"I have argued that we must make a serious and sober effort to rethink the first-century Galilean fishing trade and the more extensive agrarian social formation in non-capitalist terms—challenging the universality of its constitutive categories such as conceptions of enterprise, innovation, individualism, the free-market, and capital accumulation. Historical disciplines can and should play a crucial role in relativizing the inviolable reality of entrepreneurialism. This can be achieved simply by emphasizing how individual entrepreneurialism is an inadequate heuristic device for reading ancient texts. As an alternative, I suggest we regard Jesus’ call of fishermen in the Synoptic tradition as indicative of social peasant unrest that was, in fact, widespread during the frequent upheavals of first-century Roman Palestine. When viewed in tandem with other social, political, and economic forces that were intruding on the daily lives of Jewish peasants, the Synoptic narratives suddenly take on new life."
