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Triclinium Trialectics: The Triclinium as Contested Space in Early Roman Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2019

G. Anthony Keddie
G. Anthony Keddie*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
*
anthony.keddie@ubc.ca
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Abstract

This study draws on critical spatial theory to analyze the earliest archaeological and literary evidence of the triclinium, or Roman dining room, in Early Roman Palestine. It begins by examining the archaeological evidence of triclinia and similar banqueting spaces in Palestine, addressing their dating, their differing settings, and how their appearance and diffusion reflects socioeconomic and cultural changes under Roman influence. Next, it examines literary constructions of banqueting spaces in the Parables of Enoch, Testament of Moses, and “Q Sayings Gospel.” It demonstrates that these sources all seem to envision a triclinium setting in which elites eat, drink, and engage in all sorts of revelry while reclining on couches. The final section is devoted to critical spatial analysis of both the archaeological and literary data. It argues that these sources all evince, in varying ways, the interpenetration of local and global spaces rather than the unilateral “Romanization” of provincial space.

Keywords

TricliniumbanquetRomanizationspatial theoryapocalyptic literature
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 113 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 63 - 88
Copyright
© Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2020 

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Footnotes

*

This paper was first delivered at a joint symposium held by the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria in March 2018. I am especially thankful to Gregory Rowe for his thoughtful formal response and to Franco De Angelis, Matthew McCarty, and Florence Yoon for their helpful suggestions. I am also indebted to the HTR reviewers and Shulamit Miller for their sage feedback on this article.

References

1 David Driscoll, “Sympotic Space, Hierarchy and Homeric Quotation in Table Talk 1.2,” in Space, Time and Language in Plutarch (ed. Aristoula Georgiadou and Katerina Oikonomopoulou; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017) 271–78. See, further, Jason König, Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 60–89.

2 E.g., Carolyn Osiek and David L. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997); L. Michael White, “Regulating Fellowship in the Communal Meal: Early Jewish and Christian Evidence,” Meals in a Social Context: Aspects of the Communal Meal in the Hellenistic and Roman World (ed. Inge Nielsen and Hanne Sigismund Nielsen; Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 1; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998) 177–205; David L. Balch, Roman Domestic Art and Early House Churches (WUNT 228; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); idem, Contested Ethnicities and Images: Studies in Acts and Arts (WUNT 345; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). Peter Oakes, “Nine Types of Church in Nine Types of Space in the Insula of the Menander,” in Early Christianity in Pompeian Light (ed. Bruce Longenecker; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016) 23–58.

3 An important exception that discusses the historical Jesus and the early Synoptic traditions is Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). However, Smith does not treat these traditions as products of changing material conditions in Early Roman Palestine, but rather against the broad background of Greco-Roman culture.

4 Seth Schwartz, “No Dialogue at the Symposium? Conviviality in Ben Sira and the Palestinian Talmud,” in The End of Dialogue in Antiquity (ed. Simon Goldhill; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 193–216; Gil Klein, “Torah in Triclinia: The Rabbinic Banquet and the Significance of Architecture,” JQR 102 (2012) 325–70; Eyal Baruch, “Adapted Roman Rituals in Second Century CE Jewish Houses,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70–132 CE (ed. Joshua Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson; Leiden: Brill, 2018) 50–74. Much of the discussion has focused on the famous triclinia in the early 3rd cent. CE peristyle mansions in Sepphoris (the Houses of Dionysos and Orpheus): Zeev Weiss, “The House of Orpheus: Another Villa from the Late Roman Period in Sepphoris,” Qad 36 (2003) 94–101 (Hebrew); Rina Talgam and Zeev Weiss, The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris, Qedem 44 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2004).

5 Although I follow scholarly convention by setting the beginning of the “Early Roman period” in Palestine with Pompey’s conquest in 63 BCE, in this paper I also examine the influence of Roman culture in the Levant prior to Pompey (e.g., see below on Tel Anafa and Jericho).

