Edwin Judge, Wayne Meeks, and Social-Scientific

20 Edwin Judge, Wayne Meeks, and Social-Scientific Criticism James D. Dvorak

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Introduction

ocial-scientific criticism has become an increasingly important methodology in the exegetical task.1 There are several reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that scholars have come to understand that meanings of texts—biblical or otherwise—are inextricably bound together with the social and cultural contexts in which they were produced.2 Although there are various implementations of socialscientific criticism,3 a key methodological feature that binds them into a composite, useful criticism is the explicit use of models informed by contemporary theories of the social sciences for the express purpose of providing an interpretation of a biblical text.4 1. This is evidenced by the growing body of and references to work produced by members of the Context Group. For information about the Context Group, see Esler, “Context Group Project,” and the group’s Web site at http://www.contextgroup.org. On social-scientific criticism generally, see Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism; Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s Social-Scientific Criticism.” On the growing ubiquity of social-scientific criticism, see the expansive bibliographies in Elliott, What Is Social Scientific Criticism, 138–74, and Esler, “Social-Scientific Approaches,” 337–38. 2. See Halliday, “Context of Situation,” 11–12. Contemporary social-scientific approaches rightly view texts as meaningful social discourse, an idea that assumes a shared system of signification (Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic, 123). To determine what a text meant, then, requires the interpreter to know as well as possible, not only the historical context, but also the social and cultural context in which the text was constructed (see Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s Social-Scientific Criticism,” 264–65; Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 50; Malina, New Testament World, 1–2). 3. See Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 18–20; Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s SocialScientific Criticism,” 254–56. 4. See Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 20. On potential (or real) weaknesses, see Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s Social-Scientific Criticism,” 277–78; Barton, “Social-Scientific Criticism,” 280–81; Milbank, Theology and Social Theory. For a defense, see Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 9–16.

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However, not all works labeled “social” or “sociological” are exercises in socialscientific criticism as defined here. Elliott notes, for example, that some works are investigations of social realities or facts (e.g., groups, institutions, etc.) for the purpose of illustrating certain social features of ancient society, but with no real concern for analyzing and explaining those features in social-scientific fashion.5 Others go further by integrating social, economic, political, and religious phenomena to reconstruct the social history of a particular period, movement, or group, but do so with a conceptual framework that is more historical than social-scientific.6 Works like these, although exhibiting a “sociological imagination”7 to a greater or lesser degree, provide more of a social description than sociological explanation of the social data found in the New Testament documents.8 Works on either side of this distinction have much to offer, and those thought of as socially descriptive have in many ways served as the foundation upon which socialscientific criticism has been built. With this in mind, the purpose of this chapter is to highlight the work of two scholars—Edwin Judge and Wayne Meeks—who exemplify work from the social history/description and social-scientific approaches respectively. To accomplish this task, I will provide a brief biographical sketch of each scholar, as well as critical descriptions and examples of their theoretical perspectives, models, and basic methodologies.

Biographical Sketches Edwin Arthur Judge was born January 27, 1928.9 He was educated at Canterbury University College, New Zealand. After a short period of teaching, he ventured to 5. Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 18. Examples include Jeremias’s Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus and Ferguson’s Backgrounds. 6. Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 19. An example would be Malherbe’s Social Aspects. See Malina, “Received View.” 7. Elliott, Home for the Homeless, 5, says, “Sociological imagination, according to [sociologist C. Wright] Mills, ‘enables its possessors to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.’ It is concerned with the intersections of biography and history. It attends to such issues as the structures of particular societies and the relation of their essential components, and the meaning of their peculiar features for group continuance and change; the specific place of societies within human history and their characteristic ways of history-making; the varieties of men and women within a society of a given period and the manner in which they are liberated or repressed, alienated or offered fellowship; the distinction and relation of ‘the personal troubles of milieu’ and the ‘public issues of social structure.’ ‘To be aware of the idea of social structure,’ Mills maintains, ‘and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieu. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination.’” 8. Gager, “Social Description and Sociological Explanation,” 175; Gager, “Shall We Marry Our Enemies,” 259. See also, Richter, “Social-Scientific Criticism,” 266–68. 9. This paragraph is dependent upon (1) Scholer, “Introduction,” xv–xvi; (2) Judge’s bio on the Australian Institute of Archaeology’s Web site (http://www.aiarch.org.au/bios_ejudge.htm); (3) information from the University of Sydney Web site (http://www.usyd.edu.au/senate/Judge.shtml).

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Dvorak—Edwin Judge, Wayne Meeks, and Social-Scientific Criticism

England where he completed the Classical Tripos at Kings College, Cambridge, graduating with first class honors. After leaving England, Judge was appointed Lecturer and Reader in History at Sydney University. In 1969, he became Professor of History at Macquarie University, Australia, a post he held until 1993. Judge is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Professorial Fellow in History at Macquarie University. He has a Doctor of Letters from Macquarie University, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and a member of the Order of Australia. Wayne A. Meeks was born January 8, 1932.10 In 1956, he earned a BD from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Texas, following which he studied for a year at Tübingen as a Fulbright scholar. He went on to earn his MA (1964) and PhD (1965) at Yale University. He has held teaching positions at many universities, including Dartmouth College (Instructor in Religion, 1964–65), Indiana University (Assistant and Associate Professor of Religious Studies, 1966–69), Yale University (Associate Professor, Professor, Professor Emeritus, 1969–99), Emory University (Visiting Distinguished Professor, 2004), and Williams College (Visiting Professor, 2005). Additionally, he has served on the board of directors of the American Academy of Religion (1974–77) and as president of the Society of Biblical Literature (1985).

Edwin A. Judge Contribution to Biblical Interpretation In 1909, Adolf Deissmann’s paradigm-defining tome Licht vom Osten was published,11 in which Deissmann brought together his interests in the realia of ancient places, their nonliterary texts, and the forms of Greek in use around the beginning of the Christian era.12 The book was not only influential with regard to the study of Greek language, lexicography, and epistolography, but also regarding the social location13 of the early Christians.14 Based on the study of ancient papyri alongside the New Testament (not to mention the unstated assumption that a correlation exists between social class and literary culture),15 Deissmann maintained that the early Christian groups were primarily made up of people from lower working classes.16 This captured the attention of Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky, who, in Deissmann’s words, understood primitive 10. This paragraph relies on Meeks’s Curriculum Vitae, available online at http://pantheon.yale. edu/~wmeeks/Meeks%20CV.html. 11. ET: Deissmann, Light. 12. Horsley, “Deissmann,” 72. 13. On the difficulty of, yet necessity for, clearly defining “social class,” “social status,” and the more recent “social location,” see Rohrbaugh, “Methodological Considerations,” and “Social Location of Thought.” See also Malina, New Testament World, 90. 14. See Deissmann, Light, 252–392. 15. See Malherbe, Social Aspects, 32. 16. See Deissmann, Light, 8–11, 284, 466; also Horsley, “Deissmann,” 73; Malherbe, Social Aspects, 31–35; Meeks, First Urban Christians, 51–53.

