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Since the rise of critical scholarship in the period of the Enlightenment, scholars have approached
the biblical texts from a humanities perspective. Typical of all scholarship, whatever its theological
presuppositions, have been analyses of the historical, linguistic, religious, and literary contexts of
ancient Israel. What was often missing, however, was an analysis of Israelite culture in its social
contexts, an assessment of its beliefs, social structures, and institutions from the perspective of the
social sciences. Despite a few forays of anthropologists and sociologists into biblical studies, social
science approaches remained peripheral to biblical studies until the last three decades. Yet,
Scripture itself contains several proto-sociological observations, dues to the social significance
of rituals or institutions. When the writer of the Holiness Code equates Yah webs command for
ritual purity with the proscription for ethnic purity, he is touching on the social significance for
religious and social boundaries (Lev. 20:22-26). Likewise, the Deuteronomic historian comments
on the shifting role and function of prophets in his parenthetic statement that prophets were
formerly called "seers" and men of God (1 Sam, 9:8-9). Provisional observations of this type are
also found in classical texts, with some scholars identifying Herodotus and others Plato or Aristotle
as the first sociologist, early rabbinic texts often explore the social function of customs from
ancient Israel s and their own cultures. Even so, however, these sociological observations tended
to be peripheral, subjugated to the overarching religious or theological interpretation of Israelite
and Jewish texts.
In the rest of this chapter, I provide a brief historical account of the emergence of the social sciences
and their subsequent application to biblical cultures and then assess the contributions of this
emerging field of study to knowledge of the biblical world, I conclude with an analysis of the points
of concern evangelicals may raise regarding its application to Scripture and a discussion of the
appropriate methods for using the social sciences to study the warp and woof of Israelite life.
Many of the seminal scholars within the social sciences - from Tnnies and Spencer to W.
Robertson Smith, Durkheim, and Weber - developed these ideas into the two related disciplines of
anthropology and sociology. Several distinct lines of social analysis have emerged in the last
century. These are typically categorized as the conflict tradition, the structural-functional approach,
the idealist perspective, and the materialist perspective. The conflict model of analysis examines
the way that societies and social entities respond to the influences of internal or external social,
economic, military, and political pressures. It explores the strategies of these sometimes competing
groups as they respond to each others concerns, their attempts to assert their own influence and to
legitimate their interests. It is concerned with the way in which societies achieve balance in the
face of the flux that often results from the interrelationship of groups with competing interests.
When societies fail to achieve balance they may instead weaken and ultimately implode.
In contrast to the conflict tradition, the structural-functional approach emphasizes the basic unity
that exists within societies. While it does not deny the existence of conflict and competing
ideologies within a particular society, it suggests that even in the face of these tensions, balance is
achieved by consensus rather than being imposed. The structural-functional approach emerged as
an alternative to the naively evolutionary and deterministic perspective that was introduced by
Spencer and that dominated the social sciences for nearly a century. It grew out of the French
structuralist school that traces itself to Durkheim, and has been the most prominent method of
inquiry in European and American sociology since the 1950s. As its name implies, it commonly
examines the structure and function of both institutions and ideologies within societies as well as
the complex relationships and interrelationships that result from their interaction.
The materialist perspective (often referred to as cultural materialism) is frequently associated with
the theory of Marx and is typically contrasted with the idealist orientation. Both approaches agree
on the power of social, religious, and political ideologies. They differ, however, on the origin of
these ideologies, the factors that make them effective, and their role in cultural change. The
materialist viewpoint posits that the physical realities of a culture give rise to the ideologies whereas
the idealist perspective emphasizes the impact of ideologies on particular social structures. A good
example of these approaches concerns the emergence and significance of the Israelite dietary' laws.
Marvin Harris, writing from a materialist orientation, maintains that the pork taboo resulted from
the economic and environmental constraints of Syria-Palestine. Pigs, he suggests, compete with
humans for natural resources such as water, food, and shade. The costs - both economic and in
terms of human capital - were too great for both pigs and humans to flourish concurrently in this
environment with its limited resources. Thus pork taboo emerged in order to protect human culture
and ensure its survival, Mary Douglas, writing from an idealist perspective, claims that the dietary7
restrictions come instead from a more comprehensive concept of order and purity. In her view,
many of the Priestly writings establish categories of normalcy; any animal or practice that
violates that normal order is considered out of place and therefore unclean. While it is true that
much, if not most, sociological theory is idealist in nature, what is often overlooked is that some of
the early anthropological and sociological theorists recognized the effect of material realities in the
development of social structures, cultural practices, and ideology. Thus W. Robertson Smith called
attention to the materialist origin and significance of rituals; and L. Wallis and A. Causse
independently argued that the prophetic emphasis on social justice was rooted in class divisions, in
the material effects of oppression.
Antonin Causse analyzed Israelite society through the lens of the French sociological school and
its most prominent thinkers, mile Durkheim and Lucien Levy-Bruhl. He consciously applied to
ancient Israel Durkheims notion of group mentality and Levy-Bruhls notion of the development
of human consciousness from a primitive, collective phase to a logical, individualistic phase.
Causses analyses of Israel were published initially in a series of articles in the Revue dhistoire et
de philosophic religeuses, but then revised and collected into several books. Although his work is
not as widely known as Webers, it is no less insightful; and though many of the scholars who have
commented on his work have considered it Weberian in outlook and perspective, his writings
instead exemplify the structural-functional approach to sociology.
In Causses analysis, a communal, primitive stage is characteristic of the tribal period, with its
emphasis on kinship and family bonds, and relates to Durkheims concept of organic solidarity.
As Israelite society became more complex not only did these social bonds lose significance, but
the class distinction and social stratification of the monarchy weakened the earlier social unity.
Urban centers increased in power and importance, usurping the role of villages and their ruling
structures. Causse held that during this phase, and under the impetus of the prophetic movement, a
shift began toward a more individualistic mentality'. The influence of the earlier corporate
solidarity could still be seen in the moralizing tone of the Deuteronomic History' and the judgment
oracles of the eighth-century B.C. prophets. With Ezekiel and the exilic prophets, however, a new
notion emerges: the responsibility of the individual for his or her own actions. This shift toward
individualism is completed with the emergence of sectarian Judaism in the late fifth and early fourth
centuries B.C.
