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Exposing the Economic Middle: A Revised Economy Scale for the Study of Early Urban Christianity

St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JU, Scotland, bruce.longenecker{at}st-andrews.ac.uk

In 2004 Steve Friesen proposed a `poverty scale' for Graeco-Roman urbanism as a backdrop against which to assess features of the earliest urban Christian communities. This article offers an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Friesen's scale, not least in relation to binary taxonomies of Graeco-Roman economic stratification, rhetorical conventions of the ancient world, and the `middling groups' of Graeco-Roman urbanism. It proposes adjustments to the scale (renamed as the `economic scale') and gives consideration to the significance of those adjustments for the reconstruction of early Christianity relative to ancient poverty.

Key Words: Friesen • middling groups • poverty • economic scale • urbanism • early Christianity

Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Vol. 31, No. 3, 243-278 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0142064X08101524


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