Sometimes people wonder how believing Christians can be scientists. The Big Bang Wikipedia page is a little different from Genesis, for example. But maybe the contradictions are even larger for Christian mainstream economists. How to reconcile the teachings of Jesus with a world in which nearly everything is for sale and we’re told that’s as it should be (for efficiency)?
I stopped into a session on “The Economy of Ancient Israel” at the American Economics Association 2015 meeting to see how it works. “Rational Peasant Strategy in Biblical Israel: Reconciling Theory with Archaeological Evidence” by Albino Barrera was an exploration of what it was like to be an Iron Age peasant in Israel from 1200 B.C. to the Babylonian Exile (about 600 B.C.). Barrera explained that standard economics theory posits that peasants should have been impoverished and unable to hold onto any surplus that they generated because an elite would have confiscated surpluses through taxation. He said that the Biblical texts support this point of view. Archaeological evidence, however, is that a typical family lived in a 3-4 room house of 130 square meters in size (1400 square feet) and that these houses had storage areas. Evidence is that peasants had private land and held surpluses but then they lost it all after the Babylonians came in.
Some other speakers talked about reciprocity in ancient Israel. If you got a lot of wealth you would try to distribute it among your clan so that, if you were ever in need, those neighbors would come to your aid. Apparently the system worked out better than it did for Timon of Athens.
Certainly it doesn’t seem as though microeconomics has changed much in 2500+ years.
Related: I’m still listening to Cleopatra: A Life