The sociological perspective came to the fore once again in the work of George Mendenhall and
Norman K. Gottwald. Though they approach ancient Israel very differently in the details of their
scholarship, both raise significant methodological questions, both challenge the assumptions that
had previously dominated biblical scholarship, and both agree that biblical Israel can be understood
fully only when one analyzes its social setting. Mendenhall's initial contribution concerns the
question of Israel's emergence in Palestine and the role of Yahwism as a cultural tradition that gave
the newly formed Israel its social and religious coherence. He questions the validity of using a
nineteenth-century model of Bedouin culture as a model for Israelite society; he shows that the
notion of the tribe had been poorly defined in previous research, which had not approached tribal
structure from a social science perspective; he suggests that Israel's emergence was a complex
social process that originated from Canaanite unrest, as demonstrated in the Amarna Letters, and
converged as the Apiru joined with the band of slaves who had escaped Egyptian oppression under
Moses' leadership. In his view, both the Moses group and the Canaanite peasants along with the
apiru shared a common Identity when they adopted Yahwism as a religious tradition and rejected
enslavement and oppression. But Mendenhall's contribution goes far beyond his programmatic
peasant revolt model of Israelite origins. He develops Weber's concept of the covenantal
community as the basis for Israelite unity and studies the social and religious context of law.
Gottwald accepts the basic outline of Mendenhall's peasant revolt model, but approaches earliest
Israel from a materialist rather than an idealist perspective. Gottwald's groundbreaking study on
"Domain Assumptions and Societal Models" also critiques the basic working assumptions of
biblical scholars, as well as what he refers to as the humanist approach rooted in linguistics,
theology, and literary and historical studies. He identifies three assumptions that have formed the
basis of theories on Israels emergence: that social change results primarily from population
displacement, originates from the desert regions, and is idiosyncratic or arbitrary. He suggests
instead that social change is a normal, internal process, that the desert cultures had a minimal
influence on this change, and that such change is multifaceted and complex. Gottwald's critique
anticipated a major change in both biblical archaeology and anthropology. In questioning these
ruling assumptions and replacing them with ones that define social change in more broadly based
and nuanced ways, he places a greater emphasis on indigenous developments and views Israelite
culture and cultural change from a more systemic and holistic viewpoint.
Mendenhall and Gottwald have been both roundly criticized and widely praised for their pioneering
work. Both, for example, have been criticized for lacking sophistication on the one hand, and for
being too comprehensive on the other. Gottwald's Tribes of Yahweh has been alternately dismissed
as the worst of arm-chair sociology and compared to Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the
History of Ancient Israel and W. F. Albright's From the Stone Age to Christianity in its potential
impact on the field of biblical studies. If there is a major weakness in Gottwalds early work, one
particularly demonstrated in Tribes, it is his personal commitment to a Marxist dialectic. The
cultural materialist perspective at times seems to be forced upon Israelite tradition, causing him to
draw conclusions that the data do not necessarily warrant. For example, while it is true that "only
as the full materiality of ancient Israel is more securely grasped will we be able to make proper
sense of its spirituality, Gottwald is clearly off the mark when he interprets Israelite literacy as a
social tool designed to celebrate its difference from the Canaanite context from which it emerged.
Instead, writing is a tool intended to encourage social order and to control access to goods and
resources; as such, it promotes social control rather than independence. Similarly, Gottwald may
be correct in observing that a critical element of premonarchic Israel is its egalitarian (and he would
add, anti-statist) ideology. But he may be criticized for being inconsistent in applying his
materialist model to biblical Israel. It is more likely that any egalitarianism that may have existed
in tribal Israel was due to the social realities from which Israel emerged. The earliest settlements
in the hill country are characterized by crude pottery and architectural traditions and a subsistence
economy with little, if any, surplus. Societies with these features tend to be egalitarian by nature,
since stratification tends to occur only when a substantial surplus is produced. A commitment to
egalitarianism, and possible legitimization of it in Yahwistic religion, would probably have been
secondary and socially influenced.
Since the initial question that Mendenhall and Gottwald addressed was Israels emergence, it is no
surprise that this question has evoked the most discussion in the recent social science analysis of
biblical cultures. What is surprising, however, is that even now no consensus has been reached.
Albright's conquest model, which closely parallels the biblical traditions of the Book of Judges,
has been largely abandoned in the scholarly world. The peaceful infiltration and the peasant revolt
theories remain the most widely held theories that account for the Israelite settlement. Both seek to
combine archaeological, biblical, and extra-biblical textual data to achieve a comprehensive picture
of nascent Israel, but both have radically different points of departure. The peaceful infiltration
theory, most recently revised by Israel Finkelstein, maintains that the Israelites entered the central
hills from Transjordan, abandoning a seminomadic lifestyle in favor of a sedentary existence. The
model remains heavily influenced by analogs from Bedouin and other seminomadic cultures. The
peasant revolt theory suggests that the earliest Israelites were in effect disillusioned Canaanites,
who either rebelled against or withdrew from a stratified, oppressive Canaanite city-state system
that is reflected in the Amarna Letters and in the archaeological record of Syria-Palestine.
Essentially, these Canaanites retribalized - that is, they left a more developed social setting of
the city-state for a more open tribal system.
Several refinements of the basic peasant revolt model have been proposed. Attempting to merge
both Mendenhall s and Gottwalds theories, Marvin Chaney has reexamined the Amarna
correspondence as a social indicator and seeks to harmonize archaeological data and the unrest
documented in the Amarna Letters with the traditions of Joshua and Judges. What emerges from
his study is a more comprehensive portrait of both biblical and social worlds. Gerhard Lenski, a
sociologist who critiques Gottwalds work, suggests that Gottwalds reconstruction of Israelite
society fails to answer a more basic question. Lenski maintains that while peasant unrest and even
revolts are common in agrarian and semifeudal societies, they are seldom successful. Given this
typical failure of peasant revolts, he suggests that more fundamental questions for biblical
sociologists are: Why did this revolt succeed? and Why did a monarchy replace the more egalitarian
tribal social organization so quickly? Lenski contends that a social model that more directly
answers both questions is the frontier model." In this model, a republican organizationwhich
tribal Israel loosely embodiesis typically replaced by a more centralized monarchic structure, as
is the case in Israel.
