Walking in Their Sandals: A Guide to First-Century Israelite Ethnic Identity

Synopsis: This volume invites readers to walk in Israelite sandals, that is, to take a journey of the imagination, and to immerse themselves in the identity, values, and institutions of first-century CE Israelites with the help of contemporary social-scientific studies and theories. What emerges is that the Israelites did not practice a religion. Rather, they were an ethnos, or as this book describes it, an ethnic identity, who lived out a particular way of life and culture the customs of the fathers. It is to belong to a people who obtained their collective identity, honor, and sense of worth from their socialization and membership in Israel and from the social convention of loyalty to their rich cultural tradition. It was to belong to a "world," or having a perspective on the world with its own quality of "knowledge," which, among other things, preferred collectivism over individualism, and orthopraxy over orthodoxy. Endorsements: "Cromhaut tidily synthesizes Social Identity Theory, Social Construction of Reality theory, Primordial and Constructionist theories of ethnicity, the importance of group practices for ethnic boundary marking, and ethnicity models. He details ancient Israel as a boundary-marking ethnic group and Paul's offering an alternative ethnos–new core values and a new, inclusive way of life. This informed, informative, readable study will engage and reward both introductory students and advanced scholars." –Dennis C. Duling Emeritus Professor Canisius College, Buffalo, New York "Utilizing ethnicity theory and other social sciences with sophistication and insight, Markus Cromhout challenges many assumptions of what it meant to be a first-century Judean. In the process he also questions traditional understandings of the apostle Paul's entire enterprise, as well as significant aspects of the New Perspective on Paul. He provides, in addition, an intriguing answer as to why most Israelites rejected Paul's message. His excellent summaries are themselves worth the price of the book." –Walter F. Taylor Jr. Ernest W. and Edith S. Ogram Professor of New Testament Studies Trinity Lutheran Seminary "Cromhout has written an absolutely essential book in which he connects central topics of the New Perspective on Paul with insights about their social and cultural background within the ancient Mediterranean world. Based on a complex and well argued socio-cultural model of Israelite ethnic identity, the book deepens our understanding of Pauline concepts like 'works of the law, ' 'faith/belief, ' 'righteousness, ' etc., and traces them back to their contemporary discourses." –Wolfgang Stegemann Augustana-Hochschule, Germany Author Biography: Markus Cromhout is a Research Associate in the Department of New Testament Studies at the University of Pretoria. He is the author of Jesus and Identity: Reconstructing Judean Ethnicity in Q (Cascade Books, 2007).