Honor Patronage, Kinship, And Purity By David Desilva Summary

1065 Words3 Pages

In David deSilva book, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture deSilva states that context is extremely important as well as understanding the culture, without these elements one cannot properly understand the interpretation of Scripture. David deSilva gives an enlightening contextual study of first century Mediterranean culture. deSilva believes that all culture delivers the framework for all communication, and the New Testament writings is no different in how the culture provides the framework for communication. The main idea of deSilva’s work is to “recover the ideology of the early Christians.” His ultimately goal for recovering the ideology of the early church is improve the contemporary Church. deSilva carefully analyzes the Scriptures through the four core values, stated in the title of his book: honor, patronage, kinship and purity. Each of these values deSeilva devotes chapters to. deSilva gives cultural structure to the New Testament analysis and seeks the ancient Judaic and Greco-Roman cultural contexts. Chapter One Chapter one focuses on honor and shaming methods used in ancient times. deSilva’s main works consist of: Seneca, Aristotle, Isocrates, Quintilian, Ben Sira, Plutarch and the Apocryphal and Biblical writings. These resources show the involved …show more content…

In deSilva’s words, the thesis of chapter six is: “how the early Christian leaders constructed this new family (chiefly through the attention they gave to creating a lineage), used the family’s lineage to promote perseverance in the family of faith, adapted the ethics of kinship to the new community, and finally held together the fictive kinship of the whole Church with the setting of the Church within natural households.” deSilva’s states that Christ followers are to seek ways to serve in the name of Jesus and through this being the kinship of Jesus enacting as part of the family of

Open Document