Frans,
I seriously question the "crushing exploitation of the peasantry by Herodian and Roman rules" assumption as even really existing in their times. Sure peasants are generally the poorest, in terms of material things, but they also had their social outlets and could accumulate enough wealth to volunteer in the tens of thousands to fight for Aristobulus II or his sons Alexander and Antigonus, with armor and their own supplies!
But as to the question of why so many scholars believe the old myths, there is a long history of thinking that spans back to the 19th century that built upon itself to create what the critics wanted to see.
It all started with:
• Karl Marx, of course
tm, who developed the socio-economic model in journal articles, etc., of his day, and published formally as
"Capital" (
Das Kapital, v1, 1867; v2 posthumously published by Engels, 1885; v3 by Engles, 1894).
• F. Engels, Marx's closest protégé, "Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity," in
Sozialdemokrat, 1882; "The History of Early Christianity" in
Neue Zeit,1894). Engels dies in 1895.
• Karl Kautsky, a follower of Marx who looked at things a bit differently than Engels did, "Origins of Christianity" in
Neue Zeit, 1885; 'Primitive Christian Community,' ch 2 of Forerunners of Mod Socialism, 1893);
Der Ursprung des Christentums "
The origins of Christianity," book, 1908.
Sociologists (Anthropologists, mate) became interested in Judean society and the realized economics of various eras, epitomized in Max Weber:
• "The Theory of Social and Economic Organization", original article 1915?, translated by Talcott Parsons' in his translation of vol 1 of
Economy and Society, 1947
• "General Economic History - The Social Causes of the Decay of Ancient Civilisation," in "
Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion 1920 to 1921," tr 1950,
Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie in 1920-1921, pub. 1927
• "Ancient Judaism" (original articles 1917-1920, collectively published in "
Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion 1920 to 1921," tr 1952,
Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie in 1920-1921, pub. 1927
•
The City, tr 1958,
Die Stadt, 1921 [on the Western style City or Town]
• "
Economy and Society,"
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1922
• "
Collected Essays on Sociology and Social Policy,"
Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, 1924
• "
General Economic History,"
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1924
Weber's ideas were championed by Gerhard Lenski,
•
Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (1966).
When the Didache began to come under modern scrutiny, some scholars again took some Marxist assumptions developed by Karl Kautsky and mixed them with sociological theory proposed by Max Weber and Gerhard Lenski:
• Theissen, Gerd, "Itinerant Radicalism: The Tradition of Jesus Sayings from the Perspective of the Sociology of Literature,"
Radical Religion 2, 1976 ET, 1973 German
• Theissen, Gerd, "Legitimation and Subsistance: An Essay on the Sociology of Early Christian Missionaries," in
The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, 1982 ET, 1974 German
• Niederwimmer, Kurt, "An Examination of the Development of Itinerant Radicalism in the Environment and Tradition of the Didache,"
The Didache in Modern Research, 1996 ET, 1977 German
• Theissen, Gerd,
The First Followers of Jesus: a Sociological Analysis of Earliest Christianity, 1978 ET, 1977 German
• Theissen, Gerd,
The Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity aka
The First Followers of Jesus, 1978 ET, 1977 German
• Theissen, Gerd, "'We Have Left Everything...' (Mark 10:28): Discipleship and Social Uprooting in the Jewish-Palestinian Society of the First Century," in
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 ET, 1979 German
• Theissen, Gerd, "Christology and Social Experience: Aspects of Pauline Christology in the Light of the Sociology of Knowledge," in
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 ET, 1979 German
• Theissen, Gerd, "Jesus' Temple Prophesy: Prophesy in the Tension between Town and Country," in
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 ET, 1979 German)
• Theissen, Gerd, "Sociological Theories of Religion and the Analysis of Early Christianity: Some Reflections," in
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 ET, 1979 German
• Theissen, Gerd, "The Wandering Radicals: Light Shed by the Sociology of Literature on the early Transmission of Jesus Sayings,"
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 ET, 1979 German
• Halleux, Andre de, "Ministers in the Dicache," in
The Didache in Modern Research, 1996 ET, 1980 French
• Draper, Jonathan A, "The Jesus Tradition in the Didache," in
The Didache in Modern Research, 1996 reprint, 1985 English
• Theissen, Gerd, "Some Ideas about a Sociological Theory of Early Christianity," in
Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, 1992 English
• Draper, Jonathan A, "Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text: Prophets, Teachers, Bishops, and Deacons and the Development of the Jesus Tradition in the Community of the Didache," in
The Didache in Context, 1995 English
• Patterson, Stephen J, "Didache 11-13: The Legacy of Radical Itineracy in Early Christianity," in
The Didache in Context, 1995 English
In more modern times, those who continued to carry the Marxist torch were:
• John H. Kautsky,
The political consequences of modernization, 1972;
The politics of aristocratic empires, 1982
• G. E. M. de Ste. Croix,
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 1981
Last but not least, there was John Dominic Crossan:
• Crossan, John D,
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 1991, ISBN 0-06-061629-6
• Crossan, John D,
The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, 1994, reprinted 1998, ISBN 0-7858-0901-5
• Crossan, John D,
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1994
• Crossan, John D,
The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus, 1998, in which he cobbled together his own socio-economic theory from elements of John Kautsky's The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (above) and also Gerhard Lenski, Power and Privilege (above).
