Modelling Early Christianity

Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in its Context

Modelling Early Christianity explores the intriguing foreign social context of first century Palestine and the Greco-Roman East, in which the Christian faith was first proclaimed and the New Testament documents were written. It demonstrates that a sophisticated analysis of the context is essential in order to understand the original meaning of the texts. The contributors examine social themes such as early Christian group formation, the centrality of kinship and honour and the economic setting. They offer a wealth of novel and socially realistic interpretations which make sense of the texts. At the same time, Modelling Early Christianity contains significant new ideas on the relationship between social-scientific and literary-critical analysis, the theoretical justification for model-use and the way these new approaches can fertilise contemporary Christian theology.

LANGUAGE. OF. WARFARE. IN. THE. NEW. TESTAMENT. Raymond. Hobbs.
INTRODUCTION This essay is a continuation of my interests in warfare in the
Bronze Age and Iron Age and the literature related to it (Hobbs 1989a; Hobbs
and Jackson 1991). In this present form it is more an invitation to discourse than a
finished product, and will form the basis of further research. In my book on
warfare in ancient Israel (1989a) I wrote much in the concluding chapter about
the ...