Readers who want to delve deeper into aspects of Pompeian life discussed in this book will do well to consult one of the introductory books found in the first paragraph of the “Studies of Pompeii” listed below. Being books of an introductory nature, they almost inevitably articulate the larger contexts in which those aspects can be considered.
More specific studies pertaining to issues mentioned in the chapters of this book are found in the chapter-by-chapter listings below. I have not tried to list every possible resource on any given topic mentioned in the main chapters of this book; these entries (usually listed in chronological order) are simply helpful starting points for exploring relevant publications beyond this book. Beyond these lie many other helpful studies, including many written in languages other than English. (Moreover, the fact that a resource is listed here does not necessarily mean that I agree with its contents.)
Studies of Pompeii
The best overall introduction to Pompeii is Joanne Berry, The Complete Pompeii (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007). For other recent works, see Mary Beard, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (London: Profile Books, 2008; also published as The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010]); Roger Ling, Pompeii: History, Life and Afterlife (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2009); Paul Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press, 2013). See also the excellent DVD lecture series by Steven L. Tuck, Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City, The Great Courses, 2010.
An engrossing reconstruction of the town’s final twenty-five years can be found in Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence, Pompeii: The Living City (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).
The best introduction to Herculaneum is Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum Past and Future (London: Francis Lincoln, 2011).
For studies of Pompeii that are more academic, see L. Richardson Jr., Pompeii: An Architectural History (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); John J. Dobbins and Pedar W. Foss, eds., The World of Pompeii (London: Routledge, 2007).
On economic aspects of Pompeian life, see Miko Flohr and Andrew Wilson, eds., The Economy of Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), which offers some important qualifications to the issues recorded by Willem M. Jongman, The Economy and Society of Pompeii (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1988). See also Eric Poehler, Miko Flohr, and Kevin Cole, eds., Pompeii: Art, Industry, and Infrastructure (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011).
For interesting studies on Pompeii’s street system (on which so much of the town’s social life was built), see Jeremy Hartnett, The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Eric E. Poehler, The Traffic Systems of Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)—the latter improving on an earlier work by Ray Laurence, Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (London: Routledge, 1994). See also the photographic reconstruction of Pompeii’s main east-west street in Jennifer F. Stephens and Arthur E. Stephens, Pompeii, A Different Perspective: Via dell’Abbondanza (Atlanta: Lockwood, 2017). For the “religious register” of the streets, see especially Harriet I. Flower, The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
General Studies of Pompeii’s Relevance for Understanding Early Christianity
On the presence of Jesus-devotion within Pompeii, a fresh case that sets out new evidence can be found in Bruce W. Longenecker, The Crosses of Pompeii: Jesus-Devotion in a Vesuvian Town (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016).
On Pompeii as offering resources for helping to understand early Christianity, see Bruce W. Longenecker, ed., Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016)—a collection of academic essays by a variety of scholars.
For a reading of Romans with the help of Pompeian material realia, see Peter Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).
General Studies of Early Christianity in the Roman World
An introduction to some of the issues discussed in this book can be found in Paul Duff, Jesus Followers in the Roman World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).
For other studies of early Christianity in urban contexts of the Greco-Roman world, see especially Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (1983; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell, eds., After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009); Luke Timothy Johnson, Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Moyer Hubbard, Christianity in the Greco-Roman World: A Narrative Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010); N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 197–347, 1271–407; M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014); James R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn, eds., The First Urban Churches 1: Methodological Foundations (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015); James R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn, eds., The First Urban Churches 2: Roman Corinth (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016); James R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn, eds., The First Urban Churches 3: Ephesus (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018); C. Kavin Rowe, One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); J. Paul Sampley, ed., Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, volumes 1 and 2, rev. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016); Steve Walton, Paul R. Trebilco, and David W. J. Gill, eds., The Urban World and the First Christians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017); Robert Knapp, The Dawn of Christianity: People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Jan N. Bremmer, Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017); Harry O. Maier, New Testament Christianity in the Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
For discussion of Christians in rural contexts prior to the Constantinian revolution (although primarily in the second and third centuries), see Thomas A. Robinson, Who Were the First Christians? Dismantling the Urban Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Chapter 1: Human Meaning in Stone and Story
On story as a central aspect of human identity, see Jonathan Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
The standard compilation of Vesuvian graffiti and inscriptions is Alison E. Cooley and M. G. L. Cooley, Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 2013). Recent studies of the graffiti of Pompeii include Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Peter Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 2014); Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan, eds., Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World (Boston: Brill, 2016). For an earlier study, see Helen H. Tanzer, The Common People of Pompeii: A Study of the Graffiti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939). On the “love inscriptions” of Pompeii, see Antonio Varone, Erotica Pompeiana: Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeii, translated by Ria P. Berg (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2001).
