T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament 9780567379542, 9780567666499, 9780567669865, 9780567017604

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T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament

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T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament Edited by J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker

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Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker, with Contributors, 2014 J. Brian Tucker, Coleman A. Baker and Contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: ePDF: 978-0-56701-760-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament / J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker p.cm Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978–0–5673–7954–2 (hardcover) Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

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Contents Abbreviations Contributors Editors’ Preface   1 Introduction: J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker

ix xiii xv 1

Part 1: Methodological Studies

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  2 An Outline of Social Identity Theory – Philip F. Esler   3 Social History and Social Theory in the Study of Social Identity – Andrew D. Clarke and J. Brian Tucker   4 Ethnicity and Social Identity – Aaron Kuecker   5 Ritual and Social Identity: The Deutero-Pauline Shaping of Early Christianity – Minna Shkul   6 Letter Writing and Social Identity – Matthew J. Marohl   7 A Narrative-Identity Model for Biblical Interpretation: The Role of Memory and Narrative in Social Identity Formation – Coleman A. Baker   8 Nodes of Objective Socialization and Subjective Reflection in Identity: Galatian Identity in an Imperial Context – Robert L. Brawley

13 41 59 79 93

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Part 2: Textual Studies

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  9 Group Norms and Prototypes in Matthew 5.3–12: A Social Identity Interpretation of the Matthaean Beatitudes – Philip F. Esler 10 Suffering and the Creation of Christian Identity in the Gospel of Mark – Paul Middleton

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11 Textual Orientations: Jesus, Written Texts, and the Social Construction of Identity in the Gospel of Luke – Rafael Rodríguez 12 Filial Piety and Violence in Luke-Acts and the Aeneid: A Comparative Analysis of Two Trans-Ethnic Identities – Aaron Kuecker 13 Social Identities, Subgroups, and John’s Gospel: Jesus the Prototype and Pontius Pilate (John 18.28–19.16) – Warren Carter 14 Children of Abraham, the Restoration of Israel and the Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Nations: What Does it Mean for ‘In Christ’ Identity? – Christopher Zoccali 15 Social Identity and Conflict in Corinth: 1 Corinthians 11.17–34 in Context – Mark Finney 16 ‘If Anyone is in Christ, New Creation: The Old has Gone, the New has Come’ (2 Corinthians 5.17): New Creation and Temporal Comparison in Social Identity Formation in 2 Corinthians – Kar Yong Lim 17 Galatians 2.1–14 as Depiction of the Church’s Early Struggle for Community-Identity Construction – Atsuhiro Asano 18 Adopted Siblings in the Household of God: Kinship Lexemes in the Social Identity Construction of Ephesians – Daniel K. Darko 19 Echoes of Paul’s Philippians in Polycarp: Texts that Create Identity – Sergio Rosell Nebreda 20 New Identity and Cultural Baggage: Identity and Otherness in Colossians – Minna Shkul 21 Stereotyping and Institutionalization as Indications of Leadership Maintenance in the Pastoral Epistles: 1 Timothy as a Test Case – Jack Barentsen 22 Paul’s Particular Problem – The Continuation of Existing Identities in Philemon – J. Brian Tucker 23 Social Identity in the Epistle to the Hebrews – Steven Muir 24 Calling on the Diaspora: Nativism and Diaspora Identity in the Letter of James – K. Jason Coker 25 ‘Aliens’ among ‘Pagans’, ‘Exiles’ among ‘Gentiles’: Authorial Strategy and (Social) Identity in 1 Peter – Todd D. Still and Natalie R. Webb

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211 235

253 273

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389 407 425 441

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26 The Agapé Feast in 2 Peter, Imperial Ideology, and Social Identity – R. Alan Streett 27 Identity in 1 John: Sinless Sinners who Remain in Him – Rikard Roitto 28 Constructing Identity in the Epistle of Jude – Ritva H. Williams 29 Israelite Ethnic Identity Responding to the Roman Imperium in Revelation – Markus Cromhout Bibliography Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources Index of Modern Authors

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473 493 511 527 551 619 649

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Abbreviations AB

Anchor Bible

ABD

Anchor Bible Dictionary

ABR

Australian Biblical Review

ACNT

Augsburg Commentaries on the New Testament

AnBib

Analecta biblica

BBR

Bulletin for Biblical Research

BDAG

Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd edn.

BDF

Blass, F., A. Debrunner, and R. W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)

BECNT

Baker Exegetical Commentary of the New Testament

BibInt

Biblical Interpretation

BNTC

Black’s New Testament Commentaries

BSac

Bibliotheca sacra

BTB

Biblical Theology Bulletin

BZNW

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

CBQ

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

ConBNT

Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series

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x Abbreviations

CTR

Criswell Theological Review

DPL

Hawthorne, G. F., R. Martin, and D. G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993)

EDNT

Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament

EncJud

Encyclopaedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem, 1972

ETR

Études théologiques et religieuses

ExpTim

Expository Times

FoiVie

Foi et vie

FRLANT

Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des AT und NT

GNT

Grundrisse zum Neuen Testament

HTKNT

Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament

HTR

Harvard Theological Review

HvTSt

Hervormde teologiese studies

ICC

International Critical Commentary

Int Interpretation JAC

Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum

JBL

Journal of Biblical Literature

JECS

Journal of Early Christian Studies

JR

Journal of Religion

JRH

Journal of Religious History

JRS

Journal of Roman Studies

JSJ

Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods

JSNT

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

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Abbreviations

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JSNTSup

Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series

JSP

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies

L&N

Nida, E. A., and J. P. Louw (eds), Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament: A Supplement to the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1989)

LEC

Library of Early Christianity

LNTS

Library of New Testament Studies

LSJ

Liddell, H. G., H. S. Jones, and R. Scott (eds), A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

MM

Moulton, J. H., and G. Milligan (eds), The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930; Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997)

MNTC

Moffatt New Testament Commentary

NAC

New American Commentary

Neot Neotestamentica NIB

New Interpreter’s Bible

NICNT

New International Commentary on the New Testament

NIGTC

New International Greek Testament Commentary

NovT

Novum Testamentum

NovTSup

Supplements to Novum Testamentum

NTOA

Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus

NTS

New Testament Studies

OED

Simpson, J. A., and E. S. C. Weiner (eds), The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)

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xii Abbreviations

PNTC

Pelican New Testament Commentaries

QR

Quarterly Review

ResQ

Restoration Quarterly

RivB

Rivista biblica italiana

RTR

Reformed Theological Review

SBLDS

Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

SBLMS

Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series

SBLSBS

Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study

SBLSP

Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers

SNTSMS

Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series

SwJT

Southwestern Journal of Theology

TDNT

Kittel, G., G. W. Bromiley and G. Friedrich (eds), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964)

TQ

Theologische Quartalschrift

TynBul

Tyndale Bulletin

VC

Vigiliae christianae

WBC

Word Biblical Commentary

WUNT

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

ZNW

Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der ältenKirche

ZTK

Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

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Contributors Atsuhiro Asano, Professor of New Testament Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan. Coleman A. Baker, Program Manager, Soul Repair Center and Adjunct Professor of Religion, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. Jack Barentsen, Associate Professor of Practical Theology, Institute for Leadership and Ethics, Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, Belgium. Robert L. Brawley, Albert G. McGraw Professor of New Testament Emeritus, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois. Warren Carter, Professor of New Testament, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. Andrew D. Clarke, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. K. Jason Coker, Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion, Albertus Magnus College, New Haven, Connecticut. Markus Cromhout, Research Associate, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Daniel K. Darko, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts. Philip F. Esler, Portland Chair in New Testament Studies, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England. Mark T. Finney, Lecturer in New Testament, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England. Aaron J. Kuecker, Associate Professor of Theology, LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas.

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xiv Contributors

Kar Yong Lim, Lecturer in New Testament Studies, Seminari Theoloji Malaysia (Malaysia Theological Seminary), Seremban, Malaysia. Matthew J. Marohl, College Pastor, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Paul Middleton, Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies, University of Chester, Chester, England. Steven Muir, Professor of Religious Studies, Concordia University College of Alberta, Alberta, Canada. Rafael Rodríguez, Professor of New Testament, Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee. Rikard Roitto, Assistant Professor, Stockholm School of Theology, Stockholm, Sweden. Sergio Rosell Nebreda, Professor of New Testament, Centro Teológico Kenosis, Madrid, Spain. Minna Shkul, Teaching Fellow, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England, and Research Fellow in ‘Enemies in the Making: Others and the Construction of the early Christian Identities’ project, Finnish Academy. Todd D. Still, William M. Hinson Professor of Christian Scriptures (New Testament), Baylor University, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Waco, Texas. R. Alan Streett, Senior Research Professor of Biblical Exegesis, Criswell College, Dallas, Texas. J. Brian Tucker, Associate Professor of New Testament, Moody Theological Seminary, Plymouth, Michigan, and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Wales. Natalie R. Webb, New Testament Ph.D. Candidate, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. Ritva H. Williams, Independent Scholar, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Christopher Zoccali, Independent Scholar, Rochester, New York.

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Editors’ Preface Almost twenty years ago, Philip Esler presented a paper at the British New Testament Conference in Nottingham dealing with the use of social identity theory, group conflict and the Matthaean Beatitudes. This launched an approach to New Testament interpretation in which social identity theory would serve to raise a new set of questions and provide a fresh perspective on the biblical text. Since then, there has been a steady flow of journal articles and monographs addressing various aspects of social identity and the New Testament. This volume represents another step in that process and brings together the key lines of inquiry from leading scholars that have been researching in this area for the past few decades. The purpose of this volume is to explore the various ways the New Testament constructs social identity. It addresses those aspects of the New Testament’s theologizing that are perceived to have decisive impacts on the social identity shaping processes particularly among its original addressees. It also sheds light on the processes of social identity formation among the earliest groups of Christ-followers within the context of the Roman world generally and Judaism specifically. The editors have assembled a group of scholars who have all published on the use of social identity approaches in the New Testament. The contributors represent an international perspective, with scholars from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa. The focus of each essay reflects each author’s particular research interests and contributions to New Testament studies and provides a series of case studies for the various ways social identity approaches shed light on the formation of a distinct social identity in the earliest Christ-movement. There are several people the editors would like to thank for their assistance in bringing this project to completion. First, the staff at Bloomsbury Publishing/T&T Clark were most accommodating, with Dominic Mattos and Caitlin Flynn deserving special attention for their support and encouragement throughout the publication process. Second, we are appreciative to

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Editors’ Preface

the various contributors for writing stimulating essays and for responding in such a professional and efficient manner to our various queries and requests for revisions. Third, we would like to acknowledge the immeasurable assistance of Laura J. Hunt (Ph.D. candidate, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David), whose administrative and editorial assistance was crucial to the timely preparation and completion of this volume. Finally, we would also like to thank Christopher Zoccali and Amber Tucker for their assistance in the final stages of the project and help with the indices. J. Brian Tucker Plymouth, Michigan, USA Coleman A. Baker Fort Worth, Texas, USA April 2013

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Introduction J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker

The current volume presents diverse aspects of the recent emphases in New Testament studies on the role social identity played in the development of the Christ-movement.1 The contributors reflect on social identity and the way its presence is evident in the New Testament. This allows for a new set of questions to be asked of the biblical text and provides keen insights into the social context in which the movement emerged. While a significant number of the contributors draw on the resources of Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s social identity and self-categorization theories, a diversity of approaches to this topic is also evident. We have not attempted to restrict the ways scholars approach this topic; rather each author was invited to develop their essay along the broad parameters of the biblical material, bringing to the fore issues associated with the formation of social identity. Thus the essays in this volume contribute to the ongoing and energetic dialogue between the social sciences and biblical studies. In their variety, the diversity of the New Testament texts, read through the lens of social identity, resonates afresh in relation to contemporary issues of interpretation. The two parts of the volume address the study of social identity in two distinct ways. The contributions in Part I focus on methodological and theoretical issues. Taken together, they provide an essential orientation to ‘Christianity’ as a separate and discernible religion did not occur until later. Thus, in order to avoid conflating later Christian identity from the second and third centuries with what was occurring during the time of the writing of the nt documents, a number of the essays in this collection use terms such as ‘Christ-movement’ or ‘Jesus-movement’ to describe these earliest communities. The same applies for the use of the term ‘Christian’. This work normally uses ‘Christ-follower’ or ‘Jesusbeliever’ to describe those individuals. However, authors are given the freedom to maintain the more traditional ‘Christian’ terminology.

1

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several of the concerns that have arisen in the social-scientific study of the New Testament. The contributions in Part II engage several of the texts from the New Testament and reflect on the way social identity concerns are evident in those works. While different interpretative approaches are evident, they are unified around the theme of social identity and the way these texts address concerns associated with it. Part I begins with a survey of social identity theory by the pioneer of the theory’s use in biblical studies, Philip Esler. Esler describes Henri Tajfel’s life and work, including a discussion about the initial exposition of the theory. He then highlights social identity’s twin theory, self-categorization, as developed by John C. Turner. Esler notes the way these theories combine to complement each other, bringing to the fore key advancements that have been made by other researchers. In an effort to contribute to the long-standing debate between social historians and social theorists, Andrew Clarke and Brian Tucker contend that there is usefulness in both approaches. Social theory provides a framework for interpreting the evidence that the historian finds, while social historians provide the evidence needed to substantiate purported theoretical claims. Aaron Kuecker discusses the importance of a methodologically nuanced approach to ethnicity when studying social identity in antiquity, especially in relation to the nt. He covers ethnicity in the ancient world and then turns to ethnicity theory in the past century. He combines ethnic identity and social identity theory by highlighting the relevance of categorization, identification and comparison and concludes with a discussion of ethnic identity and social conflict. Minna Shkul addresses the topic of ritual in the Deutero-Pauline epistles. Using ritual theory primarily as advanced by Bell, she offers a nuanced look at both the absence of extensive directions for ritual and the presence of calls towards the cohesion and steadfastness that rituals produce (this, primarily, in the Thessalonian correspondence). Furthermore, in the texts that do reference rituals such as baptism and the Eucharist, terms and practices are redefined in ways consonant with Whitehouse’s mode of spontaneous exegetical reflection (this particularly in Ephesians). In this way, the Deutero-Pauline letters continue to shape emerging Christ-following communities in ways that contribute to their distinct identities. Matthew Marohl addresses the relationship between social identity theory and the

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interpretation of the nt letters. He highlights two areas of ongoing conversation among social psychologists: the role of the group story in the formation of identity, and the value of a superordinate identity. He sees these two areas as particularly germane for nt interpreters. Coleman Baker offers a sophisticated model for the way narrative forms identity in biblical interpretation by combining several features of Tajfel and Turner’s work with that of narrative scholars. In the process, he brings to the fore the importance of social memory in the formation of social identity. Baker’s eclectic model provides a path forward for those seeking to combine insights across academic disciplines. In the final methodological study, Robert Brawley provides further insight into an eclectic use of social identity approaches by paying particular attention to the Roman imperial context in light of insights from postcolonial studies. Using Galatians as a test case, Brawley interprets Paul’s letter by drawing on Kaufmann’s petits cinémas (‘videos’). This allows Brawley to highlight several roles evident in this letter. Taken together, the methodological studies in this section, while not comprehensive, provide several paths forward for future researchers interested in social identity and the nt. Part II begins with an essay by Philip Esler that was originally presented in 1994 at the British New Testament Conference in Nottingham and represents the first use of social identity theory on a nt text. Published here for the first time, this essay epitomizes the way social identity theory may be applied to the biblical text by skillfully navigating existing scholarship concerning the ethical or eschatological function of the Beatitudes; it concludes that a better way forward is to see them as an attempt to establish group norms and prototypes. This provides the members of Matthew’s community with an assurance that they are right to socially identify in a way cognizant with the characteristics described in the text. Paul Middleton provides a fascinating reading of key portions of Mark’s Gospel and the way suffering forms Christian identity in that document over against both the disciples’ authority and behaviour. In other words, Mark’s readers must do better than the disciples. The model of Christian identity envisioned by Mark is one in which followers stand before authorities, deny themselves, confess Christ, take up their cross, and follow Jesus along the path of suffering and martyrdom. Rafael Rodríguez analyses the function of written texts in the construction of social identity in

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the Gospel of Luke. His essay focuses narrowly on the references to γραφή/ γραφαί (‘scripture(s)’), in the third gospel and isolates the development of an emerging text-interpretative tradition centred on the Messiah’s suffering, even the divine necessity of his suffering. This emerging text-interpretative tradition led first to a distinctive Jewish social identity and, eventually, to a non-Jewish (i.e. Christian) identity. Aaron Kuecker compares Luke-Acts with Virgil’s Aeneid, highlighting the way both authors seek to construct trans-ethnic identities while preserving ethnic particularity. The Aeneid, as a foundational narrative for local expressions of Roman social identity, draws deeply from the concept of filial piety and the way it intersects the ability of non-Romans to identify with the superordinate category ‘Roman’ or face violence as a member of the outgroup. Luke-Acts contains similar identity-forming processes in relation to filial piety and the possibility of peace, though without the concomitant violence evident in Vergil’s vision. For Luke-Acts, the filial piety of the early Christians is situated within  a vision of neighbourliness that rejects social categorization as a basis for love and thus results in striking displays of enemy love. Warren Carter, after positioning his approach to the use of social identity theory in relation to its use by other Johannine scholars, discusses the Jesus-Ioudaioi2-Pilate scene in John’s Gospel, which he contends establishes Jesus as a six-featured group prototype of an uncompromising identity for Jesus-believers over-against Roman power, whom group members are to emulate. Using a model of subgroup relations developed by Matthew Hornsey and Michael Hogg, Carter argues that the textual assertion of such a distinctive and uncompromising prototype suggests and reinforces divisions among Johannine subgroups over cultural involvements. Chris Zoccali discusses several approaches to Abrahamic ancestry and its relation to Christ-community identity in Romans. Finding several weaknesses with these, Zoccali contends that for Paul, ‘descendants of Abraham’ is a superordinate identity that socially categorizes all those who are in Christ, both The translation of ’Ιουδαῖοι occurs in several different ways in this work: ‘Ioudaioi’, ‘Jews’ or ‘Judeans’ or left in the original Greek. Authors were given the freedom to choose their approach to this important translation issue. What is clear across the contributors, however, is an awareness of the post-Shoah environment in which our research occurs.

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Jews and gentiles3 (in the context of and not to the exclusion of their existing identities). The connection of Abrahamic ancestry to the multi-ethnic Christ community is seen through the lens of the eschatological pilgrimage tradition of Judaism, which Paul believes is fulfilled in the gospel. In this way, Abraham becomes an exemplar or prototypical member of the Christ community, one in which traditional ethnic markers of Judaism or ethnic distinctiveness of non-Jews is not eradicated. Mark Finney examines the role of honour in the formation of social identity in antiquity and the way the pursuit of honour contributed to the high level of conflict in Corinth, as evidenced by problems with the fellowship meal at the Lord’s table. Building on existing research on voluntary associations and communal meals, Finney investigates how and why tension and conflict arose over the meal and concludes that the problem relates to the way differing groups were trying to accrue honour and outdo each other in the volume and quality of their food and drink. Paul’s solution was to emphasize the cross (and its concomitant extreme shame) as the supreme criteria in the formation of social identity within the community. Temporal comparison is another aspect of social identity, although it is not often addressed. Kar Yong Lim contends that, specifically in the Corinthian correspondence, scholars have overlooked its role in the construction of social identity. Building on the text of 2 Corinthians generally, Lim uncovers two dimensions of the social identity formation of the Corinthians: 1) the notion of ‘new creation’, not understood in a religious, cosmological or eschatological dimension but in the context of intra- and intergroup conflict for social significance; and 2) temporal comparison that brings to the fore the past and present status of the Corinthians as a process of cognitive judgement designed to reinforce their identity in Christ. To demonstrate this, Lim examines three specific areas where these two dimensions of social identity formation are interwoven in Paul’s social influence and implications: his positive cognitive evaluation of his sufferings; his negative cognitive evaluation of his opponents; and his final challenge to the Corinthians to complete the collection for the poor in Jerusalem as social influence and implications. The difficulty in translating ἔθνη relates to contemporary conceptions that ‘Gentile’/‘Gentiles’ is an ethnic term equivalent and opposite to Jews. Thus, throughout this work, ‘gentile’/‘gentiles’ will normally not be capitalized when it translates ἔθνη, though some authors do retain this for specific rhetorical purposes. Alternately, ἔθνη may be rendered as ‘non-Jews’ or ‘the nations’; the latter is used especially when the Roman imperial understanding of ἔθνη is in the fore.

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Atsuhiro Asano discusses the issue of gentile incorporation into the Christ-community in Gal. 2.1–14 in light of its social impact on the Jerusalem leaders, the ‘false brothers’ and Paul. By framing the question this way, Asano is able to bring to the fore the difficult processes evident in the text that were associated with the way the Christ-community sought to construct and maintain its identity. This identity was not an a priori given but rather the result of the difficult struggles associated with shared ethnic concerns and differing perspectives on primordialism with regard to physio-cultural features. The issues evident in the text then reflect differing or aggregative approaches to community-identity construction. In distinction to those who argue that Ephesians constructs the social identity of its readers by building on patriarchal structures, Daniel Darko contends that the kinship discourse evident in Ephesians does not depart from the undisputed Pauline letters. To make his case, Darko highlights key issues and insights in Pauline scholarship and kinship studies in the Roman world. For Darko, the kinship lexemes in Ephesians promote the social identity of the family of God as a multi-ethnic one. Darko contends that the author reinterpreted the ‘oikos-polis’ linkage, resulting in a transformed understanding of the household and ethics. This is crucial since who the Ephesians are in Christ (i.e. their social identity) relies on the household framework for the development of a relational model for believers. In this way, kinship is one of the tools the author uses to promote group identity and solidarity, and this discourse is, at the same time, consistent with what is found in the undisputed Pauline letters. Sergio Rosell Nebreda looks at the way Philippians and Polycarp-related writings, especially as these echo Paul’s Philippian correspondence, seek to form a faithful Christ-like identity in their readers. This identity, according to Rosell, has two main building blocks: suffering and humility, both lived out in the public arena. The admonitions evident in these texts form a ‘social map’ that establishes group boundaries and produces social cohesion. Rosell’s essay brings to the fore the way drawing on social identity theory allows scholars to discern social and theological forces at work in the ancient texts that otherwise might have been overlooked. Minna Shkul discusses the interplay of a new Christ-identity and cultural baggage in Colossians; the metaphor of cultural baggage refers to the traditions

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that community members bring to the community, which, like luggage to the traveller, are important to them, but unwanted, or suspicious to the host. The social identity that is shaped in Colossians reinforces common values evident in the broader Jesus-movement while also repositioning the community in their local socio-ideological context with regard to establishing distance between the community, existing Jewish traditions, and other cultural influences. These are described as cultural baggage that the author understands as a threat to the community. The third shaping influence is seen in the way Colossians incorporates existing hierarchical structures and constraints on social mobility in order to, in these cases, align the community more closely to its social environment. The result of these three manoeuvres is that the community is able to more clearly define members of ingroup and outgroup. In his essay, Jack Barentsen introduces a way to evaluate the use of stereotypical and church4 order discourse in 1 Timothy. Drawing on the relationship between social identity theory and leadership development, Barentsen offers alternative interpretations of stereotyping, understood as ‘shorthand’ leadership discourse rather than as evidence for fading memory, and of church order discourse, understood as a proposal for principles of succession to a widely recognized charismatic leader rather than as institutionalization due to failing charisma. Social identity theory allows him to uncover more clearly the social context for this language and guides his reconstruction of the social patterns evident in the letter – reconstructions that call into question several scholarly viewpoints. Brian Tucker addresses the question: what (if anything) should be done when a slave becomes a follower of Christ and his or her owner is already a member (and leader) within the Christ-movement? This describes the ‘nested social dilemma’ that Paul faced in regard to Philemon and Onesimus. Drawing on social identity theory’s understanding of intergroup and intragroup The essays in this work normally leave ἐκκλησία untranslated in order to avoid implying an institutionalized understanding of ‘church’ that would not be in view at this early stage in the Christ-movement, though again some authors may retain ‘church’/‘Church’ for specific rhetorical purposes. The idea of ‘community’ is a close English approximation for ἐκκλησία, which emphasizes ‘shared belief ’ and ‘common identity’, an emphasis that is also evident in Diog. Laert., 8.41, cited in BDAG, 303. For stylistic reasons, at times, ‘Church’/‘church’, ‘assembly’, ‘congregation’, ‘ecclesia’ or ‘community’ may be used, and ‘house-church(es)’ may also be used when addressing scholarly discussions concerning actual meeting places and should not be understood as an equivocation.

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dynamics as a way to understand the relationship between Paul, Philemon and Onesimus, Tucker argues that Paul’s approach to identity formation is one in which an emerging superordinate identity does not necessarily abrogate existing subgroup identities. This results in the development of the ‘dual identity model’, a framework for Paul’s social entrepreneurship evident in Phlm. 16c. Steven Muir demonstrates that social identity theory may help develop a new understanding of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Because of persecution, members are leaving the group, and Muir estimates that the portrait of Christ as high priest was an effective community-building theme, not only against those contemplating a move to mainstream Judaism but also those seeking greater involvement in Graeco-Roman5 polytheistic religions. Jason Coker discusses the Letter of James as an official letter to the diaspora from Jerusalem. Building on the work of Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, Coker contends that key invectives in James reflect a nativist call to the homeland (though in James’s case it is the empire of God). When combined, nativism and diaspora bring to the fore the anti-imperial context and discourse that is evident throughout the letter. This context, according to Coker, becomes the critical identity issue for the ‘twelve tribes in the diaspora’. Coker’s postcolonial analysis understands the content of the letter to be addressing issues related to boundary marking and cultural assimilation. Todd Still and Natalie Webb look at the way 1 Peter seeks to form the Christian identity of the emerging congregations in Asia Minor, especially in the context of social dislocation and affliction. After addressing the letter’s authorial strategy, Still and Webb draw on the resources of social identity theory as a way to understand more clearly the way 1 Peter calls Anatolian Christians to gaze backward and forward even as they live as exiles among the nations. Alan Streett uses social identity theory to compare the author’s exhortations in 2 Peter to the behaviours typical of Graeco-Roman dining practices. He offers a thorough introduction of the latter, including a broad When the term ‘Graeco-Roman’ is used in several places in this work, it should be recognized that the overarching cultural context of life in the first century ce was Roman, though there was, to a certain extent, a mutually beneficial context of Roman power and Greek cultural identity. Because of the interpenetration of these cultural dynamics this work alternates between ‘Graeco-Roman’, ‘Greek and Roman’, or simply ‘Roman’. This use is not intended to obscure the Jewish context in which the biblical authors’ identity and line of reasoning were formed.

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cross-section of primary source references. Most importantly, however, he brings out the way these events were used to create and uphold status and allegiance to Rome and the gods. In contrast, Streett brings out the levelling of social status, subversion to Rome, and alternative morality of Christian ἀγάπη feasts, first in general, and then in 2 Pet. 2.13b–14 specifically. Rikard Roitto explores how 1 John creates Christian identity, using social identity theory in combination with attribution theory. He argues that 1 John promotes a powerful identity narrative about how the recipients, as ‘born of God’, have superior knowledge and love as opposed to ‘them’, who deceive and hate. Yet, the loving character of the community oscillates between fact and commandment in the text, which – Roitto suggests – probably had a number of group dynamic effects. Ritva Williams investigates the way Jude may be understood as an artefact of communicative memory. After highlighting the role ancient Judean cultural memories played in the social identity of the author, Williams contends that Jude seeks to stereotype the opponents by selectively recalling from the addressees’ cultural memories a set of villains, their characters, crimes and punishments. Jude’s purpose for drawing on these resources is to influence the audience’s perspective on the itinerant teachers, the opponents evident in the letter. Lastly, Markus Cromhout investigates the dynamics of ethnic identity in the social world of the New Testament in general and the book of Revelation in particular. He offers a socio-cultural model of Israelite ethnicity consisting of a pictorial representation of the Israelite symbolic universe accompanied by theoretical statements that draws from the primary insights of ethnicity theory.  Cromhout contends that the seer who wrote Revelation both represents and adapts Israelite identity to address his ideological conflict with the Roman imperium as a follower of Jesus. The seer constructs a reconstructed Israelite identity offering an alternative vision for the destiny of the empire’s inhabitants and a soon-to-berealized Israelite imperium.

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Part One

Methodological Studies

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An Outline of Social Identity Theory Philip F. Esler

It is only a few decades since social identity theory was launched upon the world, in a work edited by its founder, Henri Tajfel, in 1978, but since then it has gone on to become a dominant presence in the understanding of intergroup relations. In this essay I will describe the origins of social identity theory, set out its main features, and consider how it has developed and is continuing to develop in ways that are immensely useful for investigating phenomena between and within groups that bear upon biblical interpretation.1

Origins Henri Tajfel was a Jew, born in 1919 in Wloclawek, Poland. When World War II broke out he was studying chemistry at the Sorbonne and was called up to serve in the French army. He was captured by the Germans but survived the war in various prisoner-of-war camps; that he was thought to be a French and not a Polish Jew enabled his survival. After the war, during which most of his family died, he set up home with his German-born wife in the UK and studied psychology at Birkbeck College in the University of London, graduating with a First Class Honours degree in 1954. Later he obtained his doctorate, also from the University of London. After periods at Durham and Oxford Universities, he was made Professor of Social Psychology at the University of For a recent summary of social identity theory by one of its early exponents, see Michael A. Hogg, ‘Social Identity Theory’, in Contemporary Social Psychological Theories, ed. Peter J. Burke (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 111–36.

  1

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Bristol in 1967. There he concentrated on research into intergroup relations and soon began attracting outstanding doctoral students, many of whom are still active researchers in the field. Prominent among them was John Turner (1947–2011), born in London, who completed his doctorate under Tajfel  at Bristol University  in the years 1971–4 and worked with him there until the early 1980s. He then moved to Australia, first to Macquarie University in Sydney and then in 1990 to the Australian National University in Canberra. Henri Tajfel died in 1982.2 John Turner has written of him that ‘much more than for most, his social psychology, the problems he studied, the theories he proposed and the approaches he saw as necessary and significant, remained closely bound up with the tragedies and experience of his earlier life’.3 Turner himself died on 24 July 2011. Tajfel’s research was based on experiment. The seminal experimental results that led to social identity theory were reported by Tajfel and others in an article published in the inaugural volume of the European Journal of Social Psychology in 1971.4 The authors explained how processes of group categorization had been shown to affect intergroup behaviour in a series of what have come to be called ‘the minimal group experiments’. Tajfel and his colleagues had set up a situation where participants were organized into groups anonymously and at random, without any prior contact with one another or experience of the group, and where their personal self-interests were not served by the decisions that they took. The extraordinary discovery made by Tajfel and his colleagues, and repeated often in subsequent studies,5 was that the mere fact of ‘social categorization’, of being included in a group, led to intergroup behaviour that discriminated (via the distribution of rewards and penalties) against the outgroup and favoured the ingroup. ‘[I]n a situation devoid of the usual trappings of ingroup membership and of all the vagaries of interacting with an outgroup’, the actions of the subjects in the experiment For an outline of Tajfel’s biography, see John C. Turner, ‘Henri Tajfel: An Introduction’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996).   3 Turner, ‘Henri Tajfel’, 4.   4 Henri Tajfel et al., ‘Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour’, European Journal of Social Psychology 1, no. 2 (1971): 149–78.   5 As an early example, see Michael Billig and Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behaviour’, European Journal of Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (1973): 27–52, where membership of a particular group was based on nothing other than the random toss of a coin.   2

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were ‘unambiguously directed at favouring the members of their ingroup as against members of the outgroup.’6 The only qualification to this was the occasional appearance of fairness to moderate ingroup bias.7 An important influence on Tajfel and his colleagues, and cited in this article,8 was the work of Muzafer Sherif and his collaborators, in their famous summer camp experiments, which showed, inter alia, that when the boys at the camp were arbitrarily allocated into groups, the groups immediately began competing with one another, even where boys in different groups had been friends with one another on arrival at the camp.

The initial exposition of social identity theory The key ideas in what has come to be called social identity theory were set out by Tajfel in the initial four, programmatic chapters in Differentiation between Social Groups published in 1978.9 The opening sentence of the book resonates with Tajfel’s life experiences and his commitment to the contribution social psychology could make, although never in some hegemonic fashion, towards understanding and even solving difficult human problems: ‘Much of this book is concerned with the social psychology of human groups in conflict.’10 He went on to note that all of the chapters in the book adopted a common approach that reflected only the first few years of theory and research adopting and articulating a new perspective on one of the most important and neglected issues in social psychology.11 What was that issue? It was the persistence in our world of differentiation between social groups, the extent to which groups of many types (including national, ethnic and linguistic groups) Tajfel et al., ‘Categorization and Intergroup’, 172. Tajfel et al., ‘Categorization and Intergroup’, 173–4.   8 Tajfel et al., ‘Categorization and Intergroup’, 151; citing Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn W. Sherif, Groups in Harmony and Tension: An Integration of Studies on Intergroup Relations (New York: Harper, 1953); and Muzafer Sherif et al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman: University Book Exchange, 1961).   9 Henri Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978). See the references for details. There were thirteen other chapters.  10 Henri Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, in Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978), 1.  11 Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, 1.   6   7

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aimed at preserving their ‘distinctiveness’, their special characteristics and identity, in spite of increasing levels of communication and interdependence between groups.12 It is interesting to note from this that ethnic groups (and ethnic conflict) fell within the scope of social identity theory almost from its inception. He and his collaborators were developing ‘an alternative approach to the social psychology of intergroup relations’.13 At around this time he wrote an important article with John Turner on intergroup conflict.14 The first step in the argument was to distinguish carefully ‘between social situations in which individuals behave towards each other as individuals and those in which they behave as members of separate groups which stand in certain kinds of relations towards each other’.15 This involved isolating four interrelated theoretical continua. The first continuum was between fully interindividual (or interpersonal) behaviour at one end and fully intergroup behaviour at the other. This meant taking a strong stand against the reduction of social phenomena, such as outbursts of racism, to ‘the ordinary dealings of individuals with individuals’.16 This reductionist tendency was not only common in everyday parlance and in the proclamations of politicians (most famously in the statement made on a number of occasions by Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, that ‘there is no such thing as society’), but was also a dominant theme in social psychology. As noted by Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams in 1988, the leading US social psychologist Floyd Allport, for example, had been strongly of the view that ‘there is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and entirely a psychology of individuals’.17 Tajfel’s opposition to such a view was rooted in his own experience of having only survived World War II because he was categorized by German military officials, whatever his individual relationships with

Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, 2. Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, 4.  14 Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds) (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), 33–47.  15 Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, 7.  16 Henri Tajfel, ‘Interindividual Behavior and Intergroup Behavior’, in Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (London: Academic, 1978), 27.  17 Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), 12; citing Floyd Henry Allport, Social Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), 4.  12  13

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prison guards, as belonging to the group ‘French Jew’ and not ‘Polish Jew’.18 Tajfel also benefited from the work of some social psychologists, especially Muzafer Sherif in his summer camp experiments, which showed how easily inclusion in groups led to striking expressions of behaviour that were determined not by personal relationships and individual characteristics but by membership of particular groups.19 For Tajfel, the simplest statement that could be made about a group was that it is a body of people who feel they are a group. Yet he distinguished between three components: (a) a cognitive component, meaning the knowledge that one belongs to a group; (b) an evaluative component, in the sense that one’s belonging to a group could have a positive or a negative value connotation; and (c) an emotional component, in the sense that the cognitive and evaluative aspects and one’s being a member of it ‘may be accompanied by emotions (such as love or hatred, like or dislike) directed towards one’s own group and towards others which stand in certain relations to it’.20 These three aspects applied equally well both to small groups and to large social categories.21 At this point in the argument Tajfel introduces and describes the minimum group experiments mentioned above, on the basis that if his definition of groups were useful in such conditions it should also assist in other contexts where the reality of group membership was more expansive.22 It is within this context that Tajfel explains the interindividual (or interpersonal) and intergroup continuum. He suggests that the interpersonal extreme does not actually exist, since no instances can be found in real life in which two people encountering one another would not be affected by their allocating one another to various social categories about which they had some preconceived ideas and attitudes, such as gender, nationality, profession, and so on. On the other hand, it is possible to imagine purely intergroup behaviour, as when (and here again Tajfel drew on his wartime experience) an air force crew bombed ‘an enemy population target’ or a battle was ‘waged by soldiers

Turner, ‘Henri Tajfel’, 2. See his close alignment with Sherif at Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 28.  20 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 28–9.  21 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 30–1.  22 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 33–4. There is a more detailed discussion of the minimum group experiments later in the work, at 77–82.  18  19

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of opposing armies out of sight of each other’.23 The pivotal insight from this type of analysis was that all social situations fall somewhere between these two extremes and that behaviour towards people categorized as belonging to the ingroup or the outgroup ‘will be crucially affected by the individuals’ perception (or rather interpretation) of the situation as being nearer to one or the other extreme’.24 In particular, the nearer a situation was to the intergroup extreme, members of an ingroup would (a) show more uniformity in their behaviour towards members of outgroups, and (b) tend to ignore individual differences between outgroup members and treat them as undifferentiated items in a unified social category.25 In seeking to explore the major psychological conditions under which members of a group would interpret their relations with an outgroup as being primarily intergroup rather than interpersonal in character, Tajfel proposed particular specifications for the expressions ‘social change’ and ‘social mobility’. He defined social change as ‘a change in the nature of the relations between large-scale social groups, such as socio-economic, national, religious, racial or ethnic categories’. Social mobility was ‘individual social mobility’, meaning the movement of individuals and families from one social position, from one social group, to another.26 Extreme forms of intergroup behaviour emerged when social mobility was low or non-existent, that is, when the relevant persons believed that the social boundaries between groups were ‘sharply drawn and immutable, in the sense that, for whatever reasons, it was impossible or at least very difficult for individuals to move from one group to another’. On the other hand, predominantly interpersonal behaviour is associated with a high degree of social mobility, when there are flexible group boundaries and no particular restraints on moving from one group to another.27 Where social mobility is difficult or even impossible, so that members of a group cannot move out of it, the only way they can change things for the better (or resist changes for the worse being thrust on them) is by the group acting as a whole and thereby bringing about ‘social change’.28 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 41. Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 43.  25 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 44–5.  26 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 46.  27 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 50–1.  28 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 52–3.  23  24

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Building on these fundamental conceptions, Tajfel proceeds to explain the social psychological processes that lead to forms of behaviour being engaged in by members of a group in common when its relationships with other groups take particular forms in varying social contexts. The initial process is one of social categorization, meaning ‘the ordering of social environment in terms of groupings of persons in a manner which makes sense to the individual’.29 Associated with categorization, or the allocation of persons into groups (understood in the sense already explained) is the accentuation of differences between those groups, often including positive or negative associations of the groups in view.30 At this point Tajfel introduces a major consequence of group membership from which the whole theory has since come to be known: ‘social identity’. He defines this concept as follows: social identity will be understood as that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.31

Here ‘social identity’ has a meaning quite distinct from uses of the expression in quotidian discourse, not least the fact that it is an attribute of an individual, part of his or her self-concept derived from group membership, not an attribute of a group. Tajfel immediately acknowledges that the image one has of oneself is ‘infinitely more complex, both in its contents and its derivations, than “social identity” as defined here’.32 Nevertheless, memberships in certain groups do make a contribution to everyone’s self-image. Social identity is thus a limited but very useful concept for generating hypotheses about intergroup behaviour. Linking social categorization and social identity is ‘social comparison’. To a considerable extent, groups and individuals know who they are in comparison with other groups and individuals, in relation, for example, to factors such as status, wealth or poverty, ethnic identity or the ability to achieve particular goals or ambitions. Such social comparison can be intergroup or intragroup. Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic, 1978), 61.  30 Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 62.  31 Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 63 (italics original).  32 Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 63.  29

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Where a group considers that it has limited access to various benefits and opportunities, economic and otherwise, compared with other groups, it experiences what is known as ‘relative deprivation’.33 In conditions of ‘social mobility’ an individual may leave a group if social comparison suggests that membership of the group is not preserving the positive dimensions of the social identity he or she previously derived from it. In situations of social change (where exit is not possible), the position is different, since here the group can only protect the social identity of its members by maintaining the positive distinctiveness it possesses in relation to other groups. Sometimes ‘this distinctiveness must be created, acquired and perhaps also fought for through various forms of relevant social action’.34 Indeed, where a group considers that its comparative disadvantages with respect to other groups are illegitimate, that perceived illegitimacy becomes the ‘socially and psychologically accepted and acceptable lever for social action and social change in intergroup behaviour’.35 The final stage in Tajfel’s programmatic 1978 discussion is to situate various problems that groups encounter in their relations with other groups with respect to the interindividual and intergroup spectrum of behaviour and the sequence of social categorization, social identity and social comparison. He proposes that the underlying theme of group actions is the attempt to create or preserve ‘psychological group distinctiveness’ to differentiate ingroup from outgroups.36 This leads him to a further consideration of the minimum group experiments and their application to actual social contexts.37 He explains how notions of ‘race’ are used to maintain social differentiation, especially by helping to create, enhance and perpetuate perceived differences between the ‘worth’ of groups and individuals and to make them seem as clear-cut and inflexible as possible.38 Such establishment of group distinctiveness also appears in other areas, such as in the efforts of smaller ethnic groups across the world to establish a separate identity for themselves, as with French Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 66. Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 67.  35 Tajfel, ‘Categorization, Identity, Comparison’, 76.  36 Tajfel, ‘Introduction’, 9.  37 See Henri Tajfel, ‘The Achievement of Group Differentiation’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel (London: Academic Press, 1978), 77–98, 77–82 for the minimum group experiments.  38 Tajfel, ‘Achievement’, 83–4.  33  34

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Canadians, the Welsh and Scots in Britain, the Basques in France and Spain, and so on.39 He also raises the case of the Hutus and Tutsis of Ruanda, using anthropological research to highlight the manner in which the Tutsis went to great lengths to express their distinctiveness from, and superiority over, the Hutus.40 His instinct for a serious social problem (here one of rival ethnic identities) found tragic confirmation only sixteen years later when, in 1994, perhaps as many as 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, were murdered in the Ruanda genocide. As noted above, from the very outset Tajfel realized the potential applications of social identity theory to ethnic groups and ethnic identities. Lastly, Tajfel addressed situations in which a group, perceiving itself to be inferior to another group, responds in various ways. He outlines three possible responses. First, the inferior group can, through action and reinterpretation of its characteristics, become more like the superior group. This will entail the assimilation of the group as a whole into the superior group (meaning the boundary between the two groups is removed and the first group disappears). Second, the group perceived to be or perceiving itself as inferior may reinterpret its characteristics in new and more positively valued ways.41 Third, and similar to the second response, the inferior group can invent new characteristics that establish a positively valued group distinctiveness. Thus a group of boys in a summer camp experiment who were deliberately allocated an inferior set of building materials to build a hut compared with another group responded by creating a garden around their inferior construction and by insisting the garden be taken into account in the comparison.42 These strategies of intergroup differentiation described by Tajfel were soon clarified within social identity theory along the following lines. The initial broad distinction lies between situations in which members of an inferior group are able to leave it (= social mobility) and those in which exit is not possible (= social change). In cases falling within the social change area, two options are possible. The first, ‘social creativity’, refers to cases where members of the inferior group cannot envisage any other social arrangement Tajfel, ‘Achievement’, 84. Tajfel, ‘Achievement’, 85–6.  41 Tajfel, ‘Achievement’, 93–5.  42 Tajfel, ‘Achievement’, 96–7.  39  40

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than that which already exists; they are stuck in a position of disadvantage vis-à-vis another group, and they cannot alter the reality of that arrangement. An example is lowest caste members in the Hindu caste system. Social creativity strategies do not change the status quo but render the identity of the subordinate more attractive. They might (a) select a different dimension for intergroup comparison, as with the summer camp boys and their garden just mentioned; (b) positively redefine what had previously been thought of as negative (as in the ‘black is beautiful’ slogan in the USA in the 1960s); or (c) they might compare themselves with other groups, typically of even lower status. The second option in the social change area is ‘social competition’, meaning a direct confrontation between subordinate dominant groups when the status quo is no longer regarded as legitimate. Examples include civil rights movements, passive resistance, or even, in its most dramatic manifestations, violent terrorism, revolution or civil war.43

Self-categorization theory The key ideas Two recognized problems with Tajfel’s theory were, first, that it had little to say about the cognitive aspects of social identity salience and, second, that it focused on intergroup rather than intragroup processes.44 In 1985 John Turner, who had been Tajfel’s doctoral student and then close collaborator at Bristol University in the 1970s, published an essay that launched on the scholarly world a new theory containing a major expansion of social identity theory that he referred to as ‘self-categorization’ that sought to address these problems and also propose several other theoretical developments.45 Whereas

The clarifications in this paragraph are taken from Hogg and Abrams, Identifications, 28–9. For a visual representation of these processes of intergroup comparison, see Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 55.  44 Mark Bennett and Fabio Sani, ‘Introduction: Children and Social Identity’, in The Development of the Social Self, Mark Bennett and Fabio Sani (eds) (Hove and New York: Psychology Press, 2004), 11.  45 John C. Turner, ‘Social Categorization and the Self-Concept: A Social Cognitive Theory of Group Behaviour’, in Advances in Group Processes, ed. Edward J. Lawler (Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1985), 77–122.  43

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Tajfel had focused on intergroup phenomena, Turner was interested in the processes operative within and between groups.46 In 1987 Turner and others published a detailed exposition of the theory, Rediscovering the Social-Group: A Self-Categorization Theory.47 In the Preface Turner acknowledged that the theory was a product of ‘a distinct European tradition of research on social categorization processes and social identity initiated by the late Henri Tajfel’. He noted that the theory spelled out explicitly the assumptions about psychological group formation that were necessary to understand the results of studies on how social categorization was related to intergroup behaviour, as produced by Tajfel’s minimum group experiments. Yet self-categorization theory was distinct in significant ways. First, in the earlier work on intergroup behaviour (such as described above), the major explanatory factor was not social identity itself ‘but the idea that intergroup comparisons were focused on the achievement of positive ingroup distinctiveness’. Second, whereas the initial theory conceptualized the interpersonal-intergroup continuum as ‘acting in terms of self ’ to ‘acting in terms of group’, the new theory insisted that the latter was an expression of the former; this meant that not only individual but also group behaviour constituted ‘acting in terms of self ’. In other words, self-categorization theory made social identity ‘the socio-cognitive basis of group behaviour’, in the sense that social identity was not just part of one’s identity derived from belonging to a group but the very mechanism making group behaviour possible. Turner agreed that because self-categorization theory developed out of the earlier work done by Tajfel (and himself), which he called ‘the intergroup theory’, it was acceptable to call it by the name ‘social identity theory’, as long as lumping them together like this was recognized as a terminological convenience for what were substantively different theories.48 Many social psychologists differentiate the two theories as ‘social identity theory’ (SIT) and ‘self-categorization theory’ (SCT), a practice I will follow in the balance of this essay to distinguish the two theories, while continuing to use ‘social identity theory’ where necessary to refer to the two of them together. Stephen Reicher and Nick Hopkins, Self and Nation: Categorization, Contestation and Mobilization (London: Sage, 2001), 37.  47 John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1987).  48 For the material in this paragraph, see Turner’s Preface in Turner et al., Rediscovering, viii-ix.  46

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Whereas SIT is directed especially at explaining intergroup discrimination (and conflict), on the basis ‘that individuals seek to differentiate their own groups positively from others to achieve a positive social identity’, SCT, developed later, is not directed to the explanation of ‘a specific kind of group behaviour but of how individuals are able to act as a group at all’.49 That concern was formulated in terms of the following questions: How does a collection of individuals become a social and psychological group? How do they come to perceive and define themselves and act as a single unit, feeling, thinking and self-aware as a collective entity? What effects does shared group membership have on their social relations and behaviour?50

The core of the answer that Turner and his colleagues gave to these fundamental questions depended on processes they called self-categorization and depersonalization. The antecedent condition for the whole process is the formation of ingroup categories.51 For a group to form, two or more people in a particular situation come to perceive themselves in terms of similarities and differences that they share as opposed to other people. In other words, they perceive that they belong to one social category as opposed to other social categories to which they do not belong. While there is a huge range of available social categories, some of the most prominent are gender, family, class, occupation, religion and ethnic identity. Where two or more people in a situation recognize that they belong to such a category they are likely to internalize preformed culturally available information relating to that category. Thus psychological group formation occurs to the degree that ‘two or more people come to perceive and define themselves in terms of some shared ingroup-outgroup categorization’. People in a given context are more likely to categorize themselves as, and thus become, a group ‘to the degree that the subjectively perceived differences between them are less than the differences perceived between them and other people (psychologically) present’.52 A further process, namely, ‘depersonalization’, is inextricably linked to and activated in the perception of certain people that they belong to a particular Turner et al., Rediscovering, 42 (emphasis added). Turner et al., Rediscovering, 1.  51 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 51–4.  52 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 51.  49  50

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social category. Turner and his colleagues define depersonalization as ‘the process of “self-stereotyping” whereby people come to perceive themselves more as the interchangeable exemplars of a social category than as individual personalities defined by their individual differences from others’.53 But depersonalization is not ‘a loss of individual identity, nor a loss or submergence of the self in the group’. Rather, ‘it is the change from the personal to the social level of identity, a change in the nature and content of the self-concept corresponding to the functioning of self-perception at a more inclusive level of abstraction’. In fact, depersonalization allows individuals to gain identity, as it allows them to act in terms of social similarities and differences built up in human cultures over time.54 As just noted, group formation refers to ‘the formation and internalization of self-defining social categorizations’.55 Yet there is a further aspect of utmost importance in the whole process, namely, a specific group membership must become salient: ‘salience refers to the conditions under which some specific group membership becomes cognitively prepotent in self-perception to act as the immediate influence on perception and behaviour.’56 Thus a long-time immigrant to the UK from Australia whose mind is normally focused on local matters but who is attending an England versus Australia rugby match at the Twickenham stadium in London may well find (especially if England are winning!) that his Australian identity becomes salient, indeed very salient.57 This type of response, however, occurs in countless other situations. As Stephen Reicher and Nick Hopkins have said in commenting on this aspect of the theory: ‘We all have a number of self-categories, but in different situations different categories will be more or less important to us.’58 Some very recent research has investigated the processes by which group members integrate a new social identity over a period of time.59 These processes may be viewed as the social infrastructure within a group that assists new members to engage in the depersonalization that leads to conformity to the Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50. Turner et al., Rediscovering, XX (emphases original).  55 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 54.  56 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 54 (emphasis added).  57 This happened to the author in 2011; Australia lost.  58 Reicher and Hopkins, Self and Nation, 38.  59 Catherine E. Amiot et al., ‘Changes in Social Identities over Time: The Role of Coping and Adaptation Processes’, British Journal of Social Psychology 49, no. 4 (2010): 803–26.  53  54

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group and its norms. This research shows that factors such as social support and need satisfaction facilitate the adoption of a new social identity and have an impact on the strategies of coping and adaptation that members use when becoming integrated into a new group. The categorization into groups that produces depersonalization of the self-perception as various categories become salient is the basic process that underlies all group phenomena, including those identified in SIT. These phenomena include social influence, group cohesion, attraction, co-operation, shared norms, ethnocentrism and social stereotyping and (we might add) intergroup and interethnic conflict and its resolution.60 I will now briefly explain the contribution of SCT to the foundational features of social influence and group polarization before moving on to consider specific aspects of SIT and SCT that are particularly relevant to biblical interpretation.

Social influence and group polarization The basic hypothesis is that ‘people are evaluated positively to the degree that they are perceived as prototypical of the self-category in terms of which they are being compared’.61 So a member of an army regiment will be positively evaluated if he embodies the regiment’s traditions of skill, heroism and dogged persistence. Such a person will be attractive to other members of the regiment because he closely approximates to what they regard as prototypical of the regiment. Someone who does not approximate to the prototype will be derogated. According to Turner and his colleagues, group cohesion (mutual attraction) depends on the members of a group mutually perceiving that there exists a similarity (or identity) between themselves in terms of the defining or prototypical characteristics of that group (or social category).62 An important consequence is that ‘interpersonal attraction and personal self-esteem follow perceived differences in or the relative prototypicality of ingroup members’. The attractiveness of specific individuals ‘depends upon their perceived prototypicality in comparison with other ingroup members (= relative For these phenomena, see Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50; Bennett and Sani, ‘Introduction’, 16. Turner et al., Rediscovering, 57. Turner et al., Rediscovering, 60–1.

 60  61  62

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prototypicality)’. In addition, such attractiveness is not a constant but varies with the relevant ingroup membership and its defining dimensions that are being used for comparison and with the other members with whom a person is compared.63 This is extremely significant as it means, in simpler terms, that ‘prototypes are context dependent rather than fixed – they vary from context to context as a function of the social comparative frame (situation, goals, and people physically or cognitively present)’.64 If we move one level of self-categorization higher than interpersonal attraction, we come to ‘ethnocentrism’, which refers to ingroup members’ positive evaluation of and attraction to the group as a whole. Ethnocentrism depends upon ‘the perceived prototypicality of the ingroup in comparison with relevant outgroups (relative prototypicality) in terms of the valued superordinate self-category that provides the basis for the intergroup comparison’. As with interpersonal attraction, ethnocentrism is not constant but varies with the superordinate self-category providing the frame of reference for intergroup comparison, the specific dimensions of intergroup comparison in play and the outgroups with which the ingroup is compared.65 Here ‘ethnocentrism’ is not used pejoratively; it is just ‘the equivalent of personal self-esteem at the level of the ingroup self-category’. As noted above, Tajfel had argued that there is a link between the positive distinctiveness of one’s group vis-à-vis other groups and the social identity derived from belonging to that group. SCT provides an explanation for this phenomenon. The concept of ‘positive distinctiveness’ now means the relative prototypicality of the ingroup in relation to valued dimensions of intergroup comparison. SCT further postulates that there is ‘a general tendency to seek positive distinctiveness for oneself at any salient level of self-categorization’.66 This means that (a) within a group there is a tendency to create and enhance favourable differences between oneself and other group members, and (b) between one group and another there is a tendency to create and maintain the benefits the ingroup has over the outgroup.

Turner et al., Rediscovering, 60. Michael A. Hogg and Scott A. Reid, ‘Social Identity, Self-Categorization, and the Communication of Group Norms’, Communication Theory 16, no. 1 (2006): 10.  65 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 61.  66 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 62.  63  64

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Important aspects of social identity and self-categorization theory Reduction of intergroup bias and conflict At the heart of SIT lies an explanation of the tendency for the members of one group to compare it to other groups in order to achieve positive distinctiveness in relation to them. Hence ethnocentrism (as described above) and ingroup favouritism are characteristic of intergroup relationships, as the minimum group experiments so graphically revealed. In its more extreme forms this quest by a group for positive distinctiveness vis-à-vis other groups can lead to bias against outgroups and even intergroup conflict, as competition occurs over resources, power, land, prestige, and so on.67 Tajfel gave sustained thought to the whole question of how intergroup relations occur in a variety of possible situations, as explained and modelled above. SIT and SCT have made a distinctive contribution to understanding and reducing bias and conflict between groups. Prior to their arrival on the scene the accepted psychological theory in this area was ‘the contact hypothesis’. The basic assumption of this approach, classically articulated by Gordon Allport (the brother of Floyd Allport mentioned above), was that association with individuals from a disliked group, getting to know them personally, reduced prejudice and resulted in liking and respect for that group, even though certain conditions had to be achieved for such contact to be effective.68 Supporters of the hypothesis acknowledged that contact was only effective if it occurred under certain conditions: (1) it had to be prolonged and purposive cooperative activity; (2) it should occur within the framework of official and institutional support for integration; and (3) it should involve people or groups of equal social status.69 By 1986 social psychologists using Tajfel’s social identity understanding of intergroup relations and proposing alternative approaches had begun critiquing Allport’s contact hypothesis.70 Two early strategies based on SIT

See Marilynn B. Brewer and Donald T. Campbell, Ethnocentrism and Intergroup Attitudes: East African Evidence (New York: Sage, 1976), for some East African examples.  68 See Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954).  69 Michael A. Hogg and Graham M. Vaughan, Social Psychology, 2nd edn. (London: Prentice Hall, 1998), 386–7.  70 Miles Hewstone and Rupert Brown, ‘Contact Is Not Enough: An Intergroup Perspective on the “Contact Hypothesis”’, in Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters, Miles Hewstone and Rupert Brown (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 1–44.  67

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and SCT and proposed in 1989 by Samuel Gaertner and colleagues were ‘recategorization’, meaning that the members of two groups were included in a new superordinate group, and ‘decategorization’, meaning that individuals were taken out of group affiliations.71 The former strategy was found to reduce bias towards the outgroup by increasing the attractiveness of former outgroup members, and the latter did so by decreasing the attractiveness of former ingroup members! Gaertner and his colleagues found more promise in recategorization and developed this approach under the banner of ‘the common ingroup identity model’, initially in an article published in 1993.72 This entailed the movement of group boundaries from an ‘us’ and ‘them’ to a more inclusive ‘we’. The authors proposed that by creating a new common ingroup involving members of two subgroups bias and conflict would be reduced, as attitudes to former outgroup members became positive. They suggested various benefits that would bring about this result: we attribute greater similarity to our own beliefs to members of our ingroup; the psychological distance between members of an ingroup is less than between ingroup and outgroup members; we process and retain information differentially, in particular in more detail and with stronger memories, as between ingroup and outgroup members; and we tend to attribute positive behaviour to ingroup more than outgroup members.73 On this approach, it was even possible to interpret one of the more empirically based results of the contact hypothesis, that actual cooperation between ingroup and outgroup reduced bias, as dependent not on the activity itself but on the members of the two groups starting to conceive of themselves ‘as one (superordinate) group rather than as two separate groups’.74 Of utmost importance was the suggestion by Gaertner and his associates that ‘the acceptance of a common ingroup identity may not necessarily require sub-groups to forsake their earlier characterizations entirely’. In fact, they argued that the most effective types of common ingroup would be those in which ‘both the superordinate and the sub-group identities are salient, such as Samuel L. Gaertner et al., ‘Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Benefits of Recategorization’, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 57 (1989): 239–49.  72 Samuel L. Gaertner et al., ‘The Common Ingroup Identity Model: Recategorization and the Reduction of Intergroup Bias’, European Review of Social Psychology 4, no. 1 (1993): 1–26. Also see Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio, Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2000).  73 Gaertner et al., ‘Common Ingroup Identity Model’, 7–8.  74 Gaertner et al., ‘Common Ingroup Identity Model’, 15.  71

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when the members conceive of themselves as two sub-groups within a more inclusive superordinate entity’.75 This analysis was soon merged with an earlier suggestion of Miles Hewstone and Rupert Brown in relation to an improved, SIT-informed version of the contact hypothesis, that in such interactions it would be better to establish mutual intergroup differentiation (for example, in areas of expertise and experience), with the self-respect of the groups not being diminished, and to avoid a process in which individuals might consider that they were being deprived of their valued (sub)group identities.76 This came to be called the ‘the equal status-different dimensions condition’ of intergroup contact.77 Further research confirmed that the development of a new ingroup identity was more likely to be achieved when the original subgroup identities were not threatened in the process.78 Thus Matthew Hornsey and Michael Hogg have suggested that the most effective way to improve relations between groups ‘is to promote awareness of a common superordinate identity, while at the same time preserving the integrity of valued subgroup identities’. They add that ‘By preserving subgroup boundaries during the encounter between groups, enhanced appreciation for others is more likely to be generalized to the outgroup as a whole’.79 Subsequent research has suggested that in any intervention to reduce intergroup bias and conflict, attention must be given to the fact that members of subgroups may vary in the extent to which they identify with that subgroup. In particular, for those who are high identifiers it will be important to preserve their subgroup identity as well as establishing the superordinate category.80 Gaertner et al., ‘Common Ingroup Identity Model’, 20 (emphasis original). Hewstone and Brown, ‘Contact Is Not Enough’, 35. See J. F. Dovidio, S. L. Gaertner, and A. Validzic, ‘Intergroup Bias: Status, Differentiation, and a Common in-Group Identity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, no. 1 (1998): 117.  78 See, for example, Rupert Brown, James Vivian, and Miles Hewstone, ‘Changing Attitudes through Intergroup Contact: The Effects of Group Membership Salience’, European Journal of Social Psychology 29, no. 5–6 (1999): 741–64; Matthew J. Hornsey and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity: An Integrative Model of Subgroup Relations’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, no. 2 (2000): 143–56.  79 Matthew J. Hornsey and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Subgroup Relations: A Comparison of Mutual Intergroup Differentiation and Common Ingroup Identity Models of Prejudice Reduction’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26, no. 2 (2000): 243.  80 Richard J. Crisp and Sarah R. Beck, ‘Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Moderating Role of Ingroup Identification’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 8, no. 2 (2005): 173–85; Richard J. Crisp, Catriona H. Stone, and Natalie R. Hall, ‘Recategorization and Subgroup Identification: Predicting and Preventing Threats from Common Ingroups’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32, no. 2 (2006): 230–42; Catriona H. Stone and Richard J. Crisp, ‘Superordinate and Subgroup Identification as Predictors of Intergroup Evaluation in Common Ingroup Contexts’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 10, no. 4 (2007): 493–513.  75  76  77

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Hornsey and Hogg have drawn an important distinction between superordinate groups with nested subgroups and those with cross-cutting subgroups.81 A nested subgroup is usually one that is found entirely within the superordinate group. A cross-cutting subgroup has some members within the superordinate subgroup and some outside. Thus if members of two ethnic groups decide to set up a football team in which they all compete against other teams, that will represent a cross-cutting subgroup since there will be many members of both ethnic identities who are not in the team. Research by A. Mummendey and M. Wenzel suggests that for a superordinate identity to be successful it must be inclusive and should not reflect too strongly the characteristics of a dominant subgroup.82 This finding becomes more significant given that some subgroups, typically those with high status or power, may project their subgroup identities onto the superordinate category and regard the latter as synonymous with their own subgroup identity.83 If it is likely that a subgroup will behave in this way in a particular context, to identify and propose such a superordinate category may not be a good strategy for improving relations between the dominant subgroup and other subgroups not in that privileged position.84 The founders of the common ingroup identity model, Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio, in reviewing more recent research have acknowledged that social categorization is a dynamic process, since people possess many group identities and can focus on different social categories.85 They have also highlighted the complexity and subtlety of intergroup relations and have stressed the need to investigate intergroup contact from the perspective of both majority and minority subgroups, which have different ideals and motivations.86 They reach this view although noting that the evidence continues to Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’; this distinction has been noted with approval by Jukka Lipponen, Klaus Helkama, and Milla Juslin, ‘Subgroup Identification, Superordinate Identification and Intergroup Bias between the Subgroups’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 6, no. 3 (2003): 241.  82 Amélie Mummendey and Michael Wenzel, ‘Social Discrimination and Tolerance in Intergroup Relations: Reactions to Intergroup Difference’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 3, no. 2 (1999): 168–9.  83 Mummendey and Wenzel, ‘Social Discrimination’, 166.  84 Lipponen, Helkama, and Juslin, ‘Subgroup Identification’, 249.  85 John Dovidio, Samuel Gaertner, and Tamar Saguy, ‘Another View of “We”: Majority and Minority Group Perspectives on a Common Ingroup Identity’, European Review of Social Psychology 18, no. 1 (2007): 298.  86 Dovidio, Gaertner, and Saguy, ‘Another View’, 325.  81

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support ‘the value of maintaining subgroup identities with the context of an overarching superordinate identity’.87

Norms and prototypes88 In social psychology the expression ‘social influence’ refers to the ways in which the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are affected and shaped by the presence of others. Social psychologists use the word ‘conformity’ when speaking of how a group influences individuals in this way. The distinctive feature of our conformity to the groups to which we belong is the role of norms.89 In this context, norms are those ‘regularities in attitudes and behavior that characterize a social group and differentiate it from other social groups’.90 They bring order and predictability to the environment, thus helping members to construe the world. They also point to appropriate behaviour in new and ambiguous situations. Norms enhance and maintain group identity.91 Norms can either be descriptive or prescriptive/injunctive, the former referring to regularities in how people actually behave and the latter to how they should behave.92 Although some social psychologists consider that the sanction for breach of prescriptive norms consists of an awareness of the disapproval of other people, social identity scholars ‘attribute the prescriptive force of group norms to their internalized self-definitional function’.93 Norms in this sense are related to ‘ethics’ as employed by philosophers and biblical interpreters. But we should notice the distinction. We are not dealing here primarily with prescriptive assertions of what an individual should do to stay right with (God and) his or her neighbour. From a social-psychological

Dovidio, Gaertner, and Saguy, ‘Another View’, 320. For a fuller account of norms and prototypes in SIT and SCT, see my chapter on the Matthaean Beatitudes in this volume.  89 Hogg and Abrams, Identifications, 157–8.  90 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 7.  91 Rupert Brown, Group Processes: Dynamics within and between Groups, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 60.  92 See R. Cialdini, C. Kallgren, and R. Reno, ‘A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: A Theoretical Refinement and Reevaluation of the Role of Norms in Human Behavior’, in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. M. P. Zanna (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1991), 201–35.  93 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 12.  87  88

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viewpoint, the emphasis falls on the much larger issue of the creation and maintenance of a group identity. In SIT and SCT, norms are closely connected with prototypes. A prototype is an abstract concept formed from several experiences with members of a category. It is a summary representation that encapsulates the central tendency of the category as opposed to an exemplar, which is a single example of the category in question.94 From a SIT and SCT perspective, ‘group prototypes describe individual cognitive representations of group norms’.95 Individuals self-stereotype themselves via the process of depersonalization in order to become ‘the interchangeable exemplars of a social category’.96 This helps them to conform to shared ingroup prototypes and this in turn leads to them manifesting ingroup normative attitudes and behaviour.97 Norms and prototypes often gain in intensity through the process of polarization. This means the manner in which the attitudes or behaviour of a group, after discussion, tend to move in a direction that is more extreme than the pre-test responses of the individual members. This is called the polarizing effect.98 When this occurs in the context of competition with a rival outgroup, both ingroup norms and polarization due to conformity with them become more extreme.99 Groups tend to generate norms and prototypes that are polarized away from outgroups. 100

Leadership The distinctive use made of prototypes in SIT and SCT has allowed social identity researchers to take a fresh approach to leadership. In general terms, leadership refers to ‘the process of influencing others in a manner that enhances their contribution to the realization of group goals’.101 From a SIT perspective, Eliot R. Smith and Michael A. Zarate, ‘Exemplar and Prototype Use in Social Categorization’, Social Cognition 8, no. 3 (1990): 244–6. Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 11.  96 Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50.  97 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 11.  98 John C. Turner, Margaret S. Wetherell, and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Referent Informational Influence and Group Polarization’, British Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1989): 135–47.  99 Turner, Wetherell, and Hogg, ‘Group Polarization’, 138. 100 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 13. 101 S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach, 1st edn. (London: Sage, 2001), 58.  94

 95

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leadership involves having the members of a group act as a team (= social identity salience) and not as individual members pursuing their own interests (= personal identity salience). When social identity is salient the members will align themselves with group norms, they will have been provided with a common perspective on reality, they will be motivated to coordinate their behaviour around group norms, and they will work collaboratively to further their collective self-interest.102 For leaders to be successful in such a context they must define themselves in terms of the group’s shared social identity. In particular, ‘leadership centers around the process of creating, coordinating, and controlling a social self-categorical relationship that defines what leader and follower have in common and what makes them “special”’.103 To achieve this result, social identity researchers have proposed that the leader must represent an ingroup prototype, since ‘As the (most) prototypical group member the leader best epitomizes (in the dual sense of both defining and being defined by) the social category of which he or she is a member’.104 The leader is the one who represents to the maximum extent the shared identity of the group. This perspective on leadership is now the subject of an important monograph by Alex Haslam, Steve Reicher and Michael Platow.105

Beliefs With the exception of one researcher, beliefs are a somewhat neglected area of SIT. That exception is Daniel Bar-Tal, especially in an important 1990 monograph.106 His work deserves consideration by biblical researchers especially because it facilitates a fresh investigation of the interpenetration of dimensions of the texts which tend to be differentiated under the banners of the ‘social’ and ‘theological’. S. Alexander Haslam and M. J. Platow, ‘Your Wish Is Our Command: The Role of Shared Social Identity in Translating a Leader’s Vision into Followers’ Action’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, Michael A. Hogg and Deborah J. Terry (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001), 217. 103 Haslam and Platow, ‘Your Wish’, 218. 104 Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 66. 105 S. Alexander Haslam, Stephen D. Reicher, and Michael J. Platow, The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence, and Power (Hove: Psychology Press, 2011). 106 See Daniel Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs: A Conception for Analyzing Group Structure, Processes, and Behavior, Springer Series in Social Psychology (Berlin and New York: Springer, 1990); Daniel Bar-Tal, ‘Group Beliefs as an Expression of Social Identity’, in Social Identity: International Perspectives, Stephen Worchel et al. (eds) (London: Sage, 1998), 93–113 (a summary of his views). 102

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For Bar-Tal ‘Group beliefs are defined as convictions that group members (a) are aware that they share and (b) consider as defining their “groupness”.’107 The fundamental group belief is ‘We are a group’, since if the members do not share this belief they could not consider themselves to be group members.108 This idea is close to Tajfel’s ‘cognitive’ component of group belonging, the knowledge that one belongs to a group, as noted above. Bar-Tal further argues, however – surely persuasively – that, in addition to this fundamental group belief, members share other beliefs of varying content that relate to a variety of subjects. These beliefs underlie their ‘we-ness’ and uniqueness and define the social identity they derive from belonging to that group.109 The most important characteristics of group beliefs are that they are held with great confidence ‘because they are considered to be facts and verities’ and that they are central to group members, in the sense of being accessible and relevant in making decisions.110 He notes that the ‘more central group beliefs are considered as prototypic in group characterization and therefore are called basic group beliefs’.111 Bar-Tal argues, with explicit reference to Tajfel’s work on differentiation between groups, that group beliefs serve to differentiate one group from another.112 Yet he also argues that he has moved beyond the work of Tajfel and Turner by showing that the cognitive dimension of group belonging is not exhausted simply by the belief of the members that they constitute a group but also extends to group beliefs of different contents ‘which define the nature of the group’ and ‘allow individuals to feel, think and act as group members’.113 Bar-Tal loosely classifies group beliefs differentiated by content into four groups. First, there are group norms. We have already considered norms above in relation to prototypes, but here we see Bar-Tal approaching them from a different direction. His broad view is that group norms are ‘shared standards that guide group members’ behavior’. They tell members what

Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 36, emphasis original. Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 37. Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 37. 110 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 57–8. 111 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 58, emphasis original. 112 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 59–60. 113 Bar-Tal, ‘Group Beliefs as an Expression’, 112. 107 108 109

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they should or should not do. They regulate the behaviour of members and also furnish criteria for judging it. Bar-Tal notes that norms, so defined, do not have to be group beliefs, because some aspects of the behaviour of members may be regulated by norms that are not characteristic of the group. But sometimes norms may constitute group beliefs: ‘when norms function as group beliefs, group members believe that their patterns of behavior are unique to them and characterize their membership’.114 Second, he mentions group values. Adopting an earlier definition of value ‘as an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is … socially preferable’ to its opposite or converse, he notes, as with norms, that values do not necessarily function as group beliefs (they could, for example, derive from the wider cultural context). Sometimes, however, values do function as group beliefs, either by formal prescription (as with a creed) or informally through processes of socialization and influence. In this case they represent the ideals to which the group aspires.115 Third, there are group goals, meaning ‘valued or desired future specific states for the group’. Where goals play a significant role in the life of the group they are functioning as group beliefs.116 Fourth, and perhaps less helpfully, he cites group ideology. ‘Ideology’, which he refers to as ‘the mental characteristic of a group’, is a word of notoriously vague denotation. Nevertheless, by it he conveys the important idea that sometimes groups have an interrelated set of beliefs constituting a programme.117 Finally, Bar-Tal usefully discusses the formation and maintenance of group beliefs, including the role of a group’s ‘epistemic authorities’ in this process, and the ways in which groups and group beliefs change.118

Time Groups exist in time. They have a past, a present and a future. In some cases – for example, in the case of ethnic groups – they may have a history going back centuries. Often the past will weigh on the members and on the group identity Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 49. Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 51. 116 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 53. 117 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 56–7. 118 Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs, 63–77 and 79–91. 114 115

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in a manner that affects their experience of the present and their expectations for the future. Accordingly, it is somewhat disappointing that social identity theorists have as yet paid comparatively little attention to the question of time, barring essays by Susan Condor and Marco Cinirella. In 1996 Condor noted that most social psychological research viewed social life as composed of discrete moments and contexts, a situation rather at odds with Tajfel’s own concerns with how intergroup phenomena such as prejudice and conflict endured and developed over time. She proposed that a preferable view was to emphasize social life as a temporal trajectory, in which social agents take up identities, ideas and practices and hand them on to their successors, often transforming them as they go.119 Social groups should be regarded as ongoing processes extended in time not as entities existing in this or that moment. Part of the social identity we derive from belonging to groups inevitably includes the fact of their being situated in history, stretching backward and forward in time.120 In relation to the past, it is clear that group identities are nourished by collective memory (which allows an easy connection with the theories of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs and others on this topic). As far as the future is concerned, groups plan for the future and the challenges and opportunities it will bring. Thus groups provide their members with a serial connectedness to other group members. On this point Condor quotes D. Carr to the effect that: my social existence not only puts me in contact with a co-existing multiplicity of contemporaries: it connects me with a peculiar form of temporal continuity … which runs from predecessors to successors … the we with whose experience the individual identifies can both pre-date and survive the individuals that make it up.121

Marco Cinirella has dug still deeper into the temporal aspect of social identity by utilizing the earlier research of H. Markus and P. Nurius on ‘possible selves’. These are the beliefs that individuals hold concerning themselves in the past and what might happen to them in the future, S. Condor, ‘Social Identity and Time’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford; Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), 289–91. 120 Condor, ‘Identity and Time’, 302–3. 121 Condor, ‘Identity and Time’, 306; citing David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 113–14. 119

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together with some estimate of the probability that different possible selves will be achieved. Cinirella wants to see social identity theory develop so that it may address past social identities and the means by which the past, present and future can be reworked to create meaningful stories for both individuals and groups.122 Some researchers have, indeed, applied the social identity perspective precisely to the ways in which groups draw upon historical experience to create identity for their members in the present. In one section of Self and Nation Stephen Reicher and Nick Hopkins consider the role of history in the maintenance and creation of nations and the social identity that a national population derives from belonging to it.123 At the end of this discussion they note, speaking in relation to national identity but in a way that has application to other types of groups: ‘we can never allow the past to be foreign to us, for to do so would be to cede it to others and thereby cede them a key advantage in shaping reality.’ They go on to say: ‘The past is powerful in defining contemporary identity because it is represented in terms of a narrative structure which invites those in the present to see themselves as participants in an ongoing drama.’124

Conclusion As I re-read some of the classic works of social identity theory in writing this essay, I found that my initial enthusiasm in early 1994, when I first discovered SIT, for the promise it held in helping us to explore the meaning of biblical texts has not waned.125 On the contrary, not only do the original works seem as pertinent as ever, but the explosion of research informed by SIT and SCT in so many new areas has magnified the applicability of these social-psychological ideas for biblical research. While the specific issues I discussed in the last section of this essay seem pertinent to me, those who read the expanding periodical literature on SIT and SCT will no doubt find numerous other Marco Cinnirella, ‘Exploring Temporal Aspects of Social Identity: The Concept of Possible Social Identities’, European Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1998): 227–48. 123 Reicher and Hopkins, Self and Nation, 138–51. 124 Reicher and Hopkins, Self and Nation, 150. 125 I describe the circumstances of my discovering SIT in my other essay in this volume, 147–8. 122

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areas of interest. These will help them not only pose new questions to New Testament texts but also to organize the answers they prompt (to ‘draw the lines between the dots’) in socially realistic ways – the twin goals, if I might simplify somewhat, of all social-scientific interpretation.

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Social History and Social Theory in the Study of Social Identity Andrew D. Clarke and J. Brian Tucker

Introduction Social history and social theory may retrospectively be regarded as occupying a single spectrum during much of the twentieth century. There have been both significant animosity between those who worked at the extreme poles, as well as increasing rapprochement, and even co-operation, between those who regarded themselves as occupying the middle ground – whether that be socially focused history or historically applied social theory. That middle ground is now much more populated, and it is widely recognized that scholars rarely engage in social description without any appeal to some form of theoretical or conceptual framework, method or model.1 The discussion here is about whether that appeal is under-theorized or too theory-driven; whether it is transparent or inadvertent; whether it allows new findings to emerge or actually dictates them; and whether it both challenges existing assumptions, yet narrows the range of potential answers. Social historians provide important social data that can be valuably interrogated from the perspective of particular sociological questions, concepts and theories. Nonetheless, social theorists often find this historical data unusable in their research.2 Clearly the vast majority of social description research W. J. Hynes, Shirley Jackson Case and the Chicago School: The Socio-Historical Method (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981). The Shirley Jackson Case era at the University of Chicago would stand out as an exception to this claim. The Christ-movement was studied only within the context of the broader environment in which it developed.  2 D. J. Chalcraft, ‘Is Sociology Also Among the Social Sciences? Some Personal Reflections on Sociological Approaches in Biblical Studies’, in Anthropology and the Bible: Critical Perspectives, ed. Emanuel Pfoh (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 49–55; D. J. Chalcraft, ‘Is a Comparative  1

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within biblical studies has adopted lines of social history, with an especial focus on the biblical world. In tending to focus more on the descriptive than the analytical, social history is necessarily constrained by the limited nature of the extant historical data. However, this material rarely provides interpretative clarity with regard to issues of social dynamic, change and process. This is not unexpected in that much of the kind of data most useful to social and behavioural scientists is often gleaned through direct interrogation of subjects (etic approaches, describing a behaviour or belief from the perspective of an external observer, often drawing comparisons or making generalizations across different contexts), or by immersion into the particular group being studied (emic approaches, describing a behaviour or belief using a case study by somebody from within that group). Study of ancient societies is not suited to either of these ideal approaches because of the comparative inaccessibility of the groups in focus, which means that, both in terms of data and method, there are inevitable compromises. Peter Burke, in his work History and Social Theory, brings the key issue to the fore with two questions: ‘What is the use of social theory to historians, and what is the use of history to social theorists?’3 Taking Burke’s question as a starting point, this essay is interested more precisely in the ways social historians and theorists research issues related specifically to social identity, and it uses some snapshots from Pauline studies and the Corinthian correspondence to illustrate key points. The claim is that contemporary social theories are especially useful tools when they provide an appropriate framework and language for interpreting the historical evidence. The evidence provided by social historians, on the other hand, can both demonstrate the relevance of a given theory and provide lines of proof to substantiate the theoretical claims made by social theorists. These two stances suggest the inherent value of a dialogical approach. This kind of work by both historians and theorists is evident in the research associated with the formation of social identity within the earliest Christ-movement. An important feature of the overarching research context is that historical research tends to be written from a ‘presentist’ perspective. That is, knowledge Historical Sociology of Ancient Jewish Sects Possible?’, in Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History, ed. Sacha Stern (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 249. See also the forthcoming D. J. Chalcraft, The Bible and Sociological Theory (London: T&T Clark, 2013).  3 P. Burke, History and Social Theory, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 1.

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about the past, whether for the social historian or the social theorist, is typically driven by questions relevant to the present. Even over the past half-century, it is possible to see how the dominant questions have gradually changed, ranging from questions of class and economy to concerns of gender and identity. This inevitably means that such research is vulnerable to an element of anachronism, but also there is a burgeoning plurality of competing theories from which to select, each of which has its particular agenda, compromises and limitations. It should, therefore, be recognized that any approach that purports to present a universal description or unifying construct is likely to be flawed. Even the goal of establishing a long-standing consensus may be vaulting ambition. In this context, the overwhelming value of open dialogue and engagement, which seek to identify and evaluate each particular contribution to our historical understanding, is all the more apparent – between both complementary and competing approaches, between eclectic and narrower approaches.

Defining social identity and its relevance Defining social identity with regard to the earliest Christ-movement is both rewarding and fraught with difficulties. One of the often-cited challenges relates to the implications of using a definition from an era foreign to the one under investigation. As we have observed, successive generations of scholars have applied fresh insight to ask new questions of the historical data, including at times questions at best only indirectly addressed by or not ideally answerable from the ancient sources. The most widespread definition in use by New Testament scholars is that offered by Henri Tajfel: ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [sic] knowledge of his [sic] membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’.4 In this definition, Tajfel places significant emphasis on the groups to which an individual belongs and on competitive intergroup relations. The observations that led to this H. Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic, 1978), 63.

 4

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definition and the social psychological theories that subsequently developed from them are inevitably rooted in his own particular and challenging associations with a number of different European racial groups.5 Those experiences are located within a set of social contexts that inevitably owe much to a postEnlightenment focus on the distinctiveness of the individual in relation to a group and on the conviction that widespread social change is indeed possible and desirable. First-century Mediterranean societies were very significantly stratified and categorized by group identities, with a large measure of discrimination between groups: slave/free; rich/poor; honestiores/humiliores; Roman/ Greek; Jew/Gentile. Tajfel’s identification of ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’ distinctions consequently has the potential to offer much to scholarly understanding of intergroup relations in ancient Mediterranean society. It is important to be sensitive, however, to whether both the contemporary and the ancient contexts are similar in the extent to which an individual’s self-esteem is/was dictated by group membership or subsumed by that group membership; the degree to which individuals are/were able to self-determine the group/s to which they belong, in order to establish personal advantage or superiority; the extent to which groups can/could capitalize on discrimination against other groups; and whether there was significant opportunity to be critical of the status quo, and significant likelihood of social change. Tajfel concluded that individuals were more often perceived by others as stereotypical of the groups to which they belonged once that group identity was known. Although his social identity theory experiments were designed to be context-less, it may be questioned whether it is indeed possible for individuals to engage relationally without an overarching set of assumptions.6 It is at this point that careful historical research is needed in order to determine and evaluate the limitations or inevitable compromises to applying social identity theory to

Tajfel’s experiences as a Polish Jew who presented himself to the Germans as French during much of World War II, eventually gaining French, and subsequently British, citizenship, were very formative to his thought; cf. J. C. Turner, ‘Henri Tajfel: An Introduction’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann, 1996), 2–3. Social identity theory was especially able to address intergroup relations in the light of the Holocaust; cf. M. J. Hornsey, ‘Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory: A Historical Review’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 1 (2008): 204.  6 Self-Categorization Theory, subsequently developed by Tajfel’s student, J. C. Turner, focuses less on the individual and is more depersonalized.  5

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first-century contexts, and whether the set of assumptions intrinsic to social identity theory is fully relevant to the focal context.7 A second challenge occurs when the comparative lack of data or inaccessibility of evidence challenges the ability to apply social theory in standard or sustainable ways. The concern becomes more acute with those approaches that are most reliable when applied to a large body of data, or those methods that normally require empirical research, including, for example, the ability to interrogate the subject.8 The difficulties inherent in a study in which the target group can no longer be the subject of empirical research are not, therefore, insignificant. It is important to be aware of both the implications and significance of this when interpreting the evidence reflected in the New Testament and other ancient sources. A third area of caution frequently – perhaps inevitably – arises in interdisciplinary studies, in which a given scholar lacks full proficiency in the secondary discipline. This occurs, for example, where biblical scholars are making extensive use of early iterations of theoretical models, without fully engaging with subsequent nuances, critiques and developments of the initially over-ambitious theories, as they are tested and honed in the light of further, contemporary, empirical research and sometimes harsh criticism.9 This vulnerability again endorses the value of collaborative, dialogical approaches. Social psychology, defined as the study of persons in the context of their social relationships and group memberships, is another approach that provides resources for exploring group-related issues in an ancient text. Social psychology as a heuristic device for understanding an ancient text may be supported by three interrelated claims. First, the purpose of using social psychology is to gain a better understanding of what is occurring in a text that evidences group dynamics, which may include the dynamics either within a group or between groups. It would, of course, be grossly anachronistic to assert or assume that Paul had contemporary social psychological categories in mind as he wrote. Nonetheless, while scholars recognize they Cf. the comparison between ‘collectivist’ and individualistic cultures in J. H. Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 27–31.  8 Cf. E. Pfoh, ‘Anthropology and Biblical Studies: A Critical Manifesto’, in Anthropology and the Bible: Critical Perspectives, ed. Emanuel Pfoh (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 15–35.  9 Cf. Hornsey, ‘Social Identity Theory’, 209–15, who highlights modifications of SIT in Self-Categorization Theory and Self-Esteem approaches.  7

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are engaged in a descriptive enterprise and not a prescriptive one, they may utilize the descriptive insights from social psychology, so long as the limitations of both historical distance and the historical data are appreciated. These limitations include the significant lack of extensive, reliable and empirically falsifiable access to the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, intentions and behaviour of the group/s targeted in the texts being studied, and the need for the scholar to reconstruct the social dynamic before analysing it, on the basis of the perspective presented by one individual (e.g. one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians).10 With this proviso, the concerns over eating food sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8–10) may give unusually rich insight into group belief systems, including especially the efforts to persuade others and influence them. It is clear that the nature of the beginning of the early Christ-movement involved shifting from one group to another with implications for social identification. In this context, social psychology may provide insights into what was occurring in the context of those shifting group memberships as well as language to make explicit what was already implicit in the writing event and the phenomena of the text. Second, if a text is referring to the nature of the human situation, then, even allowing for cultural differences, some elements of social psychology may reasonably be applied because of the shared human condition. To the extent that the discipline of social psychology can identify what is humanly universal in scope, regardless of gender, age, class or culture – the so-called global identity – then the significance of time is mitigated with regard to understanding aspects of the human condition that are consistent over time. Third, it is therefore necessary to identify that which is intrinsic to humankind and to delve into the world associated with the text by means of social psychological categories, as long as this is not confused with the actual text. This approach, though often wrongly accused of seeking the ‘world behind the text’, has been employed by social-scientific biblical scholars with convincing results.11 Thus, Cf. E. Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Rhetorical Situation and Historical Reconstruction in 1 Corinthians’, in Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church, Edward Adams and David G. Horrell (eds) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 145–60. 11 A. Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts (London: T&T Clark, 2011); P. A. Harland, Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians: Associations, Judeans, and Cultural Minorities (New York: T&T Clark, 2009). For further examples see C. A. Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, BTB 42, no. 3 (2012): 129–38. 10

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the field of social psychology may provide language to better explain the exegetical findings for passages that deal with social relationships and group memberships. The discussion of method that follows responds to specific criticisms that are relevant to questions related to social history and social theory in the study of Christ-movement social identity. It is not a comprehensive defence either of social-historical approaches, nor of social-scientific criticism.12 We have already recognized that the widely used definition of the word ‘identity’ is a modern invention,13 and those who study the role of social identity in the formation of the early Christ-movement could therefore be accused of engaging in a semantic anachronism.14 Social-scientific criticism as a method for interpreting the Bible is still a debated issue, and, dependent on a developing group of disciplines, it unsurprisingly lacks a clear, agreed-upon method.15 John Elliott describes this exegetical method 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, This has already been provided by others, e.g. J. H. Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism? (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993); S. C. Barton, ‘Historical Criticism and Social-Scientific Perspectives in New Testament Study’, in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, ed. Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 61–89; S. C. Barton, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, in A Handbook to the Exegesis of the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 277–89; S. R. Garrett, ‘Sociology (Early Christianity)’, in ABD, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 89–99; D. B. Martin, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, in To Each Its Own Meaning, Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes (eds) (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1999), 125–41; T. E. Schmidt, ‘Sociology and New Testament Exegesis’, in Introducing New Testament Interpretation, ed. Scot McKnight (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 115–32; M. DeNeui, ‘The Body, the Building and the Field: Paul’s Metaphors for the Church in 1 Corinthians in Light of Their Usage in Greco-Roman Literature’ (University of Aberdeen, 2008), 7–35. One example which is not addressed here is the concern over foundational or ideological differences with regard to the social sciences in comparison with theology; S. C. Barton, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 754; B. Holmberg, ‘The Methods of Historical Reconstruction in the Scholarly “Recovery” of Corinthian Christianity’, in Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church, Edward Adams and David G. Horrell (eds) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 271. 13 OED, 620. 14 V. H. T. Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth: A Comparative Study of 2 Corinthians, Epictetus, and Valerius Maximus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 10–51, has somewhat ameliorated this concern. He will be discussed further below. 15 R. A. Scroggs, ‘The Sociological Interpretation of the New Testament: The Present State of Research’, NTS 26, no. 2 (1980): 166; A. D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A SocioHistorical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1–6 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 3–6; D. Tidball, The Social Context of the New Testament: A Sociological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 20–1, who offers other difficulties which include sparse ‘evidence’, ‘models [that] simplify reality’, ‘theories’ which are untestable, and problems associated with ‘parallelomania’; L. J. Lawrence, Reading with Anthropology: Exhibiting Aspects of New Testament Religion (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), 15, who suggests researching ‘with humility, in order to cast fresh light on, rather than dictate or presume to wholly understand patterns’ as a way through some of these difficulties. 12

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theory, models, and research of the social sciences’.16 The approach being argued for here is one that cautiously uses both historical-critical tools and social-scientific analyses to understand more clearly the group dynamics and the social implications of a biblical text.17 Scholars who have researched the Corinthian correspondence have recognized that it contains significant material regarding the social setting of the early Christ-movement and is thus particularly suited to social-scientific analysis.18 These scholars, however, differ about the ways this material is to be evaluated and understood. Social historians focus variously on Jewish, Greek or Roman texts and artefacts to establish the context for understanding the setting of the Christ-movement and the social identity that emerged within it.19 Social theorists rely on the resources from various social-scientific theories to provide insight into the significance of the evidence that is uncovered from both texts and material remains.20 These approaches are sometimes set against one another and understood as competing scholarly frameworks. However, a more fruitful approach is one that proceeds from a combination of the

Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism?, 7. H. C. Kee, Knowing the Truth: A Sociological Approach to New Testament Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 32, 43–50, describes group analysis as one of the main areas of concern for socialscientific approaches to New Testament interpretation. Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism?, 53, notes ‘a group-identifying function’ is inherent in texts. See also DeNeui, ‘The Body’, 35. 18 For example: E. Adams, Constructing the World: A Study in Paul’s Cosmological Language, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000); J. K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth, JSNTSup 75 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); D. G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); A. S. May, The Body for the Lord: Sex and Identity in 1 Corinthians 5–7, JSNTSup 278 (London: T&T Clark, 2004); G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982). 19 E. A. Judge, The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); B. W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001); J. R. Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context, WUNT 172 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); J. A. Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995). 20 For example, P. F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998); Horrell, Social Ethos; B. J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd edn, rev. and exp. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001); G. Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). This does not imply that the first group does not employ contemporary theories; they sometimes do, but in a limited fashion. For example, J. R. Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 326. The work of the Context Group is notable here, see J. J. Pilch, ed., Social Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible: Essays by the Context Group in Honor of Bruce J. Malina, Biblical Interpretation Series (Leiden: Brill, 2001). 16 17

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perspectives of both the social theorists and social historians; a few observations should be made concerning this issue.21

Combining social history and social theory As mentioned above, social theorists are sometimes accused of anachronistically employing theories developed in a later context and reading them back into another setting for which the theory holds no warrant.22 Edwin Judge’s approach to the social distinctives and context of the earliest Christmovement relies on papyrological, textual and inscriptional evidence while dismissing a significant explanatory role for contemporary social-scientific models. He argues that these models were developed much later and in a context foreign to that of the Roman Empire.23 Thus, he insists that New Testament scholars should resist using the results of ‘modern sociology’ until their findings can be validated through a type of ‘painstaking field work’ that is all but impossible when dealing with ancient cultures. He concludes that those who employ these methods are engaging in ‘the sociological fallacy’.24 While Judge’s critique is significant and should not be overlooked by scholars engaged in social theoretical approaches to biblical interpretation, his almost complete dismissal of these resources needs to be nuanced.

Holmberg, ‘Methods’, 267–8. He places ‘Gerd Theissen and Wayne Meeks’ in this combined social theoretical and social historical group and describes this approach as a ‘mediating position’ characterized by ‘a much more tentative use of social theory’ in an ‘eclectic and piece-meal’ fashion; see also W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 6. This characterization may be challenged in that the integration of various approaches does not imply eclecticism or a general disregard for method. 22 Barton, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, 754. 23 E. A. Judge, ‘The Social Identity of the First Christians: A Question of Method in Religious History’, JRH 11, no. 2 (1980): 210–17; Barton, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, 754, notes concerning the findings of sociological and anthropological approaches, that they ‘may draw attention (working by analogy) to significant features of biblical and early Christian social dynamics that might otherwise go unnoticed’. This is not meant to diminish the level of incommensurability between the first-century context and the contemporary context, only to note that there may be analogous features based on shared human experience. Cf. A. D. Clarke, A Pauline Theology of Church Leadership, LNTS 362 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 6; Garrett, ‘Sociology (Early Christianity)’, 89. 24 Judge, ‘The Social Identity of the First Christians’, 210. Holmberg, ‘Methods’, 255–9, offers an extensive discussion concerning this issue. 21

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First, sociological analysis should rely on source-based reconstructions.25 However, this still does not resolve the underlying methodological issue as to when and where these theories should be used. Rainer Kessler provides a useful taxonomy for this in his work on Ancient Israel.26 The second nuance suggested is that social theories should be used at the tertiary level. In Kessler’s hierarchy, ‘archaeological and epigraphic remains’ should be our primary source, while the biblical texts are secondary ones.27 Following these two would be ‘socio-ethnological analogies’, which include, ‘theories derived from modern sociological/anthropological research’.28 Kessler’s contribution to the debate is that evidence that has temporal proximity is given more weight and provides a more solid basis for the resulting theoretically informed interpretation. Two recent monographs on the Corinthian correspondence provide excellent examples of this type of nuanced research with regard to social history and theory. L. L. Welborn’s An End to Enmity: Paul and the ‘Wrongdoer’ of Second Corinthians, explores Paul’s Corinthian correspondence in its GraecoRoman context and uncovers the identity of the shadowy figure known as the wrongdoer. This work brings together key aspects of Welborn’s approach to Paul that draws on ancient politics, friendship discourse, and the material remains of Roman Corinth. With these, he provides a social and rhetorical analysis of the Corinthian correspondence that brings to the fore the relational dynamics between Paul and the Corinthians.29 Mark T. Finney argues that the pursuit of honour and its ensuing conflict combine to form an interpretive matrix that unifies 1 Corinthians.30 Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World provides a reading of 1 Corinthians Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities, 29, 95, 326. Harrison is a good example of a social historian who works extensively with comparative materials; however, he also draws on the resources of linguistic ‘coding’ and contemporary research on ‘hidden transcripts’ to better explain the ideological collision between Paul’s gospel and Rome’s. 26 R. Kessler, The Social History of Ancient Israel: An Introduction (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 19–23. 27 Kessler’s hierarchy focuses on Israel’s Scriptures which are difficult to date and often written well after the events they describe. With regard to the NT texts generally, and the undisputed Paulines specifically, this same issue does not apply. Thus, it would be wise to consider switching the taxonomy with the NT texts being our primary source and the material remains being secondary. 28 Kessler, Social History, 21. 29 L. L. Welborn, An End to Enmity: Paul and the ‘Wrongdoer’ of Second Corinthians, BZNW 185 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 22, 219, 334, 355, 371–2, 391, 449, 466, 476, 481. 30 M. T. Finney, Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World: 1 Corinthians in Its Greco-Roman Social Setting, LNTS 460 (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 2. 25

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that takes seriously the Graeco-Roman social context behind this letter by providing an extensive lexical and conceptual study of the multivalent meaning of φιλοτιμία (the love and lust for honour) and the disparate ways it generates partisanship, conflict and factionalism.31 Each of the exegetical chapters begins with a survey of aspects of φιλοτιμία relevant to one section of 1 Corinthians and then provides an honour-conflict model-based reading of that section (not verse-by-verse) that brings to the fore key themes and motifs. This allows him to conclude that ‘the pursuit of honour was at the root of the community’s many problems and Paul’s reiterated emphasis is that the cross must be allowed to shatter all accepted cultural norms’.32 Both Welborn and Finney provide excellent examples of ways to provide coherent understandings of the social identity of members of the earliest Christ-movement, and they do this by establishing the historical context by a rigorous application of social historical methods. In many ways, they are following the lead of B. W. Winter, who contends that the historical context must be established before scholars cautiously apply contemporary social theories.33 Judge’s critique notwithstanding, another reason to draw on the resources of social-scientific theories is that they may furnish language to describe phenomena in the text that then provide insight into the way the text may be appropriated in a new context.34 Henry Nguyen argues that persona functions as an ancient equivalent for the concept of social identity and thus may be studied to understand more clearly Paul’s rhetoric and the way the Corinthian Christ-followers constructed ‘their conception of Christian identity’.35 Nguyen compares the use of persona/πρόσωπον in the works of Valerius Maximus, Epictetus and Paul.36 He concludes that by adding the modifier ‘social’ in front of persona one may understand Paul to be addressing a preoccupation with the superficial aspects of one’s social identity in a manner similar to that of the other two authors.37 Nguyen, following Jenkins, defines social identity as ‘our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and reciprocally,

Finney, Honour and Conflict, 7–8. Finney, Honour and Conflict, 223. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, xiii–xiv. 34 Barton, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, 753. 35 Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, 130. 36 Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, 4. 37 Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, 5–9. 31

32 33

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other people’s understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us)’.38 His approach does not employ contemporary identity studies extensively but his move to include ‘social’ in front of persona provides a possible model for combining these two approaches.39 In this way it follows the suggestion of B. W. Winter that after the ‘proto-sociological’40 work has been completed, social theorists might apply the findings of the work of social historians.41 Nguyen’s work provides an important first step in the study of early Christ-movement social identity in Corinth but in continuity with the work of Judge and Winter, since he does not use theoretical models in his analysis.

Models and social-scientific analysis Philip Esler and David Horrell wrote a series of articles debating the way sociological models should be employed within social-scientific biblical interpretation.42 Esler’s approach is structured around the use of sociological models to help understand the rhetoric of a text and more accurately answer questions concerning the function of a text.43 Horrell’s approach allows themes to emerge from the text and then seeks to apply the categories from modern theories, be they psychological, sociological or anthropological, to provide language by which to answer questions in a contemporary context.44 In other words, to understand issues of social Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, 1, citing R. Jenkins, Social Identity, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1996), 5. 39 Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, 11–17. It should be noted that he does rely on the work of sociologist Marcel Mauss to establish his framework for his understanding of social identity. See M. Mauss, ‘Une catégorie de l’esprit humain: la notion de personne celle de “moi”’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 68 (1938): 263–81. 40 Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership, 5, referencing P. J. Richter. 41 Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, xiii. 42 P. F. Esler, ‘Models in New Testament Interpretation: A Reply to David Horrell’, JSNT 78 (2000): 107–8; D. Horrell, ‘Models and Methods in Social-Scientific Interpretation: A Response to Philip Esler’, JSNT 78 (2000): 84–6. Holmberg, ‘Methods’, 267–9, also provides an excellent analysis of the Esler/Horrell debate. 43 Esler, ‘Models in New Testament Interpretation’, 112, rejects the claim that his exegetical conclusions are based on models and not on the actual textual data itself. See Garrett, ‘Sociology (Early Christianity)’, 96–7, and her discussion of Malina and Neyrey with regard to the imposition of models which avoid ethnocentric readings. See B. Holmberg, Sociology and the New Testament: An Appraisal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 12–14, and his original warnings concerning the use of models whether explicit or implicit. 44 Adams, Constructing the World, 23–38; Horrell, ‘Models and Methods’, 83–105; Esler, ‘Models 38

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identity construction within the early Christ-movement, he does not rely on any one theory of social identity but cautiously reads the scriptural discourse informed by various theoretical approaches. As Kathy Ehrensperger rightly concludes, ‘contemporary theories can provide an illuminating perspective and shed light on aspects of the fragmentary discourse of the Pauline epistolary conversation which would otherwise go unnoticed’.45 So, the method being suggested here pays full attention to the social context in both its exegetical and historical details as well as the contemporary setting in which the study is undertaken.46 However, things are never that simple; seeking a middle-of-the-road approach to social history and theory in the context of social-scientific analysis of the New Testament is rather difficult and controversial. David Horrell provides a clear analysis of the state of social-scientific analysis of Scripture in his essay, ‘Whither Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation? Reflections on Contested Methodologies and the Future’.47 It begins with a survey of Wayne Meeks’s methodology, whose approach is described as moderate functionalism, a theoretical framework shared by Gerd Theissen. As a social historian and theoretician, Meeks draws from the social sciences in an ‘eclectic’ manner while focusing on various issues of social status within the early Christ-movement. This brief summary orients the reader to Meeks’s approach and serves as the foundation for Horrell’s discussion in the rest of the chapter where Horrell surveys key scholarly developments since the publication of The First Urban Christians. in New Testament Interpretation’, 107–13. It should be noted that Esler draws on social identity theory while Horrell draws on Giddens’ structuration theory. Cf. Esler, Galatians; P. F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Horrell, Social Ethos. R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 12–13, provides an introduction to the issues of method related to postcolonial analysis, while K. Ehrensperger, That We May Be Mutually Encouraged: Feminism and the New Perspective in Pauline Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 39–42, provides the same from a feminist perspective. In some ways, Garrett, ‘Sociology (Early Christianity)’, 98, anticipates the approach suggested in this essay by calling for ‘sustained theoretical reflection’ on ‘the interface between sociological study and various forms of literary criticism’. 45 K. Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement, LNTS 325 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 3. 46 Holmberg, ‘Methods’, 270, provides a helpful warning that ‘models or theories cannot substitute for evidence, by filling in gaps in the data’ and ‘historically based models can turn a guess into an educated guess, but no more’. 47 D. Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation? Reflections on Contested Methodologies and the Future’, in After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later, Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell (eds) (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 6–20.

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First, the field of social-scientific New Testament studies is now widely diverse and has developed into so many differing areas that it is almost impossible to discern a common, overarching methodological approach. Second, most of Meeks’s innovative ideas with regard to the social aspects of the Christmovement are now part of the common field of knowledge in New Testament studies. Third, the work of Bruce Malina and the Context Group is noted as an approach which differs from Meeks’s and, as a group, they prefer to identify themselves as the proper locus for social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts. This leads Horrell to ask: ‘What does count for social-scientific criticism?’ Malina contends: (1) scholars must employ recognized social-scientific models to interpret the text if they want to engage in social-scientific interpretation; (2) there is a distinction between social historians and social theorists; (3) social science interpreters are rejected if they do not follow the tightly defined disciplinary framework laid out by Malina and some within the Context Group.48 Horrell raises these issues and then provides a critical analysis of the approach represented by Malina. He argues that the exclusive reliance on models is not warranted, in that some leading practitioners within the social sciences (e.g. Grace Davie and David Sutton) rely on approaches that do not cohere with Malina’s model-based approach.49 This leads Horrell to conclude that a narrow definition of what social-scientific interpretation entails is unwarranted; however – and quite importantly – Horrell does think that ‘outlining a coherent and explicit theoretical framework at the outset of one’s work’ is of vital importance.50 Horrell’s essay provides a useful summary of the current contours within New Testament studies with regard to social-scientific interpretation. However, by way of assessment, a few criticisms should be noted. First, social-scientific interpretation, in Horrell’s approach, ceases to be a useful descriptor within New Testament studies. It is emptied of most of its distinctive content and comes close to being a term that is non-communicative. Second, Horrell’s argument that there is no significant difference between social historians and social theorists downplays the distinctive manner in which scholars such as Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific’, 11–12. Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific’, 14. Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific’, 13.

48 49 50

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E. A. Judge and Bruce Winter approach the interpretative task as compared to social theorists such as Philip Esler and David Chalcraft. These approaches can be combined; however, it is too stark to suggest that ‘there is no sustainable distinction to be drawn’.51 Third, Horrell slightly overstates the accepted view of the sectarian nature of the Christ-movement and questions the extent to which scholars may speak of discrete ‘Pauline communities’.52 This reduction of a contextualized, discernible, Pauline ethos leads to the view of the early emergence of a predominant ‘Christian’ social identity.53

Social theorists and social historians One final issue should be mentioned in this essay – namely, the explicit use of social-scientific theories assists the researcher in making clear for the reader which theoretical framework is being utilized.54 Likewise, feminist scholars have stressed the importance of making clear one’s research assumptions for the benefit of the reader.55 These insights emerged from debates that had begun in the 1970s and 80s, when there was a growing sense of the failure of critical scholarship to adequately explore and address the social contexts of the earliest Christ-movement.56 In some measure this was a consequence of the tendency to focus on the language, literature and religion of the movement in a way that was too divorced from the social and cultural Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific’, 17. Horrell, ‘Whither Social-Scientific’, 9. See D. J. Chalcraft, Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (London: Equinox, 2007). 53 D. Horrell, ‘Pauline Churches or Early Christian Churches? Unity, Disagreement, and the Eucharist’, in Einheit der Kirche im Neuen Testament, Anatoly Alexeev, Chrestos K. Karakoles, and Ulrich Luz (eds), WUNT 218 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 203. Here Horrell’s universalistic approach to social identity comes to the fore. For a critique of this approach see W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 87–101. 54 Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism?, 36–59. 55 Ehrensperger, That We May Be Mutually Encouraged, 13. 56 In regard to Pauline church structure, cf. M. Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A SocioHistorical Study of Institutionalisation in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings, SNTSMS 60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 60, ‘The picture of the organization of the Pauline communities as being purely pneumatic, which represents the starting point for much writing on the development of the church, is deficient because it does not fully take into account the relationship between beliefs, social structures and social setting. The leadership structures of Paul’s communities are not shaped in a straightforward manner by his theology; the relationship between the structures and the ideas is dialectical. A purely charismatic ministry and concept of authority based exclusively on Spirit endowment presents an unrealistic picture of the human society of the Apostle.’ 51 52

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settings in which those texts first found meaning.57 However, in the wake of fresh scholarly interest in the application of social scientific tools to the structures and dynamics of the Pauline communities, we have seen researchers engaged in a contentious debate over the comparative merits of social theory and social history as research methods, some of which have been outlined above. On one side of this debate, the use of social theory was criticized by those who classed themselves as purer historians. The grounds for this criticism are both that one’s choice of theory or sociological model in some measure determines or subtly shapes the results of that research, and that the models that are applied may be anachronistic and alien to the first-century, ethnic context. On the other hand, those who presented social history as a more value-neutral approach, relying exclusively on the identifications and interpretation of comparative, historical sources (justified because they derive from appropriate chronological and ethnic contexts), were also criticized for being naïve to regard themselves as somehow dispassionate, or less personally committed to or influential over their findings.58 The suggestion that a reliance on the use of historical sources makes the interpreter immune from the insidious influences of ethnocentricity or anachronism is rightly viewed as untenable. One positive attribute of the use of social theory is that at least it is explicit about its chosen interpretative model, whereas the interpretative lenses underlying research questions or personal values of the social historians are more often kept hidden from view, implying that such influences are negligible. It is clear that the agenda of the social historian, especially when hidden from public scrutiny, should be regarded as no less susceptible to ethnocentricity or anachronism, since all readings are in some measure politically and socially motivated.59 P. F. Esler, New Testament Theology: Communion and Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 33–5, criticizes such a non-historical focus on the New Testament texts. E. Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Unmasking Ideologies in Biblical Interpretation’, in History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader, ed. W. Yarchin (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 386, is one of many who have levelled criticism at historical-critical studies precisely because they continue to be subject to ‘dogmatic and ecclesiastical controls’. ‘The positivist value-neutral stance of historical-critical studies was shaped by the struggle of biblical scholarship to free itself from dogmatic authority and ecclesiastical controls. The mandate to eliminate value considerations and normative concepts in the immediate encounter with the text is to assume that the resulting historical accounts would be free of ideology and dogmatic imposition.’ 59 Martin, ‘Social-Scientific Criticism’, 130. 57

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This debate clearly ought to have nurtured the recognition that neither approach can guarantee immunity from those influences that inform the results of one’s scholarship.60 Instead, however, both sides of the debate tended to defend the validity of their own particular approach, whether by downplaying the extent to which present-day perspectives, personal values or cultural assumptions exploit the uncertainties that are inherent in both the primary sources and their chosen method, or by downplaying the historical, cultural and philosophical distance. Instead of recognizing that neither approach can in fact guarantee immunity from the potential of influencing factors, it was frequently the case that proponents of one approach tended to highlight the bias of the other. For some, this took the form of a tendency to affirm traditional interpretations, whereas for others, producing a novel or innovative interpretation was sufficient in itself because it challenged the traditional.61

Conclusion The foregoing essay finds usefulness in both social history and social theory approaches. Without the work of social historians, social theorists would have no way to secure their theoretical claims in the everyday lived experience of members of the earliest Christ-movement. The use of theory, on the other hand, provides boundaries for social historians and helps them to see that they also research in a contextualized manner and their presuppositions play a significant part in their historical endeavour. Thus, whichever approach is used, there is a need to be explicit about the research framework or model that is chosen. While the use of models is one approach to the social-scientific analysis of the biblical text, it is not the only one. Those using models should be diligent with regard to the manner in which the model is imposed on the text. It would seem that one of the primary contributions of social theory is Horrell, Social Ethos, 9–32, is one who has argued that many of the methodological distinctions between history and sociology are false inasmuch as the use of models, termed research frameworks, is inevitable in both disciplines. 61 K. J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 382, criticizes Clines’s economic approach whereby an interpretation is justified if it meets the needs of a particular consumer. 60

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that it provides a series of questions that may be asked of a text that might otherwise go unasked because of the interpreter’s social location. Thus, we return to the questions with which we began: ‘What is the use of social theory to historians, and what is the use of history to social theorists?’ For historians, social theory provides a framework for interpreting the evidence, and for theoreticians, social history provides the evidence needed to substantiate their purported theoretical claims.

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Ethnicity and Social Identity Aaron Kuecker

One of the ironies attached to the pervasive individualism that marks social life in the increasingly postmodern world is that, despite the thoroughgoing rhetoric of individual liberty and freedom for self-determination, the social phenomenon of ethnic identity remains pervasive, powerful and ambiguous. The explanatory power of social identity theory as a usable theory for understanding the relationships between groups and identity can be seen in the apparently counter-intuitive endurance of ethnic identity as a primary force in nearly every arena of social life within nearly every contemporary society. It was less than half a century ago that some sociologists were confidently predicting that the trend toward globalization would eventually lead to the end of ethnicity. The basic hypothesis moved something like this: because ethnic identity emerges most purely in social isolation as a result of certain primordial factors (such as common descent, shared language, or shared religion), ethnicity was bound to be mitigated as a social reality based on the reduction of social isolation that would stem from the increase in intergroup contact created (1) by technologies that were effectively ‘shrinking’ the world and (2) by economic and political structures that were facilitating and incentivizing global interaction. The result would be a movement toward social homogeneity that would cause ethnicity to bear diminished significance in the way groups organized the world and understood their own identities. This hypothesis, in retrospect, clearly missed the mark. Even a cursory review of the events of the past century reveals that the complex concept of ethnicity is one of the most vexing issues within society. The increase in global exchange has led not to the demise of ethnicity, but to its intensification. The

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ambiguity of ethnicity as a social phenomenon can be seen in the fact that ethnic identities can provide a powerful and positive sense of belonging, access to resources and shared histories, and a way to know oneself in a world of dizzying and complex diversity. Yet, ethnic identities continue to form social barriers whose ferment can lead to stultifying prejudices, social and political injustices, and horrific violence. The long litany of atrocities committed between groups at the boundaries of ethnic identities reads like the tragic roll call of the human propensity for unspeakable violence: the Balkans, Darfur, postcolonial America, and Rwanda, to name a few. One need not refer only to the most inhumane violence to see the way that ethnicity continues to shape the experience of most humans on the planet. Access to social services, salary scales and housing availability are a handful of social markers that show dramatic inequity at ethnic boundaries. Ethnicity continues, time and again, to be the cleavage at which inequity and strife are amplified, and for this reason it is essential to understand the powerful processes that underwrite this social identity. Not only is an understanding of the identity-forming processes connected to ethnicity significant for understanding our own social contexts, the pervasive and powerful nature of ethnic identity is relevant to biblical scholars interested in understanding the social context from which the New Testament emerged. Though not initially indebted to developed theoretical accounts of ethnicity, biblical scholarship in the mid-twentieth century began to be influenced by readings (of Paul in particular) that began to intuit the significance of ethnicities both on and within the texts that comprise the New Testament. In a genealogy that initially began with Krister Stendahl’s landmark work on Paul, and that stretched through E. P. Sanders’ work on Second Temple Judaism down toward the New Perspective on Paul, interpreters began to attend to the significance of group identities for understanding the New Testament texts in context. In these texts, themes of social identity in general, and ethnicity in particular, emerged as a result of contextual and exegetical investigation. Emerging slightly later, and sometimes in parallel to the so-called New Perspective work, a burgeoning number of interpreters have turned their attention more overtly to the significance of ethnicity within the New Testament texts and world. These scholars have taken a wide variety of methodological approaches aimed at understanding the way that

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New Testament texts described the effects of the gospel on significant social identities. While these two approaches, both convinced of the centrality of ethnic identities in the New Testament world, have not always been in dialogue with one another, the combined significance of their existence demonstrates the fertile exegetical and theological ground that is tilled when one attends to ethnicity within the biblical text. Indeed, a case can be made that once the New Testament is viewed through a heuristic lens that appreciates the significance of ethnicity as a social category, the Bible begins to bristle with the stories of people groups and their exemplars in ways that draw into deep relief the significance of social difference – and its reconciliation – in the pages of the New Testament. While some would argue differently, it is certainly plausible to suggest that one of the most revolutionary effects of Christianity in its ancient contexts had to do with its impact on social groups at explicitly ethnic boundaries. For it is here that the vision of peace, so closely connected to the Old Testament and New Testament vision of the reign of God, was manifest socially. The increased interest in ethnicity across the academy, and particularly within the social sciences, has provided a wealth of theoretical and methodological resources available to interpreters of the Bible and its world. The task of this essay will be to describe several prominent approaches to the study of ethnicity and to situate those approaches within a more general account of social identity provided by social identity theory. At the conclusion of the essay I will briefly suggest ways that the significance of this account of ethnic identity as it pertains to biblical interpretation far exceeds its descriptive nature.

Ethnicity in the ancient world: Language of social differentiation1 To step into the realm of ethnicity is to step into the world of group differentiation. As is the case with all social identities, ethnicity is one manner of categorizing the complex and diverse social world in ways that assume, The methodological descriptions of social identity and ethnicity in the following sections appear in an expanded form in Aaron Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts (London: T&T Clark, 2011).

 1

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describe and create judgements regarding social similarity and difference. It is this reflection on those who are ‘like us’ and hence are a part of ‘my people’ and those who are ‘not like us’ and hence ‘other’ that lies at the root of almost all discussions about social identity. It is a social scientific truism that identity is constructed, at whatever level (individual, cultural, social, national, transnational), through expressions of ‘difference’… Identity can never be created in a vacuum – it must always be produced in and through a set of relations with real or imagined others. Identifying the ‘in-group’ makes little sense from an analytical or lay point of view unless one also identifies the ‘out-group(s)’ … In this sense, the allocation of identity in relation to the self is both an inevitable outcome of human interaction and – at times – a more self-consciously adopted stance in relation to others.2

As we shall see, ethnicity in both its ancient and modern contexts is a powerful expression of the apparently pervasive human impulse toward social categorization and differentiation. The New Testament, as a reflection – I would argue – of its own social context, is full of vocabulary and social assumptions linked to ethnic identities. In the New Testament texts themselves, the word groups most closely aligned with ethnic identities include primarily ἔθνος and γένος, but can extend to include terms such as λαός, ἄνθρωποι, πατήρ/μήτηρ, ἀδελφός and ἄλλος. In the context of the New Testament, ἔθνος/ἔθνη functioned as a vocabulary of group differentiation. First appearing in Homeric literature to designate a ‘group’ of something (i.e. bees, birds, or Lycians), it came to be used in ancient Greece to categorize ‘barbarians’ living outside the administrative influence of the Greek city-states.3 In the parlance, γένος was reserved for Greeks while ἔθνη was used for non-Greeks.4 This was advanced by Rome, which produced an even greater caricature of the barbarous ἔθνη.5 The use of ἔθνη for group differentiation is consistent across much of the New Testament. This usage is Simon Coleman and Peter Collins, ‘Introduction: Ambiguous Attachments: Religion, Identity and Nation’, in Religion, Identity, and Change: Perspectives on Global Transformations, Simon Coleman and Peter Collins (eds) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 2.  3 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, (eds), Ethnicity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4.  4 Elizabeth Tonkin, Malcolm Chapman, and Maryon McDonald, (eds), History and Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1989), 11–17.  5 Hutchinson and Smith, (eds), Ethnicity, 4.  2

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intelligible most clearly from the Israel-centric origin of the broader metanarrative that undergirds the social imagination of the New Testament. While Israel saw itself as ὁ λαός, all non-Israelites populated the outgroup ἔθνη. It is important to note that, save perhaps for non-Israelites attached to synagogues, no one in the New Testament world self-identified as ἔθνη (which is the unfortunate impression that the proper noun ‘Gentile’ can give to readers of English translations of the New Testament). The ἔθνη constituted the ‘them’ against which Israelite identity could be forged.6 As such, the language of ethnicity in the New Testament is inextricably related to social differentiation. And while the texts primarily reflect an Israel-centric viewpoint, plenty of examples of social differentiation by non-Israelites directed toward proximate social groups exist in the text as well. The social barriers between those who self-identified as Israelites and those who did not form a primary point of narrative and rhetorical tension in the biographical, historiographic, epistolary and apocalyptic texts in the New Testament. One further point of clarification with regard to ethnic identity in the ancient world is in order. While we are apt to think about ethnic identities as applicable only to very large social groups (for example, African American, Serbian or Asian), ethnic identities in the ancient world could describe relatively small social groups. The theoretical reasons for this phenomenon will be addressed in the following sections, but for now it will suffice to speak rather descriptively about the perception of social categories in the ancient world. As Shaw argues, ancients were keenly cognizant of the ‘people’ to which they belonged and the ‘peoples’ that surrounded them: ‘One of the strongest modes of identification for individuals in the Roman world, one that was prior, logically and historically, to that of the city or state, was that of belonging to a “people”’.7 Pliny, for example, is aware of 112 ‘tribes’ in northern Italy, 49 gentes in a part of the Alps, 150 populi in Macedonia, and 30 ‘peoples’ John H. Elliott, ‘Jesus the Israelite Was Neither a “Jew” nor a “Christian”: On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 5, no. 2 (2007): 124 n. 13. See also Christopher D. Stanley, ‘“Neither Jew nor Greek”: Ethnic Conflict in Graeco-Roman Society’, JSNT, no. 64 (1996); Richard Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (London: Sage, 1997), 81 clarifies: ‘While social groups define themselves, their name(s), their nature(s), and their boundary(ies), social categories are named, characterized and delineated by others’.  7 Brent D. Shaw, ‘Rebels and Outsiders’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XI: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192, Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, and Dominic Rathbone (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 380.  6

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in the Crimea (Nat., 5.4.29–30; 2.15.116; 4.10–33; 4.12.85). Josephus identifies over forty ethnic groups in his Contra Apionem.8 Ancient ethnographers demonstrated an obsession with the ‘other’, often describing people with increasingly animalistic characteristics the further away they lived from the socio-geographic centre of the ethnographer’s own ingroup.9 Because ‘ethnic’ groups could be small, the number of interactions potentially categorized as interethnic encounters could be quite high. These ethnic identities were regularly the source of conflict in the ancient world. Though there is much more to be said, we can confidently state that the texts that comprise the New Testament were written into a world filled with competing ethnic identities where, at least episodically, ethnic antagonism reared its ugly head.

Ethnicity theory in the past century As with any complex social phenomenon, theoretical approaches to ethnicity are diverse, nuanced and contested. This section will provide a description of several prominent approaches to ethnicity over the course of the past century. As one might imagine, simple definitions of ethnicity are hard to come by. When pressed to narrow – definitionally at least – the description of an ethnic group, scholars tend to follow a line exemplified by Jonathan Hall, who suggests: ‘The connection with a specific territory and the common myth of descent are … distinctive characteristics of ethnic groups.’10 In other words, ethnic groups share a sense of being from somewhere (a land of origin) and from someone (a common ancestor). While this gives a good, general starting point, it operates at a high level of generalization. A more nuanced (and complex) definition is developed by Markus Cromhout who, drawing heavily on Richard Jenkins’s social anthropological model of ethnicity, proposes a model that gives definition based upon six related propositions. Philip F. Esler, ‘Judean Ethnic Identity in Josephus’ Against Apion’, in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 73–92.  9 Strabo (Geogr., 5.4.153–9) describes inhabitants of Ierne (Ireland) as incestuous man-eaters who are ‘more savage than the Britons’ and adds: ‘I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy witnesses for it’(!). 10 Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25.  8

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1 Ethnicity is a form of social identity and relation, referring to a group of people who ascribe to themselves and/or by others, a sense of belonging and a shared cultural tradition. 2 Ethnicity is socially (re)constructed, the outcome of enculturation and socialization, as well as the social interaction with ‘others’ across the ethnic boundary. 3 Ethnicity is about cultural differentiation, involving the communication of similarity vis-à-vis co-ethnics (aggregative ‘we’) and the communication of difference in opposition to ethnic others (oppositional ‘we-they’). 4 Ethnicity is concerned with culture – shared meaning – which consists of any combination of the following: widely accepted values/norms which govern behaviour, a corporate name for the group, myths of common ancestry, shared ‘historical’ memories, an actual or symbolic attachment to a specific territory or ancestral land, a shared language or dialect, kinship patterns, shared customs, a shared religion, and shared phenotypical or genetic features. 5 Ethnicity is no more fixed than the culture of which it is a component, or the situations in which it is produced and reproduced. 6 Ethnicity is both collective and individual, externalized in social interaction and internalized in personal self-identification.11 Cromhout’s model turns up some aspects of ethnicity that are easily anticipated (e.g. ethnicity is about shared culture and social differentiation) and some that may not be anticipated (e.g. ethnicity is socially [re]constructed and potentially fluid). These latter factors are central to the important theoretical questions concerning how ethnic identity arises within a social group. Contemporary popular discourse about ethnic identity frequently operates on the assumption that ethnic identities arise from a set of significant and relatively static cultural distinctives, such as differences in language, religion or biological descent. The assumption that ethnicity is hardwired in ways that lead to the reification of ethnic difference is one factor that creates the Markus Cromhout, Walking in Their Sandals: A Guide to First-Century Israelite Ethnic Identity (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), 7. See also Jenkins, Rethinking, 165. Hutchinson and Smith, (eds), Ethnicity, 6–7 expand on Hall’s criteria, adding several other diagnostic factors for determining whether groups are properly classed as ‘ethnic’: (1) common proper name; (2) myth of common ancestry; (3) shared history; (4) common culture (i.e. customs, language, religion); (5) link with a homeland; (6) group solidarity. See also Cromhout’s contribution to this volume, 527–50.

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appearance of intractability with regard to interethnic conflict. This popular view is a dim reflection of a prominent theoretical position, primordialism, which was ascendant in the first half of the twentieth century. The primordial view of ethnic identity hypothesized that ethnicity arose in social isolation and was caused by the distinct, reified cultural objects of a group.12 In other words, ethnic identity is the result of the cultural factors that define a group in such a way that one’s ancestral lineage, one’s language, or one’s set of inherited social customs are the primary causes of ethnicity. As a result, ethnic identity is relatively stable and endures as long as those primordial factors remain unchanged, or at least are relatively contiguous. Compelled by this theory, anthropologists rushed to isolated islands to find ‘primitive’ peoples from whom they could observe the rise of ethnic identity in its ‘purest’ forms. In the primordialist paradigm, ‘common descent’ was believed to be the most powerful identity-forming agent. Edward Schils, a prominent proponent of the primordialist view, points toward the uncommon power of consanguinity in ethnic identity. The attachment [between people sharing common descent] was not merely to the other family member as a person, but as a possessor of certain especially ‘significant relational’ qualities, which could only be described as primordial … a certain ineffable significance is attributed to the tie of blood.13

One can see how the primordialist paradigm underwrites the logic in the predictions pointing toward the demise of ethnicity referenced above. Given this position, phenomena such as intermarriage or cultural interchange carry the risk of diluting the ineffable markers of identity, therefore the increased interethnic contact spurred on by globalization posed the very real possibility of diluting ethnic identities in ways that would marginalize their social significance. The primary challenge to primordialism as an orienting theory for understanding the rise of ethnic identity was issued by Fredrik Barth in the late 1960s. Drawing on the work of Max Weber and Everett Hughes – who themselves emphasized the significance of ‘group-ness’ and differentiation The intellectual genealogy of primordialism flows through Tönnies, Schmalenbach, Schils, and, indirectly, Geertz. 13 Edward Schils, ‘Primordial, Personal, Sacred, and Civil Ties: Some Particular Observations on the Relationships of Sociological Research and Theory’, British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957): 140. 12

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from the ‘other’ in identity formation – Barth developed a fundamental point of departure from primordialist schemas known as the constructivist theoretical position.14 According to Barth, ethnicity is not created by reified ‘cultural stuff ’; rather, the ethnic boundary defines the group.15 An ethnic group is not formed because it shares a common language or culture; instead, an ethnic group is defined by a sense of ‘group-ness’ (‘self-ascription and ascription by others’) that can exist only in reference to other groups.16 Because ethnicity is formed by a bounded sense of ‘group-ness’, the cultural objects of an ethnic group (language, religion, shared history, etc.) can change dramatically over time while the sense of ethnic identity is perpetuated.17 Jewish identity is a good example of this phenomenon. Contemporary Jews rightly see themselves as sharing an identity with ancient Israelites. However, many of the practices and identity markers that define a twenty-first-century person as Jewish and the practices and identity markers that defined ancient Israelites (sacrificing animals and speaking Hebrew, to name two) are very different. Cultural objects do not make ethnic identity; rather, ethnic identity creates a boundary in which cultural difference can develop. The Barthian constructivist view ultimately suggests that ethnic identity is formed based on an evaluative comparison with the outgroup that is characterized by ‘dynamic ebb and flow of social interaction, from which boundaries are constructed between “us” and “them”’.18 Wallman articulates this theoretical conviction clearly: Ethnicity is the process by which ‘their’ difference is used to enhance the sense of ‘us’ for purposes of organisation or identification … Because it takes two, ethnicity can only happen at the boundary of ‘us’, in contact or confrontation by contrast with ‘them’. And as the sense of ‘us’ changes, so the boundary between

See Max Weber, Weber: Political Writings, Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 385–9; Everett C. Hughes and Lewis A. Coser, On Work, Race, and the Sociological Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 91; Jenkins, Rethinking, 11, summarizes Hughes: ‘Ethnic cultural differences are a function of “group-ness”, the existence of a group is not a reflection of cultural difference’. 15 Fredrik Barth, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston; Oslo: Little, Brown and Co; Universitetsforlaget, 1967), 15. 16 Barth, ed. Groups and Boundaries, 13–14. 17 Barth, ed. Groups and Boundaries, 58 claimed an identity is ‘ethnic’ when it ‘classifies a person in terms of his basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his origin and background’. 18 Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ “Praeparatio Evangelica” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 28. 14

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‘us’ and ‘them’ shifts. Not only does the boundary shift, but the criteria which mark it change.19

It is perhaps unsurprising that the constructivist approach rose to theoretical prominence in conjunction with emerging postmodern concerns about the relationship between power and metanarratives of ultimate meaning. According to the constructivist vision of ethnicity, identity is rather fluid and is open to redefinition. Denise Kimber Buell identifies this facet of the constructivist paradigm in relation to power-holders by noting that ethnicity in the ancient world had the appearance of fixity, but in reality was fluid within bounds set by those with social authority.20 Identities, according to this position, can be manipulated by those with power in a society.21 This modified vision of constructivism, known as instrumentalism, sees the group’s pursuit of its own good as the primary factor driving the construction of its identity. The apparently broad gap between the ontological arguments of primordialism and the purely constructionist arguments of constructivism or instrumentalism can be partially mediated by attention to whether one is operating from etic or emic perspectives. While it is true that ethnic identity can be fluid and open to manipulation, the socially constructed nature of ethnic identity is only apparent at an etic level of observation. To those embedded within social systems (an emic perspective), ethnic identity feels primordial. This was helpfully articulated by Geertz, who nuanced the primordialist ‘ethnicity-arises-in-isolation’ model by suggesting that, from the perspective of its actors (an emic as opposed to an etic perspective), the ‘gross actualities’ of ‘blood, speech, custom, and so on, are seen to have an ineffable, and at times overpowering coerciveness in and of themselves’.22 As Jenkins helpfully articulates, ‘Ethnic identity may be imagined, but it is emphatically not imaginary; locally that imagining may be very powerful’.23 To rob socially embedded actors of their powerful sense that ethnicity is a primordial Sandra Wallman, ‘Introduction: The Scope for Ethnicity’, in Ethnicity at Work, ed. Sandra Wallman (London: Macmillan, 1979), 3. 20 Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 1–41. 21 Animal Farm stands as one fictional but well-known example of such manipulation. 22 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 258, 259–60. 23 Jenkins, Rethinking, 47. Cf. Marcus Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 185–7. 19

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given is to undermine our ability to understand the tremendous affective pressures that ethnic boundaries exert upon members of social systems.24 So while the significance of boundary setting and boundary maintenance with regard to ethnic identification is well established by social anthropology, the social goods within bounded identities are real cultural things for group members who hold particular ethnic identities. Hence, action within groups often occurs on the basis of (or in defence of) cultural objects that operate functionally as primordial givens, even if the negotiation of boundaries – at an observational level, especially over time and space – is entirely more fluid.

Ethnic identity and social identity theory Because ethnic identity is just one of many available layers of social identity within human societies, ethnicity can be helpfully described through the lens of social identity theory. As an explanatory theory, social identity theory provides conceptual resources that can help walk the delicate balance between the emic, primordial experience of ethnic identity and the etic, constructivist reality of ethnic identity in ways that illuminate the processes that activate ethnic identity and clarify why internal cultural factors can be both fluid and real. Further, because social identity theory can help identify the way social identities impinge upon intergroup contact, it explains why ethnicity is such a social flashpoint, existing in the words of one scholar as the ‘final frontier’ in the mitigation of identity-based conflict.25 As has been described in detail in an earlier essay in this volume,26 social identity theory posits that social identity is formed in three basic stages: categorization, identification and comparison. I will briefly describe social Ed Cairns, ‘Intergroup Conflict in Northern Ireland’, in Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 277 cites Whyte on identity-based conflict in Northern Ireland: ‘Anyone who studies the Ulster conflict must be struck by the intensity of feelings. It seems to go beyond what is required by a rational defense of the divergent interests which undoubtedly exist. There is an irrational element here, a welling-up of deep unconscious forces’; John Whyte, ‘Interpretations of the Northern Ireland Problem: An Appraisal’, Economic and Social Review 9, no. 4 (1978). 25 Miles Hewstone, ‘Contact and Categorization: Social Psychological Interventions to Change Intergroup Relations’, in Foundations of Stereotypes and Stereotyping, M. Macrae, Miles Hewstone, and C. Stangor (eds) (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 351. 26 Esler, ‘An Outline of Social Identity Theory’, 13–40. 24

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identity theory, with an eye to its relevance with regard to particularly ethnic identities.

Categorization Categorization is the division of the social world into assessable group entities. Categorization itself is a neutral phenomenon, but the necessary precondition for social categorization, as well as its eventual result, is depersonalization in which personal identity is subsumed by the characteristics of the group category in view. This action is essential as a ‘reliable guide for judgment and action’ in a world of social diversity.27 Categorization results in a perceived world composed of deindividuated groups about which large-scale generalizations can be made: ‘All Americans are loud’, ‘Cretans are always liars’ (Tit. 1.12), or ‘From one [Greek] acquire knowledge of all’ (Virgil, Aen., 2.65). Though the stereotyping that arises from deindividuation has negative connotations in popular parlance, social identity theory holds that stereotyping is necessary to life in diverse contexts. And yet, the comparative aspect of social identity formation hints at the fact that the act of categorization is frequently the source of less favourable descriptions of outgroups.

Identification The categorization of one’s social context results in a social reality populated by many different groups. Within such a context, humans identify with the groups to which they perceive they belong. Hence, the necessary precondition for group formation is nothing more than two or more individuals who perceive themselves to be members of a common social category.28 The self-definitions that arise from our membership in groups are our social identities.29 The many reasons to join a social group can be broadly classified under Rupert Brown, ‘Agenda 2000 – Social Identity Theory: Past Achievements, Current Problems and Future Challenges’, European Journal of Social Psychology 30, no. 6 (2000): 751. 28 John C. Turner, ‘Toward a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group’, in Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 15. 29 Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 246; Turner, ‘Toward a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group’, 19; Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, ‘Social Identity and Social Cognition: Historical Background and Current Trends’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 10. 27

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two headings: (1) maintenance of positive self-esteem, and (2) the reduction of subjective uncertainty, both of which give a measure of security to group members.30 With regard to ethnic social identities, identification can tend to function as more of a social given than with other more ascriptive groups. One has little choice – at least early in life – to opt out of the group Yoruba, but one has broad flexibility with regard to whether or not one opts into the group ‘supporter of the Chicago Cubs baseball team’ versus the group ‘supporter of the Chicago White Sox baseball team’. The appearance of relatively fixed boundaries within ethnic groups – especially from an emic perspective – is one of the factors that can heighten the difficulty of ethnic reconciliation. This will be discussed in greater detail below.

Comparison Positive group identity, and hence positive social identity, is maintained through a process of comparison and evaluation in which the ingroup favourably differentiates itself from outgroups.31 The positive evaluation of the ingroup is known as ingroup bias. Two things must be noted about this comparative process. First, comparative criteria are fluid. Groups can evaluate themselves on whatever criteria are comparatively advantageous.32 This feature of social identity theory has important explanatory power for understanding the relationship between primordialist and constructivist visions of ethnicity. Within the boundaries of an ethnic identity, group members have a wide array of cultural factors upon which to marshal comparisons with proximate outgroups. For example, an ethnic group that has low economic status may select to compare itself to high-status groups on the basis of purity or it may compare itself on the basis of a certain ethical vision. Alternatively, language can function as a status marker that can form the basis for intergroup comparison. While this sounds like a purely constructivist argument, it is important to note that purity codes, language and social practices are not imaginary. Rather, Michael A. Hogg and Barbara A. Mullin, ‘Joining Groups to Reduce Uncertainty: Subjective Uncertainty Reduction and Group Identification’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 249–79. 31 B. A. Bettencourt et al., ‘Status Differences and Ingroup Bias: A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Effects of Status Stability, Status Legitimacy, and Group Permeability’, Psychological Bulletin 127, no. 4 (2001): 521. 32 Bettencourt et al., ‘Status Differences’, 521. 30

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they are real things that have powerful identity-forming ramifications. The fixity and fluidity of ethnicity can be seen within social identity theory once one grasps the way in which intergroup comparison is utilized to maintain positive group identity. The second important feature of the process of intergroup comparison as it relates to the maintenance of positive social identity is that social identity is primarily about the ascription of positive characteristics to the self and not about a primal disdain for the ‘other’; it is primarily an expression of ingroup love rather than outgroup hate. However, research and experience demonstrate that ingroup bias is infrequently benign and often forms the seedbed for social tension.33 The inherently evaluative process of social identity formation has a pernicious tendency: ‘social antagonism … is the result of ordinary, adaptive, and functional psychological processes’.34 Because the ‘we’ that always stands behind the ‘I’ is formed by comparison with the ‘they’, the ‘they’ are regularly conceptualized as inferior.35

Ethnicity and social conflict Ethnic identities are not always salient. Because there is no limit to the number of groups a human can join, all humans possess multiple social identities. These ‘dual’ or ‘nested’ identities become salient based upon social context and intergroup contact.36 Hence, in certain social settings, humans can operate for long stretches of time without their ethnic identities making a strong impact on their intergroup interactions. When intergroup contact is with a fan of Rangers football club, a fan of Celtic is likely to act based

Brewer: ‘Many forms of discrimination and bias may develop not because out-groups are hated, but because positive emotions such as admiration, sympathy, and trust are reserved for the in-group and withheld from out-groups’; Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?’, Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 3 (1999): 438. 34 John C. Turner, ‘Henri Tajfel: An Introduction’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), 19. 35 Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Corrine I. Voils, and Margo J. Monteith, ‘Implicit Associations as the Seeds of Intergroup Bias: How Easily Do They Take Root?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 5 (2001): 797 note that ‘behavioral manifestations of such implicit biases undoubtedly have negative implications for out-group members, regardless of whether the biases are rooted in in-group favoritism or out-group derogation… Favoring an in-group member in the workplace, for example, necessarily results in an undesirable outcome for out-group members.’ 36 Brewer, ‘Psychology of Prejudice’, 438. Jenkins, Rethinking, 85 uses the helpful example of a Russian matryoshka doll for nested identity. 33

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upon her social identity as a supporter of Celtic. When an Englishman has intergroup contact with a man from Scotland, he is somewhat more likely to interact based upon his English social identity.37 Nested identities such as these are no modern construct. Philo’s well-known quote gives evidence for this phenomenon in antiquity. For no one country can contain the whole Jewish nation, by reason of its populousness; on which account they frequent all the most prosperous and fertile countries of Europe and Asia, whether islands or continents, looking indeed upon the holy city as their mother city [μητροπόλις] in which is erected the sacred temple of the most high God, but accounting those regions which have been occupied by their fathers, and grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and still more remote ancestors, in which they have been born and brought up, as their country [πατρίδος] (Flacc., 45b–46a).

According to Philo, both the mother-city (Jerusalem) and the fatherland (Diaspora homeland) form aspects of the social identity of Diaspora Judeans.38 While nested identities can create a complex nexus of identity, an individual’s most basic social identity is his or her terminal identity.39 This social identity orients other lower-level identities and can be conceived as the answer to the question, ‘Who are my people?’ Ethnic identities quite often function as terminal identities, which is another reason that the ethnic boundary is so nettlesome. Of all available social identities, ethnicity can be most basic to a person’s sense of self, especially within collectivistic societies. Hence, the stakes are high for maintaining positive social identity with regard to ethnicity. The evaluative aspect of social identity formation, while regularly fostering less favourable views of the other, does not necessarily lead to intergroup conflict. Several factors, however, do increase the likelihood of conflict, and of these factors unequal group status is particularly potent. In situations of

Daniel Burdsey, ‘One of the Lads? Dual Ethnicity and Assimilated Ethnicities in the Careers of British Asian Professional Footballers’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 27, no. 5 (2004); cf. A. Saeed, N. Blain, and D. Forbes, ‘New Ethnic and National Questions in Scotland: Post-British Identities among Glasgow Pakistani Teenagers’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 5, no. 1 (1999): 840–1. 38 See Jones and Pearce on local Israelite identities; Sian Jones and Sarah Pearce, (eds), Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco-Roman Period (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). 39 K. Deaux et al., ‘Parameters of Social Identity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68, no. 2 (1995): 280; Cairns, ‘Intergroup Conflict’, 281. 37

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perceived status inequality, four scenarios intensify ingroup bias and, potentially, intergroup conflict. 1 High-status stability. When there is high-status stability, social groups as a whole are relatively unable to improve their social position. 2 Impermeable group boundaries. When group boundaries are impermeable, individual members are relatively unable to defect from their ingroup to join the high-status group. Impermeability sometimes is due not only to barriers erected by high-status groups, but to social pressure from within the low-status group itself. This is frequently the case for ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and political or ideological movements. 3 Status illegitimacy. Status illegitimacy is the shared perception among the (typically, low-status) group that the high-status group holds its position illegitimately. This is often true where there is political occupation, subjugation or unequal access to resources. 4 External threat. In this scenario, the group perceives that its identity is threatened and at risk of obliteration. This can be the case for high-status groups convinced that low-status ‘others’ are threatening their group’s ‘purity’ or for low-status groups who feel pressured to abandon their distinct identity through assimilation. Each of these factors prompts increased identification with the ingroup, increased ingroup bias and deteriorating views of the outgroup. The factors above clearly bear on ethnic identities. In particular, high-status stability and impermeable group boundaries pertain to ethnic groups in a measure disproportionate to social identities in general. Status change for very large groups is slow and difficult. Moreover, the appearance of impermeable group boundaries – for example, one can never change their ancestry – is perhaps the most common feature of ethnic identities. Couple these two factors with the gross power differentials between ethnic groups, and we can begin to see why ethnicity is such an intractable social barrier. Low status groups in situations like those described above have three basic options to improve their negative group status (and hence the negative social identities of their members). Group members can opt for social mobility, which is the movement of individuals from a low-status group to a high-status group. But as noted above, societal constraints sometimes make

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this impossible. Groups also have recourse to social creativity, which is an intragroup mechanism that attempts to construct positive social identity by either (1) redefining the criterion for intergroup comparison or (2) selecting a different outgroup against which to evaluate the ingroup. In terms of ethnic groups, this can be seen in societies where relatively oppressed low-status groups themselves oppress lower-status groups. One recent example of this phenomenon is the oppression of black Zimbabweans seeking work in South Africa by black South Africans who themselves occupy a relatively low-status position in the wider South African context. Finally, social competition is the direct competition for status and resources and includes collective social action, protest and intergroup violence. This form of social action is the type of interethnic engagement that most often makes the news due to its frequently violent nature.

Conclusion At the beginning of my description of the methodological concerns related to ethnicity and social identity, I pointed toward a conviction that the significance of such an account outpaced its largely descriptive nature. In this conclusion I briefly will present several claims regarding both the utility and the urgency of a methodologically nuanced approach to ethnicity on the part of biblical interpreters. First, to not identify methodological and theoretical resources that can help biblical interpreters give a disciplined and nuanced account of ethnicity in the world of the New Testament is, de facto, to import unreflective and unexamined assumptions regarding ethnicity into readings of the text. Operating with an explicit theoretical position provides the intellectual rigour, humility and transparency necessary for bringing one’s views into full and free dialogue within the academy. Second, an awareness of social identity in general, and ethnic identity in particular, can help relatively individualistic twenty-first-century readers of biblical texts to develop new layers of sensitivity to the social dynamics both reflected in and called forth by the texts of the New Testament. Understanding the pervasive nature of ethnic identity in ancient contexts can

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ensure interpreters remain aware of the fact that many of the interactions in the New Testament can be justifiably understood as interethnic encounters. This is true whether the character in the text is itself a social group or whether it is an individual who, inevitably in ancient contexts, stood as an exemplar for the entire group with which the person identified. An awareness of these social realities gives added texture and weight to many features of the biblical text, and it provides windows on the ancient world as it helps us to position the social identity of early Christians in their thoroughly ethnic context. Third, a general understanding of the factors that lead to intergroup conflict at the boundaries of social identities – coupled with an appreciation for the way ethnicity continues to be one of the most intractable identities with regard to intergroup reconciliation – can help interpreters appreciate the truly revolutionary way that early Christianity provided for reconciliation between heretofore antagonistic ethnic ‘others’. The claims that Luke, Paul, Peter and John the Seer make about communities of reconciled difference are truly astonishing in their ancient contexts – even granting the fact that these communities continued to struggle significantly with issues related to ethnic social identity. In particular, an appreciation of the nuanced dynamics of identity can help interpreters come to see the way that many of the New Testament authors envisioned a community of Jesus-followers whose terminal identity, ‘follower of Jesus’, simultaneously transcended and affirmed ethnic identities. Such a transformation of social identity is sorely to be desired in our own approaches to ethnic difference. Fourth, because the world in which we live is riven by conflict and inequity at the boundaries of ethnic identities, we would do well to marshal all of our theoretical and exegetical resources in order to cultivate an ability to bring the lessons of past communities into our present ones. A theoretically nuanced approach to ethnicity within the world of the New Testament can – perhaps – form a bridge between ancient and modern contexts, shining light on our own world and the ways that ethnic identities impact social interactions in modern societies. Listening to these voices from the past in contextually sensitive ways draws us out of our own social constructs and helps to cultivate new imaginations for the configuration of our own social groups. Indeed, if biblical scholars can contribute to the ongoing conversations about ethnicity and interethnic reconciliation in our all-too-violent world, the guild will

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have made an important contribution to contemporary society precisely by learning well the hard-won, imperfect, and often painful lessons emerging from the ethnic groups and their exemplars that populate the pages of the New Testament.

