[JSNT S4 (2001) 85-94]

ISSN0142-064X

RESPONSE TO MARTIN AND THEISSEN

Justin J. Meggitt
Corpus Christi College
Cambridge CB2 1RH

Given that so many books on the New Testament, particularly books by

unknowns in the field, elicit little response at all, I am extremely grate-
ful that Dale Martin and Gerd Theissen have spared the time to com-
ment at such length on my book Paul, Poverty and Survival (PP&S).
They make a number of salient observations, that, I am sure, are not
only helpful to me but to others too. In what follows I have tried to
respond to the bulk of their criticisms, but I will address some of the
questions further in a subsequent article in this journal and elsewhere.1
It is best to start with a quick summary of what PP&S is actually
about. Although space is limited, it is important to do this, as I have
often been criticized, as I am here, for having failed to write a very dif-
ferent book. PP&S did not attempt to provide an alternative to the 'new
consensus' or a fresh explanation of the conflicts in the Pauline
churches.2 Certainly, it has consequences for how such things might be
understood, attacking the evidential basis for many current reconstruc-
tions, and I realize that that is the main reason most New Testament
scholars have shown an interest in its contents. But that is not what
PP&S is about.
Rather, the book is intended to provide a study of the material reali-
ties experienced by Paul and the members of the Pauline communities,
and their responses to this aspect of their first-century urban context. Its

1. See, for example, my 'Sources: Use, Abuse and Neglect', in D. Horrell and
E. Adams (eds.) Christianity at Corinth (forthcoming).
2. I did indicate this in a number of places. See, e.g., p. 99 n. 118.
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86 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001)

basic thesis is that these believers, including Paul, like virtually all
other inhabitants of the Roman empire who were not members of the
political elite or their associates,3 lived subsistence or near subsistence
lives, in which their access to necessities was inadequate and precari-
ous. Like their neighbours, none was potentially more than a few weeks
away (and many far closer than that) from a life-threatening crisis, with
little call on material resources when in such need. They suffered from
what we would term absolute poverty. As a consequence of this bleak
economic context we should rethink the place of the theological and
ethical motif that I believe can be labelled 'mutualism' in Pauline
literature. Intentionally or otherwise, the material consequences of this
motif represented a distinctive and effective form of support for
individuals faced by endemic privation.
As I note at the outset of the book, the concern with the material con-
text makes the analysis that follows rather undifferentiated (p. 5). But
this lack of differentiation is deliberate. The central dichotomy between
those economically vulnerable and those not is helpful for bringing into
view the universality of the experience of privation for the Pauline
Christians that, in material terms, a more differential analysis, even if it
were possible, would obscure. Such an undifferentiated analysis cannot
explain everything, or describe everything, nor does it assume that the
Pauline churches lacked social stratification (pp. 5, 106) (although the
grounds on which current conceptualizations of this are based are not, I
believe, possible to sustain). There is, I contend, a great deal of value in
using such dichotomies as long as we recognize their limitations.4
Before I turn to specific issues raised by Martin and Theissen, I
would like to make two further points that I think are significant. First,
the picture of wide-scale material deprivation presented in the book has
recently been confirmed by the first comprehensive study of nutrition
experience in antiquity, a work that has argued that chronic mal-

3. See PP&S, p. 50 n. 59 and also p. 49 n. 43.

4. Something, e.g., Martin fails to do when he claims that 'the theological
differences reflected in 1 Corinthians all resulted from conflicts between various
groups in the local church rooted in different ideological constructions of the body'
(The Corinthian Body [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. xv). Martin
exaggerates the explanatory power of (mistakenly) assuming that there were two
exclusive constructions of the body in Corinth.

