The Social World of the Bible

Question 1

What is the context of the social world of the bible?

Answer 1

Scholars, readers, believers were interested in revealing the world from which the Bible had emerged. They were trying to reconstruct the history and social context out of which the Bible arose in order to understand a foundational text for Western culture.

Question 2

What does the historical context range from?

Answer 2

• the early 2nd millennium to the end of the 1st millennium BCE
• the early 1st century CE (Christianity)

Question 3

How do you read the text to understand the social world of the Bible?

Answer 3

Reading text using historical sociology perspective.

Question 4

What was the old method to approaching the Bible? What method does the new approach to the Bible utilize?

Answer 4

Unlike earlier scholarships on the Bible, which rely on traditional, textual, philological, and historical studies, he new approach utilizes social disciplines as their method.

Question 5

What is the “sociological method”?

Answer 5

Provided the tools for reconstructing social systems of ancient Israel, which includes: functions, roles, institutions, customs, norms, judicial and religious institutions. Military and political structures, and the material aspect of culture.

Question 6

How does the “sociological” reading of the Bible reconstruct the past?

Answer 6

Created images of the past that are not necessarily the same as the theological reading of the scripture.

Question 7

What is the main purpose for using sociological (or anthropological) methods?

Answer 7

Is in order to expose the meaning of the texts in terms of the 1st Century Mediterranean culture (parallel with historical criticism).

Question 8

What were scholars able to draw a sharp distinction between in the process of the sociological method?

Answer 8

Between historical reconstruction and theological understanding of the Bible.

Question 9

What is the key problem which dominates all attempts to understand the social world of the Bible?

Answer 9

the relationship between texts and their social world.

Question 10

What is the problem with the theological reading of the texts?

Answer 10

• they can no longer be understood as a simple reflection of the earlier historical reality
• ## the texts rather portray a reality from a particular point of view at the time of the writers

Question 11

What has been instrumental in helping to uncover the social world of the Bible?

Answer 11

The appeal to social scientific models and the date

Question 12

What is important as an insight to understand what they choose to include/exclude, what audiences that they address, and what other possible construction of the past that they deny and thereby silence?

Answer 12

The texts

Question 13

What ist he problem with applicability and validity with the social world of the Bible?

Answer 13

There re disagreements among scholars as to the applicability and validity of modern social science to reconstruct the social world of the Bible.

Question 14

Describe the social world of the New Testament in terms of the society of the time?

Answer 14

The people of the 1st century lived in a pre-industrial, or agrarian societies. In contrast, today we live primarily in industrial societies.

Question 15

In agrarian societies, what percent of the population were rural, vs the percent in who are urban in industrial societies?

Answer 15

• 90%

- 90%

Question 16

What is the estimated population of the entire Roman Empire? How many Jews lived in Israel? What was the largest city in Israel?

Answer 16

• 50 million
• 700 000
• Jerusalem

Question 17

True or False: Christians were the majority in the 1st Century?

Answer 17

False. They were the minority.

Question 18

What was the basic social unit in Israel during the New testament times?

Answer 18

the family

Question 19

How were children view in New Testament times?

Answer 19

Children were a blessing from God and bareness a curse, but children had no voice in the larger social world.

Question 20

How was marriage view in NT times?

Answer 20

• men were expected to marry, and it was assumed something wrong if they didn’t
• arranged marriages were still practiced; polygamy was practiced, but only a few men could afford it.

Question 21

In NT times, was was the centre for trade and conversation?

Answer 21

the market[lace

Question 22

True or False: privacy was almost impossible in ancient cities and people deliberately spent most of they waking hours outside of their houses.

Answer 22

true

Question 23

What are Roman baths? What did they include?

Answer 23

• the roman baths were a cross between a modern country club and a community recreation centre
• they included hot tubs, exercise areas, libraries, and chapels

Question 24

Who were the poor in NT times? Who were rich? Percents of people in each category? (5 categories)

Answer 24

• at the top of the social stratification were monarch and/or aristocratic families (1-2%)
• tax gathers, police, scribes, priests, etc. (5-7%)
• the bulk of the population (i.e., 75%) consisted of merchants, artisans, almost all of whom lacked world goods; and struggling farmers and fishermen, some of whom owned more and some less land.
• most of Jesus’ disciples seem to have come from the poor majority
• below these are beggars, prostitutes, criminals, who lived in the edges outside the cities (i.e., 15%)

Question 25

What were slaves in NT times?

Answer 25

• a social class that cut across all economic distinctions

- most slaves were prisoners of war, born-slaves, or sold themselves into slavery (to pay debt).

Question 26

What was the concept of love in NT times?

Answer 26

• in the social context of the NT, love was characterized and entered on actions rather than emotions
• to love someone was to be attached and bonded to someone, and in such societies, we did not love someone if our actions did not reflect it.
• in our individualist Western societies today, love is typically held to refer to positive inner emotion and feelings towards persons and objects.