The Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective

Rating:
Summary: Horsley Did It Better
Review: Expanding the 1999 Rauschenbusch Lectures into a book, Professor Malina does little except demonstrate that (1) he knows how to use a thesaurus, (2) he can survive in the "publish or perish" environment of modern academia, and (3) he has an uncanny knack for remembering minute and meaningless details. This is the worst type of publishing to issue forth from the ivory covered towers of our institutions of higher education. With his concern for social justice, this effete academic snobbery would have made Walter Rauschenbusch ill. While it may amuse the academic, it does nothing to educate the general public, because the author goes out of his way to be obtuse and frighten away the lay reader.

Professor Malina succeeds at painting a picture of Jesus, and the early Jesus movements, in context. However, he does so at a terrible price.

Professor Richard A. Horsley has also done much to paint a portrait of Jesus and the early Jesus movements in their first century context. The difference is that Professor Horsley's works are, generally, accessible to the lay reader. Unless you are a doctoral student and interested in the most minute of details, read Horsley instead of Malina.

Rating:
Summary: Horsley Did It Better
Review: Expanding the 1999 Rauschenbusch Lectures into a book, Professor Malina does little except demonstrate that (1) he knows how to use a thesaurus, (2) he can survive in the "publish or perish" environment of modern academia, and (3) he has an uncanny knack for remembering minute and meaningless details. This is the worst type of publishing to issue forth from the ivory covered towers of our institutions of higher education. With his concern for social justice, this effete academic snobbery would have made Walter Rauschenbusch ill. While it may amuse the academic, it does nothing to educate the general public, because the author goes out of his way to be obtuse and frighten away the lay reader.

Professor Malina succeeds at painting a picture of Jesus, and the early Jesus movements, in context. However, he does so at a terrible price.

Professor Richard A. Horsley has also done much to paint a portrait of Jesus and the early Jesus movements in their first century context. The difference is that Professor Horsley's works are, generally, accessible to the lay reader. Unless you are a doctoral student and interested in the most minute of details, read Horsley instead of Malina.

Rating:
Summary: Cognitive disorientation
Review: Malina's first premise is this: language and other forms of behavior derive their meaning from social systems. Therefore, to understand Jesus' words and actions, we must understand the social setting in which he lived. The only way we can apply Jesus' message to the present day is if we understand what it meant back then. Otherwise, our readings of the Gospels will be anachronistic and ethnocentric. Moreover, this is a conceptually difficult task for us, since ours is a fundamentally different social world than the New Testament setting.

Each chapter is similar in this respect: Malina spends a majority of the time explaining some concept from the social sciences, and then at the end of the chapter, he applies that concept to the biblical issue at hand. The application is usually evident in advance.

The book begins with a discussion of social institutions. One of the main things that distinguishes different societies is how the four major social institutions (politics, religion, economics, kinship) interrelate. In modern-day America, all four institutions are considered freestanding, i.e., they are each meaningful without reference to the other three. In first century Palestine, and more generally, in all Mediterranean cultures at that time, politics and kinship were the only two freestanding social institutions. Economics and religion were embedded in politics and kinship. Political religion, for example, involved deities that sanctioned the existing regime and temples that offered sacrifices for the "common good." Domestic (kinship-based) religion, on the other hand, sought meaning through belonging (e.g., to a chosen people), and placed considerable emphasis on the legitimacy of heirs.

Even if Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God appears to be religious, it must have to do with either politics or kinship. Kingdom is clearly a political word, so Jesus was saying something about political religion. What needed to be changed about the current political situation? The patron-client system, on which peasants depended, was not functioning properly. The Israelite aristocrats were neglecting their duties to their clients, preferring instead to enhance their own status. The kingdom of God refers to a new patron-client system, where God is the patron.

Other social issues addressed include establishment violence, dissident speech ("cognitive disorientation of true believers"), modes of social interaction (face-to-face, face-to-grace, etc.), who are the poor, what does self-denial mean in group-oriented societies, what are the dynamics of group formation and development. After explaining each of these, Malina applies them to some aspect of Biblical interpretation to explain, for example, what it meant to deny oneself and follow Jesus.

A major theme of this book is that, as citizens of the United States living in the 21st century, our life experiences are basically useless for the purpose of understanding the Bible. Words and behaviors derive their meaning from social systems, and our society today is drastically different from society back then. This books does a great job of illuminating some of these differences. The writing style is choppy at times, though, so be prepared to think.