The Upside Down Kingdom
What is the paradigm of Kingdom?
How is this antithetical to Shalom?
Shalom is predicated upon freedom, a shared prosperity and well being.
How do Jesus, the Deuteronomist, and the prophetic tradition turn it upside down?
Honor is the moral code that maintains the power structure of oppression.
The moral code of shalom is charity, humility and obedience to God who is righteous and generous.
Honor and Shame
"If humanity is to evolve
beyond the propensity toward violence that now threatens our very
survival as a species, then it can only do so by recognizing the
extent to which the patriarchal code of honor and shame generates
and obligates male violence. If we wish to
bring this violence under control, we need to begin by reconstituting
what we mean by both masculinity and femininity."
James Gilligan, M.D.
Gilligan focuses upon the gender issue. Indeed gender is so intertwined in our concepts of self worth and, therefore, to honor and shame that we cannot avoid discussing it, but I wish to be clear that recognizing that gender is a social construct or that our concepts of gender are problematic for the pursuit of peace is not a feminist issue but rather a question regarding the human condition.
"Honor and shame are parallel labels used by anthropologists to describe either physical conditions or human behavior of which a culture approves or disapproves. In some cases, the words 'honor' and 'shame' actually appear in the Bible itself. But codes of honor and shame also govern the use of comparable terms like 'wise' and 'foolish' in the books of Proverbs, Qoheleth, and Job, as well as 'clean' and 'unclean' or 'holiness' and 'impurity' in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The 'Holiness Code' in the book of Leviticus (Lev 17-26), for example, is comparable to a code of honor and shame in ancient Israel." Victor H. Matthew's and Don C. Benjamin, "Social Sciences and Biblical Studies" in Honor and Shame in the World of the Bible (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994) 11.
According to David A. deSilva:
"Honor is a dynamic and relational concept. On the one hand, an individual can think of himself or herself as honorable based on his or her conviction that he or she has embodied those actions and qualities that the group values as 'honorable,' as the marks of a valuable person. This aspect of honor is really 'self-respect.' on the other hand, honor is also the esteem in which a person is held by the person's group that he or she is a valuable member of that group. In this regard, it is having the respect of others. It was a problematic experience when one's self-respect was not matched by corresponding respect from others, but strategies could be developed to cope with discrepancy here. When the powerful and the masses, the philosophers and the Jews, the pagans and the Christians all regarded honor and dishonor as their primary axis of value, each group would fill out the picture of what constituted honorable behavior or character in terms of its own distinctive sets of beliefs and values, and would evaluate people both inside and outside that group accordingly.... The meaning of shame is somewhat more complicated. If honor signifies respect for being the kind of person and doing the kinds of things the group values, shame signifies, in the first instance, being seen as less than valuable because one has behaved in ways that run contrary to the values of the group. The person who puts personal safety above the city's well-being, fleeing from battle, loses the respect of society. His worth is impugned; he 'loses face'; he is disgraced and viewed as a disgrace. In a second sense, however, shame can signify a positive character trait, namely a sensitivity to the opinion of the group such that one avoids those actions that bring disgrace. Out of shame of this kind, a woman refuses an adulterous invitation; a soldier refuses to flee from battle." Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture, p.25
The Attributes of Honor
B. Honor as a Moral Concept
I tie the notion of honor as a moral concept to the notion of duty, keeping of social mores and upholding the laws of the land. If one fails to do one's duty one is dishonored. In military culture, one is stripped of one's medals or rank. In judicial settings, if one falls to do one's duty by upholding the laws of the land, one suffers the humility of punishment. The person who suffers public humiliation unjustly becomes a favorite trope in literature. The protagonist must seek vindication through violence. In Beau Geste, the falsely accused brother goes off to fight in the French Foreign Legion, the mercenary fighting force manned by dispossessed exiled men of formerly high social status. The duel is fought in cases when one person who believes he is deserving of respect is shown disrespect from another who does not think respect is owed. The conflict is resolved by the wounding or the death of one or the other.
During the 2000 GOP presidential primary, David Blankenhorn wrote an article, "Against Honor" The Weekly Standard 4.10.00, in which he described Senator John McCain's attempt to revive a concept of personal honor as the basis for good government. "The proposition is that a distinctly civic faith, rooted in the ideals of patriotism and personal honor, constitutes the best moral framework for public serve and political action." Blankenhorn's critique of this concept of honor points to the heart of the issue for the discussion of Shalom:
1. Honor in the military, from which McCain drew his philosophy, refers to "personal fidelity to a code of conduct." Murders and thieves can behave honorably -- that is, according to a strict code of conduct, such as a code of silence or a code of "respect" or "family honor." Fascism has its code of honor, as does communism. Indeed, anthropologists tell us that many societies and subcultures in human history have tended to orient behavior, especially male behavior, around notions of honor and shame. Such codes often generate high levels of conflict and violence.