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Christianity as a “movement for the emancipation of the proletariat, accompanied by a tendency to communism.”17 In 1960, however, Judge challenged the conclusions of scholars like Deissmann and Kautsky, claiming that they had arrived at an incorrect view of the social location of the early Christians due to a failure to thoroughly test their interpretive models for historical validity.18 In Judge’s view, the result was an anachronistic projection of the scholars’ own social locations onto the early Christian groups.19 He wrote: So long as the nature of Christian social precept remains a living issue, it will be difficult to separate from it the question of the social identity of those who originally formulated its principles. A creed that is deemed to have revolutionary implications ought, it is assumed, to have been the product of social discontent. This assumption was invested with a specious air of fact by Deissmann’s much publicized “discovery” of the common man of antiquity in the papyrus documents; he was, to Deissmann’s intense satisfaction, a creature of plain and solid virtue; and he offered a shining contrast with the vicious sophistication of the aristocracy. That Christianity was the achievement of this noble proletariat has become a commonplace of modern Christian rhetoric. Led by working men (Was not Jesus a carpenter and Paul a tentmaker?) a small band, honest but humble (Were not many of them slaves?), fought for the right against the corruption of imperial Rome, and they triumphed.20

According to Judge, avoiding this kind of anachronistic reading requires scholars to employ an approach that gives primacy to the study of the social world of the early Christians. This method must ask what the patterns of contemporary society were, and how the constituency of the Christian groups was related to them. . . . We need to know not only who they were, and what relation they had as a group to the social structure of their own communities, but what they existed for as a group, what activities they engaged in, and what their contemporaries would have made of them.21

17. Deissmann, Light, 467. See Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity. See also Malherbe, Social Aspects, 31 n. 7, where he notes that other scholars, including Dibelius (Urchristentum und Kultur, 20–21), although opposed to Kautsky’s Marxist view, agreed about the social status of the earliest Christians. Deissmann, however, disapproved of Kautsky’s view saying that it “underrates quite considerably the effects of the creative personality of Jesus and of St. Paul” (Light, 467). 18. Judge, “Social Identity,” 127–30. 19. See Judge, “Social Pattern,” 2; Judge, “Cultural Conformity and Innovation,” 157–60; also Judge, “Early Christians as a Scholastic Community I,” 4. 20. Judge, “Early Christians as a Scholastic Community I,” 4. 21. Ibid., 8. Cf. Malherbe, Social Aspects, 45.

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In other words, any method attempting to provide a satisfactory description of the lives and writings of the early Christians must thoroughly investigate the social milieu in which they lived and wrote, since there is no such thing as “contextless” meaning.22 At this point, however, a “notorious difficulty”23 arises regarding the social data to be studied: how does one deal with the fact that Christianity has both Jewish and Greco-Roman backgrounds? Although Judge clearly demonstrates in his work that Jewish social institutions should not be neglected,24 he argues that primary attention should be given to the study of Greco-Roman social institutions.25 In support of this claim, he rightly observes that the New Testament itself is the product of a social shift from the rural Galilean origins of Christianity to the cosmopolitan Hellenistic cities of the eastern Mediterranean where Christianity flourished.26 This is demonstrated at least in part by the fact that the writers of the New Testament were mainly Jewish Christians “of Palestinian associations” whose primary audiences were “Greek-speaking members of Hellenistic communities.”27 Even the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels are not his teachings tout court; rather, they are his teachings “as collated and formulated [by the Gospel writers] . . . for the information of religious societies in Hellenistic cities.”28 Thus, both the writers and the readers were firmly situated in Greco-Roman society and culture, making it the primary social context to investigate.

Social Description in Action The vast majority of Judge’s work focuses on “putting Paul in his place,”29 that is, interpreting Paul, his world, his behavior, and his writings in light of the social and cultural milieu in which he lived.30 For example, in a number of articles31 Judge discusses various Pauline texts in light of the pervasive social institution of amicitia and clientela (patronage and clientism).32 Here, following a brief description of this social institution, I will offer a number of interpretive insights from both non-Pauline and Pauline 22. Judge, “Social Pattern,” 3. 23. Ibid., 4. 24. Ibid., 5–10. 25. Ibid., 4–5. 26. Ibid., 4. Cf. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 10–11; Stambaugh and Balch, New Testament in Its Social Environment, 52–54. 27. Judge, “Social Pattern,” 4. 28. Ibid., 5. 29. See the rather tongue-in-cheek use of this phrase in Judge, “St. Paul and Classical Society,” 73. 30. Scholer, “Introduction,” xv. Of the eight essays collected by Scholer, six of them have Paul and his society as their primary subject matter. For a comprehensive bibliography of Judge’s work, see Scholer, “Comprehensive Bibliography.” 31. E.g., Judge, “Rank and Status”; “St. Paul as a Radical Critic”; “Cultural Conformity and Innovation.” 32. As described in, for example, Elliott, “Patronage and Clientism”; Malina, “Patron and Client”; Malina, New Testament World, 94–95; Esler, “Mediterranean Context,” 18–21.

