Explaining Radical Family Ethos in the Synoptic Gospels: From Functionalist Accounts to Cognitive Theorizing

EXPL AINING RADICAL FAMILY ETHOS IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

Fro m Fu nct iona l is t Acco unts to C ogni t ive Theoriz ing

Risto Uro

I. Introduction My interest in the methodology of New Testament and Early Christian studies originated in the intensive and inspiring discussions that Kari Syreeni and I were having as graduate students in the 1980s. Kari was working on the Sermon on the Mount. This dissertation project led to a sophisticated reconsideration of redaction criticism, a method of gospel research which had reached its maturity by that time.1 I myself was writ-ing a dissertation on the mission instructions of the Sayings Gospel Q.2 My work was inspired by the renaissance of Q studies which had began in the preceding decade and seemed to open a new intriguing window onto the early Jesus movement and its multiform traditions. In the process of my study, I became fascinated by sociological theories about itinerant radicalism, which gave me the stimulus to familiarize myself more deeply with social-scientific approaches in a later stage of my academic work. Kari’s methodological path has been somewhat different, covering herme-neutics and literary-critical approaches, but it is interesting that our roads now again converge with our common interest in using psychological re-search in the study of early Christian traditions. In this essay, I return to

1 Kari Syreeni, The Making of the Sermon on the Mount: A Procedural Analysis of Matthew's Redactional Activity. Part I: Methodology & Compositional Analysis (AASF 44; Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia, 1987). 2 Published as Risto Uro, Sheep Among the Wolves: A Study on the Mission Instructions of Q (AASF 47; Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia, 1987).

URO: EXPLAINING RADICAL FAMILY ETHOS IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

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my early source of fascination, the radical ethos found in the synoptic tra-ditions, with the aim of providing an updated critique of various ap-proaches to the issue and to offer suggestions for future studies. I am happy to dedicate this essay to Kari, who taught me to appreciate careful methodological reflection.3 Jesus’ radical sayings on renunciation of family and kinship ties in the Synoptic Gospels have given rise to a number of different explanations and interpretations. For this essay, I have singled out four different per-spectives; not because they cover all possible explanations and interpreta-tions, but they illustrate the major methodological choices scholars have made in tackling the issue in the last few decades. I am particularly inter-ested in the presuppositions and larger theoretical frameworks that can be detected behind the scholarly explanations. I will not provide a detailed analysis of Jesus’ sayings on the family and make no attempt at tracing the earliest layer and the form of these traditions or their historically “authen-tic” core. The reason for bracketing the issues of “origin” and “historic-ity” is not that I regard such a quest as irrelevant, but rather that the meth-ods I discuss in the essay do not necessarily provide tools for answering such questions. This is particularly the case with the cognitive theories in-troduced at the end of the essay. Although the “cognitive science of relig-ion” (CSR) was not originally developed as a tool for historical investiga-tion,4 my argument is that cognitive approaches can offer both new per-spectives and complementary insights for an analysis of the social history of the gospel traditions.

II. Anti-familial Traditions in a Nutshell I start with a brief survey of the anti-familial traditions. All the Synoptic Gospels (including the ‘Q’ gospel) contain several sayings in which Jesus either encourages the disciples to break with natural family ties (Mark 3 Some of the materials in this essay go back to the research I already did in 2005 for the project “Body and Society in the Biblical World” (Petri Merenlahti, Martti Nissinen, Kristel Nyberg, Matti Pirhonen, and Kari Syreeni) in the Centre of Excel-lence on “Formation of Early Jewish and Christian Ideology” led by Heikki Räisänen. Later versions of the paper were read by István Chachesz, Petri Luomanen, and Ilkka Pyysiäinen. I am grateful for their helpful comments and suggestions for improvement. I would also like to thank Margot Stout Whiting for the revision of the English of the article. 4 For general introductions to CSR, see, e.g., Ilkka Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion (Cognition and Culture 1; Leiden: Brill, 2001); Todd Tremlin, Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2006); Justin L. Barrett, “Cognitive Science of Religion,” Religion Compass 1 (2007) 1–19.


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10:29–30; Q 9:59–60; 14:26, and parallels in Luke and Matthew) or as-sume that such a break will, in fact, be the result of being a disciple of Je-sus (Mark 13:12; Q 12:51–53). Jesus’ relationship to his own family and home village is described in a fashion which is in accord with these say-ings about renunciation and conflict (Mark 3:20–21, 31–35; 6:1–6, and parallels; see also Luke 11:27–28). Moreover, Jesus’ sayings about home-lessness (Q 9:58), mendicant travel from house to house (Q 10:4–7), free-dom from being anxious about food and clothing (Q 12:22–31), and the ruling on divorce and marriage (Mark 10:2–12; Q 16:18) are often dis-cussed in the context of the anti-familial traditions. In addition to the Syn-optics, the Gospel of Thomas contains a number of sayings which reflect a similar radical ethos, many of them being rather close parallels to the syn-optic versions (e.g., Gos. Thom. 16; 55; 79; 86; 99; 101; 105).5 There are some interesting differences among the gospels’ presenta-tions of Jesus’ radical teaching about the family. Mark, for example, is much more explicit in suggesting an alternative, fictive family for those “who have left everything” and followed Jesus (Mark 10:29–30; cf. also 3:31–35 and Gos. Thom. 99) than Q.6 Luke is the only gospel that includes “wife” in the list of the household members left behind (Luke 14:26; 18:29).7 Thomas, on the other hand, has a special emphasis on monachoi or “solitaries,” who have renounced the family ties (Gos. Thom. 16) and will enter the bridal chamber (75; cf. also 49). The term may refer to those who practice sexual abstinence, but there is a lot of ambiguity in Thomas’ language about marriage and procreation.8 It is furthermore possible to 5 More complete surveys of relevant gospel materials are given by Arland D. Jacobson, “Divided Families and Christian Origins,” in The Gospel Behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (ed. Ronald A. Piper; NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 361–80; idem, “Jesus Against Family: The Dissolution of Family Ties in the Gospel Tradition,” in From Quest to Q: Festschrift James M. Robinson (ed. Jón Ma. Asgeirsson, Kristin De Troyer, and Marvin W. Meyer; BETL 146; Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 2000) 189–218; Santiago Guijarro Oporto, “Kingdom and Family in Conflict: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Jesus,” in Social-Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible: Essays by the Context Group in Honor of Bruce Malina (ed. J. J. Pilch; BIS 53; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 210–38. 6 See Peter Kristen, Familie, Kreuz und Leben: Nachfolge Jesu nach Q und Markusevangelium (MTS 42; Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1995); but compare Jacobson, “Jesus Against Family,” 194. 7 For Luke’s ascetical tendencies, see Turid Karlsen Seim, The Double Message: Patterns of Gender in Luke & Acts (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994); and idem, “Ascetic Autonomy? New Perspectives on Single Women in the Early Church,” ST 43 (1989) 125–40. 8 Risto Uro, “Asceticism and Anti-Familial Language in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (ed. Halvor Moxnes; London: Routledge, 1997) 216–34; idem, “Is Thomas an Encratite Gospel?” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Risto


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infer that Matthew and Luke have, to some degree, toned down the con-flict between Jesus and his family underscored by Mark since they have both omitted the story about Jesus’ family going out to restrain him (Mark 3:20–21). As a whole, however, the Synoptic Gospels, Q, and Thomas witness considerable unanimity and persistence in their accounts of Jesus’ radical severance from family and household. Whatever differences there are among these traditions, they all present Jesus as positioning himself and his followers against or outside their homes and original families.9

