16-3-5 The First Century Mediterranean Understanding Of Society

When Western / Euro-American people read of an Iranian father killing his son because he converted to Christ and shamed the family, we are shocked. But many people living in societies like Iran are far less shocked, they find it perfectly natural and understandable, even if they don't agree with it. How society is today in much of the non-Western world is similar to how it was in the first century Mediterranean. An individual was defined not according to their own personhood and unique characteristics, but according to their place in relation to others. Indeed, this was how things have been world-wide, for it was only until the 17th century that individualistic culture began to take off in Europe.

Geographical Origin

The teaching of both Old and New Testaments concerning the ultimate value and meaning of the individual person was radical stuff, so radical that it was rarely fully understood even amongst the people of God. For example, it was important to know where a person was from- because people from certain areas were understood as being a certain person. Hence the Jewish refusal to accept that Jesus could be Messiah, because He was from Galilee, and "out of Galilee arises no prophet" (Jn. 7:52), indeed nothing good could come out of Nazareth (Jn. 1:46). This led to what we would call today stereotyping and racism. People didn't travel very far, and so this of itself reinforced some of the stereotypes. Horizons were extremely limited for the average person. Vergil could say that "to know one Greek is to know them all"; and Philo likewise made total generalizations about Egyptians in his writings. Paul refers to the common maxim that "Cretans are always liars...lazy drunkards" (Tit. 1:12)- but goes on to appeal to the Cretan believers to not be like that, to challenge and break the stereotype! It's the same with the Corinthians- the very term "Corinthian" meant a drunkard, shameless man. And yet it was in this very city that so many were called to the Lord, and He attempted to turn them away from that very stereotype they had been born into. And the very fact that the Son of God was from "that despised Nazareth" was the ultimate deconstruction of this understanding- that leaders, kings etc. could only come from some areas and not others. We need to ask ourselves whether we don't follow the same kind of stereotypes when we assume things about people- he's from that family, she's from that country, they're from that church / ecclesia... These attitudes deny the wonderful meaning and value of the individual of which our Lord showed us in His teaching, life, death and current work amongst us.

Family Of Origin

A person was understood in connection with who their parents and ancestors were. Hence some Biblical characters are referred to as the son of X who was the son of Y who was the son of Z. Plato summed it up when he said that good people were good "because they sprang from good fathers". This is where the genealogies of Jesus would've been so hard to handle for some- because Matthew stresses how the Lord had whores and Gentiles in His genealogy. And it's also where the New Testament doctrine of the new birth and the new family in Christ were radical- for it was your family and ethnic origin which were of paramount importance in defining a person within society. John's Gospel especially emphasises the great desire to know from whence Jesus came (Jn. 3:8; 6:41,42; 7:27,28; 8:14; 9:29)- and the lack of any solid, concrete answer. To say that God was quite literally His Father was just too much for most people to handle.

Occupation

Seeing one tended to be born and raised in or for a certain occupation, this too was a significant factor in how society defined people. Remember how the sailors asked of Jonah: "What is your occupation? And whence do you come? What is your country? Of what people are you?" (Jonah 1:8). Hence it is recorded that every shepherd was despised by the Egyptians (Gen. 46:34).Silversmiths and tent makers (leather workers?) tended to club together in community (Acts 18:3; 19:24-27). In the first century Mediterranean, shepherds were especially despised- and again, this stereotype was overturned by shepherds being chosen to receive news of the birth of God's Son and being the first to come and offer homage; Jesus describing Himself as the good shepherd, in a society where no shepherd could be "good"; and the leaders of the early church being described as spiritual "shepherds".

