Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts. By Reta Halteman Finger

Abstract

Pp. x, 326 , Grand Rapids , Eerdmans , 2007 , $115.00. This book studies commensality, principally though not exclusively in the church of Jerusalem as reflected in the early chapters of Acts, and raises particular questions about the role therein of women, and especially of widows. Finger argues that common meals were an integral and essential aspect of early Christian life, in continuity with the table fellowship shared by Jesus not only with his disciples but also with others, including those deemed to be outcasts of society. While this may seem in many ways non-controversial, she challenges the findings of previous scholarship in its reconstruction of early Christian life, and she poses a significant challenge to the Church today. Finger argues that community of goods was fundamental to early Christian life. Notwithstanding the eschatological orientation of the early Church, this was not an interim or short-sighted arrangement which precipitated the poverty of the Jerusalem church by the middle years of the first century. Poverty was quotidian reality, with or without community of goods, for the overwhelming majority in the ancient world. Eschatological expectations were not cataclysmic, and there was every expectation that the Church would have to endure in the longer term. She accordingly intimates, but perhaps does not discuss in adequate detail, that the alienation of property, reflected in different ways in the examples of Barnabas and of Ananias and Sapphira, was not undertaken without regard to the long-term viability of the community. A partial corollary of the centrality of commensality to early Christian life is that the Eucharist cannot be separated from table fellowship. In arguing this point, Finger would have benefited from interaction with recent liturgical scholarship. This would have been helpful not only for her reconstruction of early Christian ritual and communal life, but also for her arguments about Christian fellowship today. In her treatment of Acts 6:1–6, Finger criticises the assumption that the Hellenist widows mentioned were neglected recipients of food dispensed by the Jerusalem church to its most needy members. She notes that, in ancient Mediterranean culture, as in many other societies, the preparation of food, and the management of domestic space generally, are the sphere of women, and that housekeeping is an important aspect of women's power. She argues accordingly that the widows in question are members of the church who are not given their proper share in the ministry of preparing and distributing food for community meals. She suggests that the language barrier may have hindered the participation of women who spoke only Greek, when perhaps the majority, and certainly the dominant group, within the Jerusalem church spoke Aramaic. The argument could perhaps have been strengthened with the observation that men, who entered and were active in public space, were more likely to have been bilingual than women, whose activities for the most part were confined to private space. This could have accounted for what remains a weak point in her argument, viz. explaining why the apostles' response to the crisis was to call for the nomination of male members of the community to address the problem. Finger could have strengthened her argument by observing that only widows are mentioned as being neglected, and not orphans, the other paradigmatic weak and marginalised members of society. This could suggest that it is indeed the potential contribution of the widows, rather than their need, which is at issue. For many readers, this book may be challenging rather than persuasive. But the challenges both to the historical reconstruction of Christian origins and to Christian life today need to be addressed. Finger implies, if indeed she does not assert, that the liturgical life of the Church has deviated from its ancient and essential ideal in separating the Eucharist from commensality, and in particular from inclusive table fellowship which embraces the poor and the outcast. This will be an uncomfortable challenge to those coming from traditions to which liturgical order is central. But equally it needs to be questioned whether the Church has ever been free of the tension between ritual observance and the social imperatives of faith which may fundamentally undermine it. This is a significant work, and one worthy of careful study, but also of robust and detailed interaction. Readers of all scholarly and ecclesiastical persuasions will be challenged and enriched.