RELIGION IN THE IMAGINED NEW TESTAMENT WORLD: MORE SOCIAL SCIENCE LENSES
Abstract
The task of New Testament interpretation entails reading sources with the use of comparative scenarios culled from the first century Mediterranean world and the interpreter’s contemporary world (Malina 1991). A basic set of scenarios for New Testament interpretation requires some sort of explicit consideration of the comparative ways in which people understood themselves and their living together with others. Living with others inevitably entailed a perception of how a person’s life was controlled by others and how to approach those others who controlled one’s life. Obviously this perception of being controlled and of connection to the one(s) who controlled is fundamental to the social institution of politics (or government) as well as religion. For religion is always rooted in analogies drawn from the social experience of being controlled and of connection to those who control, whether in a kinship or a political framework. The purpose of this essay is to obviate anachronistic assessments of religion in New Testament times by situating the institution of religion within the framework provided by the stages of social bonding.Downloads
Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
This is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors’ publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal webpage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: “This is an electronic version of an article published in Scriptura, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX–XXX”, DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://scriptura.journals.ac.za/pub) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University’s’ Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