6 Among others: David L. Kennedy, “Greek, Roman and Native Cultures in the Roman Near East,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research (ed. John H. Humphrey; JRASup 14; Portsmouth: JRA, 1999) 2:76–106; Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); idem, “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 40 (1994) 116–43; idem, “Romanization 2.0 and Its Alternatives,” Archaeological Dialogues 21 (2014) 45–50; Leonard A. Curchin, The Romanization of Central Spain: Complexity, Diversity and Change in a Provincial Hinterland (London: Routledge, 2004); Louise Revell, Roman Imperialism and Local Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For overviews of “Romanization” in the study of Judaism and Christianity, see Mark A. Chancey, Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (SNTSMS 134; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); J. Albert Harrill, “Paul and Empire: Studying Roman Identity after the Cultural Turn,” Early Christianity 2 (2011) 281–311; Reuben Yat Tin Lee, Romanization in Palestine: A Study of Urban Development from Herod the Great to AD 70 (BAR International Series 1180; Oxford: BAR, 2003); Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Rabbis and Romanization: A Review Essay,” in Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World (ed. Mladen Popović, Miles Schoonover, and Marijn Vandenberghe; JSJSup 178; Leiden: Brill, 2017) 218–45.

7 Katherine Dunbabin, “Ut Graeco More Biberetur: Greeks and Romans on the Dining Couch,” in Meals in a Social Context (ed. Nielsen and Nielsen) 97. See also Inge Nielsen, “Royal Banquets: The Development of Royal Banquets and Banqueting Halls from Alexander to the Tetrarchs,” in ibid., 102–33; Katherine Dunbabin, The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); eadem, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” in Dining in a Classical Context (ed. William J. Slater; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991) 121–48.

8 Dunbabin, “Graeco,” 81.

9 Dirk Schnurbusch, Convivium. Form und Bedeutung aristokratischer Geselligkeit in der römischen Antike (Historia Einzelschriften 219; Stuttgart: Steiner, 2011) 65–81.

10 Ibid., 83. See, further, Lisa Nevett, “Housing and Households in Ancient Greece: The Greek World,” in Classical Archaeology (ed. Susan E. Alcock and Robin Osbourne; 2d ed.; Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology 10; Malden: Blackwell, 2012) 209–27; Cristoph Börker, Festbankett und griechische Architektur (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1983).

11 E.g., Plato, Symp. 175c, 177d.

12 On the Roman reclining posture as an expression of elite power and status, see Matthew B. Roller, Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). For a discussion of the roles of slaves in triclinia, see John H. D’Arms, “Slaves at Roman Convivia,” in Dining in a Classical Context (ed. Slater) 171–84. Note that a few guests would sometimes sit on the edges of the couches if they were not allotted places for reclining.

13 Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 39–40; August Hug, “Triclinium,” PW 7A (1948) 92–101.

14 Lise Bek, “Quaestiones conviviales: The Idea of the Triclinium and the Staging of Convivial Ceremony from Rome to Byzantium,” Analecta romana instituti danici 12 (1983) 82–88; John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) 16–19.

15 Schnurbusch has shown that Roman banquets were regular sites of elite competition and political rivalry, in Convivium, 219–54.

16 Shelley Hales, The Roman House and Social Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 109–22; John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) 223–27, 246–68; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Mark Grahame, “Public and Private in the Roman House: The Spatial Order of the Casa del Fauno,” in Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond (ed. Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; JRASup 22; Portsmouth: JRA, 1997) 137–64.

17 Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 224, ill. 129.

18 Vitruvius 6.3.7–11; 6.4.1–2.

19 Nielsen, “Banquets,” 111 fig. 10, 116, 125.

20 Dunbabin, “Graeco,” 87.

21 Ibid., 92. See, further, Nicholas K. Rauh, The Sacred Bonds of Commerce: Religion, Economy, and Trade Society at Hellenistic Roman Delos, 166–87 B.C. (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1993).

