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Text: David McLoughlin on human dignity and being truly human


Bishop Lang with David McLoughlin

Bishop Lang with David McLoughlin

The following talk was given by David McLoughlin at the Clifton Diocesan Assembly in Bristol on Saturday 14 March 2015. The title was 'Human Dignity and Being Truly Human'. David McLoughlin is a Senior Lecturer at Newman University in Birmingham.

Human dignity is not a common theme in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Status and honour are. But status in Greece, in the much lauded Athenian democracy, is based on a subclass of slaves and Roman status is based on patronage and its implicit creation of debt and indebtedness.

However in the Hebrew scriptures there is the core of an alternative vision. Genesis 1:26 "God created Man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." Human dignity then is based on humanity's relationship to God, it is a fundamental gift of the Creator and inalienable. Persons are ends in themselves and they are innately social inter-dependent. This vision is worked out in a very particular way in the experience of Israel and in practice of Jesus. I would like to explore a little of this with you today.

After the 10 commandments in the Book of Exodus comes a code of Laws (the Covenant Code Ex 20:22-23:33), which includes provisions for the care of the poor. Among some of its oldest strands are those which prohibit the taking of interest from a poor person (22:24), the command to give back every evening the cloak left as a pledge on a loan (22:25), rights for poor to harvest the fields, vineyards and olive orchards every seventh year (23:11). Particular concern is shown for the stranger i.e. the migrant worker. This is unique of all the Ancient Near Eastern law codes. The laws start and conclude with the stranger Ex22:20; 23:12, and then focus on the widow and the orphan ( 22:21 and later 23:11).

What is interesting is that the word used when commanding not to oppress the stranger is the same word used of the oppression of the Israelites when they were in Egypt (Ex 3:9/Dt 26:7). In other words the God giving these rules is the God of Exodus, reminding the Israelites they were once strangers in the land of Egypt. It reminds Israel that it came into being by God's action, liberating a suppressed and poor part of an inhuman, oppressive society; and that part of God's plan is that they should create an alternative society, just and blessed, in opposition to the corrupt societies of the world around them. God had taken Egypt's poor, transplanted them in another country to start something really new. It's clear that that society was to exclude oppression and poverty, and yet these laws clearly presuppose the continuing existence of poverty within Israel itself.

In the book of Deuteronomy, there is a further set of Laws (12-26). Here the stranger the orphan and the widow are joined by slaves and Levites. It seems as though the legislator is trying to create new structures to help all those who cannot live off their own land. There will always be strangers, orphans and widows but Deuteronomy is trying to create a world where they don't have to be poor and where they have an innate dignity. And so in this vision of things a widow and a slave have the same right to secure life as a Levite, a temple official, an honoured person in Israel.

The Sabbath and Debt In the midst of all of this lie a series of laws about debt, cf. Dt. 15 & 24. There was obviously a growing experience of debt among the small farmers of Palestine. Bad harvests led to financial difficulties people borrowed. Dt. 15: 7-11 urges the neighbours to lend what is necessary (no expectation of interest yet) To pay back they may have to give their services as day labourers but Dt. 24:14-15 assures they'll be given daily pay. If the creditor demands a pledge Dt. 24:10-13 insists on an honourable way of it being handled. If the debt is so great that he or she should have to enter debt slavery then on a Sabbath or fallow year the Dt15:1-6 instructs the lender to free them from their debt. If they became a debt slave in another year Dt. 15:12-18 says that in the Sabbath year the master must free them and give them enough to set themselves up independently. The language unlike other legal codes is sexually inclusive. Help for those in debt is required from their immediate neighbours and it is linked to the holy rhythm of seven years. The word brother is used for the first time of a fellow Israelite, implying a family solidarity with one's neighbour 15:2. Help is demanded even at the risk of one's own considerable financial loss 15:9. Economic and political disasters are inevitable but human dignity remains inalienable.

The sanction is dire. 15:9 & 24:15 Anyone who forces the poor to cry out to God will be in a state of sin, a sin (het) which can only be expiated by the death of the sinner. The vision is that poverty when it arises should stimulate all to eradicate it. Sadly no-one seems to have totally believed, or understood this, so that by the time we get to the book of Leviticus and a new set of Laws what are called the Holiness Code there has be a retrogression.

