The City in the Valley: Biblical Interpretation and Urban Theology (SBL Studies in Biblical Literature 7)

Against Aristotle, who thought that money originated to ease barter, G. follows G. Heinsohn against M. I. Finley (pp. 105,266,286,291): emerging from catastrophes, Greek societies distributed common land as private property to all free adult males; patriarchy and private property-protected by the gods and law-enabled lending and borrowing. Just as G. promotes a Pauline urban theology while criticizing one form of Hellenistic "divine man" urban christology, he also criticizes the modern quest of the historical Jesus, for the portentous individual oriented toward achievement, a medieval hero worship, a cult of the extraordinary, the bourgeois concept of "genius," which fits the religion of white people in the West, despite the fact that the majority of NT writings show little interest in the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth (pp. xxvi, 54,65,195,269,237,277,311-12).