Bethlehem University Student detained by Israeli Military

I received the following note this morning and wanted to pass it along. I have already written a letter and sent it to the email address.

BETHLEHEM UNIVERSITY

جامعـــة بيـــت لحـــم

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
28 October 2009
Bethlehem, Palestine

The enclosed appeal comes from Brother Jack Curran at Bethlehem University.

Seeking HELP for a Bethlehem University Student
28 October 2009

Earlier today we learned that Ms. Berlanty Azzam, a 4th year student enrolled at Bethlehem University, majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Translation, is now being held in detention by the Israeli military authorities.

The Israeli Military authorities are holding this 4th year Christian student in the Sharon Detention Center near Netanya in Israel and are threatening to “deport her’ to Gaza “for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University.” Berlanty is originally from Gaza, but she has been living in the West Bank since 2005, after she received a travel permit from the military to cross from Gaza to the West Bank.

Berlanty is a 4th year student, seeking to complete her bachelors degree – but today she was arrested by the Israeli military at a checkpoint while traveling from one part of the West Bank to another part of the West Bank. The Israeli military has banned Palestinian residents of Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank.

We need your help.

Berlanty needs your help!

What can you do to help? RIGHT NOW, please send a letter to the Israeli military authorities by email (cogatspokesman@gmail.com ) or by fax (+972 3 697 6306) and let them know that you demand that they release Berlanty Azzam immediately so that she can resume and complete her last year of studies at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University.

May God Bless You!

Apparently I am a Gnostic Christian

According to April Deconick’s recent quiz, I am a reform gnostic! Take it for yourself here

Approaches to Early Christian Identity

Before my internet went down last week, I posted about the characterization of Peter and Paul in Acts. A related question, which I have been interested in for some time, is the text’s role in shaping the identity of early Christ-followers.  The relationship between narrative, audience, and identity formation, however, remains underdeveloped and needs much greater attention.  In my dissertation, I will address some of the ways early Christian identity has been addressed in previous discussions, focusing primarily upon four approaches that emphasize identity in relation to ethnicity, theology, social processes, and narrative processes.

Identity and Ethnicity: The Internal Struggle for Supremacy

The earliest modern approaches to understanding early Christian identity focused on the relationship between Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers and their struggle for supremacy in the nascent Christ movement.  This approach focused on identity in terms of ethnicity and ethnic distinctions made between groups.  Identity, therefore, was addressed by examining ethnic identity markers, especially circumcision, and the conflict it created.

The pioneer of this perspective, mentioned in the previous chapter, was F. C. Baur, who argued that the early church was marked by severe conflict along ethnic lines; that is, between a Judean (Petrine) group and a non-Judean (Pauline) group.  Baur argued that the split between these two groups began with the conflict involving the Hellenists and the Hebrews, which culminated in the execution of Stephen.

The tension between these groups, according to Baur, escalated in the conflict over ethnic identity markers, particularly purity regulations concerning meals and circumcision.  Acts 10-11 highlights the tension related to Judeans eating with non-Judeans and Acts 15 depicts the conflict over circumcision, which Baur argues is between an ethnically Judean third party on one side and Peter and Paul on the other.  The purpose of this characterization, Baur suggests, was to conceal the real conflict over Judean ethnic identity that existed between Peter and Paul, as illustrated in Galatians 2.

Baur’s hypothesis sparked scholarly interest in the conflict between Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers and continues to influence scholars of Christian origins.  As mentioned in the previous chapter, Baumgarten argued that Baur’s view failed to account for the sociological aspects of changing religious/ethnic groups and Ritschl maintained that it failed to acknowledge greater diversity within both non-Judean and Judean Christianity.  For Baumgarten, there was much more involved than simply rejecting or embracing certain ethnic customs; anticipating future approaches, he argued that the social implications of such a shift must also be considered.  For Ritschl, early Christian identity could not be understood merely in terms of ethnicity nor could it be limited to two traditions.

More recently, scholars have attributed to Baur’s theory the denigration of Judean identity in the period of early Christianity that persisted into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  William S. Campbell notes that “he [Baur] contributed enormously to the tendency in the Paulinism of the last century and a half to denigrate the image of Judaism in the New Testament.”