Several scholars have analyzed the nature of Israelite society in the premonarchic period and the
forces that led toward the monarchy. Abraham Malamat applied Max Weber's notion of the ideal
type and the various stages of social development to the judges." According to Weber, societies
typically progress from ad hoc to institutional forms of leadership. Weber referred to this process
as the "routinization of authority, and suggested that such authority" begins in a '"charismatic"
phase in which leaders arise in times of social duress; these leaders function for a limited time and
for a specific purpose. Often, however, the position of the charismatic leader becomes "routinized"
as the position that was originally spontaneous and centered around the leader becomes part of the
social fabric. Weber refers to this as the rational" phase of leadership. Malamat identifies Israels
"judges" as charismatic leaders and suggests that the Philistine threat produced the necessary
impetus for the charismatic phase to end and the monarchy, a routinized, rational institution, to
emerge.
In the years following Malamat's study, several scholars have applied a different model to the social
setting of the tribal period" and the development of the monarchy. The studies of Frank Frick,
James Flanagan, Israel Finkelstein, and Robert Coote and Keith Whitelam have contributed to the
emergence of a new consensus. All identify this period as a chiefdom, a type of society that
frequently precedes a monarchy or centralized form of government in social development.29
Several elements unify these studies. They all are rooted in anthropological and/or
macrosociological theory, they all make significant use of archaeological data, and they all agree
that such external data provide a more accurate portrait of such a dramatic change than does the
Philistine threat model that relies rather uncritically on the biblical narratives in Judges and 1
Samuel. This marks a significant departure from previous scholarship. It recognizes that the
perspective of the biblical writers was not sociological but theological/ideological and maintains
that in order fully to understand the social development of ancient Israel one can profit from
applying models of social development from the social sciences to the biblical data. This
perspective, and this use of models from other cultures, unites virtually all social science criticism
of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Each of these studies concentrates on different elements of chiefdoms. Flanagan directly applies to
ancient Israel the theory of social evolution initially developed by Elman Service. He suggests that
Israel evolved from a tribal or segmented society, to a chiefdom, and finally to a monarchy. He
identifies the rule of Saul, and then of David, as chiefdoms. In a subsequent study, he analyzes the
forces that led to a full-fledged monarchy, employing the notion of a hologram and its multifaceted
image to suggest that any social analysis of Israelite society must be multilayered and account for
multiple factors in order to present a coherent picture of Israelite society.
Fricks study is more archaeological in nature. He demonstrates the weaknesses in the former
consensus view that slaked-lime cisterns, terrace agriculture, and iron tools were the prime
technological forces that allowed Israelite settlement in the hill country of Palestine. Instead, he
suggests, these technologies were not developed by the Israelites to enable settlement, but rather
were technological adaptations that allowed a surplus to be produced in an agriculturally marginal
area in response to the pressures of population growth. In most societies, as a surplus is produced
social complexity concomitantly increases. In the case of Israel, the increase in agricultural
production both allowed a chiefdom to emerge and made controlling its territory more desirable to
other political entities such as the Philistines. Frick finds evidence for the social differentiation that
typifies chiefdoms in the site of Tel Masos. Excavations in the northeastern sector of the tell (Area
A) revealed a belt often houses with similar size, plan, and artifacts. Apart from other data, this
might suggest that the social structure of the settlement was egalitarian. In Area H, located in the
southern part of the site, however, a large building was discovered that was twice the size of those
in Area A. It contained pottery that was more sophisticated in both form and decoration, evidence
of imported wares, and luxury items, such as an ivory lions head. Thus both the size of the building
and its contents suggest that its inhabitants were of a different social rank than those of the buildings
in Area A, that the family was that of the local area's chieftain.
Coote and Whitelam identify the various social pressures that existed at the end of the Late Bronze
Age and the beginning of the Iron Age as factors that allowed first the emergence of Israel and then
its transition from chiefdom to monarchy. They suggest that the perspective of the French theorist
Ferdnand Braudel of la longue dure best explains Israelite political and sociological evolution.
Rather than view the tribal and monarchic periods as two opposite poles or even two distinct
developments, they concentrate on the processes behind the various social changes that occurred
in Syria-Palestine and view them as developments on a continuum. Among the factors influencing
the emergence of Israel and the formation of the monarchy are the collapse of Egyptian hegemony
and trade at the end of the Late Bronze Age, agricultural intensification in the Early Iron Age,
social stratification, and population pressures.
Israel Finkelstein also addresses the emergence of Israel and transition toward a monarchy from
the perspective of la. longue dure. While his studies are conversant with important social science
theories, he does not always apply social models consistently or in a methodologically sound
manner. Nonetheless, his sensitivity to the environmental features of the land of Israel, his
understanding of the demographic patterns from the mid-thirteenth through the tenth centuries, and
his ability to interpret these data in a comprehensive manner make his studies essential reading for
a careful study of earliest Israel. Finkelstein advocates a neo-Altian, peaceful infiltration model to
explain the settlement of Israel in the central highlands of Canaan and suggests that the settlement
process was one of sedentarization of nomads. He argues that the four-room house, once identified
with a specifically Israelite material culture, follows the pattern of the nomadic tents, and that
archaeological features such as storage pits that are independent of architectural remains for early
settlements such as Isbet Sarta also represent a nomadic lifestyle and the first phases of
sedentarization. Like Frick, Flanagan, and Coote and Whitelam, he views much of the
premonarchic period as a chiefdom, and uses site distribution and population estimates to suggest
an increased social and economic structure that led to the establishment and increasing complexity
of kingship and petty statehood.
