Not to be confused with social-scientific study are the numerous productions that offer a view of social circumstances and institutions without reference to the theoretical framework described above.
number of varieties of approaches to exposition of the biblical text, this is the series to consult.
In addition, the chapter on commentaries in the present work will introduce the student to numerous products of such approaches. For application of social-scientific analysis to a Gospel, see Halvor Moxnes, The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). See also the essays in The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, ed. Jerome H. Neyrey (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1991).
‘O In a review article in CBQ 41 (1979): 176-81, Bruce Malina lists some of Theissen’s publica- tions that underlie Sociology of Early Christianity; he also charges Theissen with falling short of in-depth sociological study. For further critique of Theissen, see J. H. Elliott, “Social-Scientific Criticism of the New Testament and Its Social World: More on Method and Models,” Semeia 35 (1986): l-33. Elliott’s well-screened bibliography includes references to basic works that antedate application of social-scientific models to biblical studies. It is, of course, the nature of scientific inquiry that one generation sows and another harvests, and each in turn becomes obsolete. The same issue of Semeia also contains articles that make use of social-scientific models in the study of Matthew, Mark, 1 Corinthians, and 3 John.
” See Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970; reprint, 1973); Cultural Bias, Occasional Paper No. 35 of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 1978).
Anthologies are a useful medium for gaining entry to ancient social worlds.
In New Testament Background: Selected Documents (London: SPCK, 1956, and reprints), C. K. Barrett samples a broad variety of ancient texts that reveal somewhat the intellectual and religious milieu in which the New Testament took shape. A sourcebook by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982), offers translations of selections from Greek and Roman authors, papyri, and epigraphs relating to women. As in this work, so also in Ross S. Kraemer’s Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Sourcebook on Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), woman’s history begins to leap out of texts frequently ignored by male writers concerned with social institutions. For original texts on the social positions of women, consult H. W. Pleket, Epigraphica, vol. 2: Texts on the Social History of the Greek World, Textus Minores 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1969). Documentation from Roman and Greek sources for many aspects of slavery is available in Thomas Wiedemann’s Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore, 1981). For “sacred texts of the mystery religions of the ancient Mediterranean world,” consult Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook (San Francisco: Harper,
1987).
Inscribed decrees, diplomatic and private correspondence, and selections from Greek and Roman authors on political and economic matters dominate a sourcebook by M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A selection of ancient sources in translation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Through these documents one can gain a clearer image of the kind of world that later on shaped the context within which Christianity learned to communicate. This author’s Benefactor:
Epigraphic Study of a Graeco-Roman Semantic Field (St. Louis: Clayton Publishing House, 1982) goes further and relates selected decrees and other inscribed documents to biblical documents, thereby demonstrating the important role played by the reciprocity-patronage system. Many other documents are included in Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, Roman Civilization, 2 ~01s. (New York: Harper, 1966).
In Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), Sarah B. Pomeroy embeds translations from Greek and Latin literature in her discussion of the fortunes of women in the ancient Mediterranean world. More theoretically oriented, with repeated emphasis on the theme of patriarchy, is Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza’s I n Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984). Status of children, wet-nursing, and theories of conception in the ancient Roman world are but a few of the topics dis- cussed in a collection of essays edited by Beryl Rawson, The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).
268 Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study Contextuality 2 6 9
Rawson’s two sets of bibliographies will amaze the student who might be tempted to underestimate the importance of the topic.
A number of books include within their covers a miscellany of topics. Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), offers a judicious sampling of primary and secondary sources on a broad range of topics relating to politics, religion, culture, and intellectual currents.
Robert M. Grant’s Gods and the One God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986) is the first of nine volumes in Library of Early Christianity, edited by Wayne A. Meeks. This series includes chapters on the New Testament in its social environment (John E. Stambaugh and David L. Balch) and early biblical interpretation (James L. Kugel and Rowan A. Greer); a sourcebook on moral exhortation (Abraham J. Malherbe); studies on letter writing in antiquity (Stanley K. Stowers); the moral world of the first Christians; a look down the pathway from the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Shaye J. D. Cohen); studies on the literary environment of the New Testament (David E. Aune);72 and Christology in context (M. de Jonge).
Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, ed. David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, and Wayne A. Meeks (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1990), collects the thoughts of numerous scholars on Hellenistic philosophy, rhetorical influences on portions of Pauline correspondence, and other points of contact between Christianity and Hellenism. The book con- cludes with a bibliography of Malherbe’s many efforts to contextualize Christianity.
Some of Arnaldo Momigliano’s choice essays on religion in the Greco-Roman world are collected in a book titled On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987). See also John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), and W. Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. J. Raffan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).
For the grand scene one ought to make the acquaintance of William Woodthorpe Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, 2 vols., 3d ed. rev. by Tarn and G. T. Griffith (London: E. Arnold, 1952), an old but vibrant work. In The Harvest of Hellenism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), F. E. Peters records “A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity.”
Where did Christians live in Rome? Who were their neighbors? What nationalities did they represent? What social distinctions prevailed? What can be learned about the people listed in Romans 16? These are a few of the ques- tions Peter Lampe endeavors to answer, with guidance to a vast literature, in
72 See also Aune’s Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), a study of early Christian prophetic activity and expression against the background of prophetic roles in Israel, early Judaism, and the Greco-Roman world.
Die stadtriimischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten, Wissen- schaftliche Untersuchungen zum NT 2/18,2d rev. ed. (Xibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Siebeck], 1989), which will also appear in English. Wayne A. Meeks discusses the social world of the apostle Paul in The First Urban Christians (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1983). What are the implications of St. Paul’s activity as an artisan? Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tent- making and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), answers with full command of the ancient social and economic context. Derek Tidball stages a broader scene in The Social Context of the New Testament: A Sociological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Academic Books, 1984). For a bridging of Pauline usage and Greco-Roman legal interest, consult Francis Lyall, Slaves, Citizens, Sons: Legal Metaphors in the Epistles (Grand Rapids: Academic Books, 1984).
Sumptuously adorned is A History of Private Life, I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. Paul Veyne, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). This is the first of five volumes in a series that has the private sector from polytheistic Rome to the present time as its core topic.
The general editors, Philippe Arib and Georges Duby, have designed the series for the general public, and students who desire to check the validity of many of the generalizations found in this work will be frustrated by the paucity of notes. On the other hand, the bibliography (pp. 647-55) lists some of the choicest scholarly discussions on Greco-Roman social-historical topics. In addi- tion to cultivating knowledge of Paul Veyne’s informative section, “The Roman Empire” (pp. 5-234), students will profit from Peter Brown’s instructive chapter,
“Person and Group in Judaism and Early Christianity” (pp. 253-67).
Two works that are constantly mined, overtly or covertly, cannot escape mention. David Magie provides a large supply of social data in Roman Rule in Asia Minor to the End of the Third Century after Christ, 2 ~01s. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1950). The other, Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeffs The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2 ~01s. (1926;, 2d ed. rev. P. M. Fraser, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), invites some discount for ideological perspective.
Before making pronouncements about social customs in Asia Minor it is well to note what William Ramsay said in Asianic Elements in Greek Civili- sation: The Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh 1915-1916 (London: John Murray, 1927), a book replete with sagacious comment on kinship and custom, that one must be careful about looking “through European-Greek binoculars badly focused on an Asian object” (p. 141). For further appreciation of this scholar’s knowledge of Mediterranean society, con- sult his insightful comments in The Social Basis of Roman Power in Asia Minor, prepared for the press by J. G. C. Anderson (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1941).
Standing out from among many works is The Future of Early Christianity:
Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), a
270 Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study Contextuality 2 7 1
mosaic of contextualization by thirty-nine colleagues and students of Helmut Koester, with its generous and fruitful contributions to the study of Christian origins and history. This handsome volume refracts many of the hues that are part of the variegated pattern portrayed in the present chapter and those that have gone before. Edited by Birger A. Pearson, this collection touches, among other things, on textual criticism, archaeology, exegetical questions, early Christian literature, Gnosticism, Judaica, papyrology, and epigraphy.