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Ritual and Social Identity: The Deutero-Pauline Shaping of Early Christianity Minna Shkul

Introduction This chapter will discuss how the Deutero-Pauline1 texts of the New Testament (nt) reflect ritual aspects of the Jesus-movement in the post-apostolic period, examining textual examples of ritualized practice, connecting with the transcendent world, or God’s presence or power.2 In terms of its discursive positioning, this chapter takes a secular approach to nt rituals as ‘culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings’, whether or not such beings were in fact real or imagined, mythical, historical or divine beings, and whether they were counterintuitive or not.3 In other words, this Although the Deutero-Paulines isn’t a fixed corpus of New Testament (nt) texts which we could identify and categorize with certainty, it is used here to refer to 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles of the nt, commonly assumed to be of pseudonymous origin due to semantic, stylistic and social differences, assuming that they were probably written in the late first century ce to develop the Pauline legacy in and for later circumstances. My research interest lies particularly in testing their ‘cultural evolution’, examining continuity and development of the Pauline legacy in them, and their ‘social entrepreneurship’, that is, the deliberate shaping of ideology and social orientation by the later writer(s).    While much of the scholarship focuses on individual letters, rather than a broader discussion of the nt letters assumed pseudonymous, Margaret MacDonald’s work makes an important contribution to discussions of the development of post-Pauline Christianities, including their rituals. See e.g. Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalisation in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings, SNTSMS 60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Margaret Y. MacDonald, ‘Ritual in Pauline Churches’, in Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation, ed. David G. Horrell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999); Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, ed. Daniel J. Harrington, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000).  2 Following Pascal Boyer’s concise definition; Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London: Vintage, 2002), 264.  3 M. E. Spiro, ‘Religion: Problems in Definition and Explanation’, in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Blanton, A. S. A. Monographs 3 (London: Tavistock, 1966), 96; quoted in Colin Renfrew, ‘The Archaeology of Ritual, Cult and Religion’, in The Archaeology of  1

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chapter will examine ritual language in its literary context. I will discuss selected examples of ritual discourse – or its absence – in 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral epistles in light of recent literature on (religious) rituals, focusing particularly on Catherine Bell’s concept of ‘ritualization’.4

Rituals and social influencing through ritualization Rituals are commonly regarded as essential for religious belief, despite the anachronistic difficulties involved in such terms in biblical studies.5 Although traditional Protestant theology and biblical studies have avoided ‘ritual study’ of the Bible and Christian practice, ‘rituals’ as a category is, as recently acknowledged, extremely useful in biblical studies.6 Ritual study is particularly helpful in making biblical studies more objective, acknowledging that Christianity has

Ritual, ed. Evangelos Kyriakidis (Los Angeles: University of California, 2007), 114. Early Christian belief in the crucified Jesus as the risen, counterintuitive ‘Christ’ was (and is) a socially contested claim, and its subcultural nature should be kept in mind when discussing a socio-ideological evolution of the movement, its beliefs, rituals and values. For a discussion of the ‘naturalness’ of gods and beliefs in their counterintuitiveness, see Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004), 30–3.  4 For important studies in the ritual language of the Bible, see for example Richard E. DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World (London: Routledge, 2008); Mark McVann, ed., Transformations, Passages, and Processes: Ritual Approaches to Biblical Texts, Semeia 67 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). In addition, Harvey Whitehouse and James Laidlaw, (eds), Ritual and Memory: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Religion (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004) and Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 110 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) would be of interest to the readers of this volume.  5 In biblical studies the category of ‘religion’ is typically rejected as an inappropriate label for the first-century context, due to its more narrowly defined meaning in today’s world. Aware of the anachronistic aspects of the term, I find the term ‘religion’ discursively useful, without assuming that it was a separate institution in antiquity, but assuming the ‘belief in the supernatural beings’ to have been an overarching cultural value, which influenced different spheres of social life, beliefs and values, personal and social; Whitehouse, Modes, 4. Bryan Turner’s definition seems useful for a discussion of the interconnectedness of the social aspects of beliefs in the supernatural world: ‘Religion may be defined as a system of symbols and values which, through their emotional impact, not only bind people together into a sacred community, but induce a normative and altruistic commitment to collective ends’; Bryan S. Turner, Religion and Social Theory, 2nd ed., Theory, Culture & Society (London: Sage, 1991), xi. Furthermore, it ‘produces community as the consequence of collective ritualistic practices and a common sharing of belief ’ and ‘creates powerful symbols of social life and human existence which generate a powerful experience of social membership’; Turner, Religion and Social Theory, xi.  6 Frank H. Gorman, Jr., ‘Ritual Studies and Biblical Studies: Assessment of the Past, Prospects for the Future’, in Transformations, Passages, and Processes: Ritual Approaches to Biblical Texts, ed. Mark McVann 67 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); John J. Pilch, ‘Response to Frank H. Gorman, Jr. Biblical and Ritual Studies’, in Transformations, Passages, and Processes: Ritual Approaches to Biblical Texts, ed. Mark McVann 67 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).

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functioned as ‘a privileged model’,7 despite the fact that the same social, psychological and cognitive mechanisms are at work ‘in our religion’ as in others. Thus ritual studies make an important contribution to biblical studies, focusing on the analysis of literary data and exegesis, rather than self-enhancing discourse that insists on the correctness of Christian faith, which is often achieved by ‘othering’ the religious past and difference, taking a superior view to primitive perspectives and orientalism, and diminishing the integrity of ‘other faiths’.8 According to Catherine Bell, rituals are activities that give tangible cultural expression to beliefs, creeds, myths and symbols, or means for these conceptual orientations to be performed and socially expressed.9 Rituals are persistently portrayed as ‘a means of sociocultural integration, appropriation, or transformation’.10 Bell is renowned for resisting neat definitions and tight, fixed conceptions for definitions for rituals. Instead, she is more interested in the multiplicity of ritual performances, experiences and interpretations.11 Her discussion of interpretation of ritual observance leads us to consider the role of the observer, who interprets original performances and provides their narrative descriptions, which are again reinterpreted.12 In biblical and early Christian ritual studies we deal with multiple layers of ritual interpretation, from the writer to different reader(s), and our interpretations are influenced by ancient texts, our present-day settings and contemporary theory.13 We must be mindful of our Turner, Religion and Social Theory, 20. Cf. Turner, Religion and Social Theory, esp. 15–37 on ‘other religions’; Jacques Berlinerblau, The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ward Blanton, Displacing Christian Origins: Philosophy, Secularity, and the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); James G. Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (London: Equinox, 2008).  9 Catherine M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 19. 10 Bell, Ritual, 19. 11 Catherine M. Bell, ‘Response. Defining the Need for a Definition’, in The Archaeology of Ritual, ed. Evangelos Kyriakidis (Los Angeles: University of California, 2007), 279. 12 Bell, Ritual. 13 Bell examines both rituals and ritual theory and its restrictions, claiming that ‘the implicit structure of ritual theory, while effective in identifying a distinctive phenomenon for cultural analysis, has imposed a powerful limit on our theoretical flexibility, our divisions of human experience, and our ability to perceive the logical relations inscribed within these divisions’; Bell, Ritual, 17. She distinguishes between meaning for the ritual actors and/or participants and the theorist/observer.    ‘What constitutes meaning for the ritual actor is seen as the integration of their conceptual and dispositional orientations that takes place in a ritual. What constitutes meaning for the theorist is the same model, the integration of his or her conceptual categories with the ritual dispositions of the native actors, and integration afforded by proper analysis of ritual. … Most simply, we might say, ritual is to the symbols it dramatizes as action is to thought; on a second level, ritual integrates thought and action; and on a third level, a focus on ritual performances integrates our thought and their action’; Bell, Ritual, 32, italics original.  7  8

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reading position and interests, as Bell suggests, ‘the theoretical construction of ritual becomes a reflection of the theorist’s method and the motor of a discourse in which the concerns of theorist take center stage’.14 To make those concerns explicit for the purposes of this chapter, I will not engage in the mapping of early Christian ritual practice, discussing what rituals were practiced and what not, due to the poor amount of data about the Deutero-Pauline communities and to the constraints of rhetorical strategies of writing. Instead I will examine the use of the ritual for the purposes of social influencing. I apply Bell’s concept of ‘ritualization’, examining how the post-Pauline writers use rituals in written discourse and how these contribute to shaping communal experience of belonging into a countercultural, minority movement of Jesus-followers. Given that the only material for ritual study is their selective representation by the post-Pauline writers, I focus on how these rituals are explained and what meanings they are loaded with for the purposes of social influencing and ideological persuasion.15 Ritualization, in my view, is a component of the wider phenomenon of social influencing.16 Bell uses ritualization to describe a deployment of ritual as a social strategy used for social control and social communication.17 Thus it refers to ‘a strategic way of acting’, which differentiates particular ritual from other practices for the purposes of ‘particular social effects… rooted in a distinctive interplay of a socialized body and the environment it structures’.18 The strategies of ritualization are those of communal social influencing aimed at producing ‘“a ritualized social body”, a body with the ability to deploy in the wider social context the schemes internalized in the ritualized environment’.19 The Deutero-Pauline writer can thus be seen as a social influencer who shapes the group (a social body) by providing appropriate tradition, as well as social orientation, values and appropriate rituals for worship and communal

Bell, Ritual, 54, italics added. Again, ‘ideology’ and ‘social’ are complex terms that require some explanation, especially as ideology (beliefs, overarching theory or a general worldview) is part of the ‘social’ dimension. Nonetheless I find it useful to distinguish between these concepts when referring to formative beliefs or values (ideology) which then find different expressions and cultural performances and influence one’s social identity and orientation. 16 I use an overarching model of social entrepreneurship for analysing different means of social influencing; cf. Minna A. I. Shkul, Reading Ephesians: Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in the Text, LNTS 408 (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). 17 Bell, Ritual, 89. 18 Bell, Ritual, 7–8. 19 Bell, Ritual, 107. 14 15

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experience.20 ‘The ritualized social body’ thus comes to possess a cultural ‘sense of ritual’21 which is shaped by the social agent(s) in dialogue with their values, orientations and social circumstances, reflecting the goals of the agent and his/her social influencing. Both a ritualized social body and its ritual praxis are culturally disposed and positioned in a particular position, which in our study of Deutero-Pauline Christianity involved the socially contested position of the Christ-followers and their distinctive, subcultural location, different from Jewish and especially from Graeco-Roman communities. Furthermore, this involves a renegotiation of identities, and ritual traditions, as these texts are presumed to be written by a Jewish ritualist to communities made of diverse different ritual communities, and even different counter-intuitive orientations. While many ritual observances may derive from the early Jewish Jesus movement, it may have been ritually different to its non-Jewish members from various ritual backgrounds.

Deutero-Pauline ritualization: Ritual experience and interpretation Despite the fact that early Christian literature testifies to the early practice of sacraments and the emergence of Christian rituals,22 those nt texts discussed in this chapter make only patchy reference to articles of faith and their tangible expressions through rituals and other cultural performances.23 While ritualization can socialize by solemnizing and affirming key aspects of

Hogg and Abrams, Social Identifications, 158. Bell, Ritual, 107. See Gerd Theissen for an outline of the ‘ritual sign language’ of primitive Christianity and nt rituals which are still practised in different Christian groups and denominations, although not widely recognized as sacraments; Gerd Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1999), 122–6. 23 This is certainly the case with the Deutero-Pauline texts, for which ritualization is one, but perhaps not the most prominent, strategy of social influencing, as I proceed to explore. The texts are not liturgical handbooks, and they are typically selective in their reflection of the life of the Jesus movement. Paul refers to additional guidance he plans to give in person in e.g. 1 Cor. 11.34b. Similarly, Eph. 1.13; 5.20ff; 2 Thess. 2.15; 3.6; 1 Tim. 1.3–7; and 2 Tim. 2.2, for example, refer to elementary teachings and particular traditions that accompany the preaching of the gospel and the socialization of affiliates into the Jesus-movement. The selectiveness of materials also means that the absence of literary evidence of particular rituals does not mean that such a ritual was not practised in the community or that the group had developed an anti-ritualistic stance in general. 20 21 22

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the belief system,24 ritual language is not at the fore of Deutero-Pauline letterwriting, despite its possible usefulness in the achievement of social goals. The absence of (expected?) ritual language in the Deutero-Paulines suggests that ritualization was only one of the early Christian social strategies, despite the fact that rituals exemplify what is now considered ‘religious’. This is seen most clearly in 2 Thessalonians which lacks ritualization altogether. This short letter develops some of the key concerns of 1 Thessalonians and focuses on affliction experienced by the believers, swearing that God will have his vengeance upon non-believers or those who persecute Christ-followers. Its most notable feature is its prediction of cataclysmic eschatological events which will test the perseverance of believers and how firmly they hold on to traditions (ἡ παραδόσις, 2 Thess. 2.15; 3.6). Although the steadfastness of faith is the letter’s key concern, the writer gives no explanation as to what tangible, cultural expressions ‘holding firmly’ to the traditions should involve. Furthermore, there is no appeal to any rituals as a glue of cohesion to strengthen believing and belonging. When theorists consider the function of rituals, the emphasis is often on social reinforcement of belief and values. So, for instance, Bryan Turner, who postulates that ‘religion can only be understood by concentrating on its social role in uniting the community behind a common set of rituals and beliefs’, following a Durkheimian perspective.25 Although ritual praxis may produce ‘a conscience collective’, which ‘binds its members into homogenous units’,26 and it may develop precisely the qualities 2 Thessalonians expects of its audience, the letter makes no effort in giving ritual direction. Similarly, early Christian rituals that were formalized as sacraments are remarkably absent from these texts. For instance, the Eucharist is notably absent as the Deutero-Paulines make no effort to reiterate the importance of the ritual, to explain its meaning for the Christ-followers or to give guidance for its correct observation. It seems obvious that the Lord’s Supper was ritualized earlier in the life of the movement. So, for instance, in Pauline social entrepreneurship in 1 Corinthians 11, where the partaking in the meal and its symbolic interpretation is ritualized on at least three levels: 1) bolstering the historicity and legitimacy of the ritual (vv. 23–6); 2) expanding upon its meaning for the Renfrew, ‘The Archaeology of Ritual, Cult and Religion’, 119–20, italics added. Turner, Religion and Social Theory, 15. Turner, Religion and Social Theory, 15, italics added.

24 25 26

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believers and upon the magical faculties involved in partaking in the ritual (vv. 27–32); and 3) correcting its observance in the Corinthian community (vv. 17–22; 33–4). By doing so Paul was ritualizing the Lord’s Supper, shaping the tradition and observance of the rite; thus a communal meal became a ‘culturally cultivated disposition’ and received a rich symbolic meaning uniting the community members with each other and their divine saviour.27 As the Pauline tradition demonstrates, ritualization may be used to give instructions for ritually correct performance, or to provide required narrative, which may provide communal meanings for its praxis, purpose and/or legitimacy. Both are important for the creation of ritual difference. Although the ritual sharing of bread and wine was probably relatively insignificant in comparison to ritual parallels in the ancient world, it is the symbolism of that bread and wine as body and blood that established the ritual difference. Theissen notes that this ‘symbolic cannibalism’, with its connotations of drinking blood and cannibalism,28 would have been offensive in the cultural environs where it arose, which would have made the ritual cognitively costly to the participants.29 Hence it is no wonder that later Christian apologists had to defend the ritual, even though its practice had become routinized in the movement because the social influencers provided the members with the cultural resources to interpret its socially awkward terms of reference.30 From a secular perspective, it is remarkable that sacrificial theology is thoroughly internalized in Christian discourse. Despite its gross language of eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, the vulgar metaphors of cannibalism are interpreted with theologically loaded symbolism, avoiding the literal terms of reference. Even twenty-firstcentury Christians continue to practise the Eucharist as a key Christian ritual, and the bread and wine are still remembered as Jesus’ tortured and bleeding body in different liturgical (ritual) contexts. However, although the Eucharist is not carefully ritualized by the DeuteroPaulines, Ephesians and Colossians have their specific take on baptism,

For ‘a culturally cultivated disposition’ see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); quoted in Bell, Ritual, 98. 28 Theissen, Theory, 133. 29 Cf. Whitehouse, Modes, 50, see also 29–47 and 49–59 for cognitively optimal universal religious tendencies and cognitively costly religions and rituals, respectively. 30 See Whitehouse for the process of routinization of rituals; Whitehouse, Modes, 103–4. 27

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developing the way the ritual is differentiated from its Jewish origins. As we know from ancient literature, baptism was widely observed in different Jewish movements and its functions varied from initiation to regularly reoccurring purification rites. The New Testament makes historical connections between the baptism of John and the use of baptism in the Christ-following movement, legitimating the ritual as instituted by Jesus himself during his lifetime. In the post-resurrection movement this was transformed into an initiation rite that marked the ritual transformation of believers. Galatians likens baptism to clothing oneself with Christ (3.27), a differentiation typically associated with the rites of belonging and social divisions (3.28).31 Thus Galatians’ ritualization of baptism transforms identifications and meanings associated with the Jewish practice, establishing alternative meanings for the rite in the service of the Christ-movement, such as eradication of ethnic difference and covenant. This exemplifies how the same rituals may be used in different, even competing, social movements, when their different narrative frameworks and ideological interpretations become decisive for their use. Rituals may then become the battleground for societal influencing while associated narratives compete for legitimacy. The symbolic ritualization of baptism continues in the post-Pauline traditions, particularly in Col. 2.11–12: ‘In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12 when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.’32 The writer gives the baptism a new ritual reference as ‘spiritual circumcision’ and ‘circumcision of Christ’. Obviously this is more than a ritual demarcation of communal membership: not only does the ritual itself derive from the Israelite community, but also its interpretation renegotiates membership in God’s people and its symbolism. Here ritualization is twofold as it empties Israelite ‘circumcision’ from its ritual significance for the community at the same time as it bolsters the meaning of baptism. This is clearly intentional as the context demonstrates: Col. 2.6–23 deals with contested beliefs and values, In contrast to Pauline egalitarianism, the Pastorals develop the ritual othering of women, limiting women’s expression of their femininity and influence by restrictions upon their appearance and conduct at the places of worship (1 Tim. 2.8–15; Tit. 2.3–5). On ritual as a means of organizing social identification see Jenkins, Social Identity, 181. 32 All Bible quotations are nrsv, unless otherwise marked. 31

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in which rituals receive particular attention as the writer denounces regulations on food and drink, ritual calendar and festivals and Sabbath observance, while also attacking the integrity of other communities, alternative beliefs and ritual practices, including ascetic tendencies (2.16–23, cf. 2.8, 13–15). Margaret MacDonald suggests that baptism was probably a matter of a dispute along with other religious rituals disapproved of by the writer.33 It is notable that baptism in Colossians is not only a matter of initiation or ritual re-enactment identifying with the death of Christ, but it is a counter-ritual against circumcision. Building on traditional rituals is a common strategy, particularly in reform movements, which seek to establish their ritual – and therefore socioideological – difference. This is central to Bell’s view on wielding social power through rituals and ritualization: First, effective political ritual evokes a complex cluster of traditional symbols and postures of appropriate moral leadership, but it orchestrates them to differentiate itself, this particular political authority, from what has gone before. Thus, ritual is built out of widely accepted blocks of tradition, generating a sense of cultural continuity even when the juxtaposition of these blocks defines a unique cultural ethos. Second, rather than affirming clear and dogmatic values to impress them directly into the minds of participants, ritual actually constructs an argument, a set of tensions. … Third, ritual does not disguise the exercise of power, nor does it refer, express or symbolize anything outside itself. In other words… ritual is power; it acts and it actuates.34

While Ephesians and Colossians have much in common, their strategy of ritualization differs at baptism. Ephesians does not ritualize baptism in the context of opposition or polemics, but it simply lists baptism in its articles of faith: ‘one body… one Spirit… one hope… one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of all’ (4.4–6). However, Ephesians does manifest an equally dismissive stance towards Jewish rituals and beliefs as it seems to replace the whole past regime of Jewish rituals and law observance by claiming that ‘Christ has abolished the law’ (2.15).35 Similarly, the letter to Titus also refutes ‘Jewish myths’ and ‘commandments of those who reject MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 104–8. Bell, Ritual, 195, italics original. 35 See Shkul for different interpretations of this passage and its meaning for the community and their social relations; Shkul, Reading. 33 34

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the truth’ (1.14). Given that ‘Ritualization involves dynamics of contrast with other forms of cultural activity and, inevitably, with other ritualized acts as well’,36 the Deutero-Paulines exercise different strategies aimed at the same goal of establishing ritual difference, all sharing in disguising communal polemics in the language of ritualization, dismissing Jewish rituals more or less explicitly. All denounce the value of Jewish law, customs or circumcision and relativize what Jewish groups held sacred. Thus it is the messianic values which have become formative for identity and belief and consequently, the Deutero-Pauline ritualization. Ephesians’ references to communal initiation in ch. 1 have often been interpreted in light of baptism, despite the fact that explicit references to baptism are missing. Instead the symbolic description of transition in 1.3–14 makes reference to spiritual concepts such as blessings (1.3), chosenness (1.4), adoption (1.5), redemption, forgiveness and experience of grace (1.7), knowing the mystery of God’s will (1.9) and somehow obtaining a divine inheritance and destiny (1.10), which would be hard to measure or verify. However, the letter positions these as personal experiences of community members in relation to the benevolent god. The transition is completed with being ‘marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit’ after hearing the gospel and its acceptance (1.13–14; cf. 2 Cor. 1.21–2). MacDonald takes this as a reference to baptism,37 although it is not explicit in the text. However, the study of Ephesians’ ritualization highlights that baptism does not have its place in the members’ liminal process, but the transition is about spiritual benefits, such as being adopted and marked with the spirit (1.3–14) and being transferred from death to life, and from aliens to fellow citizens (2.11–22). Thus we find that Ephesians ritualizes neither baptism nor the Lord’s Supper. Instead its focus seems to be on moving beyond established symbols of communality as it envisions greater ritual difference from its cultural environs by abolishing the law (2.15), which makes Jewish rituals obsolete for the community, and by distancing from Graeco-Roman culture in 4.17. Interestingly, however, both cultural bases are covered with a blanket statement, not an explicit discussion

Bell, Ritual, 118. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 204.

36 37

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of or negative remarks about rituals practised in the community members’ (previous) cultures. It is possible that Ephesians operates in a slightly different mode of religiosity from that of Colossians and the Pastorals, placing more emphasis on subjective spiritual experience than other Deutero-Paulines. This is seen for instance in Eph. 5.18 where we find reference to ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’, which is connected with the devotional experience of singing and giving thanks (5.18–20). This finds no Deutero-Pauline parallels, but Acts reports believers being filled with the Spirit appearing drunk in the eyes of the outsiders (2.4, 13, 15). This suggests it may have involved some ecstatic experience. More importantly, while it could have been a one-off occurrence in Acts, Ephesians sees charismatic fullness of the Spirit as a part of an ongoing devotional experience, thus ritualizing the phenomenon in the discourse. However, Ephesians does not develop ideas of spiritual gifting, glossolalia or other signs of charismatic experience as the Paulines do. It is likely that such experience(s) would involve high emotional arousal which typifies imagistic modes of religiosity.38 If so, such personal, ecstatic experiences would be stored in autobiographical, episodic memory, and they could lead to spontaneous exegetical reflection (SER) as a person could reflect individually upon his/her religious experience.39 This could disrupt the community at times; however, experiencing the divine realm in some tangible way typically leads to high cohesion and episodic memories as seen in exclusive communities among those similarly disposed.40 Although Ephesians does not tick all the boxes of Whitehouse’s imagistic mode, it does allow for more charismatic emphases and places greater emphasis on counter-intuitive experience – for instance, being exalted into God’s presence (2.4–6). The believers are also said to benefit from individual gifting (4.7), but Christordained leadership guides the community on their religious journey into maturity and cohesive unity (4.11–16). However, this again is more symbolic rather than ritual discourse, as Ephesians does not elaborate on the ritual functions of the leaders. They are seen as appointed by Christ, but there is no inauguration ritual, which is another illustration of the way Ephesians is Whitehouse, Modes, esp. 70–4. Whitehouse, Modes, 71. Whitehouse, Modes, 73.

38 39 40

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poorer in its ritual discourse than the Pastorals, other Jewish texts or GraecoRoman cultures, as it does not develop detailed counter-rituals for the ritual past. It is particularly in the rites of ordination where the Pastoral epistles develop post-Pauline traditions most extensively, enriching our understanding of the early Jesus-movement and its ritual variety. The Pastorals give tangible examples for appropriate behaviours and the reputation expected of communal leaders (1 Tim. 3.1–13; Tit. 1.5–9). The focus is on their moral character and social respectability, rather than on their charismatic gifting or, e.g., possession of divine revelation. The Pastorals then proceed to institute the ritual of ordination through laying-on of hands (1 Tim. 4.14; 5.22; 2 Tim. 1.6), establishing the principle of apostolic succession. The (Deutero-)Pauline leadership appointment and succession requires that the anointed leader, e.g. Timothy or Titus, appoint further leaders in different localities (Tit. 1.5ff.), after careful consideration (1 Tim. 5.22). Thus the choice of ministers and authority to inaugurate them is with the individual who himself has been similarly appointed by the apostle and elders through laying-on of hands. In contrast, Ephesians regards leaders given by Christ (4.7–11), which grants the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers authority and positions them beyond challenge or dispute.41 By doing so, Ephesians imagines that the counter-intuitive agents are directly involved in the life of the community, at least at its launch – although, in my view, this makes it harder to imagine how further generations of leaders would be selected and appointed, as the writer fails to ritualize ordination and to provide specific guidance for succession, unlike the Pastorals. Ritualization in the Pastoral Epistles thus involves ‘the formal “modelling” of valued relationships so as to promote legitimation and internalization of those relationships and their values’.42 If, as Bell suggests, ‘ritual practices are produced with an intent to order, rectify, or transform a particular situation’,43 None more so than the apostle Paul, whose reputation is particularly embellished, as he exemplifies divine gifting, and although still human, he is strategically positioned as greater than past prophets and other agents of God; Shkul, Reading, 196–9. 42 Bell, Ritual, 89. For the institutionalization of the later Pauline canon, cf. MacDonald, Pauline Churches; David G. Horrell, ‘Leadership Patterns and the Development of Ideology in Early Christianity’, in Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation, ed. David G. Horrell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999). 43 Bell, Ritual, 108. 41

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the Pastorals contribute significantly in establishing ongoing leadership which carries the trademarks of apostolic succession and authority. Although the Pastorals establish what kinds of people should exercise authority in the Christ-movement, ordination is not ritually embellished, and there are no elaborate rites for them to undergo. Furthermore, none of the DeuteroPaulines outline the full ritual landscape of their community or of the Christ-following movement at the time of writing. They do not describe the ‘ritual mastery’ of the leaders, what their role as ‘ritualized social agent’ might involve and what ritual experiences they endorse.44

Concluding remarks As Bell concludes: ‘Ritualization cannot turn a group of individuals into a community if they have no other relationships or interests in common, nor can it turn the exercise of pure physical compulsion into participatory communality.’45 The Deutero-Pauline writers ritualize within positively predisposed groupings, which share the socially divisive Christ-followership. They do not ritualize in the same way, but manifest different emphases ranging from disputes over communal rituals and their legitimacy in Colossians, to abolition of Jewish ritual traditions in Ephesians, to ordination and institutionalization of the movement in the Pastorals. Thus the Deutero-Pauline ritualization is much about legitimating the movement and othering past ritual experience(s). From the patchy evidence available it is not appropriate to draw conclusions on the ritual communal practice in the post-Pauline era, but what we discover is evidence for ritualization as one of the strategies of social influencing and shaping early Christian traditions, particularly in terms of providing an alternative interpretation to praxis and refuting alternatives operative in other social groups.46 All Deutero-Pauline examples considered above ritualize with reference to previously established practice, particularly in the Jewish cultural world. It seems that the writers, as agents of social influencing, respond to their Jewish heritage and the cultural origins of the Cf. Bell, Ritual, 107. Bell, Ritual, 222. Jenkins, Social Identity, 177.

44 45 46

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movement. They continue to reflect Pauline controversies by establishing cultural difference within the Jewish symbolic universe, providing alternative meanings for rituals seen as communally useful, like baptism, and denouncing the ritual significance of others, like the Jewish law and its requirements for circumcision, food purity or observance of Sabbath. The Deutero-Paulines share in imagining that God himself legitimates the group and its revisions upon Jewish faith using counter-intuitive agents – God and Jesus Christ – to legitimate their beliefs, social orientations and the ritual expressions. Despite the fact that the presence and function of these counter-intuitive agents is difficult to verify, the Deutero-Pauline writers portrayed them and their relation to their communities in so compelling a fashion that they still captivate the imagination of nt readers and Christian believers.

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6

Letter Writing and Social Identity Matthew J. Marohl

Social identity theory and the letters of the New Testament Midway through the second chapter of his 1998 commentary on Galatians,1 Philip Esler outlined social identity theory and presented its general application to the letter. While this was not Esler’s first application of social identity theory to a biblical text,2 it has come to serve as the starting point for what is becoming a well-established model for biblical interpretation. In 2012, Coleman Baker offered his own introduction to social identity theory accompanied by a list of many of the scholarly works that have employed the heuristic device for biblical interpretation.3 It is exciting to trace the history of the use of social identity theory in biblical interpretation. It is even more exciting to encounter a fresh reading of a biblical text which employs social identity theory as a tool for interpretation. So, why begin this chapter with an all-too-quick nod to the history of the relationship between social identity theory and biblical interpretation? Stated simply, the use of social identity theory as an appropriate and helpful model for interpreting biblical letters is well documented. Since Esler’s reading of Galatians, others have used the heuristic device in their readings of the New Testament letters.4 Furthermore, this volume presents a reading of nearly Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 40–57. Philip F. Esler, ‘Group Boundaries and Intergroup Conflict in Galatians: A New Reading of Gal. 5:13–6:10’, in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 215–40.  3 Coleman A. Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, BTB 42, no. 3 (2012): 129–38.  4 Matthew J. Marohl, Faithfulness and the Purpose of Hebrews: A Social Identity Approach (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2008). See also, Minna A. I. Shkul, Reading Ephesians: Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in the Text, LNTS 408 (London; New York: Continuum, 2009).  1  2

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every letter in the New Testament from a social identity approach. In short, there is a rich and constantly developing body of literature that both explains and defends the relationship between social identity theory and the interpretation of the New Testament letters. With this in mind, I will take a different approach. Rather than explaining the relationship between the ancient genre of letter-writing and the formation and maintenance of social identity,5 or rather than outlining past and current uses of social identity theory as a heuristic device in the study of the New Testament letters, this chapter takes seriously the call to examine the methodology of social identity theory. In so doing, I will highlight two aspects of social identity theory that may inform the future interpretation of the New Testament letters.

Social identity theory and group narrative Interest in social identity theory among biblical interpreters began with the desire to understand the role of intergroup comparison in the formation and maintenance of first-century group identity. For those interested in the New Testament letters, the focus is often upon the role of the letter-writer in the formation of group identity. While the act of intergroup comparison and differentiation is often critical in identity formation, other factors may also be involved. For example, how the letter-writer tells the shared story or narrative of the ingroup can prove instrumental. Early consideration in biblical scholarship of the relationship between identity and a shared ingroup narrative focused upon the work of Marco Cinnirella.6 In a 1998 article, Cinnirella offered the hypothesis that ‘social groups will create shared “life stories” or narratives of the group which tie past, present and predicted futures into a coherent representation’.7 In a paraphrase of his hypothesis, he noted that ‘ingroup members will be motivated to re-interpret and re-construct past, present and future-oriented For an overview of ancient letter-writing and its relationship to the study of culture and identity, see Esler, Galatians, 14–21.  6 Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).  7 Marco Cinnirella, ‘Exploring Temporal Aspects of Social Identity: The Concept of Possible Social Identities’, European Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1998): 235.  5

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possible social identities so that a sense of temporal continuity is perceived to exist’.8 Cinnirella’s primary concern is that of ‘possible selves’. He notes that many national and ethnic identities are based upon the narrative of a glorious past or golden age. When the group considers any change to its identity, the possible self that is envisioned may be compared with and against the narrative of its past golden age. If potential future changes in identity are identified as being inconsistent with this past, it is likely that there will either be resistance to the change or a need to reinterpret the past.9 Here, we may witness at least two possible points of contact between Cinnirella’s hypothesis and biblical interpretation. First, it might be argued that resistance by a group, or conflict within the group (e.g. recipients of a letter, a specific group of Christ-followers, etc.), may be due to an ingroup perception that a proposed change in identity (or ‘possible self ’) is incompatible with the group’s perception of its own past. Second, it might be argued that the letter-writer engaged in the act of reshaping the past life story of the group in order to make it better align with a proposed identity.10 Hebrews 11.26 might serve as an example. Our author explains that Moses ‘considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward’. By including the assertion that Moses considered his abuse to be ‘for the Christ’, the author reshapes the story of Moses and in so doing, reshapes the life story of the group.11 Here, the author creates a narrative that directly links the past experience of Moses (abuse suffered for the Christ) with the present struggle of the audience – an audience that is exhorted to ‘run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’ (Heb. 12.1–2). Cinnirella’s hypothesis may help to explain the felt need by the author to change the Moses narrative. In this case, the faith of Moses is brought in line with the faith of the readers (a faith in Christ). Furthermore, the author highlights a shared experience of abuse or suffering and the need to Cinnirella, ‘Exploring’, 236 emphasis removed. Cinnirella, ‘Exploring’, 236. 10 Coleman A. Baker, Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011). See also Coleman Baker’s essay in this book, 105–18. 11 There is much debate regarding the identity of the original recipients of the letter. Whether or not the original recipients considered the story of Moses to be ‘their’ story, the letter is certainly written in such a way that the story of Moses is grafted into the ongoing faith story of the recipients.  8  9

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look ahead toward a future reward. In short, the author of the letter presents the identity of the recipients – an identity that is grounded in faith in Christ – as consistent with the past experience and identity of Moses. While the work of Marco Cinnirella may hold possibility for future biblical interpretation,12 there are limits. Cinnirella continues to publish in the area of group identity, but he seems to have made little or no explicit follow-up to his theory of group narration. This does not necessarily mean that there are problems with his hypothesis. It simply means that it has not been tested. In 2001, Richard D. Ashmore et al. proposed that rather than a static group identity (‘We are _____’), there is a group-level analogue to the individual level life story or personal narrative. They explain that, ‘just as individuals develop stories that specify not only what “I am like now” but also “how I got here” and “where I will likely go in the future”, we propose that groups develop narratives that tell the story of their group’.13 In addition, Ashmore and his colleagues made four observations regarding the nature of group narratives. First, group stories can lie dormant for periods of time. Second, changes in conditions may push for demonstrating and featuring the group narrative. Conditions such as the threat of crisis or an outgroup action can bring group stories to prominence. Third, group stories can change and groups can alter their story. Fourth, group narratives often contain folk theories of ethnicity, and these stories are commonly called upon to mobilize the group.14 It is important to note that this description of group narrative was presented in the broader context of intergroup conflict resolution. In other words, it is not enough to note that groups, like individuals, have a tendency to create a life story. We must also observe how (or if) these stories change in the context of intergroup conflict. We may further inquire how (or if) the group narratives are used to reduce or minimize intergroup conflict. Again, we may witness possible points of contact between the work of Ashmore et al. and the interpretation of the letters of the New Testament. We might ask whether or not our author is calling upon a previously dormant Cinnirella presents a total of seventeen hypotheses regarding the possible temporal aspects of social identity. 13 Richard D. Ashmore et al., ‘Conclusion: Toward a Social Identity Framework for Intergroup Conflict’, in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction, Richard D. Ashmore, Lee J. Jussim, and David Wilder (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 236–7. 14 Ashmore et al., ‘Conclusion’, 237. 12

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group story.15 If so, how might the inclusion of the story inform the identity of the group? We might ask whether or not a change to a well-established group narrative indicates a change in context or condition for the group. For example, might the change indicate a sense of crisis or threat? Finally, we might ask whether or not our author’s use of a past narrative is meant to mobilize a group. If so, for what purpose is the group being mobilized? Unfortunately, we encounter the same problem with the discussion of group narratives by Ashmore and his associates as we did with Cinnirella. While Ashmore reintroduced his exciting topic into the broad discussion of social identity theory, it seems that their specific contribution has not led to a detailed theory of group narration. This is not to say that discussion of the role of narrative in group identity has remained dormant. As we will see below, a great number of individuals interested in social identity theory ask questions regarding the nature and role of group story in the context of identity. Unlike the discussion of narrative identity and the individual,16 however, the role of the narrative within the social group remains a fragmented discussion. In 2007, James H. Liu and János László offered their own narrative theory of history and identity.17 Particularly helpful in Liu and Laszlo’s analysis may be their description of the relationship between the producer and the recipient of the narrative. If biblical interpreters are willing to view the author of a letter as a producer of a group narrative, it will be necessary to pursue the possible impact that such a narrative had on the group. Liu and László propose that the group narration establishes a ‘surface structure empathy hierarchy’ that influences how the reader or listener constructs the meaning of the narration. Within biblical studies, we might ask how the narration itself was constructed in order to create meaning and identity within the group. A second area of interest may be the proposal that how the narrator relates past events to the current situation has significant influence on impression The inclusion of Melchizedek in Hebrews 7.11–28 is an example of an author’s use of a previously dormant story. The priest Melchizedek appears in very few places outside of this letter. We might ask, why does the author of Hebrews call upon this story? Further, how does the inclusion of this story inform group identity? 16 For a thorough description of narrative identity as it relates to the individual and for the history of the concept, see Dan P. McAdams, ‘Narrative Identity’, in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles (eds) (New York: Springer, 2011), 99–115. 17 James H. Liu and János László, ‘Narrative Theory of History and Identity: Social Identity, Social Representations, Society and the Individual’, in Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process, and Power, Gail Moloney and Iain Walker (eds) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 85–107. 15

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formation and identity judgements about the narrator. In other words, a narration does not only convey a message about the group, but the group often believes that how the message is told conveys something about the narrator. While there are many possible points of contact between the work of Liu and László and the interpretation of the New Testament letters, this last observation may prove especially helpful. For example, it might be argued that if the recipients of a particular letter did not respond in the manner hoped for by the author, this might have been due (at least in part) to an unfavourable impression of the author, rather than the content of the story. In 2010, James H. Liu, this time with Chris G. Sibley, explored issues of peace and conflict within the broader discussion of social identity theory and history/narration.18 Liu and Sibley outline four steps to ‘operationalizing social representations of history in national cultures of conflict and peacemaking’. Liu and Sibley conclude that For social identity theory, this work shows how phenomena such as in-group favouritism that appears to be ubiquitous in laboratory settings become contingent on culture and shared knowledge in society once these are freed up to act as causal factors. More fundamentally, it suggests that the particular category system that is most salient in a country is based on historical experience.19

If Liu and Sibley are correct, and group identity is (at least to some degree) contingent on the historical experience of the group, the manner in which this history is told may be critical for identity formation and maintenance. It is clear that those interested in social identity identify over and over again group narrative or story as an important aspect in the formation and maintenance of group identity. Much has been written in the past decade regarding the relationship between social identity theory and group story. There is, however, no single definitive discussion of the relationship between the two. As we move forward as biblical interpreters, we will certainly need to be mindful of the ever-evolving discussion of group story and group identity.

James H. Liu and Chris G. Sibley, ‘Culture, Social Representations, and Peacemaking: A Symbolic Theory of History and Identity’, in Peace Psychology in Asia, Noraini M. Noor and Cristina J. Montiel (eds) (London: Springer, 2010), 21–39. 19 Liu and Sibley, ‘Culture’, 33–4. 18

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This particular aspect of social identity theory will surely inform the way that we read and interpret the New Testament letters in the future.

Superordinate social identification and conflict resolution Social identity theorists understand one’s self-concept to be made of two components: social identity and personal identity. ‘Social identity’ is the term given to that aspect of the individual’s identity that is based upon group memberships.20 ‘Personal identity’ is the term given to that aspect of the individual’s identity that is unique to the individual and may be based upon a relationship with another individual, or object, or upon a unique attribute of the individual. Both components are further divided into multiple identifications. Therefore, an individual’s social identity is divided into multiple social identifications (e.g. sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc.) and one’s personal identity is divided into numerous personal identifications (e.g. friend of x, daughter of y, etc.).21 Finally, each of the social and personal identifications produces identity descriptors. For example, as a citizen of the United States of America I tend to be individualistic (social identification = citizen of the United States; social identity descriptor = individualistic). As the son of Gerald I tend to be influenced by his sense of optimism (personal identification = son of Gerald; personal identity descriptor = optimistic). Social identity theory, as its name implies, is primarily concerned with that aspect of the individual’s identity which is based upon group memberships, one’s social identity, without denying that personal identity is often salient. Just as social identity theory is built upon the understanding that selfconcept has two components, social and personal identity, it is also proposed that there is an ‘interpersonal-intergroup’ behavioural continuum. The continuum seeks to explain the difference between social behaviour which is interpersonal in nature and social behaviour which is intergroup in nature. In other words, all behaviour can be understood to fall somewhere along a Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic, 1978), 63. 21 Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), 24–5. 20

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continuum with ‘purely interpersonal behaviour’ as one extreme and ‘purely intergroup behaviour’ as its opposite extreme. Purely interpersonal behaviour is described as any encounter between two or more people in which all of the interaction that takes place is determined by the personal relationships between the individuals and by their respective individual characteristics. Purely intergroup behaviour is understood to be that in which the behaviour of two or more individuals toward each other is determined exclusively by their membership of different social groups or categories.22 Henri Tajfel is quick to point out that while the concept of a purely interpersonal behaviour is necessary to serve as one extreme in the continuum, it cannot actually occur. He explains that […] it is impossible to imagine a social encounter between two people which will not be affected, at least to some minimal degree, by their mutual assignments of one another to a variety of social categories about which some general expectations concerning their characteristics and behaviour exist in the minds of the interactants.23

This is even true for close friends or family members. Social categories such as sex, age and profession prevent purely interpersonal behaviour. On the other hand, Tajfel explains that it is possible to envision behaviour that is purely intergroup in nature. He uses the image of air force bombings of enemy populations as an example of behaviour that is based entirely upon one’s group membership, having nothing to do with personal relationships. Once it has been established that social behaviour is to be understood within the context of this continuum, all social situations will necessarily fall somewhere between the two extremes. This means that the behaviour of individuals will be informed by their perception of where the interaction falls on the social behaviour continuum. Some social situations will be more interindividual and therefore idiosyncratic in nature, while others will be more intergroup and therefore more stereotypic in nature. Social identity theory is primarily concerned with social behaviour nearer the intergroup extreme. Henri Tajfel, ‘Interindividual Behavior and Intergroup Behavior’, in Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (London: Academic, 1978), 41. 23 Tajfel, ‘Interindividual’, 41. 22

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For this discussion, it is necessary to return to the concept of social identity. More specifically, we must return to the understanding that individuals possess multiple social identifications. Since an individual may possess multiple social identifications (e.g. sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc.), it is possible to envision any number of intergroup conflict scenarios. For example, a group with a shared nationality (e.g. citizens of the United States of America) may experience conflict over a social identification that is not shared (e.g. religion). In the case of intergroup conflict, then, we might ask (for lack of better wording) whether or not all social identifications are ‘created equal’. In other words, ought a social group possess a single ‘superordinate’ social identification and multiple ‘subordinate’ social identifications?24 Samuel Gaertner et al. explain the value of having a ‘dual identity’, where original group identities are maintained, but within the context of a superordinate identity.25 They propose that a common ingroup identity may be achieved by increasing the salience of an existing common superordinate membership. For example, a superordinate identity may be based upon a shared membership in a school, a company or a nation. A common ingroup identity may also be achieved by introducing factors that are perceived to be shared by the membership (e.g. common goals or a shared fate). But what is the benefit of a shared, superordinate identity? Gaertner and his colleagues note that […] a strong superordinate identity allows individuals to support policies that would benefit members of other ethnic subgroups without giving primary consideration to their own instrumental needs. Furthermore, once people identify with a superordinate identity, the relative strength of their subgroup identity does not significantly change their basis or supporting policies that benefit other groups within the superordinate collective.26

In addition, it is discovered that superordinate identity more broadly influences attitudes toward members of other subgroups; it is not limited to the specific subgroup members encountered during intergroup contact. For a helpful example of the discussion of superordinate identity, see Samuel Gaertner et al., ‘Across Cultural Divides: The Value of a Superordinate Identity’, in Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict, Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller (eds) (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 173–212. For an example of the discussion of superordinate identity within biblical studies, see Aaron Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 19. 25 Gaertner et al., ‘Cultural Divides’, 181. 26 Gaertner et al., ‘Cultural Divides’, 196. 24

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Linda Argote and Aimee A. Kane, building explicitly upon social identity theory, define superordinate identity as a ‘psychological state that derives from members of multiple units feeling a sense of belonging to or identification with a higher-order organizational aggregate’.27 For Argote and Kane, one value of a superordinate identity is found in the transfer of knowledge. They explain that, ‘when shared by organizational members, a superordinate social identity provides a metaphorical kindling that facilitates knowledge transfer and enables innovations to reach their full potential’.28 In other words, when individuals share a sense of common identity, they are more likely to create an environment that encourages the open transfer of knowledge and ideas. While Argote and Kane’s definition of superordinate identity and the subsequent discussion of its value are helpful, we must pay particular attention to their summary of the current debate within the discussion of superordinate identity. They explain that researchers debate the motivations of individuals for social identifications and the conditions needed to create the experience of a shared superordinate identity. The debate hinges on whether or not perceptual and linguistic cues are sufficient to create an understanding of shared, superordinate identity. There are many possible points of contact between the discussion of superordinate identity and the interpretation of New Testament letters. However, it may be in the area of conflict management or conflict resolution that we will find the most promise. While intergroup comparison and differentiation forms the backbone of group identity, intragroup comparison and differentiation can lead to intragroup conflict. A detailed theory of superordinate identity may help us to better understand intragroup conflict in the New Testament and the conflict resolution tactics proposed by its letter-writers. Two examples might be found in the letters of Paul. First, an understanding of superordinate identity may help in a reading of Gal. 3.28. Here, Paul writes that ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’.29 Each of the identity descriptors listed by Paul is social, rather than personal, in nature. Linda Argote and Aimee A. Kane, ‘Superordinate Identity and Knowledge Creation and Transfer in Organizations’, in Knowledge Governance: Processes and Perspectives, Nicolai J. Foss and Snejina Michailova (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 168. 28 Argote and Kane, ‘Superordinate’, 168. 29 nrsv used throughout this essay unless otherwise noted. 27

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Jew and Greek are social groups, as are slave and free, male and female. Furthermore, the letter itself indicates that intragroup conflicts are known to exist between such social groups. For example, Paul acknowledges conflict with Peter over the issues of table fellowship and circumcision between Judaeans and non-Judaeans (Gal. 2.11–14). An interpretation of this letter, then, might consider whether or not Paul is identifying a superordinate identity – being one in Christ Jesus – in order to address the conflict present over ‘opposing’ subordinate social identifications. Second, the concept of superordinate identity may inform an interpretation of the ‘body image’ used by Paul. Paul explains that ‘just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ’ (1 Cor. 11.12–31). It is an understatement to say that this letter is sent to a group in conflict. After a brief salutation, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to be in agreement that there would be no divisions among them (1 Cor. 1.10). Later, Paul is so taken by the divisions in Corinth that he explains that he could not speak to them as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ (1 Cor. 3.1). Examples of this infantlike behaviour are too numerous to list. Paul discusses the sexual immorality that defiles the community (1 Cor. 5). He addresses the situation of intergroup lawsuits (1 Cor. 6.1–11). He even identifies abuses happening at the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11.17–22). So, how does Paul address this intragroup conflict? He points to a shared, superordinate social identity – the body of Christ. While it may be the case that some of the conflict is interpersonal in nature, rather than intragroup, there seems to be ample evidence that the Corinthians pitted themselves against one another in various ways, individual against individual and group against group. While both examples come from Pauline letters, there are clear differences. In the first example, Paul emphasizes that the superordinate social identity erases previous subordinate social identities. Not only is intragroup conflict over ‘opposing’ subordinate social identifications to stop, the very social identifications are not longer to be recognized. Under the superordinate identity – one in Christ Jesus – distinctions are no longer made. In the second example, Paul acknowledges the necessary role played by each of the subordinate social identifications but emphasizes that they must function together under the inclusive, superordinate social identification. An individual or

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group might act as the foot or the ear or the eye, and these are important roles, but all must work together as the one, single body of Christ. It seems that those interested in social identity theory are increasingly interested in the role and value of superordinate and subordinate social identity. Much has been written in the past decade regarding the function of superordinate identity, particularly in the area of intragroup conflict resolution. As we move forward as biblical interpreters, we will certainly need to be mindful of this critical aspect of social identity theory.

Conclusion The relationship between social identity theory and the interpretation of New Testament letters is far-reaching. This volume is evidence of both the diversity within social identity theory and the many ways that the theory might inform the reading of a text. It was my intention in this chapter to highlight two important areas of social identity theory that are being actively discussed and developed among social psychologists. There is great interest in the role of the group story or narrative in identity formation. Likewise, there is an ongoing and active discussion of the role and value of superordinate identity. As we move forward in reading and interpreting New Testament letters, both will surely prove to be fertile ground for discussion.

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A Narrative-Identity Model for Biblical Interpretation: The Role of Memory and Narrative in Social Identity Formation1 Coleman A. Baker The early Christian narratives of Jesus’ life tell the story of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, and the narrative of Acts describes the expansion of the Jesus-movement from the Judaean into the wider Roman world. Recent scholarship has argued that these narratives were not written solely, or even primarily, for historical purposes, but rather to shape the identity of the communities for which they were written.2 While the identity-forming function of these narratives has been highlighted in recent years, little work has been done toward a methodology for helping understand how the authors of these narratives sought to shape the identity of their audiences.3 This chapter will draw together theories of social identity, social memory and narrative in an effort to model the identity-forming role of early Christian narratives. Paul Ricoeur coined the phrase ‘narrative identity’,4 defining it later as ‘the kind of identity that human beings acquire through the mediation of the narrative function’.5 The development of an individual’s narrative identity takes place through interaction with the narrative in a threefold process: This chapter is a revised version of Chapter 1 of Coleman A. Baker, Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011). Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.  2 Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000); Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).  3 Coleman A. Baker, ‘Early Christian Identity Formation: From Ethnicity and Theology to SocioNarrative Criticism’, Currents in Biblical Research 9, no. 2 (2011).  4 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).  5 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Narrative Identity’, in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. David Wood (London: Routledge, 1991), 188.  1

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1 Prefiguration – the preunderstanding the reader/hearer brings to the text. May also be understood as pre-existing identity(ies). 2 Configuration – the author’s construction of the text and the readers’ interaction with the narrative world of the text. 3 Refiguration – the fusion of the world of the text and the world of the reader. Narrative identity, then, is constructed as an individual (or group) engages a narrative with a certain pre-existing identity (which is based upon preunderstanding) and reconfigures that identity based upon interaction with the narrative. By exploring Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity at the intersection of social identity, social memory and narrative theories, this chapter will offer a model for interpreting the identity-forming function of early Christian narratives.

Social identity theory Social identity theory has been summarized both in this volume6 and elsewhere,7 so that only a brief overview is necessary here in order to highlight aspects of the theory important for this narrative-identity model. The pioneer of social identity theory (SIT) was Henri Tajfel, who, building upon the works of Mead,8 Festinger9 and Sherif,10 published several studies concerning group processes and social identity.11 These studies culminated in 1986 when Tajfel and John C. Turner published ‘The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior’, in which they argue that simply recognizing that one See Esler, 13–39. See Baker, Identity, 2–12; Baker, ‘Early Christian’.  8 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self & Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).  9 Leon Festinger, ‘A Theory of Social Comparison Processes’, Human Relations 7, no. 2 (1954). 10 Muzafer Sherif et al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman: University Book Exchange, 1961); Muzafer Sherif, In Common Predicament: Social Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). 11 Henri Tajfel, ‘Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination’, Scientific America 223 (1970); Henri Tajfel, ‘La Catégorisation Sociale’, in Introduction À La Psychologie Sociale, ed. Serge Moscovici (Paris: Larousse, 1972); Michael Billig and Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behaviour’, European Journal of Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (1973); Henri Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978).  6  7

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belongs to a specific group is ‘sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favoring the in-group’.12 People categorize themselves into groups in an attempt to establish a positive sense of value. One of the ways this categorization is accomplished is by distinguishing their group (ingroup) from other group(s) (outgroup), distinctions that generally view the outgroup negatively and the ingroup favourably.13 Accordingly, Tajfel and Turner defined social identity as ‘those aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as belonging’.14 SIT focuses on the way group members understand themselves as part of the group and differentiate their group from other groups in order to achieve a positive social identity. Initially, SIT focused on intergroup relations, that is, processes that take place between groups. After Tajfel’s death, however, Turner expanded SIT to consider intragroup processes, that is, the processes that take place within groups and between subgroups within a superordinate group. This subtle shift allowed Turner and his colleagues to analyse processes both between and within social groups and, in doing so, to identify three contexts in which identity operates: 1 Superordinate identity – the category that supersedes other categories (i.e. a person as a human being). 2 Social ingroup identity (various groups that a person belongs to). 3 Subordinate identity (personal identity).15 Within the second level (social ingroup identity), there exists the possibility of smaller subgroups, such as ethnic, religious, civic and political groups. When one aspect of a person’s (or group’s) identity becomes more salient, other aspects become less salient. Thus, social identity is a fluid construct rather than a static condition; individuals and groups may emphasize one aspect of

Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behaviour’, in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin (eds) (Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, 1986), 13. 13 Tajfel and Turner, ‘Social Identity Theory’, 17. 14 Tajfel and Turner, ‘Social Identity Theory’, 16. 15 John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1987). 12

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their identity while downplaying the others. For example, when social identity is salient, group membership serves to guide individual and group behaviour. One important aspect of the study of social identity is the ways that various identities are brought together within a superordinate identity. Capozza and Brown note that Turner’s theory of recategorization emphasized ‘redrawing group boundaries so that those who were once classified as outgroupers can be regarded as fellow ingroupers with a larger superordinate category’.16 Dovidio, Gaertner and Validizic took recategorization one step further by suggesting that, rather than eliminating the boundaries altogether,17 boundaries should be redrawn to bring the two identities into one superordinate identity so that ingroupers and outgroupers recognize their commonality and view one another as members of the same group while maintaining some elements of their subgroup identity.18 Subsequent studies have examined the role of leadership in the recategorization process, emphasizing that the leaders of a recategorization attempt must: 1 be ‘one of us’, 2 exemplify what makes ‘us’ better than ‘them’, 3 stand up for the superordinate group.19 According to these criteria, we may identify three elements crucial for the recategorization process:

Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown, eds, Social Identity Processes: Trends in Theory and Research (London: Sage, 2000), xiv; J. C. Turner, ‘The Experimental Social Psychology of Intergroup Behavior’, in Intergroup Behavior, John C. Turner and Howard Giles (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981). 17 See, e.g. Norman Miller and Marilynn B. Brewer (eds) Groups in Contact: The Psychology of Desegregation (Orlando: Academic, 1984). 18 J. F. Dovidio, S. L. Gaertner, and A. Validzic, ‘Intergroup Bias: Status, Differentiation, and a Common in-Group Identity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, no. 1 (1998). Also see Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio, Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2000); Samuel L. Gaertner et al., ‘The Common Ingroup Identity Model: Recategorization and the Reduction of Intergroup Bias’, European Review of Social Psychology 4, no. 1 (1993); S. L. Gaertner et al., ‘The Common Ingroup Identity Model for Reducing Intergroup Bias: Progress and Challenges’, in Social Identity Processes: Trends in Theory and Research, Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown (eds) (London: Sage, 2000). 19 S. Alexander Haslam and M. J. Platow, ‘Your Wish Is Our Command: The Role of Shared Social Identity in Translating a Leader’s Vision into Followers’ Action’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, Michael A. Hogg and Deborah J. Terry (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001). 16

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1 Establish superordinate identity boundaries that define ‘us’. 2 Emphasize superordinate commonality while contrasting the new ingroup with a new outgroup. 3 Represent superordinate group in social competition with new outgroups. Leaders of recategorization attempts, therefore, must create a sense of commonality between differing subgroups while allowing each to maintain its own particular salient features and, at the same time, differentiate between the new superordinate group and new outgroups. Social identity theorists refer to these leaders of recategorization as ingroup prototypes.20 Hogg, Hohmann and Rivera offer the following definition of an ingroup prototype: According to social identity theory, people cognitively represent social groups as fuzzy sets of attributes that define one group and distinguish it from relevant other groups. Called prototypes, these fuzzy sets not only describe the group’s attributes but also, very importantly, prescribe how one should think, feel, and behave as a member of the group. Psychologically identifying with a group involves a cognitive process of categorizing oneself as a group member. The consequence of this self-categorization process is that one actually sees oneself and the world through the lens of the prototype – one’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors are configured and dictated by the group’s prototype.21

Smith and Zarate note that a group’s prototype can be a representation of a person that embodies the identity of the group, though the prototype does not necessarily have to be an actual or current member of the group but rather an ideal image of the group’s character.22 Group prototypes, though, should not be viewed as fixed characters that group members are to imitate; later group members may reinterpret the group’s prototype according to the contextual needs of the group. This ongoing process of reinterpreting a group’s prototype raises the matter of the role of social memory in the process. That is, the group prototype from the past must be remembered and commemorated in meaningful ways for their prototypical status to remain effective. Michael A. Hogg, ‘Social Identification, Group Prototypicality, and Emergent Leadership’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, ed. Michael A. Hogg (Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 2001). 21 Michael A. Hogg, Zachary P. Hohman, and Jason E. Rivera, ‘Why Do People Join Groups? Three Motivational Accounts from Social Psychology’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 3 (2008): 1273–4. 22 Eliot R. Smith and Michael A. Zarate, ‘Exemplar and Prototype Use in Social Categorization’, Social Cognition 8, no. 3 (1990). 20

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The process of remembering and reinterpreting a group’s prototype is one of the central concerns of social memory theory. While Halbwachs was the pioneer of social memory studies,23 the work of Jan Assmann is of particular interest for this study. Assmann notes a transition period between two phases of memory.24 The first phase is termed communicative memory and is characterized by the face-to-face circulation of foundational memories. These memories are shared among those who experienced the originating events (i.e. ‘eyewitnesses’). This type of memory, however, ‘cannot sustain group-constitutive remembrances beyond the three to four generations able to claim living contact with the generation of origins’.25 This limitation forces the emergent community into a second phase that is characterized by what Assmann calls cultural memory, which focuses on the past and thus comprises a ‘body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose “cultivation” serves to stabilize and convey that society’s selfimage. Upon such collective knowledge, for the most part (but not exclusively) of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and particularity.’26 As the period of communicative memory passes, groups tend to find ways to remember the group’s prototype from the past that serve the needs of the group in its current situation. Thus, prototypes are remembered/reinterpreted according to the current needs of the group. This phenomenon is illustrated by Barry Schwartz’s study of the post-Civil War characterization of George Washington and the depiction of Abraham Lincoln during World War II.27 More recently, McIver notes the way that the first-century Judaean group who committed suicide at Masada rather than surrender to the Romans was presented by Josephus but yet reinterpreted by twentieth-century Zionists, and Damgaard notes the ways that Moses was remembered in narratives from

Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. F. J. Ditter and V. Y. Ditter (New York: Harper and Row, 1980); Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 24 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 1992). 25 Alan Kirk, ‘Social and Cultural Memory’, in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (eds) (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005), 5–6. 26 Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique, no. 65 (1995): 132. 27 Barry Schwartz, ‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington’, American Sociological Review 56, no. 2 (1991); Barry Schwartz, ‘Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II’, American Sociological Review 61, no. 5 (1996). 23

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ancient Judaism through fourth-century Christianity.28 These studies show that not only are the present needs of the group important for the group’s cultural memory, the present context may be just as determinative as the past that is being remembered. There are limits, however, to these reinterpretations. Rather than being completely reinterpreted, the memories of past historical figures are not entirely precarious; rather, they remain ‘a stable image upon which new elements are intermittently superimposed’.29 That is, memory of a group’s prototype is a series of ‘ongoing processes of construction in narrative form’.30 Nevertheless, Condor notes that, due to the lack of emphasis on social groups as ongoing processes, ‘remarkably few social identity theorists have considered the ways in which intra- or intergroup processes may unfold and transform over time’.31 The result of this neglect is that social groups are viewed as static constructions rather than dynamic, ongoing processes. Recognizing this, Cinnirella noted the ‘need for a theory of social identity which adequately encompasses the temporal nature of identity maintenance and the quest for coherence amongst past, present and future identities’.32 He develops the idea of ‘possible social identities’ which […] include conceptualizations of the social categories and groups an individual might have been a member of in the past, and could become a member of in the future. In addition, they also represent predictions about how existing social group memberships might change over time, and thoughts about how groups might have been in the past. Thus possible social identities can pertain to potential group memberships (both past and future), as well as current group memberships and thoughts about how these might have been different in the past and could develop in the future.33

Furthermore, Cinnirella hypothesizes that ‘[s]ocial groups will create shared life stories or narratives of the group which tie past, present and predicted Robert K. McIver, Memory, Jesus, and the Synoptic Gospels (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 88; Finn Damgaard, ‘Recasting Moses: The Memory of Moses in Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives in Ancient Judaism and 4th-Century Christianity’ (University of Copenhagen, 2010). 29 Schwartz, ‘George Washington’, 234. 30 Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 122. 31 S. Condor, ‘Social Identity and Time’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford; Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), 292. 32 Marco Cinnirella, ‘Exploring Temporal Aspects of Social Identity: The Concept of Possible Social Identities’, European Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1998): 227–8. 33 Cinnirella, ‘Exploring’, 230. 28

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futures into a coherent representation’.34 That is to say, ingroup members will reinterpret the group’s past to make its identity more compatible with new situations and future directions. This reinterpretation is very often accomplished by appealing to a group prototype from the past. Thus, group prototypes and a group’s developing memory of that prototype play an important role in the construction and maintenance (including future reconstructions) of group identity. To summarize, social identity is constructed by differentiating between ingroups and outgroups and is often rooted in group norms which consist, in part, of shared beliefs and practices. To embody their identity, groups attribute the role of prototype to some ideal person(s) from the past through the vehicle of social memory. Group prototypes, and thus the identity of the group, are not static but are capable of change depending upon the situation of the group as the group remembers its prototypical figures in new ways. This process of reinterpreting the group’s prototypes from the past in order to address present group situations may be especially useful in the process of recategorizing two groups (or subgroups) into a common superordinate identity. The group prototype serves as the leader of the recategorization process by creating a sense of commonality between differing groups (or subgroups) while allowing each to maintain its own particular salient features and differentiating between the new superordinate group and new outgroups.

Narrative theory The importance of narrative in connection with group identity and memory has already emerged in the previous discussion. This section will elaborate on narrative theory in order to draw connections with group memory and prototypes in the process of group identity formation. Narrative theory has its roots in Aristotle’s work on Poetics. In Chapter 6, Aristotle discusses the different components of a narrative including, most importantly, plot and character. 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 Cinnirella, ‘Exploring’, 235.

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be no story. Beginning in Chapter 13, Aristotle addresses the question of how a story accomplishes its purpose. He maintains that story should not depict a person’s falling from prosperity to adversity through evil or depravity, but through error. This character must be someone for whom the reader should have sympathy and, thus, whose plight can affect the reader emotionally. Thus, character development, particularly in narratives about a group’s prototype, is of central importance for the identity-forming function of the narrative. The relationship between character and plot has long been debated.35 While older approaches viewed the various parts of a narrative as separate entities in and of themselves, James argues that character and plot cannot be separated: ‘What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?’36 Critical of the perspective that treats character as merely a function of the plot, Chatman argues that, rather than a static component of the narrative, characters are ‘autonomous beings’ that are ‘reconstructed by the audience from evidence announced or implicit in an original construction and communicated by the discourse’.37 Chatman calls this evidence a ‘paradigm of traits’ that readers obtain as they read the text and which they revise as they encounter new evidence. Hochman notes that ‘Chatman makes an elaborate case for the affinity between characters in literature and people in life, and for the similarity between the ways we retrieve them, conceptualize them and respond to them’.38 Moreover, Hochman argues, What links characters in literature to people in life, as we fabricate them in our consciousness, is the integral unity of our conception of people and of how they operate. I, indeed, want to go further than Chatman by holding that there is a profound congruity between the ways in which we apprehend characters in literature, documented figures in history, and people of whom we have what we think of as direct knowledge in life.39

Therefore, not only do readers construct their image of characters by what they perceive in the text, as Chatman argued, but also by combining this Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 116. Henry James, ‘The Art of Fiction’, in Partial Portraits, ed. Henry James (London: Macmillan, 1988), 392. 37 Seymour B. Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 119. 38 Baruch Hochman, Character in Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 35. 39 Hochman, Character, 36. 35 36

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information with their own knowledge and experience of people. Accordingly, Hochman concludes, […] our retrieval, or reading out, of character is guided by our consciousness of what people are and how people work. To read character adequately we must heighten our consciousness of the reciprocity between character in literature and people in life.40

Although characters and people are different because they live in different worlds, readers come to know characters in much the same way they come to know people, through interaction and revision. This interaction between character and reader, and thus the production of meaning, is the central concern of audience-oriented criticism, which focuses on the acts of reading and the oral/aural means of communication.41 For example, Iser maintains that ‘[r]eading is not a direct “internalization”, because it is not a one-way process’ but rather ‘a dynamic interaction between text and reader’.42 Thus, the audience (a better term than ‘reader’ for the ancient world, since ‘audience’ can include both those who read the text and those who hear the text being read) is not passively receiving information but is actively involved in the production of meaning. The audience interacts with the text by anticipating and revising its expectations/opinions and filling in gaps in the narrative. Within this interaction, audience members are guided to change their perceptions. Group identity is thus formed in the process of interaction between story and audience.43 This harkens back to Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, mentioned earlier in this chapter, in which he argues that identity is shaped through the audience’s engagement with the narrative in a threefold process. First, prefiguration refers to the preunderstanding the audience brings to the text and thus corresponds to the audience’s social memory. Second, configuration refers to both the author’s construction of the text (using various components of narrative theory) and the audience’s interaction with the text. This Hochman, Character, 59. David Rhoads, ‘Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies – Part I’, BTB 36 (2006); David Rhoads, ‘Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies – Part II’, BTB 36, no. 4 (2006). 42 Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 107, italics original. 43 Iser, Reading, 152. 40 41

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portion of the process may involve contesting memories and evaluating new information. Third, refiguration refers to the fusion of the audience’s previous social memory and identity with the information presented in the configuration process. Thus, narrative identity is constructed, and reconstructed, during the interaction between the audience, whose present identity has been constructed by its social memory, and the text, which reinforces previous identity and memory or seeks to counter and reform identity and memory. Returning to the role of memory in social identity formation, a quotation from Cinnirella earlier in this chapter warrants repeating: ‘[s]ocial groups will create shared life stories or narratives of the group which tie past, present and predicted futures into a coherent representation’.44 Kirkman notes the importance of cultural memory in the construction of narrative identity: It is the continuity of memory which contributes to the certainty of one’s self, even though that self can exist only in relation to others. The continuity of memory operates through narrative to construct a coherent identity, appropriating the past and anticipating the future.45

Kirkman continues: ‘narrative identity is developed in interaction with its social and cultural contexts.’46 Thus, identity can be formed in the same manner in which readers come to know characters in literature: by interaction with the narrative in combination with cultural memory, that is, their own experience and knowledge. Similarly, Liu and László note the identity-forming function of narrative, arguing that social representations of history are ‘stories of events with a temporal structure that can be related thematically from a particular point of view’ and thus should be ‘approached as narratives’. Consequently, ‘[i]n the case of historical narratives, these stories reflect group identity on the one hand, and connect individuals to the group on the other’ and may be revised according to the identity needs of the group.47 Liu and László then isolate two Cinnirella, ‘Exploring’, 235. Maggie Kirkman, ‘What’s the Plot? Applying Narrative Theory to Research in Psychology’, Australian Psychologist 37, no. 1 (2002): 32; Kirkman is summarizing the argument of S. Crites, ‘Storytime: Recollecting the Past and Projecting the Future’, in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, ed. Theodore R. Sarbin (New York: Praeger, 1986). 46 Kirkman, ‘Plot’, 32. 47 James H. Liu and Janos László, ‘Narrative Theory of History and Identity: Social Identity, Social Representations, Society and the Individual’, in Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process, and Power, Gail Moloney and Iain Walker (eds) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 95. 44 45

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key priorities of narrative, narrative perspective and the ability to generate empathy, to help understand the relationship between the recipients of the narrative and the culture that generated the narrative. Narrative perspective is viewed as a ‘relational concept between the producer and the recipient of narrative’ that ‘establishes a surface structure empathy hierarchy that influences how the reader or listener constructs the meaning of the narrated event and opens the way for participatory affective responses’.48 Thus, these narratives invite participation from the audience by attempting to create empathy for the characters, which was an important function of character for Aristotle. The hope is that ‘[t]he reader, viewer, or listener … participates vicariously in the narrative to the extent that he [sic] shows empathy for the point of view expressed and the characters and situations depicted’.49 In this way, ‘narrative connects individuals to a collective through symbols, knowledge and meaning’.50 This collective memory ‘goes back to the supposed origins of the group’ and ‘objectifies memories that have proven to be important to the group, encodes these memories into stories, preserves them as public narratives, and makes it possible for new members to share group history’.51 The identity of a group is grounded the group’s social memory and may include shared formative narratives, beliefs and practices; these are often embodied in a prototype from the past. The memory of this prototype becomes the chief character in the group’s formative narrative history and personifies the shared identity of that group. As new situations emerge, the group may remember/reinterpret the prototype in a new light in order to address the new context.

The Narrative-Identity model The Narrative-Identity model builds upon the narrative identity framework of Ricoeur by incorporating the insights of social identity and social memory theorists along with a focus on character and plot from narrative theory. 50 51 48 49

Liu and László, ‘Narrative Theory’, 96 emphasis original. Liu and László, ‘Narrative Theory’, 98. Liu and László, ‘Narrative Theory’, 87. Liu and László, ‘Narrative Theory’, 88.

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As a heuristic framework, the Narrative-Identity model is intended to help interpreters better understand the identity-forming capacity and identityforming process of texts. Moreover, the Narrative-Identity model focuses on the identity-forming work of the group’s narrative, particularly the prototypes from the past that serve as major characters in the group’s formative narrative, and on the process of recategorization in which prototypical ingroup members are reinterpreted by their presentation in the narrative to help construct a common superordinate identity while allowing subgroups to maintain salient ingroup features. Briefly recalling Ricoeur’s threefold process in relation to social identity and social memory will help prepare for the explicit presentation of the model. Ricoeur’s first stage of prefiguration refers to the preunderstanding the audience brings to the text and thus corresponds to the audience’s social memory, which includes prototypical figures from the past that embody the group’s identity. The second stage, configuration, refers to both the author’s construction of the text and the audience’s interaction with the text and involves either affirming or contesting memories and identities by evaluating new information. The third stage, refiguration, refers to the fusion of the audience’s previous social memory and identity with the information presented during the configuration process. Thus, narrative identity is constructed, and reconstructed, during the interaction between the audience, whose present identity has been constructed by its social memory, and the text, which reinforces previous identity and memory or seeks to counter and reform identity and memory. (Granted, this is not an automatic process. Some audience members may become ‘resisting readers’ who refuse to interact with the narrative in such a transformative way. In spite of these potential resisting persons, the narrative, and thus the implied author, aims for interaction that will result in transformation.)52 We may now elaborate upon each of these stages as they relate to the Narrative-Identity model. The prefiguration stage refers to the social identity and memories already constructed by the audience. This stage also includes all the information and experiences of the audience and, therefore, focuses on the historical and

On this see Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).

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cultural knowledge and experiences of those who lived during the time of the text’s writing. Also included in this preunderstanding is knowledge of the historical and cultural knowledge of the time narrated in the text if it is different from the time and place of composition. For early Christian writings, this stage addresses facets commonly associated with historical criticism and adds newer facets by elaborating upon social and cultural factors. The configuration stage focuses on the text itself and the way the author constructed, and how the audience interacts with, the narrative. The refiguration stage refers to the fusing of previous memories and identities with the information gained from the narrative in the configuration stage. This fusion may result in reformed group memories and a reformed group identity or the reaffirmation of previous memories and identities. This narrative-identity forming process should not be understood, however, as a linear process. Rather, these three stages continuously interact as the audience interacts with the narrative. Since the narrative world of the text is embedded in the historical/cultural world in which the text was written and received, attention to historical and cultural context (prefiguration stage) is an important part of this approach. Traditional historical-critical and the more recent social-scientific criticism (including both social history and the use of social scientific models) are particularly helpful at this stage. Within the world of the text, the implied author constructs the narrative by use of plot, setting, characters, etc.; thus, narrative theory is useful in examining the structure and function of the narrative components including plot, setting, narrator, characters, etc. (configuration stage). Likewise, the authorial audience engages the text in a reciprocal process in which the audience reads/hears the narrative and makes certain judgements which may then be refined as the audience continues along in the narrative (configuration and refiguration stages); audience-oriented and social identity/memory approaches are helpful here to understand better the process of interaction and identity formation. Together, this methodological mix of social identity, social memory and narrative theories can help students and scholars analyse the identity-forming function of early Christian narratives.

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Nodes of Objective Socialization and Subjective Reflection in Identity: Galatian Identity in an Imperial Context Robert L. Brawley An oft-repeated category mistake is to consider circumcision in Galatians as a sine qua non for salvation rather than for identity. Paul’s caveat that circumcision incurs obligations of the entire law (Gal. 5.3) and his charge that those who influence the Galatians to be circumcised do not keep the law (6.13)1 indicate that the identity at issue has to do with only some aspects of Torah. Shifting from salvation to identity, however, does not make identity less momentous, because identity is a sine qua non for persons to have a sense of self. Lost identity means a catastrophic rupture between self and community. As a source for meaning that gives group members purpose and motivates behaviour, social identity even trumps individual esteem and is therefore all the more important for people who count the least in the social order2 (e.g. Ioudaioi and Galatai)3.

Methodology Among eclectic methods in this essay, two stand out. One is identity theory – social, feminist, philosophical; the other is locating the development of This does not indicate that these influencers are not Jewish, since Paul’s position is that Israel’s problem is keeping the law corporately.   2 John C. Turner, ‘Some Current Issues in Research on Social Identity and Self-Categorization Theories’, in Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content, Naomi Ellemers, Russell Spears, and Bertjan Doosje (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 24; Jean-Claude Kaufmann, L’invention de soi: Une théorie de l’identité (Paris: Colin, 2004), 79, 90, 102, 118.   3 Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 2, 31–2, and passim.   1

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Israelite identity markers in imperial contexts. The plural ‘contexts’ indicates, on the one hand, the specific imperial context for Galatians. On the other, it points to historical developments for at least two centuries of Israelite struggles for identity under imperialism, especially for the light this sheds on Paul’s singular references to Ἰουδαϊσμός in 1.13–14. Postcolonialism is pertinent for both identity theory and imperialism, especially for its critique of essentialism and its perspective on the relationship between the social centre and margins. Further, Paul’s arguments in Galatians 3–4 involve allusions to Israel’s scripture that prompt the use of intertextuality. Popular notions often reduce intertextuality to the recognition of a precursor text that appears in a successor text. But the method employed here capitalizes on figurations that the interplay between the two generates. Moreover, the intertextuality in these arguments also involves enthymemic rhetoric, that is, arguments that resemble logical syllogisms but characteristically omit either a premise or a conclusion. Hearers supply such premises or conclusions because they are cultural commonplaces so current that they need not be stated.

Theories of identity Social identity theory Social and individual identity are inseparable:4 ‘Social identity theory is the theory of the dynamic and generative interdependence of self-concept and intergroup relations’, which produces a consciousness of self in both individual and collective life.5 This reciprocity obviously means that community and self are interrelated poles. Focusing on community underscores the impact of society on behaviour. And yet such matters as discipline and imprisonment make it obvious that individuals violate social norms. Conversely, focusing on the self emphasizes personal hierarchies of values. But individuals also violate Dominic Abrams, ‘Social Identity, Social Cognition, and the Self: The Flexibility and Stability of Self-Categorization’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 205–6.   5 Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, ‘Social Identity and Social Cognition: Historical Background and Current Trends’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 6; Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1999), 130.

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priorities of their values, do what they consider trivial, and neglect what they consider important.6 In any case, two poles are in interplay: society forms persons; persons form society. Jean-Claude Kaufmann envisions the relationship between these poles as a double helix. The nodes paired with each other along the borders of the helix are (1) external, objective socialization and (2) personal, subjective reflection. Personal reflection means considering potential functions in society among possibilities provided by socialization. Moreover, the helix constantly spirals on. That is, identity constantly progresses by continual reflection on roles that one may play in order to maintain identity among the perils of losing it.7 Many social anthropologists maintain that identity in antiquity was dominated by communal socialization. Identity was dyadic rather than individualistic and was stable because social norms restricted identity.8 Obviously, individuality existed, but it reflected definition by social groups. Social determinants trumped individual freedom, relationships with others dominated interiority, external categorization superseded subjectivity. Importantly, however, identity is not merely conceptual but also behavioural. ‘Who am I?’ also means ‘What do I do?’ Therefore, dyadic personalities predictably exhibited group norms. Accordingly, Kaufmann asserts that the modern ‘self ’ unfettered by social norms was a post-Enlightenment phenomenon that emerged when developing nation-states overrode local communities. This enabled individuals not only to dream about realities different from what circumstance assigned them but also to follow at least some of their dreams. Paradoxically, the dissolution of communities came not from relaxing social control but accentuating it. When the nation-state overshadowed local communities, local cultures lost

Sheldon Stryker and Richard T. Serpe, ‘Identity Salience and Psychological Centrality: Equivalent, Overlapping, or Complementary Concepts?’, Social Psychology Quarterly 57, no. 1 (1994): 17; Sheldon Stryker and Peter J. Burke, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory’, Social Psychology Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2000): 284–8; Kaufmann, L’invention, 44.   7 Kaufmann, L’invention, 7–8, 80.   8 Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, ‘First-Century Personality: Dyadic, Not Individual’, in The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, ed. Jerome H. Neyrey (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 67–96. Not only do I wish to challenge the notion of the unlikelihood of changing social roles but also to avoid this supposedly sophisticated ‘orientalism’ of viewing the ancient Mediterranean world as exotic but unsophisticated. See R. S. Sugirtharajah, Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: History, Method, Practice (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 44–5.   6

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power to assign social roles, and new roles emerged in imagination and aspirations.9 For Kaufmann, dreams of changing identity, which he labels petits cinémas (as it were, mental ‘videos’ [my adaptation] of playing new roles in society), existed in antiquity just as in our era. But only with the Enlightenment was it possible to adopt them. However, Kaufmann also maintains that new identities require disrupting social constructs of reality, and the Enlightenment introduced a new era for identity because it disrupted constructs of reality based on social consensus.10 Reversals, loss and violence may disrupt constructs of reality. To illustrate, the Holocaust has changed both Jewish and Christian identity. Deep tragedy disturbs so that it is impossible to view reality the same as before. On the other hand, unexpected beneficence also disrupts constructs of reality.11 The Japanese tsunami of 2011 had an impact on both Chinese and Japanese – historically mutually distrustful – and Chinese relief efforts reoriented both. Here it is opportune to pose the question: did the Galatians experience arresting tribulation or dramatic beneficence so as to transform constructs of their roles in community? For social identity theory, identity varies according to context. Identity is multifaceted because people belong to various groups – ethnic, religious, social, geographical, political – and play multiple roles – child, parent, spouse, vocation, citizen, position.12 It also varies because as contexts change, different roles become salient over others.13 Some theorists attempt to rank salience in terms of the importance of roles. At best, this holds only partially, because in particular circumstances what is highest in a personal hierarchy may be suppressed. Desmond Tutu gained fame as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and openly presented himself as Kaufmann, L’invention, 60. Following Thomas Kuhn, Terence Donaldson expresses a similar notion in terms of anomalies disrupting established paradigms; Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 43–6.  11 Kaufmann, L’invention, 181–8.  12 Stryker and Serpe, ‘Identity Salience’, 17; Stryker and Burke, ‘Past, Present, and Future’, 284.  13 Jean-Claude Deschamp and W. Doise, ‘Crossed Category Memberships in Intergroup Relations’, in Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (London: Academic Press, 1978), 144; Naomi Ellemers, Russell Spears, and Bertjan Doosje (eds), Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content (Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 24.   9  10

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an Anglican Archbishop. Much of the actual work of the Commission was carried out under Deputy Chair Alex Boraine. Because of the multi-religious context in South Africa, Boraine suppressed his role as the youngest Bishop ever of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. In spite of his hierarchy of values, he declined to play a social role in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a Christian.14

Feminism and postcolonialism This section does not attempt to give a thorough account of feminism or postcolonialism but appropriates their critiques of essentialism and the revaluation of the relationship of social margins with the hegemonic centre. Over against the Enlightenment’s advocacy of objectivity in relation to reality, Elizabeth Berg calls for ‘partiality’ – the antonym of impartiality, in the sense of preferences in relationships.15 This is an ideological stance that resists making universal claims for truth. Rather, it creates a subject position from which subaltern people speak for themselves, asserting their identity in relation to specific contexts. Iris Marion Young challenges the notion that social justice for marginalized populations means eradicating difference. This assimilates difference into sameness. She advocates rather a politics of difference that affirms and promotes difference.16 This is comparable to postcolonialism’s revaluation of the margin. Dominant culture lures the margin to mimic the centre with promises of a higher culture and power (eliminating difference).17 Failure to move toward the centre implies remaining unenlightened. But postcolonialism revalues the margin as a place for creative activity. This does not mean mere opposition to the dominant centre, in which case the margin is

Personal interview with Alex Boraine, 1998. Elizabeth Berg, ‘Iconoclastic Moments: Reading the Sonnets for Helene, Writing the Portugese Letters’, in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 213.  16 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 157.  17 Colonized people are socialized to accept domination, and expectation of achieving power is a strong determinative for acquiescence. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 20, 82.  14  15

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still defined by its negative relationship to the centre.18 Rather, the margin is a creative space from which to develop an alternative reality.19 Finally, both feminism and postcolonialism resist essentializing, as if gender and culture could be represented by a paradigmatic woman or culture (hence, the postcolonial critique of social anthropology). Rather, reality for both gender and culture is manifest in concrete cases.20 Though related to culture and socialization in a culture, identity remains quite particular, and to generalize gender or culture as one-size-fits-all commits the fallacy of essentializing.21 Ironically, this unveils a weakness in social identity theory inasmuch as this theory is built on general characteristics of roles people play in the social order.

Philosophies of identity Postmodernism challenged the very notion of identity from the perspective that the human mind selectively construes discrete experiences as if they formed a coherent whole. Identity then is an artificial construct.22 Furthermore, Friedrich Nietzsche analysed another division in identity on the basis of the will to power. He posited the will to power as authentic human identity, and because benevolence is contrary to the will to power, it denies true identity.23 As a response Paul Ricoeur posits meanings for identity between two poles, for which he uses ipse (‘itself ’) and idem (‘the same’). The latter leans toward In fact opposition defines both centre and margin by the other, Scott, Domination, 10–19. See Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah, ‘Introduction’, in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 2; Geoffrey Bennington, ‘Postal Politics and the Institution of the Nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1995), 121. M. Weber notes special skills and originality among the subdominant; Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 126. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson (eds), trans. Vern McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 2: ‘the most intense and productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries’.  20 See Nancy Miller, ‘Preface’, in The Poetics of Gender (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), xiii; Sugirtharajah, Exploring, 107–10.  21 Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994).  22 Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Seuil, 1979). He was anticipated by David Hume’s argument that humans are driven to construe discrete experiences as cohesive; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1969; reprint, 1748), 251–63.  23 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Die fröhliche Wissenschaft’, in Werke in Drei Bänden, ed. K. Schlecta (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1960), 2.210–12; Nietzsche, ‘Zur Genealogie der Moral’, 2.788–9.  18  19

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permanence, the former toward discrete incidents. But both dimensions are held together in one’s own narrative. Emplotting autobiographical experiences unifies a person as a character in the narrative.24 Even then identity remains problematic because of forgetting and falsifying, so that permanence (idem) is not permanent.25 Nevertheless, Charles Taylor advocates a unified identity encompassing past, present and future that for him, as for Ricoeur, takes the form of a narrative.26 Taylor’s proposal is part of a strong agreement among philosophers that in any case identity is developed in social networks. Even the language with which one’s narrative takes shape is integral to the communal framework in which one is socialized. Further, the plot of one’s story inevitably involves interaction with others. Indeed Heidegger, likewise, takes identity to be socially mediated.27 Thus Taylor argues convincingly that fragmentation and fallacies of memory notwithstanding, the construct that is manifested in narrative is a genuine reality upon which we bet our lives. This is a propitious place to introduce a primary thesis of this essay: Paul’s resistance to circumcision for Galatian Christ-followers is grounded in his view that identity markers feature only certain aspects of Israel’s redemptive history and thereby misrepresent it. A key indicator of this is Paul’s narrative about his role as one who was sent (Gal. 1.13–24). An implicit narrative about the Galatians’ experience of the Spirit supplements this, and a metanarrative about Abraham determines the significance of both.

Imperial contexts Imperialism makes it difficult to distinguish provincial peoples from the empire. Though seldom experiencing emperors directly, provincials were inevitably implicated in imperial systems. The systems flowed down from the Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 2, 115–24. Bakhtin emphasizes centrifugal forces that fragment and centripetal forces that unify; Wayne Booth, ‘Introduction’, in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, M. Bakhtin, Theory and History of Literature 8 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxi–xxii.  25 Ricoeur, Oneself, 140–3.  26 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 46–52.  27 Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 41.  24

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emperor through governors, client kings and local collaborators.28 With the exception of rebellious outlaws, provincials stood at some point on a spectrum from vanquished subjects to elite collaborators. Such a spectrum means that imperial agents, native collaborators and vanquished subjects were woven unevenly into the same fabric.

Imperialism and local control Brigitte Kahl provides a remarkably sweeping view of Celtic29 culture from loosely affiliated nomadic clans to their assimilation into imperial systems. Although the Galatians often negotiated for lands, from the Graeco-Roman viewpoint, their migratory patterns coincided with their independence and martial prowess. Romans stereotyped them as lawless, powerful and fearless, provoking fear with their lawless power.30 From imperial perspectives, the conquest and incorporation of the Galatians into imperial systems made them paradigmatic for pacification, indeed ‘salvation’ (from barbarity) by military force. Imperial conquests of them were interpreted as vindication against Galatian attacks on Delphi or Rome and thus were deemed sacred violence.31 Loosely organized Celtic tribes in Anatolia coalesced under a succession of indigenous monarchs, who were client kings responsible for local social order.32 The death of the last of these, Amyntas (25 bce), provided the occasion for Augustus to make Galatia a province under his legates.33 But this system still depended on indigenous collaborators who controlled local populations. Thus local collaborators were integral to Roman imperial strategy. This produced a social hierarchy that was partly indigenous and partly Roman,34 illustrated by many natives who held civil offices and also became Even Roman soldiers were seldom seen in Galatia; Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, The Celts and the Impact of Roman Rule 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 9, 69, 200.  29 Because of derivation from Latin and Greek, ‘Galatian’ is an equivalent of ‘Celtic’.  30 Kahl, Galatians, esp. 42–75. Mitchell, Anatolia, 7.  31 ‘Sacred’ violence also involved the amphitheatre and coliseum, and even human sacrifice; Kahl, Galatians, 54–7, 62–7, esp. 77–127, 149–50.  32 Rome relied on client kings, and if military was used, soldiers were ordinarily natives; Mitchell, Anatolia, 29, see 136–42.  33 Mitchell, Anatolia, 29, 31, 33, 61.  34 See Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), 15.  28

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priests in the imperial cult.35 At the other end of the spectrum, non-elites were conscripted into the Roman military.36 To use Homi Bhabha’s language, the resulting system was ‘less than one and double’.37 That is, under native collaborators, provincial systems were less than an autonomous nation, but collaborators who were accountable to imperial superiors meant that civil authority was doubled. Religious legitimation of imperialism in Galatia is easily documented. Without abandoning their traditional religion, the Galatians readily incorporated other local influences.38 Thus the imperial cult quickly made inroads among them. In the temple of Roma and Augustus in Ancyra, a list of twenty Galatian priests catalogues their civic benevolences that reinforced their place as elite collaborators in imperial administration.39 Moreover, Augustus’s Res Gestae, detailing his accomplishments and alleged beneficence, is engraved into the interior of the temple. The imperial cult was not merely the most prominent cult on its own but was syncretized with virtually all others. It not only coexisted with but dominated them. This is represented graphically in the Gemma Augustea, a cameo relief locating Augustus among traditional deities (figure 1 below). In the upper tier divine Oikoumene places a corona civica on Augustus’s head, thus designating him saviour of the Romans. His place on the upper level associates him exclusively with deities including Roma, Victoria and Neptune, and Jupiter’s eagle is under his feet. The lower tier likely depicts some vanquished Galatians.40 Coins that feature Augustus on one side and traditional deities on the other further document the co-opting of other cults.41 Kahl perceptively identifies Paul’s primary target not as the empire as such but as the determination of the Other by imperial ideology. This ideology Kahl, Galatians, 238–41. Mitchell, Anatolia, 74–8; Kahl, Galatians, 175–8.  37 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994 [2010 edition]), 139, 171.  38 Mitchell, Anatolia, 58.  39 Mitchell, Anatolia, 107–17. On benevolent imperialism see David Braund, ‘Cohors: The Governor and His Entourage in the Self-Image of the Roman Republic’, in Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, Ray Laurence and Joanne Berry (eds) (London: Routledge, 1998), 10.  40 Image available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gemma_Augustea_KHM_2010.jpg [accessed June 16, 2011]. See Kahl, Galatians, 128, 144.  41 Mitchell, Anatolia, 114–15, presents a photo of a Pergamum coin featuring Zeus on one side and Augustus with Roma on the other. Another coin shows Augustus on the recto and Cybele on the verso; Justin K. Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult: A Critical Analysis of the First-Century Social Context of Paul’s Letter, WUNT 237 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 70.  35  36

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was played out in Rome’s strategy of reinstating local rulers over conquered peoples. To position ethnic groups under separate indigenous collaborators effectively kept ethnic groups apart, which Kahl calls the law of dividing and conquering.42 Part of the problem in Galatia concerning the association of ἔθνη with Ioudaioi perhaps involved the claim to be exempt from the emperor cult. Indeed an imperial decree granting Ioudaioi the right to worship according to ancestral traditions was inscribed in the temple of the imperial cult in Ancyra (Josephus, Ant., 14.185–267; 16.162–5). Although direct exception from the emperor cult goes unstated, many interpreters assume that for Ioudaioi, because worshipping according to ancestral traditions would have included monotheism, this would have constituted exemption from the emperor cult. In any case, in Rome’s world of conquering by dividing, the Galatians crossed ethnic boundaries in the name of Israel’s one God rather than maintain separate ethnic identities in the name of Rome’s universal father, Caesar.43 According to Kahl, in this setting Paul opposed the accommodation of the Galatians to Rome’s terms by becoming proselytes because it identified them not with Israel’s redemptive history but reinscribed imperial dominance over the inferior Other. Whether by resistance or accommodation, Israel was defined in imperial terms.44 The ‘law’ in this case was not Israel’s law as such but Israel’s law as defined and determined by Roman law,45 and the ideology was the dominant Roman Self over the inferior vanquished Other. In this sense Kahl understands that the Galatians were in jeopardy of returning to enslavement to beings who by nature are not gods, that is, imperial rulers. Additionally, the problem of days, months, seasons and years was associated with imperial festivals (Gal. 4.8–10).46 Paul thus opposed the Galatians’ accommodation to Rome’s terms by becoming proselytes because Kahl, Galatians, 21–4, 39, 221–2. Dividing and conquering is another case of imperial systems producing ‘less than one and double’ (see n. 37 above). Imperialism attempts at one time to unify the world and to partition it (see Ahmad, In Theory, 45).  43 Kahl, Galatians, 21, 219–22; Mark D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 93, 268.  44 See a similar point above from a postcolonial perspective concerning resistance to defining the margin by the alleged centre, nn. 18–19 above.  45 Kahl, Galatians, 6–10.  46 Note the celebration of the New Year on Augustus’s birthday, and months and days assuming imperial names (Mitchell, Anatolia, 100, 113). See Troy Martin, ‘Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy’, JBL 114, no. 3 (1995): 437–61; Kahl, Galatians, 220–1, 225; Nanos, Irony, 267.  42

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it did not usher them into Israel’s redemptive history but reinscribed imperial dominance over inferior peoples. In contrast, Paul’s ‘faith working through love’ (5.14) shattered the binary opposition of superior and inferior.47 As a parallel, consider that whatever else Paul may have meant in 1 Cor. 7.21–2, slaves, even if they remain slaves, are not defined by masters either by resistance or submission.48 In my judgement, however, Kahl ultimately neglects her own caveat that imperialism is pervasive. At one point this is her primary focus, but she shifts the problem entirely to Roman ideology rather than include Paul’s critique of his own culture as a distortion of Israel’s heritage under imperial pressures. Emphatically, this cannot be equated with a ‘Christian’ critique of ‘Judaism’ as in later history. The distinction above between identity and salvation sheds light on this issue. Confusing cultural markers, indispensable for identity, with Israel’s redemptive history with respect to the ἔθνη misrepresents it. Features of identity are also unevenly shaped by imperial dominance – including Hellenism, as we shall see – especially in resistance to such domination. Thus, Paul takes pains to persuade the Galatians with respect to their relationship to Abraham, to Christ, and to God beyond the boundaries between Israel and the ἔθνη. Moreover, incentives to proselytize implicate negative evaluations of the ἔθνη – to be remedied by changing groups.49 In short Paul eschews the politics of polarity, whether it is manifested in Rome or in ecclesiai.

Social identity in Galatians Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr’s commendable study of Paul’s identity emphasizes only two dimensions: ethnicity and ministry.50 Granted, Niebuhr attends to Paul’s membership in groups such as the Pharisees or his family but in order

Kahl, Galatians, 21, 219–22. Bhabha attempts to rescue culture from the binary oppositions of periphery and centre, e.g. the case of the ‘unmastered slave’ (Location, xi, 5, 187). Similarly William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 64.  49 Henri Tajfel, ‘The Achievement of Group Differentiation’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel (London: Academic Press, 1978), 87–8.  50 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1992).  47  48

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to emphasize the centrality of his ethnicity.51 As noted above, social identity theory recognizes that identity operates at multiple levels with respect to belonging to distinct groups. Not all group identities, however, are salient in a given context and may even be in competition and conflict. To illustrate, Gal. 3.28 mentions social identities that are conspicuous for the Galatians, but when ‘in Christ’ identity is salient, Ioudaioi/Greek, slave/free, male/female are not. Social identity theory illumines how the Galatians relate to one another in connection with belonging to groups.52 If the interdependent nodes of selfconcept and intergroup relations generate images of the self in both individual and communal life,53 the distinction between an ancient dyadic personality and Kaufmann’s post-Enlightenment ‘self ’ hinges on the relative dominance of social determinants and individual freedom. Determinants and freedom are not independent but intermingle in constructs of identity. One does not exist without the other.54 Kaufmann’s petits cinémas (‘videos’) have the character of miniature theatrical performances, particularly in narrative form. To reiterate, when humans author stories in which they play social roles, their narratives flesh out identity. Thus, fragmentation is not the end of the self, but the condition under which humans construe the self. A. J. Greimas and Josef Cortés define the initiation of narrative as a predicament in which an actant is conjoined with an undesirable object or separated from a desired object.55 Thus suffering or impediments are at the heart of narratives.56

Videos The initial video in Galatians is Paul’s narrative about himself. He appears in the subject position narrating his role as an actor who has been sent. Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 100–7. Abrams, ‘Social Identity’, 197.  53 See n. 4 above.  54 Kaufmann, L’invention, 48–50. On the wordplay ‘one does not exist without the other’ see Ricoeur, Oneself.  55 Algirdas J. Greimas and Joseph Courtés, ‘Narrative Schema’, in Semiotics and Language an Analytical Dictionary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 203–6.  56 So Ricoeur, Oneself, 144–5 and passim.  51  52

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Galatians 1.1 introduces his story elliptically, to be elaborated later. From the first his identity is constituted by his experience of another – Israel’s God, who raised Christ from the dead. Paul’s role is that he is sent by these two agents.57 Though his experience is subjective, he determines his identity by something prior to himself and also to other apostles, whom he mentions but for whom he disclaims primacy over himself.58 This priority of Christ and God holds also for Paul’s readers in the form of the gifts of grace and peace (1.3), which he also elaborates later (3.2–5).

A disruptive video Before returning to his own narrative, Paul screens a video that disrupts his construct of reality, and he presents it also in order to disrupt Galatian constructs.59 It is a video of a change that he dramatizes as apostasy. In spite of obvious strained relationships with the addressees, the interchange between Paul in the first person and the Galatians in the second favours an I-Thou relationship. This contrasts dramatically with ‘some’ in the third person who proclaim another gospel.60 J. Louis Martyn presumes that Paul expects these ‘influencers’ to overhear the epistle,61 but as far as the communication itself is concerned they are agonistically outsiders. The addressees are the subjects of the apostasy, but it rests on the shoulders of those who proclaim ‘another’ gospel (1.6–7). I find Jae Won Lee’s interpretation of the other gospel persuasive. She reads 1.6–7 according to its most obvious meaning and associates it with 2.7. There Paul says that he was entrusted with the gospel τῆς ἀκροβυστίας and See Ricoeur’s closely related categories of speaking and acting as constitutive for identity (Oneself, 17). See Ricoeur’s comments on the function of the Cartesian cogito ergo sum (Oneself, 8–10). Ricoeur depending on Spinoza notes that the very attempt to verify reality is prior to Descartes’s ‘great deception’ experiment (Oneself, 315–17). Paul employs a similar type of circular argument in Gal. 4.5–7, see below.  59 Nanos suggests that ironic rebuke ‘freezes the scene’ for the Galatians (Irony, 1). I suggest that it is dynamically disruptive.  60 Nils Dahl notes that the ‘ironic rebuke’ associated with θαυμάζω (1.6) appears as ‘an indirect expression of affection and concern’ when relationships between sender and receiver are positive; Nils Dahl, ‘Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: Epistolary Genre, Content, and Structure’, in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 119, 129.  61 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 118.  57

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Peter with the gospel τῆς περιτομῆς. Thus, he declares in 1.6–7 that there is another gospel (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον) that is ‘not other’ (οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο).62 The exception implied by εἰ μή in 1.7 is taken not with the influencers’ gospel as such, but with their troubling of the Galatians with a gospel that is contextually inappropriate. Mutatis mutandis, Paul Ricoeur’s distinction between idem and ipse in personal identity helps to explicate the other gospel that is not other. Idem emphasizes permanence whereas ipse is contingent upon the context.63 The gospel τῆς ἀκροβυστίας and the gospel τῆς περιτομῆς are idem. But contingencies mean that contextually each is also ipsum. Moreover, Paul equates confusing the two with apostasy by twice pronouncing anathema on those who insist on idem when only ipsum is warranted. The other gospel hardly represents the polarity that is conventionally assumed. Rather, 2.7 demonstrates contextually appropriate complementarity.

Continuing Paul’s narrative In Gal. 1.11–24 Paul extends the narrative of his role as ἀπόστολος. Less explicitly, he implies an earlier role when he was an agent of disaster: He was persecuting God’s ecclesia. What was the source of this disaster? Niebuhr persuasively interprets Paul’s zeal for ancestral traditions as ardour for features of identity that developed in the Maccabaean crisis under Hellenistic imperialism. When Antiochus IV punitively attacked his own stereotypes of Israel’s identity – the temple, circumcision, and food restrictions – resistance magnified these very features as quintessential marks of fidelity to Ἰουδαϊσμός.64 As resistance, zeal for these traditions is vigorously anti-imperialistic. But little resembling major aspects of Israel’s redemptive history enters this picture, not

Jae Won Lee, ‘Justification of Difference’, in Character Ethics and the New Testament Moral Dimensions of Scripture, ed. Robert L. Brawley (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 194–5. Martyn notes the relationship between 1.6–7 and the two gospels in 2.7 but comments only that it is a significant problem (Galatians, 110). H. Betz appeals to Burton for relating ὅ to ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον rather than to εὐαγγέλιον alone or to the ὅτι clause; Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 48 n. 60. This is hardly satisfactory in that, as is ordinarily the case, οὐ negates the word before which it stands (ἐστίν) rather than ἄλλο. Further the case in BDF 306 (4), to which Betz appeals, has to do with ἄλλο introducing εἰ μή. Campbell speaks of two parallel missions (Paul, 39–40).  63 Ricoeur, Oneself, 2 and passim.  64 Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 21–3. Niebuhr demonstrates that in the lxx Ἰουδαϊσμός means devotion to the temple, people, and Jerusalem reflected especially in circumcision and food laws.  62

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to mention the Shema.65 This does not imply that circumcision, food restrictions, temple and Sabbath are unimportant. Indeed, they play enormous roles in the social identity of Ioudaioi. To give them up threatens identity itself. Paul even states that if abandoning such things is not ἐκ πίστεως, it is sin (Rom. 14.20–3). But important as they are, they hardly encompass Israel’s redemptive history. Rather, certain features were intensified over others under imperial pressures,66 and this intensification produced a colonial alienation of Israel from its own redemptive history. This again is ‘less than one and double’. Features such as circumcision could only be synecdochal, but they were intensified as essences. For the Galatians to be circumcised would be a misstep, because what would thereby be inscribed as Israelite heritage would speak less than and more than the whole truth.67 Homi Bhabha describes phenomena such as Ἰουδαϊσμός as hybridity. Contrary to popular conceptions, he does not mean only a merger of native and imperial practices, such as the Galatians adopting Greek under Hellenism while maintaining their Celtic language.68 Rather, hybridity happens in the space between native culture and imperial dominance. It is shaped by heightened resistance, as in the case of the hyperbolic implementation of identity markers in Ἰουδαϊσμός, but also by accommodation and collaboration, as in Paul’s pragmatism toward ruling powers in Rom. 13.1–7. Significantly for what follows, hybridity is not resolved either by a return to nativism – the effects of imperialism cannot be undone – or by capitulation, in which case even colonial identity is swallowed up.69 For Paul the persecutor, however, in what way did some Ioudaioi who believed that Jesus was God’s messiah threaten Ἰουδαϊσμός? Daniel Boyarin’s assertion that Paul critiqued his culture, and that his reforms grew out of that culture, is persuasive. But I hastily dissent from his judgement that Paul wished to eradicate cultural specificities by equating equality with sameness.70 Among On the centrality of monotheism for Paul see Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 179–207; Campbell, Paul, 55–6.  66 Nanos (Irony, 89) notes that circumcision attained additional significance due to Hellenistic encroachment. His reference to ‘other communal symbols’ (99) also indicates that circumcision and similar symbols are synecdochal and hardly exhaustive.  67 See Bhabha, Location, 197.  68 Mitchell, Anatolia, 50.  69 Bhabha, Location, 3–5, 37, 41, 58, 162–4.  70 Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 2–3, 6–7. See Young, Justice (n. 16 above).  65

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other evidence, my dissent rests on the two contextual renditions of the gospel. They are distinct (ἕτερον) but not different (ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο) (2.7–8). I also agree with Boyarin that the crisis Paul faced in his culture entailed conflict between particularity and universality.71 But a dimension that needs to be added is the context of Roman imperial systems. In this context Paul was once a social control agent attempting to compel other Ioudaioi to maintain identity (1.13) under pressures of imperialism – systems that included Roman agents, client kings, and ruling elite collaborators from among the Ioudaioi. As Josephus indicates, the latter were especially the high priestly party (Ant. 20.251). If Paul’s Ἰουδαϊσμός is analogous to the Maccabaean crisis, if messianist Ioudaioi were Torah observant, and if Paul’s persecution occurred before ἔθνη entered the ecclesia, thinking that his persecution had anything to do with circumcision, food laws or the Sabbath strains reasons.72 But if elite Ioudaioi collaborators within imperial systems were involved in Jesus’ crucifixion as well as in resistance to the early Jerusalem ecclesia (as in Acts), the probability is strong that messianic Ioudaioi were at odds with ruling elites centred in the temple. This would set the scene for Paul the persecutor to undertake synagogue discipline to coerce fidelity to the temple as essential for the identity of Ioudaioi.73 An analogy to Paul’s zeal as a persecutor is evident also in the Antioch incident in 2.11–14. Elaborating the suggestion of differentiating ‘some from James’s from ‘some of the circumcision’ (2.12)74 and emphasizing the Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 52–3 Paula Fredriksen views early messianist Ioudaioi as Torah observant and therefore surmises that ἔθνη indeed had entered the ecclesia. Noting speculation, she suggests that the presence of ἔθνη threatened relationships of Ioudaioi with the imperial government in Damascus; Paula Fredriksen, ‘Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2’, in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 251–5. To my knowledge, the only evidence in Paul supporting Damascus as the place of his persecution is the note that he ‘returned to Damascus’ (Gal. 1.17). References to his persecution are elliptic and provide no evidence for the location or presence of ἔθνη as the cause for his persecution.  73 Note the severe crisis that the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple were for Ioudaioi, necessitating new interpretations – for the Rabbis the study of Torah replaced the Temple.  74 Craig C. Hill, Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 128. Mark Nanos identifies οἱ ἐκ τῆς περιτομῆς as those ‘for’ circumcision, namely the circumcision of ἔθνη, and raises the possibility that they are a separate non-Christ-believing group; Mark D. Nanos, ‘What Was at Stake in Peter’s “Eating with Gentiles” at Antioch?’, in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 289–92. Troy Martin identifies them as ‘those who practice the distinctions of circumcision’; Martin, ‘Apostasy’, 85–6; similarly Robert Jewett, ‘The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation’, in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 340–2.  71  72

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socio-political environment of Palestine in the 40s and 50s, Seon Yong Kim proposes that ‘some of the circumcision’ reflect a reaction of ardent Ioudaioi under imperial systems.75 Indeed, James Dunn characterizes the sociohistorical situation of Ioudaioi by such incidents as Caligula’s intention to install his statue in the temple, Cuspius Fadus’s aborted attempt to control the vestments of the high priest (Josephus, Ant., 15.403), his massacre of Theudas and his followers (Ant., 20.98), his command to crucify James and Simon, sons of Judas the Galilean (Ant., 20.102), and violent tumults under Cumanus (Ant., 20.105–17).76 With this distinction of two groups, ‘some from James’ bring information about ‘those of the circumcision’, who are analogous to Maccabaean social control agents. Under Roman imperialistic pressures, they emphasize identity markers to the extent of persecuting other Ioudaioi who are more lax than they about accepting ἔθνη as equals apart from requiring them to live Ἰουδαϊκῶς (2.14).77 Ancestral traditions appear in Paul’s video in a context in which his ardour surpasses that of his peers. This means that he and his peers represent a social identity from which he derived his behaviour as a persecutor. He construes his identity in what he calls Ἰουδαϊσμός as the primary factor in his persecution of what he later understood to be God’s ecclesia. In 1.13–15 Paul juxtaposes his zeal ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ with the revelation of God’s son to him. A crucial point, which to my knowledge has been overlooked, is that this juxtaposition implicates a socio-political significance for the resurrection of Christ. That is, the resurrection vindicates Jesus’ enterprise that occasioned his execution under imperial systems and brings into being a renewed community that is an alternative to imperial systems. Paul makes a comparison between the revelation of Christ and Ἰουδαϊσμός as something that disrupts his construct of reality and compels a new construct. Emphatically he does not dismiss his heritage, otherwise his argument would

Seon Yong Kim, ‘Be Consistent: Another Look at the Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2.11–14)’, unpublished work, 2003, 1–30.  76 James D. G. Dunn, ‘The Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2.11–18)’, in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 204–7; see Jewett, ‘Agitators’, 340.  77 Kim, ‘Be Consistent’. See Richard A. Horsley and Neil A. Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 121; Dunn, ‘Incident’, 211.  75

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be ineffective. Rather, he rearranges priorities because a surprising beneficence disrupts his construct of reality.78 The surprising beneficence is the revelation of God’s Son to him. Any Ioudaios of Paul’s time would know that numerous martyrs died for the sake of Israel. But among them was a Galilean whom Paul understood to have advocated communal restoration within the context of imperial systems according to divine promises,79 and whom God vindicated in Maccabaean fashion by raising him from the dead – an act of God as decisive for Paul as Israel’s heritage of creation (‘new creation’, 6.15), exodus, and restoration from captivity.80 Paul implicates not his heritage but his construct of identity within that heritage based on the social consensus of Ἰουδαϊσμός. He does not repudiate his culture but construes an augmented redemptive history for Israel and the ἔθνη.81 Paul’s abiding identity within his culture is subtly apparent from his geographical perspective in 1.12–22. Mark Nanos has noticed that Paul’s instinctive references to Jerusalem represent traditional views of Ioudaioi, who regarded it as the centre of the earth. Although in 1.17 he does not visit Jerusalem, it is still ‘up’. He goes ‘away’ into Arabia. Then he does ‘go up’ to Jerusalem in 1.18, and after 17 years he ‘goes up’ again to Jerusalem (2.1–2).82 Even when he denies the influence of personages in Jerusalem on his proclamation, Jerusalem is his point of reference. Nevertheless, Paul’s identity in relation to his heritage does change. Because of unexpected beneficence he reconstructs his identity from which he also See Nanos, Irony, 99–100. The gospel was nothing other than the explanation of biblical promises from the presuppositions of the work and message of Jesus; Ferdinand Hahn, Die Verwurzelung des Christentums im Judentum: exegetische Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1996), 5.  80 On ‘new creation’ as challenging imperialism see Kahl, Galatians, 21–5. Roy Ciampa notes correspondences in Galatians between the revelation of God’s Son and exodus and restoration; Roy E. Ciampa, The Presence and Function of Scripture in Galatians 1 and 2, WUNT 2.102 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 40, 46, 106, 206–9.  81 Because of varieties within Judaism, Boyarin states that ‘the denotation of “Israel” was up for grabs’ but takes Paul to be a ‘supersessionist’ because he advocates a new covenant (A Radical Jew, 104–5; see 202–6). As I emphasize below, Paul is a thorough advocate of the old (‘ancient’) Abrahamic covenant. Aside from the last supper tradition in 1 Cor. 11, 2 Cor. 3.6 is the only time Paul mentions a ‘new’ covenant, and as in the precursor text in Jer. 31.31–3, it means restoration rather than repudiation. See A. Andrew Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001), 86–94. Paul argues for an enfleshed living out of God’s covenant (Gal. 2.20) as he construes it, just as Boyarin posits an existing enfleshed community as he construes it.  82 Mark D. Nanos, ‘The Jerusalem Oriented Geopolitical Perspective of Paul’s Autobiographical Material in Gal. 1.17–2.12’, unpublished work, 1999.  78  79

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derives his behaviour. God set him apart, called him by grace, and revealed God’s Son to him. Thereafter, he no longer construed his identity in terms of the social consensus that he shared with peers. Rather, he identified himself as one sent by God, and the behaviour flowing from it was proclaiming the gospel ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν. Niebuhr asks appropriately how Paul’s account of his past relates to the Galatian addressees. Because they are not Ioudaioi, they can hardly identify with the ecclesia composed of Ioudaioi that Paul persecuted. But they can identify readily with the ecclesiai of Judea who glorified God because of his proclamation of the gospel (1.23–4).83 Niebuhr demonstrates additionally how Paul’s story locates him not on the margin as an extremist but at the centre of his heritage.84 This indicates Paul’s social identity of belonging. Thus, not only can the Galatians identify with Ioudaioi who glorified God, they can also identify with Paul in terms of how the experience of God’s beneficence changes identity. Paul turns to such a change in identity from the Galatians’ perspective in 3.2–5.

A Galatian narrative elaborated At 3.2 Paul prods his addressees to recall a video in which they are recipients of the Spirit. According to Paul’s presentation, they are the objects of the persuasion of ‘some’. An unexpressed given is that the Galatians are also the objects of imperial domination. But for Paul to be able to remind them of their experience, they necessarily had to be narrators of their own story. Here there is no recourse to an essentialist identity that can be reduced to general features. Rather their identity is dependent on their narrative of receiving the Spirit. Paul expects recalling the experience of the Spirit to bring to mind disruptions of their construal of reality and its new configuration. He initiates

Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 38–9. Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 25–56. Boyarin labels Paul a radical at odds with Israel’s heritage (A Radical Jew, 2). But he does so by comparing Paul’s hermeneutic as an individual Ioudaios with composite images of both Rabbinic and Hellenistic hermeneutics. In Paul’s self-understanding, his place ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ was at the apex of his heritage. See a similar critique of Betz, who compares Paul as an individual with composite understandings of Hellenism, in John M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 172.

 83  84

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the recall by the vocative Γαλάται in vernacular Greek, which implies hybridity between a purely ethnic identity and assimilation into imperial norms.85 Further, if they have allowed their construct of reality to be determined by ‘some’ who proclaim another gospel that is not other, then Paul imposes upon them an identity as ἀνόητοι – ‘uncivilized’, ‘uneducated’. If such were the case, they would be victims of an ironic deficiency in understanding.86 The irony is multiplied by Paul’s rhetorical accusation that they are bewitched,87 which contrasts sharply with receiving the Spirit. They would be operating at a level inferior to the construal of reality achieved by receiving the Spirit. Paul and the addressees know clearly what the experience of receiving the Spirit is. Is it possible for modern readers to know? First, Paul indicates that receiving the Spirit is not merely an internal perception but a word event (ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως). Second, there is little support for an ecstatic incident such as glossolalia. In contrast to experiences of ecstasy among only some believers, as in glossolalia, 3.2 presumes that all the addressees received the Spirit. Third, Paul returns to the experience of the Spirit in 4.4–7. Here it is an acclamation, presumably communal: ἀββα ὁ πατήρ. This acclamation attests that they are God’s children and simultaneously is an experience of the Spirit, neither of which has priority over the other. Appealing to God as a child to a parent is receiving the Spirit, or conversely receiving the Spirit is appealing to God as a child to a parent. Logically, the argument is circular, but experientially it identifies the Galatians as God’s children.

Paul’s Abrahamic metanarrative Inside literary brackets referring to the Spirit (3.2; 4.6) Paul relates a metanarrative about Abraham. Social identity theory anticipates that groups with On bilingualism in Galatia see Mitchell, Anatolia, 173–6. No evidence indicates that Celtic was ever written in Galatia (51). It is plausible that Paul’s reference to writing in large letters (6.11) may be for the benefit of readers who would be slow to recognize Greek letters. See Mitchell’s reference to crude Greek in rural inscriptions (193).  86 Dahl, ‘Paul’s Letter’, 123.  87 Susan Eastman astutely detects an intertextual echo in Paul’s use of ἐβάσκανεν in 3.1 of Deut. 28.53–7, which announces a curse and corresponds to the curse Paul mentions in 3.10; Susan Eastman, ‘The Evil Eye and the Curse of the Law: Galatians 3.1 Revisited’, JSNT 24, no. 1 (2001): 69–87. The evil eye also implies a deficiency in the Galatians’ view of reality (Nanos, Irony, 187).  85

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high levels of considering themselves unified will represent themselves by prototypes.88 Paul thinks of the Galatian ecclesiai not in terms of individual members (in contrast to 1 Cor. 12–14) but corporately and represents them with Abraham as their prototype. In this video they play the role of Abraham’s offspring. Abraham is first a prototype of those who have believed Paul’s gospel. Paul cites Gen. 15.6 virtually verbatim in Gal. 3.6: Ἀβραὰμ ἐπίστευσεν τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην. This is the basis for an intertextual enthymeme in which he omits the major premise. Allusive intertextuality expects readers to supply from their cultural repertoire what Michael Riffaterre calls the hypogram, that is, an unexpressed textual pattern of a precursor text underlying the successor text and in interplay with it.89 Here the hypogram includes not merely Abraham’s act of believing but also its content, namely, the promise of an heir and numerous offspring (Gen. 15.2–5). This major premise is an unexpressed presumption,90 and Paul gives only the minor premise and the conclusion. The latter names the Galatians descendants on the basis of the unexpressed major premise concerning promises made to Abraham. Thus, Abraham is not merely a prototype who believes God but who also receives divine promises. Ricoeur inquires perspicaciously: If one is not counting on another, is the other capable of fulfilling a promise?91 For Paul, Abraham counts on God as such another, and in Paul’s video on behalf of the Galatians, so do they. In addition to the pledge to Abraham of descendants, Paul explicitly includes God’s promise to bless πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (Gen. 18.18; see 12.3; 22.18; 26.4) and explains it as sharing a common heritage with Abraham. For the Galatians the repercussions are at least twofold. They are recipients of blessing through Abraham – manifested in part in receiving the Spirit (Gal. 3.14) – and they are Abraham’s descendants (3.7, 29). For this reason, when Paul refers a

S. Sherman, D. Hamilton, and A. Lewis, ‘Perceived Entitativity and the Social Identity Value of Group Membership’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 83.  89 Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 12–13 and passim. See Robert L. Brawley, Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 7 and passim.  90 On unexpressed premises see Aristotle, Rhet., 1.2.13; 2.22.3; 3.18.2, 4.  91 Ricoeur, Oneself, 341.  88

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bit later to the Abrahamic covenant, he speaks of the promises (plural, 3.16).92 Abraham is not merely a prototype for the Galatians. He is also their ancestor.

Kinship and citizenship Pamela Eisenbaum makes the intriguing claim that biology is not determinative for kinship – in fact all kinship is fictive – and she proposes that Paul understands Jesus’ death as a sacrifice (ubiquitous in antiquity) that incorporates offspring into a patrilinear family.93 That kinship is a fictive social construct is hardly problematic. But the difficulties for Eisenbaum’s thesis are weighty. (1) Paul seldom envisions Jesus’ crucifixion as a sacrifice, and when he does, it is never connected to kinship (in Rom. 3.25 ἱλαστήριον is likely a place [the mercy seat], not a sacrificial action;94 even if the blood of Jesus in 5.9 is sacrificial, it is associated with justice, not kinship; 8.3 has to do with the sending of God’s Son, not his death, and the kinship of adoption in 8.14–17 is associated rather with God’s Spirit; the sacrifice in 1 Cor. 5.7 is associated with Passover). (2) Paul views Jesus’ death as a scandal (1 Cor. 1.23; Gal. 5.11). (3) In Rom. 5.8 Christ’s death manifests God’s love. (4) Should not Eisenbaum’s pattern anticipate Abraham as the one who performs the sacrifice and not his offspring (σπέρμα, Gal. 3.16)? (5) Eisenbaum herself notes that Christ is God’s ‘Son’, which she attributes to pre-Pauline tradition. Jesus’ death, then, for her is God’s sacrifice, like the sacrifice of the first-born.95 But she fails to draw the conclusion that in the sacrificial schema Jesus would therefore need to be adopted as God’s son, but by whose sacrifice? (6) Paul repeatedly views Jesus’ death and resurrection as the manifestation of God’s power.96 Moreover, in spite of Eisenbaum’s observation that all kinship is fictive, it is not thereby divorced from genealogy. And ancient traditions make Abraham Campbell, Paul, 61–4. Campbell and I are in close agreement about Abrahamic promises, but whereas I see them as part of the Abrahamic covenant (Gal. 3.16–17), Campbell reserves ‘covenant’ for those who are of the circumcision (Genesis 17). Thus, he can speak of blessings for ἔθνη whereas for him the covenant is with Israel (136).  93 Pamela Eisenbaum, ‘A Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman: Jesus, Gentiles, and Genealogy in Romans’, JBL 123, no. 4 (2004): 671–92, 681.  94 Daniel P. Bailey, ‘Jesus as the Mercy Seat: The Semantics and Theology of Paul’s Use of Hilasterion in Romans 3:25’, TynBul 51, no. 1 (2000): 155–8.  95 Eisenbaum, ‘Remedy’, 701.  96 On sacrifice in Paul see Das, Paul, 123–44.  92

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the putative ancestor of the ἔθνη as well as of Israel. Eisenbaum cites the tradition in 1 Macc. 12.21 and Josephus, Ant., 12.226, that the people of Sparta and the Ioudaioi are both Abrahamic. But there are also traditions according to which Abraham, like Adam, was an ancestor of the entire world.97 In Genesis, Ishmael is Abraham’s son through whom divine promises to the ἔθνη also pertain, and though not in the covenant line through Isaac (17.21), he is circumcised as a sign of his participation in the Abrahamic blessings (12.3; 16.10; 17.4, 20; 21.13).98 This is part of an entire system in which the ἔθνη are offspring of Abraham apart from his circumcision and by virtue of no sacrifice.99 But again, the ἔθνη are also included in Abrahamic blessings by virtue of divine promises. Thus, I concur with Terence Donaldson that the oft-used motif of the eschatological pilgrimage of the ἔθνη is inadequate as an explanation for their inclusion.100 For Paul, the Abrahamic heritage depends on divine promises. Thus requiring ἔθνη to accept circumcision in order to enter Abraham’s family not only imposes hyperbolic identity markers of Ioudaioi on ἔθνη but also shortchanges them by advancing a truncated view of God’s promises to them in the Abrahamic heritage by which they are already included. This heritage from Abraham rests on deriving life ἐκ πίστεως, which in Gal. 3.9 is a way of life in common with Abraham who believed the God of promises. This is then expressly contrasted with those who derive life ἐξ ἔργων νόμου. In what does this contrast consist? Michael Bachmann and James Dunn 1 Enoch 90.33. Josephus, Ant., 12.225–6. In Ant., 1.220–1, Josephus derives Arabian tribes from Ishmael’s 12 sons, but in 1.225–6, he also derives colonies in Troglodytis and Libya from Abraham’s sons through Keturah. He also cites Polyhistor, who in turn is citing Cleodemus Malchus, to the effect that Abraham’s sons through Keturah were the eponymous ancestors of Asia and Africa. Unless Cleodemus is citing Jewish sources, this would attest Abraham’s Adamic ancestry outside of Israelite traditions. See Eusebius, who cites Polyhistor, citing Cleodemus and Demetrius and derives the Assyrians, Africans, Carthaginians, and Moses’ wife Zipporah from Abraham through Keturah (Praep. Ev., 9.20; 9:29.1–3). Josephus also derives the world population, including the Galatians, from Noah (Ant., 1.122–39). For Philo, Abraham is the progenitor of the Canaanites (Mos., 1.241–2).  98 Because of this, I judge Donaldson’s omission of ἔθνη as heirs of Abraham (Paul and the Gentiles, 98–100) to be erroneous. In extenso Thomas Naumann, Ismael: Theologische und erzählanalytische Studien zu einem biblischen Konzept der Selbstwahrnehmung Israels im Kreis der Völker aus der Nachkommenschaft Abrahams (Habilitationsschrift Universität Bern, 1996), esp. 40–4, 214–16.  99 After relating some traditions of Abraham as ancestor and prototype of gentiles (primarily the early Abraham), Campbell nevertheless identifies him as ‘first and foremost father of the Jewish people’ (Paul, 63). But as in the case of Ishmael, if ancestry exists, it cannot mean priority of one descendant over another. But see p. 113. 100 Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, esp. 166–9, 187–97 and passim.  97

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have challenged each other on the interpretation of works of law. Bachmann maintains that it is neither works nor law101 as such but the orientation toward the entire phrase – regulations of law (halakah). Dunn responds that in due time the precepts are to be performed, as in 3.12.102 Some mediation between the two is possible by distinguishing between metaethics and ethics. When the terms οἱ ἐκ πίστεως and οἱ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου identify people in the sense of the origin, motivation and power for behaviour or express how one lives in relation to God (3.16), the level is metaethical. On this level Bachmann is on target, but on the level of behaviour itself, so is Dunn.103 This fits especially with social identity theory in that identity is determined by such things as orientation toward norms, e.g. regulations of law, whereas behaviour also emanates from identity. What is crucial, however, is that in the context ἀλληγορούμενα in 4.24 means to ‘speak figuratively, metaphorically’ (LSJ), and its nuances here go beyond the conventional understanding of ‘allegory’ as the correspondence of an external schema with details of a text. A part of the figuration in 4.21–31 is the intertextual troping of Isaiah, not only with the explicit citation of Isa. 54.1, but with the larger context going back at least to ch. 45. There Isaiah introduces the images of father, mother and children, precisely in connection with the Abrahamic covenant (48.19; 49.8). By chs 50–1, there are two mothers, a hypothetical divorced one and Sarah, and two Jerusalems, desolate Zion in captivity and comforted Zion in restoration. Key evidence for implicating the larger Isaianic context in Galatians is the appearance of two Jerusalems in Gal. 4.25–6 before the quotation of Isa. 54.1. ‘Jerusalem now’ and ‘Jerusalem above’ in Galatians correspond to Jerusalem in captivity and Jerusalem in freedom in Isaiah and also reiterate the antithesis slavery/freedom.104

Note the difficulty in translating indicated by using negatives to say what ἔργα νόμου does not mean. 102 Michael Bachmann, Antijudaismus im Galaterbrief?: Exegetische Studien zu einem polemischen Schreiben und zur Theologie des Apostels Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Michael Bachmann, ‘Keil oder Mikroskop? Zum jüngeren Diskussion um den Ausdruck “Werke” des Gesetzes’, in Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive, ed. Michael Bachmann, WUNT 182 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); James D. G. Dunn, ‘Yet Once More – “the Works of the Law”: A Response’, JSNT 14 (1992): 99–117; James D. G. Dunn, ‘Noch Einmal “Works of the Law” – the Dialog Continues’, in Fair Play: Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen, Ismo Dunderberg, C. M. Tuckett, and Kari Syreeni (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 277, 281–2. 103 Robert L. Brawley, ‘Meta-Ethics and the Role of Works of Law in Galatians’, in Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive, ed. Michael Bachmann, WUNT 182 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 104 Robert L. Brawley, ‘Contextuality, Intertextuality, and the Hendiadic Relationship of Promise and Law in Galatians’, ZNW 93, no. 1–2 (2002): 99–119.

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Consequently, like Isaiah, Gal. 4.21–31 anticipates Jerusalem’s freedom rather than the commonly understood polemic against it.105 Crucially, Paul claims that (free) Jerusalem above is ‘our mother’ in the present tense (ἥτις ἐστὶν μήτηρ ἡμῶν, 4.26), that is, citizenship in Jerusalem above is not future but present. If Paul’s reference to the στοιχεῖα who by nature are not divine (4.8–9) indicts imperial systems, and if ‘our mother’ in 4.21–31 means God’s fidelity to the Abrahamic promises for both Israel and the ἔθνη, then Paul is advocating citizenship in an alternative community whose identity is determined neither by imperial domination nor by social control agents who insist on hyperbolic marks of Ἰουδαϊσμός, which developed under imperial pressures and which overlook God’s original promises to the ἔθνη. He calls this alternative citizenship αἱ ἐκκλησίαι (1.2). This is the realm of fictive citizenship,106 which, like fictive kinship, does not mean that it is not real. Rather, fictive citizenship is an embodied way of living out a construct of identity.

Bachmann has shown that the antitheses in 4.21–31 connote slavery and freedom, not ethnicity (Antijudaismus, 137–8). Cf. Bhabha, Location, xvii.

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Photo: Andreas Praefcke, October 2010 Permission for use: Public Domain

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Part Two

Textual Studies

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9

Group Norms and Prototypes in Matthew 5.3–12: A Social Identity Interpretation of the Matthaean Beatitudes Philip F. Esler

Introduction The core of this essay is an argument that I presented on Friday 16 September 1994 at the British New Testament Conference in Nottingham in a friendly debate with Francis Watson on ‘Interpreting the Matthean Beatitudes: A Methodological Debate’.1 To the best of my knowledge the paper I delivered on that occasion was the first extended use of social identity theory in New Testament scholarship. For various reasons I have not previously published that paper. So I am pleased that the editors have let me publish it in this volume, although in a revised form that reflects my own evolving understanding of social identity theory and the burgeoning scholarship on the Matthaean Beatitudes. I remain committed to my central proposition in 1994, that the Beatitudes are usefully interpreted in the light of social identity theory, especially the way it understands group norms. The first published expression of social identity theory in New Testament interpretation appears to be an essay of mine on Galatians that appeared in 1996.2 Given the focus of this volume, its readers may be interested to know how I got into social identity theory in the first place. In 1993, some eighteen months after I had arrived at the University of St Andrews in Scotland to take My paper at Nottingham was entitled ‘Social Identity, Group Conflict and the Matthean Beatitudes: A New Reading of Mt. 5.3–12’.  2 Philip F. Esler, ‘Group Boundaries and Intergroup Conflict in Galatians: A New Reading of Gal. 5:13–6:10’, in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 215–40.  1

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up a position in New Testament, Richard Roberts (a systematic theologian, also of the St Andrews School of Divinity) and James Good (a social psychologist from the University of Durham in England) published an important book they had edited entitled The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences. In February 1994 there was an event at St Andrews to celebrate the launch of the book and this was followed by a reception at Richard Roberts’s house. During the course of the evening I had occasion to have a discussion with James Good. I told him that I was interested in applying social-scientific ideas to biblical texts and that I had read some of the literature on small group behaviour and the relationships between groups but had not found much of use. Could he recommend an area of psychological thought relating to groups that might prove helpful? Without hesitation he proffered the name of Henri Tajfel and his work on differentiation between groups and group identity. I had never heard of Tajfel but a few days later I went to St Andrews University Library and withdrew a collection of essays Tajfel had edited and to which he had significantly contributed, Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, which had been published in 1978. I carried this red-cloth bound book (the very copy of which I have next to me as I type) back to my office in St Mary’s College, propped it up on my desk and started reading. It only took about ten minutes before I had probably the biggest ‘Eureka’ moment in my career. I was amazed and delighted by the potential for fresh interpretation of the New Testament evident in Tajfel’s ideas. Soon after I began the work of applying social identity theory (SIT), beginning with how it might help us understand the Matthaean Beatitudes. This essay seeks to advance a new way of understanding the Matthaean Beatitudes (Mt. 5.3–12), which are prominent in public awareness and scholarly discussion. After this introduction, the essay will explore existing approaches to this passage, especially those that interpret it under the headings of ‘eschatology’ or ‘ethics’, and point out problems with such approaches – for the worth of a new perspective on a biblical text is best demonstrated by showing that it produces exegetical advances over existing interpretations. In keeping with the socialscientific approach to biblical interpretation, a particular theoretical position, the social identity theory of Henri Tajfel (together with the closely related selfcategorization theory of John Turner) will be proposed as a helpful framework

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within which to interrogate the Matthaean Beatitudes in fresh ways and to provide a more satisfying explanation of their meaning. The reaches of social identity theory deployed will embrace both the level of intergroup behaviour and conflict, as evident in phenomena such as stereotyping and ingroup inversion of outgroup values, as well as intragroup phenomena such as group prototypicality and norms. These perspectives will then be applied in detail to Mt. 5.3–12, producing an interpretation that avoids certain problems associated with current interpretations. Above all, it will be suggested that the Beatitudes are comprehensively immersed in the identity of the Matthaean community: in a very particular group and intergroup context they tell the members of Matthew’s community who they are and reassure them that they are right to be that way.

The Beatitudes in scholarly discussion Few passages in the New Testament figure more prominently in the popular imagination or attract as much scholarly attention as Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), especially its initial substantive section, the Beatitudes (Mt. 5.3–12).3 So heavy is the weight of existing scholarship that it is not unusual to find commentators setting out on the subject offering an apology as they begin.4 Yet, leaving aside other issues that are beyond the scope of this essay,5 when one considers the key question concerning the Matthaean Beatitudes, namely, that of content – when we ask just what type of discourse they represent – we find a rather tightly circumscribed set of answers. Critics tend to approach New Testament texts with the interpretative frameworks and intellectual categories in which they were trained and this inevitably produces a sameness to the questions they ask and the answers they offer. Much discussion on the Beatitudes polarizes over the issue of whether they are ‘ethical’ or ‘eschatological’. Other, less traversed, approaches relate

For a review of scholarship, see Lorin L. Cranford, ‘Bibliography for the Sermon on the Mount’, SwJT 35, no. 1 (1992): 34–8. For an extensive bibliography of monographs on the subject in major languages up to May 2003, see http://cranfordville.com/NT-BiblioSerMt.html  4 So Robert A. Guelich, ‘The Matthean Beatitudes: “Entrance-Requirements” or Eschatological Blessings?’, JBL 95, no. 3 (1976): 415.  5 Such as their connection with other examples in Israelite literature and their relationship to Luke’s Beatitudes (6.20–3).  3

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the Beatitudes to the Wisdom tradition or to Graeco-Roman notions of the epitome.6 Each of these, however, tends to focus on only some of the data in the text and to relate somewhat awkwardly to the data that are addressed, as a necessarily brief examination of the ‘ethical’ vis-à-vis ‘eschatological’ explanations will show. In a well-known 1976 article, Robert Guelich asked whether the Beatitudes represented ‘entrance requirements for the Kingdom of Heaven’ or the ‘eschatological’ blessings, the pronouncement of the presence of the New Age.7 He cited Klaus Koch and Georg Strecker, inter alii, as supporters of the former alternative (also referred to as the ‘ethical’ approach), with reference to beatitudes in the Psalms and Wisdom literature, and Eduard Schweizer (although his focus was mainly on the Lucan Beatitudes), with reference to prophetic-apocalyptic literature, as a proponent of the latter.8 Ulrich Luz sees an ‘ethicizing’ tendency in the Matthaean Beatitudes: they become a catalogue of virtues.9 Recent support for an ‘eschatological’ interpretation has come from D. C. Allison.10 Any interpretation of biblical data tied to the expression ‘eschatological’ inevitably suffers from the imprecision that attends that almost-never-explained term and its equally unexplored and quite debilitating connection with modern notions of time.11 Guelich himself favoured the ‘eschatological’ interpretation: For Matthew, as for Q, the Beatitudes are the eschatological pronouncement of the presence of the New Age. He, no more than Luke, is setting forth a list of ethical requirements for the Kingdom. … Instead of ethics swallowing up eschatology in Matthew, it is just the reverse.12

Accordingly, he cites with approval Schweizer’s statement that ‘the future blessing (salvation) is so announced to the hearer in Jesus’ word of authority Timothy D. Howell, The Matthean Beatitudes in Their Jewish Origins: A Literary and Speech Act Analysis, Studies in Biblical Literature 144 (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 3–5, reasonably isolates these four approaches as the main ones proposed to understand the Beatitudes.  7 Guelich, ‘Beatitudes’.  8 Klaus Koch, The Growth of the Biblical Tradition (New York: Scribner, 1969); Georg Strecker, ‘Die Makarismen der Bergpredigt’, NTS 17, no. 3 (1971): 255–75; and Eduard Schweizer, ‘Formgeschichtliches zu den Seligpreisungen Jesu’, NTS 19, no. 2 (1973): 121–6.  9 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 243. 10 Dale C. Allison, Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 178. 11 See Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 251–2. 12 Guelich, ‘Beatitudes’, 433.  6

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that the hearer becomes a new person through Jesus’ summons, a person called by God and therefore blessed’.13 Immediately after this Schweizer writes: ‘In Jesus’ summons the future Kingdom comes even now to the one who responds.’14 While Talbert interprets Guelich as treating the Beatitudes as promises of ‘eschatological blessings’, a view he supports (in spite of having stated earlier that ‘[a]ll of the interpretative options see the Sermon as an ethical text’),15 this seems to add a futurist dimension to the Beatitudes not present in Guelich’s argument. A notable feature of Guelich’s argument is that it is difficult to run his ‘eschatological blessings’ conclusion against the detailed language of the nine Matthaean Beatitudes, and we will see that the same applies to the ethical mode of interpretation mentioned above. 5.3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 5.4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5.5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 5.6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 5.7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 5.8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 5.9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 5.10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 5.11 Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 5.12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you. (RSV)

In spite of the movement to the second person in v. 11 (which continues throughout the Sermon), I have kept vv. 11–12 in conjunction with vv. 3–10 because here too we have a Beatitude (beginning, like the rest, with μακάριοι). The dominant pattern in these Beatitudes is to contrast a present reality against another reality that lies in the future yet has a connection with the present. Here we should note how the proximity of the kingdom of Heaven Guelich, ‘Beatitudes’, 433, citing Schweizer, ‘Formgeschichtliches’, 126. Guelich, ‘Beatitudes’, 418, citing Schweizer, ‘Formgeschichtliches’, 126. 15 Charles H. Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5–7 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 30, 47. 13 14

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is dealt with in Matthew. At Mt. 4.17 Jesus says, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near’. John Nolland is correct to insist on a future dimension to this: the kingdom is not yet here. Yet he is also right in stating that we must give proper force to the imagery of drawing near; at the very least ‘God has now acted to set in process advance arrangements for the coming of the kingdom’.16 Scholars who reasonably try to balance the fact that the kingdom has not yet arrived with its nevertheless having some impact in the present might usefully bear in mind the different understanding of time in the ancient Mediterranean world compared with modern understanding. Rather than a sharp break existing between present and future, the future is seen as organically linked to the present.17 For peasant farmers this perspective on time is the experience of the crop that has been planted and is ripening for the harvest, or the horse that is pregnant but has not yet foaled. In Matthew’s Gospel such an understanding of time is perfectly captured in the account of the bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom in Mt. 25.1–13, which is, after all, prefaced with the statement that this is what the kingdom of Heaven is like (Mt. 25.1). In this pericope we learn that the process has begun that will end with his arrival, with happiness for some and desolation for others, but he is not here yet. A period of time has commenced that will culminate in the kingdom; but though it is near, it is has not yet arrived. The Beatitudes address those who are, in many respects, currently in a fairly wretched condition: they are poor in spirit; they are in mourning; they are meek; they hunger and thirst for righteousness and are persecuted for its sake; and they are reviled, persecuted and spoken about in all sorts of evil ways. Yet there is an upside, since at the same time they are merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers. In relation to six of the Beatitudes an explicitly future, happier state is contrasted with the present: either the sufferings they experience now will be reversed in the future (5.4, 5, 6) or they will be rewarded in the future for their behaviour in the present (5.7, 8, 9). On two occasions, a current negative statement finds as a response: ‘For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’ (5.3, 10), and in relation to the remaining Beatitude there is the statement, ‘for See John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005), 176. 17 See Bruce J. Malina, ‘Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean?’, CBQ 51, no. 1 (1989): 1–31; and Esler, Conflict and Identity, 253–60. 16

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your reward is great in heaven’ (5.11). Yet since these latter statements coexist with the present condition, their current connection with the kingdom is as an entitlement, or as belonging to a process that will give them the kingdom in due course, not a present reality. In either case, they find themselves in a current state that is organically linked to a future that has not yet arrived. Schweizer is therefore wrong to say that ‘the future kingdom comes even now to the one who responds’.18 The μακάριοι statements do not function to announce the presence of the kingdom; instead they proclaim the reality and value of a present experience that compensates for the fact that it is near, but it is not here yet. In the Beatitudes the Matthaean Jesus asks his audience to interpret their current existence in a particularly positive way in view of the kingdom that is to come. Their present blessedness subsists in the certain reality that they will be compensated for their present suffering or rewarded for their present behaviour. Difficulties also beset interpretations of the Matthaean Beatitudes as ‘ethical’. Leaving aside the question (virtually never asked by New Testament scholars) as to whether the intellectual paradigm of ‘ethics’, which constitutes a highly differentiated area of modern philosophy, is entirely appropriate when applied to ancient phenomena, we have the difficulty of finding sufficient textual data that responds to the notion, however it is understood. Modern ethics concerns right or wrong behaviour and has until recent decades focused on the formulation and defence of normative rules, usually via utilitarian consequentialism or Kantian deontological approaches, with the former establishing ethical rules linked to the greatest good for the greatest number and the latter rules linked to the inherent nature of the human person. More recently we have seen the rise of virtue ethics, stemming ultimately from Aristotle, which focus on the development of moral character: one becomes virtuous by practising virtue. How do the Matthaean Beatitudes relate to these approaches? Of primary importance is that none of the nine Beatitudes is expressed in terms of an ‘ethical’ rule or principle. What we find are nine statements about people who have attitudes or dispositions or are behaving or experiencing the behaviour of others in various sorts of ways. This immediately distances such discourse from consequentialist or deontological traditions of ethics. Yet Schweizer, ‘Formgeschichtichles’, 126.

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even if one were to argue that rules could be implied from these statements about persons, only some of the Beatitudes seem to supply what is sought. For Jesus is probably not advocating being poor in spirit as an ethical value, nor engaging in mourning, nor being persecuted, nor being reviled and spoken about in evil ways. In addition, it is artificial to regard hungering and thirsting after ‘righteousness’ as expressing any particular ethical principle; rather, it advocates being strongly orientated to ‘righteousness’ (δικαιοσύνη) without any specification of what this means. He may be urging his addressees to act in a ‘meek’ way, inasmuch as this means relaxing the sensitivity to one’s honour, which is a feature of the Sermon on the Mount, as Jerome Neyrey has rightly proposed.19 While the Matthaean Jesus probably does mean that he wants them to be people who are pure in heart and who make peace, these dimensions speak to their characters as persons rather than offering ethical rules. All this indicates that the area of current ethical theory having the closest connection with them is that of virtue ethics; indeed the primary thesis of C. H. Talbert’s recent book on the Matthaean Beatitudes is that ‘the Sermon on the Mount functions primarily as a catalyst for the formation of character’.20 Yet even here there are problems. While the behaviours specified in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh Beatitudes are presented positively, the Matthaean Jesus is not proposing the types of behaviour specified in the remaining three (being poor in spirit, mourning, being persecuted for righteousness sake and being reviled) as worthy of emulation, even while acknowledging that they are the fate of those who follow him. The intense debate which rages on this topic21 is usually unaccompanied by questioning of whether the eschatology/ethics paradigm is an appropriate one, even though the difficulties of accommodating all the Beatitudes to one or other category are obvious. My aim in this essay is to propose a new reading of the Beatitudes that involves substituting the current paradigm with one that seems more adequate to the task. My primary interest lies in the extent to

Jerome H. Neyrey, ‘Loss of Wealth, Loss of Family and Loss of Honor: A Cultural Interpretation of the Original Four Makarisms’, in Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context, ed. Philip F. Esler (London: Routledge, 1995), 139–58. 20 Talbert, Reading, 29. 21 This debate is documented and entered into by William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 439–42. 19

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which the text embodies a dialectical relationship between social context and Gospel insights. Although I will necessarily employ social-scientific perspectives, my approach remains historical in the sense that I am interested in exploring what meaning the Beatitudes conveyed to the original audience of the text. Yet I am concerned only with the final form of the text, not with its tradition history. I am not seeking to go behind the text, nor to draw a sharp break between form and meaning, but to examine the extent to which the Beatitudes are invested in the creation and maintenance of a distinct identity for Matthew’s audience. Accordingly, I will treat the Beatitudes not as a cultural artefact in the manner of literary-critical readings of the New Testament, which assuredly have their own value, but as a meaningful configuration of language carrying a communication from their composer to his audience, which I take to be a community of Christ-followers or, perhaps, an ensemble of communities of a similar type.22

A social identity approach to the Beatitudes Intergroup conflict and the Beatitudes: Identifying the issue Since I delivered this paper in 1994, one of the main ways in which my own thinking has developed is in moving away from the idea that the context of the Matthaean Gospel and the other New Testament texts involved two ‘religions’, ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’, to a very different model. I now consider that the situation was powerfully asymmetric – a confrontation between an earlier and dominant identity, ethnic in nature, and another, newer one of a completely different type. On the one hand it involved the Judaeans, one of many ethnic groups in the first century ce Mediterranean world (whose Greek name Ἰουδαῖοι must be translated in this way to preserve the link with the original homeland, as was the case with the names of all other ethnic groups of that period). On the other hand it involved a group or groups of a very different, non- or trans-ethnic For my views on the community nature of the Gospel audiences, see Philip F. Esler, ‘Community and Gospel in Early Christianity: A Response to Richard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians’, SJT 51, no. 2 (1998): 235–48. For my understanding of biblical texts in the context of communication theory, see Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 6–9.