Biblical scholars of all theological persuasions have identified the prophetic tradition as one of the
enduring contributions of Israelite religion to subsequent human civilization. Much scholarship has
concentrated on the prophetic office, the prophetic message, and the literary and moral force of
prophetic literature. But the social sciences have also been applied to the prophetic tradition from
the earliest efforts of W. Robertson Smith to the more recent work of Robert R. Wilson. Several
lines of interest have been particularly fruitful. Max Weber viewed the prophetic tradition as
emerging from the early Israelite notion of YHWH as a war deity and from the perspective of
covenant. While certainly not all scholars have adopted his conceptual framework of the war deity,
virtually all scholars speak of the covenantal, and therefore sociological, nature of prophecy.
Further, Weber was one of the first scholars to speak of what he called the social psychology of
the prophets and to seek to uncover their social context. Writing from a different perspective, both
Louis Wallis and Antonin Causse saw the prophetic call for social justice as rooted in the growing
stratification and class struggles that accompanied the development of Israelite society after the
period of the judges. Gottwald stresses this notion of the influence of an increased level of material
and economic differentiation on the prophetic ideal in his most recent social reconstructions.
Recently, social science approaches to prophecy have used cross-cultural parallels to concentrate
on such issues as social location and context, prophetic authority, and the rise of the apocalyptic
tradition, Robert R. Wilson's Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel identifies the Israelite prophets
as intermediaries and finds social parallels for Israelite prophecy in shamanism and spirit
possession of contemporary tribal societies. He analyzes spirit possession that is considered
"positive" and negative by their social groups and is particularly interested in the social context
of prophets and the level of cultural support that is necessary for prophetic survival. He identifies
two distinct prophetic traditions, the Ephraimite tradition of such figures as Samuel, Elijah and
Elisha, Hosea and Jeremiah, and the Judean tradition of Nathan, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Amos.
While these traditions have distinct theological perspectives, they are similar in that individual
prophets function either as central intermediariesthose who have direct access to and the
approval of the ruling establishmentor peripheral intermediariesthose whose access is limited
and who frequently lead protest movements against the establishment.
Thomas Overholt and Burke Long focus more on prophetic authority and, like Wilson, introduce
ethnographic parallels for biblical prophecy. Overholt concentrates on Native American shamans
as a source for prophetic models, using the Ghost Dance movement of the late nineteenth century
and the Seneca holy man Handsome Lake. He builds on Long's suggestion that prophetic authority
resides not only in the spoken word but also in the community to which the prophet speaks. He
develops a dynamic idea of authority, suggesting that prophecy was not simply a function of the
message from YHWH but also was affected by the audience lo whom he or she spoke. Comparing
Handsome Lake with Jeremiah, he maintains that the prophet would typically receive feedback
from the hearers, which would in turn help the prophet to refocus the message. As members of the
community accept the revised message, they in turn validate the prophet's authority.
_
Bernhard Lang views the prophetic movement with its monotheistic ideal as a minority religious
tradition. Lang's study identifies the salient points in the development of monotheism within
ancient Israelite religious tradition, and like Wallis, Causse, and Gottwald, places the prophetic
minority tradition within a social context of peasant poverty. Prophets, like Amos with his concern
for social justice, often stood in a position of social critics.
Paul Hanson and Steven Cook present opposing accounts of the rise of apocalyptic tradition. Both
see the crisis of exile and return as providing a major impetus for apocalyptic literature to emerge
from the prophetic movement. Hanson applies the conflict tradition of the social sciences to the
period and the literature of Haggai, First and Second Zechariah, Joel, and Third Isaiah. In his view,
a critical tension existed between the hierocratic party represented by the Jerusalem priestly
establishment and the disenfranchised visionaries. Cook suggests instead that apocalyptic tradition
need not arise from marginalized groups. He notes that prophets with priestly origins or influences,
such as Ezekiel, First Zechariah, and Joel, operated from an apocalyptic perspective with its hope
for a radical inbreaking of God's kingdom. By rooting his position in the study of millenarian
groups in many different historical and social settings, Cook shows not only that priestly groups
can and do demonstrate eschatological fervor but that they also frequently hold central positions of
power and leadership. Thus he contends that it was not internecine conflict but a priestly, millennial
context that best explains apocalyptic literature, the apocalyptic worldview, and an apocalyptic
community.
One of the most important areas of the social setting of ancient Israel to be recovered is the role
and place of women within Israelite culture in general and in Israelite religion in particular. While
a significant portion of this recovery has come through feminist scholarship, often literary and
linguistic studies of the Hebrew text and comparative analyses of ancient Near Eastern documents,
the social sciencesparticularly archaeology, sociology, and anthropologyhave shed
considerable light on these issues as well. Thus the most important works on women in ancient
Israel have been both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in nature; most have built in some way
on early works of both Rosemary Radford Ruether and Phyllis Trible. The result of the more recent
studies is on the one hand a clearer understanding of male/female roles and authority and on the
other hand an indication of the degree to which women enjoyed positions of status. What is clear
is that where traditional, male-dominated areas of society are restrictive, women often find
positions of power and influence outside the accepted social frameworks. Thus women exercised
significant authority within the wisdom tradition and functioned as prophets and official cultic
functionaries, as did Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah. As Phyllis Bird points out, male-dominated
biblical scholarship often devalued other important roles of women as cult functionaries, such as
their rule as professional mourners, singers, and celebrants. In this respect, Bird has furthered the
discussion of women's place in ancient Israel by making scholars more aware of the ways in which
interpretive bias has further skewed the record of the Hebrew Bible; for males dominated not only
ancient culture but until recently also modem scholarship. Two layers of interpretation, then, must
be shed in order better to understand the cultural landscape of ancient Israel: that of the Hebrew
Bible itself and that of its modem interpreters. Further, modem scholarship has tended to look
exclusively at sanctioned institutional avenues of power and influence, such as the priesthood,
rather than those that were suppressed, and the public roles rather than those that were private. By
opening the study of women's roles within the cultus to the private sphere and the suppressed
traditions, we can better understand the significance of women s power and influence.
