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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.
List of contents
1.Class Struggle in the New Testament!
Robert J. Myles
2.Jesus, the Temple, and the Crowd: A Way Less Traveled
Neil Elliott
3.Romans Go Home? The Military as a Site of Class Struggle in the Roman East and New Testament
Christopher B. Zeichmann
4.Peasant Plucking in Mark: Conceptual and Material Issues
Alan H. Cadwallader
5.IVDAEA DEVICTA: The Gospels as Imperial "Captive Literature"
Robyn Faith Walsh
6.Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee? Unmasking Neoliberal Ideology in Biblical Interpretation
Robert J. Myles
7.Hand of the Master: Of Slaveholders and the Slave-Relation
Roland Boer and Christina Petterson
8.Populist Features in the Gospel of Matthew
Bruce Worthington
9.Troubling the Retainer Class in Antiquity
Sarah E. Rollens
10.Rethinking Pauline Gift and Social Functions: Class Struggle in Early Christianity?
Taylor Weaver
11.The Origin of Archangels: Ideological Mystification of Nobility
Deane Galbraith
12.Christian Origins and the Specter of Class: Locating Class Struggle in the New Testament Today
James G. Crossley
About the author
Robert J. Myles is lecturer in New Testament at Murdoch University.
