In the wake of Paul Veyne’s Le Pain et le cirque (1976),1 historians of Mediterranean antiquity have recognized that systems characterized by reciprocity served to reproduce forms of social and political order.2 This system operated according to the logic of exchange; gifts and favors, whether personal or political, obliged the recipient to respond with a gift or favor in return. Both gift and countergift could take various forms, including money, material goods, public honor and recognition, and access to social networks.3 Inasmuch as these gifts and countergifts consisted of exchanges in material goods and services involving human labor, their regular transmission functioned as an economic system. Gift exchange, however, was not conducted on a mercantile basis, according to fixed rates of exchange and dates of repayment. Neither the exact value of the reciprocal gift nor the date on which it would be presented was predetermined. The reciprocity system served an economic function, albeit in accordance with nonmercantile principles.
This chapter argues that there also existed another type of exchangeable product within the reciprocity systems of Mediterranean antiquity. This type, the “religious symbolic good,” consists of benefits ostensibly mediated by the power of a divine being.4 Since this type involves nonmaterial, linguistically mediated productions, it falls into the broader category of “symbolic goods” identified by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In his discussion of the economy of the Catholic Church, Bourdieu treats the “goods of salvation” (i.e., the bestowal of a beatific afterlife) as an exchangeable product, access to which is controlled by the monopoly of a clerical elite.5 Reciprocal systems in which symbolic productions play a constitutive role are designated “economies of symbolic goods.”
The argument developed in this chapter proceeds in two steps. First, on the basis of a treatise of Seneca the Younger, the chapter outlines the main tenets of the system of reciprocity as it was practiced in Greco-Roman antiquity. A system of reciprocity is salutary for the operation of economies of symbolic goods, as it provides the conditions under which religious discourse may function as a product exchangeable with other products. Second, the chapter considers one writer of this period, Paul of Tarsus, as a test case to determine whether religious economies of symbolic goods were operative in early Christian communities. Paul, I argue, describes situations in which religious discourse, material goods, and services involving human labor are held to be exchangeable within the context of an ethic of reciprocity. Paul, in other words, operates within the framework of a religious economy of symbolic goods. Although other Pauline letters are pertinent, a brief survey of Romans, 2 Corinthians, and Philemon suffices to convey the key concepts.
During the latter half of the first century CE, the Roman rhetorician and statesman Seneca wrote a sustained reflection on the theory and practice of gift-giving, De Beneficiis (“On Benefits”). Seneca describes a system of reciprocity similar to those that have been attested in a variety of cultural contexts.6 He outlines a simple principle: a gift given elicits a return from the recipient. This principle is demonstrated in artistic depictions of the Graces, who were often portrayed as three youthful sisters dressed in loose, transparent veils and dancing hand in hand. Seneca interprets the picture allegorically:
Why do the sisters hand in hand dance in a ring which returns upon itself? For the reason that a benefit [beneficium] passing in its course from hand to hand returns nevertheless to the giver [ad dantem revertitur]; the beauty of the whole is destroyed if the course is anywhere broken, and it has most beauty if it is continuous and maintains an uninterrupted succession.7
Gifts, ideally, pass “from hand to hand,” eventually returning to their giver. For the system to operate successfully, it must “maintain an uninterrupted succession” (i.e., gifts given must be reciprocated). Ingratitude, for Seneca, is the ultimate vice (Ben. 1.1.2; 1.10.4; 3.1.1; 3.6.1–2), because it interrupts the pattern in which gift is followed by countergift. When there is no gratitude, no return is made; the ring of the Graces is broken.
