Labours of the Saints and the Collection for Jerusalem

to premodern societies since both terms are defined by ideological struggles between capitalism and Marxism. So I begin by reformulating the topic for a precapitalist setting and by locating it within networks of exchange in a tributary mode of production. Using this framework, the article examines an innovative and perhaps unprecedented project by the apostle Paul in which he sought to collect capital from the daily labours of his multi-ethnic network of Christ groups in several cities and to distribute it to poor people in the Christ groups of Jerusalem. Paul's ideological support for the experimental project was eclectic, and if effective, the exchange had the potential to suppress objections to his activism from Jerusalem-based Christ groups. This movement of capital flowed away from Rome and toward a province that was difficult to control. So while the collection for Jerusalem attempted to realign ethnicity within the networks of Christ groups, this redistribution of capital also violated the imperial ideology of ethnicities that undergirded Roman hegemony.