Challenging the Authority of Jesus

Abstract

"The ˜nal quarter of the twentieth century has been characterized by the employment of a variety of new methodologies in NT study. Models imported from the ˜eld of cultural anthropology have proved particularly fruitful for scholars interested in gaining a better understanding of the world of the early Christians. Near the beginning of almost every introductory textbook dealing with the cultural background of the NT, the reader encounters a chapter addressing Mediterranean sensibilities concerning honor and shame. Honor is consistently identi˜ed as the single most important value or “good” in the ancient world. The cultural centrality of honor serves, in turn, to explain much about Jesus’ interactions with his antagonists in the Gospel narratives. Speci˜cally, the questions which Jewish leaders repeatedly bring to Jesus must be interpreted as challenges to Jesus’ honor"