III. A Functionalist Model: Theissen’s Wandering Radicals It is hardly an exaggeration to state that Gerd Theissen’s idea of “wander-ing radicals” or “itinerant charismatics” is the most famous and also most-criticized explanation for the anti-familial radicalism of the gospels. Al-though his ideas are well known and often cited, I will briefly recapitulate the main points. Put forward the first time in a seminal 1973 article, wandering radical-ism became the bedrock of Theissen’s sociological description of the Pal-estinian Jesus movement developed in a series of articles and books pub-lished during the 1970s.10 According to Theissen, the Jesus movement was

Uro; SNTW; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998) 140–62. 9 This is not to say that there are not traditions which attest the household as the locale of Jesus’ teaching and ministry; see John H. Elliott, “Jesus Was Not an Egalitarian: A Critique of an Anachronistic and Idealist Theory,” BTB 32, (2002) 75–91, esp. 85–88. 10 Gerd Theissen, “Wanderradikalismus: Literatursoziologische Aspekte der Überlieferung von Worten Jesu im Urchristentum,” ZTK 70 (1973) 245–71; ET: idem, “The Wandering Radicals: Light Shed by the Sociology of Literature on the Early Transmission of Jesus Sayings,” in Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament (ed. Gerd Theissen; trans. Margaret Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 33–59; idem, “Legitimation und Lebensunterhalt: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie urchristlicher Missionare,” NTS 21 (1974–75) 192–221; ET: idem, “Legitimation and Subsistence: An Essay on the Sociology of Early Christian Missionaries,” in The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (trans. John H. Schütz; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1982) 25–67; idem, Soziologie der Jesusbewegung: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums (Theologische Existenz heute 194; Munich: Kaiser, 1977); ET: idem, The First Followers of Jesus (trans. J. Bowden; London: SCM, 1978); idem, “‘Wir haben alles verlassen’ (Mc. X 28): Nachfolge und soziale Entwurzelung in der jüdisch-palästinischen Gesellschaft des 1. Jahrhunderts n. Ch.,” NovT 19 (1977) 161–96; ET: idem, “‘We have left everything...’ (Mark 10:28): Discipleship and Social Uprooting in the Jewish-Palestinian Society of the First Century,” in Social Reality and the Early Christians, 60–93. See also idem, Die Jesusbewegung: Sozialgeschichte einer Revolution der Werte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2004), in which Theissen places his theory of itinerant radi-calism in the wider context of early Jewish movements.


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a renewal movement within Palestinian-Jewish society, which had been driven into a deep-seated economic, political, and cultural crisis. The Jesus movement, like the other contemporary renewal movements, emerged out of this crisis and articulated a special kind of answer to it. However, this social function of the movement, which Theissen mainly sees in the con-tribution to containing and overcoming aggression, was a failure. The movement’s impact on Jewish society was minimal; only its Hellenistic branch, in which the original radicalism was tamed to “love patriarchal-ism,” survived and succeeded. Theissen’s famous thesis is that “the ethical radicalism of the sayings transmitted to us is the radicalism of itinerants.” According to him, “this ethic only has a chance on the fringes of society; this is the only real-life situation it can have.”11 There were local communities and sympathizers who led a settled village life. They provided support for the itinerants and made their peripatetic lifestyle possible. Their voices can be heard in those few sayings in the gospel tradition that reflect more conservative norms and values, for example, towards family and marriage (Mark 10:2–12, 13–16).12 The wandering radicals, however, were the “decisive spiri-tual authorities” of the movement.13 Without them, the radical synoptic traditions would not have been preserved. “It is improbable that ethical precepts will be passed on for long if no one takes them seriously, if no one makes at least an attempt to practice them.”14 Theissen’s reformulation of form criticism’s search for Sitz im Leben, setting in the life of the church, into fully sociological questions about the social structure of the Jesus movement was a momentous shift in the methodological development of New Testament studies. His theory has exerted a profound influence on several central areas of gospel research, such as Q and Jesus studies,15 Thomasine studies,16 and the “Cynic hy-pothesis” (the last, however, can be seen more in terms of an independent line of interpretation than of a direct influence).17 Entire books have been written in order to defend18or to repudiate the theory.19 11 Theissen, “Wanderrakalismus,” 262 (ET: idem, “‘We have left everything...,’” 40). 12 Theissen, First Followers of Jesus, 19. 13 Ibid., 7. 14 Theissen, “Wanderrakalismus,” 247 (ET: idem, “‘We have left everything...,’” 35). 15 Louise Schottroff, “Schafe unter Wölfen: Die Wanderpropheten der Logienquelle,” in Jesus von Nazareth: Hoffnung der Armen (ed. Louise Schottroff and Wolfgang Stegemann; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1978) 54–88; Uro, Sheep Among the Wolves; John Dominic Crossan, “Itinerants and Householders in the Earliest Jesus Movement,” in Whose Historical Jesus? (ed. William E. Arnal and Michael Desjardins; SCJ 7; Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997) 7–24. 16 Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1993). 17 For the Cynic reading of the Jesus traditions, see, e.g., Burton L. Mack, The Lost


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The criticisms raised against Theissen’s reconstruction of the early Je-sus movement are manifold. Theissen has been criticized for ignoring the obvious differences between the various sources and layers of the sources, for example, the fact that Mark’s anti-familial sayings seem to presuppose a community situation (“brothers and sisters”) rather than an opposition between a few wandering radicals and the local sympathizers.20 It has been noted that the disciples’ leaving their families was not voluntary, as Theis-sen’s comparison with the Cynics would suggest, but a consequence of real poverty and the arduous conditions of the poor people in Palestine.21 Theissen’s reading of many of the sayings on which he builds his case has been challenged. It has been noticed, for example, that the itinerants of Q 10—the key text for Theissen’s hypothesis—are not described as the spiri-tual authorities over the houses they visit, but rather as “workers” (10:2) who are “sent out” and either rejected or welcomed by the households (10:5–7) or cities in general (10:8–12). There is no hint in Q 10, or else-where in the Synoptic Gospels, that the itinerants are those in charge.22 A special area of debate has been the question of whether the instruc-tions in Did. 11–15, which appear to speak about travelling spiritual au-thorities, namely apostles, prophets, and teachers, provide support for The-issen’s overall view. Some scholars have argued that the instructions in the Didache relate to a relatively late stage of a communal situation which is caused by the emergence of charismatic prophets and their intrusion into

Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins (San Francisco: Harper, 1993); Leif E. Vaage, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus' First Followers According to Q (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994); John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, “A Dog among the Pigeons: The ‘Cynic Hypothesis’ as a Theological Problem,” in Jón Ma. Asgeirsson, De Troyer, and Meyer, From Quest to Q, 73–118. 18 Markus Tiwald, Wanderradikalismus (Österreichische Biblische Studien; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002). 19 Richard A. Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989); William E. Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). 20 Wolfgang Stegemann, “Wanderradikalismus im Urchristentum? Historische und theologische Auseinandersetzung mit einer interessanten These,” in Der Gott der kleinen Leute: Sozialgeschichtliche Auslegungen (vol. 2; ed. Willy Schottroff and Wolfgang Stegemann; Munich: Kaiser, 1979) 94–120. See also Jacobson, “Jesus Against Family,” 199. 21 Schottroff, “Schafe unter Wölfen”; Wolfgang Stegemann, “The Contextual Ethics of Jesus,” in The Social Setting of Jesus and Gospels (ed. Wolfgang Stegemann, Bruce J. Malina, and Gerd Theissen; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002) 45–61. 22 John S. Kloppenborg, “The Sayings Gospel Q: Recent Opinion on the People Behind the Document,” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 1 (1993) 9–34; John S Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000) 181–82. For an even more critical evaluation of Theissen’s reading of Q 10, see Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 91–95.