Furthermore, Shawn Kelley argues that,

For Baur, Christianity, despite its origins in the East, is the Western religion.  Consequently, his task is to define the essence of Christianity by purging it of anything that smacks of Judaism or the Orient, of nationalism, legalism, and particularism.

This perspective, exacerbated by the work of Ferdinand Weber,

notes Campbell, “had the long-term effect of depicting Judaism in a negative light.”

The negative view of Judaism resulting from Baur’s reconstruction, centered as it was in antithesis to Pauline Christianity, was challenged by George Foot Moore in his 1921 article in which he noted this negative shift in perspective concerning Judaism

and set forth his own constructive presentation entitled Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era.

This reassessment was elaborated upon in the work of E.P. Sanders, who examined the prevailing view of Paul as opposed to anything Judean in relation to the Reformation era hermeneutics of Luther.

James D.G. Dunn aptly describes Sanders’ argument:

Sanders’ basic claim is not so much that Paul has been misunderstood as that the picture of Judaism drawn from Paul’s writings is historically false, not simply inaccurate in part but fundamentally mistaken. . . .  The problem focuses on the character of Judaism as a religion of salvation. For rabbinic specialists the emphasis in rabbinic Judaism on God’s goodness and generosity, his encouragement of repentance and offer of forgiveness is plain. Whereas Paul seems to depict Judaism as coldly and calculatingly legalistic, a system of ‘works’ righteousness, where salvation is earned by the merit of good works. Looked at from another angle, the problem is the way in which Paul has been understood as the great exponent of the central Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. . . . If Stendahl cracked the mould of twentieth-century reconstructions of Paul’s theological context, by showing how much it had been determined by Luther’s quest for a gracious God, Sanders has broken it altogether by showing how different these reconstructions are from what we know of first-century Judaism from other sources.

Nevertheless, Dunn criticized Sanders’ presentation of Paul as “only a little better than the one rejected.” While Sanders recovered Paul’s Judean ethnic identity, he maintained that Paul abandoned this identity in favor of being “in Christ.”

Dunn maintains that Paul did not reject his ethnic identity nor did he criticize the Law.  Rather, Dunn argues that Paul was critical of the misuse of the Law that created social barriers, which Paul refers to as “the works of the law”:

‘works of the law’ are nowhere understood here, either by his [Judean] interlocutors or by Paul himself, as works which earn God’s favor, as merit-amassing observances. They are rather seen as badges: they are simply what membership of the covenant people involves, what mark out the [Judeans] as God’s people;…in other words, Paul has in view precisely what Sanders calls ‘covenantal nomism.’ And what he denies is that God’s justification depends on ‘covenantal nomism,’ that God’s grace extends only to those who wear the badge of the covenant.

Paul, according to Dunn, does not reject these ethnic identity markers; rather he objects to their use in maintaining an exclusive ethnic purity.

This discussion of Paul and his relation to Judaism is important for our study since this understanding of Paul revived the Judean aspect of early Christian identity.   This perspective spawned further studies of the relation between early Christianity and its Judean and Hellenistic context, thus influencing the way scholars addressed the question of early Christian identity.   Rather then merely examining ethnicity and the ethnic conflict involved in the formation of early Christian identity, scholars began to realize that much more was involved in the process of identity formation than negotiating ethnicity.  One of the most influential approaches to understanding early Christian identity focused on the role of theology in identity formation and maintenance.

Identity and Theology: The Quest for “Orthodoxy” and “Heresy”

One factor that emerged in the early twentieth century was the definition of identity in terms of right belief, that is, along the lines of theological “orthodoxy” and “heresy.”  Following Ritschl’s criticism that early Christianity could not be limited to two traditions nor understood solely in terms of ethnicity, Walter Bauer argued that early Christianity was far more diverse in terms of theology.  In his monumental study that would change the landscape of the study of early Christianity, Bauer claimed that in some regions the original expression of Christianity would later become labeled as “heresy.”

