"This enormously useful volume presents a 'world' of information and theoretical perspectives that have become indispensable for contextual exegesis of Luke-Acts. The authors of this fascinating and well-planned book are seasoned and trustworthy guides into the world inhabited by Luke and his first readers. These provocative articles provide the commentary reader of Luke-Acts with mighty tools for creating first-century scenarios that reveal significantly new dimensions of Luke's cutting edges."--S. Scott Bartchy, associate professor of early Christian history, UCLA
"This is clearly the best collection of articles available from the New Testament scholars employing methods of interpretation from cultural anthropology. The writers introduce a wide range of innovative models to unravel the culture of the biblical world. They offer the first comprehensive analysis of a single New Testament text from the perspective of the social sciences. This highly readable volume will be essential for anyone eager to experience the flood of insights coming from recent social study of the New Testament."--David Rhoads, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

"The Social World of the New Testament: Insights and Models" surveys essential contributions made by leading scholars of the social-scientific approach to New Testament studies. Including important essays by Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch, among others, this book acts as a comprehensive collection of the most important essays and articles in the field. Included are topics vital to the social scientific interpretation of the New Testament, organized under three headings:
INSTITUTIONS
- Kinship: All in the Family: Kinship in Agrarian Roman Palestine--K. C. Hanson
- The Patron-Client Institution: God in the Letter of James: Patron or Benefactor?--Alicia Batten
- Economics: Jesus and Agrarian Palestine: The Factor of Debt--Douglas E. Oakman
CULTURE
- Honor and Shame: Loss of Wealth, Loss of Family, Loss of Honor: The Cultural Context of the Original Makarisms in Q--Jerome H. Neyrey, SJ
- Purity: The Epistle of James in Rhetorical and Social-Scientific Perspective: Holiness-Wholeness and Patterns of Replication-- John H. Elliott
- Social Location: Was Jesus a Peasant: Implications for Reading the Jesus Tradition (Luke 10:30-35)--Douglas E. Oakman
- Social Location: The Social Location of the Markan Audience--Richard L. Rohrbaugh
- Gender: Who Should Be Called "Father"? Paul of Tarsus between the Jesus Tradition and Patria Potestas--S. Scott Bartchy
- Space: "Teaching You in Public and from House to House" (Acts 20:20): Unpacking a Cultural Stereotype--Jerome H. Neyrey, SJ
- Healing: Healing in Luke-Acts--John J. Pilch
- Evil Eye: Paul, Galatians, and the Evil Eye-- John H. Elliott
- Limited Good: "He Must Increase, I Must Decrease"(John 3:30): A Cultural and Social Interpretation--Richard L. Rohrbaugh and Jerome H. Neyrey
MODAL PERSONALITY
- Modal Personality: Ancient Mediterranean Persons in Cultural Perspective: Portrait of Paul--Jerome H. Neyrey, SJ and Bruce J. Malina

Jerome Neyrey clarifies what praise, honor, and glory meant to Matthew and his audience. He examines the traditional literary forms for bestowing such praise and the conventional grounds for awarding honor and praise in Matthew's world.

How did ancient persons understand themselves, other people, and the world around them? Is there a marked contrast between their understandings of "self" and "other" and the way modern Westerners define those concepts? Bruce Malina and Jerome Neyrey focus on the figure of Paul to provide a comprehensive investigation of how one man was perceived in the ancient world. Drawing on primary sources from antiquity, as well as lessons from cultural anthropology, the authors help provide a fuller understanding of the person of Paul and his world. By doing so, they offer readers a new, and more balanced, way to approach the New Testament.

The focus of this book is an anthropological perspective that will open the writings of Paul to a challenging new range of questions and issues. Jerome Neyrey introduces the reader to critical access thorough a wholly convincing method of cultural-historical analysis. Paul comes alive in time and place. Biblical theologians and students will find ample stimulus in Neyrey's analysis of Paul.

