Southwestern Journal of Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 62, No. 1 – Fall 2019
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Laura Salah Nasrallah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. xviii + 310 pages. Cloth, $99.00
New Testament archaeology has primarily been focused on the world of Jesus, so it is refreshing to have a study dealing with the Pauline corpus. Lacking an ability to answer most New Testament critical questions (i.e. questions of source criticism or authorship), NT archaeology historically became geared to locating sites mentioned in the text. Over time, material evidence related to the New Testament accumulated, primarily consisting of relevant inscriptions and what could be labeled as narrative backdrops of physical space. Contemporary NT archaeology has expanded far beyond these boundaries and draws on current archaeological theory and the geometrically expanding data on the first century world.
The book begins with a strong introductory chapter that firmly argues for the importance of current archaeological data for biblical scholarship; “Those interested in the historical context for the production and first reception of biblical text must [sic] use archaeology” (14). Nasrallah confines her discussion to the recipient cities of letters included in the higher critical “canon” of Pauline writings (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, the Corinthian correspondence, Philippians and Romans; she also includes Philemon which some critical scholars do not). She then provides a chapter based on each of her accepted letters. By including Philemon, she is able to engage with Ephesus as her starting point from which she focuses on slavery: “being bought with a price” is her theme. In chapter 3 she uses Galatians to discuss travel and hospitality, in particular the effect on the hosting community of various travelers. Philippi becomes the context for a discussion on poverty and abundance. This chapter is her first real engagement with archaeological data beyond inscriptions. Chapter 5 focuses on death and grief against a Corinthian background. In Chapter 6 she uses the Augustan mausoleum in Rome as the launching pad for a discussion of time, race and obelisks and their influence in the letter to the Romans. Chapter 7 discourses on what Nasrallah calls “the afterlife of the Apostle Paul” (224), using Thessalonike as a backdrop. Her concluding chapter again argues for the use of archaeology in NT study, a weakness that she correctly identifies in much contemporary NT scholarship.
However, this book, despite its title, is neither a comprehensive survey of the archaeology of the world of Paul nor a true archaeological study on the letters of Paul like she calls for in her discussion of method (34). As her title indicates, she does not discuss Acts in her presentations. She baldly states that “Acts is a later text … it is not an objective history against which to plot the life of Paul” (14). Instead, Nasrallah uses archaeological data from the various cities linked to the letters to lay a foundation for a discussion of non-traditional perspectives on various interpretive issues in the letters. Nasrallah writes as a biblical scholar, writing for biblical students and scholars, freely admitting in both the introduction and the conclusion that she is not an archaeologist. For the most part, her archaeological data is inscriptional material and the physical topography of the cities she engages with. This is a classic “biblical backgrounds” approach, of some value, but it is not archaeology. Her strongest chapter is probably the one on Philippi because she understands the site very well. Another limitation is a general failure to use evangelical scholarship even where it could contribute to her narrowly focused discussions.
This study can be frustrating to use. Although she self-identifies as a Christian (2), she does not have an evangelical approach to the Pauline corpus, and this hurts her work. For example, Nasrallah’s failure to accept Ephesians and the Timothy correspondence as Pauline severely limits her interaction with the archaeology of Ephesus. This site has been intensively excavated for nearly a century and provides a wealth of contextual data on first century life in the first generations after Roman conquest. She does not engage at all with the fluidity of identity in Ephesus or with the overpowering presence of Artemis in the lives of the populace, a major issue in the NT writings. Philemon mentions a house church, but she does not use the results from the extensive domestic excavation which has occurred in Ephesus to comment on this phenomenon. Even on this issue, she could have used the physical layout of the houses to discuss domestic slavery. By not accepting Titus as Pauline, she fails to benefit from new work on Crete which provides archaeological evidence of negotiated identity which is highly relevant to the epistle. In chapter 3, she has a good discussion of travelers, but does not emphasize that ideas spread through trade networks. She could have engaged the wealth of new data on Roman trade networks in Anatolia, primarily derived from ceramic studies and used it as a framework to discuss Paul’s travels. The chapter on Rome is frankly bizarre with a five-page section devoted to a discussion of Mussolini’s ‘archaeology’. She defends this choice, saying “embedding the letter to the Romans within the ancient roman landscape of Augustus’ mausoleum complex, even while our awareness hovers over the fact that this complex is an ‘authentic ruin’ produced by fascist ‘archaeology’ allows us to hear more clearly the language of time and cosmos in the letter to the Romans” (222). Maybe it does for her, but not for me.
Overall, Nasrallah raises good questions that are rarely asked in the way she does, but when she answers them, she actually employs only a small amount of the archaeological data that could be brought to bear on these issues. If this book encourages NT students and scholars to dip into the burgeoning archaeological literature bearing on the Mediterranean world of Paul, then it will have achieved a positive purpose.