Summing up, a person was defined not so much by their unique personal character, credit was not given for who they had become or stopped being... but rather by the place in society into which they were born. And so these group-oriented people came to live out the expectations of society- and so the whole process rolled on through the generations. It was continuity rather than change, tradition rather than transformation, which was valued. Change was seen as some kind of deviancy- whereas the Christian gospel is all about change! The past was seen as more glorious than the present and the future, a pattern to be followed- whereas the Gospel of the future Kingdom of God on earth taught that the best time is ahead. And so often Paul compares the "past" of our lives with the much better "now" in Christ (Gal. 3:23-27; 4:8,9; Rom. 6:17-22; Eph. 2:11-22; 5:8). A whole new set of traditions were delivered to the new community, and it was they rather than human traditions which must now be kept (1 Cor. 11:2; 14:33-36; 2 Thess. 2:15; 2 Tim. 1:13,14; 3:14). The credibility of a person depended not so much on them but upon their status and place in society- thus the witness of women, slaves, children and poor people was discounted. We see it happening in the way that the preaching of Peter and John was dismissed by the elders because they were of low social status (Acts 4:13). And yet these were the very types of people which the Lord Jesus used as His star and key witnesses in the very beginnings of Christianity!

Physical Appearance

It was believed that nature and destiny had decreed your place, and there was to be no questioning of it. Thus according to the first century principle of 'physiognomics', a slave was born with a muscular, servile body, an upper class female Roman was born beautiful, etc. The idea of education was to train them up to be as they were intended to be by nature. The ancient world believed that all that was decreed and predestined by nature would have some sort of physical reality in the appearance of a person. Hence the challenging nature of Paul's command not to judge by the outward appearance; and again, Divine providence overturned all this by choosing Paul as such a "chosen vessel", when his outward appearance and manner of speaking were so weak and unimpressive, literally 'lacking strength' (2 Cor. 10:10). This understanding of 'nature' and destiny meant that first century people were relatively passive to disasters compared to Euro-American people today. A famine was an act of God, of nature, and it had to be accepted; the idea of one ethnic group taking up a collection for another one in another place who were suffering from famine was a real paradigm breaker. And that's just what Paul engineered, in arranging for the Gentile converts to take up such a collection for the Jewish believers in Palestine who were suffering famine.

Education

Today, students are 'trained' to think for themselves, be creative, develop their own opinions, push forward their own independent research, using question / problem-based learning as a paradigm for their education. 'Education' in the first century wasn't like that at all. The idea was that "every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher" (Lk. 6:40). The idea was that a person born into a certain social situation was trained to take their place in society, given that 'station and place' into which they had been born. Initiative in that sense was not encouraged; it was all about training up a person to correctly fulfil societies' expectation of them. The idea of being personally taught by the invisible Master / teacher Jesus, becoming like Him rather than like the person whom society expected, being given talents by Him which we are to trade and multiply at our initiative (Mt. 25:15-28)... this was all totally counter-cultural stuff. What was so vital in the Mediterranean world was that a person achieved conformity to accepted values. Cicero advised that in any good presentation of a legal case or encomium, emotions and passions shouldn't be referred to. Individualism was seen as a threat to tradition and the collective society. The huge New Testament emphasis on becoming disciples, learners, of an invisible Lord, Master and teacher located in Heaven, serving Him alone, worried about His standards, perceptions and judgment of us- that was and is so totally opposite to the expectations of society. People were educated to be embedded in society, rather than to come out of their world and live in the new world in which Christ was the light, and all things were made new in a new creation, a new set of values. To willingly describe oneself as a slave of Christ was totally against the grain of first century social norms- for to be a slave in any form took away a person's credibility and value. And yet Paul especially in the context of describing his witness, speaks of himself as a slave of Jesus. He urges the converts to see themselves as "not your own" because they have been bought as slaves by the blood of the cross (1 Cor. 6:19,20). People were trained to take their place amongst fixed categories within society- the whole idea of transformation, of taking ones' place amidst the ecclesia of Christ, of being a saint, a called-out one, of being made free from how others' see us... was all so radical that even those who converted to Christianity likely never grasped the full extent of the ideas.

