Class Struggle in the New Testament

Class Struggle in the New Testament engages the political and economic realities of the first century to unmask the mediation of class through several New Testament texts and traditions. Essays span a range of subfields, presenting class struggle as the motor force of history by responding to recent debates, historical data, and new evidence on the political-economic world of Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels. Chapters address collective struggles in the Gospels; the Roman military and class; the usefulness of categories like peasant, retainer, and middling groups for understanding the world of Jesus; the class basis behind the origin of archangels; the Gospels as products of elite culture; the implication of capitalist ideology upon biblical interpretation; and the New Testament’s use of slavery metaphors, populist features, and gifting practices. This book will become a definitive reference point for future discussion.

The volume as a whole delivers on its potential by opening up important lines of argument, recovery, and interpretation that come into focus through the prism of class. There is also a great deal of interaction with primary and secondary literatures, much of which is done well. . . this collection will be a welcome addition to academic libraries., This book contains a strong, challenging and innovative collection of essays that probe class struggle in both New Testament texts and ancient socio-economic contexts. The perspectives are various, but each essay explores explicitly or implicitly the antagonistic dialectic of groups with essentially opposing interests. Well-worn class definitions, such as "retainers" and "peasants," are re-examined and nuanced. Ultimately, this book also asks us to reflect on dominant ideologies and agendas in today’s academic contexts., Class Struggle in the New Testament turns the often ignored lens of "class" on New Testament texts and their complex contexts in the first century Roman Empire. An introduction by the editor, Robert Myles, situates the chapters and their approaches within a renewed interest in class in current biblical studies as well as the availability of more sophisticated tools for its analysis. The chapters demonstrate such sophistication as a rich fare of approaches are brought to the analysis and interpretation of a range of texts and issues within the Pauline and Gospel corpuses: the crowds, the military, peasants, retainer class, the function of gift and the Gospels as imperial captive literature to name but a few. Engagement with this collection of essays will be essential for all scholars of the Gospels and the Pauline literature., Why are modern scholars, in the words of Robert J. Myles, 'fishing for entrepreneurs in the ancient economy'? This volume brings together scholars who over time have sustained a critical discourse on the economic theories informing New Testament texts but even more their modern interpretation. The volume stands out especially with its chapters that systematically work through textual and material cultures as they relate to specific labour or work areas in the biblical world: the military, peasants, fishermen, slaves, the retainer class––and archangels! This focus on specific 'classes' yields a detailed, nuanced, interesting, and improved picture of the mixed and conflicting class perspectives embedded in the New Testament.

Robert J. Myles is lecturer in New Testament at Murdoch University.