Although Seneca defines a benefit (beneficium) as a gift concerning which the giver takes no thought of return (Ben. 2.31.2; 1.1.9; 1.2.4), it is clear that, in his view, the receiver ought to have the thought of return uppermost in his or her mind: “The man who intends to be grateful, immediately, while he is receiving, should turn his thought to repaying” (2.25.3). There is a stark contrast between the (ideal) attitudes of giver and receiver: “the one should be taught to make no record of the amount, the other to feel indebted for more than the amount” (1.4.2–4). Ingratitude, or the refusal to perceive oneself as indebted to a gift-giver, is the paradigmatic vice (1.1.2; 1.10.4; 3.1.1; 3.6.1–2). The giver is entitled to a return, above all in the form of gratitude (gratia) from the recipient, but also—as Seneca is at pains to point out—in the form of a material countergift (2.35.1). Although it is bad form for the giver to acknowledge an expectation of a return (1.2.3; 2.6.2; 2.10.4), nonetheless the reciprocity system demands that one be made. Giving a benefit is analogous to farming, writes Seneca: one must cultivate it—while avoiding the appearance of doing so—from the time of planting until harvest. Eventually, a well-cultivated benefit yields a healthy return (2.11.4).
The gift, in economic terms, is analogous to a loan.8 As with a loan, the giving of a gift places the recipient under a debt. Seneca muses on the sentiment aroused by being placed under such an obligation: “sometimes, not merely after having received benefits, but because we have received them, we consider the givers our worst enemies” (Ben. 3.1.1). Bourdieu notes a Kabyle proverb that expresses the same sentiment: “A gift is a misfortune,” the proverb goes, because it must be repaid.9
However, the countergift need not be repaid with the same currency in which the original gift was made. While some types of reciprocity did proceed on the basis of an exchange of similar material goods, in other cases, a material gift was reciprocated in the form of social support or the bestowal of honor upon the gift-giver. Numerous inscriptions attest the bestowal of public honors in the form of proclamations, statues, honorific inscriptions, and the like in return for public service or material benefits bestowed.10 Such forms of reciprocation, which do not consist of a return in kind (e.g., material good for material good), are nonetheless viewed as providing adequate recompense for the original donation.
Both ancient practice and modern scholarship have recognized that the system of reciprocity need not, and often does not, consist of exchanges in which the countergift represents a type of product identical with that of the original gift. This raises the questions: how does one determine which cultural products, in any given milieu, are accorded a value such that they might be traded within a system of reciprocal exchange, thus marking them as goods recognized within that system? Were the benefits posited by religious discourse, which existed not in material form, but in the nonmaterial forms of discourse and imagination, accorded a value that enabled them to enter, as goods, into an economic system based on reciprocal exchange? To answer these questions, we consider three letters of Paul as test cases.
Paul, I argue, describes an economy of symbolic goods operative within early Christian assemblies. This economy was based on the ideals of reciprocity practiced throughout the Mediterranean region in antiquity.11 Paul’s own reliance on the ethic of reciprocity has been well established in several recent studies, including those of G. W. Peterman, Stephan Joubert, Zeba Crook, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, David Briones, and John Barclay.12 In what follows, I explicate Paul’s use of religious symbolic goods within this system of exchange.
Paul assumes that not only monetary goods, but also symbolic goods are exchangeable within the reciprocity system. He treats religious symbolic goods (e.g., promises of an ameliorated afterlife) as exchangeable with other goods recognized within the system (i.e., currency, comestibles, the mobilization of human labor, etc.). In Paul’s system, the benefit (charis) ostensibly granted by the god of Israel is identified with the justification of sinners resulting from Jesus’ crucifixion; previous transgressions against covenantal norms are pardoned (Gal 2:19–21; 2 Cor 5:21–6:1; Rom 3:24–26; 5:15, 17).13 This justification, Paul supposes, has stunning results, including acquittal at the god of Israel’s universal judgment, an event that Paul perceived as imminent (1 Thess 4:13–18), and a home in the heavens in a glorified, or luminous, and thus godlike, body (Rom 5:2; cp. 1 Cor 15:35–57).14 These nonmaterial benefits, construed as the direct result of a charis, a “gift” or “benefit” bestowed by Israel’s god, exist only in symbolic form, in discourse and the imagination.15 Paul, as we will see, accorded these discursive benefits a material exchange value.