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texts that sociological insight makes possible. These will serve as brief examples of Judge’s approach. Patronage and Clientism

The world of Paul and his churches had a rather clearly defined status system: there was a careful accounting of “relations between people and the appropriate ordering of them as between greater and lesser.”33 An outgrowth of such a status-conscious society is the social institution of patronage and clientism. Patron-client relations, or “friendships,”34 defy simple definition, but may be described in terms of a set of basic features: It is a personal relation of some duration entered into voluntarily by two or more persons of unequal status based on difference in social roles and access to power, and involves the reciprocal exchange of different kinds of “goods and services” of value to each partner. In this relationship of binding and longrange character designed to advance the interests of both partners, a “patron” is one who uses his/her influences to protect and assist some other person who becomes his/her “client,” who in return provides to this patron certain valued services. The influence of the patron can be enlisted to secure for the client a diversity of “goods” including food, financial aid, physical protection, career advancement and administrational posts, citizenship, equality in or freedom from taxation, the inviolability of person and property, support in legal cases, immunity from expenses of public service, help from the gods, and in the case of provincials, the status of socius or “friend of Rome” (proxenia). The client, in return, is obligated to enhance the prestige, reputation, and honor of his patron in public and private life, favor him with daily early-morning salutations, support his political campaigns, supply him with information, refuse to testify against him in the courts, and give constant public attestation and memorials of his patron’s benefactions, generosity, and virtue.35

In many ways, patron-client relations were modeled after the kinds of relations in the social institution of kinship.36 In fact, as Osiek and Balch point out, patronage and

33. Judge, “St. Paul as a Radical Critic,” 105. Cf. Malina, New Testament World, 21–57, 90; Esler, “Mediterranean Context,” 16–18. 34. Judge, “Radical Critic,” 105; Garnsey and Saller, Roman Empire, 154–56; Moxnes, “PatronClient Relations,” 245. 35. Elliott, “Patronage and Clientism,” 42 (“Patronage and Clientage,” 148–49). Cf. Garnsey and Saller, Roman Empire, 148–59; Judge, “St. Paul as a Radical Critic,” 105–6; Ferguson, Backgrounds, 55–56; Moxnes, “Patron-Client Relations,” 242–46; Osiek and Balch, Families, 48–54. 36. On kinship, see Malina, New Testament World, 82–83; Osiek and Balch, Families, 41–43; Hanson, “Kinship.” The reader should note, as Malina makes clear, that competitions for honor were not motivated by individualism (the notion that, for the most part, a person is motivated to achieve self-fulfillment in life through individual efforts).

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clientism was primarily a form of fictive kinship, in which familial loyalties were applied to others not related by blood, law, or some other traditional bond.37 Patronage and Clientism in the New Testament

It is not surprising to see this social institution reflected in the language of the New Testament.38 For example, in Matt 11:19, Jesus cites two reasons why people were rejecting both John and himself. The accusation leveled39 against him employs the language of patronage and clientism: “Look, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος φάγος καὶ οἰνοπότης, τελωνῶν φίλος καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν). This indicates that, at least in part, the rejection of Jesus was based on the fact that he had entered into patron-client relations with tax collectors and sinners, whereby he used his influence to provide them with either tangible or symbolic “goods or services” in exchange for increased honor and notoriety both for himself and for his heavenly Patron40—a point completely neglected in many current commentaries.41 Another example is found in Acts 19 in the story of the Ephesian riot. After Demetrius had incited an angry mob (19:24–29), Paul wished to appear before the group (19:30a). Presumably, he wished to proclaim Jesus to the large crowd, but his entourage (“the disciples,” οἱ μαθηταί) would not permit him to do so (19:30b). Additionally, some number of Asiarchs42—local officials that had both status and rank43 in the community—“being friends with him” (ὄντες αὐτῷ φίλοι) begged him not to enter the theater (19:31). To interpret these φίλοι as mere acquaintances of Paul would be a 37. Osiek and Balch, Families, 54. Cf. Esler, “Mediterranean Context,” 18–19. 38. Any given text (language in use) will reflect the context of situation that prompted its instantiation, and “bits” of that situation will be encoded into the text. Influenced by Malinowski and Firth, Halliday identified three features of context that get encoded (his theory of register): field (what is going on); tenor (who is involved); and mode (how language is being used in the situation; see his “Context of Situation”). Halliday also points out that a text has to be interpreted against the broader context of culture: “Any actual context of situation, the particular configuration of field, tenor, and mode that has brought a text into being, is not just a random jumble of features but a totality—a package, so to speak, of things that typically go together in the culture. People do these things on these occasions and attach these meanings and values to them; this is what culture is” (Halliday, “Text, Context, and Learning,” 46). See also Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic, 65, 68–69; Lemke, Textual Politics, 9, 25–28, 31–36; Martin, English Text, 493–588; Malina, “Reading Theory.” 39. Whether or not it is a direct quote or an interpretation of any complaints heard is beside the point. 40. See Malina, “Patron and Client”; Neyrey, “God, Benefactor and Patron.” 41. The following commentaries, for example, neglect this point: Blomberg, Matthew; France, Matthew; Keener, Matthew; Morris, Matthew; D. L. Turner, Matthew; and, surprisingly, Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. 42. On the Asiarchs, see Kearsley, “Asiarchs.” 43. Again, status refers to one’s social position of influence; rank is a formally defined position in society. Judge notes that status tended to convert itself into rank, but one did not have to have rank in order to have prominent social status (Judge, “Rank and Status,” 139).

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misunderstanding; these unnamed Asiarchs were Paul’s patrons. Though it is unlikely they helped fund Paul’s Ephesian ministry, perhaps it was by their patronage that Paul was able to teach in the lecture hall of Tyrannus (19:9)44 or in Ephesus at all. Here, they had to take steps to persuade Paul not to enter the theater, not only to protect Paul from certain verbal and physical abuse (i.e., public shaming), but also to protect their own honor. Because they had a social contract with Paul, any loss of honor on his part would likely have led to a loss of honor on their part. Thus, it is likely that their own status preservation rather than a caring “personal relationship” with Paul was the motivation behind the Asiarchs’ plea that Paul not enter the theater—another point completely missing in many current commentaries.45 With regard to the Pauline corpus, Judge observes a striking lack of the technical terminology of friendship. It appears to him that Paul has replaced patron-client language with “a rich terminology of his own,”46 a terminology “deliberately drawn from the language of servitude and subordination, and not from the language of patronage or leadership or friendship in the patronal sense.”47 He interprets this to mean that Paul “clearly has no value to place upon patronal relations as such,”48 and that he may, in fact, have flouted this cultural institution.49 However, this interpretation is somewhat misleading. Indeed, Paul does draw on the language of servitude and subordination to describe both himself (e.g., Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, Rom. 1:1) and others in the church (e.g., Φοίβην . . . διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας, Rom. 16:1).50 He also obviously draws heavily upon the language of kinship to describe collegial relations, especially the language of siblinghood (e.g., ἀδελφοί, “brothers and sisters”).51 However, Paul’s penchant for such language does not necessarily indicate that he flouted the patronage institution. In fact, post-Jesus groups such as the Pauline communities were a type of fictive kin group shaped by the norms of the prevailing kinship institution, the institution which, as we have noted above, also shaped patronage and 44. Suggested by Witherington, Acts, 595. 45. The following commentaries neglect this point: Bruce, Acts; Marshall, Acts; Longenecker, Acts; and surprisingly, Malina and Pilch, Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Acts. Witherington, Acts, 595, raises the question, but does not discuss the possibilities or probabilities of this interpretation. Johnson, Acts of the Apostles, 349, speaks of the “niceties of obligation demanded by philoi in the Hellenistic world,” but he does not discuss it any further. 46. Judge, “St. Paul as a Radical Critic,” 106. 47. Ibid., 107. 48. Ibid., 106. 49. Judge says Paul “totally rejected” the importance of status, and he uses the lack of technical language of friendship in Paul’s writings as evidence for this opinion (ibid., 103). 50. Cf. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 85–94. 51. One finds ἀδελφός 14 times, ἀδελφοί 77 times, and ἀδελφή twice. Paul also occasionally drew upon terminology from other realms, such as the military (e.g., συστρατιώτης, Phil 2.25; Phlm 2), politics (e.g., συμπολῖται, Eph 2.19), and labor (e.g., συνεργοί, Rom 16.3, 9, 21; 2 Cor 8.23; Phil 2.25; 4.3; Col 4.11; 1 Thess 3.2; Phlm 1, 24). On the use of kinship language in Paul, see Hellerman, Ancient Church as Family, 92–126.

