Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible

and Theology
http://btb.sagepub.com

"Religion" in the World of Paul

Bruce J. Malina
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1986; 16; 92
DOI: 10.1177/014610798601600303

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://btb.sagepub.com

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Biblical Theology Bulletin Inc.

Additional services and information for Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://btb.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://btb.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations http://btb.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/16/3/92

Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009

 "RELIGION" IN THE WORLD OF PAUL
J. Malina
Bruce
Creighton University, Omaha,
historical-critical method has been applied to the
The Bible quite successfully. Endowed with the usual
historical concerns for chronological accuracy and
archaeological and geographical specificity, historically
minded biblical scholars know the distinctive ways in
which persons spoke and wrote in the past, the historical
setting in which such communication took place, and
the concrete items referred to in the writings. While the
historical method has moved biblical interpretation a
long way from the impressionistic subjectivism of the
anachronistic interpretations of the past, its successes
leave one no less aware of its inadequacies. Specifically,
the historical-critical method has yet to address the ques-
tion of the meaning of social realities in some objectively
verifiable way, that is in a way that might account for
and filter out the ethnocentric bias of the interpreter.
Witness the many interpretations of marriage and
divorce in the Bible, of the poor and their poverty, and
the rich and their wealth. And note the almost total
absence of fundamental Mediterranean themes in bib-
lical interpretation, such as honor and shame, challenge
and riposte, faction formation and conflict. While it is
a necessary and fundamental tool for understanding the
past, the historical-critical method, it seems, cannot
adequately deal with ideology and its abstract, symbolic
referents. This is especially true as regards religion in
the Bible. And no bigger and better pile of footnotes will
solve this problem. What is needed are more adequate,
explicit models of interpretation, validated or invalidated
by a broad and large number of tests and applications.
To_put it another way, to read and interpret the mean-
ing of any sort of writing, whether a road sign or a
restaurant check or a biblical book, the reader must share
with the writer a scenario of how the world works.
People who read the New Testament authors today most
often presume that they fully share the same &dquo;religious&dquo;
world view as those authors. This fundamentalism is
often avoided by the historically minded. Yet even those
persons with a sense of history often believe that the
ancient world in general and Israel in particular had
dominant beliefs and institutions which were explicitly
religious. For example, the noted historian, John Collins,
writes: &dquo;In the ancient world in general, and in Israel in
particular, the dominant beliefs and institutions were
explicitly religious and were embodied in traditions
92
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
NE 68178
passed on from generation to generation&dquo; (1983: 2). For
such people, Paul of Tarsus and Jesus of Nazareth would
have picked up and elaborated explicitly religious themes
in the course of launching their respective forms of
Christianity. What largely differentiated the two was
that Jesus set a rural movement under way, while Paul
had to deal with the first urban Christians.
The purpose of this essay is to question the accuracy
and adequacy of the received historical view in this
regard. In the process of such questioning, an alternate
way of imagining religion in the first-century Mediter-
ranean world will be described. For if people today see
first-century Mediterranean religion as though it were
just like religion in our society, it is possible they may be
suffering from an optical illusion. On the other hand, it
is obvious that there is not much evidence at present for
considering religion in the world of Jesus and Paul in any
other way than we do. The reason for this perhaps is that
the theories that produce such evidence, that make
evidence evident, are simply not in place and have not
been utilized up until now. The theoretical model pre-
sented in this essay is based on a historically more
accurate way of describing society and its institutions
and values in a first-century Mediterranean setting. The
attentive reader is invited to test the model, to see
whether adequate evidence might be produced that
would situate the groups of Jesus and Paul within the
eastern Mediterranean of two thousand years ago.
Explicit Religion
in the New Testament?
It seems thatpeople look upon the Bible as an
most
explicitly religious book chiefly because the Bible is the
book of the church. It is the Sacred Scriptures of the
church. Since the concrete religious institution called
church has been the proper place of the Bible as far back
as one might care to remember, the Bible must neces-
sarily be an explicitly religious book. But are the writings
of the Bible, in fact, explicitly religious? If phone books
were found only in hospitals, people would see phone
books as somehow medical, or at least closely tied to
sickening and healing. If the writings comprising the
Bible are not explicitly religious, what would they be?

