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Book
Bruce J. Malina · 1981
An academic study applying cultural anthropology models to interpret the social context and behavior of people in the New Testament, designed for beginning students of biblical studies. Malina examines Mediterranean cultural values including honor, shame, kinship, and purity through anthropological frameworks.
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What this book knows
First-century Mediterranean people were group-embedded, honor-driven, and purity-ordered — reading the New Testament without knowing this distorts everything.
self-and-identity
Is Paul pointing to internalized guilt, a self-punitive reaction after transgression? Augustine and Luther thought so — but the first-century personality worked differently.
NTWI-RC-061In the first-century world we find dyadic personalities and females always embedded in some male — choice of mates arranged by parents to fit an established kinship group.
NTWI-RC-113If faith is to be held responsibly, theology must articulate the culture-bound original symbols of the primordial Christian movement in the clearest language available.
NTWI-RC-167obedience-and-authority
People out of place are called deviants — unclean, impure, profaned. We lock up deviants to keep our community clean, pure, sacred, unpolluted, and safe.
NTWI-RC-034This world of persons consisted of statuses embracing all of reality, reaching up to the cosmos, with God at the top — vertical relationships governing everything important.
NTWI-RC-102shame
Evil intentions from the heart refer to interpersonal relationships that harm one's fellows — Jesus reorders the priorities of purity toward a new social vision.
NTWI-RC-158Illuminates
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
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