Thus, the sense of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” was not present from the beginning of the Christ movement.  Rather, there existed many diverse expressions of the Christ-following community, most of which would eventually be subsumed into an “orthodox” expression.  According to this view, Christian identity was closely connected with correct theology, which became the determining factor of one’s identity; if one did not believe rightly, she or he was labeled deviant and an outsider.  Unfortunately, Bauer examined mainly second-century expressions of Christian identity, leaving the question of unity and identity in the New Testament unanswered.  Ironically, the first study to apply Bauer’s theory to the New Testament writings would come in the same year as the first English translation of Bauer’s work.

Robinson and Koester’s Trajectories through Early Christianity attempted to apply Bauer’s model to the writings of the New Testament. Essentially agreeing with Bauer’s assessment of early Christianity, Robinson and Koester provide evidence for several distinct lines of development in the New Testament.  These lines of development constitute diverse identities within the New Testament writings such as Johannine, Judean, Pauline, post-Pauline, etc.  Like Bauer, Robinson and Koester maintain that “orthodoxy” grew out of this original diversity.

Likewise, James D. G. Dunn’s Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity examines the New Testament perspectives on topics including the use of the Hebrew Bible, worship, ministry, and sacraments.

While Dunn agrees that early Christian identity was very diverse in specific beliefs, he departs from the previously mentioned studies in that he identifies a central “unifying element,” which Dunn concludes, is “the conviction that the wandering charismatic preacher from Nazareth had ministered, died and been raised from the dead to bring God and man [sic] finally together.”

Despite Dunn’s argument for a central unifying element, this emphasis on a wider diversity than originally envisioned by Baur added breadth to studies of early Christian identity.  While ethnic identities were certainly important to the earliest Christ-followers, these identities may have caused certain groups to emphasize certain beliefs that may have been divergent from other Christ-following groups.  Thus, social location and social processes began to surface as important factors in understanding early Christian identity.

Identity and Social Processes: Social-Scientific Approaches to Identity

With social location and processes becoming important in studies of early Christianity, scholars began to understand that identity formation was much more than a matter of maintaining ethnic boundaries and the negotiation of diverse beliefs; identity formation is a complex process that is shaped by various social factors.  The earliest sociological approaches to early Christianity focused on describing the social context in which Christianity developed and may be represented in the important works of E.A. Judge and H.C. Kee, for example.

Although it has proven extremely helpful in understanding the context of the ancient world, social description did not produce a more complete understanding of the process of identity formation.  Sensing a need to analyze social processes, some scholars began to employ various models and perspectives from cultural anthropology and social psychology.

For example, Jack Sanders’ Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants employs deviance theory in an examination of the relationships between Judeans and Christ-followers before 135 C.E. Deviance theory, Sanders notes, asserts that the “control of deviance is a form of boundary maintenance brought on by external or internal changes that cause an identity crisis.” He concludes that “mainstream Judaism . . .  struck out at the deviant Christians in order to preserve its boundaries, its self identity as a culture.” Of course, one could also argue that the Christ-followers also struck out against the deviant Judeans who did not accept their message.

Most significant for the present study is Philip Esler, who pioneered the use of the Social Identity Approach (SIA) in biblical interpretation. SIA, which will be discussed in detail in the following chapter, involves social differentiation based on group membership and includes consideration of salient group norms, boundaries, and rituals.   Esler employed various aspects of this method in studies of Galatians, Romans, and the Gospel of John.

In his study of Galatians, Esler focuses on intergroup processes and the distinctions made between ingroup and outgroup members. He holds that Paul’s main purpose in Galatians is to create and to maintain the identity of the Christ-following group.  Since the Christ-following group that Paul addressed consisted of both Judeans and non-Judeans, the identity had to be expressed through boundary-making with these two groups. Thus, Paul is less an author of a theology of freedom than an architect of group identity in that he draws identity boundaries between Judean outgroups and his ingroup readers. In contrast, Esler’s study of Romans focuses on intragroup processes and the developing of a common ingroup identity. Esler’s thesis is that there existed within the Roman congregations quite a high level of conflict between Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers after the former returned to Rome following the edict of Claudius. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, then, represents his attempt to create a common ingroup identity among both Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers. The goal was not to force each subgroup to forsake its own cultural identity; rather the goal was to widen the scope of Christian group identity to encompass both.  The individual subgroup boundaries would become more permeable while the common group identity superseded each subgroup.