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an existing structure of resident bishops and deacons23 or which simply reflects “translocal institutional solidarity.”24 Others continue to use Did. 11–15 as an important proof text for the existence of itinerant charismatics at an early stage of the Jesus movement.25 One crucial point in Theissen’s reading of the synoptic sayings is his contention that oral traditions about renunciation of family and posses-sions could survive only if their tradents (or at least some of them) prac-ticed them literally. Theissen makes a rather sharp distinction between the written and oral form of transmission.

A written tradition can survive for a time even when it has no bearing on the behavior of men and women, or even if the tradition’s intention runs counter to that behavior.... But oral tradition is at the mercy of the interests and concerns of the people who pass it on and to whom it is addressed. Its survival is dependent on specific social conditions. To mention only one of these: the people who pass the tradition on must some way or other identify with that tradition. It is improbable that ethi-cal precepts will be passed on for long if no one takes them seriously, and if no one makes at least an attempt to practice them.26

There are at least two issues that need to be considered here. First, Theis-sen’s distinction between oral transmission which is totally dependent on social conditions and written transmission which is less so requires speci-fication. Recent studies on orality and literacy in antiquity have empha-sized interaction between the two modes of communication.27 Writing was

23 Jonathan A. Draper, “Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text: Prophets, Teachers, Bishops, and Deacons and the Development of the Jesus Tradition in the Community of the Didache,” in The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History, and Transmission (ed. Clayton N. Jefford; NovTSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 256–83; idem, “Wandering Charismatics and Scholarly Circularities,” in Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q (ed. Richard A Horsley and Jonathan A Draper; Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999) 29–45. 24 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 88–91. 25 Stephen J. Patterson, “Didache 11-13: The Legacy of Radical Itinerancy in Early Christianity,” in The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission (ed. Clayton N. Jefford; NovTSup 57; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 313–29. 26 Theissen, “Wanderrakalismus,” 247 (ET: “Wandering Radicals,” 35). 27 Jack Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Brian V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Ruth Finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988); Tony M. Lentz, Orality and Literacy in Hellenic Greece (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989); Joanna Dewey, ed., Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature (Semeia 65; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994); Risto Uro, Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas (London: T & T Clark, 2003) 107–109.


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also a social act28 and should not be distinguished from oral transmission too radically. Both oral and written transmission presuppose some kind of social identification on the part of the audience or those who pass on the traditions. Early Christian authors did not work in “romantic isolation” from their audience, but the “audience’s expressed expectations would seem to have a powerful effect in social composition.”29 The authors of the early Christian gospels did not hesitate to reformulate, reinterpret or drop out altogether the traditions that did not meet the needs of their communities, as has been demonstrated by the redaction critics. Now, as Theissen himself states in a later study, “the remarkable thing is that the radical traditions of the earlier period continued to be preserved later. They continued to be regarded as relevant.”30 Theissen apparently thinks that this relevancy is something different than the “interests and concerns” in the early oral phase of transmission. The problem, however, is whether we can create such a great divide between one-to-one social identification at an oral stage and a less-literal (metaphorical, historicizing, or other) identification at later redactional stages. This leads us to the second point. The notion of social identification,31 that is, the suggestion that people who pass on the tradition must “some way or other identify with that tradition,” can be understood as referring to various kinds of social and psychological motivations for preserving the tradition. One can agree with Theissen that the radical sayings on the family were passed on because they were somehow taken seriously. This does not, however, entail that the only motivation for their preservation in oral tradition was their theological significance or ethical practicability. One may, tentatively at least, consider quite different explanations. It is obvious that the sayings and stories about abandoning family ties were both attention-demanding and memorable. Recent studies of religion drawing on cognitive science have demonstrated that ideas of “gods,” “spirits,” “ancestors,” etc. are attractive to the human mind because they are counterintuitive and therefore mind-grabbing, not because they are al-ways applicable and useful.32 To be sure, Jesus’ radical sayings on the 28 F. Gerald Downing, “Word-Processing in the Ancient World: The Social Production and Performance of Q,” JSNT 64 (1996) 29–48; Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 166–169. 29 Downing, “Word-Processing,” 34 and 32–33, respectively. 30 Gerd Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1999) 98. 31 For social identification, see Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 14–32; cf. also Jack Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequences of Literary,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies (ed. Jack Goody; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 27–68, esp. 31. 32 Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion


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family are not generally “counterintuitive” in the sense cognitive scholars understand it. In most sayings, no boundary between ontological catego-ries is violated in the sayings, such as happens, for example, in the belief that there is an agent that has a mind but not a body (cf., however, the counterintuitive idea of the dead burying the dead in Q 9:59). In any case, all anti-familial sayings are salient and many of them must have had a shocking effect. One can assume that they triggered an emotional response in the audience which could have contributed to the survival of the say-ings.33 We know that people in the Greco-Roman world attached sayings and anecdotes with a similar shocking effect to their cultural heroes (cf. the numerous popular chriae about philosophers in Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum), as they also attached miracle stories or sayings which inverted or diverted conventional wisdom. This kind of reasoning does not suggest that there could not have been serious practice along with the transmission of the anti-familial sayings in the oral tradition or that the popularity of these sayings would not have encouraged some Christians to put them into practice in a radical manner (compare how sayings and sto-ries about Cynics encouraged some to consider becoming practicing Cyn-ics; see Epictetus, Diatr. 3.22). The argument, however, illustrates that there is no simple, causal relationship between the act of transmission and social praxis. The most discussed theoretical issue with regard to Theissen’s analyses is his commitment to structural functionalism.34 Richard Horsley has de-voted a lot of space to demonstrating that Theissen’s reconstruction of the Jesus movement is based on an outdated social theory. He lists several problems of functionalism, such as anti-historical bent, underestimation of serious conflict, and conservative bias.35 It would go beyond the limit of the present essay to evaluate the value of different social-scientific per-spectives or traditions, but I doubt if Theissen is guilty of all the sins listed by Horsley. It is true that Theissen’s analyses deal with Palestinian Jewish society as an “abstract social system”36 and his social description does not really address the subjective aims of the people behind various institutions

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) 91–124; idem, Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London: Vintage, 2002) 58–105; Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works, 18–22, 66–67. 33 For effects of emotion on memory with regard to ritual and the transmission of reli-gious traditions, see István Czachesz, “Long-term, Explicit Memory in Rituals,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 10 (2010) 321–33. 34 John H. Elliott, “Social-Scientific Criticism of the New Testament: More on Methods and Models,” Semeia 35 (1986) 1–33; Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement. 35 Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement, 35–39. 36 Ibid., 35.


