7bb. Honour and Shame

One cannot read far in the letters of Paul and his disciples without discovering that it was concern about the internal life of the Christian groups in each city that prompted most of the correspondence. The letters also reveal that those groups enjoyed an unusual degree of intimacy, high levels of interaction among members, and a very strong sense of internal cohesion and of distinction both from outsiders and from "the world." (4)

Traditional Pre-Industrial Society

The ancient Mediterranean world is classified as a traditional pre-industrial society. In such a system, politics, religion, and economics are subsumed under military and kinship structures, which sustain and support the balance of power. There is a close economic relationship between the city as market center and the agricultural territory that it controls and protects, and which in turn supports it with food production. Most of the land, the most precious commodity, is concentrated in the hands of ruling elites for whom the combination of supervising agricultural work on their rural estates from their country houses and participating in leadership in the urban political system is the idealized life.(7)

Aristocracy

This aristocratic group, consisting of no more than 3 percent of the population, consists of both military and religious elites. From their families both army and temple leaders are chosen. This elite class is crowned by a ruler, in the Roman system by the imperial family and its apparatus which controlled vast amounts of property and power. (7)

This aristocratic elite was supported most directly by a small class of "retainers" who served the needs of the ruler and elite class. They were the governmental and religious functionaries and bureaucrats whose positions depended directly on the elites, but who profited socially and economically by their status. In the Roman Empire, many of these were the slaves and freedmen and women of the emperor and the aristocrats. Others, the class of urban non-elites, were in less direct contact with centers of power through the complex networks of patronage. Some of these constituted a merchant class that tended to benefit from the dependence on them of the city elites, to whose tastes they primarily catered. In no way, however, were any of these groups a middle class, as that term is understood today. (7)

Rural Populations

In most areas, probably no more than 7 percent of the population lived in cities, while the vast majority of the rural populations were peasants who worked the land or those who provided support for them through small crafts or trade. This silent majority who worked the land and supported small peasant villages ultimately bore the crushing economic burden of taxation, which forced them to give up the fruit of their labours to support the luxuries, military campaigns, and religious pomp of the urban wealthy. (7)

Social Shame and Honour

All cultures have some kind of symbolic construction of honour, and all cultures have a sense of social shame. The contention of those who would maintain a common cultural heritage in Mediterranean societies that the fundamental values of these societies revolve around honour and shame especially as a way of structuring social relationships through sex and gender roles. According to this theory, male and female honour and shame systems are distinctly different yet totally involved with each other. (7)

Male honour consists in maintaining the status, power, and reputation of the male members of a kinship group over against the threats that may be thrown against them by outsiders. Each exchange between males of different kinship groups is seen as a contest for honour. Within the kinship group, the absolute loyalty and deference of each male member is expected, according to his proper role in the hierarchy of authority within the family. Aggressiveness, virility, sexual prowess, and the production of sons are important components. The crucial thing, both for individual males and for families, is that one's claim to status and power is matched by others perception; this is the coherence of ascribed and attributed honour. To claim greater honour than is recognized by others would incur the shame of one who does not know his place in society. (7)

Patronage and Hospitality

One important element of the demonstration of male honour is the function of patronage and hospitality. It is the duty and expected role of the powerful to protect and support the less powerful. To fulfill this role is honourable; for the powerful to take advantage of the weak is despicable. The patron functions as a kind of surrogate father, and the patronage system is a way of replicating kinship systems. The patron must provide some material benefits to the client, but most important, benefits for social advancement. The complementary role of the client is proper deference toward the patron, the pouring on of attributed honour, and the performance of certain actions that contribute to the support of the patron, especially help in any way that the patron might need. Because male society held all political power and because it was heavily structured along patronage lines, it "resembled a mass of little pyramids of influence, each headed by a major family ... not the three deck sandwich of upper, middle and lower classes familiar to us from industrial society."(7)

Bibliography

"You are fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household." Ephesians 2.19

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