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The Sociological Study of the New Testament: Promise and Peril of a New Discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Thomas F. Best
Thomas F. Best
Affiliation:
Institut zur Erforschung des Urchristentums, Wilhelmstrasse 100, D7400 Tübingen, West Germany
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Extract

There was once a man who, upon asking about Presbyterianism, was handed the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Having read it, he replied: ‘This is all very well; I now understand the official beliefs of Presbyterians. But I am after not just beliefs, but the reality of everyday life: what is it like to be a Presbyterian? How does one distinctively feel about himself and the world, and to what practical consequences does this lead?’

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , May 1983 , pp. 181 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1983

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References

page 182 note 1 Holmberg, B., Paul and Power (Lund, 1978), p. 206.Google Scholar

page 182 note 2 ibid., p. 205.

page 182 note 3 ibid.

page 183 note 4 Judge, E. A., The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century (London, 1960), p. 9.Google Scholar

page 183 note 5 Meeks, W. A., ‘The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972), p. 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 185 note 6 See for example Bartchy, S. Scott, First-Century Slavery and I Corinthians 7.21 (Missoula, Mont., 1973)Google Scholar and Hock, R. F., ‘Paul's Tentmaking and the Problem of his Social Class’, Journal of Biblical Literature 97 (1978), pp. 555–564CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘the Workshop as a Social Setting for Paul's Missionary Preaching’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979), pp. 438–450Google Scholar. The best general survey of this aspect of the social study of the early Christian movement is Malherbe, A. J., Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Baton Rouge/London, 1977).Google Scholar

page 186 note 7 Schütz, J. H., Pauland The Anatomy of Apostolic Authority (Cambridge, 1975), p. 277–278.Google Scholar

page 186 note 8 ibid., pp. 278–9.

page 186 note 9 Scroggs, R., ‘The Earliest Christian Communities as Sectarian Movement’, in Christianity, Judaism and other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. Neusner, J. (Leiden, 1975), I, pp. 3ff.Google Scholar

page 187 note 10 ibid., pp. 22–3.

page 187 note 11 ibid., p. 23.

page 188 note 12 Theissen, G., Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, trans. Bowden, J. (Philadelphia, Pa., 1978), p. 99–110.Google Scholar

page 188 note 13 Cahman, W. J. and Boskoff, A., eds., Sociology and History (London, 1964), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

page 189 note 14 Stark, W., Sectarian Religion (London, 1967), p. 337.Google Scholar

page 189 note 15 Wilson, B. R., Magic and the Millennium (London, 1973), p. 15, note 9.Google Scholar

page 190 note 16 Wilson, B. R., ‘Introduction’ to Patterns of Sectarianism, ed. Wilson, B. R. (London, 1967), p. 2Google Scholar. On this question see also B. R. Wilson, ‘Sociological Analysis and the Search for Salvation’ in B. R. Wilson, Magic and the Millennium, pp. 9–30.

page 190 note 17 W. J. Cahnman and A. Boskoff, op. cit., p. 7.

page 190 note 18 G. Theissen, op. cit., p. 97.

page 191 note 19 Thus speaking of W. Stark, The Sociology of Religion, vols. I–IV, B. R. Wilson notes a ‘normative theological perspective which very much diminishes, where it does not altogether destroy, the sociological value’ of the work (B. R. Wilson, Magic and the Millennium, p. 16, note 10). There are also critical remarks on several other sociological works which have enjoyed a certain currency among NT (and some OT) scholars, including Worsley, P., The Trumpet Shall Sound (London, 1957)Google Scholar, Lanternari, V., The Religions of the Oppressed (London, 1963)Google Scholar, Burridge, O. L., New Heaven, New Earth (Oxford, 1969) (p. 2, note 1)Google Scholar: Niebuhr, H. R., Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York, 1929) (p. 12, note 4)Google Scholar; Marty, M., ‘Sects and Cults’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 332 (1960), pp. 125–134Google Scholar (p. 15, note 9). Troeltsch comes off rather better, as one whose concepts have been pushed beyond their original scope: see Magic and the Millennium, pp. 11–12, and Patterns of Sectarianism, p. 3.

page 191 note 20 W. A. Meeks, op. cit., p. 71.

page 192 note 21 Weber, M., The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Trans. Shils, E. A. and Finch, H. A. (Glencoe, 1, 1949), p. 80.Google Scholar

page 193 note 22 MacMullen, R., Roman Social Relations: 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven and London, 1974). p. 249.Google Scholar