This volume invites readers to walk in Israelite sandals, that is, to take a journey of the imagination, and to immerse themselves in the identity, values, and institutions of first-century CE Israelites with the help of contemporary social-scientific studies and theories. What emerges is that the Israelites did not practice a religion. Rather, they were an ethnos, or as this book describes it, an ethnic identity, who lived out a particular way of life and culture the customs of the fathers. It is to belong to a people who obtained their collective identity, honor, and sense of worth from their socialization and membership in Israel and from the social convention of loyalty to their rich cultural tradition. It was to belong to a "world," or having a perspective on the world with its own quality of "knowledge," which, among other things, preferred collectivism over individualism, and orthopraxy over orthodoxy.
I am a research associate at the University of Pretoria, Faculty of Theology. My food is social-scientific criticism of the New Testament. Learning about the different social values and institutions of the Biblical world is a real eye opener! The Bible becomes alive so to speak in its own time and place.
I am a member of The Context Group and enjoy all the work of these scholars, people such as Jerome Nerey, Philip Esler, Denis Duling, Richard Rohrbaugh, John Elliott, and John Kloppenborg, to name but a few.
My particular area of study is ethnic identity. Thus far my work attempts to develop models and to emphasise that ethnic identity should be a key area of research for New Testament scholars, and any serious Bible reader. Ethnic studies will open a whole new understanding of Paul, as well as the New Perspective on Paul, for example.
