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Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts
Reta Halteman Finger

9780802830531 Retail Price: $28.00
CenturyOne Price: $21.00
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Format: Paperback, 326pp.
ISBN: 9780802830531
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Pub. Date: May 15, 2007

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Description

From The Publisher:

Though "community" has become a common byword in the contemporary Western church, the practice of communal sharing has effectively fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, it is often the poor who are left wanting because we no longer come together.

Reta Halteman Finger finds a solution to this modern problem by learning from the ancient Mediterranean Christian culture of community. In the earliest Jerusalem church, in holding the responsibility for preparing and serving communal meals, women were given a place of honor. With the table fellowship and goods sharing of the early church, Luke says, “there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:34). Finger thoroughly examines this agape-meal tradition, challenging traditional interpretations of the “community of goods” in the Jerusalem church and proving that the communal sharing lasted for hundreds of years longer than previously assumed. Of Widows and Meals begins a discussion of need in community that can revolutionize the contemporary church's interaction with the world at large.


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About the Author

Reta Halteman Finger is assistant professor of New Testament at Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania.

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Table of Contents

    Introduction


  1. With Whom Do You Eat — and Where and When? Sharing Possessions and Breaking Bread

  1. Stating the Question: A Middle-Class Bias against Communal Sharing?

  2. Economic Sharing in Acts? A History of (Mis)Interpretation

  3. Naming the Meal: Agape, Eucharist, Bread-Breaking

  4. Meals on Wheels for the Widows? Common Meals versus Poor Relief

  1. The Social World of Acts 2:41-47 and 6:1-6

  1. From the Top Down: Socio-Economic Structures of an Agrarian Society

  2. Jerusalem: Productive City on a Hill

  3. How the Non-Elite Survived: Social Relations and Community Values

  4. Copycats? Essene Communal Life as Model

  1. The Social Context of Meals in Acts 2:42-47 and 6:1-6

  1. Never Eat Alone! Food and Meals as Cultural Symbols

  2. "A Glutton and a Drunkard": Jesus and Table Fellowship

  3. "Upstairs, Downstairs": Widows and Other Women in Dining Room and Kitchen

  1. Back to the Texts: Putting It All Together

  1. The Intentional Community: An Exegesis of Acts 2:41-47

  2. The Widows' Complaint: An Exegesis of Acts 5:42–6:1-6

  3. Daily Commensality: A Necessity Then, Impractical Today?

    Bibliography
    Index of Names and Subjects
    Index of Scripture References



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