A “Marketless World”? An Examination of Wealth and Exchange in the Gospels and First-Century Palestine
Research on the economic context of Jesus’ teaching on wealth and exchange points to the need to take into account the nature and extent of market arrangements in first-century Roman Palestine. This context involves changing relations among reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange. Studies of the relevant archeological evidence point to intra- and inter-regional trade, increasing specialization, and monetization. This article claims that in the Gospels we find Jesus recognizing a growing role for market exchange and a legitimate pursuit of economic gain through risk-taking alongside of the need for the practice of general reciprocity. Perceived hostility toward wealth and market exchange is explained in terms of the institutional features of the Palestinian agrarian economy, including extractive wealth transfer by the Roman state and religious authorities. The article concludes that Jesus’ teachings on wealth and market exchange have greater moral relevance to modern economic life than is commonly thought. Edd S. Noell, "A 'Marketless World'? An Examination of Wealth and Exchange in the Gospels and First-Century Palestine," Journal of Markets & Morality 10, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 85-114
A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire*
The economy of the early Roman Empire has been an object of study for at least the last century. The discussion has been marked by continuing debate, known sometimes as the primitivist/modern debate and at other times as the Finley debate, following his famous Sather lectures, The Ancient Economy. This paper is a contribution to this debate, written by an economist rather than an ancient historian. My purpose is to define the concept of a ‘market economy’, and to see if it fits the evidence we have for the early Roman Empire. Finley declared that, ‘ancient society did not have an economic system which was an enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets’. He drew implicitly on research by Polanyi to oppose the views of Rostovtzeff within the field of ancient history and those of Fogel and Engerman in economic history, but he did not explicitly join their conceptual apparatuses. Morris has summarized the debate fuelled by Finley's dramatic lectures in his foreword to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition and argued that the controversy is still vigorous today. I hope to clarify the issues in this debate and even resolve the debate for the period of the early Roman Empire.
New Writing-Tablets from Vindolanda
This article offers preliminary editions of three texts discovered at Vindolanda in the excavations of 1993. These seasons produced a total of about 400 ink tablets and 46 stilus tablets. Added to the yields of the earlier seasons of the 1990s, we estimate that there are between 70 and 80 substantial new ink texts which we hope to publish within the next three years.