J E Lendon on Honor

This is from J E Lendon's study of Roman texts, titled Empire of Honour.  Although the focus is on Roman culture, the instances and stories of honor are comparable to other Mediterranean cultures.

Let me remind you that honor is about prestige, respect, reputation--all done through public acts, all done with the perception of others in mind.

A short and sweet story I like is about Cato the Younger (p.59).  There is a Latin word for honor that has an "utterly compulsive force" and it is maiestas (majesty).  Cato left the theatre in the middle of a performance (i.e., dishonoring the performers) and due to his maiestas everyone got up and left with him.

Honor is an intensely public concern that, to some degree, conflicts with our relatively new concern with "authenticity."  We value, or at least we claim to value honesty, truth and genuine speech.  We look down upon those whom we think do acts simply to please others.  Our ideal is the person who prays in private and the moral opposite is the person who prays in public but not in private.  When we study honor-shame cultures and texts that originate from them we must take care to recognize our own ideals and how they interfere with understanding the texts.  It does not mean we have to adopt their values or abandon ours; it means we cannot assume everyone is like us.

Reading scenarios

Pilch has a nice list (compiled by Neyrey) here.

Children in Antiquity

Came across an awesome example of social differences:

"Contrary to our ethnocentric and anachronistic projections of innocent, trusting, imaginative, and delightful children playing at the knee of a gentle Jesus, childhood in antiquity was a time of terror. The women in Luke 18:15-17 who bring their infants to Jesus are almost certainly asking him to touch them because they are sick and dying. Children were the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. Infant mortality rates sometimes reached 30 percent. Another 30 percent of live births were dead by age six, and 60 percent were gone by age sixteen. [...] Children had little status within the community or family. While a minor, a child was on par with a slave, and only after reaching maturity was he/she a free person who could inherit the family estate. The orphan was the stereotype of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. The term "child/children" could be also used as a serious insult (cf. Matt 11:16-17; Luke 7:32)." (Malina & Rohrbaugh, Soc-Sci Com on Synoptics, p.336)

Though they note that they aren't saying that children were not loved and valued. Children meant security in old age (there are some good lines from G-R material about that).

If you are like me, often numbers just brush off and you don't see the significance of what's being said. Let me try to struggle with you by making a visual...





Compare that with a 2001 stat from Statistics Canada



Consider this... out of 1000 births, 300 have died by age six. In Canada, out of 1000 live births, 5.2 die before reaching age one. If we are to arbitrarily extrapolate that, 5.2 x 6, that's roughly 30 dead by age six. Using that number, the death rate is 1/10th as it was in antiquity.

So that is a big whack. If you live on a street with, say, 15 houses, leave your house and walk down the street. The first five houses (roughly) will have lost a lad or lass. :( For every three friends that you have, one of them will have a sibling dead by age 6.

Patronage (p1)

This is once again a very fundamental part of ancient culture. It was "expected and publicized" (HP, p.96). In De Beneficiis, Seneca says that the system of patronage was the "practice that constitutes the chief bond of human society" (1.4.2). So what is patronage?

There was patronage between the higher and lower classes, and patronage among the lower classes. We will take a cursory look at patronage between the higher and lower classes in this entry.

We have two main parties here: the patron, and the client. The patron is the one with all the resources, and the client is the one asking for help--also known as making a petition. If the patron granted the petition, this would be called giving favor or grace. So it is a two-way system: first the request, then the grant. You want, I have.

So that's how it worked in a nutshell. If the patron granted the request, the petitioner would become the client. A potentially long-term relationship would begin, where the patron would be available for further help, and the client would fulfill the obligations, as we will see. Let's look at the honor aspects of this system. Recall limited good. The patron gives; the patron has lost something. Thus the patron's grace has left the client indebted to him (or her, on occasions). The client therefore had some obligations: to enhance the patron's honor and fame, to be loyal to the patron, and provide services (HP, p.97).

One interesting (and perhaps amusing to us) example of how clients could enhance the patron's honor is by joining his entourage. When the patron would go somewhere, a crowd of clients would go with the patron, proclaiming his name and 'clearing the way'. We will look at grace and returning grace in more detail later.

