NTL 210/1/2
Graham Smith
, WEEK 7
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM (20 MARKS LONG QUESTION)
NB!!! The following consideration of social scientific criticism as well as the application thereof to Lukan
texts provides more than enough points to construct a 20-mark essay. Therefore, ensure that you carefully
work through all the material and take note of key points to utilise in your essay. You may structure the
essay in a similar manner as the following discussion, however, just give a shorter description of each
main point.
Social scientific criticism of the New Testament attempts to place the New Testament text into the social-
cultural context of the first-century Mediterranean world (i.e. the world of the New Testament text). Social-
scientific criticism, being a development of historical criticism, is part of the overall task of interpreting the New
Testament texts in the context of the first-century Mediterranean world from which they came. To achieve its
goals, the social scientific method examines the social institutions which comprise the social system of the New
Testament world. A brief highlight of the models and social institutions of the ancient Mediterranean world is
given below namely, honour-shame, collectivism, kinship, and patronage and clientism.
Honour and shame paradigm: Honour
The primary social institution of the early Mediterranean world is honour and shame. The entire bible is
replete with honour and shame language and thus for that reason, it is critical that whenever biblical
studies are in engagement that honour and shame is surfaced for a fair interpretation of the texts under
study and their application in present-day readers. The behaviours and social codification of roles and the
domain to do those roles for all community members were operated by the honour-shame paradigm.
Honour is a social currency which can be gained or lost in one’s relationship with others. Honour is the
community’s recognition of one’s place within the larger community. Honour can be understood as
determining a person’s social worth, and one’s value in the eyes of the community. Honour is when other
people think well of you resulting in harmonious social bonds in the community. Honour carries with it a
communal aspect regarding the worth or value of a person both in their eyes (that is one’s claim to worth)
plus that person’s value in the eyes of his or her social group. In this sense, honour carries with it the
connotation of one’s view of self within the group, village, neighbourhood, tribe, or society. Honour is a
register of social rating which entitles a person to interact in specific ways with equals, superiors, and
subordinates, according to the prescribed cultural cues of his/her society.
There are two kinds of honour in the early Mediterranean societies, namely ascribed and acquired
honour. Ascribed honour is given by authority figures such as kings and deities (whose sanction of honour
to a person is recognised by others on the basis of the rank or power of the one bestowing the honour)
while acquired honour is gotten from birth (because the family is the repository of honour of past illustrious
ancestors and their accumulated or acquired honour). The acquisition and retention of honour is a driving
force in nearly every social interaction which occurs outside the family unit in the ancient Mediterranean
world. Honour, as the socially approved and expected attitudes and behaviours in the areas where power,
sexual status, and religion intersect as well as the public claim to worth and status along with the social
acknowledgement of such status and reputation, is the apex of the pyramid of temporal social values and it
conditions their hierarchical order. Cutting across all other social classifications honour divides social
beings into two fundamental categories, those endowed with honour and those deprived of it.
Shame:
Shame is the contempt, loss of face, defeat, and loss of honour. As such, every community member lives
to achieve honour as ascribed by their societal philosophical dictates while shunning attracting shame at all
costs. It is consequently evident how the honour-shame paradigm governs the behaviours of people of a
given community and also in a way dictates how roles are codified between men and women according to
culturally accepted norms.
1 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
, Moreover, shame is a negative public rating: a community thinks lowly of you and, in the event of shame,
one gets severed from the community. A shameful state is an intensely painful feeling or experience of
believing that one is flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
The honour and shame paradigms may be linked to biblical practice and postulate that as much as cultural
or social shame measures one’s worth about social expectations, theological (sacred) shame is ascribed to
those who lack honour before God. Through social-scientific criticism these concepts are applied to
evaluate the restraints they cast on people described in the NT text.
Similar to the social context of the New Testament, African cultures inherently follow the honour-shame
paradigm. Recent studies have revealed that African cultural values have similarities with the Ancient
Mediterranean value system of honour and shame where indigenous African languages are used to talk
about honour and shame, such as African proverbs in their varied dialects across Africa. Research has
proven that the African interacts and transacts with the NT text with his/her own value system (modelled
under honour and shame paradigms) in which these values are also encountered.