The Radical Nature Of The New Community In Christ

For Paul to calmly teach in Gal. 3:28 that baptism into Christ meant that there was now no longer differentiation between male and female, slave and free, Jew, Greek or any other ethnic group, called all the first century understandings of society into total question. Indeed, the idea that Gentiles could become spiritual "Jews", and that the Jews weren't the real children of Abraham, was an intentional reversal of the categories around which society had been built. Much of the early 'geography' of the first century involved stereotypical descriptions of ethnic and geographical groups, usually ending up with praising the Greco-Roman peoples as being superior in every way to all others. Yet this worldview, which was accepted even by the despised ethnic groups about themselves, had to be ended for those in Christ. Being in Him was to be their defining feature. This was equally radical for the Jews, who held themselves above these stereotypes about themselves. They believed that "as the navel is found at the center of a human being, so the land of Israel is found at the center of the world... Jerusalem is the center of the land of Israel, the temple is at center of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies is at the center of the temple, the ark is at the center of the Holy of Holies... which spot is the foundation of the world... the holy city... is also the mother city" (1). This was all consciously countermanded in Hebrews, where each of these features of the temple is shown to have been surpassed in Christ; and it is the Heavenly Jerusalem which is now "the mother of us all" (Heb. 12:22; Gal. 4:26). And of course Gal. 4 drives home the point that it is the "Jerusalem which is above" which is the true Jerusalem, whereas the earthly Jerusalem and temple are in fact now to be associated with bondage and Abraham's illegitimate seed. This language of Hebrews and Galatians was just as tough on the Romans, who considered Italia as the "mother of all lands", and Rome to be the mother city.

Society and human existence was all about what others thought of you; appearances were all important, loss of face before your community was a fate worse than death, and the honour of your family or community was crucial. You had to be polite, say what was right in the ears of your hearers rather than what was true, never shame those in your 'group' by telling inconvenient truths, say what the others want to hear. Against this background, and it's a background not so strange for any of us today in essence, the commands to be truthful, even if it meant becoming the enemy of some because you told the truth (Gal. 4:16), take on a new challenge. Likewise the message of imputed righteousness was powerfully challenging. For the whole message of Romans is that our only acceptability is through God counting us righteous although we are not... and it is His judgment which matters, not that of the million watching eyes of society around us. 1 Cor. 4:3-5 teach that the judgment of others is a "very small thing", an irrelevancy, compared with Christ's judgment of us. The fact that we have only one judge means that whatever others think or judge of us is irrelevant. That may be easy enough to accept as a theory, but the reality for those living in collective societies was far-reaching. Appreciating the ultimate importance of our standing before God means that we have a conscience towards Him, and a rightful sense of shame before Him for our sins. Yet in collective societies, where life was totally lived in the public realm and anything done 'in private' is seen as deviant (cp. Jn. 7:4; 18:20), shame was related to how others saw you, not your internal reflections and assessment of your guilt or innocence for things like private thoughts and unknown deeds. And there's every reason to think that the global village of the 21st century is an equally conscience-less place, where so long as you talk in nicespeak and don't get caught actually doing anything society thinks is wrong, you can exist with no internal, personal conscience at all. Indeed, the word "conscience" originated from words which literally mean 'common / with others / knowledge'- conscience was collective, whereas the Biblical understanding of it is more on a personal level.