22 Andrea M. Berlin, “Identity Politics in Early Roman Galilee,” in The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (ed. Mladen Popović; JSJSup 154; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 92. See, further, Sharon C. Herbert, “Occupational History and Stratigraphy,” in Tel Anafa I, i: Final Report on Ten Years of Excavation at a Hellenistic and Roman Settlement in Northern Israel (ed. Sharon Herbert; JRASup 10, I, i; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994) 26–182.

23 Andrea M. Berlin, “Between Large Forces: Palestine in the Hellenistic Period,” BA 60 (1997) 27. For analysis of the rich material culture from this complex, see Tel Anafa II, i: The Hellenistic and Roman Pottery (ed. Sharon C. Herbert; JRASup 10, II, i; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Tel Anafa II, iii: Decorative Wall Plaster, Objects of Personal Adornment and Glass Counters, Tools for Textile Manufacture and Miscellaneous Bone, Terracotta and Stone Figurines, Pre-Persian Pottery, Attic Pottery, and Medieval Pottery (ed. Andrea M. Berlin and Sharon C. Herbert; JRASup 10, II, iii; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018).

24 On the potential influences of Hellenistic palatial architecture in the Near East (e.g., the Qaṣr el-ʿAbd at ʿIraq el-Amīr) on the Hasmonean and Herodian palaces, however, see Andreas J. M. Kropp, Images and Monuments of Near Eastern Dynasts, 100 BC–AD 100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 93–109.

25 Kropp identifies several parallels: the second phase of the Jericho Hasmonean palace, Herod’s second Jericho palace, Herod’s Western Palace at Masada, and the Nabataean villa ez-Zantur IV at Petra (ibid., 113). See also Reinhard Förtsch, “The Residences of King Herod and Their Relations to Roman Villa Architecture,” in Judaea and the Greco-Roman World in the Light of Archaeological Discoveries (ed. Klaus Fittschen and Gideon Foerster; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996) 73–120.

26 Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Nelson, 1983) 95–120.

27 Ibid., 102; idem, The Herodian Quarter in Jerusalem: Wohl Archaeological Museum (Jerusalem: Keter, 1989) 61–4. See also section 3 below.

28 Whereas a strict definition of triclinium entails a dining space with three couches, a broad definition refers to a room that served as a dining space and usually had couches along three walls. See Schnurbusch, Convivium, 65–81, on the broad uses of triclinium in ancient literature. Note that this discussion does not address all potential dining spaces in the Herodian palaces but rather a representative selection.

29 Virgilio Corbo, “L’Herodion di giabal fureidis,” LASBF 17 (1967) 102–3.

30 Ehud Netzer, The Architecture of Herod, the Great Builder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 31.

31 Ibid., 63; Kropp, Images and Monuments, 129.

32 Kropp, Images and Monuments, 171.

33 Ibid., 143.

34 Carmen Aranegui and Ricardo Mar, “Lixus (Morocco): From a Mauretanian Sanctuary to an Augustan Palace,” Papers of the British School at Rome 77 (2009) 56.

35 In my estimation, the plastered tables and bench from the second story of the “Scriptorium” (L30) at Qumran were too narrow for reclining and likely served as a writing table and bench. See Ronny Reich, “A Note on the Function of Room 30 (‘the Scriptorium’) at Khirbet Qumran,” JJS 46 (1995) 157–60; Jodi Magness, Debating Qumran: Collected Essays on Its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004) 106; eadem, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 90–100, esp. 96; contra, among others, Pauline Donceel-Voûte, “ ‘Coenaculum’—La salle a l’étage du Locus 30 à Khirbet Qumrân sur la Mer Morte,” ResOr 4 (1992) 61–84.

36 On Roman garden triclinia, see Balch, Contested Ethnicities and Images, 311–43; Katharine T. von Stackelberg, The Roman Garden: Space, Sense, and Society (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies; London: Routledge, 2009).

