Mormon continues to reprise the information from the end of 3 Nephi, where he had noted: “And they [the twelve] taught, and did minister one to another; and they had all things common among them, every man dealing justly, one with another” (3 Ne. 26:19).
The similarity of language suggests intentional repetition. It provides reassurance that cultural values continued but provides no other new information.
Culture: Even though there is an obvious similarity between the New World practice of “all things in common” with that of Christian communities in the Old World, there must have been important differences. The economic structures were different. The Old World had a monetary economy built on land ownership, as Johannes Munck, author of the Anchor Bible commentary on Acts points out: “Just as Judas carried the common purse when Jesus walked with his twelve disciples (John 12:6, 13:29), so everything was held in common by the larger group of disciples. The narratives inserted give a more detailed picture of the community of property in the primitive church. Barnabas was singled out as one who had sold a plot of land and had given the money for it to the apostles (Acts 4:36–37). It would not have been necessary to stress this if ‘all of them’ had done so.”
Old World Christians sold their property and gave the money to the apostles. However, this custom was apparently rather short-lived and was apparently neither an absolute requirement nor a complete separation from individual ownership. Probably, the amount of donation influenced the donor’s degree of participation in redistributing the resulting wealth. John Dominic Crossan analyzes the well-known story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1–10:
Recall… that Essene communalism could range from donating one’s entire property at Qumran to donating a minimum of two days’ salary per month in the other communities. I think of that communalism as a spectrum from maximum to minimum, but, whatever its specific details, it indicates that a holy Law for an unholy time demands modes of communal sharing. I emphasize, however, that sharing means both giving and taking. If, for example, one depends absolutely on the community, one must give absolutely to the community. Similarly, with Jerusalem. I leave open whether “all things in common” should be taken absolutely or relatively. I propose that there was a serious attempt to establish what we could call share-community to which one gave, at maximum, all one had or, at minimum, all one could. Against that background, the fault of (fictional?) Ananias and Sapphira was lying to the community, claiming to have given all when some was withheld, But that was a practical not just a theoretical lie. They were now taking from the community as if they no longer had any resources of their own. The story admits, in fact, that they did not have to sell their property and that, even after selling it; they did not have to hand it over to the community. But claiming an absolute gift was also claiming an absolute right, an absolute right to receive what one needed, an absolute right to share in the eucharistic share-meal of the community. All the Christ-hustlers were not in Galilee and Syria. In Jerusalem, then, as in Qumran; no deliberate lies about goods, no spurious claims to sustenance. What I see in both cases, with the Essene Jews and the Christian Jews, is a thrust toward establishing sharing community in reaction against commercializing community—an effort made, of course, to live in covenant with God. It is, in any case, the collection for the poor that convinces me to take Luke’s “all things in common” not as imaginary idealism or even patronal sharing but as communal sharing.
The reason for communal sharing in Acts was to provide for those who would otherwise have no access to the necessities of life. Sociologist Rodney Stark points out: “Eusebius provides a letter from Cornelius, bishop of Rome, written in 251 to Bishop Fabius of Antioch, in which he reported that ‘more than fifteen hundred widows and distressed persons’ were in the care of the local congregation, which may have included about 30,000 members at this time.”
Such circumstances would not have been unusual. Neither Jewish nor Pagan religio-political systems had consistent means of providing for the needy. Distributions to the poor were held primarily in connection with festivals. While the festivals were periodic, they were not held with the frequency of the early Christian sharing meals.
New World Christians were in very different circumstances. They could not sell land, because they did not own land. No one did—at least in the sense that we think of ownership; there were clearly family plots. Furthermore, there was no money with which to buy land. And finally, if individuals sold their land, then they immediately lost their ability to produce food and goods. New World Christian communities had to be different.
When Philo, a Hellenized Jew, 20 B.C.–A.D. 40, described an Essene community of Palestine, he did so from an outsider’s viewpoint. He indicated that they had all things in common, although Qumran documents indicate some retention of personal ownership within that Essene community’s system of communal sharing. Nevertheless, his perspective is important because it describes a rural community that would have had more in common with the New World than with urbanized Christians:
No one among them ventures at all to acquire any property whatever of his own, neither house, nor slave, nor farm, nor flocks and herds, nor any thing of any sort which can be looked upon as the fountain or provision of riches; but they bring them together into the middle as a common stock, and enjoy one common general benefit from it all.
And they all dwell in the same place, making clubs, and societies, and combinations, and unions with one another, and doing every thing throughout their whole lives with reference to the general advantage; but the different members of this body have different employments in which they occupy themselves, and labour without hesitation and without cessation, making no mention of either cold, or heat, or any changes of weather or temperature as an excuse for desisting from their tasks. But before the sun rises they betake themselves to their daily work, and they do not quit it till some time after it has set, when they return home rejoicing no less than those who have been exercising themselves in gymnastic contests; for they imagine that whatever they devote themselves to as a practice is a sort of gymnastic exercise of more advantage to life, and more pleasant both to soul and body, and of more enduring benefit and equability, than mere athletic labours, inasmuch as such toil does not cease to be practised with delight when the age of vigour of body is passed; for there are some of them who are devoted to the practice of agriculture, being skilful in such things as pertain to the sowing and cultivation of lands; others again are shepherds, or cowherds, and experienced in the management of every kind of animal; some are cunning in what relates to swarms of bees; others again are artisans and handicraftsmen, in order to guard against suffering from the want of anything of which there is at times an actual need; and these men omit and delay nothing, which is requisite for the innocent supply of the necessaries of life.
It is reasonable to assume that the egalitarian Nephite community operated in a similar way. As an agrarian society, all had to work to supply themselves with food, clothing, and shelter. Even King Benjamin supported himself instead of taxing the population (Mosiah 2:14). The results of their efforts were shared, so that if one family experienced a crop failure or the death/disability of a primary worker, others in the community would provide support through that lean time.
Reference: In his translation, Joseph wove several KJV phrases and constructions to this verse:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common. (Acts 2:44)
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. (Rev. 13:16)
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.… (Heb. 6:4)
Acts has provided both the phrase “all things common” and the context. It describes an economic experiment in both the Old World and the New. Revelation 13:16 supplies the next phrase, “no rich nor poor” that describes the Nephite egalitarian ideal. “Bond and free” also reflects 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Galatians 3:28.
It is not possible to date the commencement of slavery in Mesoamerica, but it was an economic institution. When the Nephites were living the principles of equality, there would have been no debts for which one would need to sell themselves into slavery. Benjamin specifically noted that he has not “suffered… that ye should make slaves one of another” (Mosiah 2:13).