The benefits that the patron could grant were numerous. Some of them are land, money to start a business, protection, debt relief, and more glamorously, position and office. One important benefit that a patron could grant was access to another patron. This is also known as being a broker, or to use the classical term, mediator. (HP, p.97) This works by the patron becoming a client to a greater patron. The patron would testify for the character of his client (we'll see more about this in grace), basically that the person he is petitioning for is worthy of grace. If the greater patron granted the request, the original client would be indebted to both the broker and the greater patron.

An example of brokerage would be granting citizenship. deSilva cites the case of Pliny the Younger's physical therapist Arpocras. Pliny petitions the Emperor Trajan (Epistles 10.5-7, 10), and Arpocras is graced with both Roman and Alexandrian citizenship.

Patrons also referred to their clients as 'friends', out of sensitivity to their client's honor. Clients mostly referred to their patrons as patrons, as would be expected from gratitude. Thus if we see 'friends' we should suspect that it really means 'clients' (HP, p.99).

Secrecy

Reflections on Neyrey's article on secrecy and the GoJ.

Right off the bat the article challenges a non-social scientific reading of the text. What's really lurking behind the words of the gospel?

Unlike the Synoptic gospels, John does not contain a commissioning by Jesus to his disciples to "go make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt 28:19). Information from and about Jesus, when it is spread, is accomplished through a "gossip network" to select individuals (Neyrey 1994). And although Jesus declares before one of his judges, "I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple. . .I have said nothing in secret" (John 18:20), that hardly explains the intricate patterns of double-meaning words, irony, lying, deception and misunderstanding and actual hiding in the Fourth Gospel.

This is pretty interesting, and not just because so often in Western Christianity Jesus is held up as a model. Jesus, it is said, was honest, kind, nice, devout, etc. What would Jesus do? But maybe that question is really, 'What would our ahistorical Jesus do?' A God of 'love' and 'truth', it is said, would NEVER lie. (See also Ex. 20:16. I suspect that 'neighbor' means 'Israelite/kin'.)

I'm a little disappointed that Neyrey didn't sum up Pilch's work on lying, but that's really no problem--further research is expected. But on that point, there is an important note about honorable lying to be made. See the latter half of this Tekton article for a brief note.

Anyway, the know/not know dichotomy is interesting. It divides more than one might think; the educated from the uneducated; the 'cool' from the 'uncool', likewise the 'in' from the 'out'. Something I constantly see is siblings having information control from their parents.

I'm curious to know how revealing information was done. What was the criteria for revealing to outsiders? Kinship was one. Tobit 5:9-14:

Tobiah went back to tell his father Tobit what had happened. He said to him, "I have just found a man who is one of our own Israelite kinsmen!" Tobit said, "Call the man, so that I may find out what family and tribe he comes from, and whether he is trustworthy enough to travel with you, son." Tobiah went out to summon the man, saying, "Young man, my father would like to see you." When Raphael entered the house, Tobit greeted him first. [...] Tobit asked, "Brother, tell me, please, what family and tribe are you from?" Raphael said: "Why? Do you need a tribe and a family? Or are you looking for a hired man to travel with your son?" Tobit replied, "I wish to know truthfully whose son you are, brother, and what your name is." Raphael answered, "I am Azariah, son of Hananiah the elder, one of your own kinsmen." Tobit exclaimed: "Welcome! God save you, brother! Do not be provoked with me, brother, for wanting to learn the truth about your family. So it turns out that you are a kinsman, and from a noble and good line! I knew Hananiah and Nathaniah, the two sons of Shemaiah the elder; with me they used to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where we would worship together. No, they did not stray from the right path; your kinsmen are good men. You are certainly of good lineage, and welcome!" (emphasis mine)

Kinship all over the place. Tobit is looking for a trustworthy man to travel with his son, and "Azariah"'s lineage tells him all he needs to know. But it seems that Jesus didn't have strict use of kinship as a criteria, as John 4:7-39 says:

The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He." ... So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" ... From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, "He told me all the things that I have done."

It's interesting that Jesus let a Samaritan woman into his information network. Not just because she wasn't Jewish, but it was a she. Those who are 'in the know' have higher status, so she did as well.