2. "Often, the code of honor is closely linked to the male's desire for fame and glory, typically achieved through military heroism or other displays of bravery and feats of physical strength and domination. This particular conception of honor runs deep in Western civilization and goes way back. It was essentially how the Greeks and Romans understood the term."
Blankenhorn argues that the association of honor with sacred duty is a false association and describes how the concept of honor of which the Bible approves is different from the way that McCain uses it. "Indeed, according to some scholars, a major cultural achievement of Judaism and then Christianity was to challenge the primacy of honor-shame codes as guides for behavior, offering instead a newer ethic of humility, charity, and obedience to God. No longer, then, would greatness refer only or even mainly to kings and military leaders pursuing glory through rule and conquest. The new idea is that greatness means godliness and therefore "comes from God only."
Blankenhorn suggest that this new idea makes democracy possible because it is an "essential cultural underpinning for the practice of self-governance. For in a democracy, the degree to which independent moral truth trumps civic pride rather than the other way around -- the degree to which our morality is defined religiously rather than patriotically is exactly the degree to which politics is relativized and the claims of the state are limited. In this way, government operates under, and draws legitimacy from, a moral canopy that is not of its own making."
B. Honor as a Personal Attribute
Honor tends to be seen as something owed because of who one is. To be put to shame is to be denied the honor that is perceived as one's due.
Julian Pitt Rivers, "Honor" in International Encyclopedia of the Social Science vol 6 David L. Sills Editor McMillan 1968 pp. 503-510, examines how honor and shame is attached to the body. Categories B through E are borrowed from Rivers' article.
Honor is inherited through blood.
The shedding of blood is a stain of honor.
Private parts are the seat of
shame.
They are vulnerable.
Excrement is a source of pollution.
The right hand is the hand of
honor, the left the hand of shame.
The head is to be honored. In court, no one's head should be higher
than the ruler's.
The head of the ruler is crowned.
The defilement of dead bodies, by severing heads, tends to increase the violent response. It is a sort of taunt.
Proper burial is a matter of showing honor and respect. A corpse left in the open is a shameful thing. Compare the stories of Antigone and Saul's concubine, Rizpah (2 Samuel 21:1-14). Both will risk death and punishment to protect the honor of their men. The Levite escalates violence by outraging the corpse of his concubine, but she cannot suffer the same dishonor as the men. They have been dishonored and therefore they can reclaim honor only through violence.
Collective honor is vested in the head of state and had symbolic representation in flags, crests, coasts of arms, badges, uniforms and insignia.
B.1. Honor as Precedence.
In this case honor comes from a social position that allows the claimant to impose himself or herself upon others. The tyrant commands respect through force and fear. The Aristocrat, through social privilege and economics. Those with power receive honor. Masters can abuse their slaves for technically the slave cannot be debased, they have no honor or shame. This sort of honor is expressed in the power of patronage. The king who can maintain a large army or the man who maintains a large household is worthy of honor. The immigrant, as a person without hereditary status, property or power is, therefore, an ignoble position in a vulnerable position.
B.2. Honor through Competition.
War is a matter of honor and shame; the
battle ground is the field of honor. To the victor goes the spoils of war. He
can rape
the women of the vanquished for
the vanquished have no honor to defend. In antiquity slaves were
the vanquished.
Competition is a means of winning or gaining honor. Titles and
trophies are symbols of such honor. In our society the greatest
honor tends to be given to athletes and to those who defeat others
and win. Someone must know the "agony of defeat" in
order for the other to know the "honor of victory." The fireman who
risks his or her life to save a family from a burning building is a hero for
a day, but his or her name is seldom
remembered by more than the family who is saved.
The chance of gaining this sort of honor, a name that can be remembered, is so slim, that it is little wonder that some individuals seek to gain it through a method that is guaranteed to be successful. No one remembers the names of the student athletes who died at Columbine High School in Colorado in the Spring of 1999; many people remember the names of the two students who killed them. Their faces appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek.
B.3. Sacrilege
Certain acts associated with honor and shame may be treated as having more serious consequences than others: parricide, incest, blasphemy , the swearing of false oaths.
In Oedipus Rex, the pollution of the city caused by the incestuous relationship of Oedipus and his mother and the murder of his father requires that Oedipus be killed or banished. He must be expunged from the city.