At the beginning of chap. 13 we called the roll of a number of pioneers who laid the foundation for others who came later into the vineyard of inquiry.
One of the hazards encountered at the end of the twentieth century is the ease with which those who have labored in the heat of day can be forgotten. Out of much that could be mentioned, we refer especially to work done by the Religionsgeschichtler, the proponents of the history-of-religions approach to biblical interpretation. Younger students who do not read German can scarcely know how much of the work of the Religionsgeschichtler has entered into the mainstream of biblical studies. Included in that goodly company of scholars who defied time’s erasures by producing pyramids of ageless research are Richard Reitzenstein, Albrecht Dieterich, and others in Archiv fiir die Reli- gionsgeschichte, an inexhaustible quarry of learning.73 Students who know the meaning of gratitude will add to this list the names of other scholarly bene- factors who deserve a place in abiding memory.
CO N T E X T U A L I Z A T I O N O F T H E RE A D E R
Whereas the Enlightenment set the reader of the Bible outside the precmcts of the text, hermeneutical theory in the closing decades of the twentieth century focused attention on the reader’s immediate involvement in the text. Since detailed exploration of this subject would excessively expand the present work, it is sufficient to call attention to a few basic resources out of a rapidly expand- ing bibliography. Little known in biblical circles, but important for under- standing the shift that has taken place, is the collection of essays in Contemporary Literary Hermeneutics and Interpretation of Classical Texts/
Hermkneutique litt&aire contemporaine et interprdtation des textes classiques, ed. Stephanus Kresic (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1981). The two- part article, “Biblical Criticism,” ABD, 1:725-36, by J. C. O’Neill and William Baird, sketches historical developments, describes a variety of historical-critical
and literary-critical approaches, and provides guidance to the basic literature.
In “Reader Response Theory,” ABD, 5:625-28, Bernard C. Lategan features the development in literary studies that “focuses on the relationship between text and receiver.” For more detailed probing of this method of understanding a text, consult Edgar V. McKnight, Post-Modern Use of the Bible: The Emergence of Reader-Oriented Criticism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988).
In Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1992), Janice Cape1 Anderson and Stephen D. Moore serve as editors of a series of essays on modern developments in criticism. Robert Fowler’s chapter on Mark in this book invites attention to the detailed discus- sion in his Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). Other chapters in Mark and Method round out some of the principal emphases in contemporary inquiry, including feminist criticism. Especially revealing is the title of the second essay, by Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “Narrative Criticism: How Does the Story Mean?” Jack Dean Kingsbury well exhibits application of literary- structural awareness in two works published by Fortress Press: Conflict in Mark (Minneapolis, 1989) and Conflict in Luke (1991), both with the subtitle: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples. For an overview of a variety of approaches to the Old Testament, see The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, ed. J. Cheryl Exum and David J. A. Clines (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press, 1993).
Between the “New Archaeology” and “New Criticism” there appears to be no epistemological division. But in practice the latter more than the other democratizes the effort to understand, and interpretation becomes less and less an elitist undertaking.
73 For other classics, see the list in Helmut Koester, “Epilogue: Current Issues in New Testa- ment Scholarship,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed.
B. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 467-68 n. 1; for an assessment especially of R.
Reitzenstein’s research on Iranian mythology, see Carsten Colpe, Die religionsgeschichtliche Schule (GBttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961).