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and groups,37 but many of the sociological studies work from similar per-spectives. Moreover, one should notice that Theissen does speak about conflicts (resistant fighters, tensions between city and countryside, be-tween local leaders and wandering charismatics, etc).38 In one article he explicitly draws on a conflict theory advanced by the German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf.39 Theissen is not manifestly anti-historical either but re-constructs a historical trajectory from the earliest Jesus movement to later urban Hellenistic churches. “Functionalism” should not be used as a label by means of which ques-tions of social functions of early Christian traditions would be shown to be valueless or inadequate. Most biblical scholars use arguments that have a functionalist bias. Understood as a grand theory, functionalism is without doubt outdated, but moderated to one perspective among others or incor-porated into other, more recent sociological or “socio-cognitive” perspec-tives, it can still serve as a useful tool.40 It is not an unwarranted method to ask what the anti-familial sayings would have “done” in a particular social and historical context and what possible legitimating function or need they fulfilled in a certain group or society (cf. also the discussion on the com-mitment signaling theory below). It must be remembered, however, that such needs and functions must have varied depending on individual situa-tions and circumstances and that an a priori suggestion that the traditions always serve some positive function leads to circular reasoning.41 More-over, it is necessary to bear in mind the commonplace critique of function-alism that whatever impacts the traditions may have had at certain point of transmission, these are not necessarily the causes that gave rise to the phe-nomenon in the first place.42 37 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 51; see also Bengt Holmberg, Sociology and the New Testament: An Appraisal (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) 140. 38 See Theissen, First Followers of Jesus, 114, and his defense in idem, Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament (trans. Margaret Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), idem, Theory of Primitive Chris-tian Religion, 9–10, and idem, Jesusbewegung, 131–217. 39 Theissen, “Sociological Theories of Religion.” 40 For the functionalist perspective in biblical studies, see e.g. David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (SNTW; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996) 22–38. For func-tionalism and the cognitive science of religion, see Boyer, Religion Explained, 28–32 and Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works, 67. 41 A commonplace criticism against (structural) functionalism is that parts can have positive, negative, or no consequences for functional integration of the larger social whole. This was emphasized already by Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949), anticipating many of the later criticisms that would be levelled at the functional theory. See Jonathan H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory (7th ed.; Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson, 2003) 33–34. 42 Hans H. Penner, “The Poverty of Functionalism,” HR 11 (1971) 91–97.


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IV. Explanations based on the Mediterranean Cultural Script

It is helpful to set Theissen’s theory in a wider context of New Testament studies and to compare it to a quite different social-scientific approach, drawing upon studies of cultural or “Mediterranean” anthropology.43 Whereas Theissen focuses on a particular society (Jewish Palestine) and groups or movements within that society, scholars who apply this kind of anthropological model operate with a much larger concept of “culture,” often blanketing the whole ancient Mediterranean circuit and passed on from generation to generation up to the present time. While Theissen ana-lyzes the economic, ecological, and political factors influencing the Jesus movement, these scholars address issues of pivotal cultural values and atti-tudes in the circum-Mediterranean area and investigate how these values are reflected in the biblical texts. Instead of the traditional functionalist fo-cus on social organization, scholars influenced by various symbolic-culturalist approaches44 conceive of culture in a Geertzian sense, as a sys-tem of shared meanings or symbols45 and understand this web of meanings as a kind of language or script in which every person in the Mediterranean region was socialized. Although these scholars do not always follow the interpretivist tradition of Geertz,46 they tend to assume a general code or conventional language which was widely known throughout the Mediter-ranean basin for centuries. As Jerome Neyrey puts it, “elites and non-

43 During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of anthropologists made efforts to produce a circum-Mediterranean perspective focusing on the theme of honour and shame. Since the 1980s, this approach has been criticized for ethnocentrism, exoticism (cf. the “Ori-entalism” criticized by Edward Said), and stereotyping, but new approaches have also been suggested. See, e.g., John George Peristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965); John H. R. Davis, People of the Mediterranean: An Essay in Comparative Social Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); David G. Gilmore, “Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area,” Annual Review of Anthropology 11 (1982) 175–205; David G. Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1987); John George Peristiany and Julian Pitt-Rivers, eds., Honor and Grace in Anthropology (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 76; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Dionigi Albera, “Anthropology of the Mediterranean: Between Crisis and Renewal,” History and Anthropology 17 no. 2 (2006) 109–33. 44 For this very broad characterization, see Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 61–62. 45 See Geertz’ influential collection of essays: Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (London: Hutchinson, 1973). Theissen’s more recent semiotic analysis of ear-ly Christian religion (Theory of Primitive Christian Religion) is clearly influenced by Geertzian type of approaches. 46 See e.g. Philip F. Esler, “Introduction,” in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. Philip F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995) 1–22, esp. 4–7.


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elites, urban and rural all knew in some fashion this ‘general code’; all un-derstood and spoke this ‘language’ in their speech, clothing, self-presentation, social intercourse, and the like.”47 The core values of the New Testament world are defined by the catego-ries of honour and shame.48 They were foundational to systems of kinship, economy, purity, understanding of personality, and so on. It is natural that Jesus’ sayings about the renunciation of family ties are seen in the context of the pivotal values of honour and shame. Neyrey examines the Gospel of Matthew in terms of honour and shame.49 A part of his study focuses on sections of the gospel which corre-spond to the major divisions of the ancient rhetorical form of encomium (a formal praise of someone), namely birth and origins, accomplishments, and noble death. Particularly relevant to the issue of family is his analysis of the macarisms in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3–12).50 Neyrey observes that, both in Luke and Matthew, the macarisms are addressed to the disciples, not the crowds (Matt 5:1b–2; Luke 6:20b). They do not speak of the general human conditions of poverty and suffering. The key to the “cultural meaning”51 of these sayings are to be found in the last macarism (Matt 5:11–12; Luke 6:22–23), which describes a frightful loss of honour to someone because of becoming a disciple of Jesus. This key is especially clear at the level of Q, in which sayings attacking the family unity and loyalty are linked with remarks on loss of wealth and honour (e.g., Q 12:22–53). Thus crisis within the family emerges as a probable cause for disinheritance and banning, not religious excommunication from the synagogue as scholars have often suggested.52 A likely scenario for the last macarism and all other sayings dealing with loss of family and wealth is the situation of a son being disinherited by his father and shunned by his

47 Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 10. 48 Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (London: SCM, 1981) 25–50; Halvor Moxnes, “Honor and Shame,” in Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation (ed. Richard L. Rohrbaugh; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996) 19–40; Neyrey, Honor and Shame; Philip F. Esler, “The Mediterranean Context of Early Christianity,” in The Early Christian World (vol. 1; ed. Philip F. Esler; London: Routledge, 2000) 3–25; Richard L. Rohrbaugh, “Honor: Core Value in the Biblical World,” in Understanding the Social World of the New Testament (ed. Dietmar Neufeld and Richard E. DeMaris; London: Routledge, 2010) 109–25. 49 Neyrey, Honor and Shame. 50 See also Jerome H. Neyrey, “Loss of Wealth, Loss of Family, and Loss of Honour,” in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. Philip F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995) 139–58. 51 Ibid., 156. 52 Ibid., 155.


