Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Christopher B. Zeichmann on Matthew 5:41

  

Conscripted for a Mile—Matt 5:41

 

Jesus’ saying about “going the extra mile” is among examples of turning the other cheek and not resisting the evil person (5:38-42). Conscription (angareuseí) for a mile has long been interpreted as a reference to civilians being legally obligated to carry soldier’s supplies in the Roman provinces. Scholars commonly assume there was a law that mandated civilians carry a soldier’s burden up to one mile, but there is no evidence for such laws and this inference is unnecessary. Laurena Ann Brink has demonstrated that such a meaning does not capture the legal sense of the word anagareia in the Roman East during the first century CE which differed from the common conception in important ways. (Laurena Ann Brink, “Going the Extra Mile: Reading Matt 5:41 Literally and Metaphorically,” 111-28) Namely, while officers could conscript others to carry their load, those conscripted were not civilians themselves, but civilians’ animals; even then, they were only allowed to do for so for official business—anything else was legally tantamount to robbery. Brink demonstrates that the supposition that civilians themselves were legally obligated to carry military goods is unfounded. She points to several inscriptions and papyri from the first century; one inscription erected 18-19 CE near Pisidia (AE 1976.653), for instance, clarifies that the number and species of livestock each rank were allowed: an equestrian officer was allowed three wagons or three miles, whereas a centurion was permitted one wagon or three mules. Regardless of the officer’s rank, the edict indicates the payment due to the owner of the livestock, one sestertius per schoenus of mule travel (roughly 3.5 miles). Of course, just because anything beyond this was legally considered robbery does not mean it never happened. Ancient writers regularly depicted soldiers as bullies who demanded inscription from civilians they encountered (e.g., Apuleius Metam, 9.39) and the very existence of such an edict in Pisida indicates that it was deemed necessary to prevent exploitation.

 

Matthew assumes that humans are the ones being conscripted to go a mile, not the livestock. Perhaps someone is being extorted or illegally threatened to accompany an “evil person”—in this case, a soldier or officer. If so, this would imply a double humiliation should be accommodated: not only is the reader not being paid as would be legally required, but they themselves are being treated like livestock; it is easy to see why the person demanding such would be deemed “evil” by the evangelist! (Christopher B. Zeichmann, The Roman Army and the New Testament [Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2018], 67)