Patronage and Sectarianism: On the Socio-Cultural Background of the Old Testament

EMANUEL PFOH

Leipzig

Congreso; European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting, Leipzig 2013; 2013

EABS

When read from a socio-anthropological point of view, two factors seem to be distinctively detected throughout the Old Testament: 1) the presence of basic units of patronage bonds between one major party and a minor one; and 2) the understanding of reality through means of an essential opposition between the ‘People of God’—or the ‘Children of Israel’—and the pagan peoples who worship deities others than Yahweh. In the following analysis, I shall try to show literary as well as sociological and ethnographic evidence of both factors in the Old Testament and the Near East in order to envision a possible social and cultural background for understanding the political and religious world of biblical writers.