Social Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Pilch
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Models ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Social Scientific

The Hermeneutical Framework of Social-Scientific Criticism: How much can Evangelicals get involved?

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Kenneth Berding
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Models ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Social Scientific

How can an evangelical read and benefit from the writings of the socalled social-scientific critic? To what extent can an evangelical participate in this approach to interpreting the Bible? This article seeks answers to these questions. It lays out and evaluates the hermeneutical assumptions and methodology of some of the most prolific writers among those practicing social-scientific criticism. The conclusion is that there are a couple fundamental issues at stake, a few non-fundamental differences of degree, but many potential areas of benefit for the evangelical interpreter who wants to draw upon cultural-anthropological and social-scientific models in interpreting the Bible.

The Biblical World of Limited Good in Cultural, Social, and Technological Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Oakman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Social Scientific

Forty years ago, Bruce Malina led the way in applying social-scientific models and concepts to the study of the New Testament. He especially argued that respectful reading scenarios could be drawn from the cultural anthropology of the Mediterranean world, which offered the nearest contemporary analogy to biblical societies. His early work on limited good beliefs in biblical cultures is here extended to investigate links between cultural beliefs and conditions of agrarian economic production and to test several corollaries in the cases of the Jesus group in Palestine and Christ-followers in the Roman cities. It is argued that limited good beliefs in the New Testament are related to the actual conditions of the low-productive societies and social-stratification realities in which the Bible was inscribed.

Becoming Heretical: Affection and Ideology in Recruitment to Early Christianities

2011 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Eshleman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Models ◽  
The Road ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Ritual Practices

A growing consensus recognizes that the differences among Christians in the late second and early third centuries were neither as obvious nor as great as representatives of later orthodoxy would have us believe, and that what divided Christians in this period were not so much different beliefs and ideas as different hermeneutical and ritual practices. This article approaches the same conclusion from a different angle: from the perspective of potential recruits to Christianity, drawing on social-scientific models of conversion. For them, the peculiarities of doctrine and even of practice that obsess ancient polemicists and modern scholars were often largely invisible. While those features could take center stage for mature converts—and hence in retrospective accounts of conversion—they seem to have played little role in bringing people to specific versions of the faith in the first place. Rather, for many Christian recruits, the road to “orthodoxy” or “heresy” began not in ideological attraction, but in attachments to family, friends, and patrons already inside the group.

scholarly journals Hermeneutiese uitgangspunte in historiese-Jesus navorsing, Deel 1: Sosiaal-wetenskaplike vooronderstellings P A Geyser

2000 ◽  
Vol 56 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. A. Geyser
Keyword(s):  
Historical Jesus ◽  
The Third ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Social Conditioning ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Scientific

Hermeneutical premises in historical Jesus research, Part 1:social-scientific presuppositions. The aim of this article is to reflect on social-scientific theoies, models and methods in historical Jesus research. The discussion focuses on ive epistemological aspects. The first aspect is the social conditioning of the epistemological process. All knowledge is socially conditioned and perspectival in nature. The second aspect is the situational discourse of the interpreter and the object of investigation. The third aspect concerns the process of knowing where theories and models are discussed. Distinctions are drawn between paradigms, theories, models and methods. Heuristics is the fourth matter to be discussed. Three approaches are evaluated critically: deduction, induction and abduction. Fifthly, the world of the Bible will be considered as a pre-industrial and advanced agrarian society.

scholarly journals ’n Verruimde invalshoek tot die verlede? Die sosiaal-wetenskaplike benadering tot die Nuwe Testament

1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Joubert
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Social Scientific

A broadened perspective to the past? The social scientific approach to the New Testament This paper focuses on the possibilities that the social scientific approach holds out for the understanding of the New Testament. A review of the contributions of the sociological and the cultural anthropological approaches to the New Testament is undertaken before the social-scientific approach as a whole is evaluated. The use of social-scientific models, in particular, in the construction of the possible social contexts of the New Testament documents, is evaluated in terms of the ability of these contexts to establish ‘new’ systems of meaning.

scholarly journals Insults and face work in the Bible

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Pilch
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
Scientific Model ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Social Scientific

Insults play a key role in social interaction in the agonistic culture of the Middle East. This article constructs a social scientific model of social interaction regarding face work and insults and then filters the Gospel of Matthew through that model to highlight the prevalence of insult in the biblical world.

Toward a Dialogue with Historical Sociology

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Zunz
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Joint Enterprise

A Commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue should not mask the unwieldy complexity of “social science history,” this strange-sounding compound word invented to stress the equality of partners in their joint enterprise. Some of the benefits as well as the difficulties inherent in crossing disciplinary boundaries can be detected, from a historian’s point of view, in Theda Skocpol’s Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (1984) in which a group of young historical sociologists and two “sociologically acclimated social historians” reassess the work of major figures in the subfield of historical sociology. approached this book with considerable excitement, for at the time of its publication, I had just sent to press the manuscript of Reliving the Past (1985), a volume in which five historians of different regions of the world reappraise the use of social-scientific models in historical analysis, examine the ways in which these models are applicable to different geographic areas and take a fresh look at the place of social history within history. To add to my excitement, Charles Tilly, who contributed an essay on European social history to Reliving the Past, was one of the nine major figures whose work was examined in Vision and Method, a testament to the influential role this scholar has played in the two disciplines of sociology and history.

scholarly journals The ancient Mediterranean values of honour and shame as a hermeneutical procedure: A social-scientific criticism in an African perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Mahlangu
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Value System ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
African Context ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
People Today

The life of modern people evolves around economics and all that goes with it, such as labour, production, consumption and possessions. These things do not only motivate many peoples' behaviour, but claim most of their energy and time. Therefore, the organising principle of life of people today is instrumental mastery - the individual's ability to control his or her environment, personal and impersonal, to attain a qualityorientated success: wealth, ownership, "good looks" proper grades, and all countable indications of success. But, in the first century Mediterranean world, economics was not the be-all and end-all. People worked primarily to conserve their status and not to gather possessions. Thus, the pivotal values of the first century Mediterranean world was honour and shame. This article looks at how social-scientific critics have attempted to show how the understanding of these values would lead to an understanding and interpretation of the New Testament. In this article the author approaches this paradigm from an African perspective. It is shown that the African interacts and transacts with the New Testament with his/her own value system in which these values are also encountered. This, therefore, makes the reading of the Bible in an African context possible.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document