Jesus and the Peasants

Douglas E. Oakman

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781597522755
  9781498210256
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621892496
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

While some of the chapters focus on systemic issues, others probe the depths of individual Gospel passages. The author's keen eye for textual detail, archaeological data, comparative materials, and systemic overviews make this volume a joy for anyone interested in understanding Jesus in his own context. The volume is organized into three interrelated parts: 1) political economy and the peasant values of Jesus, 2) the Jesus traditions within peasant realities, and 3) the peasant aims of Jesus.

Part 1

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Political Economy and the
Peasant Values of Jesus

chapter 1

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Jesus and Agrarian Palestine: The Factor of Debt

This chapter explores, through a variety of evidence and with the help of conceptual models and comparative study, the social dynamics of debt in early Roman Palestine. The chapter further attempts to assess whether the ministry of Jesus formulated a response to widespread indebtedness in that environment.

The value of utilizing conceptual models in the study of the past is that of allowing the known to illuminate the unknown, of testing how things were on the basis of how the modern student conceives they might have been. The model makes explicit the assump­tions and judgments of the student and helps to trace the connections between bits of evidence in the effort to eliminate unserviceable interpretations. The model also helps to build the big picture, much like a mosaic. The study of history in this way becomes a history of interpretive “successive approximations.”1

In a similar way, comparative study lends precision and focus to the kinds of ques­tions the historian brings to this task. Employment of social scientific studies in various ways can contribute to a more adequate interpretation of particular aspects of the past.2

Preliminary Considerations about Debt in Antiquity

Debt was often in antiquity a formal expression of relations of dependency and (perhaps irredeemable) obligation. The ideals of reciprocity and social equality in the Graeco-Roman and Jewish traditions encouraged hopes for more “horizontal” relations in society, but more often than not imbalances of power and wealth led in fact to “vertical” relations of dominance and subjection.3

For the Greeks, the most fundamental debt was that to one’s parents. So Plato writes:

Next comes the honour of living parents, to whom, as is meet, we have to pay the first and greatest and oldest of all debts, considering that all which a man has belongs to those who gave him birth and brought him up . . . .4

Aristotle also speaks of this primal debt:

This is why it would not seem open to a man to disown his father (though a father may disown his son); being in debt, he should repay, but there is nothing by doing which a son will have done the equivalent of what he has received, so that he is always in debt.5

Aristotle further considers in the Ethics how essential reciprocity is to friendship, and whether it is better to return a favor (and thus stay out of debt), or to accept such as something which cannot be paid.6

The socio-political aspect of debt is expressed well by Thucydides in the mouth of Pericles:

In generosity we [sc. the Athenians] are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift.7

On the Roman side, the vertical and political realities of debt were frequently evident. Cicero criticizes Sulla and Caesar for having expropriated property in order to bestow (politically useful) benefits on others. For Cicero, “liberality” in this sense is not just.8 Plutarch tells how Caesar ran up huge debts for the purpose of sustaining his own politi­cal position and agenda.9

It is in this context that the whole subject of clientage needs to be mentioned. In the late republic and early empire, political networks were established, maintained, or destroyed by the bestowing of political favors, loans of money, or other social goods. This is well illustrated, for instance, in the affairs of Roman socii like the Herods. To give just a few examples, Antipater quickly won Caesar’s friendship in Egypt by supplying a small army to support the actions of Mithridates. This gained high honors for Antipater (that is, Caesar cancelled his obligation to Antipater and made him a client).10 Herod was unable to hide the support he had given to Antony when he presented himself to Octavian at Rhodes.11 With his usual boldness, Herod made a point of his former loyalty to Antony as a potential asset to the new princeps. To this appeal, Octavian was favorably inclined: “So staunch a champion of the claims of friendship deserves to be ruler over many subjects.”12

If debt was at times the bond of friendship or the cement of political relations in Graeco-Roman antiquity, for “little people” it was more often than not brutal compulsion and oppression. The abolition of debt was frequently encountered as a revolutionary slogan of the disenfranchised, usually accompanied by a demand for the redistribution of land.13

In the century and a half immediately preceding the birth of Jesus, the cases of Tiberius Gracchus, Aristonicus, and Lucullus, to name just three, give evidence of attempts to reverse or escape altogether Rome’s imperialistic and exploitative agrarian policies, as well as evidence of the socially disruptive effects of debt. Tiberius, witness­ing the decline of a Roman peasantry long burdened by the Punic wars and many of whose lands were in the hands of the wealthy, passed an agrarian law designed to restore expro­priated lands to their former owners.14 Tiberius was murdered. His aims were carried forward without ultimate success by his brother Gaius. The social order of Rome became dominated, again as of old, by a landed aristocracy.

Almost contemporaneously with the death of Tiberius (133 BCE), Attalus III bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Before a final settlement could take place, a great “slave” revolt erupted under the leadership of Aristonicus (132–129).15 This revolt, according to Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, had a manifestly utopian aim—the foundation of an egalitarian state. The Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia Minor had exploited its agricul­tural peoples to the hilt. Rome could be expected to follow similar policies, as was evident to the insurgents from events in Greece. The insurgents had nothing to lose and everything to gain by revolt.

Plutarch makes the agrarian aspect of this revolt plain by connecting the aims of both Aristonicus and Tiberius Gracchus with the Stoic philosopher Blossius: Freedom was only guaranteed by equalitarian arrangements in property.16 A Pergamene inscription (OGIS 338) indicates that a belated attempt was made to co-opt the insurrection by offer­ing elevated status to the slaves involved. Though the insurrection eventually was crushed, the initial success of Aristonicus shows how powerful the hope for freedom could be for enslaved or indebted people. Several decades later, the lower classes of Asia Minor were still ready to risk all by supporting Mithridates.

After the defeat of Mithridates, the Roman general Lucullus found the population of Asia in terrible straits because of debts owed to Roman publicani. The fears of the movement associated with the name of Aristonicus were realized! Lucullus opposed the interests of these “capitalists” and implemented measures to alleviate the sufferings of the province: (a) Interest was lowered to 12 percent per year, (b) interest in arrears was remitted, and (c) creditors could take annually no more than one fourth of a debtor’s income.17 Plutarch says that these measures were successful in alleviating the crisis, but within a few short years the publicani and the evils associated with them were back.18

In the Graeco-Roman world, then, debt and related agrarian problems played a crucial role in historical developments. The same can be said on the Jewish side. A long biblical tradition recognized and attempted to limit, if not completely eradicate, the disruptive socio-economic effects of debt. Prescriptions or problems related to debt are mentioned in all of the major divisions:19 Legislative (Exod 22:25–27; Lev 25; Deut 15; 23:19–20), prophetic (Isa 5:8; Hab 2:6), historical (1 Sam 22:2; 2 Kgs 4:1; Neh 5:1–5), and wisdom writings (Prov 22:7). The tradition uniformly opposes usury and the permanent transfer of real property (Exod 22:25; Lev 25:13; Deut 15:2).

The basic presupposition for the biblical view of debt was the equality, with various qualifications, of each member of Israel before Yahweh. This meant equality of access to the goods of life as well. Hence, the vociferous opposition in the tradition to disruptions of the social order from economic causes. The emergence of the Israelite monarchy and the c...

Table of contents

• Jesus and the Peasants
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part II
• Part III
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography