The gift, argues Jacques Derrida, is an impossibility. It is impossible, in Derrida’s view, because “for there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt.”1 The gift is “aneconomic” in that it must always remain outside the “circle” of reciprocal exchange that characterizes the marketplace, a context in which, when a good or service is transmitted, another good or service—or, better, currency—must be transmitted in return: “If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back what I gave him or her, there will not have been a gift.”2 The gift is impossible because, as soon as it is recognized as “gift,” its recognition as such calls into play a network of symbolic associations: gratitude, reciprocity, gift-debt, and countergift. These associations, in Derrida’s view, disqualify that which is transmitted from being categorized as “gift.”
Central to Derrida’s argument is his construal of that which is “economic,” a term that he restricts in its application to mercantile exchange, conceptualized using the metaphor of the circle: the “law of the economy” demands a “return to the point of departure, to the origin, also to the home.”3 The “economy” entails circulation: reciprocity and return. The gift remains “aneconomic” in the sense that “it must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation of the circle in the form of return to the point of departure.”4
Derrida’s definition, however, fails in several respects. First, as Pierre Bourdieu has shown, the “economy” can only with difficulty be limited to transactions that occur within the context of mercantile exchange.5 Goods and services are frequently transmitted in extramercantile contexts: in the home, among friends, or, in the classic anthropological literature on gift exchange, between clans. The Greek term oikonomia, from which “economy” derives, originally referred to the ordering of relations within the household—the location par excellence in which mercantile exchanges are suppressed in favor of gifts.6
Second—more damaging to the thesis—is the fact that, as André Petitat has shown, Derrida’s definition of the gift results not from an examination of the actual processes involved in the transmission of what we might label “gifts,” but rather from a denial or inversion of characteristics associated with market exchange: circulation and return, calculation, self-interest, and obligation.7 As such, Derrida’s notion of a “pure,” unilateral gift inhabits an imaginary symbolic space—a utopia of exchange, or an “inverted dream” in which all of the purportedly negative characteristics of mercantile exchanges are absent. Rather than resulting from a robust analysis of the actual processes involved in gift exchange, Derrida’s understanding rests on the postulate that “gift” may be defined simply on the basis of the denial that it possesses characteristics of the market economy: it represents that which is “aneconomic.” The “gift” constitutes that imaginary space which “must keep a relation of foreignness to the circle” of reciprocity. However, as Derrida himself seems to have recognized, the appearance of a gift under the conditions that he describes is “impossible”: the “simple recognition of gift as gift” is sufficient “to annul the gift as gift.”8 As Petitat makes clear, Derrida’s definition entirely removes his discussion of the gift from the actual world of human exchange, locating it instead in an impossible, utopian space.
Although Derrida was right to point to distinctions between gift and market economies, any definition of the gift that operates solely according to the logic of negation is clearly inadequate. Gift exchanges in the “real world” of socioeconomic interaction exhibit an array of characteristics, only some of which are opposed to mercantile exchanges (a point to which we will return). Although, as Petitat points out, the range of what we might call gift exchange covers a host of diverse interactions that cannot be reduced to a single typology or set of principles,9 nevertheless some regularities may be observed. Jacques Godbout and Alain Caillé point out that the gift may be viewed as a “catalyst and an outward sign of elective affinities,” or as “the embodiment of the system of interpersonal social relations.”10 In the opinion of the first-century CE Roman senator Seneca the Younger, gift exchange constitutes the “chief bond of human society.”11 Derrida omits the socially formative aspects of gift exchange entirely from his account. The distinction between gift and mercantile exchange lies not, as Derrida assumed, in the supposedly irreciprocal character of the gift, but in the type of obligation implied in the reciprocal donation: unlike the obligation to render payment in market transactions, the obligation of reciprocity in gift exchange is not enforceable in a court of law; its sanctions reside in social disapproval and the weakening or dissolution of social bonds. As the gift is “the embodiment of the system of interpersonal social relations,” its refusal or reticence to reciprocate it—whether with a countergift, a display of gratitude, or, what is perhaps the most valuable gift, the gift of oneself: one’s time and one’s presence—constitutes a denial of social relations.
