Realización de radares de comparación: benchmarking competitivo para bienes

Positing presumed common ancestors as the criterion of ethnicity locates the other indicators of ethnicity, such as common language, customs or boundary markers, as social shorthand that signal the presence or absence of the criterion of putative kinship. These indices of ethnicity vary from group to group and can change significantly for a

34

Bauckham, "The Parting of the Ways," 143; Richard N. Longenecker, "Paul's Vision of

the Church and Community Formation in His Major Missionary Letters," in Community

Formation in the Early Church and the Church Today (ed. Richard N. Longenecker;

Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), 78-79. Paul Sevier Minear, Images of the Church in

the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960; repr., Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 90: “Just as in Christ, God had disclosed the true meanings of

particular group without threatening the persistence of that group.35

Group boundaries are far from the stable, rigid fences between groups that both members and observers often

assume them to be. They are permeable, though on prescribed terms.36

They expand and contract to include more or fewer people. They are liberalized or rigidified to make crossing them more or less common. Indices may be renegotiated when formerly distinct groups are merged through the “discovery” of common ancestors.

Yet through all this, an ethnic identity persists, often with minimal awareness on the part of the members or surrounding groups of how elastic the group actually is. What remains stable is the group’s definitional criterion of association with a particular

genealogy, usually fixed by means of the group’s proper name derived from the name of

an ancestor or ancestral homeland, e.g.70Ioudai=oi or Israel. When a group ceases to be

defined by the criterion of ancestry, it ought no longer to be classified as an ethnic group but according to its new basis, be that religion, geography, culture, etc. This is the thesis

of Hall’s Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, in which he traces the early creation

of a Hellenic ethnic identity that, over time, lost its ethnic criteria and became a purely cultural category. This could be seen as definitional sophistry, yet for examination of how identities are created and maintained by the actors, it provides the basis for discriminating between and comparing the strategies peculiar to certain kinds of groups (here, ethnic)

and other strategies of social cohesion.37

Examination of how various cultural indices are

35

This distinction between the criteria and indices of ethnicity comes from Donald L.

Horowitz, "Ethnic Identity," in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (ed. Nathan Glazer and

Daniel Patrick Moynihan; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 119-20.

Hall, Ethnic Identity, 20; Hall, Hellenicity, 9-10, adopts this distinction from Horowitz.

Esler, Galatians, 80, independently of Horowitz or Hall, uses the term “indicia of

ethnicity” in the same way.

36

Barth, "Introduction," 9-10, 16, 21.

37

This point underscores a difference between Esler’s study of social identity in Galatians and this inquiry. Esler frames his analysis in terms of a more general theory of social

identity (that of Henri Tajfel; see Esler, Galatians, 40-57); whereas this study focuses on

the strategies particular to ethnic groups. In this regard, the works are complementary.

deployed with respect to the criterion of genealogy may illuminate their function in creating and maintaining the ethnic identity.

It is widely noted that Jewish proscriptions on eating with or marrying non-Jews constituted two of their chief boundary mechanisms that enabled them to resist assimilation. Restating this fact would hardly be novel. But locating these boundary mechanisms in a model of ethnicity as indicia of common descent provides analytical tools for assessing how these features function within a broader discourse and among all the dimensions of that identity. Further, as Esler notes, appreciation of how ethnic boundaries function differentially to regulate inter-group relations enables nuanced

description of how assimilation and acculturation vary in different social arenas.38

The linkage between particular indices of an ethnic identity and the genealogical criterion of that identity will not be self-evident but must be asserted. For instance, Torah and arguments from Torah established why circumcision was an indicator of Abrahamic descent. Other ethnic groups in the ancient Near East practiced circumcision, but it held different cultural significance for them than it did for Jews. Similarly, vegetarianism might be based on health considerations, religion, or ethnic identity. Its significance will be embedded in a broader cultural discourse. Ethnic discourse is recognized, in the first instance, by the linking of group characteristics or desired collective behaviors to a genealogical foundation. Apart from a claim, implicit or explicit, that group members are the authentic descendants of a mythic ancestor(s), rhetoric may not be considered ethnic.

This distinction between criteria and indicia is an etic model imposed for the purpose of analyzing how ethnic groups construct themselves. For members of the ethnic group, their genealogical roots, the practice of their cultural norms and their significance form a identity theory provides a broader and needed context for the development of ethnic

theories; cf. Hall, Hellenicity, 17, regarding “ethnicity as a specific type of cultural

identity” (italics original).

38

Esler, Galatians, 86-88. Cf. Barclay, Diaspora, 88-98, on multi-dimensional

seamless, organic whole. They are, together, what it means to be a Jew, or a Greek, or a Serb. For instance, 2 Maccabees describes the evils of Antiochus thus:

Not long after this, the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus . . . People could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the festivals of their ancestors, nor so much as confess themselves to be Jews. (2 Macc 6:1, 2, 6)

These particulars are aspects of what the author of Maccabees considers essential to Jewish identity. Our approach does not override that emic perspective but provides a heuristic tool for focusing on the ethnic basis of this identity. It distinguishes between the assumed relationship with the ancestors and the various practices that are indicia of that relationship, enabling us to discern ethnic warrants for those practices.

