Conspectus : The Journal of the South African Theological Seminary

In this longitudinal study of peasant poverty in Israel/Judah/Palestine, I make use of various key indicators, including coinage, banking, markets, land tenure and labour, to suggest ways in which advances, in these areas, may have complicated the lives of ordinary peasants across the centuries (from the 8th century BCE to the 1st century CE). Using archaeological data, I make the case for three distinct periods: the Monarchy (1000–587 BCE) with its predominance of four-roomed houses; the Persian/Hellenistic Period (539–65BCE), with the appearance of landed estates; and the Roman/New Testament Period (65BCE–100CE), with its one-roomed homes around common courtyards. I conclude that debt was, increasingly, a factor in peasant poverty, and that Jesus’ action, in the Jerusalem Temple Bank, in overthrowing the tables (banks) of the money-changers (bankers), was a dramatic protest against the rising peasant debt of the time.

The terms 'honour' arid 'shame' translate two Greek words, τιμή and ἀτιμία respectively. In classical times, these formed pivotal values in Graeco-Roman society. Cultural anthropo-logists, in their studies of different Mediterranean societies, have used the English 'shame' and 'honour' to render a variety of indigenous expressions, dealing with codes of unacceptable or acceptable behaviour. These so-called Mediterranean values have been transposed upon biblical values, by scholars eager to show continuity between the two. This study takes issue with that approach. Christianity has fundamentally influenced modem Mediterranean values, particularly with regard to issues like sexuality, purity and gender roles. Proverbs offers an understanding of shame and honour which is quite distinctive, and should be appreciated in its own right. Wisdom and folly are the pivotal values around which all other values find their proper place.

A visitor to the Middle East is confronted by a bewildering mixture of ancient and modern, existing more or less happily side by side. Outside of an archaeological excavation, or a museum, there remains very little to put him or her in touch with the world of the Bible. But, at the same time, the visitor, has an awareness of the distance between themselves and this world. Unfortunately, when we read the Bible, familiarity with the text has virtually destroyed any sense of strangeness one might once have felt and the necessary sense of distance is lost. Consequently, we recreate the biblical stories and characters in the garb of our own time, and invest them with our own sets of values and culture. In the process we lose much of the original setting and colour. Cultural anthropology is one of the methods used by scholars of the Bible, to remind people of the gulf between twentieth-century Christianity and the world of Jesus, the wandering teacher from Galilee. The careful use of models, drawn from contemporary societies, enable us to re-enter the world of the Bible and to re-capture something of its rich diversity.