Challenging the Authority of Jesus: Mark 11:27-33 and Mediterranean Notions of Honour and Shame

Primjena različitih novih metoda u proučavanju Novog zavjeta obilježava kraj dvadesetog stoljeća. Modeli tumačenja preuzeti iz područja kulturne antropologije pokazali su se posebno plodnim za znanstvenike koji žele steći bolje razumijevanje svijeta ranih kršćana. Na početku gotovo svakog udžbenika o kulturnoj pozadini Novog zavjeta čitatelj se susreće s poglavljem o mediteranskom poimanju časti i sramote. Čast se redovito prepoznaje kao najvažnija vrednota ili dobro drevnog svijeta. Kulturna važnost časti služi, zauzvrat, da u Evanđeljima objasni znatan dio Isusovih sporova s njegovim protivnicima. Moja je namjera pozorno ispitati važan susret između Isusa i njegovih neprijatelja opisan u Evanđelju po Marku 11, 27-33. Istaknut ću način na koji primarna vrednota časti u mediteranskom društvu objašnjava ključne točke ovog vrlo napetog dijaloga.The final quarter of the twentieth century has been characterized by the employment of a variety of new methodologies in NT study. Models imported from the field of cultural anthropology have proved particularly fruitful for scholars interested in gaining a better understanding of the world of the early Christians. Near the beginning of almost every introductory textbook dealing with the cultural background of the NT, the reader encounters a chapter addressing Mediterranean sensibilities concerning honour and shame. Honor is consistently identified as the single most important value or "good" in the ancient world. The cultural centrality of honor serves, in turn, to explain much about Jesus\u27 interactions with his antagonists in the Gospel narratives. My intent here is to carefully examine a single important encounter between Jesus and his adversaries narrated in Mark 11:27-33. I will highlight the way in which the pivotal value of honour in Mediterranean society illuminates the text at crucial points in the course of the highly charged dialogue

Compactification in the Lightlike Limit

We study field theories in the limit that a compactified dimension becomes lightlike. In almost all cases the amplitudes at each order of perturbation theory diverge in the limit, due to strong interactions among the longitudinal zero modes. The lightlike limit generally exists nonperturbatively, but is more complicated than might have been assumed. Some implications for the matrix theory conjecture are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 3 epsf figures. References and brief comments added. Nonexistent divergent graph in 0+- model delete

Ancient church as family : early Christian communities and surrogate kinship

The author explores the literature of the first three centuries of the church in terms of group identity and formation as surrogate kinship. Why did this become the organizing model in the earliest churches? How did historical developments intervene to shift the paradigm? How do ancient Mediterranean kinship structures correlate with church formation? Hellerman traces the fascinating story of these developments over three centuries and what brought them about. His focus is the New Testament documents (especially Paul\u27s letters), second-century authors, and concluding with Cyprian in the third century. Kinship terminology in these writings, behaviors of group solidarity, and the symbolic power of kinship language in these groups are examined.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1004/thumbnail.jp

Vindicating God\u27s servants in Philippi and in Philippians: the influence of Paul\u27s ministry in Philippi upon the composition of Philippians 2:6-11.

This article examines the thematic parallels between (a) Paul\u27s portrayal of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ in Phil 2 6-11 and (b) Luke\u27s story of the public shaming and vindication of Paul and Silas, while they were in Philippi during the second missionary journey I draw on socioanthropological findings related to collective memory and social identity formation to suggest that the sequence of events surrounding the founding of the Philippian church (later related by Luke in Acts 16 11-40) functioned in an ongoing way as the community\u27s narrative of origins The story thus served to legitimate the Philippian Christians\u27 social identity as a threatened minority group in the colony Paul, now imprisoned in Rome (ca A D 62), and quite aware of the enduring impact on the Phihppians of events surrounding the founding of the church, frames his picture of Christ in Phil 2 in a way that resonates with this still-familiar story of the humiliation and vindication of the missionaries during their visit to the colony more than a decade earlie

Embracing shared ministry : power and status in the early church and why it matters toda

Healthy church leadership based on the model of shared ministry in the early church Social historian and pastor Joe Hellerman addresses issues of power and authority in the church—in the New Testament and in the church today—in a fresh, culturally nuanced way. The local church, Hellerman maintains, should be led and taught by a community of leaders who relate to one another first as brothers and sisters in Christ, and who function only secondarily—and only within the parameters of that primary relational context— as vision-casting, decision-making leaders for the broader church family. Unique among contemporary treatments of servant leadership, Hellerman interprets the biblical materials against the background of ancient Roman cultural values, in order to demonstrate a social context for ministry that will provide healthy checks and balances on the use of pastoral power and authority in our congregations.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1028/thumbnail.jp

Brothers and Friends in Philippi: Family Honor in the Roman World and in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians

The essay seeks to demonstrate the value of insights from the social sciences for New Testament interpretation by triangulating between (a) a cultural anthropological model of ancient Mediterranean family honor, (b) the social realia of the Roman colony at Philippi, and (c) Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Archaeological evidence from Philippi decidedly confirms the particular aspect of the social scientific model in view, namely, that family members in the ancient Mediterranean world ideally deferred in honor to persons within their kinship groups and competed for honor with representatives of other families. Both activities are amply attested in the inscriptions from Philippi. The presence of these values in the colony sheds light, moreover, upon portions of Philippians, since Paul viewed the Jesus community in Philippi as a family, and he sought in his letter to encourage the Philippians to treat one another like surrogate siblings. This suggests that Paul desired to establish a relational ethos among Christians in the colony which would forcefully discourage competition for honor among persons who took seriously their identity as brothers and sisters in Christ