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The Context Group is a working group of international biblical scholars who promote research into the Bible using social-scientific methods such as anthropology and sociology.
The Context Group is an international team of scholars that merges historical exegesis and the social sciences to interpret the Bible in its social and cultural contexts. It initially organized in 1986 as the "Social Facets Seminar," headed by John H. Elliott as chair, meeting in conjunction with the Jesus Seminar under the direction of Robert W. Funk and the Westar Institute. In 1989 it broke ties with the Jesus Seminar and reorganized in Portland, Oregon, as The Context Group, A Project on the Bible in its Social and Cultural Environment.
Two seminal publications by founding members were Bruce J. Malina's The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (1981) and John H. Elliott's Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter (1981). Elliott's What is Social-Scientific Criticism of the Bible? (1993) coined a new term for the group's methodology and provided a bibliographic survey. Other key figures who published on the subject during this era (all of whom eventually became part of the Context Group) include Dennis Duling, Philip Esler, Douglas E. Oakman, Jerome Neyrey SJ, John J. Pilch, Richard L. Rohrbaugh, and Wolfgang Stegemann.
The work of the group has had considerable influence in the field, but also has attracted a variety of criticisms.
At the root of the Context Group's social-scientific method is the belief that biblical scholars have taken western cultural assumptions for granted when interpreting biblical texts, which are ancient documents produced in a much different culture.
The key difference is that the modern western world is an individualistic, industrial society, whereas the society of the ancient Mediterranean world was collectivistic and agrarian.
The ancient Mediterranean was also a high-context society, where discourse took shared cultural values for granted. This contrasts with the modern western world, which is a low-context society in which discourse tends to be more specific and specialized (i.e. to particular groups, subcultures, etc.). According to the Context scholars, the interpreter must learn the cultural assumptions and values behind the text in order to understand it correctly. This involves understanding values such as honor and shame, for example, which Malina calls "pivotal cultural values."
Other common themes in Context analysis of the Bible include patron-client relationships, the "evil eye", kinship, purity codes, and dyadic/group-oriented personalities.
The Context Group's founding and early members include important scholars in the field today: John H. Elliott, Bruce J. Malina, Philip Esler, Jerome H. Neyrey SJ, John J. Pilch, Wolfgang Stegemann, K.C. Hanson, Douglas E. Oakman, Dennis C. Duling, S. Scott Bartchy and Richard L. Rohrbaugh.
Important publications include the following:
Matthew the Apostle is named in the New Testament as one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. According to Christian traditions, he was also one of the four Evangelists as author of the Gospel of Matthew, and thus is also known as Matthew the Evangelist.
Modern Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from the post-critical orientation of later scholarship; and from the multiple distinct schools of criticism into which it evolved in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Epiousion (ἐπιούσιον) is a Koine Greek adjective used in the Lord's Prayer verse "Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον". Because the word is used nowhere else, its meaning is unclear. It is traditionally translated as "daily", but most modern scholars reject that interpretation. The word is also referred to by epiousios, its presumed lemma form.
The "New Perspective on Paul" is a movement within the field of biblical studies concerned with the understanding of the writings of the Apostle Paul. The "new perspective" was started with scholar E. P. Sanders' 1977 work Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The old Protestant perspective claims that Paul advocates justification through faith in Jesus Christ over justification through works of the Law. After the Reformation, this perspective was known as sola fide; this was traditionally understood as Paul arguing that Christians' good works would not factor into their salvation – only their faith would count. In this perspective, first-century Second Temple Judaism is dismissed as sterile and legalistic.
Gerd Theißen is a German Protestant theologian and New Testament scholar. He is Professor of New Testament Theology at the University of Heidelberg.