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clientism.52 In his letter to Philemon, Paul not only demonstrates an awareness of the patron-client institution, but specifically draws Philemon’s attention to it. This is borne out linguistically as he negotiates his relationship with Philemon.53 The language of patronage first surfaces in the letter to Philemon in a concessioncounter construction54 in vv. 8–9: “Although having55 great frankness of speech to command you to do what is proper, I appeal to you instead on the basis of love.” Sampley points out how in Paul’s day there was a direct connection between frankness of speech (παρρησίαν)56 and friendship, such that the former was imbued with meaning by the latter.57 He writes, “frank speech [is] delivered by a friend, and its aim is the friend’s improvement—and it can range in form from the harshest rebuke to what Philodemus, a first-century AD educator, moralist, and rhetorician, called ‘the gentlest of stings.’”58 Where one’s frankness of speech ranked on the scale of “harsh rebuke” to “light sting” depended upon the mixture of praise and blame.59 Attentive to this, Paul, not wanting to shame Philemon or rebuke him, praises Philemon in the thanksgiving section of the letter for having refreshed the hearts of the saints (v. 7). Following upon this, the concession in Phlm 8 construes both Paul and Philemon as being cognizant of the patronage institution. Further, it construes Philemon as having some expectation that Paul could and likely would make a command60 on the basis of their patron-client friendship.61 However, Paul counters this expectation by appealing to Philemon “on the basis of love,” thus building solidarity with Philemon.62 Even though Paul deliberately chooses to forego any social privileges wrapped up in 52. Malina, New Testament World, 214; Osiek and Balch, Families, 54. 53. Dvorak, “Persuasion or Manipulation.” 54. Concession-counter constructions are linguistic formulations that replace or supplant one proposition by providing a counter proposition. Counter propositions may be signaled grammatically by adversative conjunctions (e.g., δέ, ἀλλά) or, as in this case, a comparative adverb (μᾶλλον). See Martin and White, Language of Evaluation, 120–21; Dvorak, “Persuasion or Manipulation,” 9–10. 55. The participle ἔχων is concessive here (O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, 287; Moule, Idiom Book, 102; Porter, Idioms, 191). 56. On this translation of παρρησία rather than “boldness” or “confidence” (as in NRSV, NASV, NET, ESV) see LSJ and BDAG s.v.; and Sampley, “Paul and Frank Speech,” 293–94. 57. Sampley, “Paul and Frank Speech,” 294. See also Konstan, “Friendship,” 7–10. 58. Sampley, “Paul and Frank Speech,” 294; Philodemus, Lib., Col. VIIIb (for text and translation of Philodemus, see Konstan et al., Philodemus). Note also (as Sampley, 294, does) that in Paul’s day “friendship” operated most frequently between people of unequal status (and often unequal rank). See also Konstan, “Friendship,” 9. 59. Philodemus, Lib. Frg. 58. See Sampley, “Paul and Frank Speech,” 296. 60. This is the interpersonal effect of concession-counter formulations (see Martin and White, Language of Evaluation, 121). 61. I follow deSilva (Introduction, 671–73) who sees Paul as assuming the role of patron in this relationship—a point that becomes clearer in the second surfacing of patron-client language (see below). 62. See Wilson, “The Pragmatics of Politeness.”

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patronage, the concession statement makes it apparent that both he and, presumably, Philemon, are well aware of the institution of friendship. The second point at which friendship language occurs is at the conclusion of the letter’s body in vv. 17–20.63 These verses contain the crux of Paul’s recommendation regarding Onesimus, as the sudden appearance of imperatives suggests.64 Paul writes: Therefore, if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me. Now, if he has wronged you in any way or owes you, charge it to me—I, Paul, write with my own hand: I will repay—lest I should mention to you that you owe even yourself to me. Yes, brother, I ought to have this benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.

The statement that Philemon owes himself to Paul becomes more than a passing comment if it is viewed in light of the institution of patronage. Although paraleptic,65 the point would not likely have been lost on Philemon. In a context focusing on debts, Paul ironically66 “reminds the addressee that it is he, Philemon, who is indebted to the apostle.”67 That Philemon’s debt is based on the institution of patronage is made clear by the language of benefit/favor in Paul’s claim, “I ought to have this benefit/favor from you in the Lord.”68 This claim is based on the presupposition that Paul benefitted Philemon in the past and that Philemon owes him in return—the kind of reciprocity expected in a patron-client relationship.

Summary for Edwin Judge Judge not only emphasized and exemplified the importance of accounting for social and cultural context in exegesis, he also reinvigorated scholarly interest in the description of the social world of the early Christians and its impact on the meaning of biblical texts. In this way, Judge is responsible at least in part for a paradigm shift in biblical studies that has resulted in the development of many context-oriented theories, models, and methods of interpretation such as what is now called “socialscientific criticism.”

63. White notes that in letters of recommendation it is not uncommon for body conclusions to “nail down” the writers’ requests (White, Light, 205). 64. No imperatives are used in the letter prior to v. 17. 65. See Robertson, Grammar, 1199. 66. See “What is Paralipsis?” 67. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, 301. Cf. deSilva, Introduction, 673. 68. This translates ὀναίμην, which is Aorist Middle Optative First Person Singular of ὀνίνομαι. The optative is volitive (Porter, Idioms, 60), urging Philemon toward a specific action, but the outcome is contingent.