In attempting to distance the gift from mercantile transactions, Derrida’s definition of the gift inadvertently ceded too much to the marketplace. Assuming that circularity, reciprocation, and return were characteristics only of the market, he was compelled to deny that the unilateral, irreciprocal gift was possible. It became instead “the impossible”: it is that which, once recognized as gift, ceases to exist as such. The interpreter must be careful, however, not to concede too much ground to the marketplace by assuming, with Derrida, that “return” nullifies the gift. The “circle” of exchange is not solely the province of the market; it is territory over which the gift also shares a claim.
Derrida’s “impossible” gift bears some similarity to the “free gift” sometimes posited by Christian theology.12 Robert Duvall’s film The Apostle features an itinerant, outlaw preacher who, like Paul of Tarsus, styles himself an “apostle.” In a climactic scene, the “Apostle E.F.”—whose self-ascribed title overshadows his name, indicated only by initials13—preaches a farewell sermon to the congregation that he had painstakingly assembled in a one-room church in fictive Bayou Boutte, Louisiana.14 In an impassioned discourse on the death of Jesus, understood as a “gift” to humanity, an act of sacrifice by which sins might be forgiven, providing “salvation” for the sinner, the “Apostle” opines: “He died for us so that we could be saved. It’s free, but it ain’t cheap.”15 The “free gift” of salvation did not come cheaply in Christian theology: it was “purchased” at the price of Jesus’ death. It is “free” in the sense that the recipient need not, in the manner of most market transactions, offer repayment in the form of a specified amount of currency, exchanged at a time and place negotiated before the transaction: “salvation” cannot be bought.
The characterization of the gift as “free,” however, ought not be taken to imply that no reciprocal action is expected within the Christian “economy of salvation”: affective bonds are forged between “believers” and their God, who sacrificed his only son, and Jesus, who willingly gave himself so that others might live. Tears in the eyes of the “Apostle’s” parishioners testify to the depth of affect that may be activated by an impassioned account of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Nor is the gift unilateral: those who have been “saved” willingly offer their tithes, their time, their thanksgiving, and their praise to the authors of such great gifts, the heavenly Father and Jesus, his son. The gift, along with the affect and gratitude that it inspires, establishes a circle that, in the view of those who participate in it, unites the human and the divine, the terrestrial and the heavenly, in a system of social relations: worshipers give of themselves because their savior first gave of himself. The “free gift” does not fail to generate reciprocity, nor does it for that reason cease to function as “gift.” On the contrary, the constitution and reconstitution of social bonds, both actual and imagined, are among its most salient characteristics.
The “free gift” can be neither bought nor sold under the conditions of the marketplace, but like market transactions, it “returns” to its giver countergifts, gratitude, thanksgiving, or services: both the market and the gift may aptly be described by the metaphor of the circle. But there is a crucial difference: with market exchange, once the circle is completed by the rendering of payment, it ceases to exist as such—no reciprocal obligation remains to lend it permanence. It is otherwise with the gift: when the countergift is offered, the circle persists, as donors becomes donees, themselves obliged to make a return. The “circle” of the gift progresses through the dimension of time, in spirals.
The aim of the present work is neither to clarify theological issues concerning relations between humans and their culturally postulated god or gods, nor to reiterate insights into the nature of gift exchange already registered by the anthropologists and sociologists whose work has been central to the explication of “the gift” in its myriad cultural forms. Rather, the aim is twofold: (1) to delineate the characteristics of the “economy” of gift exchange evident in the letters of the first-century Jewish evangelist Paul of Tarsus; and (2) to make use of Paul’s letters as a heuristic device through which to clarify and elaborate issues not yet raised in previous studies of gift exchange. The task is necessarily multidisciplinary, involving the detailed study of Paul’s letters (an exercise familiar to New Testament scholars) within the economic context of the Roman empire (involving classics and economic history), prompted by questions of gift exchange more frequently pursued in departments of sociology or anthropology. Readers are invited to exercise clemency in their judgments regarding the book’s success in this endeavor: these fields are broad—each one too broad to be fully mastered by a single individual, and collectively far too large for such mastery even to be conceived. My aims are therefore circumscribed: I hope to make use of studies of gift exchange to illuminate Paul, and to make use of Paul to refine and elaborate the study of gift exchange.
