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re: Re: crosspost from Ioudaios




I think that Ron Harrison's perspective of cultural anthropology helps get us 
thinking in a different direction.  I have always been uneasy at the attempt 
to establish normative behaviour from such paucity of evidence, i.e. a few 
phrases in the gospels, which in themselves play such a minor role in 
representing language of an entire era.  We have not yet discovered the proto-
text (Hebrew? Aramaic?) from which the gospel stories were developed.

Second Temple Israel was clearly a heterogenus society, even as it is 
represented in Greek texts.  What do sociologists have to say about this 
matter?  And socio-linguists?  Biblical scholars without linguistic, 
sociological, or anthropological formation, may be least prepared to 
adequately respond to this question.

Dennis Stoutenburg
Providence College