In the context of a discussion of a collection of funds from Gentile churches to be delivered to the Jerusalem church,16 Paul formulates a principle of exchangeability between material and symbolic goods:
For [the churches in] Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to establish a certain fellowship with the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. They were pleased; indeed, they stand in debt to them [opheiletai eisin autōn], for if they [the Jerusalem church] have shared with the Gentiles their spiritual things [ta pneumatika autōn], they [the Gentiles] are obligated [opheilousin] to render service to them even in material things [en tois sarkikois]. (Rom 15:26–27)17
According to this formulation, the members of the Jerusalem church have bestowed on the Gentiles their “spiritual things” (ta pneumatika). This act of gift-giving obliges the recipient to return a gift. In Paul’s language, as the result of Jerusalem’s gift, the Gentiles “stand in debt” to them. This debt need not be repaid in kind (i.e., “spiritual things” for “spiritual things”); material goods (ta sarkika) constitute a suitable return. In Paul’s economy of symbolic goods, for which Rom 15:27 stands as an excellent summary, “spiritual things” and “material things” stand in a relationship of exchangeability. “Spiritual things” are accorded material value.
A year or two before penning his succinct formulation of the economy of symbolic goods in Rom 15:27,18 Paul treated the subject of the Gentile contribution to the Jerusalem church in the “Collection Letters” in 2 Cor 8–9.19 These letters, brought together in the canonical version of 2 Corinthians, appeal to the congregations in Corinth and Achaia (especially Cenchreae) to make weekly contributions to a fund that Paul would eventually collect and deliver to the Jerusalem church (cp. 1 Cor 16:1–4; Rom 15:25–26). As in Rom 15:27, Paul formulates a vision in which material goods (in the form of currency) are viewed as exchangeable with symbolic goods. Second Corinthians 9:6–15 illustrates the point.20
After giving notice that he has sent an unnamed “brother” to Achaia in order to ensure that regular contributions are being made to the collection in advance of his visit to retrieve the amassed sum, Paul assures readers that, despite this precaution, the collection is not carried out under compulsion (9:7), nor as a pretext for personal greed (8:19–21). Rather, it is undertaken as a “good deed” (ergon agathon)21 grounded in the economic self-sufficiency (autarkeia) of the Achaian congregation. “God,” after all, “loves a cheerful giver,” Paul reminds his addressees (9:7, citing Prov. 22:8a LXX). But it is not only divine approval that is to motivate the Achaians’ gift to Jerusalem:
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. . . . And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. . . . He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; . . . you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing benefit [tēn hyperballousan charin] of God that he has given you. Thanks [charis] be to God for his indescribable gift [tē anekdiēgētō . . . dōrea]! (2 Cor 9:6–15)
Paul describes the principle of reciprocity using an agrarian metaphor: he who sows abundantly reaps abundantly. It is incumbent upon the Achaians to “sow abundantly” (i.e., to contribute lavishly to Jerusalem), because the material goods that Achaia has obtained are themselves gifts from God, who “supplies seed to the sower and bread for food.” The Achaians’ gift will not go unrewarded: God will “increase the harvest of [their] righteousness”; they will be “enriched in every way.”22 The idea expressed in Paul’s agrarian metaphor parallels that of Seneca’s image of the dancing Graces: the system of reciprocity “has most beauty if it is continuous and maintains an uninterrupted succession.” In response to the divine benefaction of material goods, the Achaians are to donate material goods to those in Jerusalem, in response to which Israel’s god will provide further benefactions.