In a series of books and essays that have spanned his career, Jonathan Z. Smith has developed the notion that the academic study of religion ought to entail—in addition to an examination of the social context and history of interpretation of a given text—three crucial elements: “comparison,” “redescription” and “rectification.”16 Predicated on the view that knowledge is constituted on the basis of systems of classification and discrimination, comparison is the prerequisite to a nuanced understanding of primary data—in Smith’s case, those of “religion.”17 He writes: “With at least two exempla in view, one is prepared to undertake their comparison both in terms of aspects and relations held to be significant, expressed in the tropes of similarities and differences, and with respect to some category, question, theory, or model of interest to the study of religion.”18 The goal of comparison, in Smith’s view, is “the redescription of the exempla (each in light of the other) and a rectification of the academic categories in relation to which they have been imagined.”19 The present work involves a number of comparisons between primary sources from the Roman imperial period, as for example, comparisons between Paul and Seneca on aspects of gift exchange (chapters 2 and 3) and between Paul and Pliny on “gifts” of status (chapter 6). In other chapters, comparisons are made between Paul’s letters and the formulations of recent theorists of gift exchange (chapters 4–6) and sociopolitical status (chapters 6 and 7). In each case, the “aim” of comparison entails, as Smith suggests, a redescription of the primary source material and a “rectification” of the academic categories in relation to which gift exchange has been imagined. It is my hope that this procedure will result not only in an interesting and informative redescription of Paul’s discourses and practices, but—more importantly—an elaboration and refinement of theories of gift exchange that will be of utility within a number of academic disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, classics, and religious studies.
The discussion of gift exchange necessarily involves interdisciplinarity. The patriarch of academic discussions of the subject, Marcel Mauss, the nephew of and collaborator with Émile Durkheim and a founding editor of L’Année sociologique (1898), received a chair in the religions of “primitive” peoples at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1902.20 His work traversed three academic disciplines: sociology, anthropology, and religion. Each of these disciplines has subsequently interpreted, critiqued, and elaborated the seminal insights outlined in his Essai sur le don (The Gift), first published in 1925.
Alvin Gouldner’s 1960 article in the American Sociological Review posited that reciprocity was a “universal” norm, although “its concrete formulations may vary with time and place.”21 Even if, faced with data that are necessarily incomplete, one may hesitate to label any practice or norm “universal,” it is certain that reciprocity is widespread: it is evident in a number of cultures globally throughout recorded history.22 Gift exchange, one of the most prominent types of reciprocal interaction, is likewise alive and well, even in the present situation of globalized corporate capitalism: the gift has not been eradicated by the market.23
Recent studies in primatology have demonstrated just how “widespread” reciprocity really is: not only humans, but also primates exhibit patterns of reciprocal exchange. Frans de Waal has demonstrated that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) groomed by companions are more likely later to share food with their groomers than with other members of their group.24 In an analysis of studies on the subject, Gabriele Schino and Filippo Aureli have shown that reciprocity plays a larger role than kinship in grooming among primates.25 In a separate meta-analysis, Schino and Aureli demonstrated that “female primates groom preferentially those group mates that groom them most”;26 this is a “general pattern that seems to be widespread across the primate order.”27 These and other data suggest that “primates are indeed able to exchange grooming both for itself and for different rank-related benefits.”28 As a phenomenon that is exhibited not only by humans across disparate geographic and historical locations, but also by our closest nonhuman relatives, the reciprocal exchange of goods and services, which we might otherwise label “gift exchange,” is too broad a topic to be adequately addressed from within the confines of any given academic discipline. Gift exchange is a topic that invites—indeed demands—a multidisciplinary approach.
