Overview

In this book, Alex J. Ramos examines production, consumption, and transaction in the regional economy of Galilee during the Early Roman period. Drawing on literary sources—including biblical texts, Josephus, and the Mishnah—and archaeological evidence, he assesses the ways that the Roman and Herodian states, settlement patterns, and Jewish religious obligations would have shaped household economic behavior. Approaching the topic through new institutional economics, Ramos considers the role of state institutions of administration and taxation and religious institutions derived from the Torah and the Temple in structuring for Galilean Jews the incentives, priorities, and costs of economic decision making. In contrast to classical economic assumptions of what is economically “rational” behavior, he considers the ways that the laws of the Torah defined the bounds of rational and socially permissible approaches to economic production, consumption, and transaction. Ultimately, Ramos argues that state institutions played a rather indirect and weak role in shaping the economy through much of the Early Roman Galilee; religious institutions, by comparison, played a more formative role in defining economic behavior.

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9781978704503

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Both Judaism and Christianity have their roots in the Galilee of the Roman period, a society where religious life and economics were deeply intertwined in ways specific to that time and place. Torah, Temple and Transaction breaks new ground by probing the interconnections between piety and economics in Roman-era Galilee--how economic realities shaped religious practice, and how religion drove economic practice in turn. Recent study of the economic dimensions of Jesus' world has been shaped by economic models developed in the 1970s and 80s. Informed by a sophisticated grasp of ancient economics, Ramos' study represents a true step forward, proposing a new paradigm and mustering an impressive combination of literary and archaeological evidence in support of its approach.--Steven Weitzman, University of Pennsylvania

Author Information

Alex J. Ramos (PhD in Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania) is production editor at Penn State University Press.

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