Leviticus omits the provisions for those without landed property. The facility of those without land to live freely off the land in the Sabbath year is subtly changed. Deuteronomy spoke of the stranger the orphan and the widow. Leviticus speaks of the stranger and the poor. Not only does it presuppose the existence of poor in Israel, it demotes orphans and widows to the class of the poor. Also the strangers no longer have a place in the joyful celebration of Israel's great feasts of Pentecost and Tabernacles, the pilgrimage feasts. Whereas in the time of Deuteronomy the stranger the widow and the orphan and landless Levite were taken in by Israelite families to participate in Israel's joy. Now it is only every citizen of Israel (Lev 23:42) who enjoys the joyful days in the booths, strangers are excluded. It appears that the holiness of the cult can too easily become exclusive.

Jubillee (7x7+1) instead of Sabbath Deuteronomy's attempt to provide for all groups of the population is whittled down. Now the liberation of slaves will take place every 50th year instead of every 7th. Given the short life expectancy most Israelite victims of poverty would not see a Jubilee year. Would not see the end of their debt slavery, or be able to start again. There is still some concern for the poor. In the Jubilee year not only persons but also lands must be returned to their original clan, and debt slaves have clearer rights than ordinary slaves (Lev. 25:40). But for all the encouragement to help an impoverished brother (Lev. 25:35-8) the assumption seems to be that the poor will always be there. Leviticus is more realistic perhaps but is it more truly God's will?

However the vision of Deuteronomy was not completely forgotten. The prophets kept something of it alive. Isaiah proclaimed a messianic gospel for the poor. And Jesus proclaimed Isaiah's Gospel to the poor. The meals he shared with whoever would sit down with him are the fulfillment of the festive meals of Israel in Deuteronomy when there was a place for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan and where their dignity was celebrated. The Acts of the Apostles sees the early church in Jerusalem as fulfilling Deuteronomy "there were no poor among them" (Acts 4:34) and "the widows received a daily distribution" (Acts 6) X Let's look at the situation at the time of Jesus.

Jesus and the Torah

Jesus is involved in an ongoing debate over the true nature of the Torah and he stands with the prophets in their interpretation of it (Math 5:17). As he puts it "The weightier matters of the Torah are judgement, mercy and faithfulness." (Mth 23:23.) This is Jesus restatement of the Prophet Michah's summary of a righteous llfe (6:8)- "to act justly, to love tenderly and walk humbly with God". This is to image the creator and liberator God of Genesis and Exodus.

Something of this tension can be seen in the encounter between Jesus and a scribe who asks him how to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks two revealing questions: "What is written in the Torah? How do you read?" In other words they make sure they are dealing with the same text but then the text has to be interpreted. In Galilee the Torah was in dispute. Jesus teaching and action reveal how he read and interpreted the Torah. So let's look at some of his readings.

Purity and Debt

In the Torah there are purity as well as debt codes. The debt codes belong primarily to the Yahwhist and Elohist strands of the tradition and the purity codes to the Priestly strands. Deuteronomy reinstates both. The codes apply to the table, the household, and the sanctuary.

The origin of the purity code is in the creation story and the command "You shall be holy as I am holy". Just as God separates light from darkness the purity code separates incompatibles cf. Dt. 22:9-11 on planting different seeds, using different cloth for clothes, ploughing with different animals. But the process continues - clean and unclean animals, women at different times of their cycles, Israelites and Gentiles, those who follow the Torah and the amme ha-aretz (the dirt poor who have no time for the finer points of religion as they strive to survive on a daily basis). The list can extend ad infinitum at its heart is the idea that every individual should be complete and there should be no mixing of kinds. Mixing involves pollution, confusion, a curse, and death. In this underst6anding impurity is the beginning of the dissolution of creation back into chaos. The purity codes avoid this. In the time of Jesus the authorities feared chaos and any social disorder as it would have immediate and brutal consequences under Roman rule.

The debt codes however are linked to the exodus and the gift of the Land. The land is Yahweh's the people are tenants. So the land can never be sold in perpetuity (Lev. 25:23). The Debt codes extend the graciousness of the first gift to the sharing of the fruits of the land e.g. Deut. 26:12 has tithing every three years to "the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they eat their fill within your towns." Similarly with the Sabbatical Year (Dt. 15:12-18) and the Jubilee year (Lev. 25:23-55) with it's cancelling of debts, freeing of slaves, and return of land to the original families.