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Wayne A. Meeks Contribution to Biblical Interpretation Although scholars like Judge leveled serious challenges against it, Deissmann’s view of the early Christians’ social level was generally accepted among biblical scholars of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, discussion and debate about the matter continued. In the 1960s and 70s there began a resurgence of interest in the social world of the New Testament that continues into the present. Gerd Theissen is generally considered to be largely responsible for this revival, with the 1973 publication of his “Wanderradikalismus: Literatursoziologische Aspekte der Überlieferung von Worten Jesu im Urchristentum.”69 Following Theissen was the American scholar John Gager, who in 1975 published his Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity, which introduced to the English-speaking world the potential benefits of marrying70 biblical interpretation and the social sciences. Whereas Judge demonstrated an obvious sociological imagination in his work as a social historian, these two scholars were among the first to bring “a self-consciously sociological perspective to bear on the early church as well as a range of useful concepts for examining and ordering the material.”71 Following in their footsteps, Wayne Meeks provided a significant contribution to New Testament studies with the publication of his The First Urban Christians.72 It must first be determined whether or not it is appropriate to claim that Meeks practiced social-scientific criticism. He describes himself as a social historian and “social anthropologist”73 whose goal, similar to that of Judge, was to describe—as opposed to explain74—in as much detail as possible, the social forms, social environment, and customary cultural assumptions embedded in that environment, as well as the subculture that developed among the Pauline groups of Jesus-followers.75 Yet, unlike Judge, he argued that a social historian “cannot afford to ignore the theories that guide social scientists,” and that these theories are necessary “both to construct interpretation and to criticize constructions.”76 He does not claim to adopt a unified, 69. ET: Theissen, “Itinerant Radicalism.” See also Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 21. 70. See Gager, “Shall We Marry Our Enemies.” 71. Elliott, What Is Social-Scientific Criticism, 20, 25–26. 72. See also Meeks, “Social Context.” 73. See Meeks, First Urban Christians, 2, 6. 74. It appears Meeks makes this distinction in an effort to avoid the criticism that employing social-scientific models inevitably leads the interpreter to “infer what must have happened and the conditions that must have obtained on the basis of certain assumed regularities in human behavior” (ibid., 5). Yet, Meeks does, albeit tentatively, move beyond mere social description into “sociological explanation” (on the difference between social description and sociological explanation, see Gager, “Shall We Marry Our Enemies,” 259). 75. Meeks, First Urban Christians, ix, xiii. Cf. also Meeks, “Social Context,” 266–67, where Meeks appears to cast himself in the role of a historian who is interested in providing social description. 76. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 6–7.

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comprehensive model77 of social behavior as a guide, but instead utilizes social-scientific theory “piecemeal, as needed, where it fits,”78 similar, he claims, to anthropologists in the field whose theories “only become relevant if and when they illuminate social reality.”79 As Elliott has noted, Meeks appears to want the relative “safety” of theory-free social description, while occasionally dipping into the explanatory powers of sociological research when it best suits his purpose (e.g., prosopography and reference group theory [see below]).80 Elliott appropriately comments elsewhere that simply referring to a work as “social description” does not mean that the work is more objective or less theory-laden. Researchers are always forced to select from the universe of phenomena, and that selection—whether explicitly stated or not, or even if explicitly denied or downplayed—reflects some theory the interpreter has in mind when attempting to interpret the so-called “raw data.”81 Elliott rightly concludes that “‘social description’ is no safe haven for exegetes and historians leary [sic] of theory or murky about models.”82 Thus, it is fair to say that Meeks has indeed practiced a form a social-scientific criticism. Even though Meeks is eclectic in his choice of models (“pragmatic” is the term he uses),83 those he opts to employ are not unconstrained or without theoretical backing. Although Meeks is to some extent influenced by (structural-) functionalism84— enough so that he would label himself a “moderate functionalist”85—it becomes clear as he describes the paradigm from which his research commences that he is guided by a symbolic or symbolic-interactionist conceptual model. This model interprets society as a system of symbols consisting of persons, things, and events “that have unique reality because of their perceived symbolic meaning.”86 Members of the shared social 77. Meeks actually uses the term “theory,” but appears to refer to “model.” This is an example of Elliot’s general complaint about confusion among biblical scholars caused by a non-standardized use of popular cross-disciplinary jargon (Elliott, “Social Scientific Criticism: Models,” 7). 78. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 6. See Elliott’s review of First Urban Christians for discussion of how this kind of approach limits the strength of Meeks’s argument. 79. Here Meeks quotes Victor Turner for support: “Although we take theories into the field with us, these become relevant only if and when they illuminate social reality. Moreover, we tend to find very frequently that it is not a theorist’s whole system which so illuminates, but his scattered ideas, his flashes of insight taken out of systemic context and applied to scattered data. . . . The intuitions, not the tissue of logic connecting them, are what tend to survive in the field experience” (Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, 23, quoted in First Urban Christians, 6). 80. Elliott, Review of First Urban Christians, 332. 81. Elliott, “Social-Scientific Criticism: Models,” 9. 82. Ibid. 83. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 6. 84. On structural-functionalism, see Malina, “Social Sciences,” 233, and Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s Social-Scientific Criticism,” 261; see also Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie.” 85. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 6–7 (citing Gellner, “Concepts and Society” for a defense of moderate functionalism). 86. Malina, “Social Sciences,” 235–36. See also Dvorak, “John H. Elliott’s Social-Scientific Criticism,” 261.

