SOCIAL STATUS IN ROMAN WORLD

Wealth and Poverty

The Roman Empire was characterized by grotesque economic inequality. There was nothing comparable to what we would call a “middle class”; for the most part, people were either extremely rich (about 3 percent of the population) or extremely poor (about 90 percent).

Most of those who belonged to the latter group lived at or near a subsistence level, making just enough to survive, with little hope of saving anything that would allow them to improve their position or provide them with a hedge against calamity. The more fortunate of these impoverished persons might at least learn a trade (as was apparently the case with Jesus, his disciples, and the apostle Paul), but for many people in rural areas “subsistence” meant living off the land, and so life was subject to the vicissitudes of agriculture. Thus for the least fortunate—beggars, widows, orphans, prisoners, unskilled day laborers—survival itself may frequently have been in question. Modern estimates suggest that about 28 percent of the population of the Roman Empire during New Testament times lived below subsistence level, meaning that such people did not know from day to day whether they would be able to obtain those things necessary to sustain life.

Given the extremes of such a situation, attitudes toward wealth and poverty were a significant part of the social world. Some religious people at the time of Jesus believed that wealth could be viewed as a sign of God’s blessing and that poverty could be understood as a consequence of divine displeasure. It is difficult, however, to know how widespread this notion was. What seems more certain is that virtually everyone in this time period held to what is now called a theory of “limited good.” People believed that money and the things that money can buy were in short (or at least finite) supply; the common perception—in stark contrast to modern capitalism—was that acquisition of wealth or resources by some necessitated depletion of wealth or resources for others. Simply put, virtually everyone in New Testament times believed that there was only so much “stuff” to go around and that some people had less than they needed because other people had more than they needed.

 Patronage and Loyalty

Roman society (in Palestine and everywhere else) functioned in accord with strong expectations regarding benefaction and obligation. At the simplest level, the exchange of favors was virtually definitive of friendship. “Friends” were people who did things for one another, and even though no one was supposed to keep score, the assistance and support would have to be mutual over the long term or else the friendship would break down. At another level, however, almost all people were involved in patron-client relationships with people who were not their social equals. Very few people had money or power, but those who did were expected to serve as benefactors for those who did not.

The wealthy might, for instance, allow peasants to live on their land or provide them with food or grain or employment. In sociological terms, such benefactors are called “patrons,” and the recipients of the benefits are called “clients.” In such a relationship the exchange of favors could not be mutual, but the clients were expected to offer their patron what they could: gratitude and, above all, loyalty. They were expected to praise their patron, to speak well of their patron, and to enhance his or her social reputation. They were expected to trust their patron to continue providing for them. And, as necessary, they were expected to perform various services that the patron Roman society (in Palestine and everywhere else) functioned in accord with strong expectations regarding benefaction and obligation.

At the simplest level, the exchange of favors was virtually definitive of friendship. “Friends” were people who did things for one another, and even though no one was supposed to keep score, the assistance and support would have to be mutual over the long term or else the friendship would break down. At another level, however, almost all people were involved in patron-client relationships with people who were not their social equals. Very few people had money or power, but those who did were expected to serve as benefactors for those who did not. The wealthy might, for instance, allow peasants to live on their land or provide them with food or grain or employment. In sociological terms, such benefactors are called “patrons,” and the recipients of the benefits are called “clients.”

In such a relationship the exchange of favors could not be mutual, but the clients were expected to offer their patron what they could: gratitude and, above all, loyalty. They were expected to praise their patron, to speak well of their patron, and to enhance his or her social reputation. They were expected to trust their patron to continue providing for them. And, as necessary, they were expected to perform various services that the patron might request of them. Such relationships were not constituted legally, but at a basic level they represented how most people thought the world was supposed to work and, indeed, how it usually did work.

Patron-client relationships would form a significant backdrop for the development of Christian theology. The term most often used for the patron’s bestowal of benefits is charis (typically translated as “grace” in the New Testament), and the term that is often used for the client’s expected attitude of loyalty toward his or her patron is pistis (often translated as “faith” in the New Testament). Thus the phenomenon of patron-client relationships seems to have served as a rough analogy for divine-human encounters in which the constitutive

elements are grace and faith: God gives to people freely and generously (grace), and this arouses within people an appropriate response of trust, devotion, and willingness to serve (faith).

 Honor and Shame

The pivotal social value in the New Testament world (among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and everyone else) was honor—that is, the status that one has in the eyes of those whose opinions one considers to be significant. To some extent, honor was ascribed through factors beyond an individual’s control: age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, height, physical health, economic class, and the like could set certain parameters that defined the limits of how much honor one could hope to attain.

Given such limitations, however, many things might increase one’s honor (religious piety, courage, virtuous behavior, a congenial or charitable disposition, etc.), and many things might precipitate a loss of honor or even bring its opposite, shame. Such a value system may not seem strange to us because even in modern Western society everyone likes to receive honor and nobody wants to be put to shame. The difference, however, could be one of magnitude: the New Testament world was one in which honor was to be prized above all else and shame was to be avoided at all costs. For example, people wanted to be wealthy not primarily because wealth would enable them to live in luxury but because almost everyone believed that it was honorable to have money to spare. Likewise, it was shameful to be needy; Ben Sira, a prominent Jewish teacher of the Second Temple period taught that “it is better to die than to beg” (Sir. 40:28). He said this not because begging was immoral or sinful but because it is the most shameful situation a person is exposing to the public.

By the start of the second century, almost all the books of the New Testament had been written, including the Gospels and all of Paul’s letters. By this time the Romans had come to regard Christianity and Judaism as separate religions, and the former was now regarded as an unauthorized innovation and was officially outlawed. We get a good picture of what this meant in practice from a set of letters sent by the Roman governor Pliny to the emperor Trajan in about the year 112. The overall policy was something of a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” approach: Christians were not sought out, but when they came to a ruler’s attention, they were to be tortured and killed unless they renounced their faith and made sacrifices to Roman gods.

In the New Testament world shame was not just a temporary emotional response (like embarrassment) but rather an overriding psychological status according to which one lived in disgrace and was considered to be unworthy of divine or human attention (or even of life itself). Cowards, failures, and fools lived in shame, as did tax collectors, lepers, beggars, and prostitutes.