To answer this question, consider the following related
questions. Where would one find books of the sort found
in the New Testament in their original form? What type
of social institution in the first-century Mediterranean
area would produce and cherish such writings? For clues,
consider the types of persons to whom they are ad-
dressed : are they addressed to fellow believers (religion),
to consumers and producers (economics), to teachers and
students (education), to fellow nationals, fellow citizens
and rulers (politics) or to brothers [and embedded sisters]]
and children (kinship) in Christ? If this last, then to what
institution would one look to find the social matrix for
the writing? Since none of the writings are actually
addressed to fellow &dquo;believers,&dquo; it would seem that the
religious institution, whether explicit or not, would be
the last place to look for an understanding of the shared
scenarios depicted in the Bible. Brothers and sisters and
households belong to kinship institutions, as do those
ethnic groups defined by birth, such as the men of Israel,
children of the God of Israel, and the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. On the other hand should such ethnic
groups comprise a kingdom or a city state, then their
institutional mooring would be political. This would be
the case if one of the families of an ethnic group ruled
over the whole group as royalty, or if a number of families
ruled as an oligarchy, or if the adult males of the group
governed as a democracy. In these latter cases, the sub-
jected ethnics as well as resident aliens and foreigners
would be part of the political institution of the prevail-
ing ruling group. The &dquo;kingdom of Heaven,&dquo; the reign or
rule of God, the activity of some Messiah, and reference
to &dquo;exiles of the Dispersion&dquo; (1 Pet 1:1) all point to
politics, to some political institution.
The point here is not that early Christianity was
described by its adherents in terms of kinship or politics.
Rather my contention here is that early Christian groups
were in fact kinship and/or fictive kinship as well as
political and/or fictive political groups in which religion
was embedded. The group gathered by Jesus was rooted
in the politics of first-century Palestine, while groups
following upon Jesus took the shape of particularistic
kinship (e.g. Judaizers) or catholicizing fictive kinship
(e.g. Paul) groups. Due to space constraints, I will focus
largely on the factions founded by Paul. However, the
general purpose of this essay is to describe how such
embedded religion might be understood by persons used
to religion that is conceptually distinct from and socially
independent of kinship, politics, economics and educa-
tion. I would maintain that in early Christianity, religion
might be embedded in political or kinship groups (just
as economics in fact was), and that this embedded reli-
gion might be particularistic (limited to a given ethnic
group) or catholic in the Hellenistic political sense, open
to many ethnic groups. Yet in no instance was there
&dquo;explicit&dquo; religion. People concerned with implicit
religion were explicitly concerned about politics and
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
93
power as well as kinship and solidarity.
Hence just as there was domestic economy and polit-
ical economy in the first-century Mediterranean, but no
economy pure and simple, so also there was domestic
religion and political religion, but no religion pure and
simple. In Paul’s day, wealth tended to follow power and
kinship rather than the other way around. The same was
true of religious meaningfulness and the sentiments of
belonging and comfort that were bound up with it. In
modem society, wealth is often the means to power and
kinship status; the same is true of religion and religious
affiliation. In the ancient world, power and kinship
status were the means to wealth and meaningfulness.
The opportunities for political and kinship wealth accu-
mulation were extensive, the former at the expense of
subjugated people, the latter through marriage, adoption,
and slaveholding. Similarly, opportunities for a meaning-
ful existence within a traditional overarching order of
existence were open to the politically well-placed and
the domestically well-born.
In the first-century Mediterranean world, persons
would perceive a mismatch between professed values
and social experience if one had wealth without power
or kinship standing. This was the problem of the wealthy
freedman, Trimalchio, described in Petronius’ Satyricon.
And the same was true if one were a professed believer
in some ethnic deity yet lacked the traditional ethnic
polity and domestic setting in which to experience the
deity’s benevolence and with which to demonstrate due
respect. This was the problem of foreign domination in
Palestine. Just as wealth without power left one vul-
nerable to the confiscatory powers of those who con-
trolled the political system, so too devotedness to some
ethnic deity without power left one vulnerable to the
requirements of respect and allegiance demanded by the
deities presiding over the controlling political system.
In any event, religion was substantive, embedded in
politics and/or kinship, just as economics was.
Domestic religion might have members who belonged
to it involuntarily simply because they were bom into
a given family, or it might be found in groups with
voluntary membership, forming a fictive kinship group.
Domestic religion of the kinship variety is rather perma-
nent, continually binding in all contexts of life, cus-
tomary in forms of behavior, and inclusive of the kin of
the principal participants. On the other hand, domestic
religion of the fictive kinship variety is temporary,
restricted to specific contexts, voluntary, and not neces-
sarily inclusive of the kin of the principal participants.
Thus the &dquo;conversion&dquo; of Cornelius in Acts 10:24 which
included the baptism of his &dquo;kinsmen and close friends&dquo;
(v. 48) points to a domestic religion of the kinship sort,
even though Cornelius and company remained fictive
kin relative to Peter. After all Cornelius was not circum-
cised, a ritual pointing to kinship. The baptism of Lydia
and her household reported in Acts 16:15 is quite similar.
94
Likewise, political religion might be involuntary in that
it obligated all ethnics in a given polity, or it might be
voluntary and confined to fictive polities, e.g. Romans
in Gaul, Jews in Alexandria. Such embedded religious
institutions will be called substantive, to distinguish
them from present differentiated religion, which can be
designated formal religion.
Thus, the movement set under way by Jesus was
rooted in the theocratic proclamation of the kingdom
of Heaven (i.e. of God); and it was directed to &dquo;the house
of Israel&dquo; (Mt 10:5; Acts 10:36). A group espousing the
ideology of this movement would be a particularistic one
with religion embedded in politics. Political religion here
would look to an obligatory but particular way of life for
meaningfulness. The Pharisees, on the other hand, had
their movement confined to Israelites, but in fictive kin
groups later called &dquo;haburoth.&dquo; Christian Jews or Judaizers
were much the same. Such groups would be particular-
istic ones with religion embedded in fictive kinship.
Focus in such domestic religion is directed to loyalty to
a particular way of life, loyalty to a particular truth not
meant for all. On the other hand, St. Paul’s &dquo;brothers [and
sisters] in Christ&dquo; formed groups open to various ethnic
groups, hence comprised catholic groups with religion
embedded in fictive kinship. Such domestic religion saw
itself based on loyalty to a generalized way of life, loyalty
to truth available to all. Finally, to round out the picture,
when Christianity attained political ascendancy, e.g.
with Constantine at Nicea, but notably with Justinian,
and became open, empire-wide, to all ethnic groups sub-
ject to the emperor, it became catholic, with its religious
institution embedded in the political institution. Such
political religion impose obligation to a way of life
binding on all human beings, a duty to embrace and sub-
mit oneself to a sort of &dquo;universal&dquo; truth. The following
figure marks off these types of embedded religion.
Substantive Religion
. labeled in a rather unambiguous way. The same religion
A number of features and processes-theology, rite,
liturgy, organization, personnel, piety, ethics and world
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
view-occur both in contemporary Western religion as
well as in first-century Mediterranean society. But to
conclude that because both have such features, then
their organization, functioning and purpose in ancient
society must be essentially the same as in ours is, of
course, unwarranted. As previously noted, such a view
is often implied by biblical scholars and even explicitly
set out in their writings. Theological studies of the Bible
and the role of women are quite similar in this regard;
biblical scholars find quite non-Mediterranean, &dquo;counter-
cultural&dquo; womens behavior in the Bible, especially in the
New Testament, in spite of the lack of historical, social
and cultural warrant. The reason for this is that biblical
interpretation attempts to be relevant.
Surely, one could not conclude that because there are
special religious personnel in the United States, Iran and
Israel, the same social role and status evaluation are
operative in each country. All one can infer from the
presumed general presence of &dquo;religious&dquo; personnel is that
if such personnel were to be found in the U.S., they
would be called &dquo;religious&dquo; personnel. And yet an aya-
tollah in Iran is unimaginable without a government to
influence and control, and a rabbi in Israel is quite rab-
binic without &dquo;ministering&dquo; to a congregation. Yet U.S.
religious personnel are quite outside their element
without some appropriate denominational management
function. Why is this so?
The most one might initially say about persons pre-
sumably functioning as religious personnel is that they
belong to socially interdependent groups and that within
these groups they in some way serve institutions by
means of which persons have access to what they them-
selves cannot control when the meaningfulness of their
existence is at issue. This is what religious personnel do.
Yet the basic forms of religious institutional structures
can only be established by empirical investigation. As
with means of production in economics, so too with
means to meaningfulness, i.e. religion. While meaning
systems are to be found in all human groups, such sys-
tems take on a vast number of forms in human social life.
Similarly, when other Western religious manifesta-
tions (e.g. sects and cults) are compared with what seem
to be their counterparts in the first-century Mediter-
ranean world, it becomes clear that the differences in
their organization and functioning are more important
than their presumed similarities. Clarification of this
point is especially necessary for understanding the nature
and function of &dquo;religion,&dquo; contact among &dquo;religious&dquo;
bodies and the meaning of &dquo;religious&dquo; space in Paul’s day.
In contemporary Western religious institutions, &dquo;reli-
gion&dquo; is more or less univocal, an all-purpose designation
(much like the use of the word &dquo;money&dquo; and the legal
tender named as such). To be called &dquo;religious&dquo; is to be
is said to serve all areas of life requiring some reference
to and contact with the overarching order of existence,

