The Gospel of Luke by Green Joel B.;

Author:Green, Joel B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006070 Religion / Biblical Commentary / New Testament
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Jesus addresses his fellow guests

Jesus addresses his host

When you are invited to a meal …

When you host a meal with guests …

Do not … lest …

Do not … lest …

But when you are invited to a meal …

But when you host a meal with guests …

Then you will … because.…

Then you will … because.…125

Because the sharing of food is a “delicate barometer” of social relations,126 when Jesus subverts conventional mealtime practices related to seating arrangements and invitations, he is doing far more than offering sage counsel for his table companions. Rather, he is toppling the familiar world of the ancient Mediterranean, overturning its socially constructed reality and replacing it with what must have been regarded as a scandalous alternative.

Intimacy with two interrelated ingredients of the taken-for-granted world of Roman antiquity is assumed in this segment of Jesus’ table talk.127 First, this was a world in which social status and social stratification were vital considerations in the structuring of life, with one’s status based on the social estimation of one’s relative honor—that is, on the perception of those around a person regarding his prestige. For example, where one sat (was assigned or allowed to sit) at a meal vis-à-vis the host was a public advertisement of one’s status;128 as a consequence, the matter of seating arrangements was carefully attended and, in this agonistic society, one might presume to claim a more honorable seat with the hope that it (and the honor that went with it) might be granted. What is more, because meals were used to publicize and reinforce social hierarchy, invitations to meals were themselves carefully considered so as to allow to one’s table only one’s own inner circle, or only those persons whose presence at one’s table would either enhance or at least preserve one’s social position.

Second, central to the political stability of the Empire was the ethics of reciprocity, a gift-and-obligation system that tied every person, from the emperor in Rome to the child in the most distance province, into an intricate web of social relations. Apart from certain relations within the family unit and discussions of ideal friendship, gifts, by unwritten definition, were never “free,” but were given and received with either explicit or implicit strings attached. Expectations of reciprocity were naturally extended to the table: To accept an invitation was to obligate oneself to extend a comparable one, a practice that circumscribed the list of those to whom one might extend an invitation. The powerful and privileged would not ordinarily think to invite the poor to their meals, for this would (1) possibly endanger the social status of the host; (2) be a wasted invitation, since the self-interests of the elite could never be served by an invitation that could not be reciprocated; and (3) ensue in embarrassment for the poor, who could not reciprocate and, therefore, would be required by social protocols to decline the invitation. As will become clear below, in recording Jesus’ table talk, Luke exploits these cultural scripts in order to undermine

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.