Chapter 2: Fire in the Bones
On status as the primary commodity of the Roman world, see especially Carlin Barton, Roman Honor: Fire in the Bones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
On the complex phenomenon of manumitted slaves and the role of freedmen in the Roman world, see Lauren Hackworth Petersen, The Freedman in Roman Art and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Henrik Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
On the complexities of identity pertaining to manumitted women, see Matthew J. Perry, Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Chapter 3: Accessing the First-Century World
On Greco-Roman urbanism in general, see the valiant attempt to construct an “urban geography” by J. W. Hanson, An Urban Geography of the Roman World, 100 BC to AD 300 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2016).
For discussion of the growth in the number of Christians, see Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 185–226. Hopkins’s work meshes well with the proposals of Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). See also Roderic L. Mullen, The Expansion of Christianity: A Gazetteer of Its First Three Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Note, however, the important qualifications to the numerical figures suggested in these studies in Thomas A. Robinson, Who Were the First Christians? Dismantling the Urban Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
On the term “Judean,” see especially Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007): 457–512.
For discussions of Pompeian art and architecture, see especially Amedeo Maiuri, Roman Painting (New York: Skira, 1953); Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life, translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Antonella Magagnini and Araldo de Luca, The Art of Pompeii (Vercelli, Italy: White Star, 2010). For an extensive (although optimistic) analysis of the relevance of Vesuvian art for our understanding of early Christianity, see David L. Balch, Contested Ethnicities and Images: Studies in Acts and Art (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); also David L. Balch and Annette Weissenrieder, eds., Contested Spaces: Houses and Temples in Roman Antiquity and the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).
Chapter 4: Deities and Temples
On “religion” in the Roman world, see Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, volume 1, A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and its accompanying volume, Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, volume 2, A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Denis Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Valerie M. Warrior, Roman Religion: A Sourcebook (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2002), and its accompanying volume, Valerie M. Warrior, Roman Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006); Jörge Rüpke, Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ: On the History of Religion in the Roman Imperial Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Rüpke, On Roman Religion: Lived Religion and the Individual in Ancient Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); Rüpke, Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
On monotheistic strands even within Greco-Roman polytheism, see Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999); Stephen Mitchell and Peter van Nuffelen, eds., One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
On the role of women serving in public cultic contexts, see Meghan diLuzio, A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
On the religious context as it pertains to early Christianity, see Hans-Josef Klauck, The Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000); James B. Rives, “Graeco-Roman Religion in the Roman Empire,” Currents in Biblical Research 8 (2010): 240–99.
On Jesus-devotion in polytheistic contexts, see Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).
On temple imagery in John’s Gospel, see Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001); Alan R. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2002).
Chapter 5: Sacrifice and Sin
On the notion of sin in the ancient Hellenistic world, see Andrej Petrovic and Ivana Petrovic, Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion, volume 1, Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
On the overlap between philosophical ethics and “popular morality” in the first century, see Teresa Morgan, Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
On sacrifice in the Greco-Roman world, see F. S. Naiden, Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
On the use of sacrificial metaphors in two early Christian texts, see Jane Lancaster Patterson, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors of Sacrifice in 1 Corinthians and Philippians (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015).
On the possibility that the man of 1 Corinthians 5 is having sexual relations with his father’s second wife while his father is still alive, see Joshua M. Reno, “γυνὴ τοῦ πατρός: Analytic Kin Circumlocution and the Case for Corinthian Adultery,” Journal of Biblical Literature 135 (2016): 827–47.