First century society was structured around binary opposites- you were in or out of a certain group, for or against, either / or. These black and white views led to the stereotypes we've considered above. For Paul to introduce the idea of conscience, of the possibility of some individuals having a different conscience to others, and the need to tolerate this, was therefore quite radical- and the Corinthians and others evidently struggled with it. It was not until the 17th century that Europeans started to move towards accepting 'shades of grey' rather than black and white, so Christ and Paul were well ahead of their time in this. But it wasn't only that shades of grey had to be accepted; instead of treating only your fellow ethnic / social / gender / occupational group members as "in" with you, the new Christian had to accept people in his or her 'out' groups as now 'in'. No longer were some other groups to be treated indifferently or in a hostile manner; people from other towns, ethnic groups, lower social class, gender etc. were to be loving accepted as one would their very own family members. There was to be now the "household of faith" (Gal. 6:10), with people from all the 'other' groups now to be accepted as 'brother' and 'sister', which meant denying the natural ties to your family in the way that surrounding society expected- for to them, loyalty must be to family above all else. Denying this and putting our bonding with Christ and His family first was indeed equivalent to self-crucifixion (Mk. 8:34). Meals were usually only taken within the family, and the men ate together (2). For the breaking of bread to be a collective meal for male and female together was unheard of- it reflected the new understanding of family which there was to be "in Christ". Collective societies are all about submission and obedience to those above you in the hierarchy- yet repeatedly, Christians are exhorted to be obedient and submissive to the Lord Jesus and the new community in Him (Rom. 1:5; 6:16,17; 2:8 etc.). And even within the new community, Paul's own example showed that acceptance in the eyes of those who appear to be the pillars of the society of Christ is also of little ultimate value if they have fallen away from the understanding of grace (Gal. 2:9). To keep using the word "radical" doesn't do justice to the colossal change in worldview that was required on conversion to Christ. Reflecting on all this, it seems to me that the reason the Jewish people crucified their Messiah was above all because He so powerfully turned their whole worldviews upside down- and they just couldn't handle it, just as so many families today turn against the one who truly turns to Christ.

The 21st Century Global Village

Westerners shouldn't be too hasty to assume that their culture is totally unlike collectivist culture. Increasingly, it is returning to it in essence. Everyone is so awfully worried at what others think, and tend to live out their expectations; young women in Eastern Europe will go without basic food in order to find the money to buy the designer clothes and gadgets that society thinks are acceptable; the single mum in downtown Sydney works overtime to enable her daughter to have the latest jeans or T-shirt, without which she'll be mocked in class; the 'war on terror' and concern about global warming have led society to club together in a collectivist way; the move towards house churches in the last half of the 20th century has now given way to a trend towards mega churches, safety in numbers. Image in the eyes of ones' fellows has become important as never before; no longer is it so cool to be a hippy or a punk, the coolness is to be seen as cool by a society you consider cool. 'Us and them', 'cowboys and Indians' thinking has been spread throughout society from the top down, as President after President utters that war cry. Thus into modern Western society all the radical elements of the Gospel once again must break through... the radical nature of the call to personal relationship with Jesus, the demand of total personal transformation, the acceptance of others because they are in Christ rather than for what they look like or with whom they are associated... the list of incisive demands can be extended into every Western life. For one outcome of globalization has been actually the re-enforcing of values, norms and expected behaviour; and we are to protest against that in our lifestyle in Christ.

I'd like now to present two examples of the way in which Paul so radically stepped out from the society of the first century, and turned on their heads all the expectations and norms which went with it.

Galatians: An Encomium

Cultured, educated people in the first century presented themselves to others by means of an 'encomium'. This was a document or major speech which included five sections, clearly defined in the various manuals of rhetoric which survive, and which surely Paul would have been taught. The purpose of the encomium was to demonstrate how the person was an upright member of the community and worthy of honour within it. Students of the letter to the Galatians have detected these five sections of the encomium followed in an almost classic manner by Paul in Galatians 1:10-2:21. Borrowing from the research of others (3), I present them here:

1. Opening (prooimion) 1:10-12: Paul's Gospel

2. Lifestyle (anastrophe) 1:13-17: Paul as persecutor of the church and preacher of the Gospel. Gal. 1:13 uses the very word anastrophe ("way of life")

