Social and cultural context of the gospels

Contextual understanding

A significant challenge for readers and interpreters of Scripture is their contextual understanding of the time and place in which the Bible stories were set. Anthropology, sociology and Biblical studies are a few of the disciplines that can assist religious educators and their students to broaden their contextual understanding.

Jesus’ mission and vision of the kingdom of God challenged profoundly the contemporary social system and order.

Wherever Jesus went, spreading his new vision for of the kingdom of God, crowds around him could be divided into two groups: those who were favourable and those who were hostile.

Jesus’ short career frequently provoked conflict, rejection and hostility, particularly from the individuals and social groups who upheld and benefited from the status quo.

His favourable followers were those on the social margins and those who were looking for freedom, forgiveness, hope, justice and a better and brighter future.

For the favourable Jesus was the ‘Messiah’; for the hostile he was a ‘dangerous revolutionary’ who was bent on turning the known world upside down.

Social system, class and Jesus

In first century Palestine, the middle class was small. It was made up of professional people such as shopkeepers, tradesmen, fishermen, and educated people such as the Pharisees and Scribes. Jesus, the carpenter, may have belonged to this class, though other scholars put the artisan class below the peasantry; Jesus, the itinerant preacher however, would be at the bottom of the social ladder.

Even smaller than the middle class was the upper class. This class included the very wealthy such as the aristocratic families of the Herods, the high priests, and the rich nobility who owned most of the land.

The majority of the people in Palestine belonged to the peasant class. These were the tenant farmers and farm labourers to whom Jesus refers in his parables.

Below them was an even lower class, known as the poor. All sorts of people belonged to this class, such as orphans and widows, the blind, the crippled and the mentally ill. Having no other means of livelihood, people with physical and mental handicaps became beggars. To this class also belonged outcasts.

One could be an outcast without necessarily being poor economically. Such were tax collectors and sinners.

The tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes from fellow Jews for the Roman Empire. They were considered traitors, who became wealthy by collaborating with Roman authorities at the expense of their own people.

The sinners, who are grouped with the tax collectors, were not “ordinary” sinners. The Pharisees, along with others, could readily admit that everyone is, after all, a sinner and in need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But the sinners associated with tax collectors were in a special class. These were people who deliberately and persistently transgressed the requirements of the law. Included in this group would be money-lenders who charged interest on loans advanced to fellow Jews. This was a clear violation of the law of God stated in Leviticus 25:36-38. Also in this group of sinners might be prostitutes. These were individuals who sold themselves to a life of sin in deliberate disregard of the law of God.

Yet, Jesus apparently associated with such people at dinner parties. The Pharisees charged that Jesus was "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Luke 7:34).

Jesus is recorded as saying to some religious leaders in Jerusalem, "The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you" (Matthew 21:31). It's not hard to see why those who were hostile to Jesus were upset.

Purity systems

The purity systems within the first century Jewish culture impacted profoundly on Jewish attitudes and behaviour.

Organisation of society along purity lines meant careful avoidance of contact with all people who were judged impure or unholy e.g. sinners, lepers, blind, lame, menstruates, corpses, toll collectors, Samaritans, Gentiles.

Proper respect was given for holy places (the temple and synagogue), holy persons (temple personnel) and acts of purification such as washing hands before meals and holy times (Sabbath and festivals).

This system of economic and social stratification legitimated by purity classifications meant that the rich were ranked above the poor; the clergy above the laity; urban dwellers, especially those living in Jerusalem, above the rural peasantry, especially those living in distant Galilee; men above women; married above unmarried; the healthy above the ill; conformists above deviants.

As an occupied country, the Roman Emperor, Governors, Prefects, Centurions, soldiers were ranked above the occupied people of Palestine from a political standpoint.

According to the Gospel writers, it was this system of purity and the exclusivity and injustice that it fostered which Jesus challenged. This challenge proved dangerous for Jesus and his followers because it was so wide-reaching in its political and social ramifications. Jesus’ position of overturning the social world of the times inevitably led to conflicts, clashes and social division.