The debt codes aimed to avoid the violence of the exploitation of the poor by the rich. But it is clear from Jesus teaching that as the land produced abundantly it was not simply seen as a gift but as a source of wealth and so instead of distributing the surplus it was hoarded for status and private excessive consumption.

Notice what happens when one code is read over another; When the debt codes are read as subsidiary to the purity codes, poverty, from the point of view of the purity codes, is the result of uncleanness. If one were pure one would be blessed i.e. not poor. Hence the way in which the Temple authorities, who based themselves on the purity codes, blamed those they exploited by portraying them as unclean amme ha-aretz - the people of the soil, struggling to make ends meet. Their poverty was their own fault.

But read from the point of view of the debt codes poverty is the result of covetous greed what Jesus calls Mammon, the unrestricted accumulation of wealth. And how do the rich in this society, a subsistence economy, accumulate wealth? At the expense of peasant producers, through fraudulent collection of taxes and tithes, through lending to those who would have difficulty paying back and then foreclosing on their loans. All this is a violation of the will of Yahweh expressed in the non-exploitative social relations of the covenant. In Jesus view it compromises the justice of the divine rule (the Kingdom). So in the story of the rich fool (Lk. 12:16-20) Jesus explodes the way in which the debt codes have been sabotaged. The fool in hoarding the excess out of greed undermines the Torah's teaching that the land is Yahweh's alone. Life is giving, whereas here having is holding and, implicitly, is the cause of the poverty and death of others.

In the time of Jesus from becoming a homeless, wandering, day-labourer as a result of debt, and so being totally dependant on one's own strength and health and no longer being supported within the mutuality of village structures, till dying of malnutrition was a matter of a few years. Hence the power of the parable of the workers in the vineyard that attacks head on the isolation and marginalisation of the day workers in a society originally founded on the vision of the shared graciousness of Yahweh's gift.

Again something of this can be seen in the encounter with the wealthy man in Mark 10:17-22. He flatters Jesus expecting suitable polite flattery back but gets none. Indeed the tone of the encounter is rather sharp. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" he asks . He is wealthy with inherited wealth. It is his expectation as an observant Israelite to inherit eternal life. He comes in confidence. He has followed the Torah since youth, according to the perspective of the purity codes he at one with God. As wealthy he is already clearly blessed by Yahweh.

Jesus challenge is a challenge to his religious assumptions. The rich man who can only remain wealthy by keeping others poor has worshipped a God who condones oppression. This is the not the liberating God of Exodus. The God of the covenant has become a God of convenience. Note how Jesus slips in the phrase "you shall not defraud" among the commandments. There is no such commandment in the Decalogue but, for Jesus, to defraud implies the infringement of the whole covenant, the taking of God's name in vain and the undermining of the essential value and dignity of God's children.

The confidence of the wealthy man is so total that Jesus has to restate the radical message of the Decalogue in a powerful way. Instead of reading the Decalogue through the purity code he reads it through the debt code.

"Just one thing you lack: go, sell, give - distribute to the destitute, follow me". This is a reading of the Torah as an appeal to the justice of the rule of Yahweh. Jesus interprets the Torah in terms of the distributive justice of God, who gave the land to be received and shared not hoarded at the expense of others. He is appealing to the Jubilee code. The man leaves because he has great wealth, many possessions, and great estates. He can meet the requirement of the purity codes but not of the radical call to distributive justice and the acknowledgment of the equal dignity of his poorer neighbours.

The teaching of the kingdom of God as a fresh statement of the essential dynamic of the Covenant. Into this reality Jesus comes bringing a message about a God who is not primarily interested in rituals of home or temple, nor of purity laws, nor of racial identity. Rather this God is reminding the Jewish people of where they come from. When Jesus says in Mark 12:28 Love God with your whole self and your neighbour as yourself " he is evoking ancient memories. They would have heard the echo of the prayer written on the heart of every Jew and taught to all children Deut. 6: 5 Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God the Lord alone! Therefore you shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength." And the second half echoes Lev 19:18 "Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countryman. You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The people of Israel were a liberated people made up of migrant workers under the Egyptians, 12 tribes is a glamorous title for 12 separate gangs with little in common except their slavery. God calls them out of nothingness, to be something, his people Israel. A people characterised by a unique freedom and as such they were to be a sign for others that such freedom was possible. They must create a land where there would always be a place for the widow the orphan and the stranger - the migrant worker! The people whose power was a gift of God should not threaten the powerless.

