Common Property, the Golden Age, and Empire in Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-35

Joshua Noble

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567695840
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Joshua Noble focuses on the rapid appearance and disappearance in Acts 2 and 4 of the motif that early believers hold all their property in common, and argues that these descriptions function as allusions to the Golden Age myth. Noble suggests Luke's claims that the believers "had all things in common" and that "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions"-a motif that does not appear in any biblical source- rather calls to mind Greek and Roman traditions that the earliest humans lived in utopian conditions, when "no one … possessed any private property, but all things were common." By analyzing sources from Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Christian traditions, and reading Acts 2: 42-47 and 4: 32-35 as Golden Age allusions, Noble illustrates how Luke's use of the motif of common property is significant for understanding his attitude toward the Roman Empire. Noble suggests that Luke's appeal to this myth accomplishes two things: it characterizes the coming of the Spirit as marking the beginning of a new age, the start of a "universal restoration" that will find its completion at the Second Coming of Christ; and it creates a contrast between Christ, who has actually brought about this restoration, and the emperors of Rome, who were serially credited with inaugurating a new Golden Age.

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Introduction

In the first five chapters of Acts, Luke punctuates his narrative with three passages that summarize the lifestyle of the early Jerusalem community. The first two, Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35, describe the believers holding their property in common: they “had all things in common” (2:44), and again, “all things were common to them” (4:32).¹ These statements are quite conspicuous, as they are the only places in not only Luke-Acts but also the entire biblical canon where the idea of a community of property emerges. Luke describes individual acts of generosity elsewhere, but the general practice of common property appears abruptly in these summaries and disappears without comment.

Though Luke’s portrayal of a community of property lacks biblical parallels, scholars have long observed that his language closely resembles that found in various Greek and Roman descriptions of common ownership. While some have assumed that Luke’s only aim was to add luster to his sketch of the early church by depicting the fulfillment of a general cultural ideal, others have argued that the summaries contain a more precise allusion. Scholars have most often seen a reference to Hellenistic friendship ideals present in Luke’s common property language, but some have also posited allusions to Plato or to contemporary ethnographic traditions. In each case, the specific referent is claimed to be interpretively significant: Luke’s aim would not be merely to describe the economic arrangement of the believers but also to characterize them more particularly as a community of friends, an ideal state, or the virtuous exemplars of an ethnos.

One other context for common property has been suggested often as a model for the Acts summaries but rarely explored: the myth of the Golden Age. This myth, which appears as early as Hesiod, describes the decline of humanity from an initial ideal state through a series of races or ages, each corresponding to a metal. Toward the end of the first century BCE, the Golden Age myth exploded in popularity among Roman authors and began to be employed in imperial propaganda. Virgil’s Aeneid announced that “Augustus Caesar … will establish the golden ages again” (Aen. 6.792–793), and later emperors were often extolled for using Golden Age vocabulary.² Around the same time, Golden Age depictions began to include a new motif: the practice of common property.

In this book, I examine Luke’s use of the common property motif in Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35 in light of the early imperial Golden Age myth. My central claim is that Luke’s assertions regarding common property, along with other features of the summary descriptions, would have evoked the idea of the Golden Age for many in Luke’s audience. An allusion to the Golden Age would have served two purposes: characterizing the coming of the Spirit as the beginning of a universal, eschatological restoration and making a supra-imperial claim for Christianity vis-à-vis the Roman Empire.

To prepare for building this case, in this first chapter I do four things. First, I review suggestions for the literary background of the common property motif in the Acts summaries, looking at the types of evidence mustered for each. Second, I show that a Golden Age reading of the summaries is relatively unexplored, potentially fruitful, and initially plausible, and thus well worth pursuing. Third, I lay out six criteria that will help establish whether or not a Golden Age allusion is present in the summaries. Fourth, I briefly summarize the structure of this book.

Previous Research on the Literary Background of Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35

Recognition of a Hellenistic background to Luke’s descriptions in Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35 is often traced back to Johann Jakob Wettstein, whose 1751–2 Greek NT cites more than a dozen Greek and Roman authors who discussed common property.³ As Luke Timothy Johnson observes, this recognition has been widely accepted subsequently: “Since the time of Wettstein the Hellenistic provenance of the language in this passage has been repeatedly affirmed and can be said to have the nearly unanimous approval of scholars.”⁴ Even those who minimize the importance of extra-biblical parallels for understanding the summaries often acknowledge that Luke’s descriptions likely would have brought certain cultural ideals to the minds of many readers.⁵

Precisely which ideal these readers might primarily recall, however, has been more disputed. While many commentators speak of Luke as referring only to a general Greek ideal or to multiple traditions indiscriminately, others see an allusion to a more specific common property tradition.⁶ Brian Capper helpfully divides the relevant literary traditions into four main strands:

