Better Research on The Palestinian Context of Community of Goods

Here following is the "Conclusion", in full, from The Palestinian Cultural Context of Earliest Christian Community of Goods, by Brian Capper, as published in "The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting, Volume 4 - Palestinian Setting", edited by Richard Bauckham, published by Eerdmans, 1994.

I am placing this on my blog because, in my view, it puts in question part - only a part - of my previous assumptions which I held while writing my article on Christian community of goods ("authoritarian socialism") which I posted earlier in this blog.

Now that I have recently discovered this scholarly research, and now that I have seen it is substantially supported, I am in the process of modifying my views which were previously based upon Scriptures alone as well as on my experience of social group function ( my "common sense.") 

Currently, my view is summarized as follows.  As you will see from Brian Capper's "Conclusion" (see below), the practice of community of goods with a daily distribution may well have been known within the Jewish culture of the time frame of Acts chapters 1 - 6.   The Essene practices may have been adopted by the Twelve Disciples in Jerusalem, at least on a temporary basis.  And you will see that in the later church practice, specifically among the churches arising from the Greek culture, there was a much less formal system of charity, as seems to be noted in Acts chapter 6.

I concede that the Jerusalem church probably did indeed have, at least among a portion of its members, a total community of goods as practiced in the Essene Community as documented by The Rule of Community.  Yet, in my view, it would be very presumptuous to assume that this Essene style of community of goods (and labor) is to be taken by us as a command of the Lord Jesus Christ for us to implement through authoritarian structure. Rather, the less formal style of charity and care for the poor among the churches, as evidenced by Acts Chapter 6 and by the Damascus Document and as successfully implemented by churches for centuries in the Christian era, is the plan of the will of God which is pragmatic and spiritual for this current age.

--Peter van Breemen (of Maryland USA)

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Here is Brian Capper's work:

 

 

The Palestinian Cultural Context of Earliest Christian Community of Goods – Brian Capper – in The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, Vol. 4 Palestinian Setting, Edited by Richard Baukham

 

Conclusion

 

The Christian church considered for centuries that Luke’s evocative picture of community of goods was realized in the ‘angelic life’ of monasticism.¹¹³ Some Anabaptist groups at the Reformation and since have taken it as a realizable ideal for all Christians.¹¹⁴

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¹¹³Cf. L. T. Johnson, The Literary Function of Possession in Luke-Acts (Missoula:Scholars Press, 1977) 1 and n. 3.

¹¹⁴Cf. H.-D. Plumper, Die Gutergemeinschaft bei den Taufern des 16. Jh. Goppingern,1972); R. Friedmann, ‘The Christian Communism of the Hutterite Brethren’, ARG 46(19550 196-209; v. Peters, All Things Common. The Hutterian Way of Life (Minneapolis, 1965).

 

 

The very negative consensus of present-day scholarship against the historicity of the community of goods of Acts 2-6 arose partly in opposition to the sharpest Anabaptist positions, but principally as a reaction to the Christian precedent which socialist thinkers over the last hundred and fifty years have found in these passages for their views on the organization of the state.¹¹⁵ The pervasive effects of this reaction have combined with the frequent negative assessment of Acts as an historical source to deny the key new evidence made available through the publication of the Rule of the Community from Qumran the illuminating role which it deserves.

 

The Essene יחך terminology of the Rule of the Community provides close linguistic parallels to the difficult phrases employing έπί τό αύτό at Acts 2:44 and 2:47. It is possible to understand Peter's challenge to the incomplete property surrender of Ananias and Sapphira at Acts 5:4 against the background of the Essene procedure of the provisional surrender of property (lQS 6:20),which is linked to a similar-sounding rule governing lies in matters of property (lQS 6:24-25). Patristic tradition and archaeological evidence combine with evidence from Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls to suggest that the early community in Jerusalem grew in the immediate vicinity of an Essene group occupying a site which some twenty-five years earlier had housed the Essene community of Qumran itself. This community may have provided converts to the early church who were themselves the conduit into Jerusalem Christianity of Essene language and procedures.¹¹⁶ The 'daily distribution' of Acts 6:1 is much closer to the Essene process found in Philo, Hypothetica 11.4-11, and hinted at in the Rule of the Community, than to the Rabbinic analogy usually cited. Thus a cumulative case, building from a wide variety of sources and types of evidence, suggests that earliest Christian community of goods in Acts 2-6 is a historically verifiable aspect of the life of the earliest Jerusalem community, close in form to the widespread Essene practice of community of goods. Acts emerges as a source which reveals good knowledge of Palestinian cultural features of the earliest community, despite Luke's evident desire to stylize his material in a manner which appealed to those readers who shared the esteem for community of goods in Greek popular philosophy.

 

 

¹¹⁵Beginning with W. Weitling (1808-71), Das Evangelium des armen Sunders (Hamburg, 1971, reprint of ²1846); cf. L. W. Countryman, The Rich Christian in the Church of the Early Empire (New York: Edward Mellen, 19980) 1-2.

¹¹⁶Wholesale conversion of the community is possible, but not demonstrable.