Carol Meyers's work has concentrated more on the place of women within the family and village
economy of ancient Israel. She also distinguishes between private and public spheres of influence,
suggesting that while women were often excluded from positions of public power, they often
wielded considerable influenceif not powerin the domestic sphere. Women's roles within the
family were focused on production not just childbearing and child rearing, but also tending
flocks and herds and producing foodstuffs, clothing, and household goods. Meyers evaluates these
roles within a broader construct of agrarian societies. She demonstrates that within such societies,
gender roles are often clearly defined, but women are more highly considered than in other cultural
contexts due to their vital contribution to family, village, and clan survival.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky brings a more global approach to the cultic sphere within ancient Israel. Her
study, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan
Myth, examines the forces that led to the exclusion of women from the priesthood in ancient Israel.
She notes that in Mesopotamian tradition women performed official priestly functions and that
goddesses were an important part of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian pantheons in the
earliest written texts until the middle of the second millennium BC. Frymer-Kensky observes that
while women were allowed prominent social and religious functions until this time, their public
role began to decline so that by the first millennium women were "practically invisible" in the texts
from Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian world by the end of the second millennium was a male's
world, above and below; and the ancient goddesses have all but disappeared.
According to Frymer-Kensky, as the Israelites moved gradually toward monotheism, the functions
and characteristics of both male and female deities within the ancient Near Eastern pantheons were
subsumed within Yahwistic religion. But the Israelite social and religious traditions were, at their
heart, more egalitarian than those of Israel's neighbors. Thus, while Israel did not fully comprehend
or even establish an entirely gender-neutral tradition, monotheism allows a more holistic attitude
toward gender and sexuality. This would change in both Judaism and Christianity as they were
influenced by a Hellenistic culture that was often misogynist in its orientation. Frymer-Kensky s
work is appealing in that it examines carefully the Mesopotamian traditions and their
developments, the social worlds that produced them, and the differences that emerged with Israelite
monotheistic impulses. It is perhaps too facile, however, in attributing the negative attitudes toward
women primarily to the influences of Hellenism.
The Persian period, once neglected in favor of periods considered more important, has enjoyed a
recent surge of interest. Although most scholars are highly skeptical of the accounts of Ezra and
much of the Nehemiah tradition, there is a growing sense that the Persian period is the turning point
of biblical history. Virtually all scholars place much of the editing and transmissionsome would
argue, even the originof much of the Hebrew Bible in the Persian period. These renewed
assessments of the importance of the period make the social setting and ideological developments
within the postexilic community of great significance.
Several scholars have applied the conflict tradition to the social community of Yehud between 538
and 332. This tradition is at the heart of Hanson's understanding of the tension between the
hierocrats of the temple establishment and the visionaries of Isaiah 56-66. It is also fundamental to
Joel P, Weinberg's influential Brger-Tempel-Gemeinde (citizen-temple community) model for the
postexilic community^ though clearly his work employs a cultural materialist viewpoint as well.
Weinberg suggests that the province of Yehud was structured around a temple economy, a structure
found throughout Mesopotamia in various periods of its history. He identifies Yehud as a rare type
of citizen-temple community in which the temple itself did not hold any land, but suggests that the
temple functionaries gradually came to rule not only the temple but also civic affairs. One of the
weaknesses of his model is the uncritical manner in which he takes the biblical numbers of
deportees in Jeremiah and 2 Kings, and returnees in Ezra 2 = Nehemiah 7. This leads him to suggest
a province with a population in excess of 200.000 persons in the fifth century B.C., a figure that
the demographic evidence does not support. As his model seems to depend in part on a substantial
population for the province, it is surprising how widely accepted his model has become. Yet his
model does address one of the major questions of the period, that of the identity of the gola
community. Weinberg believes that the conflict that is alluded to in some of the prophetic books
and in Ezra-Nehemiah comes from the tension that arose when the returnees (the members of the
gola community) attempted to assume power over those who had remained in Palestine during the
exile. The effect of this idea is that the official history (Ezra, Nehemiah, the Chronicler) can be
trusted only to present the perspectives of the members of the exilic community who returned to
Yehud from Babylon from 538 through the middle to end of the fifth century.
Daniel Smith has contributed much to our understanding of the sociology of the exile and the
importance of identity. Smith relates the sociology and psychology of the exilic community to other
societies that have been dispossessed, conquered, or marginalized. He identifies four major types
of responses: structural adaptation, in which the ruling structure of the social group changes in
response to a new reality; a split in leadership, in which traditional leaders and new vie for influence
as the larger group attempts to adapt and survive; the development of new rituals that redefine the
boundaries between the community and its rulers; and the development of folk heroes and a
literature of resistance. These strategies of survival functioned to keep the social and religious
structures of the gola community intact. Their strong identity and belief that they represented the
true Israel in turn led to a protracted struggle for power between, their leaders and those of the
indigenous community of Judeans who had remained in the land.
As mentioned above, what makes Weinberg's proposal of the citizen- temple community
problematic is his lack of reliable data concerning site distribution and population for the province
during the Persian period. My own research suggests that the total population of the province
ranged between a low of about 13,000 and a high of 21,000 from 538-332 B.C., a population of
less than 10 percent of Weinberg's proposal. It is not currently dear whether this difference in
population invalidates his model, but these data do raise significant questions concerning the nature
of the political and social structure of the province. If the province was as small as the most recent
archaeological reconstructions suggest, the need to construct meaningful boundaries between
Judeans (the true seed of Israel) and various outsiders is more intelligible.
