468 - The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke's Gospel. Overtures to Biblical Theology

The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke's Gospel. Overtures to Biblical Theology
By Halvor Moxnes
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1988. 183 pp. $12,95.

Moxnes teaches at the University of Oslo. Beginning with the puzzling charge in Lk 16:14 that the Pharisees were "lovers of money," he combines a literary analysis of the role of the Pharisees. in Luke's Gospel together with social-scientific analysis of ancient and peasant economies to clarify how and why Luke speaks of possessions and opponents the way he does. The result is an unusually precise and rich appreciation of a much-studied aspect of Luke.

Knowing how benefactor-client relations worked in the empire and how village life generates a "moral economy" of redistribution and reciprocity leads to a fuller understanding of Luke's version of the beatitudes, the parables of Jesus, and his own theme of "divine reversal." Moxnes argues that the picture of the Pharisees is not historical but rhetorical; as those who represent an exclusionary stance antithetical to the open invitation to the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus, they are represented as "rich" and "avaricious." The positive message to Luke's readers then and today is not an easy reassurance to the wealthy but a challenge to "see the world from the viewpoint of the poor."

Some steps of the argument are less developed than others. One would like the material in Acts to be treated more fully. But this short study builds on the best of recent Lukan scholarship and with its careful use of social-scientific methods advances it as well.

Luke Timothy Johnson
Indiana University
Bloomington, Ind.