Group Survival in the Ancient Mediterranean

Rethinking Material Conditions in the Landscape of Jews and Christians

Philip A. Harland, Richard Last

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567657503
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Philip A. Harland and Richard Last consider the economics of early Christian group life within its social, cultural and economic contexts, by drawing on extensive epigraphic and archaeological evidence. In exploring the informal associations, immigrant groups, and guilds that dotted the world of the early Christians, Harland
and Last provide fresh perspective on the question of how Christian assemblies and Judean/Jewish gatherings gained necessary resources to pursue their social, religious, and additional aims. By considering both neglected archaeological discoveries and literary evidence, the authors analyse financial and material aspects of group life, both sources of income and various areas of expenditure. Harland and Last then turn to the use of material resources for mutual support of members in various groups, including the importance of burial and the practice of interest-free loans. Christian and Judean evidence is explored throughout this book, culminating in a discussion of texts detailing the internal financial life of Christian assemblies as seen in first and second century sources, including Paul, the Didache, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. In shedding new light on early Christian financial organisation, this volume aids further understanding of how some Christian groups survived and developed in the Greco-Roman world.

1

Who Belonged to Associations?

Much more numerous, nearly innumerable, … were the funeral guilds, proper. Composed of poor people … they chiefly aimed to furnish decent burial…

Waltzing, 1895: 347

The Christian communities grew up … in the midst of poverty. They had a special message to the poor, and the poor naturally flowed into them.

Hatch, 1881: 42

In general, the members of the associations seem to have been drawn from the upper echelons of the urban plebs and can best be characterized as ‘employers’ rather than ‘employees’.

Patterson, 2006: 255

Paul’s undisputed letters … [lead] … to the conclusion that the vast majority of the people in his assemblies lived just above or just below the level of subsistence.

Friesen, 2004: 357

Introduction

The question in the title is asked, to some extent, with tongue in cheek. An answer would be: many types of people from all walks of life belonged to unofficial associations, and it depends which specific group you are talking about. Yet, as the citations above show, the question of how we can generalize about the overall socioeconomic profile of participants in associations from a bird’s eye view has occupied scholarship in the past. This subject must be broached for us to address important questions regarding group survival: what segments of society were most well represented within associations overall and what implications would this have for the ability of members to support an association and contribute towards its survival?

Recent scholarship generally affirms that most associations drew members from non-elite segments of society (primarily, although not solely, in the cities), and we agree. After all, the imperial elites at the top of society – those senators and equestrians who had exorbitant wealth and held official Roman positions – amounted to an extremely small percentage of the overall population of the Roman empire, probably less than 2 per cent. And the relatively wealthy civic elites who took on important official positions in cities and sat on various boards in the provinces probably made up less than 10 per cent of the urban population.¹ So it is not a surprise to find non-elite strata prevalent within most associations, since those below the imperial and civic elites made up the vast majority of the total population (probably more than 95 per cent). However, in recent decades, it is recognized that non-elite portions of the population were, themselves, considerably varied in terms of wealth, occupation, ethnicity and other status variables, rather than being socially or economically monolithic.

Scholarly debates are, therefore, centred more on the question of what segments of ‘the masses’ or non-elite populations (‘plebs’ or ‘plebeians’, in Roman imperial terminology) were more fully represented than others in associations of various types. Of course, the answer is, it depends which group is under investigation. Associations were constituted from social network connections pertaining to the household, neighbourhood, occupation and ethnicity.² Certain groups, such as those formed through occupational contacts, may have had a more homogeneous composition than others, with at least some other specific groups reflecting a cross section of status levels in local society. In this chapter, we are less concerned with re-exploring specific cases of the socioeconomic status of those who belonged to this or that association.

Rather, like some recent scholars, we are concerned with broader patterns that are discernible regarding the profiles of membership across many groups and in what demographic generalizations may or may not be reasonable. In particular, while some recent studies propose that associates, especially those in guilds, predominantly came from wealthier segments of non-elite strata, and that membership would be relatively expensive or unaffordable for people living at lower levels, this chapter proposes a more complicated scenario. We argue that, instead, it is more reasonable to suggest that the majority of groups likely drew their members from those living between subsistence (those living with the minimum level of food, shelter and clothing) and those of middling wealth.

In this context, there was not necessarily a direct correlation between the socioeconomic standing of members in a particular group, on the one hand, and group material survival, on the other. Rather, as we will see in the next chapter, associations that survived were ones that were cognizant of their members’ situations and functioned with available, if limited, means. Often, associations that were unable to weather financial storms would be those that, regardless of associates’ socioeconomic level, mismanaged funds or overburdened participants and so lived beyond the means of their constituencies, failing to meet established communal goals.

Two scholarly models: Relatively wealthy, or poor?

It is common for scholars to generalize about the socioeconomic profiles of associations in one of two ways. On the one hand is a more recent proposal since the 1990s, which pertains primarily to occupational associations but is sometimes generalized beyond that. In a study of Italy, John Patterson (2006) suggests that, in general, members of associations ‘seem to have been drawn from the upper echelons of the urban plebs and can best be characterized as “employers” rather than “employees” ’.³ Patterson’s assessment is concentrated on Italy during the early imperial age, but some others draw similar conclusions about the overall picture for other parts of the Mediterranean. And so van Nijf (1997) finds that members of associations in Greece and Asia Minor ‘came from a level of society intermediate between the rich and the poor .… [T]hey constituted the group which Aristotle describes as the mesoi [“those in the middle”], and of which the Romans used the specific term plebs media.’⁴ Similarly, Nicolas Tran’s (2016) study of guilds in second- and third-century Arles (in Gaul) finds that most participants of occupational associations there ‘seem to have belonged to the highest echelons of the world of work – they were part of a “plebeian” elite that was well integrated into the city’.⁵ Tran acknowledges that epigraphy tends to give us access mainly to the wealthier segments of the plebeian population, however.⁶ A significant corollary of this emphasis on middling wealth is the notion that the cost of association membership may have been too expensive for those of lower economic strata.⁷

There have been both positive and negative outcomes of this scholarly trend. These recent assessments are often accompanied by a relatively new and valuable realization that the functions of associations went well beyond the material: membership in such groups was something of symbolic value to people, rather than something they necessarily required, as had been implied by the old notion of ‘burial associations’ of the poor.⁸ Yet the primary focus on those of middling wealth to the neglect of other demographic cohorts mea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Epigraphic and Papyrological Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Who Belonged to Associations?
• 2 Scenarios of Success, Survival and Decline
• 3 Starting an Association: Collective and Individual Agency
• 4 Counting the Costs of Communal Life
• 5 Acquiring Resources
• 6 Communal Collections, Part 1: Fund-Raising and Group Values
• 7 Communal Collections, Part 2: Associations Devoted to the Israelite God
• 8 Mutual Assistance and Group Cohesion
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Women Participating in Associations, 1st Century BCE–2nd Century CE
• Bibliography
• Index of Inscriptions and Papyri
• Index of Ancient Literary Sources
• Index of Modern Scholars
• Subject Index
• Copyright