The /Anthropology of the Mediterranean/ and Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies

EMANUEL PFOH

Córdoba

Congreso; European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting, Córdoba 2015; 2015

European Association of Biblical Studies

This paper aims at setting the epistemological and methodological bases for interpreting many of the socio-cultural traits (politics, economics, religious imagination and practices, ethnicity and identity) of the southern Levant roughly during the first millennium BCE through the scopes and results of the ethnographic genre known as ?anthropology of the Mediterranean?. The ?anthropology of the Mediterranean? had its zenith in European social anthropological studies between the 1950s and 1970s, contributing to the study of manifestations of honour, shame and grace in traditional societies, instances of prestige and authority in local politics, patron-client relations and redistributive economy, etc. After a crisis during the 1980s, and challenged by criticism on both its epistemology and methodology, the ?anthropology of the Mediterranean? has resurfaced during the 1990s overcoming such criticism and showing how this approach is still of value for understanding the social dynamics of traditional Mediterranean societies (including here the societies of southwest Asia). The question is: can the approach of the ?anthropology of the Mediterranean? shed any light on the societies that produced the biblical literature? This paper will show how the ?anthropology of the Mediterranean? is pertinent for understanding many of the social practices and customs manifested in biblical stories, but also for the wider ancient Near Eastern context of ancient Levantine societies.