There is, however, an aspect of gift exchange exhibited in the letters of Paul that has not yet been demonstrated in our primate relatives. The goods and services exchanged among orangutans, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys involve grooming, food sharing, sexual access, and protection—evident material benefits. In contrast, the “goods” to which Paul claimed to have access were symbolic in nature; they existed not in the form of material objects or services, but in the form of assurances of salvation from an apocalyptic judgment that he deemed imminent and the promise of eternal life in a heavenly existence. The gifts that Paul claimed to mediate differ from those of the capuchin monkey in that the former entail the analytical category “religion”—a category that, as Jonathan Z. Smith and others have cogently argued, “is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define. It is a second-order, generic concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that a concept such as ‘language’ plays in linguistics or ‘culture’ plays in anthropology.”29 The concept is not, on that account, any less useful in the service of academic analysis. As a second-order, academic construct, the category of “religion” serves useful heuristic functions, providing a rubric under which particular exempla might be juxtaposed, their similarities and differences identified, and the significance of those comparisons for the critique or elaboration of various theoretical constructs explicated.30
Like “religion,” “gift”—the term central to the analyses offered in this book—is an unstable signifier, with the potential to be defined in multiple, often contradictory ways. For Derrida, as we have seen, “gift” implied an “aneconomic” system, devoid of reciprocation or return of any kind. For Mauss, it was quite otherwise: “the gift” constitutes part of a “system of total services” that performs economic functions inasmuch as it involves “the exchange of goods, wealth, and products” on a collective scale.31 Using the developmental model that prevailed in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States (a model that, incidentally, has been implicated as part of the ideological apparatus of colonialism),32 Mauss posited that “primitive” societies operated on the basis of a “system of exchange that is different” from “our” modern market economy: “it functioned before the discovery of forms of contract and sale that may be said to be modern (Semitic, Hellenic, and Roman), and also before money, minted and inscribed.”33 The instruments of enforcement of this “system of total services” were not legal, but moral, religious, and spiritual.34
The moral basis of Mauss’s “system of total services” rested on three obligations: to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. The failure to meet any of these obligations carried penalties: the loss of honor, prestige, and authority and, in extreme cases, even warfare between tribes or clans.35 Gifts are in theory voluntary, but “in reality they are given and reciprocated obligatorily.”36 They are “apparently free and disinterested, but nevertheless constrained and self-interested,” resting on “a polite fiction, formalism, and social deceit . . . when really there is obligation and economic self-interest.”37
As Mauss makes clear, two of the characteristics often predicated of gift-giving, voluntarism and disinterest, do not constitute definitive characteristics of gift exchange; these attributes constitute nothing more than “a polite fiction, formalism, and social deceit.” Mauss’s logic of binary opposition, however, oversimplifies the complex character of transactions that we might label “gift exchange.” It is this oppositional logic, by which freedom and constraint, voluntarism and obligation, self-interest and disinterest are viewed as stark alternatives, that prompts Mauss’s unflattering characterization of gift exchange as “fiction” and “social deceit.” According to this logic, the gift may be characterized by only one term within each of these sets of paired descriptors, but never both, in varying degrees. It is likewise the logic of binary opposition that prompts Derrida to argue that the gift is impossible: the gift is defined as that which is “aneconomic” rather than “economic,” nonreciprocal rather than reciprocated, gratuitous rather than calculated.
The binary logic that both Mauss and Derrida use, however, fails to capture the nuance of gift exchange. It leads to the inevitable conclusions: either the gift is a “fiction” and “social” deceit, or it is an impossibility, existing only in a utopia of exchange. Most gift exchanges, however, exist somewhere between the binary extremes: given neither wholly freely nor entirely under constraint, neither wholly voluntarily nor entirely out of obligation, neither from unadulterated self-interest nor due wholly to concern for the other, neither calculating costs and benefits with precision nor entirely lacking such calculation. Existing in the spaces between imagined binary extremes, “the gift” resists easy definition or systematization.