Collectivism paradigm:
The first-century Mediterranean individuals were described by dyadism, a view that describes a person by
their relationship to their community at large for example by their location (e.g. Paul of Tarsus), by their
nationality (e.g. Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons), by their clan (e.g. Paul is a
Benjamite, Mary is of the house of David), by family relationships (e.g. James and John are the sons of
Zebedee), or by one’s school of thought (e.g. Paul a student of Gamaliel; Apollos received only the
baptism of John).
Individual people are not known or valued because of their uniqueness, but in terms of their dyad, that is
some other person or thing. Dyadism, therefore is a means by which one’s honour can be continually
checked, affirmed or challenged. Personal identity and knowledge of this sort belong in a cultural world that
is highly ordered and carefully classified, ensuring that there is a place for everyone and everyone in
his/her place.
This cultural understanding and view stands in stark contrast with the Western-inspired praxis,
epistemologies and philosophical frameworks which are tied to individualism, personal achievement, and
competition to mention a few. Rather, the social-scientific models show a great alignment with the African
epistemological praxis of community, complementarity, and values-driven ethos. It is evident that the social
scientific paradigms are aligned with the African worldviews, epistemologies and philosophical frameworks.
Whereas the African communal cultural view functions similarly to the cultural practices and ideas of the
New Testament, Western individualism, as the individualistic, self-centred focus typical of the
contemporary American experience, is simply not of concern to first-century Mediterranean people. Given
their cultural experience, such self-concerned individualism would appear quite boring and inconsequential.
Group survival would be dysfunctional with the Western individualist approach.
Dyadic persons find their sense of identity in the context of several dyads, or ‘others’, which determine who
their equals are and the social norms by which they may be judged. Social harmony is derived from
knowing one’s place in the world, and remaining within it. In a dyadistic culture, there is a powerful social
mechanism whereby you are dependent on others for your psychological existence and feel shame if the
image of yourself does not agree with the image shared and believed by others.
The social scientific methodology, apart from utilising the honour-shame paradigms as operators to govern
societal harmony and behaviours, has collectivism as its other feature. It considers that members of
communities with collectivistic outlooks exhibit group goals where they sacrifice and forego personal
privileges to personally and individually contribute to the common good of the group. This phenomenon
helps bring the backgrounds in which the early church communities lived and to evaluate the realities that
may have led to the perception of women for example by members and writers in these communities
2 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
Graham Smith
, WEEK 7
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM (20 MARKS LONG QUESTION)
NB!!! The following consideration of social scientific criticism as well as the application thereof to Lukan
texts provides more than enough points to construct a 20-mark essay. Therefore, ensure that you carefully
work through all the material and take note of key points to utilise in your essay. You may structure the
essay in a similar manner as the following discussion, however, just give a shorter description of each
main point.
Social scientific criticism of the New Testament attempts to place the New Testament text into the social-
cultural context of the first-century Mediterranean world (i.e. the world of the New Testament text). Social-
scientific criticism, being a development of historical criticism, is part of the overall task of interpreting the New
Testament texts in the context of the first-century Mediterranean world from which they came. To achieve its
goals, the social scientific method examines the social institutions which comprise the social system of the New
Testament world. A brief highlight of the models and social institutions of the ancient Mediterranean world is
given below namely, honour-shame, collectivism, kinship, and patronage and clientism.
Honour and shame paradigm: Honour
The primary social institution of the early Mediterranean world is honour and shame. The entire bible is
replete with honour and shame language and thus for that reason, it is critical that whenever biblical
studies are in engagement that honour and shame is surfaced for a fair interpretation of the texts under
study and their application in present-day readers. The behaviours and social codification of roles and the
domain to do those roles for all community members were operated by the honour-shame paradigm.
Honour is a social currency which can be gained or lost in one’s relationship with others. Honour is the
community’s recognition of one’s place within the larger community. Honour can be understood as
determining a person’s social worth, and one’s value in the eyes of the community. Honour is when other
people think well of you resulting in harmonious social bonds in the community. Honour carries with it a
communal aspect regarding the worth or value of a person both in their eyes (that is one’s claim to worth)
plus that person’s value in the eyes of his or her social group. In this sense, honour carries with it the
connotation of one’s view of self within the group, village, neighbourhood, tribe, or society. Honour is a
register of social rating which entitles a person to interact in specific ways with equals, superiors, and
subordinates, according to the prescribed cultural cues of his/her society.