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family for joining the circle of Jesus’ disciples.53 Neyrey’s interpretation challenges the itinerancy hypothesis since not all of those who were ostra-cized from their families necessarily became itinerants.54 Neyrey has offered a plausible interpretation for the macarisms, putting them in the concrete village and household setting from which the Jesus movement emerged, but his analysis is also open to critical questioning. Without going into a detailed discussion about the honour and shame model and the issue of Mediterranean unity,55 I would like to highlight what I regard as the basic tension in Neyrey’s approach. According to Neyrey, Matthew’s Jesus relates to the culture of his time in two different ways. On the one hand, Jesus radically redefines the fundamental values of his culture. Jesus forbids the disciples to play the typical village honour game by forswearing honour claims, challenges and ripostes (e.g., Matt 5:38–42). He also redefines whose acknowledgment truly counts by hon-ouring those who have lost their honour in the eyes of their village neighbours.56 On the other hand, alongside this rebellious Jesus, Neyrey presents a wholly encultured Jesus. All the reforms are somehow sug-gested under the canopy of the honour and shame code, which Jesus does not “overthrow as such.”57 He is playing according the rules of the game after all. This is, of course, incontestable. Everything happens inside cul-ture and no one can jump out of it. Nonetheless, the problem of the hon-our and shame model used by Neyrey is that its fundamental binary oppo-sites, Mediterranean vs. Euro-American, allow us to address cultural variations only in terms of redefinition of or opposition to the dominant or “default” system. There is at least a danger that the honour and shame code receives a similar position as “Judaism” in earlier Jesus research, a foil to Jesus who would seem to represent our own ideal of cultural resis-tance.58

53 Neyrey, Honor and Shame, 169. 54 Neyrey, “Loss of Wealth,” 156. 55 For criticisms, see, e.g., Michael Herzfeld, “Honour and Shame: Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Moral Systems,” Man 15 (1980) 339-51; idem, “‘As in Your Own House’: Hospitality, Ethnography, and the Stereotype of Mediterranean Society,” in Honor and the Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (ed. David G. Gilmore; Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1987) 75–89; Louise Joy Lawrence, An Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew: A Critical Assessment of the Use of the Honour and Shame Model in New Testament Studies (WUNT 2.165; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 56 Neyrey, Honor and Shame, 164. 57 Ibid. 58 Cf. the “unmistakable otherness” of the Second Quest Jesus noted in Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003) 11.


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The honour and shame model can also be used to demonstrate that Je-sus’ conflict with the family does not make him countercultural but rather shows how fully Jesus was embedded in the cultural value system of his time. David May has offered a reading of Mark 3:20–35 according to which Jesus’ refusal to speak to and acknowledge his family is not under-stood as an act of disrespect and dishonour, as has often been done by commentators.59 The family tries to approach Jesus because of anxiety for their own honour. Jesus does not respond to them directly, but placing the honour of God above his family, “Jesus does not dishonor his family and is shown at the same time to be even more honorable” than the scribes. “The family of Jesus and Jesus himself are saved from dishonor and shame by the higher legitimating norm of ‘doing God’s will.”’60 It may be difficult, however, to play down altogether the negative implications of Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ family standing outside. Matthew and Luke, at least, probably sensed such tones as they omitted Mark 3:20–21 from their stories.

V. Broadening the Scope: Barton’s Comparative Evidence

The assessment of the honour and shame model leads us to the thorny is-sues of scholarly constructions of “culture,” which would be impossible to deal with here extensively. It suffices to note that generalizing and deter-ministic views have recently fallen into disfavour and the Geertzian par-lance of “culture” (or religion) as “a web of significance” to be encoded by the interpreter has been criticized from various perspectives by anthro-pologists and theorists of religion.61 My concern here is the sharp contrast scholars have often suggested between the “countercultural” Jesus and the dominant culture of his day. If we view cultural knowledge as a coherent system of values, norms, symbols, etc., internalized practically by all members of a given society or population, a kind of “software of the 59 David M. May, “Mark 3:20–35 from the Perspective of Shame/Honor,” BTB 17 (1987) 83–87. 60 Ibid., 86. 61 See, e.g., Lila Abu-Lughod, “Writing Against Culture,” in Recapturing Anthropolo-gy: Working in the Present (ed. Richard G Fox; School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series; Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991) 137–62; Anthony P. Cohen, Self Consciousness: An Alternative Anthropology of Identity (London: Routledge, 1994); Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn, A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (Publications of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 9; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works, 25–54; idem, Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist's Perspective (Walnut Greek: AltaMira, 2004) 219–31; Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Lawrence, Ethnography.


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mind,”62 the “unmistakable otherness” of the Jesus traditions comes easily to the fore. But what if one finds a considerable number of cases of devi-ant family attitudes in ancient Mediterranean culture? This question may be raised in light of the material provided by Stephen Barton in his study Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew.63 Barton demon-strates that Jesus and early Christians were not alone in the ancient Medi-terranean world in circulating deviant views about family and kinship loy-alties. They were using, interpreting and giving their own versions of a cultural theme they found in their environment.64 Barton argues that Jesus’ attitude to family and kinship reflects a view that was relatively widespread in the traditions and practices of Judaism and the Greco-Roman world as a whole.65 Theissen had already taken note of the Cynic analogy,66 but Barton collects a wide range of evidence from Philo and Josephus as well as from Cynic and Stoic sources to prove his case that “early Christians were not alone in attempting to develop pat-terns of sociability that were alternative or (better) complementary to that of household and those based on marital kinship ties.”67 Philo, for in-stance, describes the Therapeutae in a way that is surprisingly similar to the gospels’ portrayal of the disciples of Jesus. The Therapeutae divest themselves of their possessions and “flee without a backward glance and leave their brothers, their children, their wives, their parents, the wide cir-cle of their kinsfolk, the groups of friends around them, the fatherlands in which they were born and reared, since strong is the attraction of familiar-ity and very great its power to ensnare” (Contempl. 18).68 The list of those left behind by Philo’s Therapeutae strikingly recalls those ascribed to the followers of Jesus in Mark 10:29 and Luke 14:26. 62 This phrase was used in Philip F. Esler, “Models in New Testament Interpretation: A Reply to David Horrell,” JSNT 78 (2000) 107–13, esp. 110. 63 Stephen C. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew (SNTSMS 80; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); idem, “The Relativisation of Family Ties in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman Traditions,” in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (ed. Halvor Moxnes; London: Routledge, 1997) 81–102. 64 For further studies documenting various anti-marital and anti-familial traditions in antiquity, see, e.g., David L. Balch, “1 Cor 7:32–35 and Stoic Debates about Marriage, Anxiety, and Distraction,” JBL 101 (1983) 429–39; Larry O. Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles: Marriage Rules in the Letters of Paul (SBLDS 80; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985); Vincent L. Wimbush, Paul the Wordly Ascetic: Response to the World and Self-Understanding according to 1 Corinthians 7 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987); Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy (SNTSMS 83; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 65 Barton, “Relativisation of Family Ties,” 81. 66 Theissen, First Followers, 14–15. 67 Ibid., 86 (Barton’s italics). 68 Trans. F. H. Colson (LCL).


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Similar to the idea of a new family in Mark 10:30, Philo also relates that the Therapeutae regarded the place of their community as a new “father-land” (Contempl. 22). Jesus or the early Christians did not invent the idea of a surrogate family,69 and, with many other ancient groups, they thought that family ties, however crucial for one’s honour and social identity, were relative and could be abandoned for a greater cause. In antiquity, the Cynic calling was such a cause par excellence. According to Epictetus,

the Cynic has made all mankind his children; the men among them he has as sons, the women as daughters; in that spirit he approaches them all and cares for them all. Or do you fancy that it is in the spirit of idle impertinence he reviles those he meets? It is as father he does it, as a brother, and as s servant of Zeus, who is Father of all of us (Diatr. 3.22.81–82).70

Idealized descriptions of Cynics,71 the Therapeutae, and similar groups were part of the cultural resources in the time of the gospel writers. Early Christians produced one version of this cultural theme. We may empha-size the uniqueness of Jesus’ call to follow him72 or we may point out the close analogy between the Q people and the ancient portrayals of Cynics to illustrate that the Jesus movement was engaged in social criticism and extravagant behaviour.73 In whatever way we see it—every cultural phe-nomenon is somehow unique and somehow similar to something else—it is crucial to realize that the representations of leaving one’s family and possessions for a greater cause were not just “countercultural” protests against established values and norms of a coherent cultural system. Rather, they were part of the continuous process in which different ver-sions of various cultural themes were reproduced, reinterpreted, and some-times challenged. This does not mean that we should deny the radical edge of Jesus’ say-ings about renunciation of family ties. Some of Barton’s comments seem to strongly undermine Jesus’ criticism of family values. Barton repeat-edly emphasizes that the family ethos of the gospels reflects “no animosity to family and household ties per se.”74 The gospels are not anti-family or

69 Joseph H. Hellermann, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). 70 Trans. W. A. Oldfather (LCL). 71 Margarethe Billerbeck, “The Ideal Cynic from Epictetus to Julian,” in The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (ed. R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Gazé; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 205–21. 72 Martin Hengel, The Charismatic Leader and His Followers (trans. James C. G. Greig; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1981). 73 Mack, Lost Gospel. 74 Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties, 107; see also p. 66.