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 MEGGITT Response to Martin and Theissen 87

nutrition (endemic not episodic) was the common experience.5 Such a

picture is a hard one for many to accept.6 However, it is not dependent
solely upon the kind of arguments provided in PP&S, such as infer-
ences from primitivist readings of the Roman economy or the existence
of the frumentaria in Rome. Other indicators, only just being system-
atically exploited, appear to corroborate it. It can, for example, be
deduced7 from the skeletal remains of the period (attending to such
potential indicators of malnutrition as dental hypoplasia or Harris
lines).8
Secondly, an important aspect of the book that may be of interest to
others studying the New Testament, and explains why the analysis in
PP&S is so contentious to many, is largely passed over by both review-
ers. A significant section of the book is taken up with a discussion of
how to construct and apply an 'appropriate context of interpretation',
one that, in E.P. Thompson's phrase, rescues the non-elite from the
'enormous condescension of posterity'.9 The basic methodological
assumption of the work is that we need to include the undocumented
dead of antiquity in our reconstructions (and primary deliberations) and
cannot allow our dialogue with the past to be one where we are deaf to
the great mass of those who lived and died in the period in which the
New Testament was written and who left nothing, except perhaps their
bones or ashes, behind them. Such an undertaking is not perverse,
although it is awkward, and has been little attempted by ancient histo-
rians. Its results are invariably perplexing, undermining much of what
passes for received wisdom (it is impossible, for example, on sheer
numerical grounds, amongst others, to see patronage by the socially
powerful as an all-pervasive characteristic of ancient society).10
I am afraid it is necessary to begin my response to these two reviews
by correcting the plethora of inaccurate and misleading claims made by
Martin about the use of secondary and primary sources in PP&S before

5. Peter Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1999).
6. Garnsey, Food, p. 3.
7. With reservations. See PP&S, p. 150 n. 38.
8. See further, J. Meggitt, Christ and the Universe ofDisease (forthcoming).
9. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor
Gollancz, 1963), p. 12.
10. See PP&S, pp. 167-69.

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88 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001 )

turning to more substantive issues. While I am sure his errors were not
intentional, they cannot be allowed to stand.
Martin maintains that I often misrepresent the scholars with whom I
disagree, and in particular the leading advocates of the 'new consen-
sus', Wayne Meeks and Gerd Theissen. However, this is not the case.
For example, I am perfectly aware that Meeks does not accept that the
members of the highest level of ancient society belonged to the Pauline
churches, and say as much (p. 100 n. 123). Nor do I misrepresent these
scholars in asserting that their reconstructions are, as they stand,
incompatible with the picture that I present (p. 99). It is hard to see
how Meeks's description of the Pauline communities including indi-
viduals 'high in income' and 'wealthy'11 concords with mine,12 and
Theissen's article in this journal demonstrates that his reconstruction is
also obviously at variance with that in PP&S. As Martin himself says,
if I am right that all the Pauline Christians lived 'brutal and frugal
lives, characterised by struggle and impoverishment' then it 'does
indeed provide a sharp contrast to what may fairly be called a current
consensus on the socio-economic realities of the Pauline churches'.
The criticism of the use of ancient written sources in PP&S is like-
wise unfair. Elite-authored texts are not used in the arbitrary and parti-
san manner he asserts but treated cautiously and critically as indirect
evidence, with attention paid to issues of authorial biography and genre
(pp. 24-25). More specifically, I certainly do not deduce from Lucian
that 'in a sociological sense' household philosophers are no different
from day labourers but rather, in a material sense, that the former could
be as vulnerable as the latter (p. 59). Nor is my use of Apuleius's
description of the brutalized mill slaves naive.13 This evocative scene is
a commonplace in studies of slavery of the period14 (even if it is absent

11. Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the
Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). p. 73.
12. Although I will concede that n. 65 on p. 54 is not a model of clarity, contra
to the positive (if qualified) picture Martin paints of (primarily) urban slave life at
the outset of Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) (one in which 'many [slaves] controlled
quite a bit of property and money' [p. 10]), slave experience was almost universally
one of abuse and vulnerability. It is also not the case that I summarily dismiss
Hock's workrather I recommend it, with qualifications (p. 75 nn. 4, 7).
13. Golden Ass 9.12
14. See, for example, the work of K.R. Bradley, 'Review Article: Problem of
Slavery in Classical Culture', Classical Philology 92 (1997), pp. 273-82, and in