Following Esler, others studies explored the implications of SIA on New Testament epistles, two of which are particularly notable. First, Matthew Marohl employs SIA in his examination of the letter to the Hebrews in an attempt to ascertain the addressees and purpose of the homily. Marohl argues correctly that the addressees understood themselves as a distinct social group noting the use of “us” and “them” throughout the letter.  He further notes that the author relates both the ingroup (“us”) and the outgroup (“them”) to faith; the ingroup is “faithful” and the outgroup is “unfaithful.”  Marohl examines the comparison of Moses and Jesus in terms of a shared life story and prototypicality, concluding that the author of Hebrews integrates the addressees and Jesus into a shared life story (narrative) in which Jesus is prototypical of their shared common identity, faithfulness.  He concludes that the purpose of Hebrews is best understood in terms of social creativity in response to the crisis of the addressees’ shared negative social identity.  By limiting the addressee’s possibility for social mobility by urging them not to “fall away,” the author offers social creativity in the form of a symbolic outgroup with whom the addressees are to compare themselves, namely the unfaithful.

Finally, Minna Shkul’s recently completed doctoral dissertation at the University of Sheffield employs SIA to demonstrate how Ephesians established early Christian identity. Shkul reviews literature on social remembering and reputation construction and applies these in an examination of how the text of Ephesians uses the reputations of Christ and Paul to legitimate the community, explaining non-Israelite inclusion into the people of God, reforms of Judean culture, and contours of the early Christian identity.

Social-Scientific models, particularly SIA, have proven beneficial in examining the processes involved in early Christian identity formation.  What has largely gone unaddressed, however, is the embedding of these processes in the narratives of the early Christian movement.  With the exception of Shkul’s work, scholars have largely neglected modern literary theory when considering social categorization and identity formation in early Christianity.

This is not to say, however, that no one has raised the question of the connection between texts and early Christian identity.  Despite the neglect of literary aspects in many social-scientific approaches, some interest has emerged recently in the role of texts in the shaping of early Christian identity.  These approaches, which we turn to now, emphasize the ways that audiences and texts interact to form identity.

Identity and the Narrative Process: The Function of Texts in Identity Formation

The notion that the texts of the New Testament served, at least in part, to form the identity of early Christian communities is a relatively new approach in New Testament scholarship.  Two scholars in particular are notable. In Matthew and the Margins, Warren Carter asserts that “the gospel is an identity-forming . . . narrative.” This identity is centered in Christ-followers’ “allegiance to Jesus as God’s agent” but is not something created anew; rather, “the gospel continues something that is already underway for the gospel’s audience.” The gospel’s audience is assumed to have been familiar with “Jewish scriptures, traditions, and piety” and, therefore, the gospel builds upon an existing identity to shape a distinctive identity of Jesus followers. Carter concludes that the “gospel seeks, then, to define the identity and way of life of the community of disciples by presenting its distinctive origin, governance, deeds, and practices which are to mark its everyday life.”

The author, according to Carter, accomplishes this purpose by means of naming, central focus, claims of exclusive revelation, rituals and associations, social organization, invective against opponents, apocalyptic eschatology, and definitions of origin, governance, and practices.

Like Carter, Judith Lieu maintains that texts played an important role in the formation of early Christian identity.  She notes that “without continuity there can be no identity,” thus stories “construct identity through their poetics.” Identity is shaped, therefore, as stories from the past are re-interpreted to meet the needs of the present and future.  In this regard, texts “both shape and are shaped by communities’ dynamic self-understanding.” Moreover, “the same history can be used differently by different claimants, while different histories may be reconciled with each other in a single text or author.” Thus, Christ-followers continued to use the stories of ancient Israel to shape their identity.  Like Carter, Lieu acknowledges that this identity forming activity builds upon existing identities to shape a distinctive identity of Christ-followers.

More recently, Philip Esler and Ronald Piper noted in their study of the Gospel of John that “[b]y focusing on Lazarus, Martha, and Mary as prototypical Christ-followers, we inevitably enter the question of characterization in the Fourth Gospel.” Esler and Piper, therefore, hint at the potential combination of prototypicality (one aspect of the Social Identity Approach) and narrative theory.  Regrettably, however, their engagement of narrative theory is nominal at best, focusing as it does on the works of Martyn, Culpeper, and Hakola rather than engaging non-biblical narrative critics. Despite the lack of interaction with modern literary theory, however, Esler and Piper successfully make the connection between characters in literature and prototypes/social memory from SIA noting that, in John 11:1-12:19, the characters of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha are “prototypes of the identity Johannine community Christ-followers in the first century.”

