Ancient Letters and the Purpose of Romans

The Law of the Membrane

Aaron Ricker

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780567693983
• eBook ISBN: 9780567694010
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Aaron Ricker locates the purpose of Romans in its function as a tool of community identity definition. Ricker employs a comparative analysis of the ways in which community identity definition is performed in first-century association culture, including several ancient network letters comparable to Romans. Ricker's examination of the community advice found in Rom 12-15 reveals in this new context an ancient example of the ways in which an inscribed addressee community can be invited in a letter to see and comport itself as a "proper" association network community. The ideal community addressed in the letter to the Romans is defined as properly unified and orderly, as well accommodating to – and clearly distinct from – cultures "outside." Finally, it is defined as linked to a proper network with recognised leadership (i.e., the inscribed Paul of the letter and his network). Paul's letter to the Romans is in many ways a baffling and extraordinary document. In terms of its community-defining functions and strategies, however, Ricker shows its purpose to be perfectly clear and understandable.

1

Community Identity Definition in Greco-Roman Association Letters

I have proposed that approaching Romans as an example of epistolary community definition offers firmer investigative ground than the traditional scholarly quests for “what Paul meant.” This new investigative focus has advantages in terms of both theory and evidence. In terms of theory, scholars have a good idea of how associations needed to define themselves: as will be shown below, the scholarly study of ancient associations confirms the social-scientific expectation that such groups needed, in defining themselves, to assert a special insider group identity while also accommodating wider “outsider” cultural values and loyalties in order to survive. In terms of evidence, researchers today have more access than ever before to examples of community self-definition in action left behind by ancient associations (including epigraphic and epistolary material evidence).

The first section of this chapter outlines the relevance of ancient associations and their study, and the second discusses the relevance of ancient letters and their study. The third section then examines specific examples of ancient Greco-Roman association letters within the investigative context thus defined. This chapter’s analysis of the ways in which ancient Greco-Roman letters defined (real and ideal) association networks provides the context for Chapter 2’s more specific account of Greco-Roman Jewish association-epistolary culture and Chapter 3’s analysis of the comparable association-epistolary rhetoric of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

1.1 Greco-Roman Association Networks and New Testament Studies

The academic study of Greco-Roman associations began in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century,¹ with applications in NT scholarship following slowly at first.² In recent years, however, it has become quite common for scholars to treat ancient association culture as highly relevant in theorizing the nature and development of early Christian communities.³ There are a number of reasons for this development. The similarities between ancient Christian ekklesiai and ancient associations have been better explored and documented, and there is an increasing recognition that the differences were exaggerated in the past by scholars focused on deciding what was “special” about Christian ekklesiai.⁴ The most common objections to comparative study (for example scholarly claims that ancient associations were too local and/or non-ethical in their focus to be comparable to ekklesiai)⁵ have been addressed.⁶ A self-critical comparative approach in Jonathan Z. Smith’s sense of the word⁷ (avoiding simple equations between ekklesiai and associations, along with unnecessary claims of direct genealogical relationships between the two phenomena) has helped clarify the project and defuse objections of “parallelomania”⁸ and reductionism.⁹

From this more theoretically disciplined and evidentially supported point of view, a number of respected scholars have concluded that it is time for NT critics to stop debating the appropriateness of this method of comparison, and to move ahead in applying it with more boldness and thickness of description,¹⁰ effectively treating the slow, uncertain development of global “Early Christianity” as one (diverse, divided, and developing) association network among many.¹¹ The subfield of Pauline studies has witnessed particular interest in this emerging interpretive context.¹² Richard Ascough recently quantified the explosion of interest by documenting the mushrooming of such studies from about a dozen published between 1970 and 1998 to closer to a hundred in the years since.¹³ The association-comparative approach has, however, faced its share of growing pains, two of which merit mention here because they have proven to be especially stubborn and because they impinge directly upon this study: First, there is the problem defining the category of “ancient associations” as a critical term of NT studies. Second, there is the related problem of precisely defining the way such associations related to the wider social worlds in which they were embedded.

1.1.1 Defining “ancient associations”

“The ancient association” is an artificial, retrospective category of scholarly analysis. The term association is used to refer to ancient groups known by a variety of somewhat ambiguous names (thiasoi, koina, mystai, phratores, philosophiai, ekklesiai, sectae, synagogae, collegia, etc.)¹⁴ and embedded within a variety of social networks that overlap in ways confusing to strict retrospective definition (household, family, workforce, neighborhood, cult, ethnicity, etc.).¹⁵ These overlaps and ambiguities point to a complex and flexible social phenomenon. They also serve to highlight, though (albeit in a way frustrating to scholarly desires for strict retrospective definition), the relevance of the phenomenon to the study of early Christian assemblies, especially since the ancient terminologies of association themselves frequently commingle in the relevant ancient sources.¹⁶ The community of Perinthos can boast, for example, a “synagogue” of professional barbers,¹⁷ and Tertullian can promote his local Christian ekklesia as a socially healthy, socially respectable “club” (factio).¹⁸

1.1.2 Defining the relationship between association and society

While it is clear that community definition and cohesion were serious concerns for ancient associations and networks,¹⁹ the question of how associations defined themselves over against the cultural norms of their host societies is complex. Some ancient associations organized their memberships and activities using traditional Greek polis structures,²⁰ for example. It may be asked if this should be seen more as an expression of high praise for the polis system (in willingly replicating its forms), or more as a form of criticism (in offering a necessary supplement or even a substitute). Scholars have differed over the years in their answers to such questions, and as the discussion of postcolonial theory below makes clear, the relationship between mimicking a dominant culture and mocking it can also be quite ambiguous and complex.

Given these considerations, the question of how “oppositional” (as opposed to “conformist”) any given ancient association may be said to have been is a live one, and often a subtle one. John Elliott, for example, has used the work of Bryan R. Wilson on the insularity of sects to argue that ancient associations were by definition insular and oppositional vis-à-vis outside culture and authority, including the Christian sectarian association that produced 1 Peter.²¹ Others have stressed, though, that the rhetoric typical of ancient associations (including the rhetoric of 1 Peter) show positive engagement with the external (civic and/or imperial) world.²² As Philip Harland points out, for example, 1 Peter explicitly advises Christians to honor the emperor and the authorities (2:11-17),²³ and Harland’s own study of association epigraphy shows that “associations … including some synagogues and assemblies, could in varying ways participate within certain areas of life in the polis under Roman rule, including involvement in imperial honors and connections.”²⁴ The ancient evidence suggests more “positive interaction” at work than adversarial “tension” overall.²⁵

This typical ancient association stance of a qualified positive engagement marrying varying degrees of insularity and engagement, self-asserti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Community Identity Definition in Association Network Letters
• 2 Community Identity Definition in Ancient Jewish Letters
• 3 Romans 12–15, Ancient Association-Epistolary Culture and the Purpose of Romans
• 1
• Study Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright