Divine Accounting
Theo-Economics in Early Christianity
Jennifer A. Quigley
Divine Accounting offers a nuanced narrative about the intersections of religious and economic life in early Christianity
Jennifer Quigley shows how the divine was an active participant in the economic spheres of the ancient Mediterranean world. Gods and goddesses were represented as owning goods, holding accounts, and producing wealth. This book argues that early Christ-followers also used financial language to articulate and imagine their relationship to the divine. It takes seriously the overlapping of themes such as poverty, labor, social status, suffering, cosmology, and eschatology in material evidence from the ancient Mediterranean and early Christian texts.
Jennifer A. Quigley is assistant professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Drew University Theological School. She formerly held a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship.
“Divine Accounting is a fascinating and important book – with Jennifer Quigley a brilliant and incomparable guide to both the literary and other material evidence for the roles of divine participants in ancient Mediterranean economies and, thus, within epistles and their audiences.”—Joseph A. Marchal, author of Appalling Bodies: Queer Figures Before and After Paul's Letters
Publication Date: June 8, 2021
1 b/w illus.