Within families, groups, organizations or governments, certain people are privy to what is withheld from others. In fact, who knows what may serve as an index of status or ranking within a group. But not everybody knows all things. Thus secrets are entrusted to some, not others. The others may or may not know that there are secrets withheld from them. Hence, we find within governments the use of degrees of classified information, labels such as "for your eyes only," and the like. Nevertheless, there tends to be an inner circle which is "in the know." (2.2)

If we attempt to plot out status and role within a group, who knows something can often serve as an index of public standing. (2.4.1)

But it seems that much knowledge was only revealed to the disciples (1.2). Neyrey's bit on why some aren't in the know (1.4) give some clues; merely negate the statements: those who have knowledge revealed prefer the light to the darkness, or they are chosen by the Father. Right now I can't see how that's much of a criteria, but it may be claimed that this knowledge was revealed to Jesus by the Father. Neyrey says,

the Samaritan woman is gradually entrusted with secrets about Jesus. She begins the story as a character who was told "If only you knew . . . who it is who said to you 'Give me to drink,' you would have asked him. . ." (4:10). As she is entrusted with more secrets, she does ask "Give me this water" (4:15) and she receives remarkable information (4:20-24), even a Christophany of Jesus as the Messiah (4:26). (3.2)

So maybe the criteria is an appropiate response to the information given.

On honoring God (p1)

One thought that continually encroaches upon my thinking is this: excelling at your particular field is glorifying God.

I want to define my terms because I specifically have not used 'worship'. Worship is a lifestyle, and thus it is not something 'done' like an action, but it is something 'lived'--or to use a more Eastern term, it is something to 'be'. Glory is something very closely related to worship, because the goal of worship is to glorify God.

What is glory? Well, the phrase 'the glory of God' is basically God's honor. We'll need to understand what honor is--I'll just draw out the most relevant parts and leave the nuances for your own discovery. You can think of God's honor as God's importance and value. Simple, isn't it? God is of the highest value and importance, and likewise is of the highest honor.

When people see someone who is excellent, the typical response is something along the lines of admiration. If there is a 'close' group who sees excellence among themselves, they will be glad that some of their members have great accomplishments; something to be proud of. Sometimes the reaction is one of awe: this person has overcome a great struggle. Those who are excellent are models because they are idols.

Now imagine you were talking to an excellent person, and you found out that they are merely students of a great teacher--their teacher is yet greater than they. Much respect and awe would be given to their teacher.

Something interesting happened in that theoretical exchange, and it rests at the very core of my argument. That person is viewed as great. But their teacher is viewed as greater--why? They testified, upon their reputation, that their teacher is greater than they. So then, the student is a testimony of the teacher. A reflection, if you will.

In very much the same way, the imagery used in the Bible of the slave and his master communicate the same pathos. There's a very important social instutition in the ancient Mediterranean world called patronage. This was the part that sparked this entry. Patronage is just about as complex as honor, so I'll once again draw the most relevant parts out, and leave the rest for your own discovery.

There were two main parties in patronage: the patron, which is the rich guy, and the client, which is the not-so-rich guy. The patron typically had more resources than he needed; lots to go around. The client might recieve resources from the patron (this is called giving favor). If the client's petition for favor was granted, a potentially long-term relationship might be entered into. This is not a deeply intimate relationship as the modern usage suggests, but it was more of a business affair. (When you see the word 'friend' in the New Testament, it means 'client'.) One of the things the client would do, to show his/her gratitude, is make known the generosity of the patron. This is the testimony of the client.

Consider another form of testimony--the unspoken kind. Let's once again go back to the student-teacher idea. The point I want to make is more obvious with first-century rabbis and their teaching methods. A student who wanted to learn from a rabbi would not come once-a-week and sit in classes. He would go and follow the rabbi, observe his ways, his methods, and learn to 'be' a rabbi. Then suppose we met this student, and found him to be excellent. He is knowledgeable, wise, caring, strong... that would say much about his rabbi.

It is with this basic understanding that we can see that the excellence of a servant is a glorifying reflection of the master.

Thus, your excellence is a glorifying reflection of your Master.