On sacrifice in Judaism and early Christianity, see Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart, eds., Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017).
Chapter 6: Peace and Security
On the Roman view that war is a necessary instrument to establish peace, see Hannah Cornwell, Pax and the Politics of Peace: Republic to Principate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
On Roman imperial propaganda, see Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Bruce W. Longenecker, “Peace, Prosperity, and Propaganda: Advertisement and Reality in the Early Roman Empire,” in An Introduction to Empire in the New Testament, ed. Adam Winn, 15–45 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016)—a book that offers readings of early Christian texts in relation to Roman imperial ideologies.
On the interpretation of the political graffito “I sing of launderers and the owl . . . ,” see Peter Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 2014), 153; on the interpretation of the explicit political graffito “screwed, I say . . . ,” see Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 122–23.
On early Christianity and Roman imperial ideology, see books listed as further reading for chapter 7.
Chapter 7: Genius and Emperor
On the lares and frescoed snakes as “the spirits of the place” (and other important issues), see especially Harriet I. Flower, The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
On the Roman imperial cult, see Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Duncan Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Boston: Brill, 2004); Gwynaeth McIntyre, A Family of Gods: The Worship of the Imperial Family in the Latin West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).
On Mamia’s temple to “the genius of the colony,” see Duncan Fishwick, “The Inscription of Mamia Again: The Cult of the Genius Augusti and the Temple of the Imperial Cult on the Forum of Pompeii,” Epigraphica 57 (1995): 17–38.
On the Roman imperial cult and early Christianity, see Bruce W. Winter, Divine Honours for the Caesars: The First Christians’ Responses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015). More generally, see Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan L. Reed, eds., Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2011).
For the political critique of Rome in Revelation, see Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984); Richard Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993); Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
For political dimensions of the Gospel of John, see Warren Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (London: T&T Clark, 2008); Tom Thatcher, Greater Than Caesar: Christology and Empire in the Fourth Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).
For political dimensions of the Acts of the Apostles, see C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Drew W. Billings, Acts of the Apostles and the Rhetoric of Roman Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
For discussion of the potential of political critique in Paul, see John M. G. Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 341–86; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 1271–319; Bruce W. Longenecker and Todd D. Still, Thinking through Paul: A Survey of His Life, Letters, and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 334–46; Christoph Heilig, Hidden Criticism? The Methodology and Plausibility of the Search for a Counter-Imperial Subtext in Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017).
On Hebrews as resistance literature, see Jason A. Whitlark, Resisting Empire: Rethinking the Purpose of the Letter to “the Hebrews” (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).
On the interpretation of the “angels of the churches” in Revelation, see Jeremiah N. Bailey, “Spheres and Trajectories: The Angels of the Churches (Revelation 1–3) in Context,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker, 167–92 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016).
On spiritual aspects of the material world in theological perspective, see especially the stimulating works of Walter Wink: Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1984); Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986); Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).
Chapter 8: Mysteries and Knowledge
On the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, see Elaine K. Gazda, ed., The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2000).
The long-standing standard work on ancient mystery cults is Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), although he slightly underplays the extent to which mystery cults at times were seen to promise life after death. For more recent discussions, see Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Jan N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Boston: de Gruyter, 2014).
On Dionysus/Bacchus, see Renate Schlesier, ed., A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism (Boston: de Gruyter, 2011); Alberto Bernabe, Miguel Herrero de Jauregui, Ana Isabel Jimenez San Cristobal, and Raquel Martin Hernandez, eds., Redefining Dionysos (Boston: de Gruyter, 2013).
On the revelation of divine mystery in Judaism and Paul, see Markus Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009). On Judean groups that gathered in secret to share divine mysteries, see Michael Stone, Secret Groups in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). On the question of the extent to which mystery devotion influenced the apostle Paul, see Alexander J. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against Its Graeco-Roman Background (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987).
On the potential influence of Bacchic devotion on Christians (and others), see Courtney Friesen, Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).
