Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture, 2nd ed.
Overview
For contemporary Western readers, it can be easy to miss or misread cultural nuances in the New Testament. To hear the text correctly we must be attuned to its original context. As David deSilva demonstrates, keys to interpretation are found in paying attention to four essential cultural themes: honor and shame, patronage and reciprocity, kinship and family, and purity and pollution.
Through our understanding of honor and shame in the Mediterranean world, we gain new appreciation for how early Christians sustained commitment to a distinctive Christian identity and practice. By examining the protocols of patronage and reciprocity, we grasp more firmly the connections between God’s grace and our response. In exploring kinship and household relations, we grasp more fully the ethos of the early Christian communities as a new family brought together by God. And by investigating the notions of purity and pollution along with their associated practices, we realize how the ancient map of society and the world was revised by the power of the gospel.
This new edition is thoroughly revised and expanded with up-to-date scholarship. A milestone work in the study of New Testament cultural backgrounds, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity offers a deeper appreciation of the New Testament, the gospel, and Christian discipleship.
- Fully updated engagement with scholarship since 2000
- Incorporates deSilva's own recent research on primary texts and cultural backgrounds since 2000
- Thoroughly edited to refine nuances and address issues raised about the first edition
- New preface which briefly summarizes the topic's impact on missiology and the utility of attention to honor and reciprocity for contextualizing the Gospel in the Majority World
- Includes updated and expanded Resources for Further Study
- Uses NRSV instead of RSV as the default translation
- Preface
- Introduction: Cultural Awareness & Reading Scripture
- Honor & Shame: Connecting Personhood to Group Values
- Honor & Shame in the New Testament
- Patronage & Reciprocity: The Social Context of Grace
- Patronage & Grace in the New Testament
- Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World
- Kinship & the "Household of God" in the New Testament
- Purity & Pollution: Ordering the World Before a Holy God
- Purity & the New Testament
- Conclusion
David deSilva offers readers a thoroughly revised and expanded new edition of his influential and well-received Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity. What makes this book so important and so worth reading is its emphasis on the data that the ‘native informants’ provide, rather than the theoretical constructs that modern scholars imagine. DeSilva explores the ‘social forms and cultural values that pervaded the Mediterranean cultures during the Greek and Roman periods’ and how the culture of the New Testament makes sense in their light. It’s the right approach and the results are insightful and rewarding.
—Craig A. Evans, John Bisagno Distinguished Professor of Christian Origins at Houston Baptist University
To understand the New Testament authors, it is crucial to comprehend how their writings and rhetoric fit within their own cultural framework. David deSilva assists biblical interpreters by illuminating the four central cultural frames expressed in the title of his work. The cultural journey deSilva leads us on spans from Jewish wisdom literature to Greco-Roman household codes to Roman imperial ideology and everything in between. At every turn, he harnesses these cultural frames to help us understand more deeply the New Testament authors and their messages. A must-read for all serious interpreters of the Bible.
—Jeannine Brown, professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota
Reading the New Testament is a crosscultural experience. Thankfully, David deSilva is an expert guide, offering insight into four key areas of the wider world of the early Christians. When students ask me how they can learn to read the New Testament with deeper understanding of the context, this is a textbook I am always quick to recommend. A new, expanded edition is very welcome, offering more insight and reflecting the latest scholarship.
—Nijay K. Gupta, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary
Ever since its first publication, David deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity has been an essential resource for understanding the New Testament within its cultural and social contexts. This updated edition has only made it stronger. Not only does it engage with recent secondary literature and contain exegetical nuggets that have been unearthed through further years of writing commentaries and monographs, it also provides astute observations concerning how the message of the New Testament is applicable to our present world. I will be using this book in my class.
—Te-Li Lau, associate professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
- Title: Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture, Second Edition
- Author: David A. deSilva
- Edition: Second Edition
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Pages: 388
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subject: Bible. N.T. › Socio-rhetorical Criticism
- ISBNs: 9781514003862, 9781514003855, 1514003864, 1514003856
- Resource ID: LLS:HNRPTRNGKNS2NDD
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-11-06T18:29:04Z
Dr. David A. deSilva, PhD, is the Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio, where he’s taught since 1995.
He’s written over 20 books in the areas of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism, including Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation's Warning (Hendrickson, 2013), The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude (Oxford, 2012),Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation (WJKP, 2009), An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation (IVP, 2004), Introducing the Apocrypha (Baker Academic, 2002), and Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle “to the Hebrews” (Eerdmans, 2000). He’s also interested in spiritual formation, having written Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation through the Book of Common Prayer (IVP, 2008) and Praying with John Wesley (Discipleship Resources, 2001).
He’s ordained in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, and serves as director of music and organist at Christ United Methodist Church in Ashland. He and his wife, Donna Jean, have three sons.
