historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

154 JUSTIN TAYLOR
By placing w. 34-35 after v. 32 (with the interposition of v. 33),
Luke may intend to make the whole passage describe a practice that
was closer to that of his own day. All is now governed by the statement:
"and they did not say that any of their belongings was their
own private property." It is therefore implicit in the modified description
that members normally kept their own property and supported
themselves. According to our text, the common fund was maintained
by the proceeds of the sale of property belonging to members of the
group. In this modified description, such persons did not divest themselves
of it upon entering the group, as in the absolute community
of goods, but were prepared to sell property from time to time—
the force of the imperfect tenses here—for the benefit of the community's
fund, and so of needy members. That not all did so is
apparent elsewhere in Acts (cf. 12:12, 21:16). In any case, in the
examples that follow from outside the New Testament, contributions
to the common fund are expected to be made out of income or
earnings, rather than from capital.
We should not be surprised that Acts should attest two or even
three different ways of practising community of goods, viz. an absolute
community, as at Qumran, in 2:44-45 and originally in 4:34-35:
one of 'Pythagorean' type, according to which members made their
goods and property available to one another, in 4:32; and a community
welfare fund maintained by voluntary donations, in the Lucan
redaction of 4:32-35. In the Jewish sectarian literature to which we
have often referred, we can observe not only analogies with these
passages in Acts, but variant practices among groups of similar type.
c) With our text from Acts 4:32, 34-35, we can compare a passage
from the Damascus Document
And this is the rule of the Many, to provide for all their needs: the
salary of two days each month at least. They (the members) shall place
it in the hand of the Inspector (Mebaqqer) and of the judges. From it
they (the Inspector and the judges) shall give to the orphans and with
it they shall strengthen the hand of the needy and the poor, and to
the elder who is [dyjing, and to the vagabond, 15 and to the prisoner
of a foreign people, and to the girl who has no protector, and to the
unma[rried woman] who has no suitor; and for all the works of the
company... (CD 14:1 lb-16). 16
15 This may refer to a member of another similar community who is on a voyage
and has sought food and lodging; cf. Josephus, War 2.8.4 §124f.
16 English translation from F. Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The
Qumran Texts in English, tran. W. G. E. Watson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 44.