We can see the connections Paul makes between the believers’ characteristic

behaviors and their genealogically constructed identity through what Wayne Meeks calls Paul’s “language of separation.” Meeks mentions Gal 4:1-11 as an example of this language by which Paul casts the believers as a distinct community within the

surrounding society.39

In that passage, the believers’ genealogical identity (carried forward from 3:26, 29 and emphasized in 4:6-7) is the basis for their liberation from slavery to “elemental spirits” (4:3, 8) and simultaneously for the rejection of false indices of their identity (4:8-10). When Paul further elaborates behaviors commensurate with their identity as sons of God and sons of Abraham in Gal 5:13-6:10, he continues this coordination of their ethos with their genealogical bond by using the terms “brothers and sisters” (5:13; 6:1), “inherit” (5:21), and “family of faith” (6:10).

The vice and virtue lists of 1 Cor 6:9-11 and Col 3:5-17 similarly construe these behaviors as reflective of their ethnic identity (“inherit” in 1 Cor 6:10; “God the Father” in Col 3:17). Likewise, in 1 Cor 5:9-13, a person “who bears the name brother or sister” (v. 11) but refuses the sexual ethics consistent with that identity is to be excluded from

39

the community (cf. the “false brothers” of Gal 2:4), showing how the expected behaviors

are indices of the familial status “brother or sister.”40

Above all, on the basis of their presumed kinship, Paul urges familial concord, as, for example, in 1 Cor 1:10-11:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.

That this ethos of harmonious unity suggests an ethnic identity becomes even clearer when viewed in its ancient social context. Our modern liberal individualistic social context often obscures from us the force of Paul’s exhortations. Much of his social vision seems today like benign counsel to be nice and tolerant--“Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another” (Gal 5:26) or “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved” (1 Cor 10:33).41

However, in the ancient Mediterranean world, such deference to others was

reserved for social allies, above all for family members.42

Ramsay MacMullen writes, “. . . Philotimia. No word, understood to its depths, goes farther to explain the Greco-Roman

achievement.”43

This love of honor was pursued competitively in a zero-sum game,

resulting in what social scientists refer to as an agonistic culture.44

Competition and envy

40

Aasgaard, My Beloved Brothers, 300-02.

41

Reidar Aasgaard, "Brotherhood in Plutarch and Paul: Its Role and Character," in

Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (ed. Halvor Moxnes; London: Routledge, 1997), 179-80: “Such advice seems to be of a rather general character, and may—from our modern point of view—be applied to most human relationships. But was this true in Antiquity?”

42

DeSilva, New Testament Culture, 212-23.

43

Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. To A.D. 284 (New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), 125.

44

Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology

(Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), 32-33; Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, "Honor and

Shame in Luke-Acts: Pivotal Values of the Mediterranean World," in The Social World

energized all of public life. Pursuit of honor was possible only collectively.45

If one’s family were dishonorable or dishonored, one could not rise above that. In the ambient society of Paul’s day, individuals were not assessed on the basis of their own merits so

much as assigned a place in society on the basis of their family and social connections.46

The family was “a haven in a heartless world.”47

The ancient ideal was harmony and mercy within the family and competition for honor with everyone else. Thus, Paul’s directions to show mercy, care for the weak, place the honor of others ahead of your own, maintain unity and peace, all reflect an ethos that in antiquity would be appropriate only within the family or clan.

Where Paul has traced the ethos of his congregations onto the template of Jewish identity, the ethnic aspect of their identity will likewise be evoked. Most noticeable was the early Christians’ strict monotheism and avoidance of the cultic worship that was ubiquitous in the Greco-Roman world (1 Cor 6:9-10; 10:1-22). In standard Jewish form, Paul combined this taboo against idolatry with a stereotype of Gentile sexual immorality that the believers were to shun as much as idol worship. Paul’s references to society

beyond the boundary of the church as ta\ e1qnh further highlights his construal of the

believers according to Israel’s identity (1 Cor 5:1; 12:2).

Paul also promotes characteristics of the believing community that derive from their particular genealogy. They are not Jews; their ancestral claim on the blessing of Abraham is via Christ (Gal 3:14). As illustrious ancestors validate the character and claims of an

Hendrickson, 1991), 29; MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 76-77 DeSilva, New

Testament Culture, 29.

45 _{Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient}

Personality (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 20, 93, 153, use the

alliteration “gender, generation, and geography” to refer to this reality. By the second two items they mean to whom one is born and where one is born, which we have seen above to be the calculus of ethnicity. On p. 168, they write, "...first-century Mediterranean persons were fundamentally embedded in groups, primarily kinship and fictive kinship groups."

46

Ibid., 17-18.

47

ethnic group who, in some sense, embodies that founder in the present, so the ethos of Paul’s churches derives from Abraham, Christ, and from Paul, himself. In Gal 3:6-9, Paul features “faith” as the chief familial characteristic to be derived from Abraham. That faith is further revealed and defined in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:22-26), who incorporates the

believers into Abraham’s line of descent on the basis of faith. Furthermore, Christ’s faithful death on the cross for others becomes the mainspring of their corporate ethos

(Gal 2:20; 5:6; 6:14; 1 Cor 1:26-31; Col 3:12-17).48

Christ is not an ancestor; rather, he is the first-born son whose character is the model of sonship. Imitation of him, then, is an ethical warrant rooted in family identity. Imitation of Paul follows a similar logic. First, he faithfully embodies the character of Christ for his churches (1 Cor 11:1). Second, he is a parent to those believers who first heard the gospel through his ministry (1 Cor 4:14-16; Gal 4:19).

In these several ways, we see that Paul corelates the ethos of his churches to their genealogically grounded identity. In terms of ethnic theory, these characteristics may be construed as indices signaling the group members’ status as kin.