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system individually and collectively attach socially-agreed-upon values to these persons, things, and events and their symbolic meanings, and then form and organize their social reality/world and their individual and group identities on the basis of these values. Meeks puts it this way, “Society is viewed as a process, in which personal identity and social forms are mutually and continuously created by interactions that occur by means of symbols.”87 The symbolic or symbolic-interactionist framework maintains that, although not the only means of symbolic meaning-making and interaction, adult human language is the primary means of doing so.88 Therefore, texts—the “end products of languaging,” to borrow a phrase from Malina89—become extremely important primary sources of social “data.” In fact, Meeks sees religion itself as a “system of communication,” for which the primary sources for scholars of Christianity are the biblical texts and other Christian texts produced in the first two centuries.90 His interest lies not so much in what these texts say as in what these texts do.91 That is, Meeks’s view, like that of many contemporary sociolinguists,92 is that texts embody the symbolic meanings that are marshaled for the purposes of socialization and resocialization. These are the meanings that “affect some of the most fundamental relationships, values, perceptions of reality, and even structures of the self, which are acquired by a child growing up within the family.”93 They encapsulate the meanings people make “to approve or disapprove; to express belief, opinion, doubt; to include in the social group, or exclude from it; to ask and to answer; to express feelings; to achieve intimacy; to greet, chat up, take leave of ”94 and so on. To illustrate how symbolic-interactionism constrains the models and methods Meeks chooses, consider how he analyzes the social statuses of those constituting the Pauline churches.95 Meeks utilizes a model of social stratification that is defined by Barber.96 This model conceptualizes social status as a multidimensional phenomenon 87. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 6. 88. See Maynard and Peräkylä, “Language and Social Interaction;” Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic, 21. 89. Malina, Christian Origins, 4, writes: “texts are the end products of languaging, and languaging is a form of social interaction.” 90. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 7. See also Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 3. For his reasoning for calling Christianity a religion (contra Judge, who thinks doing so is anachronistic), see Meeks, First Urban Christians, 140–41. 91. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 7. 92. See, e.g., Halliday, “Language in a Social Perspective”; Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 62–100; Lemke, “Semantics and Social Values.” 93. Meeks, Moral World, 13. 94. Halliday, “Functional Basis,” 316. 95. See now Meeks, First Urban Christians, 51–73; Meeks, “Social Context.” 96. See Barber, “Stratification, Social, Introduction,” and the sources he cites. On social stratification in the Roman Empire, see Alföldy, Social History of Rome.

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to be analyzed in terms of a number of social factors: power,97 occupational prestige, income or wealth, education, religious and ritual purity, kin and fictive kin position, and local community status.98 When the model is deployed, the rankings of these features are correlated with one another. According to Barber, higher degrees of correlation indicate greater status consistency (also called “status congruence or status crystallization”) among members of the group, while lower degrees of correlation point to status inconsistency (also called “status incongruence”).99 Meeks scours the Pauline corpus (excluding the Pastorals) for references to people in the so-called “Pauline circle.” Of the sixty-five individuals named, Meeks determines that we have substantial enough data around only thirty of them to be able to determine anything meaningful about their social statuses.100 He subjects these thirty individuals to prosopographical101 analysis in an attempt to develop a snapshot of the general social statuses of those comprising the Pauline circle.102 In the end, he finds that “although the evidence is not abundant . . . the most active and prominent members of Paul’s circle (including Paul himself) are people of high status inconsistency (low status crystallization).”103 This conclusion, correlated with an ideology/theology formulated throughout the Pauline corpus, leads Meeks to postulate that Paul’s message of a Christ who had experienced a life marked by vast social contradictions (“Jesus the Messiah, Son of God, crucified for human sin but raised from the dead and exalted to reign with God in heaven”)104 was particularly attractive to people who themselves were caught up in a similar experience.

Social-Scientific Interpretation in Action Besides his seminal work on the social statuses of the apostle Paul and of the members of the urban churches he founded, Meeks is also highly regarded for his research into the moral world of the early Christians. He very carefully explains that he is not involved in “doing ethics,” which he defines as studying the logic of moral discourse 97. Meeks defines power generally as “the capacity for achieving goals in social systems” (First Urban Christians, 54). 98. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 54; Barber, “Stratification, Social, Introduction,” 292–94. Not all of these social dimensions have the same weight, and each dimension’s weight is determined by the people making the status evaluation. 99. Barber, “Stratification, Social, Introduction,” 294. 100. For a list and the logic behind narrowing to thirty people, see Meeks, First Urban Christians, 55–57. 101. For definitions and descriptions of prosopography, see the now classic article by Stone, “Prosopograpy.” See also Carney, “Prosopography”; Keats-Rohan, “Progress or Perversion?” My thanks to Mr. Chris Rosser, theological librarian at Oklahoma Christian University, for bringing the latter two sources to my attention. 102. Meeks, First Urban Christians, 55–72. 103. Ibid., 73. 104. Ibid., 191.

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and action or the logical structure of duty, virtue, etc. Rather, he claims to be describing that “dimension of life” that is a “pervasive and, often, only partly conscious set of value-laden dispositions, inclinations, attitudes, and habits.”105 Specifically, he narrows his focus to those processes by which new converts106 are assimilated into the group of believers as well as how long-time members of the group are continuously re-established. These processes, he says, are best analyzed and interpreted under the rubric of “resocialization.”107 This term refers, generally, to the reshaping of one’s life to a greater or lesser degree by the new group to which one now belongs—where “life” includes such meaningful symbols as “the most fundamental relationships, values, perceptions of reality, and even structures of the self ”108 that are acquired during a person’s primary socialization.109 Resocialization and Reference Groups Defined

From a symbolic-interactionist perspective, one of the most important elements of resocialization is redefining one’s identity so that it aligns with the identity of the new group.110 The kinds of meanings that are necessary for such an enterprise are reflected linguistically in discourses organized around the shared core values and key ordering principles of the group. These values and the behaviors they expect are evaluated positively and held up as virtuous and normative, while opposing value positions and their associated behaviors are evaluated negatively and held up as deviant (“sinful”) and, thus, to be avoided at all costs.111 In this way, a group establishes boundaries between itself and its social environment. One useful heuristic for describing the staking out of group boundaries for the sake of resocialization, and one that Meeks utilizes with both alacrity and fruition, is reference group theory.112 Following Shibutani, Meeks defines a reference group as “‘any collectivity, real or imagined, envied or despised, whose perspective is assumed113 by the actor,’ where perspective means ‘an ordered view of one’s world—what is taken 105. Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 4. See also Meeks, Moral World, 11–12. 106. Following Nock, Conversion, Meeks defines conversion as a simultaneous transfer of loyalty and sense of belonging from one set of social relations to another, quite different, set (Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 31). See also Meeks, “Circle of Reference,” 310; Taylor, “Social Nature of Conversion.” 107. Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 8; Meeks, Moral World, 13. 108. Meeks, Moral World, 13. 109. Ibid. 110. See Daly, “Toward a Formal Theory of Interactive Resocialization,” 398–400. See also Meeks, First Urban Christians, 86. This is not to say that resocialization processes completely efface the identity one develops during primary socialization (see Meeks, Moral World, 13). 111. See Dvorak, “Interpersonal Metafunction,” 50–52; Dvorak, “Persuasion or Manipulation,” 2–5. 112. According to Meeks, the term “reference group” was coined by Herbert Hyman (“The Psychology of Status”). See Meeks, “Circle of Reference,” 305. 113. I.e., taken up or adopted.