Philip Francis Esler is the Portland Chair in New Testament Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. He is an Australian-born higher education administrator and academic who became the inaugural chief executive of the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2005, remaining in that role until 2009. From 1995 to 2010 he was professor of Biblical criticism at St Andrews University. From 1998 to 2001 he was vice-principal for research and provost of St Leonard’s College at St Andrews. During the years 1999 to 2003 he served as a member of the board of Scottish Enterprise Fife. From October 2010 to March 2013 he was principal at St Mary’s University College Twickenham. He had an earlier career as a lawyer, working in Sydney during 1978-81 and 1984-92 as an articled clerk, then solicitor and barrister.
James McConkey Robinson was an American scholar who retired as Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, specializing in New Testament Studies and Nag Hammadi Studies. He was a member of the Jesus Seminar and arguably the most prominent Q and Nag Hammadi library scholar of the twentieth century. He was also a major contributor to The International Q Project, acting as an editor for most of their publications. Particularly, he laid the groundwork for John S. Kloppenborg's foundational work into the compositional history of Q, by arguing its genre as an ancient wisdom collection. He also was the permanent secretary of UNESCO's International Committee for the Nag Hammadi codices. He is known for his work on the Medinet Madi library, a collection of Coptic Manichaean manuscripts.
The Right Hand of Fellowship is a ritual intended to welcome a new member into the fellowship of a congregation or welcoming a new minister into the fellowship of ministers. It is based on Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 2 verse 9, where Paul says that three disciples of Jesus "gave me and Barnabas their right hands of fellowship", bonding them together as members of the new Christian church. John Stott follows the New English Bible in suggesting that the phrase means the other apostles "accepted Barnabas and myself as partners, and shook hands upon it." Herman Ridderbos, however, believes that the "giving of right hands represents more than a reciprocal acknowledgment or testimony of friendship: it suggests rather a covenant."
Luke Timothy Johnson is an American Catholic New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.
Yung Suk Kim is a Korean-American biblical scholar.
S. Scott Bartchy is a New Testament scholar and member of The Context Group, a group of biblical scholars committed to using social-scientific interpretative methods. He is also a member of The Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Bartchy is Emeritus Professor of Christian Origins and the History of Religion in the Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught from 1981 until his retirement in 2013. At UCLA, Bartchy was integral to the founding of the Center for the Study of Religion and served as its director for many years. Under his leadership, the Center began offering UCLA's first undergraduate major in religious studies.
Mark Allan Powell is an American New Testament scholar and professional music critic.
Rhoda is a woman mentioned once in the New Testament. She appears only in Acts 12:12–15. Rhoda was the first person to hear Peter after God freed him from prison, but no one believed her account that Peter was at the door because they knew he had been put in prison and couldn't believe that he had actually been freed.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972.
Richard A. Horsley was the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts Boston until his retirement in 2007.
Bruce John Malina was an American biblical scholar, noted for his application of social scientific approaches to the Bible.
Mary Ann Beavis is a professor emerita, St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatchewan. She co-founded the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, together with Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in 2021.
Mitzi J. Smith is an American biblical scholar who is J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. She is the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in New Testament from Harvard University. She has written extensively in the field of womanist biblical hermeneutics, particularly on the intersection between race, gender, class, and biblical studies. She considers her work a form of social justice activism that brings attention to unequal treatment of marginalized groups.
John Hall Elliott was an American biblical scholar and professor emeritus of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco. A founding member of the Context Group, his scholarship and teaching examine the Bible through interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and ecumenical lenses.
Luise Schottroff was a German New Testament and feminist scholar. She was born in Berlin, Germany, and her father was a pastor in the Confessing Church. Schottroff studied theology at the University of Mainz, and then pursued a doctorate at the University of Göttingen, completing her degree in 1960. Her dissertation was entitled, "Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern." She then became an assistant professor in the faculty of Evangelical theology at the University of Mainz, in 1961. She completed her habilitation at the University of Mainz in 1969. Schottroff taught at the University of Mainz until 1986, reaching full professor by 1973. She then taught at the University of Kassel from 1986 to 1999. Also in 1986, she was a co-founder of European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR), formed to support women scholars. She taught at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California, in the United States, as a visiting professor from 2001 to 2005.