Robert J. MYLES (ed), Class Struggle in the New Testament. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London, Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2019, pp. 282 + xvi.  Hb. 978-1-9787-0207-3, (Pb announced for July 2021). Hb: $105.00. Reviewed by Daniel L. SMITH-CHRISTOPHER, Dept. Theology, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, 90045.  

This excellent collection of provocative essays establishes why “class-based” social analysis of the Bible certainly provides not only some important textual insights, but raises suspicions as to why such questions had not been raised before.  While certainly informed by classical Socialist, including Marxist, theory, these essays are certainly not all written in ‘doctrinaire’ Marxist language or historical methodology.  That is to say – one need not be committed to an exclusively materialist reading of history in order to appreciate these well-written essays.  Indeed, it becomes increasingly clear that such a class-based analysis is revealing of important textual realities in the New Testament and its contextual world of Roman-occupied Palestine in the first century CE. 

A review of the Table of Contents gives the best indication of the richness of this collection of twelve essays - and the topics that are addressed.  Robert Myles, the editor, begins with an introduction to theory (in this case, heavily indebted to Marxist analysis), but then comments briefly on each of the subsequent essays.  Ch. 2 features Neil Elliott (always worth a read!) writing: “Jesus, the Temple, and the Crowd”, drawing attention to neglected, yet quite interesting, aspects of the mention of “crowds” in the Gospel writers.  Ch. 3, “Romans Go Home? The Military as a Site of Class Struggle in the Roman East and New Testament” is by Christopher B. Zeichmann, wherein he asks why the role of the Roman military, with its often locally indentured soldiers, has not been a subject of serious examination.  How might we reconsider the Gospels if the “Romans” were themselves often “local conscripts”?  In Ch. 4, Alan H. Cadwalladar writes “Peasant Plucking in Mark: Conceptual and Material Issues”, which is a very helpful overview of the ways that a “peasant class” in and around Jesus and His disciples has been thought of, especially in the work of Horsley and Crossan.  Ch. 5, “IVDAEA DEVICTA: The Gospels as Imperial ‘Captive Literature’”, Robyn Faith Walsh reads Gospels as examples of a common Roman literary genre of “Captive Literature”.  She means how Roman writers often addressed their “exotic” interest in conquered societies, sometimes sympathetically, as “foils” against which to critique not only the conquered, but raise questions about motivations and interactions of fate and the gods.  Editor Robert Myles, writing Ch. 6, addresses “Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee?  Unmasking Neoliberal Ideology in Biblical Interpretation”.  Here, Myles raises important concerns about the social, and indeed economic, assumptions on the part of modern readers and interpreters – whose interpretations often mirror their own economic and political commitments against a careful consideration of ancient political and economic realities.  A particularly provocative essay is offered by Roland Boer and Christina Petterson, entitled “Hand of the Master: Of Slaveholders and the Slave-Relation”.  In this essay, Boer and Petterson raise significant issues about slave-holding among the earliest Christians, and prod readers with questions about whether “early Christian communities exploited slave labor in their missionary activity…” (148).  

In Ch. 8, Bruce Worthington works on “Populist Features in the Gospel of Matthew”, which offers a reading of Matthew drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s “On Populist Reason” as a guide to identifying possible examples of political movements and “crowds” (and thus an interesting companion essay to Elliot’s earlier chapter).  In Ch. 9, Sarah E. Rollens writes, “Troubling the Retainer Class in Antiquity”.  In this essay, Rollens raises critical questions about how classes have been identified in studies of ancient history, drawing on Marx, Weber, Bourdieu, and de Ste. Croix, among others.  She seems less impressed by attempts to identify a “retainer class” between an “upper” and “lower” class, as adopted in previous New Testament work.  In Ch. 10, Taylor Weaver writes “Rethinking Pauline gift and Social Functions: Class Struggle in Early Christianity?”.  Weaver’s concern here is to re-examine Paul’s use of “gift” and “grace” within a reconstructed context of Greco-Roman Palestine, and ask whether Paul’s thought subverted aspects of “gift”, “grace” and “reciprocity” and “obligation” that were all key social practices that were arguably structures of Roman society.  Deane Galbraith writes “The Origin of Archangels: Ideological Mystification of Nobility” as Ch. 11.  In this essay, Galbraith argues that the “population explosion” in heaven, in late Second-Temple Jewish thought, involved a projection of  "Jewish Warrior traditions" into heavenly “Archangels” in this scenario.  The argument is quite good, although one might raise questions about the chronological location of these developments, including the possibilities that greater administrative complexity “in heaven” may already be a reflection of Persian Imperial policies – but this doesn’t negate the really ingenious nature of her suggestions.  James G. Crossley finishes the book with his brief essay, as Ch. 12: “Christian Origins and the Spector of Class: Locating Class Struggle in the New Testament Today”, which provides a helpful historical survey of New Testament scholarly views in the 19th and 20th Centuries that anticipated a full-blown class-oriented approach to New Testament Study.  There is a substantial bibliography and brief index. 

While perhaps not a typical work for the books and topics normally addressed in this Book Review service, it is nonetheless worthy of serious consideration.  As noted, these essays frequently raise troubling questions – not only for what they may suggest about aspects of early Christian society (similar, in fact, to equally troubling questions also raised by Feminist New Testament scholars) but also troubling for why some of these questions have not been raised before.  What would be the implication, for example, of early Christians not only not explicitly and directly condemning slavery - but actually tolerating it?  Many have argued that Philemon, for example, does radically redefine "slavery", but it is also true that it is not condemned in clear ways that would have been very helpful for later abolitionists needing to engage in more direct activism than such a meticulous and detailed explications of the "liberative implications" of Philemon would readily provide. 

As Liberation Theologians have frequently reminded us – a clear-eyed class-based social and theological analysis – including the realities of class inequalities in modern Neo-liberal economic systems – raises important concerns not only for a better informed historical research, but the practice of the Church seeking justice as well – both “then” and “now”.  It is good that Lexington has determined to issue a Paperback edition appearing in July, 2021, so that the work is not limited to (frankly outrageous) price of over $100 for the Hardback edition – certainly prices only affordable for a certain class.