37 Ehud Netzer, Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho: Final Reports of the 1973–1987 Excavations (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2001) 1:191–92; Kropp, Images and Monuments, 131. See, further, Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) 224–65.

38 Netzer, Palaces, 193.

39 Ibid., 1:194, ill. 281.

40 Uri Zvi Maoz, “The Synagogue That Never Existed in the Hasmonean Palace at Jericho: Remarks Concerning an Article by E. Netzer, Y. Kalman and R. Loris [Qadmoniot 32 (117) 1999, pp. 17–24],” Qad 32 (1999) 120–21 (Hebrew); Holger Schwarzer and Sarah Japp, “Synagoge, Banketthaus oder Wohngebäude?” AW 33 (2002) 275–87.

41 Ehud Netzer, “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho,” IEJ 49 (1999) 213.

42 Ehud Netzer, Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho: Final Reports of the 1973-1987 Excavations (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2004) 2:185, ill. 218.

43 On peristyle mansions in Palestine, see further, Jodi Magness, “Peristyle House,” OEANE 4:273; Eric M. Meyers, “Aspects of Everyday Life in Roman Palestine with Special Reference to Private Domiciles and Ritual Baths,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities (ed. John R. Bartlett; London: Routledge, 2002) 193–220; Katharina Galor, “Domestic Architecture in Roman and Byzantine Galilee and Golan,” NEA 66 (2003) 44–57.

44 Emanuel Damati, “Palace of Ḥilqiah,” Qad 15 (1983) 117–20 (Hebrew); Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period (SBFCMi 34; Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1995) 89–90.

45 Avigad, Jerusalem, 146.

46 Morten Hørning Jensen, Herod Antipas in Galilee (WUNT 215; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 142–3; Anna Iamim, “The Missing Building(s) at Sepphoris,” IEJ 66 (2016) 96–113.

47 Joseph Patrich and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “The ‘Free Masons Hall’: A Composite Herodian Triclinium and Fountain to the West of the Temple Mount,” New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region 10 (2016) 15–38; “Old, New Banquet Hall by the Temple Mount,” BAR 43 (2017) 50–54.

48 Kropp, Images and Monuments, 305; Ted Kaizer, “Man and God at Palmyra: Sacrifice, Lectisternia and Banquets,” in The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East: In the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (ed. Ted Kaizer; RGRW 164; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 179–92; Inge Nielsen, Housing the Chosen: The Architectural Context of Mystery Groups and Religious Associations in the Ancient World (Contextualizing the Sacred 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) 252–53.

49 Patrich and Weksler-Bdolah, “The ‘Free Masons Hall, ’ ” 24, ill. 14.

50 Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 72–140; Balch, Contested Ethnicities and Images, 311–43; idem, Roman Domestic Art, 195–238. Jewish tombs from the Early Roman period sometimes have courtyards (e.g., Tomb of the Sanhedrin) or exterior rock-hewn benches (e.g., Tomb of Annas). However, I am unaware of any that have bi- or triclinium courtyards for funerary banquets as was common in Nabatea (Stephan Schmid, “Nabataean Funerary Complexes: Their Relation with the Luxury Architecture of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean,” SHAJ 9 [2007] 205–19). One potential exception, however, is a tomb on Mt. Scopus (Jerusalem) with what appears to be a masonry triclinium within its central vaulted chamber (Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Burial Caves and Installations of the Second Temple Period at the Har Haẓofim Observatory [Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem],” Atiqot 35 [1998] 23–54, 161–3; Amos Kloner and Boaz Zissu, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period [ISACR 8; Leuven: Peeters, 2007] 171–72, no. 1-42, Burial Cave A). The tomb contained ossuaries inscribed with names in Hebrew and paleo-Hebrew. Although the chamber with the triclinium could have originated prior to 70 CE, Kathleen Warner Slane suggests that a date after 130 CE is perhaps more likely (Corinth: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 21, Tombs, Burials, and Commemoration in Corinth’s Northern Cemetery [Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2017] 189–90, pl. 44a). In either case, this symmetrical tomb was exceptional among the rock-cut tombs of Judea.

