601 - The New Testament in its Social Environment

The New Testament in its Social Environment

By John E. Stambaugh and David L. Balch

Philadelphia, Westminster, 1986. 208 Pp. $18.95.

The second volume in Westminster Press's new series, "Library of Early Christianity," this book begins with some historical background consisting of a quick listing of significant persons, their dates, and their impact plus a valuable section on Roman law and local law: citizenship, jurisdiction, police, and punishment. The second chapter, "Mobility and Mission," deals with communications, movement of religions, the Jewish dispersion, and Christian missions. Chapter three considers the economy of social relations and finances at the time, with a fine concluding section to help the modern reader figure out just how much money then might be worth today. The fourth chapter looks at society in Palestine, and the fifth chapter describes city life, with a brief but very useful description of its main features. The final chapter describes Christianity in the cities of the Roman Empire with a detailed and valuable look at the major centers. The work concludes with suggestions for further reading, indexes, and maps.

This is an excellent piece of social history that packs much information within the compass of relatively few pages. The book should be readily understandable to its target audience of pastors, college students, and educated lay people. It has its confusing points, and I mention some of these since they may occur to other readers as well. For example, at the first mention of Palestine, it is said to be a client kingdom until 6 C.E., yet it is not to be located on the maps at the back of the book. Palestinian Jews are still said to have revolted against the Romans between 131-134, despite the evidence which indicates only a few villages in the south of Judea took part in Bar Kokhba's escapade. Further, in the first chapter, the author leaves implicit the social questions of to whom and why might the persons and dates he mentions be significant. As I read the chapter, I felt the information was quite useful from a Greek and Roman point of view. The story is being told as Greeks and Romans saw it. That is fine, but leaves out the point of view of non-Greeks and non-Romans, who perhaps are important in "the New Testament." There is also no mention of the significance of holy men, of tombs and the dead, and of the Torah as relic of God's presence

602 - The New Testament in its Social Environment

in Diaspora ideology, and no mention of a lamb as necessary ingredient of Passover. Then, the authors assert that Jews were a minority in first century Palestine.

Overall, the book has the good points and bad points of excellent social history. The authors tell a good story about selected social realities within a loose narrative structure with data and conceptions readily understandable by a twentieth century reader. They focus on personalities, localities, events as well as typical behaviors: roles, functions, and institutions. On the other hand, their conceptualizations are implicit, arbitrary, and unsystematic, evading theoretical issues, underlying structures, and questions of comparative values. This is most apparent in the section, "The Ecology of the Jesus Movement," where the argument is difficult to follow. As a rule, behavior is "explained" in terms of twentieth century U.S. behavior as though this latter were the universal norm of perception and evaluation.

Perhaps cultural specificity is the bane and boon of good social history. For if a group of twentieth century persons were to find themselves in the first century Mediterranean world, they would find this book to offer a report of what they might perceive as significant and in turn report to their contemporaries. The difficulty for New Testament interpreters is whether any first century Mediterranean would have seen the same things and concur with the assessments of those twentieth century persons. Categories such as religion, economy, mobility, sect, cult, and class are cases in point.

BRUCE J. MALINA

Creighton University
Omaha, Nebraska