Several of the previous aspects of Israel's social setting are directly related to its economic
contextthe prophetic call for justice, the role of women in production, the emergence of Israel,
and the monarchy, for example. The various socioeconomic contexts that developed in antiquity
can.be approached from two distinct, but sometimes complementary, perspectives: that of
subsistence strategy and that of mode of production. Subsistence strategy is a more general term
that refers to the methods and technologies that cultures, groups, and societies use to adapt to and
survive within their environment. It applies a taxonomy to societies from the simplest hunter-
gatherer cultures to the most complex industrial societies, and defines four basic types and three
environmentally specialized types. These include hunter-gatherer, horticultural, agrarian, and
industrial; of these, horticultural and agrarian are typically subdivided into their simple and
complex forms according to technological developments. So, for example, use of a hoe rather than
a wooden digging stick distinguishes a complex horticultural society from its simple counterpart;
agrarian societies develop where a plow replaces a hoe; and a complex agrarian society constructs
tools and weapons from iron rather than the copper or bronze tools used in a simple agrarian
society. Fishing, maritime, and herding societies are environmentally specialized types that develop
to allow survival in ecologically marginal areas (such as herding societies), or areas in which
specific environmental factors make a particular strategy more attractive (fishing and maritime
cultures). Cultures that use two or more strategies to survive within their environment are
considered hybrid societies. Given this taxonomy, one would identify early Israel as a hybrid
culture, one that applied both herding and agrarian subsistence strategies to the various
environmental niches of Syria-Palestine. Although Israel cannot be compared to its larger
neighbors in terms of its social complexity, the development of iron tools and weapons suggests
that it evolved from a simple to an advanced agrarian culture.
Scholars analyzing ancient Israel's economic context from the perspective of the mode of
production would argue that a society's place in the taxonomy of cultures tells only part of the
story. While it is important to understand the various subsistence strategies and technologies, they
would argue that these factors alone cannot account for the complex interrelationships that exist
within the society. Mode of production is a concept that Marx and Engels applied to the industrial
setting of late-nineteenth-century Europe. They proposed that cultures could be divided among
three or four types based on the relationship between the political and economic sectors of society.
Marx called this relationship the political economy, and highlighted the relationship between the
material forces of production and the social relations of production. Marx divided societies
into four phases through which human cultures have progressed: an egalitarian, classless society,
a slave-based social order, a feudal society, and the capitalist society that has typified Western
culture since the industrial age. Some scholars have argued that a fifth phase be added, the Asiatic
Mode of Production, or AMP. This type of social order exists when the cultural elite controls a
centralized state, when there is a self-sufficient village economy, and when there is little or no
private land ownership. On the evolutionary scale, this mode of production would best fit between
the classless and the slave-based society. Marx predicted an eventual return to a classless society
when the underprivileged masses revolt against their bourgeois oppressors, a theory that led to the
establishment of communist states in the former Soviet Union, the People s Republic of China, and
other similar cultural experiments.
According to Gottwald, when one applies the perspectives of political economy and mode of
production to Iron Age Israel, the following features stand out. During most of the premonarchic
phase, during its transition from a tribal society to a chiefdom, Israel functioned as an egalitarian
society. The material cultural evidence from the few excavated villages demonstrates a rustic,
subsistence-level culture, with little class differentiation. As a chiefdom and then monarchy
emerge, there is greater economic specialization and a transition to an Asiatic, or tributary, mode
of production. This involves the elite siphoning off surplus from the peasantry, which in turn causes
an increasing economic gap between the upper and lower classes. During the monarchic period,
the surplusextracted through taxation and debt slavery went to the growing bureaucracy in
order to finance the needs of the emergent state. With the fall of the northern and later the southern
kingdoms, this internal tributary mode of production shifted to an external, or foreign, tributary
mode, with the resources extracted from the peasantry going both to indigenous elite and foreign
overlords. It is only in the Roman period that a modified slave-based mode of production emerges.
At the same time that social science criticism has become more accepted in mainstream
scholarship, evangelical scholars have generally been slow in adopting this new method of biblical
study; until recently few evangelical works applied anthropological or sociological perspectives to
the Hebrew Scriptures and the cultures that produced them. Instead, some prominent evangelical
scholars consider social science interpretation of Scripture to be peripheral, mere fluff subject to
the whims of the practitioner.
I attribute this type of dismissive altitude to a number of specific concerns, including: (1) a
theological commitment to the uniqueness of Israel coupled with a desire to avoid cultural and
religious relativism; (2) a hesitation to apply cross-cultural parallels to the biblical world and an
attempt to avoid reading modem worldviews onto ancient Israel; and (3) a concern that social
science criticism wall take away from the more legitimate aspects of biblical interpretation. As
these concerns are closely interrelated and therefore somewhat difficult to separate, I discuss them
briefly together, giving examples of each where possible.
1. A theological commitment to the uniqueness of biblical Israel coupled with a desire to avoid
cultural and religious relativism, Perhaps the greatest concern evangelicals have regarding social
science criticism stems from the tendency of the social sciences to view human culture on a
continuum. This cross-cultural approach stands in stark contrast to the commitment of the biblical
authorsand of evangelical scholarsto the uniqueness of Israeli Throughout the biblical
narratives whether of the call and covenant with Abraham, the exodus event, the emergence of
Israel in Canaan, or the prophetic idealsthe Israelite authors define themselves and their
commitment to Yahweh as completely distinct from the faith of their neighbors in other gods and
goddesses, While the biblical writers certainly considered their words God's word to Israel, some
evangelicals have added the theological concepts of plenary inspiration and the inerrancy of
Scripture. These theological perspectives are not necessarily in conflict with sociological or
anthropological theory, though some scholars who apply the social sciences to Scripture do so as
a rejection of any theological commitment. The social scientist would speak of Israel's belief in its
uniqueness, but would examine other cultural traditions to see whether they shared this concept. If
other cultures can be shown to have a concept of a special call from their gods or goddesses, then
the social scientist would see Israel's uniqueness as a cultural concept rather than a theological
truth. The evangelical scholar would begin with the theological presupposition of the universal
truth of the biblical traditions, whereas the social scientist would begin with an examination of
Israels beliefs as religious ideology. Thus, for example, rather than looking solely at the provisions
of the Decalogue as divinely given law, the sociologist or anthropologist might examine the
Decalogue primarily from a social and communal perspective. This emphasis ought not to be
problematic for evangelicals in and of itself; indeed, one's understanding of the ancient force of the
commandand therefore its modem applicationcould be enhanced by a social science study of
covenant and law.
