Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Acts

by Bruce J. Malina, John J. Pilch

Like earlier volumes in the Social Science Commentary series, this volume situates Acts squarely in the cultural matrix of the first century Mediterranean world, elaborating its codes of patron and client, mediatorship, honor and shame, healing and sickening, wizardry and witchcraft accusations, and the understanding of the Spirit of God as well as deities and demons as personal causes of significant events. Part 1: Jesus First Command to the Twelve Their Activities Among Israelite Majority Populations (Acts 1:4-12:25) Part 2: Jesus Second Command to Saul/Paul His Activities Among Israelite Minority Populations (Acts 12:25-25:31)

254 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Steven Rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

This commentary is odd, and oddly useless. It is full of social-science jargon, including an extensive glossary in the back that takes up a good chunk of pagination. Rather than actually informing us about the social-historical contexts of the book of Acts, it does a better job informing the reader of what kinds of jargon words social scientists are fond of around the turn of this century.

I went to this commentary looking for A) helpful information on the cultural/social/historical contexts of the book of Acts, B) someone from a social theory background interpreting Acts, and C) any bibliographical trails that would lead to good Black, Latino/a, or postcolonial interpretations of Acts. I now realize that I was asking this book questions it was not prepared to answer. But it was still underwhelming.

I suspect that this commentary will be entirely superseded by Willie Jennings' forthcoming commentary.