51 Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011) 81–82; eadem, Archaeology of Qumran, 126; Lawrence Schiffman, “Communal Meals at Qumran,” RevQ 10 (1980) 45–56.

52 Renate Rosenthal-Heginbottom, “Imported Hellenistic and Early Roman Pottery: An Overview of the Finds from the Jewish Quarter Excavations,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem Conducted by Nahman Avigad, 1969–1982, vol. 6, Areas J, N, and Other Studies (ed. Hillel Geva; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2014) 377–413; Magness, Stone, 54–58.

53 It is unclear what words Jewish elites used for this room. Josephus refers to Herod’s banqueting halls as andrōnes megistoi (B.J. 5.177). Palmyrene inscriptions use a word derived from andrōn, ʿdrwnʾ, as well as smkʾ, which also appeared in Nabatean (Kropp, Images and Monuments, 305). The rabbis employed the loanword (טריקלין (טרקלין, but in a broad fashion (Baruch, “Adapted,” 58–63; but compare Klein, “Torah,” 342).

54 On the authors of the apocalyptic texts from Early Roman Palestine as elite or sub-elite scribes, see G. Anthony Keddie, Revelations of Ideology: Apocalyptic Class Politics in Early Roman Palestine (JSJSup 189; Leiden: Brill, 2018).

55 Although not a focus of this study, some earlier Jewish texts reflect Persian or Hellenistic dining cultures. Esther depicts reclining at the banquet of the Persian king and some Greek diaspora literature portrays royal symposia in the palaces of Greek kings (Let. Aris. 182–300, 319–320; 3 Macc. 5:15–17). Ben Sira’s sympotic discourse (e.g., 32:2–5) underscores the international pursuits of the sage, who travels to the courts of foreign kings (39:4). Tobit (early Hellenistic period) is arguably the earliest Jewish Palestinian text to depict Jews reclining at banquets without reference to the culture of foreign kings (2:1; 7:9; 9:6). Interestingly, both the Aramaic and Greek versions represent dining as nonhierarchical.

56 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 37–82 (ed. George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) 30–34; Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Parables of Enoch according to George Nickelsburg and Michael Knibb,” in Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (ed. Gabriele Boccaccini; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 65–71.

57 The Greek text was likely (though not definitively) known to the authors of Q, Matthew, and Revelation: Simon J. Joseph, The Nonviolent Messiah: Jesus, Q, and the Enochic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014); Leslie W. Walck, The Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and in Matthew (London: T&T Clark, 2011); Darrel D. Hannah, “The Throne of His Glory: The Divine Throne and Heavenly Mediators in Revelation and the Similitudes of Enoch,” ZNW 94 (2003) 68–96.

58 Other interpolations, especially chap. 71, may have been added later (1 Enoch 2 [ed. Nickelsburg and VanderKam], 18–19, 312–14). See, further, Darrel D. Hannah, “The Book of Noah, the Death of Herod the Great, and the Date of the Parables of Enoch,” in Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man (ed. Boccaccini) 469–77.

59 Pierluigi Piovanelli, “ ‘A Testimony for the Kings and the Mighty Who Possess the Earth’: The Thirst for Justice and Peace in the Parables of Enoch,” in Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man (ed. Boccaccini) 372; 1 Enoch 2 (ed. Nickelsburg and VanderKam) 103.

60 My adaptation of Nickelsburg’s translation (1 Enoch 2).

61 Isa 14:11 MT: תחתיך יצע רמה ומכסיך תולעה; LXX: ὑποκάτω σου στρώσουσιν σῆψιν καὶ τὸ κατακάλυμμά σου σκώληξ.

62 4Q184 I, 6 might also add “couches” to Isaianic judgment imagery when portraying evil: “Her beds (ערשיה) are couches (יצועי) of the pit.” It is unclear whether יצוע refers to a dining couch or a bed mattress here, though. Nevertheless, the Parables has the couches turn to worms instead of imagining them in the pit of Sheol.