The letter’s final thanksgiving, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift,” alludes to the Achaians’ generosity, itself construed as a divine gift, as well as the charis constituted by Jesus’ assumption of human form, to which allusion is made in 2 Cor 8:9 (cp. Phil 2:6–8), in order to mediate salvation from eschatological judgment (1 Thess 1:10; Rom 2:5). The material and symbolic benefactions ostensibly provided to the Achaians by the god of Israel are adequately recompensed by their material donations to Jerusalem; these, in turn, are rewarded with further spiritual (“the harvest of your righteousness”) and material (“enriched in every way”) benefits, to be provided by Paul’s god. Symbolic benefactions, which exist discursively in the form of promise and assurance, are treated as exchangeable with material donations.
Another example of Paul’s use of an economy of symbolic goods occurs in his letter to the Philippians, written in a Roman prison, perhaps in 56 or 62 CE.23 As Paul indicates, the church at Philippi provided him with welcome, although sporadic, financial contributions (Phil 4:16; 2 Cor 11:8–9). Paul’s only guarantee of food and clothing while in prison was to secure donations.24 The Philippians had in fact sent one Epaphroditus to provide for Paul. In what might be interpreted as a thinly veiled request for further aid (“Not that I seek the gift . . .”), or as a frank admission that he had already received sufficient assistance (“I have been paid in full . . .”), Paul writes:
You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving [logon doseōs kai lēmpseōs], except you alone. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek the gift [to doma], but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account [ton karpon ton pleonazonta eis logon hymōn]. I have been paid in full [apechō de panta] and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts [ta par’ hymōn] you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. (Phil 4:15–18)
The commercial language that Paul uses in this passage is striking. He uses terms borrowed from the business sphere to refer to the Philippians’ economic support: it is a matter of “giving and receiving.”25 In v. 17, Paul mixes the language of benefaction with that of business: the Philippians’ “gift” to Paul accrues a “profit” to their “account.”26 Paul, having received the “gift” from Epaphroditus, has been “paid in full.” The gift, however, is accorded a double signification: it serves not only to alleviate the material needs of Paul, but also as a “fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.” Paul employs the terminology of the temple cultus.27 A gift given to him is at the same time a sacrifice offered to the god of Israel. The cultic language is interpreted in economic terms: it results in a profit (karpon) that accrues to the Philippians’ account (logon). Paul only hints at the nature of this “profit” in his closing benediction: “My God will fulfill your every need in accordance with his wealth in glory in Christ Jesus.” The “wealth in glory” (to ploutos ... en doxē) to which he refers may allude to the luminous (i.e., “glorious”) body that, according to Paul, followers of Christ are to receive at the time of Christ’s parousia, or return from heaven (1 Cor 15:25–57; 2 Cor 4:17; Rom 5:2; cp. 1 Thess 4:13–18), or it may hint at material riches.28 He leaves the specific referent to the reader’s imagination.
In Phil 4, benefaction and business transaction are overlapping categories. Material gifts to Paul elicit a countergift (i.e., a profit that accrues to one’s account) from Paul’s god. The exact nature of the countergift that proceeds from the “wealth in glory” of Israel’s god is left unspecified. Whether it refers to the glorified body to be received by the followers of Jesus at the time of the parousia or to material wealth, as a promise of future benefaction from a divine being, it constitutes a “symbolic good.” This symbolic good is held to constitute adequate recompense for the material donations of the Philippians and therefore meets the criterion of exchangeability.29 Paul operates according to an economy of symbolic goods.
