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corpus-paul - RE: Why were Gentiles attracted to Christianity?

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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Why were Gentiles attracted to Christianity?
  • Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 11:26:11 -0400


Mark Nanos said:

>>Perhaps a post to Ioudaios would bring some evidence to
light. It might be useful to define and limit the
information. E.g., the precise guidelines for quantifying a
location as rural village, and separating the regions, say
Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, etc. <<

Yes, that would be a good thing for me to do. I'll re-read
Horsley's comments from the seminar to see if I can pin down
what it is that he is assuming (or at least suggesting)
about the Galatian addressees that is different from the
urban addressees of other undisputed letters. My initial
impression is that he sees the Galatian addressees as rural
in location and living in village or possibly estate
settings, which suggests a northern Galatian location more
than a southern. Then again, maybe he is assuming that the
addressees are residents of the rural areas associated with
individual cities in the south.

He also made a comment in response to one of my posts that
suggested that he was skeptical of the existence of (many?
large?) estates in Galatia, although he assumed these are
the norm in Achaia and Italy. But I also noticed that he
seems to think that such European estates were worked by
slaves (and housed, I get the impression, in the barracks
style documented in Italian plantations in certain periods).
De Ste. Croix, though, thought that most of these slaves
(acquired in bulk during periods of warfare) would have
eventually been made share-croppers of individual scattered
plots, and usually living in estate owned village settings.

But, I would imagine a different situation existing in a
Galatian system, where I would expect the organizational
system to resemble the villages and estates of the Herodian
client kingdoms/tetrarchies. Fiensey and Pastor had given me
the general impression that roughly half the population may
have been tenant farmers on royal estates, and that about
half of the remainder was parceled out as non-hereditary
"gifts" to key officials of the government (hey, they need
income too), leaving a small portion (maybe 20-25%?) for the
smaller landholders (cleruch grants, possibly modest
hereditary holdings of key non-political village level
"officials" whose rights to the holdings are confirmed by
each change in government based on their ability to hand
over taxes on time).

In a system like that, essentially 75% of the population are
"government" employees. Even after the former client kingdom
of Galatia was made a province, it appears to have been
managed in a manner similar to the old system used by the
king. No wonder there is epigraphic evidence for the
promotion of the imperial cult in an estate in Galatia!

In any case, I would want to try to identify the kind of
Jewish communities that may have existed in those kinds of
rural Galatian settings.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will also see about following
up on the authorities you cited.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA






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