On "Wealth in Ancient Ephesus" by Gary G. Hoag *****

I found this scholarly volume immensely interesting. Hoag does a close reading for select passages from the first letter to Timothy alongside a review of Xenophon of Ephesus's Ephesiaca. By doing so, he provides a new way of interpreting many of the passages in the biblical letter. Some readings seem more convincing than others, but no matter, one comes away feeling as if one knows Timothy much better in its context.

Xenophon's work has historically been placed a century or two after Timothy, but as Hoag notes, more recent scholars now see it as being written at about the same time, which allows for the parallel reading. Hoag examples specifically attitudes toward wealth in Timothy and how those attitudes compare with those of the Ephesians and others who would have read Xenophon's tale.

The tale involves a young couple who meet at a festival for Artemis. Because they don't properly respect the goddess, the goddess banishes them to some hard times before they are allowed to return, more humbly, to Ephesus as the loving couple that they are.

In the most convincing of his arguments, Hoag examines how the work links up ideas about femininity in comparison to what the author of Timothy writes about women. Some odd statements are made in Timothy, but they fit very well when one reads them in light of the mythology surrounding Artemis. There seem to be very good reasons that the author of Timothy discusses childbirth and the creation, beyond just these being biblical stories.

Hoag's arguments regarding false teachers, benefactors, and wealth are a bit less convincing, but they are still intriguing ways to read the letter. I say they're less convincing not because they aren't good arguments but because the standard reading of the letter--that the author is dealing with some kind of proto-gnostic set of teachers--still makes sense. In other words, although Hoag makes a strong case that the enemies of the writer could be wealthy Ephesian worshipers of Artemis, he doesn't quite convince me that the other possibility doesn't make sense. So really, he simply adds to the way that one could read such passages. But this is by no means a bad thing.