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anti-social. They “dramatize the Jesus movement’s sense of new priori-ties.”75 Even though Barton notes that Jesus’ sayings about the relativiza-tion of family ties reflect the movement’s real social experiences and ex-pectations about marginalization from society at large and integration into a new, surrogate family, his main emphasis is on the rhetorical effect of the sayings. They are “primarily a rhetorically powerful metaphorical way of calling for the displacement of every obstacle to true discipleship of Je-sus in the light of the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.”76 In the same vein, John Elliott argues that Jesus’ sayings about the family express “no critique of the family as such or its patriarchal structure.”77 “Jesus criticized certain aspects of conventional behaviour in the household, but did not challenge the family and household as an institution. In fact, he specifically adopted the family as the model for explicating life under the reign of God.”78 Elliott’s point is to challenge the common interpretations that Jesus rejected the family because it was patriarchal and not egalitar-ian.79 This criticism may be justified. But the fact that family language is used in a metaphorical sense in Jesus’ teaching does not need to diminish the harshness of the break with real families and homes. Although I have pointed out above that there is no direct causal relationship between the act of transmission and social praxis, it would be unwise to go to the other extreme and argue that words did not match deeds at all. Arnal goes even further than Barton and Elliott. According to him, Q’s anti-familial ethos is totally hyperbolic. In Q 14:26, for example, the audi-ence is not being told to literally leave their parents any more than they are being enjoined to commit suicide in the following “cross” saying (14:27).80 While it is probably true that Q’s “rhetoric of uprooting” can be read symbolically,81 it is difficult to exclude the possibility that some early Christians understood Jesus’ words about breaking with the family more or less literally. A few, at least, withdrew from sex and marriage as such passages as 1 Cor 7:1, 1 Tim 4:3, Rev 14:4, Gos. Thom. 79, and Matt 19:12 imply. Jesus’ prohibition of remarriage after divorce (Q 16:18) may also reflect a tendency toward celibacy.82 The frequent reflections about 75 Ibid., 67. 76 Barton, “Relativisation of Family Ties,” 81. 77 Elliott, “Jesus Was Not an Egalitarian,” 82; cf. also Guijarro Oporto, “Kingdom and Family in Conflict,” 236–37. 78 Elliott, “Jesus Was Not an Egalitarian,” 86–87. 79 J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1991) 299–302; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1994). Their view has been criticized also by Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place, 66–67. 80 Arnal, Village Scribes, 174–75. 81 Ibid., 11. 82 Jacobson, “Jesus Against Family.”


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divorce in the gospels and other early Christian texts can be taken as evi-dence that the Jesus movement had to deal with broken families (Matt 5:31–32; 19:9; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10–1, 27; Herm. Mand. 4.1.4–11; Clement, Strom. 3.15.19). Carolyn Osiek gives a func-tional explanation for the synoptic traditions against family loyalties by referring to a situation in which a household or extended family was di-vided by different beliefs in contrast to those households in which all members were baptized.83 The anti-familial sayings provided the belea-guered Christians coming from such divided families “with meaning and with the consolation that they were not alone in this experience.”84 Al-though Arnal’s emphasis on the rhetorical strategy of Q and Osiek’s ar-gument based on social function need not be seen to be incompatible, the different perspectives accentuate the polyvalence of the gospels’ sayings. To argue that Jesus’ sayings about the family were generally taken as “hy-perbolic” or “metaphorical” does not do justice to the variety of individual situations.

VI. New Directions: Cognitive Approaches In the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century, a number of bibli-cal scholars have begun to consider theories developed in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) as new alternatives for the study of biblical re-ligions and traditions.85 CSR is not a unified method or approach but a loose research program drawing on various fields of cognitive science, cognitive and experimental psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary con-siderations, and other fields, to explain why patterns of religious thought and behaviour are cross-culturally recurrent.86 Biblical scholars have been

83 Carolyn Osiek, “The Family in Early Christianity: ‘Family Values’ Revisited,” CBQ 58 (1996) 1–24. 84 Ibid., 16. 85 Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro, eds., Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science (BIS 89; Leiden: Brill, 2007); István Czachesz, “The Promise of the Cognitive Science of Religion for Biblical Studies,” CSSRB 37, no. 4 (2008) 1–4; Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle's Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Rikard Roitto, Behaving as a Christ-Believer: A Cognitive Perspective on Identity and Behavior Norms in Ephesians (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011); Thomas Kazen, Emotions in Biblical Law: A Cognitive Science Approach (Hebrew Bible Monographs 36; Sheffield: Sheffield Phienix Press, 2011); István Czachesz and Támas Biró, eds., Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition through the Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2012); István Czachesz and Risto Uro, eds., Mind, Morality, and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies (London: Equinox, forthcoming). 86 See above, footnote 4.


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interested in, among other things, cognitive theories of ritual and magic,87 religious experience research,88 emotions and purity,89 memory research,90 as well as the socio-cognitive capacities of the human mind that influence social identity, cooperation and the formation of social networks.91 In this essay, I take note of two models discussed and developed by cognitive scientists, Dan Sperber’s “epidemiology of representations,” which is a contribution to cultural anthropology, and the commitment (or costly) sig-naling theory advanced by evolutionary anthropologists and scientists of religion. The latter focuses on religious rituals and practices as hard-to-fake signals of commitment. Sperber’s epidemiology model may shed some light on the issues dis-cussed in this article.92 Sperber assumes that cultural transmission or communication consists of a chain of “mental representations” and “public representations.” Even though public representations have an obviously material aspect—they are signals, utterances, texts, pictures, etc.—they are still representations, that is, they represent something to someone. Public and mental elements of culture should be seen to be in continuous interac-tion: “Each mental version results from the interpretation of a public rep-resentation which is itself an expression of a mental representation.”93 If this chain continues long enough and remains relatively stable, we can speak of widespread and enduring representations, which are “paradig- 87 Risto Uro, “Towards a Cognitive History of Early Christian Rituals,” in Czachesz and Biró, Changing Minds, 103–21; idem, “Cognitive and Evolutionary Approaches to Ancient Rituals: Reflections on Recent Theories and Their Relevance for the Historian of Religion,” in Mystery and Secrecy in Late Antique Thought and Praxis (ed. John Turner, Christian H. Bull, and Liv Ingeborg Lied; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 76; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 487–510; István Czachesz, “Explaining Magic: Earliest Christianity as a Test Case,” in Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiogra-phy (ed. Luther H. Martin and Jesper Sørensen; London: Equinox, 2011) 141–65. 88 Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy. 89 Kazen, Emotions in Biblical Law; idem, Issues of Impurity in Early Judaism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010). 90 Czachesz, “Long-Term, Explicit Memory”; Risto Uro, “Ritual, Memory and Writing in Early Christianity,” Temenos 46 no. 3 (2011) 159–82. 91 Petri Luomanen, “The Sociology of Knowledge, the Social Identity Approach and the Cognitive Science of Religion,” in Luomanen, Pyysiäinen, and Uro, Explaining Christian Origins, 199–230; Roitto, Behaving as a Christ-Believer; István Czachesz, “Women, Charity, and Mobility in Early Christianity: Weak Links and the Historical Transformation of Religions,” in Czachesz and Biró, Changing Minds, 129–54. 92 Sperber, Explaining Culture. The model is further developed in idem, “Conceptual Tools for a Natural Science of Society and Culture,” Proceedings of the British Academy 111 (2001) 297–311, and idem, “Why a Deep Understanding of Cultural Evolution is Incompatible with Shallow Psychology,” in Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition, and Interaction (ed. N. Enfield and S. Levinson; Oxford: Berg, 2006) 431–49. 93 Ibid., 26.