This emerging interest in the role of texts in the formation of early Christian identity has identified several elements.  With the exception of Esler and Piper, these works, however, focus primarily on the narrative and so divert attention from the social processes of identity formation.  Esler and Piper do just the opposite; they focus primarily on the social processes and thus relegate the discussion of narrative to a small number of references.  What is needed, therefore, is an approach that will bring together these elements to develop an integrated method for understanding how the narratives of the New Testament helped to form the identity of the early Christ-followers.

A Way Forward: A Narrative-Identity Model

Each of the approaches mentioned above has contributed substantially to the discussion of early Christian identity formation.  The earliest approaches served to highlight the importance of ethnic markers such as food and meal customs and circumcision but failed to recognize other social factors that were involved.  Social-scientific approaches address the larger social phenomena but neglect the role of narratives in identity formation.  Recent works that highlight the role of narrative have identified several helpful elements of narrative that help shape identity but so focus on the text that they neglect the social processes.

This gap in scholarship drives the concern of the present study to bring together theories of narrative and social identity into a coherent method that will help us understand better how the narratives of the New Testament function in the process of identity formation.  Thus, the central methodological question of the present study is: Can connections between the Social Identity Approach and Narrative Theory be established that bring together the insights of these two methods in order to understand better how identity formation takes place in the interaction between audience and text?

back online!

Our modem died last week and we had to wait until payday to replace it. I am back online now and will post some more on Acts and Narrative-Identity soon.

Peter and Paul in Acts

The central thesis of my dissertation is that the narrative of Acts presents Peter and Paul as prototypes of a common Christian identity in the midst of diversity and conflict within the Christ movement in Western Asia Minor the last decade of the first century C.E. This identity, which I am arguing the audience constructs through interaction with the Acts narrative, is both inclusive and exclusive; it is inclusive in that it unites Christ-followers across cultural/ethnic boundaries and exclusive in that it distinguishes between distinctly Christian belief and practice and Judean and Greco-Roman belief and practice.  This Christian identity, which includes both the common belief that God raised Jesus, who had been crucified, from the dead, thus declaring him to be Messiah for Israel and the world, and the common practice of following Jesus’ example and teachings, is rooted in the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel through Jesus of Nazareth and now offered to all humanity without cultural distinction.

The question of the relationship between the characterization of Peter and Paul in Acts and the construction of Christian identity in the late first century C.E. has been neglected in previous scholarship. As the following review will show, previous work on Peter and Paul in Acts has been engaged in a search for the historical Peter and Paul and, therefore, on a historical reconstruction of early Christianity or on theological interpretations which portray Peter as the primary leader of the earliest Jerusalem Christ community who was either (1) diametrically opposed to or (2) instrumental in the inclusion of non-Judeans in the Christ movement.  These studies, likewise, argue that Acts portrays Paul as a missionary and theologian who is the chief proponent of non-Judean inclusion and, therefore, either (1) in direct opposition to or (2) in partnership with Peter.  While historical criticism has been the dominant method of interpretation, there has also been a search for the literary Peter and Paul.

Nevertheless, despite an increasing interest in literary analyses of Luke-Acts over recent decades, and given the clear emphasis and parallelism between these two characters in Acts and recent interest in early Christian identity formation, a thorough narrative treatment of Luke’s portrayal of them both with regard to their roles in the formation of early Christian identity seems to be an obvious omission; thus, the need for a search for Peter and Paul as prototypes of a common Christian identity.

reposting dissertation excerpts

Before i accidentally deleted lots of old posts, I had been posting excerpts of my dissertation on here. I will pick that up again soon, beginning with some of the stuff I had previously posted.

URL update

I have decided to let my jcbaker.info url expire. Please update your bookmarks and links to this site with the url: jcbaker.wordpress.com.

