Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity (a book review)

Recently I taught a Sunday school lesson based on David deSilva's book Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. People seemed very interested in learning more about the culture of the New Testament world, and I remember finding this book fascinating. I gained insights from it that helped me appreciate the New Testament, as well as the beauty of God's love, at a deeper level. That can never be a bad thing.

While in seminary, I wrote a review of deSilva's book. If you're interested in learning more about New Testament culture, read the book. But for a quick synopsis (and review), here's this (written 2006):

Clay Brackeen. Review of David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

Modern readers of the New Testament tend to collapse the cultural and historical distance between themselves and the text by approaching it as if it were written with their specific context in mind. In Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity, David A. deSilva attempts to alert the modern reader as to how much she is missing if this tact is taken. He explores four important aspects of first century Jewish and Greco-Roman culture and then demonstrates how understanding the cultural context sheds much needed light on the meaning of New Testament passages. DeSilva argues that without an understanding of the views that were held concerning honor, patronage, kinship, and purity, one cannot fully appreciate the New Testament’s Christian witness. He goes on to show how Christians can appropriate these concepts in today’s context.

The book’s title provides a blueprint of deSilva’s treatment of four key cultural elements. He first examines the way that first century Jewish and Greco-Roman culture viewed honor. Honor and shame, explains deSilva, provided a touchstone for all of society’s values. Honor was both ascribed at birth due to one’s lineage and conferred by society through acting in a way deemed noble. The approval of others was thus greatly desired and served to keep people in line. At times, however, various groups espoused competing values, and a minority culture would promote an alternate “court of reputation” (40) from which its members were to seek approval.

Christians, one such counter-cultural minority group, encouraged the seeking of honor from a source other than the culture-at-large. In the face of being shamed by the “upside-down mentality of the society” (53), New Testament authors urged the faithful to seek the lasting honor that God alone could bestow. They pointed to Jesus and to Old Testament examples who endured hostility from ignorant outsiders who were often committed to wickedness. Rather than losing heart in the face of such opposition, Christians should rejoice and use the opportunity to display their loyalty to God. God’s approval, reinforced by the community of faith and the testimony of Scripture, was to be enough. As God’s people, Christians were to honor and care for one another. The community of faith promoted right behavior by using honor and shame, refusing to tolerate sin but confronting and restoring the wayward with love and gentleness. The church of today, says deSilva, needs to define itself as a counter-cultural movement, seeking honor through God’s approval rather than via status symbols such as wealth, education, possessions, and achievements. Modern Christians also need to recover a healthy sense of shame, allowing one another to be held accountable by being a community of honesty and openness and by confronting one another in love.

DeSilva next examines the first century concept of patronage. Although western society values self-sufficiency, New Testament culture valued the “giving and receiving of favors” as a normal and useful practice. In society, one often used relationships to obtain money, appointments, or access to influential individuals. The person in need, called the client, would seek out a patron and enter into a binding reciprocal relationship of give and take. The patron would provide the needed goods or service and would be owed a debt of gratitude in return. Ideally, the patron would give generously with no thought of return. Thus, it was an act of grace. The client, on the other hand, would show his or her gratitude by promoting the reputation of the patron, remaining loyal to the patron through thick and thin, and returning favors to the patron whenever possible. In short, the client was to demonstrate a “desire and commitment to return grace for grace” (118).

New Testament authors made use of this fundamental relationship to show what God had done for humanity through Jesus Christ. As the patron par excellence, God chose enemies to be the beneficiaries of His grace. Not only does He give life to all, but in Jesus He purchases salvation for all who will become His clients. Jesus, then, is seen as a mediator to God’s favor. He died voluntarily for our benefit, nobly giving His all, and thus we seek God in Jesus’ name. The Christian response to such generosity includes thanksgiving, a willingness to promote God’s honor by testifying to what He has done, a life of good works, loyalty, trust, obedience, and generous service to others.

A third element of first century culture that deSilva explores is that of kinship. In a very real way, one’s family of origin defined a person. Blood relatives worked together and promoted the common good of all. They could trust one another. They shared ideals and possessions, hid each other’s shame, and readily forgave one another. Cultural roles within the household were well defined, and the family unit was committed to loving and helping one another.

In the New Testament, deSilva explains, kinship was defined as being part of the “household of God” and the ethos of kinship was the “standard for interpersonal relations” in the church (199). Christians are described as being adopted by God Himself, born of the Spirit into the family of God. Although the world does not recognize the honor that has been given to believers, the New Testament reassures that the world failed to recognize Jesus as God’s Son as well. Jesus is “the critical link in the construction of this family” (200). Christians must trust the witness of the Spirit that they are God’s children and trust that their true identity will be made manifest to all at Christ’s second coming. In the meantime, they are to treat one another as sons and daughters of the King and as kin. The mutual love required of any family should show itself in the way Christians share their resources, maintain their unity, and honor one another. In their commitment to a separate ethos, they maintain a clear division from the world. At the same time however, they reach out to outsiders in love and remain open to receiving new converts. One point of Christian kinship that deSilva urges modern believers to take to heart is this: “to honor Christ by saying his blood is more important than our own in determining who shall be our family” (238). The “fictive” kinship of God’s family takes precedence even over the “natural” kinship of physical relatedness.

Purity is the final cultural norm that deSilva introduces in his book. The first century saw certain places, people, and times as being holy—set apart from the everyday and filled with power. Purity had to do with how people ordered the world. It was thought that one did not approach God blithely, for the holy was filled with power that contained a “combination of potential danger and potential blessing” (247). Various rituals provided the means by which one could become pure and whole and thus approach the holy without fear of reprisal.

DeSilva states that the New Testament presents Jesus as redefining purity codes. Jesus Himself provided the ultimate sacrifice that cleansed His people from impurity once and for all. He clarified that what truly makes a person unclean was not external pollutants but rather internal impurity that springs from one’s heart and mind. He taught that true holiness entails love and mercy and that “acts of compassion are never out of season” (290). Jesus’ body replaces the temple as sacred space, and the Church as Christ’s body becomes sacred as well. Christians are to treat the assembly of believers and their own individual physical bodies with reverence because the Spirit of Christ now dwells there. The Church is now set apart from the ordinary, sanctified for God’s service, and must extend God’s love to the world while remaining distinct and holy.

In my estimation, deSilva succeeds in capturing and conveying four important elements of first century New Testament culture. He paints a clear picture of the role that honor, patronage, kinship and purity played in that society. He then makes logical connections to the ways that New Testament authors incorporated such cultural understandings. The insights that deSilva provides are much more than interesting tidbits. They are essential for gaining a true appreciation of what New Testament authors are trying to convey when they use terms like honor, grace, gratitude, family, sacrifice, and purity. The book’s format—that of presenting a chapter on a sociocultural category’s larger cultural context followed by a chapter on its treatment in the New Testament—is very effective. DeSilva’s modern day application’s for the Church are right on target as well.

In summary, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture is a good example of how an appreciation of cultural context unlocks a deeper understanding of the New Testament message. DeSilva summarizes several important aspects of Greco-Roman and Jewish culture with which the original writers assume their audience is familiar. This book guards against the modern reader’s natural tendency to superimpose his own worldview onto the text. DeSilva bridges the cultural gap and provides the understandings that are needed to more fully and correctly grasp the New Testament authors’ intent.