Book
Reta Halteman Finger, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007)
Reviewer
Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, ON
This study illumines the early church’s practice of commensality (fellowship at the table) within a community of goods, arguing against much of scholarship that careful attention to Acts 2:41-47 and 6:1-6, and to recent literary and social scientific research, shows that the practice was real and important to Jesus’ early followers.
Moreover, the widows mentioned in Acts 6 were not simply the most destitute and vulnerable among the poor of the early believers, but more than likely exercised an important role in the ministry (diakonia) of preparing and serving the daily common meals. Their marginalization from this function occasioned the crisis that resulted in choosing the Seven to augment the ministry of the word as practiced by the Twelve.
Finger undertakes a thorough critique of scholarship that has too often approached the texts with unwarranted historical skepticism, inadequate literary and anthropological sophistication, and outright sexism. By means of painstaking dissection of scholarship and sophisticated reconstruction of the social world, aided by a feminist alertness to the reality of women within a patriarchal world as recorded in androcentric texts, she offers a rich introduction to the social world of early believers, particularly those residing in Jerusalem.
The book consists of four parts, each subdivided into chapters, and provides clear introductions, summaries, and prospects. An introduction offers an overview of the contents and a preview of the methodology. Part I lays the groundwork, outlining the “interpretive presuppositions” and critiquing the history of scholarship.
Part II provides a social history of the early Jerusalem community of Jesus believers, employing the social sciences, including cultural anthropology. Relying heavily on Harmut Stegemann, Finger draws a close connection between Essene patterns of shared life and those of Jesus’ early followers, claiming that Jesus’ eating practices drew heavily from Essene practice.
Part III argues that the commensality reflected in Acts has its origins and inspiration in Jesus’ own practices of eating. In relation to the marginalized Hellenistic widows (Act 6:1), Finger explores the role of women in preparing and serving meals in the Mediterranean world, arguing that in the Jerusalem church they were not merely the neglected poor but were denied their traditional honorific female roles of participating in meal preparation and serving. Part IV offers a careful word-by-word exegesis of Acts 2:41-47 and 6:1-6.
In addition to meticulous textual exegesis, this volume is a mine of information on the social world of Jesus’ early followers, ranging well beyond the immediate concerns of whether they practiced commensality or what role the widows played. We learn much about the social conditions in Judea, the life of urban poor, the meaning and practice of eating, and the role of women, particularly widows.
Provocative are the close connections Finger sees between Jesus and his followers and the practices of the Essenes, even if very different notions of purity make easy parallels difficult to draw. This will no doubt be subject to further testing as Qumran scholarship continues to evolve.
More provocative and illuminating is the way the author shows how Jesus and his early followers took on traditional female roles in providing and serving food, thus representing a radical alterative to patriarchal assumptions about male roles. As important as this insight is, it left me wondering what happened to the widows once the Seven were chosen. They do not reappear in Acts.
Did this subverting of gender roles lead ironically to the displacement of women (widows) from the place they had called their own, and in which they could exercise a degree of authority and autonomy? No effort is made to draw on 1 Tim. 5 to further illumine the role of widows in the church’s ongoing development.
In a final chapter Finger argues forcefully that with all the distance between North American reality and the largely agrarian reality reflected in Acts, the practice of Jesus’ early followers eating together has found an echo in such diverse communities as the Casa San Diego Catholic Worker House in Houston and the Open Door community in Atlanta. She aims to instill in readers a sense of urgency and creativity in realizing the practical dimension of following Jesus in terms of eating together, in particular with the poor, and to do so in a way that makes real the presence of the reign of God. That, as Luke 24 reminds her and us, is how Jesus will be recognized.
I could not help but place the implicit and explicit challenge of Finger’s study in direct relation to the present urging among Mennonites to discover what it means to be a global community of faith. What does this “fictive kin group” demand of those having too much in relation to “sisters and brothers” having much too little? Finger would insist that Acts 2:41-47 and 6:1-6 have a direct bearing on contemporary faithfulness.
As well as being a storehouse of learning, Of Widows and Meals is a clear prophetic challenge to practical faithfulness. It should serve equally well as a resource for study and preaching, and as a textbook for graduate courses. There are some minor irritants that closer proofreading should have caught, but they should not be allowed to distract from this study’s overall excellence.