On the “once hidden but now revealed” motif in first- and second-century Christian apologetics about divine mystery, see T. J. Lang, Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness: From Paul to the Second Century (Boston: de Gruyter, 2015).
On speech and prophecy especially as it pertains to (women in) Corinthian Jesus-groups, see Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Anna C. Miller, Corinthian Democracy: Democratic Discourse in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015); Jill E. Marshall, Women Praying and Prophesying in Corinth: Gender and Inspired Speech in First Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
Chapter 9: Death and Life
Beyond the books on mystery cults listed as further reading for chapter 8, on ancient Isis-devotion see Jaime Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras, translated by Richard Gordon (Boston: Brill, 2008). On Isis-devotion in Pompeii (and other aspects of the town’s “spiritual ethos” in the aftermath of the earthquake of 62), see Bruce W. Longenecker, “The Empress, the Goddess, and the Earthquake: Atmospheric Conditions Pertaining to Jesus-Devotion in Pompeii,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 59–91.
On the diverse views toward resurrection in early Judaism, see C. D. Elledge, Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism: 200 BCE–CE 200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). On Paul’s apocalyptic understanding of resurrection, see especially J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1980), 135–81.
On the emotions of Jesus in the Gospel of John, see Stephen Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel: Human or Divine? (New York: T&T Clark International, 2005).
On the Gospel of John as a series of “philosophical” discourses on how Jesus Christ brings eternal life to his devotees, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Chapter 10: Prominence and Character
On Pompeian elections, see James L. Franklin, Pompeii: The Electoral Programmata: Campaigns and Politics, AD 71–79 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1980); Henrik Mouritsen, Elections, Magistrates and Municipal Elite: Studies in Pompeian Epigraphy (Rome: L’Erma Di Bretschneider, 1988).
On social prominence and personal character, see Catalina Balmaceda, Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
On women in the public arena, see Emily Hemelrijk, Women and the Roman City in the Latin West (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Hemelrijk, Hidden Lives, Public Personae: Women and Civic Life in the Roman West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
On Jesus-followers in Corinth in relation to structures of social prominence, see John K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); Peter Oakes, “Urban Structure and Patronage: Christ Followers in Corinth,” in Understanding the Social World of the New Testament, ed. Dietmar Neufeld and Richard E. DeMaris, 178–93 (New York: Routledge, 2010); Mark Finney, Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World: 1 Corinthians in Its Greco-Roman Social Setting (London: T&T Clark International, 2013).
On Paul’s theology of “the body of Christ” as protection against prioritizing financial gifting over other forms of gifting, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Paul, Poverty, and the Powers: The Eschatological Body of Christ in the Present Evil Age,” in One God, One People, One Future: Essays in Honor of N. T. Wright, ed. John Anthony Dunne and Eric Lewellen, 363–87 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018).
Chapter 11: Money and Influence
On money in the Roman age, see David Jones, The Bankers of Puteoli: Finance, Trade and Industry in the Roman World (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2006)—a book that explores the relevance of over one hundred business contracts from first-century Puteoli, just down the road from the Vesuvian towns. See also David B. Hollander, Money in the Late Roman Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Andrew Wilson and Alan K. Bowman, eds., Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Daniel Hoyer, Money, Culture, and Well-Being in Rome’s Economic Development, 0–275 CE (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
On coins and their importance for understanding the Greco-Roman context of emergent Christianity, see David H. Wenkel, Coins as Cultural Texts in the World of the New Testament (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).
On the currency of honor in early Christianity, see Stephen C. Barton, “Money Matters: Economic Relations and the Transformation of Value in Early Christianity,” in Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker and Kelly D. Liebengood, 37–59 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); Bruce W. Longenecker, “‘Do Good to All’ (Gal. 6.10): Assets, Capital and Benefaction in Early Christianity,” in Poverty in the Early Church and Today: A Conversation, ed. Steve Walton and Hannah Swithinbank, 43–53 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019).
On James and money, see Miriam Kamell, “The Economics of Humility: The Rich and the Humble in James,” in Longenecker and Liebengood, Engaging Economics, 157–76.
Chapter 12: Literacies and Status
On the Villa of the Papyri, see David Sider, The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005).
