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  • From: "John Brand" <jbrand AT gvsd.mb.ca>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Romans 1-2: Logos/Christos as Soter
  • Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 18:57:01 -0600

Thanks for your response and questions, Mark.

Mark wrote:

You have spun a story from these different interpreters
spanning hundreds of years, and from different ethnicities and
cultures. Where might it benefit from some alteration and nuance?
How widely was the story as you understand it understood by 1) anyone
then or 2) anyone since when reading Cicero or Paul? If you can find
corroboration, say in some elite, then I want to know if there is any
evidence that anyone other than an elite, representing some small
percent of the population, shared this understanding of the story.
And I want to know if and how a non-elite would relate to it.

John responds:
My answer begins by challenging the assumptions which frame the
question: Is civilization typically fragmented or organized around a
central core? We tend to look at ancient civilizations through
modernist or a post-enlightenment lens. We trim cultures of 'extra
bulk' and reduce their history according to objectives that we have
developed from a post-enlightened perspective. What I find
fascinating about Dieter Mitternacht's methodology in 'Recipient-
Oriented Assessment' (_The Galatians Debate_), is that an effort is
made to understand the 'first communication situation' and to apply
criterion that have been developed in non-biblical studies
disciplines that re: rhetoric, etc. that appear to provide us with a
more objective means of getting at Paul's conscious or unconscious
strategy in bringing his hearers back from the influence that they
had succumbed to.

I would suggest a development of this type of approach for answering
questions about the Roman civilization except that I would want to
widen the scope from the 'first communication situation' as
represented in the letter to a scope that would include the work of
World Systems Theory, for example [Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Modern
World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press,
1976) and the work of Arnold Toynbee [his tour de force: A Study in
History (10 volumes)].

Toynbee's analysis of upwards of 20 world civilizations has led to
his developing a carefully constructed model for how civilizations
develop. In his study of civilizations existing prior to what the
Karl Jaspers calls the Axis Age (6th Century BCE), he found that a
Type 1 civilization begins to develop when an elite is freed up to
engage in activities other than food production, industry or commerce
and is supported by 'wealth' drawn from a surplus extracted from the
common people by means of taxes or tribute. Also, there are four
basic ways in which this surplus is extracted: Coercion via military
caste, Control via a bureaucratic caste who specialize in government,
Conditioning via a priestly caste and by Commerce via a caste of
'merchant princes.

World Systems Theory builds on the same kind of foundation that
Toynbee builds upon: A core or 'metropole' becomes the region where
the elite are concentrated most strongly. Secondly, surrounding the
core is the hinterland or what is sometimes called the
'semiperiphery' from which the bulk of the taxes are extracted.
Surrounding the hinterland is the periphery which is the area or
territory only intermittently occupied by the civilization.

The implications for the study of Romans should be obvious: The Greco-
Roman civilization should be studied as a civilization that develops
somewhere at or about the 9th Century BCE and reaches its zenith at
about the time of the Pax Romana of Augustus. Care should be taken to
note that the core around which this civilization develops shifts
from Athens to Rome but is greatly influenced by the settling of
Magna Graecia (lower Italy) in the 6th Century BCE. The outlying
colonies of the various centers around the initial metropole (Athens
et al) give rise to independent thought and, especially, a challenge
to the lore upon which the civilization gained its initial ascendancy
(i.e. the legends of Hesiod and Homer). For example, Odysseus
wanderings back to Ithaca take him out into what was at that time the
periphery of the civilization. He runs into Sirens and the challenges
of the gods. But think what happens when satellite colonies begun to
form across the seas that Odysseus met with his challenges. It would
have an effect similar to the rise of science in our own
civilization. The periphery begins to transform the metropole.
Pythagoras settles in Italy which eventually becomes the new
metropole but his influence begins to take its effect through
Socrates at the initial metropole. The change takes time and as the
metropole moves from Athens to Rome, the influence of the periphery
is slow to transform the metropole where the elite are concentrated.
Thus, we see a development from a 'conditioning' model to a
bureaucratic model. We move from the atmosphere of Athens which gives
Socrates the hemlock for atheist influence of the young to an
adoption by the Roman Emporer Marcus Aurelius of the very philosophy
espoused by Socrates. The influence of the Christian message
similarly transforms the metropole slowly so that we have Augustus
and Virgil's Aeneid used to condition the hinterland slowly changing
through philosophy and the hybrid of Augustine which brings together
the philosophical (Cicero), the mystical or sacramental (Mani), the
pythagorean theology of neo-Platonism (Plotinus) and the authority of
the resurrected Christ.

Toynbee moved from a rigid cause and effect model for his analysis to
a 'challenge and response' model to make room for human creativity in
meeting the challenges that face a civilization as it develops and is
transformed. I am suggesting that Biblical Scholarship consider a
similar shift from an enlightened trajectory of cause and effect
developed on models from German philosophy and scholarship. Instead
of demythologizing the history of a civilization, keep the elements
that are integral to understanding the civilization in place and
compare the findings with that from other civilization (i.e. the
influence of Confucius and Buddha on Eastern Civilizations, etc.).

Hopefully, the list will find this helpful in their deliberations.

Respectfully,

John Brand
B.A. (Providence College, 1980)
M.Min. (Providence Seminary, 1990)





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