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for granted about the attributes of various objects, events, and human nature.’”114 Yet, it is not only groups that may be invoked as references. “It will also be important,” as Meeks rightly points out, “to keep in mind Hyman’s observation, in his original article, that there may be reference individuals who affect [people] in much the same way as reference groups—and these, too, may be ‘real or imagined, envied or despised.’”115 The fundamental presupposition of reference group theory is that an individual’s values, identity, attitudes, and conduct are shaped by the group(s) of which they are members. According to Kelly, there tend to be two basic ways in which a reference group/individual functions in this shaping process. On the one hand, the group/individual may play a normative role, affecting one’s motivations through the establishment and the enforcement of standards (i.e., “group norms”) by which the member is expected to live.116 On the other hand, the group/individual may fulfill a comparative function when the values, behaviors, attitudes, and other characteristics of the group itself are held up as standards against which a person or another group may be evaluated.117 In either case, reference groups/individuals become powerful tools of persuasion and social compliance in the hands of group leaders and moral entrepreneurs, especially in the dyadic society in which the early believers lived.118 In such a society, a “person would perceive himself [sic] as a distinctive whole set in relation to other such wholes and set within a given social and natural background . . . Although they are single beings, individual persons, and unique in their individual being, their psychological ego reference is primarily to some group.”119 As a result, a person’s conscience (συνείδησις), their sensitivity to right and wrong or to what is considered normal and deviant behavior, is defined by the group(s) to which they belong.120 In this sort of context, appeals to live by a particular set of “commonplace” values and to avoid those that are “out of the ordinary” were quite often communicated through the use of reference groups/individuals. Again, those reference groups/individuals whose values, character, and behavior are appraised negatively are, generally speaking, not to be imitated, while those whose values, character, and behavior are appraised positively are to be imitated. In this way, “behavioral controls are ‘social,’ deriving from a set of social structures to which all [in the group] are expected to adhere.”121 With this model in hand, Meeks’s method is to identify within the Pauline texts that he investigates what reference group(s) and/or individual(s) Paul assumes and 114. Meeks, “Circle of Reference,” 306; italics his. See Shibutani, “Reference Groups,” 105. 115. Meeks, “Circle of Reference,” 306. 116. Kelley, “Two Functions of Reference Groups,” 80. 117. Ibid., 81. 118. See Malina and Neyrey, “First-Century Personality.” 119. Ibid., 74, 75; italics theirs. 120. Ibid., 79. 121. Ibid.

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presents to be exemplars of the social values and norms by which the early Christian sects should pattern their own values and behaviors.122 In the demonstration of Meeks’s approach offered here, however, rather than simply restating the results of his work in the Pauline corpus, I will turn to the General Epistles, specifically 1 John, to illustrate how the method can be used. Resocialization and Reference Groups in the New Testament

The author of 1 John quite often utilizes reference groups and/or individuals as moral guides. A proliferation of such references is located in the stretch of text from 1 John 2:28 to 3:10. References introduced here include the Father (ὁ πατήρ), the world (ὁ κόσμος), the devil (ὁ διάβολος), and the putative readers themselves (through personal endings, second person pronominal references, and address formulas). Of particular interest, however, are the reference groups introduced with the formal pattern πᾶς ὁ + substantival participle, which are typically, although not always, followed by a noun in the accusative case. Additionally, there are three further reference individuals that are introduced with the slightly different construction ὁ + participle followed by a noun in the accusative. These references, along with a basic appraisal analysis of each, are presented in Table 1.123 Reference

Appraisal

πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τῆν δικαιοσύνην (“everyone doing justice,” 2:29)

positive

πᾶς ὁ ἔχων τὴν ἐλπίδα ταύτην (“everyone having this hope,” 3:3)

positive

πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (“everyone doing sin,” 3:4)

negative

πᾶς ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ μένων (“everyone remaining in him,” 3:6a)

positive

πᾶς ὁ ἁμαρτάνων (“everyone sinning.” 3:6b)

negative

ὁ ποιῶν τὴν δικαιοσύνην (“the person doing justice,” 3:7)

positive

ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (“the person doing sin,” 3:8)

negative

πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (“everyone born of God,” 3:9)

positive

πᾶς ὁ μὴ ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην (“everyone not doing justice,” 3:10)

negative

ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν (“the person not loving brother/sister,” 3:10)

negative

Table 1: Reference Groups/Individuals and the Appraisals They Communicate

Although I do not provide a fully detailed exegesis of these references here, I offer a number of observations that illuminate how these references appear to fulfill the social function of resocialization. First, the writer takes great pains to focus the intended readers’ attention on the reference groups. From a linguistic point of view, each of the 122. On the Christian communities as sects, see Meeks, Moral World, 97–108, esp. 98–99. 123. Cf. Brown, Epistles of John, 418–19.

