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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: voluntary associations
  • Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 08:25:31 -0500


Dave Hinley wrote:

Has anyone read _Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World_,
edited by John Kloppenborg Verbin and Stephen G. Wilson (London:
Routledge, 1996)? It is *expensive* if available at all from the
publisher, but sounds very interesting. Most authors I have seen offer
models based upon the practices of the very elite of Graeco-Roman
society, as if there was a substantial correspondence between their
circumstances and those of Paul. Hmmm... Voluntary associations,
collegia, etc, would seem the more realistic environment to me.

This is an excellent collection of essays, and additional bibliography is available in these essays, although, as you observe, the price is very high. Perhaps you can get this through inter-library loan; that is what I did.

As you note, this is a helpful direction to explore for research on Paul. For one thing, it is useful to imagine the social constraints of life for alternative communities (such as Jewish ones, and subgroups such as Paul's) in the Graeco-Roman world, and thus for those pagans who were seeking community around the meaning of the death of a Judean martyr of the Roman regime. They were not simply free to withdraw from their expected participation in the village/town/city events of worship that accompanied normal social interaction, and would be feared/accused by neighbors and kin for threatening the interests of the entire village/town/city by failure to participate. In other words, it is not only the minority Jewish communities of the diaspora that might have trouble with the claims of these subgroups, but also the Graeco-Roman non-Jews (pagans), who had a classification and thus way of understanding the difference for Jewish people and proselytes, but not for those of their own who did not conform with either their own or prevailing Jewish communal identity practices. "Who do these people think that they are?" The article by W. Cotter, for example, is useful for considering such matters.

I have drawn from several of them in offering a new construction of the Galatian situation as not only intra-Jewish, but also inter-communal, where the minority Jewish communities of the region are under pressure to conform with prevailing Graeco-Roman norms/expectations in dealings with the non-conformist claims of the non-Jewish members these subgroups, and thus the issue of becoming either members by way of proselyte conversion or accepting the limitation of being Graeco-Roman guests, and thus welcome, but still constrained to continue participation in Graeco-Roman religious life (such as observing days, months, seasons, years), to which Paul accuses these former idolaters of returning in 4:8-11.

Regards,
Mark Nanos





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