Narrative Theory

In my last post, I described social-scientific criticism. The data gathered by social scientists can be helpful for understanding biblical texts. But, the method should not be used to the exclusion of all other methods. One method I have found particularly fitting is literary criticism. More specifically, narrative theory with its concern for plot development, character analysis, audience response, etc. has become a very useful way for me to look at biblical narratives while also incorporating methods of social science criticism. In this post, I want to offer an overview of narrative theory. In future posts, I will discuss some of the work from my dissertation that combines narrative and social science methods.

Narrative Theory has its roots in Aristotle’s work on Poetics.  There Aristotle identified the major components and functions of tragic and epic poetry. In chapter six of Poetics, Aristotle discusses the different components of epic/tragedy including, plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry.  Aristotle thinks that the structure of events, or plot, is most important since a story consists of action, not state of being, and without action there could be no story.  Beginning in chapter thirteen, Aristotle addresses the question of how a story accomplishes its purpose.  He maintains that epic/tragedy should not depict a person’s falling from prosperity to adversity through evil or depravity, but through error.  This character is someone for whom the reader should have sympathy, and, thus, whose plight can affect the reader emotionally.  Chapters six and thirteen of Poetics, therefore, correspond to the two major aspects of Narrative Theory, componetial and functional analysis.

In his 2006 article on the history of narrative theory, Patrick C. Hogan notes these two aspects of Aristotle’s narrative theory and their continuity through the development of modern narrative theory. Hogan states, “Aristotle undertook two sorts of analysis in the Poetics,” namely, componential analysis and functional analysis.

Componential analysis refers to the elements and operations that compose the narrative, such as language, character, setting, and plot, as well as the selection of these events and their relation to one another.  Functional analysis, on the other hand, refers to the purpose(s) the components serve and how they relate to the purpose(s) of the plot.  Furthermore, Hogan notes that Aristotle divides the purposes of narrative into two categories, emotional and ethical.

Hogan goes on to say that all subsequent writers have shared this general approach to narrative, with varying emphases on componential/functional analysis and emotional/ethical purposes.  For example, modern literary theory has shown “a strong bias toward subsuming all literary analyses under overarching ethical or political functions.” Thus, the range of functional issues examined in narrative theory has expanded, including ideological critiques such as Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism, sexuality, disability, etc.

Likewise, modern scholars have elaborated on Aristotle’s componential analysis by adding the elements of implied author/reader.  The Formalist approach to literary criticism pressed componential analysis even further by stressing the features inherent in the text such as grammar, syntax, and literary devices.  Formalism was a highly influential school of literary criticism in Russia during the early decades of the twentieth century and in the United States after the First World War.

Because of their focus on the literary forms in the text itself, formalist methods are often linked with structuralism, especially in the fields of linguistics and anthropology.  The formalist focus on the features within the text itself came under criticism for ignoring the text’s historical-cultural background.  For example, Leon Troktsky claims that “the methods of formal analysis are necessary, but insufficient” because they neglect the social world with which the individuals who write and read literature are bound up. “The form of art is, to a certain and very large degree, independent, but the artist who creates this form, and the spectator who is enjoying it, are not empty machines, one for creating form and the other for appreciating it. They are living people, with a crystallized psychology representing a certain unity, even if not entirely harmonious. This psychology is the result of social conditions.” About the same time, a similar method known as New Criticism was on the rise in Britain and the United States.

Like formalism, New Criticism focused attention on the text itself while rejecting the influence of extra-textual sources such as the historical-cultural background, authorial intention, and the effect upon the reader. New Criticism faced similar challenges for being “uninterested in the human meaning, the social function and effect of literature” and “unhistorical,” for “it isolates the work of art from its past and its context.” It is important to mention, however, that two important facets of New Criticism were formative for Narrative Theory: (1) texts are viewed as organic wholes, a unity that should be understood on its own terms and (2) the emphasis on a close reading of the text.

Hogan seems justified, therefore, in saying, “[t]he broad framework of narrative theory has remained largely the same since its inception.” The componential and functional aspects of narrative theory persisted and served as an important point of reference for an influential English work in narrative theory by Seymour Chatman, who distinguishes between story, or the content (events, actions, characters, etc.) of the narrative and the discourse, or how the narrative is presented.

