Abstract
Ethnicity reasoning offers one way of looking at social identity in the letter to the Hebrews. The context of socio-economic abuse and hardships of the audience creates a situation in which ethnicity in social identity becomes an important issue for the author of Hebrews to address. This article is a social-scientific study which explores how the author establishes the ethnic identity of the audience as people of God. While this ethnic identity indicates the more privileged position the readers occupy in relation to the benefits of God accessible to them, it also provides the author with the appropriate social institutions and scripts by which his demand for appropriate response to God and the Christian group becomes appreciable and compelling. The article involves the definition of social-scientific criticism, ethnicity and social identity, and discusses the social context of the letter to the Hebrews. It then explains how some social scripts within specific ethnic institutions give meaning to the demands the author makes from his readers.
Highlights
Description: Dr Kissi participated in the research project ‘Sociocultural Readings’, directed by Prof
While this ethnic identity indicates the more privileged position the readers occupy in relation to the benefits of God accessible to them, it provides the author with the appropriate social institutions and scripts by which his demand for appropriate response to God and the Christian group becomes appreciable and compelling
It makes use of theories and models from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, archaeology and history, among others. These theories and models offer important information about the sociocultural systems in which the writers and audience of ancient biblical texts lived. Such information throws light on the social interactions in which the issues being addressed in the biblical text took place, giving meaning to the text by providing us with the social expectations within those systems as they find expression in the biblical text
Summary
Affiliations: 1Biblical Greek and New Testament Studies, Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana. Social-scientific criticism requires examination of the salient and interrelated properties of the society and culture that produced a text under investigation, that is, the institutions and cultural codes that governed ancient thought, institutionalised behaviour and conventional modes of interaction for the interpretation of biblical texts (Elliott 2001:10). Such examination is premised on the realisation that any text is the product of a specific social system, and that one has to understand the social system behind the text before the text can be understood.
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