22

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identity, whom we should refer to as Christ-followers or Christ-believers to avoid the anachronism inevitably imported into the discussion if they are called Christians. Coming up with any single epithet to designate this identity is very difficult. I have now explored this approach in relation to Romans, Galatians, John’s Gospel, the Contra Apionem of Josephus and Hebrews.23 Very recently I have also analysed the Matthaean Jesus as the centre of the ethnic storm in the Matthaean Gospel (in the Festschrift for Professor Gerd Theissen).24 I will not repeat my arguments in these earlier publications here but this approach will be assumed and occasionally referred to in what follows. When Henri Tajfel was working out the fundamentals of social identity theory in the 1970s, the whole issue of intergroup conflict was at the forefront of his thinking. Indeed he began his programmatic exposition of the theory with the sentence: ‘Much of this book is concerned with the social psychology of human groups in conflict.’25 In addition, he recognized from the outset that conflict involving ethnic groups formed part of the wider arena of intergroup conflict in which he was interested.26 The relevance of these observations – and hence of social identity theory itself – for interpreting the Matthaean Beatitudes comes with the realization that they are embedded in a textual context steeped in signs of conflict between ethnic Judaeans on the one hand, and Judaean and non-Judaean Christ-followers on the other.27 There are numerous ways in which to understand the structure of the Beatitudes. One pattern which is very prominent, and which links in closely See Esler, Conflict and Identity, passim; Philip F. Esler, ‘Paul’s Contestation of Israel’s (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3’, BTB 36 (2006): 23–34; Philip F. Esler, ‘From Ioudaioi to Children of God: The Development of a Non-Ethnic Group Identity in the Gospel of John’, in In Other Words: Essays on Social Science Methods and the New Testament in Honor of Jerome H. Neyrey, Anselm C. Hagedorn, Zeba A. Crook, and Eric C. Stewart (eds) (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), 106–37; Philip F. Esler, ‘Judean Ethnic Identity in Josephus’ Against Apion’, in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 73–91; and Philip F. Esler, ‘Judean Ethnic Identity and the Purpose of Hebrews’, in Method and Meaning: Essays on New Testament Interpretation in Honor of Harold W. Attridge, Andrew B. McGowan and Kent Harold Richards (eds) (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 469–89. 24 Philip F. Esler, ‘Judean Ethnic Identity and the Matthean Jesus’, in Jesus – Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Gerd Theissen zum 70. Geburtstag, Petra von Gemünden, David G. Horrell, and Max Küchler (eds), NTOA 100 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 193–210. 25 Henri Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978), 1. 26 Tajfel, ed. Differentiation, 2. 27 For the core of my argument that Matthew was writing to a mixed audience of Judaean and non-Judaean Christ-followers, see Esler, ‘Matthean Jesus’. 23

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with this issue of intergroup conflict, is the division of the nine statements beginning with μακάριοι into two similar quatrains of four beats each (vv. 3–6 and 7–10), together with the ninth constituting something of a coda (vv. 11–12). The expression ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’ forms an inclusio around the two quatrains, since it concludes the ὅτι clause of the first and the eighth makarisms (vv. 3 and 10). Furthermore, the word δικαιοσύνη, an important concept for Matthew, is located at the end of each quatrain (vv. 6 and 10). The ninth element in this pattern, comprising vv. 11–12, is very prominent both because Matthew suddenly shifts into second person plural and because of its notable subject matter of Judaean persecution in the past and present.28 Matthew also includes – as the last makarism in the second quatrain and therefore immediately before the passage under discussion – a Beatitude dealing specifically with persecution on account of δικαιοσύνη (5.10). This persecution theme cries out for comment. It is difficult to see what connection can be drawn between this aspect of the Beatitudes and either the ‘eschatological’ or ‘ethical’ interpretation of their significance, since there is nothing to suggest that the persecution referred to is ‘eschatological’, and ‘ethical’ behaviour has no necessary relationship with conflict. Some other explanation seems to be required which is able to do justice to the strong emphasis on persecution with which Matthew concludes his Beatitudes. Moreover, the need to search for an alternative explanation is strengthened by the contents of the passages coming immediately after the Beatitudes, in Mt. 5.13–7.29.29 These passages repeatedly define the appropriate type of behaviour by contrast with the wrong type, as practised by the hypocrites (Mt. 6.2, 5, 16; 7.5), non-Judaeans and so on. A most striking example is Mt. 5.20. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This conflictual aspect of δικαιοσύνη is carried over into the antitheses that follow immediately afterwards (Mt. 5.21–48), which, inter alia, serve as See Douglas R. A. Hare, The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel According to St Matthew, SNTSMS 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 120: ‘it is clearly implied that the persecutors are the Jews’. Matthew is identifying those who mistreated the prophets, that is the Judaeans, with those who carry out the persecution in the present referred to in the previous verse. 29 Namely, the collection of sayings about salt and light (5.13–16), the teaching about law and righteousness (5.17–20), the six antitheses (5.21–48) and the teaching on various topics that follows (6.1–7.29). 28

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concrete illustrations of the type of attitudes and behaviour that result in a superior righteousness. In context, therefore, it is quite wrong to treat the antitheses as merely proffering a higher ethics, since they also necessarily convey the case for the superiority of the new dispensation proclaimed by Jesus over that of rival groups. This pattern, moreover, continues into Matthew 6–7.30 It is noteworthy that so many of the attributes or outlooks which bring the designation of μακάριοι to those who possess or exhibit them in Mt. 5.3–12 are actually illustrated in the antithetical or agonistic material in Mt. 5.21–7.6. The analysis conducted in the previous paragraph indicates that from 5.13 to 7.6 Matthew illustrates the meaning of the Beatitudes in material that continually contrasts the outlook and behaviour to be expected of the followers of Jesus with that which allegedly prevails among the Judaeans. Yet to seek to interpret this major textual phenomenon under either of the currently popular ‘ethical’ or ‘eschatological’ explanations of the Beatitudes is difficult, if not impossible. Clearly, therefore, the evidence requires some other mode of explanation. My proposal in a nutshell is that the Beatitudes must be understood in the context of intergroup conflict as explained in the social identity and selfcategorization theories of Henri Tajfel and John Turner to represent neither ‘eschatological blessings’ nor ‘(ethical) entrance-requirements’ but as group norms. To investigate further, I will first outline the broad dimensions of a social identity approach to the Matthaean Gospel and the Beatitudes. Second, I will narrow the focus to one aspect of that approach for application to the Beatitudes: group norms and prototypes.

The broad dimensions of a social identity approach to the Matthaean Gospel and the Beatitudes Our sense of who we are, of our identity, is intimately tied up with our group memberships. In joining a group we redefine who we are. If asked ‘Who am I?’, part of my reply will be in terms of the groups to which I belong. Matthew’s Here the type of conduct expected is continually defined in contrast to that of other persons or groups, especially those designated as ὑποκριταί (Mt. 6.2, 5, 16; 7.5). The ὑποκριταί are certainly Judaean.

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audience seem to have had a strong sense of themselves as members of a group. If they had been asked to say ‘Who are we?’, they would have answered in a number of ways but certainly in terms of an ἐκκλησία (16.18 and 18.17), brothers, disciples, and ‘sons of the kingdom’ (13.38). In proffering any of these self-designations, they would have been evoking all three of the components of group belonging described by Henri Tajfel:31 (a) the cognitive component, meaning the knowledge that one belongs to a group; (b) the evaluative component, meaning the positive or negative value connotation of belonging to a group; and (c) the emotional component, in the sense of emotions (such as love or hate) directed towards one’s own group or outgroups. To Tajfel’s explanation of the cognitive dimension, following Daniel Bar-Tal I would now add the beliefs one holds through membership.32 The Matthaean Gospel provides strongly positive evaluative and emotional components, as reference to a few passages will illustrate. In the parable of the Vineyard and the Talents (21.33–43) the kingdom of God is referred to as that which will be taken away from the first tenants and given to the second; plainly, it is seen as a good. In the parable of the Wedding Feast (22.1–14), moreover, the kingdom is described in terms of one of the happiest occasions in Mediterranean culture.33 The notion of the group as ἐκκλησία is invested with very positive connotations, since the Messiah is depicted as a present reality within the ἐκκλησία (18.20).34 Similarly, the very last words of Jesus in this Gospel, ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (28.20b), constitute the ultimate endorsement of the value of the group through the continuing presence of the risen Lord in its midst. The emotional component also emerges in the degree to which antipathy is directed toward members of various outgroups, to which we will return below. See Tajfel, Differentiation, 28–9. Daniel Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs: A Conception for Analyzing Group Structure, Processes, and Behavior, Springer Series in Social Psychology (Berlin; New York: Springer, 1990); and Daniel Bar-Tal, ‘Group Beliefs as an Expression of Social Identity’, in Social Identity: International Perspectives, Stephen Worchel et al. (eds) (London: Sage, 1998), 93–113. 33 Wedding-feast imagery is also employed in the parable of the Ten Maidens in connection with the rewards of wakefulness (25.1–14), a pericope mentioned above. 34 Hare, Persecution, 160. 31 32

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Each member of the Matthaean audience derived ‘social identity’ from belonging to this version of the Christ-movement, meaning that part of his or her self-concept that represented the combination of all three components, as with the members of any group.35 A critical aspect of the sense we have of belonging to one group is the existence of other groups to which we do not belong.36 For present purposes, however, the agonistic nature of the Matthaean Gospel mentioned above in relation to the Sermon on the Mount and evident in other parts of this Gospel (for example, Matthew 23) induces us at this point to highlight a specific aspect of intergroup relationships, namely, the phenomenon of conflict between groups. To understand the process of intergroup conflict, however, it is necessary to recognize that there is a continuum between behaviour that, at the one end, is entirely interindividual and, at the other, is entirely intergroup. Purely interindividual behaviour is determined solely by the personal characteristics of those involved and not by reference to any social categories; it is, however, difficult to imagine behaviour which is purely interindividual. Purely intergroup behaviour consists of behaviour solely determined by membership of social groups that disregards individual differences and personal relationships;37 an example can be seen in the action of bomber pilots releasing a load of bombs upon an enemy population.38 Matthew reveals a strong intergroup emphasis, with not much sign whatever of interindividual conduct. In Matthew, for example, ‘There is no attempt to distinguish between good and bad Pharisees’.39 Tajfel argues that there is a reciprocal or ‘dialectical’ relationship between, first, social settings and situations and, second, the expression or reflection of them in subjective group memberships. There are two aspects to this: (a) The number and variety of social situations seen as relevant to group membership will increase the stronger are a member’s cognitive, evaluative and emotional connections with a group.

Tajfel, Differentiation, 63. Rupert Brown, Group Processes: Dynamics within and between Groups, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 311–13. 37 Tajfel, Differentiation, 44. 38 Tajfel, Differentiation, 41. 39 Noted by Hare, Persecution, 162. 35 36

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(b) Conversely, some social situations will force individuals to act in terms of group identification, however weak was their initial connection.40 The main area of interest raised by this aspect of SIT is the question of the extent to which the Matthaean community perceived itself to be in tension or conflict with the outside world, especially by being the subject of persecution, by Judaeans especially, but to a lesser extent by non-Judaeans.41 The closer behaviour is to the intergroup extreme, the greater the tendency to treat outgroup members as ‘undifferentiated items in a unified social category’. This leads to a clear awareness of ingroup-outgroup dichotomy, an attribution to all members of the outgroup of traits assumed to be common to their group as a whole (= ‘stereotyping’) and in the generation of value judgements associated with those traits.42 Matthew contains numerous examples of such phenomena. For example, he ‘looks upon the representatives of Israel as a homogeneous group’.43 The most striking aspect of this phenomenon is his unique and extraordinary coupling together of the historically divergent Pharisees and Sadducees on five occasions.44 Extreme forms of animosity towards outgroup members usually require sharp boundaries between the two groups, so that movement from one to another is impossible,45 which we might call ‘social immobility’. In Matthew the position seems to be that although it is possible to leave the group, as evident in the interpretation of the parable of the Sower in 13.21–3, this is presented as extremely undesirable, as shown most clearly in the conclusion to the parable of the Marriage Feast, when one of those present is thrown into the outer darkness (22.11–14). Thus, group members faced with various Tajfel, Differentiation, 39. The importance of the theme of persecution in the Gospel has been investigated by Hare, Persecution, passim. It may be, as Hare has argued, that Matthew has exaggerated the extent of the persecution, but that there was a history of followers of Jesus suffering persecution of various kinds prior to Matthew is undoubted. 42 Tajfel, Differentiation, 45. 43 Sjef van Tilborg, The Jewish Leaders in Matthew (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 1. 44 Mt. 3.7; 16.1, 6, 11, 12. A number of witnesses contain a second instance in 16.12. This tendency is also apparent in the indiscriminate way in which he refers to other combinations of Jewish leaders: thus we have ‘the scribes and the Pharisees’ (5.20; 12.38; 15.1; 23.2, 13, 15, 23, 27 and 29), ‘the high priests and the elders’ (21.23; 26.3, 47; 27.3, 12, 20), ‘the high priests and the Pharisees’ (21.45; 27.62), ‘the high priests and the scribes’ (2.4; 20.18; 21.15) and ‘the elders and the high priests and the scribes’ (16.21 and 27.41). 45 Tajfel, Differentiation, 50–1. 40 41

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disadvantages, such as a sense of deprivation vis-à-vis other groups, yet wishing to remain within the community, would have acted in alignment with the group as a whole just as surely as if exit was impossible. A group that perceives itself to be subordinate to another in terms of power and status will frequently respond through forms of group differentiation that attack the basis for the perceived inferiority.46 Such responses involve sidestepping the main dimensions of the comparison, either by changing those dimensions or inventing new ones. A common strategy is the assertion that the true positive values are the antithesis of those espoused by the dominant group.47 It is submitted that this strategy is pervasively present in Matthew. This is most apparent in Matthew 21–5, especially in the passionately anti-Judaean material in Matthew 23, for here the evangelist is primarily concerned with the relationship of the Christ-movement to Israel.48 Chapter 23 should not be seen, with David Garland, as the answer to the theological problem of Israel’s rejection of the Judaean Messiah,49 but as the primary means of differentiating the Matthaean community from the dominant Judaean ethnic group, especially through the enhancement of intergroup difference, by alleging the worthlessness of that outgroup’s values. An examination of the Beatitudes using this social identity perspective on intergroup relations developed by Henri Tajfel reveals that they do indeed both celebrate central components of the group’s identity in a context where the very opposite characteristics are displayed by the Judaean outsiders and also summarize the basis of the apparently paradoxical claim that it is the values and identity of the ingroup and not the outgroup which are authentic. Thus, the quality of being ‘poor in spirit’, lowly and humble, which is endorsed in the First Beatitude (5.3), stands in stark contrast with and gains meaning from the opposite characteristic displayed by the Judaean leaders. Whereas the Matthaean ingroup, for example, must give alms, fast and pray discreetly, without others knowing, the hypocrites proclaim to everyone that they are doing these things (6.1–6, 16–18). The notion of the ‘poor in spirit’ inheriting the kingdom of Heaven is illustrated, for example, in those from Tajfel, Differentiation, 67–76. Brown, Group Processes, 328–9. 48 So Graham Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 271–2 (although Professor Stanton used ‘church’ where I have ‘Christ-movement’). 49 David E. Garland, The Intention of Matthew 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1979). 46 47

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the highway and byways being invited to the wedding feast, while the original guests miss out (22.1–14). The ‘mourning’ referred to in the Second Beatitude (5.4) is, at least in part, what members of the ingroup will experience through the persecution they will suffer as disciples of Jesus (5.10–12; 10.16–23; 22.6; 23.34). In the end, however, the roles will be precisely reversed, since it is the outgroup who will be consigned to the outer darkness, where there will be weeping (κλαυθμός) and gnashing of teeth (8.12; 13.42, 50; 22.13; 24.51; 25.30). The ‘meekness’ proclaimed in the Third Beatitude (5.5) and typified in not retaliating and in loving one’s enemies (5.38–48)50 represents the negation of the behaviour of the Judaean outgroup, as shown in their very public displays of almsgiving (6.2), their love of extravagant dress and public signs of respect (23.5–7), and, more seriously, their piling loads on the shoulders of others (23.4). Yet it is the meek who will inherit the earth (5.5), and the kingdom (25.34), while the outgroup will be ejected like the wicked tenants in the parable of the Vineyard (21.33–43), who are expressly described as having their kingdom taken away from them (21.43). Hunger and thirst after righteousness, the subject of the Fourth Beatitude (5.6), encapsulate many of the attributes lauded in the other Beatitudes, since these are exemplified in the antitheses and teaching in 5.21–6.18, which provide content for the higher righteousness mentioned in 5.20. Conversely, the actions of the Judaean outgroup are stigmatized in Mt. 5.21–6.18 and Matthew 23 as the opposite of the righteousness which must typify the Matthaean community. In consequence, it will be the members of the ingroup who will be filled (χορτασθήσονται; 5.6), as shown in the parable of the Great Banquet (21.33–43),51 while the outsiders will miss out. To behave mercifully, as commended in the Fifth Beatitude (5.7), has a particular character in the community, since it is necessary to do so quietly and non-ostentatiously, in complete contrast to the manner of almsgiving practised by the hypocrites (6.1–4). Moreover, in the end, the truly merciful, the members of the ingroup, those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and visit the ill and the imprisoned (25.35–6), will A characteristic for which Jesus himself is the model (11.29; 21.5). A reality itself foreshadowed in those who are ‘filled’ (χορτάζειν) in the two miracles of the loaves and fishes (14.20; 15.37).

50 51

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have mercy shown them, while those who fail in this regard will have no mercy shown them at all (25.37–46). The quality of being ‘pure of heart’ (καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ) mentioned in the Sixth Beatitude (5.8) and illustrated in the teaching about adultery and divorce (5.27–8, 31–2)52 is a feature that dramatically differentiates ingroup and outgroup. The former are characterized by purity of heart, while for the impurity of the latter Jesus has the harshest condemnation (23.27–8). That purity of heart and not its opposite is the more desirable aspect of social identity is confirmed by the statement that those who embody it will see God (5.8). For the Judaean outgroup, there will come the horrors of the sack of Jerusalem (22.7; 23.38). The characteristic of peacemaking dealt with in the Seventh Beatitude (5.9) also sharply differentiates Matthew’s group from its Judaean opponents. Whereas Jesus’ disciples are to go far beyond the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (5.21–6), the outgroup practise violent persecution and murder, just as their ancestors did (5.11–12; 23.29–39). Divine sonship will be the reward for the ingroup (5.9), the destruction of their city (22.7; 23.38), disowning by Jesus before God (10.33) and eternal damnation that for the outgroup. This brings us to the particular task of characterizing the nature and function of the Beatitudes themselves, for which we need further resources to supplement Tajfel’s social identity theory with the closely related self-categorization theory of John Turner.

Self-categorization theory, norms and prototypes In 1985 John Turner, a close associate of Henri Tajfel at the University of Bristol, published an essay launching a major expansion of social identity theory that was further developed in a monograph he published with other researchers in 1987.53 This was called ‘self-categorization theory’. Whereas It is also illustrated in Jesus’ statement about the heart as the source of those things that defile a person (15.15–20). 53 John C. Turner, ‘Social Categorization and the Self-Concept: A Social Cognitive Theory of Group Behaviour’, in Advances in Group Processes, ed. Edward J. Lawler (Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1985), 2.77–122; John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1987). 52

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Tajfel had concentrated on how social identity operated in the context of intergroup relations, Turner focused on the fundamentals of psychological group formation that were necessary to explain the basis for the phenomena that Tajfel had identified. In particular, Turner and his associates sought to explain the psychological processes whereby individual selves become a group, how group behaviour was actually a form of acting in terms of one’s self. Central to this result was that individuals ‘depersonalize’ themselves, meaning that they come to regard themselves ‘more as the interchangeable exemplars of a social category than as individual personalities defined by their individual differences from others’.54 This is what self-categorization means; it is a form of self-stereotyping in the terms of a particular group. Yet this does not mean a loss of individual identity. Rather, it entails a move from a personal to a social level of identity. It actually allows people to gain in identity, by access to a wide variety of groups and their distinctive group identities.55 With the fundamental nature of self-categorization theory thus set out, we can now proceed to specific issues directly bearing upon the Beatitudes. Within the broad discipline of social psychology ‘social influence’ plays a central role, as it refers to the manifold ways in which the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are affected and shaped by the actual, implied or imagined presence of others. If we focus on the psychological processes whereby social influence operates in relation to an individual and a group, we encounter the issue of ‘conformity’. Social psychologists consider that the distinctive feature of an individual’s conformity to a group is that it involves ‘norms’.56 Within the social identity approach represented in SIT and SCT norms play a central and distinctive role.57 Hogg and Reid describe ‘group norms’ as ‘defined regularities in attitudes and behavior that characterize a social group and differentiate it from other social groups’.58 Here norms are ‘shared cognitive representations’ that describe and prescribe the behaviour of ingroup members and characterize the behaviour of members of relevant

Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50. Turner et al., Rediscovering, 51. Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), 157–8. 57 Hogg and Abrams, Identifications, 157–85, for an early exposition of many of the key ideas. 58 Michael A. Hogg and Scott A. Reid, ‘Social Identity, Self-Categorization, and the Communication of Group Norms’, Communication Theory 16, no. 1 (2006): 7. 54 55 56

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outgroups.59 Norms instruct members in how they should think and feel and how they should behave if they are to belong to the group and share its distinctive identity. In short, from a social identity point of view ‘normative behavior represents a way of generating positive distinctiveness’.60 Social psychologists have reasonably proposed that norms can either be descriptive or prescriptive/injunctive.61 Descriptive norms ‘represent typical behavior or what most people do regardless of its appropriateness’.62 Prescriptive/injunctive norms, on the other hand, are expressions of what we ought to do in the sense that there are perceived social sanctions for their violation. Whereas some social psychologists consider the sanction consists of an awareness that other people may disapprove if they do not act in accordance with a norm, social identity scholars ‘attribute the prescriptive force of group norms to their internalized self-definitional function’.63 Sometimes members of a group might behave regularly in ways (= descriptive norm) that may be at variance with what they ought to do; on other occasions there might be a co-incidence between what they do and what they believe they ought to do. From a social identity perspective a norm can describe and prescribe behaviour: this is how we ought to behave and do in fact behave. There is a close connection between prototypes and norms. A prototype is an abstract concept derived from multiple experiences with category members; as a result of experience with examples of a category, people develop a summary representation that encapsulates the central tendency of the category. An exemplar, in contrast, is a single example of the category in question.64 Prototypes have also been described as ‘fuzzy sets, not checklists, of attributes (e.g. attitudes and behaviors) that define one group and distinguish it from other groups’.65 From a social identity perspective ‘group prototypes describe individual cognitive representations of group norms’.66 Prototypes Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 10. P. Niels Christensen et al., ‘Social Norms and Identity Relevance: A Motivational Approach to Normative Behavior’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30, no. 10 (2004): 1295. 61 See R. Cialdini, C. Kallgren, and R. Reno, ‘A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: A Theoretical Refinement and Reevaluation of the Role of Norms in Human Behavior’, in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. M. P. Zanna (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1991), 201–35. 62 Christensen et al., ‘Social Norms’, 1296. 63 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 12. 64 Eliot R. Smith and Michael A. Zarate, ‘Exemplar and Prototype Use in Social Categorization’, Social Cognition 8, no. 3 (1990): 244–6. 65 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 10. 66 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 11. 59 60

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form part of the self-categorization theory of John Turner and his colleagues. The process of depersonalization means individuals self-stereotype themselves more as ‘the interchangeable exemplars of a social category’.67 The process of depersonalization based on self-categorization ‘produces conformity to shared in-group prototypes and thus produces in-group normative behavior’.68 Hogg and Abrams have set out the three stages of this process in terms of self-categorization. First, people categorize themselves as members of a group (= a distinct social category) and assign themselves a social identity from belonging to it. Second, they discover ingroup norms (which may be expressed in the form of prototypes) from those with knowledge of them. Third, they assign those norms to themselves and thus their behaviour becomes more normative as their membership of the group becomes more salient.69 On this approach, ‘conformity and normative behavior represent internal cognitive change in a given context rather than superficial behavioral compliance or obedience’. Prototypes are ‘in-here’ not ‘out-there’.70 The prescriptive force of a prototype, which is an expression of a group norm, is likely to be stronger if a number of conditions are met: (a) the relevant ingroup is important to who we are; (b) we identify strongly with the ingroup; (c) we desire to be strongly accepted by it; and (d) the value, definition or very existence of the group is under threat.71 One way in which a norm or a prototype that expresses it can increase in intensity is through the process of polarization. A frequently repeated experimental result is that where members of a group gather to discuss an issue, views on the issue move in the direction already favoured by the group, so that the consensus after the discussion is more extreme than the mean of pre-test responses of the individual members. This is called the polarizing effect.72 Moreover, it has also been shown that by introducing a context of intergroup competition, that is to say, by enhancing the salience of ingroup versus outgroup, both ingroup norms and polarization due to conformity Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50. Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 11. Hogg and Abrams, Identifications, 172. Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 13. The process outlined in this chapter has been called ‘referent informational influence theory’ by social identity theorists. 71 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 13. 72 John C. Turner, Margaret S. Wetherell, and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Referent Informational Influence and Group Polarization’, British Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1989): 135. 69 70 67 68

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with them become more extreme.73 When the presence of a rival or hostile outgroup leads to a polarization of group norms, identification with the ingroup increases.74 Hogg and Reid summarize the process in this way: ‘Specifically, we construct an in-group norm that is polarized away from the out-group and then conform to our in-group norm via self-categorizationbased depersonalization.’75 One area that has only recently begun to attract attention from social identity theorists is the role that communication plays in how norms influence group members and become consensually grounded in the group.76 Without communication it is difficult to imagine ‘how else influence occurs and how else information about norms, identity and prototypicality is acquired, validated, or changed’.77 Michael Hogg and Scott Reid have summarized other research that shows in detail how this occurs. Stories that are ‘embedded in narrative and discourse manage bonds among group members’.78 Stories also ‘construct representations of social categories’, that is of groups.79 Such representations of group norms influence what members actually talk about.80

Norms and prototypes in the Matthaean Beatitudes Analysis of the Matthaean Beatitudes in line with norms and prototypes in SIT and SCT avoids the difficulties that beset ‘eschatological’ and ‘ethical’ interpretations and generally provides a more persuasive interpretation of their meaning and function for their original audience. At the outset we 75 76

Turner, Wetherell, and Hogg, ‘Group Polarization’, 138. Turner, Wetherell, and Hogg, ‘Group Polarization’, 144. Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 13. See Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 14; citing D. L. Kincaid, ‘From Innovation to Social Norm: Bounded Normative Influence’, Journal of Health Communication 9 Suppl 1 (2004): 37–57; and Maria Knight Lapinski and Rajiv N. Rimal, ‘An Explication of Social Norms’, Communication Theory 15, no. 2 (2005): 127–47. 77 See Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 14; citing K. A. Noels, H. Giles, and B. Le Poire, ‘Language and Communication Processes’, in The Sage Handbook of Social Psychology, Michael A. Hogg and Joel Cooper (eds) (London: Sage, 2003), 232–57. 78 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 14; citing A. P. Bochner, C. Ellis, and L. Tillman-Healy, ‘Relationships as Stories: Accounts, Storied Lives, Evocative Narratives’, in Communication and Personal Relationships, Steve Duck and Kathryn Dindia (eds) (Chichester: Wiley, 2000), 13–29. 79 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 14; citing Derek Edwards, Discourse and Cognition (London: Sage, 1997). 80 Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity’, 14; P. Coté and R. Clément, ‘Language Attitudes: An Interactive Situated Approach’, Language and Communication 14 (1994): 237–51. 73 74

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observe that the notion of group norms, embracing both descriptive and injunctive norms, provides a framework for interpreting all nine Beatitudes. All of them describe behaviour or attitudes that are characteristic of the group. They tell members how they should behave if they are to belong to the group and share its distinctive identity. This is most clearly the case with the first seven. These describe behaviour as in mourning (5.4), hungering and thirsting (5.6), and making peace (5.9), but also attitudes (that are closely associated with their manifestation in behaviour), as in being poor in spirit (5.3), meek (5.5), merciful (5.7) and pure in heart (5.8). Yet even the last two Beatitudes, where those referred to are the passive victims of the actions of others, make sense as descriptive norms in the context of intergroup conflict that we have discussed above. Here we see that the condition of being persecuted and reviled becomes characteristically descriptive of the ingroup and thus constitutes group norms that are polarized away from the (largely Judaean) outgroup that is the agent of such opposition. That is, the presence of a hostile outgroup has induced an explicit polarization of group norms: the persecuted versus the persecutors, the reviled versus the revilers. At the same time some of these nine Beatitudes also have an injunctive flavour. The author clearly conveys that his audience ought to be meek, merciful, pure in heart and make peace. From a social identity viewpoint the injunctive dimension of these norms arises not from threat of sanction from other people, but because they have been internalized and function to help the members define themselves as belonging to the group of Christ-followers. The precise way in which this occurs is called ‘depersonalization’, as noted above. John Turner and his colleagues have explained this process as that whereby members of groups perceive themselves not as ‘individual personalities defined by their individual differences from others’, but self-stereotype themselves more as ‘the interchangeable exemplars of a social category’.81 All nine of the Matthaean Beatitudes thus express group norms that characterize a social group, the author’s ingroup, and differentiate it from other social groups. In addition, however, these group norms are being promulgated in the form of prototypes, summary representations encapsulating the central tendency of Turner et al., Rediscovering, 50.

81

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certain categories based on a number of examples of each one. Individuals are not named; instead, reference is made to the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, peacemakers, and those who are persecuted and reviled. These are ‘individual cognitive representations of group norms’, as noted above. The four conditions mentioned above that are likely to lead to the prescriptive force of the prototypes being stronger are satisfied here in that membership of the Christ-movement was important to Matthew’s addressees; they would have identified strongly with the group and wished to be accepted by it, while the very existence of the group was at risk from external persecution. Lastly, the Matthaean Beatitudes represent an attempt to communicate these normative prototypes. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7 represents one chunk within a larger narrative where Matthew uses the authoritative figure of Jesus to delineate prototypes embodying normative attitudes and behaviour that made the Matthaean form of the Christ-movement distinctive. We are now able to describe what is happening here a little more closely, with reference to the three stages of self-categorization in relation to prototypes explained by Hogg and Abrams and noted above. First, we can be sure that Matthew was addressing (at least in part) people who already categorized themselves as belonging to a particular form of the Christ-movement and thus obtained a social identity from their membership. Second, Matthew was helping them to discover or, more probably, rediscover critical ingroup norms expressed as prototypes in the Beatitudes. He did this, third, with the aim that they might internalize those prototypes so that their behaviour fell more in line with ingroup norms as their membership of the group became ever more central to their lives.

Conclusion On the basis of this analysis, we conclude that the Beatitudes embody group norms expressed in the form of prototypes which are the negation of those of outsiders, and provide evidence for why the identity of the ingroup is the preferable one. The Beatitudes tell the members of Matthew’s community

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who they are and reassure them that they are right to be that way. They are best understood as aimed at describing and legitimating the social identity that Matthew’s audience derived from belonging to a distinctive group such as this.

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10

Suffering and the Creation of Christian Identity in the Gospel of Mark Paul Middleton

Even a cursory reading of the documents produced by the first Christians gives the impression that suffering was a near-ubiquitous experience for the early Church. Throughout the New Testament persecution appears to be an everpresent danger, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the themes of suffering and discipleship quickly became interwoven in Christian consciousness, not least because of the example of Christ’s own passion and death.1 The martyr was the ultimate paradigm of discipleship, so much so that for Ignatius, it was only on the way to his death that he truly became a disciple. ‘For even though I am in chains for the sake of the Name, I have not yet been perfected in Jesus Christ. For now I am only beginning to be a disciple.’2 Recent scholarly work on martyrdom has explored the way in which martyr acts create Christian identity based on suffering.3 Judith Perkins argues that Christians present themselves as a suffering body, where pain is empowering, and death, in the tradition of the Graeco-Roman novel, constitutes a

On the importance of the Jesus’ death as a model for discipleship, see B. Dehandschutter, ‘Example and Discipleship: Some Comments on the Biblical Background of the Early Christian Theology of Martyrdom’, in The Impact of Scripture in Early Christianity, J. den Boeft and M. L. van Poll-van de Lisdonk (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Larry W. Hurtado, ‘Jesus’ Death as Paradigmatic in the New Testament’, SJT 57, no. 4 (2004): 431–3; Paul Middleton, Radical Martyrdom and Cosmic Conflict in Early Christianity (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 82–93; and the book-length treatment, Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).  2 Ign., Eph., 3.1; The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, trans. Michael W. Holmes, 3rd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007). See also Eph., 1.2; Trall., 5.2; Rom., 4.2; 5.1.  3 For example, L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).  1

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happy ending.4 However, as Judith Lieu correctly notes, it is not primarily the death of the martyr that is key to identity formation. Rather, it is the moment of confession, where the protagonist proclaims, ‘I am a Christian’.5 Virtually all Christian martyr acts lead to a climax where the accused are invited to confess or deny Christ.6 While most acts celebrate successful confession and martyrdom, the Martyrs of Lyons reflects the reality that not all Christians were able to follow through with their confession in the face of torture: Those that were left fell into two groups. Some were clearly ready to become our first martyrs, making a full confession of their faith with the greatest enthusiasm. Yet others were shown to be still untrained, unprepared, and weak, unable to bear the strain of a great conflict. Of these about ten in all were stillborn, causing us great grief and measureless distress.7

For the author, the trials in the arena sharply divided those Christians who successfully confessed Christ despite the torments inflicted upon them, and those who at the last minute denied. The latter are said to be weak and unprepared for the conflict. Moreover, at the climax of their trials where to witness would mean death, their denial of Christ, which ostensibly saves their lives, is the moment of true death; they are stillborn. Remarkably, later in the Lyons narrative, those who failed to confess and were said to be ‘stillborn’ are ‘brought back to life’ through witnessing others winning martyrdom. The dead were restored to life through the living … For through the martyrs those who had denied the faith … were conceived and quickened again in the

Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995).  5 Judith Lieu, ‘“I Am a Christian”: Martyrdom and the Beginning of “Christian Identity?”’, in Neither Jew nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2002), 211–31. Other recent studies which explore the contribution of martyrology to identity formation include: Moss, Other Christs; Shelly Matthews, Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).  6 Martyr acts where multiple confessions are found include: Martyrdom of Carpus, 1, 3, 5, 23, 24; Martyrdom of Justin, 3.4; 4.1, 3, 4, 6, 9; Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, 9, 10, 13; Martyrdom of Perpetua, 3.2; 6.4.  7 Martyrs of Lyons, 1.11. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).  4

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womb and learned to confess Christ. Alive now and strengthened they came before the tribunal that they might again be questioned by the governor.8

In the Martyrs of Lyons, like other martyr acts, there is a reversal of the categories of life and death: to die is to live, but to survive the arena is to die.9 There is a group of Christians in the narrative who ultimately fail the test of martyrdom. There remained outside, however, all those who had never enjoyed even a vestige of the faith nor any knowledge of the wedding garment nor any thought of the fear of God; rather by their way of life they blasphemed the Way. And these were the sons of perdition.10

Despite the strong ‘outsider’ rhetoric, these ‘blasphemers’ most likely represent Christians who ultimately denied Christ. However, they are denied even the category ‘former Christian’; to fail to be martyred is to fail to be Christian. This interweaving of the categories of life and death with confession and denial is found in Mk 8.34–8. And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? 37For what can a person give in return for his life? 38For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

As in the Martyrs of Lyons, this collection of sayings equates remaining alive in this world with death, while dying for Jesus is in reality to win life.11 Those who seek to follow Jesus will either deny themselves or express shame for Christ, precisely the choice which many would later have to make before authorities. While relatively few Christians in the first century would have

10 11  8  9

Martyrs of Lyons, 1.45–6. On the theme of life and death in relation to martyrdom, see Middleton, Radical Martyrdom, 93–5. Martyrs of Lyons, 1.48. A similar construction of saving and losing life in the face of trial is found in 4 Macc. 5.6; 6.15, 27; 10.1, 13; and especially in the case the mother of the seven martyred sons 15.2–3, 8, 25–8. A similar idea may lie behind 2 Macc. 7.37.

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found themselves in this predicament,12 they would certainly have understood this to be the potential fate of any member of the Church. In this essay, I will argue that Mark creates various means of separating insiders from outsiders, but that ultimately, for the evangelist, Christian identity is created or destroyed by embracing or eschewing the pattern of Jesus’ own suffering and death. The invitation found in Mk 8.34–8 represents the final and decisive test of one’s status as a follower of Jesus. To qualify as an authentic disciple of Christ necessarily means to accept faithfully the challenge to take up the cross and follow after Jesus on the road to martyrdom.13

Insiders and outsiders in Mark In common with most New Testament authors, Mark creates a clear distinction between those inside and outside the Christian community. Mark’s Jesus makes the division explicit, explaining that disciples have been given the secret (μυστήριον) of the kingdom of God, whereas to those outside (τοῖς ἔξω)14 he speaks in parables (4.11). The distinction is further sharpened by Mark’s suggestion that Jesus speaks in parables in order that (ἵνα) those outside will not understand the message, turn, and be forgiven (4.11–12).15 It is now generally accepted persecution was sporadic and localized. Classic studies include T. D. Barnes, ‘Legislation against the Christians’, JRS 58 (1968): 32–50; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ‘Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, Past & Present 26, no. 1 (1963): 5–23; Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London: Viking, 1986), 419–92. 13 Unlike Luke’s clear metaphorical reading of ‘taking up the cross daily’ (9.23), Mark’s version appears to suggest that literal death is called for. See Middleton, Radical Martyrdom, 146–56; and Moss, Other Christs, 28–33. 14 ‘Outsiders’ is also used as technical term elsewhere in the New Testament: 1 Cor. 5.12–13; Col. 4.5; 1 Thess. 4.12; and 1 Tim. 3.7; cf. Rev. 22.14–15. 15 The treatment of outsiders in 4.12 has troubled many commentators. T. W. Manson judges the idea that parables were intended to hinder understanding ‘simply absurd’; Thomas Walter Manson, The Teaching of Jesus: Studies of Its Form and Content (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 76. For an equally violent reaction, see Carey A. Moore, ‘Mark 4.12: More Like the Irony of Micaiah Than Isaiah’, in A Light Unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers, Jacob Martin Myers et al. (eds) (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 335–44. Manson argues that Mark has misunderstood the Aramaic original version (76–80), while Moore suggests Jesus was being deliberately ironic. J. Jeremias (Rediscovering the Parables [London: SCM, 1966], 10–12) argues ἵνα should be read as an introduction to citation rather than suggesting purpose. However, leaving aside the contemporary theological agenda driving these interpretations, that both Matthew (13.13–15) and Luke (through omission of 4.12c) eliminate or lessen the difficulty, combined with Mark’s ἵνα … μήποτε sequence suggests Mark is indeed suggesting outsiders are excluded from the Kingdom. It is not clear to me why such mild sectarianism in Mark should cause commentators so much difficulty! 12

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Outsiders are excluded from the Kingdom of God for the knowledge required to become an ‘insider’ is given by Jesus privately (κατ’ ἰδίαν) to his own (ἰδίοις) disciples (4.34). The insider/outsider dichotomy is given further shape in the episode dealing with Jesus’ family. Twice his mother and brothers are positioned ‘outside’ (ἔξω) asking for Jesus (3.31 and 3.32). However, blood relations are effectively nullified as Jesus ignores their request to see him and declares that doing the will of God is the determining factor to be counted among Jesus’ kin. In the same way in which the outsider status of the family is emphasized by the repetition of the word ἔξω, so too the insider status of those who listen to Jesus’ teaching is reinforced by the double notice that his true mother, brothers and sisters were ‘around him’ (περὶ αὐτόν; 3.32, 34).16 The family of Jesus had come out to find him in order to violently seize him (κρατῆσαι), saying that he was mad (ἔλεγον γὰρ ὅτι ἐξέστη; 3.21).17 The verb κρατέω is also used of the aborted attempt by the chief priests, scribes and elders to arrest Jesus in the temple (12.12; cf. 11.27), aligning the actions of Jesus’ family to those most hostile to him in the Gospel. Hostility to Jesus is the second mark of outsider status. From the outset of the gospel, various groups of Jewish leaders oppose Jesus, accusing him of blasphemy (2.16; cf. 3.22), objecting to his teaching or behaviour (2.16, 18; 7.5; 9.14; 11.27; 12.13), and plotting to arrest and kill him (3.6; 8.31; 10.33; 11.18; 14.1, 10, 43, 53; 15.1, 3, 11). Jesus himself warns his disciples about the dangers of the scribes and the Pharisees (8.15; 12.38). The family’s place in the camp of these Jewish opponents is reinforced by Mark’s linking of the diagnosis of madness (3.21) with the scribes’ accusation immediately following that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul (3.22). Madness and demonic possession were linked in the ancient world,18 and so the accusation of the family is effectively identical to that of the scribes. The rejection of Jesus’ family is total in Mark; not only are they associated with the main enemies of Jesus, but mention of the enigmatic ‘unpardonable sin’ is sandwiched between Earlier Jesus had chosen the twelve to be ‘with him’ (μετ’ αὐτοῦ; 3.14). While the rsv’s rendering ‘people were saying he was beside himself ’ is possible, this represents a move to be less severe on Jesus’ family. Marcus notes the exact parallel at 14.1–2 supports reading the family as the ones who were saying he was insane; Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27A (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 271. 18 Compare Jn 10.20: ‘He has a demon and he is mad.’ The same link is found in Mk 5.1–20. 16 17

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the two appearances of the family and is linked to those who accuse Jesus of being possessed (3.29–30). The people of Jesus’ home town join the family as outsiders, when not only are they offended (ἐσκανδαλίζοντο) by him (6.3), but their lack of belief amazes Jesus and appears to dampen his ability to perform mighty works (6.5–6). Mark warns that the hostility Jesus experienced, especially at the hands of family, will also be the fate of the faithful disciple. As early as the call of the four fishermen, it is clear discipleship comes at a cost. In response to Jesus’ call, ‘Come after me’ (δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου; 1.17), Simon and Andrew abandon (ἀφέντες) their nets and follow (ἠκολούθησαν) Jesus (1.18). The same pattern occurs in the calling of James and John, who abandon (ἀφέντες) not only their nets, but also their father in order to follow (ἀπῆλθον ὀπίσω) Jesus (1.20). Peter later reminds Jesus that they have abandoned everything (ἀφήκαμεν πάντα) and followed (ἠκολουθήκαμεν) him (10.28). Jesus’ response spells out that being a disciple does indeed demand breaking previous ties and familial identity markers; true followers are the ones who abandon (ἀφῆκεν) house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children and land for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (10.29). Moreover, Mark cautions that faithful disciples will face persecution, and that familial relationships may be the direct cause of arrest and execution. But take heed for yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them. 10And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given to you in that hour, for it is not you who speaks but the Holy Spirit. 12And brother will deliver up his brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 13and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one enduring to the end will be saved (Mk 13.9–13).

Suffering and persecution is the third and, I will argue, most crucial marker of social identity in Mark. It clearly distinguishes insiders (the persecuted) from outsiders (the persecutors), but it also sharply clarifies the boundaries of Christian identity. The experiences which Jesus undergoes in the Passion prefigure the fate of true Christians. Like Jesus, they may stand trial before both Jewish and gentile courts and should use the occasion to bear witness to

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Jesus. As Jesus faced hostility from his own kin, so the faithful will find their home to be a place of betrayal and danger. However, Mark universalizes the hostility to the Church; they will be hated by all (13.13). Here again is an echo of the hostility to Jesus, for before Pilate, even the crowds, which had been hitherto receptive to Jesus’ teaching, call for him to be crucified (15.13). Mark sharply divides the world in two; those who are with Jesus against those who are hostile to both him and his followers. The initial call to discipleship was made in the context of the imminent coming of the kingdom. Jesus preached that the time was fulfilled, the kingdom of God was at hand, and it was the time for people to repent and believe (μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε) in the good news (1.15). As the gospel progresses, the circle of the faithful becomes narrower as they seek to proclaim the gospel within the faithless and adulterous generation (8.12, 38; 9.19) hostile to the Gospel. However, opposition to Jesus in the gospel is not only human; throughout Mark’s drama, Jesus confronts the demonic realm. Immediately after his baptism, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the desert, where he is tempted by Satan (1.12–13). Although the nature of this temptation is not disclosed, it sets up the cosmic confrontation which will unfold in the gospel between the forces of Satan and Jesus. Significantly, Mark chooses to make Jesus’ first public act an exorcism (1.23–6), in which he rebukes (ἐπετίμησεν) and muzzles (φιμώθητι) a demon. Mark records three other significant exorcisms (5.1–20; 7.24–30; 9.14–29), while several summary statements indicate the centrality of this activity for Mark (1.34, 39; 3.11). Moreover, the twelve are called for three purposes: to be with him, to preach, and to have authority to cast out demons (3.13–14). Jesus gives them this authority when they are later sent out in twos (6.7), and a summary statement suggests they enjoyed some success (6.13).19 After the temptation narrative, Satan makes two further named appearances. First, he is responsible for snatching the Word away from potential believers in the parable of the sower (4.15). More dramatically, Satan confronts Jesus again after the first passion prediction (8.31). Using Peter as a mouthpiece, he attempts to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem to suffer and die. It is

Vocabulary associated with exorcism is also found in the story of the stilling of the storm (4.35–41); Jesus both rebukes (ἐπετίμησεν) and muzzles (πεφίμωσο) the wind.

19

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noteworthy that the language of cosmic conflict is employed; Satan through Peter attempts to rebuke (ἐπιτιμᾶν) Jesus (8.32), but Jesus responds with a counter-rebuke (ἐπετίμησεν) which addresses both Peter and Satan simultaneously: ‘he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan (σατανᾶ). For you are not on the side of God, but men’” (8.33). For Mark, Satan and humanity combine in their opposition both to Jesus and to faithful followers. The call to follow Jesus is an invitation to participate in a cosmic battle in a time of eschatological crisis. In the apocalyptic discourse, Jesus warns that believers will stand before hostile judges, and though facing the prospect of death, they must confess allegiance to Christ, renounce themselves (ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτόν, 8.34), and remain faithful. They will lose their life in order to save it (cf. 8.35). For in enduring to the end (εἰς τέλος) – either the end of their lives or the eschatological fulfillment – those who remain faithful to their confession be saved (13.13). The temptation to renounce the way of suffering in the gospel is revealed to be demonic, and those who fall prey to that temptation and fail to be martyred will lose their salvation. Mark 8.34–8 and 13.9–13 lay down a template for faithful discipleship. Both envisage a setting where disciples will face a choice: to remain faithful to their confession and face death, or to make a futile attempt to save their lives and deny. We are now ready to tighten the circle of insiders still further. Since Mark has created strict conditions for discipleship, we turn now to those who model discipleship in the gospel – the twelve.

The twelve: Insiders or outsiders? Although the 12 initially respond positively to Jesus’ call, they consistently display misunderstanding and incompetence. Many scholars regard the negative portrayal as being so severe, they conclude Mark is using the disciples as a foil for a particular position or ‘heresy’ Mark wished to counter. Christological,20 The Hellenistic Divine Man tradition was classically put forward by Theodore J. Weeden, ‘Heresy That Necessitated Mark’s Gospel’, ZNW 59, no. 3–4 (1968): 145–58; Theodore J. Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). For R. P. Martin (Mark: Evangelist and Theologian [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1973], 160), the problem originates with Paul, whose presentation of Christ as a heavenly figure was ‘open to distortion and misunderstanding’. This ‘dubious legacy’ threatened to promote a Christ figure ‘out of touch with earthly reality’.

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ecclesiological,21 and eschatological22 aberrations have all been advanced. Many of these reconstructions are overly elaborate, and the more popular view is that the presentation of the disciples serves a paraenetic purpose. Mark’s readers could read their own failure to follow Jesus as well as they might in the experiences of the disciples. The community, like the disciples, are ‘fallible followers’ yet can be confident of Jesus’ commitment to them since the disciples are restored in the end (14.28; cf. 16.7).23 Van Iersel, building on the work of Radcliffe, takes the pastoral reading one stage further. In Mark, the disciples are not only ‘fallible’, but have seriously failed.24 Both argue the Gospel of Mark arose out of the needs of the Roman church living in the aftermath of the Neronic persecution. During that time of trouble, Christians had been arrested and not only denied their master, but betrayed one another. The members of the Roman congregation urgently needed a story in which the plot and the acting characters reflected their various roles in the persecution. Theirs was the traumatic experience of seeing brothers and sisters die as the victims of betrayal by fellow Christians. Some of them were themselves guilty of providing information leading to the death and apostasy of other Christians. They needed a story in which they could find themselves.25

Radcliffe and van Iersel’s hypothesis has the advantage of taking seriously two of the major themes in the gospel, that of discipleship and persecution. It also creates an attractive Sitz im Leben where reassurance is offered to those who had apostatized under pressure, like Peter, and even those who have betrayed Joseph B. Tyson, ‘Blindness of the Disciples in Mark’, JBL 80, no. 3 (1961): 261–6; Etienne Trocmé, The Formation of the Gospel According to Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975). 22 Werner H. Kelber, Mark’s Story of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979). 23 See especially Robert C. Tannehill, ‘Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role’, JR 57, no. 4 (1977): 386–405; Robert C. Tannehill, ‘The Gospel of Mark as Narrative Christology’, Semeia, no. 16 (1979): 68–76; Ernest Best, Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, JSNTSup 4 (Sheffield: University of Sheffield Press, 1981); Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, ‘Fallible Followers: Women and Men in the Gospel of Mark’, Semeia, no. 28 (1983): 29–48; Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, ‘Disciples/Crowds/Whoever: Markan Characters and Readers’, NovT 28, no. 2 (1986): 104–30; Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, ‘Text and Contexts: Interpreting the Disciples in Mark’, Semeia, no. 62 (1993): 81–102. 24 T. Radcliffe, ‘“The Coming of the Son of Man”, Mark’s Gospel and the Subversion of the Apocalyptic Imagination’, in Language, Meaning and God: Essays in Honour of Herbert McCabe, ed. Brian Davies (London: Chapman, 1987), 167–89; Bastiaan M. F. van Iersel, ‘Failed Followers in Mark: Mark 13.12 as a Key for the Identification of the Intended Readers’, CBQ 58, no. 2 (1996): 244–63. A similar argument was earlier advanced by Max Wilcox, ‘Denial Sequence in Mark 14.26–31, 66–72’, NTS 17, no. 4 (1971): 426–36. 25 Van Iersel, ‘Failed’, 245 (emphasis added). 21

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their brothers and sisters, like Judas.26 The Gospel then invites its readers, in a church where trust has broken down, to become insiders once again through the unfailing loyalty of Jesus.27 Van Iersel points to Tacitus’ report on the Neronic persecutions that the testimony of some Christians had resulted in the arrest of others as evidence of betrayal within the Christian community. However, Tacitus wrote decades after the event and so may not accurately represent the historical situation. Moreover, not only is a Roman setting for the gospel contested,28 but van Iersel’s case demands that the familial betrayal predicted in 13.12 should refer not to the danger posed by blood relatives, but by fellow members of the new Christian family. While this is just about possible in the case of ‘brothers’, it is surely more natural to read this verse as a continuation of the hostility Christians experience at the hands of family members. In any case, among the family betrayals about which Jesus warns is that a father (πατήρ) will turn over his children. Nowhere in Mark are Christian relationships portrayed in father-child terms. Indeed, in both 3.35 and 10.30 where these new relationships are established, ‘father’ is noticeably lacking: Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news

who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age– houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life (Mk 10.29–30).

There are two further problems for all forms of the pastoral reading. First, persecution appears to be a present reality rather than a past experience

van Iersel, ‘Failed’, 256–60. There is no reason to suppose that Judas is not included among the disciples instructed to meet Jesus in Galilee in 16.7. 27 van Iersel, ‘Failed’, 261. 28 See especially Marcus who argues for a Syrian provenance for the gospel; Marcus, Mark, 30–7. 26

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in the gospel. In 10.29–30 (see above), past decisions to abandon family is contrasted with present rewards that will be received now (νῦν) with persecutions (διωγμῶν).29 The pastoral readings work best if a period of persecution during which members of the community failed is past. Moreover, the way in which Mark has set up the insider/outsider schema is based on whether one succeeds or fails to embrace suffering. Mark provides no obvious means by which those who have failed can regain insider status. There is a clear strand in early Christianity that suggests once a believer commits apostasy there is no way back (cf. Heb. 6.4–6). Mark’s disciples are confronted with the choice to follow Jesus to the cross, the very choice to be faced by those who stand before governors and kings, but they choose not to. To be sure, the twelve do begin the narrative as insiders. However, even from the outset, Judas is identified as one of the twelve (3.19); they fail to respond to the command to give the people something to eat (6.37); like the scribes, they lack understanding (7.18); they fail a second time to feed the crowd (8.4); and they are all rebuked when they try to turn the children away (10.13–14), with the threat that they might not enter the Kingdom of God (10.15). Furthermore, where Jesus calls insiders to believe rather than fear (5.36), the twelve are found to be afraid and lack faith on a number of occasions (4.40–1; 6.49–50; 9.6, 32). The disciples also take on characteristics of the enemies of Jesus. When they fail to carry out their function as exorcists, Jesus numbers the disciples among the ‘faithless generation’ (9.19). They also take on the ignorance of outsiders quite explicitly when on two occasions their hearts are hardened – first announced by Mark in an editorial gloss (6.52), but then on the lips of Jesus with the very formula that earlier divided insider from outsider: Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?’ … 21Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’ (Mk 8.17–21; cf. 4.11–12)

The disciples effectively lose the secret of the kingdom that was given to them enabling them to understand. Like outsiders, although they physically see

See also Mk 13.19. For discussion, see Marcus, Mark, 28–9.

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and hear, it does them no good. The Jewish leaders are the only other group in the gospel whose hearts are said to be hardened (3.5) just before they plot to kill Jesus (3.6). That Mark twice makes the same claim about the disciples puts them in a precarious position. When Peter is associated with Satan and hostile humanity, the twelve effectively become part of almost every outsider group in the gospel. The final test facing those who seek to follow Jesus is their conduct in the face of persecution and suffering, which the disciples, of course, fail. Mark expects those who seek to imitate Jesus to stand before governors and kings and profess to be a Christian, even if it means death, the course of action laid out in Mk 8.34–8 and 13.9–13. Even Peter announces what is expected of an insider when told of his impending denial: ‘But he said vehemently, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And all of them said the same’ (14.31). Peter and the others understand the implications of following Jesus and appear willing to accept the consequences. However, the first act of the disciples in the gospel was to leave behind their nets and families to follow Jesus; the final act of those who had been called to be with Jesus was to abandon (ἀφέντες) him and flee (ἔφυγον) at the moment of testing (14.50). Mark heightens the pressure on the character by sandwiching the trials of Peter and Jesus, so that Jesus’ confession, ἐγώ εἰμι (14.62), contrasts with Peter’s denials. The interrogation resonates with the conditions of discipleship set out in 8.34–8. Peter has the opportunity to deny himself (ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτόν), take up the cross, and follow, but instead denies (ἠρνήσατο) Jesus in order to save his own life. Furthermore, the third time he begins to curse (ἀναθεματίζειν) Jesus (14.71). The interrogation of Peter bears a striking resemblance with the shape of the trials of Christians Pliny conducted in the early second century. Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed … Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the

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gods, and moreover cursed Christ – none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do – these I thought should be discharged.30

If this form was established Roman practice, then Mark’s readers would have recognized the denial scene as the kind of trial described in Mk 13.9–13.31 Peter and the others fail to be martyrs, but in consequence, like the apostates of Lyons, do they fail to be Christians? Crucially, in Mark there is no resurrection appearance to the disciples. In the final tableau, the women discover the empty tomb and are told to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead to Galilee where they will see him to fulfil the notice in 14.28. However, as the disciples had earlier fled, now the women do the same (ἔφυγον) and because they were afraid (ἐφοβοῦντο) ‘said nothing to anyone’ (16.8). In Mark’s narrative the message does not get through. Commentators have attempted to play down the women’s failure,32 but the combination of fear and flight is in Mark’s schema profoundly negative. Others suggest Mark means the women told no one else except the disciples,33 but if it was so clear, it would be difficult to account for the two additional endings to the Gospel, as well as Matthew’s alteration to this verse.34 Others have made the point that Mark’s readers would have known Peter was eventually restored,35 but this makes Mark’s ending all the more significant. Mark has gone to extraordinary lengths to set up a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders based on the acceptance of suffering. Assuming Mark did not invent the tradition of Peter’s denial,36 then Pliny, Epistle, 10.96. Compare The Martyrdom of Polycarp, where a herald announces three times that Polycarp has confessed to being a Christian (12.1) despite being commanded to curse Christ (9.3). 32 See especially Susan Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 174–92. 33 Most recently, Larry W. Hurtado, ‘The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark’, in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 427–50. 34 ‘So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy (φόβου καὶ χαρᾶς μεγάλης), and ran to tell the disciples.’ 35 For example, Larry W. Hurtado, ‘Following Jesus in the Gospel of Mark – and Beyond’, in Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 9–29; Joel Marcus, Mark 8–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 1095–6; van Iersel, ‘Failed’. While it may be true that ancient storytellers often referred to events outside the text (so A. Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007], 797), it is at least curious that no other gospel does so with the resurrection appearances, but that the earliest account does. 36 Maurice Goguel, ‘Did Peter Deny His Lord? A Conjecture’, HTR 25, no. 1 (1932): 1–27; Günter Klein, ‘Die Verleugnung des Petrus: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung’, ZTK 58, no. 3 (1961): 285–328. For an extensive discussion, see Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 610–26. 30 31

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he has either shaped the tradition or redacted the cross sayings (8.34–8) in such a way as to render Peter’s denial in the most damning possible light. Peter does not deny self, but denies Jesus; therefore, he cannot be a follower of Jesus, since those who wish to be a disciple of Jesus must first take up the cross (8.34). By clinging to his own life, he in reality loses it (8.35), and there is nothing he can therefore give in return for forfeiting his life (8.36–7). In a time of eschatological crisis, Peter has been ashamed of Jesus, and so the Son of Man in turn will be ashamed of him (8.38).37 Peter has not endured to the end; according Mark’s schema, his salvation is in doubt (13.13). Moreover, Mk 13.11 promises that the Holy Spirit will guide those who seek to imitate Jesus at the time of trial. Believers are baptized by Jesus in the Holy Spirit (1.8), and so, by his denial, Mark suggests that Peter does not possess the Spirit. That Peter cursed Jesus may be further evidence of this (cf. 1 Cor. 12.3). Indeed, Mark’s use of the Spirit is limited to the baptism Jesus will endow (1.8), the promise of the Spirit’s help under trial (13.11), confirmation that David had the Spirit (12.36), and the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit (3.29). It is at least plausible that in cursing Jesus Peter commits the unpardonable sin. If Peter’s role in the early church was so secure, why does Mark set Peter up as an apostate and then create an ending which obscures his restitution?38 Mark can hardly deny the significance of the twelve in the early church, but he does provide a narrative lens through which the reader can follow the disciples’ descent from insiders to outsiders, and thus strip them of any meaningful authority in the early church. The disciples follow precisely the pattern of the seed sown on the rocky path; they receive the word with joy, but fall away ‘when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word’ (4.16–17).39 In contrast, when tribulation arises, the true disciple will endure to the end (13.13), and to ensure the elect will not fall away God will shorten The same formulation is found in 2 Tim. 2.11–12: ‘The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us.’ In contrast to Peter and the other disciples, the members of the churches of Pergamum and Philadelphia have not denied even when it resulted in the death of a believer (Rev. 2.13; 3.8). Compare also Jude 4; and 1 John 2.22–3. 38 The author of John 21, writing a good deal later than Mark, still feels the need to address Peter’s denial. The shorter ending of Mark appears to explicitly affirm Peter’s primacy among the disciples. 39 Mark provides examples of the other two types of failed seed: his family and Jewish leaders most closely represent those who do not receive the word because it is snatched by Satan, while the rich man, who was tied to his possessions, follows the model of the seed which fell among thorns (4.7). 37

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the days of tribulation (13.20). Since the disciples have already deserted, Mark clearly does not regard them as part of the elect. Similarly, as Jesus designated those who do the will of God as his mothers, brothers and sisters, it later becomes clear that the mothers, brothers and sisters to be received by those who have renounced everything will be through persecution (10.30). Mark constructs Christian identity around the acceptance of suffering, but also in opposition to the twelve.

Constructing identity in Mark For Mark, those represented by the seed sown on the good soil not only hear the word but accept it and, even in times of persecution, produce fruit (4.20). This is what the twelve have failed to do. By contrast, other characters in the narrative respond positively to Jesus, demonstrating the faith which his family and townsfolk lack. A leper (1.40), the friends of a paralytic (2.5), Jairus (5.23), the woman with the blood flow (5.34), the people of Gennesaret (5.55–6), the Syropheoenician woman (7.26), the father of a demoniac (9.24), and Bartimaeus (10.47) all display faith in Jesus’ power to heal. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross behind Jesus, and the centurion confesses Jesus to be the Son of God at the moment of crucifixion; these so-called ‘minor characters’ embody success in the gospel. However, Mark’s readers are also invited to become part of the drama.40 From the outset they know Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God (1.1), knowledge to which only supernatural characters are privy. They associate themselves with the mysterious crowds who are summoned (προσκαλεσάμενος) to receive Jesus’ teaching (8.34; 7.14) and also find themselves among the curious ‘other boats’ that are said – like the inner circle – to be ‘with’ Jesus (μετ’ αὐτοῦ) on the stormy waters before they are stilled (4.36).

There is no need to postulate a complex literary-rhetorical reading that regards the ending as a mechanism to frustrate the expectations of the readers; so, among others: Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 23–48; followed by Donald Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 115–21, nor worry about whether or not the message eventually got through. The readers have been privileged insiders from the beginning and stand apart from the main disciples in the story.

40

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The authority and legacy of the twelve was disputed in early Christianity. It is clear from Paul’s letters that not only were there Christian communities who existed outside the authority of the twelve (1 Cor. 1.11–13), but that relationships between these various ecclesiastical groups could be fraught. Paul appears to have experienced problems with the so-called ‘super-apostles’ who questioned his claim to apostleship (2 Cor. 11.5; 12.11). James, not one of the twelve, appears to have enjoyed primacy even over Peter, as Paul’s recounting of the Antioch dispute suggests (Gal. 2.12). The Beloved Disciple competes with Peter in the fourth gospel,41 and the author mentions the presence of ‘other sheep’ (10.16). Both Matthew’s gospel and the epistle of James may reflect attempts to reassert the Petrine primacy in conscious opposition to Paul’s legacy.42 The Johannine epistles and Revelation clearly acknowledge the existence of and tension between divergent groups of early Christians.43 If Mark is asserting the rights of his own community over against any claim to authority by representatives of the twelve, this would explain his treatment of the disciples. Furthermore, the community may be directly represented by the story of the enigmatic exorcist (9.38–40). Exorcism, as we have seen, was a crucial aspect of Jesus’ ministry, and one which he passed on to his disciples. Significantly, the unknown exorcist appears after the story where the disciples have noticeably failed to cast out a demon (9.14–29) and two further pericopes concerned with the disciples’ lack of understanding (9.30–2, 33–7). The exorcist succeeds where the disciples fail, and they attempt to stop him because he does not follow them (οὐκ ἠκολούθει ἡμῖν; 9.38). 44 However, Jesus affirms this activity outside the authority of the twelve by noting that no one who performs a work in his name will be able to speak evil of him, precisely what Peter will later do. Mark’s gospel therefore constructs a Christian identity against both the disciples’ authority and behaviour. In a time of persecution, true disciples Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979). This position is argued most recently by D. C. Sim, ‘Paul and Matthew on the Torah: Theory and Practice’, in Paul, Grace and Freedom: Essays in Honour of John K. Riches, Paul Middleton, Angus Paddison, and Karen J. Wenell (eds) (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 50–64. 43 1 Jn 2.19; 4.1; 2 Jn 7; 3 Jn 10; Rev. 2.14–15, 20. 44 Marcus (Mark, 684) identifies the exorcist as a non-Christian. To be sure, non-Christian exorcists are found employing Jesus’ name in Acts 19.13–17, but unlike the Marcan figure, they fail. This exorcist most likely is a follower of Jesus, but not of the twelve. 41 42

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must stand firm and confess to be followers of Jesus. Believers will find themselves in a position where they will be forced to make a choice between denying self or denying Jesus; abandoning their earthly ties or abandoning Jesus; clinging to or losing their life. In order to truly follow after Jesus, Mark’s readers must do better than the disciples, who deny, betray and forsake Jesus. Instead, the model by which Christian identity is formed is that of Jesus himself. True followers, such as those in Lyons, will stand before authorities, deny themselves, confess Christ, take up their cross, and only then, like Ignatius, become disciples in following Jesus on the road to suffering and martyrdom.

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Textual Orientations: Jesus, Written Texts, and the Social Construction of Identity in the Gospel of Luke Rafael Rodríguez Generously borrowed from Erving Goffman’s approach to social situations as well as ‘texts’, questions about framing direct our attention to the powers inherent in public articulation of collective memory to influence the private makings of sense. Questions about framing are essentially about the limits to the scope of possible interpretations. Their aim is not to freeze one particular ‘reading’ as the correct one, rather, it is to establish the likely range of meanings.1

Introduction The recent interest in theories of social identity and memory draw our attention away from the ink-and-parchment texts of the New Testament and refocus our gaze on the flesh-and-blood human beings that stand behind those texts.2 In other words, our interests are more sociological than exegetical. Perhaps it was predictable, then, that much of this discussion should focus on ritual and the function of ritual in mediating the past in the present (social memory) and structuring group membership and boundaries (social identity).3 Such Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), 4.  2 For an explicit recognition and exploration of the connections between identity and memory (and social theories thereof), see Coleman A. Baker, Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).  3 The connection between ritual and social memory and/or identity is commonly discussed; to pick three examples near to hand, see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 41–71; Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 114–37; J. Brian Tucker, ‘Baths, Baptism, and Patronage: The Continuing Role of Roman Social Identity in Corinth’, in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation: Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell, Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker (eds), LNTS 428 (eds) (London:  1

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discussions have offered considerable advances on our understanding of Jesus’ earliest followers and their place within and engagement with their social, cultural, and religious milieux. The current essay focuses not on this or that ritual aspect of the earliest Christians’ identity but on a textual aspect of their identity. Interpretative strategies and conflicts play significant roles in the construction of an individual’s or group’s sense of itself. While any text that gains a wider cultural currency can become a locus of social identity,4 sacred texts can impact an individual’s and a group’s sense of identity on an especially deep and fundamental level.5 Sacred written texts function as reference points – even as boundary markers – in the social construction of identity. The present essay focuses on the function of the interpretation of ‘the scripture(s)’ in the development and maintenance of one particular Jewish identity – viz. a Christian identity – in the Gospel of Luke.6

Textuality and text-interpretative traditions In a now-classic study, William Harris challenged the ‘impression of optimism, even extreme optimism’ regarding the widespread distribution of T&T Clark International, 2010), 173–88. Similarly, Richard Jenkins, whose work explicitly takes up themes from Mead and Goffman, emphasizes the function of social interaction in the construction, maintenance and deployment of social identity; Richard Jenkins, Social Identity, 1st edn (London; New York: Routledge, 1996). Coleman Baker immediately mentions ‘two common boundary crossing rituals’ mediating early Christian identity in Acts: ‘baptism in the name of Jesus and being filled with the Holy Spirit’; Baker, Identity, xv–xvi; see also 6–10. Whether or not we can helpfully conceptualize ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’ as a ‘boundary crossing ritual’, Baker’s theoretical apparatus, which explicitly and carefully incorporates social identity and social memory research, quite naturally foregrounds the role of ritual in the development and function of identity and memory in social (and textual) interaction. See also Shkul and Baker’s essays in the present volume, 79–92 and 105–18.  4 ‘A “collective memory” – as a set of ideas, images, feelings about the past – is best located not in the minds of individuals, but in the resources they share. There is no reason to privilege one form of resource over another – for example, to see history books as important but popular movies as not’; Irwin-Zarecka, Frames, 4.  5 See Tom Thatcher, ‘Literacy, Textual Communities, and Josephus’ Jewish War’, JSJ 29, no. 2 (1998).  6 I am well aware of the problems attending the use of certain labels, especially Jewish and Christian. It might be significant that, if Acts is older than 1 Peter, our author provides the earliest attestation of the term Χριστιανός (Acts 11.26; 26.28; see also 1 Pet. 4.16; Ign. Magn., 4.1; Mart. Pol., 12.1; Diogn., 2.6, 10; 6.5), and so we might be able to speak of the emergence and maintenance of an explicitly Christian identity in (or by the time of) Luke-Acts. For the present essay, however, my use of the label Christian only serves as a convenience, a way to avoid having to write ‘Jesus’ followers’ (or some similarly ungainly phrase) every time I want to refer either to them or to some aspect of their socio-cultural milieu.

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the skills of literacy in antiquity.7 In light of the observation that ‘[t]he school systems of Graeco-Roman antiquity were for the most part quite puny’,8 Harris argues, The likely overall illiteracy level of the Roman Empire under the principate is almost certain to have been above 90%. Even for the most educated populations – which would mainly have been found, I think, in Greek cities in the fourth to first century BC – the range is to be sought, if we include women and countrypeople, far above 50%.9

Catherine Hezser, in an equally important work, estimates that literacy among Roman-era Jews lagged behind Harris’s estimate of 10–15 per cent for the Roman Empire as a whole. If Palestinian-Jewish literacy rates exceeded Bar-Ilan’s estimate of 3 per cent, they were only ‘slightly higher’.10 In the wake of such studies, New Testament scholars have increasingly abandoned the once-common assumption that Second Temple Jews exhibited remarkably high – even modern! – levels of literacy, widely distributed across class and profession.11 References to the relative paucity of literacy skills across the

William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 8. Among others, Harris cites Murray’s claim that ‘archaic Greece was a literate society in a modern sense’; Oswyn Murray, Early Greece (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 96, quoted in Harris, Ancient Literacy, 9, my emphasis. He provides similar examples of optimism regarding Roman literacy rates. For an example of such a view among New Testament scholars, see Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988), 321–3.  8 Harris, Ancient Literacy, 16.  9 Harris, Ancient Literacy, 22. At the end of his study, Harris concludes, ‘[I]t seems perfectly natural that nothing like mass literacy ever came into being in antiquity … literacy on a large scale is the product of forces such as did not exist in antiquity’; Harris, Ancient Literacy, 327. 10 Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 81 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 496; Hezser references Meir Bar-Ilan, ‘Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries ce’, in Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, Simcha Fishbane, Stuart Schoenfeld, and Alain Goldschlager (eds) (New York: Ktav, 1992), 55. 11 For example, Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, trans. S. Taylor and P. Christie (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1890), 4.47–52. Schürer slides too easily between reading Torah and observing Torah, so that texts referring to the instruction of Jewish children (esp. boys) in Torah are construed as literacy education. Similarly, see Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 7 (discussed in the next footnote). For a helpful corrective, see Thatcher, ‘Literacy’.  7

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Roman Mediterranean abound in the secondary literature.12 Chris Keith has even raised the question, could Jesus write and/or read?13 Despite ongoing debate, the dominant position among scholars is that the majority of the population in the Roman Mediterranean (including Roman-era Palestine) could not read, perhaps even the vast majority.14 All the more surprising, then, that written texts and traditions flourished and proliferated among Hellenistic and Roman Jewish cultures.15 The conspicuous presence and social function of written texts explain, at least in part, why historians have so easily projected modern literacy onto these ancient cultures.16 Second Temple Jewish culture was characterized by both the presence and the function of written texts on the one hand, and the relative lack of individuals who could read them on the other. To borrow a phrase originally intended for Medieval European culture and which applies only loosely to our situation: in the centuries comprising Second Temple Judaism, ‘oral discourse effectively

For example, Richard A. Horsley, Jesus in Context: Power, People, and Performance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 4; see also Gamble, Books, 6–7; Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature, Library of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 39, 58. J. Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998), 234–5; Thatcher, ‘Literacy’, 127; Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 bce – 400 ce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 15; Chris Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus, New Testament Tools, Studies, and Documents 38 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 70–9; Chris Keith, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee, Library of Historical Jesus Studies 8; LNTS 413 (London: T&T Clark International, 2011), 72–85. There is by no means a consensus here. Maurice Casey objects strenuously against ‘minimalist reading[s] of the Graeco-Roman evidence’ and argues that, ‘[w]hen they grew up, Jesus and Jacob [= James] will have become, like Joseph, adult male Israelites who read from the Torah in Hebrew on the Sabbath and at major festivals’; Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), 158, 161. For an optimistic reading of the evidence, see Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 109–13 (though Ferguson cites Harris approvingly, 132 n. 98). Gamble approvingly cites Origen’s claim that ‘there are many more vulgar and illiterate people than those who have been trained in rational thinking’ (Cels., 1.27), but objects that Harris ‘too hastily dismisses interest in literacy among the Jews’; Gamble, Books, 6–7, 249 n. 20. 13 Keith, Jesus’ Literacy. 14 Keith, Jesus’ Literacy, 72. 15 Horsley, rightly noting the paucity of literacy in Second Temple Jewish society, wrongly assumes that written texts were primarily instruments of power, objects of the Great Tradition, and constrained to the social, political and economic elite in Jerusalem (and other urban centres); Horsley, Jesus in Context, 57–9. 16 See, for example, Charles H. Talbert, ‘Oral and Independent or Literary and Interdependent? A Response to Albert B. Lord’, in The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. William O. Walker, Jr. (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1978); and my critique in Rafael Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text, European Studies on Christian Origins, LNTS 407 (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), 30–1. 12

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began to function within a universe of communications governed by texts’.17 How do we explain this paradoxical situation? The commonest explanation offered by scholars is that reading in antiquity was usually (if not quite always) done aloud. Among biblical scholars, the classic expression of this explanation must be Paul Achtemeier’s essay, ‘Omne Verbum Sonat’.18 But even if this explanation is right,19 audible reading only explains how illiterate women and men had access to the content of written texts. Reading aloud does not explain the cultural currency of written texts – how written texts framed present experiences and were themselves affected by social changes – in the lives of the common, unlettered populace. The concept of textuality may help us develop a more robust explanation. Textuality refers to the wider cultural currency of written texts in a particular social milieu, whether of the contents of those texts or of the written text as material artefact. As an analytical concept, textuality encompasses broader issues than literacy, the deciphering of written texts: ‘Literacy is not textuality. One can be literate without the overt use of texts, and one can use texts extensively without evidencing genuine literacy.’20 Stock explains the cultural effects of changes in textuality in terms of written texts ‘emerg[ing] as a reference system both for everyday activities and for giving shape to many larger vehicles of explanation’.21 Thirty years later, we understand such ‘reference systems’ as aspects of the social construction and maintenance of identity. Unlike contemporary textuality, which easily but wrongly gives the impression of being an individualistic affair, textuality in antiquity was overtly a collective experience. Since the majority of the population could not read the texts that structured and provided orientation toward reality, most people could only have appealed to written texts in conjunction with others who were Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 3. 18 Paul J. Achtemeier, ‘Omne Verbum Sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity’, JBL 109, no. 1 (1990). 19 There have been serious challenges to the view that all (or even most) reading in the ancient world was reading aloud; see Frank D. Gilliard, ‘More Silent Reading in Antiquity: Non Omne Verbum Sonabat’, JBL 112, no. 4 (1993); A. K. Gavrilov, ‘Techniques of Reading in Classical Antiquity’, CQ 47, no. 1 (1997); M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Postscript on Silent Reading’, CQ 47, no. 1 (1997). Fusi provides a thorough discussion of the standard scholarly position and its weaknesses; Alessandra Fusi, ‘The Oral/Literate Model: A Valid Approach for New Testament Studies?’ (PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003). 20 Stock, Implications, 7. 21 Stock, Implications, 3. 17

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trained to read. A text that no one can read offers no more orientation towards the world than a river boulder or an oddly shaped stick. But we should not suppose that a community always required someone to actually read a text every time they turned to that text. Once the contents of a book or scroll are socially available, the text as a material object can perform salient and powerful social functions even without the presence of a reader.22 In his analysis of how written texts function as reference points for social organization, Stock offers the concept of textual communities, groups of people who appeal to written texts ‘to structure the internal behavior of the groups’ members and to provide solidarity against the outside world’.23 Outsiders – or, using the language of social identity theory, members of outgroups24 – inhabited ‘a universe beyond the revelatory text’.25 Two factors, (i) written texts and (ii) identification with others, facilitate the development of an aggregate of individuals into a coherent textual community. As a coherent textual community – in other words, as an ingroup – members’ thinking and behaviour are intentionally and explicitly subsumed under some sort of textual strategy, irrespective of each individuals’ specific mastery of the skills of literacy. Before we turn to consider the textual orientation of the community represented by the Gospel of Luke,26 we need to briefly consider Martin Jaffee’s recent attempt to discern ‘ways in which the orally mediated interpretative traditions associated with written texts became perceptible as cultural realities “outside of ” the texts themselves and thus required some sort of ideological legitimation in relation to the written texts’.27 Jaffee makes a threefold distinction within the larger social currency of tradition within See Thatcher’s discussion of the function of Torah according to Josephus’ account of the Jews’ war with Rome; Thatcher, ‘Literacy’. Stock, Implications, 88–92, 90 quoted. 24 E.g. Coleman A. Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, BTB 42, no. 3 (2012). 25 Stock, Implications, 90. 26 My reference to ‘the community represented by the Gospel of Luke’ does not assume a formor redaction-critical conception of so-called ‘Gospel communities’, which conception Richard Bauckham and his associates have robustly called into question; see the essays in Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Edward W. Klink, ed., The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Function of the Gospels in Early Christianity, LNTS (London: T&T Clark International, 2010). I am referring simply to the people whose interactions are reflected in and/or were mediated by the text of Luke’s Gospel, and I make this reference without assuming anything about the generative function of ‘Luke’s community’ and/or its needs. 27 Jaffee, Torah, 7. 22

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a group (or, in the terms of the present essay, a textual community). First, he refers to oral-literary tradition, in which a group’s ‘verbal [oral] products with pretensions beyond ordinary speech are cultivated for preservation and sharing in public settings’.28 Oral-literary tradition need not have any relation to a group’s written-literary tradition (if it has one), though the two are often – even usually – intertwined.29 Second, he refers to an oralperformative tradition, ‘the sum of performative strategies through which oral-literary tradition is summoned from memory and delivered in diverse public settings’.30 Importantly, a group’s oral-performative tradition pertains to more than the expression of its oral-literary tradition; ‘cultures that preserve their texts in hand-copied manuscripts also transmit such [written!] texts primarily in and through an oral-performative tradition’.31 Third, and most importantly for our purposes, Jaffee identifies text-interpretative tradition as a body of interpretive understandings that arise from multiple performances of a text (written or oral). They come to be so closely associated with public renderings of a text as to constitute its self-evident meaning. As a tradition, the text-interpretive material exists in the memories of both the textual performers and their auditors. The public readers deploy the text selectively in light of their judgement of their audiences’ capacities, while audiences supply it in their reception of the reading.32

Like the notes on the bottom of a study Bible’s pages, a textual community’s text-interpretative tradition is other than and exists apart from the text it renders meaningful. However, just like the study Bible’s notes, a text-interpretative tradition ‘come[s] to be so closely associated with public renderings of a text as to constitute its self-evident meaning’.33 The discussion thus far has been unavoidably abstract. The remainder of this essay fleshes out these theoretical arguments with reference to the Jaffee, Torah, 8. The interface and interaction between various media of communication, especially oral and written, provide a vibrant locus of scholarly activity. Among many possible references, see the essays in Annette Weissenrieder and Robert B. Coote (eds) The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres, WUNT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). 30 Jaffee, Torah, 8. 31 Jaffee, Torah, 8. 32 Jaffee, Torah, 8. 33 Jaffee, Torah, 8. Foley, pursuing a different but related research agenda, refers to ‘“additional” information’ needed to understand a group’s interpretation of a text: ‘Whether [that information] constitutes a part of the utterance amounts … to a phenomenological question: for outsiders no, for insiders yes’; John Miles Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance, Voices in Performance and Text (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 133. 28 29

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question of social identity formation – and especially the development of a distinctive textual community – in the Gospel of Luke.

The Gospel of Luke and the formation of a textual community Luke’s concern with identity formation is evident from the very beginning. In the prologue, he explains to Theophilus34 why he decided to write an account of Jesus’ life and teaching using a ἵνα clause: ‘so that you would be assured of the truth (ἀσφάλεια) pertaining to the things you were taught’.35 Barbara Misztal identifies ‘the process of our mnemonic socialization’ as a significant aspect of our incorporation into our significant collective identities (national, ethnic, familial) and, conversely, of those group’s incorporation of new members. We coalesce into ‘mnemonic communities’ and are socialized to know instinctively ‘what should be remembered and what should be forgotten’.36 More importantly for the present discussion, ‘Mnemonic communities, through introducing and familiarizing new arrivals to their collective past, ensure that new members, by identifying with the group’s past, attain a required social identity’.37 Luke overtly signals such intentions in the prologue by ‘introducing and familiarizing new arrivals (= Theophilus) to their collective past’ (= ‘the matters fulfilled among us, just as those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the word passed down to us’; Lk. 1.1–2). Familiarization with a group’s collective past, like memory itself, is not simply a mental process. The past and its representation in the present transcend cognition and incorporate material and social sites (buildings, All references to ‘Theophilus’ in the present essay also include Luke’s broader readership; see Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and Social Context in Luke 1.1–4 and Acts 1.1, SNTSMS 78 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 187–200. 35 All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 36 Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering, Theorizing Society (Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, 2003), 15. 37 Misztal, Theories, 15. ‘Being social presupposes the ability to experience things that happened to the groups to which we belong long before we even joined them as if they were part of our own personal past … Indeed, acquiring a group’s memories and thereby identifying with its collective past is part of the process of acquiring any social identity, and familiarizing members with that past is a major part of communities’ efforts to assimilate them’; Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 3. For an autobiographical account of this phenomenon, see Lewis A. Coser, ‘Introduction: Maurice Halbwachs, 1877–1945’, in On Collective Memory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 21. 34

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monuments, statues, rituals, social structure, etc.).38 ‘The fact that memories are often organized around places and objects suggests that remembering is something that occurs in the world of things and involves our senses.’39 The ‘objects’ that concern us here are the written texts of Israel’s sacred tradition, which Luke variously refers to as (i) the Scriptures,40 (ii) Torah (νόμος),41 (iii) the Torah of the Lord,42 (iv) the Torah of Moses,43 (v) Moses and the Prophets,44 (vi) Torah and the Prophets,45 (vii) or the Torah of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.46 As Luke works through his account of Jesus’ life and teaching (as well as through his follow-up account in Acts), he brings Theophilus into proper alignment with Israel’s sacred written texts, developing in the former the proper perspective of the latter.47 In other words, the Gospel of Luke provides, ‘a body of interpretive understandings that arise from multiple performances of a text’.48 Luke, of course, refers to (i.e. mentions, quotes, alludes to, and/or echoes) Israel’s sacred traditions extensively. Besides the references in the previous paragraph, Luke uses the standard introductory formula, γέγραπται (and related forms), fifteen times.49 On one occasion Jesus stands up ‘to read’ (ἀναγνῶναι) a written text (Lk. 4.16), and twice more he asks someone if (or how) they have read (ἀναγινώσκω) Israel’s sacred texts (see Lk. 6.3; 10.26). Moreover, the subtle allusions to and echoes of Hebrew biblical texts far exceed the number of explicit references we have already mentioned. For those with ears to hear, every chapter of Luke resonates with Israel’s sacred The seminal work in this regard is Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. A. Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 39 Misztal, Theories, 16. 40 See Lk. 24.27, 32, 45. 41 Luke refers to Torah (νόμος) without modifiers (e.g. ‘of Moses’, or ‘of the Lord’) at Lk. 2.27; 10.26; 16.17. 42 See Lk. 2.23, 24, 39. 43 See Lk. 2.22; see also 24.44 (n. 47, below). 44 See Lk. 16.29, 31; 24.27. 45 See Lk. 16.16. 46 See Lk. 24.44. 47 Elsewhere I have argued that the Third Evangelist writes Luke-Acts in order to delimit proper readings of Israel’s sacred written texts, which he identifies in Lk. 24.27 as τὰ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ (see Rafael Rodriguez, ‘“According to the Scriptures”: Suffering and the Psalms in the Speeches of Acts’, in Keys and Frames: Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Tom Thatcher, Semeia Studies (Atlanta: SBL, forthcoming). 48 Jaffee, Torah, 8. 49 See Lk. 2.23 (see n. 43, above); 3.4; 4.4, 8, 10; 7.27; 10.26 (see n. 42, above); 19.46; 24.46. See also 4.17 (ἦν γεγραμμένον); 18.31; 21.22; 24.44 (πάντα τὰ γεγραμμένα); and 20.17; 22.37 (τὸ γεγραμμένον τοῦτο). 38

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texts. The scope of the present essay prevents us from attempting anything like a comprehensive survey – still less an exhaustive analysis! – of Luke’s use of biblical texts. In order to keep things manageable, we will restrict our focus to Luke’s use of γραφή and examine the extent to which we can discern the text-interpretative traditions in Luke’s appeal to ἡ γραφή/αἱ γραφαί. Luke only uses γραφή, four times; we will consider each of these in turn.

‘Today this Scripture’: Jesus comes home In Luke’s account of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, he introduces a significant element of Jesus’ method of teaching: Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll in the sight of those gathered.50 Luke’s Nazareth pericope refers to Hebrew biblical tradition twice: an explicit quotation from Deutero-Isaiah (4.18–19, quoting Isa. 61.1–2; 58.6) and explicit allusions to the Elijah/Elisha traditions (4.25–7, alluding to 1 Kgs 17.8–24; 2 Kgs 5.1–19).51 In addition to the variant citation formula, εὗρεν τὸν τόπον οὗ ἦν γεγραμμένον (4.17), Luke has drawn conspicuous attention to the presence of the written text of Isaiah by means of the three-layer chiastic movement: A  καὶ ἀνέστη ἀναγῶναι. A  B  καὶ ἐπεδόθη αὐτῷ βιβλίον τοῦ προφήτου Ἠσαΐου A B C  καὶ ἀναπτύξας τὸ βιβλίον A B C   Jesus finds Isaiah 61.1–2; 58.6 A B C'  καὶ πτύξας τὸ βιβλίον A  B'  ἀποδοὺς τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ A' ἐκάθισεν. (Lk. 4.16–20)

Chris Keith draws special attention to Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ handling and reading from a scroll; Keith, Jesus’ Literacy, 142–6. 51 Terms such as ‘quotations’ and ‘allusions’ have become technical terms among scholars investigating relations between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament; see Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1989), 25–33; Richard B. Hays and Joel B. Green, ‘The Use of the Old Testament in the New’, in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, ed. Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 226–9; J. Samuel Subramanian, The Synoptic Gospels and the Psalms as Prophecy, LNTS 351 (London: T&T Clark International, 2007), 9–14. Defining these terms precisely lies beyond the scope of the current essay, though of course we will have to pay attention to the precise dynamics and features of references to the Hebrew Bible we discuss here. Thankfully, we mitigate the problem by focusing narrowly on the use of γραφή in Luke, which precludes us having to defend a subtle, implicit allusion to or echo of written texts. 50

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This is perhaps the most emphatic citation formula in the New Testament; certainly Luke nowhere else goes to such dramatic lengths to insert the written text, with all its physicality and attendant symbolic currency, into the narrative.52 Luke’s Nazareth pericope appears to get closer to contemporary Western notions of ‘reading’ and ‘textuality’ than at any other place in the Christian canon (in any of its manifestations). Appearances, however, can be deceiving. On closer inspection, the actual text that Luke quotes interpolates a line from Isa. 58.6 into the middle of Isa. 61.1 and 2 and suggests that the activity connoted by ἀναγνῶναι (4.16) differs substantially from what we consider ‘reading’. So the secondary literature is full of claims that ‘Jesus would not have switched from Isaiah 61 to Isaiah 58 and back again in his reading of scripture’.53 Or, ‘Luke is summarizing textual material used by Jesus in his synagogue address, since a normal synagogue reading would not mix passages quite like this’.54 Perhaps, but such comments provide no explanation of Luke’s emphatic insistence on the presence of a written text, even as he quotes Isaiah in such a way that suggests against the presence of a written text.55 The problem stems from our importation of contemporary notions of text, reading and textuality, which notions obscure the traditional (as opposed to textual) dynamics at work in Luke’s Nazareth pericope.56 By ‘symbolic currency’, I am referring to the cultural significance of the written text as an object, distinct from the contents inscribed therein; see Rafael Rodríguez, ‘Reading and Hearing in Ancient Contexts’, JSNT 32, no. 2 (2009): 162–70. We can see the symbolic currency of texts in multiple arenas, from the controversy over the burned copies of the Qur’an at Bagram Air Base in February 2012 (which allegedly contained handwritten extremist messages, but the literary significances of those handwritten messages was not sufficient to counter the symbolic significance of the text) to debates about the function (NB not the interpretation!) of the US Constitution in American political discourse and policymaking. 53 George Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 88. 54 Darrell L. Bock, Luke: Volume 1: 1:1–9:50, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994), 405. 55 Beasley-Murray and Bock are not exceptional in this regard, and my references to their work should not imply that they are particularly inadequate here. Quite the contrary; I refer to these two scholars because they are representative of the field as a whole. Other commentators note that the citation from Isaiah is ‘mixed’ or in some way problematic but do not explain the problem in light of Luke’s emphatic portrayal of Jesus reading; see I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 182–3; Robert H. Stein, Luke, NAC 24 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), 155–6; Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 209–10. 56 Rodríguez, ‘Reading’. For a discussion of the term ‘tradition’, see Rodríguez, Structuring, 81–113. In nuce, tradition refers to the extra-textual set of cultural associations and understandings that contextualizes any expression of the tradition – written or oral – and gives that expression its appropriate interpretation. Werner Kelber refers to tradition in this sense as ‘a circumambient contextuality or biosphere in which speaker and hearers live … Tradition in this broadest sense is largely an invisible nexus of references and identities from which people draw sustenance, in which 52

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So when Jesus, having handed the scroll back to the attendant and resumed his seat,57 declares to those gathered around him, ‘Today, this scripture is fulfilled (πεπλήρωται ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη) in your ears’ (4.21), we are left wondering what, precisely, Jesus means by ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη. Ostensibly, ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη refers simply to the text Luke cites from Isaiah. Moreover, this is the only time Luke uses the singular γραφή, which heightens the expectation that Jesus is referring to the specific text quoted in 4.18–19. But that leaves the question, is Luke referring to the fulfilment of Isa. 61.1–2? Or does he mean 58.6d? Or maybe both? In terms of Luke’s narrative, ‘both’ seems the most likely answer, but this would mean we should not press the significance of the singular γραφή. Or perhaps Luke has the entire Isaianic tradition in view, which proposal may find some support from the fact that Luke nowhere says that Jesus read the text aloud.58 In this case, Jesus, perhaps gesticulating toward the now rolled-up Isaiah scroll, pronounces ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη – the Isaiah scroll itself! – is fulfilled. But this, too, does not address the peculiarly non-textual quotation(s) from Isaiah in Lk. 4.18–19. Despite the emphatically textual (= ‘literate’) scene Luke portrays, we nevertheless observe decidedly traditional dynamics at work in the reference to Isaiah and ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη. To account for both the emphatically textual connotations of ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη in v. 21 and the non-textual dynamics of the quotation in vv. 18–19, I situate both the materiality of the Isaiah scroll and the Isaianic tradition he quotes within the larger tradition of yhwh’s judgement and restoration of/for his people Israel.59 they live, and in relation to which they make sense of their lives. This invisible biosphere is at once the most elusive and the foundational feature of tradition’; Werner H. Kelber, ‘Jesus and Tradition: Words in Time, Words in Space’, in Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature, ed. Joanna Dewey, Semeia 65 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 159. Foley refers to tradition as ‘the enabling referent’ that renders oral (especially) and written expressions of that tradition meaningful; Foley, Singer, passim. 57 ‘Sitting’ is largely considered the authoritative posture of a teacher; see Mt. 5.1–2, as well as the comments in Marshall, Luke, 184; Robert Horton Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, 2nd edn. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 66; William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 424–5; John Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, WBC 35A (Dallas: Word Books, 1989), 198; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 157–8. 58 See Hugh S. Pyper, ‘Jesus Reads the Scriptures’, in Those Outside: Noncanonical Readings of Canonical Gospels, George Aichele and Richard G. Walsh (eds) (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 6–7; Rodríguez, Structuring, 158; Keith, Jesus’ Literacy, 143–4. 59 See above, n. 56 (and the references there), for a discussion of this technical use of the term tradition.

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[Luke’s] citation of Isa. 61.1–2 taps into the larger Israelite tradition of restoration/vindication and the concomitant traditions about God’s ἀνταπόδοσις [‘recompense’]. Luke’s Jesus does not claim to fulfil the text of Isaiah 61, Lk. 4.22 notwithstanding. Luke has in view the Israelite tradition of God’s restoration, especially as it is embodied in the Isaianic texts.60

When Luke says ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη has been fulfilled, he is not referring to Isa. 61.1–2, or to Isa. 58.6, or to both texts at once, or even to the Isaiah scroll itself. He refers to the tradition of the restoration of God’s people and the judgement of their enemies (including those from Israel who have forsaken the covenant), which tradition is written (hence, γραφή) in Isaiah – as well as in other texts! – and provides the context within which Jesus’ quotation in vv. 18–19 finds its proper interpretation. We cannot press the significance of the singular γραφή to suggest that Luke only intends a singular ‘scripture’ (one verse, one pericope, or even one scroll) in 4.21. This may seem too strong a conclusion simply on the basis of the interpolation of Isa. 58.6d between Isa. 61.1 and 2, especially considering that every other use of γραφή in Luke occurs in the plural.61 If Luke did not mean ‘this particular and specific scripture’ in 4.21, it would have been easy enough for Jesus to declare to the synagogue, ‘Today, πεπλήρωνται αἱ γραφαὶ [αὗται?] in your ears’. But that is manifestly what Luke did not write. Two more considerations suggest Luke uses ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη in a wider, more global sense. First, still in the Nazareth pericope, Jesus goes on to adduce the traditions of Elijah and Elisha as supporting witnesses (4.25–7).62 Elijah and Elisha, as representative figures of both the Lord’s judgement and of his restoration, provided appropriate supporting evidence for Luke’s argument that ἡ γραφὴ

Rodríguez, Structuring, 162, emphasis added. Luke-Acts as a whole uses γραφή in the singular on four occasions (Lk. 4.21; Acts 1.16; 8.32, 35), compared to seven occurrences in the plural (Lk. 24.27, 32, 45; Acts 17.2, 11; 18.24, 28). Readers will note that the other singular uses of γραφή refer to Judas’ fulfilment of ‘the scripture’ (Acts 1.16, with two scriptures [!] – Ps. 69.25 and 109.8 – quoted in 1.20), and to ‘the scripture’ that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading (Acts 8.32–3, citing Isa. 53.7–8) and from which Philip began as he explained the good news about Jesus to him (8.35). 62 I deal with Jesus’ appeals to the examples of Elijah and Elisha in detail at Rodríguez, Structuring, 166–73. The general thrust of my argument there is simply that the traditional, established significance of Elijah and Elisha would not have supported the conclusion that God was abandoning Israel and turning instead to the gentiles, even if – if – that is how Luke intends the reference. Instead, Elijah and Elisha are both restorative figures within Judaism, effecting judgement against the apostate nation (especially the monarchy) but enacting the elevation of the faithful remnant (especially the new king, Jehu; see 2 Kgs 9–10) and the restoration of Israel. 60 61

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αὕτη, which he cited in 4.18–19, was fulfilled. Isaiah and Elijah/Elisha both functioned as parts of the tradition of Israel’s promised restoration and vindication against her enemies (and judgement against the wicked); both the scroll and the prophets inhabited this ‘traditional biosphere’ and drew their significance from it.63 Second, the association of Isaianic tradition with the traditions of Elijah and Elisha occurs together at another important moment in Luke. In Jesus’ response to John the Baptist, Jesus answers: ‘Tell John the things you see and hear: the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed; and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor receive good news’ (Lk. 7.22).64 A number of commentators have wondered about Jesus’ reference to six classes of people (the blind, lame, leprous, deaf, dead and poor), especially since five – and not six – of these classes seem to come directly from Isaiah.65 This essay has proposed an answer: tradition, the extra-textual set of cultural associations and understandings that contextualizes any individual expression of the tradition – written or oral – and gives that expression its appropriate interpretation. Tradition in this sense transcends the text of Isaiah and incorporates other expressions of yhwh’s promise of Israel’s restoration. The Qumran fragment 4Q521 exhibits similar dynamics by incorporating allusions to Psalm 146 into a text redolent with echoes of Isaiah.66 Moreover, Luke in particular conjoins Isaiah with Elijah/Elisha by narrating the healing of a military official’s slave (Lk. 7.1–10; cp. 2 Kgs 567) and the raising of a widow’s son (Lk. 7.11–17; cp. 1 Kgs 17.17–24; 2 Kgs 4.18–37). So the resurrection of the dead in Lk. 7.22 picks up both Isaianic and Elijah/ Elisha resonances, and the reference to the cleansing of lepers alludes to Elisha’s healing of Naaman. Even when Luke refers to ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη in 4.21, therefore, he is referring to the contextualizing tradition of Israel’s restoration See Kelber, ‘Jesus and Tradition’, 159, cited in n. 56, above. I treat this pericope (Mt. 11.2–6||Lk. 7.18–23) in detail at Rodríguez, Structuring, 117–37. 65 Isa. 35.5; 61.1 [lxx only] (blind); Isa. 35.6 (lame); Isa. 35.5 (deaf); Isa. 26.19 (dead); Isa. 61.1 (poor). Among the commentaries, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: I–IX, AB 28 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 668; William David Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 243. 66 Rafael Rodríguez, ‘Re-Framing End-Time Wonders: A Response to Hans Kvalbein’, JSP 20, no. 3 (2011). 67 The parallels between Lk. 7.1–10 and 2 Kgs 5 are not precise, but in light of the following pericope I think the resonances are sufficient to think that, even if Luke did not intend them, he could scarcely have been surprised if his audience nevertheless perceived them. 63 64

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as embodied in particular written texts rather than quoting narrowly from isolated (and isolatable) proof-texts.68 That larger tradition provides the appropriate perspective – the beginnings of the ‘text-interpretative tradition’ – within which Israel’s sacred written texts find their proper significance for Luke and his audience.

‘He opened the Scriptures’: The resurrection of the text After the reference to ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη in 4.21, Luke does not use the word γραφή again until the end of the Gospel, when he mentions τὰς γραφάς three times in rather quick succession (24.27, 32, 45).69 Since all three references function in the same way – to summon the whole corpus of sacred Jewish texts as a witness for the gospel – we will treat them together as one unit (see Table 1). We scarcely need to defend the thesis that the plural γραφάς refers to tradition embodied in but transcending Israel’s sacred written texts. I simply make two observations. First, unlike in ch. 4, Luke does not provide any hints as to which particular scriptures he has in mind.70 Second, Luke explicitly refers to the Hebrew biblical canon as a whole (‘Moses and all the prophets’71 as well as ‘all the scriptures’ in Lk. 24.27; ‘the Torah of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms’ in Lk. 24.44). When Jesus explains (διερμήνευσεν; 24.27) and opens (διήνοιγεν; 24.32) the scriptures, he is not so much interpreting specific written texts as contextualizing all of Israel’s biblical tradition. Both lay and scholarly readers alike have registered frustration at Luke’s laconic references to Jesus taking the disciples – first Cleopas and his companion (24.27, 32) and then the larger circle of disciples (24.45) – and walking them through τὰς γραφάς. Would that Luke had told us which Rodríguez, Structuring, 214–16. As I have already mentioned, the present essay focuses very narrowly on the word γραφή in the Gospel of Luke. Of course, Luke refers to, quotes from, and echoes Hebrew biblical texts and tradition throughout the Gospel, from the infancy narrative to the resurrection appearances. 70 See Donald Juel, Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 82–3; I address the function of τὰς γραφάς in Luke 24 and quotations from the Psalms in the speeches in Acts in Rodriguez, ‘According to the Scriptures’. 71 Subramanian demonstrates that the Psalms were widely read prophetically (‘as prophecy’) in the Second Temple period, which also suggests that Luke would not object to including the Psalms under the aegis of πάντων τῶν προφητῶν; Subramanian, Synoptic. 68 69

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Table 1: γραφή in Luke 24 Luke 24.27

Luke 24.32

Luke 24.45

καὶ ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ Μωϋσέως καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν προφητῶν διερμήνευσεν αὐτοῖς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς τὰ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ.

καὶ εἶπαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους· οὐχὶ ἡ καρδία ἡμῶν καιομένη ἦν [ἐν ἡμῖν] ὡς ἐλάλει ἡμῖν ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ, ὡς διήνοιγεν ἡμῖν τὰς γραφάς;

τότε διήνοιξεν αὐτῶν τὸν νοῦν τοῦ συνιέναι τὰς γραφάς·

scriptures! Our frustration stems, at least in part, from our restriction to the written text apart from the larger context of the circumambient tradition.72 We can never know whether Theophilus would have shared our frustration. But Luke, author of a written text and performer of the Jesus tradition, apparently felt no compunction in leaving the referent unexpressed. In light of the growing consensus on the relative paucity of literacy skills in the early Roman Empire (and especially Roman Palestine), we might explain this situation in terms of the cultural context shared by both Luke – a literate author – and his largely scribal-illiterate audience.73 For Luke’s audience as well as for Luke himself, the written text carried cultural currency beyond simply the meaning of the inscribed words. The words’ ‘writtenness’ enhanced their authority and tapped the symbolic (or ‘monumental’) value of writing.74 The physical text, as a material object with social and cultural significance, functioned like a totem, integrating competing social perspectives into a unified order and providing a reference point for a group’s being in the world. The same – or at least a similar – dynamic was operative in Johannine circles: [V]ague references to ‘Scripture’ are not uncommon in the Fourth Gospel, even when John is citing the Hebrew Bible to prove key theological points (see Jn 7:38; 17:12; 19:28; 19:36; 20:9). Perhaps in these cases, as in 2:22, John is In this sense Foley refers to ‘even the scholar closest to [oral-derived texts]’ as ‘an ‘outsider’ who can never recover the multifaceted reality that lies behind them’; Foley, Singer, 61. The problem of defining terms like literacy and illiteracy without making certain cultural value judgements has received considerable discussion elsewhere; see Rodríguez, ‘Reading’, and the sources cited there. The current consensus acknowledges a range of literacy skills, from Harris’s class of ‘semi-literates’, or Thomas’s ‘phonetic literacy’, and so on; Harris, Ancient Literacy, passim; Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 9, 11, 92. Keith distinguishes a ‘craftman’s literacy’ from ‘scribal literacy’, and my use of the term ‘scribal-illiteracy’ reflects this distinction; Keith, Pericope; Keith, Jesus’ Literacy. 74 Tom Thatcher, Why John Wrote a Gospel: Jesus–Memory–History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 37–49. 72

73

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pointing his reader not to specific passages from the Bible but rather to a mode of recall, a way of remembering ambiguous things that Jesus said and did against the backdrop of the sacred text.75

Thatcher’s argument that John refers to ‘the Scripture’ generally even when he has specific passages in mind comports with our reading of Lk. 4.21. His argument works even better with respect to Luke 24, where the text gives no indication of an intended specific passage. Luke does not clarify which scriptures he has in mind because he has in mind the Scriptures, the written text-as-totem. All of this makes sense of the observation that Luke 24 does not provide an interpretation of a specific written text but rather places Israel’s sacred texts as a whole, both their symbolic (or ‘monumental’) and their literary strata, into proper perspective.76 ‘The Scriptures’, as tradition, spoke beforehand of the suffering of the Son of Man, and only after the resurrection could Jesus explain this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples. Here we find a peculiar tension spanning the length of Luke’s narrative, that in 4.21 Jesus announced the fulfilment of ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη, but he could not explain (or open) the Scriptures to his disciples until after they assumed their role as witnesses to Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. Luke identifies Jesus’ suffering and vindication as the necessary condition for the disciples to rightly understand τὰς γραφάς. Both Mark and Matthew, in the first passion-resurrection prediction, announce that Jesus δεῖ παθεῖν (Mk 8.31 par.).77 This is the only occurrence of δεῖ παθεῖν in both Gospels. Luke uses δεῖ παθεῖν in his parallel to the first passion-resurrection prediction (Lk. 9.22), but he repeats the phrase twice more. First, in a tradition with only very loose parallels to the other Gospels, he announces again that the son of man δεῖ παθεῖν (17.25). And in the Emmaus pericope, immediately before he explains τὰς γραφάς to Cleopas and his companion, Jesus reminds them the Messiah ταῦτα ἔδει παθεῖν (24.26).78 Thatcher, Why, 28, emphasis added. See n. 53, above, for clarification of the ‘symbolic’ as distinct from the literary significance of a written text. 77 For the language of ‘passion-resurrection predictions’ instead of the standard ‘passion predictions’ (and, relatedly, ‘passion-resurrection narrative’), see Holly J. Carey, Jesus’ Cry from the Cross: Towards a First-Century Understanding of the Intertextual Relationship between Psalm 22 and the Narrative of Mark’s Gospel, LNTS 398 (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 46–8. 78 See also Acts 17.2–3, where Paul ‘reasoned’ (διελέξατο) with the Thessalonian synagogue ‘from the scriptures’ (ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν), opening the scriptures (διανοίγων; see BDAG, s.v.) and demonstrating that ‘the Messiah had to suffer (τὸν χριστὸν ἔδει παθεῖν) and be raised from the dead’. 75 76

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As Luke’s narrative unfolds, therefore, we make a twofold discovery. First, the ministry of Jesus fulfils the tradition expressed in Israel’s sacred texts (4.16–30). Second, Israel’s sacred texts rely on a text-interpretative tradition whose most salient features are (i) the divine necessity of Messiah’s suffering, and (ii) the role of the disciples as witnesses in Messiah’s restoration/vindication.79 Only after Jesus’ resurrection can the Scriptures come alive among the Christian community.

Conclusion: A new Jewish reading strategy A second tension characterizes Luke’s use of γραφή in Luke 24. The early Christians are widely recognized to have approached the Hebrew Bible with a christological hermeneutic that identified Jesus as the object of its promises and prophecies. When Cleopas and the other disciple wonder at the strange heartburn they felt as Jesus spoke with them ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ (a phrase itself redolent of traditional resonance), the topic of conversation was, apparently, the proper interpretation of the Scriptures (see 24.32).80 The disciples, wielding an insufficient hermeneutic of sacred traditions they had known since childhood, had those traditions brought into proper alignment for them by the risen Lord. We find the same dynamic at work in the reference to τὰς γραφάς in v. 45.81 The dynamic works exactly in reverse, however, in Lk. 24.27.82 As Jesus moves from listening to speaking, the what that he explains to the disciples – the unknown factor – is τὰ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ, and he turns to πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς – the known factor – to explain that unknown factor. In other words, Luke turns to Moses and all the prophets – even to all the scriptures – to illumine the proper significance of Jesus’ suffering, his death, and the women’s unsettling reports. As we think about the text-interpretative perspective from which Jesus’ earliest followers reconsidered, reframed, and reread Israel’s scriptures, we find ourselves confronted by the mutually interpretative function of Jesus and the Hebrew Bible vis-à-vis one another. See esp. Lk. 1.2; 24.48; Acts 1.8. καὶ εἶπαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους· οὐχὶ ἡ καρδία ἡμῶν καιομένη ἦν [ἐν ἡμῖν] ὡς ἐλάλει ἡμῖν ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ, ὡς διήνοιγεν ἡμῖν τὰς γραφάς; (Lk. 24.32; emphasis added). 81 τότε διήνοιξεν αὐτῶν τὸν νοῦν τοῦ συνιέναι τὰς γραφάς· (Lk. 24.45; emphasis added). 82 See my discussion in Rodriguez, ‘According to the Scriptures’. 79 80

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In many regards, the Christians were unremarkable in their expression of Jewish identity. The text-interpretative traditions by which both the early Christians and their non-Christian Jewish contemporaries interpreted their biblical traditions shared a number of key themes, including the idea of the ‘righteous sufferer’, the promise of Davidic rule (= Messiah) in perpetuity, and so on. At the same time, however, Jesus’ followers developed distinctive hermeneutical characteristics that distinguished them from other Jews and provided occasion for intergroup interaction. The most conspicuous innovation in the early Christians’ hermeneutic must have been the idea that the Scriptures foretold a suffering messiah.83 The notion, more relevant for Acts than for the Gospel of Luke, that Christians need not observe Torah was equally conspicuous. So Justin’s rebuff of Trypho, that he speaks from ignorance and has been ‘instructed by teachers who are ignorant of the meaning of the Scriptures’ (Dial., 9.1),84 prompts Trypho’s complaint that Christians do not ‘observe a manner of life different from that of the Gentiles’ and that, further, ‘[y]ou place your hope in a crucified man, and still expect to receive favors from God when you disregard his commandments’ (Dial., 10.3).85 Trypho’s complaint brings Luke emphasizes the divine necessity of Messiah’s suffering, presumably on the basis of the early Christians’ conviction that the scriptures predicted that suffering, by his repeated use of δεῖ παθεῖν, which we have already discussed. See Bockmuehl for a discussion of the now-discredited claim from the early 1990s that the Qumran text 4Q285 referred to a slain messiah; Markus N. A. Bockmuehl, ‘A “Slain Messiah” in 4Q Serekh Milhamah (4Q285)’, TynBul 43, no. 1 (1992). 84 πειθόμενος τοῖς διδασκάλοις, οἳ οὐ συνίασι τὰς γραφάς. Michael Slusser, ed., St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, rev. ed. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 17. Compare the language of Lk. 24.45: συνιέναι τὰς γραφάς. Baker’s formulation of the theoretical underpinning of social identity theory applies also at the level of the textual community: ‘Rejecting previous attempts to understand intergroup conflict in terms of unequal distribution of objective resources, Tajfel argued that simply recognizing that one belongs to a specific group is “sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favouring the in-group”. Thus, people categorize themselves into groups that attempt to establish a positive sense of value by distinguishing their group (ingroup) from other groups (outgroup)’; Baker, Identity, 4–5, citing Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behaviour’, in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, S. Worchel and W. G. Austin (eds) (Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, 1985), 13. The talk of ‘establish[ing] a positive sense of value’ is probably wrong; the ‘establishment’ of a positive sense of value and the ‘categorization into groups’ are dialectical rather than sequential. 85 Slusser, ed., Dialogue, 18; emphasis added. When Justin describes his conversion, he says his spirit ‘was immediately set on fire, and an affection for the prophets, and for those who are friends of Christ, took hold of me [ἔρως εἶχέ με τῶν προφητῶν καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων, οἵ εἰσι Χριστοῦ φίλοι]’; Dial., 8; Slusser, ed., Dialogue, 15; emphasis added. In light of his comments elsewhere (e.g. ‘On the day which is called Sunday we have a common assembly of all who live in the cities or in the outlying districts, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as there is time’; 1 Apol., 67; Thomas B. Falls, ed., The Fathers of the Church: Saint Justin Martyr (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), 106 (emphasis added), I find it reasonable to suppose that Justin is speaking of (and associating) two sets of written texts: the prophets, and the friends of Christ (viz. ‘the memoirs of the Apostles’). 83

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into view the full force and consequences of Luke’s text-interpretative traditions. Justin and Trypho occupy dramatically different social identities, and those identities foster (and are fostered by) differing interpretations and applications of the same texts. The conflict is intensified, however, because Justin and Trypho belong to different textual communities.86 The history of Jewish/ Christian relations in the ensuing centuries demonstrates the significance of a community’s textual orientations for social identity, which significance bears considerable power for good and, unfortunately, for ill.

Contrast the tenor of Justin’s Dialogue with that of his 1 Apology. In the former, the interpretation of text and tradition features front-and-centre; in the latter the interpretation of text and tradition plays little if any role. Similarly, Daniel Boyarin’s thesis regarding ‘the partition of JudaeoChristianity’ engages the Dialogue significantly more thoroughly than it does the Apology, which is understandable since the Apology bears much less relevance for Jewish and/or Christian identity; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

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Filial Piety and Violence in Luke-Acts and the Aeneid: A Comparative Analysis of Two Trans-Ethnic Identities Aaron Kuecker Set at the beginning of Vergil’s epic poem the Aeneid is the rather ominous line: ‘It was so hard to found the race of Rome’ (1.33). This frank admission, while certainly a literary trope intended to cultivate anticipation for the epic drama to follow, speaks beyond the fictional world of the poem to the difficult realities surrounding the formation and administration of an empire that, while still young at the time of the Aeneid, would go on to incorporate vast swaths of land and countless peoples. Characteristic of Rome’s imperial strategy was a willingness to allow conquered peoples to retain many of their own practices and beliefs while simultaneously uniting these diverse people groups within the superordinate social category ‘Roman’. Roman citizenship, available by birth or through the benefaction of the powerful, served as a means to create a shared, high-status, overarching identity that was aimed at reconciling otherwise competing social identities. The dual identities formed by this strategy – one could be both an Egyptian and a Roman, for example – can be understood as an attempt to bring intergroup peace by forming a superordinate identity while retaining subgroup salience, a strategy that social identity theorists have found to be quite productive in reconciling real-world social conflict.1 Several important sections later in the Aeneid are virtually

Amélie Mummendey and Michael Wenzel, ‘Social Discrimination and Tolerance in Intergroup Relations: Reactions to Intergroup Difference’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 3, no. 2 (1999); J. F. Dovidio, S. L. Gaertner, and A. Validzic, ‘Intergroup Bias: Status, Differentiation, and a Common in-Group Identity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, no. 1 (1998); S. L. Gaertner et al., ‘Reducing Intergroup Bias: Elements of Intergroup Cooperation’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76 (1999).

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technical descriptions of the formation of a superordinate identity with ongoing subgroup salience. Near the climax of the epic, Jove declares: The Ausonians [Latins] shall retain their ancient tongue and customs; and their name shall be as now. But, mingled with the mass, the Trojan race shall settle in their land. I will ordain their customs and their sacred rites, and all shall be Latins, one common speech to all. Hence, mingled with Ausonian blood, shall rise a nation above men and gods in worth, nor matched by any race in serving you (12.1055–65).

Vergil’s Aeneid, written under the benefaction of Caesar Augustus, attempts to describe Romanitas as an identity that could hold together people from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. Within about a century of the writing of the Aeneid, in the heart of the Roman Empire, an ironically analogous identity had arisen far from the centre of imperial power. This social identity also held the promise of uniting diverse peoples into a common family. Luke-Acts reports the existence of small and remarkably diverse communities of Jesus-followers, scattered throughout primarily urban areas in the Roman Empire, who were coming together to share meals and possessions, and to worship the God of Israel and Jesus the Messiah. In some descriptions of these little communities, there is evidence of a powerful superordinate identity that could allow one to retain subgroup identity salience, while coming also to know oneself primarily as a Jesusfollower. One could be both a Judaean and a Christian, both a Greek and a Christian, or both a Cretan and a Christian. Luke’s two-volume work, written under the benefaction of Theophilus, was one prominent attempt to describe Χριστιανός as a superordinate identity that could hold together people from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. We begin then with the rather straightforward observation that in the first century ce Roman citizenship and Christian identity stood as unique parallels with regard to their interest in reconciling still salient ethnic subgroup identities within a larger, trans-ethnic social group. The goal of this essay is to examine the attention that both Luke-Acts and Vergil’s Aeneid give to the formation of this trans-ethnic identity. The main line of investigation will pursue the identity-marking function of filial piety (perhaps more familiar among biblical scholars as ‘fictive kinship’) and its effect on both ingroup

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solidarity and intergroup relations.2 Central to this investigation is the observation that though Vergil’s Romanitas and Luke’s Χριστιανός emerge as identities that both retain and transcend ethnic particularities by cultivating filial piety as a chief identity-marker in service of the formation of a larger social identity, Romanitas – as described by the Aeneid – leads quite predictably toward violence. After a brief description of the identity-forming role of the Aeneid in the Roman world, the essay will examine the diverse ways that filial piety can function in the narrative worlds of Vergil and Luke, ways that either must or must not lead inexorably toward violence. It is important to make one significant clarification at the outset of this short study. By examining these two texts and their identity-forming strategies in parallel I am not making a claim to generic equivalence or to any literary relationship between the two texts.3 Instead, I will treat these two texts as foundation stories, stories that are ‘concerned with the creation of a particular community and call attention to some aspect of that community’s distinctiveness’.4 Key passages within the two texts will be analysed on their own terms, in order to draw comparisons and contrasts regarding the shape of the transethnic identities commended by the texts to their hearers. It is worth noting that the emerging interest that New Testament scholars are paying to issues related to the complex and powerful concept of identity has yet to spill over into large-scale comparisons of competing configurations of social identity within proximate socio-cultural contexts. This essay will attempt an initial foray into such a comparative analysis.

David Arthur deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000).  3 Gary B. Miles, ‘The Aeneid as Foundation Story’, in Reading Vergil’s Aeneid: An Interpretive Guide, ed. Christine Perkell (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 231. Such claims of generic equivalence have been made by Bonz, though largely unpersuasively; Marianne Palmer Bonz, The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). While the Aeneid is universally recognized as epic poetry, Luke is most often recognized as ancient biography and Acts, though more difficult to categorize, as historical monograph.  4 Use of the category ‘foundation story’ is not intended to imply or deny claims about the historicity of the text; rather the category identifies the identity-forming function of the text. Baker makes a similar comparison between Luke-Acts and the Aeneid as foundation stories; Coleman A. Baker, Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 60–2.  2

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The influence of the Aeneid on the configuration of Roman identity Written between 29 bc and 19 bc, Vergil’s Aeneid tells the story of the destruction of Troy and the long journey of the Trojan hero Aeneas to Italy, where he becomes the father and founder of the Roman race. It is difficult to overstate the widespread influence of the text in the Roman world.5 The text appears in a number of different strata of Roman cultural life. Ovid names the poem as among the most important pieces of Roman literature. Seneca the Elder reports imitators of Vergil in Roman rhetorical schools. Language of the Aeneid was taken up to form everyday proverbs and was commonly quoted on tombstone epitaphs. Vergil’s works were used as oracles for predicting the future, and a genre of poetry emerged that composed poems entirely of lines of Vergil’s poetry (known as Vergilian centos). Central, however, to the influence of the text on the imagination and identity of Romans was its significance to literacy and Roman education. The appearance of Vergil in graffiti (especially in Pompeii) has led scholars to suggest that ‘literacy and knowledge of the Aeneid may have gone hand in hand’.6 Within the Roman educational system, ‘[r]eciting the Aeneid was a central and often repeated experience in a Roman boy’s education. It was therefore not uncommon to know Vergil’s works by heart in their entirety.’7 The use of the Aeneid in service of Roman socialization is summarized well by Susanna Morton Braund: Virgil’s poems are illuminated when viewed not in terms of systems of philosophical thought but as reflecting and participating in the exemplarity central to the formation of the Roman ‘man’ (vir) and Roman ‘manhood’ (virtus). This in turn corresponds to the function of Roman education, which was not to develop free thinkers but to focus the individual’s thoughts upon his role as an individual in the state.8

The following data is taken from Yasmin Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), ch. 1. Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 14.  7 Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 14.  8 Susanna Morton Braund, ‘Virgil and the Cosmos: Religious and Philosophical Ideas’, in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 220–1.  5

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Recent scholarship on the Aeneid has attended to the identity-forming strategies evident within the text.9 Syed argues cogently that the Roman identity constructed by Vergil’s text reflects closely the reality on the ground in the early Imperial era, namely, that the expansion of territory through conquest necessitated an ‘adjustment in the meaning of Roman identity’.10 In the Aeneid, the identity that is formed is not strictly primordial – that is, owing only to a myth of common descent. Instead, Vergil offers a vision of Romanitas that supersedes basic ethnic identities (such as Trojan or Latin) by describing Romanitas as an identity marked by ‘adherence to certain values (honoring martial valor and self-sacrificing love) and the maintenance of these values by means of a paternal hierarchy of power’.11 This strategy presents Romanitas as an identity that can be acquired, regardless of one’s birth identity. One particularly brilliant aspect of Vergil’s identity-forming programme is the way that Vergil explicitly creates Romans out of a mixture of peoples. This is evident in a number of places, but is especially clear in the statement near the conclusion of Book 12: For the Ausonians will keep their homeland’s words and ways; their name will stay; the body of the Teucrians will merge with Latins, and their name will fall away. But I shall add their rituals and customs to the Ausonians’, and make them all – and with one language – Latins. (12.834–7)

Roman identity is overtly linked to the joining of separate groups – underscoring Syed’s point that Roman identity in the Aeneid is relatively open. Galinsky argues similarly: A significant theme, therefore, is the fusion of peoples… It was not enough, therefore, for Vergil to describe the mere genetic fusion of Trojans and Latins into a new race – and the Romans were always aware of being a multicultural people – but Aeneas had to be de-asianized and Romanized in terms of attitudes and values.12

Ethnicity, in particular, is often in view in this regard. Syed observes: ‘Most of the pivotal moments of the plot are marked by references to ethnicity, a fact that should alert us to the poem’s focus on ethnic definitions’; Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 207. 10 Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 223. 11 Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 216. 12 Karl Galinsky, ‘Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses as World Literature’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, ed. Karl Galinsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 346.  9

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Because Vergil’s vision of Romanitas is not predicated solely on a myth of common descent, the identity requires a primary identity-marker that functions as the central comparative criterion between Roman identity and other social identities on offer.13 It is broadly accepted that filial piety is one of – and most likely the primary – marker of Roman identity in the Aeneid. Filial piety – fidelity to the father (and, more broadly, one’s family and descendants) and the fatherland (which must be construed socially to include one’s people) – is the chief attribute of Aeneas, the hero of the poem who functions as the ideal expression of Romanitas.14 Miles argues that Aeneas ‘learns that his ruling virtue must be Roman pietas, obedience to the claims of ancestors and community, rather than Greek arête, the display of personal prowess’.15 To be Roman, according to the Aeneid, is to be faithful to the ideals of filial piety. To summarize this section, it is clear from the evidence of antiquity that the Aeneid, especially due to its central role in Roman education, was a significant foundation narrative that helped answer the contested question: ‘What does it mean to be Roman?’16 Through the reader’s identification with Aeneas, the Aeneid presents a vision of Romanitas that anticipates the incorporation of diverse ethnic groups under a trans-ethnic superordinate identity marked by the shared Roman virtue of filial piety. To be Roman was to be loyal to Rome and Rome’s ways. Said another way, to be Roman was to love your family, a category that could stretch as broad as the empire. Those familiar with the large body of literature on the prominence of kinship language in the New Testament and within early Christian communities may be somewhat surprised that the ideal that marked Roman identity – at least according to Vergil’s influential vision – was the ideal of filial piety. Scholars have long noted that the early church could speak about itself as a family composed of diverse social groups in ways that go beyond the kinship talk of typical Graeco-Roman associations.17 The similarities between the B. Ann Bettencourt et al., ‘Status Differences and Ingroup Bias: A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Effects of Status Stability, Status Legitimacy, and Group Permeability’, Psychological Bulletin 127, no. 4 (2001): 521. 14 Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid, 54. 15 Miles, ‘Aeneid’, 234. 16 Miles states, ‘The question of who could be a Roman likewise had a particularly contentious history in Vergil’s age’; Miles, ‘Aeneid’, 242. 17 John S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson (eds) Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 1996). 13

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visions of identity proffered by Vergil and Luke are striking: both are superordinate social identities capable of uniting divergent subgroups that retain their subgroup identity salience, and both envision filial piety as a central identitymarker for these superordinate identities. Yet, as we shall see, filial piety leads in very different directions in these accounts of identity, especially as it relates to those outside the ‘family’.

The formation of Roman identity in Vergil’s Aeneid Vergil never leaves his hearers room to doubt that Trojan identity is the highest status identity evident in his epic. In the three-part movement that leads toward positive social identity (categorization – identification – evaluation), the evaluative instinct of groups has a fluid character that allows them to compare the ingroup with the outgroup according to any evaluative criterion that results in a favourable comparison. In the case of the Aeneid, the chief evaluative criterion that establishes Trojan identity as the high-status identity is the fact that the Trojans bear the favour of the gods. In Vergil’s highly eschatological vision of the birth of the Roman people, the Trojans are destined by the high god, Jupiter (or Jove), to found the race of Rome. Jupiter repeatedly assures Aeneas that the destiny of the Romans is a fait accompli. Jove promises that Aeneas ‘[s]hall subdue the fierce and hostile tribes, and give them laws, and manners, and walled towns… then shall the barbarous centuries grow mild’ (1.342–3, 379). Aeneas himself recognizes the relationship between the identity of his people, his destiny as the founder of Rome, and the favour of the supreme god: ‘Italia, my ancestral land, and the race sprung from Jove supreme, I seek’ (1.494–5). This theme permeates Vergil’s text and yet is most famously described at the end of Book 6, when Aeneas journeys to the underworld to find the shade of his deceased father Anchises. Anchises, with prescient foreknowledge, draws clear lines between Rome’s divine destiny, imperial rule, and the relationship between Roman identity and the ‘other’: Now turn your eyes, and look upon this race, your Romans. This is Caesar, this the line born of Iulus, destined to appear beneath the arch of heaven. This, this is he, whom you have heard foretold and promised, Augustus Caesar, of a race divine… Others, I say, shall mold, more delicately, forms of bronze, lifelike, and

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shape the human face in stone; plead causes with more skill, describe the paths of heavenly orbs, and note the rising stars. But you, O Roman, bend your mind to rule your people with strength. This shall be your art: to impose both terms and rules of peace; to spare the vanquished, and subdue the proud (6.985–90, 1064–72).

The gods have decreed that Roman identity will inevitably incorporate other subgroup identities, and yet Roman identity is the highest status identity in the Aeneid because the Romans are favoured by the gods. The narrative identity forged by Vergil in the Aeneid is not purely triumphalistic. At nearly every turn in the Aeneid, Trojan identity is a threatened identity. The epic opens with the revelation that the goddess Juno, in consort with the god Æolus, is at work to thwart the Trojan destiny.18 This theme endures throughout the book and is not limited to divine resistance to the Trojan pilgrimage. The Trojans are threatened by the Greek army, the inhospitality of the Carthaginians, by famine and plague, and by beastly, mythic, or inhuman creatures. The result is that the Trojans are depicted as a wandering people, enduring ‘an exile borne away upon the deep’ (3.15). The continual oscillation between Vergil’s reminder that the gods favour Troy and the threat that Troy faces throughout the epic is a powerful identity-forming strategy. Social identity theorists have observed that identity threat functions to heighten ingroup solidarity.19 The identity-forming significance of this theme is that not only do the correlations between divine destiny and threatened identity create a sense of solidarity for the Roman ingroup, they also smartly allow for a kind of identification with the conquered clients of Rome. Because Roman identity is forged in the midst of peril, tragedy and threat, the stories of conquered peoples can more easily become fully Roman stories.

Filial piety in Vergil’s Aeneid While the gods have decreed the Trojans’ destiny as the founders of the Roman race, it is their filial piety – with Aeneas as the chief exemplar – that

1.116–28. Bettencourt et al., ‘Status Differences’, 521.

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enacts their privileged destiny. At numerous points in the epic the fate of the Trojans hangs on the filial piety Aeneas embodies toward his father, his son, and – in ever-widening concentric circles – all his people. Family love ranges from tender to terrible throughout the course of the Aeneid, and the examples I will produce demonstrate this spectrum, ultimately revealing that when filial piety is elevated to the chief marker of Roman identity, it trends toward inevitable violence. In Vergil’s epic, Aeneas demonstrates filial piety above all to his father Anchises and his son Ascanius (also known as Iulus). It is for the sake of his father and his son that Aeneas perseveres at every dangerous point in his journey: Aeneas – for a father’s love forbade his mind repose – the swift Achates sends back to the ships, to bear Ascanius the tidings and to lead him to the city. In his Ascanius centers all his care. (1.837–41)

Likewise, a sort of selfless love of father and fatherland spurs Aeneas onward whenever doubt arises: ‘This is my love, my country this… Not of my own accord do I seek Italia’ (4.455, 473–4). This virtue is most emblematic in Aeneas’ refusal to abandon his father to the flames of Troy in order to save himself. In the face of his father’s plea that Aeneas leave him to die in Troy, Aeneas expresses moving filial piety: Come then, dear father! On my shoulders I will bear you, nor will think the task severe. Whatever lot awaits us, there shall be one danger and one safety for us both. Little Iulus be my companion; and at a distance let my wife observe our footprints. (2.955–61)

Aeneas is willing to risk the perilous journey to the underworld to see the shade of his father, on which occasion even the dead laud Aeneas’ filial piety: ‘Trojan Aeneas, well renowned for arms and filial reverence, to these lower shades of Erebus descends to meet his sire’ (6.111–12). Aeneas’ filial piety is also manifest in his exemplary loyalty to all Trojans, a virtue regularly expressed through his sadness at the death of Trojans and his insistence on performing funeral rites for dead Trojans, regardless of their social status (e.g. 3.78–80; 7.1; 11.1–5). Aeneas’ love for his people stands as an exemplary mark for all Trojans in a rallying cry early in the book’s final

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battle: ‘O sluggish souls! No pity and no shame for your unhappy country do you feel, nor for your gods, nor for the great Aeneas?’ (9.970–3). Here we see powerfully the way that love of family (your country) and love of gods is linked closely to Trojan identity. In fact, love of the gods is expressed by love of the people, a fact Vergil makes clear by suggesting that one criterion for a happy afterlife in the Elysian Fields is one’s self-sacrificial filial piety. Those in the Elysian Fields are those who ‘for their country fought and bled’ (6.822). It is unsurprising that Trojan-style filial piety is not a characteristic of the Greeks – the most obviously dangerous subgroup in the text. In one telling scene, Ulysses, the hero and prototype of the Greeks, is willing to abandon a countryman in order to save himself. Having left his Greek countryman Achaemenides alone to face the Cyclops, Vergil delightedly tells us that in saving himself Ulysses was not ‘forgetful of himself in such an hour’ (3.789– 91). While the self-giving filial love of Aeneas ensures the founding of the Roman race, the selfish impiety of Ulysses dooms one of his fellow Greeks to awful peril. The contrast could not be clearer.

Filial piety and violence in the Aeneid Having observed the significance of filial piety as the central identity-marker of privileged Trojan identity, we can finally examine the ramifications of Vergil’s vision of filial piety for non-Romans by attending to the way that filial piety impacts the ability of non-Romans either to identify themselves with the superordinate category ‘Roman’ or to face the violence that is the shadow side of the filial piety that marks Romanitas. The Aeneid describes three basic ways in which Rome’s intense filial piety can impact the outgroup.

Rome has pity on those who have been abandoned by their impious people There are several interesting ‘conversion’ scenes in the Aeneid in which the Trojans are willing to incorporate into their own ingroup former enemies who have been abandoned by their people. We see this first in the ill-fated incorporation of Senon, a Greek who deceives the Trojans into taking the

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Trojan horse inside the walls of Troy. The invitation given to Senon is quite open: ‘Whomever you are, henceforth forget the Greeks whom you have lost; be one of us; and truly tell the things that I shall ask of you’ (2.206–9). It is essential to notice that in this case the Trojans are willing to accept Senon largely because he has been disowned by the Greeks. He himself articulates his freedom to abandon his countrymen due to their impious behaviour toward him (2.216–28). Likewise, the aforementioned Achaemenides is a ‘rejected’ Greek who is invited to join the Trojans as a result of his abandonment by his people. Evidently, even an enemy can become a Roman – though this is usually only the case for enemies who have come to see the utter impiety of their own people and who now seek a better (more Roman) way.

Rome is willing to assimilate those who submit to Roman sovereignty Aeneas’ important treaty with Evander and the Acadians is formed on the basis of consanguinity (8.166, 169–72), but it must be noted that in every alliance – whether on the basis of consanguinity or not – the Trojans allow allies to align themselves with Troy so long as the Trojans have priority in leadership. This connects ever so closely with the divine destiny articulated throughout the text. Romans are to rule. That is their vocation. We see the relationship between submission to Rome and peaceful intergroup relations in the case of the Latins, who are welcome to join the Roman family not only because the prophecy of the gods suggests that the admixture of races, Latin with Trojan, will lift the Latin name to the stars (7.338–41), but also because the Latins are willing to submit to Trojan primacy. So states the Latin politician Drances: ‘O Trojan hero, mighty in your fame, and mightier still in arms, with what high praise shall I extol your name? – which most admire, your justice, or your great efforts in war? We truly shall with grateful hearts bear back this answer to our city; and if a way by any chance should open, will unite you to our king. Let Turnus for himself seek his alliances, but, we ourselves, well pleased, will build your fated city’s walls, and on our shoulders bear the stones of Troy’. He spoke, and all as one murmured assent. A twelve days’ truce is settled; and meanwhile the Trojans and the Latins, freely mixed, roam through the forests. (11.163–81)

All are welcome to participate within the superordinate category ‘Roman’, provided that all submit to Roman rule.

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Rome must destroy those who refuse to join the family The limits of filial piety as a central identity-marker become evident when Vergil describes the Trojan response to those who refuse to join the Roman family by submitting themselves to the rule of the Trojans and by adopting Troy’s vision of filial piety. It is at this point – pervasive throughout the text but most densely located in the final battle – we see that Vergil’s vision of filial piety provides an identity-marker that cannot resist violence toward those who resist assimilation into Roman identity. This theme is most striking in several scenes near the end of the epic where Aeneas refuses to grant mercy on the basis of the filial relationships of his enemy, but rather chooses to avenge the deaths of his countrymen. Aeneas’ exchange with Magus, a Rutulian who is battling the Trojan army, is telling: At Magus next he hurled his hostile spear; who deftly stoops; the whizzing javelin flies above his head. Embracing then his knees, Magus thus pleads: ‘Ah, by your father’s shade, and by your hopes of young Iulus, spare this life, for my sire’s sake, and for my son’s! I have a stately palace, and within talents of graven silver buried lie; and weight of wrought and unwrought gold I own. It’s not on me the Trojan victory turns; nor can one life make such a difference’. To whom Aeneas answered: ‘Keep your gold, your silver talents for your sons. All rules of ransom and of interchange in war were swept away by Turnus, when he took the life of Pallas. So Anchises’ shade, and so Iulus deems’. With that, he grasped with his left hand his helmet, and bent back his neck, and, as he begged for mercy, plunged the weapon to the hilt into his breast. (10.688–707)

Not only does Aeneas refuse to grant mercy based on Magus’ appeal to his own father and son, Aeneas slaughters Magus precisely because of his own filial obligations. The epic’s final scene, likewise, demonstrates the inevitability of violence in Vergil’s configuration of filial piety. In a fascinating scene rich with identityforming ramifications, Aeneas’ chief enemy, Turnus, now wounded by Aeneas, begs for mercy on behalf of his own aging father. This is a direct appeal to the piety that comes from an appreciation of filial obligations – an appeal that ought to resonate well with Aeneas’ own central values. As Aeneas weighs the request, he notices that Turnus is wearing the belt of Pallas, son of Evander,

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king of the Arcadians, who are allies of the Trojans in their battle for Italy. The sight of Pallas’ belt elicits a murderous rage from Aeneas: He, as his eyes drank in the hateful sight, those spoils, memorials of that cruel grief, inflamed with fury, terrible in wrath, ‘And do you think’, he cried, ‘to escape my hand, clothed in the spoils you have snatched from my friend? It is Pallas, Pallas slays you with this blow, and takes his vengeance with your accursed blood!’ He spoke, and plunged his sword into his breast. Relaxed, the limbs lay cold, and, with a groan, down to the Shades the soul, indignant, fled. (12.1191–201)

And so the epic ends with violence that is an expression of filial piety, even in the face of calls for mercy. The scene is all the more remarkable for the fact that Aeneas’ own sense of filial piety is ignited by grief over the death of Pallas, who is not a Trojan – but who has allied himself with Troy’s destiny. In Vergil’s configuration of identity, filial piety extends beyond the Trojans, but only those who join in league with Troy, submitting to their rule. This is the key to peace with Troy and, in Vergil’s overtly political apology, it is the key to peace with Rome for conquered peoples. Submit to Rome and serve the fatherland as an expression of Roman-style filial piety and you will bear the benefits granted to the family. However, Vergil’s vision of filial piety has no mechanism for social intercourse with those who refuse to join the family. In these cases, violence toward the recalcitrant is the only faithful expression of filial piety. This is how family love, when it is the central identity-marker, must work. Either you join the family and receive its benefits, or you stay outside the family and face destruction.

Filial piety in Luke-Acts An examination of social identity in Luke-Acts can quite easily locate a number of broad similarities with the evidence for social identity-forming processes in the Aeneid. The community of Jesus-followers in Luke-Acts has favourable social identity vis-à-vis other proximate groups solely because of God’s gracious election of that people through Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the world’s true Lord. In Acts, this is particularly marked by the gift of

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the Holy Spirit, which is the central marker of a person’s identity.20 Yet while the community of Jesus-followers understands their identity to be secured by the gracious favour of God, theirs is also an identity under threat. Jesus, the founder of their people, was executed as an enemy of the empire and a deceiver of his own people, and the primary exemplars of Christian identity in Acts – Stephen, Peter and Paul, most notably – face significant threat from outgroups. On these two factors – the favour of the gods and the existence of external threat – Luke’s Jesus-followers and Vergil’s Trojans share very similar identity-forming narratives. The similarities between the two groups continue with the significance of filial piety as a primary ingroup identity-marker. While the importance of kinship categories in earliest Christianity is well-documented, it bears pointing briefly to one particular moment in Acts when the significance of filial love is central to the formation of a common superordinate identity. Luke makes careful use of ‘ethnic language’ and his usage pattern for terms like ’Ισραήλ, ’Ιουδαῖος, and ἀδελφός is precise and runs in parallel to identityformation themes in the text.21 Of particular interest to this study is that way that ἀδελφός moves from a term that describes biological kin or the Israelite people as a whole, to a term that can encompass Jesus-followers from non-Israelite ethnic groups. In Luke, ἀδελφός primarily functions to describe biological kin (21 times) though it can also refer to all Israelites (Lk. 8.21) or to the group of Jesus-followers (Lk. 22.32).22 The word occurs 54 times in Acts, where it can function either as an insider term for Israelites or for the ingroup of Jesus-followers.23 Prior to Acts 15 and the momentous decision made at the Jerusalem Council, no Israelite (whether a member of the Jesus group or not) ever categorizes a non-Israelite (whether a member of the Jesus group or not) as an ἀδελφός. In literature relevant to this period, including the other canonical Gospels, the only instances I can discover in which non-Israelites See here Peter’s configuration of Joel 3.1–5 lxx in his Pentecost speech in Acts 2.17–21 where he indicates that the Spirit will be given to all who are the slaves of God – both male slaves and female slaves. See Aaron Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 120–4. 21 See Kuecker for an extended discussion of these patterns; Kuecker, The Spirit, 184–8; 212–13. 22 Lk. 3.1, 19; 6.14, 41, 42; 8.19, 20, 21; 12.13; 14.12, 26; 15.27, 32; 16.28; 17.3; 18.29; 20.28 (3x), 29; 21.16; 22.32. 23 Acts 1.14, 15, 16; 2.29, 37; 3.17, 22; 6.3; 7.2, 13, 23, 25, 26, 37; 9.30; 10.23; 11.1, 12, 29; 12.2, 17; 13.15, 26, 38; 14.2; 15.1, 3, 7, 13, 22, 23, 32, 33, 36, 40; 16.2, 40; 17.6, 10, 14; 18.18, 27; 21.7, 17; 22.1, 5; 23.1, 5, 6; 28.14, 15, 17, 21. 20

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are called ἀδελφός by an Israelite are in Josephus, Ant., 12.225–8; 13.43–5, 163–70 and 1 Macc. 12.1–23 (cf. 1 Macc. 14.16–23; 2 Macc. 5.8–9), texts that describe the ‘brotherhood’ between the Spartans and the Hasmonaean dynasty. Yet these instances are severely qualified by their clear political expedience and the fact that the Spartan claim to ‘brotherhood’ still rests on physical kinship – the ‘discovery’ of common Abrahamic descent.24 It is a remarkable transition in Luke’s description of the identity of the early Jesus-followers when, in Acts 15, the category ἀδελφός expands to include those who are ethnically non-Israelites.25 The brothers (ἀδελφοί), both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the non-Israelites (ἀδελφοῖς τοῖς ἐξ ἐθνῶν) in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings.26

I have argued elsewhere that this appears to be the first unambiguous instance in the Gospel tradition or indeed in contemporary Israelite literature outside the New Testament (excepting the anomalous case of the Spartans described above) in which Israelites refer to non-Israelites as ἀδελφοί.27 On the heels of this important deployment of filial language to describe the now fully trans-ethnic Jesus group, Luke shifts the use of ἀδελφοί within the narrative. After Acts 15 ἀδελφοί can function in two ways: (1) to express ongoing ethnic solidarity with fellow Israelites, or (2) to describe the Jesus group, irrespective of the ethnic identities of its members.28 The category can now include people of any ethnic identity. For example, in Acts 21.7, 17 and 22.22–3 Luke uses ἀδελφοί to describe (1) an ethnically diverse community of Jesus-followers (21.7), (2) a group of Israelite Jesus-followers (21.17) and, in the same pericope, (3) to address non-believing Israelites (Acts 22.1, 5, 13). Clearly, the trans-ethnic identity described by Luke does not obliterate ethnic Ranon Katzoff, ‘Jonathan and Late Sparta’, The American Journal of Philology 106, no. 4 (1985): 486–7. 25 While the main transition is apparent in Acts 15.23, the malleability of the category – as a response to the theological development Luke depicts in the self-understanding of the Jesus group – is proleptically evident also in Acts 15.1, 3. 26 Acts 15.23, my translation. 27 The construction ‘to the ἀδελφοί from (ἐκ) the ἔθνη’ (Acts 15.23) cannot be taken to imply ‘the brothers taken out of the ἔθνη’. Luke regularly uses ἐκ/ἐξ to denote the ongoing identity of figures in his narrative (e.g. Lk. 1.5; 2.4). 28 For the use of ‘brother’ to express intra-Israelite ethnic solidarity, see Acts 22.1, 5, 13; 23.1, 5, 6; 28.17, 21; 28.17, 21. For applications to undifferentiated groups of believers, see Acts 15.32, 33, 36, 40; 16.2, 40; 17.6, 10, 14; 18.27; 21.7, 17, 20; 28.14, 15. 24

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particularity at a subgroup level, as Israelite believers and non-believers can still know one another as ethnic ‘brothers’. Yet this identity is subordinated to the identity formed by membership in the Jesus group – a group comprised of ‘brothers’ from many ἔθνη.

Filial piety, neighbour-love, and non-violent intergroup relations Vergil’s trans-ethnic Roman identity and Luke’s trans-ethnic Christian identity both achieve positive social identity based chiefly on the favour of the gods; both intensify identity through the presence of pervasive identity-threat in the narratives, and both configure filial piety as a chief identity-marker for the ingroup. This leads us to the central question of this essay: Why does Luke’s vision of filial piety not lead inexorably to violence in the same way that Vergil’s vision of filial piety evidently does? Luke-Acts contains multiple expressions of strong ingroup identity, marked by filial piety, that negatively impact the outgroup, sometimes with violent results. This theme emerges in its most shocking manner at the critical narrative seam in Lk. 9.49–56. The two incidents described in these pericopes stand on either side of Jesus’ movement from relatively safe Galilean home territory (which Luke, save for the incident in Nazareth in Luke 4, describes as receptive to Jesus) toward Judaean territory (where Luke describes Jesus as facing mortal danger). John answered, ‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us’. But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you’. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

Here we see two examples of filial piety – love for the ingroup, strictly configured – that have negative consequences for the outgroup. In the first

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pericope, the disciples attempt to restrict access to the benefits of Jesus’ ministry on the basis of their common ingroup identity. Then, entering the space of the ethnic Samaritan ‘other’, James and John utter one of the most violent expressions of outgroup hate in the New Testament. When the Samaritans refuse to join the family, so to speak, the logical implication for James and John is violent destruction of the village. This sounds eerily similar to the way filial piety functions in Vergil’s description of the relationship between Romanitas and those outside the Roman ingroup. Yet for Luke, outgroup violence is not the necessary end of the filial piety of the Jesus group. In his descriptions of the early communities, Luke marshals the imagination of his hearers in ways that utilize an imitatio Dei theme shaped by enemy-love to relegate filial piety to a secondary virtue for the identity of Jesus groups. The Jesus groups in Acts resist the violence that inevitably flows from the primacy of filial piety because Luke locates their filial piety (or ingroup love) within a more foundational marker of membership in the Jesus group: neighbour-love. Hints that filial piety is too restrictive an identity-marker for the small communities of Jesus-followers appear very early in Luke’s Gospel. As I have argued at length elsewhere, Luke’s narrative account of Jesus’ encounter in the Nazareth Synagogue is unique among its Synoptic parallels in ascribing the tension in the story not to Jesus’ transgression of his honour status (as in Matthew and Mark) but to Jesus’ unwillingness to privilege his πατρίς (his father-city) in the distribution of the benefits of his ministry. Jesus rejects this filial loyalty as the chief criterion for gaining access to his ministry.29 What receives narrative expression in Lk. 4.16–20 is more explicitly expressed in the so-called Sermon on the Plain. A fascinating configuration of filial love in relationship to outsiders stands at the centre of the identityrelated concerns of this text. Here, Luke’s Jesus suggests that the way to find oneself as a member of the family of Israel’s God is to extend the filial love normally reserved for those with whom one shares a common identity to those who can be considered enemies. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit See Kuecker for a detailed exegetical defense of this argument; Kuecker, The Spirit, 80–95.