There are two kinds of honour in the early Mediterranean societies, namely ascribed and acquired
honour. Ascribed honour is given by authority figures such as kings and deities (whose sanction of honour
to a person is recognised by others on the basis of the rank or power of the one bestowing the honour)
while acquired honour is gotten from birth (because the family is the repository of honour of past illustrious
ancestors and their accumulated or acquired honour). The acquisition and retention of honour is a driving
force in nearly every social interaction which occurs outside the family unit in the ancient Mediterranean
world. Honour, as the socially approved and expected attitudes and behaviours in the areas where power,
sexual status, and religion intersect as well as the public claim to worth and status along with the social
acknowledgement of such status and reputation, is the apex of the pyramid of temporal social values and it
conditions their hierarchical order. Cutting across all other social classifications honour divides social
beings into two fundamental categories, those endowed with honour and those deprived of it.
Shame:
Shame is the contempt, loss of face, defeat, and loss of honour. As such, every community member lives
to achieve honour as ascribed by their societal philosophical dictates while shunning attracting shame at all
costs. It is consequently evident how the honour-shame paradigm governs the behaviours of people of a
given community and also in a way dictates how roles are codified between men and women according to
culturally accepted norms.
1 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
, Moreover, shame is a negative public rating: a community thinks lowly of you and, in the event of shame,
one gets severed from the community. A shameful state is an intensely painful feeling or experience of
believing that one is flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
The honour and shame paradigms may be linked to biblical practice and postulate that as much as cultural
or social shame measures one’s worth about social expectations, theological (sacred) shame is ascribed to
those who lack honour before God. Through social-scientific criticism these concepts are applied to
evaluate the restraints they cast on people described in the NT text.
Similar to the social context of the New Testament, African cultures inherently follow the honour-shame
paradigm. Recent studies have revealed that African cultural values have similarities with the Ancient
Mediterranean value system of honour and shame where indigenous African languages are used to talk
about honour and shame, such as African proverbs in their varied dialects across Africa. Research has
proven that the African interacts and transacts with the NT text with his/her own value system (modelled
under honour and shame paradigms) in which these values are also encountered.
Collectivism paradigm:
The first-century Mediterranean individuals were described by dyadism, a view that describes a person by
their relationship to their community at large for example by their location (e.g. Paul of Tarsus), by their
nationality (e.g. Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons), by their clan (e.g. Paul is a
Benjamite, Mary is of the house of David), by family relationships (e.g. James and John are the sons of
Zebedee), or by one’s school of thought (e.g. Paul a student of Gamaliel; Apollos received only the
baptism of John).
Individual people are not known or valued because of their uniqueness, but in terms of their dyad, that is
some other person or thing. Dyadism, therefore is a means by which one’s honour can be continually
checked, affirmed or challenged. Personal identity and knowledge of this sort belong in a cultural world that
is highly ordered and carefully classified, ensuring that there is a place for everyone and everyone in
his/her place.
This cultural understanding and view stands in stark contrast with the Western-inspired praxis,
epistemologies and philosophical frameworks which are tied to individualism, personal achievement, and
competition to mention a few. Rather, the social-scientific models show a great alignment with the African
epistemological praxis of community, complementarity, and values-driven ethos. It is evident that the social
scientific paradigms are aligned with the African worldviews, epistemologies and philosophical frameworks.
Whereas the African communal cultural view functions similarly to the cultural practices and ideas of the
New Testament, Western individualism, as the individualistic, self-centred focus typical of the
contemporary American experience, is simply not of concern to first-century Mediterranean people. Given
their cultural experience, such self-concerned individualism would appear quite boring and inconsequential.
Group survival would be dysfunctional with the Western individualist approach.
Dyadic persons find their sense of identity in the context of several dyads, or ‘others’, which determine who
their equals are and the social norms by which they may be judged. Social harmony is derived from
knowing one’s place in the world, and remaining within it. In a dyadistic culture, there is a powerful social
mechanism whereby you are dependent on others for your psychological existence and feel shame if the
image of yourself does not agree with the image shared and believed by others.
The social scientific methodology, apart from utilising the honour-shame paradigms as operators to govern
societal harmony and behaviours, has collectivism as its other feature. It considers that members of
communities with collectivistic outlooks exhibit group goals where they sacrifice and forego personal
privileges to personally and individually contribute to the common good of the group. This phenomenon
helps bring the backgrounds in which the early church communities lived and to evaluate the realities that
may have led to the perception of women for example by members and writers in these communities
2 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