3. Achievements (praxeis) or "deeds of the body" 1:18-2:10- Paul's work in Jerusalem, Syria and again in Jerusalem

4. Comparison with others (synkrisis) 2:11-21- Paul and Peter; Paul and the Jews

5. Conclusion (epilogos)- 2:21 Paul and grace.

The encomium was essentially self-praise and self-justification within society. Paul almost mocks the encomium, by using its elements to show how radically different are the standards of thinking and behaviour for the Christian. In Gal. 1:15 Paul speaks of his birth (genesis), which in the usual encomiums would've been a reference to his family of origin, which as we've shown was all important in a collectivist society. Paul never speaks of his parents, as would've been normal in an encomium- and seeing he was born as a free man, he could've made an impressive point at this stage had he wished. But the birth he speaks of is that which came from God, who gave Paul birth by grace. His place in God's invisible household was all important, rather than what family he belonged to naturally. An encomium would typically have a reference to a man's education- and Paul could've made an impressive case for himself here. But rather he speaks of how God Himself revealed Christ to him, and how his spiritual education was not through interaction with any other men of standing in the Christian community, but rather in his three years alone in Arabia (Gal. 1:18). It has been suggested that Paul actually coined a new Greek term in 1 Thess. 4:9, when he spoke of how he had been taught-by-God (theodidaktos) (4). To claim an education 'not by flesh and blood' (Gal. 1:16) was foolishness to 1st century society. In the description of his "deeds", Paul could've made a fair case both as a Jew and as a Christian. But instead he spends Gal. 2:1-10 speaking of how he had laboured so hard to avoid division in the church of Christ, to teach grace, avoid legalistic obedience to the norms of Jewish society, and to help the poor. These were the works he counted as significant. It was usual in an encomium to speak of your courage (andreia) and fortitude. Paul uses the word andreia, again in conscious imitation of an encomium, but he relates it to how he courageously refused to "yield submission even for a moment" to the pressures to conform to Jewish societal expectations (Gal. 2:5). When it comes to the synkrisis, the comparison with others, he chooses to compare himself with Peter, who caved in to the pressures from the Jews, agreeing to act smart before men rather than God, whereas Paul says he withstood this and insisted upon a life of radical grace which paid no attention to what others thought of his appearances.

Other References To The Encomium

Phil. 3:4-11 reads rather like an encomium, with Paul writing of how he was "circumcised on the eighth day... of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews" (Phil. 3:5). But then he as it were alters course half way through, as if to say 'Nah, just kiddin''. He speaks of his "confidence in the flesh", his former "gains", as being now "loss for Christ"; he's almost sarcastic about his humanly impressive encomium. For he says all this in the context of the preceding chapter, Phil. 2, where he has shown that the only true path of glory lays after the pattern of the Lord Jesus, who had to die the death of the cross in order to be highly exalted. A similar sarcasm about his humanly impressive encomium is to be found at more length in 2 Cor. 11:21-12:10. All the classic elements of the encomium are there- his origin and birth, training, accomplishments, comparison with others etc. But then he says that those who compare themselves with others (synkrinontes) are fools (2 Cor. 10:12), and that he himself has been speaking as a fool, a raving madman. That was what he thought of an encomium after the flesh. This is all a needful lesson for our generation, surrounded as we are by pressure to trust in education, achievements, being humanly cool and impressive. Paul goes on to say that actually, he prefers as a Christian to "boast of things that show my weakness" (2 Cor. 11:30). Instead of speaking of glorious "deeds of the body", he speaks of his labours, imprisonments, beatings etc. And thus he draws out the paradox, incredible for the first century mind- his real strength and power is in his weakness, for it was this that made him trust in God and in the grace of the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 12:10). Instead of impressing those around him, Paul sought to impress the Father and Son above. His strength was not, as society then thought, in what he had inherited and developed from the communities into which he was born- it was rather in the grace of God transforming his character. His patron, his teacher and elder, was the Lord Jesus, and the God who raised Jesus from the dead (Gal. 1:1; Rom. 8:11), rather than any visible 'elder' of his natural communities.

There are other passages which appear to allude to parts of the encomium- e.g. for Paul, his glory was not in heroic "deeds of the body" but rather in the fact that when he first preached to the Corinthians, he was suffering from "weakness... much fear and trembling" (1 Cor. 2:3)- a reference to anything from agitated nervous breakdown to malaria. We have Gal. 4:13 in the same vein: "You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at the first".

