Where's My Milk and Honey? The Economy of First Century Palestine
With apologies to Family Feud, Scholars say: Most people in the Roman Empire were poor and heavily taxed and always on the brink of starvation. What happened to the milk and honey? Weren’t they in the Promised Land?
Yes. They were. But in truth, Jews of the First Century Palestine had lost most of the Promised Land and there weren’t many of them who’d managed to hang on. More than half of the original 12 tribes were gone – they were no longer Jews. They’d vanished into the surrounding countryside and blended into other peoples. Of those few Jews who remained, the Promised Land was now mostly in the hands of the rich and powerful – many of them foreigners. They lived under Roman law. Their leaders lived as the Greeks – their Hellenized culture a pale imitation of Alexander the Great’s motherland culture and philosophies that he’d forced on the region during his reign some 300 years earlier. The Jewish High Priest, who should know better, and the Sadducees, embraced the cosmopolitan nature of the Empire and happily participated in shameful Greek customs, secure in their knowledge that as long as they attended Temple and make the requisite sacrifices their consciences were clear. The Pharisees castigated the Sadducees about their inattentiveness to Jewish ways and began a crusade to make Palestine Jewish again with strict enforcement of Jewish tradition and laws. What seemed to bind the country together was the desire for independence. Here they are, hundreds of years later, in the Promised Land but still oppressed. They kept the spark alive. They’d had it briefly before the Roman axe fell upon them after they’d managed to rid themselves of the Seleucids who had been weaklings compared to Alexander the Great, and they were sure that Yahweh could do it again – they just couldn’t agree on how he was going to do it. It made Judea a difficult province for the Romans to govern.
First Century Palestine was ready for hope; to grab a chance to better their lives. Jesus was not the only Messiah to appear to the Jews. Josephus writes (in Jewish War 2.261-262) “There was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former, for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives. He was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to rule them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him.”
In Acts 5:35-40 when Peter stands accused before the council of the high priests Gamaliel gives them a quick history lesson: “…Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for it this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!...”
But why were they so desperate? It helps to understand the economic realities that most Jews lived. Experts estimate that up to 90% of the population of First Century Palestine was made up of small acreage farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers or other (bandit or some sort of miscreant) who survived on subsistence wages or crops. This includes minorities as well as Jews in the region.
The poor were surrounded by large estates owned by people they seldom, if ever saw: some Roman and some belonged to their own high officials. Absentee landlords, who knew little about agriculture, valued their labor only for what they could produce and who lived a life completely divorced from country folk. So says Philip Harland in his article which surveys the general scholarly consensus of the Economy of First-Century Palestine. Goods were traded, bought and sold but such business accounted for but a small fraction of first century economic activity and was not considered an honorable occupation. Taxation has been in existence ever since one man discovered that he was stronger than his neighbor and could force payment from him. Wealth flowed from the country side to the elite in the city, principally Jerusalem and specifically to the Temple. From there, it made its way to other elites. Wealth in the form of benefits did not come back to the countryside. Wealth was on a one-way trip. Taxes and tithes and rents reached up to 30% of a family’s yearly harvest in a worst case scenario. Folks lived day to day.
Indebtedness was everywhere. Klausner identified seizure of a family’s land to pay off debts as the main reason for landlessness (Harland, 2002). What happened to this being the promised land where each tribe was allotted its share and each family in the tribe their plot? Canaan was the land of milk of honey – yet the average Jew could barely feed himself. Grant in his work identifies lack of land as one of the major causes of economic distress preceding and during the first century in Palestine (Harland, 2002).
Why does this matter to us? It’s a piece of the puzzle. To bring the scriptures to life, you need to understand the civilization that surrounded them; to position them in relation to the realities of the life they cover. It’s a difficult task – we weren’t there: the literature of the day consists of what we’ve found and deciphered and the writers of the day didn’t set out to write economic treatises. We have no idea if what has been preserved is representative of everything that was written and circulated or just a minority viewpoint. We make educated guesses. As I write this, my Facebook feed is full of nothing but Cleveland Cavalier celebrations: if this were all I were to find and read 2000 years hence I’d be convinced that basketball players were the gods of our world and that they have a miraculous capacity to resurrect cities.