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 MEGGITT Response to Martin and Theissen 89

from his own, rather optimistic book on the subject). It is confirmed in

the iconographical record15 and even by the traumatized skeletons of
abused slaves themselves.16 Nor, contrary to Martin, am I surprised to
hear that Juvenal's Satires refer to upward social mobility and patron
age relationships among different social stratain fact I take Juvenal's
Satires as evidence for the existence of both in Roman society (p. 56 n.
74; p. 147). And of course the poor state of Umbricius's17 clothes in
Satire 3 is not a straightforward description of reality but affected by
comic exaggerationagain, I actually say as much (p. 62). Nor is it
true that I use the incident involving Corax found in Petronius's Satyri-
con to support my observations about the existence of non-elite self-
esteem18 (p. 90) and ignore, because it is not so convenient for my
argument elsewhere, references in the Satyricon to self-sale as a means
of social mobilityin fact I use the Satyricon as evidence of the exis
tence of just such a practice (p. 82 n. 36).
Martin's remarks about my use of historical evidence are also
inaccurate. I do not claim that only 'craftsmen and women' used defix-
iones, as he asserts. Such a claim would indeed be absurd because, as I
say on p. 33, all 'sexes, ages, statuses, peoples and religions' used
curse tables. On p. 56 I refer to the use of specific defixiones by artisans
attempting to gain an advantage over one another as indicative of their
marginal, precarious circumstances.
Unfortunately Martin's characterization of the method of argumenta
tion in PP&S is also erroneous. He believes that I use qualifying terms
that render many of my claims unassailable and that I raise 'the bar for
historical evidence to heights impossible for normal historiography' in
order to make my case. In fact, through careful argumentation (unfor-

particular ' Animalizing the Slave: the Truth of Fiction', JRS 90 (2000), pp. 110-25.
15. E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1981), pp. 329-32.
16. See, for example, the harrowing description of the skeletal remains of a
young slave girl in Sara Bisel, 'The People of Herculaneum', Helmantica 37 (1986),
pp. 11-23.
17. He may well be a bankrupt equestrian (Juvenal, Satires 3.154) although this
is not necessarily the case. Despite the Lex Roscia (Otho) in 67 BCE, it seems that
others in addition to equestrians sat in these seats and had to be evicted (Suetonius,
Domitian 8.3).
18. Something that can be demonstrated in other sources, e.g. P.Oxy 51.3617
(which refers to the high esteem of an enslaved weaver).

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90 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001)

tunately caricatured by Martin)19 I try to demonstrate that details cur

rently taken to indicate that an individual in the Pauline churches was
wealthy, when examined individually, tell us either (a) far less than is
often taken to be the case (e.g. slave ownership, services rendered) or
(b) nothing at all (e.g. travel,20 concerns over meat offered to idols, the
incest of the man in 1 Cor. 5). When these details are taken collec
tively, they fail to demonstrate that anyone in the Pauline churches was
likely to have been wealthy. Far from raising the 'bar of evidence
beyond that of normal historiography' the observations in PP&S about
how inferences from such data can legitimately be made, and how
cumulative arguments can be appropriately applied, are dependent
upon the conventions of normal historiography21 and might help future
reconstructions by New Testament scholars stand up to criticism from
outside the guild.22
I also disagree with Martin's analysis of my presentation of Pauline
mutualism. I do not think it was a consequence of context in a causal
sense (pp. 175-78). I am not so crudely reductionists in my reading.
Nor do believe that there is any difficulty in claiming that a particular
form of social action was without close analogy. Not only do we regu
larly make such claims for others (the Essenes and Therapeutae, for
example, seem to be unique in antiquity in collectively rejecting slav
ery),23 but I would maintain that even apparently small changes in

