HONOR, PATRONAGE, KINSHIP, AND PURITY

SECOND EDITION

UNLOCKING NEW TESTAMENT CULTURE

DAVID A. deSILVA

An imprint of InterVarsity Press

Downers Grove, Illinois

Second edition ©2022 by David A. deSilva

First edition ©2000 by David A. deSilva

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®. For more information, visit intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Chapters three and four contain material published previously as “Patronage and Reciprocity: The Context of Grace in the New Testament,” Ashland Theological Journal 31 (1999): 32–84, used by permission.

The publisher cannot verify the accuracy or functionality of website URLs used in this book beyond the date of publication.

Cover design and image composite: David Fassett

ISBN 978-1-5140-0386-2 (digital)

ISBN 978-1-5140-0385-5 (print)

To N. Clayton Croy,

a devoted disciple, meticulous scholar, and dear friend

CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Abbreviations

Introduction: Cultural Awareness and Reading Scripture

1. Honor and Shame: Connecting Personhood to Group Values

2. Honor and Shame in the New Testament

3. Patronage and Reciprocity: The Social Context of Grace

4. Patronage and Grace in the New Testament

5. Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World

6. Kinship and the “Household of God” in the New Testament

7. Purity and Pollution: Ordering the World Before a Holy God

8. Purity and the New Testament

Conclusion

Resources for Further Study

Name Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Ancient Writings Index

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I am grateful for the opportunity to present a fully revised and updated edition of this book that has, since its publication in 2000, become something of a “signature” book for me. It has become a vehicle through which I have had the great privilege of speaking to students of the biblical literature and its world and contributing to the work of other scholars who have carried its contributions forward in new ways to new audiences.

In an important article on the disciplinary divide between biblical studies and missiology, Michael Barram observes that “generally speaking, missiologists have tended to disdain both the academic sterility of biblical scholarship and a perceived lack of pragmatic evangelical engagement by many of its practitioners.… Not surprisingly, missiological research until relatively recently has tended either to ignore or to interact only superficially with serious biblical scholarship.”1 One of the great delights I have had is to witness, ...