On education in the Greco-Roman world, see Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkin, eds., The Oxford Handbook on Children and Education in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and (with reference to Egypt) Raffaella Criboire, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). On forms of education in Pompeii, see Laurentino García y García, Pupils, Teachers and Schools in Pompeii: Childhood, Youth and Culture in the Roman Era (Rome: Bardi Editore, 2005). On ancient training for education, discussion, and dispute, see Eleanor Dickey, Stories of Daily Life from the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
On writing in the Roman age, see Hella Eckhardt, Writing and Power in the Roman World: Literacies and Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
On the literacy (or otherwise) of Jesus, see Chris Keith, Jesus against the Scribal Elite (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).
On literacy in Greco-Roman Judea, see Michael Owen Wise, Language and Literacy in Roman Judaea: A Study of the Bar Kokhba Documents (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); see also the helpful corrective to Wise’s view in Pieter W. van der Horst, review of Michael Owen Wise, Language and Literacy in Roman Judaea: A Study of the Bar Kokhba Documents, in Review of Biblical Literature, August 25, 2016, http://www.bookreviews.org.
On corporate reading in early Christianity, see Dan Nässelqvist, Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1–4 (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Brian J. Wright, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017).
Chapter 13: Combat and Courts
On gladiators in Pompeii, see Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (Los Angeles: Getty, 2003). On the rituals surrounding gladiatorial combat as a form of “performing the deities,” see Jacob A. Latham, Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The Pompa Circensis from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
On Roman warfare, see Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011); Joanne Berry and Nigel Pollard, The Complete Roman Legions (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012); Simon Elliott, Empire State: How the Roman Military Built an Empire (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017).
On Roman courts and the Roman legal system, see Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
The issue of Corinthian Jesus-followers taking each other to court has been studied from a number of angles (some more successful than others). See Bruce W. Winter, “Civil Litigation in Secular Corinth and the Church: The Forensic Background to 1 Corinthians 6:1–8,” New Testament Studies 37 (1991): 559–72; J. D. M. Derrett, “Judgment and 1 Corinthians 6,” New Testament Studies 37 (1991): 22–36; A. C. Mitchell, “Rich and Poor in the Courts of Corinth: Litigiousness and Status in 1 Corinthians 6:1–11,” New Testament Studies 39 (1993): 562–86; Michael Peppard, “Brother against Brother: Controversiae about Inheritance Disputes and 1 Corinthians 6:1–11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 179–92.
On Paul and warfare with spiritual forces, see Lisa M. Bowens, An Apostle in Battle: Paul and Spiritual Warfare in 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
For the significance of the trial motif in the Johannine Gospel, see Andrew T. Lincoln, Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000); P. J. Bekken, The Lawsuit Motif in John’s Gospel from New Perspectives: Jesus Christ, Crucified Criminal and Emperor of the World (Leiden: Brill, 2015). For an earlier study of the topic, see A. E. Harvey, Jesus on Trial (London: SPCK, 1976).
Chapter 14: Business and Success
On occupational groups at Pompeii, see Jinyu Liu, “Pompeii and Collegia: A New Appraisal of the Evidence,” Ancient History Bulletin 22 (2008): 53–70. On associations in the Greco-Roman world, see Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds., Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012).
On associations in relation to Judaism and early Christianity, see Philip A. Harland, Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009); John S. Kloppenborg, Christ’s Associations: Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
On associations, the imperial cult, its economic connections, and Revelation, see Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Chapter 15: Household and Slaves
On slavery in the Greco-Roman world, see Sandra R. Joshel and Lauren Hackworth Petersen, The Material Life of Roman Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). See also Sandra R. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the manumission of men and women, see the entries for Hackworth Petersen, Mouritsen, and Perry cited as further reading for chapter 2. On the progressive views on slavery held by Bryson (the first-century Neopythagorean philosopher), see Simon Swain, Economy, Family, and Society from Rome to Islam: A Critical Edition, English Translation, and Study of Bryson’s Management of the Estate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
On prostitution in Pompeii, see Thomas A. J. McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Sarah Levin-Richardson, The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). On prostitutes in the Greco-Roman world, see Anise K. Strong, Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
On sex in the Roman world, see John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 BC–AD 250 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001); John R. Clarke, Roman Sex: 100 BC to AD 250 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003); Rebecca Langlands, Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
On the “zebra patterns” of the Vesuvian towns, see L. Laken, “Zebra Patterns in Campanian Wall-Painting: A Matter of Function,” Bulletin Antieke Beschauing 78 (2003): 167–89.