Reading the New Testament we sense that Jesus aimed his teachings to encourage the poor – to give them hope. He took the authorities of the day to task. He did not give the rich a pass. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” We can argue what Christ meant by that but we can be sure that the audience he was speaking with would appreciate it and feel affirmed and empowered. It is hard for us to truly appreciate how hard their lives must have been. I had an inkling of it one summer when I stayed with some friends in El Salvador and gaped at the level of subsistence poverty so many of their neighbors experienced. Did the First Century Jews get by with remittances from kin in Egypt or Syria? The closest thing I can think of about the Exodus from Egypt is the never ended masses of refugees walking from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to Greece and Turkey. I don’t imagine any of the countries they passed through on their way to Canaan were any happier to see huge crowds of refugees descending upon them than countries today are.
To exist in the first century was grim – but Christianity is a forward looking religion that teaches this life is not all there is; God has more in store for his believers and he sent his son to be the path for his children to reconciliation with him. This is important when comparing Christianity with other belief systems that existed during this time period as we will do in later blogs.
First Century Palestine was ready for hope; to grab a chance to better their lives. Jesus was not the only Messiah to appear to the Jews. Josephus writes (in Jewish War 2.261-262) “There was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former, for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives. He was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to rule them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him.”
In Acts 5:35-40 when Peter stands accused before the council of the high priests Gamaliel gives them a quick history lesson: “…Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for it this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!...”
But why were they so desperate? It helps to understand the economic realities that most Jews lived. Experts estimate that up to 90% of the population of First Century Palestine was made up of small acreage farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers or other (bandit or some sort of miscreant) who survived on subsistence wages or crops. This includes minorities as well as Jews in the region.
The poor were surrounded by large estates owned by people they seldom, if ever saw: some Roman and some belonged to their own high officials. Absentee landlords, who knew little about agriculture, valued their labor only for what they could produce and who lived a life completely divorced from country folk. So says Philip Harland in his article which surveys the general scholarly consensus of the Economy of First-Century Palestine. Goods were traded, bought and sold but such business accounted for but a small fraction of first century economic activity and was not considered an honorable occupation. Taxation has been in existence ever since one man discovered that he was stronger than his neighbor and could force payment from him. Wealth flowed from the country side to the elite in the city, principally Jerusalem and specifically to the Temple. From there, it made its way to other elites. Wealth in the form of benefits did not come back to the countryside. Wealth was on a one-way trip. Taxes and tithes and rents reached up to 30% of a family’s yearly harvest in a worst case scenario. Folks lived day to day.
Indebtedness was everywhere. Klausner identified seizure of a family’s land to pay off debts as the main reason for landlessness (Harland, 2002). What happened to this being the promised land where each tribe was allotted its share and each family in the tribe their plot? Canaan was the land of milk of honey – yet the average Jew could barely feed himself. Grant in his work identifies lack of land as one of the major causes of economic distress preceding and during the first century in Palestine (Harland, 2002).
Why does this matter to us? It’s a piece of the puzzle. To bring the scriptures to life, you need to understand the civilization that surrounded them; to position them in relation to the realities of the life they cover. It’s a difficult task – we weren’t there: the literature of the day consists of what we’ve found and deciphered and the writers of the day didn’t set out to write economic treatises. We have no idea if what has been preserved is representative of everything that was written and circulated or just a minority viewpoint. We make educated guesses. As I write this, my Facebook feed is full of nothing but Cleveland Cavalier celebrations: if this were all I were to find and read 2000 years hence I’d be convinced that basketball players were the gods of our world and that they have a miraculous capacity to resurrect cities.
Reading the New Testament we sense that Jesus aimed his teachings to encourage the poor – to give them hope. He took the authorities of the day to task. He did not give the rich a pass. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” We can argue what Christ meant by that but we can be sure that the audience he was speaking with would appreciate it and feel affirmed and empowered. It is hard for us to truly appreciate how hard their lives must have been. I had an inkling of it one summer when I stayed with some friends in El Salvador and gaped at the level of subsistence poverty so many of their neighbors experienced. Did the First Century Jews get by with remittances from kin in Egypt or Syria? The closest thing I can think of about the Exodus from Egypt is the never ended masses of refugees walking from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to Greece and Turkey. I don’t imagine any of the countries they passed through on their way to Canaan were any happier to see huge crowds of refugees descending upon them than countries today are.
To exist in the first century was grim – but Christianity is a forward looking religion that teaches this life is not all there is; God has more in store for his believers and he sent his son to be the path for his children to reconciliation with him. This is important when comparing Christianity with other belief systems that existed during this time period as we will do in later blogs.
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