i.e. areas such as death, pain,
meaninglessness, sorrow,
love, meaningfulness, creativity, life. One &dquo;religion&dquo; is
said to cover all these areas, namely the individual’s
denominational religion, including &dquo;secular humanism.&dquo;
However, where what we would call &dquo;religion&dquo;
emerged in Paul’s world, it was not univocal and all-
purpose. Paul noted that &dquo;there are many gods and many
lords&dquo; (1 Cor 8:5); and he undoubtedly meant what he
said, with the proviso that his group would be satisfied
with God, the Father (a fictive kinship term), and
one
one Lord, Jesus Christ (v. 6). In the first-century Mediter-
ranean world, there were multiple religions used for
special ranges of meanings and behaviors, depending
specifically on whether what people were concerned
about belonged to the kinship institution or the political
institution. In other words, all &dquo;religion&dquo; in the first-
century Mediterranean world was embedded in either
kinship or polity. There was no freestanding social
institution recognized as &dquo;religion,&dquo; no discernible separa-
tion of church and state or church and family, even if
one wished to make such a separation.
To further illustrate, in the Mediterranean world view,
demons of various sorts were used to explain and make
sense of sickness, negative weather phenomena, death
and the like, while good demons, angels and spirits did
the same for sense-making reactions of a positive sort,
insights, dreams, etc. Such nonvisible, eminent entities
were found as part and parcel of the phenomenon they
effected. They were not some gossamer, free-floating,
disembodied ghosts. Similarly, the role of ancestors and
the inheritance of honor along one’s ancestral lineage in
the New Testament points to a form of ancestrism, as
does monolatry focused on ancestral deities, e.g. the God
of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Finally, the general transfor-
mation of present negative social conditions is expected
of the Most High, but thwarted by a sort of anti-god,
Satan. Now modem, differentiated religion, as a rule, has
depopulated this cosmic scenario in favor of a heavy
emphasis on one ultimate All, or at least far fewer than
the ancient world had. A single God gives rain, heals,
gets jobs as well as serves as the ultimate All of the
universe. Yet in the world of Jesus and Paul (as well as
in Islamic din), religion referred to a person’s response
to the demands of God in all spheres of human living,
but in a cosmos populated with multiple sources of
power. In such a situation, the formal aspects of religion
will be encompassed in beliefs determined by the spheres
of human life in question, notably kinship and polity.
Furthermore, while the Western elite tradition learned
from Aristotle that the essential human was a rational
animal, human beings rarely, if ever, display concern
over rationality and animality. Rather people are des-
perately concerned about those various &dquo;metaphysically
unnecessary&dquo; human situations ranging from sickness
to health, from meaninglessness to creativity, from crisis
to victory, from failure to success. Now these concerns
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
95
were often compartmentalized in first-century Mediter-
ranean behavior. Frequently they were resolved without
recourse to the ultimate divinity, the focus of political
religion and its central shrine(s). Instead they were trans-
acted at different levels of kinship and polity, in accord-
ance with different sets of social rules, such as kinship
obligations inducing ancestral merit (again, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, see Mk 12:26; Mt 22:32; Lk 20:37;
Acts 3:13; 7:32; Rom 9-11); or political obligation urging
sacrifice at some lesser or more central shrine (Lk 2:24;
Acts 14:12).
The cosmic personnel of the first-century Mediterra-
nean world were individuals perceived as quite necessary
to make sense within or alongside of some focal being
serving as creator and maintainer of the overarching
order of existence. What needs to be emphasized here
is the fact that there is quite a difference in the number
and quality of such cosmic personnel in the perceptions
of the modem world as compared with the world of Paul.
Such differences point up the underlying disparities
between those worlds. For these worlds simply do not
share any common conceptual models of perception of
the world at large or of religious integration and insti-
tutional arrangements, i.e. kinship, polity, economics,
ideology.
Western Categories Not Applicable
Consequently, what one finds described in the books
of the Bible is not explicit religion, but embedded
religion. The uncritical application to early Christianity
of such familiar Western categories as doctrine, church,
scripture, tolerance, and the like obscures essential
differences. Usually such terms are not functional,
&dquo;dynamic,&dquo; equivalents, but rather superficially similar
designations for objects and practices which are not only
organized differently, but often with different social as
well as &dquo;religious&dquo; (i.e. political and domestic) purposes.
For example, in contemporary U.S. religion, tolerance
is expected and displayed internationally in terms of the
same principles which govern domestic behavior, both
locally and nationally. In the Mediterranean world, while
tolerance might be the rule in international relations,
it would usually not be found within the bosom of one’s
society, at least not officially. And yet wandering mis-
sionaries crossing political lines (both Jewish and Gen-
tile) were to be found, travelling under the truce of the
institution called hospitality.
Furthermore in societies like those of the first-century
Mediterranean, &dquo;conversion&dquo; is induced by the nonavail-
ability of some religious dimension at home (e.g. types
of fertility rites, healing rites, and the like on the one
hand, and thoroughgoing monolatry on the other).
Indeed, this invariably seems to be the rationale for cross-
ethnic conversion. In contrast, missionary outreach in
96
modem Western religions takes place on the basis of the