On the issue of slavery in early Christianity in its Roman context, see Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006); James Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009); Katherine Ann Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). See also the broader study by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery: The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
With regard to slavery and house churches in Colossians, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Slavery, Sexuality, and House Churches: A Reassessment of Colossians 3:18–4:1 in Light of New Research on the Roman Family,” New Testament Studies 53 (2007): 94–113.
On the question of slavery in Philemon, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Philemon,” in James W. Thompson and Bruce W. Longenecker, Philippians and Philemon, 149–95 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016).
On Christian attitudes toward sex in the context of the Roman world, see William Loader, Making Sense of Sex: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013); Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); and David Wheeler-Reed, Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
On the relevance of the “zebra patterns” in relation to ideologies of slavery in early Christianity, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Slave and Free: Ideal Ideologies in Vesuvian Villas and in Galatians 3:28,” in A Temple Not Made with Hands: Essays in Honor of Naymond H. Keathley, ed. Mikeal C. Parsons and Richard Walsh, 85–102 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018).
Chapter 16: Family and Solidarity
On the political configuration of family in the Roman world, see Susan M. Elliott, Family Empires, Roman and Christian (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2018).
On women in the Roman world, see Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life (London: Duckworth, 2007). On women and household structures with regard to Roman law, see Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood (London: Routledge, 2002). On educated elite women, see Emily A. Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite from Cornelia to Julia Domna (London: Routledge, 1999).
On the construction of masculinity in the Roman world, see Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
On family in the Augustan period, see Beth Severy, Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 2010).
On children and early Christianity, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014); Sharon Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).
On women and early Christianity, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Bruce W. Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006); Lynn Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); Cynthia Long-Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016); Carolyn Osiek, “Growing Up Female in the Pauline Churches: What Did She Do All Day?,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker, 3–22 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016); Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017); Kaisa-Maria Pihlava, Forgotten Women Leaders: The Authority of Women Hosts of Early Christian Gatherings in the First and Second Centuries C.E. (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2017); Alicia D. Meyers, Blessed among Women? Mothers and Motherhood in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
On families and early Christianity, see Stephen C. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Matthew and Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Carolyn Osiek and David L. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997).
On reconfiguring Roman masculinity in early Christianity, see Colleen M. Conway, Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Brittany E. Wilson, Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Chapter 17: Piety and Pragmatism
On locations where early Christians gathered (as testified to by sources from the first three centuries), see Edward Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). See also the imaginative exercise on this topic by Peter Oakes, “Nine Types of Church in Nine Types of Space in the Insula of the Menander,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker, 22–58 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016).
On the after-meal symposium as a context for early Christian teaching and ritual, see Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). On meals as a context for reinforcing the corporate identity of Jesus-followers, see Hal Taussig, In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).
On “faith” (and its cognates) in Roman and Christian contexts, see Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and see the journal essays that deal with her work in New Testament Studies 64 (2018): 243–61.
On Paul’s conviction that the holiness of a believing partner spreads out within a non-Christian household, see Caroline Johnson Hodge, “Married to an Unbeliever: Households, Hierarchies, and Holiness in 1 Corinthians 7:12–16,” Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010): 1–25; Stephen C. Barton, “Sanctification and Oneness in 1 Corinthians with Implications for the Case of ‘Mixed Marriages’ (1 Corinthians 7.12–16),” New Testament Studies 63 (2017): 38–55.
On the Pastoral letters as crafting an identity that unites Christian commitments and Roman values, see T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, Civilized Piety: The Rhetoric of Pietas in the Pastoral Epistles and the Roman Empire (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017).
