Saturday, September 12, 2020

Kent W. Huff's Non-Communalistic Interpretation of Acts 8 and 4 Nephi

 

Following is a brief attempt at an explanation of the “all things common” account in Acts 8:

 

Acts 8:1 tells us that because of persecution, all the saints except the apostles left Jerusalem. First they fled to other Judean and Samarian cities, and then on to Cyprus, Antioch, Damascus, and Alexandria . . . This had essentially been accomplished before the conversion of Saul. The Bible chronology tells us that Saul’s conversion occurred in 35 A.D. If we use the date of 33 A.D. as the year of the death and resurrection of Christ, then the large growth spurt of the Church and the exodus from Jerusalem all took place within two years. The Annanias and Sophira episode occurred somewhere during that time, probably near the beginning of the two-year period.

 

The persecutions would mean that people would have to flee their homes and lands to avoid imprisonment or death. Selling those possessions where possible would be the most sensible thing to do. The money received could be used to help finance a trip to a new location and the establishment of a new home and occupation. Part of those funds could go to assist those who had no means, perhaps because their belongings had been confiscated or destroyed.

 

In these circumstances it would probably be important to establish some kind of welfare system. If a person were to turn over all his property to the church, he would then have no property and could logically be classified as “poor.” By being a poor person, he could qualify for sharing in the proceeds from other similar donations. Someone such as Joses (Acts 4:36-37) may have set the pattern by donating all his property and then becoming eligible for sharing in the proceeds of other donations.

 

Apparently Annanias and Sophira decided to take advantage of the system by pretending to give all their property and thus becoming eligible to be maintained by the church. By secretly keeping back a part of the original sales price, they could have two sources of wealth. They thus become some of the first “welfare cheaters” on record. Their behavior would justify a strong action by the Lord so that no one would be tempted to take advantage of the system made possible by the unselfish acts of others.

 

Although possibly under a higher level of persecution, these Jerusalem saints were somewhat like those latter-day saints who were asked to leave their homes in the east and migrate to the west as part of the gathering process. They were counseled to do the best they could under the circumstances, that is, to sell their land if they could, or to rent it or simply leave it behind if no other arrangement could be made. D&C 38:37.

 

Attitudes toward property and its use are likely to be quite different during a time of forced or required migration. There are many parallels between the Jerusalem saints and the saints of Joseph Smith’s day. A “use it or lose it” or “give it or lose it” philosophy would become reasonable. It might as well be used to help your friends as be left to your enemies. When people are migrating, they give up and share property easily—if they don’t use it, they lose it anyway. Nomadic peoples or others in subsistence economies typify some of these practices for very sensible reasons. See George Dalton, ed. Tribal and Peasant Economies: Readings in Economic Anthropology (Garden City, N.Y.: The Natural History Press, 1967), p. 17.

 

Two other scriptural references to communal situations can be explained in a similar way. The references in the Book of Mormon to a people with “all things common among them,” 4 Nephi 1:3, occurred just after the wholesale destruction of cities in the New World. With supplies and facilities gone, people might well have to band together in a tribal subsistence kind of organization in order to survive. At economic conditions improved through hard work and accumulation of supplies and tools, organization ties could become more casual.

 

About two hundred years after the gospel-based society originated, the majority of the people rejected the gospel (4 Ne 1:24, 38, 40), and as a consequence, most of the cooperation they had enjoyed was replaced with contention (4 Ne 1:25-49). With only a catch-phrase, “all things common”, and a few remarks about the setting to go on, there is little that can be determined about the nature of the society, and we are left almost wholly to speculation. However, it seems clear enough that the peoples’ acceptance of the gospel (4 Ne 1:15, “no contention . . . because of the love of God”) was the factor that made possible whatever cooperation there was, rather than being the reverse, an economic mechanism does not the gospel bring. In other words, it seems unlikely that the apostasy was a consequence of a change in social structure. It is more likely that the apostasy damaged the social fabric.

 

The phrase “no poor among them,” Moses 7:18, is often assumed to indicate some kind of communal organization. It comes from a time when the armies of the world were attacking the people of Enoch. The Lord protected the people of Enoch through power given to their leader, but they probably found it necessary to help themselves as well by organizing along military lines for defense. This process would include centralized control of many aspects of life, including the army quartermaster functions of acquisition and sharing of supplies, facilities, and equipment.

 

The common thread running through the New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Pearl of Great Price references to communalism is the hostile, primitive, migratory conditions in which the organizations develop and the survival purpose they served. Brigham Young’s united order in Utah and Joseph Smith’s in Illinois and Missouri continued the pattern. (Kent W. Huff, Joseph Smith’s United Order: A Non-Communalistic Interpretation [Orem, Utah: Cedar Fort, Inc., 1988], 43-45 n. 15)