Jesus breaks open again the Covenant message. And he does it by re-naming God. The Jewish title for God, its holiest word that still today no orthodox Jew will use, is Yahweh. It is given to Moses at the burning bush. It can be translated as "I am who I am" but also "I will be who I will be" and even "I will be where I will be". In other words God beyond our concepts and feeble imaginings, Lord of history master of creation. You can see the danger of this name. Too holy to be named, God must be too holy to be near. This is the classic danger and option of religion, utter transcendence! But when the disciples say how should we pray. Jesus says "Our Father - Abba- a close familial, everyday name The God of domestic mess, the God who is where we all are. In using this name Jesus had already subverted the power of temple and cult and potentially of those who controlled access to the God of Temple and cult. And his practice of forgiveness became an economic issue undermining the trade in temple sacrifices for forgiveness. Now forgiveness is a direct transaction between God and us but implying just as direct a transaction between us and those who trespass against us. Something which becomes very clear in the prayer he gives to the disciples.

Let's consider the disciples prayer: Then as now the basic struggle of peasant families, who form the basic unity of Jesus society, was to survive between harvests. Harvests which were the fruit of their labour on their own small family holdings, which in Palestine were seen as God's gift, that which made them "the people of God - Israel". It is in this context that the disciples ask Jesus for a prayer, they are asking him for a prayer that will set them apart as his disciples. In the Lord's Prayer in Mathew (6:9-13) the prayer has four direct petitions: May your Kingdom come! The bread we need each day give us today. And cancel our debts for us, as we too have cancelled the debts of those indebted to us. And do not lead us to the trial. The first line asks for God's direct intervention. And then we see why they need that intervention. The petitions lay bare the political and economic situation of the Galilean peasants of the time, under Roman occupation and the collusive leadership of their leaders and priests.

The appeal for bread speaks of ever-present commonplace hunger. When their harvest fails they starve. When their overlords call in too much produce they starve. When their resources grow limited they resort to loans. Loans from Jewish neighbours are fine and the assumption is they will be paid back interest free, as and when. But when all are without surplus then loans have to be made from their Roman or Greek landlords and Jesus tells us elsewhere, in his parable of their dishonest steward, that their interest rates were extortionate, 25% on grain and 50% on oil (Lk 16:1-8). Unable to meet their repayments they have eventually to mortgage their land and ultimately all too often forfeit it. Families are broken up, children are sold as debt slaves, the men become wandering day labourers, without shelter or family networks to support them and with increasingly short life expectancies.

The petitions of the Lord's Prayer address this reality but speak of an alternative equitable use of resources. It is not simply utopian. They are not expecting God to do everything. The prayer of the disciples commits them to renew the ideal of the Mosaic covenant with its expectation of cancelling each other's debts. It is a prayer of petition but also of commitment, to revive the co-operation of the covenant within their village communities. So much of Jesus conflict with the "Scribes and Pharisees" is not so much over ritual purity laws but over their focus on the support and maintenance of the Temple and formal religion at the expense of the basic subsistence needs of the people of the land. (Cf. Mk. 7:1-13 and the practice of "korban"; in particular his criticism of "devouring widows' houses" Mk 12:38-40).

