancient context—even one
as varied and enduring as the sacred economy. Ultimately I think these criti-
cisms are more like correctives and I don’t imagine that Boer disagrees with
these points—at least in theory—given his commitments to Marxism and
Marxism’s commitments both to historicize and to view history as an intercon-
nected, collective story. Instead of dismissing as homiletical attempts to make
biblical texts meaningful in alien contexts, I think a Marxist view of history
provides the best account of how texts continue to speak ancient messages
with vital contemporaneity.
Others take aim at some of Boer’s more substantive claims. Blanton nicely
supplements the conversation with attention to theoretical concerns and the
philosophical background to Boer’s Marxist perspective. But he also questions
the latter’s formal resonance with abstract political myths that Boer criticizes
elsewhere. Chaney offers several probing challenges to Boer’s account of the
sacred economy. For example, Boer strongly emphasizes the significance of
labor and the insignificance of land in the sacred economy. He thus offers
an important corrective to common depictions of the household (bet ‘ab) as
firmly grounded in particular plots of land. But Chaney adds an important
exception about the Iron II period when, as recent archaeological surveys sug-
gest, the Cisjordanian central highlands achieved population levels approach-
ing saturation.
Boer also rejects the commonly advanced thesis that in the eighth century
BCE Israel and Judah began an accelerated transition from a subsistence-based
to a market-oriented economy that produced surplus amounts of cash crops
for the purpose of international trade. Boer claims that neither Israel nor Judah
exported goods in any significant amount. While not rejecting Boer’s position
entirely, Chaney offers solid historical grounds for the idea that a significant
trading relationship existed between Israel and Phoenicia in that:

· Phoenicia did not produce enough grain to subsist,

· Phoenicia’s close proximity to Israel reduced the risk of spoilage and limited
the high cost of overland trade,

2 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations (trans. Harry Zohn;
ed. Hannah Arendt; New York: Schocken), 261.

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· numerous biblical texts attest to Israel’s close economic and trading ties to
Phoenicia,
· and Chaney cites evidence of eighth century Israelite wares in recently dis-
covered, sunken Phoenician ships.

To be clear, this is a circumscribed claim that Israel and/or Judah likely enjoyed
some trade with the Phoenicians; it does not suggest that Israel or Judah began
to participate in an international, imperially-backed, market-based, and profit-
oriented economy of trade. In my judgment Boer’s analysis successfully and
severely challenges this reigning scholarly framework.
Finally I want to indicate a few points about Boer’s book that struck me but
are not indicated or developed in the reviews. First, given (i) Chaney’s impor-
tant caveat about population saturation in Iron II, followed by a significant
depletion in exilic and postexilic Yehud, and (ii) that many still think that some
texts within the biblical corpus were shaped by the conditions of Iron II even
if they continued to grow and change in and beyond the Persian Period, I won-
der whether and how this drastic shift in socio-economic conditions shapes
the biblical texts. To what extent might the Bible’s different perspectives on
land and labor be correlated with the economic consequences of significant
population fluctuation? Second, what if any ecological consequences might
one draw from Boer’s attempt to turn our focus from land to labor? Relatedly,
is the subsistence-survival regime proposed at the end of Boer’s book feasible
given the world’s population and the ecological advantages of urban life for
accommodating so many people? Third, Boer resists using terms like “ruling
elite” to refer to the wealthy, non-laboring class. Instead he calls them “non-
producers” and “willingly unemployed.” This nicely avoids a pronounced
tendency especially among ancient historians and biblical scholars to celebrate
“heroes” uncritically without acknowledging their clear dependence upon
and support of exploitative regimes with oppressive practices of extraction.
However, and at the risk of appearing to offer a thinly veiled self-justification
of my own academic labor, I worry that much may be lost when all intellectual
labor is deemed “nonproductive.” What might Boer’s analysis gain by recogniz-
ing different kinds of manual and intellectual labor? Finally, I hope Boer and/
or others will extend this work to consider the sacred economy in transition, in
relation both to what it emerges out of as well as to how this mode of production
gets sublimated into something different in the Hellenistic and Roman eras.
To leave readers with a sense of work that needs to be done is one mark of
a book’s significance. In this case it is a direct consequence of the complex,
multi-layered contributions of Boer’s analysis to my understanding of the
ancient sacred economy of southwest Asia.

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