Chapter 18: Powers and Protection
On the use of “magic” and protection against evil in the ancient world, see Andrew T. Wilburn, Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012); Justin Meggitt, “Did Magic Matter? The Saliency of Magic in the Early Roman Empire,” Journal of Ancient History 1 (2013): 1–60; Eleni Pachoumi, The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017; this book might benefit from substituting the term “suprahuman forces,” or some equivalent, for the misleading term “divine” in the title).
On Judean use of magic, see Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Michael D. Swartz, The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).
On early Christian texts in a world of suprahuman powers, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Until Christ Is Formed in You: Suprahuman Forces and Moral Character in Galatians,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61 (1999): 92–108; Hans-Josef Klauck, Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity: The World of the Acts of the Apostles (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Clinton E. Arnold, “‘I Am Astonished That You Are So Quickly Turning Away!’ (Galatians 1.6): Paul and Anatolian Folk Belief,” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 429–49; Arnold, Ephesians, Power, and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light of Its Historical Setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Natalie R. Webb, “Powers of Protection in Pompeii and Paul: The Apotropaic Function of the Cross in the Letter to the Galatians,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light: Texts, People, Situations, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker, 93–122 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016); John H. Elliott, Beware the Evil Eye, volume 4, The Evil Eye in the Bible and the Ancient World—Postbiblical Israel and Early Christianity through Late Antiquity (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017).
On stories of miracles in early Christianity and its Roman context, see Wendy Cotter, Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of New Testament Miracle Stories (New York: Routledge, 1999); Cotter, The Christ of the Miracle Stories: Portrait through Encounter (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010); Lee M. Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014).
On Mark’s Gospel as functioning to move people past a simplistic understanding of Jesus as a deity of protective power, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Mark’s Gospel for the Second Church of the Late First Century,” in The Fullness of Time: Essays on Christology, Creation and Eschatology in Honor of Richard Bauckham, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Grant Macaskill, and Jonathan T. Pennington, 197–214 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).
Chapter 19: Banqueting and the Dead
On the many aspects of death in the Roman world, see Valerie M. Hope, Death in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 2007); Hope, Roman Death: The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome (New York: Continuum, 2009). Most books on the subject of the afterlife in the Roman world (often in connection with “mystery religions”) are fairly hefty. See, for instance, Katharina Waldner, Richard Gordon, and Wolfgang Spickermann, eds., Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016); Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (New York: Routledge, 2007). Somewhat easier to digest (but also ranging widely) is John Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 1999).
On the memorializing of memory in a Pompeian necropolis (especially Vesonius Phileros, discussed in chapter 13), see Henri Duday and William Van Andringa, “Archaeology of Memory: About the Forms and the Time of Memory in a Necropolis of Pompeii,” in Ritual Matters: Material Remains and Ancient Religion, ed. Claudia Moser and Jennifer Knust, 73–86 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017).
On death and the afterlife in early Christianity, see Richard N. Longenecker, ed., Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Peter G. Bolt, Jesus’ Defeat of Death: Persuading Mark’s Early Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Stephen E. Potthoff, The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage: Near-Death Experiences, Ancestor Cult, and the Archaeology of Paradise (New York: Routledge, 2016).
Looking Further: A Conclusion
On initiatives of Jesus-followers in relation to the poverty of their world, see Bruce W. Longenecker, Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). For a precursor along different lines, see Justin J. Meggitt, Paul, Poverty and Survival (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). The subject has been explored in numerous ways since then (with varying results). See, for instance, David J. Armitage, Theories of Poverty in the World of the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016); Thomas R. Blanton and Raymond Pickett, eds., Paul and Economics: A Handbook (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017); Thomas R. Blanton, A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
On poverty and wealth in early Christianity, see Bruce W. Longenecker and Kelly D. Liebengood, eds., Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); Helen Rhee, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012); Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Brown, Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016).
On the economic relationships embedded within “the parable of the Good Samaritan,” see Bruce W. Longenecker, “The Story of the Samaritan and the Inn-Keeper (Luke 10:30–35): A Study in Character Rehabilitation,” Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 17 (2009): 422–47.