Connections of NT to Patronage, Slavery, Rome

[Irish1975]

The following are vague questions, perhaps under-considered in the always speculative study of Christian origins. If you know of good studies I’d be grateful.

1) Patronage. Did the 4-Gospel Book have wealthy and politically well-connected patrons? Is the address to κράτιστε Θεόφιλε in Luke 1:1 (and in Acts 1:1) a subtle acknowledgement of those patrons? When you study Vergil and Horace, you learn about Maecenas, their wealthy and influential and all-important liason to Octavian and the post-Actium political order. The patrons of those great poets made an obvious and essential impact on the content of what they wrote, and enabled them to write at the very high level of literary excellence that they achieved. But it seems like the question of a literary patron for the NT is somehow not an issue. Obviously the sacredness of canonical scripture makes the question distasteful for some. But for the historically-minded, you only have to think about the comparatively low literary quality and poor theological inventiveness of all other Christian texts from the time period, such as Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists, to wonder how a literature so carefully crafted and so “classic” could have emerged at the same time or even earlier, among the same “communities.”

2) Slavery. Robyn Faith Walsh, in her recent book The Origin of Early Christian Literature, wrote about how common it was in the literary world of “Silver Age” and “Second Sophistic” (late 1st and 2nd c.) that teachers, philosophers, intellectuals, scribes, literati, etc. would actually be enslaved persons. (I wish she had gone into this further.) It was common in the late Republic and early Empire that elite Roman families would employ slaves from the East, especially Greek-speakers from the East, to educate their sons. There was some kind of important intersection between (a) being enslaved, (b) being from recently conquered territories of the Empire (often of the Hellenistic East), and (c) being a highly skilled and highly valued user and producer of literature. Those are just sociological generalizations about the time. But when I turn to the NT, and consider its overt and extensive mentions of slaves, the institution of slavery, and the ambiguous suggestiveness of the metaphor of slavery to Christ/God, I wonder if the scribes who are writing this material are contributing to its content, in some way.

3) The imperial city. So much of early Christianity relates to the capital city itself. Not Italy, or the “West,” but Roma ipsa. Why is that? There were other critical sites in Asia Minor and probably Syria, but Rome seems extra special. I am not well read in archeology, but from what I gather from Graydon Snyder’s book Ante Pacem, early Christian archeological evidence is all but confined to Rome. That seems important. True, there are disagreements about how much of Christianity formed in Rome as opposed to elsewhere, with Walter Bauer or Markus Vinzent making Rome the center of everything, while others reject that idea in favor of Greece, Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine. (I’ve always had the feeling that if someone at or near the Library in Alexandria was producing scripture, it was never intended to be disseminated anywhere close to Egypt, and so could have made its way to Rome or Ephesus or what have you without any evident connection to its point of origin.) But we have a good idea that people in Rome were worshipping Christ at an early period, and that has to count for something. So do the target of Paul’s journey in Acts, and his premier epistle, and Roman political and military elites mentioned in Gospels/Acts, and even the furious allusions to Rome in Revelation.

[Peter Kirby]

1) Patronage. Did the 4-Gospel Book have wealthy and politically well-connected patrons? Is the address to κράτιστε Θεόφιλε in Luke 1:1 (and in Acts 1:1) a subtle acknowledgement of those patrons?

I wonder if it's not so subtle. Maybe it was simply addressed to Theophilus of Antioch. Perhaps in concert with and for the greater advancement of his recent well-regarded work refuting Marcion? It's fun to speculate.

[Irish1975]

I wonder if it's not so subtle. Maybe it was simply addressed to Theophilus of Antioch. Perhaps in concert with and for the greater advancement of his recent well-regarded work refuting Marcion? It's fun to speculate.

The “Theophilus” part seems deliberately vague. As with so many biblical names, we get the suggestion of there being a real individual behind it, but no identifying info. “Beloved of God.”
κράτιστε suggests an eminent personage, but I doubt that Theophilus of Antioch, the apologist, was that.

[andrewcriddle]

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2) Slavery. Robyn Faith Walsh, in her recent book The Origin of Early Christian Literature, wrote about how common it was in the literary world of “Silver Age” and “Second Sophistic” (late 1st and 2nd c.) that teachers, philosophers, intellectuals, scribes, literati, etc. would actually be enslaved persons. (I wish she had gone into this further.) It was common in the late Republic and early Empire that elite Roman families would employ slaves from the East, especially Greek-speakers from the East, to educate their sons. There was some kind of important intersection between (a) being enslaved, (b) being from recently conquered territories of the Empire (often of the Hellenistic East), and (c) being a highly skilled and highly valued user and producer of literature. Those are just sociological generalizations about the time. But when I turn to the NT, and consider its overt and extensive mentions of slaves, the institution of slavery, and the ambiguous suggestiveness of the metaphor of slavery to Christ/God, I wonder if the scribes who are writing this material are contributing to its content, in some way.
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I don't myself on the whole agree with the following idea. However: a/ One of the most important discussions of masters and slaves in the Christian household occurs in Ephesians (chapter 6); b/ it has been seriously argued that Onesimus the slave about whom Paul wrote to Philemon was the actual author of Ephesians (in this theory Paul's Onesimus is identified with the bishop of Ephesus known much later to Ignatius.) See for example Onesimus and the first christian slave

Andrew Criddle