19. His description of my discussion of the cost of slaves is not adequate, and on
a number of other occasions he misrepresents what is actually said in PP&S For
example, I do not say on 139 that the scholars I refer to assume that the designa
tion TTJs is evidence that Erastus was a powerful civic func
tionary, but that they hold that this designation encourages identification of the
Erastus of Rom 16 23 with the aedile in the Corinthian inscription Interestingly,
some commentators do make the deduction that Martin finds so improbable (see, for
example, J Ziesler, Paul's Letter to the Romans [London SCM Press, 1989],
356 and C Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, [Edinburgh T. &
Clark, 1979], 808)
20 I actually say that the ability to travel cannot be used as an indicator at all
(p 134), contra Martin' s presentation of my view
21 See, e g , my use of C Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions
(Cambridge Cambridge University Press), 1984
22 See, e g., my remark on the ways in which indicators are employed by advo
cates of the 'new consensus' (PP&S, 101 129)
23 Philo, Omn Prob Lib 79; Vit Cont 70. See Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slav
eryfromAristotle to Augustine (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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 MEGGITT Response to Martin and Theissen 91

otherwise common contingent factors is all that is often required to

produce striking and unprecedented social practices in groups (and
early Christian religious claims were of a far greater magnitude).24
Nor is it accurate to say that PP&S ignores the ideological nature of
the Pauline literature and as a consequence presents the Pauline churches
as 'lovely peaceful sights of economic mutualism'. I note, for example,
that mutualism was abused by some (p. 162) and observe that its most
significant manifestation was undertaken in part to serve Paul's own
need for legitimation (p. 159 nn. 24, 25). However, it is evident that the
motif of mutualism is not merely a rhetorical ploy originating with
Paul, but is something he can use precisely because it is already present
in a variety of aspects of the life and experience of the communities he
addresses (pp. 176-77).25
In contrast to Martin's contribution, Theissen's paper is a much
richer, more accurate response that furthers the debate. It deserves far
more space than I can give it here. Nonetheless, I would like to make a
few initial observations and continue the dialogue at a later date.
On the subject of sources, I think it is problematic to assume that the
socio-economic profiles of the Pauline communities were the same as
those of communities reflected in texts authored a generation or more
later, such as Acts or Pliny's epistle26 (or that they replicated the socio-
economic profiles of the Jewish diaspora communities from which
some of their members came). On comparative grounds such a change
in the early life of a new religious movement is unsurprising, even to
be expected.27 Indeed, in current estimations of the development of

24. The well-documented Skoptsy cult, for example, lived lives identical to their
Russian peasant brethren but adopted a degree of self-mutilation completely
unprecedented in western history as a result of the influence of certain charismatic
leaders; Laura Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folk-
tale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) (the title of the book does not
reflect the severity of their behaviour).
25. Nor, by the way, do I argue that all economic relationships in the Pauline
churches, particularly those relating to his own support, can be characterized in such
a way (p. 77).
26. PP&S, p. 99 n. 120; p. 121 n. 227.
27. Bryan R. Wilson, Social Dimensions of Sectarianism (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990), pp. 105-27. See, e.g., Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), and J. Beckford, The Trumpet of
Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah 's Witnesses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1975).

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authority structures in the New Testament communities, it is a com

monplace to posit such a development. More specifically, I am under
standably suspicious of the value of rather generalizing statements such
as those found in Acts 17.4, 12 that have otherwise left no impression in
early Christian literature (or any other).
Theissen's observations about the analogies with collegia are signifi
cant and illuminating for later developments in the church.28 In retro
spect, I would have liked to have interacted with Schmeller's work, and
hope to benefit from the long-awaited collection of relevant primary
material being produced by Kloppenborg and Mclean. However, the
value of voluntary associations in understanding economic relation
ships in the Pauline communities is limited (pp. 170-71) (and I think
we would be hard pushed to demonstrate that the small number of
Officials' we encounter in Paul's churches were permanent ones who
supported themselves).
I am afraid I do not find any grounds for revising my estimation of
the socio-economic status of the individuals Theissen discusses. The
association of the Erastus in Rom. 16.23 with Erastus (or Eperastus)
the aedile mentioned in the Corinth inscription is not just uncertain but
unlikely, given the dating, the problems in equating the term
% with the office of aedile, and the popularity of the name
Erastus (pp. 135-41). I do not, incidentally, think I underestimate life
expectancy in antiquity as it affects the debate over dating.29 Nor do I
think that Paul's inclusion of Erastus's secular job indicates that we
should make this association (such secular epithets are not unusual in
the New Testament30and it seems reasonable enough that it was used
in this case to distinguish between different Erastuses associated with
the Pauline mission). Nor am I convinced that the fact that Crispus and

