Semeia 56: Social Networks in Early Christian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History
Overview
Semeia is an experimental journal devoted to the exploration of new and emergent areas and methods of biblical criticism. Studies employing the methods, models, and findings of linguistics, folklore studies, contemporary literary criticism, structuralism, social anthropology, and other such disciplines and approaches, are invited. Although experimental in both form and content, Semeia proposes to publish work that reflects a well defined methodology that is appropriate to the material being interpreted.
- Key perspectives on biblical criticism
- Includes bibliographies and index
Top Highlights
“People convert because of their social ties to others who already belong. Accepting a new faith is part of conforming to the expectations and examples of one’s family and friends. Hence, religious movements can grow in two primary ways. First, they grow as members form new relationships with outsiders. Conversion occurs to the extent that these relationships come to outweigh the outsider’s ties to other outsiders. A second way movements grow is by spreading through pre-existing social networks as members in turn bring in their families and friends. The latter pattern has far greater potential for rapid growth.” (Page 172)
“The Christian teaching that God loves those who love Him was alien to pagan beliefs.” (Page 168)
“Christian values of love and charity had, from the beginning, been translated into norms of social service and community solidarity. When disasters struck, the Christians were better able to cope and this resulted in substantially higher rates of survival.” (Page 160)
“Christianity offered a much more satisfactory account of why these terrible times had fallen upon humanity and it projected a hopeful, even enthusiastic, portrait of the future.” (Page 160)
“Frequently in human history, crises produced by natural or social disasters have been translated into crises of faith.” (Page 162)
- Elizabeth A. Clark
- Holland Hendrix
- Ronald F. Hock
- Thomas L. Robinson
- Rodney Stark
- Robert F. Stoops, Jr.
- L. Michael White
- Title: Semeia 56: Social Networks in Early Christian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History
- Editor: L. Michael White
- Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
- Publication Date: 1992
- Pages: 202