29

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is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.30

This text is at odds with the identity-based violence invoked by James and John in Lk. 9.51–6 and shows that filial relation to the Most High God results from the extension of love toward enemies. Further, Jesus’ vision in Luke 6 stands in obvious contrast with the vision of filial piety and outgroup antipathy that marks Roman identity in the Aeneid. The chastening of filial piety as a marker of social identity is most clearly and elegantly expressed in Jesus’ parable of the merciful Samaritan in Lk. 10.25–37. The significance of this passage for Luke’s overall narrative aims should not be underestimated. Structurally, the passage ‘comes near to the midpoint of his symmetrically organized narrative’, and Jeffrey has recently argued that the story – with its underlying question, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ – functions as a synecdoche for the ‘whole biblical story of salvation’.31 The story exposes and subverts filial piety, here configured as the limitation of social obligation to the ethnic ingroup, in a parable that destabilizes the hegemony of filial piety as a central identity-marker for membership in the people of God.32 The narrative tension in the story runs dialectically between social categorization and social obligation. The question of the lawyer, ‘And who is my neighbour?’, invites Jesus to engage in the sort of social categorization that could limit social obligation or access to the benefits of the lawyer’s own Israelite ingroup. The assumption that runs beneath the question appears to be the idea that the description of the social category ‘neighbour’ will allow the lawyer to know the groups to whom he is obligated to extend neighbour-love. Green has noted that Jesus, in his undeniably brilliant response to the lawyer, immediately resists the lawyer’s desire for a clean categorization of the lawyer’s world.33 In a delightfully rich narrative Lk. 6.32–5. David L. Jeffrey, Luke, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2012), 151. 32 Green suggests that the parable is powerful enough to ‘destabilize the world of the lawyer and challenge him to embrace the new world propagated through Jesus’ ministry’; Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 427. 33 Green, Luke, 429. 30 31

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gap, Jesus does not identify the ethnic identity of the victim on the Jericho road, stating only that ‘[a] certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho’ (ἄνθρωπός τις κατέβαινεν ἀπὸ Ἰερουσαλὴμ εἰς ’Ιεριχώ).34 Within the narrative world of the parable, however, Jesus makes it clear that the victim’s ethnic identity would have been partially evident to the passers-by. The man was ‘stripped’, which Esler argues would at least have made clear the identity of the victim as belonging (or not) to the category ‘circumcised’.35 Jesus’ rhetorical strategy in the telling of this story thereby resists the intention of the lawyer’s question. The lawyer wants Jesus to create a hierarchy of social categories, one of which is ‘neighbour’, so that the lawyer can know the extent of his obligation for neighbour-love. The opening lines of Jesus’ parable immediately tell us that for Jesus such a method of categorization for the sake of determining the extent of one’s social obligation is not at home within the reign of God. Instead, Jesus tells a story that calls for neighbourlove to be extended not on the basis of social categorization, but according to a posture of unconditional availability that transcends group categories. The scandalous introduction of the Samaritan as the hero of this story is well known, and yet it is the character of the Samaritan’s neighbour-love that gives texture to this orienting theme of the Gospel. The Samaritan gives of himself – his own supplies, his own donkey, his own money, and his own time – in order to care for the victim of this attack. The unconditional nature of his self-giving is underscored by Longenecker’s point that innkeepers had a particularly unsavoury reputation in a social context where any respectable person could expect travelling hospitality from networks of kin. The Samaritan, in essence, gives the innkeeper a blank cheque, ‘When I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend’, thus opening himself to the risk of being utterly defrauded.36 The point of the parable, and of Jesus’ destabilization of the lawyer’s presumptions of filial piety, must not be muted by making the oft-stated claim that the Samaritan exercises neighbour-love across an ethnic barrier. That claim makes the assumption that the victim in the attack was an Israelite – but that is an assumption that Jesus’ telling of the story will Lk. 10.30. Philip F. Esler, ‘Jesus and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict: The Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Light of Social Identity Theory’, BibInt 8, no. 4 (2000). 36 Bruce W. Longenecker, ‘The Story of the Samaritan and the Innkeeper (Luke 10:30–5): A Study in Character Rehabilitation’, BibInt 17, no. 4 (2009). 34 35

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not allow us to safely make. And that is precisely the point of the story. The questions of ethnic identity within the parable are utterly irrelevant (save for the fact that it is a Samaritan who knew what the Israelite lawyer ought to have known). While the lawyer asks Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’, Jesus focuses our attention on a very different question, ‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour?’. The significance of Jesus’ parable for the identity of the Jesus group must not be missed. Jesus encourages his followers not to organize their charity on the basis of social categories. Instead of looking to social categorization as a clue for social intercourse, Jesus suggests that, along with love of God, the primary attribute of his people is dispositional. The question is not, “And who is my neighbour?’. The question is, ‘Will you be neighbourly?’. This transition from family love (read, filial piety) to neighbourly loving as the central virtue of the Jesus group is a full articulation of the trajectory that is initiated by Jesus’ rejection of filial piety as the criterion for privileged access to the goods of his ministry (Lk. 4.16–30) and that is deepened in the imitatio Dei theme that sits at the centre of the Sermon on the Plain (Lk. 6.32–5). The social category Χριστιανός (to anachronistically retroject a category-name from Acts back into Luke) – those who can be variously described as Israelites who will ‘inherit eternal life’ (Lk. 10.25), those from all humankind who ‘shall be saved’ (Acts 2.21), or those non-Israelites who can be categorized as ‘brothers’ because they ‘will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus’ (Acts 15.11) – finds its central identity-marker in a vision of neighbourly love that eschews social categorization as the basis of love. Instead, the neighbourly love of the Jesus group is characterized by a transformational disposition within the Jesus group that results in an identity marked by the practices of neighbourliness.

Paul the former Pharisee: A narrative exemplar of the transition from filial piety to neighbourliness The contrast between the tendency toward violence that results from filial piety in the Aeneid and the hospitality toward non-family members initiated by the Spirit-empowered neighbourliness in Luke-Acts is clearly evident in Luke’s narrative portrayal of Paul. Prior to joining the Jesus group, Paul was

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an exemplar of a certain expression of filial piety that resulted in violence. His effort to destroy the Jesus-movement was a symptom of his zeal for God and the ancestral law (τοῦ πατρῴου νόμου) of his people.37 This is filial piety, through and through. And yet, Paul becomes for Luke an exemplar of neighbourly love as his violent expression of family love is utterly transformed by his encounter with Jesus, his experience with the Spirit, and his incorporation into the Jesus group. This is particularly clear in instances when Paul seeks the good of his enemies. In Acts 16.25–40, Paul’s first words to the suicidal Philippian jailer are, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here’. In Acts 26.29, Paul offers to King Agrippa – a representative of imperial power – the goods of Jesus’ ministry: ‘I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am – except for these chains.’ In Acts 27.33–7, in the midst of a frightful storm and the imminent possibility of shipwreck, Paul offers to his captors what some think may have been a liturgical enactment of the Eucharist.38 Prior to entering the Jesus group, Paul is motivated by filial piety, an identity-marker that can trend dangerously toward violence for those who are either aprototypical or members of the outgroup. After Paul’s encounter with Jesus and incorporation into the Jesus group, Paul is an exemplar of the kind of neighbourliness implicated in the parable of the merciful Samaritan. Because neighbourly love is an identitymarker that is not concerned with the categorization of the ‘other’ but rather is dispositional, neighbourly love is able to allow for intense filial piety exercised toward members of the Jesus group (see again the significance of fictive kinship in Luke-Acts and the New Testament in general) and yet can ensure that the group as a whole (and all its individual members) resist the violence inherent to many versions of filial piety and instead function with an identity that extends its goods to those outside the ingroup.

Acts 22.3–5. See Witherington for a discussion of whether or not this meal has eucharistic overtones in Acts; Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 772–3.

37 38

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Conclusions regarding identity-formation in Luke’s early Christian context The basic premise of this essay was the contention that Roman identity and Christian identity could both be described as superordinate social identities with ongoing subgroup salience, thus allowing for the formation of a transethnic identity that could make possible the reconciliation and unification of otherwise competing subgroups. Further, the essay argued that filial piety was a central marker of identity in the foundation stories that emerge from the narrative worlds of Vergil’s Aeneid and Luke-Acts. Given these observed similarities between Roman identity and Christian identity, the central investigation undertaken sought to determine why social identity characterized by the virtue of filial piety was inevitably violent in the Aeneid, but utterly non-violent in Luke-Acts. The core argument, based on an analysis of these two texts and aided by theoretical resources from social identity theory, was that Luke’s vision of filial piety is nested within a more foundational identity-marker – namely, neighbourly love. In particular, Jesus’ construal of ‘neighbour’ not as a social category outside the self, but as a disposition within the self that is actualized through the radical availability of one’s goods (however broadly construed), establishes for Luke’s community of Jesusfollowers an identity-marker that is capable of extending the love given to the ‘family’ (or ingroup) to those who are (even violently) outside the family. While this study opens up space for the comparative investigation of a number of identity-related themes in Luke and Vergil, at least three concluding points can be made on the basis of this essay. First, Luke and Vergil both have visions of a superordinate identity that can transcend subgroup identities without eliminating subgroup salience. Yet these visions – based on their differing views regarding the role of filial piety – have a very different texture with regard to relationships with the outgroup. Second, it is clear that treatments of Luke-Acts that have emphasized the significance of fictive kinship need to be carefully nuanced. A comparison of filial piety in Luke and Vergil shows us that filial love can have pernicious effects. Luke has a more foundational virtue for his communities – neighbourliness – within which filial love can flourish non-violently. Third, though beyond the scope of this essay,

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it is imperative to note that in the book of Acts, neighbourliness is a Spiritempowered trait for individuals and communities. That is to say, nobody in Luke’s narrative comes to the disposition of neighbourly love based on their own virtue or the quality of their own communities. It is only the work of the Spirit, who is the agent of the exalted Jesus’ reign over all creation, which brings the sort of transformation of persons and social groups that is capable of challenging the hegemony of filial piety. Vergil’s hero is willing to carry his aged Trojan father in an act of selfless love. Luke’s hero is willing to carry an unidentified victim in an act of selfless love. The first is exemplary Roman filial piety. The second is exemplary Christian neighbourly love. The first has no provision for those who refuse to join the family. The second seeks the good of those outside the family, even at great cost to the self. The first marks Vergil’s vision of the empire of Caesar. The second marks Luke’s vision of the empire of God.

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Social Identities, Subgroups, and John’s Gospel: Jesus the Prototype and Pontius Pilate (John 18.28–19.16) Warren Carter Social Identity Approaches (SIA) have contributed to the pervasive discussions of identity in contemporary nt studies.1 In the first section, I evaluate their uses in several previous discussions of John’s Gospel and identify three methodological issues important for this contribution. I then discuss the Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene (Jn 18.28–19.16) arguing that it presents Jesus as a six-featured prototype of an uncompromising identity of Jesus-believers overagainst Roman imperial power. In the final section, using a model of subgroup relations developed from SIA by Hornsey and Hogg, I engage the scene’s possible functions for subgroups of Johannine Jesus-believers in dispute over their identities vis-à-vis Roman imperial society.2

Social Identity Approaches (SIA) Social Identity Approaches (SIA) emerged in the 1970s and 1980s from the work of Henri Tajfel and his student John Turner (Self-Categorization Theory).3 Bengt Holmberg, ‘Understanding the First Hundred Years of Christian Identity’, in Exploring Early Christian Identity, ed. Bengt Holmberg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 5–27; Coleman A. Baker, ‘Early Christian Identity Formation: From Ethnicity and Theology to Socio-Narrative Criticism’, Currents in Biblical Research 9, no. 2 (2011): 228–37.  2 Matthew J. Hornsey and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity: An Integrative Model of Subgroup Relations’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, no. 2 (2000): 143–56.  3 Henri Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978), 1–98; Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Henri Tajfel, ed. Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); John C. Turner, ‘Toward a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group’, in Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (Cambridge:  1

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Tajfel argued that ‘human interaction ranges on a spectrum from being purely interpersonal (or individual) on the one hand to purely intergroup (group membership) on the other’.4 Belonging to a group and employing ‘us-them’ distinctions alters the way people see and treat each other. Articulating a ‘minimal group paradigm’, Tajfel and Turner identified the awareness of similarities within the ingroup, differentiation from an outgroup, and the triggering of ‘intergroup discrimination favoring the ingroup’.5 Group membership also alters the way that members see themselves, moving from an identity based in idiosyncratic and individual features that distinguish them from other individuals (attitudes, emotions, behaviours, memories) to a ‘social’ identity that derives from group membership. This social identity comprises cognitive (recognition of group belonging), evaluative (enhanced self-esteem) and emotional (positive attitudes to ingroup members and derogation of outgroups) dimensions. Turner focused on cognitive and intragroup dimensions. He identified three levels of self-categorization: a superordinate category (human being), ingroup membership (including subgroups) against other groups (social identity), and personal identity based on interpersonal comparisons. Social identity is a fluid concept as aspects of identity are foregrounded and others downplayed. When group identity is more salient, group members see themselves less as individuals and categorize themselves in terms of a group prototype. This process of depersonalization ensures group cohesion and conformity to a group prototype, a somewhat flexible cluster of attributes that prescribes ‘attitudes, emotions, and behaviours appropriate in a given context’.6

Cambridge University Press, 1982), 15–40; John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1987); John C. Turner, ‘Some Current Issues in Research on Social Identity and Self-Categorization Theories’, in Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content, Naomi Ellemers, Russell Spears, and Bertjan Doosje (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 6–34.  4 Matthew J. Hornsey, ‘Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory: A Historical Review’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 1 (2008): 204–22; Turner, ‘Current Issues’; Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown, eds., Social Identity Processes: Trends in Theory and Research (London: Sage, 2000); S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach, 1st ed. (London: Sage, 2001), 26–57.  5 Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behaviour’, in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin (eds) (Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, 1986), 13.  6 Hornsey, ‘Social Identity Theory’, 209.

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In relation to John’s Gospel, Philip Esler and Ronald Piper use aspects of SIA, especially stereotyping of outgroups, collective memory and prototypes, to argue that Lazarus, Martha and Mary are a prototypical family of Christfollowers.7 These characters exhibit key attributes of the Johannine ingroup that distinguish it from an outgroup, namely being loved by Jesus, loving one another, and loving Jesus. Esler and Piper argue that the raising of Lazarus addresses group insecurities caused not by external threats but by death from natural causes. The Lazarus narrative affirms the necessity of death but offers ‘a prototype of the destiny awaiting group members who have died’.8 Raima Hakola offers a second example of SIA work on John, arguing that Nicodemus is an ambiguous character in the Gospel.9 As a ‘depersonalized representative’ of Pharisees and Jews, Nicodemus represents for Hakola an unbelieving and hostile world, yet, though an outsider, Nicodemus is not predictable or consistent in that he does not reject Jesus. Combining various aspects of SIA (intergroup behaviour; outgroup deviants especially the ‘black sheep effect’; subtyping), Hakola insightfully argues that this ambiguity ‘may have helped John and his audience to accept the ambiguities and uncertainties in their social environment without abandoning the basic thrust of their symbolic world’.10 Three issues emerge in these discussions that distinguish my approach from these previous uses of SIA in relation to John’s Gospel. A problematic feature of this previous work is that it moves with little hesitation from textual constructions of identity to social situations whereby the two are understood to correlate with each other. For Esler and Piper, the Gospel scene involving natural death addresses insecurities about natural death in the Johannine community. For Hakola, a scene portraying ambiguity reflects ambiguity in the Johannine community. While such a positive correlation of text and context is possible, I do not assume it here. That does not mean, of course, that the Gospel text exists in a social vacuum, but it does forego an easy equivalency between text and Philip Francis Esler and Ronald A. Piper, Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006).  8 Esler and Piper, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, 111.  9 Raimo Hakola, ‘The Burden of Ambiguity: Nicodemus and the Social Identity of the Johannine Christians’, NTS 55, no. 4 (2009): 438–55. 10 Hakola, ‘Ambiguity’, 455.  7

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context in favour of recognizing a multiplicity of possible interactions.11 Foregrounding caution about any claims, I will argue in the later sections that in constructing Jesus as a prototype for ingroup attitudes toward the outgroup of Roman power, the Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene in 18.28–19.16 performs multiple functions among hearers of the Gospel. Specifically, observing the scene’s inflated ‘over-against’ style and content, and guided by Hornsey and Hogg’s model of subgroup relations, I argue that the text engages a context of subgroup divisions. I suggest that its maximizing of distinctiveness and ‘overagainstness’ intensifies rather than mollifies divisions over interactions with imperial society among subgroups in the Johannine audience. Second, these previous discussions raise the question of the efficaciousness of textual identity-constructing work. Esler and Piper seem to assume that the Gospel’s audience accepts the text’s identity-formation work because the prototypicality of the Lazarus scene involving love for and by Jesus is already shared by its audience. The scene, then, confirms and secures an existing identity: ‘For John and, we must assume, for his audience, membership in the Christ movement entailed loving Jesus and being loved by him.’12 Just why, however, ‘we must assume’ that this textual identity is already in place socially and that the scene confirms it, is not clarified. I will not make the same assumption here. The claim, though, raises several interesting questions. One concerns, as we have noted above, whether SIA necessarily predispose the discussion toward compatibility of identity between text and context. A second related and perhaps more foundational question concerns whether SIA prejudice an analysis against heterogeneity and toward a single or monolithic group identity. Recognizing these concerns over heterogeneity, Sani and Reicher note that SIA can favour the monolithic and render invisible divisions within groups because the focus is on group belonging and definition over against an outgroup.13 They recognize, however, several factors that foreground multiple and contested identities within the ingroup. One factor comprises Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 27–61, 300–2. 12 Esler and Piper, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, 93, italics added. 13 Fabio Sani and Steve Reicher, ‘Contested Identities and Schisms in Groups: Opposing the Ordination of Women as Priests in the Church of England’, British Journal of Social Psychology 39, no. 1 (2000): 95–112, 95–7. 11

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the recognition that ‘social identities are comparative entities’, shifting and malleable in formulation in various contexts.14 Another factor disputing a predisposition to monolithic identity comprises the claim of Haslam et al. that group members engage less in a ‘state of consensus’15 and more in a ‘process of consensualization’ through ‘persuasion, negation, and argument’.16 Group identities are discursive and contested, as Sani and Reicher’s own work on ecclesial schism shows. Schisms occur when positions are advocated within the group that other group members perceive to be incompatible with the group identity and that ‘fundamentally alter group identity’. When identity is thought to be subverted, consensus is impossible.17 Beyond these studies that provide some space for the fluid, pluriform and contested nature of identities within a group are studies concerning prototypicality. Prototypes are ‘context specific, multidimensional fuzzy sets of attributes that define and prescribe attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that characterize one group and distinguish it from other groups’.18 Prototypes are not monolithic and fixed but comprise a gradient of prototypicality in that group members adhere to a (unstable) group prototype in differing degrees.19 Scholars have also observed that group prototypicality can change,20 and that intragroup deviance from norms occurs with differing evaluations for the deviants.21 The study by Hornsey and Hogg of subgroup relations – to be employed below – suggests the divisive impact of aggressive assertions of prototypicality among subgroups.22 Following their argument, I will argue that the aggressive presentation of Jesus as a prototype of antithesis in the Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene maximizes distinctiveness and thereby minimizes

Sani and Reicher, ‘Contested Identities’, 97. S. Alexander Haslam et al., ‘The Group as a Basis for Emergent Stereotype Consensus’, European Review of Social Psychology 8, no. 1 (1997): 203–39. 16 Sani and Reicher, ‘Contested Identities’, 98. 17 Sani and Reicher, ‘Contested Identities’, 95–9. 18 Michael A. Hogg, ‘A Social Identity Theory of Leadership’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 3 (2001): 187. 19 Hogg, ‘Leadership’, 189. 20 Michael A. Hogg, ‘Social Identification, Group Prototypicality, and Emergent Leadership’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, ed. Michael A. Hogg (Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 2001), 202–3. 21 D. Abrams et al., ‘Pro-Norm and Anti-Norm Deviance within and between Groups’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 5 (2000): 906–12. 22 Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’. 14 15

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the likelihood of consensus among contestive subgroups, simultaneously confirming and contesting (shifting?) ingroup identity constructions. Third, previous uses of SIA have been interested in John in relation to Jewish/Judaean outgroups. Esler and Piper affirm the Gospel’s address to a particular late first-century ‘local audience’ of predominantly Judaean ‘Christfollowers’ in the context of disunity with other Christ-followers.23 Hakola sees Nicodemus’ ambiguous characterization addressing uncertainties that comprise the different ways in which Jewish Jesus-believers ‘may have dealt with synagogue communities and their members’, including boundaries between Jewish Jesus-believers and ‘other Jews that remained open and fluid’.24 While Esler and Piper, as well as Hakola, emphasize the significance of a Judaean context and outgroup, they also make passing reference to some (peripheral) gentile presence. Typical of Johannine studies, however, none pursues the identity of these faceless gentiles nor inquires about any significant role for gentiles either in the ingroup or as an outgroup. My argument is that, as far as the Gospel’s narrative is concerned, interaction with gentile imperial society does not belong in what Hogg calls the ‘specific, multidimensional fuzzy sets of attributes’ that comprised the Gospel’s prototype of group membership.25 The vigour with which the Pilate scene asserts a maximally antithetical relationship with Roman imperial society suggests, according to Hornsey and Hogg’s model of subgroup relations, not only that there are significant differences among subgroups over this issue but also that some or many do not agree with this strongly asserted antithetical relationship. Hornsey and Hogg’s model also indicates that this textual maximalization of distinctiveness is not at all likely to enhance harmonious relations among subgroup/s whose quite different prototype/s include/s significant interactions with imperial society.26

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Esler and Piper, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, 5–8, 23. Hakola, ‘Ambiguity’, 452–3. Hogg, ‘Leadership’, 187. Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 143, 153.

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Jesus, the Ioudaioi, and Pilate (18.28–19.16a) This prototype of distance from and disengagement with imperial society is evident in the Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene (18.28–19.16a). Space prevents consideration of the pattern of alternating scenes27 and of the imperial dynamics the scene assumes, such as structures of the Roman imperial system, alliances with provincial elites, the roles and responsibilities of governors, and understandings of ‘justice’.28 Rather, I will identify six features, drawing on central Johannine emphases, that characterize Jesus as the prototype of maximum ingroup opposition to imperial society, represented here by the contentious alliance of governor Pilate and the local Jerusalem leaders, the Ioudaioi.

Antithetical relation to imperial society The dominant feature of Jesus’ prototypicality comprises antithetical interaction with imperial power. This antithesis pervades the scene from Pilate’s initial deployment of Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus (18.3, 12),29 through the Ioudaioi handing Jesus over (παρεδώκαμεν) to Pilate in the praetorium (18.30), to Pilate’s final handing over of Jesus (παρέδωκεν) for crucifixion (19.16). The Ioudaioi identify Jesus to Pilate as an ‘evil doer’ (κακὸν ποιῶν, 18.30), thereby designating him as an outgroup member and opponent. Their verdict of Jesus as ‘evil doer’ reverses the Gospel’s presentation of Jesus as ‘the good shepherd’ who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’ (10.11) and who reveals ‘many good works (πολλὰ ἔργα καλά,) from the Father’ (10.32). The ‘good works’ sum up a public ministry of Jesus’ agency comprising divine revelation and material transformation in healings and feedings (5.1–15; 6.1–15; 9.1–12; 11.38–44). In labelling him an ‘evil doer’, they reverse ‘evil’ and ‘good’, fail to recognize claims of divine revelation, identify themselves as outsiders, and offer a wholly negative assessment of Jesus’ societal engagement. This assessment is the basis for their commitment to kill him. It establishes an antithetical relationship

Warren Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 299. Carter, John and Empire, 52–89, 289–314. Carter, John and Empire, 300–2.

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between Jesus’ activity and his society’s powerful rulers, and presents societal involvement as endangering his life. Pilate’s response underlines the extensive alliance of the societal powerplayers against Jesus. Pilate’s instruction (‘Take him yourselves and judge him’, 18.31) is often misinterpreted as Pilate’s disinterest or affirmation of Jesus’ innocence. It is neither. Pilate’s committal of troops for Jesus’ arrest (18.3, 12) establishes his awareness of Jesus’ threat. Rather, Pilate’s response is part of the contested negotiation of power involving Roman governor and local allied elites. Neither can maintain position and power without the other, but neither will forego an opportunity to assert dominance, albeit temporarily, over the other. Pilate forces their acknowledgement of his upper hand, humiliating them by publicly securing their dependence on him while momentarily hiding his dependence on them (18.31b). Narratively, this spat among allies underscores the antithetical interaction of this alliance comprising Roman and Judaean provincial power – the Gospel’s political and cultural world – against Jesus. The alliance continues to be contested, even while it reinforces its unifying opposition and antithetical relationship to Jesus. Pilate’s whipping of Jesus (19.1) and his soldiers’ mocking of Jesus (19.2–3) show Pilate’s protestations of ‘finding no crime’ in him to be empty. These acts increase the Ioudaioi’s dependence on Pilate (19.4–6). But Pilate plays the card once too often in ‘seeking’ (ἐζήτει) Jesus’ release (19.12). They counter effectively: ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor; everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.’ The retort identifies Jesus as an imperial opponent and requires Pilate to display his loyalty to the emperor against Jesus. In response, Pilate acts as a friend of the emperor rather than as a friend of Jesus (cf. 15.14–15). He parades Jesus and taunts the Ioudaioi, recalling their subjugation while also warning them of what happens to those who resist Roman control: ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ (19.13–15). The ‘chief priests’ distance themselves from Jesus by shouting for his crucifixion (19.15, cf. 19.6) and embracing Rome’s sovereignty: ‘we have no king but the emperor’ (19.15). Pilate has solicited an amazing confession. With these words, the Jerusalem leaders repudiate their centuries-old covenant with God as Israel’s king (1 Sam. 8.7; Ps. 47.2; 93.1). God’s kingship was manifested in the Davidic king (2

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Sam. 7.11–16) who, as God’s son, represented God’s just and life-giving rule (Ps. 2.7; 72). With these words, they abandon their heritage and calling. They renounce the biblical traditions and aspirations that looked for God’s just and life-giving reign to be established over God’s creation and over all empires (like Rome’s) that resist God’s purposes (Isa. 2.1–4). They who in 8.33 claimed never to have been slaves of anyone enslave themselves to Rome and recognize the emperor’s rule, rather than that of God manifested in Jesus, God’s anointed agent. Having drawn from them this amazing statement of loyalty to Rome and renunciation of their heritage, Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified (19.16).

Exclusive commitment to God’s rule Along with an antithetical relationship between Jesus and these representatives and allies of imperial power is a second attribute of Jesus’ prototypicality: exclusive commitment to God’s rule that is incompatible with Rome’s rule. The competition between empires is evident in Pilate’s opening question about Jesus’ kingly identity: ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ (18.33). The question, tantamount to a charge of insurrection (‘Are you leader of a revolt?’), emphasizes the incompatibility of the two sides. Rome’s emperor is βασιλεύς as Josephus (J.W., 3.351; 4.596; 5.58–60, 563) and Dio Chrysostom (Regn., 1.22) attest. Only local kings sanctioned by Rome have legitimacy, such as Herod ‘King of the Jews’ (Josephus, Ant., 15.373–9; 16.311). Pilate identifies Jesus as one who uses or attracts the title ‘king’ treasonously unsanctioned by Rome. Pilate asks Jesus again directly about his identity as king in 18.37, and refers to him as king in 18.39 and 19.14–15. Pilate’s soldiers mock him as king in 19.3, and the Jerusalem leaders refer to Jesus as king (ironically) with the term ‘son of God’ (19.7). For Pilate as Rome’s representative, emperors were sons of god.30 The Gospel, though, does not yield to Rome the role of defining legitimate rule. It knows the Hebrew tradition of God as king of Israel and the world (Ps. 24.1–10; 47.1–9), saving and judging nations both in the present and future (Isa. 24.21–3; Zech. 9.9–10; 14). God delegates this kingship to human agents Carter, John and Empire, 194–5.

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or representatives (from David’s line, Psalm 89). Jesus is such an agent, son of God and king of Israel (1.49), recognized by a Jerusalem crowd (12.13, 15). Jesus’ identity threatens Roman rule in revealing God’s life-giving purposes (8.32; 10.10) which since 1.10 have been shown to be at odds with Roman commitments and societal structures. In response to Pilate’s question to Jesus about his identity as king (18.33), Jesus responds in terms of the source of his rule (18.36). Jesus begins with a negative: his rule is not ‘from this world’ (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου). He is not clarifying that his rule is not political. Such a reading is quite unconvincing. Jesus does not deny being a king or having a kingdom/empire, nor does he declare that his rule is ‘spiritual’ or ‘interior’. Rather, the statement draws together Johannine concerns with origin, dualism, identity and ‘the world’. The origin of his rule is emphasized three times in verse 36. The same preposition – ἐκ with a genitive – appears four times in 8.23 to denote origin. To say that Jesus is ‘from above’ (ἐκ τῶν ἄνω) is to declare his origin from God (cf. 3.13; 6.41–2) and his identity as God’s agent and Son constituted by God’s purposes (14.7–11). To declare that his opponents, the Ioudaioi (8.22–3), are ‘from below’ (ἐκ τῶν κάτω) is to identify their origin as from the devil and their identity as opposed to God and God’s purposes (8.44). The chiasm immediately equates ‘from below’ with ‘from/of this world’ (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου). While the Johannine use of ‘world’ embraces both the created and human realms with positive and negative meanings, its dominant sense is negative in denoting life contrary to and opposed to God’s purposes.31 The ‘world’s’ deeds are evil (3.19; 7.7), it hates Jesus (7.7) and Jesus’ disciples (15.18–19; 17.14), it does not know God (17.25), and it rejects Jesus (1.10). The ‘world’, then, is the domain of Pilate and his Jerusalem allies committed to the emperor and his rule (19.12–15). Its (local) ruler is Pilate who represents Roman power (12.31; 14.30; 16.11).32 Its peace – the pax romana or order of life under Rome’s rule – is contrary to that from God mediated by Jesus (14.27). Jesus’ claim is that he (8.23b) and his rule (18.36) do not derive from or belong to that which is opposed to God and God’s purposes, the ‘world’

Warren Carter, John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2006), 90–2. Carter, John and Empire, 290–1.

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(‘not…from/of this world’; 18.36). To the contrary, the rule to which Jesus is exclusively committed is God-given. It manifests God’s will (5.30) and life-giving purposes in actions beneficial for all. Jesus sets forth exclusive commitment to God’s rule as a second feature of his prototypicality.

Non-violence To Jesus’ antithetical relation to imperial society and exclusive commitment to God’s rule, the scene adds a third aspect of Jesus’ prototypicality. Jesus specifies non-violence as a distinction between his rule that manifests God’s purposes and Pilate’s: ‘if my kingship/ kingdom/empire were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Ioudaioi’ (18.36). The verb ‘fight’, an imperfect of ἀγωνίζομαι, denotes military battles (2 Macc. 8.16). The term that the Gospel uses only here for Jesus’ ‘followers’, ὑπηρέται, further establishes a contrast with Rome’s legendary prowess in military violence. Elsewhere, the term denotes the ‘temple police’ of the chief priests and Pharisees who unsuccessfully seek to arrest Jesus (7.32, 45–6) and of the ‘police’ who with the governor’s soldiers accomplish his arrest (18.3, 12, 22). Military violence is a defining mark of ‘the world’. It contrasts the non-violence of Jesus and his followers. The declaration forbids violent interaction with Roman imperial power.

Bearing witness to truth In response to Pilate’s repeated question concerning Jesus’ identity as a king (18.37), Jesus adds a fourth dimension to his prototype of imperial negotiation, namely a commitment to bearing witness to the truth: ‘for this I came into the world to testify/bear witness to the truth’ (18.37). The language recalls his mission to do God’s will (4.34; 8.42), ‘for this I came into the world’ (3.17–19), and associates it with the key Gospel activity of ‘bearing witness’. Previously Jesus has described himself as ‘truth’ (8.32; 14.6) so he bears witness to himself as the one who reveals God (14.7–11). While the term ‘truth’ can mean ‘real’ or ‘genuine’, in the biblical tradition it often means ‘faithfulness’ or ‘loyalty’ to one’s commitments and obligations (Gen. 24.49). The term ‘truth’ or ‘true’, often translated ‘faithfulness’ (Exod. 32.10; 34.6), is

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applied to God. God acts ‘truthfully’ or ‘in truth’ or ‘truly’ when God is faithful to God’s covenant promises to show loving kindness or to act powerfully and faithfully to save people from their enemies (Ps. 40.10–12; 108.4). The opposite of truthfulness or faithfulness is falseness, wickedness and injustice when humans do not carry out their commitments (Isa. 59.9–15) or do not live faithfully to God’s ways. By declaring that his mission is to witness to ‘the truth’, Jesus tells Pilate that he testifies to God’s faithful saving action among human beings. He witnesses to God as true or faithful (8.26) and to God acting faithfully to God’s own commitments to save (3.33). When Jesus declares that he is ‘the truth’ (14.6), he claims to reveal God’s faithful saving action. When he declares that ‘the truth shall set you free’, he claims that God’s saving actions, manifested in him, will free people from everything that resists and rejects God’s purposes, including Roman power (8.32). Jesus comes from above (8.23), from heaven (3.13) where he has heard (8.26) and seen (5.19) the Father, so that he can reveal God’s ‘truth’, God acting powerfully and faithfully to save the world (3.1617; 8.14–18). This is, of course, not good news for Rome or its representative Pilate.

Listening to Jesus’ voice To this prototype of imperial negotiation – an antithetical relationship to imperial society, commitment to God’s reign, nonviolence, and commitment to ‘truth’ – Jesus adds a fifth feature, namely listening to Jesus’ voice (18.37b). Listening to Jesus’ voice matters because he hears and testifies to God (3.32; 8.40) and speaks God’s words (14.10, 24). Jesus’ voice has the power to grant life or condemnation at the judgement (5.24–5, 28–9; cf. 11.43). To listen to Jesus is to be known by him, to follow, and to obey his commandments (10.3–16, 27). To hear God’s words through Jesus is to share Jesus’ origin from God (8.47), accepting and understanding his faithful revelation of God’s truthful or faithful saving purposes. Pilate, though, is not listening. Jesus’ words give Pilate the opportunity to decide that Jesus speaks ‘truthfully’ or faithfully about God’s work. But Pilate cannot ‘hear’. He has decided against Jesus in allying with the Jerusalem elite to arrest and kill Jesus (18.3). He rejects the second chance that Jesus gives him.

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Though he asks Jesus, ‘What is truth?’ the question is rhetorical (18.38a). Like the Jerusalem leadership, he does not find Jesus’ testimony to be true (8.13). Not to listen evokes a profound dualism: he is not from God (8.47), he is Jesus’ opponent (10.20), he hears and obeys the devil’s voice (8.38, 43–4, 47).

Awareness of God’s superior power Jesus identifies a sixth feature of his prototype. In the competition between God’s purposes and Roman power, Jesus witnesses to God’s victory (19.10– 11). Pilate asks Jesus about his origin: ‘Where are you from?’ (19.9). Other characters have wrestled with Jesus’ origin (3.34; 6.33, 41–2; 7.25–9; 16.27–8). To know Jesus’ origin is to know his authority and legitimacy as God’s agent and as the one sent from God, and to know one’s own identity and allegiance to him. To not know is to belong to the devil (8.39–47). Jesus adopts silence, a classic pose of the powerless before the powerful.33 He had answered Pilate’s question in 18.36–7 about the origin of his kingship from God, but Pilate was not listening. Pilate interprets Jesus’ silence as defiance (19.10). Impatiently and ironically, he tries to intimidate Jesus by asserting complete power over Jesus, boasting of his power to release or crucify Jesus (19.10). The Gospel, though, does not grant Pilate such power. Pilate succeeds in getting Jesus to answer but Jesus’ response contextualizes Pilate’s claims and power in God’s purposes (19.11). Jesus concedes that Pilate has the power to kill him, but, Jesus claims, that power is given to Pilate ‘from above’, from God to accomplish God’s purpose (4.34). John’s Jesus locates Pilate in the tradition of Babylon (2 Kgs 24.1–7) and Cyrus the Persian (Isa. 44.28; 45.1) as empires that carry out God’s will without recognizing it. Jesus’ life is not taken from him; he lays it down (10.17–18). His crucifixion occurs within God’s purposes partly to expose Rome’s fundamental rejection of God’s purposes and partly – in Jesus’ resurrection – to expose the limits of Rome’s ‘absolute’ power. It is not Pilate’s or Rome’s victory. In this scene involving Jesus and Pilate, Jesus’ prototypical behaviour comprises six characteristics that draw on central Johannine emphases: an

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 108–82.

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antithetical relationship to imperial society, exclusive commitment to God’s reign, non-violence, commitment to the truth, listening to Jesus’ voice, and awareness of God’s superior power. Central to the prototype is its uncompromising opposition to imperial society. There is no compatibility between Jesus and Pilate, Rome and God. The two entities are set at odds with each other. There is no compromise, no negotiation of difference, only the assertion of distance and the superiority of God’s reign. The six characteristics of the prototype maximize the distinctiveness of God’s reign over against Rome’s rule.

Social identities? How does this scene with its maximized distinctiveness function? Asserting that groups and communities are ‘rarely homogeneous’ and comprise subgroups, Hornsey and Hogg use SIA to study subgroup relations.34 They argue that the ‘minimization of distinctiveness threat is a prerequisite for harmonious subgroup relations. Social harmony is most likely to be achieved by maintaining, not weakening, subgroup identities, provided they are nested within a coherent superordinate identity.’35 That is, within any community, subgroup harmony is maintained by acknowledging rather than eliminating subgroup differences, by minimizing the threat to distinctiveness, and by emphasizing the superordinate group identity that the subgroups share.36 A subgroup’s identity, though, can be threatened by criticism, attack, or a perception that ‘boundaries are becoming blurred or ambiguous’.37 This threat causes subgroup conflict and can produce in response an aggressive ‘search for distinctiveness’ by some subgroups that escalate the conflict. To maintain harmony, Hornsey and Hogg argue, ‘the threat to identity should be minimized’ and the superordinate identity asserted.38

Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 143. Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 143. Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 148; Samuel L. Gaertner et al., ‘The Common Ingroup Identity Model: Recategorization and the Reduction of Intergroup Bias’, European Review of Social Psychology 4, no. 1 (1993): 1–26. 37 Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 145. 38 Hornsey and Hogg, ‘Assimilation and Diversity’, 153. 34 35 36

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How does Hornsey and Hogg’s model interpret the prototype of maximal distinctiveness that the Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene creates? We return to the three issues identified at the beginning of this chapter: the relation of text and social context, textual efficaciousness, and the identity of the Gospel’s outgroup. Response to threat has been a major feature of studies of the Johannine social context. The major threat to Jesus-believers has been understood to come from a synagogue. The Gospel emerges, so it has been argued, after the separation occurred. The Gospel justified the separation and sustained the separated Jesus-believing community’s identity. That is, on this conventional approach, the Gospel text correlates with, explains and reinforces a social context of hostility and separation. Several factors, however, suggest this identification of threat is misplaced. First, the scenario of synagogue hostility and separation constructed on the basis of (layers of) the Johannine text and ch. 9 in particular has been extensively reviewed and found deficient in numerous dimensions.39 Gospel passages such as the caring coexistence between Jesus-believers and Ioudaioi in 11.19, 31–3 and Jesus’ explicit prayer against taking disciples out of the world in 17.15 undermine the privileging of chapter 9’s synagogue-exclusion scenario. Second, recent scholarly research on diaspora synagogue communities in areas such as first-century Asia – where John’s Gospel was at least read – have shown that synagogues were generally not introverted, withdrawn sects or enclaves of Jewish identity, satellites of a singular controlling hub to which they were accountable.40 Rather, they were much more participationist and acculturated to their imperial societies, attending the theatre, involved in civic networks of benefaction, participating in the gymnasium, engaged in a wide range of occupations, and belonging to trade groups or associations.41 If Carter, John and Empire, 7–11, 19–26. Paul R. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, SNTSMS 69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 bce – 117 ce) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Tessa Rajak, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). 41 Philip A. Harland, ‘Honouring the Emperor or Assailing the Beast: Participation in Civic Life among Associations (Jewish, Christian and Other) in Asia Minor and the Apocalypse of John’, JSNT, no. 77 (2000): 107–9. 39 40

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Jesus-believers were part of synagogue communities, it is likely some/many similarly participated actively in their imperial contexts.42 Yet accompanying this participation is observance of some distinctives, such as circumcision, Sabbath and festival celebrations, and worship of Israel’s God.43 Like John’s Jesus-believers, synagogues were involved in finding their way in their complex late first-century societies. Synagogues were places of imperial negotiation. Their members knew the experience of what postcolonial approaches identify as the hybridity or ambiguity that so often pervades the identity and way of life of those who negotiate imperial power. The reality of existence in that third space somewhere between and involving accommodation and the maintenance of (defying?) distinctives, while much discussed in studies of synagogue communities in the Roman world, has been neglected in Johannine scholarship. What emerges is a complex situation in which some/ many Johannine Jesus-believers were quite at home in imperial culture. But, it seems from the antithetical Jesus-Ioudaioi-Pilate scene that some, such as the Gospel’s author, were not ‘at home’ but perceived a threat from daily interaction with and accommodation to imperial society. Immediately prior to the Jesus-Pilate encounter, a scene presents Peter participating in a social context – and being faithless to Jesus (18.15–18, 25–7). Hornsey and Hogg argue that minimizing a (perceived) threat to subgroup distinctives and elevating the group’s superordinate identity maintain harmonious relations among subgroups. But this scene with its six-featured prototype constructing an uncompromising antithetical relationship between Jesus and imperial powers does not so function. Its aggressive assertion of distinctiveness and its maximization of an ‘over against’ position does not minimize threat. According to Hornsey and Hogg’s model, this maximalization not only attests the likely threat but also ensures the scene has a polarizing rather than a harmonizing effect on ingroup/subgroup relations. In all likelihood, it reinforces divisions concerning cultural involvement rather than invalidating or dislodging that involvement or achieving reconciliation. Hornsey and Hogg’s model indicates

Carter, John and Empire, 26–51. Paula Fredriksen, ‘Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go’, in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal, David B. Capes, Larry W. Hurtado, and Alan F. Segal (eds) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 35–8.

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that a simplistic assumption of consonance between text and context cannot be sustained. Hornsey and Hogg’s model also suggests an answer to the second issue raised in the opening section of this chapter, concerning the efficaciousness of this scene. In a conflictual context of multiple identities, the scene’s prototype of antithetical interaction could have various effects among the group’s subgroups. If the scene is intended to unify conflicting subgroups, such an effect is unlikely. More likely, its strong assertion reinforces an isolationist position for at least one subgroup and further alienates subgroup/s with a participationist identity. Moving from ingroup dynamics to the third issue of outgroup definition, more clarity emerges. Johannine scholarship has been fixated with constructing an identity for the Gospel audience circumscribed almost exclusively by a synagogue. The neglect of the role and challenge of imperial negotiation for synagogue communities has resulted in seriously distorted, monolithic reconstructions of the supposed sectarian nature of synagogue-separated Jesus-believers. The above discussion, along with other work, has shown that such ethnic and cultural circumscribing is erroneous. There are no grounds for continuing to construct the identities of Johannine Jesus-believers – both textual and contextual – as though Jewish communities were isolated entities cut off from the larger but invisible imperial world. The establishing of Jesus as a prototype of uncompromising antithetical imperial interaction is but one indication of many that the issue of negotiating imperial society and power was a live one for some of the subgroups in the world of the Johannine Gospel and community/ties.

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Children of Abraham, the Restoration of Israel and the Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Nations: What Does it Mean for ‘In Christ’ Identity? Christopher Zoccali There should be little question as to the critical insight brought to the study of the New Testament by social-scientific methodologies, including the resources from both social history and social theory. This is particularly the case as interpreters explore the phenomenon of early Christ-movement identity. That being so, the integration of the findings of social-scientific investigation with theological approaches to the New Testament remains an underdeveloped interpretative method. In this light, I wish to explore the issue of identity precisely from such an integrative approach. And there are perhaps few better texts to serve as a test case than Romans 4. Scholars generally fall into two camps concerning what they hold as the central theme of Romans 4 in the context of the larger argument in the letter. Benjamin Schliesser succinctly refers to these camps as ‘faith’ and ‘fatherhood’, with the former emphasizing the notion of ‘justification by faith’ (cf. vv. 1–8, 19–25), and the latter Abraham’s fatherhood of Jews and gentiles (cf. vv. 9–18).1 Joshua W. Jipp’s recent study of the chapter, however, suggests that Paul’s argument is too complex to be narrowed down to a single theme, and that Paul’s appeal to Abraham serves a ‘multifaceted’ purpose.2 My goal here is not to argue for a particular theme or themes for the chapter per se, but to identify a coherent underlying logic for Paul’s assertions throughout, as consistent with the letter as a whole, in order to draw out the implications for Benjamin Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4: Paul’s Concept of Faith in Light of the History of Reception of Genesis 15:6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 222.  2 Joshua W. Jipp, ‘Rereading the Story of Abraham, Isaac, and “Us” in Romans 4’, JSNT 32, no. 2 (2009): 218.  1

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Christ-community identity. Notwithstanding, it is clear to me that the matter of how persons are brought into a proper relationship with God is inextricable from the matter of who, i.e. what group(s), is or can be in a proper relationship with God, and it is these interconnected notions that Paul is pursuing in this section of the letter.3 As a contextual grounding for the following analysis, it will be helpful to offer a brief overview of three main approaches to Paul’s claims regarding Abrahamic ancestry as the respective conclusions that have been offered here bear significantly on the question of social identity within the Christ movement. Traditionally, Protestant interpreters have understood Paul to be redefining Abraham as the father of Christ-followers on the grounds that Abraham is the exemplar par excellence of the principle of salvation by faith without works, a view that has since been designated the ‘Old Perspective’. By replacing wholesale a key component of first-century Jewish self-understanding, that of Torah submission, with ‘faith in Christ’ (especially in conjunction with the idea that the former ultimately represented a misguided piety), this view leaves little room for the continuation of Jewish identity in any meaningful sense within the Christ community. Ernst Käsemann consequently draws the following conclusions: Philo also already depicted Abraham as the prototype of faith, thus taking over the Jewish tradition which calls the patriarch ‘our father’. Paul’s argument, therefore, belongs within a firm traditional context. At the same time, it moves out of that context when it makes Abraham the prototype of Christian faith. By doing so, Paul does not merely demonstrate a different understanding of faith. The polemic which runs through the whole chapter shows that we are dealing here not with an extension or modification of the Jewish view but with its contrast. But this means that in fact the ground is cut away from under the feet of the Jewish tradition and the Jewish interpretation of the scriptures, and that the patriarch himself is removed from its context.4 The view taken here is that God’s declaration of ‘righteousness’ (δικαιοσύνη) conferred to Abraham in Gen. 15.6 is ultimately for Paul the means according to which persons are brought into a positive relationship with God, numbered among God’s covenant people, i.e. the community of God’s loved, called, and holy ones (Rom. 1.7), and who receive, then, the covenant blessings. The status of righteousness is therefore central to ‘in Christ’ identity; cf. on this point Philip Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 167–8.  4 Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, trans. M. Kohl (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1971), 79–80.  3

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Others interpreters, critical of such readings, have proposed instead that Paul’s claim of Abrahamic ancestry particularly over gentile Christ-followers is fundamentally an attack on Jewish ethnocentrism. Michael Cranford addresses this issue in his study of Romans 4. The nature of Paul’s argument in the previous two chapters of Romans has been identified by James Dunn and others as rejecting the Jewish assumption that covenant privileges are strictly associated with ethnic Israel and therefore unavailable to Gentiles. Over against the Torah, Paul has instead offered faith as the identifier or boundary marker of those who are members in God’s people – a difference which allows Gentiles full participation in the covenant.5

While Cranford on the one hand states, ‘The distinction between Jews and Gentiles is not sociologically irrelevant’, he nevertheless concludes his analysis of Romans 4 by asserting that ‘ethnic boundary markers are not significant in the people of God’.6 It would seem in light of this assertion that, as a practical matter similar to what is found in the Old Perspective, the traditional markers of Jewish identity prescribed in the Torah are deemed by Paul, if not wholly irrelevant, effectively superfluous in Christ.7 It follows in such a view that expressions of ethnic distinctiveness in Abraham’s family, at least between Jewish and gentile Christ-followers, are properly bound for obsolescence. In keeping with the basic contours of this general approach, Terence Donaldson suggests, moreover, that while first-century Judaism contained various forms of universalism according to which gentiles could attain salvation, Paul’s conviction regarding the equal covenant status of gentiles qua gentiles with Jews qua Jews in Christ led him to argue against the ‘clear’ sense of the Abraham story in Genesis, whereby obedience to the rite of circumcision is inseparable from the promises of God to Abraham made earlier in the story.8  7  8  5  6

Michael Cranford, ‘Abraham in Romans 4: The Father of All Who Believe’, NTS 41, no. 1 (1995): 71. Cranford, ‘Abraham’, 85, 88. James D. G. Dunn, Romans, WBC, vol. 1 (Dallas: Word, 1988), 127–8. In some contrast to Cranford (and certainly Dunn), Donaldson does affirm for Paul a continuing role for the Torah in distinguishing Jews from gentiles within the Christ community, which is integral to the approach that I will take below. However, for Donaldson, this is evidence of an irresolvable ‘category-confusion’ on Paul’s part with respect to how Abraham’s descendants are finally demarcated, and it compromises Paul’s main argument regarding covenant inclusivity through Christ in place of Torah. Thus, rather than a fully coherent and reasoned position grounded in Scripture, Donaldson’s Paul comes to such seemingly disparate conclusions ‘by sheer force of will’ as a result of competing fundamental convictions. Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 157–61; 103–4; 127.

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For Donaldson, Paul is therefore engaged here in rather torturous exegesis in order to provide Scriptural legitimacy by appealing to Abraham for his gospel of gentile inclusion in the covenant blessings. A third set of interpreters, critical of both Old Perspective interpretations and ethnocentric readings, argue that Paul is exclusively portraying a fictive kinship to Abraham for gentiles, such that the implications for the Jewish community drawn from traditional conceptions of Abrahamic ancestry remain largely uncontested. That is, Jews continue to relate to God as they always have, and the Christ event has primary significance only for gentiles. Caroline Johnson Hodge explains this view: Paul employs the story of Abraham as a model to illustrate how the God of Israel works in the world, a model which operates within the logic of patrilineal descent: he chooses a faithful person to receive blessings and pass them on to future generations. Both Abraham and Christ were faithful … Abraham’s faithfulness resulted in the guarantee that God’s promise would come to all his descendants, both Jews and gentiles. Christ’s faithfulness implements this promise for gentiles. (emphasis added)9

In my view, while there may be a certain truth to each of these approaches, all three miss the central point that Paul is at pains to make in this chapter of the letter (as well as in Romans as a whole). If he is not utilizing the figure of Abraham to demonstrate the validity of a system of redemption contrary to first-century Judaism, or attacking Jewish ethnocentrism (perhaps to the extent of committing interpretive violence to the biblical text), or singularly offering a new fictive kinship for gentiles without any alteration of traditional Jewish reckonings of Abraham as father, what exactly is the import of Paul’s appeal to Abraham in Romans 4? My basic thesis is as follows. For Paul, ‘descendants of Abraham’ represents a superordinate identity that ultimately demarcates all those who are in Christ, both Jews and gentiles. Paul’s fundamental conviction is that the final eschatological redemption of Israel and all creation has been brought about through his gospel. The Torah was never intended by God to be in itself sufficient to secure membership Caroline E. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 91.This is also the general approach of Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987); Stanley Kent Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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in Abraham’s family, the community of righteous ones, the people of the covenant. Because membership here had always been secured on the most fundamental level by God’s hesed 10 – God’s covenant love and abiding faithfulness – a future move of divine initiative is what the Torah and the prophets had all along anticipated (cf. Rom. 3.21, 27, 31; 8.2–4; 9.30–10.13; 11.26–32).11 The redemption and reconciliation wrought by Christ has happened, then, in order to fulfil the original promise to Abraham, as seen through the lens of a broader salvation-historical matrix, in which the restoration of Israel and consequent ingathering of the nations envisaged by the prophets is integral. Romans 4 centrally concerns this new social phenomenon – the coming together of Jews and gentiles into a single and unified, eschatological covenant community, in which previous social identities necessarily retain their fundamental significance. Indeed, I will attempt to demonstrate that this is not only a pragmatic matter for Paul’s mission, namely, maintaining group cohesion and stability for the multi-ethnic Christ communities he founded or addresses in his letters, but that it is deeply rooted in his theology vis-à-vis the fundamental significance of the Christ event.12 The crucial implication of Paul’s theologizing is that to be a child of Abraham does not eradicate the import of the traditional ethnic markers of Judaism, nor that of the ethnic distinctiveness of the varied people groups of the non-Jewish world. However, both groups are also therein transformed and united as one renewed humanity in Christ, and it is in this way that Abraham functions as an exemplar or prototypical member of the Christ community. In order to better clarify the issues raised in Romans 4, it will be important to first review key sections of the preceding argument in the letter. Directly following Paul’s main thesis for the letter in 1.16–17 – that God’s faithfulness to both Israel and the other nations to set the world right13 has now been ἔλεος is the normal translation in the lxx of the familiar Hebrew term ‫חסד‬, and the theme of ‘mercy upon Israel’ is a relatively standard one (see e.g. Ezek. 39.25; Amos 5.15; Ezra 3.11; Hos. 2.23; Pss. Sol. 4.29; 6.9; 8.33–4; 9.19; 11.9; 17.51) and is expressed by Paul in the conclusion of his letter to the Galatians (6.16). There should be little question that the notion of God’s hesed is integral to Paul’s theologizing (cf. Rom. 11.26–32). 11 Regarding 3.27, this is basically how I understand the much debated phrase νόμου πίστεως – Torah finding its rightful climax and thus fundamental meaning in God’s act in Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom. 10.4). 12 The stability of the Roman Christ community is especially critical for Paul given his desire to use it as a base of operation for a projected mission to Spain (cf. Rom. 15.23–4). 13 This is how I understand Paul’s phrase, ‘the righteousness of God’. While I do not follow all of Wright’s conclusions here, for a similar understanding of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, cf. N. T. Wright, ‘Romans and the Theology of Paul’, in Pauline Theology Volume 3: Romans, David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson (eds) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). 10

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revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ – he indicts in chapters 1–2 both the gentile and Jewish world as evidencing within their respective groups the reality of sin. In chapter 3, while Paul suggests a Jewish advantage in regard to their historical election and possession of the Scripture (vv. 1–2), he nevertheless concludes that neither group stands in a privileged position in the final judgement, at which time all people will be held accountable for sin. Philip Esler’s analysis of Rom. 1.18–3.20, which draws upon the social identity and self-categorization theories of Tajfel and Turner, provides insight into Paul’s negotiation of ‘in Christ’ identity among the Jewish and gentile members of the Roman Christ community. Confronted with the ‘problem of persisting subgroup loyalties’, Paul could not realistically ‘suggest that his addressees abandon them; nor does he do so, but rather he self-consciously preserves the two social categories, as in the programmatic affirmation of 1.16’. In order, then, to promote a ‘common ingroup identity’, Paul establishes ‘a common superordinate identity while simultaneously maintaining the salience of subgroup identities’.14 As he attempts to demonstrate the equal status of the two groups, he does so on terms relative to each group. This is necessary because if he were to propose this equality by pointing to identical attributes, the groups might then be urged to compete with one another, which could in turn destroy the ‘single ingroup identity to be achieved’.15 Thus, Paul accomplishes his objective in this section of the letter by first relating the way each group in particular is under the dominion of sin. Romans 1.18–3.20 serves, therefore, as the crucial introduction to Paul’s gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s means of dealing with the problem of sin once and for all, found in 3.21–6. The final manifestation of God’s righteousness, what God has done in Christ, is an act of God’s sovereign grace and mercy through which is found liberation from and atonement for sin for all people groups without discrimination, Jewish and gentile (cf. Rom. 2.11; 10.12). Righteous status is secured, then, only by the faith realized in Jesus Christ,16 Esler, Conflict and Identity, 143–4. Esler, Conflict and Identity, 144. 16 I have become increasingly convinced that πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ represents something closer to a genitive of origin, such that it is essentially synonymous with the gospel, i.e. God’s faithful eschatological act of redemption/restoration/reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ, which calls for the human response of fidelity. However, this is not at the exclusion of the broader implications of either the subjective or objective genitive readings, as they clearly remain implicit in this understanding. 14 15

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for all people who give allegiance (3.22; cf. 10.13; see also Phil. 2.9–11).17 From here Paul draws vital implications for these subgroups within the Christ community, as he elaborates in 3.27–31. In v. 27 Paul asserts that public claims of honour (καύχησις, typically translated ‘boasting’) for either subgroup over against the other are disallowed by the gospel (cf. n. 13 above).18 In the Ancient Mediterranean world, honour was conceived of as both ‘a relative matter in which one claimed to excel over others, to be superior’, and a limited good in which one’s gain of honour was ipso facto at another’s expense.19 Such honour claims would represent the antithesis of Paul’s vision of a unified eschatological people, consisting of both Israel and the other nations together. The supportive reasoning that he employs in v. 29 is predicated upon the Shema. It is precisely because there is only one God for both Jews and gentiles – for all humanity – that entrance into God’s people is determined singularly on the basis of the faith realized through the Christ event, equally available to all. But how can gentiles be made righteous, i.e. brought into covenant relationship with God (cf. n. 3 above), if they do not fully submit to the Torah and thus take on Jewish identity?20 Can this notion be reconciled with the teaching of Torah? It is this implicit question to which Paul turns next through appeal to the figure of Abraham. The following chapter continues the diatribe ‘Give allegiance’ is, in my view, a more precise rendering of πιστεύοντας here, particularly in a firstcentury Roman context. Paul’s gospel demands not merely intellectual assent, as is the connotation of the contemporary English term, ‘believe’ (which is perhaps more in keeping with James’s usage of πίστις; cf. Jas 2.19), but allegiance to Israel’s Christ (cf. Rom. 1.1–4) rather than Caesar. I will assume this sense for the term throughout Romans 4, in which Paul will thus refer to Abraham’s allegiance or fidelity to God. Cf. the analysis of the semantic range of πίστις and its cognates in Douglas Atchison Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 178–88. 18 As Esler remarks, ‘The making of this claim to honor has nothing to do with the self-confidence of “the religious person” overly proud of his achievements, as Käsemann [1980, 102] (and others) has suggested’; Esler, Conflict and Identity, 168; Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 102. For Paul’s use of καύχησις in a positive light, cf., e.g. Rom. 5.2, 11; 15.17; 1 Cor. 15.10; 2 Cor. 7.4, 14; 8.24; 9.2–3. 19 R. L. Rohrbaugh, ‘Honor: Core Value in the Biblical World’, in Understanding the Social World of the New Testament, Dietmar Neufeld and Richard E. DeMaris (eds) (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 112. 20 As generally consistent with the New Perspective, I maintain that for Paul ‘works’ has in view the ordinances of Torah precisely as they function to manifest Jewish identity and thus covenant identity, over against the non-Jewish world (cf. Gal. 5.3). This, of course, was a central point of contention within the early Christ movement (cf. Acts 15), and one which occupies Paul thoroughly both here in Romans and in his prior letter to the Galatians. For a discussion surrounding this issue throughout the Pauline corpus, cf. Christopher Zoccali, Whom God Has Called: The Relationship of Church and Israel in Pauline Interpretation, 1920 to the Present (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010). 17

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style that began in 2.17, in which Paul utilizes a fictitious Jewish interlocutor to raise potential objections to his argument.21 In Rom. 4.1 the interlocutor asks, Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν εὑρηκέναι Ἀβραὰμ τὸν προπάτορα ἡμῶν κατὰ σάρκα;22 There has been much debate surrounding the proper translation of this verse. However, what seems to me to be the most obvious rendering has to my knowledge not yet been explicitly proposed. I suggest the verse should read: ‘What then will we say we have found23 Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, to be?’24 The expression to find (εὑρίσκω) someone to be a certain way is a fairly common one in the Pauline corpus (cf. 1 Cor. 4.2; 15.15; 2 Cor. 5.3; 9.4; 11.12; 12.20; Gal. 2.17; Phil. 2.8; 3.9). This would also reflect the typical portrayal of Abraham in the Jewish literature: You found his heart faithful before you, and you made a covenant with him to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Jebusites and Girgashites. You have kept your promise because you are righteous (Neh. 9.8). He kept the laws of the Most High, and he entered into a covenant with him. He established a covenant in his flesh, and when he was tested, he was found faithful. (Sir. 44.20) And in everything wherein He had tried him, he was found faithful, and his soul was not impatient, and he was not slow to act; for he was faithful and a lover of the Lord. (Jub., 17.18) Wasn’t Abraham found faithful when he was tested, and it was considered righteousness? (1 Macc. 2.52)

The answer to this question seems clear enough. From the Torah we find that Abraham was reckoned righteous by God. Abraham is unsurprisingly referred Cf. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 232–4. This form accords with the best manuscript evidence; cf. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 257–8. 23 Cf. BDF §396: ‘In classical Greek the complement of verbs of (perceiving), believing (showing), and saying which indicate the content of the conception or communication, is formed to a great extent by the infinitive. If the subject of the infinitive is the same as that of the governing verb, it is not expressed.’ 24 Zahn and Hays come close to this translation, rightly positing Ἀβραάμ as the object of the infinitive εὑρηκέναι, rather than the subject, which represents the standard reading. Theodor Zahn, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (Leipzig: Deichert, 1910), 212–19; Richard B. Hays, ‘“Have We Found Abraham to Be Our Forefather According to the Flesh?”: A Reconsideration of Rom 4:1’, NovT 27, no. 1 (1985). 21 22

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to here by Paul’s Jewish interlocutor as ‘our forefather according to the flesh’.25 Late Second Temple Jewish thought clearly understood Abraham as the ancestor of the Jewish people in terms of a myth of common biological descent (cf. Rom. 9.5). Integral to this perception, his fidelity and righteousness were viewed as inextricable from his submission to the rite of circumcision, and by extension, to the entirety of God’s instruction to Israel.26 However, v. 2a hints that the simple equation of fidelity and righteousness with full Torah submission (cf. n. 50 below) is misleading and would indeed result in the sort of Jewish honour claim that Paul says is prohibited by his gospel.27 The question of vv. 1–2a could be therefore reiterated: ‘What then will we say that we have found Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, to be if not accepted by God precisely because of his submission to the ordinances of Torah, thus confirming that covenant membership is dependent upon this, and thereby giving him (and by extension all Jews) a claim of honour over against the “non-Jewish” world?’ Paul then objects to the interlocutor’s line of reasoning in v. 2b: ‘Not as far as God is concerned!’ He cites Gen. 15.6 in v. 3, which portrays God’s act of reckoning Abraham righteous in response to Abraham’s giving of allegiance A frequent objection made by those who generally translate 4.1, ‘What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather, found according to the flesh’, is that Paul would not introduce Abraham as ‘forefather according to the flesh’, because it conflicts with his later argument of Abrahamic ancestry according to ‘promise’ rather than ‘flesh’ (9.8; cf. 4.9–13); cf., e.g. Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 307; Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith, 322. However, this fails to take into account Paul’s use of diatribe; it is not ‘Paul’, but his interlocutor who refers to Abraham in this way, and Paul will then set out to re-evaluate this traditional notion in 4.2b–25. 26 It should be noted here that Paul clearly possesses a particular understanding of what makes one Jewish, explicitly referring to two primary aspects of this ethnic boundary: kinship and Torah submission, both of which are, generally speaking and despite the ambiguities it presented for women, interconnected to the rite of circumcision. Without attempting to gloss over the complexity of first-century Judaism, it would seem quite safe to conclude that most orientations of Judaism in this period regarded circumcision as a primary marker of Jewish identity and inextricable with its other aspects. While the references in the relevant literature to Abraham being found faithful are in most cases pointing to the Aqedah, it seems nevertheless that all of Abraham’s faithful acts are implicit here. Schliesser comments: ‘The tradition regarding Abraham’s faith in the light of the sacrifice of Isaac became a common property. However, though Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son symbolizes the climax of his faithfulness, it is but one aspect of his general compliance to the νόμος ὑψίστου (Sir 44,20), it is one part of his ἔργα (1 Macc 2,51), one proof of his faithfulness – though the most significant one – (Jub 18,16), and ultimately one part of the “work of the law,” of keeping Yahweh’s precepts. Consequently, the underlying understanding is that in all that Abraham did, he observed and fulfilled the whole Torah without compromise; the Torah, consequently, becomes a trans-temporal pre-Mosaic entity’; Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith, 213. 27 To the extent that Paul is primarily concerned with fallacious Jewish honour claims here, it should be observed that he will soon turn the ‘polemical tables’ on the gentiles in his audience, chiding them for any arrogant, supersessionist assumptions among them (cf. Rom. 11.11–32). 25

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to God. The assumption commonly made from v. 4, that Paul’s metaphor of a paid labourer who earns a wage is intended to portray a false, merit-based approach to righteousness, significantly distorts Paul’s main point, which is to associate ‘reckoning’ (λογίζομαι) strictly with an act of God’s freedom (cf. v. 8).28 God is not compelled to make humans righteous but chooses to do so as a matter of sheer grace (cf. Rom. 5.20–1). There is here no attack on full Torah submission (cf. Rom. 2.25) nor on a requirement of general obedience in favour of an abstract disposition of ‘believing in God’ (cf. Rom. 2.6–11; 6.16; 12.1–2; 13.13–14; 14.10–12). Indeed, as suggested in vv. 19–22, Abraham’s πίστις was manifest in his actions. Stowers offers the following remarks: God’s approach required Abraham’s trust in the divine promises in a way that ensured Abraham’s faithfulness to the hopes embodied in the promises. Specifically, in spite of his being too old to procreate, Abraham was circumcised, and Abraham and Sarah had sexual intercourse because of God’s promise. This was Abraham’s faithfulness: Not lawkeeping but acting as circumstances required in light of God’s promise … Abraham’s initial trust upon hearing God’s promises should not be separated from his continuing faithfulness, which While it would indeed be a mistake to deny that Jews viewed strict Torah obedience as integral to their relationship with God and even conceived of perfect obedience as the ideal, there is, in my view, little reason to believe Paul confronted or was significantly concerned with a (false) notion that one could merit righteousness through Torah obedience. A survey of the relevant literature demonstrates that Torah obedience was viewed foremost as a response to the grace of God already shown Israel vis-à-vis their special election; E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977); E. P. Sanders, ‘Comparing Judaism and Christianity: An Academic Autobiography’, in Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders, ed. Fabian E. Udoh (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). Since the Torah provided an entire sacrificial system as a provision for the failure of covenant members to abide by the specific laws contained therein, it would seem that perfect obedience, however held as an ideal, was not practically anticipated either in the Torah itself or the subsequent body of Second Temple Jewish literature. Required, rather, was Israel’s overarching faithfulness to God. Furthermore, even in the literature that stresses performance of the Torah as having salvific consequences, such obedience is generally portrayed as dependent upon divine enabling, with salvation ultimately predicated upon the more fundamental basis of God’s sovereign grace and mercy. There is in this respect (i.e. a rejection of ‘cheap grace’) little difference between what is found here as compared to Paul (cf. Rom. 2.6–16, 25–7; 6.16; 8.5–17; 11.22; 12.1–2; 13.13–14; 14.10–12; 1 Cor. 6.9–11; 7.19b; 9.21; 2 Cor. 5.10; 13.5; Gal. 5.13–24; Phil. 2.12; Col. 1.10–14, 21–3; 3.5–10; 1 Thess. 4.1–8). Though I come to largely different conclusions, see on this issue A. Andrew Das, ‘Paul and Works of Obedience in Second Temple Judaism: Romans 4:4–5 as a “New Perspective” Case Study’, CBQ 71, no. 4 (2009): 797–801. I would add that Paul’s reading of the Abraham story is not the sort of antithesis to the view of James (2.21–4) that is commonly supposed (cf., e.g. Jipp, ‘Rereading’, 223–4) if one recognizes that the terms ‘faith’ and ‘works’ have quite different connotations in the respective letters (e.g. the idea of ‘works of Torah’ as demarcating covenant identity at the exclusion of gentiles is not at issue in James, a letter addressed to Jewish Christ communities). Paul would hardly deny that righteous status calls for (and is really inextricable from) concomitant acts, and that the latter proves the reality of the former.

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allowed him and Sarah to conceive and bear Isaac. The faith has no independent status in isolation from the faithful acts.29

Thus, in v. 4 Paul is simply affirming the fact of God’s sovereign grace and mercy as being most fundamental to covenant relationship with God, even if this righteous status is conferred by God in response to human allegiance (cf. Rom. 10.10), as was the case with Abraham. Similarly, in Romans 9–10, as the Scriptural grounds for his argument that Israel’s covenant has reached its intended τέλος in Christ (10.4), Paul cites several texts, including Exod. 33.19 (9.15); Hos. 1.10; 2.23 (9.25–6) Isa. 1.9; 10.22 (9.27–9); 65.1–2 (10.20–1), which all point to the priority and indispensability of God’s hesed in relation to Israel.30 The Scriptural story of Abraham’s descendants ‘according to the flesh’ testifies to the notion that God ultimately remains faithful to his people, securing their relationship to God’s self, even in the absence of their keeping of the works of Torah (cf. Rom. 3.3–4). This is clearly illustrated in Exodus 32–4.31 In the aftermath of the golden calf incident, at which time Israel violated the first commandment, God ultimately decided to renew the covenant (cf. Exod. 32.11–14; 34), with forgiveness for sin then asserted as an explicit attribute of the divine in relation to his covenant people (cf. esp. Exod. 20.4–7 with 34.6–10). Similarly, the prophetic promises of covenant renewal that follow in the wake of Israel’s failure to abide by the works of Torah, which led them into exile, are predicated upon God’s abiding grace and mercy towards God’s people. Importantly, the substance of this renewal is understood foremost in terms of cleansing from sin and enabling of obedience by a special act of God (see below). The critical point of vv. 5–8 is therefore that God in the end brings into existence or re-establishes relationship with God’s self those who are ungodly on this basis alone, in keeping with God’s freedom to do as God chooses. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 228. Along these lines, in Rom. 10.6 Paul seemingly echoes Deut. 9.4–6. In this narrative, referring to the other nations that God will supplant in the land promised to Israel, Moses says: ‘Do not say in your heart, “It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to occupy this land” … It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land … Know, then, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness.’ 31 This passage is unquestionably significant to Paul given his notable reliance upon it in his Corinthian correspondences (cf. 1 Cor. 10; 2 Cor. 3).

29

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In light of the universality of human sinfulness that Paul has thoroughly explicated in chapters 1–3 (cf. esp. Rom. 3.23; see also 11.32a; Gal. 3.22), all expressions of human fidelity to God, including the works of Torah, are at their core an appeal or response to the revelation of God’s prior grace and mercy in creation and election, culminating for Paul in what God has done in Christ (cf. Rom. 2.4; 3.3–4, 25–6; 6.15–22; 8.28–30; 9.11–16; 11.22, 30–2; 12.1–2; see also Col. 1.15–23). Again, it is this and not primarily one’s submission to Torah that is and has always been the basis of covenant identity, as Paul’s citation of Ps. 32.1–2 seeks to demonstrate (cf. Ps. 32.10–11).32 Paul’s rhetorical question in v. 9, ‘Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcision, or also on the uncircumcised?’ implies that what he has just asserted in vv. 1–8, while perhaps a challenge to traditional Second Temple Jewish views about righteous status, does not in itself contradict them. In v. 10 he explicitly points out that God’s reckoning of Abraham as righteous was prior to his submission to the ordinance of circumcision. The role of circumcision, claims Paul in v. 11a, was as a seal of this righteous status, that is, of the newly formed covenant relationship between Abraham and God.33 It is not until we arrive at v. 11b that the conclusion drawn necessarily requires a reading of Scripture that is informed by Paul’s eschatological convictions. In effect what he argues is that because Abraham’s covenant membership was established prior to his submission to the Torah ordinance that comes to define Jewish identity, God’s plan all along was that non-Jews would likewise be brought into the covenant. For Paul, this plan has (only) now been fulfilled in God’s act in Christ. He continues in v. 12 by affirming Abrahamic ancestry over Jews generally, and then to Jewish Christ-followers

Cf. Schliesser: ‘David … considers his personal experiences as a lawless and ungodly man, who however upon confession of his sins was forgiven, as typical and turns them into a general phrase (31:1–2). Therefore, Paul can use David as a type for those who are under the reality of the law, who are in the covenant, but who are in fact without works (χωρὶς ἔργων) and find themselves cut off from the law and from God. Yet even they will be forgiven through their trusting and throwing themselves unto God’s mercy, since God’s steadfast love is unconditional; it surrounds those who trust him. But now, even though David clearly represents primarily those under the law, the general conclusion about God’s merciful dealing comprises also non-Jews: Characteristically, they are labeled “lawless,” “ungodly,” and “sinners,” which are precisely the terms that David attributes to himself. Hence, there is no distinction between Jews and gentiles (cf. Rom. 3:22–3; 10.12); they all have sinned, and God shows no partiality, whether they have sinned apart from the law or under the law (cf. 2:11–12)’; Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith, 352. 33 Paul’s rewording of Gen. 17.11 lxx here, replacing διαθήκη with δικαιοσύνη, speaks to the virtually synonymous nature of righteous status and covenant membership in his understanding. 32

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specifically. However, what Paul will go on to suggest in the remainder of the passage points to the necessity of ‘in Christ’ identity for one to remain in the family of Abraham.34 Verses 13–16 are especially dense; it would seem that there are several overlapping notions presupposed in what is explicitly asserted here. Yet, this is where Paul reveals the underlying logic by which he could make the claims he did in vv. 9–12. First, the twin promises of the Abrahamic covenant, offspring and homeland, are here both conflated and universalized into the inheritance of the entire world (cf. Rom. 4.17; 8.18–25; 1 Cor. 3.21–3). This notion is similarly expressed in much of the relevant Jewish literature (cf. Sir. 44.19–21; Ps. 36.9, 11, 22, 29, 34 lxx ; Jub., 17.3; 22.14–15, 27–30; 32.18–19; 1 En. 5.6–7; 4 Ezra 6.55–9; 2 Bar. 14.13; 51.3; Philo, Moses, 1.55; Somn., 1.175).35 Paul clearly understands this promise, which he connects to the ‘new creation’ of Isaiah’s prophecy, to have been inaugurated by the resurrection of Christ.36 He thus alludes in Rom. 8.18–25 to a ‘new exodus’ presently taking place for all creation,37 in which the ‘children of God’ – or, synonymously, the ‘children of Abraham’ (cf. Gal. 3.26, 29) – will be revealed for who they are. It should be observed that, as found in Isa. 40–66, and as likewise understood by the author of Jubilees (cf. 1.23–9; 4.26; 19.21–5; 22), inextricably linked for Paul are the fulfilment of the original promise(s) to Abraham, the renewal of all creation, and the renewal of Israel’s covenant. Romans 4.12 points to the eschatological tension inherent in Paul’s theologizing, in which the full advent of the new covenant and creation is temporarily suspended to give both Israel and the other nations time to repent. Thus, for Paul, in this interim period inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection, historical Israel, collectively, remain ‘children of Abraham’, but such status will be confirmed in the final judgement only for Jews in Christ. It is these who represent ‘all Israel’ in Rom. 11.26. See Christopher Zoccali, ‘“And So All Israel Will Be Saved”: Competing Interpretations of Romans 11.26 in Pauline Scholarship’, JSNT 30, no. 3 (2008); Zoccali, Whom God Has Called, 91–118. 35 Noting the similarities between Rom. 4.13 and Sir. 44.19–21, Johnson Hodge remarks that ‘both entail the fertility of Abraham, the inclusion of the gentiles in his progeny, and the ultimate inheritance of the earth for his descendants. This passage illustrates a point that is also true for Paul: the blessing and incorporation of the gentiles are necessary parts of this particular understanding of God’s promise. The author of the Wisdom of Sirach sees an implicit connection between the ancestor Abraham (the “father of many nations”), the incorporation of the gentiles, and universal inheritance’; Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 188. 36 For the first, cf. Isa. 2.1–4; 9.6–7; 11.1–9; 25.6–10; 27.6; 40.3–5; 42.1, 6; 45.8; 49.6; 51.4–6; 54; 56.6–8; 60; and esp. 65.17–25; 66.22–3; see also Zech. 9.10; Ps. 72.8–11. For the second, cf. 2 Cor. 5.17; Gal. 6.15; Rom. 8.18–25; 1 Cor. 6.2; 15.20–8; Col. 1.15–20; see also Eph. 1.7–14; and elsewhere in the nt: Heb. 1.2; Mt. 5.5; 2 Pet. 3.10–14; Rev. 21–2. 37 Cf. Sylvia C. Keesmaat, ‘Exodus and the Intertextual Transformation of Tradition in Romans 8:14–30’, JSNT, no. 54 (1994); Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Paul and His Story: (Re)Interpreting the Exodus Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 34

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This leads to a second notion presupposed here. The inheritance of the world comes not through a righteous status expressed in full Torah submission, as per the previous dispensation, but through πίστις (cf. Rom. 9.30–2; 11.6).38 This idea is elaborated in vv. 14–15. For Paul, the Torah was never intended to be the final means through which righteousness could be secured for God’s people. Rather, the Torah itself points to a fresh act of divine initiative, whereby God would reconcile the wayward members of the covenant to God’s self (cf. Deut. 30.1–6). Paul’s entire theological program rests on the conviction that such prophecies of covenant renewal (cf. Rom. 11.27; 1 Cor. 11.23–6; 2 Cor. 3.3–18), in which God via the agency of the Spirit would write Torah on the hearts of God’s people, is presently taking place in Christ.39 As affirmed in Romans 7, the Torah and its commandments, while ‘holy and just and good’ (v. 12), could never elicit obedience. Therefore, the Torah, in the absence of Christ, can only ultimately function as a means of explication and conviction of sin (cf. Rom. 3.20; 5.20; 7.13; see also Gal. 3.19; 1 Cor. 15.56). It thus becomes the vehicle for God’s eschatological ‘wrath’ (4.15), which has now been inaugurated, to culminate in the final judgement (cf. Rom. 1.18–2.9; 3.25; 5.9; 1 Thess. 1.10; 5.9; Col. 3.5–6).40 With respect to Israel’s covenantal status in the era prior to Christ’s coming, it might be presumed that Paul would claim that such Torah-predicated righteousness, to which he refers in Philippians 3, was merely provisional, and thus requiring all along confirmation through a sovereign act of God. In this light, Rom. 3.19–20 and 10.3–4 (and, for that matter, Gal. 3.10–11) should be understood in terms of an eschatological pronouncement (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11) – now that God has acted once and for all in Christ there is no other means of righteousness available. 39 Cf. Rom. 2.12–16, 25–9; 7.6; 8.1–11; 9.30–10.4; Gal. 3.1–5; 1 Cor. 2.10ff.; see also Isa. 32.15; 44.3; 59.21; Jer. 31.31–40; 32.39–40; Ezek. 11.19–20; 36.22–32; 39.29; Joel 2.28; Zech. 12.10; Bar. 2.30–5; Jub., 1.21–4; CD 3.10–20; 1QS 1.16–2.25; 1QH 5.11; 7.6–35; 9.32; 12.12; 13.24–5; 14.3, 8–13; 16.7–15; 1Q34 2.5–7; 4Q504 5.6–16. Paul’s description of the gospel in Rom. 1.1–4 in terms of the messianic hope is an integral part of covenant renewal. While Davidic messianic expectations (derived from texts such as, e.g. Isa. 9.6–7; 11.1–12; Jer. 23.5–8; 33.14–26; Ezek. 34.23–31; 37.24–8; Amos 9.11–15; Hos. 3.4–5; Mic. 5.2–3; Zech. 3.8; 6.11–13) are by no means monolithic in the postbiblical literature, Fuller points out that when such a figure is envisaged ‘it is usually within the exilic model of restoration. For those Jews who sustained the hope for his coming, the messiah’s arrival was understood to be pivotal to Israel’s restoration’ (cf., e.g. Pss. Sol. 17–18; 1 En. 37–71; 4 Ezra 7.25–44; 12.31–4; 13.25–50; 2 Bar. 26.1–30.5; 36.1–40.4; 53.1–76.5; 4Q252 5.1–6; 4Q161 3.11–22; 4Q285 frg. 5; 4Q174 1); Michael E. Fuller, The Restoration of Israel: Israel’s Re-Gathering and the Fate of the Nations in Early Jewish Literature and Luke-Acts (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 184. 40 In Gal. 3.19–29 Paul seems to indicate that prior to Christ, the Torah offered guidance concerning transgressions and thus a form of protection from the full brunt of sin and its wages of death. Israel was in this way set apart from the ‘gentile sinners’ to which Paul refers in Gal. 2.15. But when ‘πίστις came’ (Gal. 3.23), and the power of sin and death was broken, and the promise to Abraham was confirmed, this role for the Torah had reached its intended conclusion. Thus, the Torah no longer 38

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The third layer of understanding in these verses concerns what would take place consequent to Israel’s restoration. In my view, Paul is unquestionably influenced by the eschatological pilgrimage motif found throughout the prophetic texts. The very conclusion to the main theological discourse of the letter in 15.7–12 suggests that the ingathering of the nations to join a restored Israel in worship of their God, anticipated in Isaiah and elsewhere, is fundamental to Paul’s gospel.41 Claiming that this is now happening, Paul’s view differs further from those expressed in the relevant Jewish literature in that the ingathered nations are brought into Israel’s covenant on equal terms (cf. n. 47 below).42 He draws, then, a natural correlation between the eschatological pilgrimage tradition and the Abrahamic promise. As such, the participants in this eschatological phenomenon are precisely the members of the multi-ethnic family promised to Abraham, with such righteous gentiles already anticipated in the person of the righteous uncircumcised Abraham (cf. vv. 9–11). Further support for this reading is found in vv. 24–5. As is widely recognized, Paul echoes here the Suffering Servant Song of Isaiah 53.43 However, functions in the same capacity. This is what Paul affirms in Rom. 10.4, ‘Christ is the τέλος of the Torah’. In keeping with this observation, it is evident that Paul did not view the sacrificial system prescribed in Torah as a permanent measure in dealing with sin. Rather, he came to believe that it was always God’s plan that Israel’s Christ would be the means by which this problem would be rectified. In this respect his thinking would seem to be in line with the author of Hebrews. 41 The Greek syntax of Rom. 15.8–9 is notoriously difficult. I translate these verses: ‘For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised for the truthfulness of God in order to confirm the promises to the fathers, and as a result the gentiles may glorify God for (his) mercy.’ 42 This critical aspect of his view is not explicitly indicated in the relevant prophetic texts (outside perhaps Isa. 54.15 lxx; 56.6–8; 66.18–21; Amos 9.11–12 lxx), nor the postbiblical literature outside the New Testament, which suggest: (a) the subordination of the gentiles by virtue of such pilgrimages; cf., e.g. Isa. 14.1–2; 18.7; 45.14; 60; Hag. 2.6–7, 21–2; Pss. Sol. 17.29–35; Jub., 32.19; Sir. 36.11–17; Tg. Isa. 25.6–10; 1 En. 90.30; 2 Bar. 72.2–6; or (b) the gentiles’ salvation independent from Israel’s covenant, in which their status in relation to Israel is ambiguous; cf., e.g. Isa. 2.2–4; 25.6–10; 42.1–9; 49.6; 51.4–6; Jer. 3.17; Mic. 4.1–3; Zeph. 3.9; Zech. 2.11; 8.20–1; Tob. 13.11–14; 14.5–7; 1 En. 10.21–11.2; 48.4–5; Sib. Or., 3.556–72, 710–23, 757–75; T. Levi 18.2–9; T. Naph. 8.3–4; T. Jud. 24.4–6; 25.5; T. Zeb. 9.8; T. Benj. 10.3–11; also possibly 4 Ezra 6.25–28. 43 As demonstrated by J. R. Wagner, ‘The Heralds of Isaiah and the Mission of Paul: An Investigation of Paul’s Use of Isaiah 51–55 in Romans’, in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, W. H. Bellinger and William Farmer (eds) (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1998); J. R. Wagner, Herald of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul in Concert in the Letter to the Romans (Leiden: Brill, 2002); O. Hofius, ‘The Fourth Servant Song in the New Testament Letters’, in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (eds) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 175–83; F. Watson, ‘The Hermeneutics of Salvation: Paul, Isaiah, and the Servant,’ in Pauline Soteriology Group at the SBL Annual Meeting (San Diego: 2007), there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Isaiah 53 had a significant influenced on Paul. He directly quotes from the lxx passage in Rom. 10.16 and 15.21 (cf. Gal. 3.2). Further, textual echoes from it are found in Paul’s ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν formula (cf., e.g. 1 Thess. 5.10; Rom. 5.8; 8.32; Gal. 3.13), his understanding of Christ’s vicarious death for ‘our sins’ (ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν) (cf. Gal. 1.4; 1 Cor. 15.3; and similarly in Rom. 4.25), as well as his language of Christ being ‘given up’ (παρέδωκεν) (cf. Rom. 4.25; 8.32; 1 Cor. 11.23).

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what is seldom observed is the significance of the allusion to Isaiah 53 with respect to the relationship of Paul’s identification of the servant (as Jesus Christ) and the identification of the servant (as Israel) in the four Servant Songs of Second Isaiah (cf. Isa. 44.1; 45.4; 49.3; see also 42.18–43.1), a relationship of which Paul was almost certainly aware. R. E. Clements is surely correct in his assertion that the ‘literary background to all four passages concerning the identity of the Servant would undoubtedly support the claim that we are faced here with a figure who fulfils some form of representational collective role’.44 In this regard, the comments of Christopher R. Seitz on Isaiah 53 are instructive. The dual mission of the servant – restoration of the survivors of Israel and as ‘Israel,’ a light to the nations (49:6) – is here confessed … as fully accomplished … [I]n this poem the servants come to acknowledge the life and death of the servant, as an individual, as expiatory for themselves. But because the servant, as an individual, has understood himself as the embodiment of ‘Israel, in whom I will be glorified’ (49:3), especially with a vocation to the nations, the poem functions at yet another level. The individual servant’s suffering and death are Israel’s on behalf of the other nations.45

I suggest that Paul came to understand in such representational terms Christ’s faithful, sacrificial work (cf. Rom. 3.25; 5.19; Phil. 2.5–8) as the very means by which Israel’s fundamental calling and covenant purpose is ultimately fulfilled, in which all the nations on earth are blessed, as per God’s original promise to Abraham in Gen. 12.3.46 Said somewhat differently, without God’s intervention in Christ to renew the covenant by Christ’s offering of himself (cf. 1 Cor. 11.25) thereby restoring Israel and bringing the other nations into Abraham’s family as together the one renewed humanity of the One God, the promise of the world/new creation could not be realized.47 R. E. Clements, ‘Isaiah 53 and the Restoration of Israel’, in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, W. H. Bellinger and William Reuben Farmer (eds) (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1998), 41. 45 Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 40–66, NIB 6 (Nashville: Abington, 2001), 462. 46 Cf. Gal. 3.8; see also Gen. 18.18; 22.18; 26.4; 28.14; Exod. 19.5–6; Deut. 4.5–8; 10.19; Isa. 2.2–4; 11.9–10; 42.1, 6; 49.6; Tob. 13.11; 14.6; Sib. Or., 3.195; Wis. 18.4; 1 En. 105.1; T. Levi 14.3–4; 1Q28b 4.27. 47 On the one renewed humanity, see Rom. 1.16; 3.30; 5.12–21; 6.5–11; 7.4–6; 8.28–30; 11.30–2; Gal. 3.16–18, 26–9. While Gal. 3.28 states that ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek … for all are one in Christ’, Paul does not intend here to negate difference wholesale. Ethnic differences are part of God’s good creation and in continuity, then, with the new creation inaugurated in Christ. Paul is calling, rather, for the unity and equality of the various groups who belong to the greater Christ community. This, 44

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Verse 16 reaffirms that the inheritance of this promise is received on the basis of God’s grace through πίστις (cf. Rom. 3.24). Once more, πίστις is not an abstract disposition that is the antithesis of one’s efforts. It is, rather, the same allegiance to God that Abraham demonstrated and that historical Israel was also called to exhibit (cf. Exod. 19.5–6). All such fidelity requires action in light of divine promise (cf. Rom. 4.19–21). This had meant full Torah submission in the era beginning with ‘Moses’ (cf. Rom. 5.13–14), but with the coming of Israel’s Christ this πίστις requires first and foremost acceptance of him, his death and resurrection, as typified by Abraham, who ‘hoped beyond hope’ (v. 18) and did not ‘weaken in fidelity’ (v. 19) or ‘waver into distrust’ (v. 20) in the God who ‘gives life to the dead’, ‘calling things into existence that do not exist’ (vv. 17b, 20). Thus, in accordance with God’s plan set in motion by Abraham’s faithful actions, all people groups (cf. Rom. 3.22; 10.11–13; see also 1 Thess. 1.9–10; 1 Cor. 15.1–4), can now be set right, fulfilling the promise and, indeed, the Torah itself (cf. Rom. 8.2–4; 10.4; Gal. 3.23–6).48 As the final expression of God’s hesed – God’s sovereign grace and mercy in answer to, and giving victory over, the problem of sin (cf. 1 Cor. 15.57) – no room is left for honour claims of one subgroup over another (cf. Rom. 3.27–9; 11.17–24) among those who have (only) in this way been made righteous (cf. Rom. 3.23–4, 30; 5.10–11; 6.6–8; 7.4; 8.1–17; 9.30–10.4; 11.6, 32; 2 Cor. 5.19).49 in turn, argues against the need for gentiles to become Jews or for Jews to become like gentiles. Indeed, as Paul likewise asserts, God will show no partiality (cf. Gal. 6.15; 1 Cor. 7.19; Rom. 2.11; 3.22; 10.12). On the promise of the world/new creation, see Rom. 8.19–21; Gal. 6.15–16; 2 Cor. 5.14–17; Col. 1.15–20. For a more detailed analysis of the role of Israel as God’s ‘true humanity’ and the fulfilment of this role, for Paul, in the person of Jesus Christ, cf. Zoccali, Whom God Has Called, 158–66. It is this ‘new covenant’ community defined by God’s act in Christ, which both represents and inherits the ‘new creation’, that is referred to in Gal. 6.15–16 as the ‘Israel of God’. It should be observed that ‘Israel’ is for Paul a multi-vocal identity category. 48 Nevertheless, the Christ community is still called to act out their righteous status in light of divine promise (cf. n. 28 above), in this case the promise that God will consummate the redemptive programme for all creation already inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection (cf. Rom. 8.18–38; see also esp. 1 Cor. 15). 49 This understanding argues against so-called ‘apocalyptic’ readings of Paul, which reject any primary significance to salvation history and thus the crucial, positive role of historical Israel and the Torah in Paul’s thought. This is simply an untenable position, for without this historical people set apart by virtue of the Torah there is no Christ to fulfil the promise(s) – a conclusion that surely did not escape Paul (cf. Rom. 1.2–3; 9.4–5; 15.8–12); contra J. L. Martyn, ‘Events in Galatia: Modified Covenantal Nomism Versus God’s Invasion of the Cosmos in the Singular Gospel: A Response to J. D. G. Dunn and B. R. Gaventa’, in Pauline Theology, Volume 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, ed. Jouette M. Bassler (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991); J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 161–75; see also here Esler, Conflict and Identity, 192–3.

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For Jews who are confirmed in this righteousness, full Torah submission continues to function as an appropriate expression of ethnic identity and faithfulness towards God.50 Paul therefore refers to this subgroup here as τῶ ἐκ τοῦ νόμου. For the gentile subgroup the presence of whom among Abraham’s family is confirmed in vv. 17–18 on the explicit basis of Gen. 17.5, this same righteousness excludes the prospect of proselytism, submitting to full Torah obedience (cf. Gal. 5.2–6). As Paul vehemently argues in his previous letter to the Galatians, for a gentile to seek Jewish identity, as would be required for covenant membership in the prior dispensation, is to in effect deny God’s faithfulness (i.e. ‘righteousness’; cf. Rom. 1.17; 3.3–4, 26) in bringing about the realization of the promise – the inauguration of the renewed covenant and creation in Christ (cf. n. 38 above) – and thus to re-subject oneself to slavery to sin and death (cf. Gal. 4.8–31).51 Thus, the community of righteous ones necessarily consists of both Jews qua Jews and gentiles qua gentiles, who thereby share Abraham as father and exemplar of ingroup identity (cf. esp. 1 Cor. 1.24; 7.17–20). This superordinate group is referred to as τῶ ἐκ πίστεως Ἀβραάμ, that is, those who find their identity in Abraham’s πίστις by being ‘in Christ’ (cf. Gal. 3.16, 27–9). Paul draws a direct connection here between Abraham’s faithful response to God’s promise and the fulfilment of this promise found in the multi-ethnic As already suggested in n. 28 above, ‘full Torah submission’ does not mean here perfect obedience. Rather, in view is the full body of laws contained in Torah, thus including those laws that, for Paul, continue to distinguish Jewish identity from gentile identity, e.g. circumcision, kashrut, and Sabbath observance. Of course, all covenant members must submit (as empowered by the Spirit) to the overarching ethical vision of Torah (cf. n. 48 above), that is, the doing of justice and righteousness; cf. Mic. 6.8; Amos 5.21–5; Isa. 5.7; 42.1–9; Jer. 7.5–7; Mt. 23.23–4; Lk. 11.42. Romans 7 is often viewed as suggesting that Christ-followers are no longer to submit to the Torah. But as is made quite explicit in Rom. 8.1–2, the κατειχόμεθα to which Paul refers in Rom. 7.6 does not point to the Torah in an absolute sense, but to its role in condemnation (cf. Rom. 7.10–11; 3.19–20). That is, in view here is sin and death, which, while made manifest by the Torah (cf. Rom. 7.7, 13), could not be overcome by it (cf. Rom. 7.14–24). The defeat of these forces, anticipated for Paul by the Torah, has once and for all been accomplished through Christ. It is thus the dispensation of Torah, the era of the old covenant and creation ruled by sin and death (cf. 2 Cor. 3.7–11; 1 Cor. 15.56), from which Christ-followers are ‘discharged’ (cf. Gal. 3.21–3), not the practice of Torah in the renewed covenant and creation inaugurated by Christ – either in terms of a full submission for Jews (cf. Rom. 2.25; 14; 1 Cor. 7.18), or a ‘limited’ submission for gentiles (cf. Gal. 5.13–26; Rom. 6; 8.1–17; 13.8–14; 1 Thess. 4.1–8; 1 Cor. 7.19; 9.21). 51 In this respect, Sanders is correct in arguing that Paul’s thinking runs from solution to plight. If ‘in Christ’ gentiles have received the promise of the Spirit, this must necessarily mean they have fulfilled the requirements of the Torah already, despite being uncircumcised. This conviction undergirds Paul’s assertions in Rom. 2.14–15, 28–9; 7.6; 2 Cor. 3.3–18. It is what also lies behind his rhetorical question to his Galatian converts in Gal. 3.3, ‘Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?’ 50

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Christ community.52 It is the intersection, then, of Abraham’s and the Christ community’s shared allegiance to God that allows for the ingroup designation appearing in the letter to the Galatians, the οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως (Gal. 6.10).53 As Paul asserts in Rom. 5.1–2, because of God’s act in Christ to bring to completion the plan of redemption that began with the call of and promises to Abraham, Jews and gentiles together in the churches of Rome ‘have peace with God’, ‘access to [God’s] grace’, and, indeed, reason to ‘claim honour in [the] hope of sharing the glory of God’. It was certainly Paul’s hope that in light of what God had done for them, they would live at peace with and extend grace to one another (cf. Rom. 12.3–21; 14.7–19).

Cf. Gal. 3.7; see similarly Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 79–91. All a result, one might add here, of God’s faithfulness ultimately manifest in Christ’s own faithfulness.

52 53

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15

Social Identity and Conflict in Corinth: 1 Corinthians 11.17–34 in Context1 Mark Finney

Social identity and honour Within the broad context of social identity in the ancient world, numerous studies have noted the significance and primacy of honour and that the lust for its accruement was an irreducible fact of life.2 This was true not only for those of elite status but also for the humiliores, whether it be those existing as slaves, those involved in what were described as the ‘vulgar’ professions, or those simply reliant upon the largesse of the rich for their meagre provision of dole.3 Dio Chrysostom observed that even slaves jockeyed with one another over ‘glory and pre-eminence’, and, for Valerius Maximus, ‘There is no status so low that it cannot be touched by the sweetness of prestige’.4 In the more poetic words of Horace, ‘Glory drags in chains behind her shining chariot the obscure no less than the nobly born’.5 In short, ‘The plebeian was as preoccupied with honor as the patrician, the client as the patron, the woman as the man, the child as the adult’.6 Some of the material in the following chapter is derived from my monograph, Mark T. Finney, Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World: 1 Corinthians in Its Graeco-Roman Social Setting, LNTS 460 (London: T&T Clark, 2012).  2 See Jon E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Carlin A. Barton, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Finney, Honour and Conflict.  3 Ramsay MacMullen notes of the lower ‘classes’, ‘[They focussed] their energies on the pursuit of honor rather than economic advantage…Like everyone else, they sought status’. Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974), 76–7.  4 Cel. Phryg., 41; Valerius Maximus, 8.14.5.  5 Horace, Sat., 1.6.23–4.  6 Barton, Honor, 11. And see also, Lendon, Empire, 51, 97; Sandra R. Joshel, Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), CIL 1.2.1210; 6.2.6308; Cicero, Parad., 36–7; Plautus, Mil. Glor., 349–51; Stic., 279–80; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att., 10.3.7; Seneca, Constant., 5.1.  1

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The rivalry for honour within Roman society subsumed all other social power struggles and became overwhelmingly important to its participants. Honour was, in essence, the pre-eminent value of social identity in the Roman world. Roman social historian Jon Lendon asserts: ‘Honour was a filter through which the whole world was viewed, a deep structure of the Graeco-Roman mind, perhaps the ruling metaphor of ancient society.’7 Men, in particular, lusted after honour and were determined to be seen, and publicly acknowledged, as having the social rewards which honour brought: status, respect, power, influence, entourage, genuflection, and especially envy. Cicero writes: By nature we yearn and hunger for honor, and once we have glimpsed, as it were, some part of its radiance, there is nothing we are not prepared to bear and suffer in order to secure it. (Tusc., 2.24.58)8

So, too, Dio Chrysostom assumed without question the proposition that it was the quest for honour that stood at the root of male motivation: For you will find that there is nothing else, at least in the case of the great majority, that incites a man to despise danger, to endure toils, and to scorn the life of pleasure and ease. This certainly is clear: neither you nor anyone else, Greeks or barbarians, who are considered to have become great, advanced to glory or power, for any other reason that you were fortunate enough to have men who lusted after honour. (Rhod., 17, 20)9

Social identity, dining and conflict The fellowship meals of the many voluntary associations or, indeed, any form of dining in the Roman Empire appear to demonstrate the same social concerns regarding the appropriation of honour, and with it, the potential for conflict.10 Lendon, Empire, 73. On the craving for honour, see also Cicero, Arch., 28–9; Rep., 5.9; Fin., 5.22.64; Off., 1.18.61; Augustine, Civ., 5.12.  9 Further, Rhod., 20 speaks of the rewards of such honour (and see the wider context of vv. 16–22). 10 See John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 1996); Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Dennis Edwin Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). See also two other essays in this volume: Andrew Clarke and J. Brian Tucker, ‘Social Identity and Social History’, 41–58, and R. Alan Streett, ‘The Agapé Feast in 2 Peter, Imperial Ideology, and Social Identity’, 473–91.  7  8

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That is, a social gathering around a meal was a setting of considerable consequence in terms of social identity, both for those determined to display or secure their status (and perhaps relative wealth) and for those desiring to improve their honour standing vis-à-vis their social contemporaries.11 The Graeco-Roman literature reflecting this will be examined below. An added dimension with regard to 1 Cor. 11.17–34 is the importance of placing the apostle at the very centre of the community’s liturgical praxis.12 Following Paul’s formation of the Christ-movement in Corinth, and during his eighteen-month stay there, one can safely assume that the congregation met numerous times to partake of the κυριακὸν δεῖπνον. Further, one may posit that the practicalities of the meal were originally settled by Paul (or under his direction) and that the theological significance of particular aspects of the meal was drawn out by him for the benefit of the nascent community.13 Even if one recognizes that by the end of his time in Corinth some or all of the above could have been undertaken by others – as in the case of baptism (1 Cor. 1.14–17) – the meals, and the theological significance of those meals, would have taken place under the guiding influence of the apostle himself. So, over the tenure of Paul’s stay there are valid grounds for suggesting that the meal became in some way ‘institutionalized’ within the community’s liturgical practice and that, following Paul’s departure, the tradition of the meal would continue to be a, or the, focal point of the community’s liturgical gatherings. What needs to be assessed, therefore, is how and why the socio-theological function of the meal disintegrated so badly as to provoke not only Paul’s severe rebuke upon the factionalism that now existed during the meal, but the issue of a direct warning of judgement and condemnation upon anyone partaking of the meal in an unfitting way (11.29, 34). As the early Christ-movement was likened to a voluntary association,14 an analysis of the wider social context of So, MacMullen, Social Relations, 106–20; Harland, Associations, 2. Mark Finney, ‘Honour, Head-Coverings and Headship: 1 Corintians 11.2–16 in Its Social Context’, JSNT 33, no. 1 (2010); Finney, Honour and Conflict. 13 Bradley B. Blue, ‘The House Church at Corinth and the Lord’s Supper: Famine, Food Supply, and the Present Distress’, CTR 5 (1991): 232; David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 153; and Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), are among the few scholars who make note of this point, although it is only Winter who asks pertinent questions of what this may mean for the social context of the text. 14 See Finney, Honour and Conflict, 66–7. 11 12

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fellowship meals within such groups is appropriate, and this will be followed by an attempt to answer some of these engaging questions.

Fellowship and meals in the voluntary associations Although voluntary associations were typically composed of freedmen who practised the same craft or trade, they mirrored wider civic culture in that their internal structure was associated with honour and prestige.15 Several lists of club membership survive and these are headed by the names of patrons, predominantly wealthy men, sometimes of senatorial rank, who had often made gifts to the club.16 In return for such beneficence a club would honour the patron with titles and dedications which added to his status (and which were, in some sense, a suitable quid pro quo for his investment). Other members of the club bore titles imitating municipal officials: presidents of a club might be given the title magistri, curators or quinquennales; the accounts were held by the quaestores; below these came certain officials, the decuriones, followed by the ordinary members (plebs). Here, those club-members excluded from overt civic honours could find suitable recompense within the familiarity of the association.17 The meal played an important part in this process because particular procedures provided a highly visible means for acknowledging status. The clubs offered, as Meeks notes, ‘the chance for people who had no chance to participate in the politics of the city itself to feel important in their own miniature republics’.18 In general, a formal meal or banquet would have consisted of perhaps two main courses, the δεῖπνον (the main meal), followed by the συμπόσιον (the drinking party).19 The transition to the συμπόσιον was normally marked by a On the social composition of clubs, see Gerd Theissen, ‘The Social Structure of Pauline Communities: Some Critical Remarks on J. J. Meggitt, Paul, Poverty and Survival’, JSNT, no. 84 (2001): 76–7. 16 Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Berlin: Berolini, 1892–1916), 6174–6; 7216f.; 7225–7. 17 So, MacMullen, Social Relations, 75–7; Dennis E. Smith, ‘Meals and Morality in Paul and His World’, SBLSP, no. 20 (1981): 328; Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 31, 34. 18 Meeks, First Urban, 31. 19 A small appetizer prior to the δεῖπνον may have constituted a third course, see Martial, Epigr., 11.31.4–7; Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 734A. Further on table fellowship, see Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 93–116. On the symposion, Oswyn Murray, ed. Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 15

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libation, and other religious rituals may also have been included such as the singing of hymns.20 The provision of food was almost entirely made by the patron or by those of comparatively greater wealth and resources, and this obviously meant that the relatively poor were wholly dependent upon the generosity of others. At the same time, the actual division of the food was demarcated upon lines of status, for not only would the wealthy receive larger portions, but as the more honoured guests, they would also receive a better quality of food. Such practice is well attested for the period and simply served to reinforce status distinctions.21 For instance, the collegium in Lanumium (136 ce) established a rule on the sharing of food that read: ‘any member who has administered the office of the quinquennalis honestly shall receive a share and a half of everything as a mark of honor.’22 Here, a larger share at the meal was an obviously distinct and highly visible sign of honour, and it was, of course, inconceivable that any protest would be made about larger and better portions going to those whose contributions made the meal possible in the first place. So, even though the clubs fostered fellowship and mutual concern, the fact that in the distribution of money or food a larger share was given to the patron and officials demonstrates that the club functioned as a microcosm of wider civic culture wherein honour played a vital part in the club’s social objectives.23 Other significant and highly visible marks of status centred upon one’s seated position at table and, with it, one’s reclining posture. Such attitudes are well attested in respect of private meals and dinner parties but are equally true of clubs and religious organizations. The statutes of the College of Diana and Antinous, for example, an Italian funerary society of the second century ce, included a rule against ‘moving from one place to another’, and the statutes of the Iobakchoi, a second-century ce Athenian religious association dedicated See Ben Witherington, III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 192–5, 241–7. Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, trans. E. O. Lorimer (London: Routledge, 1941), 270–1; Abraham J. Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Baton Rouge; London: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 82; Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), 154, 156 and cf. Pliny, Ep., 2.6; Juvenal, Sat., 5; Martial, Epigr., 1.20; 3.49, 60; 4.85; 6.11; 10.49. Xenophon (Mem., 3.14) notes Socrates’ difficulty in attempting to have food shared equally, as does Plutarch in the case of Lycurgus (Mor., 226E–227A; Lyc., 11). 22 Quoted in Theissen, Social Setting, 154. 23 Smith, ‘Meals’, 327.

20

21

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to Bacchus or Dionysus, included a fine if ‘anyone is found…occupying the couch of another member’.24 Particular seating positions at table represented varying degrees of honour, and these rules demonstrate the use and regulation of ranking systems at table and the importance of maintaining such distinctions.25 In a similar way, to recline at table was considered a posture associated with elegance and social rank and was traditionally reserved for the free-born male. Women, children and slaves were expected to sit. Although by the first century ce such customs were slowly changing and, for example, women were allowed to recline,26 the indelible mark on social perception left by these earlier traditions meant that for a man to have to sit at table was imbued with the social stigma of a particular class and was felt to be dishonouring. This is evident in Lucian’s description of a late-arriving male guest to a banquet at which all of the reclining positions were taken (and at which women were present). He is invited to sit, but he refuses on the grounds that sitting at a banquet is ‘womanish and weak’. Rather, he elects to recline on the floor.27 But knowing one’s social place in a group context did not mean that procedures at fellowship meals were always calm and relaxed. Rather, the opposite is the case. As has already been noted, the notion of strife and enmity in public gatherings is entirely consistent within the antagonistic environment of ancient social life, and this is especially so over questions of honour. It appears, for example, that the ancient Celts were notoriously sensitive over such questions, particularly at meals and banquets. Diodorus Siculus reports that disputes during meals often led to challenges of single combat, and Athenaeus notes that at dinner the Celts sometimes engaged in fights, occasionally to the death, over question of who was the best among them Smith, ‘Meals’, 324. The same customs are reflected in Jesus’ parable of the places of honour at a banquet (Lk. 14.7–11). Here, the astute guest has the potential to be honoured in sight of all the other guests (who are reclining at table) by initially choosing a lower place than his status would normally allow him. The converse, for the arrogant guest, is that his status does not allow him to seat himself at a particular place at table, and he is subsequently asked to move to a more appropriate place. In having to do so he is disgraced before all. The relevance of the parable is the observation of the distinct demarcation which associates one’s status with a particular position at table. With it, of course, go notions of honour and shame. Cf. also Mk 12.39; Lk. 11.43; Plutarch, Mor., 149A-B. 26 See esp. Kathleen E. Corley, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 28–9; Carcopino, Daily Life, 265, 317, n. 121. On the wider changes in meal etiquette among Graeco-Roman women, see Corley, Private Women, ch. 2. 27 Symp., 13. 24 25

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and so worthy of the finest portions of the meal.28 Centuries later, Plutarch remarks on similar social scenarios: Those who eat too much from the dishes that belong to all antagonize those who are slow and are left behind as it were in the wake of a swift-sailing ship. For suspicion, grabbing, snatching, and elbowing among the guests do not, I think, make a friendly and convivial prelude to a banquet; such behavior is boorish and crude and often ends in insults and angry outbursts. (Mor., 2.10.643–4)

He concludes, ‘the taking of another’s and greed for what is common to all began injustice and strife’.29 Such observations qualify the evidence collected by Dennis Smith on the common rules and injunctions of various clubs for banquet meetings. Smith found: 1) injunctions against quarreling and fighting; 2) injunctions against taking the assigned place of another; 3) injunctions against speaking out of turn or without permission; 4) injunctions against fomenting factions; 5) injunctions against accusing a fellow member before a public court; 6) specifications for trials within the club for inter-club disputes; 7) specifications for worship activities.30

It is of interest that Paul is required to address most of the concerns of this list within the letter of 1 Corinthians.31 In sum, appropriate recognition of status distinction at either private dinners or at fellowship group meals was deemed essential for the majority of the guests. The failure to make a gesture of suitable acknowledgment of status and honour was seen as a highly public affront and could be a source of potential humiliation. Hostility, insult and anger could quickly follow. The notion of social equality at table may not only have appeared unworkable in this first-century cultural milieu but was likely to have been considered anathema by many. So, too, the attempt by the nascent believing community of Corinth to suggest (or impose) a more equal framework of commensality upon neophytes steeped in honour-bound traditions involving various forms

Diodorus Siculus, 5.28; Athenaeus, Deipn., 4.154; other examples are found in Harland, Associations, 75–6. 29 Mor., 642F. 30 Smith, ‘Meals’, 323. 31 See Witherington, Conflict, 244. Such attitudes are not exclusive to the first century ce (cf. Aristotle, Pol., 2.4.1; Aristid. Or., 23.65). 28

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of social antagonism may well have occasioned difficulties from the outset. That said, it is to the text of 1 Corinthians 11 that we now turn.

Social identity and conflict at the Lord’s Table The subject matter discussed in 1 Corinthians 11.17–34 is the third item of the community’s behaviour brought to Paul’s attention, perhaps as an oral report by Chloe’s people or by the Stephanas delegation. In it, Paul is made aware of the σχίσματα and αἱρέσεις which existed when the whole congregation came together to share a fellowship meal and the Lord’s Supper.32 If the community met in some type of club-house,33 then food would have to be taken to the gathering (relatively wealthier members may have been expected to take extra food for the poor or may even have provided most of the food). But the situation was open to abuse, for the factional groups striving in pursuit of greater honour were competing over the type and amount of food taken and eaten. Such groups are typically seen as just two in number, the haves and the have-nots.34 But the scenario may not be quite so simple, for there may have been a number of factions in competition with one another, and here, consideration and sensitivities towards the poor were left to one side.35 The major exegetical points of debate in this section surround the meanings of the verbs προλαμβάνω (v. 21), and ἐκδέχομαι (v. 33). Traditionally, the compound verb προλαμβάνω has been understood in the temporal sense of ‘to take beforehand’ (that is, to begin eating before others do), and this was Paul’s recounting of the Last Supper tradition (11.23–6) assumes that the taking of the eucharistic elements is done within the framework of τὸ δεῖπνον; that is, there is an actual meal between the word spoken over the bread and that spoken over the cup; so, Theissen, Social Setting, 152; cf. Bruce W. Winter, ‘Secular and Christian Responses to Corinthian Famines’, TynBul 40, no. 1 (1989): 102. Τὸ δεῖπνον normally designates the main meal of the day in the Graeco-Roman world, typically eaten in the evening. As Andrew McGowan reminds us, there may have been a plurality of forms of the celebration of the Eucharist within the early Christ-movement; Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 33 See Finney, Honour, 63–8. 34 So, Theissen, Social Setting, 148; Winter, ‘Secular’, 100; O. Hofius, ‘Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s Supper Tradition: Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:23b–25’, in One Loaf, One Cup: Ecumenical Studies of 1 Cor 11 and Other Eucharistic Texts, ed. Ben F. Meyer (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993), 92; James D. G. Dunn, 1 Corinthians (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 77–8; David Horrell, ‘The Lords’s Supper at Corinth and in the Church Today’, Theology 98, no. 783 (1995): 198 and n. 7; Witherington, Conflict, 248. 35 The factionalism may well have been linked to the divisions of 1.12, which may have developed from particular house-groups. 32

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then presumed to relate to the imperative ἐκδέχεσθε (v. 33) in that Paul’s injunction to the ‘haves’ was to urge them to wait for the ‘have-nots’.36 But the verb προλαμβάνω occurs only three times in the nt, one of which, Galatians 6.1, provides an example of the verb being used non-temporally (here, simply equivalent to ‘be taken’).37 In light of this, the use of προλαμβάνω in 1 Corinthians 11.21 is not as certain as at first seems, and Paul’s usage in Galatians may better reflect the usage here. Further, Fee points out that, within the social context of eating (ἐν τῷ φαγεῖν, v. 21), there is no decisive evidence that προλαμβάνω in Greek literature is used with a temporal meaning at all,38 and more recently, Bruce Winter has suggested a more convincing alternative.39 Winter argues that here προλαμβάνω does not retain its temporal sense (and so does not refer to the prior eating of food by the wealthier believers), but simply points to the ‘haves’, ‘devouring’ or ‘consuming’ their own food while the poorer believers were going without (μὴ ἔχοντας, v. 22). His proposal is supported by an inscription which refers to a meal in the temple of Asclepios at Epidaurus (i.e. pointing to a similar social scenario), in which προλαμβάνω is employed three times and where, in each case, the temporal force of the prefix is lost and the verb simply denotes the sense of ‘to take’ in the context of eating.40 Given the similar social context of a meal in

So, Theissen, Social Setting, 151–3; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983), 161; Stephen M. Pogoloff, Logos and Sophia: The Rhetorical Situation of 1 Corinthians, SBLDS 134 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 243; Witherington, Conflict, 248 n. 23; rsv, nrsv, niv, njb, kjv, nkjv. 37 The third text is Mk 14.8. See Tucker’s analysis in J. Brian Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 121–2. 38 Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), concludes that the verb is ‘likely to be an intensified form of ‘take,’ meaning something close to ‘consume’ or ‘devour’. But one cannot totally rule out a temporal sense’ (542, cf. 568). Cf. BDAG, sv 1.c. 39 Bruce W. Winter, ‘The Lord’s Supper at Corinth: An Alternative Reconstruction’, RTR 37, no. 3 (1978): 73–82. Winter’s thesis is followed by Blue, ‘House Church’; Hofius, ‘Lord’s Supper’; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, ‘Proclaiming the Lord’s Death: 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 and the Forms of Paul’s Theological Argument’, in Pauline Theology, Volume II: 1 & 2 Corinthians, ed. David M. Hay (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997); Anders Eriksson, Traditions as Rhetorical Proof: Pauline Argumentation in 1 Corinthians (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1998); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000). Cf. Fee, First Epistle, 542. 40 Cf. MM, 542; BDAG, 872. 36

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1 Corinthians, it would appear entirely reasonable to render προλαμβάνω in an equivalent way (e.g. ‘consume;’41 ‘take’ for oneself;42 or ‘to (par)take of ’43). The second verb, ἐκδέχομαι, has a particularly wide semantic range and depends upon the wider context for its precise nuance.44 As noted above, it has traditionally been taken with the earlier understanding of προλαμβάνω by which it has been defined as ‘to wait for one-another’.45 Together with the reappraisal of προλαμβάνω it has been re-examined within the wider framework of these verses, for the primary meaning of the verb is not necessarily ‘to wait’, but can mean ‘expect someone’ (cf. 1 Cor. 16.11), or ‘look forward to someone/something’ (cf. Heb. 11.10), or ‘receive someone’ (in the sense of ‘entertain’ as a host), or ‘welcome/accept someone’.46 On this reading, Paul’s point is that the wealthier believers are to display hospitality by welcoming and receiving the poorer believers to the fellowship meal and Lord’s Supper (cf. Rom. 12.13, 15.7). The strength of this proposal is that it makes greater sense of Paul’s admonitions in 11.33–4, for if the meaning of Paul’s imperative ἀλλήλους ἐκδέχεσθε in v. 33 were simply to ‘wait for one another’, this would not alleviate the problem that there were poorer believers who had little or no food to eat. Rather, if Paul’s demand is that the wealthier believers welcome and share with the poor, then the passage becomes more intelligible.47 The social setting of the text is now apparent. At the fellowship meal there is division and factionalism as the community separates into a number of groups which seek to outdo each other in the volume and quality of the food and drink consumed. In the secular meetings outlined above, this accords with the expectations of voluntary associations where both greater quantity and better quality of food and drink were provided for a patron and for higher-status members, than for those of lower status. In this sense, as Theissen remarks, the richer members of the community were ‘simply 43 44 45

So, Winter, ‘Lord’s Supper’. So, Engberg-Pedersen, ‘Proclaiming’, 110. So, Hofius, ‘Lord’s Supper’, 91. So, Fee, First Epistle, 568. For exegetes who hold this view, see n. 36 above. Also Peter Lampe, ‘The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross’, Int 48 (1994). 46 So, LSJ; and see also Fee, First Epistle, 540–3, 567–8; and especially Hofius, ‘Lord’s Supper’, 93f., and footnotes. 47 Winter, ‘Secular’, 102. 41 42

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adopting a pattern of behaviour customary at that time’.48 Although some food may have been provided for the poor, this was probably very little, and certainly of lower quality, and the result was that as one member went hungry another had the opportunity of becoming drunk (11.21).49 Herein lay the σχίσματα: although the believers eat together in the same space, they are yet separated into antagonistic social groups demarcated by cultural concepts of appropriating honour. So, too, as the groups of wealthier believers enjoy their feast in the presence of the hungry poor, their arrogant display of insouciance serves to shame and humiliate (καταισχύνειν, 11.22) those who have nothing.50 The action of the wealthier groups also has the effect of treating the community with contempt (11.22), and their disdain towards the poor is, at the same time, a visible demonstration of contempt for the body of Christ. The wealthier members may have possibly justified such behaviour by appealing to a feeling of hunger (cf. 11.22, 34), or to normative cultural practice. In terms of the ἐκκλησία however, Paul deems that such practice has no place at the Lord’s Table, and he seeks to undermine cultural expectations within a radically conformed Christ-centred concept of commensality. In effect, he calls upon the wealthier believers to actually remove the barriers of status differentiation and to receive the poorer members as equal participants of the fellowship meal and Lord’s Supper. Meeks (following Theissen) sees this as ‘a compromise…so that at the Lord’s Supper the norm of equality can prevail’,51 but within an honour-shame culture Paul’s admonitions are much more radical than Meeks allows. For within the Corinthians’ conventional social mores which deemed as entirely appropriate suitable distinctions of rank and status to be recognized at table, Paul’s directives represent nothing short of a direct challenge to this status-orientated ideology. He requires that the wealthier believers adjust both their expectations and their behaviour to accommodate the needs of those of lower status, which in itself, in GraecoRoman culture, would have meant a reversal of normal status expectations. In Social Setting, 154. For the thesis that the provision of food may have been influenced by grain shortages and potential famine, see Winter, ‘Secular’; Thiselton, First Corinthians, 852–3. 50 The verb καταισχύνειν occurs more frequently in the Corinthian correspondence than in the rest of the nt combined. 51 Meeks, First Urban, 159. 48 49

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short, the higher-status believers would have to undergo severe loss of honour to participate in Paul’s uncompromising model of ‘egalitarian’ commensality.52

Social identity and the cross Paul’s defence of this radical command is twofold. First, he makes an appeal to Christ’s death and the institution of the meal as the essential paradigm of self-sacrifice (vv. 23–6), and, second, he issues a warning of judgement against inappropriate behaviour at the Lord’s Table (vv. 27–32). The first point instructs the Corinthians that they are to remember Christ’s sacrifice as they eat together. This is an essential and largely ignored point, for, in Paul’s absence, the Corinthian neophytes may have had little instruction on the historical basis of the meal, or the Last Supper tradition(s), nor indeed on Pauline thinking and ‘theology’ related to it.53 Paul states categorically that the meal they take together stands in continuity with the Last Supper tradition,54 most likely a Passover meal,55 wherein Jesus reinterpreted the elements of bread and wine as representations of his body and blood, shortly to be given over in death on the cross. The act of remembering (11.24, 25) points indelibly to the memory of the crucified one and his saving work, and the prepositional attributive τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν…κτλ designates the framework within which this is now conceived: it is for all of the Corinthian believers. At the same time, issues of honour-shame come to the fore, for in the very act of remembering Jesus’ death on a cross the community is forced to remember the one who was an accepting victim of extreme humiliation and shame. In light of this tradition, Paul castigates the behaviour of the wealthier believers, for it stands in contradiction to the very essence of what Jesus Here Paul’s proposal is comparable to that of Pliny (Ep., 2.6), who maintained that in a common meal, one of higher social status should adjust his eating habits to those appropriate to one of a lower social status. 53 Contra Engberg-Pedersen who claims here, ‘He [Paul] is not teaching them anything new’ (‘Proclaiming’, 125). Rather, Paul’s outline in 11.23–6 may well have been the first articulated expression of the Last Supper tradition for many of the neophytes. 54 Hofius notes: ‘Each Lord’s Supper wherever and whenever it is celebrated is a continuation of the Last Supper of Jesus’ (‘Lord’s Supper’, 100). 55 See Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 1966), 15–88; I. Howard Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1980), 57–75; Hofius, ‘Lord’s Supper’; Thiselton, First Corinthians, 871–4. 52

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founded. The eucharistic actions that encompass the meal and that make it the κυριακὸν δεῖπνον allow all of the participants an equal share in the expiatory death of Jesus Christ and in the future consummation of the salvation realized by that death. Christ and his saving act remain fundamentally essential to the Eucharist. A denial of the corporate nature of the παράδοσις (cf. the plurality of ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν) disregards Christ’s saving death and constitutes a sin against Christ himself. Consequently, Paul’s explanatory gloss in 11.26 (‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’56) looks back and reminds the reader/hearer of 1.18–2.2. The fundamental message of Paul’s preaching remains Christ crucified. Furthermore, 11.26 asserts that the remembering is thus realized in the proclaiming. The verb καταγγέλλω is almost exclusively used in the New Testament for making a verbal proclamation towards outsiders, either of the gospel as the word of God57 or of Christ as the means of salvation through his resurrection from the dead.58 So, the Corinthians’ fellowship meal around the Lord’s Table is not an exclusively internal event; the community is actually participating in a gathering which should proclaim the good news of the Christ-event to outsiders. But Paul recognizes further that one cannot properly proclaim the radical nature of life ‘in Christ’ without also conforming oneself to it, and failure to do so can lead only to one being ‘answerable for the body and blood of the Lord’ (11.27). Paul may actually conceive here that such a one will thus demonstrate an allegiance with the ‘rulers of this age’ who crucified the Lord (2.8) and who are thus responsible for his broken body and shed blood. And this may be the reason why he is able to recognize that the factions (αἱρέσεις, 11.19) at the Lord’s Table may have the positive effect of demonstrating which members of the congregation are the δόκιμοι, the approved and genuine ones, those who are able to pass the test (cf. 9.27).59 Louw and Nida allow a definition of ‘honoured’ within the semantic field, and define δόκιμος as ‘pertaining to being respected on the basis of proven worth, “respected, honoured”’. They write: 58 59 56 57

All Bible quotations are nrsv unless otherwise indicated. Acts 13.5; 15.36; 17.13; 1 Cor. 2.1; 9.14. Acts 3.24; 4.2; 13.38; 16.17; 17.3; Phil. 1.17–18; Col. 1.28. Seven of the thirteen uses of (ἀ)δόκιμος and cognates are found in the Corinthian correspondence.

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In a number of languages, meanings such as those of τιμίος, ἔντιμος, ἔνδοξος and δόκιμος may be rendered by a type of clause involving people’s attitudes toward an individual, for example, ‘one who people think is great’ or ‘one of whom everyone approves’ or ‘one to whom everyone looks up’.60

In this way, the δόκιμοι can be construed as those who are, in the present through worthy actions, predicated of honour – either by men,61 or by God or Christ.62 In short, the cross stands supreme over the criteria of social identity and what it means to be a believer. The divisions seen in chs 1–4 together with the factionalism found in the sharing of the Eucharist undermine the very heart of why the worshipping community celebrates the Lord’s Supper at all. Ironically, due to the social constraints surrounding the appropriation of honour and with it the correlative nature of bringing shame upon others, what should have been the focus of ecclesial unity had become the focus of factionalism and division and an opportunity for some to shame others.63

Conclusion The context of this section of Paul’s letter highlights an aspect of first-century ce social identity wherein the love and lust for honour is clearly demonstrated. Here, it is one of antagonistic groups or individuals at a fellowship meal striving and competing for greater honour. There is factionalism and division, and a number of believers are being humiliated and shamed in the process. So, too, certain groups are demonstrating an air of contempt towards what should have been a unified meeting of the body of Christ. In bringing to mind the Last Supper παράδοσις and the imagery of the ‘body of Christ’, handed over and broken for you (v. 24), Paul utilizes the theological premise L&N sv. Also, LSJ sv, ‘of persons, approved, esteemed, notable’. Rom. 14.18; 2 Cor. 13.7; Jas 1.12 62 Rom. 16.10; 2 Cor. 10.18. This is contra Fee (First Epistle, 538f.) who simply sees here an example of Paul’s eschatological end-time perspective. But the revealing of the δόκιμοι need not be a future end-time event; rather, attitudes and behaviour toward the congregational factionalism could manifest the δόκιμοι in the present as those deserving of human or divine honour. 63 As Louise Schottroff writes, ‘This meal must have been a humiliating situation for the poor, whose dignity as children of the one Creator of all human beings was called into question’. Luise Schottroff and Brian McNeil, ‘Holiness and Justice: Exegetical Comments on 1 Corinthians 11.17–34’, JSNT, no. 79 (2000): 53. 60 61

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upon which he conceives the believing community to be founded. Here, the social ‘body’ of Christ (vv. 27–9), the Corinthian ἐκκλησία, finds its meaning and is predicated upon the sacramental body of Christ (vv. 23–6). The dual metaphor of the ‘body’ inextricably connects Christ’s death on the cross with a profound understanding of the type of community brought into being by that very action (which Paul will further explicate in 1 Corinthians 12–13). The current incongruity between the paradigm that the cross establishes, which should be an adequate demonstration for the on-going life of the community of faith, and the current social reality of a disunified, bickering community causes Paul to reflect upon the nature of divine judgement to which such behaviour is leading (and has, in fact, already led). In recollecting Christ’s ignominious death upon the cross Paul confronts the community with a stark reminder that the Lord for whom they gather in thanks and commemoration is also the one who was a victim of extreme shame, and this is an uncompromising observation on the behaviour of those who would seek to humiliate others in lusting after honour.

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‘If Anyone is in Christ, New Creation: The Old has Gone, the New has Come’ (2 Corinthians 5.17): New Creation and Temporal Comparison in Social Identity Formation in 2 Corinthians Kar Yong Lim

Introduction Of all the Christ-movements founded by Paul, the Corinthian congregation is probably the one confronted with the most problematic issues. The two canonical Corinthian letters written by Paul are evidence of a church that is filled with conflicts and tensions internally and externally: among the members of the Christ-movement; between the members and Paul; and among the members, Paul, and external opposition parties who are against Paul. The extent of the conflicts and tension is striking because it is in Corinth that Paul spent the second-longest period of time after Ephesus throughout his active missionary period. With a period of one-and-a-half years in Corinth (cf. Acts 18.1), one can only imagine the amount of opportunity and personal contacts that Paul would have had in instructing the Christ-followers concerning his understanding of the gospel of Christ. Yet, this recalcitrant Christ-movement is one that fails to conform to the teaching of Paul’s gospel, and this is evidenced by the amount of energy and time spent both in the number of visits and correspondences Paul had with the Corinthians.1 In terms of Paul’s visits to Corinth, there are the founding visit that lasted a period of one-anda-half years (Acts 18.1), the painful visit (2 Cor. 2.1; 12.21), and potentially the third visit (2 Cor. 12.14, 20–1; 13.1–2). In between these visits, there were other planned visits that did not materialize (see 1 Cor. 16.2, 5 and 2 Cor. 1.15–16, 23; 2.3). For further discussion on Paul’s visits and

 1

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A number of scholars have established that the nature of the problems in Corinth is not so much theological but due to the role and implications of social status and the impact of social implications of Graeco-Roman social identity.2 In this respect, a number of studies incorporating social-scientific approaches and social identity formation theory have been shedding new light in understanding some of the problems in the Corinthian church.3 However, most of these studies are largely confined to 1 Corinthians. It is unfortunate that 2 Corinthians remains a much-neglected area in any serious study employing social identity theory. As Paul’s second canonical letter to the fledging congregation, 2 Corinthians gives room for further analysis as to the outcome of Paul’s quest for identity formation in 1 Corinthians. Reading 2 Corinthians with hindsight provides a further opportunity to explore whether what Paul sets out to achieve in 1 Corinthians is met with some measure of success or failure in 2 Corinthians. If Paul’s rhetoric has not produced the desired outcome, the further exigencies Paul would employ in 2 Corinthians in order to address these failures could then be explored.

Temporal considerations in social identity formation Susan Condor suggests that temporal aspects of social identity theory and self-categorization theory have often been neglected in the works of Henri Tajfel and John Turner respectively.4 Condor highlights one major weakness correspondences with the Corinthians, see Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 1–50.  2 For example, see Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001); Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians, SNTSMS 86 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).  3 For example, see David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); J. Brian Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010); J. Brian Tucker, Remain in Your Calling: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), and Mark T. Finney, Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World: 1 Corinthians in its Greco-Roman Social Setting, LNTS 460 (London: T&T Clark, 2011).  4 Susan Condor, ‘Social Identity and Time’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson (Oxford; Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996). See also Marco Cinnirella, ‘Exploring Temporal Aspects of Social Identity: The Concept of Possible Social Identities’, European Journal of Social Psychology 28, no. 2 (1998) in which possible social identities, which represent individual and shared cognitions about possible past group memberships, possible

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in Tajfel’s work where the issues he sought to address such as prejudice, intergroup differentiation, intergroup conflict, social movements and so forth are assumed to be relatively enduring over time.5 This can be seen in Tajfel’s methodology that is based on laboratory experiment relying on minimum group paradigm studies. In his research, investigation is carried out based on minimum conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. For example, Tajfel’s first experiment among English schoolboys in the early 1970s showed that discrimination existed based on a very flimsy and objectively irrelevant sense of group membership, against a perceived outgroup. Typically, a number of assumptions such as concepts, values or practices were accepted as static in order to allow a better view of reality in relation to the onset of human group formation. However, this methodology is limited in its ability to illuminate diachronic processes, especially those taking place over an extended period of time. It is especially true that in reality, social relations are realized and developed over time; they form a temporal trajectory rather than a static set of positions. How intra- and intergroup processes may unfold and transform over time remains to be fully explored in social identity and self-categorization theories. This is seen when theories such as the minimum group paradigm studies are carried out; they are attempts to explain social activity in terms of a local cause-and-effect sequence, which often entails a consideration of the motives of the groups involved. Based on Tajfel’s experiment, once it was established that the schoolboys were complying with general cultural norms of group behaviours resulting in competition between social groups and that they behaved as they did in order to achieve their social identity, the story ended there. The experiment was terminated, and what happened next was never further explored. This is where Condor suggests that in the absence of a clear understanding of social groups as serial processes, group behaviour can only be built upon static constructions.6 Recognizing the weakness of the lack of temporal consideration in social identity theory, Condor suggests employing ‘temporal comparison’ as a possible approach that could profitably be used to address issues of temporality future group memberships, and perceptions of the possible past and future for current group memberships, are explored.  5 Condor, ‘Identity and Time’, 290.  6 Condor, ‘Identity and Time’, 296.

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in social identity tradition. According to Condor, temporal comparison can be defined as ‘the process of judging the present status of an object, individual or group against its own past’.7 While this approach is originally developed in work on personal identity, it has been used in a number of studies involving intergroup contexts, and what emerges is a profitable approach to examine social identity that could be articulated in relation to notions of time and history.8 The lack of temporal observation in social identity formation by Condor is crucial in our present study. I will demonstrate that in 2 Corinthians, temporal comparison could profitably be used in the investigation of the social identity formation of the Corinthians. As observed by Condor,9 it could also be used in both positive and negative cognitive and evaluative judgements in the social identity formation of the Corinthians, as will be further explored below. But before I proceed further, I will first examine why 2 Corinthians could potentially be a good test case to use temporal comparison in the exploration of social identity formation.

Where has 1 Corinthians left us? Temporal comparison as a process of judging the present status of an object, individual or group against its own past could profitably be used in the investigation of the social identity formation in 2 Corinthians. This is because we have the great advantage of a series of at least four, if not more, correspondences between Paul and the Corinthians over a period of time. Unfortunately, not all letters to the Corinthians survived. Apart from the two canonical letters known as 1 and 2 Corinthians, it has widely been established that there could be two other letters that did not survive: a letter written prior to the Susan Condor, ‘Temporality and Collectivity: Diversity, History and the Rhetorical Construction of National Entitativity’, British Journal of Social Psychology 45 (2006): 660–1.  8 For example, see the empirical studies by Amélie Mummendey, Andreas Klink, and Rupert Brown, ‘Nationalism and Patriotism: National Identification and out-Group Rejection’, British Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 2 (2001).  9 For further discussion, see Condor, ‘Temporality’, 657–61. See also Susan Condor, ‘Having History: A Social Psychological Exploration of Anglo-British Autostereotypes’, in Beyond Pug’s Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping in Theory and Literary Practice, ed. C. C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), where she examined the ways Anglo-Britons may use and make sense of the stereotypes of their nation’s history in both positive and negative ways.  7

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canonical 1 Corinthians generally known as the ‘previous letter’ (1 Cor. 5.9 and 11) and a ‘severe letter’ or ‘letter of tears’ (2 Cor. 1.23–2.11 and 7.5–16), possibly written in between the canonical 1 and 2 Corinthians. As such, if we take the literary integrity of 2 Corinthians,10 we could confidently establish that there are at least four correspondences between Paul and the Corinthians in the following chronological order: ‘previous letter’, 1 Corinthians, ‘severe letter’, and 2 Corinthians. Since we have two canonical letters of Paul to the Corinthians, it makes sense to consider the following questions: Comparing 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, have the issues and circumstances addressed in the former letter been resolved? How has the relationship between the Corinthians and Paul himself developed since 1 Corinthians? What about the progress of the collection for Jerusalem that has been initiated? Are there new developments that would seem to either build or threaten the formation of social identity? These questions will be useful for a temporal comparison in social identity formation as we have earlier indicated. We will consider the process of judging the present status of the Corinthians based on 2 Corinthians against its own past as reflected in 1 Corinthians. We will also examine how Paul uses temporal comparison to formulate both positive and negative cognitive judgements in the social identity formation that is rooted in the gospel proclaimed by Paul. What happened after the composition of 1 Corinthians? At least three new developments have taken place by the time 2 Corinthians is written, threatening further the fragile cohesiveness among the Corinthians as demonstrated through the issues Paul addressed earlier in 1 Corinthians. First, Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians seems to have deteriorated drastically. After the composition of 1 Corinthians, Paul made a disastrous ‘painful visit’ that resulted in his unexpected hasty departure and the composition of a ‘severe letter’ (2 Cor. 1.23–2.12). This letter was most likely despatched through Titus,

The literary integrity of 2 Corinthians has been subjected to intense debate, and comprehensive reviews of these issues exist elsewhere (see the introductory section of most commentaries on 2 Corinthians). Whatever position one takes concerning the integrity of 2 Corinthians, there is no serious objection that this letter is written after 1 Corinthians. As I have argued elsewhere, it is best to take the unity of 2 Corinthians rather than treating it as a composite of several letters. See Kar Yong Lim, ‘The Sufferings of Christ Are Abundant in Us’: A Narrative Dynamics Investigation of Paul’s Sufferings in 2 Corinthians, LNTS 399 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 28–9.

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who had been charged to attend to the rising tension. Paul subsequently waited anxiously for Titus’ return and for the updated report on the situation in Corinth. While Titus seems to give a rather favourable oral report as referred to in 2 Cor. 7.5–16 in which the conflict and tension had somewhat calmed down, Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians remained fragile. There existed some other external opposing forces that seem to threaten the group cohesiveness. Described as the ‘super apostles’ (2 Cor. 11.5; 12.11), these opponents of Paul are attempting to cause further division between Paul and the Corinthians by reinforcing the values derived from Roman civic identity such as placing significance in polished rhetoric, boasting in success and achievements, and undermining Paul’s weaknesses. As a result, Paul desperately needs to align the Corinthians to him and to his teaching of the gospel, and, at the same time, to warn the Corinthians to separate themselves from all association with these super apostles. In doing so, Paul attempts to provide a negative cognitive judgement on the opponents. Secondly, the presence of Paul’s opponents in Corinth not only further compounded to the problem between the apostle and the Corinthians, these ‘super apostles’ were undermining Paul’s credentials, claiming that his sufferings proved that he was not a true apostle (2 Cor. 10.10, and the wider discussion in 2 Cor. 10.1–3). This results in further disruption to the cohesiveness of the ingroup which causes Paul to respond in 2 Corinthians by giving his sufferings an extended positive cognitive treatment in defence of his apostleship. Thirdly, the Jerusalem collection project that Paul first initiated for the Jerusalem church announced in 1 Corinthians 16.1–4 has somewhat stalled, possibly due to the deteriorating relationship with the apostle. As such, Paul needs to encourage the Corinthians to complete what they had earlier promised by giving generously to the collection project. This can be seen in Paul devoting two full chapters in 2 Corinthians 8–9 to deal with this issue in which the Jerusalem collection could potentially be used as an indication of social change or influence. These new developments would have alarmed Paul and could be seen as a threat not only to his apostleship and status as a founder, but also to the future of the Christ-movement in Corinth. Paul would need to deal with threats dealing with group cohesiveness, ingroup conflicts, and the wider relationship

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with others belonging to the same confession of faith. There is a clear conflict of social identity between what Paul is attempting to promote and that which the opponents are trying to sway the Corinthians from. When the existence of the Corinthian community is under serious attack, Paul has no choice but to engage in temporal comparison in order to underscore to the Corinthians the cognitive assessment of their social identity in Christ.

Moving beyond ‘in Christ’ to ‘new creation’ as social identity formation In his recent study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 on the formation of social identity, You Belong to Christ, J. Brian Tucker argues that some of the Corinthians continue to identify primarily with their Roman social identity rather than their ‘in Christ’ identity, and this confusion over identity positions contributed to the problems within the community.11 According to Tucker, the lack of salient ‘in Christ’ social identity is a direct result of a misunderstanding of the significance of the ‘in Christ’ social identity. There are two primary hindrances to the formation of a salient ‘in Christ’ social identity: an over-reliance on the world’s wisdom and power which is rooted in Roman imperial ideology, and a general over-identification with previous social identities. What Tucker argues is that Paul does not encourage the Corinthians to abandon their previous social identities but to prioritize them. In doing so, Paul seeks to realign the positions within the Corinthians’ identity hierarchy in order to produce an alternative community with a distinct ethos in comparison with the Roman Empire. Tucker further expands his thesis in a subsequent monograph, Remain in Your Calling, in which he explores the way Paul forms a unique Christmovement identity in Corinth. Tucker examines how both previous Jewish and gentile social identities continue but are transformed ‘in Christ’. To support his argument, Tucker looks at three case studies: the way Roman water practices and patronage influence the ritual of water baptism; Roman household space in the assembly in Corinth; and Corinthian apocalyptic

Tucker, You Belong, 35. For further treatment on the impact of civic identity in Roman Corinth, see his ch. 4, 89–128. Tucker’s thesis is further developed in chs 6–9, 152–267.

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identity (that Paul recontextualizes to remind the Corinthians that God, rather than the Roman Empire, is in control of history).12 If Tucker is right to maintain that the primary issue with the Corinthians is their continual identification with their previous social identity that is rooted in their Roman civic identity, it is then very significant to see how Paul would navigate this issue in 2 Corinthians, especially if what he has already addressed in 1 Corinthians failed to yield the desired results. As I have pointed out earlier on, since the composition of 1 Corinthians, further developments have taken place that appear to be a threat to Paul’s vision of establishing an alternative community with a distinct ethos in comparison with the Roman Empire. When it comes to the time of the composition of 2 Corinthians, Paul’s vision of social identity formation ‘in Christ’ is under serious threat. There is now an urgent need for Paul to reinforce further the social implications of the gospel and the formation of Christian identity in Corinth, failing which, the very existence of the Corinthian Christ-movement may be severely in doubt. That is why in 2 Cor. 5.17, Paul declares: ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.’13 In 2 Cor. 5.17, Paul introduces two new dimensions in the social identity formation of the Corinthians: the notion of ‘new creation’ and a temporal comparison.

‘New creation’ as social identity While the notion of ‘in Christ’ within the Pauline corpus is widely used, the idea of ‘new creation’ is rarely mentioned. Apart from 2 Cor. 5.17, the other occurrence of ‘new creation’ is found in Gal. 6.15.14 The prevailing understanding of the conception of ‘new creation’ can be broadly classified into three categories. First, Paul’s understanding of new creation incorporates the anthropologically focused promises of the new heart and new spirit in Jer. 31.31–4 and Ezek. 36.26–7, suggesting that new creation is the altered nature of the converted person or the newness that is brought about by God’s Tucker, Remain, especially 139–226. Translations are those of the author unless otherwise noted. 14 For recent studies on new creation in Paul’s letters, see Moyer V. Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, SNTSMS 119 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); T. Ryan Jackson, New Creation in Paul’s Letters, WUNT 2.272 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). 12 13

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action, drawing similarity from the motif of conversion in Hellenistic Judaism such as Jubilees 1.7–29; 23.11–32 and Joseph and Aseneth 8.9.15 Secondly, the understanding of new creation is also drawn from a cosmological perspective. Drawing predominantly from the background of the Isaianic passages (for example Isa. 42.9; 43.18–19; 45.17; 48.6; 65.17–18; 66.22), it is understood that new creation constitutes cosmic renewal with the dawning of the new age.16 Finally, the Jewish apocalyptic literature also contributes to the understanding of new creation. Viewed from this eschatological perspective, new creation is understood as the dawning of the new age which stand over the present evil age.17 These views on the conception of new creation remain firmly focused on Paul’s theology. The major weakness of this line of thought is that insufficient attention is given to the social reality of Paul’s community. How would the Christ-followers in Corinth have grasped this conception of new creation in light of their social identity? The lack of attention given to the social function of new creation is even more curious if serious consideration is given to the context in which Paul evokes the image of new creation. In Gal. 6.15, the mention of ‘new creation’ has direct bearing on the Jewishgentile relationship. Here, the irrelevance of circumcision/uncircumcision is contrasted with an expression of the life of faith effected through the cross of Christ, ‘a new creation’. The social implications of the gospel in the Galatian context is clear – the boundary markers that used to separate the Jews and gentiles have now been removed, and both Jewish and gentile social identities have been transformed in Christ. It is significant that in Gal. 6.15, Paul also criticized those who boast in the externals (see Gal. 6.12–13). For Paul, the only legitimate boasting is to boast in the cross of the Christ (Gal. 6.14). To be in Christ is thus a participation in the new creation in order to be liberated from all the social and nationalistic boundaries that serve to divide rather than to unite. Within the wider context of 2 Cor. 5.17, Paul is dealing with his rivals in Corinth. He is mindful of the criticism that his apostleship lacks any form For example, see Hubbard, New Creation, 11–77. For further discussion, see Douglas J. Moo, ‘Creation and New Creation’, BBR 20, no. 1 (2010). 17 See R. H. Strachan, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935), 113–14; Harris, Second Epistle, 432–3. 15 16

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of authenticity such as public displays of ecstasy and power.18 In response, Paul brushes off the importance of ecstatic experiences and emphasizes his apostleship based on the preaching of the gospel of Christ and the care of those who are now Christ-followers (2 Cor. 5.11–13), establishing his common identity with the Christ-followers in Corinth. This is followed by the creedal confession affirming the redemptive work of Christ and his personal obligation to preach the gospel (2 Cor. 5.14–15). It is after this that Paul emphasizes once again the radical newness brought about by being in Christ – Paul would not regard the Christ-followers according to worldly standards (κατὰ σάρκα; 2 Cor. 5.16). Paul is concerned that the Corinthians are already judging according to worldly standards (κατὰ σάρκα) by aligning themselves to the opponents. This is seen in the manner in which the Corinthians are judging Paul and his apostleship, based on what is outward rather than what is within (2 Cor. 5.12). The only way forward to transform the cognitive evaluation of the Corinthians from worldly standards (κατὰ σάρκα) is to remind them that any evaluation has to be done according to the cross of Christ and according to what it requires, which is the very heart of the gospel of Paul (cf. 1 Cor. 2.1–5). Hence, Paul first reminds the Corinthians of the salience of their ‘in Christ’ identity in 2 Cor. 5.17 before moving on to emphasize the concept of ‘new creation’ – ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’. The concept of ‘new creation’ suggests that one’s identity is transformed in Christ. The old identity needs to be reconfigured in light of the gospel of Christ. The worldly standards are to be evaluated in light of the gospel of Christ. The question here is, why does Paul need to declare that the Corinthians are a ‘new creation’? What is Paul aiming to accomplish by using ‘new creation’ in identity formation? For Paul, a ‘new creation’ is not only about the whole process of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit leading to repentance and faith or the continual growth in holiness leading to conformity to the image of Christ. The ‘new creation’ is more than that – it is the new community that allows their previous identities to be transformed in light of the gospel. This is a new community that has done away with the artificial barriers of circumcision and uncircumcision in which the relationship of different ethnic groups needs to be redefined in light of the universal nature of the gospel. In See 2 Cor. 5.12. Cf. 2 Cor. 10–13 for Paul’s wider negative evaluation of the opponents.

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other words, any rejection of the uncircumcised group by the circumcised group or vice versa would be tantamount to a rejection of the gospel. This social implication of the new creation identity will be further explored below when I discuss the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. Suffice to say that the ‘new creation’ identity further underscores the uniqueness of this alternative assembly that Paul is establishing against the other assemblies found in the Roman Empire.