28. For remarks on collegia in PP&S, see p. 136 n. 320 and pp. 170-71. For a
discussion of the implications of current scholarship on the subject, including the
contribution of Schmeller, see Richard S. Ascough, What Are they Saying about the
Formation ofPauline Churches? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998).
29. In PP&S, p. 138 n. 332 I was not taking general life expectancy as a base in
making this statement, which, as he quite rightly notes, includes high mortality in
early childhood, but was assuming that the comparative life tables used to make
such conjectures underestimate the age-specific mortality rates in the first century
because they underestimate the environmental stress onfirst-centuryurban popula
tions. See Walter Scheidel, 'Progress and Problems in Roman Demography', in
Walter Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 24.
30. Titus 3.15; Col. 4.14.

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 MEGGITT Response to Martin and Theissen 93

Sosthenes are termed tells us anything about the eco

nomic standing of these important converts. As far as we can say any
thing for certain about synagogue offices in this period, where
appear in written sources they are depicted as a group
responsible for the organization of public worship and teaching,31 and
no comment is made about them being expected to make benefactions
of any kind or having any kind of material obligations to the commu
nity. As I note, and Theissen helpfully details, a tiny number are recorded
as making contributions in the pre-Constantine period, as did others in
the communities, but to infer from this that only those with substantial
wealth could hold such a post is unwarranted.32 As for Stephanas and
his household: all that can be inferred from 1 Cor. 16.15-16 is that Paul
believed Stephanas's household (which may or may not have included
slaves) to have been particularly faithful and consequently worthy of
respect. They certainly acquired status within the church by virtue of
their actions and perhaps because of the relatively long period that they
had been believers.33 Possibly it was a status that would surprise some,
because Paul needed to emphasize it, but I do not see why we should
say that it was dependent upon Stephanas's high social standing. In the
case of Gaius, I would concede that it may well be better to take the
genitives analogously in Rom. 16.23 but I cannot agree with what
Theissen then deduces about Gaius's wealth from this. We should not
think that only a larger-than-4average' private house could host the
Corinthian church,34 particularly given the semi-public nature of the
meetings at this stage (14.23). We should remember the variety of other
forms of housing present in ancient cities likely to be occupied (or
partly occupied) by the poor (that I detail on p. 63). The alternative is
not just a flat but includes shared housing (with shared space between
tenants), and the more temporary structures of the poor such as shanties
and tents. We may need to engage our imagination a little more when
we try to envisage the meetings of the early Christians.

31. Lk. 13.14; Acts 13.15; Justin, Dialogue 137.2. See also m. Sot. 7.7-8;
m. Yom. 7.1; also Epiphanius, Panarion 30.18.2; Z?. Pes. 49b; Codex Theodosianus
16.8, 13.
32. Indeed, even the apparently impressive donation of a synagogue may not
imply the level of wealth he assumes. See Lk. 7.5.
33. A significant virtueRom. 16.7; cf. also 1 Tim. 3.6.
34. We must not overestimate the likely size of this church (p. 121 n. 227). Acts
18.10 is not a reliable indicator of the numbers in this period.

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I appreciate Theissen's critical estimation of my discussion of the

ethos of the church and I agree wholeheartedly with him that mutual-
ism and social homogeneity need not go together. However, I am wary
of placing too much weight on the sacraments as bearers of the radical
social ethos (other rituals, such as the holy kiss, and also the ethical
and experiential life of the believers are also, I believe key). But, per-
haps more importantly, I am still not convinced that we can determine
with any precision the nature of social diversity within the Pauline
communities and what part it can legitimately be said to play in their
conflicts. I am afraid that at present I would maintain that only the most
general analysis of the churches, such as that which I attempted to
undertake in PP&S, can bear fruit. I fear that we should respond to the
more intricate and sophisticated edifices that are currently proliferating
in the field, and are dependent upon the precarious foundations of the
'new consensus', in the same way as an anonymous critic of Domitian
who, when faced with yet another victory arch scratched on it a single
word: 'enough'.35

3 5. Suetonius, Domitian 13.

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