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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