The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology

by Bruce J. Malina

A classroom standard for two decades, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology has introduced students to both the New Testament and the social-scientific study of the New Testament. This revised and expanded third edition offers new chapters on envy and the Jesus movement, updates chapters from earlier editions, augments the bibliography, and offers student study questions.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Religion, New Testament, Christianity, Theology, Christian

277 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1993

Reviews

[Blake Randolph]

Read it for a class. Some cool stuff on Honor/Shame in the Greco-Roman world.

[Dustin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's an old adage: men are from Mars and women are from Venus. That is to say, men and women are very different from each other in many respects and they need help understanding one another. Well, if that's true, then the people of the 1st-century are from Jupiter! This is where The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology by Bruce J. Malina saves the day.

Our mistake, when reading the New Testament, is to presume a culture that's very similar to our own: one's that based on achievement, individualism, limitless goods, anxiety- and guilt-prone, and competitive. In general, we may think that they're a bit old-fashioned, but we don't usually give it further thought.

However, this is a society with a strict order of where things belong (purity and cleanliness rules) and how people should behave (honor and shame). In fact, honor, rather than financial credit, is how people conducted business transactions. All goods were considered limited and survival was based on forming patron-client relationships. And, identity was not based on the individual, but rather the group (formed either through kinship or elective associations), so it would be improper to consider the personal psychology of individuals in scripture.

Though Malina does use a few biblical examples, I would've liked him to dig deeper into a few passages. However, he does have a commentary series, which I'll have to check out.

In all, I highly recommend this book if you want to understand why people act the way they do in scripture and to understand the interactions between scriptural characters.

[Steve Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introduction to the cultural milieu of the New Testament world with the intention of making the meaning of the New Testament less dependent on today's culture. Lots of study examples and problems. Needs concentration on the part of the reader.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a decent book, we had to read for a class that I am taking.

[Philip Mohr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb scholarship and a must-read for those wanting to understand the intersection of cultures when/where Christianity first developed.

[Brett Marko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Malina's book. Particularly the aspect on gaining an insight on what drove the first century person who lived in the eastern Mediterranean. The true take home from this book is that Scriptures take on a new meaning when you realize the culture filters that are in place within the mind of the first century Jew. All too often, we approach the scriptures through the lens of our own culture. A culture that is symbolized by limitless good, guilt based reactions, focus on money and achievement, rugged individualism, as well as many more. Malina's book shows us that if we look at the Scriptures through this lens, we can miss many of the nuances inherent in the Gospel that stem from their focus on honor/shame, group dynamics, how they viewed personality, how they formed groups, why things were clean or unclean. Reading this book gave me many new insights to consider when I study the Scriptures.

[Jeremy Lovelock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work is a scholarly thesis describing social attitudes from the early Christian world and is recommended reading for students of the period. I confess I found Malina's style very dry and somehow disassociated from the world whose inhabitants he is discussing - I longed to be put into an ancient home and to smell the human atmosphere created by the values and mores that his thesis explores. But alas, pages and repetitive pages of numbingly abstract terms with very little by way of concrete examples.

[Kalebherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great and provides really intuitive insights into the first century Mediterranean world and Palestinian Judaism of the first century. It's a very dense read and I might suggest reading it twice to really grasp all of the concepts. At first I thought I would not like the book but it provides solid explanations of concepts like limited good, honor and shame in codes of conduct, and purity codes (the organization of sacred and secular).

[Dick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent resource for understanding the Mediterranean culture.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A generally tough read. There is a large amount of information that is useful it is sometimes difficult to find.