Abstract
As students become increasingly familiar with the texts of the New Testament, they are often surprised at the diversity of the texts, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of the social structures and identities in which the texts are embedded, and which they also seek to structure, maintain, or challenge. This volume is an excellent resource for the student who has some familiarity with the biblical texts and now needs to ground his or her reading in context. “Context” here refers explicitly to the social world of the ancient Mediterranean, but the reader is also provided with a solid methodological framework. The chapters all build upon interpretive models from the social sciences, rendering the ancient contexts of the biblical texts “strange,” yet approachable through careful cross-cultural modeling.
Each chapter is clearly organized and presented and includes pertinent suggestions for further reading. Endnotes are limited; the simple use of in-text citations allows the reader who is new to social-scientific methodology to move smoothly through the argument. Opening with a general theoretical introduction, the chapters then move to an application of this theory or model to a text or series of texts from the New Testament. For example, Ritva H. Williams, in her chapter “Purity, Dirt, Anomalies, and Abominations” (pp. 207–19), begins her chapter with a cultural anthropological model of purity and impurity. Williams then applies this discussion more specifically to the human body, highlighting the symbolic interplay of purity rules between social and physical body using the example of Israelite and Judean purity regulations. Finally, Williams applies the contextual model to a reading of Mark 7:1–22 in order to demonstrate the importance of the anthropological framework to the interpretation of presentations of purity and impurity in the New Testament texts and how they function symbolically as expressions of social value and identity.
Other contributors to the volume also focus on topics important in current social-scientific debate and research, from cognitive and psychological perspectives to spatiality and ritual studies. The currency of the topics is due no doubt to the activity of the volume's editors as co-chairs of the Social-Scientific Criticism of the New Testament section at the Society of Biblical Literature and to the participation of the contributors in the work of the interdisciplinary, international collaboration of the Context Group, a cluster of biblical scholars who focus on social-scientific methodology in interpretation of the ancient texts. While the volume includes multiple essays on patronage structures and brokerage, each author works from a different theoretical standpoint, and the volume not only acknowledges that chapters will inevitably overlap in some areas, but rather encourages this overlap. The necessity of the interpretive “constellation” is made most clear in the excellent introduction to the volume. DeMaris and Neufeld approach Acts 6–7 as a case study, relating social “clues” in the chapters to the theoretical frameworks discussed throughout the book. Why do “the Hellenists” complain to “the Hebrews” about the treatment of their widows in Acts 6:1, for example? In this seemingly simple verse, the reader must unravel ancient constructions of honor, gender, kinship, collectivism, ethnicity, etc.
Some chapters are more accessible than others; Pieter F. Craffert's “Altered States of Consciousness: Visions, Spirit Possession, Sky Journeys” (pp. 126–46) offers an essential introduction to the definition and theory of altered states of consciousness, but does not provide the sort of focused application to a New Testament text(s) which make other essays in the volume more user-friendly. Dennis C. Duling's chapter “Ethnicity and Paul's Letter to the Romans” (pp. 68–89) is particularly strong in this regard. Duling first examines the language and social-scientific theory of ethnicity, carefully constructing an ethnic identity model which considers both the fixity and fluidity of identity features and contexts. Before moving to a discussion of “ethnic reasoning” in the letters of Paul, Duling invites the reader to reinforce his or her understanding of the model by applying it to a series of quotations from ancient texts which contain each of the features of the model, asking the reader not only to identify these markers, but to consider how they function together to construct social identity in each text. By engaging the reader on this cognitive level and equipping them for application of the model, Duling allows for a more in-depth discussion of ethnicity theory as applied to the letters of Paul. In this way, Duling's chapter serves as an excellent “model” for the volume as a whole, constructed to promote active, contextually aware and methodologically thoughtful study of the New Testament texts.