Extracting the Lives of Stoneworkers from New Testament Texts

Augustus famously boasts that he found Rome a city of brick but left it a city of marble. But who was really responsible for the marbleisation of the Roman Empire and its cities? For millennia people have marvelled at the marble remnants of the Roman Empire, paying little attention to the hands responsible for extracting, shaping, and finishing it. In this article, I argue that attention to the working conditions of stoneworkers opens new avenues for interpreting Luke 20:17-18. Demand for stone created numerous opportunities for employment in the imperial building boom, but working with stone was physically difficult, dangerous, and anxiety ridden. Given the magnitude of the stone industry, the people to whom Jesus speaks would likely be made up of stoneworkers and others familiar with its exploitative economy. They would hear their experiences in his words and resonate with his rebuke of its unjust economic practices.