The theme of community of goods appears in a variety of contexts in the Graeco-Roman period. The most important are the Golden Age (an account of human beginnings), political theories of the proper organization for the state (beginning with Plato’s Republic), the association of community of goods with the ideal of friendship, and its attribution to primitive peoples or location in fabled distant lands.⁷

Following Capper’s division, I will briefly summarize the previous research into the literary background of Luke’s common property descriptions using these four categories: (1) friendship traditions, especially the maxim “friends have all things in common” found in Aristotle and Plato, among others; (2) ideal state representations, particularly Plato’s Republic; (3) descriptions of far-off fictional lands (such as the Islands of the Sun) or primitive peoples (such as the Scythians); and (4) versions of the Golden Age myth.

Friendship Traditions

The enduring popularity of the idea that Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35 draw upon friendship traditions is mostly due to the purported presence of two friendship proverbs in these summaries, proverbs that also appear together in Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Acts 4:32 contains the first possible proverb:

Eth. nic. 1168b μία ψυχή One soul

Acts 4:32 τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶν πιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ μία. Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.^8

The second possible friendship proverb occurs in this same verse, as well as in the first summary:

Eth. nic. 1168b κοινὰ τὰ φίλων Friends have all things in common.

Acts 2:44; 4:32 εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά They had all things in common. ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά All things were common to them.

For Jacques Dupont, the joint appearance of two expressions similar to Aristotle’s friendship proverbs is “not absolutely compelling, yet … strong enough to justify the hypothesis” that Luke is alluding to friendship traditions rather than the Golden Age myth or historical communes.⁹ Johnson is still more confident, asserting that Luke’s language “explicitly identified the community as a community of friends.”¹⁰ This remains the most popular interpretation among scholars who see a reference to a specific common property tradition in Acts 2 and 4.¹¹

The first of these purported proverbs, the phrase μία ψυχή (“one soul”), undeniably does occur in discussions of friendship.¹² Prior to Plutarch, however, firsthand evidence of μία ψυχή as a friendship proverb is surprisingly sparse. By far the most common use of μία ψυχή (or ψυχὴ μία) is simply to designate an individual person, soul, or life.¹³ A second function is to characterize the unity of multiple persons without any explicit invocation of friendship.¹⁴ In contrast, the employment of μία ψυχή as a friendship proverb in Greek literature of this period is almost limited to Aristotle’s oft-cited citations of it as such, along with a possible instance in Euripides’ Orestes.¹⁵

As for the second friendship proverb, the expressions εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά (“they had all things in common”) and ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά (“all things were common to them”) share only one word with the Aristotelian maxim they are supposed to reflect: κοινά.¹⁶ Johnson’s assertion that this is “an unmistakable allusion” to Aristotle’s proverb reduces to the claim that the appearance of this word in the context of common property almost always invokes the friendship tradition.¹⁷ Yet this is simply not the case. The term κοινά occurs in a wide variety of discussions of common property that make no appeal to friendship ideals, ranging from Plato’s descriptions of primitive Athens (Crit. 110d) to Nicolaus of Damascus’ depiction of the galactophages (FGH 90f.104).¹⁸ The word κοινά can appear anywhere common property is discussed, often apart from ideas of friendship. As such, its mere presence in a description of a community of property is not evidence for a reference to friendship ideals specifically.

These observations do not disprove a Lukan friendship allusion, much less exclude the possibility that some of Luke’s readers might have recalled friendship proverbs upon reading the summaries. Nevertheless, the lexical case for a clear reference to friendship ideals is far shakier than often supposed.

Ideal State Descriptions

While many have compared Luke’s language to the friendship proverbs cited by Aristotle, others have drawn a connection to Plato, particularly to his description of the ideal state in the Republic. David Mealand is the most influential proponent of the idea that the accounts of common property in the Acts summaries use specifically Platonic vocabulary.¹⁹ Mealand focuses on two phrases in Acts 4:32; the first is οὐδὲ εἷς … ἴδιον:²⁰

Resp. 5.464d διὰ τὸ μηδὲν ἴδιον ἐκτῆσθαι πλὴν τὸ σῶμα Because they possess nothing of their own except their body.

Acts 4:32 οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι No one claimed private ownership of any possessions.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Golden Age Myth in Greek and Latin Sources
• 3 The Golden Age Myth in Jewish and Christian Sources
• 4 Preliminaries to a Golden Age Reading of the Acts Summaries
• 5 Reading Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35 as Golden Age Allusions
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Ancient Sources Index
• Subject Index
• Imprint