It is important to note that it is not only evangelical or conservative scholars who defend the
distinctiveness of Israel or who would place specific controls on the use of the social sciences in
biblical studies. Roland de Vaux sought to delineate the difference between Israelite and other
ancient Near Eastern sacrificial traditions by showing that while Canaanite and Mesopotamian
sacrifices were intended to provide food for the deities, the Israelite priesthood was oriented toward
a more ethical understanding of sacrifice. Yahweh, who was spirit, needed no sustenance (Ps.
50:12-14). As Gary Anderson has shown, however, the notion of sacrifice as food for YHWH,
while perhaps diminished for ideological reasons in the Hebrew Bible, is still evident in both legal
and poetic traditions and is present in texts that span biblical genres and historical periods alike.
2. A hesitation to apply cross-cultural parallels to the biblical world and an attempt to avoid
reading modem worldviews onto ancient Israel. Recent studies of the nature of earliest Israel and
of the focal point of its ideology suggest that early Israel was a more complex society than the
biblical narratives indicate. If one follows the biblical story line for the transition from tribal league
to monarchy, the Philistine threat stands out as the prime mover for the rise of Saul and the Davidic
monarchy. As noted above, the social sciences propose a multilevel cause for Israel's emergence
and political development, one rooted in the collapse of Late Bronze Age social structures, a
declining economy, a volatile political atmosphere, and a rise of available surplus and, with it, of
specialization. This perspective of la longue dure, tracing Israels evolution from a tribal league,
to a chiefdom, to a petty kingship does not in itself necessarily conflict with biblical narratives, but
it does require supplementing the biblical traditions with social science models. Once again, the
critical issues are the priority and perspective of the social science data regarding the biblical
traditions, and the degree to which parallels from other societies can be appropriately applied to
the biblical narratives. Here additional concerns emerge: Is it legitimate to supplement biblical
narratives with modem social science models? Does doing so necessarily undermine one's
commitment to Scripture as God's Word?
Similar questions arise when one seeks to place Israelite religion within its ancient Near Eastern
context. Evangelicals have long rejected the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche
Schulz). This perspective suggests that Israelite religion is best understood as a form of Syro-
Palestixuan cultus, with strong influence from the Mesopotamian, Syrian, Ugaritic, and to a lesser
extent, Egyptian cultures. Once again, the issue that is brought into sharp focus is the evangelical
belief in the uniqueness of Israelite religion as revealed religion and truth and the social science
analysis of religion as a human phenomenon. This tension makes it particularly difficult for many
evangelical scholars to accept the use of sociological parallels when analyzing Israelite religious
practices, although the use of literary parallels from ancient Near Eastern cultures is a common
practice. Few evangelical scholars would hesitate to use the Mari texts to compare Mesopotamian
and Israelite prophetic practices, texts from Emar to shed light on the priesthood, Ugaritic language
and texts as parallels to Biblical Hebrew or Israelite poetic traditions, or suzerainty-vassal treaties
to help define Israel's relationship with Yahweh. While evangelical scholars may draw different
conclusions from their mainstream scholarly counterparts, they employ a similar critical
methodology in applying these parallel texts to the biblical record.
Those same scholars might be less comfortable applying practices of Native American holy men
as parallels to Jeremiah's prophetic ministry and the nature of prophetic authority within a
community. One may indeed ask whether it is appropriate to compare biblical prophecy with "spirit
possession" or shamanism. The issue of Israel's uniqueness would again be the sticking point for
some scholars. If Israelite prophecy is unique, and the place of the prophet in the community is
different from ancient Near Eastern analogs, then Israels uniqueness is preserved. But if the role
and status of the prophet are shown to have legitimate social parallels with spiritual leaders from
other tribal cultures, then the commonness of spiritual power is emphasized, ostensibly at the
expense of Israel's distinctiveness. Again, I believe that aspects of the social parallels drawn by
Overholt and Wilson (mentioned above) add to, rather than take away from, ones view of
prophecy. Such parallels reinforce the power of the prophet in his or her community, and in
particular provide a clearer understanding of the struggles that peripheral prophets such as Elijah
and Jeremiah faced m proclaiming the word of YHWH to their fellow Israelites and Judeans.
3. A concern that social science criticism may diminish the more legitimate aspects of biblical
interpretation. For the evangelical community, the ultimate aim of al! of the methods of critical
scholarshipfrom archaeological excavation to historical and literary studiesis the
interpretation of Scripture for the community of faith. For this reason, establishing the text,
understanding the literary, linguistic, and historical contexts of Scripture, and then applying certain
hermeneutical principles to Scripture to allow its current application^) are considered fundamental
tasks for the interpreter. Biblical exegesisestablishing the original meaning of the textand
hermeneuticsproposing a contemporary meaning of that textare together a theological work.
Scripture is not simply a historical document that informs us of the beliefs and story of an ancient
culture. It is instead a living document that can transform individuals, churches, and even cultures
when it is heeded and practiced. This belief allows us to speak with conviction about current issues,
such as social justice, religious orthodoxy, the virtue of love, gender equality, and environmental
ethics.
The concern that the social sciences in fact take away from rather than add to the interpretive task
is amplified when some mainstream critical scholars advocate social science criticism as an
alternative to theologically oriented biblical scholarship. Robert Odens The Bible without
Theology and Philip Davies's In Search of Ancient Israel advocate such a position. Both suggest,
though in different ways, that biblical scholarship has too long been subject to theological agendas
that, they claim, render such scholarship biased by nature. Further, they suggest that in order for
critical scholarship to be truly objective, it must extract itself from any theological commitment, In
many respects, this marks but the most recent volley in the long-standing tension between
theologically oriented studies and a supposedly more neutral religious studies approach to
Scripture. This tension has led to an increasingly theologically independent discipline within
colleges and universities as compared to that of seminaries, and this continues to be a point of
discussion within academe. What makes this different, however, and more threatening to
evangelicals, is the clear repudiation of the theological method as an authentic, objective enterprise
and the replacement of theology with the social science ideology. I would argue, however, that the
social sciences are by no means anti-theological in and of themselves; nor need they be peripheral
in the theologically oriented interpretive task. Indeed, they can underpin and enhance both the
understanding of the original social and historical context of a text and its current proclamation.