So the context for the Lord's Prayer is villages where people are hungry and are in debt to one another. There is clearly a persistent worry about the basics: food, clothing and shelter (cf. Lk 12:22-31) and elsewhere Jesus addresses the reality of those without land, day labourers, debtors (cf. Lk 16:1-8). It is precisely to such village communities broken by such economic pressures and misplaced religious ritual requirements that Jesus addresses his ministry and teaching and indeed sends out his disciples to work among, accepting the subsistence support they may be offered. In other words the disciples presence is to be a help not a burden and their message comes without hidden cost attached cf. Luke 10:8-11. Jesus mission addressed this breakdown of the Mosaic covenant; he was not primarily calling individuals to private acts of faith but whole village communities to a renewed and healthier shared life under the Father God's reign. Read again Luke 6: 27-49 in the light of this. Read it as teaching to communities fractured by debt pressures. E.g. "to the one who ask from you, give, and from the one who borrows, do not ask back...But love your enemies, and do good and lend." Taken as an exhortation to local communities it echoes the spirit of the Covenant in Deuteronomy e.g. Dt. 15:7-11. "Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful" asks the members of the communities to reflect God's generosity as reflected in Leviticus 19:2. It re-enforces the second petition of the Lord's Prayer "hallowed be thy name". And calls us to our fundamental vocation to image God.

Effectively, in the face of economic and social fragmentation, Jesus is provoking a renewal of the people's vision. He teaches there is an alternative! He shares the vision of the Kingdom and its promises and their worth and dignity within it and then underlines the principles of the kingdom in terms of a renewal of the Covenant's mutual sharing and co-operation. It is a call to a renewed shared communal life, starting from the local, capable of resisting the powerful political and economic forces that would undermine it. And the disciples, in their ministry, are called to model this.

The Use of Parable

If the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Abba then all sorts of relationships change, all sorts of limits disappear. "Many will come from East and West and sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the Reign will be thrown into outer darkness" Mth 8:14 The so often forgotten and latent universalism of Jewish faith flames forth again. The way Jesus extends this transformation of people's expectations and perspectives is by his use of parables. It's worth remembering he taught these parables to groups, crowds, communities. They were intended to provoke discussion, conversation, raise awareness. They were the starting point of a process not the end. They got people to a possible shared "light-on" moment which could then have further consequences. If a group saw the implication of a parable then they saw their world differently and had a choice to make:- whether to stay with the way things were or to step out into this new "kingdom" way of looking at things.

Lets look at a story of one Woman's effective action AKA the parable of the Unjust Judge (Lk.18:1-8).

It's a model for activists. Luke remembers this story of Jesus in a time when the church was struggling and he sees it as a call to persistent prayer even when things seem against us. But I'd like to reflect on it in the context of Jesus time when a more radical message emerges for those of us engaged in action for change.

Widows were vulnerable in Jesus society. They were among the powerless ones like the orphaned children and foreign workers that Jesus calls "the little ones". Jesus story presumes the woman is without support or worse that her family have undermined her inheritance rights by bribing the local judge. A woman had to be represented in court by a man usually of her immediate family. But Jesus tells us she is alone, her prospects are not hopeful. The Hebrew scriptures have beautiful texts that state God will always hear the cry of the powerless widow (Ex. 22:21-24) and demand God's people respect and care for widows . But there are so many of these texts in Deuteronomy and the Prophets that it is clear that such compassionate practice was often abandoned.

Jesus story assumes the Widow's claims are just, but that she has no means to bribe the judge to act affirmatively on her behalf. The presumption is the Judge has already been bribed to find against her. Jesus tells us the Judge is so corrupt that he "neither fears God nor respects human beings". This is already clear as he deals with her case alone. All such cases, by right, demand a tribunal, so bribes have already perverted the Law. The Jewish Talmud will later call such officials "Robber Judges" "willing to pervert justice for a dish of meat" i.e. a good meal! This is a judge who has colluded with the methods of the Roman forces of occupation and their systematic alienation of the local masses from their means of support and survival, creating a culture of debt and dependency.

But the Woman does not give up. She sees clearly what is happening, she knows what her rights are and she works out an effective strategy to bring about the justice which the system deprives her of. She does not appeal to the court, as the local justice system has been clearly undermined. She identifies the key figure who can change things and targets him - the unjust Judge. She goes public. She appears day after day at the town gate where the men of influence gather and cries out against him . One woman's voice raised repeatedly calling for justice. She speaks the truth and many there will recognise it as truth. She makes public the barely hidden corruption of the Law which should serve all. Notice her emphasis is on calling him to do justice. She is calling him to account in public. And it is this voice crying for justice, emerging day by day from the generalised collusion with corruption, which makes a difference and wears him down. He can only take a certain amount of shame beyond that his own authority will be undermined.