Another of Paul’s letters in which an economy of symbolic goods comes into play is that to the slave owner Philemon, written in 55–56 or 62 CE.30 This letter was occasioned by the departure of a slave, Onesimus, who either had been providing for Paul’s needs in prison or, after having angered his master, had approached Paul in an attempt to persuade him to appeal to Philemon for clemency toward the slave.31 The letter is addressed to Onesimus’s owner, Philemon, and two co-addressees, Aphia and Archippus, functionaries within the local house-church, perhaps in Colossae.32 During the time when Onesimus had been visiting him in prison, Paul had persuaded the slave to become a convert to Paul’s religious views, thus constituting him as Onesimus’s spiritual “father” (v. 10). Paul’s letter, to be carried by Onesimus on his return trip, makes a request of Philemon, the exact nature of which is not specified:
For this reason, though I am bold enough to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love . . . I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. . . . I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me [hina . . . moi diakonē] in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. . . . Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. (vv. 8–14, 21)
It is clear that Paul wishes for Philemon to send Onesimus back to Paul while in prison.33 Whether he is asking for Philemon to manumit Onesimus or to send him back as a slave to serve Paul has been the subject of debate.34 Perhaps Paul intentionally framed his request ambiguously in order to leave to the judgment of Philemon how best to fulfill it (“knowing that you will do even more than I say”).
From the standpoint of Paul’s economy of symbolic goods, the most significant statements occur in vv. 17–20:
So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything [opheilei (se)], charge that to my account [touto emoi elloga]. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it [egō apotisō]. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self [kai seauton moi prosopheileis]. Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you [egō sou onaimēn] in the Lord!
Paul uses the language of business transaction; both he and Philemon keep accounts in their dealings. Paul is willing to charge to his own account any debt incurred by Onesimus (v. 18). Paul indicates that he is creditworthy; he will repay the debt (v. 19). Philemon’s account, however, stands in the red, as he owes Paul an unrepayable debt: his own life, or “self” (v. 19). Paul alludes to one of the symbolic goods provided by his preaching. In his view, a positive response to his preaching saves one from the worldwide apocalyptic judgment of God, viewed as imminent (1 Thess 1:10; 5:1–10; Rom 1:18; 2:5). Converted on the basis of this preaching, Philemon owes Paul his very life.35 Paul’s less than subtle reminder of Philemon’s indebtedness serves as the basis for his final appeal: “Confident in your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.” Paul implies that, in view of his unrepayable debt, the least Philemon can do is to allow Onesimus to serve Paul for the duration of his stay in prison (cp. v. 13: “I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me [hina. . . moi diakonē] in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel”).
Although Philemon owes Paul his very “self,” Paul will accept Onesimus’s presence as a substitute (v. 13: “that he might be of service to me in place of you” [hyper sou]).36 Paul construes Philemon’s “self” as fungible with Onesimus’s. Should Philemon allow Onesimus to serve Paul, it is implied, this service would in some measure begin to repay a debt that Philemon could never fully discharge. Paul’s logic rests on the principles of exchangeability and fungibility: Paul’s gift of a religious symbolic good (i.e., his claim to mediate salvation from apocalyptic judgment) indebts Philemon for his very life, or “self”; Onesimus’s life—or the labor value which that life embodies—may substitute for Philemon’s and is credited toward discharging the latter’s unrepayable debt to Paul. Paul construes symbolic goods as exchangeable for the products of human labor.
This chapter has shown that Bourdieu’s concept of the economy of symbolic goods illuminates the system of exchanges described in Paul’s letters: not only material goods and services involving human labor but also the symbolic goods described by religious discourse function within the context of a broader system that, operating according to a logic of reciprocal exchange, may be characterized as a nonmercantile economy. Paul’s letters assume that nonmaterial, discursive products, such as the promise of deliverance from an apocalyptic judgment imagined to be imminent, may be accorded a material exchange value. He draws attention to these imagined benefits in attempts to motivate, on the basis of the principle of reciprocity, the transmission of material goods and labor services. In the absence of such imagined benefits, these transmissions presumably would fail to take place. These symbolic benefits, however, serve as more than a motive for exchange; they are rather a medium of it. Thus, Paul describes an economy in which symbolic goods played an integral part. There could be no better summary of the operation of this economy than that of Rom 15:26–27: if one imparts spiritual things to another, the former is entitled to a reciprocal gift consisting of material things. For Paul, such reciprocal interactions constitute the sine qua non of the spiritual enterprise.