Temporal comparison: The old has gone, the new has come It is interesting that Paul introduces a temporal comparison after declaring that the Corinthians are a ‘new creation’ in Christ. He further expounds the idea that ‘the old has gone, the new has come’. It is significant to note that in both instances, in Galatians and in 2 Corinthians, when Paul promotes the notion of ‘new creation’, it is within the context of deep conflicts. In Galatians, the conflict is with the discussion of the national boundary markers of Israel – circumcision, Sabbath and food laws – that deal with the ethnicity and cultural boundaries of the Jews to the exclusion of others. In 2 Corinthians, the context includes both the conflicts Paul has with the Corinthians and the external opposition parties. By introducing the temporal aspect in his argument, Paul is now issuing a challenge to the Corinthians to evaluate their current status ‘in Christ’ (which is ‘the new’) against their own past (which is ‘the old’) that is shaped by their Roman civic identity that regards others according to worldly standards (2 Cor. 5.16). The underlying question is this: is the group behaviour of the Corinthians compatible with their new identity in Christ as a new creation where the old is gone, and the new has come? If not, this temporal comparison, a process of judging the present status of the Corinthians against their own past, serves as a useful tool to examine whether they are truly a new creation in Christ. If what they are now is incompatible with their status as being in Christ as a new creation, then decisive actions need to be taken to align themselves to it. As members of this new creation, their identity should reflect that of the gospel of Christ. The old boundary markers and the worldly standards in evaluating others are to be removed. As in 1 Corinthians, Paul is also concerned in 2 Corinthians with the transformation of cognitive and

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rational capacities with regard to social identity in Corinth. Paul is calling for a more serious evaluation of those cognitive processes rooted in the GraecoRoman conventions that contradict the social implications of the gospel. It is after declaring the new identity of the believers as ‘new creation’ that Paul moves on to deal with the theme of reconciliation in 2 Cor. 5.18–19. Here, Paul clearly states that reconciliation is first and foremost to God, and it is only afterwards that Paul proceeds to talk about reconciliation between the Corinthians Christ-believers and himself. In this regards, reconciliation works both ways: to God and to the apostles. This ‘new creation’ identity fulfils this agenda of Paul in wanting to reinforce the commonality between him and the Corinthians. By doing so, Paul further draws the Corinthians away from the rivals, thus presenting that there is hardly any common ground between him and the rivals. By associating with the rivals, the Corinthians are in essence moving away from their ‘in-Christ-new-creation’ identity. To summarize my argument thus far, it is highly plausible that Paul has not been narrowly thinking about religious, cosmological or eschatological dimensions when he used the term ‘new creation’ but perhaps of something more fundamental, rooted in the social reality of the Corinthians. I have suggested that the notion of ‘new creation’ is used by Paul within the context of intra- and intergroups conflicts with social significance. The fact that in 2 Corinthians, Paul introduces a temporal comparison between the past and present status of the Corinthians as a process of cognitive judgement serves to guide them forward in the reinforcement of social identity formation in Christ. In the following sections, I will then explore how the notion of ‘new creation’ and temporal comparison could be used to reinforce the formation of social identity in 2 Corinthians by examining the following: 1) Paul’s positive evaluation of his sufferings 2) Paul’s negative evaluation of the opponents 3) Paul’s challenge to complete the collection for the poor in Jerusalem as evidence of social change and influence.

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‘New creation’ and temporal comparison as social identity formation in 2 Corinthians Paul’s positive evaluation of his sufferings Among the apostles in the New Testament, Paul probably suffered the most in his calling as an apostle to the gentiles. The most detailed descriptions of his sufferings are found in 2 Corinthians (see 2 Cor. 1.3–11; 2.14–16; 4.7–12; 6.1–10; and 11.23–12.10). I have argued elsewhere that Paul develops the theme of suffering at critical points in his argument in 2 Corinthians and that this suffering is the unifying theme that unites the entire argument of this letter.19 In this article, I will not enter into detailed exegesis of these passages since I have already done so elsewhere.20 My purpose here is to consider Paul’s positive cognitive evaluation of his sufferings in order to establish his apostolic credentials against the ‘super apostles’ that challenge his weakness and sufferings. First, Paul’s understanding of his suffering is not to be divorced from his apostolic mission. Whenever Paul mentions his suffering in 2 Corinthians, it is directly related to his apostolic mission. His suffering is a proclamation of the gospel of the crucified Messiah (2 Cor. 2.14–15; 4.10) in which the power of God is revealed (2 Cor. 4.7; 12.9–10; 13.4). For Paul, proclamation of the gospel is not done out of his convenience, neither is it done out of his comfort. His missionary activities are often fiercely met with opposition and persecution, and yet none of these ever diminish his zeal for the gospel. As such, Paul views his suffering as necessary and integral to his gentile mission, and it does not impede the progress of the gospel (2 Cor. 6.3). Second, Paul claims that his suffering has positive benefits for the Corinthians. Paul clearly states that it is through his suffering that the Corinthians receive comfort and salvation (2 Cor. 1.6) and life (2 Cor. 2.15–16; 4.10–12 and 13.4). There is no ambiguity in Paul’s language that the Corinthians are the direct beneficiary of his sufferings. The fact that death is at work in Paul, but life is at work in the Corinthians (2 Cor. 4.12) further testifies to his positive evaluation of his sufferings. For further discussion, see Lim, Sufferings, 27–39. See Lim, Sufferings, 40–196.

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Next, Paul also identifies his suffering as that of the sufferings of Christ. It is interesting to note that when Paul mentions his sufferings in 2 Corinthians, he explicitly makes reference to the sufferings of Christ as well. In 2 Cor. 1.5, Paul declares, ‘the sufferings of Christ are abundant in us’.21 Further on in 2 Cor. 4.10–11, Paul states that he always carries in his body the ‘dying of Jesus’ so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in his body. In 2 Cor. 13.4, Paul again identifies his weakness with that of Christ being ‘crucified in weakness’. Therefore it is not surprising that Paul is able to declare: ‘for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Cor. 12.10). By doing so, Paul wants the Corinthians to understand that his specific exposition of the nature of his apostleship and his ministerial lifestyle is transformed by his understanding of the cross of Christ. If the Corinthians cannot understand and appreciate his cruciformed life and ministry as demonstrated by weakness and suffering grounded in the cross and gospel of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 11.23–12.10), how can they understand the cross and the weakness and suffering of Christ? Finally, it is through Paul’s very weakness in suffering that the power of God is manifested in his life. In bringing the gospel to the Corinthians, Paul does not subject himself to the prevailing social values and conventions of his day that are rooted in Roman civic identity. Paul declares that he did not proclaim the gospel with eloquence or superior wisdom but in weakness, fear and trembling (1 Cor. 2.1–5). The only message Paul proclaimed is ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2.2) and Paul’s ministerial style clearly reflects that of the humility of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 13.4). His physical wounds and scars resulting from years of suffering (cf. Gal. 6.17) are not marks of honour but dishonour and weakness to the eyes of a society that placed high value on physical appearance. Therefore, it is not surprising that all these factors work against Paul where his nature of apostleship is called into question and subsequently become crucial points of contention between him and the opponents within the Corinthian church. Based on the above observations, a conclusion can be drawn that, far from viewing himself as a cracked and useless vessel, Paul sees his sufferings and

For further evaluation of the debate on the idea of ‘the sufferings of Christ’, see Lim, Sufferings, 63–90.

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weaknesses as the very vehicle that God uses ‘to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us’ (2 Cor. 4.7). Paradoxically, it is through his suffering that Paul is able to identify with the sufferings of Christ, experience the power of God working through his weakness, and the power of the Holy Spirit in the proclamation of the gospel. By having a positive evaluation of his sufferings, Paul reiterates that suffering is not incompatible with the gospel he proclaims which is rooted in the sufferings of Christ.

Paul’s negative evaluation of the opponents The precise identity of Paul’s opponents labelled as ‘super apostles’ in 2 Cor. 11.5 and 12.11 has been assumed to be of critical importance in the interpretation of Pauline texts.22 This is reflected in the large number of monographs and studies on the identity of Paul’s opponents that result in a divergence of hypotheses concerning their identity.23 This enterprise of identifying Paul’s opponents is a highly conjectural exercise based on lack of sufficient information from Paul’s letter. Furthermore, if Paul wishes to present a negative evaluation of the opponents, some forms of exaggeration and distortion of the portrait of the opponents should not be completely ruled out. As such, any assumptions that allow the hypothesized identity of the opponents to drive the interpretation of 2 Corinthians overestimate the importance of the role of the opponents. Based on these observations, I maintain that the precise identity of the opponents is not crucial to our understanding of the text, and therefore, we will not venture beyond the fact that they were Jewish missionaries who adopted the style and criteria current in Graeco-Roman conventions and were made welcome by at least a group of Corinthian believers. What is important here is that Paul is providing a negative cognitive evaluation of these super apostles by calling the Corinthians to reassess their own standing as a new creation in Christ. As such, the crucial issue is no longer ‘Who are See C. K. Barrett, ‘Paul’s Opponents in 2 Corinthians’, NTS 17, no. 3 (1971): 233, ‘It is not too much to say that a full understanding both of New Testament history and of New Testament theology waits on the right answering of this question’ of the identity of the opponents of Paul’. See also Jerry L. Sumney, Identifying Paul’s Opponents: The Question of Method in 2 Corinthians, JSNTSup 40 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 189–90. 23 John J. Gunther, St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background: A Study of Apocalyptic and Jewish Sectarian Teachings, NovTSup 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 1, identifies thirteen proposals of Paul’s opponents. Cf. Harris, Second Epistle, 79–80. 22

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the opponents?’ but ‘Why do the Corinthians shift their allegiance from Paul to this group of people who in Paul’s view seem to do more harm to the community than good (cf. 2 Cor. 2.17; 11.19–20)?’ Compared to other Pauline communities, the Corinthian community is a privileged group, having benefited from a considerable period of one-anda-half years of Paul’s instructive attention (cf. Acts 18.11). Yet they are easily persuaded by these interlocutors. Furthermore, there is no doctrinal issue that becomes the focus of attention in Paul’s argument, and this suggests that the Corinthians’ shift of allegiance is not directly related to the teaching of the opponents. The evidence seems to point to the fact that the major contention between the Corinthians and Paul centres on the misunderstanding of the nature of his ministry and lifestyle.24 What is clear is that Paul’s opponents practise at least some kind of boasting (2 Cor. 11.12, 18, 21), and it appears that they boast of at least: 1) their Jewish heritage (2 Cor. 11.21–3); 2) their boldness and achievements as servants of Christ in Corinth (2 Cor. 10.12–16); 3) their rhetorical eloquence (2 Cor. 10.10); and 4) the miraculous signs and wonders they performed (2 Cor. 12.11–12). At the same time, the nature of Paul’s apostolic authority has also been seriously challenged (2 Cor. 10.8) on at least several grounds: 1) his weak appearance and his less than eloquent preaching (2 Cor. 10.10; 11.6); 2) his refusal to accept financial support and his labour as an artisan to support himself (2 Cor. 11.7–11); and 3) his lack of letters of recommendation (2 Cor. 3.1; 12.11).25 The interplay here suggests that the issues at stake are Paul’s concept of the nature of apostolic ministry with the opponents’ consequent boasting about their superiority over Paul (cf. 2 Cor. 11.5; 12.11). What then is the standard that the opponents use in boasting of their superiority against Paul? The clue that Paul provides is that they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves (2 Cor. 10.12). Marshall convincingly argues that the standards used in measuring and comparing themselves are the encomiastic topics parading physical appearance, education and achievements, a familiar Hellenistic social Cf. Savage, Power, 10–12. For further discussion and analyses of these issues, see Savage, Power, 54–99. Cf. E. A. Judge, ‘St. Paul and Classical Society’, JAC 15 (1972): 35–6 that these criticisms against Paul carry cultural overtones and reflect the social prejudices of the day.

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convention that the Corinthians readily recognize and accept.26 By boasting about these encomiastic topics, the opponents could easily match Paul’s Jewish pedigrees (2 Cor. 11.23); however, Paul fails to match up to them and to the current acceptable standard of the Hellenistic rhetorical skills, physical appearance and achievements required of any public speaker or leader (cf. 1 Cor. 1.17–25, 27–31; 2.1–7).27 When confronted with the widely accepted Hellenistic practice of boasting in one’s honour, Paul has no choice but to respond to it in 2 Corinthians 10–13. But Paul decides not to dance to the same tune and will not evaluate them according to worldly standards (cf. 2 Cor. 5.16). In his response, Paul goes beyond the practice of Hellenistic boasting. First, he grounds his argument in the Hebrew Scriptures by providing a case for legitimate boasting (2 Cor. 10.12–17). Then he moves on to boast of the things that show his weaknesses, a practice that in the eyes of both the opponents and the Corinthians is to Paul’s discredit (2 Cor. 11.1–12.10). Finally, Paul demonstrates that his suffering and weaknesses are not dishonourable but are grounded in the story of Jesus, for Jesus himself was crucified in weakness (2 Cor. 13.4). By doing so, Paul not only exposes the folly but also reverses the effects of the Hellenistic boasting which he considers illegitimate. At the same time, Paul also seeks to bring about a conversion of the understanding of the Corinthians concerning his apostolic ministry by charging these super apostles with preaching ‘another Jesus…a different spirit…a different gospel’ (2 Cor. 11.4) and labelling them as ‘false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ’

Peter Marshall, Enmity in Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians, WUNT 2.23 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1987), 327. Cf. Jerry L. Sumney, ‘Servants of Satan’, ‘False Brothers’ and Other Opponents of Paul: A Study of Those Opposed in the Letters of the Pauline Corpus, JSNTSup 188 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 79–133. See the translation of nlt which captures this nuance well: ‘they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement.’ 27 See Christopher Forbes, ‘Comparison, Self-Praise and Irony: Paul’s Boasting and the Conventions of Hellenistic Rhetoric’, NTS 32, no. 1 (1986): 1–30, where Paul implies that the self-commendation of the opponents has taken the form of boasting of their authority, achievements, and comparison. Forbes also suggests the action of comparison may not only be limited to among the opponents, but also extended to include comparing themselves against Paul, which is to Paul’s disadvantage. As Edwin A. Judge argues, ‘As Paul himself complains, he was despised for not indulging in it… Paul found himself a reluctant and unwelcomed competitor in the field of professional “sophistry” and…promoted a deliberate collision with its standards of value’; E. A. Judge, ‘Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice’, ABR 16, no. 1–4 (1968): 47. See also Bruce W. Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a JulioClaudian Movement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 203–39. 26

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(2 Cor. 11.13), probably the most negative cognitive evaluation Paul could ever give to anyone.

Paul’s challenge to complete the collection for the poor in Jerusalem as social influence and implications For Paul, organizing a major relief fund for the poor in Jerusalem is no easy task.28 He seems to have spent a considerable amount of time, energy and resources in organizing this collection, as evident from his comments about the project in 1 Cor. 16.1–4; 2 Cor. 8.1–9.15; and Rom. 15.25–32. In 1 Cor. 16.1–4, Paul lays down clear instructions for the Corinthians concerning the logistics of the collection. They were to set aside a sum of money on a weekly basis for the relief fund, so that in his next visit, the contribution would have been ready to be despatched to Jerusalem. However, these instructions were ignored by the Corinthians, possibly due to the deteriorating relationship between them and Paul. Despite this, Paul is now attempting to encourage the Corinthians to resume this collection project by dedicating two full chapters to the topic in 2 Cor. 8–9. Paul begins by emphasizing the example of the Macedonians, who had generously contributed to the fund despite their extreme poverty. According to Paul, the Macedonians literally begged Paul to accept their monetary gift despite the fact that they themselves would have greater need for the money (2 Cor. 8.1–5). This act of generosity was a result of the Macedonians giving ‘themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to (Paul)’ (2 Cor. 8.6). Following this, Paul then appeals to the paradigmatic grace of the Lord Jesus Christ: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8.9, niv). There have been debates whether Paul has in mind in this context the act of Christ voluntarily embracing human poverty, or the humiliating death of Christ by identifying with the spiritual

For a detailed historical treatment on Paul’s collection, see Dieter Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992). See also Bruce W. Longenecker, Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).

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poverty of fallen humanity, or the event of incarnation.29 As I have argued elsewhere,30 the story of Jesus in Paul’s thought would constitute the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus in what Horrell describes as ‘one seamless act’.31 Thus, it is not necessary to limit it to a particular event in the life of Jesus, be it the incarnation or death. In retelling the story of Jesus, Paul is attempting to inculcate in the Corinthians behaviour that he wishes them to emulate. Jesus himself is the model for generous giving. The ‘self-lowering other-regard’ paradigm reflected in 2 Corinthians 8.9 as suggested by Horrell is paradigmatically demonstrated in the central story of Jesus himself, whose self-lowering takes the movement from one extreme end to another: from being rich to being poor.32 By evoking the story of Jesus, Paul is attempting the recategorization of both the gentile and Jewish Christ-followers into a common ingroup. What used to divide (the old) is now gone, and a new identity reconfigured around the central belief that Jesus is the Christ unites the ethnically and culturally divided Christ-followers in both Corinth and Jerusalem into a ‘new creation’ with a common identity ‘in Christ’. With this new common identity, Paul is able to continue to challenge the Corinthian Christ-followers to give generously to the Jerusalem poor by looking out for the interests of others.33 The notion of having the interests of others in mind in giving generously is further developed in 2 Corinthians 8.13–15. Paul makes it clear that he is not seeking a role reversal of rich and poor, but equality or fairness. Paul recognizes that there are extremes of wealth and poverty, and this is not acceptable in the Christian community. Those who have a surplus should contribute to those who have needs, according to the proportion that the individuals have, and not a fixed percentage for everyone. Closing the gap between the rich and

See Harris, Second Epistle, 578–80. Lim, Sufferings, 151–5. 31 David G. Horrell, Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 212, 237. So Thomas D. Stegman, The Character of Jesus: The Linchpin to Paul’s Argument in 2 Corinthians, AnBib 158 (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2005), 189; Harris, Second Epistle, 580. 32 Horrell, Solidarity, 210. For a detailed treatment by Horrell, see 204–45. See also the discussion by Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 242–4; Stegman, Character, 188–96. A similar pattern is also found in Philippians 2.5–11. 33 For further discussion, see Kar Yong Lim, ‘Generosity from Pauline Perspective: Insights from Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians’, Evangelical Review of Theology 37, no. 1 (2013): 20–33.

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poor in the body of Christ is needed to ensure that no one has any lack. The needs of the poor are to be met out of the surplus of others.34 At the same time, Paul is also traversing sensitively through the intricacies of the Graeco-Roman conventions. The protocol of gift-giving in the Corinthians’ culture dictates that the one who gives more generously than others will gain the superior status while others move down the rung in the social ladder.35 This explains why Paul makes it clear that the Corinthians’ surplus will now meet the needs of the poor so that their needs may one day be met by the Jerusalem saints. By stressing the notion of reciprocity, Paul underscores that no one should outgive one another in order to attain a higher status over the other, but should give out of a cheerful and willing heart. To challenge the Corinthians further, Paul reiterates that both he and the Corinthians would be shamed if the Macedonians found out that the collection was left unfinished by the Corinthians (2 Cor. 9.1–5). Then Paul evokes an agrarian metaphor, suggesting that all giving to the Jerusalem collection was like sowing seed and would surely reap a harvest. Finally, Paul underscores that true generosity was also a direct result of the confession of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This generosity would also bring about thanksgiving and praise to God from the recipients of the collection (2 Cor. 9.6–15) ‘for the obedience that accompanies the Corinthians’ confession of the gospel of Christ, and for (their) generosity in sharing with’ (2 Cor. 9.13) others. The ‘obedience’ that Paul refers to is most likely the obedience to the working out of the gospel of Christ, a gospel that demands that believers should help to provide for the needs of those both inside and outside of the family of God. If the Corinthians follow through with generosity on their commitment and involvement in the Jerusalem relief fund, it demonstrates that the dividing lines of racial and social classes have indeed been broken down in Christ. As part of their confession of the gospel of Christ, the generous gift that the Corinthians give constitutes a concrete gesture of love that speaks of the unity of the body of Christ. Indeed a ‘new creation’ is one where ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28). This is evident that the gospel of Jesus Christ ultimately brings

This is also the ideal of Christian partnership as presented in Acts 2.44–5 and 4.36–7. For further discussion, see Lim, ‘Generosity’, 27–9.

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reconciliation to those who were once strangers and enemies, a powerful social change and influence in the Graeco-Roman world.

Conclusion In this essay, I have attempted to consider the need for temporal comparison in social identity formation in 2 Corinthians. I have argued that 2 Corinthians is a good test case since this is the second canonical letter of Paul to a problematic church. Since the composition of 1 Corinthians, a number of new developments had taken place that threatened Paul’s vision of establishing an alternative community with a distinct ‘in Christ’ ethos within the Roman Empire. To reinforce the social implications of the gospel and the formation of an ‘in Christ’ social formation identity, Paul uses the notion of ‘new creation’ and introduces temporal comparison in 2 Cor. 5.17. Following this, I have explored the notion of ‘new creation’ and temporal comparison in identity formation by examining Paul’s positive cognitive evaluation of his sufferings, his negative cognitive evaluation of his opponents, and his final challenge to complete the collection for the poor in Jerusalem as social influence and implications. Towards the end of 2 Corinthians, Paul issues a final challenge to the Corinthians: ‘Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?’ (2 Cor. 13.5). This will be the ultimate test for the Corinthians to take into consideration whether they have been adhering to an unadulterated form of the gospel in light of their ‘new creation’ social identity ‘in Christ’. This call for self-examination allows the Corinthians to employ temporal comparison to judge their present status against their own past in order to evaluate whether they are truly in the faith. At the same time, 2 Corinthians is also a letter to prepare Paul’s third visit to the Corinthians. Paul does not hesitate to warn the Corinthians that this upcoming third visit will be one that would result in disciplinary actions if they failed to carry out proper self-examination (2 Cor. 13.1–3, 10). But yet Paul remains hopeful that the Corinthians, as ‘new creation’, will do the necessary self-examination and carry out remedial actions towards striving for full restoration, encouraging

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one another, being of one mind, and living in peace (2 Cor. 13.11), so that this third visit will not end in disaster like the earlier ‘painful visit’ (2 Cor. 2.1–4; 12.21). For Paul, a community of ‘new creation’ is one that will be reconciled to their apostle and to one another, will disassociate themselves from the super apostles, and complete the collection for the poor in Jerusalem.

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Galatians 2.1–14 as Depiction of the Church’s Early Strugglefor Community-Identity Construction Atsuhiro Asano

Introduction Attempts to interpret Paul over the last 20 years from the perspective of community identity1 have proven to offer a significant contribution to Pauline studies by adding a new dimension to the conventional portrayal of Paul and his community, which has been largely based upon the discussion of a history of ideas and the correlation between biblical narrative and background historical movements.2 One Pauline pericope that naturally requires application of the concept and theories of identity construction is Gal. 2.1–14, which depicts one of the Jesus-community’s earliest struggles to arrive at some type of unity among people with varying ideas of how the identity of the community as a whole might be constructed and maintained.3 The highly confrontational nature of the narrative has been analysed by P. F. Esler from the perspectives of social psychology and cultural anthropology in order to show the strategies for hegemony between the Jerusalem

E.g. most recently, Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).  2 Cf. Richard A. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), ix–xv.  3 It is assumed here that Paul wrote Galatians during his first visit to Corinth, around 51 ce. For a detailed discussion on the provenance and dating of the letter, cf. Werner Georg Kümmel, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 21st edn. (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1983), 265–6. This assumption allows enough time between the writings of Galatians and 1 Corinthians (ca 55 in Ephesus) to explain the ‘development’ in Paul’s thoughts on the construction and maintenance of respective communities’ identities.  1

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leaders and Paul.4 While the study should rightly be appreciated for its contribution to the understanding of the early Jesus-community, one may be able to advance the understanding of the pericope by setting the power struggle within the context of community-identity construction, so as to clarify the motivation for such a struggle within the communities. For the analysis of how community identity may be constructed and maintained, the present study is indebted to M. Brett’s suggestion of an eclectic use of the theories of F. Barth and C. Geertz.5 Therefore, the theoretical framework for this study modifies Brett’s suggestion and is drawn from a critical evaluation and eclectic employment of various theories of identity construction. On the basis of this framework, the conflicts observed in the pericope are understood as reflecting different approaches of community-identity construction based upon varying stances toward a group’s ‘core ethnic sentiment’. According to this understanding, the issue of gentile incorporation observed in Galatians would mean 1) to the Jerusalem leaders a secondary attachment of gentile sympathizers6 to the Jewish community, 2) to the ψευδαδέλφοι (‘false brothers’) a ‘judaization’ of those sympathizers, and 3) to Paul the formation of a new and yet ‘authentic’ community. Classifying the three groups in this way, one is able to view peculiar features within the pericope, such as insistence upon and resistance against circumcision (vv. 3–5), gospels of both the circumcised and uncircumcised (v. 7), the relationship between Jerusalem and Antioch (vv. 8, 11–14), and approaches to inter-ethnic communal dining (v. 12), as reflecting the difficult process of adjustment for the Jesus-community in constructing its identity. Thus, the present study helps the reader to avoid viewing the identity of newly emerging communities of faith as something a priori given, and to locate the hard reality of early struggles in constructing their community identity within the historical process of the effort of the Jesus-community as a whole to attain its cohesion and unity.

For his social-psychological and cultural-anthropological approaches, see Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 126–40.  5 Mark G. Brett, ‘Interpreting Ethnicity: Method, Hermeneutics, Ethics’, in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 13.  6 The general term ‘gentile sympathizer’ is preferred by the author in this discussion to more popular terms such as ‘god-fearing gentile’ and ‘proselyte’.

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Theoretical framework of community-identity construction Prior to interpreting the pericope, a brief explanation of theories employed in this study is in order. ‘Identity’ is now widely understood as a product of a dialectic between the subjective and the objective.7 Therefore, when one speaks of the identity construction of a given community, both internal identification and external categorization should be considered.8 This idea of an internal-external dialectic of identification helps one to assume that Paul’s effort of community-identity construction is shaped by his self-understanding as an autonomous apostle to gentiles and is also affected by various expectations of and pressure from Jews in general and Jewish Christians in particular (especially here the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι). In considering the nature of community identity, one should take note of two seemingly opposing aspects, i.e. the fluid nature of cultural features expressed in a rather stable sense of identity.9 This nature of identity is best understood by viewing community symbolically, whereby the symbol does not so much force one meaning onto the members as it does offer the locus where they aggregate with varying interpretations of the same symbol. In this sense, community should be regarded as ‘commonality’ (as opposed to ‘integration’), which allows some degree of flexibility while retaining enough common understanding of a symbol that those who do not share the same understanding would be identified as outsiders and at times deviants.10 For example, Josephus articulates a distinction between three Jewish ‘philosophies’ (φιλοσοφεῖται) in the context of unity of the people (B. J., 2.118–19; C. Ap., 2.179–81).11 However, when it comes to the description of the ‘fourth philosophy’, Josephus delineates it as something quite foreign from the other ‘philosophies’ (Ant., 18.1.1). Therefore, the symbolic understanding of

E.g. Reginard Byron, ‘Identity’, in Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer (eds) (London; New York: Routledge, 1996).  8 Richard Jenkins, Social Identity, 1st ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 20, 82, 86–7; Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London; New York: Routledge, 1989), 37.  9 Fredrik Barth, ‘Introduction’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, ed. Fredrik Barth (Boston, Little, Brown and Co; Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969), 10. 10 Cohen, Symbolic Construction, 14, 16. 11 Cf. Martin Goodman, ‘Identity and Authority in Ancient Judaism’, Judaism 39, no. 2 (1990): 192–201.  7

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community helps us to refrain from regarding such entities as Judaism and Christianity monolithically. In the discussion on the mechanism of identity construction, we are to consider three ethnic identity theories, namely primordialism, instrumentalism and transactionalism.12 In applying these ethnic identity theories, a question may rightly arise as to whether the Pauline communities are ‘ethnic’ groups on which to justifiably apply such theories. However, the application of ethnic identity theories is justified on at least two accounts. First, the primary theory to be employed in this study (transactionalism) has been applied widely by theoreticians to social groups other than ethnic ones, and second, Paul’s community-identity construction is understood and discussed in relation to other ethnically-oriented groups. Therefore, the application of these theories is justified. It is generally understood that there is a core of ethnic sentiment within each ethnic group, manifesting itself in various physical and cultural (thus in this chapter ‘physio-cultural’) features such as assumed blood ties, region, religion, custom and language. Theories of ethnic identity differ among themselves primarily on the criteria of how flexibly and intentionally a particular group preserves or abandons its physio-cultural features, and how those physio-cultural features and the core ethnic sentiment are related to each other. Primordialism tends to consider not only the core ethnic sentiment but also the physio-cultural features as a priori (‘primordially’) given.13 Instrumentalism tends to view physio-cultural features ‘instrumentally’, i.e. as something that a group employs as an instrument to gain political and/or economic advantage. Therefore, in this theory, even a group’s core ethnic sentiment is at times sacrificed for the sake of pursuing such gains.14 However, neither of these two theories seems to present a comprehensive picture of the mechanism of identity construction. The former fails to explain why some groups frequently undergo cultural changes or even emerge as new Sergey Sokolovskii, ‘Ethnicity’, in Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer (eds) (London; New York: Routledge, 1996). 13 Clifford Geertz, ‘The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States’, in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963), 109–12. 14 Abner Cohen, Custom & Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 13, 24, 131, esp. 193. Cf. Marcus Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 35–6. 12

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ethnic groups, while the latter fails to explicate why some groups persist for centuries.15 Therefore, it is more precise to regard both theories as describing the tendency of particular groups, rather than being all-inclusive models. Transactionalism, on the other hand, seems to present a general mechanism of how identity is constructed. Noting some degree of persistence in ethnic sentiment and fluidity in the expression of that sentiment, the theory suggests that ethnic identity is manifest in the pattern of (internal-external) exchange or negotiation of physio-cultural features with other groups at the boundary line.16 I noted earlier that in his eclectic application of these theories to biblical hermeneutics, Brett proposes that the Ezra-Nehemiah community represents the primordial mode and Paul’s mission the transactional mode. For the present analysis, I must make a modification to Brett’s eclecticism. Ethnic identity or core ethnic sentiment manifests itself at the boundary line where a group interacts with others. In the interaction, physio-cultural features of a given community are either preserved, abandoned or redefined (either broadly or narrowly).17 This interaction or transaction at the boundary reflects the distinct identity of an ethnic group. Primordialism and instrumentalism, therefore, are articulations of peculiar behavioural tendencies of particular groups. Some groups show more resistance than others in their interactions at the boundary line, and they tend to preserve not only the core ethnic sentiment but also many of the physio-cultural features (primordial mode). Others show more flexibility in their interactions at the boundary line, and even their core ethnic sentiment may at times be undermined (instrumental mode). The modified eclectic approach suggested for the present study is to view the ψευδαδέλφοι’s community-identity construction in the primordial mode and that of Paul in the instrumental mode, while locating the Jerusalem leaders somewhere in between, in the transactional continuum.

A. L. Epstein, Ethos and Identity: Three Studies in Ethnicity (London: Tavistock, 1978), 7; John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, ‘Ethnicity, Religion, and Language’, in Ethnicity, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds) (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 32–4. 16 Barth, ‘Introduction’, 10, 16–17. 17 Democratic decision-making should not be assumed, as ‘behaviour at the boundary line’ is sometimes forced. Cf. Banks for the critique of the Barthian theory; Banks, Ethnicity, 16. 15

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Modes of community-identity construction A brief explanation and justification for the construct above is in order. We do this by observing the boundary negotiations/behaviours of the Jewish commonwealth, which has a genealogical link with the Jesus-community. As gentile sympathizers are incorporated into the Jewish commonwealth, identity becomes an important issue, and the particular physio-cultural feature of circumcision plays a significant role, as it clearly reflects the Jewish core ethnic sentiment. At and around the boundary line are gentile sympathizers, with varying degrees of acculturation into the Jewish commonwealth. Cohen classifies the modes of gentile attachment to it in such categories as 1) acknowledgement of and reverence for yhwh (2 Macc. 3.36; Bel 40–1), 2) selective practice of Jewish customs (C. Ap., 2.282), and 3) distancing from Graeco-Roman gods (Jos. Asen., 12–13; Philo, QE, 2.2; Let. Aris., 128–38, 148).18 The general direction is from interested gentiles to ‘righteous’ gentiles, and the final step is ‘to become a Jew’ (Ant., 20.38–9) and ‘to enter the house of Israel’ (Jdt. 14.10) through circumcision.19 Jews responded to such external stimuli in various ways. Some Jewish groups or individuals tend to preserve their physio-cultural features strictly and others rather leniently.20 Josephus’ account of the ‘conversion’ of Izates is a case in point. In it, a Galilaean Jew, Eleazer, insists that Izates be circumcised, while a Jewish merchant, Ananias, did not see the initiatory step as necessary for Izates’ devotion to yhwh (Ant., 20.34–48). What are called ‘Noachide Laws’ are another example. In these regulations, which had their initial development in Second Temple Jewish literature (Jub., 7.20–1; Let.Aris., 128–38, cf. Sib. Or., 3.547–9), a rabbinic midrash on the flood narrative gives ethical and monotheistic regulations for gentiles.21 While some

Shaye J. D. Cohen, ‘Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew’, HTR 82, no. 1 (1989): 13–33. Cf. Andreas Feldtkeller, Identitätssuche des Syrischen Urchristentum: Mission, Inkulturation und Pluralität im Ältesten Heidenchristentum, NTOA 25 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 35–9. 19 A. F. Segal, ‘The Costs of Proselytism and Conversion’, in SBLSP, ed. David John Lull 27 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 367; cf. Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 63. 20 For a possible political background of such a ‘Torah-fixation’, cf. Martin Hengel, Die Zeloten: Untersuchungen zur Jüdischen Freiheits-Bewegung in der Zeit von Herodes I. Bis 70 N. Chr (Leiden; Köln: Brill, 1961), 231. 21 Simon R. Schwarzfuchs, ‘Noachide Laws’, in EncJud, ed. Cecil Roth (New York: Macmillan, 1971), especially on t. ‘Abod. Zar., 8.4. 18

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regard such regulations as a basis for condemning gentiles, others regard them as a criterion for acknowledging or affirming their righteous state (cf. t. Sanh., 13.2).22 These examples of the Jewish approach to gentile incorporation can be understood in the framework of transactional community-identity construction, in which are observed both those who approach the issue with a higher degree of primordiality (resistance to changes in physio-cultural features) and those with a lesser degree thereof. Even on the surface level, a close parallel to this mode of identity construction, with its varying degrees of primordiality, is observed microcosmically within the Jesus-community of Jerusalem. In it, some of those community members (ψευδαδέλφοι) are found with a higher degree of primordiality than others (the Jerusalem leaders), as their insistence of circumcision upon Titus seems to imply (Gal. 2.4). This parallelism is rather expected of the Jesus-community in Jerusalem because of its genealogical link with the larger Jewish commonwealth. That the Jesus-community of Jerusalem was still deeply rooted in the larger Jewish society is clearly observed, especially in its contrast with how Paul relates to ‘Judaism’. For example, the Jesus-community of Jerusalem seems to have limited the scope of its mission imperative to Jews (Gal. 2.7–8; cf. Acts 10.1–11.18). Its closer affinity with the general Jewish population (particularly those in Jerusalem) than with Paul has been suggested, on the basis of Paul’s apprehensiveness as to whether the Jesus-community in Jerusalem would risk its reputation among the compatriots in Jerusalem by identifying itself with him through the acceptance of his gift (Rom. 15.13).23 With such a close proximity to Jewish society, the Jesus-community of Jerusalem seems to have had a conflict with Paul, who sought to set aside the core Jewish ethnic sentiment, manifested in such significant physio-cultural features as commensality (Gal. 2.12, cf. Acts 10.28), circumcision (Gal. 2.3–5, cf. Acts 15.1, 5) and other customs and traditions based upon the Torah (cf. Acts 21.18–21). Where, then, is Paul located in relation to the Jesus-community of Jerusalem, and how do we understand Paul’s behaviour at the boundary line? Markus N. A. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 159; Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1990), 197. 23 Ernst Haenchen, Die Apostelgeschichte, 13th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 544; cf. Walter Schmithals, Paulus und Jakobus, FRLANT 85 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 82. 22

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Paul expresses his break from the stance of Torah-observance as a ‘former life in Judaism’ (Gal. 1.13). The term ‘Judaism (Ἰουδαϊσμός)’ has ethnic, religious and political connotations,24 and therefore it appears from the expression that Paul describes himself as being outside of the Jewish society in general.25 Not only does he emphasize his departure from some sort from ‘Judaism’ by the peculiar expression, he takes care to emphasize his distance from the Jerusalem leaders and their jurisdiction as well (Gal. 1.17–20; 2.1–10). The repeated use of the term δοκεῖν to introduce the Jerusalem leaders (Gal. 2.4, 6a, 6b, 9) impresses upon the original readers of the letter to the Galatians Paul’s reservation to acknowledge their authority over him, rather than portraying a simplistic picture of unity among the communities of Jesus as a whole.26 While Paul’s self-understanding as an autonomous apostle may have rightly begun with his revelatory experience (Gal. 1.1, 15–16), this marking feature of autonomy in the letter reflects Paul’s motive for writing the letter. Because Paul feared that ‘circumcisers’, with their ethnocentric teaching, would have a grave influence on the Jesus-communities in Galatia, he wrote the letter to persuade the community members to choose his teaching over that of the circumcisers. Paul maintains the motif of enslavement in the description of the circumcisers’ teaching (4.9, 4.21–5.1, cf. 2.4), so as to portray a picture of contention between the ones who marginalize non-Jews according to ethnocentric values and the one who fights against them for the well-being of the non-Jews. In his retrospective interpretation of history, Paul

Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu Ihrer Begegnung Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas Bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh. V. Chr, WUNT 10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969), 1–2. 25 The term Ἰουδαϊσμός appears only twice in Paul’s letter (Galatians 1.13 and 14) and nowhere else in the New Testament, so his use of the term appears to be highly conscious. The expression, ‘the former life in Judaism,’ seems to be a rhetorical description of himself in order to show his sympathy with the gentile believers in Galatia who are outside the Jewish commonwealth. The author does not think that Paul is comparing ‘the former life in Judaism’ and ‘the present life in Judaism’. For a detailed discussion on this matter, cf. Atsuhiro Asano, Community-Identity Construction in Galatians, JSNTSup 285 (London: T&T Clark Continuum, 2005), 82–9. This issue can be discussed in terms of ‘call/conversion’, i.e. whether Paul was transferred from the Jewish religion to another independent religion or he was given a special mission to be a Jewish prophet-apostle to convert gentiles. Consult the following works for various views on this issue: Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976); Segal, Paul. 26 Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 86–7; cf. Günther Bornkamm, Paulus, 2nd edn. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), 59. 24

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often bypasses details of historical events, and the description of such events is greatly shaped by his value judgement.27 The relation between the Jesus-community in Jerusalem and Paul can be elaborated on the basis of the framework of community-identity construction introduced earlier. While the general effort of finding cohesion of the Jesus-community as a whole can be viewed as a transactional behaviour vis-à-vis non-Jews, one finds the ψευδαδέλφοι operating in the primordial mode and Paul in the instrumental mode. The Jerusalem leaders, whose community-identity construction is motivated by the preservation of their ethnic sentiment as well, though not necessarily insisting upon the preservation of physio-cultural features as strictly as the ψευδαδέλφοι, may be located somewhere between these two extreme modes of identity construction.28 In the following section, we will use this ‘transactional continuum’ as the interpretative framework, in order to analyse the early efforts of the Jesus community to construct and maintain its identity.

The Jesus-community’s effort to construct the community-identity The Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι The relation between three parties The first ten verses of the second chapter of Galatians identify two groups whom Paul and his company met during their visit to Jerusalem. One is the Jerusalem leaders, i.e. James, Cephas (Peter) and John. The other is introduced Cf. George Lyons, Pauline Autobiography: Toward a New Understanding, SBLDS 73 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985), 136; Beverly Roberts Gaventa, ‘Galatians 1 and 2: Autobiography as Paradigm’, NovT 28, no. 4 (1986): 313. This scheme (retrospective interpretation) is manifest, for example, when Paul explains that he resisted the ψευδαδέλφοι’s pressure so that the truth would remain with the Galatians (Gal. 2.5). Here, the description is conditioned by its implication on the community yet to be constructed. On the question of objective historical description and subjective narration in Galatians, especially in the section of narratio, cf. Gerd Lüdemann, Paulus, der Heidenapostel, FRLANT 123.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 195–6. 28 James’s reconciliatory function described in Acts 21.17–26 may reflect this situation. James is afraid that Paul, who had been accused by some Jewish believers of dissuading Diaspora Jews from obeying the Torah (v. 21), would upset the peace of the community in Jerusalem. Thus, while welcoming Paul (v. 17), James attempts to bring reconciliation between Paul and those who are zealous for the Torah (v. 20). Cf. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, AB 18C (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 693. 27

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as ‘the false believers who are (secretly) brought in’ (Gal. 2.4) ‘to spy’ on the freedom of Paul and his company with the motivation to subjugate them. By the negative descriptions of the ψευδαδέλφοι, some suggest that Paul and the Jerusalem leaders are united against them, and this assumption supports the unity of the Jesus-community and the finality of orthodoxy of the gospel shared between Paul and the Jerusalem leaders.29 However, while they are negatively depicted by Paul, the expression ψευδαδέλφοι suggests that they are regarded as members of the Jesus-community in Jerusalem (ψευδbeing Paul’s evaluation and ἀδελφοί being their status in the community of Jerusalem). The ψευδαδέλφοι, as insiders of the Jesus-community in Jerusalem, may have exerted some influence on the leaders’ meeting with Paul.30 Paul, as an outsider, visited the community for fear that his mission might be under suspicion in Jerusalem (Gal. 2.2). Therefore, one should see the Jerusalem scene as the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι on one side, and Paul with Barnabas and Titus standing on the other.

Unity and diversity The relationship between the two ingroups in the Jesus-community of Jerusalem can be explained by how they relate to the gentile sympathizers. We were reminded earlier that at the boundary between Jews and gentiles in general, there is this collectivity of gentile sympathizers, some of whom would come ever closer in the degree of their incorporation into the Jewish commonwealth, with the rite of circumcision being the final step of incorporation. Likewise, at the boundary between the Jesus-community and gentiles in general was the collectivity of gentile sympathizers who sought allegiance to Christ and his community. The gentiles’ approach to the Jesus-community makes the constituents of the community in Jerusalem aware of an important question: in order to preserve the community identity, how far would the gentile sympathizers need to be integrated? This question lies behind the unity and diversity between the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι. There was a unity because both considered preservation of ethnic sentiment E.g. Joseph B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 9th edn (London; New York: Macmillan, 1887), 106. 30 Cf. Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 115. 29

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as the foundation of the community identity, but diversity existed as well, because their approaches to the preservation of ethnic sentiment, i.e. degrees of primordiality, differ from each other. The ψευδαδέλφοι, who would tend to approach the issue of the preservation of ethnic identity in the primordial mode, insisted on full incorporation of sympathizers through circumcision, while the Jerusalem leaders do not see the existence of gentile sympathizers as a threat to the identity of their community, as long as they continue to be in the intermediate state of gentile sympathizers. From the perspective of the leaders, they are still considered ethnically separated from the authentic Jesuscommunity in Jerusalem, though staying in close proximity to it. If one makes a correlation between this perspective and Peter’s mission narrated in Acts, the conversion experience of Cornelius and his household and the following consensus reached in Jerusalem (Acts 10.1–11.18) may at least partially explain the lenient tendency of the Jerusalem leaders. A similar phenomenon of unity and diversity was earlier observed in Josephus’ narrative of Izates’ ‘conversion’. While some (e.g. Eleazer) consider the existence of gentile sympathizers short of full integration as being problematic, others (e.g. Ananias) do not (Ant., 20.34–48).

Unity of ethnic sentiment Let us consider the unity of the Jesus-community in Jerusalem. As long as the community consisted entirely of Torah observant Jewish followers of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah,31 both the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι had no special need to be concerned with the idea of preserving Jewish ethnic identity, at least within the Jesus-community in Jerusalem. It is when the community was faced with gentile sympathizers that this ethnic distinction was destined to become a sensitive issue. What concerns the Jesus-community in Jerusalem is that something foreign (gentile sympathizers) is about to attach itself to their distinctly ethnic group. When they heard the report about Paul’s mission, presumably the one in Cilicia and Syria (Gal. 1.21–4), apart from the reason that Paul ceased to persecute those with faith in Christ, they may have rejoiced over or perhaps even prided themselves on their influence Cf. Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderten, 4th edn, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924), 51.

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among gentile cultures without considering the impact of gentile incorporation on the identity of the larger community of faith in Christ. Would the Jerusalem leaders, then, require the gentile sympathizers to be circumcised when they desire to join the community? Some interpreters, who assume that Paul and the Jerusalem leaders share the same gospel,32 deny that they would force circumcision upon the gentile sympathizers. Paul, to be sure, defied the influence of the ψευδαδέλφοι in the end. It is, however, curious that the ψευδαδέλφοι seem to have been able to exert some influence upon the private meeting in Jerusalem, or at least their influence seems to have met no resistance from the Jerusalem leaders (2.4–5).33 Therefore, it is plausible that there was room for negotiation between the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι regarding the mode of association between their community and the gentile sympathizers. Furthermore, if an uncircumcised member had already existed in the Jesus-community of Jerusalem, there would have been little reason for the ψευδαδέλφοι to apply a stricter rule for Titus upon his arrival. The reason that Titus was not required to be circumcised is that the Jesus-community in Jerusalem did not consider the secondary status of the gentile sympathizers a threat to their identity. However, if they desired to join (and become fully functional in) the community, they would be required to undergo the rite for the purpose of preserving the community’s self-understood identity.34 Thus, the Jerusalem leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι are in unity in seeking to preserve the identity of the community on the basis of their core ethnic sentiment.

Diversity in physio-cultural features The motivation for the primordial stance of the ψευδαδέλφοι is uncertain,35 yet we may rightly suppose that they were more realistic about the implication of Paul’s missionary activity among gentiles. They may have anticipated the potential impact of the existence of gentile sympathizers upon the coherence of their ethnocentric community in Jerusalem and possibly in wider Judaea. E.g. Schmithals, Paulus, 37–8. Cf. Franz Mussner, Der Galaterbrief, 5th edn, HTKNT 9 (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 108–9. 34 Bockmuehl suggests that the political situation in the 40s and 50s ce in Palestine would have allowed only a thoroughly Jewish mission. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 172. 35 Some connect these ψευδαδέλφοι with those of the Pharisaic origin in Acts 15.1, 5. Cf. Lightfoot, Galatians, 106. 32 33

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As gentiles began to form their version of communities in Christ outside Judaea, they may have anticipated that the gentile sympathizers would not be relating to the Jesus-community in a merely marginal fashion. Therefore, in order to maintain the coherence of the Jesus-community as a whole and thus to preserve an ethnically oriented community identity, the ψευδαδέλφοι demanded the marginal subgroup to be fully integrated into the Jewish community of faith in Christ through the rite of circumcision. Paul and the ψευδαδέλφοι agreed on one point, which was the need to achieve a unified Jesus-community of Jews and non-Jews. However, while Paul desired to attain the goal by abandoning the rite of circumcision, the ψευδαδέλφοι sought to do so by insisting the rite be performed on the gentile sympathizers.36 What then is the role of Titus in the event? It is generally understood that Titus was a ‘specimen’, an evidence for the validity of Paul’s mission – a case of conversion without circumcision.37 However, being sensitive to the potential influence of gentile sympathizers upon the identity of Jesus-community, the ψευδαδέλφοι could not have regarded Titus merely as a marginally attached uncircumcised sympathizer. Indeed, he may well have already been an uncircumcised leader, as he was a few years later described by Paul as his fellow-worker, significantly involved in the affairs of the gentile assemblies (cf. 2 Cor. 8.23, κοινωνός/ συνεργός). From the perspective of the ψευδαδέλφοι, Titus was not merely a sympathetic ‘bystander’, but one who was potentially influential in shaping the identity of the Jesus-community, which they felt should be based upon the Jewish core ethnic sentiment. Therefore, they considered it right to demand that he be fully integrated into their community through the rite of circumcision. On the other hand, the Jerusalem leaders may have regarded Titus as representing the gentile sympathizers attached in the secondary sense to the authentic religious community, whose centre was the Jesus-community of Jerusalem. Based upon this view, to the leaders the visit of a gentile sympathizer was not a threat to their core ethnic sentiment.

Cf. Segal, Paul, 198; Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 35. Betz, Galatians, 88; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 117.

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Mission to Jews and mission to gentiles Separation policy and Paul’s gospel Titus was indeed not a threat to the Jerusalem leaders but only so long as his status remained that of a gentile sympathizer attached in the secondary sense to the religious community of Jews who follow the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. This approach to gentile sympathizers reflects the Jerusalem leaders’ concern to construct and maintain the community identity on the basis of their ethnic sentiment. Would Paul be content with such an approach to gentile incorporation? The view that this approach to gentile sympathizers would result in ‘marginalizing’ them as ‘second-class citizens’ probably started to develop as Paul responded to a special call to the gentile mission. The force of his rhetoric, then, became ever stronger, particularly as he faced the Antioch incident and problems within the Galatian community. Paul’s purpose in writing the letter to the Galatians was noted earlier. It was to persuade the community members to remain united with Paul against the circumcisers by providing a community identity that authenticates the gentile mission and consequently promises to deliver them from the experience of marginalization resulting from a community-identity construction based upon the Jewish ethnic sentiment. This purpose of Paul could not be reconciled with the approach of the Jerusalem leaders. If this is so, what then is the nature of the affirmation of two missions reached at the meeting (Gal. 2.7–9)? Whether the difference between the two missions is geographical or ethnic has been debated. Those who consider the distinction to be geographical suggest that the mission, or rather, the gospel to Jews (2.7) is primarily referring to the missionary effort within the geographical confines of Palestine.38 The mission to gentiles, then, covers the rest of the world. However, to understand the phrase merely as a geographical demarcation proves problematic, as Jewish communities existed in most major cities throughout the empire, let alone the fact that terms such as περιτομή and ἀκροβυστία denote primarily ethnicity rather than geography.39 On the other hand, to understand ‘the gospel to the D. Theodor Zahn, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1907), 106–7; Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Galater, 10th edn. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1949), 46; Schmithals, Paulus, 36, 49. 39 Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), 96–9. 38

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Jews’ merely as an ethnic expression seems to be imprecise as well, as Paul may well have preached to a mixed audience of Jews and non-Jews (e.g. Acts 13.48–50; 18.4).40 In order to clarify the complexity of the issue, we are once again reminded that geographical concern is one of the significant physiocultural features in which is manifest the core ethnic sentiment of a given group. Therefore, it seems wrong to ask whether the issue is either ethnic or geographical. In the Jerusalem meeting, the ethnic concerns of gentile incorporation into the Jewish community may have been understood and discussed at least partially in geographical terms. Both issues are inseparable. What then resulted from the meeting in Jerusalem? Taking into account the subsequent incident in Antioch (2.11–14), it seems clear that they did not come to a new and clear agreement as to what they would do with a gentile sympathizer to the Jesus-community and what they would do with a Jewish sympathizer to the same community.41 Rather, it may be understood as an occasion to acknowledge what Paul and perhaps the Jesus-community in Antioch were already doing on one hand and what the community in Jerusalem was already doing on the other – a ‘separation policy’ consisting of the missions whose primary focus was, respectively, gentiles and Jews. The conflict between the ψευδαδέλφοι and Paul may have made the Jerusalem leaders aware of the looming problem, which was not as much a problem of relation between the Jesus-communities of the Jews and the Jesus-communities of the gentiles as that of inter-ethnic cohabitation within a community. Then, the separation policy was nothing but a temporary solution to the real problem. Paul reports that the Jerusalem leaders realized that he was entrusted with a gospel for the gentiles, as Peter was with a gospel of the Jews (Gal. 2.7). In the temporary solution, the Jerusalem leaders may have recognized that Paul’s gospel was a sufficient adaptation of the gospel of the Jews for the gentile audience, and that it was good for establishing a secondary group of gentile sympathizers.

Burton, Galatians, 125. But cf. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 bce–66 ce (London: SPCK, 1992), 224. 41 Hans Conzelmann, Geschichte des Urchristentums, GNT 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 70. Conzelmann suggests that the confusion in Antioch (Gal. 2.11–14) derives from the ambiguity concerning the demarcation. See also James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, BNTC (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 122. 40

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Secondary mission or autonomous mission The division of labour between the Jerusalem leaders and Paul does not necessarily mean that they all agreed that the two missions were autonomous and equal. Rather, the gentile mission of Paul was viewed as secondary to the mission of the Jesus-communities of the Jews.42 In the context of a sensitive and nuanced relation between Paul and the Jesus-community of Jerusalem, one must consider the gesture of recognition in Gal. 2.9. The nuance of the expression ‘giving the right hand’ must not be assumed simply to mean a mutual recognition of equal power and status of some sort. Giving of the ‘right hand’ in the military context, for instance, can mean enforcement of the status quo by the powerful to the powerless (1 Macc. 6.58–9; 11.50; 13.45; 2 Macc. 4.34; 11.26).43 Therefore, the significance of the symbolic act should be determined by its context. Based upon the assumption suggested above, i.e. the temporary recognition of Paul’s mission by the Jerusalem leaders, it seems best to understand the gesture of ‘hand-shaking’ as their granting of sanction to the secondary ministry of Paul for the gentiles to continue. Paul, on the other hand, accepted the permissive gesture and realized that the ideal of the united Jesus-community of Jews and non-Jews according to his terms would be unattainable.44 Now that Paul’s desire to attain the ideal is frustrated, he interpreted and reported to the Galatians on this rather unsatisfactory meeting in reality as an occasion to prove that his mission to gentiles was autonomously authentic, which gave birth to the Galatian community. When the Jewish commonwealth was faced with the issue of gentile incorporation, they approached the issue in various ways. The particular Jewish community of faith in the Jewish Messiah Jesus was no exception. Though the leaders and the ψευδαδέλφοι shared the same concern to preserve their ethnic sentiment, they had different approaches to Titus. Paul, on the other hand, opposed the ψευδαδέλφοι in their treatment of Titus on the grounds that he had an entirely different concern in the construction of the community identity. In the end, the attempts to homogenize the community both by Cf. Segal, Paul, 190. Philip F. Esler, ‘Making and Breaking an Agreement Mediterranean Style: A New Reading of Galatians 2:1–14’, BibInt 3, no. 3 (1995): 299–300. 44 Then, the modifier κοινωνίας following δεξιάς ἔδωκεαν may reflect Paul’s interpretation of the event. 42 43

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‘judaizing’ the gentiles in the primordial mode (the ψευδαδέλφοι) and by abandoning ethnic features in the instrumental mode (Paul) were avoided. The Jerusalem leaders let Paul continue his mission to gentiles, but as a secondary attachment to the authentic Jewish community of faith, in order to both preserve the Jewish core ethnic sentiment and to maintain peace with Paul and his special call to gentiles in the gentile lands. The concession of a separation policy faces a challenge as soon as the location of the identity adjustment shifts from Jerusalem to Antioch. In the final analysis, we will consider the Antioch incident in terms of the significant physio-cultural feature of commensality.

The Antioch incident and commensality Commensality has been recognized among anthropologists as one of the most significant physio-cultural features that reflect the identity of a given community.45 In his customarily ambiguous description of events, Paul does not inform us of the exact modality of the inter-ethnic dining in Antioch (Gal. 2.12). However, the recent debate on this issue makes us aware of varying approaches to the Jewish communal meal vis-à-vis non-Jews.46 The most exclusive approach to communal dining is evidenced in such texts as Jub., 22.16 and Jos. Asen., 7.1 (‘Eat not with [gentiles]’ and ‘Joseph never ate with the Egyptians’, respectively. See also m. ‘Abod. Zar., 4.6) where no interethnic dining can be expected, although these texts may rightly be regarded as exceptional cases.47 Other texts allow inter-ethnic dining as long as Jews E.g. Manning Nash, The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 10–15. For the extended discussion, cf. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 137–48; Esler, ‘Making’; Esler, Galatians, 94–116; E. P. Sanders, ‘Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2.11–14’, in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul & John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, Robert Tomson Fortna and Beverly Roberts Gaventa (eds) (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 170–88; Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 56–61. 47 Sanders, ‘Jewish Association’, 175–6. In Jos. Asen., however, Joseph later ate and drank with the family of Aseneth (Jos. Asen., 20.5–8). The text group (d) implies that the parents of Aseneth came to believe in yhwh, but this may reflect the text group’s tendency to solve ambiguity and anomaly. It is then significant that the text group may resist the description of inter-ethnic dining in the given text. Cf. Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 50, 76; C. Burchard, ‘Joseph and Aseneth’, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James Hamilton Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2.234. 45

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prepare their own meal and bring their own vessels (Jdt. 10.5; m. ‘Abod. Zar., 5.5). This ‘parallel mode’ of dining is favoured by some scholars as the mode of inter-ethnic dining within the early Jesus-community.48 We are not informed in Galatians of the content of James’s instruction via his delegates nor of the Jews’ ‘fearful’ influence upon Peter, which caused Peter to withdraw from the communal dining in Antioch. It may well be that the anti-imperial ethnic fervour in Judaea caused James to relate his concern against careless inter-ethnic integration in the Antiochian community (cf. Ant., 20.200),49 and consequently Peter and the Jewish constituents of the community resorted to the most extreme (separatist) approach to communal dining.50 Thus the historical situation may have forced the Jerusalem leaders to tend toward a higher degree of primordiality in relation to physio-cultural features. Even if James’s preferred approach to inter-ethnic communal dining was the parallel mode, and the separatist approach that resulted in Antioch was a rash reaction on the part of Peter, this incident must have impressed upon Paul that the community-identity construction based upon the Jewish core ethnic sentiment would always assume the secondary status of the gentile constituents of the community, and thus would inevitably be a threat to the raison d’être of his mission. If the Jesus-community in Antioch had been practising the ‘parallel mode’ of communal dining before the Antioch incident,51 its negative impression upon Paul may have caused him to begin seeking a new and highly ethnically integrated mode of communal dining. We may find the ideology behind the integrated dining mode reflected in 1 Corinthians – Jews and non-Jews sharing one bread and one cup (10.16–17; cf. 11.17–34). One should note that Esler, on the basis of the clear image of unity in the eucharistic teaching in 1 Corinthians 11, maintains that this integrated ‘eucharistic mode’ of communal dining had been the norm in the Jesus-community of Antioch.52 This view makes possible an interpretation of Paul’s accusation that Peter lived like a J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 151; Sanders, ‘Jewish Association’, 177–8. 49 Cf. Martin Hengel and Anna M. Schwemer, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Antiochien: die Unbekannten Jahre des Apostels, WUNT 108 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1998), 387–9. 50 For similar but slightly varying views, refer to Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 151; Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 72–3; cf. Schmithals, Paulus, 55–7. 51 The view taken by all the scholars except Esler listed in footnote 46. 52 Esler, ‘Making’. Cf. Ernst Haenchen, ‘Petrus-Probleme’, NTS 7, no. 3 (1961): 196. 48

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gentile and pressured the gentiles to live like Jews (Gal. 2.14). In the eyes of (at least some) Jews, such a highly integrated mode of communal dining with gentiles may have appeared to step over the boundary line (cf. m. ‘Abod. Zar., 4.6; 5.5), to be like a gentile (ὑπάρκων ἐθνικῶς), and the incident may have pressured the gentiles to adopt Jewish customs (ἰουδαΐζειν), such as circumcision, to be a part of even the most separatist communal dining.53 However, if we take into consideration Paul’s peculiar tendency in interpreting and reporting historical events, such terms as ὑπάρκων ἐθνικῶς and ἀναγκάζεις ἰουδαΐζειν may have been used for the purpose of impressing upon the original readers the picture of the oppressors of gentile sympathizers vs. their deliverer from the oppressors. Peter may have been prudent in being sensitive to the customs of the host community (perhaps practicing the ‘parallel mode’ of communal dining) until a concern was related to him via James’s delegates; then Peter began to refrain from some occasions of communal dining. While such a highly integrative mode of communal dining is certainly a clear identity marker that differentiates the Jesus-communities founded through Paul’s gentile mission from other Jesus-communities, whose identity is constructed on the basis of the Jewish ethnic sentiment, it may have been considerably repulsive to those Jews who would consider joining Paul’s community. However, it has been suggested that such a symbolic act, which reflects an anti-traditional/anti-institutional (liminal) ideology sometimes enhances the coherence among the members of a newly emerging community against the marginalizing pressure of outgroups.54 Such liminal features are observable elsewhere in the letter to the Galatians – the ‘universal’ baptismal liturgical saying (3.28) and the peculiar interpretation of the Sarah-Hagar story (4.21–31) for example, which respectively obliterate the ethnic boundary and reverse the statuses of Jews and non-Jews. Paul’s instrumental tendency in his mission and the identity construction of the resultant communities may be intensified due to the incident in Antioch and the problems in Galatia. Paul’s instrumental tendency, however, becomes less obvious as the highly instrumental mode of his gentile mission begins to face various problems deriving from the reality of Jews and non-Jews sharing a religious life. For Esler, Galatians, 137. Cf. Walter Gutrod, ‘ Ἰουδαίζειν’ in TDNT, vol. 3. For the theory of liminality, cf. Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Cornell University Press, 1969).

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example, in 1 Corinthians, in the context of discussing the issues relating to the maintenance of unity and order of worship, Paul speaks of the difficulty in dealing with inter-ethnic dining (8.4–13) while pointing out the significance of the eucharistic meal, which symbolizes the community’s unity (10.16–17). Furthermore, Paul seems to affirm a selective and therefore parallel mode of dining in the context of a communal meal (Rom. 14.1–3).55 In it, Paul had to deal with the problem of division on the basis of the injunction against idolatry, commonly held but manifested differently between Jewish and gentile community members. Therefore, one should not fail to note that, in the later period of Paul’s mission, Jewish ethnic concerns began to exert more constructive influences upon his community-identity construction.

Conclusion The struggle reported by Paul in Gal. 2.1–14 was understood as the early effort of the Jesus-community to construct its community identity. The focus on the issue of community-identity construction helped to analyse differing motivations behind the struggle to attain the coherence of the community. The theoretical framework employed in this study helped to understand the relation between the Jerusalem leaders, the ψευδαδέλφοι and Paul in terms of varying approaches to community-identity construction and maintenance. In it, the coexistence of unity and diversity among the members of the Jesuscommunity of Jerusalem was explained as a shared ethnic concern behind their ideas of community identity and different degrees of primordiality regarding (or insistence upon) the physio-cultural features. Then, Paul and his mission were differentiated from the other two as conveying an instrumental mode of community-identity construction reportedly occasioned by his revelatory experience. Therefore, the relation between the three parties was viewed not simply as a ‘Jewish mission by the Jesus-community of Jerusalem vs. a gentile mission by Paul’, nor ‘orthodoxy shared by the Jerusalem leaders and Paul vs. heterodoxy held by the ψευδαδέλφοι’, but as an aggregation of

This passage is one of Bockmuehl’s points of contention with Esler. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 58.

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various groups with varying approaches to community-identity construction.56 In other words, these varying approaches contributed to the process of the Jesus-community as a whole to provide a locus (‘symbolic identity’, to use A. P. Cohen’s term) where people with varying convictions could aggregate. In the process conflicts were recognized between individuals and groups with different approaches to the construction of their community identity, which sometimes led to exclusive measures and sometimes to concessions. This description of the life of the early Jesus-community helps the modern interpreter to avoid reading his or her ideal of unity into the earliest experiences of the community, or scapegoating one party or another as having prevented the ideal to be realized in the community. That we should avoid viewing the early Jesus-community monolithically is demonstrated through the description of the three parties, with their varying approaches to the formation of their community and its identity.

Nevertheless, relying largely on Paul’s description of the events, the discussion has focused more on his community-identity construction than on the other two.

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Adopted Siblings in the Household of God: Kinship Lexemes in the Social Identity Construction of Ephesians Daniel K. Darko The appropriation of kinship lexemes in Ephesians has received little or no significant attention in the study of social identity of its readers/hearers. The subject surfaces scantly, for the most part, in studies that focus on the use of sibling language (brother/s) in the undisputed Pauline letters. It is alleged that Paul’s use of fictive kinship advances his egalitarian ethos whereas the disputed letters (i.e. Ephesians) belonging to a post-Pauline era utilize patriarchal/hierarchical household framework in their identity construction and institutional development.1 There have been attempts to depict how an egalitarian Paul distanced himself from the patriarchal conventions of his day to either espouse equality or solidarity.2 Apparently, Ephesians departs from the Pauline notion of ‘fictive siblings’ to construct the social identity of its readers along the lines of the patriarchal mores of its time. I will however argue, to the contrary, that there is sufficient evidence in Ephesians and elsewhere to ascertain that its use of kinship lexemes does not depart from the undisputed Pauline usage. It will become clear that the notion that Ephesians departs from Pauline ‘kinship concept’ is quite selective in scope and misleading in conclusions. There seems to be confusion between M. Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalisation in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings, SNTSMS 60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 91–102. MacDonald examines institutional development in the Pauline corpus in this monograph. She finds progressive development from a more ‘egalitarian’ outlook in the undisputed Pauline churches to what she refers to as ‘love patriarchal’ institutional structures developing in letters like Ephesians.  2 See E. Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (London: SCM Press, 1983), 266. Schüssler Fiorenza was one of the most articulate scholars of this view in Paul, especially in her reading of Galatians 3.28.  1

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patriarchal social structures (institutional structure) and social relations or solidarity in patriarchal cultures (relationships or group dynamics). For example, the Graeco-Roman household (Greek, Roman or Jew) served as the primary referent of individual identity3 and the locus for economic, spiritual and personal development. Concord in the oikos engendered public respect and advanced socio-political causes in the polis. The appeal to kinship (fictive or real) to harness concord in patriarchal households, social groups and the wider society was commonplace by the time of Paul.

Pauline scholarship and kinship in the Graeco-Roman world Among others,4 Meeks,5 Aasgaard,6 Esler,7 Bartchy8 and Horrell9 have demonstrated the manner in which Paul uses sibling language to promote solidarity. Meeks and some others have argued that Paul uses kinship language (brothers) as a unique identity marker to differentiate between the early Christian sect and outsiders.10 The significance of kinship in social identity formation as P. R. Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 16. Trebilco buttresses this point that individual identity is derived from belonging to the family.  4 P. A. Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions of Group Identity: “Brothers” (Adelphoi) in Associations of the Greek East’, JBL 124, no. 3 (2005): 491–3. Harland provides a comprehensive list of studies of kinship language as it relates to early Christian identity in the first three pages of the article. He aptly identifies problems in the claim that Paul’s use of kinship language does have limited parallels in wider Graeco-Roman literature and presents overwhelming evidence that points to the contrary and commonplace of the use of fictive kinship language in various regions of Graeco-Roman antiquity.  5 W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 74–110.  6 R. Aasgaard, ‘My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!’: Christian Siblingship in Paul, JSNTSup (London: T&T Clark, 2004); R. Aasgaard, ‘Brotherhood in Plutarch and Paul: It’s Role and Character’, in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. Halvor Moxnes (London: Routledge, 1997). Aasgaard’s study on sibling relations, especially from the interpretation of Plutarch, is an excellent study that may support the fact that the solidarity adduced in siblings relations were all meant to function within the wider social framework. The study shows the general usage of kinship language outside the New Testament in a manner that finds close parallels in the New Testament.  7 P. F. Esler, ‘Keeping It in the Family: Culture, Kinship and Identity in 1 Thessalonians and Galatians’, in Families and Family Relations as Represented in Early Judaisms and Early Christianities: Texts and Fictions: Papers Read at a Noster Colloquium in Amsterdam, June 9–11, 1998, Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten (eds) (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2000).  8 S. S. Bartchy, ‘Undermining Ancient Patriarchy: The Apostle Paul’s Vision of a Society of Siblings’, BTB 29, no. 2 (1999).  9 D. Horrell, ‘From ἀδελφοί to οἶκος Θεοῦ: Social Transformation in Pauline Christianity’, JBL 120, no. 2 (2001). 10 Meeks, Urban, 85–8. See Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions’.  3

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noted by Meeks is indisputable. However, compelling evidence has since been presented to show parallels to the Pauline use of fictive kinship in GraecoRoman social groups.11 Harland gathers evidence from ethnic, occupational, civic and even gymnastic groups in support of the common usage of fictive kinship lexemes in antiquity: Inscriptions from Greece, Asia Minor and Greek cities of the Danube and Bosporus, as well as papyri from Egypt, suggest that familial language was used in a variety of small-group settings in reference to fellow members as ‘brothers’ or (less often) ‘sisters’, as well as to leaders as ‘mothers’, ‘fathers’ or ‘papas’.12

The works of Bartchy and Horrell are noteworthy in the study of how Paul’s use of kinship lexemes (e.g. sibling language) relates to or differs from their usage in the disputed letters. According to S. Scott Bartchy, Paul refrains from using the word ‘father’ in referring to church leaders as part of his strategy to undermine the patriarchal conventions of his time. Apparently, Paul assumes anti-patriarchal framework in order to harness a vision of the church as a community of siblings.13 Thus, the image of the father as the head of a household would have evoked negative sentiments in a community that seeks to advance mutual interdependence. Bartchy writes: Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus were on the same page in their intentions: (a) to undermine the authority and social cohesiveness of the blood kin group and patriarchal family, (b) to offer an alternative of social bonding in place of the patrilineal biological family, and (c) to make viable a first century Mediterranean person’s choosing to live in such an alternative, trust-based form of social relations.14

Apparently, fathers held too much power in patriarchal societies whereas siblings counted on each other for love and support. For Bartchy, it is in

Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions’. Harland highlights that Meeks’s claims of Paul’s sectarian use of ‘brothers’ is overstretched and provides substantial evidence to the contrary. It is within this framework that some would later argue that the hierarchal structures in the household codes of the disputed Pauline letters were not Pauline but material that was adopted from the wider society for apologetic aims. 12 Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions’, 512. 13 Bartchy, ‘Undermining’, 73. He would not call Paul an egalitarian, since the word belongs to the semantic domain of politics and not kinship. 14 Bartchy, ‘Undermining’, 69, 71. Cf. Bartchy argues that Jesus undermines the natural family ties in the same way that Paul undermines patriarchal norms. It is quite difficult to establish grounds for such claim on a careful study of the Gospels and Paul alike. 11

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this framework that sibling language becomes important in Paul’s efforts to promote one group identity and concord in the churches to which he wrote. If Bartchy were right, then the early church and their society would not have seen the natural/biological ‘father’ and his role in a positive light. However, the attempt to synchronize Pauline fictive kinship with that of the historical Jesus lacks concrete evidence from the Gospel accounts. Barton has demonstrated persuasively that Jesus indeed redefined what constitutes the new family and promoted the primacy of discipleship ties over natural kinship, but he never undermined the natural family or deemed it irrelevant.15 In other words, Jesus did not subscribe to the notion of kinship being attributed to Paul. Moreover, the power of fictive sibling language was rooted in the nature of kinship relations in Graeco-Roman households. As Trebilco puts it, ‘clearly ἀδελφοί language comes from the sphere of the family’.16 Moreover, some ingroup members referring to each as ‘brothers’ also employed designations such as ‘father(s)’ for their leaders: There is, in fact, strong evidence pointing to the importance of such metaphorical parental and parent-child language in Greek cities generally and within local associations in the cities of Asia Minor, Greece, Thracia, and other regions in the first three centuries.17

The father image was rather positive, except perhaps where parental abuse was in question. David G. Horrell reiterates the significance of sibling language in Paul’s community and social formation, along the lines of Bartchy.18 He points to the infrequent use of ἀδελφοί in Ephesians as evidence of a progressive development from egalitarian community to hierarchical ethos expressed in its Haustafel. Horrell clarifies, ‘that should not be taken to imply that Paul’s vision

S. C. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew, SNTSMS 80 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 57–225. It is quite misleading to align Paul with Jesus in such a claim. 16 Trebilco, Self-Designations, 16. 17 Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions’, 512. Here Harland provides a very long list of bibliographical and inscriptional evidence. The attempt to distance ‘sibling relations’ from household relations in antiquity is almost an impossible undertaking. 18 D. G. Horrell, Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 112–15. Here, he joins Aasgaard in making a significant and very important observation in Paul’s use of sibling language in this regard. 15

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is unambiguously that of egalitarian community. It seems to me that that is essentially what Paul implies with the designation ἀδελφοί’.19 He asserts that, We might then broadly characterize this change as one from the model of an egalitarian community of ἀδελφοί toward the model of a hierarchical household-community, a community with masters and subordinates, structured according to the relative positions of different social groups.20

A significant methodological shortfall in this argument is self-evident. For example, the lexical analysis compares the language or framework of household or οἶκος/οἰκία in the disputed letters to sibling language (ἀδελφοί) in the undisputed Pauline letters. A comparison of sibling language with sibling language or household relationships would have yielded a converse conclusion, not to mention that a selective approach to the study of kinship that separates sibling relations from wider household relations in patriarchal cultures leaves out the role of parents in fostering such relationships. Similar views are expressed by scholars who argue that Ephesians adapts the patriarchal household structure in departure from Paul to serve apologetic aims – to integrate the church to the wider society.21 This assumes a widespread adherence to the tenet of Aristotle that order in the household imparts order in society; this is what I call oikos-polis linkage. Thus, the notion of egalitarian ethos would have suggested subversion of civic order and prompted undesirable consequences. Indeed, the doctrine of interconnectedness of households and society was a norm in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The earliest mention is found in Plato.22 Aristotle later developed it in his discourse on ethics and political theories. For Aristotle, Justice is the bond of men in states, for administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society. Seeing

Horrell, ‘From ἀδελφοί’, 303. Horrell, ‘From ἀδελφοί’, 310. 21 See P. Perkins, ‘God, Cosmos & Church Universal: The Theology of Ephesians’, SBLSP, no. 39 (2000): 764; A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), 360; A. T. Lincoln, ‘The Household Code and Wisdom Mode of Colossians’, JSNT, no. 74 (1999): 100–1; Schüssler Fiorenza, Memory, 266; J. D. G. Dunn, ‘The Household Rules in the New Testament’, in The Family in Theological Perspective, ed. Stephen C. Barton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 54–5. 22 Plato, Leg., 3.690 A-C. 19 20

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then that the state is made of households, before speaking of the state we must speak of the management of the household.23

Aristotle proceeds to elaborate on how the household structure helps to promote concord. Hierarchical structure then served as a means to promote solidarity or concord. Prominent philosophers such as Epictetus,24 Dionysius of Halicarnassus,25 Arius Didymus26 and Hierocles27 further underscored the link between order in the oikos and order in the polis. Consequently, potential leaders in society were expected to have their household in order as a matter of necessity (cf. 1 Tim. 3.2–5). Moreover, loyalty to household gods and participation in religious activities in the public arena became an integral part of civic responsibility. It was therefore not unusual to include loyalty to the gods/deities or even refer to deities in paternal or maternal imageries (father, mother, husband, wife etc.) as motivation and basis for propriety, as we find in Eph. 5.21–6.9.28 Orderly and stable households garnered desirable mutuality and respect in the public arena. These patriarchal norms fostered closer family ties. The notion that the father, in his role or image of the ‘father’, would undermine concord lacks evidence.29 If there were any particular hallmark of patriarchal societies then one of them would be how parents, siblings and external family members live and work in harmony. It is in this vein that kinship became both a model and descriptor for social groups of antiquity. Fictive kinship concepts were therefore employed to foster a semblance of family ties and evoke a sense

Aristotle, Pol., 1.1253a. Epictetus, Diatr., 3.7.19–28; 3.22.71–2. 25 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom., 2.24.2–2.25.5. 26 Arius Didymus, ‘“Concerning Household Management” and “Politics”,’ 147.26–152.25. I am citing from D. L. Balch, ‘Household Codes’, in Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament: Selected Forms and Genres, ed. David E. Aune, SBLSBS 21 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 40–5. 27 Hierocles, On Duties, ‘Household Management’ (4.28.21 = 5.696, 21–699, 15 Hense) cited from A. J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation: A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 98–104. 28 Plutarch, Mor., 140D. Plutarch highlights the role of these gods in marriage and household relations and urges the wife to participate in her husband’s devotion to the gods. 29 The exception is the case where abusive fathers treat members of their family inappropriately. Abusive parenting does not respect patriarchal or egalitarian norms. Our so called ‘egalitarian’ experiment in how household relations work was unknown in antiquity, and today the evidence of its outcome rather shows family breakdowns, dysfunctional homes and increased divorce rate. As a proponent of equality and teamwork in the family, I think we have yet to learn how to make ‘egalitarianism’ translate in real terms into healthy relationships in our Western civilization. 23 24

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of belonging at the deepest level, not only in early churches but also in pagan clubs and cult associations.30 A closer look at Ephesians will show that the epistle utilizes kinship lexemes (a) to promote the social identity of its readership as a multi-ethnic family of God, (b) in reinterpreting the Aristotelian ‘oikos-polis linkage’ to show how ethics in the domestic setting affects the larger household of God, and (c) to establish that propriety in the nuclear household is a moral necessity, given who they are in Christ (social identity). It is in this framework that natural kinship serves as a model for the believers.

Kinship lexemes in Ephesians Ephesians opens with a traditional Pauline appeal to the fatherhood of God in its greetings (1.2) and proceeds to depict God as the πατήρ (father) of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1.3). This πατήρ of Jesus reached out to enlist membership into his household by means of adoption. Thus God has blessed, chosen and predestined ‘us’ to be υἱοθεσία31 in the ‘beloved’ (1.6). The father who adopts (υἱοθεσία) is also the architect of the beloved community of which believers are chosen to be a part. Membership of the ‘beloved’ came by the father’s initiative and volition. The motivation is not to acquire a slave-labour force but to redeem the ‘adopted’ to a place of belonging and honour. As υἱοθεσία (1.5), they share one father and privileges with Christ in the heavenly realms (2.6). In his prayer, the author qualifies the ‘father image’ of God as an honourable father, πατὴρ τῆς δόξης, who is accorded wisdom in matters of freedom and security (1.17–23). In Semitic parlance, the readers’ pre-conversion identity and status are characterized as ‘children of disobedience’, ‘children of wrath’, a people dead in ‘sins and trespasses’, and subject to the control of diabolic forces (2.1–3). God’s acts of redemption and adoption are therefore gestures to accord new identity and membership into a beloved household. This notion of kinship is likely to evoke an emotive response based on the readers’ concept and experience of household relations. The imagery would have

Meeks, Urban, 87. Also Hos. 1.10; 2.1–3 lxx; 1QS 6.10, 22; 1QSa 1.18; 1QM 13.1. Υἱοθεσία refers to a child who is obtained by means of adoption.

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been counterproductive if indeed the father’s role in the household evoked negative sentiments in the patriarchal context, as suggested by the scholars aforementioned. Moreover, Ephesians condemns past Jew-gentile disparities as unfitting to the new status in Christ. To resolve inter-ethnic tension in the community, the author employs fictive kinship as a framework for one identity and solidarity (2.11–22). Gentiles who were once alienated from the citizenship (πολιτεία)32 of Israel and who were strangers (ξένος) to the ‘covenant of promise’ have a new status in God’s commonwealth. The salvific work of Christ has brought them near and given access to the father. Consequently, instead of alienation from τῆς πολιτείας τοῦ ’Ισραήλ (2.12) they have become συμπολῖται τῶν ἁγίων – alienation from the commonwealth of Israel has given way to fellow membership in the commonwealth of saints (2.19).33 They are no longer ‘strangers and resident aliens’ in Christ (2.19); gentiles may no longer be perceived as aliens in God’s polis or temporary occupants in his oikos. It is particularly noteworthy that the socio-political language in 2.19 links citizenship to membership in the household of God. The readers’/hearers’ political status and household membership have changed from ξένοι and πάροικοι to συμπολῖται and οἰκεῖοι τοῦ θεοῦ. The term ξένοι refers to immigration status in relation to the polis whereas the second πάροικοι implies temporary status in a family home (one who does not have a permanent place in the household). ‘Although a resident alien (πάροικοι) may live in a country, he is not a part of the “family” of the nation in which he is residing.’34 The author is here prompting a new self-understanding and awareness of an important change of status that ushers gentiles into a new relationship with Jews in the household of God (5.5). This does not require the obliteration of individual ethnicity; rather Jews and gentiles are amalgamated or reconciled to God35 and thereby sharers in the household of God. Temple imagery is employed later in chapter 2 to elaborate on the physicality of the house of God (2.20–2). The apostles and prophets formed the

This is a reference to the lack of access to the territory and political state of Israel and then follows ‘strangers’ to the covenant community. Here we find state-religious community linkage. Note the use of political parlance in the passage. 34 H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 394. 35 In Ephesians, reconciliation is not simply how Jews and gentiles came together, but the term expresses how both ethnic groups were brought into union with God (members of the household of God) by means of Christ. 32

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foundation whereas Christ stands as its cornerstone – holding the building together. It is therefore in Christ that the building grows (organically) to become a holy temple (moral purity) and a ‘dwelling place of God in the Spirit’. Thus life and activity in the household of God are not static or stagnant but involve a growing process towards perfection through Christ (spiritually, morally and socially). The author would indicate later (in 4.11–16) that grace-gifts have been given to some members to equip the church to function effectively in unity. In that context, maturity and unity are explained analogously in terms of human anatomy, as a child grows to become ἄνδρα τέλειον (4.13), growth that departs from the ignorance and gullibility of infants (4.14). The children of God need to grow in their knowledge of Christ as a necessary ingredient for maturation and social interaction. The author exhorts his readers to live up to their kinship obligations (5.1–2). Previously, their new identity had been explained as bearers of imago Dei who ought to live in righteousness and holiness (4.24). Here, they are children of a loving father being called upon to emulate his virtues and let that reflect in their sibling relationships. The call to imitate their father would undoubtedly resonate well with Graeco-Roman readers. Ideally, a child was expected to emulate the good qualities of his father.36 This is found, for example, in Pseudo-Isocrates where children are urged to imitate the noble virtues of their fathers.37 Philo similarly instructs children to acquire prudence by ‘imitating the nature of their father, do all that is right without delay and with all diligence’.38 The call to imitate God ‘as beloved children’ (5.1–2) implies a positive father concept in the childfather relationship (1.6). It also presumes the unwritten code of honour and shame associated with kinship: inappropriate behaviour of children could lead to dishonour and embarrassment for the entire household.39 Here, Ephesians alludes to social norms and customary obligation for children to imitate their father. Contra Bartchy, ‘Undermining’, 68–78. Bartchy constructs the image of a patriarchal father-child relationship that would hardly make children see their fathers as role models. The notion of the patriarchal figure as tyrant or brutal, though not explicitly stated, seems to underlie much of what we find in the constructed image of a father in antiquity, and somehow these fathers were supposed to have raised children that loved and cared for each other. Moreover, the reader is made to take for granted that individuals in reasonable sibling relationships were likely to make a radical change in attitude as soon as they became fathers – to treat their children with cruelty. 37 Isocrates, Demon., 1–15. 38 Philo, Sacr., 68b. 39 N. Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 38–98. Sherman has demonstrated that the use of such expressions to evoke an emotive response was a very significant part of moral instruction among the Stoics. 36

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The instruction ‘to walk in love’ (5.1–2; cf. Gal. 4.5–6; Rom. 5.5; 8.15; Phil. 2.15) draws from the child-father relationship as the basis for good sibling relationships. The beloved children ought to love one another.40 In other words, the loving relationship of siblings is rooted and modelled after their relationship with the father. The nature of love being called upon is also patterned after the sacrificial love of Christ; it is not a mere affection among siblings but virtue that is rooted in who they are as children of a loving father (God).41 This would customarily evoke a sense of obligation in kinship relations in a society where siblings are expected to be cordial, even after marriage.42 The readers are entreated to model their love for one another after the self-giving love of Christ (their big brother) – whose life received God’s approval like a fragrant offering (5.2). In the honour and shame culture, the command ‘to love’ is also placed in antithesis to deplorable vices that may not even be named among the ‘saints’, namely fornication, impurity and covetousness (5.3). The readers, in their pre-conversion past, are again characterized as ‘children of disobedience’ (5.6) whose current status requires that they conduct themselves in the Lord as ‘children of light’ (5.8). The differentiation between foolish and wise conduct in 5.15–24 flows seamlessly into the instruction on natural household relations (5.21–6.9). The macro family of God is linked to the nuclear household in 5.15–24, where Christ is supposed to be Lord. In other words, the author makes the grammatical and conceptual link between fictive kinship and natural kinship in the social identity construction of the readership. This is even more acute in the husband-wife and Christ-church analogy in the Christocentric Haustafel. The role of the husband (patria potestas) who is also the father of the children and master of the slaves is rather likened to Christ’s relationship to the church. The notion of fictive sibling relations is recalled in the closing remarks: the author calls Tychicus ὁ ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός (‘the beloved brother’; See 1.5, 15; 2.4; 3.18–19; 4.3, 15–16; 5.25, 28, 33; 6.23–4. Cf. T. Gad, 4.7. It is misleading to assume or claim that only God could love his children this much or only believers could be that affectionate with their children. Basic behavioural patterns suggest that children who did not have a good relationship with their father are more likely to develop a father concept that is problematic. The role of the father in antiquity must be placed in proper perspective as we examine related texts in the nt despite the remoteness of patriarchal structures to our Western framework. 42 Aasgaard, Beloved, 64. 40 41

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6.21)43 and refers to the church as τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς (‘brothers’; 6.23). To refer to Tychicus as a ‘beloved brother’ is to assert a closeness of relationship. Though not qualified by the adjective ‘beloved’, the author extends this sibling-like relationship to other believers.44 Arzt-Grabner’s papyrological study shows that both metaphorical and literal use of ἀδελφός in the ancient patriarchal cultures ‘expresses closeness, solidarity and some kind of bond of engagement’.45 Sibling relationships were important in antiquity, with a central place in the family structure, carrying out vital tasks within the family and so linked to expectations of shared responsibility, loyalty, positive emotions, diversity, tolerance, forgiveness, concern for honor, and harmony.46

Aasgaard points out that Paul’s use of sibling language ‘broadens the motivational basis for his ethics’.47 It is important to note that solidarity and interdependence in sibling relationships were not a threat to the patriarchal norms or vice versa. On the contrary, strong family ties and relationship are key features in patriarchal cultures. Ephesians, like the undisputed Pauline letters, uses sibling language to foster mutuality and a deep sense of belonging.

Ephesians’ continuity with Pauline use of kinship language The study of kinship lexemes in Ephesians shows that they are utilized in a manner consistent with Paul to harness social identity and solidarity in the Cf. A. Nobbs, ‘“Beloved Brothers” in the NT and Early Christian World’, in The New Testament in Its First Century Setting, ed. P. J. Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 143–50. Nobbs indicates that the expression ‘beloved brother’ was not used among Christian groups in antiquity. It is also noteworthy that Tychicus is the first individual to be referred to as a ‘beloved brother’ in Paul (cf. Col. 4.7 and Phlm. 16). 44 P. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastorals (London: Oxford University Press, 1964); B. M. Metzger, ‘Reconsideration of Certain Arguments against the Pauline Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles’, ExpTim 70, no. 3 (1958). While Harrison and Metzger show the flawed nature of using numerical tabulations and statistics in the authorship debate of the Pastorals, their findings may shed light on the weakness of using a simple word count to establish a credible conclusion in the study of the New Testament. The fact that ἀδελφός is used less frequently in Ephesians, though conveying the same sense as undisputed Pauline letters, is not a good reason to dismiss its import or suggest that it does not have the meaning it conveys elsewhere. 45 P. Arzt-Grabner, ‘“Brothers” and “Sisters” in Documentary Papyri and in Early Christianity’, RivB 50 (2002). 46 R. Aasgaard, ‘“Role Ethics” in Paul: The Significance of the Sibling Role for Paul’s Ethical Thinking’, NTS 48, no. 4 (2002): 520. Also C. Osiek and D. L. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox press, 1997), 38–42. 47 Aasgaard, ‘Role Ethics’, 513. 43

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believing community. The argument for an egalitarian church in the first century is anachronistic, since there is no evidence to that effect either in Paul or elsewhere. The noble aspirations for equality or an egalitarian ethos should not be read into Paul or disputed Pauline letters, since that misconstrues the social realities of the time and incorrectly demonizes the patriarchal norms of the Graeco-Roman world. In so doing, we have ignored the richness and complexity of family relations in antiquity, and their power to work suggestively for biblical authors such as the writer of Ephesians. Plutarch’s treatise On Brotherly Love, which features frequently in the study of Paul’s use of fictive sibling language, is instructive. While Plutarch’s emphasis on solidarity, goodwill and emotional bonds attracts attention, his concept of a hierarchy of relationships is often rather marginalized in the quest for an egalitarian Paul. In other words, the evidence often cited in support of ‘egalitarianism’ or a departure from patriarchal ethos in the discussion of fictive sibling relations is, in fact, grounded in patriarchal conventions. In Plutarch’s hierarchy of honour, brothers come first before friends; parents receive the greatest and highest honour only after the gods.48 He also underscores the importance of household relations (including parents) as a model for other relationships. Plutarch asserts, ‘for most friendships are in reality shadows, imitations, and images of that first friendship which nature implanted in children toward parents and in brothers toward brothers’.49 Plutarch’s treatise is couched in the patriarchal framework of his time. The evidence that New Testament scholars use to show solidarity in sibling relationships (e.g. Plutarch) typify how such relationships worked in the patriarchal cultures of antiquity; I have found no evidence of the existence of egalitarian social structure in the New Testament era. The studies of kinship language in the undisputed Pauline letters (see above) have been inadequate in their focus on some select aspects of kinship (like sibling relations) while failing to examine the role of fathers, mothers, siblings and even slaves in the household together. The quest for an egalitarian Paul in his use of sibling language thus requires revision in the assertions and conclusions reached. For example, we find Paul’s depiction of an affectionate

Plutarch, Mor., 479F, 491B. Plutarch, Mor., 479D.

48 49

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father-child relations in 1 Cor. 4.14 where he refers to his readers as ὡς τέκνα μου ἀγαπητά in language similar to that used for God in Eph. 5.1: ὡς τέκνα ἀγαπητά. Elsewhere, Paul references the parent-child relationship in unambiguously patriarchal terms (2 Cor. 12.14; cf. Gal. 4.18–20). Paul even assumes the role of the patria potestas to charge the Thessalonians to conduct themselves in a befitting manner (1 Thess. 2.11–12). Perhaps, Paul’s view of patriarchal relations is more acute in 1 Cor. 11.3 where he names the man/ husband as the head of the woman/wife similarly to what we find in Ephesians (κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνήρ in 1 Cor. 11.3 and ἀνήρ ἐστιν κεφαλὴ τῆς γυναικός in Eph. 5.23).50 The undisputed Pauline letters do not contain any of the patriarchal household codes; it is, however, insufficient to argue from silence that Paul did not subscribe to the patriarchal ethos of his time. A holistic study of Paul’s use of sibling language would clarify his vision of the church as a household of God and a community of siblings who are instructed to live at peace with one another. Ephesians, like the undisputed Pauline letters, adopts fictive kinship lexemes to construct the identity of the church as the multi-ethnic household of God in which mutual interdependence and concord are imperative. The author links the church to domestic relationships to reinforce the inseparable moral aspirations for the church. To reiterate, Ephesians uses kinship lexemes consistently to promote concord in the church and in the household of the readership. The fictive kinship does not contradict or override the natural family in the letter.51 The quest for solidarity is grounded in the readers’ standing with God both in the depiction of the church as ‘the house of God’ and in the household code (5.21–6.9). The micro household is placed within the framework of the macro household of God to make an oikos-ecclesia linkage instead of an nt scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century saw several attempts, often competing attempts, in trying to ‘de-patriarchalize’ Paul and his use of κεφαλή – does it refer to source, prominence or what? One may observe how the similar expression in Ephesians lacks such attempts to deconstruct the patriarchal framework in the same vein. 51 D. K. Darko, No Longer Living as the Gentiles: Differentiation and Shared Ethical Values in Ephesians 4.17–6.9, LNTS (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 71–103. I have demonstrated here how Ephesians is consistent in its use of fictive kinship language and in the framework of its household code. I point to several loopholes in the ‘apologetic hypothesis’ for the household code in Ephesians and argue that kinship in the letter should be read in its own milieu, not anachronistically. 50

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oikos-polis linkage. The author constructs the identity of the church as a macro household first, and then shows how the moral aspirations he espouses flow into propriety in the domestic setting. This is particularly significant since the earliest reference to house churches is associated with Ephesus. The view that Ephesians departs from an egalitarian ethos in the Pauline churches to adopt a patriarchal ethos in post-Pauline churches needs to be revisited and revised. The theological and moral framework of its kinship lexemes shows a consistent pattern in the author’s aim to promote one identity and internal cohesion. Lastly, I do not argue that kinship is the only instrument being employed to promote the social identity of the readers of Ephesians, nor even necessarily the most effective framework. I do contend, however, that (1) it is significant in the way it contributes to the author’s aim to promote group identity and solidarity, and (2) that the kinship lexemes in Ephesians are consistent with what we find in the undisputed Pauline letters. This language is rich, and deserving of further attention from scholars.

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Echoes of Paul’s Philippians in Polycarp: Texts that Create Identity Sergio Rosell Nebreda

Ancient Christian texts played an important role as constructors of identity.1 The characters portrayed in both narratives and theologically charged letters – be they heroes or villains – embodied values and social practices for individuals and groups to adhere to or to reject. These texts embark readers and hearers alike into an intense social dialogue, drawing them into a dramatic history that is in fact theirs.2 For these particular texts, ultimately, invite all to play an active part in the drama of salvation – God’s economy – so that, as they become part of the story, their lives will be forever transformed (Phil. 1.21; 2.5–11; Pol. Phil., 5.2; 9.1–2; Mart. Pol., 2.1; 19.1). It is here that Paul’s letter to the Philippians, together with Polycarp-related writings, offer us a unique window in order to explore the drama of a faithful Christ-like identity formation. This development, nonetheless, takes place in the midst of opposition and struggle, when different voices threaten to silence its particular – and alternative – view of human relationships and the understanding of the divine. Jack T. Sanders, Charisma, Converts, Competitors: Societal and Sociological Factors in the Success of Early Christianity (London: SCM Press, 2000), 168; Jeremy Punt, ‘Paul and the Others: Insiders, Outsiders, and Animosity’, in Animosity, the Bible, and Us: Some European, North American, and South African Perspectives, John T. Fitzgerald, Fika J. van Rensburg, and Herrie F. van Rooy (eds) (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 137; Klyne Snodgrass, ‘Introduction to a Hermeneutics of Identity’, BSac 168, no. 669 (2011): 5.  2 Holland: ‘persons and, to a lesser extent, groups are caught in the tensions between past histories that have settled in them and the present discourses and images that attract them or somehow impinge upon them. In this continuous self-fashioning, identities are hard-won standpoints that, however dependent upon social support and however vulnerable to change, make at least a modicum of self-direction possible. They are possibilities for mediating agency’; Dorothy C. Holland et al., Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, 4th edn. (Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 4.  1

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Death and martyrdom The last few days had been tense, filled with concern for the brethren. He had hoped many could escape the frenzy of the mobs, though times such as these were a God-given opportunity to pay ultimate witness to the Lord. He was hiding from the persecutors in a local farm after the throngs, disconcerted at the calm disposition of the Christ-followers dying before the beasts, had chanted his name to be done away along with all the atheists (Mart. Pol., 3.2).3 He had gathered with close companions, spending sleepless nights interceding for the churches around the world, as was his custom (5.1). Some nights ago he had received a revelation of his impending martyrdom: his pillow caught on fire, a sure sign he was to suffer at the stake. Two slaves, under torture, had confessed about his whereabouts, so the hour was near. He could hear the approaching steps of his captors. There was a chance to escape once more, but he knew the time had finally come: ‘The will of God be done’ (7.1). The persecutors were astonished at the calmness of the old man, who ordered that food would be set for all and only requested an hour so that he could pray undisturbed (7.2). He was then taken to the city mounted on an ass, to stand before the captain of the police, Herod by name4 – imagine the pun – and a certain Nicetes, who asked him: ‘What’s so grave in saying that Caesar is Lord, and offering incense … and thus saving yourself?’ (8.2). Nicetes continued: ‘Have respect to your age’, and other things in accordance, as it is their wont to say; ‘Swear by the genius of Caesar; repent and say, “Away with the atheists”.

The ‘pagans’ considered the Christ-followers as atheists, for they did not worship their gods (see also 9.2). Since the gods protected both cities and inhabitants, the ‘unbelief ’ of the Christ-followers was a menace to the pax deorum; David Álvarez Cineira, ‘El Cristianismo en el Imperio Romano’, in Así Empezó el Cristianismo, ed. Rafael Aguirre (Estella: Verbo Divino, 2010), 404. Walsh dismisses the element of accusation as the main reason for pagan hatred up to 150 ad, though admits it is central in Mart. Pol. (ca 155 ad); Joseph J. Walsh, ‘On Christian Atheism’, VC 45, no. 3 (1991): 270. While de Ste. Croix thought early Christians were charged ‘for the name’, Sherwin-White acknowledged judicial reasons and Christian contumacia as responsible for the adverse perception on the part of local authorities; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ‘Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, Past & Present 26, no. 1 (1963): 28–33; A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted ? – an Amendment’, Past & Present 27, no. 1 (1964): 23–7.  4 It is clear that the author attempted to present Polycarp’s martyrdom in close parallel with Christ’s passion (Mart. Pol., 1.2); cf. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Passions des Martyrs et Les Genres Littéraires (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1921), 19. However, we must beware of taking as parallels what could just be general reminiscences; cf. B. Dehandschutter, ‘The New Testament and the Martyrdom of Polycarp’, in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, Andrew F. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 403.  3

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Then Polycarp with solemn countenance looked upon the whole multitude of lawless heathen that were in the stadium, and waved his hand to them; and groaning and looking up to heaven he said, ‘Away with the atheists’.5

The scene is a clear example of the clash between self/group identification (internally oriented) and the categorization of others (externally oriented). This internal dialectic was part of the process of identity formation of the early Christ-followers.6 The old man answers straightforwardly, since authorities seem unable to come to terms with his true identity (Mart. Pol., 10.1): If you suppose vainly that I will swear by the genius of Caesar, as you say, and act as if you are ignorant who I am, hear it plainly: I am a Christian (Χριστιανός εἰμι).

Polycarp’s affirmation is outstanding. He defines himself in a single phrase that encapsulates not only a body of doctrine, but also a lifestyle that can be communicated to others (10.1–2; 17.1). The narrative continues with Polycarp’s public and gruesome death, infused with courage, joy, and grace, while the startled proconsul sent the herald to proclaim three times in the stadium that Polycarp had confessed himself to be a Christian. ‘And all the multitude marveled that there should be so great a difference between the unbelievers and the elect’ (16.1). And so we afterwards took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place; where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the birth-day of his martyrdom for the commemoration of those that have already fought in the contest, and for the training and preparation of those that shall do so hereafter. (Mart. Pol., 18.2–3; my emphasis)7

The Martyrdom of Polycarp highlights the sufferer as the central actor of the drama ‘through which a new way of understanding is created and Mart. Pol., 9.2–3. Polycarp challenges external categorizations. If Christ-followers were labelled as ‘atheists’ by their countrymen, it is he that categorizes them (the ‘other’) as the true atheists. Cf. Everett Ferguson, ‘Early Christian Martyrdom and Civil Disobedience’, JECS 1, no. 1 (1993): 73–93.  6 Jenkins observes that categorizations are ‘less likely to stick if they differ markedly from existing identifications’; Richard Jenkins, ‘Categorization: Identity, Social Process and Epistemology’, Current Sociology 48, no. 3 (2000): 21.  7 Cobb stresses that these stories are ‘both descriptive and prescriptive’; L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 5.  5

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maintained’.8 Polycarp identifies as a Christian in public and is readily rejected by the multitudes (12.2–3).9 Thus, while the individual adheres to a particular self-identity, the ‘others’ in the story straightforwardly oppose it, having categorized him differently. We know that an important element of what constitutes a particular social/personal identity is not only what the person/ group identifies with, but also ‘what they are not’. No wonder, then, that the narrative delineates strict boundaries between the ‘elect’ and the ‘unbelievers’ (16.1) even when the latter (the more powerful) categorized the former as ‘atheists’ (cf. 3.2; 9.2). Social identity is never unilateral, that is, it is composed by both self-image and public image.10 Polycarp’s discussion with the authorities reveals that he thinks they are willingly ignorant of his true identity (cf. 10.1), so that the way people categorized him and the movement (as ‘atheists’) does not fit at all with his self-identification as a ‘Christian’. The story aims at constructing a viable social identity in dialogue with society, so the characters reflect who they truly are (and what they are not), in light of their actions,11 placing before the readers a choice: whether to side with the ‘ones’ or with the ‘others’, however stereotyped these groups might be.12 For Lieu, Polycarp’s simple statement redefines and rearticulates self-identity. A point to take into consideration is the force of the ‘other’, for Christianity’s identity was constructed in opposition.13 We should not be deceived by the colourful narrative notes of the text, the sharp contrast between Polycarp’s self-control and the lack of it in the multitudes. We are to keep in mind that Judith Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2002), 212.  9 The few early references we have concerning pagan views on Christianity are at best sketchy and ill founded; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100–400 (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1984), 20. The first mention of the Christian movement by a Roman writer dates from about eighty years after the beginning of the movement; Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), xix. 10 Jenkins, ‘Categorization’, 9. 11 Identities ‘happen in social practice’; Holland et al., Identity, vii. 12 Lieu: ‘the martyrs … are themselves constructs, constructed by the texts’; Lieu, Neither Jew, 218. Also Lieu: ‘studies of identity in antiquity have focused on texts, not only because it is these that survive, but out of a recognition of the constructive role of texts in that world, particularly that of the Roman Empire. Moreover, numerous references to reading as well as to writing demonstrate an assumption that a wide audience would have experienced Christian texts. It is the texts’ own presupposition that they will shape their audiences’ self-understanding even if their authors must have taken for granted how few would actually read them’; Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 10. 13 Ignatius (Rom., 3.3): ‘Christianity is not a work of persuasion but it is [one] of greatness when it is hated by the world’. Lieu: ‘the claiming of this identity involves the denial of other alternatives’; Lieu, Neither Jew, 215.  8

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the public nature of Roman executions shows that one purpose of humiliating the miscreant was to alienate him from his entire social context, so that spectators, regardless of class, were united in a feeling of moral superiority as they ridiculed the miscreant.14

Therefore, this dialogue is more than a calm and settled conversation;15 it opposes the crude reality of public humiliation, violence, and overall, its intended exemplary role (by enforcing execution) so that μίμησις/imitatio on the part of would-be followers is deterred. However, martyrdom became such a powerful witness that it included a didactic element, as noted earlier (cf. 18.2–3). We must notice that public opinion was also moulded at the ‘amphitheatre’.16 Our particular reading, informed by social identity theory, allows us to discern social and ideological forces at work within the overall strategy of the texts. In Martyrdom of Polycarp the construction of what we call a Christianidentity becomes central. Lieu observes: Yet within this drama the determinative moment is not the death, however extended or graphic, nor even the preceding torture; rather is the declaration Χριστιανός εἰμι, Christiana sum, although this is no less the moment choice is made for death; the individual identity of Christian belongs to the martyr. It is, moreover, emphatically a public moment, and a public identity.17

Polycarp’s public self-identification, ‘I am a Christian’, is striking for its starkness and begs the question of what is meant by it. Such a confession […] is also a refusal to accept alternative ways of finding and describing one’s self by means of security, pleasure, power, action, nationhood, ethnicity or

Coleman describes it as ‘rituals of humiliation’; K. M. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments’, JRS 80 (1990): 47. 15 Schüssler Fiorenza criticizes Paul’s politics of ‘othering’ (and vilification) because of the negative outcome it has bred in the history of interpretation. SIT can aid interpreters to better understand how stereotyping, otherness, etc. are achieved via categorization in order to maintain group cohesion, rather than allowing ideology alone have the last word; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Paul and the Politics of Interpretation’, in Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl, ed. Richard A. Horsley (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), 45. 16 ‘Their parliament’ (Hopkins), quoted in Cobb; Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in Roman History. Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 16; Cobb, Dying, 38. 17 Lieu, Christian Identity, 213. 14

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honour. Instead, Christian discipleship means giving one’s self over to a divine designation, even if that means suffering and death.18

The Smyrnean had sometime earlier written a letter to the church in Philippi (Pol. Phil.), a Christ-following community to whom Paul wrote some decades earlier (Phil.).19 I propose to use the three texts mentioned in the introduction (Phil., Pol. Phil., and Mart. Pol.) as roadmaps in order to answer what it means ‘to possess a Christian identity’ according to Paul’s view, since he so influenced the Christ-followers of the second century, Polycarp in particular.20 Literary dependence on Paul is obvious on the part of the Polycarp-related texts under scrutiny, but this, in itself, is not enough to confirm theological/ ideological tutelage.21 It is clear that similar mechanisms for constructing a social identity according to Paul’s Christ-model are at work in Polycarprelated texts. Thus, I will follow a more encompassing approach, focusing on literary, theological/ideological and social insights.22 Social identity theory (SIT) sheds further light as we combine these perspectives, since it builds on traditional historical-literary methods but asks how these belief-systems were constructed in social interaction.

Michael Jensen, Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 2–3. The term ‘Christianity’ was first used by Ignatius (Magn. 10.1–3; Phld., 6.1; Rom., 3.3) as opposed to ‘Judaism’, so I have opted for using the term ‘Christ-following communities’ to refer to the early churches; cf. Sergio Rosell Nebreda, Christ Identity: A Social-Scientific Reading of Philippians 2.5–11, FRLANT 242 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 28; William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 12. 20 This influence is clear in ad Philippenses, where Polycarp repeatedly refers to Paul’s authority; Paul Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament: The Occasion, Rhetoric, Theme, and Unity of the Epistle to the Philippians and Its Allusions to New Testament Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 216–35. 21 Even if literary dependency (i.e. Mart. Pol. on the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament texts) cannot be conclusively proven, this is hardly ‘the whole story’; M. W. Holmes, ‘The Martyrdom of Polycarp and the New Testament Passion Narratives’, in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, Andrew F. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 418. 22 ‘As we move further away from overt citation, the source recedes into the discursive distance, the intertextual relations become less determinative, and the demand placed on the reader’s listening powers grows greater. As we near the vanishing point of the echo, it inevitably becomes difficult to decide whether we are really hearing an echo at all, or whether we are only conjuring things out of the murmurings of our own imaginations’; in Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 23. 18 19

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Paul’s main emphases in Philippians Paul’s Philippians has several purposes in mind. The ad hoc nature of his correspondence implies a variegated approach to urgent issues Pauline communities were facing,23 a novel way of dealing with new challenges.24 In Philippians, particularly, Paul aims to create a Christ-identity based on the example of Jesus Christ (2.5–11), a Christ-phronesis, a life oriented toward the example of Christ’s self-denial and surrendered on behalf of others, which is central. The reversal of values shown in the Christ-hymn serves as an exhortation to the community to align with a radical redefinition of society’s symbolic universe (based on honour and power) in light of God’s assessment of Jesus the Christ’s humiliation and self-giving attitude. The hymn’s theme – Christ’s downward and upward movement – possesses the potential to transform the way they live. Not only that, it renders positive those elements readily rejected in society, understood now under a new light. It is a radical redefinition of values, a call to acquire a Christ-phronesis (orientation towards Christ’s values; 2.5), which allows them to perceive ‘reality’ in a new way.25 Thus, the apparent failure of the mission in partnership with the apostle – now in prison – is transformed into a possibility for the advancement of the gospel (1.12). There is still a more pressing problem: potential disunity, embodied by two principal women (4.2). Paul’s cure for such a threat is to imitate (συμμιμεῖσθαι) those like himself and others who do not seek after their own interest (3.17), but have learned the way of Christ-phronesis based on Christ’s lordly example of humility (ταπεινοφροσύνη, 2.3), a recurring theme in the letter.26 Encouragement J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul the Letter-Writer: His World, His Options, His Skills (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995), 42. 24 Gerd Theissen, El Nuevo Testamento: Historia, Literatura, Religión, trans. María del Carmen Blanco Moreno and Ramón Alfonso Diez Aragón (Santander: Sal Terrae, 2003), 99–135; see also Mart. Pol., 3.2. 25 Thus, Jesus’ manner of death, on a Roman cross, rendered his very memory accursed, ‘a true damnatio memoriae’; Dieter Georgi, Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology, trans. David E. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 74. 26 Klaus Wengst, Humility: Solidarity of the Humiliated (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 49. This is the new way of relating with others; cf. Rosell, Christ, 218. Andrews: ‘As Aristotle wrote [Rhet 1.9.1], noble persons (ἀγαθός) deserve one’s praise while the base (κακός) deserve one’s blame. Those who experienced hardships were separated by social status, those who endure possessed dignitas, and deserved respect. Those who fail to endure misfortune (ἀτυχέω) are the weak, the “humble” (ταπεινός) and “slavish” (ἀνδραποδώδης)’; Scott B. Andrews, ‘Too Weak Not to Lead: The Form and Function of 2 Cor 11.23b–33’, NTS 41, no. 2 (1995): 266. The kind of solidarity with the weak Christ’s (and Paul’s) example displays is a radical redefinition of how individuals are to relate in the community of the faithful. 23

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and correction form the core of Philippians, calling the Philippians to stand united and resist threats both by pagan adversaries (1.28) and overzealous missionaries (3.2). They are to stand fast, faithful to their call in Christ as they await their salvation and the fullness of their Christ-identity that ultimately triumphs over a timocratic and self-seeking system destined to destruction (1.29; 3.19). The ‘court of reputation’ is radically transformed, and reward and punishment are placed within an eschatological framework that allows the Philippians to appreciate this transformation from a global perspective. There is no better encouragement for those in the (apparently) losing side of society than to realize they side with the victor. They follow Jesus Christ, who underwent a radical status reversal, and show the entire created order what pleases God, who has the last word. He who appeared to the world as a slave-God (Phil. 2.7) is cosmocrator (2.9–11), holding universal lordship even over the Roman emperor.27 How can a group realistically opt towards such a paradigm shift and how does it take place? No social group in its right mind desires to join the lessprivileged group unless what it has to offer can bring any benefit in the form of positive self-esteem or the like, usually accomplished via comparison with outgroups.28 Through Christ’s voluntary abasement – though being like God (2.6) – the believers’ perception of reality is transformed: humility, abasement, suffering and service for the other (notice δοῦλος-related language)29 are now seen as imitatio Christi, the way of the victor.30 Paul himself has adopted this particular way of life or Christ-orientation. He describes himself as a slave (Phil. 1.1), takes present suffering as a way to advance the gospel (1.12) and has learned – by way of comparison – that his former life of Jewish privilege Bornhaüser noticed this expression in opposition to the typical reference to Νέρον Καῖσαρ κύριος Σωτήρ; Karl Bornhäuser, Jesus Imperator Mundi (Phil., 3,17–21 U. 2,5–12) (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1938), 14. 28 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 37. Moreover people perceive themselves positively, since social comparison is done in such a way that they receive positive feedback by way of comparison and/or contrast, although this not may be the sole reason for identification; cf. Rupert Brown, Group Processes: Dynamics within and between Groups, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 359. 29 I refer here to ‘linkage group’, an expression deriving from genetics applied to abstract concepts; in John T. Fitzgerald, ‘Christian Friendship: John, Paul, and the Philippians’, Int 61, no. 3 (2007): 288. 30 Rosell, Christ, 339. The role of narrative to influence and link with our own life-story is a powerful element in the creation of the collected memory; Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 23; David Horrell, ‘Paul’s Narratives or Narrative Structure? The Significance of Paul’s Story’, in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002), 168. 27

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(ethnic/religious identity) is of no value in light of the new paradigm that is knowing Jesus the Christ (3.7–10; combining again resurrection and sufferings). This personal assessment does not deny other kind of experiences – sublime and intimate (2 Cor. 12; Gal. 1.12) – or even hardships (his Peristasenkatalogen: Rom. 8.35; 1 Cor. 4.10–13a; 2 Cor. 1.8–9; 4.8–9; etc.). In fact Paul understands suffering (and its counterpart, patience/endurance) as a kind of ‘endowment’, not as virtus in Stoic fashion (cf. Phil. 1.29: ὅτι ὑμῖν ἐχαρίσθη τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, οὐ μόνον τὸ εἰς αὐτὸν πιστεύειν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πάσχειν). That is why Paul can also exhort the Philippian believers to act Christ-like toward one another (2.3–4), in direct defiance of GraecoRoman mores based on timocratic and privileged elements.31 All this could sound as pious chatter, for dare we speak of a ‘real’ transformation when the status quo has not basically changed?32 The Philippian congregation, unable to climb up in the social scale, looks for social change via social creativity. It looks for new dimensions for intergroup comparison and finds a crucial one: they belong to a superior kingdom which is defined by God their father (2.15). Christ followers share in the triumph of the victor, but Christ’s lordship serves an even higher purpose. It re-defines the value of the status quo (which remains unchanged) and releases a positive social identity which has now a narrative (the Christ-hymn) that serves to consolidate the social memory of the group.33

These social competition strategies emerge when the subordinate group (the Christ-followers) is able to present cognitive alternatives of change. It Peter Oakes, ‘Re-Mapping the Universe: Paul and the Emperor in 1 Thessalonians and Philippians’, JSNT 27, no. 3 (2005): 302, defines Roman ideology well: ‘Roman discourse which sustains certain power relations. The power relations in question are those of Roman society. They have both external and internal dimensions. Externally, they constitute Rome’s dominant position over against any competing values. Internally, they constitute a hierarchy that runs from the emperor down to the most marginal inhabitants of the Empire’. Cf. Gideon Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City: Past and Present (New York: Free Press, 1960), 225–8. The inhabitants of Philippi – a Roman colony in Greek soil – were impelled to follow these traditions with zeal, showing submission and accord with the more powerful Romans; Rosell, Christ, 183. 32 Abrams and Hogg show that it can take place within the individual, for ‘private and public self-focused attention leads to different behavioral outcomes because they involve behavioral self-regulation in terms of different standards. Private self-focus involves attention to one’s selfportrayal. When attention is directed towards self or group member, behavior will be regulated in such a way that will make it consistent with and supportive of that self-definition’; Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg, eds., Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), 98. 33 Rosell, Christ, 339. 31

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challenges the status quo because it is no longer perceived as immutable; thus a remapping of the symbolic universe is in order.34 Social change becomes a possibility, and the subordinate group mobilizes, according to different strategies, from passive resistance to even violent terrorism.35 This last statement takes us a step further, for then we are able to discern ways in which the Christ-following movement implemented these strategies in the public arena. Paul contrasts this present earthly and passing kingdom (1.28; 3.18–19),36 based on power and status, to the other, which reaches across the entire created order and is forever (1.28, ‘salvation;’ cf. 3.20–1). These contrasting groups are portrayed as two different communities with distinct boundaries – belonging ultimately to different kinds of πολιτεύματα: the opponents belong to and have their identity in the social order of an earthly πολίτευμα, and the believers are citizens of a heavenly πολίτευμα and have their identity and security in the coming of their ‘Savior’ and ‘Lord’.37

This heavenly homeland not only possesses the power to completely transform their lives (cf. 3.21), according to the power of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is able to subdue all things, but it also endows its subjects with the privilege of believing and suffering for him (1.29). These are the two elements that stand out as we relate Paul with Polycarp. They are the basic values that underpin the heavenly πολίτευμα and fill with content their Christ-identity. The first has to do with the practice of humility (ταπεινοφροσύνη) in social relationships, opposing present social mores that rule against it.38 We have to remember that ‘humility’ was not precisely

Oakes, ‘Re-Mapping’, 302–5, categorizes several relations between Christianity and imperial ideology, with the latter claiming absolute control over the inhabitants of the empire. Cf. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1990). 35 Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), 29. 36 The in-word in the colonies was ‘peace and security’ (εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσφάλεια, cf. 1 Thess. 5.3), but for Paul this is but an omen (ἔνδειξις) of its finitude (Phil. 1.28; ‘destruction’, ἀπωλείας). 37 Mikael Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State: Christians, Jews and Civic Authorities in 1 Thessalonians, Romans, and Philippians (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001), 268. 38 Witherington: ‘humility was not seen as a virtue in Greco-Roman antiquity. This word means something like “base-minded”, “shabby”, “of no account”, and in its adjectival form it was no compliment at all (it meant having the mentality of a slave) … Paul’s most striking contribution to this development is that he connects this idea with the founder of his faith’; Ben Witherington, III, Friendship and Finances in Philippi: The Letter of Paul to the Philippians (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994), 63. 34

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appreciated in the eyes of Graeco-Roman writers. It contained a negative connotation as servility and expressed mean-spiritedness.39 In this context, What happens to social hierarchies in the Christian community when they come under the searchlight of an ethic that calls on everyone to serve and consider the interest of others? By this schema, leaders become at most exemplary or head servants, and Roman pecking orders become irrelevant or even obsolescent within the life of the community. In this regard the Christian community seems to have acted rather like some ancient clubs, trade guilds, and societies (collegia) in that a more egalitarian approach was taken and even slaves were allowed to have their say and assume some leadership roles.40

The second relates to the first, for it prepares the group to be willing to suffer as they practice their common faith.41 Suffering possesses no intrinsic value for Paul. Rather, it is the logical outcome of righteous living in the midst of an ‘evil and crooked generation’, as the Philippian believers live as τέκνα θεοῦ (2.15).42 These two elements merge in the apostle’s central exhortation: ‘live as good citizens (πολιτεύεσθε), worthy of the gospel of Christ’ (1.27), which has the sense of living out their Christ-identity in the public arena of politeia.43 We come now to the crucial nexus for these two elements – humility and suffering – as part and parcel of Paul’s particular view on Christ-phronesis, which merges in the δοῦλος-identity expressed in the Christ Hymn (2.6–11). Paul portrays God as he who specialises in displaying his action through the apparently insignificant – the ‘power’ of the δοῦλος – to demonstrate his power and character. God saves through weakness, a recurring Pauline Markus Bockmuehl, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, 4th ed. (London: A & C Black, 1997), 110. Minucius Felix (Octavius 9.4): ‘To say that their ceremonies on a man put to death for his crime and on a fatal wood on a cross (hominem summon supplicio pro facinore punitum et crucis ligna feralia) is to assign to these abandoned wretches sanctuaries which are appropriate to them (congruentia perditis sceleratisque trinuit altaria) and the kind of worship they deserve’. 40 Witherington, Friendship, 65; original emphasis. 41 Pereira thinks Paul’s expression, ‘being poured as a libation’ (Phil. 2.17), functions as a metaphor that relates to the sufferings included in [Christian] ministry, even its extreme case, the possibility of dying a violent death; Á. Pereira, ‘ “Pablo Libado” O de Cómo el Ministerio Deviene Culto (Flp 2,17; 2Tm 4,6–8)’ (paper presented at Asociación Biblica Española, Burgos, Spain, September, 2011). In the temple of Jerusalem sacrificial rites could be performed without libations, but never libations without sacrifices, which seems to be common also in Graeco-Roman sacrifices; (cf. Hesiodus, Op. (Opera et dies) 336–8; Plutarch, Aristides, 21.5–6). 42 Hafemann: ‘Rather than questioning the legitimacy of his apostleship because of his suffering, Paul considered suffering to be a characteristic mark of his apostolic ministry’; S. J. Hafemann, ‘Suffering’, in DPL, Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (eds) (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), 919. 43 Cf. Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 81–104. 39

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theological topos (cf. 1 Cor. 1.25; 2.2–3; 4.10–13; 2 Cor. 12.9–10; 13.3–4; Gal. 4.13–14; Phil. 3.7–11), which corresponds to a particular life-style (1 Cor. 2.2–3; 9.22; 2 Cor. 11.29–30). This positive approach to suffering and weakness/humility clearly runs counter to the core of Graeco-Roman society, based on privilege and power.44 The early Christ-followers ‘opted’ for different alternatives during the first two centuries,45 and we know that, despite lack of knowledge of the movement(s) on the part of civil authorities in general, Christ-followers faced increasing opposition as they competed with other religious manifestations in society.46 Perkins thinks that for their second century cotemporaries ‘this was how Christians presented themselves. Christian suffering was the message encoded in nearly all of the Christian representation of the period.’47 It is tricky to speak so generally about a movement for which we have little evidence. However, we now turn to Polycarp’s letter in order to be more concrete about our assertions.48

Polycarp’s Ad Philippenses The bishop of Smyrna (cf. Tertullian, Praescr., 32.2.) wrote his only extant letter upon the request of the Philippian church (Phil., 3.1), and it received

Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Jon E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 45 I use ‘opting’ because early Christianity, as a wide movement, deeply reasoned about how to live the message of its founder in a society holding a different value system. Paul is a clear example: He insists that the Philippians choose the right course of action, the right φρόνησις that spells the values of the heavenly politeuma. The rational aspect of such an exhortation – across the letter – is hard to miss. Cf. H. Paulsen, ‘Φρονέω’, in EDNT, H. Balz and G. Schneider (eds) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 438–9; Moisés Silva, Philippians, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 96. 46 Eva Ebel, Die Attraktivität Früher Christlicher Gemeinden: die Gemeinde von Korinth im Spiegel Griechisch-Römischer Vereine, WUNT 178, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). 47 Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 23. This representation – and its interpretation – is always incomplete, for a ‘culture’s discourse represents not the “real” world, but rather a world mediated through the social categories, relations and institutions operating in the specific culture’; Perkins, Suffering Self, 3. Against Perkins’ ‘reductionist’ view, see Cobb, Dying, 10. 48 C. K. Barrett, ‘What Minorities?’, David Hellholm, Halvor Moxnes, and Turid K. Seim (eds), Mighty Minorities? Minorities in Early Christianity, Positions and Strategies: Essays in Honour of Jacob Jervell on His 70th Birthday, 21 May 1995 (Oslo; Stockholm: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 1. 44

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significant attention surely due to its link with the Ignatian corpus.49 Polycarp is a privileged witness to the apostolic preaching, a stern defender of the tradition under attack by gnostic families, whom he accuses of ‘twisting the words of the lord’ (7.1).50 The Philippian believers had suffered on account of their faith (9.1) and seen Ignatius and companions – in chains – on their way to martyrdom. The theme of suffering is thus central. Polycarp is hesitant to exercise his authority over the addressees, perhaps feeling the comparison with the much-loved apostle Paul who had founded the church (cf. 3.2). Though Paul’s Philippians is not the text most frequently cited by Polycarp, ‘it is a natural text to use for more detailed comparative study, because Polycarp consciously writes in the shadow of that letter’.51 My aim is to trace the links between the two letters on the themes of suffering and humility, basic blocks in the Christ-identity according to Paul. The first thing worth noticing is Polycarp’s manner of addressing the church: she ‘sojourns’ (παροικούσῃ; cf. Mart. Pol. παροικούσα). Though not the usual Pauline formula, the concept is in view if we attend to Paul’s heavenly commonwealth (cf. Phil. 3.20–1). This idea plays an important role in our three texts, possessing a certain tension that resolves in different creative ways. Though the Christ-followers belong to an alternative πολίτευμα, they too show the character of their heavenly citizenship via their public participation, that is, by the way they live as citizens amidst their ‘other’ citizens, those who ‘dwell’ and ultimately find their reason for existence and telos within the polis (cf. Mart. Pol., 12.2; κατοικούντων). It is easy to observe concomitances with Diognetus, 5.1–10, roughly coetaneous: For Christians (Χριστιανοί) are distinguished from the rest of men neither by country nor by language nor by customs. 2For nowhere do they dwell (κατοικοῦσιν) in cities of their own; they do not use any strange form of speech or practise a singular mode of life. […] 4But while they dwell (καταικοῦντες) in both Greek and barbarian cities […] and follow the customs of the land in 1

J. J. Ayán Calvo, Ignacio de Antioquía, Cartas; Policarpo de Esmirna, Carta; Carta de La Iglesia de Esmirna a La Iglesia de Filomeno, Fuentes Patrísticas 1 (Madrid: Ciudad Nueva, 1991), 193. 50 Most certainly a reference to heresy; Paul Hartog, ‘The Opponents of Polycarp, Philippians, and 1 John’, in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, Andrew F. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 376. 51 Peter Oakes, ‘Leadership and Suffering in the Letters of Polycarp and Paul to the Philippians’, in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, Andrew F. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 354. 49

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dress and food and other matters of living, they show forth the remarkable and admittedly strange order of their own citizenship (παραδόξον ἐνδείκνυνται τὴν κατάστασιν τῆς ἑαυτῶν πολιτείας). They live in fatherlands of their own, but as aliens (πάροικοι). 5They share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land […] 9They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven (ἀλλ’ ἐν οὐρανῷ πολιτεύομαι). 10They obey the appointed laws, yet in their own lives they excel the laws.

This statement implies positive group self-esteem because it is precisely in politeia (the public arena) where life is to be displayed. Meecham believes that despite the idyllic nature of Diognetus ‘the ideal cannot have been entirely remote from the actual’.52 In To the Philippians the old bishop encourages believers to hold fast to the faith that was once transmitted, as it ought to characterize the church, keeping good testimony in politeia; because this is what they are. But it is important to highlight also what they are not. They are to abstain, forsake, and refrain from all kinds of evil. Polycarp includes all behaviour (covetousness, all the vices listed in 5.2–3) and any phronesis that is ultimately self-serving. We need to add another important term that captures the basis of life lived in the public arena: conversatio (10.2, 14; a possible translation of πολιτεύομαι, cf. 5.2). Social interaction – including social, religious, and economic networks – could be seen as a threat to the group’s identity, so that boundaries must be clearly established.53 In Phil., 5.2 Polycarp exhorts the community to ‘walk according to the truth of the Lord’, which is reminiscent of the downward-upward movement in the Christ-hymn: He who was servant to all (διάκονος πάντῶν) promises they will reign with him (συμβασιλεύσομεν). This, however, emphasizes a Christ-identity lived in society – in typical Pauline fashion – for Polycarp uses the same terms (πολιτευσώμεθα, ἀξίως; cf. Phil. 1.27). To the Philippians 8.1–2 speaks once more about Christ’s suffering in imitatio terms (μιμηταί). Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of humanity, though inimitable, becomes the pattern of conduct (i.e. his endurance) for believers. They are to be willing to suffer for the truth as the Lord was willing to do on their behalf. His pathos becomes ὑπογραμμόν (8.2, an ‘example’; cf. Phil. 3.17, Henry G. Meecham, The Epistle to Diognetus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1949), 30. Cf. Oakes, ‘Leadership’, 368.

52 53

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which contains τύπος). This suffering (πάσχωμεν; 8.2) brings glory to God (δοξάζωμεν; Phil., 8.2; cf. Phil. 2.11: εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ πατρός). This confirms our earlier assessment that ‘martyrs affirmed their community’s self-understanding that to be a Christian was to suffer’.54 Christians are called to suffer together (συνέπαθον; 9.2) with the Lord, because through their endurance they can ‘overcome the unjust proconsul’ (cf. Mart. Pol., 19.2). If the incontestable power of the State translates into bruises, wounds and broken bodies, the ‘Christian discourse reverses the equation and thus redefines some of the most basic signifiers in any culture – the body, pain, and death. Moreover, these radical redefinitions function to create politically subversive texts’.55 So Mart. Pol., 17.3 can also exclaim: For Him, being the Son of God, we adore, but the martyrs as disciples and imitators of the Lord we cherish as they deserve for their matchless affection towards their own King and Teacher. May it be our lot also to be found partakers and fellow-disciples with them!

Polycarp’s admonitions create a sort of ‘social map’,56 where boundaries are firmly delineated for the faithful (including the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’) in order to produce social cohesion. This social map, in turn, affirms a particular Christus conformitas for the ingroup. Conformitas goes beyond mere imitation, for it speaks about an extra nos action (i.e. God’s) and does not imply the practice of virtus. To understand the hymn we need to link it with the text in 3.20–1. The linguistic echoes are more than casual, not only sharing terms with the previous context of the hymn (1.27, πολιτεύεσθε; πολίτευμα), but with key terms in the hymn (ὑπάρχει, κύριος, and the compounds of σχῆμα, μορφή, ταπείνωσις, δόξα, τὰ πάντα). Hooker observes that more important than the language is the theme:

Perkins finds Christianity’s ‘triumph’ over paganism within the discursive struggle over the representation of the self, which in traditional Graeco-Roman fashion presented the self as soul/mind controlling the body; Perkins, Suffering Self, 34. By contrast Christianity’s discourse represented ‘subjects’, the suffering self, as a community of sufferers. Using Social identity theory language we can affirm that such a perspective in life entails both a ‘new categorization’ and a ‘new identity’, siding with the weak of society as Christ-followers, fully surrendered to God, the God who in fact holds the entire universe in his hands. This implies the evaluative redefinition of traditionally negative characteristics; cf. Hogg and Abrams, Identifications, 289. 55 Perkins, Suffering Self, 115. 56 Harry O. Maier, ‘Purity and Danger in Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians: The Sin of Valens in Social Perspective’, JECS 1, no. 3 (1993): 243–7. 54

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Our body of humiliation is to be fashioned anew by Christ […] In these verses, then, the meaning of Christ’s exaltation for the believer is worked out: in Christ the Christian shares in the reversal of status which took place when God raised him.57

Final conclusions All the texts we studied redefine how the Christ-followers are to perceive ‘reality’. First, by refusing to acknowledge and accept outside categorizations that misinterpret their true (Christ-like) identity: they are the true believers (Mart. Pol., 9.2; 10.2), the true circumcision (Phil. 3.3), who do not put their hope in the immediate (Phil., 9.1–2).58 Their hope’s foundation is firm and speaks of a heavenly πολίτευμα whose full revelation still awaits (Phil. 3.20–1; 1.10; cf. Mart. Pol., 14.3, ‘Jesus the eternal and celestial priest’, ἐπουρανίου, certainly resounds with Phil., 12.2: sempiternus pontifex), and finds expression via an alternative value-system for the here and now. Second, core elements in society, its very building blocks (honour, power, and violence geared toward submission, i.e. ‘distinction’), are placed as tertiary elements – if at all – in the midst of the Christian community. Believers are to relate in a Christ-like manner (cf. Phil. 2.4; Pol. Phil., 3.3; 8.2; Mart. Pol., 16.1). It is the mark of suffering (understood now as ‘sacrificial love for others’) that becomes the new identity-marker, the outward and concrete practice of the transformation that baptism receives in Paul’s other letters (cf. Romans 6; 1 Cor. 1.10–17; 10.2; 12.13; Gal. 3.26–9, etc.). This new standing (or ‘righteousness’) bears fruit (Phil. 1.11) and, being the reflection of divine character, becomes a direct witness to society,59 relativizing the value of ethnic and social boundaries within the community of faith.60 Third, Christians are contrasted with contemporary ‘pagan’ adversaries as calm, practising self-control, which sets them apart as a ‘people’ (Mart. Morna D. Hooker, ‘Interchange in Christ’, JTS 22, no. 2 (1971): 357. This rejection of (outside) categorizations goes beyond the obvious discourse. The Roman amphitheatre (στάδιον in Mart. Pol., 9.1) symbolized liminality, since it dramatically differentiated between civilization and barbarism, and it firmly established the divide between the ‘us’ and the ‘them’; Cobb, Dying, 45. 59 Justin (Apologia, 2.12), for example, attributed his conversion to the influence of the martyrs. 60 Cf. Phil. 3.1–5; Jacques Schlosser, ‘La Figure de Dieu Selon L’épitre aux Philippiens’, NTS 41, no. 3 (1995): 388–9. 57 58

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Pol., 3.2, θεοφιλοῦς καὶ θεοσεβοῦς γένους τῶν Χριστιανῶν).61 Moreover, this particular trait stresses – by sheer contrast – pagan lawlessness (Mart. Pol., 16.1; ἄνομοι).62 This idea is linked to Paul’s reference to the ‘two destinies’ (Phil. 1.28–9). Though pagans find security in the matrix of the polis, their end will be loss. This outcome coincides with that of the political adversaries (ἀντικείμενοι), whose apparent security is nevertheless an omen (ἔνδειξις) of destruction.63 Contrastingly, salvation (σωτηρία) is the gift to the Christfollowers, the transformation of their present humiliation into something glorious (Phil. 3.20–1). This theme reappears in Mart. Pol., 2.2–3, exhorting believers to focus on the eternal, making Christ’s presence nigh for those who suffer, ‘purchasing at the cost of one hour a release from eternal punishment’. Polycarp encourages the community to be like-minded: If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, we shall also reign together with Him, provided only we believe. (Pol. Phil., 5.2)

Within this scheme of intergroup relations we must not suppose all Christians behaved rightly, as if the only examples presented in the texts were the ‘ideal type’. Paul speaks of dissension within the community of believers (Phil. 4.1–2); Polycarp warns against Valens’ example, former beacon of virtue turned selfcentred (Pol. Phil., 11.1–4),64 and Martyrdom of Polycarp recalls believers who succumbed to the devil (3.1; Quintus in 4) in the midst of pressure. However, the purpose of the texts is to encourage a faithful Christ-identity, so believers Nowhere do the authors use the term ‘pagan’ to refer to ‘non-Christians’. It is used here as a received category. However, I am aware that its earliest usage springs from Tertullian (De pallio, 4; De corona militis, 11), but it is not until two centuries later that we find Christian inscriptions depicting non-Christians in this manner, the result of the ‘triumph of Christianity narrative’; Michele R. Salzman, ‘Pagans and Christians’, in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 187. 62 Martyrdom of Polycarp and other martiriological texts address culture head-on. If Marcus Aurelius (Meditationes 3.6–7) explained that the life of reason is comprised of justice, truth, self-control, and manliness, all these elements are ascribed to Polycarp and the martyrs; Cobb, Dying, 21. Cf. Mart. Pol., 1.2 (truth); 9.1 (‘play the man’, ἀνδρίζου); 2.2; 5.1 (self-control); 9.3 (justice), also 15.1 (τοῦ γένους τῶν δικαίων). 63 Something similar can be said concerning Valens’ φιλαργυρία (4.1). According to Maier: ‘The danger of wealth is not primarily that it brings social discord […], it is rather that it is a symbol that one is a doomed outsider, excluded from the elect circle of faith’; Maier, ‘Purity’, 242. 64 Valens’ sin may be related firstly with his avaritia and secondly with not acting as financial patron towards less privileged members, thus losing sight of his locum (11.1–2 and 6.1). For a more detailed treatment see Maier, ‘Purity’, 237. 61

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will be ready to suffer for their faith (τὸ κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον μαρτυρίον; Mart. Pol., 1.1; 19.1).65 These faithful emphasize the Christ-like life as the only valid alternative, for though many profess ‘faith’, for them it is only a selfserving act, pleasing the flesh (Pol. Phil., 7.1). True believers are to separate from such.66 Even within the grand ingroup there are some who may act out of impure motives (cf. Phil. 1.15); however, these are carefully contrasted with the ‘enemies of the cross’, (Phil. 3.18), who lust after their own desires (‘twisting the words of the Lord’; Phil., 7.1).67 Though Martyrdom of Polycarp does not use this expression (‘enemies of the cross’), it refers to the ‘Father’ of all enmity as the ‘adversary of the family of the righteous’ (17.1). The texts demarcate clear boundaries that discriminate between the ingroup and those outside of it, be it on account of purity-impurity boundaries and/or ethical expressions – social descriptors – of their self-identity.68 These demarcations could at times be perceived as harsh,69 no doubt, but they were so defined for the benefit of – lest we forget – the oppressed.70 Lastly, all of the literary examples studied merge into what we mentioned at the start, that is, that the early Church was ‘book conscious’.71 Its writings contributed, to a certain extent, to the construction of an enhanced trans-local growth and universal identity across towns, local communities, etc., in order

Understood here as ‘according to Christ’s model’, in agreement with Holmes; roughly equivalent to κατὰ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ or κατὰ Χριστὸν ’Ιησοῦν; Holmes, ‘Martyrdom’, 421–2. 66 Pol. Phil., 5.3; cf. Hartog, ‘Opponents’, 377–8. 67 This could extend to authorities and persecutors (outgroups), as its new context implies; cf. Pol. Phil., 12.3, inimicus crucis; Hartog, ‘Opponents’, 390. 68 Maier, ‘Purity’, 244. Smith’s distinction between the ‘radical other’ who is ‘merely’ other and the ‘proximate’ other – more problematic – is helpful for understanding Martyrdom of Polycarp. Smith contends that Jews appear in martiriological texts as a bigger threat to Christians because of their nearness in belief, whereas the crowds tend to be seen in a more distant light and are less of a threat to Christian distinctiveness; Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘What a Difference a Difference Makes’, in ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Christians, Jews, ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity, Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (eds) (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 25. 69 Punt: ‘The strong sense of identity and continuous efforts to maintain and also elaborate notions of identity necessarily required procedures of demarcation as much as processes of identification.’ These, in Punt’s point of view, could eventually lead to ‘animosity’, that is, competition, or even call forth hostility; Punt, ‘Paul’, 140. I have treated this issue in more detail in Rosell, Christ, 222–31. 70 Postcolonial readings of the New Testament concerned with contemporary sensibilities (i.e. ‘obfuscating discourse of power’; cf. Punt) can be greatly helped by our particular focus on identity formation, but these modern readings cannot forget that Christianity, before it became one with the political power in the fourth century, was on the side of the oppressed and the martyred. Without clearly drawn boundaries it would not have been able to resist the power of the State and other religious pressures that threatened the movement both from outside and inside; Punt, ‘Paul’, 145. 71 Sanders, Charisma, 168. 65

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to form a ‘transnational civic society’.72 However stereotyped characters may appear here, we need to remember that Christianity had to compete with similar literature, for ‘like all cultures, the community knows other songs; their adversaries also had stories that shaped their values’.73 Social identity theory proves therefore an invaluable approach that allows us to discern and better explain social and theological forces which otherwise would have been concealed to contemporary readers.

Sanders, Charisma, 170. James W. Thompson, ‘Preaching to Philippians’, Int 61, no. 3 (2007): 306.

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New Identity and Cultural Baggage: Identity and Otherness in Colossians Minna Shkul

Reading positions, ideological positions, cultural positions The letter to the Colossians addresses a community of Christ-followers who are a part of the Pauline network of communities (2.1, 4.16). Like those in any New Testament text discussed within this volume, the beliefs, values and negotiation of cultural performances in Colossians were subcultural and contested beliefs and values, as early Christian beliefs were in the process of formation at the time of writing, without a stamp of ‘scriptural authority’ or orthodoxy. Nonetheless, despite the letter’s (claims for) humble origins in a Roman prison (4.3, 18), its apostolic connection, authority and discourse qualities assured that it was embraced by the early Christian movement and eventually became part of the Christian scripture and associated ongoing theological self-enhancement. Analysing social identity in the text of Colossians is a complicated task for lots of reasons, not only because we have virtually no information about its recipients, or even a consensus over its author, date or circumstances.1 See commentaries for general introductions to Colossians, its authorship, provenance and key questions on its interpretation. Social-scientific commentary by Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, ed. Daniel J. Harrington, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000); socio-rhetorical commentary by Ben Witherington, III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), and commentaries by Jerry L. Sumney, Colossians: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), and Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians and Philemon, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005) may be of particular interest for the readers of this article, as well as classics like James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); Peter Thomas O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), which offer helpful introductions to the letter and questions that bear upon its identity discourse.

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In addition, perhaps all the more importantly, readers’ cultural positioning, identifying with Colossians’ propositions and taking its ideological and cultural propositions as given (truth of the Scripture) may have led to overlooking how the author manoeuvres in his diverse cultural milieu. For instance, the value of studying Graeco-Roman rhetoric, traditions, ideologies, rituals and culture for biblical interpretation has long been acknowledged, but this is often paired with dismissing its value and the validity of Graeco-Roman heritage, labelling it ‘paganism’, ‘idolatry’ or ‘world without Christ’.2 Although this may be a theological convention, cultural superiority should not be implied in the study of identity discourse. In fact, in the light of postcolonial literature, early Christian discourses have provided texts for attempts to conquer indigenous traditions and culture. Shaping early Christian identity by suppressing Graeco-Roman deities and cultures can be seen as an example of cultural imperialism by early Christian social influencers, which may continue to inspire theological self-enhancement. At the same time, it may continue to cultivate cultural superiority in readers and contribute to further cultural imperialism. Theological readings may also be theoretical and are not necessarily ‘uncritical’, as contributions to this volume will demonstrate. However, the transformative power of the textual creation of ‘us’ and ‘others’ (and its scriptural authority) may illustrate why readers of Colossians would internalize its cultural pre-eminence that silences or dismisses ‘other’ worldviews, or has no concern for those who may be disadvantaged, or marginalized in the text.3 This has its bearing on analysing the contours of identity in the text as our cultural For example, Sumney distances himself from the polemics of the writer, but Witherington seems adapt the term rather more uncritically, along with ‘OT’, both indicative of cultural positioning sympathetic to the polemics of the text; Sumney, Colossians, 191; Witherington, The Letters, 138, 177, 308.  3 For further discussion of the marginalized and subaltern voices, see for example, feminist, queer and postcolonial readings of Colossians and the New Testament. For instance, Laura Salah Nasrallah and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009); Amy-Jill Levine, ed. A Feminist Companion to the Deutero-Pauline Epistles (London & New York: Continuum, 2003); Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, ‘“Asking the Other Question”: An Intersectional Approach to Galatians 3:28 and the Colossian Household Codes’, BibInt 18, no. 4–5 (2010); Deryn Guest et al (eds), The Queer Bible Commentary (London: SCM, 2006); Ann Nyland, Study New Testament for Lesbians, Gays, Bi, and Transgender: With Extensive Notes on Greek Word Meaning and Context (Uralla, Australia: Smith and Stirling, 2007); Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd C. Penner, Her Master’s Tools?: Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse, Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005); Annie Tinsley, ‘Reading of Colossians from an African American Postcolonial Perspective’ (PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010); Gordon Zerbe and Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, ‘The Letter to the Colossians’, in A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings, Fernando F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah (eds), (London: T&T Clark, 2009); as well as Fernando F. Segovia and R.  2

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positionings guide and/or restrain the research questions. For instance, if a reader who conducts an analysis of social-identity shaping is culturally aligned with the author, some of the biggest identity-shaping propositions, such as Jesus being the Messiah of Israel (1.1, passim), may escape notice altogether.4 This article is positioned ‘a little bit outside’ the realm of meanings implied in Colossians,5 in order to analyse its identity discourse and how different ideological and cultural traditions are negotiated.6 I will examine what is important for early Christian identity expressed in remembering, renegotiating and inventing traditions for the community addressed, as well as what is not important for this identity, as reflected in ‘othering’ unwanted cultural values and performances. However, this essay will not offer a detailed discussion of Graeco-Roman identities in first-century ce Colossae, or attempt a historical reconstruction of the group addressed. Rather it will discuss the shaping of early Christian identity in the text, assessing broad cultural influences, in order to understand how the writer negotiates different cultural traditions and meanings of faith for the recipient community.7 In order to understand how communal identity and ‘otherness’ (key aspects of social identity) are constructed in the text, I will use Anthony P. Cohen’s idea of cultural boundaries: Cohen famously asserted that ‘people become aware of their culture when they stand at its boundaries’.8 This reading proceeds



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S. Sugirtharajah (eds) A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London: T&T Clark, 2009) illustrate the complexity of challenging interpretive questions. See Talbert for ‘in Christ’ language and Colossians’ ‘salvific narrative’ which provide us with a contemporary example of a theologically aligned reading ‘within’ Colossians’ narrative of salvation; Charles H. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians, Paideia (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 180–1. Note the ideas of conquest by Christ and condemnation of the disobedient (who are not followers of Christ), which illustrate theological imperialism. Culturally familiar with Christian traditions, but critically distanced for the purposes of analysis. This article reads the ‘final form’ of the text, referring to the author as ‘he’, leaving the authorship question aside for now as it cannot be known with certainty whether the letter was written by Paul or Timothy or another associate of Paul, male or female. For ‘Pauline’ as author, see Angela Standhartinger, ‘The Epistle in the Congregation in Colossae and the Invention of the “Household Code”’, in A Feminist Companion to the Deutero-Pauline Epistles, ed. Amy-Jill Levine (London & New York: Continuum, 2003). For a more detailed discussion of relationships between the text and surrounding social worlds see e.g. Roy R. Jeal, ‘Starting before the Beginning: Precreation Discourse in Colossians’, Religion & Theology 18, no. 3–4 (2011), as well as MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians and Sumney, Colossians. Anthony P. Cohen, ‘Belonging: The Experience of Culture’, in Belonging: Identity and Social Organisation in British Rural Cultures, ed. Anthony P. Cohen, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 3. Cohen applied Fredrik Barth’s views that groups become aware of their ethnic identity when they engage with others; Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969).

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to examine what the writer notes and comments upon, as he considers and constructs belonging and otherness.9 However, it is important to note that this is not ‘mirror reading’, as my aim is not to identify ‘what happened’ in the community. Instead, I regard the discourse as social influencing and use the idea of being positioned at the cultural boundaries as a way of ‘looking round’ the discourse world in order to understand what the (post-?) apostolic writer considered to be distinctive features for the Jesus-movement, and what was perceived as harmful cultural influences.

