The New Testament: A Translation

by David Bentley Hart

verse 18 goes further and tells them not only to make themselves rich in good works, but also to become—well, here the customary translations are along the lines of “generous” (εὐμεταδότους [evmetadotous]) and “sharing” (κοινωνικούς [koinōnikous]), but the better renderings would be something like “persons readily distributing” their goods, in the former case, and something like “communalists” or “persons having all their possessions in common,” in the latter. (A property that is koinōnikon is something held in common or corporately, and therefore a person who is koinōnikos is certainly not just someone who occasionally makes donations at his own discretion.) Only thus, says verse 19, can the wealthy now “store up” a good foundation for the age that is coming, and reach out to take hold of “the life that is real.” And this would seem to have been the social philosophy of the early church in general. When Christianity arrived in Edessa (to take a very local but very revealing case, more or less at random), its adherents promptly became a kind of mendicant order, apparently owning nothing much at all. In the words of that very early manual of Christian life, The Didache, a Christian must never claim that anything is his own property, but must own all things communally with his brethren (4:9–12).