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matic cases of cultural representations.”94 However, most of the represen-tations are not like these. They are either in one individual only and are not communicated, or they are communicated but not repeated. The ques-tion is, then, why some representations become widely attested and part of the “shared” knowledge in some human group or subgroup. Why are these more successful than others in a given human population? The anal-ogy of an epidemic is an attempt to answer these questions. Sperber’s model belongs to the evolutionary approaches to culture, such as Richard Dawkins’s idea of “memes,” according to which cultural units are transmitted analogously with genes.95 The analogy with genes or, in Sperber’s model, with the replication of viruses or bacteria, is however only partial. Cultural units are not “copy-me” programs which undergo mutations only rarely (perhaps one per million replications).96 In contrast to genes, “representations are transformed almost every time they are transmitted, and they remain stable only in certain limiting cases.”97 Simi-larly, there is a clear difference between the epidemiology of diseases and the epidemiology of representations. While the former occasionally has to explain why a disease is transformed in the process of transmission, the latter “has to explain why some representations remain relatively stable—that is, why some representations become properly cultural.”98 In the case of cultural representations, we are not normally dealing with identical rep-lications. To say that cultural representations are stable does not mean that they are always identical. In most cases, they are more like “strains, or families of concrete representations.”99 Which factors contribute to the ex-planation of such strains? Although no single unified theory should be ap-plied to various kinds of cultural representations, both psychological and environmental or ecological factors are to be considered in every case. Sperber writes:

Potentially pertinent psychological factors include the ease with which a particular representation can be memorized, the existence of back-ground knowledge in relationship to which the representation is rele-vant, and a motivation to communicate the content of the representa-

94 Ibid., 25. 95 The idea of “meme” was first introduced in Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). For other, more sophisticated models of cul-tural evolution, see, e.g., David Sloan Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicaco: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), and Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 96 Ibid., 103. 97 Ibid., 25–26. 98 Ibid., 59. 99 Ibid., 83.


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tions. Ecological factors include the recurrence of situations in which the representations give rise to, or contributes to, appropriate action, the availability of external memory stores (writing in particular), and the existence of institutions engaged in the transmission of the representa-tion.100

At least superficially, Sperber’s model is reminiscent of Theissen’s “analysis of factors,” in which he distinguishes economic, ecological, po-litical and cultural factors. Sperber’s ecological factors could be seen to cover all four types in Theissen’s analysis.101 Whatever we call them, the influence of such factors is an indispensable part of the analysis of cultural units. We can, for example, examine the village setting of Jesus’ traditions about the family (cf. Theissen, Neyrey) and compare it to the more urban setting of Pauline Christianity. In addition to such social and ecological issues, Sperber takes note of more technical factors, such as external memory stores (cf. the discussion on oral transmission above) and the in-stitutional contexts in which representations were transmitted (e.g., gather-ings where Jesus traditions were remembered and read). Importantly, psy-chological constraints should not be rejected as explanations for the distri-bution of cultural representations. These include cognitive mechanisms, such as the salience of the representation under discussion and its cogni-tive staying power. I have argued above that at least some of the anti-familial traditions were attention-demanding, emotionally stimulating and therefore memorable. It is important to realize that traditions do not grow merely because of conscious elaboration; intuitive inferences are also im-portant.102 Moreover, the existence of background information needs to be considered among contributing factors. The cultural theme of relativiza-tion of family ties circulating in the Greco-Roman world (cf. Barton) could be taken as such a type of background information that would make it easier for people to process cultural representations like Jesus’ sayings about leaving one’s family. It is also possible to speak of a “cultural scheme” that was evoked by Jesus’ teaching about leaving one’s family.103

100 Ibid., 84. See also idem, “Why a Deep Understanding.” 101 Theissen, First Followers of Jesus. 102 Ilkka Pyysiäinen, “Intuition, Reflection, and the Evolution of Traditions,” in Prospects for a Story and for a Programme: Essays on Räisänen's Beyond New Testament Theology (ed. Todd Penner; Helsinki/Göttingen: The Finnish Exegetical Society/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005) 282–307. 103 Strauss and Quinn, Cognitive Theory, 48–88. For the scheme or script theory in memory research, see István Czachesz, “Rewriting and Textual Fluidity in Antiquity: Exploring the Social-cultural and Psychological Context of Earliest Christian Literacy,” in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (ed. J. H. F. Dijkstra, J. E. A. Kroesen, and Y. B. Kuiper; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 425–41; and Uro, “Ritual, Memory, and Writing.”


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Sperber’s model is not without problems. The negative pathological sense of epidemiology easily evokes negative associations.104 The con-cepts of “mental” and “public” representations may be further refined and other cognitive models of cultural transmission should also be consid-ered.105 Nonetheless, the ideas of distribution and cultural selection have some advantages over the traditional approaches applied in biblical stud-ies. To begin with, the model focuses on the question of how representa-tions spread among people, not on the issues of origin or genealogy which have often dominated biblical scholarship. The quest for the historical Je-sus is one striking example of this domination. It is, of course, not unrea-sonable to ask whether the anti-familial sayings derive from Jesus or some later followers of Jesus. It is crucial, however, to realize that the analysis of origin does not explain why some representations, out of the countless number of representations, are repeated long enough to be preserved in people’s memory. Whether or not a particular tradition derives from Jesus does not explain why it became a tradition in the first place. Second, insofar as the approaches discussed above presuppose a view of culture as a “web of significance,” Sperber’s model of cultural trans-mission as an interaction between mental and public representations helps us to see where the problem lies. If we assume that a culture or some sub-culture is a system of shared meanings, we are creating an abstraction based on the similarities between widespread cultural representations. If we assume that the whole Mediterranean world formed a system of shared meanings for centuries or even millennia, we are creating a huge abstrac-tion indeed. Such abstractions hide the ecological and individual differ-ences and idiosyncratic experiences. As noted above, most of the mental representations are not shared. Generalizations may be useful in many re-spects and are unavoidable to some degree. But, as Sperber points out, it should be remembered that the talk about a systems of shared meanings in some group is only “loose talk.” What we are really (or should be) saying is that “these individuals have mental representations similar enough to be considered versions of one another.”106 We cannot speak of the meanings of the representations as if they were independent of people’s minds. On the other hand, if we understand cultural systems as a kind of “software of the mind,” we only transfer the abstract summaries constructed by schol- 104 This is also admitted by Sperber (Explaining Culture, 25). 105 For discussions, see Pyysiäinen, Magic, Miracles, and Religion; idem, “Intuition, Reflection, and the Evolution of Traditions,” and István Czachesz, “How Can Evolutionary Theory Contribute to Biblical Studies?” in New Directions in Biblical Studies: Social-Scientific and Cultural Approaches (ed. David Chalcraft, Rebecca Watson, and Frauke Uhlenbruch; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, forthcoming). 106 Ibid., 82.


