Rustic conditions in the New Testament 303 



and essayists contributed something to the revival of healthier public 

 sentiment, I do not dispute; though I think too much success is some- 

 times 1 ascribed to their good intentions. At any rate they cannot be 

 credited with improving the conditions of rustic life. To the farmer the 

 voice of the great world outside was represented by the collectors of 

 rents and taxes, the exactors of services, not by the sympathetic homi- 

 lies of popular teachers. 



XLI. NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS. 



The authors of the books of the New Testament, whom it is con- 

 venient to view together as a group of witnesses bearing on the condi- 

 tion of a part of the Roman East under the early Empire, supply some 

 interesting matter. We read of an agriculture that includes corn- 

 growing, the culture of vines, and pastoral industry: the olive, and 

 above all the fig-tree, appear as normal objects of the countryside. 

 Plough spade and sickle, storehouse threshing-floor and winepress, are 

 the familiar appliances of rustic life, as they had been from time im- 

 memorial. Farmers need not only hard work, but watchfulness and 

 forethought, for the business of their lives. Live stock have to be pro- 

 tected from beasts of prey, and need endless care. And the rustic's 

 outlook is ever clouded by the fear of drought and murrain. All this 

 is an ordinary picture, common to many lands : only the anxiety about 

 water-supply is perhaps specially Oriental. The ox and the ass are the 

 chief beasts of draught and burden. In short, country life goes on as 

 of old, and much as it still does after many changes of rulers. 



From the way in which farmers are generally spoken of I infer that 

 they are normally peasant 2 landowners. That is to say, not tenants of 

 an individual landlord, but holding their farms with power of sale and 

 right of succession, liable to tribute. The Roman state is strictly 

 speaking the owner, having succeeded to the royal ownership assumed 

 by the Seleucid kings. But that there was also letting 3 of estates to 

 tenant-farmers is clear, for we read of collection of rents. At the same 

 time we find it suggested, apparently as a moral rather than legal 

 obligation, that the toiling farmer has the first claim 4 on the produce, 

 and the ox is not to be muzzled. Such passages, and others insisting 

 on honesty and the duty of labour, keep us firmly reminded of the 

 moral aims pervading the works of these writers. In other words, they 

 are more concerned to define what ought to be than to record what is. 

 Many of the significant references to rustic matters occur in parables. 



1 As in Archbishop Trench's charming Lectures on Plutarch pp 10, 77 foil. 



2 Matt 21 28-30. I cannot feel sure of this general inference. 



3 Matt 21 33-41, Mar 12 1-9, Luk 20 9-16. 

 * I Cor 9 710, I Tim 5 18, II Tim 2 6. 