Interconnected questions of authorship and cultural evolution While the letter opens with an introduction by the imprisoned apostle (1.1; 4.18), and it contains geographical references and greetings referring to a particular time and context in his mission (1.2, 4.7–17), both questions of authorship and date of the letter continue to divide commentators and readers. While supporters of Pauline authorship may be in the minority, they are by no means ‘gone and forgotten’.10 But there are many who regard thematic or theological differences, the inclusion of liturgical materials or the household code, or other linguistic factors as evidence of ‘un-Paul-like’ literary style, which suggests that one of Paul’s followers wrote Colossians.11 Others attribute differences to Timothy’s fairly independent writing.12 It is important to note that the view ‘at the cultural boundaries’ highlights ingroup similarity and outgroup difference, but does not offer an exhaustive description of belonging, or identity. Rather, the discussion is dominated by concerns that arise from the current situations and concerns of the author. For instance, the fact that there is little material on communal worship or initiation rituals does not mean that they were unimportant for communal identity or culture. Rather, the discourse is perceived to be contextual, driven by the writer’s current interests, which may explain why the discourse can be relatively silent on some beliefs we would assume to be of great importance. 10 Cf. Raymond Edward Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 610. See recently for example, Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians; Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, Pillar New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 28–41; Michael F. Bird, Colossians & Philemon: A New Covenant Commentary, New Covenant Commentary Series 12 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009). 11 Recently for instance, Sumney, Colossians, 1–9; Standhartinger, ‘Congregation’; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 6–9; Leppä, O., The Making of Colossians: A Study on the Formation and Purpose of a Deutero-Pauline Letter, Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society (Helsinki; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). 12 See Dunn, Epistles, 38–9; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, 2nd edn (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), 393–5. Witherington considers Timothy as a ‘co-author’ or ‘co-authority’; Witherington, The Letters, 25, 102–3, 116, 202. It is plausible that the letter was written down by Timothy, under Paul’s direction, who signed off with his personal signature greeting  9

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While the authorship question may be less relevant for Colossians’ contemporary reception, or for how the text might shape today’s readers’ identity or their social orientation in the twenty-first century, it does matter for our understanding and assumptions of the author’s cultural positioning. 13 Whether we perceive Colossians as Pauline (even if Timothy was a scribe) or not provides subtle paradigms for understanding the letter’s original setting and discussion of its original recipient community.14 The assumption of authorship alone may be decisive for how we interpret the discourse, as readings tend to either ‘lean’ towards similarity with how(ever) we understand Paul, or highlight differences between how(ever) we understand Paul and socioideological developments in the movement. For instance, the authorship, date and provenance of the letter affect how we imagine the occasion of writing and the implied community: apostolic authorship and the earlier date assume closer connections with wider Jewish movements and presumably (at least some form of) ongoing relations with the synagogue networks in the Diaspora setting, despite the contested nature of Pauline traditions.15 In contrast, the later date typically highlights lack of personal connections with the apostle himself and lays greater emphasis on notions of change,16 mindful of how the



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(4.18). In other words, ‘Paul is speaking, but Timothy is writing’; Witherington, The Letters, 102. Or like Lohse puts it, ‘It is the voice of Jacob, but the hands of Esau’; Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 91. Lohse’s comparison does undermine Timothy’s motives as it reminds us of a story of a deliberate deception for personal gain, unlike the way Timothy’s (or other pseudonymous author’s) role is usually perceived, as an attempt to preserve and safeguard apostolic thought. See for example, Colossians Remixed, which considers how Colossians’ counter-imperial identity discourse travels across time and space to critique, for example, ‘global consumer crusade’ and the violence of ‘Pax Americana’; Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 61–4, 166, 175–6, 180–3. This article will propose a number of ways in which ‘mirror-reading’ is problematic. Instead of taking the discourse as evidence for ‘circumstances of the recipient community’, I take them as indications of the author’s cultural bias, likes and dislikes for example. I hope to offer a contribution to scholarship that highlights what factors the author raises from his/her social milieu, what is remembered, what is forgotten or deliberately suppressed, and how the writer uses the discourse to socio-ideologically influence his audience. In other words, the emphasis is on how the text reflects wider social environs, and what tools it gives to its audience for their life as Jesus-followers. The way of understanding Paul still provides the paradigms. This does not deny differences depending where one locates him on the continuum of ‘apostle’ or ‘apostate’, whether Paul is regarded as leaving Judaism behind (traditional view), or as an apostle of the mission to the nations (with the ‘New Perspective’), or whether he argued for two-way salvation (with the ‘radical new perspective’), or was contextually fluid, or inconsistent. See Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The ‘Lutheran’ Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), for evaluation of key trends and Pauline scholars. Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalisation in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings, SNTSMS 60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

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movement evolved socially and ideologically and distanced itself not only from Jewish synagogue networks, but also from Jewish Christ-followers.17

Social identity and discursive processes in Colossians Social identity in Colossians is, in a nutshell, about differentiations between ‘Christ-followers’ and ‘others’, and these occur throughout the letter.18 Social identity approach highlights evidence for different communal processes, such as categorization, identification of the ingroup and ‘outsiders’, and comparison of the groups and identities. These theoretical perspectives provide useful models for understanding Colossians, how it interprets Jewish culture and the GraecoRoman world to its recipients, and how its ‘theology’ functions to provide positive distinctiveness for the group. However, although this fundamental value of Christ-followership was important to the writer, it, or its social meanings, may not have been obvious to the audience or to their wider social context. Consequently, in reading the letter we observe how the writer bolsters Christfollowership, and interprets cultural complexities for the community; not so much what the community was like, but what the writer thought it should be like. The key social value that unites individuals from different traditions, ethnicity, gender and class is their belief in Jesus as Christ (1.1), the son of Israel’s God (1.3). Although community members are diverse, as will be explored a little later, they share in ‘faith in Christ Jesus’ (1.4–6) through the mission of Epaphras, a native of the region (1.7–8; 4.12) and Paul’s associate (cf. Phlm. 23).19 The congregation In my view, the authorship stance may provide the lens that colours readings of Colossians, as happens with other disputed Paulines. For instance, if it is preconceived as apostolic, the writing is perceived as similar to others of Paul’s letters, and the contextual variation tends to be appreciated and elaborated upon. Alternatively, if regarded as pseudonymous, cultural differences and revisions on Pauline thought receive the emphasis. In other words, the reading position and authorship question may provide the rationale that causes either similarity or difference to dominate, as it is difficult to keep on testing different hermeneutical alternatives and wander between different viewpoints; Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 18 For a theoretical outline, see the introductory chapter in this volume. In addition to key pioneering theorists, see Richard Jenkins, Social Identity, 2nd ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 2004) for key ideas on social identity and various identity processes used to draw lines of distinction. 19 See commentaries for a discussion of ‘fellow slave’ and the social complexity of the topic of slavery in Colossians, for example MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 156–69 and Michael F. Trainor, Epaphras: Paul’s Educator at Colossae, Paul’s Social Network: Brothers and Sisters in Faith (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008). See Trainor’s discussion for the name Epaphras and Epaphroditus in Phlm. 2.25–30; Trainor, Epaphras, 6–10. 17

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may not have had a personal relationship with the apostle himself (2.1; cf. 1.9–10), and hence naming Paul and his associates is an important mnemonic device for endorsing the historical connections with the apostolic mission and traditions.20 However whether or not Epaphras was the first to ever preach about Jesus in Colossae, his ministry is endorsed because it points the community in a desired direction, over and against alternative influences and traditions.21 However, just as the metaphor of the new ‘risen life’ suggests (2.13), belonging in this group involves dying to one’s past (2.13). The community members’ ethno-cultural otherness is described as being dead (2.13). While the past is pronounced dead and buried (2.12), faith now becomes symbolized as new life, and ideas of difference and discontinuity are obviously implied. It would seem that the idea of Christ-followership goes beyond an ‘over-arching identity’ model: it is unlikely that one could simply add god-called-Jesus among the local deities, enjoy the benefits of new social networks (1.4) and communal love ‘that binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (3.14), learn a few different cultural performances on how to worship this particular deity (3.15–16) and some ritual formula ‘in the name of the Lord’ to repeat with thanksgiving (3.17). Instead, what we encounter in Colossians and elsewhere in Pauline traditions is that the ‘nations’ are included among the people of Israel’s God, and cultural assimilation is expected. Othering of ethnic difference occurs throughout Colossians. A few observations may be useful to highlight how the language of ‘otherness’ is embedded in the discursive making of ‘us’. First, 2.11–13 portrays the writer’s attitude towards (ethno-)cultural others ‘in Christ’.22 While all benefit from forgiveness (1.13–14), the writer nonetheless See Minna A. I. Shkul, Reading Ephesians: Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in the Text, LNTS 408 (London; New York: Continuum, 2009) for the importance of memory and for shaping communal remembering in an analysis of social identity and social influencing. 21 Epaphras is a prototypical associate of Paul and an interpreter of his message that the community is to remember and assimilate. He, along with Tychicus and Onesimus (4.7–9), visit the community loaded with apostolic legitimacy. For a more detailed discussion of Epaphras as stabilizing and supporting the Pauline legacy see Trainor, Epaphras, esp. 55–95. Note how some individuals are endorsed in the letter, particularly in the final greetings 4.7–17. Their reputation is endorsed positively, which enhances them being remembered as prototypes, models for faithfulness and endurance. In contrast, communally harmful individuals are not named, but deviant ideas and behaviours are referred to more stereotypically, as for instance, ‘those who are disobedient’, who deserve God’s wrath in 3.6. This may be a deliberate silencing of the deviants, so that their memory would not be rekindled but rather forgotten through stereotypical ‘othering’ and negative values on talking about ‘others’. 22 This allows for the possibility that the writer could be a non-Israelite, but he has internalized Jewish polarization of humans into two groups, ‘us’ and ‘others’, which is a community-enhancing metaphor in itself. I am not making decisions about the genealogy of the writer, but perhaps more about his ‘ethnicity’, assuming that ethnicity is socially transferred, not primordial and unchanging. 20

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finds it important to remind the community about their lack of ethnic chosenness as God’s people while they were ‘dead in trespasses and uncircumcision of the flesh’ (2.13). The use of uncircumcision as a stigma seems to betray Jewishness, as the ritual itself would have been regarded negatively by Graeco-Romans.23 Second, it is important to consider, how does this relate to 3.11, which is often seen as an egalitarian claim denouncing ethnic and class divisions, following Galatians 3.28?24 If non-Israelites were equal members ‘in Christ’, why keep talking about the ethnic chosenness of Israel as God’s covenant people? Clearly, the earliest Jewish Christians held their ethnic covenant in great esteem and wanted to remind ‘others’ to appreciate the value of their present inclusion, as 1.15–27 proclaims.25 The audience may have been familiar with the stereotype of ‘gentile sinners’ from the Pauline movement (Gal. 2.15) or other contexts. However, it is also possible that they had not (previously) known much about Jewish discourse that projected other nations as lacking God’s covenant, law and a reflection of his holiness, or that considered regular (uncircumcized) penes as lacking, or inferior. This is an example of how the writer’s view influences the reader, and the text provides guidance for thinking differently about circumcision. For example, it would seem that as far as the writer of Colossians was concerned, the audience’s ‘uncircumcision’ was ‘unforgettable’, and it seemed to be a problem. This is evident in the fact that it is not just forgotten, but examined and ritually replaced. The writer resolves the ‘uncircumcision’ of his audience with the swivel of a pen to perform a ‘spiritual circumcision’ in the text (2.11–12). The dramatic language of burial with Christ and experiencing the power of his resurrection added symbolic meaning to the rite of baptism, which probably wasn’t a very exciting or costly ritual at all in comparison to circumcision or other rituals in antiquity.26 Sumney, Colossians, 135–7. See for example Witherington, who takes it as levelling previous categories of honour and dishonour in 3.11; Witherington, The Letters, 178–9; and see Kartzow, ‘Asking the Other Question’, for the complexities of household roles. 25 For a discussion of circumcision and otherness, see Andrew S. Jacobs, Christ Circumcised: A Study in Early Christian History and Difference (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). See also Ephesians 2, and Shkul, Reading. 26 If a theoretical leap from social identity theory to anthropology may be allowed, see Harvey Whitehouse for a discussion of different modes of religiosity, which highlights the role of rituals in group formation and socio-cultural evolution. Whitehouse distinguishes between imagistic modes, which have exciting, rarely occurring rituals associated with high emotional arousal, and doctrinal modes of religiosity, characterized by low arousal, frequently occurring rituals and 23 24

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Third, the cultural difference that accompanies spiritual life in Christ is developed with further cultural meanings (3.1–10). Colossians uses repeated metaphors to suggest a discontinuity between the past and present life of the believers, things that are ‘above’ and those that are ‘earthly’ (3.1, 2, 5). The demand for cultural change builds on the idea of change of status (uncircumcision – spiritual circumcision) and further contributes to defining membership by othering a lot of cultural baggage as communal deviance. By deviance I refer to the pushing of cultural boundaries and the violation of the norms of a group or a society. It is typically seen as ‘socially constructed’ as the groups or societies articulate what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, as well as what are the consequences of doing something ‘wrong’.27 It is important to note how Colossians defines rights and wrongs. As it happens, when cultural baggage is examined, fairly ordinary local customs, including Jewish religious festivals, trigger the alarm and are made deviant in the discourse (2.16). In other words, things that are practiced in the wider environment become deviant in the community. Furthermore, in terms of Colossians’ deviant processing, the author puts pressure on the community itself to identify and eliminate deviance (3.5, 9–10) and links it with ideas of divine condemnation (3.6), if the members do not continue to be ‘holy, blameless and irreproachable’ (1.21–3). Fourth, despite familiar philosophical and ethical themes,28 ‘culturally different’ community members with different Graeco-Roman traditions received little or no acknowledgement of the value of their traditions in the discourse; instead, they faced a subcultural rhetoric that regarded GraecoRoman deities and the surrounding world as profoundly evil and immoral (1.21; 2.13; 3.5–7). Believers from different ethnicities and traditions (usually labelled gentiles, or non-Israelites) were culturally foreign from the early religious experiences typically associated with larger communities, higher orthodoxy and more dynamic leadership; Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004), esp. 63–89. For the socio-cultural evolution of the Pauline movement from an early charismatic and innovative movement to a tightly structured second-century movement as reflected in the pseudonymous epistles, see the important volume by MacDonald, Pauline Churches. 27 Clifton D. Bryant, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Deviant Behaviour (London: Routledge, 2011); Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, 2nd edn. (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009). 28 See Andrew Lincoln, ‘The Spiritual Wisdom of Colossians in the Context of Graeco-Roman Spiritualities’, in The Bible and Spirituality: Exploratory Essays in Reading Scripture Spiritually, Andrew Lincoln, G. McConville, and L. Pietersen (eds) (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013).

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Christian discourse world, which maintained a Jewish symbolic universe adding Jesus as the Messiah (which caused some reforms). Ethno-culturally diverse community members received new communal memories and learned that this community did not endorse worship of other deities but regarded devotion as idolatry.29 They learned about a monotheistic deity and about his son, ‘the image of the invisible God’, ‘the firstborn of creation’ (1.15–16), ‘the firstborn from the dead’ and hence the prototype of renewal (1.18), who was also worshipped.30 The new cultural traditions, such as the God of Israel’s prevailing ethnic covenant with the Israelites, would have seemed peculiar. Even more importantly, we should not assume that they were received by all without hesitation or challenge, without grasping how big the idea was. For example, the ongoing legitimacy of God’s covenant with Israel was challenged and rejected by many early Christian thinkers, which serves to demonstrate that it was a difficult concept to grasp.31 These factors illustrate the dynamics of social identity theory; the construction of ‘identity’ in Colossians makes reference to similarity and difference, particularly with regards those who are ethnically and culturally different from the writer. This is evident in viewing the outsiders negatively and expecting them to undergo cultural change (note parallels with colonialism). The notions of cultural superiority and remodelling of God’s people could explain why the writer adapts the idea of ‘newness’ to convey discontinuity and transformation (3.9–10, cf. Eph. 2.15). Naturally, Christ-followership would have functioned as an over-arching identity for all Christ-followers in contrast to people, Jewish or Graeco-Roman, who did not follow Christ. Nonetheless, there seems to be an element of ongoing distinction within the boundaries of Christ-communities, as ethnic heritage is noted and expanded upon in the discourse.32 I discuss social remembering and communal identity in my earlier work; Shkul, Reading. The early Christian discourse mode was highly political, as many of its key concepts may have derived from imperial discourse, or at least helped Graeco-Roman subjects to understand concepts like ‘the gospel’, the language of a supreme ruler, saviour, god, his son, and imperial household and reign over distant regions and territories. 31 While I find the concepts of the ‘radical new perspective’ or ‘the two-way covenant’ quite persuasive, I do not think New Testament writers explained this as eloquently as the associated scholars do. 32 In my view, multiple and hybrid identities are fascinating. For example, ‘British’ seems to be an overarching identity, for which there are tests to measure the required minimal level of local knowledge and language skills, followed by initiation processes and financial costs of transferral and documentation. Perhaps it is precisely because it is an ‘overarching identity’ that it does not 29 30

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False teachers or cultural otherness Identity is socially constructed, and the sense of ‘self ’ and ‘community membership’ are continually evolving, interfacing with other people in our social networks, as well as ideologies and cultural trends in our cultural contexts. While being ‘in Christ’ may characterize ingroup membership and provide the basic contrast with outsiders in Colossians, ‘faith alone’ is not all there is to identity and community; the writer also scrutinized the wider cultural context and sought to influence the members’ values and behaviours by positioning a range of cultural expressions outside the boundaries of acceptance. Colossians’ ideas of captivity by false philosophy and meaningless rituals illustrate one of the basic group processes whereby communities promote coherence and simultaneously oust difference, by challenging the marginal or the deviant to conform and to remodel their behaviours upon prototypical values and behaviours. The discussion of prototypical values and cultural difference in Colossians 2–3 has usually been interpreted as a description of the ‘opponents of Paul’, or the writer, in the community or in its environment. It has been often assumed that the negative references to ‘philosophy’, ‘elements of the universe’, ‘fullness’, ‘rulers and powers’, ‘circumcision’, ‘body of flesh’ and ‘legal demands’ reflect the opponents’ key terms (2.8–15).33 However, the postulation of ‘opponents’ could be recategorized as overt mirror reading in light of social identity approaches, which have demonstrated that the prevalence of ‘outsider’ comparisons is at the very heart of identity discourses: the awareness of categories of ‘us’ and ‘others’ alone may generate comparison, ingroup favouritism and competitiveness.34 Nonetheless, the tendency to reconstruct necessarily replace previous identifications or function as a primary identification. People still identify themselves, and classify others, as Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English, ‘Pakistani’, or ‘British Asian’, ‘Afro-Caribbean’ and e.g. ‘Eastern European’, which are used to explain accents, appearances, cultural difference, and the like. However, to elaborate on that further would require a different essay altogether. 33 MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 104; cf. Sumney, Colossians, 10–12. 34 Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978). Raymond E. Brown and Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘Intergroup Relations’, in The Handbook of Social Psychology, Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey (eds) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998); Michael A. Hogg, ‘Social Identity Theory’, in Contemporary Social Psychological Theories, ed. Peter J. Burke (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

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opponents remains a dominant discourse model in New Testament studies. In some cases this may be compelling, particularly in the light of independent data from other texts of the period and archaeology. However, reading the disputed Paulines as pseudo-Paulines reduces the attractiveness of the reconstructive model. On the one hand, relations and networks are questioned and largely unknown in the absence of data, while on the other hand, theories on identity and group processes, along with the selectiveness of social remembering, prove that comparisons are triggered without actual conflict, on the basis of cognitive awareness of difference. Furthermore, negative views towards outsiders and ingroup favouritism may be motivated by a self-enhancing desire to bolster a sense of common identity and belonging, or by the threat the outsiders are perceived to pose to the community. Both processes seem operative in Colossians, which intertwines positive ingroup prototypes using Christ-language and warnings about harmful or meaningless ideas and cultural performances. Although the writer imagined opponents, or opposing values, this does not necessarily require a context of conflict or dispute. The reconstruction of ‘opponents’ faces a further complication since the texts do not always clearly indicate whether ‘othering’ of the unwanted culture refers to 1) the lifestyle of outsiders who are different and NOT Christ-followers; 2) culturally different Christ-followers; 3) the dominant culture within the Christ-following community itself, which is different from the writer’s culture; 4) a minority influence within the community, which causes some of the members to be labelled as deviants; or even 5) prejudice towards outsiders or cultural otherness, without any particular causes.35 I will discuss the prejudice in the pseudo-Paulines more fully in my forthcoming article on the Pastorals. However, for the purposes of illustration, the use of the ‘gentile sinners’ stereotype could either be venting specific frustrations, or it could be indicative of prejudice, that is, derogatory attitude towards particular social groups or their members; T. Kessler and A. Mummendey, ‘Prejudice and Intergroup Relations’, in Introduction to Social Psychology: A European Perspective, Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe, and Klaus Jonas (eds) (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 292. For discussion of prejudice and intergroup relations, see John F. Dovidio, Peter Samuel Glick, and Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years after Allport (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) for a review and discussion of prejudice, fifty years after the publishing of Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954). See also Diane M. Mackie and Eliot R. Smith (eds), From Prejudice to Intergroup Emotions: Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups (New York & Hove: Psychology Press, 2002); Marilynn B. Brewer and S. Roccas, ‘Individual Values, Social Identity, and Optimal Distinctiveness’, in Individual Self, Relational Self, Collective Self, Constantine Sedikides and Marilynn B. Brewer (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001); Rupert Brown, Prejudice: Its Social Psychology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) on intergroup relations and prejudice.

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Pressing the idea of cultural difference heightens the complexity of analysis: cultural diversity would have been a fact – but this fact challenges the interpretation of the letter. In the context of non-Jewish membership recruited in multi-ethnic and multicultural Asia Minor, the community addressed in Colossians would have been polytheistic and multicultural by default, without a doubt. It should also be assumed that the community members would have continued practising their customs until convinced otherwise. Consequently, when the author considers and disapproves of ideas and customs that include folk religions, mysticism, philosophies, and Jewish traditions, it is difficult to know who or what caused his frustration, whether it was his cultural difference in comparison to the locals, local believers’ different culture, opponents (Christ-followers or not), or surrounding outsiders, who would have – by default – undermined or challenged the minority views of the community (see options 1–5 above). It is beyond doubt that early Christian beliefs would have been socially contested. But there is no certainty that there were ‘false teachers’ as organized groups focussed on refuting ingroup ideas. This challenges Wright and Dunn’s reconstructions of Jewish religious syncretism and most other reconstructions of ‘the enemies’ in Colossians.36 In fact, the popular hypothesis of Colossian syncretism may be false; it is entirely possible that the writer refers to the unwanted cultural baggage the culturally diverse members have brought with them. The warnings do suggest that some influencing may be taking place, or warns the community, should that happen: ‘I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with persuasive arguments’ (2.4) and ‘See that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human traditions, according to elemental spirits of the universe’ (2.8). But these warnings do not necessitate false teachers: it would be naïve to assume that there would be no ingroup discussions or debates when different cultures come together, especially since allegiance to traditions is at stake. ‘Arguments’ could simply refer to communal conversations where members entwined elements from other cultural discourses into their discussion of traditions and cultural performances in the Christ-movement. Some of the undesired customs are clearly Jewish (such as circumcision, legal demands, feasts, Sabbaths, and possibly also ascetic tendencies and Cf. N. T. Wright, ‘Poetry and Theology in Colossians 1.15–20’, NTS 36, no. 3 (1990); Dunn, Epistles.

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food taboos). But were there Jewish teachers – and why should we call them ‘false’ teachers? Jewish ‘philosophical influence’ could derive from Jewish community members, acquaintances, or teachers (Christ-follower or not), from either non-Israelites’ previous associations with Jewish people or synagogue networks, or through their active, ongoing engagement with the synagogue networks.37 In my view, all of the above options are plausible, but only one of these possibilities would involve teachers or social influencers that scholarship traditionally understands as ‘opponents’. Consequently, cultural boundary discourse, or othering of unwanted ideas would not require opposing mission or a social movement. Having considered the socio-cultural meanings of Colossians’ warnings, MacDonald suggests that the author is particularly concerned with visible identity markers, such as initiation rituals and food laws.38 She follows Wayne Meeks in taking baptism as a transformation rite and argues that Colossians’ emphasis on baptism is aimed at denouncing re-occurring identity-reinforcing rituals and experiences.39 She admits that the removal of some visible communal rites may have been unusual in the rich ritual environs of the community but suggests that developing a spiritual-cosmic identity and symbolic discourse may have benefited the community by granting some protective invisibility for the group in the ever more suspicious and hostile setting.40 This is not entirely Devaluing Jewish culture and lack of its legitimation would have meant that current associations with other Jewish groups are probably less likely, or at least the writer’s stance could have possibly complicated matters. 38 MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 110. 39 Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 150–7; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 125. New Testament scholarship may have accepted the role of baptism as the undisputed initiation ritual uncritically, as DeMaris has argued; Richard E. DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World (London: Routledge, 2008), 17–20, cf. Heb. 6.2. But it seems to have been loaded with considerable importance in the disputed Paulines, including ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father’ in Eph. 4.5. 40 MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 125–6. The idea of replacing frequently reoccurring re-enactments and rituals with an initiation ritual that occurs only once (2.12–13) is hardly equal in terms of ritual frequency and intensity. Other New Testament texts suggest that Christ-followers developed a sense of their ritual at very early stages, as e.g. frequently celebrating the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11.23–6) or gathering to worship on the first day of the week suggest (Acts 20.7). Similarly, at least in the earliest stages, believers practiced some dietary taboos to facilitate interaction with the Jewish people (Acts 15.28–9; 1 Corinthians 8; cf. Rev. 2.20). It is therefore unlikely that Colossians would have lacked other early Christian ritualized practice, but these are not paired with the unwanted and ‘useless’ rituals, probably to highlight the efforts of ‘others’ and the simple, true worship of the ingroup. Not evoking discussion about Christ-followers’ rituals also silences any debate on diverse practices in Christian communities. In other words, ‘outsider’ rituals are meaningless human commandments that appear pious but have no value (cf. 2.20–3). 37

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convincing, as ritual difference (through spiritual-cosmic symbolism and the absence of familiar performances) could have amplified communal difference, while continuing common expressions may have disguised their difference. Interestingly, some of the earliest Graeco-Roman references to Christianity are suspicious of the group precisely for their odd rituals, misinterpreted or misunderstood. Reducing ritual intensity and frequency at the same time could suggest that the author of Colossians developed greater emphasis on symbolic explanations than experience, which could be connected to processes of institutionalization of the charismatic Pauline movement. For example, Colossians never sanctions the elements of charismatic ritual life associated with the apostle, as e.g. women’s ritual dress (head coverings in 1 Cor. 11.4–16), being filled with the Holy Spirit, glossolalia, prophecy and other charismata are missing.41 Colossians 3.16 refers to the teaching of the Word, singing and thanksgiving while other rituals (like the Eucharist) are missing, which suggests that the community is relying on earlier ritualization.42 Thus ritual changes could indicate the development of a different mode of religion, less charismatic, more doctrinal, more institutionalized.43 Colossians’ social identity discourse reinterprets baptism as ‘new’ circumcision.44 Reinterpretation of traditional rituals and symbols is common in Compare with Pauline ritual world in 1 Corinthians. Other missing rituals include the ‘laying on of hands’, which Hebrews lists as basic Christian praxis; it is witnessed in the Pastoral Epistles and James in a specific healing ritual (cf. Acts, 1 and 2 Timothy, Heb. 6.2; Jas. 5.4) 42 The Deutero-Pauline texts are highly selective in their reflection of the life and worship of the early Jesus movement. The letters refer to additional apostolic traditions that accompany the preaching of the gospel and the socialization of affiliates into the Jesus-movement in Eph. 1.13; 5.20–6.9; Col. 1.5–8; 2 Thess. 2.15; 3.6; 1 Tim. 1.3–7; and 2 Tim. 2.2. Naturally, the absence of literary evidence for a particular ritual does not mean that such a ritual was not practiced in the community or that the group had developed an anti-ritualistic stance in general. Rather, it seems that the writers built upon earlier ritualization within the Pauline movement. For instance, in 1 Corinthians 11 partaking in the memorial meal and its symbolic interpretation is ritualized on at least three levels: 1) bolstering the historicity and legitimacy of the ritual (vv. 23–6); 2); ‘expanding upon its meaning for the believers and upon the magical faculties involved in partaking in the ritual’ (vv. 27–32); and 3) correcting its observance in the Corinthian community (vv. 17–22; 33–4). Interestingly, the Eucharist was soon separated from the ordinary meal, and tasting something more ‘set apart’, i.e. a thin wafer not otherwise consumed, is now common practice in many Christian groups. 43 For further discussion of different modes of religion, both doctrinal and imagistic, see Whitehouse, Modes; MacDonald, Pauline Churches. 44 According to Gunther the use of the word baptismos rather than the customary baptisma (2.12) suggests further that Christian baptism is also the new counter-ritual for the ceremonial washing of cookware, cf. Mk 7.14; John J. Gunther, St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background: A Study of Apocalyptic and Jewish Sectarian Teachings (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 134. This may illustrate Colossians’ counter-ritualization and renegotiation of cultural performances. 41

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reform movements. Traditional rituals may be used to evoke established performances, symbols and even social structures but in a way that orchestrates differentiation rather than connection with traditions.45 This may ensure that the community ‘fits in’ with its environs, and outsiders may not see the difference, while ingroup symbolic meanings may be even directly opposed towards the past.46 This may contribute to achievement of ‘optimal distinctiveness’, as something ‘too different’ could lead to negative social responses and social stigma.47 While baptism may not have looked that different from ritual washings, it is loaded with symbolism of death and life (Col. 2.12–13). This follows Pauline traditions closely, as Gal. 3.27–8 also associates baptism with denouncing ethnic, status and gender difference, as does Col. 3.10–11. It is not surprising then that commentators assume a similar opposition and dispute.48 If baptism was a counter-ritual, different interpretive options arise: Colossians may have dismissed the value of Jewishness altogether, if criticism of the Law is indicative of the eradication of God’s covenant with Israel on the grounds of their rejection of Christ and if baptism – instead of circumcision – now constitutes God’s people. Or Colossians may have disregarded circumcision as the sign for God’s people, meaning that the nations undergo spiritual circumcision to mark their initiation ‘in Christ’.49 In other words, baptism either 1) replaces circumcision as the ritual to mark God’s people who are now baptized (and the past covenant is no longer relevant), or 2) it takes the

Catherine M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 195. Bell uses ritualization to describe a deployment of ritual ‘as a social strategy’ for social control and communication; Bell, Ritual, 89. It refers to strategic ways of differentiation of a particular ritual from other cultural performances, in order to achieve ‘particular social effects … rooted in a distinctive interplay of a socialized body and the environment its structures’; Bell, Ritual, 7–8. 46 So for instance MacDonald, who compares Jewish traditions and social networks to a ‘protective umbrella’ for the early Christian movement; Margaret Y. MacDonald, ‘The Politics of Identity in Ephesians’, JSNT 26, no. 4 (2004). 47 Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17, no. 5 (1991); Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘Optimal Distinctiveness, Social Identity, and the Self ’, in Handbook of Self and Identity, Mark R. Leary and June Price Tangney (eds) (New York: Guilford Press, 2003). 48 Cf. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 13, 104–8, 125. 49 Sumney makes an interesting remark: it is unlikely that the metaphor of circumcision would have been imagined by a non-Jew; Sumney, Colossians, 136. This would make the evaluation of Jewish culture as deviant all the more striking. Either the writer fails to explain his position (and the two covenants) fully, or the writer is blatantly critical of Israelites who have rejected Jesus. Either way, the text became associated with the idea of separating the Jesus-movement from its cultural origins. 45

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place of circumcision for the nations, marking their initiation, while the Jewish covenant would continue, as would the ritual, for that ethnic group. If Colossians is examined in the light of the two-salvation hypothesis, 2.11–13 is not necessarily negative, neither is anything else in 2.8–23. This includes a striking image of ‘the writing that stood against us with its legal demands’ which was nailed to the cross (2.14). Was it a heavenly record of trespasses, as a placard of crimes (‘sins of the world’) for which Christ was crucified?50 The writing nailed to the cross is associated with the ‘trespasses’ and ‘uncircumcision’ (of the nations) in 2.13; due to the idea of ‘commands’ (dogmasin) it could also refer to the Law, particularly as the term also appears in Ephesians in conjunction with law (Eph. 2.15). If it was the Law, the interpretation may depend on one’s views on Jewish Law and covenant.51 Either the Law no longer defines the people of God, which also include the faithful of the nations in Christ, but it does remain valid for Israel, or the Law served a temporary purpose, and it was nailed to the cross along with the redeeming sacrifice and has now been replaced by the fullness of God’s mystery in the risen Christ. Colossians has potentially provided one of the most shocking images of the New Testament: the Jewish Law was executed on the cross, together with Christ, a contested messianic figure. Denouncing Jewish ritual life means that Colossians’ community positioning is different and distinctive from the earliest Jewish Jesus movement. The newness of the community appears to involve a denial of ethnic, cultural, or status difference, in a familiar sounding of ‘There is no Greek and Jew, circumcized and uncircumcized, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all, and in all’ (3.11; cf. Gal. 3.28; 1 Cor. 12.13). But at the same time, the saying keeps on reminding the group of differences. Furthermore, despite the rhetoric of levelling honour and privileges, the community does not deliver social mobility to community members: the stereotypes marking the Jew/ ethnic other remain operative (2.13; 4.11); slaves remain slaves (3.22–5), and their masters continue to enjoy privileged positions (4.1).52 The writer also See for example, Dunn, Epistles, 166; Sumney, Colossians, 147. Note the Eph. 2.14–16 parallel for reconciliation ‘making peace through the blood of his cross’; Col. 2.20. 52 For the complexity of hierarchies and interconnected identities see Marianne Kartzow, ‘“Asking the Other Question”: An Intersectional Approach to Galatians 3:28 and the Colossian Household Codes’, BibInt 18, no. 4–5 (2010): 364–89. Kartzow discusses the intersectionality of Colossians’ hierarchical positions for the marginalized and subordinate: female, juvenile, and enslaved (male, female). 50 51

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maintains gender priorities: Jewish circumcision never marked ‘the people of god’, all of them, but only Jewish males. Although baptism would provide a community-unifying rite for both male and female, spiritualizing this as the ‘circumcision of Christ’ (2.11) does not make the language gender-neutral as it continues to use the idea of circumcision and refer to a ritual performed on male bodies. In terms of communal social positioning, the polemic against Jewish ritual praxis probably required some social distance from Jewish networks. Internalization of such views could have contributed to the development of dismissive attitudes and prejudices. For example, denouncing feasts and the Sabbath means that the author did not rekindle in the communal memory God’s covenant with Israel or how that covenant is demonstrated among ‘the nations’. However, one could argue that ‘gentiles remain gentiles, while Jews remain Jews’, and one poses no threat to the other, while both identities are renegotiated and diverse members united ‘in Christ’. Perhaps – but it wasn’t understood this way. When the movement grew in the polytheistic environment, it would have been important to direct the non-Israelites to appreciate God’s covenant and the law and to instruct them how to manage social interaction when some obey the law and others do not. We find a glimpse of negotiation of intracommunal difference in, for example, Acts 15, but the movement drifted apart socially and ideologically, and failed to understand or remember God’s lasting covenant with Israel.53 While identity in Colossians assumes a Jewish symbolic universe (monotheistic deity, Messiah, stereotypical division of people according to circumcision, etc.), some of the most important Jewish identity markers are rejected. They are not only irrelevant (not worth a mention), but Colossians makes a point by rejecting some key expressions of Jewish faith and using them in deviance processing. Therefore what may be prototypical in the cultural basis of one reform group can be deviant in another, like Colossians’ attitudes to Jewish law illustrate. Colossians’ refusal to allow contemporary cultures to flourish Interestingly, although Colossians mentions some like-minded ‘circumcized’ associates of Paul (the implied writer) in 4.10–11, the letter seems to endorse the ministry, or reputation, of Tychicus (beloved brother, faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord who will come as Paul’s representative), along with Onesimus (faithful and beloved brother, one of the locals, 4.9), and Epaphras (who is wrestling on their behalf in his prayers, has ministered locally, and in the community addressed; 1.7–8; 4.12–13).

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in the community is an instance of communal norm-making that defines deviance.54 Identifying deviance leads to identifying deviants and responding to their deviance by corrective action, punishment, or exclusion. Being labelled as deviant causes the person to either conform to communal norms or to accept deviant identity. In other words, a faithful Jewish believer would eventually become deviant in Colossians’ community and potentially exit and seek better status elsewhere. If the social positioning of the community includes some social distancing from Jewish networks, the writer makes some interesting socio-cultural manoeuvres that integrate the community in the Graeco-Roman society. For example, it is believed that the Graeco-Roman household code first appeared in early Christian literature in Colossians (3.18–4.1). The kurios formula sanctions social structures and challenges the lesser in status (women, children, slaves) to obey ‘in the Lord’. This may have been intended to discourage women’s ministry, and/or sexual abstinence, and to reorientate them towards faithful expressions of Christ-followership within patriarchal, (hetero)sexual relationships. The instructions for the slaves are longer than the advice to any other group and the only ones with the promise of reward (3.22–5). However, this does not necessarily tell us much about the community or reveal particular problems with ‘rebelling’ slaves, as the sheer number of slaves in the Roman Empire would have meant that instructions to slaves or slavemasters would have been relevant to a considerable number of community members in any urban, Roman congregation.55 The household code suggests that Colossians was creating something like an ‘optimal distinctiveness’, that is, an identity that provided sufficient distinctiveness to define the community, while ensuring that they are not too different from their social environs to safeguard them from unnecessary hassle and harassment.56 For colonial and contemporary parallels for ‘supremacy and absolutism in Christ’, see Zerbe and Orevillo-Montenegro, ‘The Letter to the Colossians’, esp. 295–7. 55 Witherington, The Letters, 72. See Walsh and Keesmaat, Colossians; Zerbe and Orevillo-Montenegro, ‘The Letter to the Colossians’; Tinsley, ‘Reading’, for postcolonial readings of Colossians, which explore how colonial ideologies are cradled in the text, how the writer responds to Roman imperialism, and complexities of interpretive histories and today’s contexts. These readings are a welcome addition to understanding shaping identity and the complexity of social attitudes in the text and their effect upon readers in diverse settings. 56 Brewer, ‘Social Self ’; Brewer, ‘Distinctiveness’. Brewer’s work highlights how individuals position themselves individually, relationally, and socially. It assumes that different aspects of identity are all social and offers some explanations as to how social identities evolve and how individual identification with different identities may shift and change, as salience may vary depending 54

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Conclusions The shaping of social identity in Colossians seems to have three key components. First, it reinforces common values with the wider Jesus-movement, such as prayerful, spiritual orientation towards Israel’s God, belief in Jesus as the saviour, and baptism as an initiation ritual. Second, it repositions the community in their local socio-ideological context, offering particular guidance for building distance to Jewish traditions and other cultural influences. This is not so much about ‘people’, or ‘opponents’, but ‘otherness’, any cultural baggage or influence that the writer regards as threatening for the community. As a result, well-known aspects of Jewish culture are perceived as unnecessary for the community and its ritual life and become categorized as deviant. Third, Colossians incorporates contemporary hierarchical structures and constrains social mobility and freedom within the community, trying to ensure that it would resemble the hierarchies of its social environs. This may have been motivated by the androcentrism or exploitation common at the time of writing or, quite possibly, by a desire for optimal distinctiveness to guard the community from social harassment and dispute. These identity discourse manoeuvres gave the community guidance on how to define right and wrong and in order to draw lines of distinction between the ingroup and outsiders. This provided tools both for self-enhancing communal processes and for deviance processing. Furthermore, deviance norms typically reduce the social attractiveness of the deviant or marginalized, which may contribute to increasing social distance if the more prototypical members marginalized and ‘distanced’ the culturally different as deviants. This is connected with synchronic identity processes in the wider Christ-movement: other later New Testament and subsequent texts manifest similar tendencies of positioning the ethnically diverse Christ-movement outside Jewish networks and Law-observance and ensuring wives would be submissive to

on circumstances and interpersonal connections at any given moment. Collective identities are negotiated socially, and individual identity may be a sum of individual traits, interpersonal relations and broader collective identities. See Constantine Sedikides and Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘Individual Self, Relational Self, and Collective Self: Partners, Opponents, or Strangers?’, in Individual Self, Relational Self, Collective Self, Constantine Sedikides and Marilynn B. Brewer (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001), 1–4.

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their husbands and masters, discouraging, for example, itinerant ministry and the leadership of women. Social identities, communities and societies have evolved a lot since the time of the writing of Colossians and will continue to do so. Today’s interpreters face the challenge of how to interpret early Christian identities for today’s generation, church and society, and how to deal with archaic androcentrism and cultural imperialism. One can only hope that values of fairness and equality would prevail and that the text would be one of hope and inspiration for humanity, not one of oppression, arrogance or exploitation.

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Stereotyping and Institutionalizationas Indications of Leadership Maintenance in the Pastoral Epistles: 1 Timothy as a Test Case Jack Barentsen

Introduction Within the Pauline corpus, the Pastoral Epistles discuss dimensions of local leadership that are not present in Paul’s uncontested letters. The Pastorals contain many stereotypical references to the Pauline teaching tradition and to Paul’s opponents, and they discuss church order and the arrangement of subgroups within the church. This chapter evaluates the use of stereotypical and church order language in 1 Timothy, seeking to reconstruct the social scenario in which this language is embedded. Social identity theory offers a helpful framework to locate such language properly in its social context. The guiding question is: what is the social setting of the stereotypical and church order language in 1 Timothy when viewed from a social identity perspective, and how does this influence the social reconstruction of leadership patterns in this letter?

Stereotypical language in 1 Timothy Johan Christiaan Beker offers a representative overview of stereotypical and church order language in 1 Timothy in his discussion of the Heirs of Paul.1

Johan Christiaan Beker, Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 36–47.

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First, Beker contrasts Paul’s lively dialogue with what he perceives as the more static and dogmatic argumentation of ‘the Pastor’, Beker’s name for the author of the Pastorals. Paul demonstrates a very ‘intricate and flexible manner in which [he] integrates his gospel with various contingent situations of his missionary churches’. For instance, the Thessalonian and Corinthian correspondences portray numerous concrete situations in these churches and Paul engages them in depth, often inserting lively personal details into the argument. However, the Pastor portrays Paul ‘as a figure who imposes doctrine and engages in monologue’. He transforms Paul’s gospel into a ‘deposit of truth’ (1 Tim. 6.20; cf. 2 Tim. 1.14), and refers to it as ‘sound teaching’ to which his readers should adhere closely (1 Tim. 1.10; cf. 2 Tim. 4.3). Indeed, Timothy is instructed to command certain people not to teach strange doctrines (1 Tim. 1.3), and to instruct or command the congregation about godliness and about appropriate relationships (4.11; 5.7). Although Beker recognizes the personal features of Paul’s portrait in 1 Timothy, he argues that the Pastor raises ‘Paul’s exclusive authority and the undisputed validity of his teaching’ to a new level. As a result, this ‘brings about an increasing “depersonalization” and “dehistoricization” of the apostle.’2 Second, Beker identifies significant differences in how Paul and the Pastor handle their opponents. Paul is portrayed as interacting personally and directly with his opponents, while the Pastor ‘does not take the theological claims of his opponents seriously, but rather vilifies and stereotypes them as empty hotheads and moral perverts’. He describes them as ‘puffed up with conceit’ with ‘an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words’. They are ‘men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth’ (1 Tim. 6.20, cf. 2 Tim. 3.13, Tit. 1.10). Beker finds that the Pastor grossly misrepresents the actual situation, and charges him with stereotyping his opponents without serious rebuttal.3 Third, Beker points to the increasing emphasis on order and administration. Even though the Pastor remains committed to Paul’s vision of an eschatological judgement, ‘his emphasis on matters of ecclesial order and administration (1 Tim. 2.1–12; Tit. 1.5–2.10) show his fading interest in the Beker, Heirs, 39–40. See also James W. Aageson, Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008), 28–31, 50–2. Beker, Heirs, 40–1.

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imminent coming of the end time’. Orderly church life and proper organization now draw his attention, as he recommends prayers for authorities (1 Tim. 2.1–2) and requires a bishop’s character to conform ‘to the moral customs of Roman society’. Beker sees this as accommodation to the GraecoRoman world.4 Other scholars similarly take the household framework in 1 Timothy 2–6 as a sign of institutionalization and accommodation to stabilize Paul’s communities and order their ministries. Many believe that such institutionalization processes take one or two generations to develop.5 Such stereotypical and church order language is usually interpreted as an indication of the historical distance between Paul and the Pastor. Beker’s view that this distance probably spans two generations is representative for many scholars, although some take exception to this.6 Additional sociohistorical variables, such as social status and household language, are added to further explain these phenomena.7 Thus, the observable differences between 1 Timothy and the uncontested Pauline letters are projected onto a timeline of historical development, with allowance for variation in geographical and social location. The question arises whether elapse of time and geographical variation are sufficient to account for these differences. To answer this question, the usual socio-historical analyses will be supplemented by a perspective from social identity theory. To rephrase the question, can social identity theory confirm that stereotypical and church order language necessarily implies social and historical distance, as theologians have frequently interpreted such language?

Beker, Heirs, 40–1. Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 207, 214; Aageson, Paul, 35; cf. David C. Verner, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 180–2.  6 Bengt Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1978), 165ff.  7 See Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, trans. John H. Schütz (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982); Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).  4  5

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Social identity theory and leadership The social identity theory of leadership provides tools to locate stereotypical and church order language in its social context. Since the theory is already introduced elsewhere,8 only a few features need to be presented. In the context of a group, members tend to think of themselves and fellow group members in terms of similarities, of what connects them together as ingroup members; that is, they highlight mutual similarities and minimize mutual differences. Conversely, they tend to think of outsiders (outgroup members) in terms of differences, what makes them different from their own ingroup, while minimizing any similarities with them. Thus, both ingroup and outgroup members are seen as similar or different based on a set of representative group characteristics, not based on their personal identity as defined by personal attributes or personal history. Social identity theory, then, proposes that group relationships are seen in highly stereotypical terms. Moreover, when such stereotypical judgements are applied to the outgroup, or even to ingroup members who are considered deviant, this is often done in derogatory terms.9 Applying the theory to leadership development, scholars have observed that some members fit the ingroup’s social identity better than others and are judged to be more representative or prototypical than others.10 Such members become a model or exemplar for the ingroup. Group members tend to conform to and be influenced by the group prototype. The more one aligns with the prototype, the greater one’s influence. Thus, group members exercise influence according to their degree of prototypicality. The increasing influence of a prototypical member is gradually transformed into actual leadership by the process of leadership attribution. In stable groups, over time, members tend to attribute the influence of a prototypical member to intrinsic leadership ability or to the person’s personality, not to his or her prototypicality. Leadership attribution thus tends ‘to construct a See Esler’s essay earlier in this handbook, 13–39. S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach, 2nd edn. (London: Sage, 2004), 30. 10 S. Alexander Haslam and Naomi Ellemers, ‘Social Identity in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Concepts, Controversies and Contributions’, in International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, G. P. Hodgkinson and J. K. Ford (eds) (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005), 41.  8  9

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charismatic leadership personality’ that sets that person apart from the group and reinforces the perception of a status difference between leader(s) and followers.11 Moreover, prototypical persons can take initiative and enhance their influence and leadership in at least four ways: (1) ‘They can try to make themselves more like the prototype … (2) they can redefine the prototype to look more like them’, (3) they can accentuate the existing group prototype, often by criticizing ingroup deviants or demonizing an appropriate outgroup, and (4) leaders can ‘initiate structure to realize the social identity-based values and norms of their group’ to increase their effectiveness.12 Thus, a leader can manoeuvre to maintain or strengthen his leadership. In essence, leaders can be seen as entrepreneurs of social identity.

Group structures in 1 Timothy Since stereotypical language indicates an intra- and intergroup context, a brief survey of groups in 1 Timothy is needed to indicate the relevance of social identity theory in this study. The first identifiable group as presented in the letter includes Paul and Timothy as members of Paul’s missionary team and, in the context of the church in Ephesus, as a leadership subgroup.13 The letter frequently presents Michael A. Hogg, ‘A Social Identity Theory of Leadership’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 3 (2001): 188–90. Hogg and Reid summarize it as follows: ‘The most prototypical person is able to exercise leadership by having his or her ideas accepted more readily and more widely than ideas suggested by others. This empowers the leader, and publicly confirms his or her ability to exercise influence. Consensual depersonalized liking, particularly over time, confirms differential popularity and public endorsement of the leader. It imbues the leader with prestige and status, and begins to reify an intragroup status differential between leader and followers’; Michael A. Hogg and Scott A. Reid, ‘Social Identity, Leadership, and Power’, in The Use and Abuse of Power: Multiple Perspectives on the Causes of Corruption, A. Y. Lee-Chai and J. A. Bargh (eds) (Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 2001), 165. 12 Michael A. Hogg, ‘Social Identification, Group Prototypicality, and Emergent Leadership’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, ed. Michael A. Hogg (Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 2001), 211. Hogg and Reid, ‘Social Identity, Leadership, and Power’, 171; Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, ‘Social Identity and the Dynamics of Leadership: Leaders and Followers as Collaborative Agents in the Transformation of Social Reality’, The Leadership Quarterly 16, no. 4 (2005): 562. 13 The majority of scholars doubt that the framework of Paul writing Timothy is to be taken as historical, but regardless of one’s position in that debate, the leadership subgroup of Paul and Timothy is a key group as presented within the literary framework of this letter. But see also dissenting voices, such as J. T. Reed, ‘To Timothy or Not? A Discourse Analysis of 1 Timothy’, in 11

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Paul as speaking in the first person singular, addressing Timothy in the second person singular (1.3, 18; 3.14–15; 4.6–5.3; 5.17–23; 6.11–14). In the middle of these sections, three verbs in the first person plural are an exclusive ‘we’ (4.10), referring to Paul and Timothy (and possibly others of the missionary team) who ‘toil and strive’ in hope. These sections frame the letter as a whole, so that even more general instructions are presented within the framework of the intragroup dynamics between Paul and Timothy. A second group is the Ephesian church. Timothy is instructed to stop false teaching in the church (1.3–4), to regulate prayers (2.1–4) and to encourage qualified leadership (3.1–14). He is to warn the brothers (4.6), be an example to the church (4.12, 15) and to regulate the participation of various subgroups in the congregation (5.1–6.2), notably widows (5.3–16) and elders (5.17–25). He is to ‘teach and urge these things’ to the church (6.3). The elders constitute a third distinct social group in the letter, since 5.17–25 views elders as a group of leaders with intragroup differentiation in an elder’s ability to rule and in the extent to which an elder engages in preaching and teaching. Even though moral issues (accusations, rebuke, sin, 5.19–20, 22) are individual (singular form of πρεσβύτερος), the approach to dealing with these issues is group-based. Taking 5.24–5 as a further reference to this eldersubgroup,14 the relationship of Paul and Timothy with this subgroup is here depicted as an intergroup relationship because of the use of third person plural verbs, indicating ‘us’ versus ‘them’ language. This raises the question whether the false teachers can be identified as a group. Timothy is instructed to charge ‘certain persons’ (τισίν, 1.3) to stop various teaching practices which had resulted in ‘certain persons’ (τινες) getting into ‘vain discussions’ (1.6), while some (τινες) actually made shipwreck of their faith (1.19). Similar references to errant teachers with plural forms of τις punctuate the letter (4.1; 5.15, 24; 6.10, 21; cf. singular form in 6.3), usually indicating that ‘some’ have deviated from the main group.15 A number of these Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research, Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson (eds), JSNTSup (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 35A (New York: Doubleday, 2001). 14 George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1992), 240–2. 15 I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, C. E. B. Cranfield, G. N. Stanton, and Graham Davies (eds), ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 574–81.

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are described as having wandered away from the faith, with the implication that they are no longer part of the church and thus outsiders (1.19; 4.1; 5.15; 6.10, 21). Other false teachers may still function within the church (1.3, 6; 5.24; 6.3). Since Timothy is called upon to intervene in Ephesus, it is likely that at least some false teachers were part of the elder-subgroup, since otherwise the elders could have provided the correction themselves. Unlike in Corinth with its jealousies and divisions, no divisions seem to be at issue in 1 Timothy, suggesting that the false teachers are not represented as an opposing outgroup nor as leaders of significant subgroups in the congregation, but as individual deviant group members, some of which had already left the group, and some of which remained as elders within the church. In summary, 1 Timothy refers to the Ephesian church as the main group, and to two leadership subgroups, Paul’s missionary team as represented by Paul and Timothy, and the local leadership subgroup of elders. False teachers figure as individual deviant group members who are marginalized relative to the Pauline leadership subgroup and the church. It is likely that some of these false teachers were part of the local subgroup of elders.

Stereotypical language as a function of group structures Having identified various groups in 1 Timothy, the next step is to investigate the stereotypical language in this group setting. To begin with, the letter contrasts Paul and Timothy as ingroup prototypes with the false teachers as ingroup deviants or even as outgroup members. The implied author exhorts Timothy to prevent the teaching of ‘any different doctrine’ (ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν, 1.3). In its use of ἕτερος, the letter marks teaching that is not congruent with Paul’s and Timothy’s as ‘other’, as marker of an outgroup identity. The content of the false teaching is merely labelled as myths, genealogies and speculations (1.4) without a clear description, while the false teachers themselves are labelled as aspiring teachers of the law who are ignorant about the subject. This stereotypical language frames the false teachers as outgroup relative to the subgroup of Paul’s missionary team. Some appear to function within the church, so this language defines them as ingroup deviants (e.g. 1.3ff.), but others are now outside the church, having become part of the outgroup (e.g. 1.20).

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This contrast is further enhanced by including the Ephesian church in the ingroup. When discussing the proper use of the law, the letter refers to the general knowledge of Christians in the phrase ‘we know that’ (1.8), which is elsewhere used to refer to common Christian knowledge.16 The law is intended to resist immoral practices (see the vice list of 1.9–10), which are ‘contrary to sound doctrine’ (1.10), so this proper use of the law supports the ‘gospel of the glory of the blessed God’ that Paul preached (1.11). These verses expand the contrast between the false teachers and Paul’s missionary team by focusing on the authorized teaching tradition and by including the church in the ingroup. The ‘we’ who know how to use the law are contrasted with the false teachers who do not, while the just (δικαίῳ, 1.9) for whom the law is not intended are contrasted with the lawless (ἀνόμοις) who are the proper object of the law. Thus, the believing community is differentiated in stereotypical terms from both the false teachers as deviant ingroup or outgroup members and from unbelievers as the outgroup, while being included at the same time in the ingroup with Paul and Timothy as ingroup prototypes. At the outset of the letter, then, the groups of the missionary team and the church are aligned with one another and oriented towards the gospel as entrusted to and exemplified by Paul. Together they are in opposition to the false teachers. This alignment and contrast is amplified throughout the letter. The virtue lists for overseers and deacons (3.1–13) function as (partial) definitions of ingroup characteristics; this favours prototypical members as candidates for leadership and communicates to ingroup deviants that they need to conform. Timothy is to teach ‘good doctrine’ (4.6) and to be a personal example to the believers (4.12), while avoiding ‘irreverent, silly myths’ (4.7). False teachers are conceited and ignorant (6.3–4), but Timothy is adjured to be faithful to his charge (6.11–15). The closing lines of the letter, probably in the author’s own handwriting, once more affirm the above (6.20–1). Clearly, 1 Timothy frequently employs stereotypical language in an intergroup context. The Pastor encourages his readers to align with Paul and Timothy as core leadership subgroup in their commitment to the Pauline gospel as the authorized teaching tradition, while framing their relationship

A phrase used elsewhere to refer to common Christian knowledge. See Rom. 2.2; 3.19; 8.22, 28; 1 Cor. 8.1, 4; 2 Cor. 5.1; Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 80; Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, 374–5.

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with deviant teachers as a vivid contrast. This labels these teachers as ingroup deviants or even as outgroup members, discouraging his readers from aligning with them. Timothy’s teaching responsibility in the church is stereotypically framed as faithfulness to the Pauline teaching tradition, but these stereotypical labels are shaped primarily in the intragroup context of the Pauline team and the false teachers, not so much in an intergroup context of the church and opposing outgroups. Thus, the church is not described and labelled as a whole in comparison with opposing outgroups, which confirms the earlier finding that the false teachers are not portrayed as representatives of opposing groups. Note that no stereotypical language is employed to label the outgroup of the unbelieving world. Since stereotypical language serves to highlight differences between groups, this signals that the letter shows little concern to differentiate the believing ingroup from the unbelieving outgroup. This differentiation is not unimportant, since unbelievers represent a key critical audience (see 2.1–2; 3.7; 5.6–7; 5.14; 6.1), but the distinctiveness of Christian identity over against the unbelieving world is simply not an issue in 1 Timothy as it is in the uncontested Pauline letters. Instead, 1 Timothy focuses on intragroup concerns regarding its teaching tradition and false teachers, which is the occasion for its use of stereotypical language.

Stereotypical language as a function of leadership maintenance The investigation of group dynamics provided a fuller social context for understanding 1 Timothy’s stereotypical language. This can now be extended to a consideration of leadership development in the letter. The letter contains various personal references to Paul (the so-called self-references) that present Paul as exemplar and prototypical model to the community. The Pastor reminds his readers of Paul’s past as persecutor, ‘formerly … a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent’ (1.13), which reflects knowledge of the memory referred to in 1 Cor. 15.9. In both passages, Paul’s absolute dependence on the grace of Christ is emphasized.17 However,

Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 1208–9.

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the Pastor reinterprets Paul’s past as exemplary for the community, since Christ displayed Paul, reckoned to be ‘foremost’ of sinners, as example for believers (1 Tim. 1.15–16). Moreover, the gospel of glory had been entrusted to Paul, which in effect puts the apostle Paul in a key position as teacher and model for the community (1.11–13). A few paragraphs later, another synopsis of the gospel (2.3–6) precedes the Pastor’s claim that Paul was preacher and apostle of the Gentiles (2.7). In both passages, the content of the gospel is intimately connected with Paul’s crucial role in proclaiming it. This rhetorical strategy accomplishes two things. First, it further highlights the contrast between the gospel entrusted to Paul and what the false teachers taught about the law.18 Second, it portrays Paul’s existential involvement in this gospel, since he is presented as living exemplar of the saving power of the gospel. Thus, even Paul’s self-references serve to highlight the stereotypical contrast between the missionary team and the believing community on the one hand, and the false teachers on the other, but they extend the argument to present Paul as authoritative teacher of the gospel which defines the nature of Christian social identity. That is, both the gospel and Paul’s role as teacher are presented as defining beliefs for the Christian community. This rhetorical strategy functions as a means of leadership maintenance. It accentuates the existing ingroup prototype over against various challenges by opponents and argues that Paul is to be accepted as the divinely authorized prototype of the community, at least in terms of its teaching tradition. In a way very similar to the Corinthian epistles,19 Paul is presented as the irreplaceable model and channel for the gospel message that defines the nature of Christian social identity. One might say that the letter constructs a charismatic leadership profile for Paul, considering the emphasis on divine grace and commission. However, the creation of a charismatic leadership personality is not a process that a leader can initiate, but a group-based process in response to leadership Merz argues on the basis of pseudonymous authorship that the Pastor wanted to claim Paul’s authority for his own version of the gospel, setting it apart through stereotypical language from competing versions of Paul’s gospel; see Annette Merz, ‘Amore Pauli: Das Corpus Pastorale und das Ringen um die Interpretationshoheit bezüglich des paulinischen Erbes’, TQ 187, no. 4 (2007): 282, 286. This interpretation of stereotypical language, however, preceded the type of close analysis such as offered in this chapter and must be re-evaluated when the social identity analysis is completed. 19 Jack Barentsen, Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission: A Social Identity Perspective on Local Leadership Development in Corinth and Ephesus, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 168 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 101–8 and 132–7. 18

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performance. Most likely, then, the letter reflects or at least anticipates the leadership attribution process taking place in the community, suggesting that 1 Timothy does not recreate Paul as charismatic leader, but rather reflects the existing community attitude towards Paul as such. Another function of leadership maintenance is the Pastor’s presentation of Timothy as Paul’s delegate and successor. In an inclusio, the initial charge to Timothy (1.3–5) is confirmed (1.18) with the Pastor entrusting to Timothy what Paul himself had been entrusted with (1.11) so that he fights the good fight. Just as Paul was commissioned by Christ (1.12), so Timothy was commissioned by prophecy (1.18). The need for faithfulness to this commission is emphasized by the negative example of Hymenaeus and Alexander (1.19– 20), which represents the stereotypical intergroup contrast between Paul and Timothy as faithfully maintaining the faith and those shipwrecking it. Furthermore, Timothy is to teach ‘good doctrine’ (4.6) and to be a personal example to the believers (4.12), based on the trustworthy saying that God ‘is the Saviour of all people’ (4.10), which he was commissioned to teach (4.14). This mirrors the portrayal of Paul, whose teaching of the gospel (1.10–11) and personal example (1.16) centred on Christ who ‘came into the world to save sinners’ (1.15), which he was commissioned to proclaim (1.11–12). These features present Timothy’s and Paul’s service as similar, portraying the former as successor of the latter.20 Paul, in his absence, entrusts the responsibility to maintain his teaching tradition faithfully in Ephesus to Timothy, so that Paul and Timothy are presented as unique guardians of this tradition. Yet another instance of leadership maintenance is the institution of various identity-embedding structures. Various evidences in the Pastorals point to a growing complexity and organization. The Pastor’s attitude is often evaluated to be one of accommodation and institutionalization.21 Interestingly, social identity research demonstrates that a prototypical leader needs to ‘use his various skills to initiate structure that would realize the social identity-based values and norms of his group’. In other words, a leader’s ‘social power is Barbara A. Ritter and Robert G. Lord, ‘The Impact of Previous Leaders on the Evaluation of New Leaders: An Alternative to Prototype Matching’, Journal of Applied Psychology 92, no. 6 (2007); Perry L. Stepp, Leadership Succession in the World of the Pauline Circle, New Testament Monographs 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005); Barentsen, Emerging Leadership, 61–73. 21 E.g. Annette Merz, Die fiktive Selbstauslegung des Paulus: Intertextuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbriefe, NTOA 52 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). 20

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not sufficient for social transformation unless it is yoked to structures that function in such a way as to overcome resistance to the collective project’. Thus, leaders must be organizers as well as visionaries.22 It appears, then, that the Pastor builds on Paul’s visionary leadership by institutionalizing certain social structures to realize his vision over the long term.23 Like Paul, the Pastor did not intend for believers to stop fulfilling their roles as men, women and slaves, but he instructed them on how these roles were to be fulfilled as Christians. The relevant dimension for their Christian identity is not their relative social status, but their attitude of love and respect for one another regardless of status. That is, the Pastor describes a Christian response at the distinctive subgroup levels of men/women, widows, leaders, etc., while simultaneously highlighting their common, superordinate identity in Christ. The Pastor does not negate subgroup identities and their social differences, but gives them their proper place in the church’s corporate identity in Christ. Although this process has been described as accommodation to worldly structures after an initial period of charismatic radicalism, it should rather be construed as the normal result of effective leadership which defines and negotiates social identities at different levels. Without initiating such structures, Paul’s visionary project would have collapsed. In other words, far from household language and organizational aspects being signs of accommodation or a failing charismatic vision, they are signs of robust leadership which both defines and constructs Christian social identity to create stable, enduring Christian communities.24 Thus, 1 Timothy contains several instances of leadership maintenance. Stereotypical references to opponents as well as Paul’s brief (stereotypical) selfreferences highlight Paul’s prototypicality as apostolic leader. Simultaneously, Timothy’s close bond and shared memory with Paul (again in stereotypical language) signal Timothy’s prototypicality to the readers: just as Paul is model for Timothy, so Timothy is model for his churches. And finally, the

Reicher, Haslam, and Hopkins, ‘Social Identity and the Dynamics of Leadership’, 560–3. See also Holmberg, Paul and Power, 165ff. Aageson follows the accommodation argument in his analysis: ‘The patterns of the household in the real world shape the ideal patterns of the household of God in the literary world, which in turn are intended to order the real life of the church’; Aageson, Paul, 23. Our own analysis suggests that the author deliberately used household structures to embed his vision of social identity into a workable form of community.

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institutionalization of certain social structures is a sign of robust leadership and does not necessarily point to accommodation decades after the initial charismatic fervour.

Implications The survey of stereotypical and church order language is completed. We should now be in a position to reconstruct more fully the social setting for this language and its impact for the study of leadership patterns in this letter.

Social proximity instead of social distance When Beker described certain features in the Pastorals as ‘depersonalization’ and ‘dehistoricization’, he wrote better than he knew. First Timothy shows clear indications of depersonalization in the sense that individual members of some groups are viewed in terms of the group’s characteristics and not in terms of personal attributes. Also, some of Paul’s self-references appear stylized to serve ideological ends. Here, an important but not yet discussed theoretical aspect sheds light on the nature of these references. Stereotyping and depersonalization take place mostly in stable groups, where group characteristics are generally clear and acknowledged. In unstable groups it is unclear what group characteristics or which group members are considered representative, with the result that depersonalization and stereotyping decrease.25 This confirms the finding above that the nature and boundaries of Christian social identity generally seemed uncontested in 1 Timothy. Moreover, it was found that in 1 Timothy stereotyping related to leadership and teaching increased as compared with the rest of the Pauline corpus. According to social identity theory, this phenomenon suggests a stable intergroup context, at least with reference to leadership and teaching tradition. This implies that 1 Timothy Michael A. Hogg, Sarah C. Hains, and Isabel Mason, ‘Identification and Leadership in Small Groups: Salience, Frame of Reference, and Leader Stereotypicality Effects on Leader Evaluations’, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 75 (1998): 1249; Hogg, ‘Leadership’, 190; Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 36.

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comes from a setting that reflects a stable vision of Christian identity, an established teaching tradition and accepted leadership structures. One might, of course, argue that the Pastor intended to convey such an impression in order to gain social power in a situation where teaching traditions and leadership structures had diversified. However, our interpretation is confirmed by the finding that false teachers probably do not represent an identifiable outgroup or an opposing subgroup but rather figure as individual deviants. Thus, the occurrence of stereotypical language and the presence of false teachers cannot be counted as evidence of diversity in terms of rival teaching traditions embedded in various versions of Christianity. Claims that the Pastor wrote in a context of such diversity remain unfounded. Compare this situation with Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian and Corinthian churches. These were written to relatively young churches that were experiencing destabilizing forces. Paul had left the Thessalonian church prematurely, while believers experienced persecution. This occasioned serious questions about Paul’s leadership and vision of Christian identity. Paul responds by reminding them in lively language about some personal details in his style of ministry and personal example (1 Thess. 1.8–2.20). In Corinth, the formation of subgroups in the congregation (1 Cor. 1–4) and the eventual influence of false teachers (2 Cor. 10–13) shifted the church away from Paul’s initial preaching and example. Paul responds by reminding them of his initial preaching and his ministry among them and by clarifying and re-establishing their Christian social identity with himself as key exemplar (2 Cor. 2.14–6.10; 11.7–12.13). In both situations, Paul manoeuvres from a marginal location within the group towards a central position as apostolic leader, using a very personal and sometimes polemical dialogue. First Timothy indeed offers a completely different context. It presents Paul as addressing a trusted colleague with whom he has collaborated at least fifteen years.26 In this setting, Paul’s conversion as well as the content of his message figure as shared, uncontested memories that can be conveniently referred to in stereotypical fashion. Within the community, such stereotypes function as shorthand to remind group members of familiar deviants

E. Earle Ellis, ‘Pastoral Letters’, in DPL, 658–66; E. Earle Ellis, ‘Paul and His Coworkers’, in DPL, 183–8.

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without needing to rehearse the details; they affirm generally uncontested group boundaries. Finally, Paul’s self-references do not need the lively detail as in other letters, since his leadership is generally accepted, certainly by the main addressee, Timothy. On the other hand, in Thessalonica and Corinth, Paul addressed congregations that questioned or marginalized him, forcing him to retell their common memories in explicit and personal detail in an effort to re-establish Paul as key leader and teacher, legitimizing his vision of the community’s identity. In these letters, Paul’s lively dialogue actually indicates emotional distance and broken loyalty, while the stereotyped references in 1 Timothy indicate shared memories and uncontested leadership structures and teaching traditions, except for a few deviants in the margin of the group. Beker’s observations, that 1 Timothy contained evidence of depersonalization and dehistoricization, were correct. From a historian’s perspective, this appeared to suggest the loss of knowledge of personal and historical details, thus implying elapse of time to account for this loss of memory. A social identity analysis suggests that such features indicate active memories shared by the main recipients. In other words, the recipients are not those who have forgotten all but the most prominent details of Paul’s ministry, but rather those who actively remember his ministry, so that these stereotypical memories make sense to them and motivate them to appropriate action. Depersonalization, dehistoricization and stereotyping thus point to a social setting for 1 Timothy that is most likely contemporaneous with Paul or within a decade after his death at the latest.

Stereotyping as a rhetorical strategy This chapter, then, argues that the stereotypical language of 1 Timothy reflects the close intragroup relationship between Paul and Timothy, the accepted intragroup structures of the Ephesian church, as well as the intragroup relationships between the Pauline team and false teachers.27 In other words, Some false teachers were already outside the community (e.g. 1.20), which accounts for the observations that the Pastor’s rhetoric sometimes portrays the relationship with false teachers as intragroup, and sometimes as intergroup. This most likely reflects the social pressure upon these deviant teachers to conform to the authorized teaching tradition, lest they place themselves outside of the community.

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these stereotypes fit well socially within the context of Paul’s missionary team as presented in the letter in an Ephesian context with a relatively stable Christian identity and uncontested authority structures. The question arises why 1 Timothy denounces Paul’s opponents sharply and names some of them, while 1–2 Corinthians take a much more cautious and personal approach. It appears in 1 Corinthians that Paul had every intention to win his opponents back to his gospel; naming his opponents publicly would have brought such dishonour upon them that he would most likely not have achieved his goal. Paul is much sharper in 2 Corinthians, since reconciliation has been achieved (2 Cor. 7.6ff.) and the opponents have now backed down or else been identified and marginalized.28 In 1 Timothy, there is no danger in estranging Timothy by stereotyping certain opponents or by naming those who are already publicly known to have left the church. On the contrary, stereotyping in this setting affirms their social identity and their prototypical role in it. Moreover, although the opponents are referred to in stereotypical fashion, the Pastor’s instructions to Timothy regarding desirable leadership behaviour are quite extensive and personal, highly sensitive to the particular context that Timothy is in (1 Tim. 1.3–20; 4.6–16; 6.11–21). That is, 1 Timothy does not lack in personal argument, but it is directed towards instructing Timothy and the community about leadership, not towards defining the gospel message or winning back opponents. Thus, Paul’s lively style of argumentation in 1–2 Thessalonians and 1–2 Corinthians is to be attributed to the unstable social identities in the Thessalonian and Corinthian churches that endangered Paul’s representative leadership and perhaps even his ingroup membership, while the more depersonalized character of 1 Timothy reflects a stable social identity shared with trusted co-workers and with the church as well, who recognized Paul as undisputed leader. Instead of supposing that the Pastor and Paul should be distinguished because of their different rhetorical strategies, this chapter proposes the hypothesis – given the likely socio-historical context as argued above – that one author is sufficient to account for the variation in rhetoric. Authors from the ancient Middle East come from a collectivist society and can

Barentsen, Emerging Leadership, 132–40.

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be expected to be sensitive to variations in the intergroup context.29 It is likely that both lively polemics and stereotypical labelling were part of the repertoire of one ancient Middle Eastern author, but in a manner quite opposite to what Beker argued.

Reconfiguring leadership development In terms of leadership development, the social identity approach has several unexpected implications. In this letter, Paul’s leadership status is uncontested. He appears as a charismatic leader, endowed by God and commissioned as preacher and teacher of the nations. We argued that this reflects not merely the author’s claims but also the community’s attitude towards Paul as a charismatic leader. Thus, 1 Timothy does not reflect a time when institutionalizing tendencies compensated for the loss of charismatic leadership, but represents a letter in which charismatic leadership attribution reaches a new climax. Second, Timothy is presented as Paul’s delegate until he returns (1 Tim. 3.15) and perhaps as long-term successor. The close parallels between Paul and Timothy emphasize their similarities in their personal calling as well as in the message proclaimed. Since Paul’s own leadership status is uncontested, such a rhetorical strategy is likely to succeed in confirming Timothy’s leadership status in Ephesus. If Paul’s leadership were contested, this strategy would have undermined Timothy’s effectiveness as leader, since Timothy would have received the same treatment as Paul. This therefore presupposes the more stable social setting for the Ephesian community that was already indicated above. Third, the community is instructed in leadership behaviour. These instructions are not directly addressed to the leaders, to Timothy’s critics or to the community, but are clearly expected to be read by them (6.21). Perhaps Timothy needed such instructions, but given his long-term cooperation with Paul, it is more likely that these instructions vindicate Timothy’s leadership before the critics and the entire Ephesian community, indirectly pressuring

Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd edn. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 58–80.

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any deviant teachers to align themselves with Paul and Timothy.30 The author could expect such a response from a stable community with relatively loyal leadership. If, however, the situation is one of diversity and conflict, such instructions are likely to meet with resistance, especially against the author, against his delegate and any other leaders in that tradition. In such a situation, a sensitive author would have expected such a letter to fail to achieve its objectives or even to backfire – in which case the letter would likely not have been included in the corpus Paulinum. Fourth, new leaders emerge. A leadership profile is adapted and shaped for use in the Christian community (3.2–7),31 and new leaders are encouraged to step forth (3.1). The instructions in the letter serve to present Timothy as a model leader for emerging leaders. Again, such succession proposals could be effective only if the model leaders are respected and esteemed. It would be a very risky proposal if the author either was unsure of respect for Paul and Timothy, or if he knew that such respect was absent. Space is too limited to sketch leadership development more fully,32 but clearly the letter offers more than only a description of the leader’s character or instructions about the leader’s tasks. The social identity approach to leadership helps to evaluate the letter in its own bid for leadership, in its ability to affirm and/or construct new leadership patterns, and in the likelihood of its success or failure upon reception. In this light, it is not sufficient to suggest that stereotypical references indicate fading memory and that institutionalizing tendencies indicate failing charisma, without also explaining how such rhetorical and institutionalizing strategies enable the Pastor to successfully claim leadership for himself and his teaching tradition in a diversified, contested situation. This chapter has endeavoured to demonstrate that a social identity approach offers a way to improve the analysis, resulting in the findings that stereotyping refers to living memory, that Paul – and by extension Timothy – was perceived as a charismatic leader, and that both stereotyping and institutionalization were evidence of processes of leadership maintenance and succession in a social context that might well have been Paul’s. Barentsen, Emerging Leadership, 282–3. See Boris A. Paschke, ‘The Cura Morum of the Roman Censors as Historical Background for the Bishop and Deacon Lists of the Pastoral Epistles’, ZNW 98, no. 1 (2007): 105–19. 32 See Barentsen, Emerging Leadership. 30 31

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Paul’s Particular Problem – The Continuation of Existing Identitiesin Philemon J. Brian Tucker

Introduction Paul’s particular problem in Philemon may be described with the following question: what (if anything) should be done when a slave becomes a follower of Christ and his or her owner is already a member (and leader) within the Christ-movement? This question describes the ‘nested social dilemma’ that Paul faced in regard to Philemon and Onesimus.1 The baptismal unity formula in Gal. 3.28; 1 Cor. 12.13; and Col. 3.11 seems to suggest that some existing social identities are no longer relevant ‘in Christ’ and thus Christ-following slaves should no longer be identified as slaves. There are two main interpretive approaches that seek to determine the social implications of these verses: the universalistic and the particularistic approaches to Christ-movement social identity.2 The former approach contends that ‘in Christ’, existing social distinctions lose their relevance (or are in some sense erased), while the latter argues that these identities are reprioritized ‘in Christ’ but can and do continue to remain situationally salient. The debate within Pauline studies is most acute A. P. Wit and N. L. Kerr, ‘Me Versus Just Us Versus Us All’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 616, describe nested social dilemmas as ‘one particularly thorny class of situations of conflicting interests in social dilemmas … in which the conflict is between private and collective interests – that is, between “me” and “us all”’. This dilemma is particularly relevant to Philemon, since Paul is instructing Philemon in the context of the emerging hierarchically nested social structures of the early Christ-movement that required, at the same time, relational interdependence. The continual weighing of alternative levels of categorization seems to be in view in this letter and makes it a useful candidate for studying the dynamics of cooperation in the context of competing social structures within the Pauline Christ-movement.  2 Bruce Hansen, ‘All of You Are One’: The Social Vision of Galatians 3.28, 1 Corinthians 12.13 and Colossians. 3.11 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 194–203; J. Brian Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 61–88.  1

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with regard to the Jew and gentile pairing and the male and female binary. The slave and free coupling receives somewhat less focus than the ethnic and gender distinctions, though this pairing raises important issues with regard to the Pauline exceptions to his ‘rule in all the assemblies’ in 1 Cor. 7.17 that a person should remain in the social situation that he or she was in when called. This final binary will be the primary focus of this essay. Michael Wolter argues thus: Paul states that the distinction between ‘slaves’ and ‘free’ has been abrogated, like the distinction between Jews and Gentiles (1Cor 12,13; Gal 3,28), as well as that between male and female (Gal 3,28), within the symbolic universe which is created and determined by faith in Jesus Christ.3

He is a good example of the universalistic approach to Christ-movement identity; for him, ‘faith in Jesus Christ creates a new identity which supersedes every other given identity’.4 Furthermore, ‘[f]aith in Christ gives everybody who shares in it a new identity that disregards every social or cultural ascription of status’.5 Based on these statements, it is not surprising that he argues that Paul was not seeking manumission for Onesimus since his status as a slave was irrelevant within the Christ-movement: ‘The slave owner is not urged to set his slave free, but he is enjoined to treat him as a brother and friend.’6 For Wolter, the distinction between Jew and gentile has been anulled, and likewise the peculiarity between master and slave has been erased. However, is this Paul’s ideological position in this letter? The argument put forth here is that, for Paul, the slave social identity (status) continues ‘in Christ’ but it also falls into the category of a Pauline exception with regard to its continuation and thus may be subjected to further transformation, similar to what happens to aspects of gentile identity ‘in Christ’.7 This liminal state for gentile identity, along with the changing first-century context, accounts for Paul’s ambiguous rhetorical constructs in Philemon. In this essay

Michael Wolter, ‘The Letter to Philemon as Ethical Counterpart of Paul’s Doctrine of Justification’, in Philemon in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter, ed. D. Francois Tolmie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 170.  4 Wolter, ‘Ethical Counterpart’, 177.  5 Wolter, ‘Ethical Counterpart’, 178.  6 Wolter, ‘Ethical Counterpart’, 178.  7 J. Brian Tucker, Remain in Your Calling: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 115–35.  3

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we are interested in Phlm. 15–16 and the way it informs elements of the debate between the particularistic and universalistic approaches to Christ-following social identity when Onesimus’s slave status and Philemon’s identification with patronage are brought to the fore. To address this debate, we will use the resources of Tajfel and Turner’s social identity and self-categorization theories in our reading of this letter that addresses Paul’s particular problem of the continuation of social identities ‘in Christ’. The understanding of social identity for this essay follows Tajfel’s definition as ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’.8 It also builds on key ideas from Brewer’s understanding of social identity as ‘categorizations of the self into more inclusive social units that depersonalize the self-concept, where I becomes we’9 and Abrams’s contention that social identity also includes the simultaneous identification with multiple groups.10 This essay briefly surveys the limitations of the traditional reconstructions of this letter and suggests that paying attention to generic group dynamics may provide a helpful path forward. It then outlines some of those group relations evident in the letter and introduces Paul’s work as an entrepreneur of dual identities. After discussing Onesimus’s identity, we will focus on Philemon’s identity as a patron. We will then conclude by detailing the dual identity model as a way to think about Paul’s approach to the formation of an ‘in Christ’ social identity.

The limitations of traditional reconstructions in Philemon In Phlm. 15, Paul seeks to offer perspective to Philemon concerning the separation between him and Onesimus: ‘Perhaps this is the reason he was Henri Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in Differentiation between Social Groups, ed. Henri Tajfel, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic, 1978), 63.  9 Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17, no. 5 (1991): 476. 10 Dominic Abrams, ‘Social Identity, Social Cognition, and the Self: The Flexibility and Stability of Self-Categorization’, in Social Identity and Social Cognition, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 206.  8

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separated (ἐχωρίσθη) from you for a while.’ The reason for the separation has been the focus of the debate concerning a plausible background for this letter. The first approach describes Onesimus as a runaway slave (fugitivus).11 According to this approach, Onesimus has left Philemon’s household and has no intention of returning. He meets Paul and becomes convinced of the claims of the gospel and is ‘converted’.12 Based on this new state of affairs, he returns to his owner with a letter from Paul. Within this position, there are slight disagreements over the wrong that Onesimus had committed and the way he came to Paul. However, these slight differences do not alter the general understanding that Onesimus was separated from his master without permission and that Paul’s purpose is reconciliation. This view has been called into question since v. 15 does not say that Onesimus ran away, rather that he was ‘separated’ (ἐχωρίσθη) from Philemon ‘for a while’ (ὥραν). The use of χωρίζω does not require the imposition of a runaway slave into the letter. It has been suggested, rather, that Onesimus had left Philemon’s household seeking out Paul as a mediator between the two of them. This view, often described as the amicus domini (‘friend of the master’) approach, does not see Onesimus as a fugitive but as one who intended to return to his master’s household once he had received a promise of intercession from his owner’s friend, Paul.13 This would alleviate the potential legal problem that Paul would have with regard to not handing over a runaway slave; however, it is not clear that such a fine distinction between a fugutivus ‘runaway slave’ and an erros ‘roaming slave’ is supported by the evidence.14 Another way to account for the separation is that it was intended. According to this approach, Onesimus had been sent by the ἐκκλησία to provide Paul with aid while in prison.15 Thus, the letter is not one designed to reconcile a master and a slave; rather, it is to thank the ἐκκλησία for sending Onesimus John G. Nordling, ‘Some Matters Favoring the Runaway Slave Hypothesis in Philemon’, Neot 44, no. 1 (2010): 86–91. 12 On problems with the use of the term ‘conversion’ at this early stage see Paula Fredriksen, ‘Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go’, in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal, David B. Capes et al., (eds) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 28. 13 Brian M. Rapske, ‘The Prisoner Paul in the Eyes of Onesimus’, NTS 37, no. 2 (1991): 202–3. 14 Justinian, Digest, 21.1.17.5 cited by John M. G. Barclay, Colossians and Philemon (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 102. See also J. Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 6–11. 15 Sara C. Winter, ‘Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, NTS 33, no. 1 (1987): 3. 11

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and to request his continued help. This thesis is attractive; however, Onesimus does not seem to be the type of slave a group of Christ-followers would send to minister to Paul, e.g. it appears he was not a Christ-follower until after he met Paul (v. 10), and he was not considered a very good slave by Philemon (v. 11). A variant of this view argues that Onesimus was sent to Paul by Philemon as a gift, and Paul, while at first using him, soon realized that this gift was intended to bring Paul into a client relationship with Philemon serving as the patron. Paul refused such an overture and returned the gift back to Philemon.16 This view, while having much promise with regard to the patronage context, does not explain why Philemon would send a slave of poor quality to Paul as a gift, and it does not fully account for Paul’s position as a patron to Philemon or the way patronage was practised within the broader Christ-movement. While each of these reconstructions have limitations and the brief nature of the letter does not allow for further clarity on this issue, it seems that paying attention to the intergroup and intragroup dynamics found in social identity theory, those likely to be shared between slaves and their owners in the first century, complicated by the emerging social identity of a new religious movement, may assist in interpreting Philemon especially in those areas where there are overlaps in the text and the proposed reconstructions offered by scholars.17 In this way, social identity theory may be used to account for the groups evident in the text, though not to the exclusion of any historical reconstruction.

Group relations in Philemon Central to the research of Tajfel and Turner is their definition of a group ‘as a collection of individuals who perceive themselves to be members of the same social category [and] share some emotional involvement in this common definition of themselves’.18 In Philemon there are several different Scott S. Elliott, ‘“Thanks, but No Thanks”: Tact, Persuasion, and the Negotiation of Power in Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, NTS 57, no. 1 (2011): 53–4. 17 Edward Adams, ‘First-Century Models for Paul’s Churches’, in After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later, Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell (eds) (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 75–6. 18 Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds) (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), 40. 16

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social groups in view. First, in v. 2 the ‘congregation’ (ἐκκλησία) that meets in Philemon’s ‘house’ (οἶκος) is one group. These individuals form a social group associated in some way with the Pauline Christ-movement. This likely means their group had organized themselves around Paul’s gospel (v. 13) and its attendant social implications as interpreted by Paul’s co-workers (v. 23). The members of this house assembly are also described as ‘the saints’ (vv. 5, 7). Paul uses the phrase πάντας τοὺς ἁγίους to reinforce the unity of all the Christ-followers and, by the use of this phrase, may be emphasizing an overarching social identity for the group (one that even extends beyond a local house assembly in Asia Minor).19 In this way, ἐκκλησία and οἱ ἅγιοι may have functioned as embryonic superordinate self-designations among members of the Pauline Christ-movement. Second, Paul describes another social group through the use of ἀδελφός. He uses this descriptor four times in the letter. In v. 1, he uses it to describe the letter’s co-sender Timothy as ‘our brother’ (ὁ ἀδελφός), Philemon as a ‘brother’ (ἀδελφέ) in vv. 7 and 20, and Onesimus, with a significant increase in emotion, as a ‘beloved brother’ (ἀδελφὸν ἀγαπητόν) in v. 16. Trebilco concludes that ἀδελφοί functioned as a widespread term describing members of the Christ-movement as a fictive kinship group.20 It was an ingroup designation that contributed to the formation of group boundaries and was not used when speaking to outsiders. I would suggest further that in Philemon, where Paul does not use the term in the plural, he is emphasizing the way these individuals now embody the shared ingroup prototype.21 The terms ἐκκλησία, οἱ ἅγιοι and ἀδελφός all function as intragroup labels that should provide the ideological resources to navigate the competing cultural scripts with regard to the primary intergroup challenge in this letter: what should be done when a Christ-following slave owner has a slave who is also a member of the Christ-movement?

Paul R. Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 129–31. 20 Trebilco, Self-Designations, 65, 67. 21 He does also mention Apphia as an ἀδελφή. This raises an interesting question with regard to her involvement in the Pauline mission, as well. Thanks to Daniel Darko for pointing this out. 19

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Paul as an entrepreneur of Onesimus’s dual identities Haslam and Platow contend that a leader’s success, ‘hinges upon an ability to turn “me” and “you” into “us” and to define a social project that gives that sense of “us-ness” meaning and purpose’.22 How does this lens help us understand Paul’s letter to Philemon? Paul’s leadership challenge in this letter is to get Philemon to see Onesimus as an ingroup member, i.e. as a member of the Christ-movement (vv. 2, 7). The letter reveals several ‘me’ and ‘you’ categorizations. The most obvious ones, from Philemon’s perspective, include: Onesimus as his ‘slave’ (v. 16), and as his ‘debtor’ (vv. 18–19a). The inverse of these likewise apply. Philemon is Onesimus’s owner and debtee. These are clearly indicative of intergroup relations. Paul, as an entrepreneur of identity, is responsible for defining and maintaining identity within the Pauline Christ-movement. In this letter, he seeks to do this through a process SIT describes as recategorization. Gaertner refers to this as a leadership approach that will ‘transform members’ cognitive representations from “us” and “them” into a more inclusive “we”’.23 Paul does this by first recategorizing Onesimus. While he is still a slave and a debtor, he is also Paul’s ‘child’ (v. 10), his ‘heart’ (v. 12), and his ‘brother’ (v. 16). Philemon is likewise recategorized by Paul in relation to Onesimus who is now also Philemon’s ‘brother’ (v. 16). To emphasize the positive nature of this renewed interdependence, Paul reminds Philemon of the nature of their relationship; he is Paul’s ‘co-worker’ (v. 1), ‘brother’ (v. 7), ‘partner’ (v. 17) and ‘debtor’ (v. 19b). Paul’s social entrepreneurship highlights the reciprocal nature of the relationship between the three of them while emphasizing the renewed kinship dimension of their relationship that should in turn result in a reduction of hostility and an increase in cooperation in the Pauline mission, the ‘social project’ that is in view in this letter (vv. 11, 13, 17). Brewer’s research uncovered three circumstances that are central to the reduction of conflict and the increased likelihood that intergroup cooperation S. Alexander Haslam and M. J. Platow, ‘Your Wish Is Our Command: The Role of Shared Social Identity in Translating a Leader’s Vision into Followers’ Action’, in Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, Michael A. Hogg and Deborah J. Terry (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001), 218. 23 S. L. Gaertner et al., ‘The Contact Hypothesis: The Role of Common Ingroup Identity on Reducing Intergroup Bias among Majority and Minority Group Members’, in What’s Social About Social Cognition?: Research on Socially Shared Cognition in Small Groups, Judith L. Nye and Aaron M. Brower (eds) (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1996), 232. 22

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might occur: common fate, positive interdependence, and common identity. The first circumstance is defined by Brewer as a ‘coincidence of outcomes among two or more persons that arises because they have been subjected to the same external forces or decision rules’.24 One of the common fates shared among the three is their involvement in the Pauline mission. This by itself does not assure positive cooperation; however, if they coordinate their efforts then a degree of positive interdependence is introduced. Paul’s desire for them to work together is evident in his initial linking of Philemon as ‘our beloved fellow worker’ (v. 2) and Onesimus’s usefulness to the two of them (vv. 11, 13). If they work together in the manner envisioned by Paul, it increases the likelihood that positive interdependence will occur, which is when ‘goals are compatible such that behaviors that benefit Person A also improve outcomes for Person B’.25 Paul’s goal for the Christ-followers that meet in Philemon’s house (v. 2) is for continued missional effectiveness (v. 6). Is there evidence that this is a shared goal between Paul and Philemon? One may infer this on the part of Philemon from the fact that he is a leader of a house assembly and a ‘fellow worker’ in the Pauline movement (vv. 1–2). He is also Paul’s ‘partner’ and ‘debtor’ (vv. 17–19b). Into this relationship of positive interdependence, Paul inserts Onesimus as one who now can be an integral part of the continuation and expansion of the gentile mission in Asia Minor, an apt description of their shared superordinate goal (vv. 6, 11, 13).26 Brewer contends that a common identity must precede, and in fact produces positive interdependence.27 By this point, it should be clear that the common identity in this letter is Paul’s, Philemon’s and Onesimus’s membership in the Christ-movement (vv. 10, 16). The common identity approach closely coheres with Wolter’s understanding of the new relationship between Philemon and Onesimus as one in which their owner and slave relationship has been ‘abrogated’.28 Or to put this another way, has not their shared ‘in Christ’ social identity transcended

Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘Superordinate Goals Versus Superordinate Identity as Bases of Intergroup Cooperation’, in Social Identity Processes: Trends in Theory and Research, Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown (eds) (London: Sage, 2000), 118 emphasis original. 25 Brewer, ‘Superordinate Goals’, 119. 26 Harrill, Slaves, 14–16. 27 Brewer, ‘Superordinate Goals’, 119. 28 Wolter, ‘Ethical Counterpart’, 170. 24

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existing identities to the point where these are no longer relevant within the Christ-movement? Is not the inference to be drawn from Philemon that existing identities are ‘abrogated’ or at best indifferent for Paul? The findings of social theorists may provide insight into Paul’s social entrepreneurship with regard to the formation of local expressions of a common ‘in Christ’ social identity. It seems likely that Paul’s construction of a superordinate identity does not seek to eliminate or obliterate existing subgroup identities.29 Haslam suggests this is a more effective way of dealing with intergroup conflict: ‘the process of intergroup negotiation – like conflict itself – can be seen to revolve around counterposed social identities defined at subgroup and superordinate levels’.30 In other words, it is important to construct Christ-movement social identities in highly contextualized ways. This is one of the weaknesses of the universalistic approach to Paul’s identity-forming work: the obliteration of existing subgroup identities runs the risk of reifying the dominant culture and ascribing to these, cultural norms with theological significance. Haslam suggests that ‘the key to satisfactory conflict resolution lies not in increasing the salience of [superordinate] social identity at the expense of subgroup identity (that is, re-categorization…) but in acknowledging and allowing expression of both superordinate and subgroup identities’.31 This understanding results in a ‘dual identity model’ that recognizes the continued importance of subgroup identities in the formation of superordinate social identity salience. Thus, as Haslam argues, the combination of subgroup and superordinate identities will increase the likelihood of group goal achievement.32 Earlier in this essay, it was suggested that Paul engaged in a process of recategorization; however, it should be noted that he did not do this in a manner that negated subgroup identities. Rather, we contend he did this in William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London: T&T Clark, 2008); Kathy Ehrensperger, ‘To Eat or Not to Eat – Is This the Question?’, in Decisive Meals: Table Politics in Biblical Literature, Nathan MacDonald, Luzia Sutter Rehmann, and Kathy Ehrensperger (eds) (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 114–33; David J. Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews: Jewish Contours of Pauline Flexibility in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). 30 S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach, 2nd edn. (London: Sage, 2004), 127. 31 Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 127 emphasis original. 32 Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 127–8; Gaertner et al., ‘Contact Hypothesis’, 36, cited in Todd A. Bryan, ‘Aligning Identity: Social Identity and Changing Context in Community-Based Environmental Conflict’ (University of Michigan, 2008), 36. 29

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a way that closely coheres with what Haslam has found, i.e. the legitimacy of subgroup identities must be recognized before groups are willing to move forward in the formation of a more inclusive social identity.33 Though it seems strange that Paul legitimates slave identity, it should be noted that he does this in a qualified manner (see 1 Cor. 7:20–2). In Phlm. 16, he writes ‘no longer as a mere slave’ (οὐκέτι ὡς δοῦλον). If Paul wanted to say that this subgroup identity (or social status) was abrogated, it seems that he should not have included the ὡς.34 Its presence in this phrase indicates Paul’s subjective perspective of Onesimus’s identity; he is no longer a mere slave.35 He then provides the transformed perspective, ‘but more than a slave’ (ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὲρ δοῦλον). His existing status has been recategorized to a more inclusive level of saliency as ‘a beloved brother’ (ἀδελφὸν ἀγαπητόν). Thus, Paul identifies him in the context of his existing identity as a ‘slave’ and his transformed identity in Christ as ‘a beloved brother’ (see 1 Cor. 10.32).36 Now, one might argue that Onesimus would have preferred to only be identified as ‘a beloved brother’ and to allow his other identity to fall into the category of what Deaux refers to as a deleted identity.37 However, because of the social dynamics involved in the relationship with Philemon this was not a valid option, nor was it Paul’s primary purpose, which was reconciliation.38

Paul as an entrepreneur of Philemon’s dual identities While the recategorization of Onesimus is rhetorically important, the negotiation of Philemon’s social identities appears to be another epistolary concern for Paul. It seems that a significant cause of the problems alluded to in this letter follows from ‘cross-cutting’ social identities between Paul and Philemon, Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 177–8. But see Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, Pillar New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 421 n. 92. 35 BDAG, 1104; Murray J. Harris, Colossians & Philemon (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2010), 231. 36 Tucker, You Belong, 81. 37 K. Deaux, ‘Social Identities: Thoughts on Structure and Change’, in The Relational Self: Theoretical Convergences in Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology, ed. Rebecca C. Curtis (New York: Guilford Press, 1991), 89. 38 Todd D. Still, ‘Philemon among the Letters of Paul: Theological and Canonical Considerations’, ResQ 47, no. 3 (2005): 141. 33

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and specifically the way Philemon’s existing social identities were in need of transformation. There are at least two in view in this letter: Philemon is a leader within the Pauline Christ-movement and is the head of a household in the Greek-speaking Roman East. There is a third social identity, one that seems to account for much of the ambiguous nature of Paul’s discourse, an undefined/unclear patron-client relationship between him and Philemon.39 This raises the same question that was in view for Onesimus, but now the focus is on the way key aspects of Philemon’s social identity continue to maintain their significance within the Christ-movement. Has Philemon misapplied the social implications of the gospel and is that Paul’s actual concern in this letter? Or, are he and Philemon embroiled in an extensive economic relationship designed to further Paul’s mission in Asia Minor and difficulties have emerged with regard to this financial friendship?40 Elliott argues that Philemon had sent Onesimus to Paul as a gift designed to entangle Paul in a further patronage relationship.41 He is correct to note the prevalence of patronage discourse in the letter (vv. 1, 7, 13, 17 and 22). Patronage discourse is evident on the lexical level in the following: (1) Philemon’s house is used for the community gatherings (σου v. 2); (2) he has the ability to ‘refresh’ (ἀναπαύω) others (vv. 7, 20); (3) Onesimus is one who provides ‘service’ (διακονέω) in lieu of his patron/owner (v. 13); (4) Paul views Philemon as his ‘partner’ (κοινωνός v. 17); (5) Philemon has a ‘guest room’ (ξενία) that will be for him (v. 22). However, Paul, in one sense, acts in the position of the patron in relation to Philemon. Paul states that he is in a place to ‘command’ (ἐπιτάσσειν) Philemon to follow a course of action (v. 8) and positions himself as one with certain financial means that would allow him to repay anything Philemon had lost (v. 18). He also seems to think he has the ability to ‘force’ (ἀνάγκη) Philemon towards a particular course of action (v. 14), and it appears he is able to direct him towards specific and personal service or ‘benefit’ (ὀνίνημι) (v. 20). These data suggest Paul was functioning

Carolyn Osiek, ‘The Politics of Patronage and the Politics of Kinship: The Meeting of the Ways’, BTB 39, no. 3 (2009): 147–8; S. Scott Bartchy, ‘Undermining Ancient Patriarchy: The Apostle Paul’s Vision of a Society of Siblings’, BTB 29, no. 2 (1999): 70, 73. 40 Cf. J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995); Harrill, Slaves; Tobias Nicklas, ‘The Letter to Philemon: A Discussion with J. Albert Harrill’, in Paul’s World, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 201–20. 41 Elliott, ‘Thanks’, 51–64. Cicero, Quint. fratr., 1.1.8. 39

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with Philemon in an asymmetrical relationship of some sort.42 However, Philemon also appears to be functioning similarly to the manner of a comparatively high-status person. He is operating as the patron of the ἐκκλησία that meets in his house (v. 2) and has provided concrete assistance to others, in such a manner that, in v. 7, ‘the hearts (τὰ́ σπλ́άγχνα) of the saints have been refreshed (ἀναπέπαυται)’.43 Both Elliott and Marchal suggest that Philemon has made a move to bring Paul into a more explicit patronage relationship, either by (a) sending Onesimus as a gift to Paul, or (b) by his actions in using Onesimus.44 It seems that some combination of Elliott and Marchal may be in view. Philemon appears to be interpreting the situation between the three of them in a way that suggests his identity as a patron (an existing social identity) is creating a social dilemma for Paul. Wit and Kerr recognize the existence of ‘nested social dilemmas’, or situations in which group members participate in a subgroup identity as well as a superordinate one where the allocation of resources are contested. They found that ‘increasing the saliency of categorization of any level of the hierarchy (i.e. individual, subgroup, or collective) through the subtle and temporary linking of fates of members at that level tends to increase group members’ willingness to allocate resources to that level of interest’.45 Notice what Paul does in v. 15. He offers Philemon perspective on the ‘separation’ (ἐχωρίσθη) that has occurred between him and Onesimus. Kreitzer suggests that putting this verb in the passive voice ‘leave[s] open the question of who the instigator was in their separation’.46 However, the perspective that Paul seems to be trying to communicate to him is, according to Dunn, ‘that all that happened so far has had a greater purpose behind it’.47 Paul, as one imprisoned (vv. 1, 9), has likewise experienced hardships that have a greater purpose behind them (and obviously, the same can be said for

Kathy Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 174. 43 Andrew D. Clarke, ‘“Refresh the Hearts of the Saints”: A Unique Pauline Context?’, TynBul 47, no. 2 (1996): 300. 44 Elliott, ‘Thanks’, 59; Joseph A. Marchal, ‘The Usefulness of an Onesimus: The Sexual Use of Slaves and Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, JBL 130, no. 4 (2011): 767. 45 Wit and Kerr, ‘Me’, 632. 46 L. Joseph Kreitzer, Philemon (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008), 26. 47 James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 333. 42

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Onesimus as a slave).48 The reason, from Paul’s perspective, is ‘that you might have him back forever’ (ἵνα αἰώνιον αὐτὸν ἀπέχῃς). He seems to be suggesting that, upon his return to Philemon, Onesimus will remain his slave, though there is sufficient ambiguity here to allow for an eternal perspective based on their shared kinship ‘in Christ’.49 As an entrepreneur of identity, Paul is seeking to induce cooperation and interdependence in a relationship that has been marked by outgroup bias, turning the ‘us’ and ‘them’ into a ‘we’.50 For this to occur, Philemon will now have to extend his ‘love for all the saints’ (v. 5) to a new ingroup member – Onesimus. Paul still must address the move by Philemon to expand the patronage relationship with him. So, throughout the letter, he reminds Philemon that Christ-movement group values are not always the same as those within the broader culture.51 Lampe picks up on this concern and notes several ways Paul recategorizes Philemon’s social identity. First, he reminds Philemon that it was based on Paul’s ministry that he was originally converted, and thus he clearly owes Paul something (v. 19b). Second, in v. 13 Paul describes the way Philemon is obligated to ‘serve’ him. Third, there are several places in the letter that support the contention that there is a clear hierarchical relationship still in place between the two of them (vv. 8–9, 13, 19b, 21, 22). Lampe summarizes the relationship between Paul and Philemon as ‘the relationship of a patron to his dependent, in which the dependent is indebted to the patron and is expected to show obedience (v. 21) and respect, if not admiration and thankfulness’.52 Fourth, v. 8a implies that this asymmetrical relationship is a social implication from their shared ‘in Christ’ social identity. Thus, both Philemon and Onesimus are part of a ‘nested social dilemma’, one where Paul’s mission could potentially be hindered if it were not resolved adequately. In order to do this, he had to recategorize both Philemon and Onesimus so that subgroup identities were not obliterated but transformed, which would then result in an increased salience in their shared superordinate identity as brothers that Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 9–38. Harris, Colossians & Philemon, 231; Ben Witherington, III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 79 n. 53. 50 Gaertner et al., ‘Contact Hypothesis’, 232. 51 Bartchy, ‘Undermining’, 72, 77. 52 Peter Lampe, ‘Affects and Emotions in the Rhetoric of Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, in Philemon in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter, ed. D. Francois Tolmie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 66. 48 49

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would produce positive interdependence and securing the continuance of the Pauline mission among them.

The dual social identity model: ‘Both in the flesh and in the Lord’ As mentioned above, Paul still views Onesimus as a slave. He does not argue that salvation is emancipation from slavery.53 He does, however, see a transformation in his identity. Paul begins by describing Onesimus, ‘no longer as a mere slave’. This seems to indicate that he no longer embodies this identity.54 However, Onesimus is also ‘more than a slave’. This indicates a new identity node55 has been brought into the discussion, namely, Onesimus is now also to be identified as ‘a beloved brother’. Thus, Paul identifies him in the context of his existing identity as a slave and his transformed identity ‘in Christ’ as a beloved brother. This coheres closely to the dual identity model introduced earlier. Paul, in v. 16b, provides an evaluation of Onesimus and connects him to Paul and to a greater degree to Philemon. Haslam contends that the ‘dual identity model’, which is based on the premise of social identity salience, ‘need not suppress individuality or sub-group specialization – it can simply harness these things towards a common goal’.56 Onesimus was earlier described as one who was ‘useless’ but had been transformed into one who was now ‘useful’ to both Paul and Philemon (v. 11). In v. 16b he is described as one who is loved by both Paul and Philemon; the phrase ‘how much more to you’ (πόσῳ δὲ μᾶλλον σοί) is indicative of the dual nature of their relationship in comparison to Paul’s relationship with Onesimus.57 The particularistic approach to ‘in Christ’ social identity contends that existing social identities continue to maintain their fundamental significance within the Christ-movement. Paul’s phrase in v. 16c ‘both in the flesh and

Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 60–8. But see Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Kolosser; Der Brief an Philemon (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1993), 335. 55 Abrams, ‘Social Identity’, 211, 214. 56 Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 127–8. 57 Dunn, Epistles, 336. 53

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in the Lord’ (καὶ ἐν σαρκὶ καὶ ἐν κυρίῳ) seems to support this interpretive framework. Paul uses this phrase to recategorize Onesimus’s identity in relation to Philemon. The social implication of the juxtaposition of these two phrases has not gone unnoticed by scholars. Sechrest rejects the idea that Onesimus’s identity as a slave is in view; rather, ‘in the flesh’ refers to their shared ethnic identity.58 While plausible, it seems the topic under discussion is Onesimus’s status as a slave and not his shared ethnic identity. Barclay thinks it unlikely that we can determine what aspect of Onesimus’s identity is in view by the use of this term.59 While certainty is unlikely, it seems that the dual relationship between the two of them is in view: Philemon relates to Onesimus as his owner (‘in the flesh’) and as a brother (‘in the Lord’).60 In this reading, Paul addresses the continuing nature of the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus in the context of their intersecting identities rather than in the contrast of these. Earlier in this verse he described Onesimus as a ‘slave’ and as a ‘beloved brother’. These identities intersect ‘in the flesh’ and ‘in the Lord’. In other words, these phrases are not describing discrete domains but are inclusive descriptors of life within the Christ-movement as Paul sees it.61 This verse is a crux interpretum with regard to whether Paul expected manumission for Onesimus. While it is unlikely that this debate can be resolved, what is clear is that Paul identifies Onesimus in the context of his existing identity as a slave and his new identity as one ‘in the Lord’. This accords well with Paul’s rule in all the assemblies in 1 Cor. 7.17–24 that views social identities as specific callings ‘in Christ’.62 For Paul, existing identities continue to be relevant within the Christ-movement; however, there are exceptions to this rule, as evident in 1 Cor. 7.20–2, and it is likely that a somewhat related scenario is in view.63 Does Paul expect Philemon to manumit Onesimus? Wolter does not think so: ‘The slave owner is not urged to set his slave free, but he is enjoined to treat him as a brother and friend.’64 However, du Plessis Love L. Sechrest, A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 132. John M. G. Barclay, ‘Paul, Philemon and the Dilemma of Christian Slave-Ownership’, NTS 37, no. 2 (1991): 173. 60 So similarly Peter Thomas O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 298. 61 Pace John G. Nordling, Philemon (Saint Louis: Concordia, 2004), 258. 62 See Rudolph, A Jew, 75–9. 63 See Tucker, Remain, 81–6. 64 Wolter, ‘Ethical Counterpart’, 178. See also Craig S. de Vos, ‘Once a Slave, Always a Slave? Slavery, Manumission and Relational Patterns in Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, JSNT, no. 82 (2001): 104; Peter Arzt-Grabner, Philemon (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 236. 58 59

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thinks that v. 21 indicates that Paul is asking for Onesimus’s manumission, as well as requesting that Philemon send him back to serve Paul in his mission.65 Barclay suggests that Paul’s ambiguity on this issue is evident because ‘he did not know what to recommend’.66 Barth and Blanke recognize the weight of the arguments on both sides of this issue and consider it to be a ‘stalemate’.67 But, even if Onesimus is manumitted, he will remain in a hierarchical relationship with Philemon, although now as his client.68 However, there was a type of manumission that was practised in the Bosphoran kingdom (Asia Minor) by Jews in the context of the synagogue that may provide a plausible context for Paul’s expectation concerning Onesimus. It is one where an individual is manumitted in order to serve within the synagogue community. The inscription from Panticapaeum, which dates to the first century ce, reads: I, [unnamed woman], release in the prayer hall [proseuchē] Elpias, my home-bred slave, so that he will be undisturbed and inviolable by all my heirs, except that he show devotion towards the prayer hall [proseuchē] under the guardianship of the congregation [synagōgē] of the Jews, and reveres God.69

The debate over this inscription with regard to the existence of ‘god-fearers’ is not our concern here.70 This inscription does provide supporting evidence for the argument that, in some Jewish contexts, slaves could be freed with an expectation that they would be devoted to the prayer hall and show deference to it. The slave Elpias is to ‘show devotion’ (προσκαρτερεῖν) with regard to the ‘prayer hall’ (προσευχῇ) and remain under the charge of the ‘congregation’ I. J. du Plessis, ‘How Christians Can Survive in a Hostile Social-Economic Environment: Paul’s Mind Concerning Difficult Social Conditions in the Letter to Philemon’, in Identity, Ethics, and Ethos in the New Testament, ed. J. G. Van der Watt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 408; cf. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, 436; S. Scott Bartchy, ‘Slavery (Greco-Roman)’, in ABD, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 71. 66 Barclay, ‘Christian Slave-Ownership’, 175 emphasis original. 67 Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, The Letter to Philemon: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 415. See also Harrill, Manumission, 2–3. 68 Suetonius, Claudius, 25; ILS 8365; ILS 8283; Ulpian, Digest, 37.14–15; 38.1; Pliny, Natural History, 14.5; 18.8; Petronius, Satyricon, 75; cf. ILS 8341; CIL 6.22355A; cited in Thomas E. J. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Sandra R. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 41–7. 69 Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E.: A Source Book (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 159, no. 126; CII 1.683a; CIRB 71. 70 Cf. Irina A. Levinskaya, The Book of Acts in Its Diaspora Setting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); E. Leigh Gibson, The Jewish Manumission Inscriptions of the Bosporus Kingdom (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). 65

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(συναγωγῆς). This inscription also contains another potential condition: Elpias is to be one who ‘reveres God’ (θεὸν σέβῶν). Levinskaya contends this is a variant version of the second and previously described condition, i.e. showing deference to the ‘prayer hall’.71 Whether Elpias should/could be described as a ‘god-fearer’ is secondary; what is clear is that his release was conditioned on his continued service to the synagogue community. This inscription provides a more concrete picture of a plausible context for understanding Paul’s implied directions in vv. 17 and 21. If a context similar to this was envisioned, Onesimus would be freed to engage in missional activities while remaining in a transformed (beloved brother) but still asymmetrical relationship with Philemon (and Paul). Thus, for Paul, his concern is helping Philemon to understand the way aspects of his social identity, in the context of patronage (and potential manumission for Onesimus), are to be transformed within the ἐκκλησία, and by extension outside of the Christ-movement.72 There is one more place where SIT might prove helpful: if Onesimus is going to be seen differently by Philemon (irrespective of manumission), then selfcategorization will have to occur. Foddy and Hogg argue that through the process of self-categorization one is ‘assimilated to the contextually salient in-group prototype which both describes and prescribes cognition, affect, and behavior’.73 So, Philemon’s categorization of himself as a Christ-follower, in contrast to a slave owner or patron, would make salient beliefs about life within the Christmovement, and influence evaluations of both the ingroup (e.g. brothers or saints) and the outgroup (e.g. slaves or clients). However, this understanding of self-categorization results in the universalistic approach to Christ-movement identity as represented by Wolter. It appears that Paul’s ideological approach coheres more closely with the dual identity model introduced earlier. In that configuration, Philemon’s categorization of himself as a Christ-follower would be done in the context of his continuing identity as a slave owner or patron; this would make salient beliefs about life within the Christ-movement (the

Levinskaya, Acts, 76. See further on this Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, Synagogue, 158, no. 125; CII 1.684; CIRB 73. But see Norman R. Petersen, Rediscovering Paul: Philemon and the Sociology of Paul’s Narrative World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 289. 73 Margaret Foddy and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Impact of Leaders on Resource Consumption in Social Dilemmas: The Intergroup Context’, in Resolving Social Dilemmas: Dynamics, Structural, and Intergroup Aspects, Margaret Foddy et al. (eds) (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 1999), 312. 71

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salient superordinate group), and influence evaluations of both the ingroup (e.g., brothers or saints) and the outgroup (e.g. slaves or clients) as subgroup identities accommodated into the superordinate identity. Haslam notes that if identity negotiation is going to be successful, ‘then this will necessarily involve problemsolving activity as lower-level social identities remain salient but parties now endeavor to reconcile them with a salient superordinate identity’.74 This is the synthesizing process envisioned in the ‘dual identity model’, and it may be that by identifying Philemon’s relationship to Onesimus in the dual categories of ‘in the flesh and in the Lord’ (v. 16), Paul has in mind a similar relational matrix.

Conclusion This essay drew on the resources of social identity theory and the way it accounts for intergroup and intragroup dynamics as a way to understand the relational nexus between Paul, Philemon and Onesimus. It outlined several emerging superordinate identities and suggested that as these are formed, subgroup identities are not abrogated. This approach coheres closely with an understanding of Paul as one who thought that existing identities continued to matter within the Christ-movement. Because of this, he was forced to address a particular problem: what should be done when a slave becomes a Christ-follower and his or her owner is also a member of the Christmovement? Paul’s solution is (a) his or her existing identity continues to be relevant, but (b) an exception can be made with regard to a slave. However, Paul had an equally important issue to address with regard to Philemon’s existing identity as a patron. This identity node had recently created relational difficulties between him and Paul. Thus, Paul also writes this letter to instruct Philemon on the way his existing social identities are transformed ‘in Christ’. The general framework for Paul’s social entrepreneurship was described as the ‘dual identity model’ and was found in Phlm. 16c, ‘both in the flesh and in the Lord’. For Paul, all of life was ‘in Christ’, and thus he sought to form the social identity of those within the Pauline Christ-movement in the context of existing identities, ‘both in the flesh and in the Lord’. Haslam, Psychology in Organizations, 130.

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Social Identity in the Epistle to the Hebrews Steven Muir

Introduction What’s past is prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge. Shakespeare, The Tempest Act 2 scene 1 Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Sir Winston Churchill, speech given in November 1942 A wheel has spokes, but it rotates around a hollow center. A pot is made out of clay or glass, but you keep things in the space inside. A house is made of wood or brick, but you live between the walls. We work with something, but we use nothing. Tao Te Ching, A Modern interpretation (#11) by Ron Hogan1

The quote from The Tempest sums up what I see to be the spirit of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The author appropriates symbols and concepts from Levitical Israel’s past and characterizes them as a particular type of prologue to the really important drama unfolding through Christ to his followers. In a text combining elements of sermon and epistle, the author dramatizes Christ in Ron Hogan, Getting Right with Tao: A Contemporary Spin on the Tao Te Ching (New York: Channel V Books, 2010).

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a new character role – the great High Priest who offered himself in a unique act of sacrifice. The act of characterizing the past as prologue is part of a larger project, namely to write a new script for Christ-followers to use in their community life. Such a script will need to be enacted among the players in this community, and in doing so the community will be united rather than fragmented. Churchill’s quote is apposite for considering the rhetoric of Hebrews. It is clear that the author of Hebrews employs a then/now, temporal/eternal conceptual framework. For him, endings and beginnings are the organizing principle of his theology and among the key points he wishes to share with his audience. The quote from the Tao te Ching touches on a very important issue: how concrete constructs (boundaries, walls) can also ‘construct’ intangibles (useful space). We see an analogy in Hebrews. As part of his agenda to foster social identity, the writer of the text constructs social boundaries. These walls or boundaries are means to an end. The really useful thing is what is inside the container – a community which will not stray outside certain boundaries which the author views as problematic. In this chapter, I explore some issues of social identity in the Epistle to the Hebrews. My analysis is selective, given the scope of this chapter and since the text itself is complex in terms of themes, and allusive as to its underlying context.2 I demonstrate that social identity issues give new questions to address a hypothesis I advanced in an earlier work3 – namely, that the author of Hebrews was addressing a mixed group comprised of Graeco-Roman as well as Jewish followers of Christ. He contrasts images of the emperor with Christ as the image of God (1.3). Here, I argue that the author is again using Readers interested in more expansive considerations of these issues are directed to David Arthur deSilva, ‘The Epistle to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective’, ResQ 36, no. 1 (1994); David Arthur deSilva, Despising Shame: Honor Discourse and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Atlanta: Scholars, 1995); David Arthur deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude: A SocioRhetorical Commentary on the Epistle ‘to the Hebrews’ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000); Iutisone Salevao, Legitimation in the Letter to the Hebrews: The Construction and Maintenance of a Symbolic Universe, JSNTSup 219 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); Matthew J. Marohl, Faithfulness and the Purpose of Hebrews: A Social Identity Approach (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2010).  3 Steven C. Muir, ‘The Anti-Imperial Rhetoric of Heb. 1.3: Karakter as a “Double-Edged Sword”’, in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts, Richard J. Bauckham et al. (eds), LNTS (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 170–86.  2

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a ‘two-edged sword’ in his discussion of sacrifice and High Priest. On the one hand, he explicitly uses the terms and concepts from Leviticus to address those attracted to groups practising conventional Jewish traditions. Jewish followers of Christ may have been tempted to revert to traditional Jewish religion, and gentile God-fearers in the Hebrews audience may have been tempted to seek fuller affiliation with traditional Jewish groups. On the other hand, the denunciation of a high-priestly sacrificial system is an equally effective implicit critique of Roman polytheist religion, particularly as it is focused in its chief officer, the Pontifex Maximus or Great High Priest. Some gentile members of the group may have been tempted to reaffiliate or intensify their affiliation with Roman polytheist groups.4 What likely is the catalyst in all of this back-sliding, relapsing and shuffling around is the persecution alluded to in the text, and which may have caused members of the group to question the price of whatever degree of affiliation they have had with this branch of the Christ-movement – a branch evidently facing ostracism and oppression – in favour of either Judaism, a religio licta (religion permitted by the state) in the Roman Empire, or Roman polytheism (the mainstream status quo). The explicit critique of Judaism keeps people from moving in that direction. The implicit critique of Roman polytheism (another system based on high priest and sacrifice) keeps people from moving in that direction.

Conversion vs. affiliation I suggest that in order to understand the full context of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we need to explore and nuance the issue of affiliation. Many studies of Hebrews and of early Christianity in general draw uncritically on A. D. Nock’s conversion model,5 where he portrays Judaism and Christianity as Reading Hebrews as a veiled critique of Roman Imperial religion is a recent trend. Craig Koester’s commentary on Hebrews offers a few worthwhile observations in that regard, and Ellen Aitken offers a very interesting reading of Hebrews against the backdrop of the scenes depicted on the Arch of Titus; Craig R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 78; Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, ‘Portraying the Temple in Stone and Text: The Arch of Titus and the Epistle to the Hebrews’, in Hebrews: Contemporary Methods, New Insights, ed. Gabriella Gelardini (Leiden: Brill, 2005).  5 See Arthur D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (London: Oxford University Press, 1933).  4

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well-established and internally coherent social groups which demanded and achieved total and exclusive allegiance at the cost of members having membership in other religious groups. By contrast, Nock portrays the polytheistic religions of Greece and Rome as seeking a lower order of commitment which Nock calls ‘adhesion’, defined as supplementing ancestral or traditional religious praxis and attitude with new modes, and often having affiliation with many groups.6 In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the social issues which lie beneath the text are often characterized as involving two well-defined groups, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Judaism’. Applying Nock’s schema to Hebrews, a largely Jewish group had converted to Christianity but were in danger of apostasy back to Judaism, and the letter seeks to forestall that possibility. First, assuming the issue in Hebrews indeed is between those sympathetic to Jewish traditions and those adhering to the Jesus movement, I estimate that the boundaries between the groups may not have been clearly defined. By framing the issue as one of conversion and exclusive membership, we may be losing the subtle nuances of a situation wherein many group members felt a variety of attractions and affiliations and worked within a system more accurately viewed as adhesion or affiliation. Second, if we consider that some members of the Christ-movement may not have been Jews but rather Graeco-Roman polytheists, the matter becomes even more complex. Some of these gentiles may have become righteous God-fearers who had not entirely embraced Jewish religion, but rather admired selected elements of the movement (monotheism, group ethics and sense of bounded community), and looked to figures in the Septuagint as authoritative or at least significant (High Priest, sacrifice, tabernacle/ temple). None of these figures would have seemed strange to them, since Roman polytheism also had high priests, sacrifices and temples. Nor should we assume that all of these God-fearers had entirely renounced their polytheistic affiliations or practices. Perhaps a significant number of the audience of

Nock’s model has been critiqued: Raymond E. Brown, ‘Not Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity but Types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity’, CBQ 45, no. 1 (1983); Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997); S. G. Wilson, Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004). See my discussion in Steven C. Muir, ‘“Look How They Love One Another”: Early Christian and Pagan Care for the Sick and Other Charity’, in Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, ed. Leif E. Vaage (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 228.

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Hebrews started as gentile God-fearers in affiliation with a synagogue and then had taken up membership with a particular Jewish group which also placed emphasis on a messiah-figure, namely the community addressed in Hebrews. Now, in light of persecution, issues of affiliation with the group have become pressing. Jewish-Christians and some polytheists might return to or intensify their affiliation with a more mainstream Jewish group and synagogue. By doing so they would have as a primary element of their social identity Jewish religion, which was a religio licta (or at least generally tolerated) in the Roman Empire.7 Others within the polytheist faction might be considering reducing their affiliation with the Christ-movement and resuming or increasing their participation in Roman polytheism – another safe move. These social exodus trends would be strategies to avoid persecution. In either case, the issue may not so much be conversion or apostasy as people bumping up or diminishing participation in a particular group. This is why Nock’s model is problematic – it unhelpfully and unrealistically polarizes the issue in a manner which probably does not reflect the reality of religious life in antiquity. In summary, I suggest that we have to take seriously that many people drifted in and out of degrees of affiliation with polytheist temples, the synagogue and the Christ-assembly. They may not always have been aware that that they were expected to convert to anything or entirely give up other memberships. This issue of fuzzy boundaries is likely what the writer of Hebrews has to work so hard to counter; in his sermon-letter he sets out firm boundaries and urges a decisive and exclusive commitment upon his audience. They cannot continue to play the field with a variety of systems and groups.

Ehrman makes this hypothesis; Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 420. On the term ‘religio licta’, see the nuanced discussion by Paula Fredriksen, ‘Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go’, in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal, David B. Capes, Larry W. Hurtado, and Alan F. Segal (eds) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 32–4.

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The Epistle to the Hebrews Author and audience On the one hand, the author displays a deep knowledge of traditions and symbols from Judaism, particularly Biblical Israelite traditions. On the other hand, the author also evidences excellent skills in the Greek language and in rhetorical style, and a substantial understanding of Platonic philosophical principles (principally the world of ideal forms). Clearly, he is a Hellenized Jew, with a very good education.8 The preponderance of Jewish themes in the text has led many scholars to identify an audience comprised mostly (if not entirely) of Hellenized Jewish Christ-followers.9 A few scholars estimate that the text is aimed at gentile Christians or former polytheists.10 An audience of mixed background of roughly equal distribution is a third possibility. I propose that the third is the most sensible supposition and one which is well supported by the complex text of Hebrews.11

Location and date Many scholars favour Rome as the site of the text’s production and audience. The conclusion to the text (13.24) mentions that ‘those from Italy send you greetings’, which suggests a Roman location. While the city of Rome would fit well with the theme of Imperial imagery I suggest below, all urban centres in the empire were thick on the ground with polytheist temples and imperial images. An urban setting fits well with the educated audience addressed in the text. The consensus opinion on scholars as to the date of the text is 70–100 ce, in other words after the Jewish revolt and destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. I concur with this assessment. The author employs a deliberate archaic perspective (speaking of Tabernacle rather than Temple) as part of his Some scholars see affinity to Philo of Alexandria’s treatment of themes and on the basis of that suggest an Alexandrian training. Speculation has been made as to specific individuals but the wisest choice is, like Origen, to leave the identity of the author as an open question.  9 E.g. Marohl, Faithfulness, 8–16; Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 9–13. 10 E.g. Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 16, 18; Ehrman, New Testament, 418, 420. 11 DeSilva concedes that Hebrews ‘would function as plausibly for a mixed or predominately Gentile congregation as for a Jewish-Christian congregation’; deSilva, ‘Hebrews’, 5.  8

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rhetorical strategy. Mentioning the Jerusalem Temple directly would not serve the author’s purpose, and therefore its lack of mention proves little about the date. Second, it is unlikely that the first persecution was prior to Nero (64 ce), and since the persecution is portrayed in the text as an event of the past rather than a current event, a date for the text prior to 70 ce also seems unlikely.12 The later persecutions in Rome under Domitian (81 ce) appear to be a useful reference point, since the prospect of renewed or new persecution looms in the text of Hebrews.13

How does social identity relate to the Epistle to the Hebrews? Here is a sketch of the social identity issues in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Social identity broadly can be understood as that portion of personal identity or self-concept which is defined by and shaped by membership in a group. I estimate that group identity involves at least three interrelated aspects and strategies. The first aspect of group identity is formation. This involves the means by which a group identifies itself as a distinct collective, profiles itself as an attractive group, and how the nascent group establishes that identity. Members of a population recognize some commonalities or similarities among themselves, as a segment of the larger group. There is perception and assessment, pattern recognition and a conceptual clustering process of the perceived common features. Recruitment issues and attracting potential members also are involved. For the group to be seen as ‘real’ and worth joining, rather than simply a perceived construct, the group may adopt such tactics as hiding or masking its constructed nature and emphasizing the absolute nature of the group by portraying itself as a natural or divinely instituted group. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we have a text addressed to an already formed group. The formative period of the group is in its past. However, there are some passages which recall those earlier days in an attempt Admittedly the earlier text 1 Thessalonians (ca 50 ce) speaks of persecution (2.14–16), but this is usually taken to be an intra-Jewish conflict rather than conflict between polytheists and Christ-followers. 13 Since 1 Clement (ca 96 ce) quotes portions of Hebrews, we should take that date as the terminus ad quem. 12

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to remind members of their origin as a group and to exhort them to remain steadfast to that time.14 The second aspect of group identity involves intragroup relations (within the group), in particular interaction between subgroups or factions within the group. Here we see issues relating to group maintenance and strengthening bonds within the group. It is a common feature of social affairs that a group will face issues which could fragment and divide it. If the group is to remain cohesive, these issues have to be dealt with effectively. If members of subgroups focus on the differences between them and other subgroups, this could lead to division, competition and lack of cooperation. Differences need to be smoothed over in the following ways: identifying similarities or common points between subgroups, de-emphasizing some differences and blurring some boundaries, fostering cooperation and engaging in bridge-building actions.15 The issues raised in the previous paragraph (early experiences of the group) are rehearsed in the Epistle of the Hebrews not to simply memorialize them but to revivify them as present experiences. Further, I argue that the creation of an overarching or superordinate identity which encompasses the various subgroups is a key feature in Hebrews – specifically, that in his portrait of Christ the great High Priest the author creates a common feature which will unite Jewish and polytheist factions within his audience. Other intragroup issues include the following. The author quotes Hebrew Scriptures extensively, appropriates Jewish customs and concepts and claims an authoritative command of their symbolism. The author uses family and group terms in reference to his group.16 Also we see wide use of third person

We see reference to early proclamations, teachings and instruction which likely formed group identity (2.1, 3; 4.2; 5.11; 6.1), early feelings of group confidence and solidarity (3.14), early acts of confession and expressions of group belief (4.15; 10.23), a distinctive term to describe the state following instruction (enlightenment, φωτισθέντας), early titles of group identity (sons, 12.5; strangers and foreigners 11.13–14; 13.14), common experiences of persecution, trials and ordeals (10.32–4), and early group actions (charity, 6.10). Another late first-century text uses the phrase ‘strangers and foreigners’ in reference to the ingroup: 1 Peter. 15 Common actions which serve a group-building function are evident in the Epistle to Hebrews. Heb. 10.24–5 speaks of love, good works, meeting together and encouraging group members. Heb. 13.1–16 urges continued expressions of group love, charity, morality, restraint in greed, obedience to leaders and emulation of them. 16 ‘Our fathers’ (1.1), ‘we’ (1.2), ‘descendants of Abraham’ (2.16), ‘brothers in Jesus’ (2.11), ‘we who have believed’ (4.3). 14

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plural, to be expected in a parenetic sermon. Finally, the author suggests that the group is special, perhaps has had distinctive experiences.17 An extensive treatment of intragroup issues relates to group attitudes and actions. The author employs a complex, paranetic framework in his discussion of social actions and attitudes within the group. He encourages particular things and discourages others. His encouragements are intended to foster group unity and establish (or re-establish) social norms, and his discouragements are meant to forestall people from drifting into factions or even out of the group. In these things, the author uses a nimble back-and-forth ‘do this … don’t do that’ style which is appropriate for a sermon. The following table illustrates how the author moves quickly and effectively in his rhetoric from type to antitype. 2.1–2 Attend to teachings 3.6 Hold fast 3.13 Exhort each other 3.14 Hold firm 4.1–11 Believe, hold fast 4.14, 16 Hold fast to our confession

6.7 Bear good fruit (works) 10.19–25 Let us draw near, hold fast, do good works, meet together, encourage 10.32–29 You endured persecution … endure again 12.1–2 Let us endure, persist 12.3–10 Endure ‘discipline’

12.12–17 Be strong, persist, strive for peace and holiness 12.27–9 Offer to God acceptable worship

2.1–2 Don’t drift away 3.7–11 Don’t rebel 3.12 Don’t fall away 3.16 Don’t rebel 4.1–11 Don’t be like Israelites, don’t rebel 5.11–13 Critique of group for spiritual immaturity, ‘children’ 6.6 Do not apostatize 6.8 Don’t bear thorns (works) 10.26 Don’t sin 10.32–9 Don’t throw away your confidence, don’t shrink back The preacher has done such a thorough job so far that I feel he doesn’t even have to say anything here… there is an echo of ‘don’t fall, don’t fail’ in the mind of the audience 12.16–17 Do not be immoral or irreligious 12.15 Do not refuse God

The group has been enlightened (φωτισθέντας), tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come (charismatic language, 6.4–6). See also the exalted language of 12.22–4, however that passage is to be understood.

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Exhortations to: 13.1–3 Charity 13.4 Sexual morality 13.7 Obedience to leaders 13.13 Willingness to suffer as Christ did 13.16 Worship, do good 13.17 Obey leaders 13.18–19 Obey

Discouragements against: 13.5 Loving money 13.8 Being led astray by diverse and strange teachings

Still on the theme of actions and attitudes, the author makes use of two groups of role models. These function as the same sort of type/antitype statements as noted above. In Hebrews 3.7–19; 4.1–13 we hear of negative role models who are the rebellious and ‘unfaithful’ Israelites in the wilderness as described in Exodus. In his discussion the author suggests the following schema: Don’t be like the unfaithful Israelites Stay faithful

They were doomed to the wilderness and did not reach the promised land (the period of ‘rest’ promised by God) You will not be doomed to your wilderness (earth) but will reach the promised land (namely heaven)

The second group of role models is the roll call of faith of figures from Hebrew Scriptures, the litany of heroic figures each portrayed by the author as an exemplar of faith, rewarded by God (Heb. 11.1–40). Figures familiar from Jewish biblical tradition are appropriated and used in a new context as heroes of faith. The third aspect of group identity involves intergroup relations (between groups). Group members become aware of other groups. Some of these groups may share features with the group in question. Effective tactics of group maintenance are again involved, but in this domain competition is actually encouraged (rather than minimized as above) since this will foster group solidarity, maintain the allegiance of members to the group and keep them from affiliating with other groups and possibly leaving the first group. Here are some of the practical means by which differences are emphasized. First, there is the setting of social boundaries through identification of ingroup and outgroup. Second, social boundaries between groups may be made stronger, more rigid and clearly defined. Third, differences between the groups may

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be emphasized. Fourth, a connection between groups may be admitted but carefully controlled and limited. For example, a group may claim a degree of continuity or commonality with other groups, but at the same time assert the supercessionist status of its group. Themes of then vs. now, partial vs. fulfilled, temporary vs. permanent, many vs. one, shadow vs. substance are common in this area (and all seen in the text of Hebrews). I develop these issues in some detail below, to demonstrate the concern of the author over rival groups and his intent to forestall members of his group drifting into these groups. Comparison is a significant feature throughout Hebrews. Rhetorically, it is used to suggest that other groups, views and practices are inferior and that those of the author and audience are superior. In terms of social relations, we may assume that each point had a variety of opinions and evaluations within the group, and that each had the potential to divide the group. By labelling certain things as ‘former, shadows, temporal’ the author wishes to move people in his audience away not only from valuing these things per se but also away from the subgroups which were championing them. We may categorize general aspects of comparison, but a list alone does not do justice to the complex and interwoven way the author treats these aspects. The number of Platonic elements suggests a Hellenized and educated audience. First, there are references to the passage of time or periods of time (then/now, former/current, former/better, 1.1–2; 7.19, 23–4; 8.1–7, 8–13; 11.2–3, 4–39). Second, there are other types of reference to time (temporal/eternal, drawing on a Platonic understanding of reality, 7.15, 23–5; 9.15). Third, note is made of how often things occur, with priority being given to those which occur once or definitively, again drawing on Platonic idealism (9.24–8; 10.1–7, 11–12; 13.8). Fourth, distinctions are made regarding substance (shadow/ ideal, earthly/heavenly, copy/reality, drawing on a Platonic sense, 8.1–7; 9.23–8; 10.1). Fifth, distinctions are drawn on the basis of quantity (many/ one, drawing on a Platonic sense, 1.1; 7.23–4; 10.11–12, 14). Sixth, differences in quality or nature are noted (imperfect/perfect, sinners/sinless, 5.1–10; 7.26–8). Finally, a distinction is made between access of salvation (mediated or direct, 1.1) Next, we consider topics in the Epistle to the Hebrews which draw from the Jewish Scriptures. The fact that these figures would have been seen as authoritative has suggested a primarily Jewish audience to many commentators;

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however I estimate that these items would equally have been important to knowledgeable gentile God-fearers, who would likely have idealized or heroicized them. First, the text mentions angels and asserts the superiority of Christ (Christ is better than angels, superior to angels, a Son rather than angels and servants, 1.4–14; 2.5–9; 2.16–18). Next, the text discusses Moses and again asserts Christ’s superiority (Moses is a servant and mediator of the old Covenant; Christ is a son and gives direct access to the New Covenant, 3.2–5; 3.16–19; 9.15; 10.28–31; 11.23–8; 12.21–4). Third, we hear of the Levitical High Priesthood, represented by Aaron and the Levites. In this context, Melchizedek is used as a foil and linked to Christ. The superiority of Melchizedek over Aaron then is asserted (6.20–7.28; 8.1–6; 10.19–22). Fourth, we hear of the ‘Tent’ or Tabernacle, the portable worship space discussed in the book of Exodus. This earthly space is compared to Christ’s body (9.1–14; 13.10–12). Fifth, Abraham is brought into focus. Again, Melchizedek is used as a foil and type of Christ. The superiority of Melchizedek over Abraham is asserted (6.13–7.28). Finally, we hear treatment of covenant (old vs. new, old being mediated through Moses and new through Christ, 8.1–7, 8–13; 9.1–10.18; 10.15–16; 13.20–1).

Issues relating to both Judaism and the Roman Empire I have suggested that a portion of the audience of the Epistle to the Hebrews may have once been gentile polytheists. Regardless of whether the text’s audience is located in Rome or some other urban centre of the empire, they would have been in constant proximity to temples, priests and images of the emperor as the great high priest of the empire. To view these issues as simply a background context perhaps does not do them justice – we might well view them as the foreground. What I will demonstrate is that when we read Hebrews with that polytheist Roman foreground in mind, a number of elements gain a surprising depth, and some anomalies or distinctive features of the text gain credible explanation. By rhetorical use of the features below, the author creates a superordinate identity and a common cause which unites Jewish and polytheist factions (intragroup relations) and keeps them from reverting back to mainstream Jewish or polytheist groups (intergroup relations).

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First, we note the reiteration of themes of enthronement and sitting at the right hand of power. Of course these draw upon enthronement and divine kingship imagery from Hebrew Scriptures. But why does the author employ them here, to this audience? Images of rule, thrones and power certainly would resonate with any audience in the Roman Empire. By portraying Christ as a heavenly ruler, there is a tacit subordination of the Roman emperor’s claim to absolute power and a powerful incentive to not drift back to that system. So we see various references to Christ in relation to the divine throne and him sitting at the right hand of power (1.3, 8, 13; 4.16; 8.1; 10.12; 12.2). Although these images spring from imagery associated with the Son of Man in Daniel 7.9–10, 13–14 and 1 Enoch 46, 48, they gain in currency when considered as a critique of the Roman emperor. We hear that Christ rules with power in a divine kingdom (1.3, 8; 2.7–9), recalling messianic imagery in the Psalms but again equally applicable against the Roman imperial system. Finally, we hear the title ‘Son of God’ applied to Christ (1.2, 5, 8; 4.14; 5.5; 7.3). And again, this term is at once derivative in the context of the Psalms and the Davidic kingship and at the same time a powerful refutation of the title as applied to the Roman emperor. Next, we consider the repeated references to Melchizedek throughout the text and comparisons of Christ to that figure (5.6, 9; 6.20; 7.1–18). Evidently this figure from Gen. 14.18–20 and Ps. 110 enjoyed a revival of interest in a variety of later texts.18 The figure of Melchizedek clearly is used rhetorically in Hebrews to establish the priority of Jesus over the Aaronic priesthood. But as a king-priest,19 Melchizedek is tacitly superior to both the Hasmonaean rulers who administered the Jewish high-priesthood and also to the emperor in his office as Pontifex Maximus. Of course the figure of Melchizedek helps the writer make his point about a pre-Abrahamic figure. But the writer can also get additional mileage out of Melchizedek as a foil to the Roman emperor who is a king-priest. Third, we note the distinctive theme of the Epistle to the Hebrews, namely its development of the portrait of Christ as High Priest – an image unique in the New Testament. While there is no denying the Jewish tenor of this

11QMelch; Philo, Leg., 3.79–82; Josephus, Ant., 1.10.2, 2 Enoch 69–72. Note the gloss on the name as meaning ‘King of Righteousness’ in Heb. 7.2.

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discussion, again I assert that the emperor as Pontifex Maximus is a factor that we should take seriously. By repeating time and again20 aspects of Christ as great High Priest and the offerings he makes, the author presents a powerful alternative to the office of priesthood exercised by the Roman emperor on behalf of the state.

Issues unique to the Roman religious system So far, we have considered issues which have a demonstrable connection to Jewish biblical tradition yet which also would have been applicable in the context of the Roman system. Now we turn to two very interesting issues, namely those which are somewhat puzzling or debated among scholars. I suggest that by considering the Roman system as a foreground element, against which the author argues, we see interesting answers to the questions raised by these passages. First, we note the strong tendency in the text to portray Christ’s death euphemistically, as sacrifice rather than crucifixion.21 While this characterization is consistent with the High Priest portrait and an explanation of the function of Jesus’ death, I feel we lose something by too narrowly confining our explanation to that aspect. Why is the topic of crucifixion generally avoided in the Epistle to the Hebrews? What might have led to the development of this particular and distinctive first-century Christology? I propose that crucifixion was too vivid in the mind of the current audience, and a little too close to their own situation of persecution. Note that the only two references to crucifixion in Hebrews are either polemical (6.6 which equates apostasy to re-crucifying Christ) or negative in tone (12.2 which speaks of the shame of the cross). This is a very different tone from that of Paul, who emphasizes the crucifixion of Christ (1 Cor. 2.2), even though he admits that it is a controversial ‘stumblingblock’ (1 Cor. 1.23). Next, we consider the idealized and anachronistic discussion of Jewish religion in its archaic Israelite-Levitical mode. Throughout the text, there is focus on anachronistic elements: the Tabernacle rather than the Temple, the

Heb. 3.1; 4.14, 15; 5.1, 5–6; 6.9, 20; 7.20–8; 8.1; 9.7, 9, 11–12, 15–22; 10.19, 29; 12.24; 13.12, 20. Heb. 1.3; 2.11; 5.1, 3, 7–8; 7.27; 8.3; 9.6; 10.1, 10–11.

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Aaronic-Levitical priesthood rather than the Hasmonaean. Whoever this audience is, some appear to be rather out of touch with Jewish religion as it is currently practised or (if Hebrews is post–70 ce) events of the recent past. Gentile God-fearers would be fuzzy on these issues. Another aspect of this idealistic portrait is the present-tense or on-going portrait of high priests offering sacrifice day after day (7.27) or year after year (10.1). If the text is post–70 ce, then the Temple has been destroyed and this scenario is not operative. But if this is also a veiled critique of Roman polytheism then it makes sense. Sacrifices are occurring daily in the city.

Conclusion The Epistle to the Hebrews benefits from a social identity analysis. Not only does that analytical framework reinforce and amplify our understanding of the supercessionist rhetoric of the text against Jewish religion, it provides a way to understand an often-overlooked aspect of the text, namely the strong context of polytheistic religion and the Roman imperial system. We gain clues into how and why the distinctive theology of this text developed.

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Calling on the Diaspora: Nativism and Diaspora Identity in the Letter of James K. Jason Coker

Since the early 1990s, with the publication of the interdisciplinary journal Diaspora in 1991, Diaspora Studies has become a burgeoning field of inquiry. Although this field has its roots in the classical Jewish Diaspora, it gained momentum as the term was applied to the African Diaspora by scholars and revolutionaries as early as the 1960s. Diaspora is used to describe various national and ethnic migrations whether voluntary or forced, e.g. the Indian Diaspora, the Greek Diaspora, the Chinese Diaspora, the Armenian Diaspora, the Palestinian Diaspora, etc. These various diaspora form three axes, according to the French anthropologist Christine Chivallon: ‘perfect and pure continuity, creolization as a meeting of two worlds and the formation of a new, culturally complex one, and alienation’.1 The complex relationship between the homeland and the diaspora drives much of this scholarship. Is the diaspora independent and autonomous from the homeland? Does the homeland exert authority over the diaspora, and if so, how? Is the homeland lost geographically, is it extraterritorial, or is it theoretical? Is the diaspora the only location where a remnant of the homeland still exists? These questions vary based on the different kinds of diaspora. The Palestinian Diaspora deals with these questions differently (and deals with different questions) than the Armenian Diaspora. The critical inquiry in Diaspora Studies regarding the relationship between the homeland and the diaspora creates fertile ground when we turn to the Christine Chivallon, La diaspora noire des Amériques: expériences et théories à partir de la caraïbe (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2004). As quoted by Stéphane Dufoix, Diasporas, trans. William Rodarmor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 15.

 1

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Letter of James. The recipients of the Letter of James are called ‘the twelve tribes of the diaspora’ (1.1). Understanding the Letter of James as an official ‘Letter to the Diaspora’ from Jerusalem makes the letter ripe for a postcolonial analysis using the burgeoning field of diaspora theory. The centre/ margins binary created between Jerusalem and diaspora in the opening prescript of James calls on those in the diaspora to come back to the homeland. The homeland is governed by ‘the perfect law of freedom’ (1.25) and ‘imperial law’ (2.8). By positioning the homeland as a rival empire to the ‘world’, James makes his claim on the diaspora’s primary allegiance. In this call to the diaspora, the recipients are forced to make a choice between the alternative empire espoused by James or the empire of the world/Roman Empire that James flatly condemns (5.1–6). The rhetoric used throughout the Letter of James is full of imperatives that beckon the diaspora to remain pure and undefiled before God. Using the works of decolonization scholars like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire as lenses to read the Letter of James, the invectives used to call the diaspora begin to reflect nativist calls to the homeland.2

James as an official ‘letter to the Diaspora’ The Letter of James begins with a simple greeting that bifurcates all that follows and therefore is worth all the detailed attention it has received in scholarship.3 In this short greeting, the person of James is positioned as the author of the letter and the centre of the discourse. The letter literally comes from James and is sent to the diaspora. This directional language creates a sense of centre and margin. James represents the centre from whom the letter See Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review, 2000); Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 2007). See also Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Harare, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1987).  3 See Peter Davids, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 1–9, 63–4; Patrick J. Hartin, James, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 16–27, 49–55; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 37A (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 89–123, 167–72; Darian Lockett, Purity and Worldview in the Epistle of James, LNTS 366 (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 66–76, 146–84; Ralph P. Martin, James, WBC 48 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1988), 1–11.  2

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comes, and the diaspora represents the margins to which the letter is sent. This centre/margin binary between sender and receiver characterizes the entire letter and creates a sense of authority and hierarchy that is important throughout. The centre/margin binary is accentuated by the imperatival and prophetic force of the letter. On all accounts then, James is writing from the centre of Judaeanness geographically and embodying the centre of Judaeanness personally as he relates to his audience, i.e. the diaspora. Excluding the final word of greeting (χαίρειν), the opening of the letter begins with Ἰάκωβος and ends with diaspora. There is no question about the direction of authority from the greeting. James is the centre and the margins are the diaspora. The volume of imperatives that follow this greeting are fitting for the centre/margin binary that has been constructed.

The Diaspora identity The emerging field of diaspora studies has had an impact on the way ancient historians have (re)constructed the Judaean diaspora. Engaging this scholarship provides another way of analysing the recipients of the Letter of James and highlights issues of nativism within the text. Nativism and diaspora are closely related in many of the writings of anti-colonialist scholars. This connection between diaspora and nativism within the Letter of James in relation to the author and audience emphasizes the antiimperial discourse that runs throughout the letter. In order to situate the subaltern sidelines, I will start by establishing a theoretical framework for diaspora, then turn to the issues related to the Letter of James as a Diasporabriefe. I will then focus on the Letter of James and see how the recipients are characterized in the letter while using the analytical tools provided by current diaspora studies.

Theoretical framework Diaspora existence is always defined by both lack and doubleness or, to use the term Homi K. Bhabha has popularized to describe the colonial encounter, by hybridity. Diaspora is the situation of being split away from a homeland. In this case, it is an identity of lack or an identity that is missing

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something of an essential essence. The missing part of diasporic existence is home or homeland.4 The importance of place in diasporic existence cannot be overstated. Where do those who live in the diaspora fit? Where do their allegiances reside? Diaspora and home/homeland are indicative of each other. The doubleness of diaspora is represented by the current place/residency or the place of ‘not home/homeland’. Negotiating authentic existence in diaspora necessitates an experience of betrayal in which another identity is accepted or imposed. The cultural interaction within diaspora, then, creates a new identity that is informed by the current locale and, by necessity, it is a hybrid identity; therefore, identity is doubled. The wide spectrum of assimilation, accommodation, acculturation and enculturation is brought to bear on diasporic existence. What parts of homeland culture are negotiable and what parts are not? Whether modern or ancient, these are some of the cultural issues that arise in diaspora settings, and they all have political consequences. Philo of Alexandria, Flavius Josephus and Paul of Tarsus were all diaspora Judaeans who negotiated their diasporic existence in different ways for different reasons. Philo’s embassy to Gaius, Josephus’s Roman-loyal account of the Jewish revolt, and Paul’s frequent imprisonments all exemplify the politics of negotiating diaspora. By addressing the letter to ‘the twelve tribes in the diaspora’, the Letter of James seeks its home within the politics of negotiating diaspora.