Dead Sea Scrolls 2 7 3 C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N
The Dead Sea Scrolls
I
N THE SPRING of the year 1947 two young shepherds were grazing their sheep and goats in the vicinity of Qumran. As one of them was looking for a stray sheep, so the story goes, he casually cast a stone into a small opening in one of the cliffs. The shattering sound echoing from the cave, soon to be heard around the world, sent him scurrying off in fright, but the lure of possible buried treasure brought him and his companion back to find only rolls of decaying leather in jars that lined the floor of the cave, now famous as Qumran cave 1. Among these scrolls was a copy of the prophecy of Isaiah and a commentary on Habakkuk. In just a few years the mists of legend have shrouded much of the story; much that was written about these ancient scrolls right after their discovery will seem to some future generation crude attempts to appraise what can be evaluated only with fact-filtering time, disciplined judgment, and chastened caution.Since the first discoveries in cave 1, ten other caves were relieved of their treasures. One of the more notable is cave 4, from which the fragments of close to five hundred manuscripts were removed in 1952. Cave 11 was dis- covered in 1956. As more and more of the finds were published and discussed, the Qumran picture came into clearer focus. Besides those discovered at Qumran, other fragments were found at Masada, Wadi Murabba’at, Nabal Hever, Nabal Se’elim, and Nabal M i s h m a r .
As must be expected when dealing with discoveries of this type, many a jerry-built construction was forced very early to topple at the impact of a fact.
The report of Yigael Yadin on the excavation of King Herod’s palace and environs, “The Excavations of Masada-1963/64: Preliminary Report,” Israel Exploration Journal 15 (1965), relieved some writers of their anxiety about the antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls.’
1 Solomon Zeitlm expressed his verdict of forgery in “The Fallacy of the Antiquity of the Hebrew Scrolls Once More Exposed,” JQR 52 (1962): 346-66; idem, “History, Historians and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” JQR 55 (1964): 97-116. Yigael Yadin expressed himself further in Masada: Herod’s
Nor has the manner of the Scrolls’ entry into the public square brought honor to academia. In his well-known study Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Hermann L. Strack describes the refusal of Solomon Leb Friedland (Fried- lsnder) to permit others, including Strack, to inspect a Spanish talmudic manuscript of the year 1212 A.D.~ History repeated itself in connection with the sporadic publication of many of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. For chapters in the sorry tale, see Hershel Shanks, Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls:
A Reader from the Biblical Archaeological Review, ed. Hershel Shanks (New York: Random House, 1992).3 Helping to break the “monopoly on the still- unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls” was the reconstruction of unpublished scrolls by Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg, eds., A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four, fascicle 1 (Washington, D.C., 1991). Fascicle 2 appeared in 1992.
Published by the Dead Sea Scroll Research Council, Biblical Archaeological Society, Washington, D.C., these two fascicles coordinate with the 2-volume set of photographs published by the Biblical Archaeology Society under the direction of Robert H. Eisenman and James M. Robinson, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Prepared with an Introduction and Index, 2 ~01s.
(Washington, D.C., 1991), containing 1,785 plates. The publication of 4QMMT in this set (vol. 1, fig. 8, p. xxxi) led to acerbic litigation.
Excellent English introductions to the Qumran scrolls, besides the work by Shanks, include Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (1957), ed.
James H. Charlesworth (New York: Crossroad, 1992); Frank Moore Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies: The Haskell Lectures, 1956-19.57 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958; rev. ed., Anchor Book A272,1961); and Jozef T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea, trans. John Strugnell, Studies in Biblical Theology 26 (London:
SCM Press; Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1959). Cross includes much
Fortress and the Zealots’ Lust Stand, trans. Moshe Pearlman (New York, 1966). Others who labored to bring light in the early years include J. A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 1z (UQpsa), Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), which includes a Hebrew text of Sirach 51:13-206, 30b. A more popular edition of the Oxford work was published under the title The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), and in a postscript Sanders presents a fifth fragment, not included in the Oxford text of the Psalms scroll but recovered in a kidnap-case atmosphere by Yigael Yadin, who first published the fragment in Textus 5 (1966). In appendix 2 Sanders catalogues and indexes the premasoretic Psalter texts, followed by a premasoretic Psalter bibliography in appendix 3. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1: A Commentary, Biblica et Orientalia 18 (Rome:
Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1966), early demonstrated the contribution made by Qumran to our knowledge of Aramaic.
= Pp. 68-69.
3 In a chapter from the Reader titled “Is the Vatican Suppressing the Dead Sea Scrolls?” 275-90, Shanks challenges the conspiracy theory advanced by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (New York: Summit Books, 1991).
272