Honour and shame

Honour

Honour, in first century Palestine, was considered an essential but limited commodity.

There were two ways to go about getting honour:

Ascribed honour was inherited at birth and you were expected to maintain and preserve the honour into which you were born. Attempting to ‘get ahead’ could divide the community. Your ascribed honour was described according to your family; e.g. Son of David; Son of Jacob etc.
Acquired honour was fraught with danger and came through:

gift giving, invitations to dinner, debates over legal issues, mutual assistance, challenge and riposte, becoming wealthy, arranging good marriages, being seen to follow customs and to practice Jewish religion
promoting honour
- win challenges
- socially open existence – keep your household open for anyone to drop in so you showed you had nothing to be ashamed of
- only invite your own social class so guests could return the favour (not Zacchaeus for e.g.).

Shame

Gospel stories give examples of how Jesus challenged the conventions of honour and shame:

When people were jockeying for best positions at a Sabbath meal Jesus told them the parable of the wedding banquet:

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host..

death by crucifixion was a shameful form of death.

Jesus mixed freely with tax collectors and sinners, making him ceremonially unclean (Luke 7:39)
He ate and drank with them and was called a glutton and a drunkard (Luke 7:34)
He ate with ceremonially unclean hands (Luke 11:38)
He broke the Sabbath laws by healing people and gleaning corn to eat (Luke 13:14, Matthew 12:1-2)
He forgave people’s sins, which to the Pharisees was blasphemy (Luke 5:21)
He also freely criticised the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness (Luke 11:37-52)