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reference introductions is marked, which contributes to the overall prominence of this stretch of text. Several features point to this, including the following: • nine of the ten participles are present-tense forms, the tense-form of foregrounding; the tenth is a perfect tense-form, the tense of frontgrounding124 • each instance is Prime in their respective clauses125 • each instance is Theme—marked Themes, in fact—in their respective thematic units126 • The list of references is bookended by πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τῆν δικαιοσύνην and πᾶς ὁ μὴ ποιῶν τῆν δικαιοσύνην, which suggests a consistent Topic for the unit, namely “acting justly and not acting justly demonstrates whether or not a person is a child of God”127 Second, the writer’s use of substantival participles rather than nouns or substantivized adjectives (e.g., choosing πᾶς ὁ ἁμαρτάνων rather than, say, πάντες ἁμαρτολοί) to introduce the reference groups/individuals makes it clear that he wishes to compare and contrast on the basis of behavior. The specific behaviors mentioned, including and especially “doing justice,” “doing sin,” and “remaining in him,” must be interpreted in light of the context of the entire letter. About “doing justice,” Brown comments, “One can do justice only if one is acting according to a holiness that dwells within, even as ‘to do truth’ means to act according to the truth internal to the Christian, for whom Jesus is the truth.”128 I agree with Brown in principle, but he over-individualizes the matter. Taking the dyadic social context of the writer and putative readers into account, it is more appropriate to say that “doing justice” (and “to do truth” for that matter) means to act in accordance with a holiness that dwells within the group, namely the norms established in the teachings that both the writer and the readers “have heard and known from the beginning” (see 1:5; 2:7, 13, 14, 24 [2x]; 3:11). “Doing sin” describes those who behave as deviants, which becomes clear when the writer equates such behavior with ἀνομία (i.e., behaving with complete disregard for accepted regulations/norms).129 But deviant in what way? Brown rightly connects the behavior to “the secessionists” (i.e., those who split off from the group, see 2:19), who held opposing views of the person and work of Christ (4:13). Consequently, they were not fulfilling the obligations of Jesus-followers to obey God’s commands and to attend to even the 124. Porter, Idioms, 23. 125. On Prime and Subsequent analysis, see Dvorak, “Thematization,” 19–21; Dvorak and Walton, “Clause as Message,” 42–45. 126. On Theme and Rheme analysis, see Dvorak, “Thematization,” 21–23; Dvorak and Walton, “Clause as Message,” 45–51. 127. On Topic and Comment analysis, see Dvorak, “Thematization,” 23–24 and 28–29; Dvorak and Walton, “Clause as Message,” 51–58. 128. Brown, Epistles of John, 383. 129. See Louw and Nida, Greek–English Lexicon, 88.139.

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physical needs of fellow believers (2:4; 3:23).130 “Remaining in him,” therefore, is not likely intended to be a comment about a mystical “abiding presence of the Christian in God and Jesus” (contra Brown),131 but to remaining in the teaching about God and Jesus that the readers had previously accepted. Third, the alternating positive and negative appraisals of the reference groups/ individuals (see Table 1 above) function linguistically as the means of establishing the boundaries on the basis of which resocialization is to occur. The positive or negative appraisal values, in most instances, are betokened lexically (as opposed to grammaticalized) in the accusative complement to each participle (see Table 2).132 There is nothing particularly morally reprehensible about “doing” (ποιῶν), for example. However, a moral distinction can be made between doing justice (δικαιοσύνη) and doing sin (ἁμαρτία). Within the context of culture and the context of situation, δικαιοσύνη is a virtue and is, in fact, one characteristic that indicates that a person is “born of God” (2:29). On the opposite end of the spectrum is ἁμαρτία, which, as noted earlier, refers to behavior that is “out of bounds,” contrary to established norms for living. Positive

Negative

πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τῆν δικαιοσύνην (“everyone doing justice,” 2:29)

πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (“everyone doing sin,” 3:4)

πᾶς ὁ ἔχων τὴν ἐλπίδα ταύτην (“everyone having this hope,” 3:3)

πᾶς ὁ ἁμαρτάνων (“everyone sinning,” 3:6b)

πᾶς ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ μένων (“everyone remaining in him,” 3:6a)

ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (“the person doing sin,” 3:8)

ὁ ποιῶν τὴν δικαιοσύνην (“the person doing justice,” 3:7)

πᾶς ὁ μὴ ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην (“everyone not doing justice,” 3:10)

πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (“everyone born of God,” 3:9)

ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν (“the person not loving brother/sister,” 3:10)

Table 2: Reference Groups Sorted by Positive/Negative Appraisal

The whole point of the positive and negative reference groups/individuals here is to create, as Meeks would likely say, “a dichotomous view of life.”133 In this particular context, behaving like a child of God (3:1–2) is set over against behaving like a child of the devil (3:8). Those who are doing justice, who are having hope (of being transformed and seeing God on the day of his revelation), who are remaining in the teachings heard from the beginning, and who are not sinning are truly “born of God.” However, those who are doing sin, who are not doing justice, and who are not loving 130. Kruse, Letters of John, 15. 131. Brown, Epistles of John, 259, 403. 132. Two are grammaticalized: πᾶς ὁ μὴ ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην (“everyone not doing justice”) and ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν (“the one not loving the brother/sister”). 133. See Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 69.

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fellow believers are “of the devil.” Clearly, the moral boundary is marked on the basis of kinship and the cultural value of “like father, like children.”134 The resocialization tactic, then, is to force the readers to examine whether they are “living up to” the standards of the kin group of God, or whether their behavior aligns them more with the devil. Assuming that the readers do not want to be aligned with the devil, they will, presumably, (re-)adjust their behavior to align with the values of God such as acting justly and loving brother and sister.

Summary for Wayne Meeks Wayne Meeks was among the first to utilize sociological theory and models to aid in the description and explanation of biblical texts and phenomena. Doing so has continued to result in new research questions and fresh insights into such topics as the formation of the Pauline churches, conversion, and the development of Christian morality.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to provide a glimpse into the life and contributions of two important biblical scholars, Edwin Judge and Wayne Meeks. Obviously, space constraints render impossible the unabridged coverage that each of these scholars and their significant contributions deserve. I only hope to have represented fairly the theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches in which each has invested so heavily. Even if space were not a confining issue, it would be exceedingly challenging to communicate the significance of the researches offered by these men. As stated above, Edwin Judge was arguably the first scholar to take social issues and institutions into account when attempting to interpret the lives and social location of the early Christians. His method of social description still provides a fresh and fruitful—not to mention theoretically principled—approach to an issue that had grown somewhat stale under the domination of Deissmann’s conclusions on the matter. Wayne Meeks, rather interestingly, quite emphatically refers to his work (especially The First Urban Christians) as social description, though, as noted, in practice he advanced into the arena of social-scientific criticism insofar as he employed sociological theories and models to explain (not just describe) the formation and socialization of the urban Pauline churches. This continued as his modus operandi in his other studies as well, namely those on such topics as conversion and the development of Christian morality. In addition to describing and showcasing each scholar’s approach, I hope to have accomplished at least two further objectives. First, I hope the generally favorable review of these scholars’ approaches has drawn attention to the potential benefits of exegesis that is informed by disciplines such as sociology, cultural anthropology, and sociolinguistics. The scholarship of Judge and Meeks clearly demonstrates both the 134. See deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity, 211–12.ere

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validity and the potential of this kind of interpretive work. Second, I hope the critical observations of the models offered by these scholars suggest that much more work could be done in the area of social-scientific criticism (including social history/social description). One of the positive qualities of social-scientific criticism is that interpretive models are explicitly stated, tested, challenged, and adapted or discarded as necessary. Thus, there is always space for more scholars to enter this field and to offer significant contributions.

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