Given its myriad cultural variations, gift exchange is characterized by an “irreducible heterogeneity,” despite all attempts to specify its rules, norms, or definitive qualities.38 Nevertheless, the notion of the gift is not without utility. We may identify several characteristics associated with gift exchange that, although failing to amount to a formal definition, nonetheless serve as useful heuristic devices for distinguishing gifts from other types of exchange:
1. The gift is that which is described by the parties involved in an exchange as a “gift,” “donation,” “present,” “offering,” or a synonymous term;
2. actors describe the transmission in question using forms of the verb “to give,” “to donate,” “to present,” or synonymous terms. The “gift” is that which is construed as “given”;39
3. the “gift” is often, but not always, followed by a reciprocal gift (“countergift”) offered in return;
4. the presentation of the countergift is often, but not always, deferred for a period deemed appropriate on the basis of local practices;
5. distinguishing it from both “barter” and “sale,” neither the value of the potential countergift nor the time and place at which it might be presented is negotiated in advance of the initial exchange;
6. generally, the failure of a recipient to offer a countergift incurs no legal sanction; it may, however, precipitate social sanctions (loss of honor, prestige, authority; the termination of friendly relations; or the initiation of hostile relations);
7. the reception of a gift is often acknowledged by a display of gratitude and thanksgiving.
Although the fulfillment of one or more of the conditions set forth in items three through seven above offers good indications that a given transaction might be categorized as “gift,” the attributions of the actors involved are paramount to the classification of the transaction, as indicated by items one and two. Gift exchange entails cognitive and symbolic elements, consisting in its classification and description as “gift” by those party to the exchange, and behavioral elements, consisting of a display of gratitude, the offering of a countergift, and so on. Since they are not observable criteria, and since they likely exist in varying degrees in multiple types of exchanges, schemes based on dyads such as freedom/constraint, self-interest/concern for the other, and calculation/gratuitousness are not useful criteria for distinguishing “gifts” from other types of exchange.
Paul’s letters present an opportunity for the elaboration of two domains of discourse and practice: “religion” and “gift.” Although the category of “religion” may well have been foreign to Paul40—there is no exact equivalent in the Koine Greek in which he wrote and spoke—nevertheless it is of utility to the contemporary observer, as the classification invites comparisons and contrasts with other individuals and groups whose discourses and practices make significant reference to culturally postulated divine beings.41 The “gift” was, in contrast, a native category for Paul; his Greek includes a rich vocabulary of gifting terminology: dōron (“gift”), anathema (“offering”), didōmi (“to give”), charis (“gift,” “favor,” “thanks”), charizomai (“to give graciously”). It has long been recognized that gift exchange was a foundational element in Greco-Roman religions (a genus of which Paul’s religion was a species), as sacrifices offered at temples and shrines were construed as gifts to the gods that invited reciprocation according to the principle do ut des, “I give in order that you might give.”42 Paul, too, claimed to function as a mediator of gifts between humans and the god of Israel. Gifts of Israel’s god were rendered accessible, in his view, through his preaching of the “good news” about Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and future authority over beings both heavenly and terrestrial. Conversely, gifts offered to Paul could be construed as gifts to Israel’s god: his person served as a substitute temple, a mobile mediator between humans and the divine.
As Mauss recognized, gift exchange forms a “system of total services” by which material goods and services of various types are circulated. Paul, however, offers an opportunity to delineate the consequences of a different, albeit parallel, set of interactions in which symbolic gifts—those posited as proceeding to or from a deity or deities—enter into a system of exchange with material goods and services. The concern of each of the chapters that follow is to delineate the material consequences of the symbolic exchanges that Paul posits, as “religion” meets “gift” within the sociopolitical contexts of various early Christian assemblies in the mid-first century CE.