63 Meskāb could also mean “bed” (see 1 En. 85:3), but here there are no indications of sleep, and meskāb seems to function as a symbol of the lifestyle of the kings and mighty. Axumite scribes translated Greek κλίνη and κοίτη with the synonyms meskāb and ʿarāt indiscriminately (August Dillmann, Lexicon linguae Aethiopicae [New York: Ungar, 1955] 381, 964).

64 George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Response (to Kloppenborg),” in George W. E. Nickelsburg in Perspective: An Ongoing Dialogue of Learning (ed. Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck; JSJSup 80; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 587.

65 The earlier Epistle of Enoch also links the dining habits of the wealthy to the exploitation of the poor (96:5; 102:9).

66 See Book of the Watchers 8:1 (rebel angels revealed how to fashion gold and silver for personal ornamentation); Epistle of Enoch 99:7 (gold and silver used for casting graven images).

67 The Parables envisions a reversal in which “the righteous and the chosen” will eat with the Son of Man at an eschatological banquet (62:14). However, no couches or other details of architecture or posture are mentioned. It is possible that one of the interpolations in the Parables relates the tradition that the righteous will dine on Leviathan and Behemoth at the eschatological banquet (60:7–10 + 24a; see also 4 Ezra 6:49–52; 2 Bar 29:4). See 1 Enoch 2 (ed. Nickelsburg and VanderKam) 239–42.

68 On dating: John Priest, “Testament of Moses,” OTP 1:920–1; Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary (SVTP 10; Leiden: Brill, 1993) 116–17.

69 Tromp, Assumption of Moses, 85.

70 G. Anthony Keddie, “Judaean Apocalypticism and the Unmasking of Ideology: Foreign and National Rulers in the Testament of Moses,” JSJ 44 (2013) 301–38.

71 Ibid.

72 My adaptation of Tromp’s translation (Assumption of Moses). Ellipses are mine, but the legible text is also lacunose.

73 Tromp, Assumption of Moses, 213.

74 Ibid., 212 (on the lacuna ending in –rum as pauperum, “of the poor”).

75 I avoid “Christ-followers” because χριστός may not have appeared in Q.

76 Among others: John S. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); William E. Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001); Giovanni Bazzana, Kingdom of Bureaucracy: The Political Theology of Village Scribes in the Sayings Gospel Q (BETL 274; Leuven: Peeters, 2015).

77 Milton C. Moreland, “Provenience Studies and the Question of Q in Galilee,” in Q in Context II: Social Setting and Archeological Background of the Sayings Source (ed. Markus Tiwald; BBB 173; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 43–60.

78 Simon J. Joseph, Jesus, Q, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Judaic Approach to Q (WUNT 333; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

79 Following convention, the versification of Q is according to Luke. Translations of Q are my own, based largely on the reconstructions in Harry T. Fleddermann, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary (BTS 1; Leuven: Peeters, 2005), with reference to The Critical Edition of Q: A Synopsis Including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German and French Translations of Q (ed. James M. Robinson et al.; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).

80 The use of the term παρεδόθη in 10:22 for the transmission of revelation from God to Jesus likely implies a critique of the Pharisaic transmission of traditions (παράδοσις) of the elders. On the latter, see Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic Paradosis,” HTR 80 (1987) 63–77.

81 “The Parable of the Children in the Market-Place, Q (Lk) 7:31–35: An Examination of the Parable’s Image and Significance,” NovT 29 (1987) 289–304.

82 John S. Kloppenborg, “Q, Bethsaida, Khorazin and Capernaum,” in Q in Context II, 61–92; Arnal, Village Scribes; Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2000).