Diasporabriefe According to Darian Lockett, the Letter of James fits within the category of a ‘letter to the diaspora from Jerusalem’.5 Following this tradition, James’s identity and location exudes authority over ‘the twelve tribes of the diaspora’. Labelling the recipients as ‘the twelve tribes of the diaspora’ places the

Although John M. G. Barclay, ‘Introduction’ in Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 2, argues that ‘The current intellectual mood is not to regard “diaspora” as failure or lack, but to celebrate its power to challenge the modernist ideal of the nation-state and to critique its desire for ethnic homogeneity’. By ‘current intellectual mood’, Barclay means postcolonial theorists who support the idea of hybridity as subversive rather than critics of such theory, i.e. those who wage materialist critiques on such theory from a nativist standpoint.  5 Lockett, Purity, 73–6. See Donald Verseput, ‘Genre and Story: The Community Setting of the Epistle of James’, CBQ 62, no. 1 (2000): 99–100. See also Richard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (London; New York: Routledge, 1999), 19–21; Manabu Tsuji, Glaube zwischen Vollkommenheit und Verweltlichung: Eine Untersuchung zur literarischen Gestalt und zur inhaltlichen Kohärenz des Jakobusbriefes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 18–27; François Vouga, L’épître de saint Jacques (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1984), 24–7, 35–7.  4

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addressees at the margins of Judaeanness while at the same time reifying James’s position as the centre, which authorizes and authenticates everything that follows. ‘Diaspora’, then, holds more meaning than most commentators give it. It is not simply a metaphor for ‘the new Israel worldwide’ or ‘Christians everywhere’.6 Lockett advances the description of the diaspora here in James beyond the mere metaphorical. He argues that ‘the ascription of sender and audience in 1.1 must be taken as a significant clue for determining the world of concerns and view of reality into which this text spoke’.7 Following the ‘tradition of official letters sent from Jerusalem to diaspora communities’, Lockett understands the Letter of James as ‘a work addressed from a leader in Jerusalem to those living outside Palestine with the intent of bringing exhortation and encouragement to persevere in the face of trial’.8 The Diasporabriefe subgenre was fairly common within the experience of Judaeanness. According to Donald J. Verseput, ‘This prevalent notion that Israel’s dispersion would one day be overcome by divine deliverance following national repentance echoed repeatedly throughout Second Temple Judaism and beyond and became the occasion for a peculiar subgenre of Jewish epistolary literature to which we may attach the label “covenantal letters to the Diaspora”’.9 These ‘letters to the Diaspora’ generally consoled the diasporic communities for having to live among gentiles outside of Jerusalem. From the examples Verseput cites, he concludes that ‘the diasporic existence of the addressees is associated with affliction, while the author of the letter offers instruction and encouragement in the hope of a coming salvation’.10 It is clear from the opening verses of James’s introduction that endurance (ὑπομονήν) is a primary subject for James (v. 3). The struggle between God/purity and the world/impurity that characterizes the rhetoric of James is to be endured so that those in the diaspora may be found pure and undefiled by the world, which is characteristic of Diasporabriefe.11 Purity, along with its counterpart, perfection, become central themes throughout the Letter of James and function as evidence for

See Davids, Epistle of James, 63–4; Johnson, James, 169; Hartin, James, 50–1. Lockett, Purity, 70 (emphasis mine). See also Verseput, ‘Genre and Story’, 99. Lockett, Purity, 73–4.  9 Verseput, ‘Genre and Story’, 100. 10 Verseput, ‘Genre and Story’, 101. 11 Tsuji, Glaube, 18–27; Martin Klein, ‘Ein vollkommenes Werk’: Vollkommenheit, Gesetz und Gericht als theologische Themen des Jakobusbriefes (Stuttgart; Berlin; Köln: Kohlhammer, 1995), 185–90.  6

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the empire of God. In his recent book Diasporas, Stéphane Dufoix argues that ‘Promoting purity is an effective argument, since the community operates on an ideal of continuity with its origin. But traditions are never transplanted in exactly the same way… [T]he purity that must be maintained depends on the near-total absence of “crossbreeding”’.12 The δίψυχος, the double-minded, are not the evil empire of the world, but represent those in the diaspora who have transgressed the boundary between home (the empire of God) and other (the empire of the world). Purity and pollution is the boundary that the whole letter of James polices and patrols. Beyond this thematic similarity with other ‘letters to the diaspora’, James also follows the characteristic geography of centre, i.e. Jerusalem, and margins, i.e. diaspora. Letters to the diaspora were sent from ‘an authoritative centre, typically Jerusalem’.13 Although the subgenre to which the Letter of James belongs does not identify the specific audience of the letter, it helps to contextualize the relationship between author and audience. Homeland, in this relationship between author and addressees, is always Palestine – and the centre of that would be Jerusalem. Geography, although it plays an important part in positioning James and his audience, however, is not the only aspect of the homeland/diaspora binary. Dufoix explains that ‘In creating a geography without physical territory, dispersion is never so unified as when the local is able to give meaning to the global, and vice versa’.14 For James, this extraterritorial place where the local (represented by James) gives meaning to the global (represented by the diaspora) is the empire of God, which is governed by the pure and perfect imperial law and mediated through the sayings of Jesus that pepper the entire letter. This extraterritorial place – the empire of God – is the homeland to which James calls the diaspora.

Subaltern sidelines Understanding the subgenre of the Letter of James as Diasporabriefe fixes James as the authoritative centre – a subaltern centre – in relation to the diasporic recipients. James’s position in the homeland speaks to the lack Dufoix, Diasporas, 74. Verseput, ‘Genre and Story’, 100–1. Dufoix, Diasporas, 75.

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or loss of culture/piety in the diaspora and calls the audience to purity and perfection, which is at the core of the centre. By confronting the empire of this world as the ‘non-self ’, James asserts a ‘purity in contexts where the prospect of mixing threatens one’s uniqueness’.15 The force of the subgenre along with the rhetoric of James may betray its intent. Is there a need for such aggressive rhetoric if those in the diaspora actually ‘longed’ for a homeland? Were those in the diaspora comfortable within a heterogeneous cultural situation? James’s force indicates a view from the centre. This does not mean the subaltern sidelines agreed. Social scientific readings of the Letter of James have certainly contributed to identifying the social situations of the recipients of the letter; however, there continues to be considerable disagreement regarding the capacity of scholars to locate the recipients with much specificity. Recent scholarship concerning the ancient Jewish diaspora may shed some light on this issue. How ‘at home’ were those who lived in the diaspora? How much did they long for Jerusalem during the period around the time the Letter of James was produced? According to scholars of early Judaism, the socio-cultural circumstances of the multifarious diasporic communities were extremely complex. The experience of diasporic communities in Rome was quite different from other communities in areas like Alexandria, so the desire or longing for the homeland varied from one site of diaspora to the next. This challenges scholarly notions about the diaspora as punishment for disobedience, which characterize diaspora as a site of struggle. Although the Letter of James reflects this sentiment, that does not mean those living in the diaspora understood themselves in the same way. Sarah Pearce and Siân Jones make this point abundantly clear: An important aspect of charting the varieties of Jewish experience and perspective in antiquity is exploring the extent to which our sources reflect identification and affiliation with the Land and, at the same time, to consider the evidence for their expressing a sense of patriotism towards local authorities and communities. This enterprise requires careful attention to the effect of ideological presuppositions which assume, whether from benign motives or not, the controlling influence of Jerusalem on the Diaspora.16 Dufoix, Diasporas, 93 Siân Jones and Sarah Pearce, ‘Introduction’, in Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco-Roman Period, Siân Jones and Sarah Pearce (eds) (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 16.

15 16

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While the subgenre Diasporabriefe evidences the importance of Jerusalem for the diaspora, it must be understood as a voice from the centre, which includes the Letter of James. The voices from the subaltern sidelines may sound markedly different as Pearce and Jones argue: The existence, however, of other Jewish temples and of forms of Judaism which did not require or even rejected the Temple, together with the lack of evidence for explicit Diaspora reaction to the destruction of the Temple in ce 70, raise significant questions as to the importance or universal significance of the Jerusalem Temple for Jews.17

Philo of Alexandria, for example, considered Alexandria as his patris and Jerusalem as his metropolis.18 In this context, ‘The diaspora Jews, Philo affirms explicitly, live at a distance through no transgression but through the need of an overpopulated nation to send out apoikiai’.19 The diaspora as colonies connects them to Jerusalem as the metropolis and constitutes an identity with agency rather than an identity characterized by lack. According to Pearce, Philo’s use of ἀποικία is completely indebted to the way in which it was used in Graeco-Roman literature: ‘Greek colonies were indeed independent, but their independence was from their mother-city; they did not think of the mother-city as the true home to which they would ultimately return.’20 At least for Philo, then, Jerusalem was not a homeland that necessitated a return in order to have an authentic identity as a Judaean. Pearce concludes that she does ‘not believe, however, that Philo’s mother-city/colony language expresses any sense that Jerusalem is the only genuine home for Jews in contrast with temporary fatherlands or colonies outside Judea’.21 Philo nowhere constructs a ‘doctrine of return’.22 Although Philo cannot represent the entire diaspora, he does provide strong evidence that the diaspora was a much more complex situation than simply a place of ‘not home’. The capacity in the diaspora for dual allegiance, in fact, may be the rationale for James’s aggressive rhetoric of purity and perfection. James’s concentration on pure and perfect piety in Jones and Pearce, ‘Introduction’, 18. Flacc., 46; Legat., 281. 19 Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 242. 20 Sarah Pearce, ‘Jerusalem as “Mother-City” in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria’, in Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 26. 21 Pearce, ‘Jerusalem’, 36. 22 Gruen, Diaspora, 243. 17 18

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opposition to double-mindedness and friendship with the world diametrically opposes the local patriotism found in instances like Philo and other forms of diaspora identity negotiation. Assimilation with the world is not tolerated in James’s rhetoric of purity, which aggressively confronts any form of cultural hybridity.

The Diaspora in the Letter of James Within the Letter of James it is important to see how James constructs his recipient’s identity. Besides the prescript that is addressed to ‘the twelve tribes of the diaspora’, James uses the vocative ἀδελφοί repeatedly throughout the letter, which creates fictive kinship. According to Pierre Keith, the use of ἀδελφοί creates a ‘collective identity’ that is characterized by ‘equality’ and reflects a ‘common belonging to the chosen people’, which evokes ‘reciprocal links of loyalty and solidarity’.23 James often modifies ἀδελφοί with μου ἀγαπητοί, which strengthens the familial ties between the author and recipients. The recipients are not simply ‘brothers and sisters’, they are ‘deeply loved’ by James himself. Statistically, James uses ἀδελφοί more than almost all of the other New Testament writers, which indicates a rhetorical attempt on the part of James to pull his audience close, or to call them home.24 This type of fictive kinship is important in nativist discourse. Rhetorically, it creates a close relationship and normalizes it. Although from disparate locations throughout the French-speaking world, Aimé Césaire affirms the solidarity he found within the Negritude movement: It was also an affirmation of our solidarity. That’s the way it was: I have always recognized that what was happening to my brothers in Algeria and the United States had its repercussions in me. I understood that I could not be indifferent to what was happening in Haiti or Africa. Then, in a way, we slowly came to the idea of a sort of black civilization spread throughout the world.25

In Césaire’s case, it did not matter if he knew specific details of what was happening to his ‘nègre’ brothers and sisters within the ‘black civilization Pierre Keith, ‘Les destinataires de l’épître de Jacques’, FoiVie 102, no. 4 (2003): 23 (my translation). James uses ἀδελφοί fifteen times in 108 verses. Only 1 Corinthians (22 times in 437 verses) and Acts (26 times in 1002 verses) use ἀδελφοί more based on the ratio of usage per verse. 25 Césaire, Colonialism, 92 (emphasis mine). 23 24

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spread throughout the world’.26 What mattered for Césaire is that they stood and fought together with a single, unified identity: Negritude. Césaire found/ finds his brothers and sisters in universal negritude. Not dissimilarly to Césaire’s rhetoric, James uses ἀδελφοί fifteen times. It is coupled with imperatives eleven times (1.2, 16, 19; 2.1, 5; 3.1; 4.11; 5.7, 9, 10, 12), with rhetorical questions three times (2.14, 3.12, 5.19) and with an infinitive construction with imperatival force once (3.10). The solidarity created by fictive kinship is used by James to sternly direct the diaspora toward a teaching from the subaltern centre, which may indicate some knowledge about the social situation of the diaspora on the part of James. What is clear from James’s rhetoric of fictive kinship is that the ἀδελφοί were to be pure and undefiled by the world. According to Keith, this call to separate from the world evidenced the fact that ‘the difficult circumstances imposed by external factors, are presented in the letter primarily in economic terms… It is concluded that at least the strong criticism of the rich is partly based on knowledge of the situation.’27 Gerd Theissen agrees with Keith and specifies the target of James’s rhetoric, however indirect, as the Roman imperial elite: The attacks against the wealthy, who are outside the community, are indirect attacks against the Roman political elite. A direct attack was impossible, but it is quite possible to do so indirectly because it was easier to blame the wealthy than the representatives of the Empire.28

The diasporic social situation, according to Theissen’s argument, is a contested set of circumstances as evidenced from the rhetoric of James. When James’s argument transitions from anti-imperial rhetoric (2.1–13, 3.13–18 and 5.1–6) to focus on the recipients themselves, James drops the ἀδελφοί terminology and addresses the diaspora in castigating terms: adulteresses (4.4), sinners and double-minded (4.8).29 This transition in address from ἀδελφοί to Césaire adopts ‘the word nègre, as a term of defiance… There was in us a defiant will, and we found a violent affirmation in the words nègre, and négritude’; Césaire, Colonialism, 89. 27 Keith, ‘Destinataires’, 25 (my translation). 28 Gerd Theissen, ‘Éthique et communauté dans l’épître de Jacques: réflexions sur son Sitz im Leben’, ETR, no. 77 (2002): 172 (my translation). Davids, Epistle of James, 28–34 and Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth in James (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987), 5–11, portray a similar Sitz im Leben for the Letter of James but they do not specify Roman Imperialism as the main target of James’s invectives against the wealthy. 29 See Lockett, Purity, 153–4. See also Luke Timothy Johnson, Brother of Jesus, Friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004), 103. 26

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μοιχαλίδες, ἁμαρτωλοί and δίψυχοί indicates a transition from anti-imperial rhetoric focused on outside opposition to anti-hybrid rhetoric focused on inside opposition. The only thing worse than the Roman Empire are those from within the diaspora who would assimilate imperial culture. Does this rhetoric, however, provide evidence that James knew the social location of his recipients? Darian Lockett follows Johnson by arguing for a much more cautious analysis of James’s rhetoric: ‘This language does not reflect the socialhistorical character of the audience, rather it is affective rhetoric.’30 While affective rhetoric does not have the social location of an audience as its main priority, it can provide social data that aids in constructing a ‘social-historical’ location. Lockett’s caution, however, raises the question about how well James knew his audience and how well scholars can determine that scenario. This begs the question: How much did James know about the diasporic recipients? Richard Bauckham answers this question quite simply: ‘[L]iving in Jerusalem and in constant contact with Jewish pilgrims from the Diaspora, he [James] will not be ignorant of conditions in the Diaspora or of the Jewish Christian communities in the Diaspora.’31 Bauckham’s comment is supported by Paul’s account of meeting James and other leaders in Jerusalem in his Letter to the Galatians. Additionally, Paul speaks about a collection for the ‘poor’ in Jerusalem throughout his epistles.32 This collection has Paul travelling between Jerusalem and the diaspora throughout his ministry. The connection between James and Paul via Galatians and Paul’s collection would be enough to evidence the fact that James received word on the conditions in the diaspora at least periodically. If the ‘men from James’ in Galatians were officially from James in Jerusalem, then there is additional evidence that James responds to certain circumstances that the diaspora faced. The evidence in Acts of James authorizing a letter to the diaspora in response to Paul’s problems may also contribute to the strength of this argument. In both accounts in Galatians and Acts, James is positioned in Jerusalem as the centre of authority and responds to issues in the diaspora.

Lockett, Purity, 158. Bauckham, James, 26. See 1 Cor. 16.1ff.

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Theorizing Diaspora What is clear from the Letter of James is that the ‘twelve tribes in the diaspora’ were faced with critical identity issues within the larger Roman Empire ‘where internal and external boundary lines are either ill-defined or precariously weak’.33 John M. G. Barclay argues that ‘The multi-locale attachments of diaspora – belonging both here and there – create an ambiguity of identity, whose particular configurations vary, of course, from case to case’.34 Diaspora is always a highly probable site for cultural assimilation. In fact, Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur argue that ‘Diasporic subjects are marked by hybridity and heterogeneity – cultural, linguistic, ethnic, national – and these subjects are defined by a traversal of the boundaries demarcating national and diaspora’.35 As a letter to the diaspora, James attempts to utterly clarify those boundaries and clean up the ambiguities for the diaspora. In order to clearly define the boundaries, James uses the rhetoric of purity and perfection to define a piety that connects the diaspora to the homeland and separates them from the world. James uses the authority of the lxx filtered through the Jesus tradition to call the diaspora to the homeland. In this sense, the ‘ingathering’ of the diaspora is not to a place as much as to an ideology, that is, Jesus’ interpretation of the Law.36 This home within the tradition has a perfect law that sets the diaspora free from the world in which they live (1.25). James places his claim on the diaspora through this letter. In this sense, Barclay’s work is informative: Diaspora communities are typically sites of contested power, both internal contests over the interpretation of ‘tradition’, and contests with the ‘host’ community or with other disaporas. The power of communities to define themselves and their place within the larger society is tied to their ability to resist the dominant political forces and challenge the cultural power which categorizes them as ‘alien’.37

James is interpreting the tradition for the diaspora in a way that marks them as ‘other’ in relation to the pervading Graeco-Roman culture; thus, for James, Lockett, Purity, 76. Barclay, ‘Introduction’, 2. 35 Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, ‘Nation, Migration, Globalization: Points of Contention in Diaspora Studies’, in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 5. 36 See Gruen’s discussion of Temple versus Torah, Diaspora, 240. 37 Barclay, ‘Introduction’, 3. 33 34

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the diaspora is the subaltern sidelines. James is systematically attacking ‘Romano-Jewish Identity’ not only as ‘double consciousness’ but as ‘doublemindedness’.38 Rather than celebrating hybridity as cultural leverage, James levels a nativist attack on all forms of assimilation by using the rhetoric of purity and perfection. The way ‘diaspora’ is used in relation to the authorship of the letter, then, creates a binary that signals an anti-imperial decree similar to the cultural antagonism found in other writings such as 4 Maccabees. Closer to the Letter of James, of course, are the references in other New Testament writings to James of Jerusalem writing or authorizing letters to the diaspora and sending an embassy to the diaspora, as stated earlier. The politicized geography between Jerusalem and the diaspora firmly creates a centre/ margin dichotomy where James functions as the ‘centre’ that produces pure and perfect piety.39 In the end, however, it is not to Jerusalem that James calls the diaspora. James calls them to the empire of God.

Barclay, ‘Introduction’, 3. See also Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). A possible example of this social situation may be found in 1 Corinthians.

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‘Aliens’ among ‘Pagans’, ‘Exiles’ among ‘Gentiles’: Authorial Strategy and (Social) Identity in 1 Peter Todd D. Still and Natalie R. Webb

Introduction If 1 Peter is no longer the ‘exegetical stepchild’ it once was,1 neither does it stand at the centre of the New Testament’s epistolary universe. One salutary result of the letter’s relative neglect is the room left for interpreters to manoeuvre. An intriguing aspect of this oft-overlooked pastoral missive that requires and offers to repay additional scholarly study is the author’s attempt to construct a Christian identity among the letter’s auditors. This interesting and important topic is the subject of our inquiry. If Petrine specialists have given short shrift to the issue of (social) identity in 1 Peter, they have expended prodigious amounts of time and energy seeking to identify both the author and the audience of the letter. At present, a majority of scholars maintain that a pseudonymous writer standing within and drawing upon a ‘Petrine tradition’ composed the letter in the later part of the first century ad.2 Regarding recipients, despite recent claims to the contrary,3 ‘Scholarship has reached a widespread agreement

See John H. Elliott, ‘The Rehabilitation of an Exegetical Step-Child: 1 Peter in Recent Research’, JBL 95, no. 2 (1976): 243–54. So, e.g. M. Eugene Boring, ‘First Peter in Recent Study’, WW 24 (2004): 253–67; cf. otherwise, Duane F. Watson and Terrance Callan, First and Second Peter, Paideia (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 5.  3 See, e.g. Ben Witherington, III, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians Vol 2: A SocioRhetorical Commentary on 1–2 Peter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 22–37.  1

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that the epistle was originally meant for readers of a primarily Gentile origin’.4 Although interpreters have advanced and enhanced our understanding of 1 Peter by attempting to identify with painstaking precision its author and/ or addressees, this essay will focus on neither. Rather, assuming the current scholarly consensus regarding both the authorship and audience of 1 Peter, we will focus instead on the Christian identity that the author hopes to instil in the letter’s auditors. We commence our article for this handbook by considering what is arguably the letter’s authorial strategy. After noting how we will employ social identity theory (= SIT) in this essay, we observe how the author helps his audience to gain traction as Christians by looking backward and forward at their newfound faith, as well as by assisting them in negotiating the nettle of the ‘now’, that is, the liminal, tenuous time between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’.5 We conclude this study with a succinct summary.

Cognition and formation First Peter 1.13–14 indicates how the ‘beloved’ addressed by the letter are (to begin) to form a decidedly Christian identity. As ‘obedient children’ they are no longer to live in conformity with ‘the desires that [they] formerly had in ignorance’ (1.14); on the contrary, they are to ‘gird up the loins of [their] mind’ (ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας ὑμῶν; ‘Prepare your minds for action’6) and are soberly to set their ‘hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring [them] when he is revealed’ (1.13). Later in the letter, the author commands readers to be ‘mindful of God’ (διὰ συνείδησιν θεοῦ, 2.19) as well as to be of ‘a humble mind’ (ταπεινόφρονες, 3.8) and ‘sound mind’ Travis B. Williams, Persecution in 1 Peter: Differentiating and Contextualizing Early Christian Suffering, NovTSup 145 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 91–2. So likewise Mark Dubis, ‘Research on 1 Peter: A Survey of Scholarly Literature since 1985’, Currents in Biblical Research 4, no. 2 (2006): 199–329 (204–5). Note esp. 1 Pet. 1.14, 18; 2.11–12; 4.1–4.  5 For a study that applies the concept of liminality to 1 Peter, see Steven Richard Bechtler, Following in His Steps: Suffering, Community, and Christology in 1 Peter, SBLDS 162 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998). See, too, the essay of M. Eugene Boring, ‘Narrative Dynamics in First Peter: The Function of Narrative World’, in Reading First Peter with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of First Peter, Robert L. Webb and Betsy Bauman-Martin (eds), LNTS 364 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 26–33, who considers the ‘narrative world’ of 1 Peter in terms of ‘then’ and ‘now’.  6 In this study, we employ the nrsv for biblical translations.

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(σωφρονήσατε). It is the author’s aim to shape the auditors’ cognitions and commitments so that they might more fully embrace their newfound beliefs and behaviours, despite having to suffer ‘for a little while’ (1.6; 5.10; cf. 2.19–20; 3.14–17; 4.1, 12–19). ‘Like newborn infants’, they are to ‘long for the pure, spiritual milk [i.e. ‘the word of God’], so that by it [they] may grow into salvation’ (2.2). For this author, ‘thinking’ is to inform and transform ‘being’ as well as ‘doing’. How does the author of 1 Peter attempt to construct and inculcate a common identity among his Anatolian audience? The initial verses of the letter suggest an authorial strategy. In the first instance, the ‘elder’ (5.1) calls the auditors to recognize their common history. These exiles (παρεπδήμοι) of the Dispersion (1.1) have been chosen and destined by God and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ (1.2). Additionally, the recipients are to realize that they share a common future, for they have been born anew ‘to a living hope’ and ‘to an inheritance’ ‘for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’ (1.4–5). Furthermore, ‘in the time of [their] exile’ (1.17) these Christ-followers are to share common commitments, experiences and practices as they anticipate the ‘outcome of [their] faith, the salvation of [their] souls’ (1.9). In the face of significant suffering, they are to live holy, reverently and lovingly (1.6, 15, 17, 22). Each of these commonalities (that is, a common past, future and present) is crucial for the author as he seeks to shape a uniquely Christian mentality and a decidedly Christian identity among his beleaguered addressees as they, albeit ‘aliens and exiles’, live as ‘Christians’ ‘among the Gentiles’ (2.11–12; 4.3, 16).

Social identity theory First Peter offers fertile, if largely untilled, soil for students of early Christian identity formation, and SIT can serve as a useful tool in studying this feature of the letter. Henri Tajfel and John Turner, the formulators of SIT, define social identity as the ‘aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as belonging’.7 SIT explores how a Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds) (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), 33–47 (40).

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person understands oneself in relation to a certain group (or groups). This is clearly relevant to 1 Peter’s authorial strategy. Three particular facets of SIT are readily applicable to our study.8 Here, we will only state and illustrate in passing that which we will explore more fully below. First, the ‘cognitive’ aspect of SIT, which deals with one’s recognition of belonging to the group, may be demonstrated by 1 Peter’s use of the ot. By appealing to and appropriating Scripture, the author attempts to foster a common identity among his readers and to shape the boundaries and behaviours of the community. Second, the ‘evaluative’ aspect of SIT, which refers to the recognition of value attached to the group, may be seen, for example, in 1 Peter’s appeal to the community’s hope for the future. Lastly, the ‘emotional’ aspect, which denotes the attitudes of the group toward insiders and outsiders, is displayed in the author’s instructions to his auditors regarding their perception of, orientation to, and interaction with the outside world (namely ‘the Gentiles’). Each of these three primary aspects of SIT, as well as other concepts culled from SIT (e.g. ‘ingroup’/‘outgroup’ relations, ‘ingroup prototype’, ‘social creativity’, ‘social mobility’ and ‘social change’), provide valuable socialpsychological lenses through which to read 1 Peter. Below, we will incorporate (where deemed appropriate) salient insights culled from SIT as we explore how the author of 1 Peter sought to develop and instil a Christian identity among ‘the household of God’ (4.17) and ‘brotherhood’ (5.9) scattered throughout the Roman Anatolian provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia (1.1).

Looking backward… One way that the author of 1 Peter sought to shape the minds and, resultantly, the identity of his audience was by constructing for them a ‘Christian story’ to inhabit. For his (largely) Gentile-Christian audience, this hermeneutical task required weaving the rich, variegated history and heritage of Israel into their

See further Coleman A. Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, BTB 42, no. 3 (2012): 129–38 (130).

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own non-Jewish memories.9 This was no small feat, however, not least due to their ‘pagan’ past. Formerly, these Anatolian Christians lived ‘in ignorance’ (1.14), in ‘the futile ways [they had] inherited from [their] ancestors’ (1.18). They did ‘what the[ir fellow] Gentiles like[d] to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry’ (4.3). In 1 Peter, these former ‘pagans’ are swept up into Israel’s story in such a way that they become co-heirs (sole heirs?) of the promises made to Israel. These previously estranged Gentiles are given a new identity, the very identity of God’s people.10 ‘In a way virtually unique among Christian canonical writings, 1 Peter has appropriated the language of Israel for the church in such a way that Israel as a totality has become for this letter the controlling metaphor in terms of which its theology is expressed’.11 In 1 Peter, the ‘elder’ appropriates the language that Scripture employs to depict Israel to describe and define the new Christian community. For example, as the letter begins, the author addresses his once-‘pagan’ audience as ‘exiles of the Dispersion’ (1.1; cf. 1.17, 2.1). Furthermore, he harvests four honorific titles from the ot and applies these epithets (that convey and capture Israel’s unique relationship to God) to Anatolian Christian congregations.12 By so doing, he (for all intents and purposes) claims Israel’s spiritual status and privileges for assailed Gentile Christian assemblies. We might also observe that references to Noah at the time of the flood (3.20) and to Sarah regarding her obedience to Abraham (3.6) serve as scriptural models for these fellowships. In addition, quotations from and allusions to the Psalms and Proverbs permeate 1 Peter.13 In short, the worldview that the author intends for and extends to his audience is one that stems from and If there were Jewish auditors of 1 Peter, such identity formation would have involved (among other things) a distinctly christological reading of their Scriptures (as it did for the seemingly JewishChristian author of the letter). 10 See further Betsy Bauman-Martin, ‘Speaking Jewish: Postcolonial Aliens and Strangers in First Peter’, in Reading First Peter with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of First Peter, Robert L. Webb and Betsy Bauman-Martin (eds), LNTS 364 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2007). 11 Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 69. 12 In particular, ‘Peter’ refers to the letter’s recipients as ‘a chosen race’, ‘a royal priesthood’, ‘a holy nation’, and ‘God’s own people’ (cf. Exod. 19.6; Isa. 43.20–1). 13 Note, e.g. Ps. 34.8 in 2.3; Ps. 118.22 in 2.7; and Ps. 34.12–16 in 3.10–12. See, too, Prov. 11.31 in 4.18; and Prov. 3.34 in 5.5. As we will see more fully below, 1 Peter appeals with even a greater degree of frequency to Isaiah. See, e.g. Isa. 40.6–8 in 1.24–5; Isa. 28.16 in 2.6; Isa. 8.14 in 2.8; Isa. 43.20–1 in 2.9; and Isa. 53.9 in 2.22.  9

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is steeped in ot story and instruction. Indeed, the author of 1 Peter regards Jewish Scripture as Christian Scripture and finds the gospel in the Hebrew Bible. In addition to ot honorific titles, ancestral stories and wisdom sayings, one discovers that Israel’s prophets are integral to the formation of Christian identity in 1 Peter. The ‘elder’ articulates his hermeneutical strategy vis-à-vis ot prophecy in 1.10–12: Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven – things into which angels long to look!14

First Peter interprets the ot prophets as speaking regarding the time of Jesus and the subsequent church.15 One example of the author’s use of ‘the prophets’ is found in 2.10. Appealing to (the book of) Hosea, ‘Peter’ declares to Gentile believers: ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy’ (see Hos. 1.9 and 2.23 respectively). Here, the ‘elder’ employs the names of Hosea’s children to describe the spiritual journey of Anatolian assemblies. Formerly (ποτέ) they had no identity as a people and were cut off from divine mercy; now (νῦν), however, through God’s mercy they had been transformed and were being formed into the very people of God. First Peter’s christological reading of the ot is most fully and clearly seen in the author’s interpretation and appropriation of Isa. 52.13–53.12 in 2.22–5.16 Although 1 Peter only cites Isa. 53.9b (see 2.22), the ‘elder’ interprets Christ’s redemptive work with special reference to 53.4–6. In a passage addressed to slaves (note 2.18), Christ is set forth as an ‘example’ (ὑπογραμμός, 2.21). Despite doing good (‘He [i.e. Jesus] committed no sin, and no deceit was On this programmatic passage in 1 Peter, see William L. Schutter, Hermeneutic and Composition in I Peter, WUNT 2.30 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989). 15 See further Travis B. Williams, ‘Ancient Prophets and Inspired Exegetes: Interpreting Prophetic Scripture in 1QpHab and 1 Peter’, in Bedrängnis und Identität: Studien zu Situation, Kommunikation und Theologie des 1. Petrusbriefs, ed. David S. du Toit, BZNW 200 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 221–44. 16 Isa. 52.13–53.12 is the fourth and final ‘servant song’ in Deutero-Isaiah. 14

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found in his mouth’; 2.22), he suffered unjustly; yet, he refused to retaliate or to ‘repay evil with evil or insult with insult’ (3.9). Instead, he entrusted himself to God (2.23). The Petrine admonition to follow ‘in his steps’ is applicable not only to believing slaves but to all believers who suffer (2.21), even as Christ’s sin-bearing, wound-inflicting cross enables both the author and the audience to be healed through dying to sin and living for righteousness (2.24). Christ’s suffering ‘in his body on the cross’ also facilitates the return of wayward sheep to ‘the Shepherd and Overseer of [their] souls’ (2.25). Suffering is a leitmotif in 1 Peter. ‘Peter’ presents Jesus Christ, via Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’, as the central example for the Christians to imitate. This carefully and creatively constructed image provides the addressees a prototype that can assist them in understanding and coping with ‘the fiery ordeal that is taking place among [them] to test [them]’ (4.12). In the language of SIT, the burden-bearing, God-trusting Christ functions as the ‘ingroup prototype’.17 In addition to specific scriptural references and allusions, in 1 Peter the story of Israel writ large is seen as analogous to the precarious social situation in which the Anatolian Christians found themselves. In his now-classic study of 1 Peter, John H. Elliott emphasized the ‘social strangeness’ of the letter’s recipients.18 The strangeness and homelessness frequently experienced by the nation of Israel would not have been foreign to or lost on the letter’s auditors. Indeed, by appealing to Israel, to her Scriptures, and to certain figures within her history, 1 Peter is able to forge a (literary) relationship between Gentile fellowships and their Jewish forebears in faith. ‘Peter’ remembers and helps his ‘pagan’ auditors to the same. A shared social experience with Israel as ‘wayfaring strangers’ offers Anatolian believers a historical backdrop against which and theological grid through which to interpret (with the aid of the ‘elder’) their newfound beliefs and practices.19 The author of 1 Peter places his readers within Israel’s history, a history that he understands as being caught up into the gospel of Jesus Christ (note, See further Michael A. Hogg, Zachary P. Hohman, and Jason E. Rivera, ‘Why Do People Join Groups? Three Motivational Accounts from Social Psychology’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 3 (2008): 1269–80. 18 John H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 38. 19 Joel B. Green rightly notes, ‘Memory … is not a passive chronicling of events, but active reconstruction, through which we seek coherence’; Joel B. Green, 1 Peter, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 268. 17

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e.g. 1.12, 25; 2.8; 3.1). It does not appear to be too difficult for the ‘elder’ to move from Israel’s past to the church’s present. To illustrate, 1 Peter regards the identity marker of Christian baptism to be prefigured by the Genesis account of the flood (3.20–1). Although there is claimed continuity with the story of Israel, in the ritual of baptism there is also a decided discontinuity.20 ‘If identities require boundaries, boundaries require boundary-crossing customs (rituals) for newcomers.’21 Baptism, then, simultaneously connects and differentiates the Christian believers addressed by the letter from their Jewish predecessors. Similarly, the author links Israel’s history with the Christian experience of his audience through the language of sacrifice and deliverance. In 1.18–19, for example, he declares that Christ-followers have been ‘ransomed from the futile ways inherited from [their Gentile] ancestors … with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish’ (see Isa. 52.3; 53.7; cf. Exod. 12.5). ‘Peter’ then turns in 1.24–5a to cite Isa. 40.6–8 (‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever’). An interpretive gloss follows: ‘That word [i.e. the forever enduring word of the Lord] is the good news that was announced to you’ (1.25b). In chapter 2 the ‘elder’ continues his appeal to Scripture (note also Ps. 34.8 in 2.3). Referring to Christ as a living stone (2.4), he proceeds to collate and to cite various ot ‘stone’ texts (Isa. 28.16; Ps. 118.22; Isa. 8.14 in 2.6–8). He also likens believers to ‘living stones’, who are being built up into ‘a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices’ (2.5). Coming full circle, the hermeneut turned letter-writer maintains that those who stumble over the living stone (and thereby fail to become living stones) do so ‘because they disobey the word’ (2.8). How are we to construe 1 Peter’s employment and exegesis of Scripture? Joel Green insightfully suggests: ‘The immediate effect of the use of Israel’s Scriptures in 1 Peter is to root fundamentally both the message of this letter and, just as importantly, the identity of its readers in Israel’s history and scriptural See further Halvor Moxnes, ‘Because of “the Name of Christ”: Baptism and the Location of Identity in 1 Peter’, in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, ed. David Hellholm, BZNW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 605–28. 21 Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory’, 131. 20

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authority.’22 Through the coalescing and interweaving of the language of Israel and their ancient, authoritative traditions (not the least Scripture) with the language and rituals of the newly formed Christian church, the author of 1 Peter is able to create a sense of shared history and belonging for his readers. Israel’s narrative provides a cognitive context for the Christian experience. Indeed, the ‘cognitive’ facet of SIT (that is, the recognition of belonging to the group) can be seen in 1 Peter’s repeated use of Israel’s Scripture in an effort to provide an interpretive framework for Anatolian believers.

Looking forward… The ‘elder’ not only seeks to arm his auditors with a collective memory (linked to Israel’s story and their shared commitments/experiences), he also places before them ‘a theology of hope’. Although the addressees of 1 Peter were experiencing tense relations with non-Christians (the so-called ‘out-group’), the author seeks to encourage and console them by maintaining that their suffering will be short-lived (1.6; 4.12, 16–17; 5.10) and that ‘The end of all things is near’ (4.7).23 Christian suffering, he contends, is neither perpetual nor unique (1.6; 5.9–10). At the outset of the letter, ‘Peter’ declares that the believers’ suffering will only last for ‘a little while’ and that their momentary afflictions (severe though they may be; see 4.12) will give way to the revelation of Jesus Christ and the salvation he will bring ‘at the last time’ (1.5–7).24 Moreover, 1 Peter suggests that believers can perceive suffering as a sign that judgement and salvation are coming. In particular, ‘First Peter 4.12–19 describes the believers’ suffering in terms of the “messianic woes”, that is, Christ’s sufferings preceding his “revelation” or return’.25 Such a view helps give meaning to the recipients’ (and to Christian) suffering. ‘Thus the fact that the church is now suffering Green, 1 Peter, 233. On 1 Peter as (among other things) a ‘letter of consolation’ (ἐπιστολὴ παραμυθητική), see esp. Paul A. Holloway, Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective, WUNT 244 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 24 On the matter of suffering in this letter, see the valuable study of Williams, Persecution. 25 Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 15. See further Mark Dubis, Messianic Woes in First Peter: Suffering and Eschatology in 1 Peter 4:12–19, Studies in Biblical Literature 33 (New York: Peter Lang, 2002). 22 23

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is not without significance, for it forms the immediate precedent to the final judgment of God.’26 This judgement includes the vindication of the church and the shaming of those causing their suffering.27 As one might expect in the process of group formation, outsiders are perceived as benighted (e.g. 1.14, 18; 2.10; 4.2–3). Furthermore, in 1 Peter those ‘who do not obey the gospel of God’ (4.17) ‘will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead’ (4.5). Those who reject Christ and oppose believers will meet their telos at the telos (4.7, 17). In addition to the hope of vindication, 1 Peter ‘personalizes the Christian message of salvation about the inbreaking of the eschaton with the metaphor of new birth in the sense of transformation of earthly existence’.28 As we have seen above, this new birth affords a new history and forms a new people. It also creates a new hope that not only offers anticipated relief from suffering, but also grants the ‘elect’ the privilege of participating in ‘the indestructible, divine fullness of life … through divine regeneration and new birth’ (see 1.23; 2.2).29 Although this new birth had already taken place (they ‘[had] been born anew’; 1.23), their full and final salvation had yet to occur.30 The future promise of salvation ‘into which angels long to look’ (1.12) is said to include an imperishable, undefiled, unfading, heaven-kept inheritance of blessing (1.4; 3.9, 14) as well as ‘praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed’ (1.7). The ‘elder’ also tells fellow elders who tend well ‘the flock of God’ that they will win gain an unfading ‘crown of glory’ when the ‘chief shepherd [i.e. Christ] appears’ (5.4; cf. 2.25). Additionally, younger believers who humble themselves ‘under the mighty hand of God’ are told that God will ‘exalt them in due time [i.e. in the glory of eternity]’ (5.6; note 5.10). Although 1 Peter does not explicitly speak of the future resurrection of believers, the author does refer to the resurrection of Jesus at two pivotal Davids, Peter, 16. See further Barth L. Campbell, Honor, Shame, and the Rhetoric of 1 Peter, SBLDS 160 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998). 28 Reinhard Feldmeier, The First Letter of Peter: A Commentary on the Greek Text, trans. Peter Davids (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 23. On this and other metaphors in 1 Peter, see Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in 1 Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), esp. 135–267. Cf. also Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter, Biblical Interpretation Series 81 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006). 29 Feldmeier, Peter, 24. 30 On salvation in 1 Peter, including a treatment of salvation as election, atonement, new birth, and future event marked by victory and vindication, see now Martin Williams, The Doctrine of Salvation in the First Letter of Peter, SNTSMS 149 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 26 27

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points within the letter (1.3; 3.21). Moreover, the letter mentions Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead in conjunction with living hope, new birth and salvation. It is reasonable, therefore, not least due to the fact that 1 Peter enjoins believers to ‘follow in his steps’ (2.21), to think that the ‘imperishable inheritance’ and future ‘glory’ of which the author speaks is meant to include (the hope of) resurrection for erstwhile Christians. By instilling these vivid images of future reward in the recipients’ minds, ‘Peter’ attaches positive value to the group and is able to shape their communal, eternal hope. This is arguably the most obvious ‘evaluative’ facet of SIT in 1 Peter. In addition to the promise of reward or retribution, 1 Peter informs and fashions the Christian eschatological imagination with apocalyptic imagery. The author depicts heaven as a place where rewards can be kept and through which otherworldly beings can traverse (1.4, 12; 3.19, 22). Angels, authorities and powers belong in heaven with Jesus at the right hand of God (3.22); there are disobedient spirits in ‘prison’ (3.19); and the devil himself ‘prowls around’ like a ‘roaring lion’ with malevolent intentions (5.8). Such images stoke the imaginations, shape the thought-world, and thereby inform and influence the recipients’ Christian identity. At this point, the audience’s understanding of themselves as God’s people and their hope of future vindication intersect with their present, less-than-pleasant plight.31

In the meantime… Although the coming of Christ is a comfort and consolation to oppressed Christians, the author of 1 Peter neither intends nor invokes an escapist eschatology. Instead, he seeks to move his readers toward Christian formation in the ‘time between times’. First Peter is ‘concerned with shaping our imaginations, our patterns of thinking – which, inevitably, finds expression in transformed commitments and practices’.32 With a historical and eschatological identity to claim, how then are Anatolian assemblies to live until their Abson Prédestin Joseph suggests, ‘[I]f they remain steadfast in sufferings … God will act on their behalf in the same manner he has acted for Israel and for Jesus’; Abson Prédestin Joseph, A Narratological Reading of 1 Peter, LNTS 440 (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 171. 32 Green, 1 Peter, 267. 31

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salvation is revealed ‘in the last time’ (1.5)? What is to be their moral identity in ‘the time of [their] exile’ (1.17)? The ‘elder’ seeks to inculcate and reinforce new commitments and practices among believers so that they might become communities marked by loving unity among insiders and steadfast purity among outsiders. As is often the case in nt (epistolary, not least Pauline) literature, the author of 1 Peter employs familial terminology to encourage unity within and among the various assemblies addressed by the letter. The recipients are urged, for example, to be ‘like obedient children’ (1.14) of God their ‘Father’, the impartial judge (1.2, 17). Invoking the image of a mother and child, the author also calls the audience to be ‘like newborn infants’ (βρέφη) who long for the ‘pure, spiritual milk’ by which they ‘grow into salvation’ (2.2). Additionally, the ‘elder’ uses a parental metaphor to depict the Anatolian Christians’ relationship with their spiritual ancestors. Appealing to the story of Sarah and Abraham, ‘Peter’ declares: ‘You have become her daughters (τέκνα) as long as you do what is good and never let fears alarm you’ (3.6). With respect to one another, believers are to understand themselves as a family of brothers and sisters (note 5.9, 12, 13). They are implored by the author to ‘love (ἀγαπᾶτε) the family of believers (ἀδελφότητα)’ (2.17; cf. ‘household of God’ in 4.17). The goal of their sanctification, as expressed in 1.22, is ‘brotherly love’ (φιλαδελφίαν). Following specific instructions to wives and husbands, the ‘elder’ instructs all believers to ‘have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another (φιλάδελφοι), a tender heart, and a humble mind’ (3.8). Reference to brotherly love ‘is not to be understood … as a love for humans in general’. Rather, ‘it is limited to members of the Christian community’.33 Believers have been ‘born anew (ἀναγεγεννημένοι)’ (1.23). They are to recognize, therefore, not only their own rebirth, but also the rebirth of other Christ-followers by the same ‘imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God’ (1.23). This new birth restructures familial ties for converts, whose deepest loyalty and love now belong to those inside the faith. While this in some way isolates believers from outsiders, the author connects the letter-recipients with other groups of believers with whom they Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 137.

33

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can identify and find solidarity, the so-called superordinate group.34 The ‘elder’ counters the auditors’ ‘exile’ by redefining family and extending relational ties beyond the borders of Asia Minor. This strategy offers a sense of unity for assailed assemblies in need of encouragement due to their relative isolation and considerable suffering. As an ‘elder’ of, ‘eyewitness’ for, and ‘sharer’ with the churches (5.1), the author regards himself as ‘part of the family’. He is a ‘brother’ to Silvanus (5.12) and a ‘father’ to Mark (5.13). Additionally, he twice refers to the recipients of the letter as his beloved (ἀγαπητοί; 2.11; 4.12), a term of endearment often used of children. As a leader of the church, he is both like a brother and a parent to the readers. As such, he employs another metaphor for his fellow elders who are among the letter’s recipients. He instructs them to ‘tend to the flock of God that is in [their] charge’ (5.2). Like shepherds, they are to care for, provide oversight for, and be examples (τύποι) to other believers (5.2–3). They are also to keep watch at the boundaries, because ‘Like a roaring lion your adversary, the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour’ (5.8). One finds a similar dynamic in the image of a spiritual building in ch. 2. Unity within the group is promoted: ‘[L]ike living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house’, in which the cornerstone, for the addressees, is precious (2.5–7a). However, for outsiders, ‘for those who do not believe’ (2.7b), the cornerstone is ‘a stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall’ (2.8 citing Isa. 8.14). Unity from within and distinction from without is the order of the day. The ‘household code’ in 3.1–7 has generated great debate. While some suggest that the author employed this truncated Haustafel for apologetic purposes,35 others think these instructions function as a form of resistance to pressure from without.36 Indeed, some regard the code as a direct affront to outsiders by virtue of the identity of the addressees. For example, Peter Davids maintains, ‘[T]he church was drawn from the disenfranchised levels of society, and it offended society by appealing to these people directly rather

‘Know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering’ (5.9); and ‘Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings’ (5.13). 35 So, e.g. David L. Balch, ‘Let Wives Be Submissive’: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter, SBLMS 26 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981). 36 So Elliott, Home. See also Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 53. 34

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than through their masters/husbands’.37 Whatever prompted the author of 1 Peter to incorporate a ‘household code’ into his paraenetic letter, the text itself calls for a shift in cognition though not in station.38 Wives are exhorted to submit to their husbands, but ‘Peter’ provides them with an ulterior motive for such submission – ‘so that, even if some of them [i.e. their husbands] do not obey the word, they may be won over without a word by their wives’ conduct, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives’ (3.1–2). Even if the wives addressed were able to adorn themselves with braided hair, gold ornaments and fine clothing, the ‘elder’ enjoins them to eschew such external symbols of status and beauty and to clothe themselves with ‘the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight’ (3.4). Something of value to their broader Gentile culture is devalued by 1 Peter. Even if unbelieving outsiders looked askance upon these women, their new identity as Sarah’s daughters (3.6) gave them a way to see themselves as beautiful and important to God. By adorning themselves internally instead of externally, they were following in the footsteps of Jewish matriarchs, ‘holy women who hoped in God’ (3.5). The letter also offers instruction (albeit comparatively little) to husbands regarding how they are to relate to their wives. Although the woman/wife is regarded as ‘the weaker sex’ (lit. ‘vessel’, σκεῦος, 3.7), husbands are to honour them and to ‘show consideration’ for their wives in their ‘life together’ because ‘they [i.e. wives] too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life’ (3.7). While in 1 Peter the husband maintains the authoritative role in the husband/wife relationship, failure to recognize one’s wife as a co-heir of ‘the gracious gift of life’ may well have deleterious spiritual consequences for the husband, namely, the hindering of his prayers (3.7). Cognitive and moral formation in the midst of an unchanging social situation is arguably even more evident in the author’s instructions to slaves. Here, there is not even a hint that their lot in life can or will change. The letter

Davids, Peter, 22. Contrast Jennifer G. Bird, who regards 1 Pet. 3.1–7 to be ‘oppressive’ and ‘life-threatening’, if not demonic (144); Jennifer G. Bird, Abuse, Power and Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives, LNTS 442 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011). 38 On 1 Peter as paraenesis, see J. de Waal Dryden, Theology and Ethics in 1 Peter: Paraenetic Strategies for Christian Character Formation, WUNT 209 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). Cf. Lauri Thurén, Argument and Theology in 1 Peter: The Origins of Christian Paraenesis, JSNTSup 114 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 37

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instructs them to ‘accept the authority of [their] masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh’ (2.18). What is more, the ‘elder’ presumes that pain and injustice will persist for slaves. First Peter, however, does offer slaves a potentially transformative interpretation of suffering: ‘For it is a credit to you if, being aware [or mindful] of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly … [I]f you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval’ (2.19, 20b). In the midst of their subservient existence, slaves can regard themselves as approved and called by God (2.20–1). It is here where the author employs Isaiah’s suffering servant motif to describe Christ (2.22–5). As they continue in their circumstances but with transformed minds (undergoing a ‘cognitive revolution’ as it were), slaves are able to follow Christ’s steps (2.21). The creative and extensive use of Christ as an example in instructing slaves is unique within the letter. Certain instructions given to slaves, however, are later repeated and directed to all the auditors of 1 Peter (3.9–12).39 In the midst of their ‘fiery ordeal’ (4.12), believers are not called to revolt outwardly against imperial domination and social oppression.40 Human authority should be accepted, the emperor honoured, and the family unit remain structurally intact (so 2.13–3.7). Christians are to embrace the exigencies and lots that are theirs, but with transformed intentions. The author writes: ‘Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention [or thought] (ἔννοιαν)’ (4.1). The call to arms is a call to knowledge and insight. Their suffering, subordination, and ‘exile’, although unchanged, take on a new hue and are infused with new meaning.41 The author’s task of redefining the identity of his readers is also seen in his embrace of the formerly derogatory term Χριστιανός (4.16). He writes: ‘Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but Instructions to slaves are likewise paradigmatic in the Colossian Haustafel (n. 3.22–5). See further John M. G. Barclay, ‘Ordinary but Different. Colossians and Hidden Moral Identity’, in Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews, WUNT 275 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 237–50. 40 One may discern a subtle subversion of the status quo, however, in the author’s instructions regarding the emperor (2.17), in his admonitions to slaves and wives (2.18–3.6), and in his call for believers not to be ashamed to suffer as Christians (4.16). The authors are indebted to Dr. Travis B. Williams for this salient insight and for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. 41 Social Identity theorists might well consider 1 Peter’s strategy at this point to be an example of ‘social creativity’, that is, where group members ‘seek positive distinctiveness for the in-group by redefining or altering the elements of the comparative situation’; so Tajfel and Turner, ‘Integrative Theory’, 43. See also David Horrell, ‘The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity’, JBL 126, no. 2 (2007): 361–81 (379). 39

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glorify God because you bear this name’ (4.16). Possible responses for those suffering from a negative social identity include ‘social mobility’ and ‘social change’.42 Although ‘social mobility’ (leaving the group) was one option for Christ-followers, ‘[W]e see the author of 1 Peter here engaging in a strategy of social creativity, attempting to give a positive value to what outsiders perceive as a cause of shame, to the term Χριστιανός, insisting that the ‘true’ value of suffering ὡς Χριστιανός is a way of bringing glory to God’.43 In the same way, foreignness and strangeness also take on a positive connotation with a strong link to the history of the people of Israel. For Christians, this bolstering of ingroup identity does not imply a complete break with the outside world. ‘[T]he foreignness of the Christians is not in its essence derived from protests against society, but from correspondence to God and belonging to his new society.’44 In fact, along with warnings from the author regarding negative influences from the outside, is the hopeful prospect of outsiders joining the group. Selwyn opines: ‘[T]he Church had no outside edges, no external boundaries: it is a flock, not a fold.’45 The stance of the Anatolian assemblies relative to ‘the Gentiles’ was not to shut them out but to draw them in.46 Wives might yet win over unbelieving husbands (3.1), and abusers might yet come to recognize that they are wrong (3.14–16). All the while, believers are to ‘proclaim the mighty acts of [the God] who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (2.9).

Conclusion In this essay we have observed how the author of the paraenetic letter known as 1 Peter sought to shape the Christian identity of fledgling fellowships in Asia Minor in the throes of affliction and social dislocation. Along Tajfel and Turner, ‘Integrative Theory’, 43–4; Horrell, ‘Χριστιανός’, 378. Horrell, ‘Χριστιανός’, 380. 44 Feldmeier, Peter, 14. Cf. Miroslav Volf, ‘Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation between Church and Culture in 1 Peter’, Ex Auditu 10 (1994): 15–30 45 Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter, 2nd edn. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981; reprint, 1947), 81. 46 Wayne A. Meeks suggests that Paul and his co-workers ‘saw in the outsider a potential insider’. Arguably, the same was true for the author of 1 Peter. Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 107. 42 43

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the way, we have also noted how one might employ SIT to explore and to comprehend more fully the author’s strategy of calling Anatolian Christians to look backward and forward even as they live as aliens among pagans and exiles among Gentiles. ‘And after [they] have suffered a little while,’ the ‘elder’ assures, ‘the God of all grace, who has called [them] to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish [them]. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen’ (5.10–11).

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The Agapé Feast in 2 Peter, Imperial Ideology, and Social Identity R. Alan Streett

Introduction Second Peter is written to a group of Christ-followers, likely comprised of the poor and those on the margins of society, who regularly gather for worship around the agapé (ἀγάπη) feast (2 Pet. 1.1; 2.12). The author, purporting to be ‘Simeon Peter’,1 desires that they experience ‘grace and peace’ which come from God and Messiah (1.2) and declares that God’s power is available to meet all life’s needs (1.3). He longs for this so his readers can: 1) ‘escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust’, and 2) ‘become participants in the divine nature’ (v. 4). Although they live under Roman rule, they must not look to Caesar’s patronage for sustenance. Their allegiance belongs to another Lord and Saviour. The writer next urges his readers to grow in those virtues that lead to ‘mutual affection’ and ‘love’ (vv. 5–8), and that will keep them from becoming ‘ineffective and unfruitful’ or forgetting ‘the cleansing of past sins’ (v. 9). This is followed by a command and a promise: ‘Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you’ (vv. 1–11).2 Prior to

The ongoing debate over the identity of the author of 2 Peter has not produced any consensus; however, a majority of scholars now believe it was written by a pseudepigrapher. For an excellent discussion of the issue see Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 123–30. For our purposes we will call the writer Peter without ascribing to him any specific identity.  2 All scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized).  1

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claiming prophetic authority for his message, the writer states that he will remind them of these lessons throughout the letter so they will be ‘able to recall’ them after his death (vv. 12–21). Thus, 2 Peter can be characterized as a letter in the form of a farewell address that includes appropriate warnings and reminders.3 Peter then launches into a diatribe against false prophets – once Christfollowers – who have departed from the faith, but continue to join with the saints for supper. They are described as licentious, greedy and deceptive, maligning the truth and leading many members astray (2 Pet. 2.1–3). All who ‘indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority’ will be judged, but the righteous will be delivered from their trials (vv. 4–10a). Other charges levelled at them include revelling ‘in the daytime’, debauchery at mealtime, and ‘eyes full of adultery’, an insatiable appetite for sin, and a desire to bait others to join them. As a result, they are ‘accursed children’ (2 Pet. 13b–14). Jude, upon whom 2 Peter 2 relies heavily4, describes the pseudo-prophets in this manner: ‘These are blemishes on your love-feasts, while they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves’ (Jude 12a). This essay will examine the ἀγάπη feast in 2 Peter and will focus specifically on verses 2.13b–14. This will entail looking at the nature of Graeco-Roman meals within the socio-political context of empire during the late first or early second century ce. Once we understand the place and significance of meal practices in general, we can advance to an analysis of ἀγάπη feasts in particular. This will help us to make better sense of the author’s admonition in 2 Pet. 2.13b–14, especially as it relates to the formation of social identity within the Christ community.

The socio-political context of the Roman banquet The Romans believed that the gods had given the empire a manifest destiny to rule the world. To accomplish this divine mandate, a small minority Jerome H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 37C (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 111.  4 Neyrey observes, ‘According to early patristic evidence, 2 Peter was slow in becoming known and later in being accepted. There is no second century commentary on 2 Peter. Jude, however, was used by Clement of Alexandria’. For this reason, scholars, in the main, believe in the priority of Jude. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 120.  3

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of elites – consisting of aristocrats or nobles at the top, with the help of native retainers – used the existing pyramid-like social structure to exercise absolute authority and control over the vast majority of common people below them. This elite class held in its grasp the collective wealth and power of the empire. As a domination system, the empire utilized several means to keep the multitudes in tow, including the rule of law, military force, confiscation of lands, heavy taxation, a patronage network, Romanization of the masses, and the cult of the emperor. The latter eventually grew into a full-scale civil religion that viewed Caesar as the ‘Son of God’, i.e. Jupiter’s earthly representative who held highest status in the empire.5 Roman authorities also used special meal gatherings to effectively manage the masses and mould them into compliant subjects of the emperor.

The banquet as a social institution Most Romans ate their main meal, the deipnon (δεῖπνον), around sunset, a custom they inherited from the Greeks. For special occasions, they expanded the δεῖπνον into an evening-long social event that included invited guests and honourees and observed specific protocols that encompassed the way one dressed, how the table was set, selection of the menu, order in which food was served, and prescribed standards of acceptable behaviour. Dennis Smith calls this formal meal a ‘banquet’, in order to distinguish it from a typical daily meal.6 Rome used these special feasts, which included ritualistic acts of devotion to Caesar and the gods, to dominate and obtain loyalty from its people. During the first century ce, the reclining banquet was an important social institution in the Roman Empire. The term social institution speaks of a system or activity that transcends the individual in which all members of society participate. By its nature a social institution preserves societal values, influences and regulates human behaviour, defines kinship, and transmits Crossan and Reed characterize the cult of the emperor as the ‘superglue’ that held the empire together; John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (New York and San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004), 142.  6 Dennis Edwin Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 20–1.  5

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knowledge and beliefs from one generation to the next, thus helping to preserve the common good.7 For example, the public school system in America might be classified as a social institution because it serves purposes beyond education. Students are taught not only the three ‘Rs’, but they learn about citizenship and patriotism. Each morning, they stand, place their right hands across their hearts, and pledge their allegiance to America. The GraecoRoman banquet served in a similar capacity throughout the Mediterranean. It was a venue where the core values of the Roman Empire were acknowledged and honoured. These included support of: 1) imperial ideology,8 i.e. Rome’s divine right to rule the world; 2) stratification of the masses in which everyone recognized and functioned within prescribed social boundaries; and 3) patronage, a scheme in which those of higher social status bestowed favour and economic assistance on those of lower status in exchange for honour, loyalty and service. As the highest patron or benefactor of his people, Caesar was owed ultimate homage and allegiance. Free men in the empire, elite and poor alike, regularly attended banquets.9 To dine with friends, associates, and peers was part of the fabric of Roman life. The particular banquet a person attended defined his social standing in society.10 Additionally, a typical banquet table had an ‘imputed ranking attached to it’.11 Since banquets served to identify one’s social position, there was rarely a mixing of classes at the banquet table. People dined with others like themselves – those of a similar standing, common interests or ethnic Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 615D; Hal Taussig, In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 26, 30; Dennis Edwin Smith, ‘The Greco-Roman Banquet as a Social Institution’ (paper presented at SBL, Atlanta, GA, 2003).  8 Balch’s extensive research shows that frescos graced the walls of many Roman dining rooms, which depicted scenes of Roman imperial power. As people reclined to eat they did so before grand visual displays that portrayed Rome’s ideology, its mythical origins, gods, and bigger-than-life war heroes, all designed to ensure that diners honoured Caesar and supported the state’s imperial agenda; David L. Balch, Roman Domestic Art and Early House Churches, WUNT 228 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 202–9.  9 Smith, Symposium, 108, shows that association-sponsored banquets were normally held once a month. If one held membership in more than one association he might attend banquets more frequently. 10 Since guests who reclined at Graeco-Roman banquets in the first century ce were normally limited to adult males, the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘his’ will be used throughout this chapter. The author is aware of the importance of contemporary gender issues and the proper use of inclusive language. In this rare instance, however, it seems more prudent to be exact by using precise gender pronouns. 11 In Plato, Symp., 175C, when Socrates, the most important of the dinner guests, arrives at the banquet he is given a position next to Agathon, the host. Also see Xenophon, Symp., 1.8 as an example of seating arrangements. Smith discusses the importance of status and seating; Smith, Symposium, 32–4, 42–6.  7

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roots. With boundary lines established, each person knew where he fit in the hierarchical pecking order of the empire. As a social institution, Rome used meals to keep people in their place.

Banquet protocol The host or sponsor of the dinner party, whether a patron, president of an association, or head of a family, devised a guest list.12 He also selected a συμποσίαρχος (symposiarch), similar to a modern-day banquet coordinator, to choreograph all aspects of the evening’s affairs, including seating arrangements, choice of menu, mixture of wine, and selecting and hiring of entertainment. When a guest arrived at an elite banquet he was met at the door by a slave13 and escorted to the ἀνδρών (andron), i.e. dining room or more literally men’s room.14 Other servants removed his sandals, washed his feet, and led him to an assigned couch. There he was met by yet another servant holding a basin of water in which he washed his hands. The host then greeted him with a kiss. When time came for the banquet to begin, the host closed the door to prevent uninvited guests from gaining entrance and to provide an uninterrupted evening of feasting and festivities.15

Lucian, Symp., 129. In a sacrificial banquet, a god or goddess might be listed on the invitation as the host, although the cultic priest would be required to serve in that capacity on the god’s behalf. See Smith, Symposium, 81–4. 13 Plato, Symp., 175A. J. H. D’Arms, ‘Slaves at Roman Convivia’, in Dining in a Classical Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 170–4. Slaves within the empire were often well educated and ran the affairs of the elites. Therefore, in the context of a banquet, slaves served in a variety of capacities depending on their position, trustworthiness and expertise. They wrote and delivered invitations, greeted the diners, controlled unruly guests who might drink too much, prepared and served food and wine, washed guests’ feet and hands, cleaned up after the meal, and so forth. Larsen notes however that slaves were never invited to attend a reclining banquet; L. Larsen, ‘Early Christian Meals and Slavery’ (paper presented at SBL Greco-Roman World Study Group, Boston, MA, 2008). 14 The Greeks referred to the dining room as an ἀνδρών or ‘men’s room’ because here the συμποσίαρχος or paterfamilias wined, dined and entertained his invited male guests. Since the Roman Empire was Hellenized and most within the empire spoke Greek, these terms from the Hellenic period were still being used. White mentions that the tablinum, a room located off the atrium in the homes of wealthy Romans, also served a similar purpose; L. M. White, ‘Taste and Space: Archeology and Adaptation in Roman Dining Practice’ (paper presented at SBL Meals in the Greco-Roman World, Toronto, Ontario, 2002). 15 James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 40. The practice of closing a door is the basis of Jesus’ teaching of the five virgins who are excluded from entering a wedding feast (Mt. 25.10). 12

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Banquets usually lasted three to four hours and were divided into two major components. The δεῖπνον, also known as the first tables, was a fullcourse evening meal. The συμπόσιον (symposion), known as the second tables, consisted of drinking mixed wine, eating desserts and delicacies and enjoying some form of entertainment. The two segments were joined by a libation, i.e. the lifting and pouring out of a sacrificial cup of mixed wine in honour of the emperor, patron, honoured guests and/or native deities. Hence, every banquet became an occasion to express one’s civic allegiance and uphold cultural norms.

Banquet structure Deipnon Unlike their modern counterparts, guests did not sit in chairs but reclined on their left elbows upon a κλίνη (couch), according to Graeco-Roman custom.16 A traditional dining room included three couches arranged into a horseshoe design known as a triclinium. This enabled nine diners to share food from adjacent low level tables and to communicate with each other. Women attending the banquet did not recline, but sat upright in chairs, located against an adjacent wall or in an adjoining room.17 They rarely participated in συμπόσιον activities.18 Plutarch mentions one occasion when two women remained for a part of the συμπόσιον, but did not speak.19 Guests were arranged according to social rank, which fluctuated depending on the status of the other guests present at the meal.20 When an honoured guest was in attendance – often a political or community leader – he was given the highest-ranked seat. Otherwise, the host or συμποσίαρχος took the best seat, and all others were arranged to his right accordingly until the person of By the time of Xenophon (ca 430 bce) and Plato (ca 385 bce) diners customarily reclined at banquets. See Xenophon, Symp., 1.20; Xenophon, Anab., 263; Plato, Symp., 174E. 17 Corley mentions that by the mid-first century trends began to change among the aristocracy in the western Mediterranean as some women started to recline with their husbands at banquets; Kathleen E. Corley, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 53–9, 147. 18 Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 612F–613A. 19 Plutarch, Sept. sap. conv., 150–5. 20 1QSa 2.11–22, the Qumran community followed a similar procedure and seated members according to rank. 16

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lowest rank found his spot at the other end of the horseshoe configuration facing the back of the συμποσίαρχος. Seating arrangements thus preserved and reinforced the Roman social structure. Slaves placed trays of food on the tables facing the couches and within easy reach of all guests. Menus varied depending on the status of the host and guests. At an elite banquet, for example, the host might serve a meat dish such as fish, game or lamb, plus vegetables, bread and mixed wine. Guests of honour might be given larger portions or better fare than those of lesser status attending the same banquet. Banquets attended by plebeians, while offering much simpler fare, nevertheless represented the best one had to offer his guests.

Libation The offering of a ‘ceremonial libation’ or drink offering marked the transition from δεῖπνον to συμπόσιον.21 After the slaves cleared the tables, swept the floor, and passed around a basin of water for guests to rinse their soiled hands, they placed a κρατήρ (krater), i.e. a large mixing bowl, in the centre of the triclinium into which they mixed large amounts of wine with water. The host or συμποσίαρχος determined how much water should be used to cut the wine, usually never less than three parts water to one part wine.22 A slave then brought a single cup of mixed wine to the συμποσίαρχος, who raised it in the name of Zeus Dios Soteros or another deity and poured a portion onto the floor.23 He took a sip and passed it around to the guests. This rite was followed by all in attendance singing a hymn to the deity in the form of a solemn chant or a victory song depending on the context and reason for the banquet.24 According to local customs, additional libations might be poured out in honour of other deities, heroes and patrons. After Augustus Caesar’s ‘military victory in Egypt’, all banquets thenceforth also ‘included a libation in honour of the genius of the emperor’.25 Xenophon, Symp., 2.1; Plato, Symp., 176A; Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 712F–713A. Athenaeus, Deipn., 10.426. 23 Athenaeus, Deipn., 15.675B, 675C. Depending on local customs and who sponsored the banquet additional libations might be poured out to a number of other guild or national deities. 24 Xenophon, Symp., 2.1. 25 Taussig, Beginning, 75. 21 22

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Joint participation in the libation produced a sense of identity among the diners and bound them to the honoured patron, gods, and to each other. Upon conclusion of the ceremonial libation the συμπόσιον portion of the banquet was officially underway.

Symposion The συμπόσιον or drinking party was the second main course of the banquet.26 The Romans also referred to it as the convivium. It was the dessert and entertainment portion of the banquet that lasted typically about two hours, featuring nuts, fruits, sweet cakes and a never-ending abundance of mixed wine. Post-meal entertainment included a variety of activities, including music, lectures, debates, philosophical discussions, lively discourse extolling emperor and empire, recitations, drama, the unravelling of riddles, dancing, party games, and the like.27 Formal banquets operated according to recognized sets of rules and codes of ethics. Communal eating was a time for shared ‘festive joy’ (εὐφροσύνη, euphrosyne) and was considered a gift from the gods.28 Unless a banqueting experience was pleasurable for all attendees, it was considered less than successful. To ensure mutual enjoyment, the evening’s affairs were designed to be conducted ‘decently and in order’.29 Therefore, drunkenness, quarrelling and abusive behaviour were discouraged.30 To this end, guests had ethical obligations to one another and agreed to conduct themselves according to the principles of social etiquette, which were implicitly understood but also enumerated in the bylaws of the sponsoring society or guild. Some banquets, however, devolved into little more than drinking parties and opportunities for sexual escapades. Although the wine had been cut, leaving an alcohol content of less than 3 per cent, guests often drank

Xenophon, Symp., 1.8, 9.2; Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 612E, 612F. Xenophon, Symp., 2.1; 9.2–7. One of the popular banquet party games was κότταβος, which tested a competitor’s prowess at slinging drops of wine at a target in the middle of the banquet hall. Another common feature of symposia entertainment was a female flute player who provided a soothing musical atmosphere for the occasion, especially the sacrificial ceremonies. See Smith, Symposium, 12, 34, 35 for a fuller description. 28 Craig Blomberg, Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), 86. Also see Smith, Symposium, 55. 29 Plutarch, Quaest. conv., 615–616B. 30 Cicero ranked friendship above drinking in importance at a συμπόσιον (Sen., 13.45).

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excessively, resulting in drunkenness and raucous behaviour.31 On such occasions, slaves might be invited to lay next to a guest and provide sexual favours.32

Banquet sponsors Collegia or voluntary associations – apart from individual patrons – were the main sponsors of formal banquets. There were four types of associations in the Roman Empire: 1) professional or occupational guilds; 2) cultic or sacrificial groups; 3) funeral or burial societies; and 4) household or ethnic societies. Each voluntary association had its own goals and purposes for existence. Regardless of the stated reason, all associations had one thing in common – their meetings revolved around meals.33 Many living in the empire, even among the poorest of the poor, belonged to one or more voluntary associations, which ranged in membership from less than a dozen to ten times that amount.34 Depending on the size and financial worth of the association, meetings were held either in homes, rented quarters, a local temple, or a building that the association owned. Usually the members met on a monthly basis. Some people, however, belonged to more than one association. Rome imposed two obligations upon all government sanctioned associations: 1) their libation had to be offered in the name of the emperor; and 2) during the συμπόσιον they could not engage in any discussion or actions against the state.35 These regulations enabled Rome to keep its subjects in line with the empire’s ideological and political agendas.

Drunkenness was a potential problem at banquets. Plato, Symp., 223B–223D, speaks of participants drinking through the night until the rising of the sun the next morning. When drunkenness and gluttony became widespread among banqueters in the Roman era, Pliny the Elder (23–79 ce), Nat., 14.28, condemned the intemperance. 32 Matthew B. Roller, Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 19–22. 33 John S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson, eds., Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 1996), 43. 34 Robert Jewett makes the case that some Christian communal meals were self-sponsored, with believers setting aside small portions of their meagre income to support a weekly or monthly supper; Robert Jewett, ‘Tenement Churches and Pauline Love Feasts’, QR 14, no. 1 (1994). Also see Robert Jewett, ‘Tenement Churches and Communal Meals in the Early Church: The Implications of a Form-Critical Analysis of 2 Thessalonians 3:10’, Biblical Research 38 (1993). 35 Jeffers, Greco-Roman, 73. 31

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Ekklesiai, associations and meals In the past decade a growing number of scholars have begun to identify the early church as a voluntary association or collegia.36 Corley, for instance, shows that many words commonly used as designation for associations and their members were also used to describe Christian groups and their members, including ἐκκλησία, ἀδελφοί, ἐπίσκοπος and διάκονος. She concludes the association is ‘the primary analogue’ for understanding the formation of the church.37 From the accounts in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, we know the nascent ekklesiai (ἐκκλησίαι) met regularly to eat (1 Cor. 11.17–20; Acts 2.42–7; 20.7–11). According to Klinghardt, Smith, Taussig and others in the SBL Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, these earliest meals followed the structure of all Graeco-Roman banquets.38 This pattern is discernible in 1 Corinthians 11–14, where the church comes together to: 1) eat a δεῖπνον, i.e. a full meal;39 2) lift a common cup to Christ – not Caesar – as Lord; and 3) participate in συμπόσιον activities that include drinking mixed wine, singing hymns, teaching about God’s plan to bring all empires under his Ascough makes a strong exegetical case that Paul understands his Macedonian congregations to be associations; Richard S. Ascough, Paul’s Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 190. Kloppenborg mentions how Tertullian used association language to describe Christian assemblies; Kloppenborg and Wilson (eds) Voluntary Associations, 18. Also see W. O. McGready, ‘Ekklesia and Voluntary Associations’, in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, John S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson (eds) (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 69–70; Taussig, Beginning, 93–5; Jeffers, Greco-Roman, 73, 80; Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, Associations in the GrecoRoman World: A Sourcebook (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 1–3. 37 Kathleen E. Corley, Maranatha: Women’s Funerary Rituals and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 12. While recognizing a similarity between congregations and associations, Meeks argues there were too many differences to classify churches as associations; Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 74–83. Harland, in his more recent and exhaustive study of the subject takes Meeks to task; Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 210. 38 An older consensus pioneered by Lietzmann had distinguished two meal types; Hans Lietzmann, Mass and Lord’s Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy, trans. D. H. G. Reese (Leiden: Brill, 1953). The first was a sacramental Eucharist, which liturgically emphasized Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. The second was the non-sacramental ἀγάπη, which emphasized fellowship in the community. In contrast, the new consensus argues that early Christianity had one basic, generic model, namely the Graeco-Roman banquet, with a deipnon and συμπόσιον. 39 As Jewett observes, ‘The purely symbolic meal of modern Christianity, restricted to a bite of bread and a sip of wine or juice, is tacitly presupposed for the early church, an assumption so preposterous that it is never articulated or acknowledged’; Jewett, ‘Tenement Churches and Pauline Love Feasts’, 44. 36

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reign, praying for daily sustenance, reading letters aloud from apostles, ministering to each other through spiritual gifts, and engaging in lively discussions, and other forms of conviviality.40 We might say these meals, variously called an agapé (ἀγάπη) feast, Eucharist and Lord’s Supper, mimicked the outward appearance of a typical Roman banquet. However, their focus and raison d’être were different. The three- to four-hour gathering focused entirely on honouring the exalted Christ.41 Henk Jan de Jonge points to Jn 13.2–20 which describes a supper proper and to 13.31–17.26 which describes after dinner activities that include prayers, instructions, questions and answers, and speeches, among other things; H. J. de Jonge, ‘The Early History of the Lord’s Supper’, in Religious Identity and the Invention of Tradition, Jan Willem van Henten and A. Houtepen (eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 217. 41 Among scholars who acknowledge that early Christians gathered for actual community meals, some make a distinction between the two-course Graeco-Roman banquet and the Eucharist. They suggest that the first-century church made such a distinction, referring to the meal as the ἀγάπη or love feast and the Eucharist as the sacramental eating of the symbolic elements over which the ‘words of institution’ were repeated. They also claim that the Eucharist was eaten at the conclusion of the meal. They base this view on Paul’s version of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor. 11.17–34, which includes a full meal (v. 21) and a reference to the institution narrative (vv. 23–5). Many scholars believe the two forms eventually were separated as a result of the problems at Corinth.    These same scholars interpret the instructions found in Did., 9.1–5 dealing with Eucharistic prayers spoken over the cup and bread after eating a full meal: ‘And after you are satisfied, thus give thanks’ (Did., 10.1) as proof that the meal and Eucharist were separate from one another. See Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 1964); Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Continuum, 2000; reprint, 1945); Paul F. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); I. Howard Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Vancouver, BC: Regent College, 1980). While the meal proper was viewed to be a normal secular practice, the Eucharist was deemed to be sacred. Jeremias, Dix, Bradshaw, and Marshall are among those holding to such a position. The phrase ‘after you have had enough’ (10.1) shows that the early church was still eating a meal. According to LaVerdiere, however, there was no separation; Eugene LaVerdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of the Eucharist in the Gospel of Luke (Chicago: Liturgy Training, 1994), 140. The church was merely following the pattern established by Jesus at the Last Supper. The first historical reference to a division between meal and Eucharist is found in Justin Martyr, 1 Apol., 67, ca 150 ce, with the Eucharist celebrated in the morning among the faithful and an ἀγάπη feast enjoyed in the evening by a wider audience and seen as a ministry of benevolence to the poor, widowed, orphans, slaves and other needy souls.    Additionally, while scholars may assume that the words of Jesus from the institution narratives were liturgically recited over the bread and wine after supper, no record actually exists of such a practice until the third century; see Hippolytus, Trad. ap., 4, where the narrative first appears as a liturgical prayer.    Only in the past two decades have scholars such as M. Klinghardt, D. Smith, H. Taussig, and A. McGowan offered substantive evidence that the meal in its entirety was the Lord’s Supper and developed out of the Graeco-Roman banquet as a social institution. All groups, regardless of whether they worshipped the gods of Rome or Yahweh like the Jews and Christians, ate meals together. The institution narratives, rather than being liturgical texts meant to be repeated in perpetuity, provide a ‘theological’ interpretation of the kingdom ideology which served as a foundation for the church’s self-identity as it reclined at the table. McGowan believes that the institution narratives functioned more as etiological texts than as a statement of how the church was to observe the Lord’s Supper. There is no compelling reason to think that Paul made a distinction between the real meal and a Eucharistic sacramental meal. See Taussig, Beginning; Andrew B. McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999); Andrew B. 40

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This mealtime coming together in Jesus’ name was a politically subversive act because it challenged Rome’s ideological claims and right to rule the world, while it upheld Christ’s right to rule the world as God’s authorized king. In essence, the Christian banquet was an act of non-violent resistance to the empire.

Meals and social identity in the Christ communities The nascent Christ-movements, consisting mainly of peasants, artisans, and people on the margins, along with a smattering of Jewish and Roman elites, pledged their allegiance to their exalted Lord Jesus by submitting to baptism in his name (Acts 2.38; 10.47–8; Eph. 4.5).42 Through this ritual act, the first believers viewed themselves as citizens of God’s kingdom and thus, took on a new identity. To the churches at Galatia, Paul writes: ‘For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.26–8). When believers gathered to eat they experienced in reality the oneness and equality ‘in Christ’ that was symbolized by the ritual act of baptism. To the degree that Christ-communities succeeded in achieving this egalitarian ideal, they of necessity stood opposed to the imperial ideology of the empire. Therefore, just as Rome used the banquet as a venue for identity formation, so did the Christ-movement. Although the church adopted the outward form of a Roman banquet, it did not support the empire’s claim of manifest destiny, honour its gods, or support stratification. Rather, it embraced and expressed an alternative social and political vision for the world.

McGowan, ‘“Is There a Liturgical Text in This Gospel?”: The Institution Narratives and Their Early Interpretive Communities’, JBL 118, no. 1 (1999): 73–87. 42 According to G. R. Beasley-Murray, the ‘One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism’ of Eph. 4.5 ‘are interconnected’ with the stress likely being ‘placed on the first article’, i.e. ‘One Lord,’ who is ‘the object of Faith’s confession in Baptism’; G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 200.

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What went on during the Christian meal? First, the early Christians ate a meal ‘in remembrance’ of Christ’s death. Dewey observes: ‘This is a curious remembrance of a Roman criminal, whose memory [at least according to Roman standards] should be damned not raised to the heavens. After all, real heroes die fighting for Rome, not in resisting Rome.’43 The act of eating a secret meal in honour of an insurrectionist would be considered a subversive act and draw suspicion to the participants. Second, the Christian communal meal was open to women, allowing them to exercise leadership and to use their spiritual gifts during the συμπόσιον (1 Cor. 11.5; 12.4–11).44 At least this was the ideal for which the church strove. The question of whether women were typically invited to recline at the triclinium during mealtime or relegated to sitting in chairs remains a topic of debate.45 Third, the practice of people from all social strata – free and slave, elites and plebeians, Jew and gentile, even those on the margins – reclining together at the same table and everyone receiving the same amount and quality of food ‘challenged the imperial assumptions of rigid [societal] stratification’.46 Such a practice would be seen as reactionary at best and subversive at worst. When Christ-followers at Corinth fell short of this egalitarian standard as taught and practised by Jesus in the Lukan meal narratives (Lk. 9.1–4; 10.4; 15.1–2; 22.24–7), Paul excoriates them. Even slaves like Onesimus were to receive the same hospitality as if he were the Apostle Paul himself (Phlm. 17). Fourth, the early church read aloud texts and letters when their members congregated for worship. In the past decade Graeco-Roman meal scholars have located these readings within the context of the reclining banquet. The συμπόσιον offered the best opportunity to read letters that had arrived from travelling apostles, prophets and evangelists, or those ministering permanently in another city. Nearly all the Epistles were addressed specifically to a local church or group of churches to be read

Statement made by Art Dewey to R. Alan Streett in correspondence of 12 December 2007. This was the case even into the second century ce. Lucian, Symp., 8–9, describes sitting rather than reclining as ‘womanish’. 45 See Corley, Private Women, 28, 53–9. 46 Quoted from an email correspondence between Reta Finger and R. Alan Streett (14 December 2007). 43 44

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openly before the entire gathering.47 According to Carter, the apostles and others wrote these letters to ‘dispute Rome’s claims, asserting over against them that God’s purposes will eventually hold sway’.48 Hence they offered ethical instruction that opposed Rome’s claim over and vision for the world. With regard to the Gospel of John, Thatcher asserts, ‘writing a gospel can itself be understood as one of the many hidden transcripts that operated within the Johannine community along with other forms of covert resistance’.49 Fifth, prayers were a συμπόσιον component (Acts 2.42). Take the Lord’s Prayer as a model. Addressing the God of Israel as Father and asking him to provide bread for the day was a direct rejection of the Roman system of patronage. As Crosby notes, Rome’s patron/client dynamics undergird every level of political economy of the empire. The political patron/client relations in the daily life of the empire mirrored the patron/client relationship among the religion’s gods and goddesses all the way to Zeus or Jupiter. To petition some god outside the empire’s religion for bread would undermine the entire system.50

The diners also prayed, ‘thy kingdom come on earth’. In this way they were rejecting Rome’s narrative of reality, what Scott calls ‘The Great Tradition’51 and replacing it with their own, ‘The little tradition’ or minority view.52 Thus, συμπόσιον prayers challenged the imperial economic apparatus, rejected Caesar as chief benefactor of the empire, and replaced Jupiter the Father of heaven with a god of their own. These kinds of prayers were subversive and treasonous because they called for the demise of an oppressive regime. See Rom. 1.7; 1 Cor. 1.2; 2 Cor. 1.2; Gal. 1.2; Eph. 1.1; Phil. 1.1; Col. 1.1; 4.15–16; 1 Thess. 1.1; 2 Thess. 1.1; Phlm. 2; 2 Jn 1.1; 3 Jn 1.9; Rev. 1.4. 48 Warren Carter, The Roman Empire and the New Testament: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 99. 49 Tom Thatcher, Greater Than Caesar: Christology and Empire in the Fourth Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 29. The act of writing a counter gospel that challenged the empire’s good news agenda was nothing less than subversive and traitorous; Thatcher, Greater, 31. 50 Michael Crosby, The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 120. 51 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 50. 52 Scott, Domination, 42. Also see Neil Elliott, ‘Strategies of Resistance and Hidden Transcripts in the Pauline Communities’, in Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance, ed. Richard A. Horsley (Atlanta: SBL, 2004). 47

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Sixth, all Roman banquets characteristically featured songs during the συμπόσιον portion of a formal supper.53 Christian banquets were no exception (Eph. 5.19). When believers gathered for the communal meal they also sang heartily during the συμπόσιον.54 Many of these songs were first embedded in the Gospels and Epistles and followed the standard forms of other songs of the first century that were found in the Mediterranean region, but proclaimed Jesus as Lord and told of a day when every knee would bow to him. As lyrical ‘hidden transcripts’ they were subversive and counter-imperial in nature and provided worshippers with a voice as they gathered for their weekly meals (Acts 4.23–6).

An examination of 2 Peter 2.13b–14 (cf. Jude 12) They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their dissipation while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! (2 Pet. 2.13b–14).

Since the communal meal was a venue where believers discovered and solidified their identity in Christ, the aberrant mealtime activities cited in the text stood opposed to that objective. Peter makes five statements about the men who use the supper for their own purposes rather than God’s. 1 They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime (ἡδονὴν ἡγούμενοι τὴν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τρυφήν). This depicts a faction of the Christ community that is self-indulgent and spends its days carousing and drinking while most believers are labouring. Such behaviour was considered a sign of debauchery.55 Peter previously Harland speaks to the importance of singing and music at association-sponsored meals; Harland, Associations, 71–3. He writes, ‘Hymns were an elaborated, sung prayer that also honored the deities whose help was requested’; Harland, Associations, 71. Plato’s Symposium is a standard text that describes a typical Greek deipnon. Plato tells how after supper, Socrates and the other guests ‘had sung hymns to the god’ (Harland, Associations, 11. He also includes Pausanias’s speech, which mentions ‘singing’ during the συμπόσιον (18). Following tradition, Jesus not only teaches and engages his disciples in lively discussion at the συμπόσιον, but includes music. Matthew notes, ‘When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives’ (Mt. 26.30; cf. Mk 14.26). 54 Smith, Symposium, 30, 179, 211–14. 55 Juvenal, Sat., 1.103. M. Green calls it ‘daylight debauchery’; Michael Green, The Second Epistle General of Peter, and the General Epistle of Jude: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 109. 53

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declares these daytime delighters to be ‘like irrational animals’ and ‘mere creatures of instinct’ who are destined for destruction (2.12). Instead of being led by the Spirit or following the ethical teaching of Christ, they seek to satisfy their animal appetites, which the writer will list later as eating, drinking and sex.56 2 They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their dissipation while they feast with you (σπίλοι καὶ μῶμοι ἐντρυφῶντες ἐν ταῖς ἀπάταις αὐτῶν συνευωχούμενοι ὑμῖν). Their decadence continues into the evening hours and is displayed at the community meal, which Jude descriptively calls an ἀγάπη feast (Jude 12), i.e. a meal characterized by charity where all participants selflessly serve others and experience unity in Christ. But these debauchers are ‘blots and blemishes’, which is ‘a reverse description’ of authentic Christ-followers and antithetical of Christ and his church (1 Pet. 1.19; Eph. 5.27).57 The first term likely refers to moral stains as in Jude 12, and the second to moral defects.58 Bauckham notes: ‘Like blemishes on an animal not fit for sacrifice (Lev. 1.13) or of a man not fit for priestly service (Lev. 21.21), those immoral people were frustrating the church’s aim for holiness and could make the church unfit to be presented as a sacrifice to God.’59 Peter later exhorts the community: ‘Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things [the end of the age, judgement, and the Lord’s return], strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish’ (2 Pet. 3.14). The nature of their mealtime ‘revelling’ is described as ‘dissipation’ (ἀπάταις), but better translated ‘deceitfulness’. Davids observes: ‘They were turning the Lord’s Supper into something deceitful. They were not celebrating in the presence of their living Lord, but rather they were indulging their own selves … for Jesus was not their Lord.’60 Most likely they drank until inebriated, thus making a mockery of the Lord’s Supper. The church at Corinth and possibly at Ephesus faced similar problems (see 1 Cor. 11.17–21; Eph. 5:18). Davids, 2 Peter and Jude, 239. Simon Kistemaker, Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 301. 58 Gene L. Green, Jude and 2 Peter, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 279–80. 59 Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, WBC 50 (Waco: Word, 1983), 265–6. 60 Davids, 2 Peter and Jude, 240. 56 57

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3 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin (ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχοντες μεστοὺς μοιχαλίδος καὶ ἀκαταπαύστους ἁμαρτίας). After a while, these intoxicated louts seek to gratify other physical cravings.61 They start by looking upon every woman as a ‘potential candidate for adultery’.62 The text is reminiscent of Jesus’ words in Mt. 5.28 and also might bring to the hearers’ mind Plutarch’s rhythmic pun that a decadent man does not have korai (κόραι) (i.e. ‘pupils’) in his eyes, but pornai (πόρναι) (i.e. ‘harlots’).63 Ovid, in his erotic elegy Amores [Love Affairs], poetically describes the aggressive attempt of a male dinner guest to seduce a married woman who is seated on a chair next to her husband as he reclines on the couch.64 While similar seductions were common at pagan banquets, they were not encouraged. According to Shelton, the following instructions were found inscribed on a dining room wall of a house in Pompeii: ‘Keep your lascivious looks and bedroom eyes away from another man’s wife’.65 The false prophets addressed by Peter cross the lines of decency at a meal designed to produce unity among believers. 4 They entice unsteady souls (δελεάζοντες ψυχὰς ἀστηρίκτους). This describes how these moral blotches on the church seek to persuade others to join in their adulterous ways. No wonder Jude labels them ‘reefs’ or ‘hidden rocks’ (σπιλάδες), metaphorically used to describe men whose presence and reprehensible behaviour shipwreck other people’s lives (Jude12a). These lusthungry wolves do not treat women as their equals in Christ, but only as sex objects to gratify their deviant desires and seek to ravage them. The present active verb ‘entice’ describes the ‘deceptive methods’ used to ensnare their prey.66 The word δελεάζω speaks of catching a fish by use of bait or a lure. When used as a metaphor it refers to the use of flattery, pleasing

Green, Jude and 2 Peter, 281. Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, NAC 37 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 352. Green describes this behaviour as ‘rape at mealtime’; Green, Jude and 2 Peter, 110. 63 Plutarch, Mor., 528E. 64 Ovid, Am., 1.4.1–70. 65 Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2nd edn. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 317. 66 Green, Jude and 2 Peter, 282. 61 62

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statements and other beguiling actions to induce ‘unsteady souls’ (i.e. those unstable in the teachings of Christ) to submit to their perverted demands. The writer does not explain the nature of the alluring bait, but likely the reprobates resort to whatever is effective. 5 They have hearts trained in greed (καρδίαν γεγυμνασμένην πλεονεξίας ἔχοντες). Using the language of the gymnasium, Peter says the heretics work as hard at being greedy as athletes do at training their minds and bodies for competition. He has already called upon the church members to train themselves in virtue, but these brutes seek proficiency in vice (2 Pet. 1.5–11). The text reaches a climax when the author declares with great emotional intensity that these abusers are ‘Accursed children!’. In doing so, he places them under divine judgement, which is the opposite of divine blessing. Ironically, the very judgement they reject as being a reality will claim them as one of its victims (2 Pet. 3.3–10, cf. Jude 12a). While the virtuous are blessed, the Christ-denying heretics (2 Pet. 2.1) who ‘have transformed the Christian celebration into an event marked by cultural practices that are antithetical to authentic Christian feasting’67 are doomed for destruction.

Conclusion During the first century ce participation in the life of the kingdom took place when members of the ἐκκλησία gathered to eat a common meal. As they reclined at the δεῖπνον and συμπόσιον, they expressed charity toward other diners and experienced their oneness ‘in Christ’. Among Peter’s audience, some deviated from this goal. Instead of viewing the meal as a Christian social institution where identity was formed and preserved (2 Pet. 2.14; also see 1 Cor. 11.17–22; Rev. 3.20), they used it to satisfy their unscrupulous lusts. As a result, they ceased to eat the Lord’s Supper. Green, Jude and 2 Peter, 281.

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To the degree a church falls short of reflecting the ethics of the kingdom, it fails at its mission of being an alternative society. Peter concludes his correspondence with these words: Therefore … strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish … [S]ince you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Pet. 3.14, 17–18)

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Identity in 1 John: Sinless Sinners who Remain in Him Rikard Roitto

First John promotes a powerful identity narrative about how the recipients, as ‘born of God’, have superior knowledge and love, as opposed to ‘them’, who deceive and hate. Yet the loving character of the community oscillates between fact and commandment. Those who are born of God do not and cannot sin, but still they must confess their sins. This chapter a) analyses the identityforming rhetoric in 1 John, b) reconstructs the identity prototype (the group’s shared cognition of an ideal group member) promoted in 1 John, and c) discusses what group dynamic effects such an identity prototype might have had in a Johannine community.

The rhetoric of identity in 1 John First John does not fit the genre of ancient letters, since it lacks prescript, greetings and postscript but still mentions that ‘I write (to you)’ repeatedly (1.3; 2.1, 7–8, 12–14, 21, 26; 5.13).1 We may therefore think of it as a written epideictic speech, aiming to inspire the listeners to adhere to a certain way of life.2 Three times the authorial voice in the text explicates his aims, using the phrase ‘I/We write … so that’ (γράφω/-ομεν … ἵνα). ‘We write to you so that your joy may be complete’ (1.4); ‘I write this to you, so that you may not sin’ (2.1); ‘I write these things so that you may know that you have eternal Author translations throughout. Duane F. Watson, ‘Amplification Techniques in 1 John: The Interaction of Rhetorical Style and Invention’, JSNT 16, no. 51 (1993); Dietmar Neufeld, Reconceiving Texts as Speech Acts: An Analysis of I John (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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life’ (5.13). The three stated reasons to write may seem quite disparate at first glance, but as one reads through the whole letter, one sees that on a pragmatic level the common denominator is identity formation. The pastoral goal is to motivate the community to cherish and manifest their social identity as those who are ‘born of God’ (2.29; 3.9; 4.7; 5.1, 4, 18) and ‘remain in Him’ (2.6, 10, 17, 24, 27–8; 3.6, 9, 24; 4.13, 15–16). Countless suggestions have been made to account for the rhetorical progression of 1 John. For our purposes, however, I think Judith Lieu’s and Dietmar Neufeld’s analyses are most helpful. Lieu analyses how the letter uses the categories ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ in order to create a common identity between the recipients and the senders.3 (I call the plural sending voice, the ‘we’ in 1.1–5, ‘the senders’, and the authorial voice, ‘I’, in e.g. 2.1, ‘the author’.) Neufeld uses speech act theory to analyse how clusters of antitheses depict two contrasting spheres of existence in order to move the readers towards a certain way of life.4 This section combines their insights with analytical categories from social identity theory in order to understand the identity-shaping rhetoric of 1 John. In the beginning of the sermon (1.1–5) ‘we’, the senders, are contrasted to ‘you’, the recipients. ‘We’ is the category of those who have ‘heard’, ‘seen’ and ‘touched’ (1.1). ‘We’ have experiences that ‘you’ do not. ‘We’ were there ‘from the beginning’ (1.1) and are therefore reliable witnesses to the nature of Johannine identity. In terms of social identity theory, the senders present themselves as prototypical exemplars of the group. They embody the very reason that the community has a valid reason to exist, which is that they are closely aligned with the Father and the Son (1.3, cf. discussion below). According to social identity theory, anyone who is able to credibly present him-/herself as an exemplar closely resembling the group’s identity prototype will have influence over other group members.5 The reason for this influence is that anyone who is perceived as an embodiment of the identity of the group is also perceived as someone who is likely to understand the truth about how

Judith Lieu, ‘Us or You? Persuasion and Identity in 1 John’, JBL 127, no. 4 (2008). Neufeld, Reconceiving Texts.  5 John C. Turner, ‘Explaining the Nature of Power: A Three-Process Theory’, European Journal of Social Psychology 35, no. 1 (2005).  3  4

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the group should think and act. The prologue therefore establishes the ethos necessary for the rest of the letter. The prologue also constructs an inclusive ‘fellowship’ (κοινωνία) which includes ‘you also’ (καὶ ὑμεῖς), as well as the Father and the Son (1.3). In terms of social identity theory, the author signals that they all belong to the same social category, and that the recipients therefore have reason to trust the senders. To signal a common identity between sender and recipient is important in order to get a message through, since humans tend to trust members of one’s ingroup more than other people.6 Nevertheless, within this inclusive category, the senders have the authority which comes from being prototypical. In the following verses discussing confession of sins and forgiveness, the meaning of ‘we’ changes. In 1.5 ‘we’ is still the senders, but in 1.6–10, ‘we’ is suddenly both the senders and the recipients. The recipients are discretely included into the ‘we’. At the same time, a hypothetical deviant group member is introduced into the discourse. ‘If we say’, followed by deviant attitudes (‘that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in the darkness’, ‘that we have no sin’, ‘that we have not sinned’), is repeated three times in these verses (1.6, 8, 10), and contrasted with prototypical attitudes. The rhetorical intention is to make the recipients distance themselves from this deviant attitude.7 According to social identity theory, group members who identify strongly with the group feel motivated to become as prototypical as possible and avoid deviance in order to maintain high self-esteem.8 The contrasting rhetoric therefore probably induced the impulse to strive for prototypicality as described by the text. The author himself does not appear until 2.1–2, where he narrates why ‘we’ have forgiveness. ‘I write’ makes the author visible, but by now it is clear that the author has his authority by being part of the prototypical sending ‘we’ in 1.1–5. ‘I’ is a representative of the collective of senders. In 2.3–11, the distance to deviant behaviour increases, as the text introduces obedience and love as signs of prototypicality and belonging. Rather Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?’, Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 3 (1999).  7 Terry Griffith, ‘A Non-Polemical Reading of 1 John: Sin, Christology and the Limits of Johannine Christianity’, TynBul 49, no. 2 (1998); Neufeld, Reconceiving Texts, 82–95.  8 Stephen D. Reicher, Russell Spears, and Tom Postmes, ‘A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena’, European Review of Social Psychology 6, no. 1 (1995).  6

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than ‘if we say’, the text says ‘whoever says’ (ὁ λέγων) in a distancing third person singular (2.4, 6, 9, 11). The text is vague, perhaps intentionally vague, whether this ‘whoever’ is a deviant from within the group or an outsider in the first two instances, but in the latter two it becomes clear that ‘whoever’ is a deviant group member, since he hates his ‘brother’, that is, another group member. This hypothetical deviant is contrasted with an inclusive ‘we’ and the recipient ‘you’ throughout the text. With this contrasting rhetoric, the identity prototype is modelled. According to the meta-contrast principle, groups prefer to perceive reality in a way that makes the group identity maximally distinct.9 This is achieved by cognitively a) maximizing the intragroup similarity of the ingroup and b) maximizing the intragroup similarity of the outgroup, in a way that c) maximizes the contrast between the ingroup and the outgroup. In this way the world is experienced as orderly, and the reasons to identify with the group appear as clear. The rhetoric of 1 John creates this kind of meta-contrast repeatedly in order to make the identity prototype of the group appear with maximal clarity. In 2.12–14, the exhortations pause, and instead the authorial ‘I’ informs about the reasons why he has cared to write to them, ‘I write … because …’ (γράφω … ὅτι …). The reason he gives them is a narrative about their spiritual status, in effect reminding them that they have every reason to value their identity. That is, he reminds them of the narrative rationale of their identity, which is important for any group to experience itself as meaningful and valuable.10 Moreover, the author’s appreciation of the recipients indirectly signals the recipients belong to the same category as the author. This reminder functions as a prelude to the introduction of ‘them’ in the following verses. Up until 2.15, there has been no explicit mention of outsiders, but in 2.15–27 the outright outsider is introduced. The outsider is talked about in the plural, as a whole group. The recipient ‘you’ is contrasted with ‘the world’, ‘antichrists’, ‘they’ who ‘went out from us’, ‘the one who denies’, ‘those who deceive you’. Especially the phrase ‘they went out from us’ (2.19), a mininarrative about the past of the group, signals that the author brings up a Penelope J. Oakes, ‘The Categorization Process: Cognition of the Group in the Social Psychology of Stereotyping’, in Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990). 10 Daniel Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs: A Conception for Analyzing Group Structure, Processes, and Behavior, Springer Series in Social Psychology (Berlin; New York: Springer, 1990).  9

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shared memory of a real group of secessionists. The rhetorical function of mentioning ‘them’ seems to be threefold: First, it increases the social distance between the recipients and ‘them’. Since ‘they’ can still ‘deceive’ (2.26), the schism does not seem complete. Second, it pulls the recipients closer to the sending ‘we’ and the authorial ‘I’.11 Third, large portions of 2.15–27 are devoted to an ideal picture of ‘you’ as Spirit-anointed people. Describing ‘them’ is therefore a contrasting rhetorical vehicle for shaping a more homogenous ‘us’, just like the meta-contrast principle (see above) would predict.12 In 2.28–3.24, ‘they’ disappear and the texts return to a hypothetical deviant in the singular, ‘everyone who’ (πᾶς ὁ, 3.4, 10, 15). (It is possible that the listeners to the text connected this hypothetical ‘everyone’ to the secessionist group in 2.17–27, since the phrase ‘everyone who’ is used once in 2.23.) The deviant ‘everyone who’ does evil is again contrasted with ‘we’, ‘you’, and ‘everyone who’ does prototypical deeds. The pattern of moulding the prototype by means of meta-contrast continues. The contrast sharpens, since the hypothetical deviant is ‘of the devil’ (3.8) and cannot ‘remain in him’ (3.17). ‘Everyone who’ acts contrary to group norms is not only on the margin, but firmly placed outside of the group, in contrast to the inclusive ‘we’ and the recipient ‘you’. The description of the ingroup is heightened to the level where it is almost threatening in ch. 3. An ingroup member ‘does not sin’, indeed ‘cannot sin’ (3.6, 9). This is the test of whether they belong (3.10). Specifically, they should be prepared to die for each other and give of their possessions to brothers in need (3.16–18). The rhetoric here is that even the slightest deviation from the ingroup prototype disqualifies from being born of God. The moral pressure here is in sharp contrast to the exhortations to confess sins and pray for sinning brothers in the beginning and the end of the letter (1.8–10; 5.16–17). It is important, however, to notice that in 3.16 there is a shift from description to exhortation. They ‘should’ lay down their lives. This is followed by an exhortation in 3.18: ‘let us love’. (ἀγαπῶμεν could possibly be indicative, but given ὀφείλομεν in 3.16 it is reasonable to think it is subjunctive.) The impression is that although the bulk of ch. 3 is formulated as an actual

Cf. Lieu, ‘Us or You?’. Cf. Neufeld, Reconceiving Texts, 96–112.

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description of the group, the function of the chapter is to present a prototype with a hortative function.13 It has long been noted in social psychological studies that descriptions of attributes of both groups and individuals are not always just descriptions, but have moralizing functions: to exalt, condemn, defend, or exhort.14 We therefore do not need to think that the rhetoric of indicative necessarily means that the author actually believed that they were all perfect, nor that the recipients perceived chapter 3 as the ultimate denunciation of almost every community member. Rather, chapter 3 would have been experienced as a forceful exhortation to strive for prototypical perfection. In 4.1–6, ‘they’ return to the text. ‘They’ are again contrasted to both the recipient ‘you’ and to ‘we’, which includes both recipients and senders. ‘You’ are on ‘our’ side, not ‘theirs’. In relation to this text, Lieu makes a most important observation: Before 4.1–6 the pronoun ‘you’ (ὑμεῖς) has gradually disappeared from the Greek text and after 4.1–6 there is only mention of the pronoun ‘we’ (ἡμεῖς).15 Before 4.1–6, there are many verbs in the second plural in the Greek text, but after 4.1–6 there are almost only verbs in the first plural. The recipient ‘you’ is gradually swallowed up and included into an inclusive ‘we’ which includes senders and recipients, and 4.1–6 is a key passage in this process. The inclusion of ‘you’ into ‘we’ is particularly telling in 4.4–6: ‘You are of God … They are of the world … We are of God …’. Lieu suggests that ‘the change of person and number’ is ‘a technique by which an orator creates a sense of identification or communication with an audience’. Further, Lieu argues, when ‘you’ disappears from the discourse, the recipients are given no opportunity to disagree, unless they are willing to become ‘them’.16

Rikard Roitto, ‘Forgiveness of the Sinless: A Classic Contradiction in 1 John in the Light of Contemporary Forgiveness Research’, in Cognitive Science and Biblical Interpretation, Gerd Theissen and Istvan Czachesz (eds) (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, Forthcoming); Georg Strecker and Harold W. Attridge, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 96–7, 102–3. 14 Fiery Cushman, Joshua Knobe, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ‘Moral Appraisals Affect Doing/ Allowing Judgments’, Cognition 108 (2008); Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter, Discursive Psychology, Inquiries in Social Construction (London: Sage, 1992), 77–126; Shaun Nichols and Joshua Knobe, ‘Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions’, Noûs 41, no. 4 (2007); Kelly G. Shaver, The Attribution of Blame: Causality, Responsibility, and Blameworthiness, Springer Series in Social Psychology (New York: Springer, 1985), 129–33; Garrath Williams, ‘Blame and Responsibility’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6, no. 4 (2003). 15 Lieu, ‘Us or You?’. 16 Lieu, ‘Us or You?’, 817. 13

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From 4.7 and onwards, there is no ‘you’ or ‘they’, only ‘we’, and only occasional contrasts between prototypical and deviant behaviour (4.20–1; 5.10, 12). Most of the text after 4.1–6 simply describes and prescribes the identity prototype without contrasting comparison. The rhetorical work of creating meta-contrast and aligning the recipients with the senders is done, and the text can concentrate on describing the ingroup prototype.

Of God and of the world: The prototype and the antitype We will now proceed to reconstructing the identity prototype promoted by 1 John and its potential group dynamic effects. The latter presents us with a problem. We simply do not know if 1 John was read repeatedly in a Johannine community and thus had the chance to form the community’s identity prototype. However, the fact that 1 John was canonized suggests that it was used with some frequency and therefore to some extent both reflects and constructs Johannine identity. In the following, when I discuss the possible group dynamic effects of the identity promoted in 1 John, I will assume a hypothetical case where a community shares the identity cognition of 1 John, well aware that historical reality was probably more complicated.17 We will use the methodology that I developed in my dissertation on Ephesians.18 There I suggested that a group’s (more or less) shared cognition about their social identity has the following components: MM

MM

MM





an identity narrative, containing the narrative rationale of the group, an understanding of the group’s relations to relevant outgroups, and an identity prototype, consisting of – attributes, that is, the character traits of the ideal group member, which cause, or should cause, – behaviours, that is, the practical, visible, manifestation of the group’s identity.

Cf. Rikard Roitto, Behaving as a Christ-Believer: A Cognitive Perspective on Identity and Behavior Norms in Ephesians, ConBNT 46 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 151–6. Roitto, Behaving.

17

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Born of God: An identity narrative Almost all groups have an identity narrative, that is, a narrative rationale describing their origin and goal, their relation to other groups, their purpose, etc.19 In 1 John, the centre of the communal narrative is how tightly aligned they are with God. Their origin is God: they are born of God (2.29, 3.9; 4.7; 5.1, 4, 18), from God (4.6), and thus children of God (3.1–2; 5.19). They have been moved from the state of death to the state of life, which is expressed with the language of realized eschatology: they have passed from death to life (3.14) and have been given eternal life in the Son (4.9; 5.11–13). In this state of life, they are closely aligned with God, which is expressed with a rich mystic vocabulary: They ‘have’ fellowship with each other, the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ (1.3; 1.6–7). They ‘have’ the Father (2.23), the Son (5.11–12), the anointing from the Holy One (2.20), and eternal life (5.15). They ‘are in’ Jesus Christ (2.5; 5.20). They ‘know’ the Father and the Son (2.3; 4.7; 5.20). God has ‘given’ love (3.1), the Spirit (3.24; 4.17), eternal life (5.11) and understanding (5.20). They ‘remain in’ the Father and the Son (2.6, 24, 27; 3.24; 4.13, 15–16) and in the light (2.10), and ‘in them remains’ the Father (3.24; 4.12–13, 15–16), God’s word (2.14, 24), the anointing (2.27) and God’s seed (3.9). The narrative is that of a group of converts who remember a transition, being ‘born’, from an undesirable to a desirable state. The most frequent verbs used for their new state is that they ‘have’, ‘remain’, and that ‘God has given’. Using conceptual metaphor-theory,20 we can see that the source-domains ‘having X’ and ‘remaining in X’ are applied to the target-domain ‘community life’, which induces the static imagination of standing still and not changing anything, since they have already achieved what they need. This is also true for the verb ‘has given’. The verb is always in aorist indicative or perfect (with the exception of 5.16), which refers to something that has already happened. They have reached the end of their narrative. ‘Remaining’ is not entirely static, however. It is an ongoing process through time. The goal is to avoid going astray, but this goal requires an ongoing effort. Bar-Tal, Group Beliefs. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

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From this basic narrative, both the group’s relation to other groups and the identity prototype is derived, which is what we will examine next.

Antichrists and false prophets: The identity antitype The statement ‘they went out from us’ in 2.19 and the warnings against false prophets in 4.1 (cf. 2 Jn 7–10; 3 Jn 9–10) seem to reflect a recent crisis where some members of the Johannine communities left. Research history on 1 John is full of detailed reconstructions of who these secessionists might have been.21 Several scholars have proposed some kind of predominantly gentile gnostic and/or docetic group.22 The reconstructions vary considerably in the details, but one common methodological denominator is that these scholars use not only the ‘they’ passages (2.18–27; 4.1–6) but also antithetical passages to mirror-read the profile of the opponents. Later scholarship has pointed out the anachronism in using the second-century labels ‘gnostic’ and ‘docetic’. Nevertheless, many scholars still reconstruct secessionists with a corrupt Christology, mirrorreading the antithetical passages of the text.23 Lately, an increasing number of scholars have suggested that the secessionists are Johannine Jews who had problems confessing Jesus as the Messiah.24 These scholars generally prefer to interpret the antithetical sayings as pastoral but accept that the ‘they’ passages to some extent reflect a secessionist group. Yet other scholars have questioned whether it is meaningful at all to mirror-read the profile of the opponents through the text, since the aim of 1 John is more pastoral than polemical.25 See Daniel R. Streett, They Went out from Us: The Identity of the Opponents in First John (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 5–131, for a review. 22 E.g. Rudolf Bultmann, The Johannine Epistles: A Commentary on the Johannine Epistles, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973); C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, MNTC (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1946). 23 E.g. Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1979); Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, AB 30 (New York: Doubleday, 1982); John Painter, ‘The “Opponents” in 1 John’, NTS 32, no. 1 (1986). 24 E.g. Birger Olsson, ‘“All My Teaching Was Done in Synagogues …” (John 18,20)’, in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel: Essays by the Members of the SNTS Johannine Writings Seminar, Gilbert van Belle, J. G. Van der Watt, and P. J. Maritz (eds) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005); Ben Witherington, III, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians Vol 1: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006); Streett, They Went Out. 25 E.g. Griffith, ‘Non-Polemical’; Judith Lieu, The Theology of the Johannine Epistles, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Lieu, ‘Us or You?’; Neufeld, Reconceiving Texts; Pheme Perkins, The Johannine Epistles (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1979). 21

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There are valid exegetical arguments for all these scholarly suggestions, but for the purposes of this essay I side with the sceptics. Although 2.19 most probably reflects an event from the history of the community, the present chapter argues that 1 John mainly forms the intragroup dynamics of the Johannine community (see analysis below) and uses outgroups as vehicles of contrast in this process (see analysis above). If so, the description of the antitype does not have to resemble anything real in order to fulfil its rhetorical purpose. The meta-contrast principle tells us that groups tend to misrepresent both themselves and their outgroups to a certain extent in order to formulate their identity as distinctly as possible. Given that 1 John does not hesitate to claim that those born of God do not and cannot sin (3.6–10), which is definitely a hyperbole, we have no reason to believe that the text portrays the secessionists fairly. Therefore any description of outgroups must be considered unreliable, even though they most probably existed. All outgroup designations in 1 John are negative ones. There are several antitype designations in 1 John: ‘the world’ and those ‘of the world’ (2.15–16; 3.1, 13, 17; 4.5), ‘the antichrists’ (2.18, 22; 4.3), and ‘the false prophets’ (4.1). We should also note the label ‘of the devil’ (3.8, 10). How do these different groups relate in the mind of the author? The relation between two social categories can either be a) that they are the same social category, b) that they are different social categories, or c) that they are hierarchically organized, meaning that one social category is a subcategory to the other.26 ‘The world’ seems to be an overarching social category, with which the antichrists and the false prophets are associated (2.15–22; 4.1–6). Both the antichrist and the false prophets are described in a more specific fashion than the world, which gives the impression that they are imagined as subcategories to the social category of the world. The false prophets are presented as a particular kind of antichrists (4.1–3), who proclaim the message of the antichrists. The false prophets are thus described as a subcategory to the antichrists. Those of the devil (3.8, 10), however, are described in a most generic manner, as general evildoers. The category of children of the devil is therefore probably more or less synonymous with the category of the world. John R. Taylor, Linguistic Categorization, 3rd edn, Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 48–53; John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1987), 117–41.

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The world = The children of the devil

The antichrists

The false prophets

We can see how the text relates Johannine identity to one single outgroup, focusing on the particularly threatening subgroup of the false prophets, and thus creates a cognitively clear-cut social situation. No matter how complex social life really was, the text simplifies in order to maximize the possibility of describing the identity of the group in a manner that makes the meaning of the community understandable. According to the self-esteem hypothesis, groups prefer to formulate their identity in a way that maximizes their collective self-esteem in relation to other groups.27 Although newer research has shown that the self-esteem hypothesis is not valid for all groups and social situations, it certainly is valid for 1 John.28 The text says nothing good about the world and nothing bad about those born of God. The narrative about the state of the world is always the opposite of the narrative of the community, for instance: MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

Children of God – Children of the devil (3.8–10) Of God – Of the world (4.4–6) Remain forever – Pass away (2.17) Remain in him and have eternal life – Remain in death and have no eternal life (3.14–15) Have the Father and the Son – Do not have the Father and the Son (2.23; 5.12)

Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds) (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979). 28 John A. Hunter et al., ‘Threats to Group Value, Domain-Specific Self-Esteem and Intergroup Discrimination Amongst Minimal and National Groups’, British Journal of Social Psychology 44, no. 3 (2005). 27

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Have God’s Spirit – Are under the influence of spirit of the antichrist (4.2–3)

There are no descriptions in the text of exchange and interaction with the world in general, except that they have ‘conquered’ the world and the devil (2.13–14; 4.4; 5.4–5). There are, however, descriptions of the relation to the more specific subcategories, the antichrists and the false prophets. The most basic aspect of the relation to the antichrists is that they ‘went out from us’ and ‘do not belong to us’ (2.19). The antichrists try to deceive (2.26; cf. 3.7) and the false prophets come with an alternative Christology that needs to be tested and exposed (4.1–3). These subcategories are not only constructed as utterly undesirable, but also as forces that might draw the ingroup away from their identity as remaining born of God.

Sinless sinners: Attributes and behaviours of the ingroup prototype The earliest work on social identity theory mainly analysed intergroup dynamics that followed when people identified with a group. As John Turner and others developed social identity theory in a direction where the cognitive foundation of social identification was more explicitly stated in terms of cognition of categories, it became fruitful to use this theory to discuss intragroup dynamics, not just intergroup dynamics.29 Turner felt that this development was such a great leap forward that he decided to call it ‘selfcategorization theory’. The most important innovation was the elaboration on the ingroup prototype, that is, the group’s shared understanding of the ideal group member, who embodies the group’s identity. One central aspect of our cognition about human agents is that humans have a mind with attributes, which causes them to act. This cognitive construct is often called ‘theory of mind’.30 When we explain why we and others act, we explain it with character traits (virtue and vice), knowledge, emotions, etc. John C. Turner, ‘Toward a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group’, in Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); John C. Turner, ‘Social Categorization and the Self-Concept: A Social Cognitive Theory of Group Behaviour’, in Advances in Group Processes, ed. Edward J. Lawler (Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1985); Turner et al., Rediscovering. 30 Alan M. Leslie, ‘A Theory of Agency’, in Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate, Dan Sperber, David Premack, and Ann J. Premack (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 29

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Behaviour is also sometimes explained with the agent’s spiritual states and influences. These cognitions about inner characteristics are called ‘attributes’, and the process when we explain behaviours and appearance with attributes is called ‘attribution’ within the scholarly field of social cognition research.31 We also use attribution in order to explain the behaviour of members of a certain social category.32 For instance, I, being a Swede, could explain ‘Swedes dislike conflict (attribute) and therefore (causal chain) never push their way in front of the queue (behaviour)’. That is, the cognition of a prototypical Swede consists of attributed characteristics and behaviours which follow from these characteristics. As discussed above, descriptive statements are often also prescriptive or evaluative. This is also true about identity prototypes. The statement about what Swedes are like might have the function of stating what Swedes should be like, or the function of evaluating the moral character of Swedes, depending on the context of the statement. In 1 John, knowledge and love, which both originate from God, are the two key attributes of the prototype:

Knowledge Throughout the letter there are assertions that the recipients ‘know’ the Father, the Son, their spiritual status, etc. (2.3, 5; 3.6, 16, 19; 4.7; 5.15, 18, 20). Knowing God and the Son is relational rather than factual knowledge.33 This superior spiritual knowledge is the result of ‘his [i.e. God’s] anointing’ (2.20–1, 27). The concept of knowledge thus connects the identity prototype to the Johannine community’s identity narrative about how they are closely aligned with God (discussed above): prototypical knowledge is to know God, and it is a gift from God. Since those who belong to the community have knowledge, they are capable of discerning who really belongs to ‘us’. The procedure by which they can do this is to test each other’s confession (2.20–3; 4.3–6, 15). To ‘confess’ (ὁμολογέω) is most probably a public action within the community in the

Martha Augoustinos, Ngaire Donaghue, and Iain Walker, Social Cognition: An Integrated Introduction, 2nd edn. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 149–85. 32 Miles Hewstone, Causal Attribution: From Cognitive Processes to Collective Beliefs (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 33 Cf. Lieu, Theology, 32–3. 31

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Johannine literature, that is, a visible behaviour.34 If we assume that the prototype of 1 John was indeed accepted by a Johannine community, this imagination of prototypical knowledge had direct group dynamic effects. Since the Johannine community thought they had been given knowledge which enabled them to discern true community members from false community members through their confession, they would probably think they had the right to reprimand (reproach, marginalize, exclude) anyone who did not confess to the right Christology, or refused to confess their sins (1.8–10).35 This spiritual knowledge and authorization has its most practical application when they decide whether a sin is ‘sin unto death’ (ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον) or ‘not unto death’ (ἁμαρτία οὐ πρὸς θάνατον, 5.16–17). In 5.14–17, the text suggests that they only need to intercede for sinning brothers who sin ‘not unto death’, which most likely means ‘sins that lead to spiritual death’. That is, ‘sin unto death’ is a sin that leads to exclusion from the fellowship with God (cf. the use of ‘death’ in 3.14). The prayer instruction should probably be read in the light of Jn 20.23–4, where the disciples are given the Spirit and thereafter the authority to mediate or not to mediate God’s forgiveness. First John 5.14–17 implies that the community is considered to know the difference between sin unto death and not unto death and use that knowledge to take proper action. Refusal to pray for a sinner would in effect mean exclusion from the community. On the other hand, if they decided to pray for each other and mediate God’s forgiveness, that would probably lead to much more efficient conflict resolution within the community than if they had not imagined that they mediated divine forgiveness to each other. The letter envisages that they should not just pray for forgiveness in private but are dependent on each other for the forgiveness of sin (cf. Jas 5.15–20; Tertullian, Pud. 9–10). As I have argued in detail elsewhere, the intercession for forgiveness probably induced a certain degree of empathy with the transgressor, and taking the role of the mediator of God’s forgiveness most likely helped the community to see beyond their retributive impulses.36 Brown, Epistles, 208. Cf. Rikard Roitto, ‘Practices of Confession, Intercession, and Forgiveness in 1 John 1.9; 5.16’, NTS 58, no. 2 (2012). 36 Roitto, ‘Practices’. 34 35

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The tension between sin and sinlessness in 1 John has been discussed endlessly by the scholarly community.37 The perfectionist statements that those who are born of God cannot sin (3.6, 9; 5.18) do not seem to give any room for deviance. Yet community members are to confess their sins (2.8–10), and community brothers should intercede for brothers who sin ‘not unto death’ (5.16–17). This tension cannot be harmonized but reflects the tension between a realistic and an idealistic understanding of the identity of the community.38 In a way, there seems to be double set of prototypes in 1 John, one ideal and one more realistic. Sometimes when one reads articles in the field of social identity theory, it is a little unclear whether the theory claims that the prototype is descriptive, prescriptive, or both, but for instance Michel A. Hogg states that ‘prototypes are context specific, multidimensional fuzzy sets of attributes that define and prescribe’.39 That is, Hogg recognizes the double and flexible character of the prototype. If ‘sin unto death’ is the limit of deviance in the Johannine community, as discussed above, what is it? Some scholars prefer to see only very grave, unrepentant sinning as ‘sin unto death’, that is, sins so grave that almost no one could commit them.40 However, I think such interpretations do not take the text of 1 John seriously. David M. Scholer is right to point out that the behaviours which the text itself points out as sins that make it impossible to ‘remain’ are a) non-altruism (3.16–17, see discussion below) and b) false Christological confessions (2.22–3; 4.2–3, 15).41 Such behaviours would have been a most real possibility for all community members. With a little bit of realism in our historical imagination, we must assume that there was probably a certain tolerance for moral deviance within the community, in spite of the very strong statements in 3.6–10. Nevertheless, both non-altruism and false Christology are behaviours that would have threatened the identity and well-being of the community that 1 John wants to promote. That is, allowing such behaviour Surveys in e.g. Brown, Epistles, 411–16, 610–19; Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John, PNTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 126–32, 193–4. 38 Roitto, ‘Forgiveness’. 39 Michael A. Hogg, ‘A Social Identity Theory of Leadership’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 3 (2001): 187, emphasis added; cf. Roitto, Behaving, 132–3. 40 E.g. Robert W. Yarbrough, 1–3 John, BECNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 311; Colin G. Kruse, ‘Sin and Perfection in 1 John’, ABR 51 (2003). 41 David M. Scholer, ‘Sins within and Sins Without: An Interpretation of 1 John 5:16–17’, in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975). 37

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in the group would probably have nurtured an identity prototype different from the one envisaged by 1 John. Therefore, if we assume that the Johannine community accepted the identity vision of 1 John, there was probably a point where some members’ behaviours were decided as ‘sin unto death’, which led to exclusion. As Jose M. Marques and others have pointed out in their research on deviance, deviants within a community undermine the cognitive clarity of the group’s identity, and therefore the identity of the group is strengthened whenever a deviant is reproached or excluded.42 The Johannine confidence that they know the difference between different kinds of sinning integrated the practices of forgiveness and non-forgiveness with their identity as those who have been given knowledge by God.

Love The virtue of love is all over 1 John: the love of God (5.1–3; cf. 4.20) and each other (2.10; 3.10, 14, 23; 4.19–20; 5.1–2). The love from God ‘is perfected’ (τετελείωται) in them (2.5; 4.12, 17–18). Just like knowledge, love is well anchored in the narrative about the community’s alignment with God. It is their state as born of God which causes them to love (e.g. 4.7; 5.1). Yet love and its practical consequences are often described as an obligation rather than a fact (3.11, 16, 23; 4.11, 21), and the text even directly exhorts the community to love (4.7; perhaps also 4.19, if we interpret ἀγαπῶμεν as subjunctive). We can see that the prototypical attribute of love has a double descriptive and prescriptive function in 1 John (cf. discussion above about the double function of the prototype). It is both a fact and a command that community members (should) love.43 When the group imagines that it is a fact that ‘the love of God is perfected’ (2.5; 4.12, 17) in them, the prototype is an immense source of self-esteem and distinctiveness in relation to the antitype, who ‘hates’ (e.g. 3.25; 4.20). Moreover, the prototype as descriptive integrates well with their identity narrative, as discussed above. Further, the individual who Jose M. Marques, ‘The Black-Sheep Effect: Out-Group Homogenity in Social Comparison Settings’, in Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances, Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds) (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990); Jose M. Marques, Dominic Abrams, and R. G. Seredio, ‘Being Better by Being Right: Subjective Group Dynamics and Derogation of Ingroup Deviants When Generic Norms Are Undermined’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001). 43 Cf. Roitto, Behaving, 132–3. 42

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identifies with the group becomes motivated to do loving deeds, since s/he self-stereotypes, that is, thinks of her-/himself as similar to the prototype – a loving person.44 When the prototypical love is thought of as prescriptive, it has other intragroup dynamic effects. First, the prototype prescribes a moral norm. Second, studies in social identity theory show that whoever is able to present her-/himself as prototypical will be appreciated by other group members and able to exercise leadership, since s/he is perceived as someone who embodies the identity of the group.45 Therefore, anyone who acted lovingly would probably be socially rewarded with status and influence. Love is described as a characteristic that leads to obedience to God’s commandments (2.5; 3.10–15; 5.1–3). Sometimes, the rhetoric gives us the impression of an empty circle, since the content of God’s commandment is that they should love each other (2.6–10; 2.23; 4.21). The virtue of love causes them (or should cause them) to obey the command of love. Once, however, the text becomes specific about the expected practical outcome of love. Towards the end of the hortatory ch. 3, the text argues that love should lead those who are born of God to a willingness to give their lives for each other (3.16). The exhortation is followed by a rhetorical question: ‘Whoever has material goods and sees a brother in need and closes his heart against him, how can the love of God remain in him?’ (3.17). Then follows a clarifying appeal: ‘Let us not love in word or speech, but in action and truth’ (3.18). The narrated chain of causality goes from being born of God, to having God’s love, to being loving and obedient to God’s command, to actual altruistic behaviour. However, that is not all. The ‘remain’ language of 1 John creates a feedback loop. It is only those who actually do good who can ‘remain’ in him (2.17; 3.17; 3.24; cf. 2.10; 3.6–10; 3.14–15). In short, the circular process is that being born of God causes altruism, and altruism causes one to ‘remain’ born of God. This circular narrative, together with the tension between love as a fact and as a command, creates a social imagination where ‘remaining’ is an on-going process, where all group members must continuously make an altruistic effort in order to remain. Cooperative and altruistic behaviour is thus well anchored in their identity.

Reicher, Spears, and Postmes, ‘Deindividuation’. Hogg, ‘Leadership’; Turner, ‘Power’.

44 45

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Born of God

Remain

Love

Altruistic behaviour

Obedience

This means that whoever acts altruistically towards other community members will be perceived as someone who remains born of God, that is, prototypical. That is, there is a social and psychological reward for costly behaviour, if we assume that the Johannine community shared the cognition promoted by 1 John. Egoistic behaviour, on the other hand, is socially reprimanded one way or another. The rhetorical question in 3.17 suggests that egoistic handling of material wealth is deviant, so deviant that such a person might even lose God’s love. To the extent that this verse was taken seriously, it would probably have led to strong social pressure within the group to be altruistic.

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Constructing Identity in the Epistle of Jude Ritva H. Williams

Introduction Drawing on insights from social memory studies, this essay explores how the author of the epistle of Jude constructs the social identity of a segment of his audience, labelling them as godless (ἀσεβεῖς).1 The use of social memory studies is appropriate for two reasons. Jude introduces the body of his letter by signalling his desire to ‘remind’ his audience (v. 5), and closes it with an exhortation that they ‘remember’ (v. 17). In other words, Jude intentionally makes his case through the medium of collective and cultural memory. Theorists of social memory and social identity recognize the role of memory in the creation and maintenance of identity.2 It is possible, therefore, to approach Jude as a case study for examining how the social identity of ‘the other’ is constructed. A brief overview of social memory studies, focusing on the role of memory in the formation of social identity, will precede an examination of Jude’s letter.

Neyrey’s translation of Jude as published in the Anchor Bible Volume 37C is used throughout this essay; Jerome H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 37C (New York: Doubleday, 1993).  2 Jeffrey K. Olick, ‘Products, Processes, and Practices: A Non-Reificatory Approach to Collective Memory’, BTB 36, no. 1 (2006): 5–6; Coleman A. Baker, ‘Social Identity Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, BTB 42, no. 3 (2012): 132.  1

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Social memory studies and social identity ‘Social memory studies’ is a general rubric for inquiry into the variety of ways that persons and groups are shaped by the past, examining distinct sets of mnemonic practices in various social sites.3 It includes a wide range of sociological, anthropological and historical studies that variously refer to collective memory, social memory, cultural memory and the like. Attempts have been made to refine these terms, for example using social memory in reference to smaller social units, while reserving cultural memory for larger social units.4 Another suggestion is to define social memory as ‘the ways that group ideologies inform individual memories’, collective memory as the way memories are ‘shared and passed down by groups’, while cultural memory ‘broadens the scope of Collective Memory’.5 Recently, Assmann has proposed a spectrum of memory that moves from the individual to the collective through time. The social aspect of personal memory he calls communicative memory because it grows out of emotionladen interactions with others.6 It has a lifespan of about three generations. He regards socialization as both a foundation for and a function of memory. The process of socialization helps us to remember, even as our memories help us to become socialized.7 It is in the process of socialization that collective or bonding memory takes over. Its task is to transmit a collective identity inscribed with society’s norms and values. It functions through the activities of commemoration: ‘memorials, days of remembrance with the corresponding ceremonies and rituals … flags, songs, and slogans’.8 Assmann asserts that religious rituals are the oldest and most fundamental medium of this bonding or collective

Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 112. Dennis C. Duling, ‘Social Memory and Biblical Studies: Theory, Method, and Application’, BTB 36, no. 1 (2006): 2.  5 Anthony Le Donne, ‘Theological Memory Distortion in the Jesus Tradition’, in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity, Stephen C. Barton, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Benjamin G. Wold (eds) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 165.  6 Jan Assmann, ‘Introduction: What Is Cultural Memory?’, in Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, ed. Jan Assmann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 3.  7 Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 4.  8 Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 7.  3

 4

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memory. They seek to establish connections and consolidate togetherness either through reference to the past or to a timeless cosmic order.9 The commemorative practices that produce collective or bonding memory often draw on the resources of cultural memory. This includes traditions, symbolic forms, myths and images, great stories, sagas and legends, scenes and constellations that reach far back into the past beyond the three-generation range of communicative memory.10 Cultural memory encompasses the ‘age-old, out-of-the-way, and discarded … the heretical, subversive, and disowned’.11 It is ‘complex, pluralistic, and labyrinthine; it encompasses a quantity of bonding memories and group identities that differ in time and place and draws its dynamism from these tensions and contradictions’.12 Since the introduction of the notion that memory is socially constructed, theorists have maintained that persons and groups perpetuate their identities through the reproduction of memories. Halbwachs’s groundbreaking The Social Frameworks of Memory examines in some detail the collective memory of families in traditional societies, highlighting the commemorative activities that reproduce their histories; define their nature, character and weaknesses; and provide models and examples for teaching the next generation.13 Fentress and Wickham write: ‘When we remember, we represent ourselves to ourselves and to those around us. To the extent that our “nature” – that which we truly are – can be revealed in articulation, we are what we remember.’14 Consequently, articulated memories can and ought to be analysed both as narratives with their own grammar and as functional guides to social identity.15 If articulated memories reveal identity, then it is also true that identity, personal and collective, is constructed in the telling and retelling of stories. As one theorist puts it, ‘Rather than being a mechanism that underwrites cohesion, storytelling about the past “per-forms” the group by “re-member-ing” it’.16 11 12 13

Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 11. Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 7. Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 17. Assmann, ‘Introduction’, 19. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 59. 14 James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory, New Perspectives on the Past (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 7. 15 Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, 88. 16 Olick, ‘Products’, 6.  9 10

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Barry Schwartz’s sociology of collective memory provides helpful insights into how collective (and cultural) memory is used in the production of social identity. He is careful to maintain that a) the past is shaped by the concerns and needs of the present, and b) the past shapes our understanding of the present.17 Thus collective memory functions as both a ‘model of ’ and a ‘model for’ society. As a model of society, it reflects social needs, problems, fears and aspirations. As a model for society, it defines social experience, articulates societal values and goals, and provides cognitive, affective and moral orientation for group members. Both aspects are empirically realized in every act of remembrance so that collective memory reflects and shapes social reality simultaneously.18 Schwarz posits two concepts, framing and keying, for illuminating the functions of collective memory. Framing refers to the way that shared memories of a ‘primary event’ – a past experience that unifies, animates, orients or reorients a group in some fundamental way – provide frameworks or background perspectives for perceiving and comprehending current events. Keying is the mechanism whereby the meaning of events in one frame is shaped by analogous events in another frame. Keying ‘matches publicly accessible (i.e. symbolic) modes of the past (written narratives, pictorial images, statues, motion pictures, music and songs) to the experiences of the present’. The result is that ‘as models of society, past events are keyed to the present; as models for society, past events are keyed by the present’.19 Schwarz illustrates this process by showing how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration invoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln to legitimate the president’s assumption of extraordinary executive powers during World War II. Lincoln’s actions during the Civil War were presented as a model for presidential conduct during national danger. In other words, preparations for WWII were keyed to the history of the Civil War.20 Kirk has successfully used Schwarz’s concepts of framing and keying to show how Q 11.47–51 keys Jesus’ death through ancient Judaism’s cultural Barry Schwartz, ‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington’, American Sociological Review 56, no. 2 (1991): 221–2. 18 Barry Schwartz, ‘Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II’, American Sociological Review 61, no. 5 (1996): 910. 19 Schwartz, ‘Memory’, 911, emphasis original. 20 Schwartz, ‘Memory’, 914. 17

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memory as the rejection of a prophet and the killing of an innocent man.21 The concepts of framing and keying will prove equally useful in demonstrating how Jude builds his case. It will also be helpful to pay attention to memory genres and genre memory. These are terms first proposed by Olick.22 A memory genre refers to the specific themes and tropes associated with a particular generic form. In his work Olick focuses on memory genres such as German suffering, German guilt, and German traditions. In the world of the New Testament we can identify the sayings of Jesus and makarisms as examples of memory genres.23 Genre memory refers to past and present retellings and interpretations of a particular memory genre, i.e. the ongoing discourse that emerges by means of these genres.24 This essay will examine Jude’s letter first as an artefact of communicative memory: an emotion-laden interaction between a person and a group that reveals important information about its author’s socio-biography. Jude’s letter invites his audience to engage in a collective ritual of hearing and recalling not only elements of the community’s recent past (its collective memory) but tapping into the deep well of Judaean cultural memory. Jude’s use of particular Judaean cultural memories reflects ongoing interpretation (genre memory) of those traditions. They frame the identity of the ‘godless’ and key the audience’s response to them.

The epistle of Jude as communicative memory The epistle of Jude is an artefact of communicative memory. It is a part of an emotion-laden oral-scribal interaction between a person and a group. The contents of the letter reveal important information about the author’s personal Alan Kirk, ‘The Memory of Violence and the Death of Jesus in Q’, in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (eds) (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005), 199. 22 Jeffrey K. Olick, ‘Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany’, American Sociological Review 64, no. 3 (1999): 383–4. 23 Ritva H. Williams, ‘Social Memory and the Didachē’, BTB 36, no. 1 (2006): 37; Ritva Williams, ‘BTB Readers’ Guide: Social Memory’, BTB 41, no. 4 (2011): 41. 24 Williams, ‘Social Memory’, 26. 21

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identity, social location and cultural background, i.e. his socio-biography. He identifies himself as ‘Jude, a servant of Christ and brother of James’ (v. 1). As Neyrey reminds us, ‘servant’ is a label identifying special agents of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Disciples of Jesus with leadership roles, such as Paul, James and Peter, routinely describe themselves as servants of Christ.25 To be a servant of Christ, then, is to enjoy a special status which in this case is augmented by the honour of kinship as a ‘brother of James’.26 Early Christian literature contains only one pair of brothers called James and Jude: the siblings of Jesus (Mk 6.3; Mt. 13.55). The prominence of James within the early Jesus movement is well attested (Acts 12.17; 15.13; 21.18; 1 Cor. 15.7; Gal. 2.9, 12; Gos. Thom. 12). The traditional identification of this author as Jude, the brother of James and Jesus, has been contested by historical critical scholars. Yet scholars continue to argue that the text preserves an authentic voice closely connected to the family of Jesus.27 Even if not penned by the brother of Jesus, the author at the very least belongs to a circle of early Judaean believers that honours the leadership and teaching of Jesus’ siblings.28 The author’s good Greek vocabulary and style, knowledge of lore, tradition and esoteric writings, suggest a non-elite scribal background probably among the urban retainer class.29 He is definitely Judaean, as is clearly demonstrated by his almost exclusive use of Judaean canonical and extracanonical lore and literature, benedictions and doxologies. Jude shares the same value orientations characteristic of Judaeans in antiquity: reverence for the past, purity, honour and shame.30 The Judaean traditions evoked in this letter are deeply rooted in the Judaean homeland, making it highly likely that author and audience were located in or had roots in Palestine.31 The lack of explicit citations from the gospels or Pauline epistles points to an oral rather than literary acquaintance with the emerging Christian tradition.32 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 44. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 45. 27 David A. deSilva, The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 45–54. 28 R. A. Martin and John H. Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, ACNT (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1982), 167. 29 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 35. 30 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 41. 31 deSilva, Jewish Teachers, 56. 32 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 37. 25 26

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The absence of references to any specifically ‘Christian’ theological, doctrinal or ecclesiastical developments is another indicator of its early date. Jude’s contention that the situation facing his audience is symptomatic of the ‘final time’ (v. 18) is consistent with the expectations of the earliest Christ-followers (e.g. 1 Thess. 4.13–18; 1 Cor. 7.26–31). It is highly probable, therefore, that this letter was written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce.33 Jude’s communication with his audience is emotion-laden and urgent. He calls them ‘beloved’ four times (vv. 1, 3, 17, 20). He had been eagerly preparing to write about their shared salvation, but now finds it necessary to set aside that project in order exhort them ‘to contend for the faith delivered once and for all to the saints’ (v. 3). These are fighting words, calling Jude’s audience to post guards, identify, neutralize and expel those who are threatening this faith.34 The presence of ‘certain men’ who have ‘crept in’ (v. 4) not only has implications for the group’s well-being in the present, but also for their ultimate destiny (v. 21). In this letter Jude seeks to raise his audience’s awareness of the threat these persons present to their collective integrity and cohesion. He does so in strong emotional terms.

The epistle of Jude as collective or bonding memory Jude’s letter invites his audience to gather, hear, remember, imagine and discern together. It provides an occasion for a bonding ritual. The letter highlights the emotional connections between the author and the audience as well as their shared history and hopes. As noted above, Jude addresses them as ‘beloved’ (vv. 1, 3, 17, 20) and invokes ‘our common salvation’ (v. 3). Past, present and future aspects of that salvation are described.35 Jude’s addressees are a community that has been ‘called and kept by Jesus Christ’ (v. 1), and that recognizes Jesus Christ as their only Master and Lord (v. 4). They can build themselves up ‘by the most sacred faithfulness’, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep themselves in God’s love, and wait for the mercy of Jesus Christ that leads to William Brosend, ‘The Letter of Jude: A Rhetoric of Excess or an Excess of Rhetoric?’, Int 60, no. 3 (2006): 294; deSilva, Jewish Teachers, 52–4. 34 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 55. 35 Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 172. 33

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eternal life (vv. 20–1). God will guard them from stumbling and make them stand before him without blemish and in joy (v. 24). Jude urges his audience to ‘contend for the faith delivered once and for all to the saints’ (v. 3b).36 Here he is referring to the objective content of the narrative that shapes the identity of this community. Jude describes this content as being παραδοθείσῃ – delivered or handed down – a technical term for the passing on of oral tradition.37 The content of the faith they have received includes those elements of salvation that have already been described, the Judaean lore and literature Jude reminds them of (v. 5), and apostolic predictions they are called to remember (v. 17). The Judaean lore and literature will be treated in the section below as Judaean cultural memory. Some interpreters regard Jude’s call to remember ‘what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold’ (v. 17) as pointing to an apostolic age long past, and hence evidence that the letter is a late pseudonymous production. While the Greek phrasing indicates a prior action on the part of the apostles, it does not necessitate placing it in the distant past.38 The remainder of Jude’s sentence, ‘how they told you’ (v.18), suggests that his audience heard these words from the lips of the apostles themselves.39 He thus evokes a relatively recent past embedded in the communicative and collective memory of group members in order to create a sense of ‘us’, a shared collective identity rooted in a faith that unites them. Jude is drawing his audience to ‘his side’.40 Jude is emphatic that his audience must remember one specific apostolic prediction: ‘at the final time, scoffers will come who go the way of godless desires’ (v. 18). The term ‘scoffers’ occurs in the New Testament only here and in 2 Pet. 3.3 which is dependent on this text.41 It occurs also in Isa. 3.4 (LXX) in connection with the day of the Lord. More generalized warnings about false Christs, false prophets, distortions of the gospel message and false teachers Jude’s use of ‘the faith” is sometimes held up as evidence that the letter must be a late pseudonymous production, e.g. Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 173. It should be noted that Paul uses ‘the faith’ in a similar way in Gal. 1.23 and Phil. 1.27; hence Jude’s use of the term is inconclusive for dating purposes. 37 Robert L. Webb, ‘The Use of “Story” in the Letter of Jude: Rhetorical Strategies of Jude’s Narrative Episodes’, JSNT 31, no. 1 (2008): 75. 38 Brosend notes that when Paul calls to mind prior teachings (1 Thess. 4.1–2; Gal. 1.9; 1 Cor. 15.1) no one sees those as indicators of a late date; Brosend, ‘Jude’, 294. 39 deSilva, Jewish Teachers, 52. 40 Webb, ‘Story’, 79. 41 Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 181. 36

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occur in numerous early Christian texts.42 The apostolic prediction that Jude recites is expressed in terms rooted in ancient Judaean cultural memory rather than those we find in the emerging Christian tradition. Jude presents it here as an interpretative frame for understanding and responding to the presence of particular persons in the community. Jude describes these persons as godless men who have crept into the community (v. 4). He accuses them ‘of turning away from God’s favor to debauchery’ and denying Christ (v. 3). These persons are not very likely to be going about explicitly denying Christ as their Master and Lord. Rather, Jude interprets their behaviour, their perversion of grace, as a denial of Christ.43 ‘These dreamers defile the flesh, flout authority and insult the angels’ (v. 8). They also ‘insult whatever they do not know’ (v. 10). They are stains on the community’s fellowship meals (v. 12). Jude describes ‘these men’ as ‘disgruntled murmurers’, whose ‘mouths speak inflatedly’, and who ‘show partiality for gain’ (v. 16). They are the scoffers the apostles foretold, physical, spiritless men who create division (vv. 18–19). There is no little irony in Jude’s claim that these people are creating divisions. Given that they are openly and without fear participating in the community’s fellowship meals, they probably regard themselves to be insiders, fully legitimate ingroup members. They may be itinerant teachers who have been welcomed and accepted by the community. Jude creates a dramatic contrast between ‘these men’ and the ‘beloved’, yet his rhetoric carefully avoids any suggestion that the ‘beloved’ might be responsible for the presence of ‘these men’. His strongly pejorative language is reserved for the scoffers and serves to highlight the distinction between them and the community.44 The effect of Jude’s rhetoric is to create the very division he allegedly deplores.

Jude and Judaean cultural memory Jude tells us nothing that we can regard as objective or factual about this group he is trying to cut out of the community. He accuses and backs up his For example, Mk 13.21–3; Mt. 24.23–8; Gal. 1.9; 5.21; 2 Cor. 13.2; 1 Thess. 4.6; Acts 20.29–30; 1 Tim. 4.1–3; 2 Tim. 3.1–5; 4.3. 43 Webb, ‘Story’, 76; Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 176. 44 Webb, ‘Story’, 79–80. 42

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accusations, not with evidence from their actual speech or behaviour, but with comparisons to characters drawn from the deep well of Judaean cultural memory. Comparison with characters from ancient Judaean sources is quite common among the early followers of Jesus. James holds up Elijah as an example of ‘a human being like us’ whose prayers were powerful and effective (5.16–17). Paul lifts up Abraham as the prototype of the believer justified by faith (Romans 4). Jude does something different. He plumbs the depths of Judaean cultural memory for villains to present as analogues to ‘these men’. In doing so he constructs a stereotype of the godless other. Jude introduces his comparisons by noting that ‘once you knew all about this, yet I want to remind you that although Jesus saved a people from the land of Egypt, he afterward destroyed those who were unfaithful’ (v. 5). This is a terse summary of both the Exodus and the subsequent judgement of the entire first generation liberated from Egypt (Exod. 1–18; Num. 13.25–14.38).45 The issue here is not unbelief,46 but rather faithfulness and loyalty.47 As one commentator puts it, ‘The faith may be delivered once for all, but the faithful must be loyal’.48 Next, Jude recalls the destiny of ‘angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper abode’ (v. 6). This cultural memory is rooted in Gen. 6.1–4 which contains an ambiguous account of ‘sons of God’ who take human wives, and the presence on earth of ‘Nephilim’ – literally, fallen ones. Jude refers not to this text, but to its apocryphal expansions – i.e. its accumulated genre memory – the best-known example of which is 1 Enoch 6–21. Prior to the flood, two hundred angels, known as Watchers, leave heaven in order to marry beautiful human women. Their offspring are giants who oppress the people, commit abominations, and later become evil spirits. God responds by ordering the Watchers imprisoned in darkness until the final judgement when they will be thrown into the fire. For Jude the rebellious angels are not just ancient history or legend, they are an ongoing reality – now kept in everlasting chains, later to be condemned.49 The issue here is the transgression of the The example of the wilderness generation is also used by Paul and the author of Hebrews to warn believers that they need to remain loyal to the one who saved them (1 Cor. 10.1–11; Heb. 3.7–4.11). 46 E.g. Webb, ‘Story’, 56. 47 Zeba Crook, ‘BTB Readers Guide: Loyalty’, BTB 34, no. 4 (2004). 48 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 60. 49 Webb, ‘Story’, 56–7; deSilva, Jewish Teachers, 104–8. 45

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divinely established boundaries between the angelic and human realms. It is a violation of purity rules that establish a place for everything with everything in its place.50 In v. 7, Jude cites the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah and the surrounding villages for behaving in the same manner as the rebellious angels. In Genesis 18–19 the destruction of these cities by fire is presented as God’s punishment for the inhabitants’ sin of inhospitality that culminates in their failed rape of the angels. Genre memory variously attributes their destruction to injustice (Isa. 1.10; 3.9), pride and luxury (Ezek. 16.48–50; Sir. 16.8), or ungodliness and death (Jer. 23.14). Jude attributes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to fornication, specifically going after ‘other flesh’. Similar interpretations may be found in Josephus, Ant., 1.194–5, T. Ash. 7.1, Jub., 20.5–6 and the T. Naph. 3.4–5.51 Here it is humans who attempt to violate, unsuccessfully, the divinely established boundaries that separate the human and angelic. Here again is another example of beings who do not keep to their proper place. What links this trio of villains – the unfaithful wilderness generation, the rebellious angels, and the immoral men of Sodom and Gomorrah – is disloyalty. The rebellious angels and the immoral humans both transgress divinely established boundaries. Their actions betray their rejection of those boundaries and, more importantly, their contempt for the one who established the boundaries in the first place. Jude alleges that the men who have crept into the community behave in the same way. They ‘defile the flesh, flout authority, and insult the glorious ones’ (v. 8). Jude’s accusation that the scoffers insult the glorious ones prepares the hearer for the segue in v. 9: ‘But Michael the archangel, when he argued with the devil and disputed over the body of Moses, did not himself dare to bring a judgment against insult, but he said: “The Lord will rebuke you”.’ Jude is drawing upon genre memories that elaborate upon the death and burial of Moses (Deut. 34.1–6). In the Testament of Moses the devil disputes Moses’ right to honourable burial because he is a murderer (Exod. 2.12–14). The archangel regards the devil’s accusation as blasphemy but does not dare to

Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd edn. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 165. Webb, ‘Story’, 58.

