Peter Oakes is the master of complication. One could call it nuance. Or analytics. Anyway, Oakes studies the New Testament with a careful eye on the diverse realities of the ancient world and the resonances in the New Testament that are responding to those diverse realities.

His new book, Empire, Economics, and the New Testament collects some of his finest essays. Overall they provide for the NT student studies of method about house churches, economics, and empire.

His forte is Pompeii and he manages to connect various NT texts to the diverse realities of Pompeii. It’s an excellent volume for the serious student. Oakes has a wonderful study of Pompeii called Reading Romans in Pompeii.

His site for a virtual tour of Pompeii is fantastic.

Oakes teaches us to use our imaginations, not to invent things but to enter into that 1st Century world to hear the apostle Paul’s letters and to comprehend those churches.

I spoke above of nuance and analytics. Here’s the context: I have, for instance, often said we can think of a 1st Century church meeting in an atrium or, following another line of thinking, in an apartment or tenement. What does the assembly look like or what happens in the assembly or how does what happen occur if it is an atrium or an apartment on the 3d floor in a poor section of Rome? It is also standard to think that a 1st Century assembly was about 30 people.

It’s complicated as we both don’t know where they met but we do know what meeting places looked like. We know, too, that there were many such places they could have met. If they met in a garden or more open setting perhaps there were a hundred or so.

Oakes calls these theories not so much into question as into a clarity we don’t necessarily have. Yes, perhaps an atrium. Perhaps an apartment. But house churches didn’t have to meet in an atrium or an apartment. Enter his expertise of Pompeii where Oakes has studied especially the “House of Menander.”

The result? There are nine possible locations for a house church. Not two. Oakes often thinks into a 1st Century Pauline church as the home of a craftsman. This matters and makes a difference, though we don’t know for sure. Space matters. Here are his nine models:

Triclinium and Atrium for the division in Corinth Peristyle Garden and banqueting hall Triclinium Small house In a bar Stoneworkers’ workshop Craftworker-hosted church in a garden, portico, back rooms Slave-led church in a stable yard Retainer-led church in the steward’s house

Without stretching this out it can be said that differing dynamics occur in each one. I have often asked what a “sermon” looked like in each setting. What did reading a letter of Paul look like in these setttings? It takes an imagination, for sure, but it’s one informed by realities.

On economics.

Economics is/was “the study of the allocation of scarce resources.” (He often uses this definition.)

Image: Cover Photo

One can use an economical theory to interpret, one can search for information about economics, and then one can use such information. The evidence can be found in archaeology, in the texts, and one can compare the evidence. Oakes argues that such a view of economics means there are poor people and economic elites, and the latter have a “larger share of scarce resoiures than would be expected in a random distribution.” The poor then are those who suffer with a “lack of socially perceived necessities.”

A vital chapter in this book is about patronage and how that gives us grids for perceiving diverse realities. The city/town itself/urban location is laid out in a way that displays the patrons of a town and throughout the town (Pompeii) are neighborhoods as agglomerations of smaller units of patronage relations. Phoebe is probably a local patron while Erastus is more in the urban center. The divisions of the Lord’s supper, then, seem to be best explained as a patronage problem where the patron was segregated from the locals and Paul wants that boundary marking down.

Oakes has a fascinating study of Philippians through the hearing of “Jason” and “Penelope,” two fictionalized hearings of what this letter meant. One is more wealthy, one suffering. Here social realities give Oakes some social realities to imagine as the letter is read. I find this imaginative reading helpful and suggestive.