Domestic and public violence in Chrysostom s community
Having both grown up in the Eastern Cape province, Jan van der Watt and I have known each other since our school days. Jan became an accomplished scholar of the New Testament, and I would like to honour him for his friendship, collegiality and scholarship with this article. Drawing on information from my field of specialisation, I might shed more light on the world in which the New Testament was embedded. It is commonly accepted that the world of the New Testament was characterised by relative peace and prosperity (Furnish 1984:365) and yet the New Testament contains several references to violence. Jesus told his disciples that should anyone slap them on the right cheek, they should let the person slap their left cheek too (Mt 5:39) Selvidge (1984:214) points out that 'there are many statements in Matthew that contain violent implications, both physical and verbal' adding that 'readers of the gospel are not normally aware of (much less outraged by) the violent traditions preserved in Matthew' In a parable Jesus refers to disobedient servants being beaten with many blows (see Lk 12:35 48) Paul describes how false teachers slap the Corinthians in the face (2 Cor 11:20) We also read in Acts 23:1 that the High Priest (of all people) ordered those who were standing close to Paul to strike him on the mouth. We can interpret some of these instances metaphorically, but the reality is that violence was quite common in the ancient world. Peter Brown (1992:50) describes late antiquity as 'a world characterized by a chilling absence of legal restraints on violence in the exercise of power' Pinker (2011:xxi) even argues that 'today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence'