An Introduction to Social-Scientific Approaches to the Study of Paul

If understanding the social environment of the early church is prerequisite to understanding the message of the New Testament (NT) documents, then it follows that we should want to know as much about that social environment as possible. Many academics have thought so as well. The result is that social-scientific approaches to the study of the NT are deliberately broad ranging. In this brief survey, I will focus on important works by Gerd Theissen and Wayne Meeks, which are representative of the approach as a whole and which many scholars have found useful. One could examine the social setting of the church in Palestine, or the church in Greece, or the Johannine community, or of various other things. My focus here will be on the churches that seem to have had most contact with the apostle Paul. I begin with a look into the social setting of the Pauline congregations.

A common language (Greek), a common culture (Greco-Roman), and a common ruler (the emperor in Rome) united the cities of the first-century Mediterranean world. Rome itself took a keen interest in developing the cities of the empire. Rulers of the provinces and client-kingdoms were very important to Rome in securing its governance of the empire.[1] Rome’s development of the cities led to improvements and advantages for the citizens of those cities.[2] Roman rule of the cities even offered limited chances for one to advance in social status.[3] Urban centres and rural settlements coexisted uneasily: power was centred in the cities; the country existed to serve the cities; and if advancement of social status could happen at all, the city was the place it had to be done.[4]

Urban centres were apparently important to Paul too; he seems to have focused his missionary activity on cities. Of course, he may have evangelised the country side as well—he did, after all, pass through the country on his way from one city to another—but the evidence we have in Acts and the Epistles points to the thrust of Paul’s labours being directed at urban centres. Yet Christianity had begun to localize in the cities of Palestine before Paul came on the scene.[5] Antioch, for example, which was “one of the three or four most important cities of the empire,”[6] was home to Christians before Paul arrived (Acts 11.19-26), and Damascus was obviously home to a body of Christians before Paul ever became a believer.

What do we know about the urban areas in which Paul worked? The answer to that question varies from location to location. Meeks summarises what we know in the following way:

In size they range from rather small towns, like Philippi, to sprawling cities like Ephesus and Corinth, but they are all cities in terms of government, culture, and the perception of their inhabitants. Two, Philippi and Corinth, are Roman colonies, but of very different types, the one primarily an agricultural center, the other a center of crafts and commerce. If we were to be convinced that the Pisidian cities Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra were the places Paul meant by ‘Galatia,’ these would be added to our list of colonies. The dominant language is Greek in all except the two colonies in Greece, Philippi and Corinth, and even in those there was a substantial population for whom Greek was the normal language. All except Philippi are centers of trade, and even in Philippi there are reasons to think that there were alongside the Italian farmers a good many foreigners who made their living by trade. Every one is well located for access by sea or land or both; even the cities of northern Galatia are connected by good Roman roads with the rest of Asia Minor.[7]

Partly because excavation has not be possible, little is known about Thessalonica, except that it was a commercial city, larger and more important than Philippi.[8] We also know that Thessalonica was a free city.[9] It is worth noting that the Jews were well established in the province of Asia, but Paul seems not to have left Christian groups in the cities in which the Jews thrived most, namely, Sardis and Apameia.[10]

Of the cities that were the target of Paul’s ministry, we know perhaps the most about Corinth. There are several reasons for this: Paul left us two long letters to that church. The extant letters are of such a sort as to tell us a good deal about the social context of Corinthian church. And substantial social-scientific study (beginning with Gerd Theissen) has aimed at determining the social setting of those letters. I will move now to a discussion of Theissen’s views of the sociology of Pauline Corinth.

Theissen proposes that there were two kinds of Christian preachers in the early church, ‘itinerant charismatics’ and ‘community organizers’. The two groups are distinguished from one another primarily on the basis of how they received subsistence. Due to a number of social factors,[11] the itinerant charismatics appear early on in the history of the Jesus-movement, but are not so prevalent later. Theissen envisages the early Jesus-movement as rooted in rural Palestine where itinerants would travel from one town to another seeking lodging and food.[12] “This was certainly no ordinary mendicancy, but charismatic begging which trusted in God to sustain his missionaries (Mt. 6:25ff.).”[13]

The ‘community organizers’ emerge in a different setting, that of taking the Jesus-movement to the Gentiles in the cities of the Hellenistic world. When the movement spread to the cities of the Mediterranean, the social factors that supported itinerant charismatic begging changed, and the practice disappears.[14] As the movement spread into the cities, it attracted people from all social levels, not just the poor as it did in Palestine.[15] Paul rejects mendicancy because of the cultural context of the Mediterranean—he adapts his approach so as to be most fruitful in the Hellenistic urban context.[16]

Theissen says that 1 and 2 Corinthians bear witness to a conflict between itinerant charismatic missionaries (who expect subsistence from the congregation) and community organizer missionaries (i.e., Paul and Barnabas, who did not expect subsistence from the Corinthians).[17] The issue at hand is apostolic legitimacy. Theissen believes that there are those in Corinth who accuse Paul of violating the norm of Christian itinerancy:

In my view there can be no doubt that one concrete norm is always to be found behind the accusation [of Paul’s opponents in 1 and 2 Cor.] and the defence [i.e., Paul’s defence against his accusers in 1 and 2 Cor.]: it is the requirement of charismatic asceticism, the ‘privilege of support’.[18]

His competitors were scarcely ‘false apostles, deceitful workmen,’ and servants of Satan (2 Cor. 11:13, 15), as Paul disparaged them. They were normal early Christian missionaries, who held more closely to the rules for itinerant charismatics than did Paul.[19]

Theissen’s theory certainly gives us insight into the social setting of the church in Corinth. However, there are some difficulties with his view. Theissen has ignored the implications of his own theory. He argued that this holy mendicancy was the norm for the Jesus-movement in Palestine. He did not demonstrate that it was only the norm for the movement’s missionaries. If Theissen is correct, then all Christians in Palestine ought to have been itinerant charismatics, not just the missionaries. Furthermore, in order for there to be any such conflict that is capable of dividing the Greco-Roman churches, those churches would have to have first imbibed the Palestinian-Christian ideal of holy mendicancy. We might, then, expect to find Paul’s churches rushing into mendicancy themselves, not just wondering why Paul did not do so. Theissen also ignores Paul’s stated problem with the ‘super apostles’—it is not that they were living as itinerants but that they were preaching a different gospel—that is Paul’s problem with the ‘super apostles’ not their itinerancy (2 Cor. 11.1-5). An additional problem with Theissen’s thought here is that he places a lot of emphasis on 1 Cor 9 and Paul’s right to subsistence. But he seems not to realize that Paul’s argument in 1 Cor 9 is given in support of his argument in 1 Cor 8 about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Paul’s point has nothing to do with subsistence. He is not arguing against itinerant charismatics here, but about how the actions of one believer affect another believer.

In another study, Theissen proposes that the social makeup of the Corinthian congregation is a large lower class that is dominated by a few upper class members, and that this social makeup may be typical of the Hellenistic churches in general.[20]

Theissen begins by appealing to 1 Cor 1.26-29 to show that there was a majority of lower class members in the Corinthian church, but also that there were some upper class. Theissen calls upon 1 Cor 4.10 to support his theory that there was a strong upper class contingent at Corinth.[21] But Theissen may be wrong to suppose that 1 Cor 4.10 be taken literally. A rhetorical analysis of 4.10—indeed, of the whole letter—might modify Theissen’s conclusions.

Theissen looks for evidence that some members of the Corinthian congregation enjoyed high social status. Such evidence includes:[22] a) official (political) offices held by members; b) ‘households’/’houses’ belonging to members; c) members who gave assistance to the congregation; and d) members who travelled. After investigating several people mentioned in Corinthians, Acts and Romans, Theissen concludes: “The result is clear. The great majority of the Corinthians known to us by name probably enjoyed high social status.”[23]

The difficulty with Theissen’s conclusion is that he makes a number of assumptions about what it meant in antiquity to hold any given office, what it meant to have a ‘house’, what level of social status is prerequisite to giving assistance to a congregation or to travelling. The cumulative effect is that Theissen’s conclusions are built on a lot of assumptions and little hard evidence. There is no real reason, for example, why a relatively poor person could not have rendered assistance to the congregation in some significant way, or undertaken travel (perhaps at the congregation’s expense).

