Her sense of fairness in her use of biblical material was refreshing and helpful at all times. This inevitably involves us both in the position of the interpreter (a point to which we must return later) and in the position of the text we are interpreting. Such different interpretations of the national religious heritage often led to considerable class conflict in the agrarian world, perhaps early on.
The last of the four classes that we distinguish in agrarian society is that of the farmers. They worked with the men in the fields and were an integral part of the rural economic structure. With this profile of agrarian society now before us, it is time to turn our attention to the industrial world of our own day.
Education in the industrial state is no longer an adjunct to the religious institutions of society. In this respect, education ironically fulfills many of the functions that religion once performed in the agrarian world. In this regard, it is important to cite some illustrations of the point we are trying to make.
Its main feature is the collapse of the hierarchical structures of both this and the other world.
Interpretation in a Sociological Context I Kings 21:1-29
Luke 16:19-31
Of perhaps key significance is the last half of the parable and its possible attribution to Jesus. They fit well with Luke's overall perception of the 'hew age' in the salvation history of the world. To begin, we must note the sociological characterization of the Rich Man and Lazarus to which the text alludes.
This gap was also unbridgeable, at least in human terms, given the rigidity of social stratification in the agricultural city. He argues that the law and the prophets point to what will be fulfilled at the coming of the new age he has announced. It is the promise of a new and different future that the figure of Lazarus represents in the second half of the story, in contrast to the self-justifying attitude that the Rich Man maintains to the end.
The surprising conclusion that Jesus gives to the story thus runs roughshod over the social perceptions of the agrarian society. To say that we have now moved out of the agrarian world is putting it mildly. With many texts, the sociological condition of the interpreter's preconceptions could easily be overlooked in the absence of a clear sociological issue in the text itself.
This now has implications that go far beyond (although they may include) the well-being of the individual. To the extent that the context of the interpreter and the text overlap, there is ground for communication. The second element in our discussion was the sociological explanation of the context of the interpreter.
The urgent need to see the context of the translator seems obvious for several reasons. Moreover, the main function of the sermon is to use the text in a way that allows these repeated events to occur. In a sense, then, the purpose of the text is not realized in a simple descriptive narrative.
We have thus argued that the interpreter's starting point is itself conditioned, both sociologically and historically. It is not a scholar's context that will determine the circumstances under which the text can become a sermon, but that of the preacher himself.
Notes
To put the matter simply and directly, as the growth of biblical knowledge raises to the conscious level a hermeneutic process involving the text, the interpreter, the relationship between the two and the conditions under which the text becomes a sermon, Balli is moving closer and closer to the side of preachers of the hermeneutical court. The following description of the characteristics of agrarian society is taken mainly from Lenski, Porter and Privilege, p. The peaceful infiltration of nomads into the uninhabited areas of Canaan.
It is very important here not to be misled by the too light use of the term "professional specialization". The term is relative and does not mean that anything like our present-day specialization and occupational mobility existed in the agrarian world. He says, “No brute man is God-fearing; nor is any of the people of the land [am ha aretx] pious.". Bellah does not deny that there are profound differences between these various rejections of the world and their implications for human agency.
See also Max Weber, "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions," in From Max Weber, ed. But the main point of the story, as we will soon argue, is not resurrection or life after death or a polemic against the Jews as such, but the coming of an eschatological reality in which there is a total reversal of value and judgment must be. . Again, attributing the main thrust of the parable to Jesus and his situation does not prevent us from seeing the matter of resurrection as related to the needs and situation of the church.
Helmut Thielicke, "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus," in Great Expository Sermons, ed. The apocalyptic character of the text we quote here raises in general terms the question of the relationship of apocalyptic thought to the world of agrarian society. The implication of Weber's comment is that it was the appearance of the stark and rigid differentiations of social class that accompanied the rise of agrarian societies that was responsible for this discontent and the resulting eschatological expectation.
In the earlier horticultural (Bellah's archaic) societies, such inequality of social class did not exist, and so religious thought tended to be an articulation of the dance of cosmic harmony. In addition to these sociological comments, any complete account of the origins of apocalyptic thought in the New Testament would have considered in detail the influence of the eschatological aspects of prophetic thought and the religious dynamics of the New Testament period. Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1974), pp.
