The Ancient Mediterranean Social World

A Sourcebook

Zeba A. Crook, Zeba A. Crook

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781467458283
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Référence biblique

What was the ancient world like?

Ancient sources tell us a great deal about the cultural patterns and values that prevailed in the Mediterranean of the biblical periods:

• how they constructed identity
• how they exercised control over groups, space, gender, and dress
• how they thought of friendship
• how they participated in social and economic exchange
• how ritual functioned and how kinship was constructed
• what healing practices, evil eye, and altered states of consciousness tell us about their sciences
• how they talked about each other behind their backs, and why

The Ancient Mediterranean Social World makes the rich social context of the ancient Mediterranean available to readers through succinct introduction of key ideas, thoughtful selection of translated primary sources, and extensive cataloging of relevant primary sources.

Zeba Crook brings together leading scholars to write on twenty different topics, from patronage to gender to loyalty to evil eye. Each chapter opens with an introduction to the topic, offers a short list of secondary sources, and an extensive list of primary sources. The passages in each chapter reflect the vast array of sources roughly from Homer to Augustine, including epigraphical, papyrological, literary, historical, philosophical, biblical, and dramatic texts.

This authoritative volume serves as a ready reference for the novice and experienced scholar alike.

Contributors:

Alicia J. Batten, Giovanni B. Bazzana, Agnes Choi, Zeba A. Crook, John W. Daniels Jr., Dennis C. Duling, John H. Elliott, Amy Marie Fisher, Mischa Hooker, Emil A. Kramer, Jason T. Lamoreaux, Dietmar Neufeld, Jerome H. Neyrey, SJ, Douglas E. Oakman, Ronald D. Roberts, Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Colleen Shantz, Gary Stansell, Eric C. Stewart, Erin K. Vearncombe, and Ritva H. Williams.

PART I

Institutions

1. Economy

DOUGLAS E. OAKMAN

Introduction

It is difficult to read anywhere in the Bible without coming across social institutions and practices shaped by economics. The economies of the biblical periods were a mix of commercial and agrarian dimensions. But while elites might enjoy long-distance commerce in luxuries, and even some bulk goods, most biblical traditions were shaped under exploitative conditions characteristic of agrarian societies where the majority had limited material security. The details vary by locality and period, but the general economic picture is fairly static over the time the Bible was being compiled.

Advanced agrarian societies are characterized by manual and animal labor and the use of the iron plow. Approximately 90 percent of the population is engaged in direct agricultural work, the purpose of which is consumption and not sale for profit. Minimal labor-saving devices are at the disposal of village or small-town peasantry, and annual crops are always at the mercy of environmental (e.g., drought) and social (e.g., exploitation by land owners, taxes, rents) variables; the cumulative effect often results in tense social relations between those who own the land and those trying to survive on it. Elites, for the most part, live in cities and on estates. Elite-controlled commercial ventures, whether by land or sea, add further stresses on the subsistence “bottom line,” because they send local agrarian wealth elsewhere without adding to food security. Elite building programs and corvées siphon labor away from peasant village agriculture. Because of the significant level of coercive relations and means, biblical economies were always political economies.

The agricultural year is very important in the biblical traditions. For instance, three major festivals were aligned with agricultural harvest times—Festival of Passover with the early grain harvest, Festival of Weeks with the full grain harvest, and Festival of Booths with the vintage (Deut 16). Deuteronomy 8:8 envisions agrarian riches in seven kinds: wheat, barley, fig, pomegranate, grape, olive, and honey. Preindustrial agrarian production is more restricted by natural and sociopolitical factors, thus giving rise to distinctive cultural values, like disdain of manual labor among elites, mistrust of money (including those who handle it), reciprocity, generosity/stinginess, Patronage (chap. 3), Limited Good and Envy (chap. 17), Evil Eye beliefs (chap. 20), self-sufficiency, and peasant “wantlessness” (being content with very little).

Labor was organized by family units at the lowest level of agrarian societies. Villages were ordinarily comprised of extended families (“relatives”); towns and cities were expressions of state-level formations and nonagricultural labor organization. Large estates, for instance, could depend upon slave or free labor. Tenancy was often disadvantageous to the peasant, and estate stewards (oikonomoi) were carefully watched by landlords. Town and urban artisans might be made up of surplus village children or declassed elites, but landless laborers were also needed for estate harvest times. Tax or rent collectors were ordinarily bonded or indentured in some way, so as to remain under control of the major collectors and elites.

In addition to agricultural work, a limited number of the population, perhaps 5–10 percent, engaged in some specialized productive pursuits. These would include merchants, weavers, potters, stone masons, metal workers, and the like. Such specialization was again pursued by families (see chap. 2, Kinship), normally involving trade secrets, and possibly controlled by elite interests in organized workshops (see chap. 19, Mockery and Secrecy).

While Solomon (1 Kgs 9:26–28) and Herod the Great (building of Caesarea Maritima) respectively attempted to control transit trade and establish seaborne commerce, the major tribute takers of this region over the millennia were indigenous monarchies or the kingdoms or empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and later Rome. In other words, integration of the biblical lands into commercial networks (overland luxury caravans or seaborne products) primarily benefited the elites and put stresses upon traditional domestic production and the peasantry. It is possible to attribute unrest and revolt occasionally seen in the biblical traditions to such agrarian stresses and crises (1 Kgs 12:18–19). From time to time as well, pestilence (Joel 1:4) and famine (Acts 11:28) brought on crises. Honi the circle-maker was famous for his prayers for rain (m. Ta’anit 3:8). In straitened circumstances, familial solidarity and sharing ensured survival; ordinarily, then, family economy was characterized as sharing without expecting immediate return (generalized reciprocity), and such values came to symbolize healing and salvation in various places in biblical traditions.

The New Testament was written during the first century and a half of the Roman Empire, when Syro-Palestine again came to be firmly integrated into the mixed agrarian-Mediterranean commercial economy of the urban-based imperial elites. The canonical Gospels thus speak about money, economy, markets, large absentee landlords, and a host of exploited landless who are addressed as honored in Jesus’s vision of the kingdom of God that will upend all imperial relations. This picture gives way in the later New Testament literature to the appearance of urban artisans, laborers, and commercial agents who move more naturally within the commercial economy of Rome (Acts 18:1–3; Jas 2:2–7). For some New Testament writers, who straddled the divide between city and country, the social tensions could evoke great anger (Jas 5:1–6; Rev 18:9–20).

The Bible is acutely aware of agrarian social institutions or conditions that endanger the primary producer. Paramount among dangers are the loss of land (or land access) and the crushing affliction of indebtedness. These two recurring problems are addressed in a number of places in the Bible, notably Deut 15; Lev 25; Neh 5; and in certain traditions associated with Jesus (Matt 18:23–35; Luke 7:41–42; 11:2–4). Indeed, debt forgiveness becomes a major biblical metaphor for salvific healing and release. Jesus speaks of the incompatibility of trusting mammon (wealth in the bank or storehouse) and loyalty to God (Luke 16:13). However, the later New Testament writers, stemming from the urban service strata, indicate that the problem is love of money (Acts 5:1–11; 1 Tim 6:9–10). The conventional ethos (consonant with household economy) among early Christ-followers came to value sharing among members of the household (Acts 4:32–37; 20:35).

Ancient Texts

MEDITERRANEAN/BIBLICAL AGRICULTURE

1. GEZER CALENDAR

The Gezer Calendar is an inscribed piece of limestone with seven lines of writing. It was found near...