This dichotomy is perhaps better illustrated by noting the five major aspects of narrative to be addressed in this study.  The setting refers to the context of the story.  This refers both to the context within the world of the text and the historical/cultural location in which the text is embedded.  The narrator is story-teller that is embedded in the text.  The narrator is not the author, but the implied author or the perspective from which the story is told.  The plot is the way events in the narrative are arranged and combined.  Rhetoric refers to the various conventions that the author may use to achieve his/her purpose, for example, persuading, legitimating, or confirming.  While each of these elements will prove important, the focus of my present work is upon character. In my next post, I will cover character development and audience response.

What is Social Scientific Criticism?

Recently, there has been much traffic on my site looking for information about Social Scientific Criticism. I have decided, therefore, to re-vise and re-post some early material I have written on the subject. Today, I offer a general description of the method, taken largely from John Elliott’s book, What Is Social Scientific Criticism?

In what is perhaps the most comprehensive description of Social Scientific Criticism, Elliott defines the discipline as “that phase of the exegetical task which analyzes the social and cultural dimensions of the text and of its environmental context through the utilization of the perspectives, theory, models, and research of the social sciences.” This definition suggests four key dimensions that make up the Social-Scientific approach to biblical texts.

First, Elliott refers to Social-Scientific Interpretation as a “phase of the exegetical task.” Social-Science Interpretation does not presume to supersede more traditional exegetical methods. Rather, practitioners of this methodology understand it as one of the many subdivisions of the exegetical task. They understand the importance of interpretative methods such as historical-critical, textual, literary, narrative, rhetorical, and feminism, as well as others. Social-Science Interpretation is thus linked with these other methodological approaches and complements them by means of cultural analysis, the second component of this definition.

Elliott’s definition of Social-Scientific Interpretation asserts that it is a phase of the exegetical task that “analyzes the social and cultural dimensions of the texts.” This aspect of the exegetical task is made necessary by the vast historical and cultural gap that exists between modern readers and the ancient authors who produced the texts. This historical and cultural distance requires not only understanding the broad sweep of historical events during which the biblical material was written and/or edited but also the general cultural systems that were in place during that time. This task requires not only attention to the social and cultural dimensions but also “the environmental context” in order to determine the meanings explicit and implicit in a text, which were “made possible and shaped by the social and cultural systems inhabited by both authors and intended audiences.”

Finally, the unique feature of Social-Scientific Interpretation is that it does all of the above “through the utilization of the perspectives, theory, models, and research of the social sciences.”

By exploring modern and ancient cultures that are similar to the biblical world and expanding the understanding of such phenomena by means of sociological research, biblical interpreters are able to employ the findings of modern social research on the ancient world of the Bible. To illustrate, in my dissertation, I use the Social Identity Approach to help understand data on group orientation and formation in combination with Cultural Anthropology’s findings on ancient collectivist cultures, such as the first century Mediterranean.

The definition of Social-Scientific Interpretation offered in this section has sketched the major components of Social-Scientific Interpretation, yet it remains necessary to delineate the specific objectives of the method. The central objectives of the methodology can be stated succinctly in three statements.

1. To understand the cultural world of the biblical writings by employing the methods and findings
of cultural anthropology and sociology.
2. To analyze biblical texts in light of these general social and cultural conditions.
3. To understand the text as a reflection of as well as response to the social and cultural context.

As with any method, this one is not perfect. It does fail to address, for example, the literary nature of the NT and early Christian texts and often does not engage in analysis of literary features. Exceptions to this generality are the works of Vernon Robbins and David Gowler. In upcoming posts, I will explore literary and narrative approaches to the biblical texts and the intersection of social scientific and literary criticisms.

PhD Required Reading List

Many PhD programs in NT (at least) have a required reading list that the student is expected to have completed by the end of their program. This is to ensure that students read from a broad range of classical NT scholarship as well as the best, most recent work.

Although I did not have a required reading list during my PhD program, I have made it a point to read some classic works, including some histories of NT research. What I would like to do is create a reading list, subdivided into the following categories, that the person completing a PhD in NT should have read.  Offer your suggestions in the comments section, please.

~ General NT History of Research

~ Gospels

~ Johannine

~ Paul

~ General Epistles

~ Methodology

~ Historical and Cultural Context