The New Testament teaching on family matters

The article shows that first-century urban Christian communities, such as those founded by Paul, brought in both whole families and individual women, slaves, and others. An example of an early Christian family can be seen in the autobiographical details of the Shepherd of Hermas, whether factual or not. The article aims to demonstrate that the New Testament teaching on family gives two very different pictures: the structured harmony of the patriarchal family as presented in the household codes of Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5, over against the warnings and challenges of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels to leave family in favor of discipleship. The developing devotion to martyrdom strengthened the appeal to denial. Another version of the essay was published in Horsley, Richard A (ed), A people's history of Christianity, Volume 1: Christian origins, 201-220. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.Due to large file sizes, articles (pdfs) may take a while to downloa

Women, honor, and context in Mediterranean antiquity

Much has been written about how the social structures of honor and shame affected women in Mediterranean antiquity. Sometimes "honor and shame" are taken out of context and used as absolute opposites, an oversimplification. Rather, honor and shame function as coordinates within a complex matrix of other societal factors. Chief among them are kinship, social hierarchy, economic control and effective social networking. Some contemporary studies from southern Europe help illuminate this pattern. The complexity and variation present in the social dynamics of these contemporary cultures indicate that the same kind of complexity and variation must have been present in ancient cultures too

Diakonos and prostatis : women's patronage in Early Christianity

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life.Spine cut of Journal binding and pages scanned on flatbed EPSON Expression 10000 XL; 400dpi; text/lineart - black and white - stored to Tiff Derivation: Abbyy Fine Reader v.9 work with PNG-format (black and white); Photoshop CS3; Adobe Acrobat v.9 Web display format PDFhttp://explore.up.ac.za/record=b100134

<i>Diakonos </i>and <i>prostatis</i>: Women’s patronage in Early Christianity

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life

Women, honor, and context in Mediterranean antiquity

Much has been written about how the social structures of honor and shame affected women in Mediterranean antiquity. Sometimes "honor and shame" are taken out of context and used as absolute opposites, an oversimplification. Rather, honor and shame function as coordinates within a complex matrix of other societal factors. Chief among them are kinship, social hierarchy, economic control and effective social networking. Some contemporary studies from southern Europe help illuminate this pattern. The complexity and variation present in the social dynamics of these contemporary cultures indicate that the same kind of complexity and variation must have been present in ancient cultures too

Jesus and cultural values : family life as an example

'Family values' is a set of traditional images that most cultures collect, images drawn mostly from an idealized picture of family life in the recent past. For Christians, the popular image of Jesus gets included: the Holy Family as a nuclear family unit, Jesus blessing children, Jesus as advocate of traditional family life. A closer reading of both contemporary family life and the Gospels reveals that things are not what they seem. Contemporary family life in Western societies is structured quite differently than the ideal. Jesus' family life was spent in a peasant village surrounded by relatives and neighbours, with little privacy and strong social pressure towards conformity. The gospel records indicate that he did not conform, and paid the price: rejection and misunderstanding by his extended family. The Synoptic Gospels consistently portray not only an estrangement between Jesus and his family, but Jesus' encouragement of his disciples to break family ties in favour of the surrogate family of the circle of disciples. In a culture in which kinship loyalty was essential, this message caused deep problems for early Christians which the authors of the household codes of Ephesians, Colossians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 1 Peter tried to alleviate.Spine cut of Journal binding and pages scanned on flatbed EPSON Expression 10000 XL; 400dpi; text/lineart - black and white - stored to Tiff Derivation: Abbyy Fine Reader v.9 work with PNG-format (black and white); Photoshop CS3; Adobe Acrobat v.9 Web display format PDFhttp://explore.up.ac.za/record=b1001341wm201

How much do we really know about the lives of early Christ followers?

We know very little about the everyday life of Christ believers in the first years. What can be extrapolated from other ancient sources must be combined with the minimal evidence from Christian sources. The two major rituals, baptism and Eucharist, may have been celebrated quite differently than we imagine. The lives of families must be seen as context for these celebrations.http://www.hts.org.z

Women at the tomb : what are they doing there?

This article will explore the role and junction of the women in the empty tomb narratives of the Gospel tradition. What purpose do they play in the resurrection kerygma of the early church? Why is the story of their first arrival at the tomb so persistent that it continues into the later apocryphal gospels? The discussion of· this question will be in three parts: part one will summarize some of the work on these passages that has been done by scholars using the tools of redaction criticism. Part two will examine some of the surrounding issues from the perspective of social history and social construction of meaning, especially with regard to women's subcultures, roles in burial customs, and public testimony. Part three will apply to these findings a feminist analysis using both a hermeneutic of suspicion and of remembrance.Spine cut of Journal binding and pages scanned on flatbed EPSON Expression 10000 XL; 400dpi; text/lineart - black and white - stored to Tiff Derivation: Abbyy Fine Reader v.9 work with PNG-format (black and white); Photoshop CS3; Adobe Acrobat v.9 Web display format PDFhttp://explore.up.ac.za/record=b1001341wm201