truth -the one, true religion for all of mankind (which
usually comes packaged with capitalism, technologically
oriented education, and &dquo;democracy&dquo;). In the West, then,
ideas, values and behavior are imported if such imports
are deemed truer, more &dquo;biblically&dquo; based, than domestic
varieties (often, in biblical studies, from Germany or
England in Protestant circles, and from Rome or France
in Roman Catholic circles).
Of special importance is the fact that where monolatry
exists in Mediterranean societies, it is almost invariably
restricted: ethnically (hence a form of political/domestic
henotheism, e.g. as with the God of Israel, the gods of
Rome, of the Athenians, etc.), or sexually (e.g. the Stoic
nous can be found in males, not females). Rarely if ever
do other peoples fit into the general picture of ancient
monolatries except in various secondary and compromis-
ing ways (e.g. see Rom 9-11). In Mediterranean religion,
henotheism is local, specific and contained, with its
religious results confined to the kinship and polity of the
society in question (e.g. Jesus declares the forgiveness
of the sins of Israelites only, since in the localite per-
spective of Israel’s political religion Gentiles cannot sin
against God since they are not in covenant with the God
of Israel, who has not chosen them; similarly when
Gentiles are healed in the Synoptic story, it is cause of
consternation, Mk 7:24-30; Mt 8:5-13; finally Jesus
sends his own only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,
Mt 10:5. Of course with Paul the focus moves from the
polity to the fictive kin group).
Thus both first-century Mediterranean and modem
religions offer their adherents rescue from some over-
whelmingly difficult situation (in Greek: soteria, salva-
tion). But the subject of this rescue in the West is the
individualistic achiever; the subject in ancient Mediter-
ranean religion was the group-embedded person seeking
to maintain the status quo. The personal obstacle to
individual well-being in the West is something or some-
one thwarting competition and the greater achievement
deriving from it; the social obstacle to some individual’s
well-being in the ancient Mediterranean was loss of
honor. In Western religious ideology, the divinity takes
the initiative; in ancient Mediterranean religions,
humans took the initiative with a view to setting up a
patron-client relationship, although honorable persons
insist they are invited by patrons (thus accounts of Paul’s
call by God, e.g., are culturally significant). Modem
Western religion seeks to facilitate the achievement
orientation of the individual believer; ancient Mediter-
ranean religion sought to support the attempts at main-
tenance of inherited honor (ascribed or acquired) of the
kinsman, fellow ethnic or fellow citizen.
In summary, Western religions are organized through
the principle of differentiation and the use of some all-
purpose &dquo;religion&dquo; which is pervasive, interrelated, and
tends to homogenize most denominations and sects.
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
Differentiated religion has appropriately termed
been
&dquo;unicentric&dquo; because of the wide variety of religious
expression transacted under the aegis of and in the sphere
of religion (education, insurance, social services, public
prayer, protest against public policy, food distribution,
as well as worship, counseling, denominational rites,
etc.). In contrast, Mediterranean religion was &dquo;multi-
centric,&dquo; and the dominant centers were organized
through &dquo;non-religious&dquo; patterns of integration, such as
kinship and reciprocity and/or polity and redistribution.
’Special purpose religions were in use, and differentiated
religion (were it to exist at all) would be considered
foreign and subordinated to local, substantive varieties.
Consequently, significant ambiguity in biblical study
results from the assumption that first-century Mediter-
ranean religious processes and devices are functionally
equivalent to their modem Western religious counter-
parts. The temptation to make such assumptions is
great: ancient Mediterranean and modern Western
groups alike must have religious organization, substan-
tive or formal, to generate, provide and maintain some
conception of an overarching order of existence. As pre-
viously noted, both use superficially similar devices and
processes, such as ideologies, worship forms, rites,
personnel, piety, ethics, organization and world view.
But if such functional equivalence were to imply a more
precise identity, either organizational equivalence or
identical purpose, the resulting viewpoint would be
highly misleading.
There is, therefore, a gulf between Western and first-
century Mediterranean types of religious organization.
These types do not shade imperceptibly into one another.
Hence it is quite easy to say where the usefulness of
modem sociology of religion ends. The sociology of
religion was developed to analyze the special structures,
processes and problems of differentiated religion, with
its special features: all-purpose &dquo;religion,&dquo; insistence on
the truth, tolerance of the non-truth, atomistic individ-
ualism, and the necessity for individuals to maintain
their conception of the general order of existence along
denominational lines. It is precisely these features which
create a gulf between the first-century Mediterranean
and the modem U.S.
It would indeed be remarkable if the sociology of
religion were relevant to first-century Mediterranean
society, since the latter differs from U.S. society in so
many essential points. Nevertheless, there are those who
on the one hand insist that there are rather great differ-
ences between first-century Mediterranean and modem
social forms, yet at the same time would deny such
differences by finding immediate, contemporary rele-
vance in first-century Mediterranean &dquo;religious&dquo; writings.
In other words, some would hold that their U.S. expe-
rience of religion can be directly based on and interpreted
by first-century Mediterranean &dquo;religion&dquo; despite the
absence of formal religion at that time and place, despite

