Dale B. Martin

The Construction of the Ancient Family: Methodological Considerations

A remarkable new consensus, recognized even by its critics, has emerged among classical historians that ‘the normal Roman family seems to have been a “nuclear family” like our own’. The consensus is remarkable because practically all historians who support it admit that the portrait of the Roman family that emerges from many literary accounts and is enshrined in Roman law and language is nothing like the modern nuclear family. Saller demonstrates that the Romans had no term equivalent to ‘family’ in the modern sense, that is, the father-mother-children triad of the ‘nuclear family’. The English word ‘family’ has almost no relation to Roman concepts of familia and domus . As Saller explains, ‘ Domus was used with regard to household and kinship to mean the physical house, the household including family and slaves, the broad kinship group including agnates and cognates, ancestors and descendants, and the patrimony’. The Latin familia , while usually narrower in reference than domus , also had little relation to anything meant by the English ‘family’.

Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous

In debating the meaning of Jesus’ arrest and death at Jerusalem, scholars have paid too little attention to normal Roman practices of dealing with persons found armed in public in Rome or other cities under their control. Moreover, the idea that only one or two of Jesus’ disciples were armed has been accepted uncritically in spite of the probability that more or all of them were armed. This article highlights the significance of Jesus’ disciples being armed when he was arrested just outside the walls of Jerusalem, linking that fact with other details from the sources, such as Jesus’ opposition to the temple, the presence of Samaritans among his early followers, the absence of lamb at the last supper, and the fact that he was executed by the Romans as a ‘social rebel’. Jesus led his followers, armed, to Jerusalem to participate in a heavenly-earthly battle to overthrow the Romans and their high-priestly client rulers of Judea.

Review Essay: Justin J. Meggitt, Paul, Poverty and Survival

In this book, a revision of his doctoral thesis, Justin Meggitt addresses the problem of the economic level of the earliest Pauline churches and Paul himself. The majority of the book comprises an argument against ‘the so-called “New Consensus”’ (p. 99) among many scholars that holds that the early Pauline churches incorporated people from different social levels and economic backgrounds. This consensus has developed in reaction to an older view, associated with early Marxist treatments (Karl Kautzky) and later with Adolf Deissmann, that Christianity was a movement made up almost exclusively of slaves, poor peasants, the destitute, and poverty-stricken manual laborers. The story of the overturning of the older view has been told many times before—indeed by those scholars Meggitt credits with orchestrating the New Consensus, especially Gerd Theissen, Abraham Malherbe and Wayne Meeks.1 In his own study, Meggitt calls for more rigorous socio-economic analysis and a thorough questioning of the many details and interpretations that have supported the New Consensus. He proposes that the newer views are ‘dependent upon anachronistic and inappropriate interpretations of

Response to Downing and Fredriksen

This is a response to criticisms raised by Paula Fredriksen and F. Gerald Downing of my recent JSNT article, ‘Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous’. After noting cases where Fredriksen and Downing misrepresent my arguments, I respond to Fredriksen’s disagreement with my interpretation of μάχαιρα as ‘sword’ and to the objections raised by both respondents about the lack of legal evidence for the prohibition of carrying arms in a city. I also address a number of historical and methodological issues raised by both responses.