Corpus-Paul

["John Brand" <jbrand AT gvsd.mb.ca>]

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)