the embedded nature of religion and economics at the
time, despite the henotheistic quality of monolatry,
despite the ethnic quality of conversion, despite the lack
of formal, non-professional personnel, despite the fictive
kinship structure of early Christian groups and post-
Temple Jewish groups, and the like.
It would be misleading, then, to believe that because
first-century Mediterraneans must have been provided
with a life-determining conception of an overarching
order of existence (this is the substantive meaning of
religion, probably generally relevant), their religious
organization must have consisted of religious structures
functionally equivalent to those of contemporary differ-
entiated religion. Such belief would hold that first-
century Mediterranean religion must be amenable to
analysis by contemporary theology, psychology and
sociology of religion. Nothing could be further off
the mark.
Characteristics of
Substantive Religion
The chief features of substantive religion as found in
the Pauline factions might most readily be grasped by
means of a consideration of (1) the structure of the
&dquo;religious&dquo; group, (2) the prevailing social system and the
&dquo;truth,&dquo; and (3) the way values and norms are controlled.
While these categories might seem quite distant from
a religious understanding of the Bible, they are perhaps
closer to what went on in the groups founded by Paul
than one might initially think.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS GROUP
First-century Mediterranean society did not have any
organization whose sole and only tasks were those of
what we call &dquo;religion.&dquo; Just as there was no perceptible
separation of politics and religion, or of kinship and
religion, so there were no enduring social groups formed
solely for and based solely on religious activities.
Religion could not be imagined as something voluntary
since one did not choose his/her ancestors or ethnic
group. There simply was no perceptible separation of
church and state, there were no denominations,
churches, sects and cults. However, there were volun-
tary associations, i.e. coalitions concerned with kinship,
political and ethnic affairs; and some of these bore fictive
kinship, fictive political and fictive ethnic features, at
times with legal implications. Yet there were no solely
religious groups of any enduring and inclusive nature
that might serve as alternatives to the prevailing kinship
and polity structures in the society at large.
Significantly, people whom we might term fellow
believers, coreligionists, or members of a community of
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
97
faith in the first-century Mediterranean world grouped
together and recognized each other on the basis of forms
of relationship other than religion. It was bonds of kin-
ship and fictive kinship (e.g. fellow Jews or Israelites,
bonds of Roman ancestrism, fictive brothers [and sisters]]
&dquo;in Christ&dquo;) within and between families, ethnic groups
and acquaintances that provided the structure for reli-
gious activities. And in those societies or statuses with
hereditary nobilities (e.g. the Roman senatorial rank, or
Jewish priestly aristocracy), the political structure itself
was the mechanism by means of which both privileged
religious groups and personnel (e.g. the Temple priest-
hood) were provided. Finally, territorial bonds might also
serve to create local faith-maintaining organizations (i.e.
empire-wide, &dquo;imperial&dquo; cults, and perhaps Phrygian
Montanism).
The point here is that religious groups were dependent
on prior kinds of social relations. One did not adopt and
live out a set of religious values and attitudes because
of some individualistic conviction of the truth and
revelational quality of that set. Rather one’s adherence
to some &dquo;religion&dquo; was based on norms having to do with
politics (and power) or kinship and/or ethnicity (and
solidarity), or some other more specific social institution
other than religion (e.g. army, philosophical &dquo;school&dquo;).
Thus people became Christians for reasons other than
and/or along with religious ones, e.g. to be healed, to
share in power, to find patrons or clients, to have a proper
funeral, to take part in weekly meals, and the like.
Religious groups in the first-century Mediterranean
world were multipurposed; their religious activities were
but one aspect of the things done by the group. (E.g. even
Jesus’ group did more than follow Jesus; members healed,
redistributed wealth, served as travelling party on pil-
grimage, etc.). Conversely, apart from the fact that they
were rooted in biology, kinship and political structures
in the first-century Mediterranean world were equally
multipurposed.
Compared to religious institutions today, what was
distinctive of such substantive religious groups was that
they were limited in:
(a) the sorts of personnel they could recruit: they had
to be ethnics or fictive ethnics (as in Judaism, Jesus sent
his own only to the house of Israel, Mt 10:5; Acts 10:36;
for the ethnic problem in Paul, see Rom 9-11; males had
to be invited to join (based on Mediterranean honor, Mk
1:16-20; 2:14; see Mk 10:17-22; for Paul, see Rom 10:14);
those who volunteered to join were often rejected (as in
the initial Jesus group, Mt 8:18-22; Lk 9:57-62), and the
like. ,
(b) the symbolic means available to have effect on
others: power and commitment were quite inflated; the
Romans preempted use of force while many claimed to
be Messiah or offered schemes of &dquo;salvation&dquo;; people were
largely concerned about being treated according to their
98
social rank. See Mk 10:17-22; Jn 18:22; on rank reversal,
1 Cor 1:26-31; 2 Cor 10:13-18.
