No abstract

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.

The aphorism 'context is everything' has been a guiding principle in many studies of Jesus' parabolic sayings. This is true, for instance, of studies attempting to recover a parable's significance in relation to the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, or in relation to its literary placement and function, or in relation to its polyvalent potential. It is also true of this study, which examines Jesus' narrative of the Samaritan-usually referred to as the 'parable of the good Samaritan'. It suggests that, when the Samaritan story is placed within a certain contextual configuration, its narrative features align themselves in ways that have either been conspicuously neglected or consciously avoided in the history of the story's interpretation. Rather than neglecting or avoiding the significance of these narrative features, this essay seeks to exploit their interpretative significance in a fresh manner, entertaining possibilities of meaning beyond the Lukan interpretative framework. In particular, consideration is given to the relationship between the Samaritan and the innkeeper as representing an exceptional partnership that testifies to the reign of God in making each party vulnerable to loss while promoting goodness towards others.

Rev .- exhibits an elaborate structure. Fundamental to its structural complexity is the rhetorical technique of 'chain-link' construction, discussed by both Lucian of Samosata and Quintilian. Appearing in at least three other passages in the Johannine apocalypse, this transition device involves a back-and-forth (AbaB) arrangement of ideas that has not been adequately appreciated in modern scholarship. Rev .- has occasionally been characterised as the product of a secondrate or 'irregular' mind. In fact, however, these verses evidence a structural feature commended by ancient rhetoricians concerned with presentational clarity and force.  New Test. Stud. , pp. -.