83 E.g., Reed, Archaeology, 44.

84 LSJ, 1344.

85 On imported garum and allec at Herodian Masada, see Hannah Cotton et al., “Fish Sauces from Herodian Masada,” JRA 9 (1996) 223–38; Piotr Berdowski, “Garum of Herod the Great (Latin-Greek Inscription on the Amphora from Masada),” QC 16 (2008) 107–22.

86 Katherine A. Shaner has recently demonstrated on the basis of 1st cent. CE visual rhetoric in imperial iconography that the language of ἁρπαγμός (and, similarly, ἁρπαγή) should be understood as referring to rape and robbery, as it often conveys imperial violence against subjugated peoples: “Seeing Rape and Robbery: ἁρπαγμαός and the Philippians Christ Hymn (Phil. 2:5–11),” BibInt 25 (2017) 342–63.

87 Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 230–35.

88 See, further, Daniel A. Smith, “ ‘But You Will Be Thrown Out’ (Q 13:28): The Spatial Dimensions of Q’s Apocalyptic Rhetoric,” in Q in Context I: The Separation between the Just and the Unjust in Early Judaism and in the Sayings Source (ed. Markus Tiwald; BBB 172; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 145–68; Arne Bork, Die Raumsemantik und Figurensemantik der Logienquelle (WUNT 404; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 277–81.

89 Eric C. Stewart supplies a helpful introduction and survey of scholarship: “New Testament Space/Spatiality,” BTB 42 (2012) 139–50.

90 Ray Laurence and Francesco Trifilò, “The Global and the Local in the Roman Empire: Connectivity and Mobility from an Urban Perspective,” in Globalisation and the Roman World: Archaeological and Theoretical Perspectives (ed. Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 119 n. 9.

91 Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies (London: Verso, 1989); idem, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996).

92 Christopher Meredith, “Taking Issue with Thirdspace: Reading Soja, Lefebvre and the Bible,” in Constructions of Space III: Biblical Spatiality and the Sacred (ed. Jorunn Økland et al.; London: Bloomsbury, 2016) 75–106.

93 Key Thinkers on Space and Place (ed. Phil Hubbard et al.; London: Sage, 2004) 272–73.

94 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith; Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) 90.

95 Ibid., 86 (original italics).

96 Ibid., 46.

97 Ibid., 39.

98 E.g., Andrea M. Berlin, “Romanization and Anti-Romanization in Pre-Revolt Galilee,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman; London: Routledge, 2002) 57–73; Richard A. Horsley, Revolt of the Scribes: Resistance and Apocalyptic Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010).

99 Claudia V. Camp, “Storied Space, or Ben Sira ‘Tells,’ ” in “Imagining” Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social, and Historical Contexts in Honor of James W. Flanagan (ed. David M. Gunn and Paula M. McNutt; JSOTSup 359; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002) 68–69.

100 John H. D’Arms, “The Roman Convivium and the Idea of Equality,” in Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion (ed. Osywn Murray; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 308–20.

101 Sarah Japp, “Public and Private Decorative Art in the Time of Herod the Great,” in The World of the Herods (ed. Nikos Kokkinos; Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007) 1:227–46.

102 On this style of wall decoration, see Silvia Rozenberg, “On the Lasting Presence of the Hellenistic Masonry Style in the Land of Israel and Neighboring Countries,” in Atti del X congresso internazionale dell’AIPMA (Naples: University of Naples Press, 2010) 365–73. David Jacobson identifies the symbolic connection between Herodian construction styles and the antiquity of the temple: “Decorative Drafted Margin Masonry in Jerusalem and Hebron and Its Relations,” Levant 32 (2000) 135–54.

103 Tom Brughmans and Jeroen Poblome, “Roman Bazaar or Market Economy? Explaining Tableware Distributions through Computational Modelling,” Antiquity 90 (2016) 393–408; Philip Bes, Once upon a Time in the East: The Chronological and Geographical Distribution of Terra Sigillata and Red Slip Ware in the Roman East (Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean Pottery 6; Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015).

