Philippians

PHILIPPIANS. By Peter Oakes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 231. Cloth, $100.95.

In this engaging and persuasive study Oakes models a method for investigating the social make-up of early Christian communities by focusing his attention on the early Pauline community at Philippi. Drawing on archaeological and literary evidence, he sheds light on the diverse range of people within the community while showing that Paul's letter to the Philippians is a call for unity in the face of economic suffering.

Following a very brief summary of past archaeological scholarship and a geographic overview of Philippi, Oakes investigates the process of societal development in the area of Philippi. His model (aided by diagrams) shows how the city developed over three processes: "initial occupation of land by the colonists; spread of colonial land to distant parts of the territory; concentration of land ownership" (p. 34). Land became concentrated in the hands of the rich, causing the majority of the population to move to the city, where power and benefaction by the elite predominated. The overall pattern of development "means that the majority of the population of the town were probably not Romans and not citizens" (p. 54, my emphasis) and were certainly not veterans (he suggests a proportion of 36% Romans to 64% Greeks [p. 76]).

Using these data, chapter 2 attempts to uncover a sense of who were the likely groups in the Philippian church and their likely proportions. Oakes concludes that the church does not reflect the same proportion of Romans to Greeks insofar as the Romans, who tended to be the elites, were unlikely to have been widely involved. Rather, the church was dominated numerically by Greeks, who worked in "service industries" (e.g., craft-workers, shopkeepers, slaves) and farmers who lived in the city while farming rented land in the area. Such people were economically dependent upon the Roman elite.

Chapter 3 takes up the themes of suffering and unity in Paul's letter. Pukes suggests that the Philippians are experiencing real suffering, based largely on his reading of 1:27-30, and that the nature of this suffering is economic. Many of their normal social, and thus economic, activities would be curtailed through their commitment to Christ. Although the form of economic suffering for each sub-group varies--withdrawal d facilities by fellow crafts-people, withdrawal of custom, cancellation of tenancy, foreclosure of debt, breaking of patron-client relationships, etc.--the overall effect was likely to be the experience of financial hardship after joining the local Christian community. Such suffering, Oakes suggests, caused tension and ruptures in the unity of the church.

The final three chapters focus on how Paul addresses the issue of unity through a three-fold parallel drawn between Christ's suffering, Paul's suffering, and the Philippians' suffering. Chapter 4 focuses on Paul as a model for the suffering Philippians--his own life constitutes an "authoritative example" (p. 127) for the Philippians to imitate. Chapter 5 shows that Paul compares Christ to the Emperor in the imagery of the hymn of Philippians 2:9-11. Here Pukes draws widely on numismatic evidence to show that the titles and authority granted to Christ challenge those claimed by the Emperor (although here Oakes' conclusions seem moot tentative; see p. 170). Chapter 6 looks at how Paul presents Christ as a model of self-abasement and obedient acceptance of suffering. Christ's Lordship, however, can also be claimed by the suffering Philippians as a basis for confidence, and thus unity.

Books such as this always leave room for quibbling over exegetical details, and some questions remain unanswered. For example, Oakes never addresses the issue of how the disparate group of people came to form the Philippian church in the first place (cr. pp. 181-42). Neither does he describe how Paul functioned as an itinerant preacher when he came to town, although he assumes the basic veracity of Acts (cf. p. 89). Prudent editing of the "dissertation"-like writing style would have helped the argument flow. Nevertheless, these are not key details, and the real strength of the volume is methodological. Oakes's conclusions are grounded not only in his exegesis but also in his research into the social make-up of the Philippian urban center in which the church existed. His progression from modeling first the development of the town, then the social structure of the town, and only then the social structure of the church allows for greater certainty about the actual Christians at Philippi than other, more speculative, reconstructions. One hopes that in future a similar approach will be taken for other locales in which there were Pauline Christian communities.

Richard S. Ascough

Queen's Theological College

Kingston, ON

COPYRIGHT 2005 Biblical Theology Bulletin, Inc
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group