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ars to people’s heads.107 A psychologically realistic picture of cultural transmission does not emerge in either case. Third, the model avoids the pitfall of the classical functionalist expla-nation since it does not assume equilibrium of a cultural system. An or-ganism can spread in favourable conditions and disturb the balance of na-ture. A successful cultural unit does not always have outright positive ef-fects on the environment in which it is transmitted. Jesus’ sayings discour-aging family loyalties can be seen as an example of a cultural trait which, if taken seriously, would not produce positive effects on social life in the long run, although the anti-familial traditions could increase group solidar-ity in more limited circumstances (see below). Cultures or subcultures need not be taken as well-integrated wholes, organisms in themselves, but rather as open systems.108 On the other hand, functionalist explanations still have a place in the model. The needs of the people, or to use Sper-ber’s broader concept of “relevance,” certainly contribute to the success of a representation, although there are other factors to be considered as well.109 Cultural processes are complex and no single general explanation or grand theory will do. In recent years, a number of anthropologists and scientists of religion have developed a neofunctionalist approach to religion and religious ritu-als focusing on the capacity of religion to promote group solidarity and cooperation.110 This approach builds on a long-standing tradition in reli-gious studies going back at least as early as Durkheim’s theory of religion, but recent theorists have aimed at creating empirically testable models with specific explanatory mechanisms. At the heart of the commitment signaling approach is the hypothesis that religious practices often function as hard-to-fake signals which increase the mutual trust among the mem-bers of a group—this is why the theory is often called the “costly signaling

107 See also Pyysiäinen, Magic, Miracles, and Religion, 230. 108 Sperber, Explaining Culture, 84. 109 Sperber argues that in the preservation process, information is generally transform-ed in two directions: entropy and relevance (“Why a Deep Understanding”). For a theory of relevance, see Dan Sperber and Wilson Deirdre, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). 110 E.g. William Irons, “Religion as Hard-to-fake Sign of Commitment,” in Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment (ed. Randolph M. Nesse; New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001) 292–309; Richard Sosis, “Why Aren’t We All Hutteries: Costly Signaling Theory and Religious Behavior,” Human Nature 14, no. 2 (2003) 91–127; idem, “Religious Behaviors, Badges, and Bans: Signaling Theory and the Evolution of Religion,” in Evolution, Genes and the Religious Brain (vol. 1 of Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion; ed. Patrick McNamara; Westport: Praeger, 2006) 61–85; Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta, “Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred: The Evolution of Religious Behavior,” Evolutionary Anthropology 12 (2003) 264–74.


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theory.” The commitment signaling theory is frequently connected with discussions on the evolutionary background of religion and its proponents argue for the adaptive value of religion and religious practices in contrast to the claim that religion is a by-product of other adaptive traits favoured by natural selection.111 The appreciation of evolutionary thinking and test-able models links the approach to the cognitive science of religion. The theory is usually presented as a contribution to ritual studies but commit-ment theorists seldom make it explicit how they distinguish rituals from other religious practices and behavioural norms.112 It is not overreaching to take the radical family ethos promoted in the synoptic gospel tradition as costly signaling. Abandoning one’s family and properties is certainly a hard-to-fake signal and it is arguable that such an ethos could increase mutual trust and solidarity among the early followers of Jesus and operate as a strategy against free riders, a function that is of-ten emphasized by costly signaling theorists. Commitment signaling also offers an important complementary perspective on explaining the trans-mission of the gospel traditions. As argued above, cognitive theorists often focus on the memorability of religious concepts and traditions and explain their spread by means of the salience of the traditions (for example, by re-ferring to the minimal counter-intuitiveness of religious concepts). There is no doubt, for example, that the shocking effect and the pithiness of the saying on “burying the dead” (Q 9:60) contributed to its survival in the tradition. However, it is also relevant to ask whether the preservation of the anti-familial ethos was due to the fact it resonated with the need of the early followers of Jesus to increase and maintain group solidarity. Such an explanation does not necessarily suggest that the ethos of breaking with one’s family was a behavioural norm that was equally demanded from the members of the group. Some recent evolutionary theories on cultural learning may provide further help in conceptualizing the role of costly signaling traditions in early Christian communities. Joseph Henrich has noted that religious traditions often spread as “belief–practice packages,” and cultural learners often adopt ideas from those who perform costly dis-plays. Since “actions speak louder than words,” “credibility enhancing displays” play an important role in the evolution of belief systems or ide-ologies.113 Drawing on this view, we can argue that costly sacrifices, such

111 See, e.g., Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray, eds., The Believing Primate: Scienti-fic, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (Oxford: Ox-ford University Press, 2009); Pascal Boyer and Brian Bergström, “Evolutionary Per-spectives on Religion,” Annual Review of Anthropology 37 (2008) 111–37. 112 E.g. Richard Sosis, “The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual,” American Scientist 92 (2004) 166–72. 113 Joseph Henrich, “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution,”


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as severing family ties and becoming hated by one’s own kin, made by a few prestigious members or heroes of early communities, contributed to the cultural success of Jesus traditions. The radical family ethos, together with other traditions about Jesus’ words and deeds, functioned as a “be-lief–practice package” which was attractive enough to be adopted by a sufficient number of people in first-century Jewish society to form a movement. With the commitment signaling approach, we have come full circle and returned to the functionalist theorizing from which we started. I hope, however, that the journey from the functionalist account to cognitive theo-rizing, drawing on over forty years of New Testament research, was not meaningless but we have learned something along the way.

VII. Summary I have evaluated and compared two prominent explanations, advanced by New Testament scholars, for the anti-familial traditions: Theissen’s theory about wandering charismatics and the explanations based on the Mediter-ranean honour and shame code. In addition, I have used Barton’s com-parative material to broaden the scope of the analysis and concurred with him that the “relativization of family ties” was a widespread rhetorical theme both in Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions. All three explanations contextualize the gospel traditions in different ways. For Theissen, the radical sayings could only survive on the margin of society, outside the normal everyday life of most people. Neyrey, on the other hand, locates Jesus’ sayings on the family both “outside” and “inside” the Mediterra-nean cultural system. While Jesus does not overthrow the cultural values of his day, he redefines them in a radical fashion. Barton clearly puts Je-sus’ sayings “inside” the Mediterranean culture by providing a compara-tive historical setting for his interpretation. The analysis shows that focusing on Jewish-Palestinian society, on the one hand, and on the Mediterranean culture, on the other, produces quite different settings and explanations for the radical family ethos in the gos-pels. Moreover, some explanations rely heavily on how scholars under-stand the transmission of cultural knowledge. In order to seek a new per-spective, I introduced a cognitive theory of culture, advanced by Dan Sperber, which is based on the distinction between mental and public rep-resentations and on the idea of the “epidemiology of representations.”

Evolution and Human Behavior 30 (2009) 244–60. For the more general co-evolutionary theory behind Henrich’s model, see Richerson and Boyd, Not by Genes Alone.


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Sperber’s cultural epidemiology and his relevance theory are compatible with the commitment signaling approach which argues that religious prac-tices function as hard-to-fake signals of commitment and cultural learners tend to pay attention to credibility enhancing displays, such as is reflected in the radical family ethos of the gospels. A fruitful task for future re-search would be to investigate various ways in which extant early Chris-tian traditions signal commitment to overcome problems of communal life.

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Explaining Radical Family Ethos in the Synoptic Gospels: From Functionalist Accounts to Cognitive Theorizing