One of Theissen’s most glaring assumptions is that high social status means influence in the church: “In the letters it is understandably the important people who are most likely to be mentioned by name, who keep in touch with Paul (that is, were free to travel) and who exercise influence within the congregation.”[24] This supposes that the early churches operated on the same value system used by Greco-Roman culture at large, and such an assumption is by no means certain, especially in light of the counter-cultural views of social status displayed in the Pauline epistles themselves.

Theissen has also submitted the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ spoken of in 1 Cor 8 to sociological analysis. He attempts to find there a connection to social classes:

Paul himself suggests that we look for the weak among the lower strata. It is hardly an accident that the first chapters of the Corinthian letter already give voice to the distinction between strong and weak, connecting this with the social structure of the Corinthian congregation.[25]

The first Corinthian letter itself, therefore, suggests the hypothesis that the socially weak of 1:26-27 are identical with those who are weak in the face of consecrated meat. This hypothesis can be tested only by looking for class-specific characteristics in what can still be discerned of the behavior of the weak and the strong, that is, behavioral traits which can be correlated with wealth, occupation, and education and thus to a higher or lower social status.[26]

Theissen first explains how infrequently people in the ancient world ate meat in the first place.[27] It was a real rarity; meat was most frequently consumed in connection with some sort of festival or other special (ritual) occasion. Thus, poor people probably only got meat on special occasions, and then the meat had likely been sacrificed to an idol. But the rich may have eaten meat more frequently. It is unlikely, then, that it was the poor who were eating sacrificial meat and thereby tempting the ‘weak’ to eat too.

Theissen concludes:

All of our observations, about forms of eating, sociability, legitimation, and communication, point to the fact that the strong probably belong to the few who are ‘wise… powerful… and of noble birth’ (1:26). Their more liberal attitude belongs primarily in the upper classes. Naturally, this attitude will have been extended beyond those limits. It is just such Christians of higher social status who bring with them a larger household unit. It is just such Christians who have been influential. But they were unable to win all to their position. There were also the weak, for whom pagan or Jewish traditions still had their influence. Such traditions, however, could be effective only because they undergirded a class-specific attitude.[28]

Again, Theissen’s conclusions overlook some important points. First, it would not really matter how frequently a person was able to eat meat. Paul’s point is that when it was eaten, the ‘weak’ had problems with it and the ‘strong’ needed to be sensitive to that. It is also interesting that Theissen, in focusing on societal influences on the weak and strong, does not even consider the possibility that the weak and the strong arrived at their positions by reasoning through the possibilities. Instead, he sees their perceptions of reality solely as products of their social level.

Derek Tidball follows Theissen on his assessment of the social realities underlying the situation of eating meat in 1 Cor 8, and he too makes the mistake mentioned above, that of assuming that attitudes about life can be so clearly indicative of social class:[29] “…it is a fair assumption on Theissen’s part that the ‘weak’ ones would be the poorer members of the church and the ‘strong’ ones would be the richer and more educated members who were used to easy mixing and socialising.”[30]

We can see how one might use a social-scientific approach to illuminate the social background of individual NT documents, but we might also ask questions about Pauline Christianity more generally. How might ancients have situated the Christians in categories they already understood? Meeks provides a good discussion of how the church might have been perceived by the ancients. He begins by describing several models with which ancients would have been familiar and that bear some resemblance to the early church: the household, the voluntary association, the synagogue, and the philosophical and rhetorical schools.

Christian meeting places were sometimes identified by the household in which they met, and individual Christians were sometimes identified by the household of which they were a part. These facts connect the early Christians with the basic unit of ancient society, the household.[31] Meeks sees these households as a sort of cell group of the church, several of which might exist in any given city, and which might even contribute to the formation of factions within a city (perhaps as in Corinth).[32]

There were also points of commonality between the early Christians and various societies:[33] voluntary membership, inclusion of a religious element, dependence on patronage. Yet there were important differences:[34] re-socialisation and allegiance to the group was stronger in Christian circles, Christianity was more widely socially inclusive and egalitarian, Christian groups did not make use of the terminology that other societies did in their self-designations. Nevertheless,

In the second century, Roman officials and literary opponents of Christianity often identified the Christian groups with such clubs [i.e., societies, guilds and other kinds of associations], especially the sort of secret and uncontrolled gatherings that were regarded as seedbeds of immorality and sedition…[35]

The synagogue too displays a lot of similarity to the early church:[36] the synagogue was identified by the ancients as a collegium and was associated with households; some Christian rituals have parallels in Judaism; diaspora Jews saw themselves as part of a larger group (Israel); and most importantly, the Christians adopted many of the belief structures of Judaism.

The philosophical schools, esp. those of Pythagoras and Epicurus, offer some parallels to early Christianity, but mainly in the fact that they were voluntary communities that were concerned with teaching ideas, including religious ideas.[37]

It is useful to know that there was a strong scholarly, academic, and rhetorical element in the activities of the Pauline groups, but it will not do to make those elements constitutive of the movement. They are ancillary.[38]

The early Christians, then, held certain characteristics in common with each of these four categories, but cannot be seen as entirely contained by any of the four. It is helpful, though, to see how early Christianity fit in with its environment.

These are only a sampling of the many directions social-scientific criticism of the NT has gone. Investigations have also been done into areas such as the sectarian and millenarian natures of the early Christian movement, as well as into how Christian rites and rituals help to define the group and provide for social cohesion. Examinations have also been made into how Paul used language to demarcate the boundaries of the group and re-socialise new members. It has been brought to attention that social-scientific criticism risks being reductionistic in approach; nevertheless, there are clear benefits to utilising the method, and it will be interesting to see what use is made of it in the future.

Things I would like to discuss with you if we have time:

· Read Max Weber?

· Ask about Rom. 16—what are possibilities?—what if it did go with Eph.? what does that do to my high view of Scripture? what does that do to theories of a Cor. origin for Rom.?—what is the significance of the textual evidences; i.e., no manuscripts to speak of omit ch. 16?

· what is the reason why the deutero-Paulines are deutero?—or, why are the Paulines considered authentic?

· what about the historicity of Acts?

· check out Meggitt, J.J. Paul, Poverty and Survival. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.

· what does it say about the application of millenarian models to early Christianity that those who ultimately took to the faith in Jesus had no connection with the social world in which it arose—that the hope for change offered by this Galilean movement did not appeal to the Jews but to the Gentiles of the Hellenistic world? Why should Gentiles place their hope in the fulfilment of God’s promises to the Jews—unless the fulfilment of those promises really had greater application than to the Jews alone?

[1] See Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 11-13.

[11] See Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, ed. and trans. by John H. Schütz. Studies in the New Testament and Its World, ed. by John Riches (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), 29 ff.

[20] See Theissen, 69-70. Tidball too thinks that Pauline Christianity was a movement that encompassed nearly all social classes (see Derek Tidball, The Social Context of the New Testament, Biblical Classics Library [Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1997]. First published as Introduction to the Sociology of the New Testament [Paternoster, 1983], 98). Tidball also suggests that Paul was a member of the upper middle class (see Tidball, 93-94). Paul’s Roman citizenship itself may have placed him in the upper echelons of the empire quite independently of other status measures (see Tidball, 93). The problem with the type of class statements made by Theissen and Tidball is that they fall victim to the mistake of viewing ancient social status in terms of modern Western social status (upper, middle, lower class, etc.) instead of in terms of more multidimensional measurements of status (see, for example, Meeks, 54-55).