Probing scripture

Since the 1970s archaeology has also generated increasing information concerning population patterns, forms of domestic architecture, agricultural practices and trade patterns for the period preceding the monarchy. This information, together with a wider array of possible comparative models for the development of noncentralized peasant societies, has begun to generate new ways of understanding early Israel, though none has yet achieved consensus.

Social-scientific approaches have also been used to investigate the significance of purity laws and kinship patterns and the social context of prophecy. They have proven useful too in studying the movement from a loose tribal confederation to the eventual formation of royal states. Social anthropologists have documented the development of chieftainships as an intermediate stage between these two forms of social organization. A chiefdom is a hierarchically organized society that lacks the strong central governmental apparatus characteristic of a true state. Though some aspects of the process are still debated, it is now generally thought that Saul's "kingship" and at least the early stages of David's rule should be thought of as chieftainships.

IN THE FIELD of New Testament, insights from sociology were first used in the 1970s to analyze the nature of the early Christian movement. One of the watersheds in the use of sociological and anthropological analysis was the publication of The First Urban Christians, by Wayne Meeks, which was a comprehensive attempt to describe the social context and organization of the early Pauline communities. Also significant were studies of the roles honor and shame played in Mediterranean societies, and of patron-client forms of social relations. Slavery, as social phenomenon and as metaphor, has been an important topic, as has the role of prophets and prophecy, the practice of magic, and the class status of early converts to Christianity. As in the field of Hebrew Bible, the social study of family structures and gender roles has yielded important insights.

Although disputes concerning appropriate methodology for social analysis have not been absent in Hebrew Bible studies, they have been particularly prominent in New Testament studies. Even the terminology has been contested. Some scholars prefer to describe their work as social history--that is, as an extension of traditional historical criticism that is informed by categories and questions from sociology and cultural anthropology. Others have insisted that their work is social-scientific in the strong sense of the term--that is, as work guided by the correlation of models and data, as are more purely sociological and social-psychological studies.

More significant than the disagreement over terminology, however, has been the issue of which sociological or anthropological methods and approaches are most suitable. The school of social functionalism examines the ways in which society, considered as an organism, attempts to contain and manage conflict, integrating disparate members and subgroups into the whole. This approach was used by Gerd Theissen to explore the earliest stages of the early Christian movement and its subsequent evolution. By contrast, conflict models in sociological theory emphasize the ways in which different groups in a society pursue their own interests and the ways in which different ideologies struggle with one another. More recent work in the sociology of early Christianity has favored conflict models over social functionalism.