104 Shimon Gibson, “Stone Vessels of the Early Roman Period from Jerusalem and Palestine: A Reassessment,” in One Land—Many Cultures: Archaeological Studies in Honour of Stanislao Loffreda (ed. Claudio Bottini, Leah De Segni, and L. Daniel Chrupcała; SBFCMa 41; Jerusalem: Franciscan, 2003) 287–308; Magness, Stone, 70–74. See also Stuart S. Miller’s important reservations about assuming that Jews were motivated to use these vessels by purity concerns as opposed to utilitarian factors and increased availability due to the Herodian construction projects: At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee (JAJSup 16; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 153–83.

105 David Adan-Bayewitz et al., “Preferential Distribution of Lamps from the Jerusalem Area in the Late Second Temple Period (Late First Century B.C.E.–70 C.E.),” BASOR 350 (2008) 37–85.

106 In a recent study, Boris Chrubasik has similarly emphasized that cultural change was instigated by elite competition rather than foreign imposition: “From Pre-Makkabaean Judaea to Hekatomnid Karia and Back Again: The Question of Hellenization,” in Hellenism and the Local Communities of the Eastern Mediterranean: 400 BCE–250 CE (ed. Boris Chrubasik and Daniel King; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 83–110.

107 This type of analysis, I suggest, focuses on the spatial aspects of what some scholars have profitably theorized as “glocalization”—that is, “the variety of ways in which local communities and cultures adopt and adapt the local global koine” (Kostas Vlassopoulos, Greeks and Barbarians [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013] 21; see also Michael Sommer, “Glocalising an Empire: Rome in the 3rd Century AD,” in Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits [ed. Franco De Angelis; Leuven: Peeters, 2013] 341–52).

108 Baruch, “Adapted Roman Rituals,” 68–71; Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 343–47.

109 Compare the parallel in y. Ta‘an. 4.2, 68a, and see also the similar language of ranking in y. Šeqal. 5.5, 49b. For further discussion, see Schwartz, “No Dialogue,” 207–16; Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 335. Another important example of Jewish negotiations of dining spaces is the tradition that on the night of Passover, “Even the poorest person in Israel must not eat until he reclines (עד שיסב)” (m. Pesaḥ. 10.1), which explicitly symbolizes freedom from Egyptian slavery in other sources (e.g., y. Pesaḥ. 68b). While these sources do not explicitly refer to the architecture and furniture of a triclinium, the bodily posture of reclining (using forms of היסב) may have been understood as implying this setting.

110 Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 340–41.

111 Gregg E. Gardner has argued that the Tannaim, an intellectual and social elite, were often quite wealthy as well, although some rabbis were of middling wealth: “Who Is Rich? The Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” JQR 104 (2014) 515–36.

112 On banqueting spaces in the gospels, see Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 219–78 (and the literature cited there).

113 For instance, Luke omits Q’s indictment of the Pharisees for taking the first seats at banquets. Instead, he uses ranking in triclinia as an opportunity to seat Jesus in the place of honor: Luke reworks the woes as a sympotic discourse Jesus delivered as the guest of honor at a banquet hosted by a Pharisee (11:37–54). Luke does, however, preserve Mark’s warning (12:38–39) that scribes seek out the seats of honor at banquets in 20:46. At issue for Luke is not the ranking itself but the unrestrained pursuit of social recognition. See, further, E. Springs Steele, “Luke 11:37–54: A Modified Hellenistic Symposium?” JBL 103 (1984) 379–94; Stuart L. Love, “Women and Men at Hellenistic Symposia Meals in Luke,” in Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context (ed. Philip F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995) 198–212.

114 Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 255; König, Saints, 133.

115 Even more than Q and the other Gospels, however, Luke presents hierarchical banqueting spaces as inclusive of the marginalized: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (14:13–14).