Following this introduction, the second chapter, “Symbolic Goods as Media of Exchange in Paul’s Gift Economy,” enlists Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the “economy of symbolic goods,” in conjunction with Seneca the Younger’s extended meditation on benefaction, as points of comparison illuminating Paul’s notions of gift exchange between humans and the god of Israel. Axioms of reciprocal gift exchange between humans, Israel’s god, and Jesus, interpreted as a divine being, are examined in Paul’s letter to the Romans, 2 Corinthians, and the letter to Philemon, indicating a “system of total services” in which both material and postulated “spiritual” goods play significant roles. The delineation of the logic by which goods and services were transmitted in early Christian assemblies associated with Paul lays the foundation for the discussions in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 3, “The Benefactor’s Account Book: The Rhetoric of Gift Reciprocation According to Seneca and Paul,” extends the comparison between Paul and Seneca. Whereas Seneca advises against issuing reminders of a gift given, in his letter to Philemon, Paul obliquely calls attention to the “gift of salvation” the he claimed to mediate. This difference in rhetoric and praxis is examined in relation to the diametrically opposed economic situations of the two agents, and its implications, both for the circulation of goods and services and for the allocation of honor and prestige, are discussed. The chapter indicates the extent to which cultural discourses and practices associated with gift exchange may be strategically modified and adapted by sociopolitical agents in their attempts to access valued resources.
Chapter 4, “Gift or Commodity? On the Classification of Paul’s Unremunerated Labor,” elaborates on the distinction between gift and commodity developed by James Carrier and problematized by Gretchen Herrmann and William Miller. The chapter examines the ways in which the categorization of a good or service exchanged does not rest simply on the basis of the “objective” characteristics of the transaction, but results instead from a “politics of classification” in which agents negotiate, classify, and reclassify exchanges in order to exploit or activate the possibilities, associations, and sociopolitical consequences inherent in various classificatory categories.
Chapter 5, “Classification and Social Relations: The Dark Side of the Gift,” analyzes the process of contestation and negotiation involved in the classification of Paul’s unremunerated labor as an itinerant evangelist periodically active in the city of Corinth. The characterization of the social relations (whether friendly or hostile) of traveling evangelists temporarily resident in the city was both contingent on and a constitutive factor in the classification of “apostolic” labor and the various forms of support that it entailed as “gift,” “theft,” “sale,” or “parasitic” exploitation. The chapter constitutes a case study in the politics of classification that is a constitutive element of the exchange process.
Chapter 6, “The Gift of Status,” distinguishes two types of status: positional status, entailing roles or positions, each with its own obligations, duties, privileges, and responsibilities; and accorded status, or honor and prestige. On the basis of examples in the letters of Pliny the Younger, the chapter demonstrates that positional status was often granted as a gift or donation by highly placed patrons—a role fulfilled in Pliny’s letters by the emperor Trajan. Like Pliny, Paul viewed positional status as a gift from those in authority; however, he believed it was primarily the god of Israel who was able to grant positional status. The chapter examines the role of postulated “gifts of status” in orchestrating a hierarchical sociopolitical organization within the early Christian assemblies. The discussion advances the study of gift exchange in that, although sociological and anthropological studies have long noted the close correlation between gift-giving and status, the fact that positional status may itself be granted as a gift has not to my knowledge previously been recognized.
Chapter 7, “Spiritual Gifts and Status Inversion,” enlists Carole Crumley’s notion of “heterarchy” as a means both to critique and to elaborate Wayne Meeks’s fundamental insights regarding “status inconsistency” within early Christian assemblies. Within the heterarchical situation of the assemblies, various schemes for according honor and prestige were readily available. In opposition to schemes in which honor and prestige were strongly correlated with wealth, Paul proposed an alternative paradigm in which prestige was associated with the “gifts of the spirit” of Israel’s god. Chapter 8 briefly summarizes the findings of the preceding chapters and considers their implications, both for religious studies and for studies of “the gift.”