This volume is a much-needed supplement to our understanding of communal forms of Judaeans and Christians in the first centuries of the Common Era, and to that end, it is overflowing with epigraphical and papyrological comparanda from ancient Mediterranean associations. The basic question that this book addresses is not what those associations offered to members (which has been the typical preoccupation), but is rather more fundamental: how did they survive at all in the complex social scape of the ancient Mediterranean city? In keeping with a number of similar recent studies, which have compared these social forms to early Christ groups, the authors rightly emphasise that the goal is not simply to point out similarities between them, but rather to use the former to generate insights and new perspectives on the latter.
Last and Harland opt for the terminology of ‘unofficial associations’ to refer to ‘certain groupings located socially between the structures of the family and the official structure of the city or village in the eastern Mediterranean’ (p. 9). These groupings ‘were not consistently sustained by resources from civic or imperial institutions’ (p. 9), were relatively small (typically less than 50 people) and informal, and met together ‘to socialize within one another and to honour both earthly and divine benefactors’ (p. 9). The evidence for these networks, usually inscriptions and papyri, are more like ‘a snapshot rather than a moving picture’ (p. 99). Drawing on their extensive knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world, the authors manage to expose many of the details of the social lives of these groups.
The authors open the study by thinking about the sort of people who became involved in these unofficial associations. To be sure, they were not the civic elite, but neither were they impoverished masses who lacked what we might call disposable income. In their words, most associations ‘drew their members from those [both men and women] living between subsistence (those living with the minimum level of food, shelter and clothing) and those of middling wealth’ (p. 16). This challenges the predominant scholarly assumption that associations were composed of those primarily of ‘middling wealth’ (p. 31).
The accessibility of these unofficial associations to different economic segments has consequences for their survival. Uniquely, the authors think through three major scenarios to understand the social history of unofficial associations: decline, survival and success. In the scenario of decline, an association exceeds the material means that they have available to them, and it ends up dissolving. This can result from various factors such as absenteeism, non-payment of dues, consequences of natural disasters or human conflict, inter alia. The authors use the situation behind the Johannine epistles as an example of an association that might be in decline because of waning membership: some members have left the group, and the remaining ones were instructed not to interact with those former members. In a scenario of survival, the association operates just within their material means. The third scenario is success, that is, functioning well within the group's material means. The authors conclude that group survival is often less dependent on the wealth of group members and more a function of the group's ability to manage resources.
Much of the discussion is focused on the monetary resources that associations acquired and managed. In terms of the expenses in the life of an association, members had to find ways to pay for meeting space (whether rented or owned) as well as the upkeep of those spaces and/or properties. While members often pooled their resources together to purchase communal meeting space, individual wealthy donors could also provide spaces at their own expense. In addition, associations had to cover the costs of internal record-keeping, honouring benefactors, burying members and maintaining gravesites, honouring deities, and purchasing food and drink for meals, the latter of which was the most routine associative activity within most of these groups. To acquire the resources for such expenditure, associations generated money from within their ranks, received donations and endowments from benefactors, rented out properties and provided loans, charged regular dues to their members and extracted fines, among other things, when necessary.
Associations stored their assets in a common fund, for which we have ample evidence among inscriptions and papyri. They sometimes took up money from within their own ranks apart from the regular dues that members paid. These collections, according to Last and Harland, are ‘volitional’ and as such, offer scholars ‘a window into group values and into what individual members took to be important’ (p. 119). In addition, such contributions gave members an opportunity to ‘perform membership and express one's sense of belonging in the group’ (p. 119). In many cases, these collections facilitated the construction or renovation of a communal meeting space or the procurement of materials for feasts and sacrifices honouring deities. The authors even find some evidence that occupational associations may have gleaned tangible economic benefits from the structures they built out of collective funds.
Scholars of early Christianity are eminently familiar with communal collection, for it is amply attested in Paul's letters. Many diaspora associations of Judaeans already had a system for collecting money and sending it to Jerusalem to support the temple before its destruction in 70 cε. Indeed, Paul seems preoccupied with collecting money for ‘the poor’ (as in Gal 2:10) in Jerusalem. This financial support, Last and Harland argue, served an important social function: ‘Having these uncircumcised adherents of Jesus collect money for Judeans at Jerusalem was one way that Paul sought to lessen tensions and bridge a connection between Judeans and Greeks’ (p. 143). In a very real sense, the financial linkages among these groups symbolised the wider network of Christ followers.
The final topic that the authors explore is the phenomenon of mutual aid (a more neutral term than charity), long considered to be what set Christ groups apart from other Mediterranean associations. Yet, they find this to be a widespread feature of associative life outside of Christ groups. It was common, for instance, for an association to have an ‘internal benefactor’ (p. 154), an individual member who might come forward to offer material resources to another member when necessary. Such aid might take the form of donating burial costs to a member who could otherwise not afford it, assisting a member with legal entanglements or providing loans to members. Importantly, these arrangements of mutual aid often made tangible the trust and social bonds among group members. The evidence for mutual assistance among Christ groups is entirely literary in the first two centuries, evidenced in, for instance, Paul's and Ignatius’ letters.
This study emphasises well the collective agency and action within unofficial associations, which pushes back against the common assumption of many historians that individual agency is the motor of historical change and social development. Through its careful analogical comparisons, it also attunes us to the material realities of early Christian groups, which in turn grounds them in the economic dynamics of urban life. It thus lays bare many of the things that likely must have been taking place in these groups, though our literary evidence does not always make explicit reference to them. For these reasons, this study stands to broaden the social world that we envision when we imagine the terrain of early Christianity. Though the study is primarily for specialists, anyone interested in the social history of early Christ groups will benefit from engaging with this book. With its careful structure and lucidly written prose, they will find it a pleasure to read.
