“This book is a triumphant demonstration of how major social-scientific models used in biblical interpretation have the closest of connections with ancient Mediterranean culture, of how the etic embraces the emic. Across a range of critical issues—such as economy, kinship, patronage, honor and shame, collectivism, gossip, space, gender, ritual, purity, and the evil eye—the contributors uncover a mother lode of primary evidence from Judean, Greek, and Latin texts, inscriptions, and papyri. It represents a unique and indispensable resource for understanding the ancient social contexts in relation to which we must interpret the biblical texts for their historical meaning.”

— Philip F. Esler

University of Gloucestershire

“If the past is a foreign country, then Crook’s sourcebook gives readers the tools to enter and experience that foreign culture. It primes them to articulate both traditional and newer social-scientific frameworks that can help guide their reading and interpretation of ancient texts. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, from Graeco-Roman philosophy and history to the Dead Sea Scrolls, from New Testament and early Christian texts to rabbinic literature, such a resource ensures that we understand as best we can the lived experience of the people represented in ancient texts and that we are not misled by our modern, often anachronistic assumptions, about society and culture.”

— Sarah E. Rollens

Rhodes College

“Social-scientific criticism of the New Testament entails the creation of models that are useful for explaining how people in the ancient Mediterranean understood and experienced their social world. This helpful sourcebook provides carefully chosen selections from the varied ancient texts that undergird the models applied in traditional and emergent areas of social-scientific criticism, from patronage and honor to space and secrecy. It is an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the social contexts of the New Testament.”

— Anthony Keddie

University of British Columbia

“A valuable provision for biblical study, presented in a way readily accessible to every student and scholar. Whatever your approach to the biblical text, you will find that the use of this collection of texts will considerably enrich your study.”

— Peter Oakes

from the foreword

Review of Biblical Literature

“This volume is another helpful demonstration of how much social-scientific criticism can illuminate social, cultural, and historical contexts of the ancient Mediterranean not self-evident to twenty-first-century readers, reduce anachronistic and ethnocentric interpretations, and reinforce the fact that interpreters can never achieve the status of an objective observer.”