Understanding the nature of social and class differentiation allows us better to grasp the severity
of Amos's critique of oppression and oppressors in eighth-century Israel and thereby to proclaim
responsibility to be a voice for the voiceless in twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture.
Understanding patriarchy and the significance of the place of womensuch as Deborah and
Huldahwho rose to power despite the limitations imposed on them by a patriarchal system allows
us to empower women to assume positions of leadership in the church today.
It is in that spirit that some evangelical scholars have made initial forays into social science
criticism. One of the first evangelicals to do so was Gordon Wenham in his commentaries on
Leviticus and Numbers. He turns primarily to anthropology' to shed light on issues such as
sacrifice, purity, and ritual practices. He quotes extensively and approvingly from Mary Douglas's
study Purity and Danger throughout his commentary on Leviticus, using her concepts of ritual and
victual purity" as stemming from the need to establish social boundaries and order. Similarly, he
cites anthropological sources on tribal societies as showing that Israelite sacrificial rituals were not
mere magic but were instead part of a meaningful symbolic world. What is impressive about his
work is that it is sensitive to the complex methodological issues that surround the appropriate use
of anthropological analogs for the study of Scripture.
Two other recent works deserve mention, both of which provide social science backgrounds for
the worldviews of the biblical writers. The more ambitious of the two is a collaboration between
Victor Matthews and Don Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel 1250-587 B.C.E. In it,
Matthews and Benjamin attempt to demonstrate for the reader the ways in which a social science
perspective can augment other, more traditional forms of interpretation. Matthews and Benjamin
have collected an impressive amount of anthropological and sociological material in the research
for their work. The application of these sources Is often uneven, however, with assumptions from
the social sciences applied to the biblical text somewhat uncritically. The volume is a useful
introduction to social science criticism and its benefits, but falls short of being a true social history
of either the tribal or monarchic periods of Israelite and Judean history. It is inferior even to some
of the groundbreaking works that approached biblical studies from a social science methodology;
it lacks the breadth and critical perspective of works by Gottwald, Wilson, or Frick. To be fair to
Matthews and Benjamin, however, this may be in part a function of its intended audience, which
is not that of biblical scholars but of an educated laity or even of undergraduate students.
A second volume is a collaborative effort by Victor Matthews and John Walton, The IVP Bible
Background Commentary: Genesis-Deuteronomy. As its title implies, it is concerned with general
backgrounds to the texts of the Torah and the cultural traditions it represents. The work, like Social
World of Ancient Israel is aimed at lay readers rather than the community of scholars. Further, it is
not strictly interested m sociological or anthropological settings of the biblical texts but has a wider
scope, one that includes literary, legal, and religious backgrounds. As such, it does make a
contribution to biblical scholarship, since one of its overall goals is an improved, if not more
accurate, interpretation of Scripture. Matthews and Walton therefore present the evangelical
audience with an instructive, if brief, commentary on the biblical world and culture behind the
Torah.
Inasmuch as it was the influence of Norman Gottwald that, more than any other scholar, put the
recent use of the social sciences on a more systematic and methodologically sound footing, it is
fitting to conclude our discussion with his most recent musings on methodology. In what Gottwald
describes as a more mature presentation of the issues involved in reconstructing a history or social
science analysis of biblical Israel, he identifies four characteristics such interpretations should
share. In being sensitive to these four elements, scholars will demonstrate a greater awareness of
the complexity of social processes. In some early studies of Israelite culture, monolithic or
simplistic models; were imposed on the data, which led to a study in which the complex is:
described in terms of the simple. This has led to the charges discussed above that the social science
studies of Israel are positivistic and deterministic, and that such studies are eclectic rather than
comprehensive. In order to ensure a more comprehensive understanding of Israelite culture,
Gottwald suggests that scholars relate four distinct elements in a series of grids to form a cultural
overlay. The physical grid examines the skills and technologies necessary to deal with the features
of the natural geography and environment in which the culture is located. The cultural grid
analyzes the self-understanding that emerges within a society through its use of language, symbols,
mores, and customs. The social organizational/political grid is concerned with the various social
structures that develop within a society, including the manner in which power is used to establish
order or to promote the interests of the sometimes competing groups that exist. The religious grid
concentrates on identifying the rituals, beliefs, and practices of a culture's popular, official, and
suppressed traditions. None of these aspects of culture existed in a vacuum, and therefore when
one does not examine them within the overall social context, one introduces the possibility of
distortion. Gottwald therefore contends that a whole range of sources should be consulted,
including social science models, textual data, and artifactual data in order to create an
anthropological triangulation." This, he maintains, will allow scholars to reconstruct the social
setting of ancient Israelor any culture from antiquitywith the greatest possible clarity and
depth.
The social sciences have already added much to the study of Hebrew Scripture. Without a solid
understanding of tribal cultures, of kinship patterns, of protest movements, of insider-outsider
status in social groups, and without the social parallels that modem ethnographic studies provide,
our understanding of biblical cultures would be impoverished. To be sure, the field, particularly as
a discipline within biblical scholarship, needs to continue to mature and become more rigorous in
its methodology. But it is clear that the social science study of the First Testament is no longer an
ancillary and optional mode of interpretation but has become a critical element of biblical exegesis.
As the discipline grows, we can look forward to a more comprehensive understanding of both the
biblical cultures and the literature they produced.
LA APERTURA DE VENTANAS EN MUNDOS
BBLICOS
Aplicacin de las Ciencias Sociales a la Escritura Hebrea
Charles E. Carter
(La cara de Estudios del Antiguo Testamento: A Survey of Contemporary Enfoques - panadero
y Arnold)