Given all that has been written about the Gospel of John over the past twenty centuries, can anything more possibly be said about it? Yes, says Jerome Neyrey -- by reading this "maverick Gospel" in terms of ancient rhetoric and by viewing it in terms of cultural anthropology. / By interpreting the text in these two fresh ways, Neyrey distinctively illuminates the Gospel of John, casting new light on its theological message and on such topics as Jesus the revealer practicing secrecy, foot-washing as transformation ritual, and the Jewish background of Jesus' equality with God, of Jesus being "greater than" Abraham. Neyrey's scholarly study will certainly educate -- and at times provoke -- attentive readers.

This 2007 commentary differs from most others in that it does not attempt to repeat all the critical materials which can be found in the larger, major series. Rather it brings to the interpretation of John, materials more literary and rhetorical in nature. It presents full paragraphs on passages, key terms and major motifs. One might say that the 'big picture' is more important here than exacting detail. Readers will be invited into the gospel by noting its typical literary patterns (chiasms, topic statements and development, patterns of double-meaning words), rhetorical commonplaces and discourse (e.g., 'the 'noble' shepherd'; forensic trials: accusations, defense, verdict and sentence). In particular this commentary brings readers into the cultural world of the gospel by presenting materials such as honor and shame, challenge and riposte, gossip, secrecy, and sectarian character of the group. This is a very accessible reading of John.

In antiquity honor and shame are two key values in public relationships and in the overall functioning of society. This work offers an exhaustive explanation of the meaning that praise and recrimination have for Matthew the evangelist and his Christian addressees. Professor Neyrey focuses on the analysis of the traditional genre, where honor and shame appear. His study, based on the knowledge of ancient rhetoric, is completed with trans-cultural studies from other countries surrounding the Mediterranean basin. It also includes some original aspects in order to get a different grasp of Matthew's Gospel.

Neyrey here interprets eight key New Testament books, providing a fresh look at theologies in the early church and introducing readers to the diverse ways in which the New Testament writers "render to God the things that are God's." He begins with two Gospels, Mark and Matthew, and moves on to the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul's letters (Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians). He then examines the formal and precise ways in which Jesus is called God in the Gospel of John and concludes with a discussion of how Hebrews uses "eternity" as a fundamental concept for understanding God. Using a social-science methodology, he offers unique perspective on the biblical text.

This 2007 commentary differs from most others in that it does not attempt to repeat all the critical materials which can be found in the larger, major series. Rather it brings to the interpretation of John, materials more literary and rhetorical in nature. It presents full paragraphs on passages, key terms and major motifs. One might say that the 'big picture' is more important here than exacting detail. Readers will be invited into the gospel by noting its typical literary patterns (chiasms, topic statements and development, patterns of double-meaning words), rhetorical commonplaces and discourse (e.g., 'the 'noble' shepherd'; forensic trials: accusations, defense, verdict and sentence). In particular this commentary brings readers into the cultural world of the gospel by presenting materials such as honor and shame, challenge and riposte, gossip, secrecy, and sectarian character of the group. This is a very accessible reading of John.

Jerome H. Neyrey gives us a thoroughly up to date and comprehensive study of two of the most obscure books of the New Testament. Written after the death of Jesus and his Apostles, the Epistles of 2 Peter and Jude offer a glimpse into the turbulent life of the early Christian communities. Neyrey's fascinating study not only provides an entirely new translation of the two texts, but also stirring commentary that takes the reader inside groups located at the very edges of Christianity, in contact with the wider Roman world and Greek culture of the day. Neyrey builds upon the excellent scholarship of the past, and introduces into the discussion factors that were rarely understood or considered in earlier times: the social, political, and economic setting in which the New Testament Epistles were written and read-the church as a community within the larger context of the vast Roman Empire of the late first and early second centuries. And while these letters are often considered peripheral or marginal to the New Testament, they nevertheless reveal and interpret one of the murkier eras in the life of the church. They reflect the hard times and difficult circumstances of the faithful, beset by treacherous comrades within and malevolent enemies without. But all the while, these documents express the constancy and commitment of those who found salvation and the renewal of life in the one Lord, Jesus Christ.