God, Benefactor and Patron: The Major Cultural Model for Interpreting the Deity in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Abstract

This study contributes to a renewed interest in the Christian Deity by employing the cultural model of benefactor–client relations. What is fresh here is an enlarged model of this pattern of social relations and fresh, apt and plentiful illustrations of it in antiquity. The patron–client model is expanded by concern for types of reciprocity and classification of what is exchanged. Typical titles of God-as-benefactor are examined in light of media of exchange, especially power, knowledge and material benefaction. Then several leading questions are asked: Why does God indeed give benefaction? What kind of reciprocity is in view? What kind of debt is incurred? Finally, what do clients return to God? Elites in antiquity state that God wants nothing and needs nothing. Yet mortals have offered sacrifice, a form of inducement, which practice Christians and philosophers rejected.