• Crossan, John D,
The Jesus Controversy: Perspectives in Conflict (Rockwell Lecture Series), with Luke Timothy Johnson, Werner H Kelber, 1999
• Crossan, John D with Jonathan L Reed,
Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, 2001
• Crossan, John D with Jonathan L Reed,
In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, 2004
• Crossan, John D,
God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, 2007
• Crossan, John D, co-authored with Marcus Borg,
The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon, 2009.
While I have not read but a fraction of all these, I have read a lot. There are trends that can be picked up on by reading the titles.
All I can say is that before anyone buys into the myth that Herod and Romans systematically crushed the poor helpless peasants into the ground economically at every step, find a copy of Fabian E Udoh's,
To Caesar What Is Caesar’s: Tribute, Taxes, and Imperial Administration in Early Roman Palestine 63 B.C.E.–70 C.E.) (2005). This will quickly make it clear that almost all of what we think we "know" about Herod and Roman taxation policy is complete hogwash.
The realities were quite different than what we were told in Sunday School or even in many college level biblical history or criticism classes. Personally, I also found James C. Scott's
The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976), and some of his other works centered on subsistence farming in SE Asia in the 1950s-60s near the end of the colonial period and beginning of independence from British and French rule, to be very enlightening.
Fun, fun ...
DCH
PS: Sorry about the mixed citation styles, but that is what I get from copying the lists from Wikipedia pages!
FransJVermeiren wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:58 am
Recently I read J
esus and the Urban Culture of Galilee, chapter 9 (p. 183-207) of Séan Freyne’s
Galilee and Gospel: Collected Essays. This essay paints the rapidly changing social situation in Galilee during the first century CE, and the decline of a supportive agricultural system in particular. Freyne’s analysis reminded me of the OP of this thread. Therefore I give the following quotes:
Page 194
The question is whether there was an appreciable move away from small family-run holdings, in which reciprocity was still the basic mode of exchange, towards a situation of land used as a revenue-generating resource. Previously, I have maintained that on the literary evidence (Josephus, the gospels, the Jewish writings and the Zenon papyri), landownership patterns in Galilee were mixed – large estates such as Beth Anath and small, family-run holdings that were part of the Jewish ideal as we have seen (1 Mac 14:10; cf. Neh 5:1-11). Undoubtedly, pressure had come on these latter since the Hellenistic age, as increased taxation and narrow margins in terms of yields left the small landowner increasingly vulnerable. Once a person was caught in the situation of having to borrow money for whatever reason, thus mortgaging their holding, it was extremely difficult for them to recover.
Page 196
The tensions between the two types of economic system and the increasing dominance of the latter in Herodian Galilee generated the social situation that many gospel parables depict – day labourers, debt, resentment of absentee landlords, wealthy estate owners with little concern for tenants needs, exploitative stewards of estates, family feuds over inheritance etc.
Page 205
For those who were exposed to these harsh realities and who had the will to resist, there remained only a downward spiral of options – from landowning to leasing, to day-labouring, to slavery or banditry.
Freyne’s essay as a whole breaths a prerevolutionary atmosphere. The declining social situation evolved to a revolution, of which the recruitment of revolutionary soldiers was a part.