In Jesus story the judge eventually says "she will wear me out with her continual bruising" (literally punches to the face!). Unable to appeal to honour or compassion she has taken an untypical role of assertive action. She makes it not worth his while to continue, if he loses too much status his wealthy backers may no longer have use for him.

In the end the victim calling for justice, saying it as it is, becomes the powerful voice calling the corrupt system to account. Her refusal to lie down, to collude and accept the system that oppresses opens up an alternative possibility. Jesus gives us a model of a thoughtful and creative woman whose unorthodox action, beyond the norms of gender and status, gains the just verdict that appeal to the compromised system could never have achieved. As a piece of sustained grass roots activism it has a lot to teach us.

Note again what Jesus is doing in these parables. he is drawing on the experience of the people, provoking them to see their world clearly but from a renewed perspective, "the kingdom of God", and inviting them to become subjects of their own history. He empowers the exploited and oppressed to re-claim their history, to see it anew, and to participate in creating it.

There is a danger when we read these texts in church that we spiritualise them and tend to take away a personal message - what do they mean for me? Then we miss their call to renew our collective vision of a creation under God where all are of equal worth and where the distribution of the goods of the earth, and the sharing of them, and solidarity in service, are at the centre of our collective concern rather than accumulation for profit and personal security.

Above all these are texts to provoke collective reflection, discussion and debate, starting from the conflicted reality we find ourselves in. A Kingdom of the Living Dead This is all part of the horizon of that kingdom or rule of God that Jesus invited the people of his time to look towards.

At the heart of his teaching are a series of sayings that we now call the Beatitudes. The familiar received translation of the first of these (Luke 6:20 NRSV) goes something like: "Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven." But the Greek word ptochai translated as poor is not simply poor. Poor and rich define our status within the same world but at different ends of a sliding scale. Ptochos is someone off the scale, a destitute person, without family or social ties, a wanderer. Indeed it is derived from the classical Greek word for a corpse. Jesus' kingdom is not a kingdom of the poor but of the destitute, the derelict, of the living dead. The kingdom is not centred on the worthy hardworking peasant or artisan but on the unclean, the degraded, the expendable, the powerless, and all too often, then as now, the children.

Note the basis of his critique of power and authority - it lacked justice and truth. "What is truth?" Pilate asks and under pressure saves himself. The question expresses the void undermining Pilate's own authority. His wealth and that of the Jerusalem elite is at others expense, that of their neighbour. Not to love one's neighbour is for Jesus not to know the God who is the father of the neighbour and the source of truth. Jesus saw the misuse of power as arising inevitably out of the profit motive - mammon. Luke. 12:21-23; Mth. 6:19-20 The rich lost their chance of knowing God, their minds clouded by desire to enrich themselves, leading inevitably to an insensitivity towards the brother in need. Cf. the parable of Lazarus and dives Luke 16: 19-31.

For Jesus, to be deaf to the cry of the poor is to be deaf to God. Such solidarity with the poor made him a threat to the Jerusalem power elite it provoked his brutal death and it inspires us to explore again the religious, political and economic, structures of our own time and their repercussions; repercussions for our sense of ourselves, of others and of the very image of God that we take for granted.

Further Reading: • • Crossan, J.D. & Reed, J.L. (2001) Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, London: SPCK • Freyne, S. (2004) Jesus, a Jewish Galilean, London: Continuum • Hanson, K.C., "The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition" in Biblical Theology Bulletin, vol. 27, 1997, pp.99-111 • Herzog, W.R. (2000) Jesus, Justice and the Reign of God, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press • Horsley, R.A. (2011) Jesus and the Powers: Conflict, Covenant and the hope of the Poor, Minneapolis, Fortress • Malina, B.J. (1996) The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels, London: Routledge • Rousseau, J.L. & Arav, R. (1995) Jesus and his World: An Architectural and Cultural Dictionary, London: SCM • Sawicki, M. (2000) Crossing Galilee: Architectures of Contact in the Occupied Land of Jesus, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International • Stegemann, W., Malina, B.J. & Theissen, G. (2002) The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels, Minneapolis: Fortress • Theide, C.P. (2004) The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus: New Light from Archaeology, London: SPCK • Theissen, G. & Merz, A. (1998) The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, London: SCM

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