(c) the way in which world views could be propagated:
by person-to-person interaction and public proclamation,
with a concern for the honor of the audience (’No one
who believes in him will be put to shame&dquo; Rom 10:11 )
and the group’s reputation among outsiders (1 Thess 4:12;
1 Cor 10:32-33; 14:23).
Thus the ability to use faith-commitment by a
multipurposed religious, believing group based on non-
religious criteria for membership was constrained by the
general function of the structured group of &dquo;believers,&dquo;
not just by its religious dimension. Political, kinship and
economic concerns constrained religious expression. In
other words, criteria for membership in early Christian
groups was not simply belief that the kingdom of Heaven
was at hand (for the Jesus groups) or that the Christ is
Lord (for the Pauline groups).
Substantive religion in the first-century Mediterranean
world was relatively inflexible. People as a rule were
ignorant of available options, that things might be any
other way than the way they were. Furthermore, the
social structure of the group was localite, i.e. suspicious
and critical of anything different from the usual and
customary. Due to these features of unawareness of
options and closedness to change, substantive religion
precluded the possibility of theological development,
theological advance, of innovation in social structures
and social organization. It did not allow for extended
crises of commitment in belief or behavioral choice. On
the other hand, as with any human groups, &dquo;religious&dquo;
groups too require some flexibility. In societies with
substantive religion, this flexibility was often provided
by resident strangers, i.e. wandering preachers, teachers,
missionaries. (In parallel fashion, societies with substan-
tive economies derived flexibility from travelling
merchants and peddlers.)
The role of the resident stranger purveying meaning,
i.e. the missionary, travelling teacher, etc., highlighted
the way in which social and cultural features channeled
religious behavior and activity. Such resident strangers
came to alien groups in order to have some influence on
the group, i.e. for ideological reasons, to spread some sort
of valuable information about the ultimate meaning of
human living. Such strangers communicated the values
and attitudes of the ideology that gripped them, thus
bringing in new ideas and images, setting up small sup-
port groups, and tying these small groups into some larger
network of belief and commitment. Yet the resident
stranger (i.e. missionary, etc.) was not morally bound to
the locals by ties of kinship or polity. He (as a rule, not
she) thus stood outside the prevailing local social struc-
ture. This social distance enabled the resident stranger
to play the role of provider of flexibility for such groups
not organized for exclusively religious ends.
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
THE PREVAILING SOCIAL SYSTEM
AND THE &dquo;TRUTH&dquo;
As in most systems of substantive religion, so too in
the first-century Mediterranean world the close calcula-
tion of &dquo;truth,&dquo; dogma, credo, ideological deviance, and
the like was often impossible or simply irrelevant.
Generalized belief in a single, focal deity, such as belief
in the God of Israel and his future Messiah, Jesus, sufficed
to meet the fundamental, henotheistic requirement that
replicated group commitment. Everything else was
debatable, either because not obligatory for group
membership or because of the general lack of harmony
between socially shared values and ordinary human
experience.
it was the logic of prevailing social
Consequently,
structures and the relative values that they enabled
which determined the advantages of change in the
application of the &dquo;truth,&dquo; in the formulation of theology
and its analogies, and in the use of resources and per-
sonnel. In other words, any change in theology would not
have derived from the demands of logical, &dquo;scientific,&dquo;
consistency or the demands of some philosophical
system. Rather theological change derived from valued
objects, events or behaviors that contributed to some
person’s or group’s honor, social standing, influence and
reputation. Concern for some abstraction such as &dquo;truth,&dquo;
was of little value unless it were convertible to some
more socially significant symbol. Therefore &dquo;truth&dquo; was
not the outcome of a concern for consistency in dogma
or moral probity-as in contemporary specialized, dif-
ferentiated theology. In general, people concerned about
&dquo;truth&dquo; would be unable to estimate and articulate the
total &dquo;truth&dquo; with any consistency anyway, if only
because of the inflated influence and commitment con-
cerns that marked the general social fabric of the first-
century Mediterranean world.
I
THE CONTROL OF VALUES AND NORMS
When religion is embedded in kinship or fictive kin-
ship, as a rule any use of resources and services to support
or expand existing social arrangements derived from
some appeal to solidarity. Such use was the outcome of
commitment activation. Solidarity in the first-century
Mediterranean world was based on community, i.e.
shared values and norms. Formally speaking, community
is a set of values, interests and relationships shared by
people who are set apart or set off from others on the basis
of some shared quality (for example: ethnicity, gender,
disability, behavior, ideology) resulting in a sense of
oneness, of brotherhood and/or sisterhood, hence of
fictive kinship.
Community, then, is a social reality rooted in persons
whose values, interests, and life style reflect their one-
ness with others in their group. It might be of interest

