Sermon Tone Analysis

Review

Letters in Context:

The Gospel is for all Nations

2. NT Letters are continuing this promise

3. Focus on Issues

Letters in context:

The Gospel is for all Nations: The Bible gives a clear vision for God using the family of Israel to bring blessing to all nations through a promised descendant.

NT Letters are continuing this promise: The apostles saw themselves as the continuation of these promises to restore God’s blessing to all nations through the good news about Jesus.

Focus on issues: The New Testament authors focused on many of the cultural and social issues of their day because they wanted their audiences to see themselves as members of the same family of God.

Form of First Century Letters:

The Opening Address: Sender, receiver, greeting

The Thanksgiving

The Body of the Letter

The Closing: Greetings to people; travel arrangements, prayer/praise to God, final note

Most letters in ancient antiquity fit into this formula.

Have specific and important meaning.

Situation Context

Do you remember our two main skills for discerning situation context?

Read letter as a whole

Mirror Reading

Reading as a whole to find repetitions and look for patterns

Type of statement

tone

frequency

consistency (same problem throughout the letter)

Historical plausibility

Context is everything:

Where do these letters fit in the broader storyline of the Bible?

What is the original Jewish, Greek, or Roman cultural context?

What is the situational context that prompted this letter?

What is the unified message of the letter as a whole?

Today we are talking specifically about #2.

Getting closer to the book of Colossians.

People have described this class as teaching verse by verse through the book....we are doing much more than that, right.

Today we get to look at some of the back drop of the Colossians, and any of the letters, so that we might pick up on some themes.

Ok Questions?

Sources

The Bible Project

Michael Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord

David deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity

Jewish, Greek, Roman Cultural Context

We could spend hours and lecture after lecture going through some of this, but we just do not have the time, I want to give you a few that I think are important.

The Roman Empire

The NT letters were all written to house churches spread throughout the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, the heartland of the Roman empire in the mid-1st century A.D. So what do we need to know about the Roman empire?

The Roman empire had been ruling over the Mediterranean world for nearly 80 years by 50 A.D. At the top was the emperor who viewed himself a divine-human whose rule brought good news and salvation to the world.

Roman law, values, gods, roads, and coins spread the ‘good news’ of Augustus through the empire.

‘The emperor cult’ spreading throughout the first century was cultic and religious devotion to the Roman emperor as an incarnation of the divine power of Rome.

The emperor was not only the king, but the “high priest” (pontifex maximus).

Temples spread through the empire where people would offer sacrifices and offerings to the “god-Augustus” (divi Augusti).

Statues of the emperor were placed everywhere, prayers were said for him and in his name at public events and festivals.

The emperor was given titles such as “savior” (Grk.

soter), whose rule brought “good news” (Grk.

euangelion) and “peace” (Grk.

eirene).

The Greek and Roman empires relate to each other in a similar way that England and America do today.

Greece/England was the reigning world empire of a previous generation, and Rome/ America inherited the imperial territory, ruling ideology, and economic dominance from their forebears but also gave it all their own unique cultural stamp.

“But there was a dark side to Rome’s ‘peace’ that cannot be forgotten… The Romans established and maintained their empire through conquest, subjugation, and intimidation.

It was, in other words, peace through war, and security via domination.

The Romans invaded and enslaved; they moved the conquered in and out; they formed new colonies and refounded old cities as their own colonies.

They imposed taxes and tributes to maintain the empire...and its peace among the subjugated.

And they had a deterrent to make sure that those who might threaten the peace understood the consequences: crucifixion.”

Michael Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 19

Honor and Shame in the Greco-Roman World

First, I want to talk about the difference in a social construct of the biblical world versus ours.

The Bible is largely set in a world that is built around Honor and Shame ethical construct.

“The culture of the first-century world was built on the foundational social values of honor and dishonor.

Seneca, first-century Roman statesman and philosopher, wrote: “The one firm conviction from which we move to the proof of other points is this: that which is honorable is held dear for no other reason than because it is honorable.”

Seneca claims that his peers regard honor as desirable in and of itself, and dishonor as undesirable in and of itself.

Moreover, he understands that the concept of “honor” is fundamental and foundational to his contemporaries’ thinking.

That is, he expects them to choose one course of action over another, or to approve one kind of person over another, and, in short, to organize their system of values, all on the basis of what is “honorable.””

What do we mean by honor and shame?

Show Chart

Honor: Individual honor, confidence in one’s gifts and talents....that would be like self-respect in our time.

That is largely an oxy-moron to the ancients.

All honor comes from social standing.

They would not know what to do with our self-help sections of book stores.

This is also important because the presentation of the gospel is through this lense.

Shame: If honor is respect for the kind of being of a person, shame signifies being less than valuable because one behaves in a contrary way to the public norm or good.

or the values of the group.

Vocabulary for honor:

glory

reputation

honor

praise

(antonyms) dishonor

reproach

scorn

slander

This imbedded in honor culture means more than we can quite get our heads around.

Let’s look at another example.....and this should be familiar language.

One more:

To be with Christ is to be in Christ’s glory.

God’s own household and honor is put upon the followers.

Ok so why is this important?

more responsible reading of the text.

one that deepens our understanding and response

responsible critique on our hyper-individualism of everything.

Patronage & Reciprocity: The Social Context of Grace

From deSilva:

“People in the United States and northern Europe may be culturally conditioned to find the concept of patronage distasteful at first and not at all a suitable metaphor for talking about God’s relationship to us.