An Appeal to Personality in Hebrews: A Social-Scientific Study

Understanding the people we meet in the Letter to the Hebrews (hereafter: Hebrews) with Western concepts of personality is misleading. This is because people in today's Western society are different from those who lived in Mediterranean societies during the first-century. This article uses pers...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Kissi, Seth (Author) ; Eck, Ernest van 1960- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: NTWSA [2017]
In: Neotestamentica
Year: 2017, Volume: 51, Issue: 2, Pages: 315-335
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Hebrews / Israelites / Mediterranean area / Personality / Human image / Anthropology / Antiquity / History / Collective / Group / Sociology
B History 1-100
IxTheo Classification:HC New Testament
NBE Anthropology
ZB Sociology
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Understanding the people we meet in the Letter to the Hebrews (hereafter: Hebrews) with Western concepts of personality is misleading. This is because people in today's Western society are different from those who lived in Mediterranean societies during the first-century. This article uses personality as a social-scientific model to study Hebrews. It will be shown that first-century Mediterranean concepts of personality allow for a full appreciation of the author's rhetoric and appeal to the audience. After discussing social-scientific criticism and some models of first-century personality, the relevant aspects of the theories on personality are used as a lens through which to consider Hebrews' appeal to its readers. The study concludes that Hebrews portrays its readers as typical collectivist persons with a group orientation, who are concerned primarily with the pursuit of goals and interests related to the group.
ISSN:2518-4628
Contains:Enthalten in: Neotestamentica
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1353/neo.2017.0016