to note that the oneness of the community is usually
replicated in the places where such groups gather, i.e.
where gangsters, vagabonds, prostitutes, gays, and the
like come together. Such places replicate the institu-
tional quality of the groups. Thus regular meeting in
people’s houses points to fictive kinship groups, while
meeting in public and quasi-public buildings points to
fictive political groups. To help understand this point,
consider modem symbolic space for a moment. Nowa-
days home surrogates in a city (such as restaurants and
bars kitchen of a house commensality; hotels bed-
= =
rooms coition) point to commercialized fictive kinship,
=
kinship embedded in economics. Business surrogates
(such as downtown sidewalks in front of stores = goods
for sale commerce) point to economic relations; while
=
out-of-bounds places
(railroad sidings, bridge abutments,
dumps and the like) point to marginal, placeless persons.
In Paul’s day, insistence on abiding by shared values
and norms was an expression of commitment
existing social structure. Consequently, &dquo;conversion&dquo;
resulted from the operation of the system of kinship (e.g.
marriage, adoption, remarriage, householding, slave-
holding) and fictive kinship (e.g. friendship, group affilia-
tion, voluntary association groups, patronage) rather than
through individualistic psychological choice and/or
transactions between religious groups. On the other
hand, coercion to abide by shared values and norms was
an expression of power rooted in the existing social
structure. &dquo;Conversion&dquo; based on power, in turn, resulted
from the operation of the polity (e.g. respect for Roman
gods, emperor worship, Roman citizenship) and fictive
polity (e.g. patron-client relations, voluntary associations
focused on political change). Consequently, manpower
in such religions was organized to flow along paths
marked by the social forms of kinship and/or polity, even
gender-based, fictive kinship forms such as &dquo;the brother-
hood of man and the fatherhood of God,&dquo; rather than
according to abstract conceptions such as &dquo;truth,&dquo; or
some &dquo;preferential option for the poor.&dquo;
In first-century Mediterranean societies, religious
norms and values were not permitted to work in ways
disruptive of the values and norms of society in general
(1 Cor 5:1-2; 1 Thess 4:9-12). Nor was the embedded
religious form allowed to radically conflict with the
values and norms of specific groups in particular (1 Cor
10:31-33). If there was conflict, as a rule it was conflict
concerning the realization of traditional core
Since the realization of values took place by means of
social structures, conflicts dealt with the quality and
effectiveness of social structures. Polity based religious
institutions sought out new or renewed social forms to
realize traditional core values, while kinship based
religious institutions did the same along fictive kinship
lines. Jesus’ movement was polity based; it looked to the
renewal of Israel. On the other hand, the communities
represented by the authors of Mark, Matthew and Luke
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009
99
aswell as Paul were kinship based; they looked to the
transformation of their group and world in Jesus’ com-
ing with power.
Finally, it might be useful to note that there were
substantive religious levelling mechanisms or ways to
keep people from gaining ascendancy in the group. These
mechanisms served as a means of forcing the outlay of
accumulated social debts and prestige so that individual
religious members maintained a sort of equality (e.g. Gal
3:28; Rom 10:12). The ability to activate commitment
=
in others and to have influence on others might be
amassed in terms of esteem, repute, precedence, great
honor, and the like. Such levelling mechanisms forced
the outlay of such symbolic goods in ways that were not
religiously rewarding or truth increasing for the indi-
vidual involved. For example, service to lower level
fictive kin (Gal 5:13; 1 Cor 9:19-23), destruction or
to the disparagement of large amounts of valuable abilities such
as speaking in tongues (1 Cor 14:1-15), ritual levies
consequent on office holding (i.e. leitourgiai, perhaps
allowing the use of one’s house for meeting), monetary
support of the organization (1 Cor 16:1-3; 2 Cor 8 :1-
9 :15), redistribution of goods by giving all to the poor
(mainly in the jubilee mentality in Mk 10:21 and paral-
lels ; Lk 12:33). Such behavior was normally marked by
a reversal of honor and shame, thus enabling and facili-
tating fictive kinship rather than underscoring inherited
kinship. These types of &dquo;religious&dquo; behavior were so many
institutionalized means that scrambled and dispersed
accumulated commitment and influence, the main
symbols of religious effectiveness. Such scrambling and
dispersal served to inhibit faction building, Paul’s con-
cem, e.g. in Corinth. And without factions, religious
groups were prevented from crystallizing along lines
determined by social rank, such as elite and non-elite
Christian groups. But by the same token, any sort of
theological advance was thus thwarted. On the other
hand, the existence of heresy and/or factions pointed to
theological ferment and factions determined by rank.
By way of conclusion, I offer the two tables on the
following page. They are intended to summarize the
whole discussion in this essay as well as to flesh out a
fuller picture of what it might mean to speak of religion
in the New Testament.
values.
Source Material
Borhek, James T. and Curtis, Richard F.
1975 A Sociology of Belief. New York: Wiley-Inter-
science Publ.
Collins, John J.
1983 Between Athens and Jerusalem: jewish Identity
in the Hellenistic Diaspora. New York: Cross-
road.
100

