Conflict in Corinth : the appropriateness of honour-shame as the primary social context
Abstract
Many recent studies in contemporary social anthropology have noted the vital
import of the concepts of honour and shame and how these are able both to generate ideas
of social identity within a community, and, in particular, to elucidate patterns of social
behaviour. This has been notably evident amongst the communities of the Mediterranean
littoral. At the same time, multi-disciplinary research exploring the communities of the
Ancient Near East, especially those undertaken by social historians investigating the
ancient societies of Israel, Greece, and Rome, have revealed that these, too, lived within
the social constraints of honour and shame. These twin concepts are said to have had a
profound influence upon such ancient communities, and, for some, are seen to represent
the pivotal values of Greco-Roman social life. Unsurprisingly then, these same values are
also evident within the narrative discourses of the Old and New Testaments, and a wide
number of studies have sought to examine a particular text or social scenario through the
lens of honour and shame. But despite having had a voluminous number of monographs
and articles written on it, the letter of 1 Corinthians has remained relatively untouched by
studies of honour-shame; yet it presents a unique expose of numerous aspects of social
life in Greco-Roman first-century CE culture. My aim here is to examine the extent to
which the social constraints of honour and shame may have had a direct influence upon
the multifarious problems of social behaviour so evident within the community (not least
the factionalism and strife which caused so many internal problems). In so doing, it
presents a fresh reading of the letter, and the thesis it proposes is that the honour-shame
model provides an appropriate and compelling framework within which to view the letter
holistically within its social context.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.