Paul's Public Defence Speeches In Acts

In the same way as Paul would've been trained to write and present an encomium, so he would've been trained in the rhetoric of how to make a public defence speech. There was a set format for defending oneself, as there was for the encomium. And in his defence speeches recorded in Acts, Paul again follows the accepted order of defence speeches- but his content was absolutely radical for the first century mind. Quinitilian in his Instructions To Orators laid down five sections for such a speech- and Paul follows that pattern exactly. There was to be the exordium [opening statement], a statement of facts (narratio), the proof (probatio), the refutation (refutatio) and the concluding peroration. The speeches were intended to repeatedly remind the judges of what in fact was the core issue- and Paul does this when he stresses that he is on trial (krinomai) for "the hope of the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 23:6; 24:21; 26:6,7,8).

Yet as with his use of the encomium format, Paul makes some unusual twists in the whole presentation. It was crucial in the set piece defence speech to provide proof and authorized witness. Paul provides proof for the resurrection in himself; and insists that the invisible Jesus, a peasant from Galilee, had appeared to him and "appointed [him] to bear witness" (Acts 26:16; 22:15). That was laughable in a court of law. Yet the erudite, cultured, educated Paul in all soberness made that claim. Aristotle had defined two types of proof- "necessary proof" (tekmerion), from which irrefutable, conclusive conclusions could be drawn; and "probable proof", i.e. circumstantial evidence (eikota / semeia). Paul's claim to have seen Jesus on the Damascus road was of course circumstantial evidence, so far as the legal system was concerned- it could not be proven. Yet Paul calls this his tekmerion, the irrefutable proof (Acts 22:6-12; 26:12-16). Luke elsewhere uses this word and its synonym pistis to describe the evidence for the Lord's resurrection (Acts 1:3; 17:31). Paul's point of course was that the personal transformation of himself was indeed tekmerion, irrefutable proof, that Christ had indeed risen from the dead. And so it should be in the witness which our lives make to an unbelieving world. Significantly, Paul speaks of the great light which his companions saw at his conversion, and his subsequent blindness, as eikota, the circumstantial evidence, rather than the irrefutable proof (Acts 22:6,9,11; 26:13). Now to the forensic mind, this was more likely his best, 'irrefutable' proof, rather than saying that the irrefutable proof was simply he himself. Yet he puts that all the other way round. Thus when it came to stating 'witnesses', Paul doesn't appeal to his travelling companions on the road to Damascus. These would've surely been the obvious primary witnesses. Instead, he claims that "all Judeans" and even his own accusers "if they are willing to testify", are in fact witnesses of his character transformation (Acts 22:5; 26:4,5). The point is of tremendous power to us who lamely follow after Paul... it is our personal witness which is the supreme testimony to the truth of Christ; not 'science proves the Bible', archaeology, the stones crying out, prophecy fulfilling etc. It is we ourselves who are ultimately the prime witnesses to God's truth on this earth. All this was foolishness in the judgmental eyes of first century society, just as it is today. Our preaching of the Gospel is likewise apparent foolishness to our hearers, like Paul it is not "in plausible words of wisdom" (1 Cor. 2:1-7), even though, again like Paul, many of us could easily try to make it humanly plausible. Paul's credibility as a preacher was in his very lack of human credibility- he was hungry and thirsty, poorly dressed, homeless, having to do manual work (1 Cor. 4:11; 2 Cor. 11:27); he was the powerless one, beaten, imprisoned and persecuted (1 Cor. 4:8-12; 2 Cor. 6:4,5). It's hard for us to imagine how unimpressive and repulsive this was in first century society. And yet it was exactly this which gave him power and credibility as a preacher of Christ's Gospel. And he sets before us a challenging pattern.

Notes

(1) Tanhuma, Kedoshim 10.

(2) Kathleen Corley, Private Women, Public Meals (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993).

(3) Hans Betz, Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); George Lyons, Pauline Autobiography (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) pp. 135 ff.

(4) Bruce Malina & Jerome Neyrey, Portraits Of Paul: An Archaeology Of Ancient Personality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996) p. 42.