Figure 1: Substantive Religion in Early Christianity

Coulborn, Rushton (eds.), Explorations in the New Economic

1958/59 "The State and Religion: Iran, India and China," History: Essays in Honor of Douglass C. North.
Comparative Studies in Society and History 1: New York: Academic Press, 235-56.
44-57. Malina, Bruce J.
"III. Reply Critics," Comparative Studies in
to 1981 The New Testament World: Insights from
Society and History 1: 387-93. Cultural Anthropology. Atlanta: John Knox.
Dalton, George 1986 Christian Origins and Cultural Anthropology:
1961 "Economic Theory and Primitive Society," Practical Models for Biblical Interpretation.
American Anthropologist 63: 1-25.
Atlanta: John Knox.
Geertz, Clifford
Nichols, James H. and Van Buitenen, J.
1984 "Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism," 1958/59 "Debate: The State and Religion," Comparative
American Anthropologist 86: 263-78.
Studies in Society and History 1: 383-87.
Guenther, Georg Mathias
1979 "Bushman Religion and the (Non)sense of Nimis, Steve
1984 "Fussnoten: Das Fundament der Wissenschaft,"
Anthropological Theory of Religion," Sociologus
29: 102-32. Arethusu 17: 105-34.
Gunderson, Gerald A. Saler, Benson
1982 "Economic Behavior in the Ancient World," in 1977 "Supernatural as a Western Category," Ethos 5:
Roger L. Ransom, Richard Sutch, Gary M. Waton 31-33.

Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009

 101

Figure 2: Some Implications of Early Christian Substantive Religion

Snow, David A. and Machalek, Richard Varenne, Herve

1982 "On the Presumed Fragility of Unconventional 1984 "Collective Representation in American Anthro-
Beliefs," Journal for the Scientific Study of pological Conversations: Individual and Culture,"
Current Anthropology 25: 281-99.
Religion 21: 15-26.
Southwold, Martin Wallwork, Ernest
1978 "Buddhism and the Definition of Religion," Man 1984 "Religion and Social Structure in The Division
of Labor," American Anthropologist 86: 43-64.
13: 362-79.
Wax, Murray L.
Strayer, Joseph R. 1984 "Religion As Universal: Tribulations of an
1958/59 "The State and Religion: An Exploratory Com-
Anthropological Enterprise," Zygon 19:5-20.
parison in Different Cultures: Greece and Rome, Zito, George V.
The West, Islam," Comparative Studies in 1983 "Toward a Sociology of Heresy," Sociological
Society and History 1: 38-43. Analysis 44: 123-30.

Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 23, 2009