50

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condemn him for it, leaving the pronouncement of judgement to the Lord.52 In this case, the archangel Michael is not a villain, but an exemplar of proper behaviour. He knows his place, does not overstep the role and authority given to him, in vivid contrast to other angels (v. 6), the men of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7), and ‘these men’ (v. 8, 10). Jude’s next set of comparisons takes the form of a woe oracle: ‘Woe to these who have gone the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for gain to the deceit of Balaam, and are destroyed in the rebellion of Korah’ (v. 11). Woes are themselves a memory genre rooted in the cultural inheritance of Israel, occurring in both prophetic and wisdom traditions.53 They are a formulaic way to present criticisms, reproaches, or accusations, and would have been heard by ancient audiences as challenges to the honour and status of the ones addressed.54 Jude’s woe oracle is clearly directed against ‘these’, i.e. ‘the men who insult whatever they do not know’ (v. 10). The contents of Jude’s woe oracle also depend on genre memories built up by the re-telling, expansion and interpretation of the biblical characters he names. Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, who kills his brother Abel (Gen. 4.1–16) is portrayed in these various traditions as the first instructor in impiety and luxurious living, the first heretic, even an atheist and godless person. Balaam, the prophet who counsels his king to use Moabite women to entice Israelite men to engage in the sexual practices associated with Baal worship (Num. 31.16), is remembered for his greed in seeking financial and material benefits. Korah, who led a rebellion against the authority of Moses and Aaron (Num. 16.1–35), becomes the archetype of ambition, envy and challenge to established authority.55 This woe oracle serves to expose and discredit the scoffers as over-reaching men, seeking self-advancement and gain, pasturing themselves as others’ expense (v. 12). Consequently they are ‘rainless clouds borne by the wind, fruitless trees in autumn, doubly dead and uprooted … wild waves of the sea who cast foam

Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 66; Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 177. Williams, ‘Social Memory’, 195. K. C. Hanson, ‘How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew’s Makarisms and Reproaches’, in Honor and Shame in the World of the Bible, ed. Victor H. Matthews (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 1994), 93–8. 55 Webb, ‘Story’, 60–1; Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 73; Bryan J. Whitfield, ‘To See the Canon in a Grain of Sand: Preaching Jude’, Word & World 29, no. 4 (2009): 424–5. 52 53 54

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over their shames, wandering stars’ (vv. 12–13). The use of images from nature as illustrations of order and disorder in the human community occurs in both canonical and extracanonical Judaean literature (Prov. 25.14; Ps. 1.3; Isa. 57.20; 1 Enoch 2.1–5; 5.1–4; 80.2–8).56 By comparing ‘these men’ to rainless clouds and fruitless trees, Jude is saying they are all show and no substance.57 Like wild waves they churn up the community, while tossing up disguises to hide their shameful behaviour. As wandering stars they are characterized by uprootedness and instability.58 Jude completes his comparisons with an explicit reference to Enoch who ‘prophesied about these, saying, “Behold, the Lord is coming with his tens of thousands of holy ones, to pass judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of both the godless deeds they godlessly did and the defiant words these godless sinners spoke against him”’ (vv. 14–15). Jude’s recitation of Enoch’s prophecy is not a verbatim quotation from any extant text. In fact, Jude portrays his source not as a text or a book, but as a person, thus reflecting not only the oral delivery of the prophecy but his own oral-scribal context.59 It is thus unlikely that he would have been working with any sort of doctrine of inspiration.60 As Neyrey puts it, ‘In Jude’s world where antiquity and ancestry were highly valued, Enoch is very old and so very honorable’.61 Enoch belongs to the earliest generations of the human race, specifically the seventh from Adam (v. 14; Gen. 5.3–20), a placement that designates him as both special and important. The biblical narrative describes Enoch as walking with God until the Lord took him (Gen. 5.24). His mysterious end gave rise to speculative interpretations in which he is remembered as a prophet mediating secret wisdom from his place in heaven to those still on earth (e.g. 1 Enoch). Jude cites Enoch as an incontestable authority based on the prophet’s role and

See detailed discussion in deSilva, Jewish Teachers; Carroll D. Osburn, ‘1 Enoch 80:2–8 (67:5–7) and Jude 12–13’, CBQ 47, no. 2 (1985); Whitfield, ‘Canon’. 57 Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 178. 58 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 74; Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 179. 59 Webb does not go far enough in highlighting the centrality of oral communication in the ancient Mediterranean; Webb, ‘Story’, 62–3. 60 Contra Cory D. Anderson, ‘Jude’s Use of the Pseudepigraphal Book of 1 Enoch’, Dialogue 36, no. 2 (2003): 48; Whitfield, ‘Canon’, 427. 61 Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 81. 56

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status in cultural memory, supporting and confirming his own evaluation of the godless.62

Social identity construction in the epistle of Jude Jude’s letter addresses a situation in which ‘certain men’ – perhaps itinerant teachers who have been welcomed into the community (v. 4) – were functioning as community members (v. 12) and may even have been regarded with respect as teachers (v. 16). Jude sets out to convince his audience that these persons are not who and what they seem to be. His goal is not only for his hearers to pronounce ‘these men’ guilty of godlessness but to separate themselves from them.63 His strategy is to use inductive reasoning by way of examples that provide points of comparison.64 All of his examples are drawn from Judaean cultural memory – canonical and extracanonical narratives together with the genre memories that have emerged in their retelling, elaboration and interpretation. Jude selects six villains from Judaean cultural memory as illustrating the true nature of the persons he perceives to be troubling his audience. They include the faithless and disloyal wilderness generation, the angels who transgressed divinely ordained boundaries to take human wives, the men of Sodom and Gomorrah who tried to overstep their boundaries by raping angels, the godless murderer Cain, the avaricious prophet Balaam, and the ambitious, authority-challenging Korah. Jude highlights these characters and their crimes to construct a stereotype of the godless as persons who, motivated by greed, envy and ambition, refuse to abide in ascribed roles, statuses and places. In this way Jude uses cultural memories attached to these six villains to frame (double entendre intended) his opponents. It is highly unlikely that Jude’s opponents thought of themselves in these terms. They would have been insulted and/or shamed to be characterized in such a manner. Jude draws on these particular cultural memories to frame and key (in Schwarz’s sense) Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 81. Robert L. Webb, ‘The Eschatology of the Epistle of Jude and Its Rhetorical and Social Functions’, BBR 6 (1996): 149–50. 64 Webb, ‘Story’, 64. 62 63

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the current situation facing his audience. These six villains function from his perspective as models of social reality, but as not models for the audience to emulate. Jude does intend for his audience, however, to key their assessment of and behaviour toward the itinerant teachers by the divine judgement that is meted out to the villains. They are to be left to their divinely ordained fate.65 Jude does recall one hero of Judaean cultural memory – the archangel Michael. This exemplary messenger of God does not overstep the boundaries of his role or status, even when confronting the devil himself. He does not dare to pronounce judgement on the devil’s insults, but leaves rebuke, condemnation and punishment to God. The archangel functions primarily as a foil to Jude’s opponents, whom he accuses of insulting not only angels but whatever they do not know (vv. 8, 10). Presumably Jude would like them to emulate the archangel’s circumspection. The irony of holding up Michael as a positive model is that Jude is not the least bit restrained in pronouncing judgement on his opponents.

Conclusion The epistle of Jude is an artefact of communicative memory – evidence of an emotion-laden interaction between a person and a group. It reveals to us aspects of the author’s social identity: his knowledge of ancient Judaean cultural memories, his values and his goals. Jude’s letter is also an exercise in collective or bonding memory, as the author invites his audience to remember together their past, evaluate their present and look forward to the fulfilment of their hopes. The author’s goal is to persuade his audience to separate themselves from a subset within the community whom he labels ‘godless’. Jude constructs their social identity by selectively recalling from Judaean cultural memory a set of villains, their characters, crimes and punishments. What Jude wants his audience to remember is keyed to the present, specifically to Jude’s current project. The cultural narratives he evokes Martin and Elliott, James; I–II Peter; Jude, 183.

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provide the frame – the perspective – through which he wants his audience to view the opponents. The audience’s response is to be keyed by those selective cultural memories. In the process the itinerant teachers are framed!

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Israelite Ethnic Identity Responding to the Roman Imperium in Revelation Markus Cromhout

Introduction To begin, let us engage in a little bit of folly. Imagine the following. A follower of Osama Bin Laden, during his imprisonment in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, had the following vision: I saw a new Mecca descend from heaven. And in the city was a mosque made of gold and adorned with diamonds and emeralds where Allah, the Merciful, will be worshipped by all the nations. They will be taught by the Prophet Mohamed (blessings be upon him), and Sharia will be in everyone’s hearts, their hands and on their lips. The city was shaped like a square, being 2,400 kilometres wide on each side, the same as its height. No infidels will enter therein, and it will be a place of healing for the nations.

What such a fantastic and fictional spectacle represents is a complete turnaround of the current political, social, religious and economic world order. The influence of Washington DC, and her Western allies, by implication, will be wiped from the face of the earth. So much for Western values (and the civilization it represents), although it enjoys incontestable supremacy, at least for the present. The Book of Revelation is also a tale of two cities and presents its readers with something similar, where, proverbially speaking, Jerusalem was trading blows with Rome, the dominant power of the first-century ce Mediterranean world. As with our fictional example above, here we also encounter an ideological battle between two opposing systems of thought and ways of living. Revelation is an example of Israelite ethnic identity responding to the

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Roman imperium, as well as participating within its realm of influence. Of course, underlying this imperium are the claims of the supremacy of Roman identity, as well as the possibility of obtaining Roman citizenship. The contrasting visions for the inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean world, are, on the one hand, based on the apocalyptic tradition of an obscure people in the Roman Empire. On the other hand, the empire was an established reality achieved through military conquest and violence and supported by imperial ideology. Since the approach in this contribution is social-scientific, we will avoid the standard view that in the first century ce there were ‘Jews’ who practised a ‘religion’ called ‘Judaism’ (as most scholars would define it today). Rather, we are dealing with an ethnic identity, an ethnos, Israelites/Judaeans who lived the Israelite/Judaean way of life.1 In antiquity, religion was embedded in the realm of politics and kinship, so we are dealing with political-religion and domesticreligion and never with religion as a separate aspect of life.2 For our purposes here it is better to argue that religion was embedded in the more encompassing realm of ethnic identity, but at the same time to realize that it was inseparable from its political and domestic aspects. In other words, religion was but one aspect of Israelite/Judaean identity, and loyalty to their ancestral customs did not make them ‘religious’; rather, it made them honourable Israelites. The Seer who wrote Revelation should be understood as a representative of Israelite ethnic identity. Instead of approaching Revelation as a ‘religious’ (or even theological) document, we need to emphasize the ethnic character of the text, and all its socio-political implications. Revelation is full of ‘ethnic talk’, that is, full of Israelite symbolism and values communicated through

On the anachronistic usage of ‘Jews’ practising a ‘religion’ called ‘Judaism’ see John J. Pilch, ‘Are There Jews and Christians in the Bible?’, HvTSt 53 (1997); Steve Mason and Michael W. Helfield, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2009), 141–84; Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 63–72; John H. Elliott, ‘Jesus the Israelite Was Neither a “Jew” nor a “Christian”: On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 5, no. 2 (2007). Elliott argues that scholars should use the preferred insider (emic) nomenclature of self-identification (‘Israel(ites)’, ‘House/children of Israel’). As for the use of ‘Judaism’ (the usual transliteration of Ἰουδαϊσμός), this should be avoided altogether since this was not a customary term of self-identification, and where the term does appear, we must translate it as ‘Judaean way of life/behaviour’.  2 Cf. Bruce J. Malina, ‘Religion in the Imagined New Testament World: More Social Science Lenses’, Scriptura, no. 51 (1994). As Malina notes, the institution of economics was also embedded in politics and kinship.  1

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numerous allusions to the Tanakh and the Jesus-tradition. It is this ‘ethnic talk’ that will command our attention in what follows. This contribution, therefore, hopes to shed some light on the dynamics of ethnic identity and how it can help us to understand the social world of the New Testament in general and the Book of Revelation in particular. The application of ethnicity theory to biblical studies is a recent phenomenon and for most who engage therein it forms part of social-scientific criticism.3 The author of Revelation, based on motifs similar to other Israelite apocalypses (e.g. 4 Ezra; 2 Baruch; 1 En. 37–71) was plausibly (a priest?) from Judaea who relocated to Asia Minor after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce.4 We will regard him as a representative of Israelite identity and its socio-cultural worldview – in this case adapted by (some) Israelite followers of Jesus – which he offers as a solution to the worldview offered by Rome. It was his understanding of a just empire, an Israelite imperium based on Israelite ethnic identity, ruled by Israel’s divine patron and brokered by Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, set over and against an evil empire brokered by the emperors and their clients.

For the application of ethnic studies to the New Testament, see various contributions in Mark G. Brett, ed. Ethnicity and the Bible, Biblical Interpretation Series (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Philip F. Esler, Galatians (London; New York: Routledge, 1998); Esler, Conflict and Identity; Philip F. Esler, ‘Ancient Oleiculture and Ethnic Differentiation: The Meaning of the Olive-Tree Image in Romans 11’, JSNT 26, no. 1 (2003); Philip F. Esler, ‘Social Identity, the Virtues, and the Good Life: A New Approach to Romans 12:1–15:13’, BTB 33, no. 2 (2003); Philip F. Esler, ‘Paul’s Contestation of Israel’s (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3’, BTB 36 (2006); Dennis C. Duling, ‘“Whatever Gain I Had …”: Ethnicity and Paul’s Self-Identification in Phil. 3:5–6’, in Fabrics of Discourse: Essays in Honor of Vernon K. Robbins, David B. Gowler, L. Gregory Bloomquist, and Duane F. Watson (eds) (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003); Dennis C. Duling, ‘Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, and the Matthean Ethnos’, BTB 35, no. 4 (2005); Dennis C. Duling, ‘2 Corinthians 11:22: Historical Context, Rhetoric, and Ethnicity’, in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune, ed. John Fotopoulos (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Dennis C. Duling, ‘“Whatever Gain I Had…”: Ethnicity and Paul’s Self-Identification in Philippians 3:5–6’, HvTSt 64, no. 2 (2008); Dennis C. Duling, ‘2 Corinthians 11:22: Historical Context, Rhetoric, and Ethnicity’, HvTSt 64, no. 2 (2008); Dennis C. Duling, ‘Ethnicity and Paul’s Letter to the Romans’, in Understanding the Social World of the New Testament, Dietmar Neufeld and Richard E. DeMaris (eds) (London; New York: Routledge, 2010); Markus Cromhout, Jesus and Identity: Reconstructing Judean Ethnicity in Q, Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 2 (Eugene: Cascade, 2007); Markus Cromhout, ‘Paul’s “Former Conduct in the Judean Way of Life” (Gal 1:13)…Or Not?’, HvTSt 65, no. 1 (2009); Markus Cromhout, Walking in Their Sandals: A Guide to First-Century Israelite Ethnic Identity (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010); James C. Miller, ‘Ethnicity and the Hebrew Bible: Problems and Prospects’, Currents in Biblical Research 6, no. 2 (2008); Denise Kimber Buell and Caroline E. Johnson Hodge, ‘The Politics of Interpretation: The Rhetoric of Race and Ethnicity in Paul’, JBL 123, no. 2 (2004).  4 David E. Aune, ‘The Apocalypse of John and Palestinian Jewish Apocalyptic’, Neot 40, no. 1 (2006).  3

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Modelling Israelite ethnicity The author of Revelation’s identity and world of meaning would have been shaped by his Israelite socialization, now adapted to the movement of Jesusfollowers, as well as recent historical events. The proposed model below serves as a guideline to the author’s ethnic heritage, that is, what he would have shared with most other Israelites. Obviously, it would have undergone some changes due to his participation in the Jesus movement and relocation to Asia Minor, but the model attempts to encapsulate where he comes from, his point of departure as a socialized Israelite who originated from Judaea. The model does not attempt to explain everything about Israelite ethnicity, but it comprises of a pictorial representation of the Israelite symbolic universe, as well as some theoretical statements that explain the social processes behind Israelite ethnic formation. The model is therefore done to a high level of abstraction offering a bird’s eye view of the Israelite world. It is also heuristic, inviting critique and modification. The proposed model looks as follows:

Socio-cultural model of Israelite ethnicity 1 Israelite ethnicity is a form of social identity and relation, referring to a group of people (‘Israel’) who ascribe to themselves and/or by others, a sense of belonging and a shared cultural tradition; 2 Israelite ethnicity is socially (re)constructed, the outcome of enculturation and socialization, as well as the social interaction with ‘others’ across the ethnic boundary; 3 Israelite ethnicity is about cultural differentiation, involving the communication of similarity vis-à-vis co-ethnics (aggregative ‘we’) and the communication of difference in opposition to ethnic others (oppositional ‘we-they’); 4 Israelite ethnicity is concerned with culture – shared meaning – which consists of a combination of the following: (1) Widely shared values/ norms which govern behaviour: God (monotheism), divine election, the covenant, Torah, millennialism, shared ‘historical’ memories, and myths

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of common ancestry. (2) Institutions: a corporate name (‘Israel’), an actual or symbolic attachment to an ancestral (or idealized) land, a sacred language (Hebrew) and other spoken languages (Aramaic and Greek), kinship patterns, shared customs (covenantal praxis), and a shared religion; 5 Israelite ethnicity is no more fixed than the culture of which it is a component, or the situations in which it is produced and reproduced; 6 Israelite ethnicity is both collective and individual, externalized in social interaction and internalized in personal self-identification.5 The graphic of the model attempts to be a pictorial representation of the Israelite symbolic universe, a snapshot of their ‘knowledge’, or their social construction of reality.6 Here, the cultural features of Israelite ethnicity are grouped in the following way: Sacred Canopy (= ‘Core Values’)

Habitus/Israel (= ‘Institutions’)

yhwh (monotheism) Divine Election The Covenant / The Torah Millennialism (and The Prophets) Shared ‘Historical’ Memories Myths of Common Ancestry

Name Language Kinship Land Covenantal Praxis (Customs) Religion

The graphic corresponds to Sanders’ notion of covenantal nomism, where the Sacred Canopy (‘Core Values’) corresponds to ‘getting in’, and the Habitus/Israel (‘Institutions’) represent ‘staying in’ the covenant relationship.7 Especially where ethnic identity and distinctiveness needs to be communicated, Fredrik Barth mentions two types of cultural features that are important. Esler explains: ‘First, there are overt signals or signs, features which people deliberately adopt to show identity (for example, dress, language, These statements are adapted from Richard Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (London: Sage, 1997), 165.  6 Here I am inspired and follow the work of Peter L. Berger, The Social Reality of Religion (Harmondsworth: Penguin University Series, 1973); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966).  7 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977); E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63bce–66ce (London: SPCK, 1992).  5

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architecture and lifestyle). Second, there are basic value orientations, the norms of morality and excellence used to assess performance.’8 Those features listed under the ‘Sacred Canopy’ correspond to Barth’s basic value orientations, while the features listed under the ‘Habitus/Israel’ set out the more overt signals or signs.

The Sacred Canopy (= ‘core values’) The ‘Sacred Canopy’ contains those elements that are of the furthest reaches of Israelite self-externalization, the more mythical or intangible aspects of their ‘world’. It is that part of their world under which the Israelite way of life takes shape, and under which the entire Israelite institutional order is integrated into an all-embracing and sacred frame of reference.9 This is how the Israelite symbolic universe was legitimated, explaining why things are the way they are. They are the ‘core (ethnic) values’ of Israelites, the means by which all their actions were orientated.10 It is also here where we will find the greatest degree of agreement or ‘minimal consensus’.11 These cultural features or values are an example of a communal mythomoteur, or a constitutive political myth of an ethnie.12 If an Israelite were speaking, he/she would perhaps summarize it as follows: ‘Our God (yhwh), the one God of the universe, elected us, and gave us his law, and established a covenant with us. Go look at our history and God’s dealings with our ancestors, in particular Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Go look at how he delivered us from slavery through Moses, gave us an ancestral piece of land, restored us to our land after the exile to Babylon, and we anticipate the day we will again live free on our land (= millennialism).’

Esler, Galatians, 80. Cf. Berger, Social Reality, 37–44. 10 Cf. John J. Pilch and Bruce J. Malina (eds), Biblical Social Values and Their Meaning: A Handbook (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993), xiii. 11 Francis Schmidt, How the Temple Thinks: Identity and Social Cohesion in Ancient Judaism, trans. J. Edward Crowley, Biblical Seminar 78 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 23. 12 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 61–8; Anthony D. Smith, ‘The Politics of Culture: Ethnicity and Nationalism’, in Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold (London: Routledge, 1994), 716.  8  9

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The Habitus/Israel (‘institutions’) The Habitus/Israel operates on two main levels. First, it concerns the dialectical interrelationship between the habitus (discussed below) and the more tangible institutions or cultural features of Israelite ethnicity, which collectively, are contained within the thick black lines. It is through these institutions, or boundaries for social activity, whereby Israelite values were realized.13 Second, it concerns the social interaction with ‘others’ across the ethnic boundary. This interaction is located in the areas demarcated as the ‘zone of social interaction’, being the zone of inclusion or exclusion, of various levels of acculturation, adaptation or resistance. Overall, the ‘Habitus/Israel’ points to Israelites living on their land (or focusing on Judaea as a place of origin), circumcising their sons, eating food according to the laws of kashrut, observing purity regulations, going on pilgrimage, strengthening their family ties, celebrating endogamous marriages, reinforcing communal solidarity, and attending the Sabbath assembly, to name but a few features of Israelite ethnicity. It is here that we encounter diversity in practice and where sectarian squabbles arose over the proper functioning of the temple, food and purity laws, proper observance of and interpretation of the Torah, the Sabbath, the calendar and related festivals, and marriage.14 The cultural features are indicated using broken, yet substantially solid lines to indicate two things: first, the (re)constructionist nature of Israelite ethnicity, and second, their ‘primordial’ attitude towards their own Israelite cultural content. Language, however, is treated differently, as illustrated by the more broken lines. Speaking a particular language (like Hebrew) was not an important means of identifying as an Israelite. Far more important was participating in the Israelite/Judaean communal way of life. The last feature of the graphic discussed here forms the link between the ‘Sacred Canopy’ and the ‘Habitus/Israel’. These are the ‘experts’ or ‘brokers’ of the Israelite symbolic universe. As Berger and Luckmann explain, as more complex forms of knowledge appear, the experts ‘claim ultimate jurisdiction

Cf. Pilch and Malina, eds, Biblical, xv. Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 7–9; Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, LEC 7 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 127–34.

13 14

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over that stock of knowledge in its totality’.15 These universal experts ‘claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does’. The priests were the primary ‘experts’, but other groups like the Pharisees, Essenes and Jesus (and his followers), having their own brand of Israelite ‘knowledge’, also competed for Israelite hearts and minds. The author of Revelation should also be understood as an ‘expert’, as he constructs his own version of the Israelite world. These ‘experts’ were not teachers of ‘religion’, but should be seen as the guardians of Israelite ethnic identity.16 With the graphic now explained, we will turn our attention to the six theoretical statements that accompany it, which briefly summarize some of the most pertinent insights of ethnicity theory, and how it can be applied to Israelite identity. 1. Israelite ethnicity is a form of social identity and relation, referring to a group of people (‘Israel’) who ascribe to themselves and/or by others, a sense of belonging and a shared cultural tradition. Ethnic groups are collections of people that have a mostly cultural relationship to one another, although kinship and a shared ancestry also play prominent roles. There exists a feeling of mutual belonging and a sense of solidarity, of an ‘us’ over and against ‘them’. Especially in collectivist societies where a person is embedded in the family, ethnos, or other groups, ethnicity is particularly salient.17 Ancient Judaeans, forming part of the ancient Mediterranean world where collectivism was the norm, would have experienced a strong sense of solidarity although scattered through many regions due to their interregional communication.18 Social identity theory (SIT) also informs us that group membership and identity have been evaluated along three interrelated ‘dimensions’.19 The Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction, 117. Cf. Smith, Ethnic Origins, 43; Smith, ‘Politics’, 712. 17 Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001); Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, ‘Ancient Mediterranean Persons in Cultural Perspective: Portrait of Paul’, in The Social World of the New Testament: Insights and Models, Jerome H. Neyrey and Eric Clark Stewart (eds) (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 260–3. 18 Gerd Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 216–19, 274–6. 19 Henri Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, European Monographs in Social Psychology (London: Academic Press, 1978); Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 15 16

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cognitive dimension identifies the recognition of belonging to a group,20 and the evaluative and emotional dimensions identify the related processes of intergroup discrimination and comparison, stereotyping, and attitudes applied to ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.21 Studies have shown, however, that this dynamic is more distinctive of collectivist and competitive groups, features typical of ancient Mediterranean peoples because of the rivalry for honour.22 Israelites were socialized into a symbolic universe filled with positive identity characteristics, which was believed to set them apart from the nations. There was the belief of being the most honourable of all people because they lived according to God’s law (e.g. Sir. 10.19, 24). Their identity encoded attributes such as righteousness, purity, moral superiority,23 superiority in character, values and intelligence,24 a distinguished ancestry, divine favour, and monotheism. Gentiles, on the other hand, were generally stereotyped by Israelites/Judaeans as ‘sinners’, ‘unclean’, and ‘idolaters’ with whom table fellowship should be avoided (e.g. Jub., 22.16; 23.24; 21.21; Let. Aris., 139–42; Gal. 2.12). Israelite attitudes towards outsiders were frequently commented upon by gentile authors (e.g. Tacitus, Hist., 5.5.1; Juvenal, Sat., 14.103–4). 2. Israelite ethnicity is socially (re)constructed, the outcome of enculturation and socialization, as well as the social interaction with ‘others’ across the ethnic boundary. Also relevant here is social categorization, a fundamental aspect of group behaviour; John C. Turner et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1987). 21 Henri Tajfel and J. C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds) (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979). 22 Rupert Brown, Prejudice: Its Social Psychology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); see also Harry C. Triandis, ‘Major Cultural Syndromes and Emotion’, in Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence, Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Markus (eds) (Washington: American Psychological Association, 1994), 287. 23 This kind of social differentiation or comparison normally exacerbates the denigration and contempt for outgroups. Brewer lists moral superiority, along with the perceived threat of outgroups, the sharing of common goals, the sharing of common values which result in competitive social comparison, as well as power politics as some of the ways in which ingroup loyalty pave the way to outgroup hate and hostility; Marilynn B. Brewer, ‘The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?’, Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 3 (1999): 435–8. 24 The literature of this period (the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha in particular) was used to emphasize, sometimes in a comical way, the superiority of the Israelite heritage and to boost Israelite self-esteem. The figures of Joseph, Enoch, Abraham and Moses were variously used. See Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, Hellenistic Culture and Society 30 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 20

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The dominant perspective in ethnicity theory today, building on the work of Fredrik Barth,25 is that ethnicity is socially (re)constructed. Constructionists emphasize that ‘ethnic identity is not inherent, fixed, or natural; rather, it is fluid, freely chosen, and thus can be seen to be perpetually constructed, that is, continually reconstructed’.26 The emphasis is on how and why ethnic groups create and maintain their group boundaries, and not on the cultural ‘stuff ’ of the group.27 This view has been critiqued because it downplays the importance of cultural content and the role of the ‘habitus’, that is, the durable and habitual dispositions and practises that social actors acquire, or their familiarity and attachment to their culture through socialization.28 The model proposed here, therefore, explains at first that ethnicity is the outcome of enculturation (being ‘enfolded’ by a culture) and socialization (receiving specific instruction), leading to the acquisition of culture-appropriate behaviour.29 This favours the argument that ethnicity is logically and ontologically prior to any boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’, although it also sees the process as dialectic.30 Israelite ethnicity should therefore be seen as grounded in the habitus, habitual dispositions, which function as both ‘structuring structures’ and ‘structured structures’, that is, which shape, and are shaped by social practice.31 In antiquity identity was about loyalty to God or the gods, and honouring the traditions and customs of the ancestors,32 but ‘remembering’ the past Fredrik Barth, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown and Co; 1969); Fredrik Barth, ‘Enduring and Emerging Issues in the Analysis of Ethnicity’, in The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’, Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (eds) (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1994). 26 Duling, ‘Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism’, 127, emphasis original. 27 Esler, Conflict and Identity, 42, 47. Constructionist approaches include ‘instrumentalism’ where an ethnic group’s self-construction is rational and self-interested and consciously mobilized in an attempt to further its own political-economic agenda. Other approaches are known as ‘circumstantial’ and ‘situational’, and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. See Cromhout, Walking, 15–16, for a summary. 28 G. Carter Bentley, ‘Ethnicity and Practice’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 1 (1987); G. Carter Bentley, ‘Response to Yelvington’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 33, no. 1 (1991); Steve Fenton, Ethnicity, Key Concepts (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 89–90. 29 John W. Berry et al., Cross-Cultural Psychology: Research and Applications, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21. 30 Eugeen Roosens, ‘The Primordial Nature of Origins in Migrant Ethnicity’, in The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’, Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (eds) (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1994), 85–7. 31 Siân Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997), 89–90. 32 Cromhout, Walking, 29–30; George De Vos, ‘Ethnic Pluralism: Conflict and Accommodation’, in Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change, George A. De Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross (eds) (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1975), 17–19; Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 166. 25

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always has to do with negotiating social realities and constructing identities in the present to ensure the ethnic group’s survival.33 So the Israelites would have lived in a world, a space of ‘habitual dispositions’ (habitus) where everyday life was regulated by their divine patron, yhwh, the requirements of the Torah, and the values and norms of their society, where honouring the ‘customs of the fathers’ would have been paramount (cf. Josephus, C. Ap., 2.204). Second, ethnic (re)construction is also the outcome of social interaction with ‘others’ across the ethnic boundary. Here the boundary between an ethnic group and others is negotiated or (re)constructed, using various symbols and cultural practices. Depending on the context, either the more traditional or the invention of new emblems of identity can be given greater emphasis. For example, during the Maccabean crisis covenantal praxis such as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath gained prominence in Israelite identity and self-understanding in the service of boundary maintenance or (re)construction (cf. Let. Aris., 139–40).34 3. Israelite ethnicity is about cultural differentiation, involving the communication of similarity vis-à-vis co-ethnics (aggregative ‘we’) and the communication of difference in opposition to ethnic others (oppositional ‘we-they’). Ethnicity is about cultural differentiation. It involves the communication of similarity and difference, that is, visibly engaging in socio-cultural activities. Constructionists explain that groups construct their ethnic boundaries in two major ways: firstly ‘in relation to like-minded, like-practiced peers, a “we” aggregative self-definition’ and secondly, ‘in relation to others, a “we-they” oppositional self-definition’.35 Engaging in cultural activities (= communicating), when appreciated within the context of collectivist societies, puts emphasis on orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy. If you perform the proper rituals, dress in the right way, participate in festivals, or eat the right kind of

Mario I. Aguilar, ‘Rethinking the Judean Past: Questions of History and a Social Archaeology of Memory in the First Book of the Maccabees’, BTB 30, no. 2 (2000); Alan Kirk, ‘Social and Cultural Memory’, in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (eds) 52 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005). 34 James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1990), 193. 35 Duling, ‘Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism’, 127, emphasis original. 33

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foods, these are the vital elements which illustrate you are an integral part of the community.36 When Israelites observed covenantal praxis, their ‘ancestral customs’, they were not being ‘religious’, but were communicating their identity, that is, their belonging and similarity vis-à-vis co-ethnics and difference in opposition to ethnic outsiders. That is why Israel was also defined more by orthopraxy than by orthodoxy.37 Being an honourable Israelite required that you communicate that identity in the proper way in order to help preserve the integrity and boundary of Israel as a whole. For example, before the onset of the Maccabaean revolt and during the introduction of a gymnasium in Jerusalem, Israelite males who performed an epispasm to participate in the novelty were said to have forsaken the ‘holy covenant’ (1 Macc. 1.15), meaning, they were disloyal to their ancestral customs and betrayed their ethnic identity. 4. Israelite ethnicity is concerned with culture – shared meaning. Ethnicity theorists have identified the following cultural features as important for ethnic identity. These include: 1) name, a corporate name that identifies the group; 2) myths of common ancestry, the group claims to be descendants of a particular person or group/family; 3) shared ‘historical’ memories, the group points to common heroes and events of the past; 4) land, the group has actual or symbolic attachment to an ancestral land; 5) language, or local dialect; 6) kinship, members of the group belong to family units which in turn, demonstrate communal solidarity with the local community or tribe, and with the group as a national entity; 7) customs identifiable with that group; 8) religion; and 9) phenotypical features, which refers to genetic features.38 These cultural features are amply demonstrated in ancient texts and are arranged in the graphic that attempts to represent the Israelite symbolic universe.39 Ancient Israelites were not identified by peculiar physical features (of course, except for circumcision) so number 9 is not relevant for our investigation here. Catherine M. Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 193. 37 Cohen, Maccabees, 61, 103; Schmidt, Temple, 25. 38 Duling, ‘Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism’, 127–8; Esler, Conflict and Identity, 43–4. 39 Cf. Cromhout, Walking, 24–6, 66–7. 36

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Not all of the features listed above are needed for a particular ethnic group. The most widespread of these are kinship relations and myths of common ancestry, while a connection to an ancestral land is also recognized as a primary cultural feature.40 But in various ways these cultural features, in varying degrees of importance, contributed towards Israelite ‘knowledge’ or their world of meaning.41 5. Israelite ethnicity is no more fixed than the culture of which it is a component, or the situations in which it is produced and reproduced. As the predominant approach to ethnicity theory informs us, ethnicity is something that is socially (re)constructed. Constructionism was largely formulated in response and in opposition to what is known as ‘primordialism’, associated with the work of Edward Shils and Clifford Geertz.42 From an etic perspective, primordialism is (mis)interpreted as seeing ethnicity as something ‘natural’, ‘pre-social’, or ‘fixed’, that ‘ethnic groups are held together by “natural affections”. These are bonds so compelling, so passionate, so “coercive”, and so overpowering, that they are fixed, a priori, involuntary, ineffable, even as “sacred”. These bonds are deeply rooted in family, territory, language, custom, and religion’.43 They are, in a word, ‘primordial’. What Shils and Geertz described, therefore, is what these primordial attachments are like for the social actors themselves.44 So although there have been attempts to argue away the merits of primordialism45 it needs to be taken into account for various reasons. For example, Hall regards the three features listed here, along with a shared history, as ‘core elements’ which determine membership in an ethnic group; Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 9–10. Miller takes ‘perceived common ancestry’ as the distinctive feature of ethnic identity, as the other features can be applied to collectivities other than ethnic groups; Miller, ‘Ethnicity’, 175. 41 See Cromhout, Jesus, 117–230, for an in-depth discussion. 42 Edward Shils, ‘Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties: Some Particular Observations on the Relationships of Sociological Research and Theory’, The British Journal of Sociology 8, no. 2 (1957); Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, Selected Papers of Edward Shils 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Clifford Geertz, ‘The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States’, in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963). 43 Duling, ‘Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism’, 126. 44 George Scott, ‘A Resynthesis of the Primordial and Circumstantial Approaches to Ethnic Group Solidarity: Towards an Explanatory Model’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 13, no. 2 (1990): 150; Fenton, Ethnicity, 80–4. 45 Jack David Eller and Reed M. Coughlan, ‘The Poverty of Primordialism: The Demystification of Ethnic Attachments’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 2 (1993); Nicola Denzey, ‘The Limits of Ethnic Categories’, in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches, Anthony J. Blasi, Paul-André Turcotte, and Jean Duhaime (eds) (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2002). 40

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we are dealing with Israelites who lived in a ‘high context society’ where there is very little social change over time.46 The culture of the time also valued stability and constancy of character and the willingness to conform one’s actions to cultural standards.47 Primordial sentiments also flourish in contexts of political suffocation and domination.48 And lastly, primordial sentiments become greater the greater the amount of opposition experienced by that group.49 In the wake of the Judaean Revolt (66–70 ce) and its devastating consequences, most of the Mediterranean world would have seen the Israelites as a dishonoured people. It is proposed here that when we deal with first-century Israel we are dealing with primordial identity (re)construction, balancing an etic (outsider) and emic (insider) perspective. On the whole, this approach interprets Israelite ethnicity being a more ‘fixed’ than ‘fluid’ phenomenon in the first century, yet change could occur, as the emergence of the various Jesus-movements clearly demonstrates. 6. Israelite ethnicity is both collective and individual, externalized in social interaction and internalized in personal self-identification. Ethnicity is externalized in ‘objective’ social reality, that is, it is a social activity.50 The bonds that hold Israelites together were social through the observance of ancestral customs.51 In other words, ethnicity was externalized in social interaction through which relationships with significant others, and as a result, collective identity, was maintained. For example, Josephus (Ant., 4.203–4) and Philo (Spec. Laws, 1.70) testify to the sense of community that pilgrimage festivals created. Social bonds would also be engendered through Richard L. Rohrbaugh, ‘Hermeneutics as Cross-Cultural Encounter: Obstacles to Understanding’, in The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Matrix – the Bible in Mediterranean Context 1 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007), 8–10; Richard L. Rohrbaugh, ‘Hermeneutics as Cross-Cultural Encounter: Obstacles to Understanding’, HvTSt 62, no. 2 (2006): 566–8. 47 Malina and Neyrey, Portraits, 39; Mark S. McVann, ‘Change/Novelty Orientation’, in Biblical Social Values and Their Meaning: A Handbook, John J. Pilch and Bruce J. Malina (eds) (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993); Mark S. McVann, ‘Compliance’, in Biblical Social Values and Their Meaning: A Handbook, John J. Pilch and Bruce J. Malina (eds) (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993). 48 Clifford Geertz, ‘The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States’, in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 264, 276. 49 Scott, ‘Resynthesis’, 163. 50 Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25. 51 John M. G. Barclay, ‘“Neither Jew nor Greek”: Multiculturalism and the New Perspective on Paul’, in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 209. 46

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the gatherings in the synagogue or assemblies on the Sabbath, preparing food according to the laws of kashrut (food laws), or celebrating common meals, such as the ‘pure supper’ (cena pura or prosabbaton), which in the diaspora denoted a communal dinner before the onset of the Sabbath.52 Ethnicity is also internalized in personal self-identification. Above we already discussed the role of socialization, and this must be seen alongside the inherent tendency for people to categorize themselves into social groups. According to Jenkins, the ‘sense of self ’, located in the habitus, is much influenced by categorization, a process that occurs already during childhood. ‘Entering into ethnic identification during childhood is definitively a matter of categorization: we learn who we are because, in the first instance, other people – whether they be co-members or Others – tell us. Socialization is categorization.’53 Where ethnicity is important, a child will not only learn she is an ‘X’, but also what it means ‘in terms of her esteem and worth in her own eyes and in the eyes of others; in terms of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour; and in terms of what it means not to be an “X”’.54 One can see how the process of categorization would be relevant to collectivist societies, where the individual would normally see him/herself through the eyes of others. Here individuals are group-orientated personalities. The ‘dyadic’ person is essentially a ‘group-embedded and group-orientated person … Such persons internalize and make their own what others say, do, and think about them because they believe it is necessary, for being human, to live out the expectation of others.’55 With this theoretical framework in place, we will now turn our attention to the ideological conflict between Israelite identity and the Roman imperium identity in the book of Revelation. It comprises two aspects: the Seer’s vision of power reversal, and how Israelite ethnic identity is adapted, indeed (re)constructed, in order to accomplish it.

William Horbury, ‘Cena Pura and the Lord’s Supper’, in Herodian Judaism and New Testament Study, WUNT 193 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 53 Jenkins, Rethinking, 166. 54 Jenkins, Rethinking, 59. 55 Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, rev. edn. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 67. 52

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Israelite ethnic identity and the Roman imperium As biblical scholars, we are in a fortunate position. As opposed to Latin authors reporting on various nations and their resistance to Rome, the ancient Israelites were quite unique in regularly giving their own testimonies of opposition. Although some expressed Judaean admiration of Roman imperialism (1 Macc. 8.1–16; 12.13–16), most textual witnesses express hatred, be it in anticipation of Roman subjection (Pesher Habakkuk), already experiencing it as a lived reality (pNah; Pss. Sol., 2.1–2; 17.11–18), or after the destruction of the temple in 70 ce (4 Ezra; 2 Baruch; Apocalyse of Abraham).56 It is this matrix of domination (colonizer) and resistance (colonized) that needs our attention, for several dynamics come into play such as fantasies of power reversal and the emergence of new identities, categories quite appropriate to the book of Revelation. Here the insights of postcolonial approaches are particularly useful.

Ethnic identity and power Ethnic identities can encode many things, such as socio-economic status, literacy, levels of intelligence, competence, employment opportunities, cultural sophistication, to name but a few. They can also encode power, privilege, and a sense of superiority. Needless to say, these are fictional constructions of ‘us’ over and against ‘them’. In the first century ce Roman identity encoded, among other things, power. The Roman sense of superiority was motivated by ethnic pride.57 Who could be the equals of the mighty Romans, who through their architecture and temples, art and statues inculcated a sense of awe?58 The Seer comments on David Flusser, ‘The Roman Empire in Hasmonean and Essene Eyes’, in Qumran and Apocalypticism, ed. David Flusser, Judaism of the Second Temple Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 175–206; cf. Philip F. Esler, ‘Rome in Apocalyptic and Rabbinic Literature’, in The Gospel of Matthew in Its Roman Imperial Context, John K. Riches and David C. Sim (eds), JSNTSup 276 (London: T&T Clark, 2005). 57 Dennis C. Duling, ‘Empire: Theories, Methods, Models’, in The Gospel of Matthew in Its Roman Imperial Context, John K. Riches and David C. Sim (eds) 276 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 73–4. 58 The visions and imagery of Revelation counters by giving descriptions of the spectacular grandeur of God’s throne and the heavenly places, not to mention the colossal size of the new Jerusalem. See David A. deSilva, ‘The Strategic Arousal of Emotion in John’s Visions of Roman Imperialism: A Rhetorical-Critical Investigation of Revelation 4–22’, Neot 42, no. 1 (2008). 56

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how the whole world marvelled and followed the beast (= Rome; Rev. 13.3). Rome was hailed as Roma Aeterna. The Roman Empire supposedly ruled by divine sanction.59 Jupiter granted Rome an ‘empire without end’, and Romans will be ‘lords of the world’ and have the right to ‘rule the world … to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished, and crush the proud’ (Virgil, Aen., 1.254–82; 6.851–3). The emperors were the mediators or representatives of the gods (cf. Seneca, Clem., 1.1.2; Statius, Silvae, 4.3.128–9). The emperor was known as pater patriae, ‘Father of the Fatherland/Country’, being the master over his ‘household’ (Acts of the Divine Augustus, 35; Suetonius, Vespasian, 12). In contrast, ‘Judeans and Syrians were born for servitude’, Cicero claimed (Prov. cons., 10). In Tacitus a Roman general supposedly explained to a German tribe that ‘all men had to bow to the commands of their betters’ and ‘with the Roman people should rest decisions what to give and what to take away’ (Ann., 13.51). Israelites in a similar fashion suffered from a sense of superiority and ethnic pride and made similar claims of world domination (e.g. Jub., 22.11; 26.23; 32.19), which may, or may not, have included the participation of gentiles.60 The Israelites, of course, were a colonized people, and certainly the experience of continuous subjection to various empires inspired hopes of power reversal; ‘imperial systems elicit a range of reactions in those who become subjects, from self-interested collaboration to resistance unto death, and all manner of intermediate positions’.61 The New Testament, an Israelite collection of texts, gives evidence of various strategies that were suggested to negotiate Rome’s power: ‘Survival, engagement, and accommodation mix with protest, critique, alternative ways of being, and imagined violent judgement.’62 In terms of the

Cf. John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (New York and San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004), 58–61, 408. 60 There were conflicting views on the participation of gentiles in the future age which primarily focused on the restoration of Israel. First, there was the view that they can become proselytes in the present (2 Bar. 41.1–6; 1QS 6.13–15; CD 14.4–6), but there is no possibility for conversion or even the presence of gentiles in the future age (Sir. 36.1–9; Jub., 24.29f.; 1 En. 90.19; Pss. Sol., 17.24; Sib. Or., 3.670–2; 4 Ezra 8.56–8; CD 4.7–12; t. Sanh. 13.2; b. ‘Abod.Zar. 3b; Pesiq. Rab. 161a). Second, the gentiles will be converted, saved or gathered to Zion as a consequence of Israel being saved (Sib. Or., 3.616f.; 3.710–20; 3.772f.; 1 En. 10.21; T. Sim. 7.2; T. Levi 8.14; T. Naph. 8.2–4; T. Ash. 7.3; T. Benj. 9.2; 11.1–3; T. Gad 7.2). 61 D. J. Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 29. 62 Warren Carter, The Roman Empire and the New Testament: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 24. 59

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latter, colonized peoples generated myths ‘that looked forward to the transformation of the present situation, the destruction of the invader and the restoration of traditional lands, culture, and power’.63 The myths created are typically hidden and ambiguous, referred to as ‘hidden transcripts’, of which the New Testament is an example.64 Carter also explains that dominated peoples often imitate the very people they resent. They want what they hate: wealth, power and status. Imitation coexists with protest, accommodation and survival. For example, the Seer employs the metaphor of military conquest. The seven congregations are promised various rewards for ‘the one who conquers’ (Rev. 2.7, 11, 17, 26–8; 3.5, 12, 21). In the book of Revelation, the above interaction between colonizer and colonized also applies. The Seer, although in Asia Minor, writes from the perspective of belonging to a dishonoured people. They were ‘colonized’ by various means as a consequence of the Great Revolt. Think of the slaughter of Israelites in the Caesarean amphitheatre, and the crucifixion of rebels, and others being sent off to work in Egypt or being sold as slaves. Their temple was destroyed. Some rebels were taken back to Rome and along with the temple vessels were paraded in a triumph. The rebels were eventually executed, or sold as slaves (Josephus, B.J., 7.154). Their humiliation and the Flavian victory were captured on Iudaea capta coins, a vehicle perfectly suited to propagate imperial ideology across the empire.65 The Seer’s homeland, Judaea, became a Roman imperial province and Israelites were generally forbidden to enter Jerusalem. In other words, his people were scattered to various parts of the Diaspora and experienced a frustrated relationship with their ancestral land and their capital city. And just recently, in 81–82 ce, the Emperor Domitian constructed the Arch of Titus in Rome – Israel’s humiliation, defeat, and dishonour were made permanent on stone. The Seer was most certainly affected by this humiliation of his people and one can expect that ‘primordial’ sentiments would be strong. Building on Israelite tradition he has visions of Israel’s restoration, power reversal, and Rome’s destruction, but he constructs these unseen yet soon to be realized events in his own unique way.66 Esler, ‘Rome’, 14. Carter, Roman, 11–12. 65 Cf. Cromhout, Jesus, 206. 66 Cf. Sergio Rosell, ‘John’s Apocalypse: Dynamic Word-Images for a New World’, HvTSt 67 (2011). 63 64

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To understand Revelation one must look at how it ends. A new Jerusalem descends from the sky. It is an enormous cube (similar to the holy of holies in Solomon’s temple; 1 Kgs 6), about 2,400 km (12,000 stadia) in width, breadth and height. What it represents is total domination of the world, a different kind of empire, an Israelite empire, a cosmic holy of holies and the new dwelling place of Israel’s God. It is a vindication of Israelite identity, Israelite honour fully restored and more, alongside a dishonoured Rome that will not even be remembered (Rev. 18.21). Those who align themselves with Israel’s divine patron, as well as his broker, Jesus, will be a conquering army with earthly (even cosmic) dominion.67 They are promised ‘power over the nations’ (Rev. 2.26). They will constitute a new form of client-kingship. They are ‘kings and priests’ (Rev. 5.10; 3.21), who will rule for a thousand years (Rev. 20.4–6). At the same time, however, they are called ‘slaves (of God)’ (e.g. Rev. 7.3).68 This imitates and undermines Roman power and status. In the book of Revelation, however, imitation is qualified by a call to repentance, salvation, transformation and inclusion.69 The Seer has a vision of an inclusive Israelite ethnos or Israelite imperium, an alternative Israelite symbolic universe consisting of all tribes, nations, peoples and languages, which will replace the Roman imperium. In other words, ethnic Israel will no longer battle the beast and dragon on its own. The Seer co-opts the gentiles in God’s plan to overthrow the Roman Empire. They are called ‘kings and priests’, echoing God’s formation and calling of ethnic Israel (Exod. 19.6). By following Jesus they are (potentially) incorporated into a reconstituted Israel.70 How he (re)constructs Israelite ethnic identity in order to accomplish this is what we will focus on next.

John T. Carroll, ‘The Parousia of Jesus in the Johannine Literature’, in The Return of Jesus in Early Christianity, ed. John T. Carroll (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2000), 100–2. 68 Was the Seer himself deported as a slave in 70 ce? Anyhow, this imagery is highly ironic. Slavery was a ubiquitous institution in the Roman world. Slaves were powerless, had no control over their bodies, and were often victims of physical, verbal and sexual abuse; cf. Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). 69 Carter, Roman, 24, 123–7. 70 There is a tension in that universal judgement (19.17–21; 20.7–10) and universal salvation (21.3, 24–6; 22.2) of the nations exist side by side. It serves a rhetorical function, ‘to portray the opposing options confronting the nations and to depict the comprehensive and universal nature of judgement and salvation in the establishment of God’s kingdom’; David Mathewson, ‘The Destiny of the Nations in Revelation 21:1–22:5: A Reconsideration’, TynBul 53, no. 1 (2002): 141–2. 67

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The (re)construction of Israelite ethnic identity Romanization could lead to ethnic identities disintegrating and disappearing and could potentially be a dangerous social boundary for those who attempted to negotiate their place in the empire. Postcolonial approaches, however, also bring attention to the emergence of new identities, or what Said calls discrepant experience in imperial discourse.71 In other words, we are dealing with identities that are ambiguous and incoherent. ‘Romanization’ can therefore be seen as ‘discrepant identity’ where ‘multiplex strategies for displaying individual and communal identity were developed’.72 Bhabha works with concepts such as hybridity, colonial ambivalence and mimicry.73 Colonial processes of contact between colonizer and colonized occur in a ‘third space’ with simultaneous forces of repulsion and attraction. In such a space, existing identities are dislocated and new identities are negotiated.74 What the Seer presents to us is a (re)constructed Israelite symbolic universe, that is, a different type of Israelite identity that is ‘discrepant’, ambiguous, ambivalent, hybrid, which mimics that of the Roman Empire. The Seer constructs an identity of an inclusive Israelite ethnos, mirroring the citizenship offered by Rome.75 Here we are not dealing with a ‘religious’ conversion. Loyalty to the Israelite God and following Israel’s messiah entailed nothing less than an ethnic conversion. Various sub-identities (‘tribes, tongues, peoples, nations’) become nested in, or are subsumed, by a superordinate or primary identity (‘tribes of Israel’). In terms of Israel’s core values, traditional issues such as divine election, the covenant, and Torah do not feature. The ways these core values are realized, those prominent covenantal praxes (food laws, circumcision) that maintained Israel’s social boundaries are correspondingly done away with. Concerns for purity, traditionally encoded on Israelite bodies, are redefined. Distinction between ‘pure/clean’ and the ‘impure/unclean’ on both cosmic and social Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1993), 35–50. Mattingly, Imperialism, 215. 73 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 2004). 74 Homi K. Bhabha and Jonathan Rutherford, ‘The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha’, in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990). 75 Cf. Bruce J. Malina, The New Jerusalem in the Revelation of John: The City as Symbol of Life with God (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), 63–4. 71 72

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levels are symbolized in clothing (e.g. 7.14; 19.8, 13–14), spatial separation (18.4–5; 22.14–15), and morality (e.g. 9.21; 21.8, 27; 22.15).76 What the Seer offers has universal significance (e.g. Rev. 5.9–10; 7.8–9; 10.10 et al.). Anyone can potentially enter the new Jerusalem, that is, participate in the Israelite imperium and obtain Israelite citizenship. If Torah is done away with, the Israelite sensitivity towards idolatry and immorality most certainly remains and is one of the defining characteristics of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 22.14–15). Babylon’s (= Rome) arrogance, reign of violence, murder of the saints, extravagant wealth, economic exploitation, greed, and witchcraft (chapters 17–18) is contrasted with the new Jerusalem as a place of healing, purity, life, restoration, fellowship with God, and his reign of justice and peace (chapters 21–2). It is widely recognized that the Seer demands a comprehensive disengagement from, and resistance to, Roman civic life on economic, social, political and religious levels. What he asked was social and economic suicide.77 ‘Come out’ of Babylon, the Seer implores, so as ‘not to be partner in its sins’ (Rev. 18.4). The Seer therefore sets out to imprint on the seven congregations that they need to maintain their group identity and boundaries and not make any compromises with the Roman order (Rev. 1.11–3.22). Underlying this was Rome’s control of wealth and commerce (Revelation 18). Especially in Asia Minor the emperor cult was highly visible within the polis and ‘was essentially a celebration of the power that made this imperial commerce and rich urban life possible’.78 Within the context of civic networks of benefaction, trade guilds and associations honoured the emperor (or imperial officials) by dedicating altars, inscriptions and statues to them. Interrelated to this were cultic honours for the emperors where they were placed alongside traditional deities.79 Where other

K. C. Hanson, ‘Blood and Purity in Leviticus and Revelation’, Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture 28 (1993). 77 Gordon Zerbe, ‘Revelation’s Exposé of Two Cities: Babylon and New Jerusalem’, Direction 32, no. 1 (2003); Carter, Roman, 62–3, 105–9; J. Sweet, Revelation (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 31–4; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 10–12. 78 Douglas E. Oakman, ‘The Ancient Economy and St. John’s Apocalypse’, in Jesus and the Peasants (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008), 79. Cf. Crossan and Reed: ‘the imperial cult created an urban life that, in one direction, demanded loyalty to emperor and stability of empire and obtained, in the other, economic and political benefit, but perhaps most important, social recognition and communal honor at the local level’; Crossan and Reed, Search, 143. 79 David A. deSilva, ‘The Revelation to John: A Case Study in Apocalyptic Propaganda and the Maintenance of Sectarian Identity’, Sociological Analysis 53, no. 4 (1992); Philip A. Harland, ‘Honouring the Emperor or Assailing the Beast: Participation in Civic Life among Associations (Jewish, Christian and Other) in Asia Minor and the Apocalypse of John’, JSNT, no. 77 (2000). 76

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authors allowed for some accommodation (e.g. 1 Pet. 2.11–17; 1 Tim. 2.1–2), the Seer vehemently opposes it. Inhabitants of the empire are the beast’s economic slaves (Rev. 13.16) in contrast to those who have the markings of God (Rev. 7.2–4). In a similar fashion there is no preoccupation with Israelite history or ancestry, and where it appears it serves to undergird a new reality. For example, Jesus is cast in the role as Davidic king (Rev. 3.7; 5.5; 22.16). Apart from David, the ‘song of Moses’ (Rev. 15.3) is mentioned. The 144,000 sealed are from the tribes of Israel (Rev. 7.4), whose names are also written on the gates of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21.12). Another discontinuity is the cultural feature of land. Traditionally the sine qua non of Israel’s restoration, the new Jerusalem virtually replaces the inhabited world. Where the old Jerusalem was the central place for Judah and Israel, the new Jerusalem performs the same function for humankind. In antiquity people were often associated with their place of origin and said to exhibit certain characteristics due to the water, air and sky of that region. But the new Jerusalem has no landscape features. ‘The emergence of the new Jerusalem points to the end of such ethnic ties (to kin, land, and water) as primary factors in the people’s relationship to God.’80 Continuities with Israelite tradition exist in the form of idolatry being addressed. In true Israelite tradition, the God of Israel is the only true God. To him and Jesus alone – we can say the Israelite projection of divine patronage and brokerage – is due worship and honour (Rev. 4.10–11; 5.12–14; 7.11–12 et al.) set against the idolatrous worship of the dragon and the beast (Rev. 13.4, 8; 14.9–11; 16.2; 19.20). Together with God, Jesus virtually replaces all other core values of Israelite tradition. Significant is the confession of Jesus, the giver of salvation (Rev. 1.5; 7.14; 14.2). Jesus is represented as the ‘Lamb’, ‘Son of God’, a heavenly ‘Messiah’ (= one like a Son of Man), the ‘Word of God’, perhaps as the principal angel.81 Another continuity is the feature of ‘millennialism’, and the Seer’s vision, involving a new heaven and earth, the restoration of paradise, pilgrimage to Malina, New Jerusalem, 58. Adela Yarbro Collins, ‘Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man in the Gospel and Revelation of John’, in King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature, Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins (eds) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 175–203.

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Jerusalem and eschatological blessings builds on traditional Israelite motifs,82 although adapted as set out above. The obvious difference is that there is no need for a rebuilt/restored temple, since God and the Lamb are the temple (Rev. 21.22).83 This book is a revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1.1), who was killed by the empire. But his followers, a newly constituted Israel, overcome and are washed, through the ‘blood of the Lamb’ (Rev. 7.14; 12.11). The empire’s capital also murdered his followers (Rev. 17.6). It is therefore an identity of perseverance and patience, present vulnerability, and the willingness to face potential martyrdom (Rev. 6.9; 12.11, 17; 14.12–13).84 The Seer implores the seven congregations in Asia Minor to embrace this vulnerability, because the God of Israel controls the destiny of the world, although all the evidence appears to the contrary. And those who remain committed to his (re)constructed Israel, and agree with the vision of the soon-to-be-realized Israelite imperium, were given the assurance: ‘I am coming quickly’ (Rev. 22.10; cf. 1.7; 16.15; 22.7, 10).

Cf. Pilchan Lee, The New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation : A Study of Revelation 21–22 in the Light of Its Background in Jewish Tradition, WUNT 129, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Revelation, however, also speaks about a heavenly temple (Rev. 7.15; 11.19), but it appears to play no part in the new heaven and earth. 84 There appears to be a consensus that at the time Revelation was written (in the mid–90s, the reign of Domitian), there was no large-scale persecution of Christians and when persecution occurred it was occasional and selective (e.g. Rev. 2.13); Sweet, Revelation, 26; Osborne, Revelation, 7–9. 82

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582 Bibliography Horbury, W. (2006), ‘Cena Pura and the Lord’s Supper’, Herodian Judaism and New Testament Study. WUNT 193. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 104–40. —(2006), Herodian Judaism and New Testament Study. WUNT 193. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Hornsey, M. J. (2008), ‘Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory: A Historical Review’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, pp. 204–22. Hornsey, M. J. and M. A. Hogg (2000), ‘Assimilation and Diversity: An Integrative Model of Subgroup Relations’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, pp. 143–56. —(2000), ‘Subgroup Relations: A Comparison of Mutual Intergroup Differentiation and Common Ingroup Identity Models of Prejudice Reduction’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26, pp. 242–56. Horrell, D. (2009), ‘Whither Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation? Reflections on Contested Methodologies and the Future’, in T. D. Still and D. G. Horrell (eds), After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later. London: T&T Clark, pp. 6–20. —(2007), ‘The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity’, JBL 126, pp. 361–81. —(2005), Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics. London: T&T Clark. —(2002), ‘Paul’s Narratives or Narrative Structure? The Significance of Paul’s Story’, in B. W. Longenecker (ed.), Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, pp. 157–71. —(2001), ‘From ἀδελφοί to οἶκος θεοῦ: Social Transformation in Pauline Christianity’, JBL 120, pp. 293–311. —(2000), ‘Models and Methods in Social-Scientific Interpretation: A Response to Philip Esler’, JSNT 78, pp. 83–105. —(ed.) (1999), Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. —(1999), ‘Leadership Patterns and the Development of Ideology in Early Christianity’, in D. G. Horrell (ed.), Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, pp. 309–38. —(1996), ‘Pauline Churches or Early Christian Churches? Unity, Disagreement, and the Eucharist’, in A. Alexeev, C. K. Karakoles, and U. Luz (eds), Einheit der Kirche im Neuen Testament. WUNT 218. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 185–203. —(1996), The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement. Studies of the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

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614 Bibliography Cognition and Social Context’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20, pp. 454–63. Turner, J. C., M. S. Wetherell, and M. A. Hogg (1989), ‘Referent Informational Influence and Group Polarization’, British Journal of Social Psychology 28, pp. 135–47. Turner, V. W. (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Cornell University Press. Tyson, J. B. (1961), ‘Blindness of the Disciples in Mark’, JBL 80, pp. 261–8. Udoh, F. E. (ed.) (2008), Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Vaage, L. E. (ed.) (2006), Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Van Belle, G., J. G. Van der Watt, and P. J. Maritz (eds) (2005), Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel: Essays by the Members of the SNTS Johannine Writings Seminar. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Van der Watt, J. G., (ed.) (2006), Identity, Ethics, and Ethos in the New Testament. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Vander Stichele, C. and T. C. Penner (2005), Her Master’s Tools?: Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse. Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship. Atlanta: SBL. Vanhoozer, K. J. (ed.) (2005), Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. —(1998), Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Vermeulen, H. and C. Govers (eds) (1994), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’. Amsterdam: Spinhuis. Verner, D. C. (1983), The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Verseput, D. (2000), ‘Genre and Story: The Community Setting of the Epistle of James’, CBQ 62, pp. 96–110. Volf, M. (1994), ‘Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation between Church and Culture in 1 Peter’, Ex Auditu 10, pp. 15–30. Vos, G. (1956), The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. de Vos, C. S. (2001), ‘Once a Slave, Always a Slave? Slavery, Manumission and Relational Patterns in Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, JSNT 82, pp. 89–105. Vouga, F. (1984), L’épître de saint Jacques. Genève: Labor et Fides. Wagner, J. R. (2002), Herald of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul in Concert in the Letter to the Romans. Leiden: Brill.

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—(1998), ‘The Heralds of Isaiah and the Mission of Paul: An Investigation of Paul’s Use of Isaiah 51–55 in Romans’, in W. H. Bellinger and W. R. Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, pp. 193–222. Walker, W. O., Jr. (ed.) (1978), The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. Wallman, S. (ed.) (1979), Ethnicity at Work. London: Macmillan. —(1979), ‘Introduction: The Scope for Ethnicity’, in S. Wallman (ed.), Ethnicity at Work. London: Macmillan, pp. 1–17. Walsh, B. J. and S. C. Keesmaat (2004), Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity. Walsh, J. J. (1991), ‘On Christian Atheism’, VC 45, pp. 255–77. Watson, D. F. (1993), ‘Amplification Techniques in 1 John: The Interaction of Rhetorical Style and Invention’, JSNT 16, pp. 99–123. Watson, D. F. and T. Callan (2012), First and Second Peter. Paideia. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Watson, F. (2007), ‘The Hermeneutics of Salvation: Paul, Isaiah, and the Servant’. Paper presented at the Pauline Soteriology Group at the SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego. Webb, R. L. (2008), ‘The Use of “Story” in the Letter of Jude: Rhetorical Strategies of Jude’s Narrative Episodes’, JSNT 31, pp. 53–87. —(1996), ‘The Eschatology of the Epistle of Jude and Its Rhetorical and Social Functions’, BBR 6, pp. 139–51. Webb, R. L. and B. Bauman-Martin (eds) (2007), Reading First Peter with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of First Peter. LNTS 364. London. New York: T&T Clark. Weber, M. (1997), Weber: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1964), The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon. Weeden, T. J. (1971), Mark: Traditions in Conflict. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. —(1968), ‘Heresy That Necessitated Mark’s Gospel’, ZNW 59, pp. 145–58. Weissenrieder, A. and R. B. Coote (eds) (2010), The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres. WUNT 260. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Welborn, L. L. (2011), An End to Enmity: Paul and the ‘Wrongdoer’ of Second Corinthians. BZNW 185. Berlin: De Gruyter. Wengst, K. (1988), Humility: Solidarity of the Humiliated. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Westerholm, S. (2004), Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The ‘Lutheran’ Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

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616 Bibliography White, L. M. (2002), ‘Taste and Space: Archeology and Adaptation in Roman Dining Practice’. Paper presented at the SBL Meals in the Greco-Roman World, Toronto, Ontario. Whitehouse, H. (2004), Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Whitehouse, H. and J. Laidlaw (eds) (2004), Ritual and Memory: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Religion. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Whitehouse, H. and R. N. McCauley (eds) (2005), Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Whitfield, B. J. (2009), ‘To See the Canon in a Grain of Sand: Preaching Jude’, Word & World 29, pp. 422–30. Whyte, J. (1978), ‘Interpretations of the Northern Ireland Problem: An Appraisal’, Economic and Social Review 9, pp. 257–82. Wiedemann, T. E. J. (1991), Greek and Roman Slavery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilcox, M. (1971), ‘Denial Sequence in Mark 14.26–31, 66–72’, NTS 17, pp. 426–36. Wilken, R. L. (1984), The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven: Yale University Press. Williams, G. (2003), ‘Blame and Responsibility’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6, pp. 427–45. Williams, M. (2011), The Doctrine of Salvation in the First Letter of Peter. SNTSMS 149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, P. J. (ed.) (2004), The New Testament in Its First Century Setting. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Williams, R. (2011), ‘BTB Readers’ Guide: Social Memory’, BTB 41, pp. 189–200. —(2006), ‘Social Memory and the Didachē’, BTB 36, pp. 35–9. Williams, T. B. (2013), ‘Ancient Prophets and Inspired Exegetes: Interpreting Prophetic Scripture in 1QpHab and 1 Peter’, in D. S. du Toit (ed.), Bedrängnis und Identität: Studien zu Situation, Kommunikation und Theologie des 1. Petrusbriefs. BZNW 200. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 221–44. —(2012), Persecution in 1 Peter: Differentiating and Contextualizing Early Christian Suffering. NovTSup 145. Leiden. Boston: Brill. Wilson, S. G. (2004), Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Winter, B. W. (2002), Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

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618 Bibliography —(1990), ‘Poetry and Theology in Colossians 1.15–20’, NTS 36. 1, pp. 444–68. Yarbrough, R. W. (2008), 1–3 John. BECNT. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Yarchin, W. (ed.) (2004), History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader. Peabody: Hendrickson. Young, I. M. (1990), Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zahn, D. T. (1910), Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer. Leipzig: Deichert. —(1907), Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, 2nd edn. Leipzig: A. Deichert. Zanker, P. (1990), The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Zerbe, G. (2003), ‘Revelation’s Exposé of Two Cities: Babylon and New Jerusalem’, Direction 32, pp. 47–60. Zerbe, G. and M. Orevillo-Montenegro (2009), ‘The Letter to the Colossians’, in F. F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah (eds), A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings. London: T&T Clark, pp. 294–303. Zerubavel, E. (2003), Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, Y. (1995), Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zoccali, C. (2010), Whom God Has Called: The Relationship of Church and Israel in Pauline Interpretation, 1920 to the Present. Eugene, OR: Pickwick. —(2008), ‘ “And So All Israel Will Be Saved”: Competing Interpretations of Romans 11.26 in Pauline Scholarship’, JSNT 30, pp. 289–318.

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 1. Hebrew Scriptures/Septuagint Genesis 4.1–16 522 5.3–20 523 5.24 523 6.1–4 520 12.3 139, 141, 268 14.18–20 437 15.2–5 139 15.6 139, 254, 261 16.10 141 17 140 17.4 141 17.5 270 17.11 LXX 264 17.20 141 17.21 141 18–19 521 18.18 139, 268 21.13 141 22.18 139, 268 24.49 245 26.4 139, 268 28.14 268 Exodus 1–18 520 2.12–14 521 12.5 462 19.5–6 268, 269 19.6 459, 546 20.4–7 263 32–4 263 32.10 245 32.11–14 263 33.19 263 34 263 34.6 245 34.6–10 263

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 619

Leviticus 1.13 488 21.21 488 Numbers 13.25–14.38 520 16.1–35 522 31.16 522 Deuteronomy 4.5–8 268 9.4–6 263 10.19 268 28.53–7 138 30.1–6 266 34.1–6 521 1 Samuel 8.7 242 2 Samuel 7.11–16 243 1 Kings 6 546 17.8–24 200 17.17–24 204 2 Kings 4.18–37 204 5 204 5.1–19 200 9–10 203 24.1–7 247 Ezra 3.11 257 Nehemiah 9.8 260

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620 Psalms 1.3 523 2.7 243 24.1–10 243 32.1–2 264 32.10–11 264 34.8 459, 462 34.12–16 459 36.9 LXX 265 36.11 LXX 265 36.22 LXX 265 36.29 LXX 265 36.34 LXX 265 40.10–12 246 47.1–9 243 47.2 242 69.25 203 72 243 72.8–11 265 89 244 93.1 242 108.4 246 109.8 203 110 437 118.22 459, 462 146 204 Proverbs 3.34 459 11.31 459 25.14 523 Isaiah 1.9 263 1.10 521 2.1–4 243, 265 2.2–4 267, 268 3.4 LXX 518 3.9 521 5.7 270 8.14 459, 462, 467 9.6–7 265, 266 10.22 263 11.1–9 265 11.1–12 266 11.9–10 268 14.1–2 267 18.7 267 24.21–3 243

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 620

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 25.6–10 265, 267 26.19 204 27.6 265 28.16 459, 462 29.19 204 32.15 266 35.5 204 35.5 LXX 204 35.6 204 40–66 265 40.3–5 265 40.6–8 459, 462 42.1–9 267, 270 42.1 265, 268 42.6 265, 268 42.9 297 42.18–43.1 268 43.18–19 297 43.20–1 459 44.1 268 44.3 266 44.28 247 45 142 45.1 247 45.4 268 45.8 265 45.14 267 45.17 297 48.6 297 48.19 142 49.3 268 49.6 265, 267, 268 49.8 142 50–1 142 51.4–6 265, 267 52.3 462 52.13–53.12 460 53 267, 268 53.4–6 460 53.7 462 53.7–8 203 53.9 459, 460 54 265 54.1 142 54.15 LXX 267 56.6–8 265, 267 57.20 523 58 201 58.6 200, 201, 202, 203

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

59.9–15 246 59.21 266 60 265, 267 61 201, 203 61.1 204 61.1–2 200, 201, 202, 203 61.1 LXX 204 65.1–2 263 65.17–18 297 65.17–25 265 66.18–21 267 66.22 297 66.22–3 265

Amos 5.15 257 5.21–5 270 9.11–12 LXX 267 9.11–15 266

Jeremiah 3.17 267 7.5–7 270 23.5–8 266 23.14 521 31.31–3 136 31.31–4 296 31.31–40 266 32.39–40 266 33.14–26 266

Haggai 2.6–7 267 2.21–2 267

Ezekiel 11.19–20 266 16.48–50 521 34.23–31 266 36.22–32 266 36.26–7 296 37.24–8 266 39.25 257 39.29 266 Daniel 7.9–10 437 7.13–14 437 Hosea 1.9 460 1.10 263 1.10 LXX 339 2.1–3 LXX 339 2.23 257, 263, 460 3.4–5 266 Joel 2.28 266 3.1–5 LXX 224

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 621

621

Micah 4.1–3 267 5.2–3 266 6.8 270 Zephaniah 3.9 267

Zechariah 2.11 267 3.8 266 6.11–13 266 8.20–1 267 9.9–10 243 9.10 265 12.10 266 14 243 2. New Testament Matthew 2.4 161 3.7 161 4.17 152 5–7 149, 170 5.1–2 202 5.3 151, 152, 157, 162, 169 5.3–6 157 5.3–10 151 5.3–12 147, 148, 149, 151, 158 5.4 151, 152, 163, 169 5.5 151, 152, 163, 169, 265 5.6 151, 152, 157, 163, 169 5.7 151, 152, 169 5.7–10 157 5.8 151, 152, 164, 169 5.9 151, 152, 164, 169 5.10 151, 152, 157 5.10–12 163 5.11 151, 153

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622 5.11–12 151, 157, 164 5.12 151 5.13–7.6 158 5.13–7.29 157 5.13–16 157 5.17–20 157 5.20 157, 161, 163 5.21–6 164 5.21–6.18 163 5.21–7.6 158 5.21–48 157 5.27–8 164 5.28 489 5.31–2 164 5.38–48 163 6–7 158 6.1–4 163 6.1–6 162 6.1–7.29 157 6.2 157, 158, 163 6.5 157, 158 6.7 163 6.16 157, 158 6.16–18 162 7.5 157, 158 8.12 163 10.16–23 163 10.33 164 11.2–6 204 11.29 163 12.38 161 13.13–15 176 13.21–3 161 13.38 159 13.42 163 13.50 163 13.55 516 14.20 163 15.1 161 15.15–20 164 15.37 163 16.1 161 16.6 161 16.11 161 16.12 161 16.18 159 16.21 161 18.17 159 18.20 159 20.18 161

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 622

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 21–5 162 21.5 163 21.15 161 21.23 161 21.33–43 163 21.33–46 159 21.43 163 21.45 161 22.1–14 159, 163 22.6 163 22.7 164 22.11–14 161 22.13 163 23 160, 162, 163 23.2 161 23.4 163 23.5–7 163 23.13 161 23.15 161 23.23–4 270 23.23 161 23.27 161 23.27–78 164 23.29 161 23.29–39 164 23.34 163 23.38 164 24.23–8 519 24.51 163 25.1 152 25.1–13 152 25.1–14 159 25.10 477 25.30 163 25.34 163 25.34–46 164 25.35–6 163 26.3 161 26.30 487 26.47 161 27.3 161 27.12 161 27.20 161 27.41 161 27.62 161 28.20 159 Mark 1.1 187 1.8 186

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1.12–13 179 1.15 179 1.17 178 1.18 178 1.20 178 1.23–6 179 1.34 179 1.39 179 1.40 187 2.5 187 2.16 177 2.18 177 3.5 184 3.6 177, 184 3.11 179 3.13–14 179 3.14 177 3.19 183 3.21 177 3.22 177 3.29 186 3.29–30 178 3.31 177 3.32 177 3.34 177 3.35 182 4.7 186 4.11 176 4.11–12 176, 183 4.12 176 4.15 179 4.16–17 186 4.20 187 4.34 177 4.35–41 179 4.36 187 4.40–1 183 5.1–20 177, 179 5.23 187 5.34 187 5.36 183 5.55–6 187 6.3 178, 516 6.5–6 178 6.7 179 6.13 179 6.37 183 6.49–50 183 6.52 183

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 623

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

623

7.5 177 7.14 187, 381 7.18 183 7.24–30 179 7.26 187 8.4 183 8.12 179 8.15 177 8.17–21 183 8.31 177, 179, 207 8.32 180 8.33 180 8.34 180, 186, 187 8.34–8 175, 176, 180, 184, 186 8.35 180, 186 8.36–7 186 8.38 179, 186 9.6 183 9.14 177 9.14–29 179, 188 9.19 179, 183 9.24 187 9.30–2 188 9.32 183 9.33–7 188 9.38 188 9.38–40 188 10.13–14 183 10.15 183 10.28 178 10.29 178 10.29–30 182, 183 10.30 182, 187 10.33 177 10.47 187 11.18 177 11.27 177 12.12 177 12.13 177 12.36 186 12.38 177 12.39 278 13.9–13 178, 180, 184, 185 13.11 186 13.12 182 13.13 179, 180, 186 13.19 183 13.20 187 13.21–3 519

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624

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

14.1 177 14.1–2 177 14.8 281 14.10 177 14.26 487 14.28 181, 185 14.31 184 14.43 177 14.50 184 14.53 177 14.62 184 14.71 184 15.1 177 15.3 177 15.11 177 15.13 179 16.7 181, 182 16.8 185 Luke 1.1–2 198 1.2 208 1.5 225 1.20 203 2.4 225 2.22 199 2.23 199 2.24 199 2.27 199 2.39 199 3.1 224 3.4 199 3.19 224 4 205, 226 4.4 199 4.8 199 4.10 199 4.16–20 200, 227 4.16–30 208, 230 4.16 199, 201 4.17 199, 200 4.18–19 200, 202, 204 4.21 202, 203, 204, 205, 207 4.22 203 4.25–7 200, 203 6 228 6.3 199 6.14 224 6.20–3 149

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 624

6.32–5 228, 230 6.41 224 6.42 224 7.1–10 204 7.11–17 204 7.18–23 204 7.22 204 7.27 199 8.19 224 8.20 224 8.21 224 9.1–4 485 9.22 207 9.23 176 9.49–56 226 9.51–6 228 10.4 485 10.25 230 10.25–37 228 10.26 199 10.30 229 11.42 270 11.43 278 12.13 224 14.7–11 278 14.12 224 14.26 224 15.1–2 485 15.27 224 15.32 224 16.16 199 16.17 199 16.28 224 16.29 199 16.31 199 17.3 224 17.25 207 18.29 224 18.31 199 19.46 199 20.17 199 20.28 224 20.29 224 21.16 224 21.22 199 22.24–7 485 22.32 224 22.37 199 24 205, 206, 207, 208

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

24.26 207 24.27 199, 203, 205, 206, 208 24.32 199, 203, 205, 206, 208 24.44 199, 205, 24.45 199, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209 24.46 199 24.48 208 John 1.10 244 1.49 244 2.22 206 3.13 244, 246 3.16–17 246 3.17–19 245 3.19 244 3.32 246 3.33 246 3.34 247 4.34 245, 247 5.1–15 241 5.19 246 5.24–5 246 5.28–9 246 5.30 245 6.1–15 241 6.33 247 6.41–2 244, 247 7.7 244 7.25–9 247 7.32 245 7.38 206 7.45–6 245 8.13 247 8.14–18 246 8.22–3 244 8.23 244, 246 8.26 246 8.32 244, 245, 246 8.33 243 8.38 247 8.39–47 247 8.40 246 8.42 245 8.43–4 247 8.44 244 8.47 246, 247 9 249 9.1–12 241

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 625

625

10.3–16 246 10.10 244 10.11 241 10.16 188 10.17–18 247 10.20 177, 247 10.27 246 10.32 241 11.19 249 11.31–3 249 11.38–44 241 11.43 246 12.13 244 12.15 244 12.31 244 13.2–20 483 13.31—17.26 483 14.6 245, 246 14.7–11 244, 245 14.10 246 14.24 246 14.27 244 14.30 244 15.14–15 242 15.18–19 244 16.11 244 16.27–8 247 17.12 206 17.14 244 17.15 249 17.25 244 18.3 241, 242, 245, 246 18.12 241, 242, 245 18.15–18 250 18.22 245 18.25–7 250 18.28–19.16 235, 238, 241 18.30 241 18.31 242 18.33 243, 244 18.36 244, 245 18.36–7 247 18.37 243, 245, 246 18.38 247 18.39 243 19.1 242 19.2–3 242 19.3 243 19.4–6 242

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626 19.6 242 19.7 243 19.9 247 19.10 247 19.10–11 247 19.11 247 19.12 242 19.12–15 244 19.13–15 242 19.14–15 243 19.15 242 19.16 241, 243 19.28 206 19.36 206 20.9 206 20.23–4 506 21 186 Acts 1.8 208 1.14–16 224 1.16 203 2.4 89 2.13 89 2.15 89 2.21 230 2.29 224 2.37 224 2.38 484 2.42 485 2.42–7 482 2.44–5 308 3.17 224 3.22 224 3.24 285 4.2 285 4.23–6 487 4.36–7 308 6.3 224 7.2 224 7.13 224 7.23 224 7.25–6 224 7.37 224 8.32 203 8.32–3 203 8.35 203 9.30 224 10.1–11.18 317, 321

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 626

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 10.23 224 10.28 317 10.47–8 484 11.1 224 11.12 224 11.26 192 11.29 224 12.2 224 12.17 224, 516 13.5 285 13.15 224 13.26 224 13.38 224, 285 13.48–50 325 14.2 224 15 224, 225, 259 15.1 224, 225, 317, 322 15.3 224, 225 15.5 317, 322 15.7 224 15.11 230 15.13 224, 516 15.22–3 224 15.23 225 15.28–9 380 15.32–3 224, 225 15.36 224, 225, 285 15.40 224, 225 16.2 224, 225 16.17 285 16.25–40 231 16.40 224, 225 17.2 203 17.2–3 207 17.3 285 17.6 224, 225 17.10 224, 225 17.11 203 17.13 285 17.14 224, 225 18.1 289 18.4 325 18.11 304 18.18 224 18.24 203 18.27 224, 225 18.28 203 19.13–17 188 20.7 380

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20.7–11 482 20.29–30 519 21.7 224, 225 21.17 224, 225, 319 21.17–26 319 21.18 516 21.18–21 317 21.20 225, 319 21.21 319 22.1 224, 225 22.5 224, 225 22.13 225 22.21 225 22.22–3 225 22.35 231 23.1 224, 225 23.5–6 224, 225 26.28 192 26.29 231 27.33–7 226 28.14–15 224, 225 28.17 224, 225 28.21 224, 225 Romans 1–3 264 1–2 258 1.1–4 259 1.2–3 269 1.7 254, 486 1.16 268 1.16–17 257 1.17 270 1.18–2.9 266 1.18–3.20 258 2.2 396 2.4 264 2.6–11 262 2.11 259, 269 2.11–12 264 2.12–16 266 2.14–15 270 2.16 262 2.17 260 2.25–7 262 2.25 262, 270 2.25–9 266 2.28–9 270 3.1–2 258

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 627

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

627

3.3–4 263, 264, 270 3.19 396 3.19–20 266, 270 3.20 266 3.21 257 3.21–6 258 3.22 259, 269 3.22–3 264 3.23 264 3.23–4 269 3.24 269 3.25–6 264 3.25 140, 266, 268 3.26 270 3.27 257, 259 3.27–9 269 3.27–31 259 3.29 259 3.30 268, 269 3.31 257 4 253, 255, 256, 257 4.1 260, 261 4.1–2 261 4.1–8 253, 264 4.2 261 4.2–25 261 4.3 261 4.4 262, 263 4.5–8 263 4.8 262 4.9–11 267 4.9–12 265 4.9–13 261 4.9–18 253 4.9 264 4.10 264 4.11 264 4.12 264, 265 4.13–16 265 4.14–15 266 4.15 266 4.16 269 4.17 265, 269 4.17–18 270 4.18 269 4.19 269 4.19–21 269 4.19–22 262 4.19–25 253

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628 4.20 269 4.24–5 267 4.25 267 5.1–2 271 5.2 259 5.5 342 5.8 140, 267 5.9 140, 266 5.10–11 269 5.11 259 5.12–21 268 5.13–14 269 5.19 268 5.20 266 5.20–1 262 6 270, 362 6.5–11 268 6.6–8 269 6.15–22 264 6.16 262 7 270 7.4 269 7.4–6 268 7.6 266, 270 7.7 270 7.10–11 270 7.12 266 7.13 266, 270 8.1–17 269, 270 8.1–2 270 8.1–11 266 8.2–4 257, 269 8.3 140 8.5–17 262 8.14–17 140 8.15 342 8.18–25 265 8.18–38 269 8.19–21 269 8.22 396 8.28 396 8.28–30 264, 268 8.32 267 8.35 355 9–10 263 9.4–5 269 9.5 261 9.8 261 9.11–16 264

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 628

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 9.15 263 9.25.6 263 9.27–9 263 9.30–10.4 266, 269 9.30–10.13 257 9.30–2 266 10.3–4 266 10.4 257, 263, 267, 269 10.10 263 10.11–13 269 10.12 258, 264, 269 10.13 259 10.16 267 10.20–1 263 11.6 266, 269 11.11–32 261 11.17–24 269 11.22 262, 264 11.26 265 11.26–32 257 11.27 266 11.30–2 264, 268 11.32 264, 269 12.1–2 262, 264 12.3–21 271 12.13 282 13.1–7 133 13.8–14 270 13.13–14 262 14 270 14.1–3 330 14.7–19 271 14.10–12 262 14.18 286 14.20–3 133 15.7 282 15.7–12 267 15.8–9 267 15.8–12 269 15.13 317 15.17 259 15.21 267 15.23–4 257 15.25–32 306 16.10 286 1 Corinthians 1–4 402 1.2 486

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1.10 103 1.10–17 362 1.11–13 188 1.12 280 1.14–17 275 1.17–25 305 1.18–2.2 285 1.23 140, 438 1.24 270 1.25 358 1.27–31 305 2.1 285 2.1–5 298, 302 2.1–7 305 2.2 302, 438 2.2–3 358 2.8 285 2.10 266 3.1 103 3.21–3 265 4.2 260 4.10–13 355, 358 4.14 345 5 103 5.7 140 5.9 292 5.11 293 5.12–13 176 6.1–11 103 6.2 265 6.9–11 262 7.17 408 7.17–20 270 7.17–24 421 7.18 270 7.19 262, 269, 270 7.20–2 416, 421 7.21–2 129 7.26–31 517 8.1 396 8.4 396 8.4–13 330 9.14 285 9.21 262, 270 9.22 358 9.27 285 10 263 10.1–11 520 10.2 362

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 629

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

629

10.11 266 10.16–17 328, 330 10.32 416 11 136, 280 11–14 482 11.2–16 275 11.3 345 11.4–16 381 11.5 485 11.12–31 103 11.16–22 274 11.17–20 482 11.17–21 488 11.17–22 85, 103, 381, 490 11.17–34 275, 280, 281, 328, 483 11.19 285 11.21 280, 281, 283, 483 11.22 281, 283 11.23 267 11.23–5 280, 483 11.23–6 84, 266, 280, 284, 287, 380, 281 11.24 284, 286 11.25 268, 284 11.26 285 11.27 285 11.27–9 287 11.27–32 85, 284, 381 11.29 275 11.33–4 85, 282, 381 11.33 280, 282 11.34 83, 275, 283 12–13 287 12–14 139 12.3 186 12.4–11 485 12.13 362, 383, 407, 408 15 269 15.1 518 15.1–4 269 15.3 267 15.7 516 15.9 397 15.10 259 15.15 260 15.20–8 265 15.56 266, 270 15.57 269 16.1–4 294, 306 16.1 451

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630

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

16.2 289 16.11 282 2 Corinthians 1.3–11 301 1.5 302 1.6 301 1.8–9 355 1.15–16 289 1.21–2 88 1.23 289 1.23–2.12 293 1.23–2.11 293 2.1 289, 486 2.1–4 310 2.3 289 2.14–6.10 402 2.14–15 301 2.14–16 301 2.15–6 301 2.17 304 3 263 3.1 304 3.3–18 266 3.6 136 3.7–11 270 3.18 270 4.7 301, 303 4.7–12 301 4.8–9 355 4.10 301 4.10–11 302 4.10–12 301 4.12 301 5.1 396 5.3 260 5.10 262 5.11–13 298 5.12 298 5.14–15 298 5.14–17 269 5.16 298, 299, 305 5.17 265, 289, 296, 297, 298, 309 5.18–9 300 5.19 269 6.1–10 301 6.3 301 7.4 259 7.5–16 290, 294

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 630

7.6 404 7.14 259 8–9 294, 306 8.1–5 306 8.1–9.15 306 8.6 306 8.9 306, 307 8.13–5 307 8.23 323 8.24 259 9.1–5 308 9.2–3 259 9.4 260 9.6–15 308 9.13 308 10–13 298, 305, 402 10.1–3 294 10.8 304 10.10 294, 304 10.12 304 10.12–16 304 10.12–17 305 10.18 286 11.1–12.10 305 11.4 305 11.5 188, 294, 303 11.6 304 11.7–11 304 11.7–12.13 402 11.12 260, 304 11.13 305 11.18 304 11.19–20 304 11.21 304 11.21–3 304 11.23 305 11.23—12.10 301, 302 11.29–30 358 12 355 12.9–10 301, 358 12.10 302 12.11 188, 294, 303, 304 12.11–12 304 12.14 289, 345 12.20–1 289, 345 12.20 260 12.21 289, 310 13.1–2 289 13.1–3 309

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

13.2 519 13.3–4 358 13.4 301, 301, 302, 305 13.5 262, 309 13.7 286 13.10 309 13.11 310 Galatians 1.1 131, 318 1.2 143, 486 1.3 131 1.4 267 1.6 131 1.6–7 131, 132 1.7 132 1.9 518, 519 1.11–24 132 1.12–22 136 1.13 134, 318 1.13–14 120 1.13–15 135 1.13–24 125 1.14 318 1.15–16 318 1.17 134, 136 1.17–20 318 1.18 136 1.21–4 321 1.23 518 1.23–4 137 2.1–2 136 2.1–10 318 2.1–14 6, 311, 326, 330 2.2 320 2.3–5 312, 317 2.4 317, 318, 320 2.4–5 322 2.6 318 2.7 131, 132, 312, 324, 325 2.7–8 134, 317 2.7–9 324 2.8 312 2.9 326, 516 2.11–14 103, 134, 312, 325, 327 2.12 134, 188, 312, 317, 327, 516, 536 2.14 135, 329 2.15 266, 374 2.17 260

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 631

631

2.20 136 3.1 138 3.1–5 266 3.2 137, 138, 267 3.2–5 131 3.3 270 3.6 139 3.7 139, 271 3.8 268 3.10 138 3.10–11 266 3.12 142 3.13 267 3.14 139 3.16 140, 142, 270 3.16–17 140 3.16–18 268 3.19 266 3.19–29 266 3.21–3 270 3.22 264 3.23 266 3.23–6 269 3.23 266 3.26–8 484 3.26–9 268 3.27 86 3.27–8 382 3.27–9 270 3.28 86, 102, 130, 268, 308, 329, 368, 374, 383, 407, 408 3.29 139, 265 4.4–7 138 4.5–6 342 4.5–7 131 4.6 138 4.8–9 143 4.8–10 128 4.8–31 270 4.9 318 4.18–20 345 4.21–5.1 318 4.21–31 142, 143, 329 4.24 142 4.25–6 142 4.26 143 5.2–6 270 5.3 119, 259 5.3–24 262

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632

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

5.11 140 5.13–26 270 5.14 129 5.21 519 6.1 281 6.10 271 6.11 138 6.12–3 297 6.13 119 6.14 297 6.15 136, 265, 269, 296, 297 6.15–16 269 6.16 257 6.17 302 Ephesians 1.1 486 1.2 339 1.3 88, 339 1.3–14 88 1.4 88 1.5 88, 339, 342 1.6 339, 341 1.7 88 1.7–14 265 1.9 88 1.10 88 1.13 83, 381 1.15 342 1.17–23 339 2.1–3 339 2.4 342 2.4–6 89 2.6 339 2.11–22 88, 340 2.12 340 2.14–16 383 2.15 87, 88, 376, 383 2.19 340 2.20–2 340 3.18–19 342 4.3 342 4.4–6 87 4.5 484 4.7 89 4.7–11 90 4.11–16 89, 341 4.13 341 4.14 341

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 632

4.15–16 342 4.17 88 4.17–6.9 345 4.24 341 5.1 345 5.1–2 341, 342 5.2 342 5.3 342 5.5 340 5.6 342 5.8 342 5.15–24 342 5.18 89, 488 5.18–20 89 5.19 487 5.20–6.9 381 5.20 83 5.21–6.9 338, 342, 345 5.23 345 5.25 342 5.27 488 5.28 342 5.33 342 6.21 343 6.23–4 342 6.23 343 Philippians 1.1 354, 486 1.10 362 1.11 362 1.12 353, 354 1.15 364 1.17–18 285 1.21 347 1.27 357, 360, 361, 518 1.28 354, 356 1.28–9 363 1.29 354, 355, 356 2.3 353 2.3–4 355 2.4 362 2.5–8 268 2.5 353 2.5–11 307, 347, 353 2.6 354 2.6–11 357 2.7 354 2.8 260

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

2.9–11 259, 354 2.11 361 2.12 262 2.15 342, 355, 357 2.17 357 3 266 3.1–5 362 3.2 354 3.3 362 3.7–10 355 3.7–11 358 3.9 260 3.17 353, 360 3.18 364 3.18–19 356 3.19 354 3.20–1 356, 359, 361, 362, 363 3.21 356 4.1–2 363 4.2 353 Colossians 1.1 369, 370, 372, 486 1.2 370 1.3 372 1.4 373 1.4–6 372 1.5–8 381 1.7–8 372, 384 1.9–10 373 1.10–14 262 1.13–14 373 1.15–16 376 1.15–20 265, 269, 379 1.15–23 264 1.15–27 374 1.18 376 1.21 375 1.21–3 262, 375 1.28 285 2.1 367, 373 2.4 379 2.6–23 86 2.8 87, 379 2.8–15 377 2.11 384 2.11–12 86, 374 2.11–13 373, 383 2.12 373, 381

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 633

633

2.12–13 380, 382 2.13 373, 374, 375, 383 2.13–15 87 2.14 383 2.16 375 2.16–23 87 2.20 383 2.20–3 380 2.27–32 381 3.1 375 3.1–10 375 3.2 375 3.5 375 3.5–6 266 3.5–7 375 3.5–10 262 3.6 373, 375 3.9–10 375, 376 3.10–11 382 3.11 374, 383, 407 3.14 373 3.15–16 373 3.16 381 3.17 373 3.18–4.1 385 3.22–5 383, 385 4.1 383 4.3 367 4.5 176, 380 4.7 343 4.7–17 370, 373 4.9 384 4.10–11 384 4.11 383 4.12 372 4.12–13 384 4.15–16 486 4.16 367 4.18 367, 370, 371 1 Thessalonians 1.1 486 1.8–2.20 402 1.9–10 269 1.10 266 2.11–12 345 2.14–6 431 4.1–2 518 4.1–8 262, 270

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634 4.6 519 4.12 176 4.13–8 517 5.9 266 5.10 267 2 Thessalonians 1.1 486 2.15 83, 84, 381 3.6 83, 84, 381 1 Timothy 1.3 390, 394, 395 1.3–4 394 1.3–5 399 1.3–7 83, 381 1.3–20 404 1.4 395 1.6 394, 395 1.8 396 1.9 396 1.9–10 396 1.10 390, 396 1.10–11 399 1.11 396, 399 1.11–12 399 1.11–13 398 1.12 399 1.13 397 1.15 399 1.15–16 398 1.16 399 1.18 399 1.19 394, 395 1.19–20 399 1.20 395, 403 2.1–2 391, 397, 549 2.1–4 394 2.1–12 390 2.3–6 398 2.7 398 2.8–15 86 3.1 406 3.1–13 90, 396 3.1–14 394 3.2–5 338 3.2–7 406 3.7 176, 397 3.14–5 394

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 634

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 3.15 405 4.1–3 519 4.1 394, 395 4.6 394, 396, 399 4.6–5.3 394 4.6–16 404 4.7 396 4.10 394, 399 4.11 390 4.12 394, 396, 399 4.14 90, 39 4.15 394 5.1–6.2 394 5.3–16 394 5.6–7 397 5.7 390 5.14 397 5.15 394, 395 5.17–25 394 5.19–20 394 5.22 90, 394 5.24 394, 395 5.24–5 394 6.1 397 6.3 394, 395 6.3–4 396 6.10 394, 395 6.11–14 394 6.11–15 396 6.11–21 404 6.20 390 6.20–1 396 6.21 394, 395, 405 2 Timothy 1.6 90 1.14 390 2.2 83, 381 2.11–12 186 3.1–5 519 3.13 390 4.3 390, 519 Titus 1.5–2.10 390 1.5–9 90 1.5 90 1.10 390 1.12 70

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

1.14 88 2.3–5 86 Philemon 1 412, 413, 417, 418 1–2 414 2 412, 413, 414, 417, 418, 486 5 412, 419 6 414 7 412, 413, 417, 418 8 417, 419 8–9 419 9 418 10 411, 413 11 411, 413, 414, 420 12 413 13 412, 413, 414, 417, 419 14 417 15 409, 418 15–6 409 16 8, 343, 412, 413, 416, 420, 424 17 413, 417, 423, 485 17–19 414 18 417 18–19 413 19 413, 419 20 412, 417 21 419, 422, 423 22 417, 419 23 372, 412 Hebrews 1.1 432, 435 1.1–2 435 1.2 265, 432, 437 1.3 426, 437, 438 1.4–14 436 1.5 437 1.8 437 1.13 437 2.1 432 2.1–2 433 2.3 432 2.5–9 436 2.7–9 437 2.11 432, 438 2.16–18 436 2.16 432 3.1 438

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 635

635

3.2–5 436 3.6 433 3.7–4.11 520 3.7–11 433 3.7–19 434 3.12 433 3.13 433 3.14 432, 433 3.16 433 3.16–9 436 4.1–11 433 4.1–13 434 4.3 432 4.14 433, 437, 438 4.15 432, 438 4.16 433, 437 5.1 438 5.1–10 435 5.3 438 5.5 437 5.5–6 438 5.6 437 5.7–8 438 5.9 437 5.11 432 5.11–13 433 6.1 432 6.2 380, 381 6.4–6 183, 433 6.6 433, 438 6.7 433 6.8 433 6.9 438 6.10 432 6.13–7.28 436 6.20 437, 438 6.20–7.28 436 7.1–18 437 7.2 437 7.3 437 7.11–28 97 7.15 435 7.19 435 7.20–8 438 7.23–4 435 7.26–8 435 7.27 438, 439 8.1 438 8.1–6 436

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636 8.1–7 435, 436 8.3 438 8.8–13 435, 436 9.1–10.18 436 9.1–14 436 9.6 438 9.7 438 9.9 438 9.11–12 438 9.15 435, 436 9.15–22 438 9.23–8 435 9.24–8 435 10.1 435, 438, 439 10.1–7 435 10.10–11 438 10.11–12 435 10.12 437 10.14 435 10.15–16 436 10.19 438 10.19–22 436 10.19–25 433 10.23 432 10.24–5 432 10.26 433 10.28–31 436 10.29 438 10.32–4 432 10.32–9 433 11.1–40 434 11.2–3 435 11.4–39 435 11.10 282 11.13–14 432 11.23–18 436 11.26 95 12.1–2 95, 433 12.2 437, 438 12.3–10 433 12.5 432 12.12–17 433 12.15 433 12.16–17 433 12.21–4 436 12.22–4 433 12.24 438 12.27–9 433 13.1–3 434 13.1–16 432

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 636

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 13.4 434 13.5 434 13.7 434 13.8 434, 435 13.10–12 436 13.12 438 13.13 434 13.14 432 13.16 434 13.17 434 13.18–19 434 13.20 438 13.20–1 436 13.24 430 James 1.1 442, 445 1.2 450 1.3 445 1.12 286 1.16 450 1.19 450 1.25 442, 452 2.1 450 2.1–13 450 2.5 450 2.8 442 2.14 450 2.19 259 2.21–4 262 3.1 450 3.10 450 3.12 450 3.13–18 450 4.4 450 4.8 450 4.11 450 5.1–6 442, 450 5.4 381 5.7 450 5.9 450 5.10 450 5.12 450 5.15–20 507 5.16–17 520 5.19 450 1 Peter 1.1 457, 458, 459 1.2 457, 466

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

1.3 465 1.4 464, 465 1.4–5 457 1.5 466 1.5–7 463 1.6 457, 463 1.7 464 1.9 457 1.10–12 460 1.12 462, 464, 465 1.13 456 1.13–14 456 1.14 456, 459, 464, 466 1.15 457 1.17 457, 459, 466 1.18 456, 459, 464 1.18–19 462 1.19 488 1.22 457, 466 1.23 464, 466 1.24–5 459, 462 1.25 462 2.1 459 2.2 457, 464, 466 2.3 459, 462 2.4 462 2.5 462 2.5–7 467 2.6 459 2.6–8 462 2.7 459, 467 2.8 459, 462, 467 2.9 459, 470 2.10 460, 464 2.11 467 2.11–2 456, 457 2.13—3.7 469 2.17 466, 469 2.18 460, 46 2.18–3.6 469 2.19 456, 469 2.19–20 457, 469 2.20 469 2.20–1 469 2.21 460, 461, 465, 469 2.22 459, 460, 461 2.22–5 460, 469 2.23 461 2.24 461

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 637

637

2.25 461, 464 3.1 462, 470 3.1–2 468 3.1–7 467, 468 3.4 468 3.5 468 3.6 459, 466, 468 3.7 468 3.8 456, 466 3.9–12 469 3.9 461, 464 3.10–12 459 3.14–16 470 3.14–17 45 3.14 464 3.19 465 3.20 459 3.20–1 462 3.21 465 3.22 465 3.22–5 469 4.1 457, 469 4.1–4 456 4.2–3 464 4.3 457, 459 4.5 464 4.7 463, 464 4.12 461, 463, 467, 469 4.12–19 457, 463 4.16 192, 457, 469, 469, 470 4.16–17 463 4.17 458, 464, 466 4.18 459 5.1 457, 467 5.2 467 5.2–3 467 5.4 464 5.5 459 5.6 464 5.8 465, 467 5.9 458, 466, 467 5.9–10 463 5.10 457, 463, 464 5.10–11 471 5.12 466, 467 5.13 466, 467 2 Peter 1.1 473

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638

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

1.1–11 473 1.2 473 1.3 473 1.4 473 1.5–8 473 1.5–11 490 1.9 473 1.12–21 474 2.1 490 2.1–3 474 2.4–10 474 2.11–17 549 2.12 473, 488 2.13 487, 488 2.13–14 9, 474, 487 2.14 489, 490 3.3 518 3.3–10 490 3.10–14 265 3.14 488, 491 3.17–18 491 1 John 1.1 494 1.1–5 494, 495 1.3 493, 494, 495, 500 1.4 493 1.5 495 1.6 495 1.6–7 500 1.6–10 495 1.8 495 1.8–10 497, 506 1.9 506 1.10 495 2.1 493, 494 2.1–2 495 2.3 500, 505 2.3–11 495 2.4 496 2.5 500, 508, 509 2.6 494, 496, 500 2.6–10 509 2.7–8 493 2.8–10 507 2.9 496 2.10 494, 500, 508, 509 2.11 496 2.12–14 493, 496

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 638

2.13–14 504 2.14 500 2.15 496 2.15–6 502 2.15–22 502 2.15–27 496, 497 2.17 494, 503, 509 2.17–27 497 2.18 502 2.18–27 501 2.19 188, 496, 501, 502, 504 2.20 500 2.20–1 505 2.20–3 506 2.21 493 2.22–3 186, 507 2.22 502 2.23 497, 500, 504, 509 2.24 494, 500 2.26 493, 497, 504 2.27 500, 505 2.27–8 494 2.28–3.24 497 2.29 494, 500 3.1 500, 502 3.1–2 500 3.4 497 3.6 494, 497, 505, 507 3.6–10 502, 508, 509 3.7 504 3.8 497, 502, 503 3.8–10 503 3.9 494, 497, 500, 507 3.10 497, 502, 503, 508 3.10–15 509 3.11 508 3.13 502 3.14 500, 506, 508 3.14–15 504, 509 3.15 497 3.16 497, 505, 508, 509 3.16–17 507 3.16–18 497 3.17 497, 502, 509, 510 3.18 497, 509 3.19 505 3.23 508 3.24 494, 500, 509 3.25 509

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

4.1 188, 501, 502 4.1–3 502, 504 4.1–6 498, 499, 501, 502 4.2–3 504, 507 4.3 502 4.3–6 506 4.4 504 4.4–6 498, 503 4.5 502 4.6 500 4.7 494, 499, 500, 505, 508 4.9 500 4.11 508 4.12 508, 509 4.12–13 500 4.13 494, 500 4.15 506, 507 4.15–16 494, 500 4.17 500, 509 4.17–20 508 4.19 508 4.19–20 508 4.20 508, 509 4.20–1 499 4.21 508, 509 5.1 494, 500, 508 5.1–2 508 5.1–3 508, 509 5.4 494, 500 5.4–5 504 5.10 499 5.11 500 5.11–2 500 5.11–3 500 5.12 499, 504 5.13 494 5.14–17 506 5.15 500, 505 5.16 500, 506 5.16–17 497, 506, 507 5.18 494, 500, 505, 507 5.19 500 5.20 500, 505 2 John 1 486 7 188 7–10 501

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 639

639

3 John 9 486 9–10 501 10 188 Jude 1 516, 517 3 517, 518, 519 4 517, 519, 524 5 511, 518, 520 6 520, 522 7 521, 522 8 519, 521, 522, 525 9 521 10 522, 525 11 522 12 487, 488, 489, 490, 519, 522, 524 12–13 523 14 523 14–15 523 16 519, 524 17 511, 517, 518 18–19 519 18 517, 518 20 517 20–1 518 21 517 24 518 Revelation 1.1 550 1.4 486 1.5 549 1.7 550 1.11–3.22 548 2.7 545 2.11 545 2.13 186, 550 2.14–15 188 2.17 545 2.20 188, 380 2.26 546 2.26–28 545 3.5 545 3.7 549 3.8 186 3.12 545 3.20 490

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640

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

3.21 545, 546 4.10–11 549 5.5 549 5.9–10 548 5.10 546 5.12–14 549 6.9 550 7.2–4 549 7.3 546 7.4 549 7.8–9 548 7.11–12 549 7.14 548, 549, 550 9.21 548 10.10 548 12.11 550 12.17 550 13.3 544 13.4 549 13.8 549 14.2 549 14.9–11 549 14.12–13 550 15.3 549 16.2 549 16.15 550 17–18 548 17.6 550 18 548 18.4 548 18.4–5 548 18.21 546 19.8 548 19.13–14 548 19.17–21 546 19.20 549 20.4–6 546 20.7–10 546 21–2 265, 548 21.3 546 21.8 548 21.12 549 21.22 550 21.24–6 546 21.27 548 22.2 546 22.7 550 22.10 550 22.14–15 176, 548, 548

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 640

22.15 548 22.16 549 3. Apocrypha Baruch 2.30–5 266 Bell and the Dragon 40–1 316 Judith 10.5 328 14.10 316 1 Maccabees 1.15 539 2.51 261 2.52 260 6.58–9 326 8.1–16 543 11.50 326 12.1–23 225 12.13–16 543 12.21 141 13.45 326 14.16–23 225 2 Maccabees 3.36 316 4.34 326 5.8–9 225 7.37 175 8.16 245 11.26 326 4 Maccabees 5.6 175 6.15 175 6.27 175 10.1 175 10.13 175 15.2–3 175 15.8 175 15.25–8 175 Sirach 10.19 536 10.24 536

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

16.8 521 36.1–9 544 36.11–17 267 44.19–21 265 44.20 260, 261 Tobit 13.11 268 13.11–14 267 14.5–7 267 14.6 268 Wisdom of Solomon 18.4 268 4. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Abraham 543 2 Baruch 529, 543 14.13 265 26.1–30.5 266 36.1–40.4 266 41.1–6 544 51.3 265 53.1–76.5 266 72.2–6 267 1 Enoch 5.6–7 265 10.21 544 10.21–11.2 267 37–71 266, 529 46 437 48 437 48.4–5 267 90.19 544 90.30 267 90.33 141 105.1 268 2 Enoch 69–72 437 4 Ezra 529, 543 6.25–8 267 6.55–9 265 7.25–44 266 8.56–8 544

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 641

641

12.31–4 266 13.25–50 266 Joseph and Aseneth 7.1 327 8.9 297 12–13 316 20.5–8 327 Jubilees 1.7–29 297 1.21–4 266 1.23–9 265 4.26 265 7.20–1 316 17.3 265 17.18 260 18.16 261 19.21–5 265 20.5–6 521 22 265 22.14–15 265 22.16 327 22.27–30 265 23.11–32 297 32.18–19 265 32.19 267 Letter of Aristeas 128–38 316 139–42 536 139–140 538 148 316 Psalms of Solomon 2.1–2 543 4.29 257 6.9 257 8.33–4 257 9.19 257 11.9 257 17–18 266 17.11–18 543 17.24 544 17.29–35 267 17.51 257 Sibylline Oracles 3.195 268

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642

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

3.547–9 316 3.556–72 267 3.616 544 3.670–2 544 3.710–23 267 3.710–20 544 3.757–75 267 3.772 544 Testament of Asher 7.1 521 7.3 544

13.24–5 266 14.3 266 14.8–13 266 16.7–15 266 1QM [War Scroll] 13.1 339 1QS [Rule of the Community] 1.16–2.25 266 6.13–15 544

Testament of Benjamin 9.2 544 10.3–11 267 11.1–3 544

CD [Cairo Genizah copy of the Damascus Document] 3.10–20 266 4.7–12 544 14.4–6 544

Testament of Gad 4.7 342 7.2 544

1Q28a [1QSa; Rule of the Congregation] 1.18 339 2.11–12 478

Testament of Judah 24.4–6 267 25.5 267

1Q28b [1QSb; Rule of the Blessings] 4.27 268

Testament of Levi 8.14 544 14.3–4 268 18.2–9 267 Testament of Naphtali 3.4–5 521 8.2–4 544 8.3–4 267 Testament of Simeon 7.2 544 Testament of Zebulun 9.8 267 5. Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Texts 1QH [Thanksgiving Hymns] 5.11 266 7.6–35 266 9.32 266 12.12 266

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 642

1Q34 2.5–7 266 4Q161 3.11–22 266 4Q174 [4QFlor; Florilegium] 1 266 4Q252 [4QCommGen A; Commentary on Genesis A] 5.1–6 266 4Q285 208, 266 4Q504 [4QDibHama; Words of the Luminaries] 5.6–16 266 4Q521 [4QMessAp; Messianic Apocalypse] 4Q521 204 11Q13 [11QMelch; Melchizedek] 11Q13 437

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

6. Philo In Flaccum [Against Flaccus] 45–6 73 Legum allegoriae [Allegorical Interpretation] 3.79–82 437 De Vita Mosis [On the Life of Moses] 1.241–2 141 1.55 265 Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum [Questions and Answers on Genesis] 2.2 316 De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini [On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel] 68b 341 De Somniis [On Dreams] 1.175 265 De specialibus legibus [On the Special Laws] 1.70 541 7. Josephus Contra Apionem [Against Apion] 2.179–81 313 2.204 538 2.282 316 Antiquitates judaicae [Jewish Antiquities] 1.10–12 437 1.122–39 141 1.194–5 521 1.220–1 141 4.203–4 541 12.225–6 141 12.225–8 225 12.226 141 13.43–5 225 13.163–70 225 14.185–267 128 15.373–9 243 15.403 135 16.162–5 128

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 643

643

16.311 243 20.34–48 316, 321 20.38–9 316 20.98 135 20.102 135 20.105–17 135 20.200 328 20.251 134 Bellum judaicum [Jewish War] 2.118–19 313 3.351 243 4.596 243 5.58–60 243 5.563 243 7.154 545 8. Mishnah, Talmud, Targumic Texts and Other Rabbinic Works Avodah Zarah 3b 544 4.6 327, 329 5.5 328, 329 Pesiqta Rabbati 161a 544 Sanhedrin 13.2 544 Targum Isaiah 25.6–10 267 9. Apostolic Fathers Didache 9.1–5 483 10.1 483 Diognetus 2.6 192 2.10 192 5.1–10 359 6.5 192 Ignatius, To the Ephesians 1.2 173 3.1 173

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644

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

Ignatius, To the Magnesians 4.1 192 10.1–3 352 Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 6.1 352 Ignatius, To the Romans 3.3 350, 352 4.2 173 5.1 173 Ignatius, To the Trallians 5.2 173 Martyrdom of Polycarp 1.1 364 1.2 348 2.1 347 2.2 363 2.2–3 363 3.1 363 3.2 348, 350, 353, 363 5.1 348, 363 7.1 348 7.2 348 8.2 348 9.1. 362, 363 9.2 348, 350, 362 9.2–3 349 9.3 185, 363 10.1 349, 350 10.1–2 349 12.1 185, 192 12.2 359 12.2–3 350 14.3 362 15.1 363 16.1 349, 350, 362, 363 17.1 349 17.3 361 18.2–3 349, 351 19.1 347, 364 19.2 361 Polycarp, To the Philippians 3.1 358 3.2 359 3.3. 362

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5.2 347, 360, 363 5.2–3 360 5.3 364 7.1 359, 364 8.1–2 360 8.2 360, 361, 362 9.1 359 9.1–2 362 9.2 361 10.2 360 10.14 360 11.1–4 363 12.2 362 12.3 364 17.1 364 10. Nag Hammadi Codices, New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha II, 2 Gospel of Thomas 12 516 Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 9 174 10 174 13 174 Martyrdom of Carpus 1 174 3 174 5 174 23 174 24 174 Martyrdom of Justin 3.4 174 4.1 174 4.3 174 4.4 174 4.6 174 4.9 174 Martyrdom of Perpetua 3.2 174 6.4 174 Martyrs of Lyons 1.11 174

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

1.45–6 175 1.48 175

De officiis 1.18.6 274

11. Classical and Ancient Christian Writings

Paradoxa Stoicorum 36–7 273

Acts of the Divine Augustus [Res gestae divi Augusti] 35 544

Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 1.1.8 417

Aristides Orations 23.65 279 Aristotle Poetics 6 112 13 113 Politics 1.1253 338 2.4.1 279 Rhetoric 1.2.13 139 2.22.3 139 3.18.2 139 3.18.4 139 Athenaeus Deipnosophists 4.154 279 10.426 479 15.675B 479 15.676C 479 Augustine The City of God 5.12 274 Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 10.3.7 273 Cicero Pro Archia 28–9 274 De finibus 5.22.64 274

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 645

645

De republica 5.9 274 De senectute 13.45 480 Tusculanae disputationes 2.24.58 274 Dio Chrysostom Celaenis Phrygiae 41 273 De regno 1.22 243 Rhodiaca 17 274 20 274 Diodorus Siculus 5.28 279 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities [Antiquitates romanae] 2.24.2–2.25.5 338 18.1.1 313 Epictetus Diatribai 3.7.19–28 338 3.22.71–2 338 Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 9.20 141 9.29.1–3 141 Hierocles On Duties 4.28.21 338

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646

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

Hippolytus Traditio apostolica 4 483

Ovid Amores 1.4.1–70 489

Horace Satirae 1.6.23–24 273

Petronius Satyricon 75 422

Isocrates Ad Demonicum 1–15 341

Plato Symposium 76A 479 174E 478 175A 477 175C 476 223B–223D 481

Justin First Apology 67 208, 483 Dialogue with Trypho 8 208 9.1 208 10.3 208 15 208 Justinian Digest 21.1.17.5 410 Juvenal Satirae 1.103 487 5 277 14.103–4 536 Lucian Symposium 8–9 485 13 278 129 477 Marcus Aurelius Meditationes 3.6–7 363 Martial Epigrams 1.20 277 3.49 277 3.60 277 4.85 277 6.11 277 10.49 277 11.31.4–7 276

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Leges 3.690 337 Plautus Miles gloriosus 349–51 273 Stichus 279–80 273 Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia 2.15.116 64 4.10–33 64 4.12.85 64 5.4.29–30 64 14.5 422 14.28 481 Pliny the Elder Epistulae 2.6 277, 284 Plutarch Aristides 21.5–6 357 Lycurgus 11 277 Moralia 140D 338 149A-B 278 226E–227A 277 479D 344

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources

479F 344 491B 344 528E 489 642F 279 643–4 279

De pallio 4 363

Quaestionum convivialum libri IX 612E 480 612F–613A 478 612F 480 615–616B 480 615D 476 712F–713A 479 734A 276

De pudicitia 9–1 507

Septem sapientium convivium 150–5 478 Seneca De Constantia 5.1 273 De clementia 1.1.2 544 Statius Silvae 4.3.128–9 544 Strabo Geographica 5.4.153–9 64 Suetonius Divus Claudius 25 422 Vespasianus 12 544 Tacitus Annales 13.51 544 Historiae 5.5.1 536 Tertullian De corona militis 11 363

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647

De praescriptione haereticorum 32.3 358

Adversus Valentinianos 4.1 363 6.1 363 11.1–2 363 Ulpian Digest 37.14–15 422 38.1 422 Valerius Maximus 8.14.5 273 Virgil Aeneid 1.116–28 218 1.254–82 544 1.33 211 1.342–3 217 1.379 217 1.494–5 217 1.837–41 219 2.65 70 2.206–9 221 2.216–28 221 2.955–61 219 3.15 218 3.78–80 219 3.789–91 220 4.455 219 4.473–4 219 6.111–12 219 6.822 220 6.851–3 544 6.985–90 218 6.1064–72 218 7.1 219 7.338–41 221 8.166 221 8.169–72 221 9.970–3 220

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648 10.688–707 222 11.1–5 219 11.163–81 221 12.834–7 215 12.1055–65 212 12.1191–201 223 Xenophon Anabasis 263 478 Symposium 1.8 476, 480 1.20 478 2.1 479, 480 9.2 480 9.2–7 480

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Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Sources 12. Inscriptions CII 1.683a 422 1.684 423 CIL 1.2.1210 273 6.2.6309 273 6.22355A 422 CIRB 71 422 73 423 ILS 8283 422 8341 422 8365 422

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Index of Modern Authors Aageson, J. W. 390–1, 400 Aasgaard, R. 334, 336, 342–3 Abrams, D. 16, 22, 32, 70, 83, 99, 120, 130, 165, 167, 170, 239, 355–6, 361, 409, 420 Achtemeier, P. J. 195, 459, 466–7 Adams, E. 48, 52, 411 Aguilar, M. I. 538 Ahmad, A. 126, 128 Aitken, E. B. 427 Alexander, L. 198 Allison, D. C. 150, 154, 202, 204 Allport, F. H. 16, 28 Allport, G. W. 28, 378 Álvarez Cineira, D. 348 Amiot, C. E. 25 Anderson, C. D. 523 Andrews, S. B. 353 Argote, L. 102 Arzt-Grabner, P. 343, 421 Asano, A. 6, 318 Ascough, R. S. 482 Ashburn-Nardo, L. 72 Ashmore, R. D. 96–7 Assmann, J. 110, 120, 512–13 Attridge, H. W. 430, 498 Augoustinos, M. 505 Aune, D. E. 529 Ayan Calvo, J. J. 359 Bachmann, M. 141–3 Bailey, D. P. 140 Baker, C. A. 3, 46, 93, 95, 105–6, 191–2, 196, 209, 213, 235, 458, 462, 511 Bakhtin, M. 124–5 Balch, D. L. 338, 343, 467, 476 Banks, M. 68, 314–15 Bar-Ilan, M. 193 Bar-Tal, D. 34–6, 159, 496, 500 Barclay, J. M. G. 137, 249, 410, 421–2, 444, 452–3, 469, 541

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 649

Barentsen, J. 7, 398–9, 404, 406 Barnes, T. D. 176 Barrett, C. K. 303, 358 Bartchy, S. S. 334–6, 341, 417, 419, 422 Barth, F. 66–7, 312–13, 315, 369, 532–3, 537 Barth, M. 422 Barton, C. A. 273 Barton, S. C. 47, 49, 51, 336 Bauckham, R. 196, 444, 451, 488 Bauman-Martin, B. 459 Baumgarten, A. I. 534 Beasley-Murray, G. 201, 484 Bechtler, S. R. 456 Beck, S. R. 30 Beker, J. C. 389–91, 401, 403, 405 Bell, C. M. 2, 80–3, 85, 87–8, 90–1, 382, 539 Bennett, M. 22, 26 Bennington, G. 124 Bentley, G. C. 537 Ben-Yehuda, N. 375 Berg, E. 123 Berger, P. L. 532–5 Berlinerblau, J. 81 Berry, J. W. 537 Best, E. 181 Bettencourt, B. A. 71, 216, 218 Betz, H. D. 132, 137, 318, 323 Bhabha, H. K. 127, 129, 133, 143, 443, 547 Billig, M. 14, 106 Binder, D. D. 422–3 Bird, J. G. 468 Bird, M. F. 370 Blain, N. 73 Blanke, H. 422 Blanton, W. 81 Blomberg, C. 480 Blue, B. B. 275, 281 Bochner, A. P. 168 Bock, D. L. 201

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650

Index of Modern Authors

Bockmuehl, M. 209, 317, 322–3, 327–8, 330, 357 Bonz, M. P. 213 Booth, W. 125 Boring, M. E. 455–6 Bornhäuser, K. 354 Bornkamm, G. 318 Bourdieu, P. 85 Boyarin, D. 133–4, 136–7, 174, 210 Boyer, P. 79 Bradshaw, P. F. 483 Braund, D. 127 Brawley, R. L. 3, 139, 142 Braziel, J. E. 452 Brett, M. G. 312, 315 Brewer, M. B. 28, 72, 377–8, 382, 385–6, 409, 413–14, 495, 536 Brosend, W. 517–18 Brown, R. 28, 30, 32, 70, 108, 160, 162, 292, 354, 378, 536 Brown, R. E. 185, 188, 370, 377, 428, 501, 506–7 Bruce, F. F. 323 Bryan, T. A. 415 Buell, D. K. 68, 529 Bultmann, R. 501 Burchard, C. 327 Burdsey, D. 73 Burke, P. J. 42, 121–2, 377 Burnyeat, M. F. 195 Burton, E. D. W. 132, 324–5 Byron, R. 313 Cairns, E. 69, 73 Callan, T. 455 Campbell, B. L. 464 Campbell, D. A. 259 Campbell, D. T. 28 Campbell, W. S. 55, 129, 132–3, 140–1, 352, 415 Carcopino, J. 277–8 Carey, H. J. 207 Carr, D. 37 Carroll, J. T. 546 Carter, W. 4, 105, 241, 243–4, 249–50, 486, 544–6, 548 Casey, M. 194 Castelli, E. A. 173 Césaire, A. 8, 442, 449–50

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 650

Chalcraft, D. J. 41–2, 55 Chatman, S. B. 113 Chivallon, C. 441 Chow, J. K. 48 Christensen, P. N. 166 Cialdini, R. 32, 166 Ciampa, R. E. 136 Cinnirella, M. 38, 94–7, 111–12, 115, 290 Clarke, A. D. 2, 47, 49, 52, 274, 418 Clément, R. 168 Clements, R. E. 268 Cobb, L. S. 173, 349, 351, 358, 362–3 Cohen, A. 314 Cohen, A. P. 313, 331, 369 Cohen, S. J. D. 316, 534, 539 Coleman, K. M. 351 Coleman, S. 62 Collins, A. Y. 185, 549 Collins, P. 62 Condor, S. 37, 111, 290–2 Connerton, P. 191 Conzelmann, H. 320, 325 Corley, K. E. 278, 478, 482, 485 Coser, L. A. 67, 198 Coté, P. 168 Coughlan, R. M. 540 Courtés, J. 130 Cranford, L. L. 149 Cranford, M. 255 Crisp, R. J. 30 Crites, S. 115 Cromhout, M. 9, 64–5, 529, 537, 539–40, 545 Crook, Z. A. 156, 520 Crosby, M. 486 Crossan, J. D. 194, 475, 544, 548 Crossley, J. G. 81 Cushman, F. 498 Czaplicka, J. 110 D’Arms, J. H. 477 Dahl, N. 131, 138 Damgaard, F. 110–11 Darko, D. K. 6, 345, 412 Das, A. A. 136, 140, 262 Davids, P. H. 442, 445, 450, 463–4, 467–8, 473, 488 Davies, W. D. 154, 202, 204 De Vos, G. 537

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Index of Modern Authors

Deaux, K. 73, 416 Dehandschutter, B. 173, 348 Delehaye, H. 348 DeMaris, R. E. 80, 380 DeNeui, M. 47, 48 Denzey, N. 540 Deschamp, J.-C. 122 Dessau, H. 276 Dix, G. 483 Dodd, C. H. 501 Doise, W. 122 Donaghue, N. 505 Donaldson, T. L. 122, 141, 255–6 Dovidio, J. F. 29–32, 108, 211, 378 Dryden, J. de Wall 468 Dubis, M. 456, 463 Dufoix, S. 441, 446–7 Duling, D. C. 512, 529, 537–40, 543 Dunn, J. D. G. 135, 141–2, 255, 280, 325, 327, 337, 367, 370, 379, 383, 418, 420, 538 Eastman, S. 138 Ebel, E. 358 Edwards, D. 168, 498 Ehrensperger, K. 53, 55, 415, 418 Ehrman, B. D. 429–30 Eisenbaum, P. 140–1 Ellemers, N. 392 Eller, J. D. 540 Elliott, J. H. 47–8, 55, 63, 455, 461, 467, 516–19, 522–3, 525, 528 Elliott, N. 486 Elliott, S. S. 411, 417–18 Ellis, C. 168 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 281–2, 284 Epstein, A. L. 315 Eriksson, A. 281 Esler, P. F. xv, 2–3, 22, 48, 52–3, 55–6, 64, 69, 93–4, 106, 147, 150, 152, 155–6, 229, 237–8, 240, 254, 258–9, 269, 276, 311–12, 326–30, 334, 354, 392, 416, 528–9, 532–3, 537, 539, 543, 545 Fanon, F. 8, 442 Fee, G. D. 281–2, 286 Feldmeier, R. 464, 470 Feldtkeller, A. 316

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651

Fenton, S. 537, 540 Fentress, J. 513 Ferguson, E. 194, 349 Festinger, L. 106 Fetterley, J. 117 Finn, T. M. 428 Finney, M. 5, 50–1, 273, 275, 280, 290 Fitzgerald, J. T. 354 Fitzmyer, J. A. 204, 319 Flusser, D. 543 Foddy, M. 423 Foley, J. M. 197, 202, 206 Forbes, C. 305 Forbes, D. 73 France, R. T. 202 Fredriksen, P. 134, 250, 410, 429 Fulkerson, M. M. 124 Fuller, M. E. 266 Fusi, A. 195 Gaertner, S. L. 29–32, 101, 108, 211, 248, 413, 415, 419 Gager, J. G. 256 Galinsky, K. 215 Gamble, H. Y. 193–4 Garland, D. E. 162 Garnsey, P. 358 Gaston, L. 256 Gaventa, B. R. 319 Gavrilov, A. K. 195 Geertz, C. 66, 68, 312, 314, 540–1 Georgi, D. 306, 353 Gibson, E. L. 422 Giles, H. 168 Gilliard, F. D. 195 Gilroy, P. 453 Glancy, J. A. 419, 546 Glick, P. S. 378 Goguel, M. 185 Good, J. M. M. 148 Goode, E. 375 Goodman, M. 313, 316 Gorman, F. H. Jr. 80 Gorman, M. J. 307 Green, G. L. 488–90 Green, J. B. 200–1, 228, 461–3, 465 Green, M. 487 Greimas, A. J. 130 Griffith, T. 495, 502

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652

Index of Modern Authors

Gruen, E. S. 448, 452, 536 Guelich, R. A. 149–51 Gundry, R. H. 202 Gunther, J. J. 303, 381 Gutrod, W. 329 Haenchen, H. 317, 328 Hahn, F. 136 Hains, S. C. 401 Hakola, R. 237, 240 Halbwachs, M. 37, 110, 198, 513 Hall, J. M. 64–5, 540–1 Hall, N. R. 30 Hamilton, D. 139 Hansen, B. 407 Hanson, K. C. 522, 548 Hardin, J. K. 127 Hare, D. R. A. 157, 159–61 Harland, P. A. 46, 249, 274, 275, 279, 334–6, 482, 487, 548 von Harnack, A. 321 Harrill, J. A. 48, 410, 414, 417, 422 Harris, M. J. 289, 297, 303, 307, 416, 419 Harris, W. V. 192–4, 206 Harrison, J. R. 48, 50 Harrison, P. N. 343 Hartin, P. J. 442, 445 Hartog, P. 352, 359, 364 Haslam, S. A. 34, 108, 236, 239, 392–3, 400–1, 413, 415–16, 420, 424 Hays, R. B. 200, 260, 281, 352 Heidegger, M. 125 Helfield, M. W. 528 Helkama, K. 31 Hellerman, J. H. 45 Hengel, M. 316, 318, 328 Heppen, J. 96 Hewstone, M. 28, 30, 69, 505 Hezser, C. 193 Hill, C. C. 134 Hochman, B. 113–14 Hoehner, H. W. 340 Hofius, O. 267, 280–2, 284 Hogan, R. 425 Hogg, M. 4, 13, 16, 22, 27–8, 30–3, 70–1, 83, 99, 109, 120, 165–8, 170, 235, 238–40, 248–51, 355–6, 361, 377, 393, 401, 423, 461, 507, 509 Hohman, Z. P. 109, 161

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Holland, D. C. 347, 350 Holloway, P. A. 463 Holmberg, B. 47, 49, 52–3, 235, 391, 400 Holmes, M. W. 352, 364 Hooker, M. D. 361–2 Hopkins, K. 351 Hopkins, N. 23, 25, 38, 393, 400 Horbury, W. 542 Hornsey, M. J. 4, 30–1, 44–5, 235–6, 238–40, 248–51 Horrell, D. G. 48, 52–5, 57, 90, 275, 280, 290, 307, 334–7, 354, 469, 470 Horsley, R. A. 135, 194, 311 Howe, B. 464 Howell, T. D. 150 Hubbard, M. V. 296–7 Hughes, E. C. 66–7 Hume, D. 124 Hunter, J. A. 503 Hurtado, L. W. 173, 185 Hutchinson, J. 315 Hynes, W. J. 41 van Iersel, B. M. F. 181–2, 185 Irwin-Zarecka, I. 191–2 Iser, W. 114, 372 Jackson, T. R. 296 Jacobs, J. S. 374 Jaffee, M. S. 194, 196–7, 199 James, H. 113 Jeal, R. R. 369 Jeffers, J. S. 477, 482 Jeffrey, D. L. 228 Jenkins, R. 51–2, 63–5, 67–8, 72, 86, 91, 192, 313, 349–50, 372, 532, 542 Jensen, M. 352 Jeremias, J. 176, 284, 483 Jewett, R. 134–5, 261, 481–2 Jipp, J. W. 253, 262 Johnson, A. P. 67 Johnson, L. T. 370, 394, 442, 445, 450–1 Johnson, M. 500 Johnson Hodge, C. E. 256, 265, 271, 529 Jones, S. 73, 447–8, 537 de Jonge, H. J. 483 Joseph, A. P. 465 Joshel, S. R. 273, 422 Judge, E. A. 48–9, 51–2, 55, 304–5

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Index of Modern Authors

Juel, D. 187, 205 Juslin, M. 31 Jussim, L. J. 96 Kahl, B. 119, 126–9, 136 Kartzow, M. B. 368, 374, 383 Kallgren, C. 32, 166 Kane, A. A. 102 Käsemann, E. 254, 259 Katzoff, R. 225 Kaufmann, J.-C. 3, 119, 121–2, 130 Kee, H. C. 48 Keesmaat, S. C. 265, 371, 385 Keith, C. 194, 200, 202, 206 Keith, P. 449–50 Kelber, W. H. 181, 201–2, 204 Kermode, F. 187 Kerr, N. L. 407, 418 Kessler, R. 50 Kessler, T. 378 Kim, S. Y. 135 Kincaid, D. L. 168 Kirk, A. 110, 514–15, 538 Kirkman, M. 115 Kistemaker, S. 488 Klein, G. 185 Klein, M. 445 Klink, A. 292 Kloppenborg, J. S. 482 Knight, G. W. 394, 396 Knobe, J. 498 Koch, K. 150 Koester, C. R. 427 Kraemer, R. S. 327 Kreitzer, L. J. 418 Kruse, C. G. 507 Kuecker, A. 2, 4, 46, 61, 101, 224, 227 Kümmel, W. G. 311 Lakoff, G. 500 Lampe, P. 282, 419 Lane Fox, R. 176 Lapinski, M. K. 168 Larsen, L. 477 László, J. 97–8, 115–16 LaVerdiere, E. 483 Lawrence, L. J. 47 Le Donne, A. 512 Le Poire, B. 168

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653

Lee, J. W. 131–2 Lee, P. 550 Lendon, J. E. 273–4, 358 Leppä, O. 370 Leslie, A. M. 505 Levinskaya, I. A. 422–3 Lewis, A. 139 Lietzmann, H. 482 Lieu, J. 105, 174, 238, 350–1, 494, 497–8, 502, 505 Lightfoot, J. B. 320, 322 Lim, K. Y. 5, 293, 301–2, 307–8 Lincoln, A. 337, 375 Lipponen, J. 31 Liu, J. H. 97–8, 115–16 Lockett, D. 442, 444–5, 450–2 Lohse, E. 371 Longenecker, B. W. 229, 306 Lord, R. G. 399 Luckmann, T. 532, 534, 535 Lüdemann, G. 319 Luz, U. 150 Lyons, G. 319 Lyotard, J.-F. 124 MacDonald, M. Y. 55, 79, 87–8, 90, 333, 367, 369–72, 375, 377, 380–2, 391 Mack, B. L. 193 MacMullen, R. 273, 275–6, 350 Maier, H. O. 361, 363–4 Malbon, E. S. 181 Malherbe, A. J. 277, 338 Malina, B. J. 48, 52, 54, 121, 152, 405, 521, 528, 535, 537, 541–2, 547, 459 Mannur, A. 452 Manson, T. W. 176 Marchal, J. A. 418 Marcus, J. 177, 182–3, 185, 188 Marohl, M. J. 2, 93, 426, 430 Marques, J. M. 508 Marshall, I. H. 201–2, 284, 304, 394, 396, 483 Marshall, P. 305 Martin, D. B. 47, 57, 420 Martin, R. A. 516–19, 522–3, 525 Martin, R. P. 180, 357, 442 Martin T. W. 128, 134, 464 Martin, W. 113 Martyn, J. L. 131–2, 269

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654

Index of Modern Authors

Mason, I. 401 Mason, S. 528 Mathewson, D. 546 Matthews, S. 174 Mattingly, D. J. 544, 547 Mauss, M. 52 May, A. S. 48 Maynard-Reid, P. U. 450 McAdams, D. P. 97 McGowan, A. 156, 280, 483–4 McGready, W. O. 482 McIver, R. K. 110–11 McNeil, B. 286 McVann, M. S. 541 Mead, G. H. 106, 192 Meecham, H. G. 360 Meeks, W. A. 49, 53–4, 276, 283, 334–5, 339, 380, 391, 470, 482 Memmi, A. 442 Merz, A. 398–9 Metzger, B. M. 343 Middleton, P. 3, 173, 175–6 Miles, G. B. 213, 216 Miller, J. C. 529, 540 Miller, N. 124 Miller, S. 185 Misztal, B. A. 198–9 Mitchell, S. 126–8, 133, 138 Monteith, M. J. 72 Moo, D. J. 260, 297, 370, 416, 422 Moore, C. A. 176 Morton Braund, S. 214 Moss, C. R. 173–4, 176 Moxnes, H. 462 Muir, S. C. 8, 426, 428 Mullin, B. A. 71 Mummendey, A. 31, 211, 292, 378 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 281, 328, 353 Mussner, F. 322 Musurillo, H. 174 Nanos, M. D. 128, 131, 133–4, 136, 138 Nash, M. 327 Nasrallah, L. S. 368 Naumann, T. 141 Neufeld, D. 493–5, 497, 502 Neyrey, J. H. 52, 121, 154, 474, 511, 516–17, 520, 522–4, 535, 537, 541 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 442

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Nguyen, V. H. T. 47, 51–2 Nichols, S. 498 Nicklas, T. 417 Niditch, S. 194 Niebuhr, K.-W. 129–30, 132, 137 Nietzsche, F. 124 Nobbs, A. 343 Nock, A. D. 427–9 Noels, K. A. 168 Nolland, J. 152, 202 Nora, P. 199 Nordling, J. G. 410, 421 Nyland, A. 368 Oakes, P. 355–6, 359–60 Oakes, P. J. 496 Oakman, D. E. 548 O’Brien, P. T. 367, 421 Olick, J. K. 111, 511–13, 515 Olsson, B. 422–3, 501 Orevillo-Montenegro, M. 368, 385 Osborne, G. R. 548, 550 Osburn, C. D. 523 Osiek, C. 343, 417 Painter, J. 501 Paschke, B. A. 406 Pearce, S. 73, 447–8 Penner, T. C. 368 Pereira, Á. 357 Perkins, J. 173–4, 358, 361 Perkins, P. 337, 502 Petersen, N. R. 423 Pfoh, E. 45 Pilch, J. J. 80, 528 Piper, R. A. 237–8, 240 Platow, M. J. 34, 108, 413 du Plessis, I. J. 421–2 Pogoloff, S. M. 281 Postmes, T. 495, 509 Potter, J. 498 Punt, J. 347, 364 Pyper, H. S. 202 Radcliffe, T. 181 Rajak, T. 249 Rappaport, R. A. 80 Rapske, B. M. 410 Reed, J. L. 475, 544, 548

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Index of Modern Authors

Reed, J. T. 393 Reicher, S. 23, 25, 34, 38, 238–9, 393, 400, 495, 509 Reid, S. A. 27, 32–3, 165–8, 393 Renfrew, C. 79, 84 Reno, R. 32, 166 Rhoads, D. 114 Ricoeur, P. 105–6, 114, 116–17, 124–5, 130–2, 139 Riffaterre, M. 139 Rimal, R. N. 168 Ritter, B. A. 399 Rivera, J. E. 109, 461 Robbins, J. 111, 512 Roberts, R. H. 148 Roccas, S. 378 Rodríguez, R. 3, 194, 199, 201–6, 208 Rohrbaugh, R. L. 259, 541 Roitto, R. 9, 498–9, 506–7, 509 Roller, M. B. 481 Roosens, E. 537 Rosell Nebreda, S. 6, 352–5, 364 Rosell, S. 545 Rudman, L. A. 378 Rudolph, D. J. 415, 421 Runesson, A. 422–3 Rutherford, J. 547 Saeed, A. 73 Saguy, T. 31–2 Said, E. W. 547 Salevao, I. 426 Salzman, M. R. 363 Sanders, E. P. 60, 262, 270, 325, 327–8, 532 Sanders, J. T. 347, 364–5 Sani, F. 22, 26, 238–9 Savage, T. B. 290, 304 Schils, E. 66 Schlier, H. 324 Schliesser, B. 253, 261, 264 Schlosser, J. 362 Schmidt, F. 533, 539 Schmidt, T. E. 47 Schmithals, W. 317, 322, 324, 328 Scholer, D. M. 507 Schottroff, L. 286 Schreiner, T. R. 489 Schürer, E. 193

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 655

655

Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 46, 56, 333, 337, 351, 368 Schutter, W. L. 460 Schwartz, B. 110–11, 514 Schwarzfuchs, S. R. 316 Schweizer, E. 150–1, 153 Schwemer, A. M. 328 Scott, G. 540–1 Scott, J. C. 123–4, 247, 486 Scroggs, R. A. 47 Sechrest, L. L. 421 Sedikides, C. 386 Segal, A. F. 316–18, 323, 326 Seitz, C. R. 268 Selwyn, E. G. 470 Seredio, R. G. 508 Serpe, R. T. 121–2 Shaver, K. G. 498 Shaw, B. D. 63 Shelton, J.-A. 489 Sherif, C. W. 15 Sherif, M. 15, 17, 106 Sherman, N. 341 Sherman, S. 139 Sherwin-White, A. N. 348 Shils, E. 540 Shkul, M. A. I. 2, 6, 82, 87, 90, 93, 373–4, 376 Sibley, C. G. 98 Silberman, N. A. 135 Silva, M. 358 de Silva, D. A. 213, 426, 430, 516–18, 520, 523, 543, 548 Sim, D. C. 188 Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 498 Sjoberg, G. 355 Smith, A. D. 62, 315, 533, 535 Smith, D. E. 274, 276–9, 475–7, 480, 482–3, 487 Smith, E. R. 33, 109, 166, 378 Smith, J. Z. 364 Snodgrass, K. 347 Sokolovskii, S. 314 Spears, R. 495, 509 Spiro, M. E. 79 Standhartinger, A. 369–70 Stanley, C. D. 63 Stanton, G. 162 Stark, R. 354

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656

Index of Modern Authors

de Ste. Croix, G. E. M. 176, 348 Stegman, T. D. 307 Stein, R. H. 201 Stendahl, K. 60, 318 Stepp, P. L. 399 Still, T. D. 8, 416 Stock, B. 195–6 Stone, C. H. 30 Stowers, S. K. 256, 260, 262–3 Strachan, R. H. 297 Strecker, G. 150, 498 Streett, D. R. 501 Stryker, S. 121–2 Subramanian, J. S. 200, 205 Sugirtharajah, R. S. 53, 121, 124 Sumney, J. L. 303, 305, 367–70, 374, 377, 382–3 Sweet, J. 548, 550 Syed, Y. 214–16 Tajfel, H. 1–3, 13–23, 27–8, 35, 37, 43–4, 70, 99, 100, 106–7, 129, 148, 156, 158–62, 164–5, 209, 235–6, 258, 290–1, 377, 409, 411, 457, 469–70, 503, 535–6 Talbert, C. H. 151, 154, 194, 369–70 Tannehill, R. C. 181 Taussig, H. 476, 480, 482–4 Taylor, C. 125 Taylor, J. R. 502 Tellbe, M. 356 Thatcher, T. 192–4, 196, 206–7, 486 Theissen, G. 48, 53, 83, 85, 276–7, 280–3, 353, 391, 450, 535 Thiselton, A. C. 281, 283–4, 397 Thomas, R. 206 Thompson, J. W. 365 Thompson, M. M. 367 Thurén, L. 468 Tidball, D. 47 van Tilborg, S. 161 Tillman-Healy, L. 168 Tinsley, A. 368, 385 Trainor, M. F. 372–3 Trebilco, P. R. 249, 334, 336, 412 Triandis, H. C. 536 Trocmé, E. 181 Tsuji, M. 444–5 Tucker, J. B. 2, 7–8, 191, 274, 281, 290, 295–6, 407–8, 416, 421

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Turner, B. S. 80–1, 84 Turner, J. C. 1–3, 14, 16–17, 22–7, 33, 35, 44, 70, 72, 106–8, 119, 148, 158, 164–5, 167–9, 209, 235–6, 258, 290, 409, 411, 457, 469–70, 494, 502–4, 509, 536 Turner, V. W. 329 Tyson, J. B. 181 Validzic, A. 30, 108 Vander Stichele, C. 368 Vanhoozer, K. J. 57 Vaughan, G. M. 28 Verner, D. C. 391 Verseput, D. 444–6 Vivian, J. 30 Voils, C. I. 72 Volf, M. 470 Vos, G. 430 de Vos, C. S. 421 Vouga, F. 444 Wagner, J. R. 267 Walker, I. 505 Wallman, S. 67–8 Walsh, B. J. 371, 385 Walsh, J. J. 348 Watson, D. F. 455, 493 Watson, F. 147, 267 Webb, R. L. 518–24 Webb, N. 8 Weber, M. 66–7, 124 Weeden, T. J. 180 Welborn, L. L. 50–1 Wengst, K. 353 Wenzel, M. 31, 211 Westerholm, S. 371 Wetherell, M. S. 33, 167–8 White, L. M. 477 Whitehouse, H. 2, 80, 85, 89, 374–5, 381 Whitfield, B. J. 522–3 Whyte, J. 69 Wickham, C. 513 Wiedemann, T. E. J. 422 Wilcox, M. 181 Wilder, D. 96 Wilken, R. L. 350 Williams, G. 498 Williams, M. 464

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Index of Modern Authors

Williams, R. 9, 515, 522 Williams, T. B. 456, 460, 463, 469 Wilson, S. G. 428 Winter, B. W. 48, 51–2, 55, 275, 280–3, 290, 305, 357 Winter, S. C. 410 Wit, A. P. 407, 418 Witherington, B. 231, 277, 279–81, 356–7, 367–8, 370–1, 374, 385, 419, 455, 501 Wolter, M. 408, 414, 420–1, 423

9780567379542_txt_print.indd 657

657

Wright, N. T. 257, 379 Yarbrough, R. W. 507 Young, I. M. 123, 133 Zahn, D. T. 260, 324 Zanker, P. 356 Zerbe, G. 368, 385, 548 Zerubavel, E. 198 Zerubavel, Y. 191 Zoccali, C. 4, 259, 265, 269

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