Because honor is something given, it does not strictly lie within one's control. A woman can be humiliated by the way a man looks at her. Someone can look upon you with contempt. So it requires coercive force to maintain.
B.4. The Status of Slaves
In antiquity, slavery was the result of military defeat, self indenture or some other prior ignoble event. The notion that one is born a slave because of racial identity is very modern.
Alcidames (Gorgias contemporary), Messian Oration "God let everyone set out as free people; nature never made anyone a slave." Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.13.3
Bernard Williams, Shame and
Necessity, University of California Press, 1993.
"The Greek world recognized the simply truth that slavery
rested on coercion. Aristotle's attempt to justify the institution,
in the literal sense of conferring justice on it rather than accepting
that it was necessary, required him to deny this simple truth.
Coercion ... is against nature, and if slavery, properly conducted,
could be natural, then it would not be, in the deepest sense,
coercion." P. 117
B.5. The Status of Women
Technically women are also without
honor.
Pericles Funeral Speech "The greatest glory of women is in
not being talked about by men for good or ill."
The Free Greek male distinguished himself from the triad of barbarian, woman and slave. (Williams 122).
In "The Mediterranean concepts
of honour and shame as seen in the
depiction of the biblical women" Religion and Theology
Vol 3/1 (1996), Renata Rabichev writes:
"A woman's honour is judged by her sense of sexual shame. Although this is not so with men, the term 'shame' is used in two different ways when applied to women. First, 'shame' can refer to the woman's 'sensitivity about what others think' about her (Malina & Neyrey 1991a40), her 'knowledge of proper moral behavior' (Press 1979:117). So, while for men shame is equivalent to a loss of honour, or negative experience, for women it is a positive value. Second, it can refer to her dishonour, in which case the term equates to her being shameless."
Rabichev delineates the ways in which a woman can dishonor her family and restrictions placed upon her to safe guard these family attributes:
Preservation or restoration of family honor is made possible through the following means: modesty, humility, timidity, passivity, chastity, confinement to the house, divorce, retribution, punishment.
C. Family and Violence: An example of the relationship between
honor and shalom
Tikva Frymer Kensky, "Virginity in the Bible" in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Victor H. Matthews et al editors (Sheffield, JSOT, 1998), pp. 79-96, explores the valuation of virginity and its ties to honor. She rejects most genetic arguments tied to economics or social stratification in favor of the ideological value of purity. Perhaps her work may be best described as a representative of the Chicago school of religious studies, i.e. phenomenology. She points out that the honor of the family is at stake if a daughter loses her virginity without the benefit of the contractual relationship with the men in her family. "Real men have the strength and cunning to protect and control their women." "Defilement of their women unmans the men." If a woman elopes or is raped, her father's inability to control his own daughter is demonstrated. He is shamed into lowering her bride price.
Frymer Kensky examines the story of Dinah and suggests that Tyndale and Calvin's reading of the story reflects the honor code operative in the text. Tyndale writes, "Dinah goeth but forth alone, and how great myschive and trouble followed." Calvin concludes that the moral of the tale is, "fathers are taught to keep their daughters under narrow watch."
Frymer Kensky argues that the question of consent is mute. Dinah is very young and women do not have the right to consent. This is statutory rape.
The story escalates into violence because of the brother's feelings of being shamed. "Should our sister be treated as a whore" that is as a woman with no family to protect her?'
"To restore honor they reprise." "To restore their virility they need to react violently."
Frymer Kensky points out that
they are prepared to sacrifice the cultural value of honesty and
to demean circumcision "to show they are real men."
Their need to restore honor escalates into a vendetta of which
there are many in the Bible, although there are voices in the
text that disapprove.
Frymer Kensky then turns to the Deuteronomic laws of rape and argues that they are designed to undercut vendetta and to redress the honor issue by (1) requiring a higher bride price and (2) making the rapist the husband of the woman rather than through recourse to violence.
Victor H. Matthew, "Honor and Shame in Gender-Related Legal Situations in the Hebrew Bible" in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Victor H. Matthews et al editors (Sheffield, JSOT, 1998) pp. 97-112, shows how,without violence, the ritual of bitter waters (Num 5:11-31) removes doubt and suspicion and stops the rumor mill that brings shame to a family .
Modern readers of the Pentateuch often conclude that the laws are harsh. They fail to recognize the jurisprudence at work in the formulation of the laws and the trajectories upon which the law sets the society. The goal of the laws is not principles by which a police force can maintain peace, but rather, principles for self-governance.
Jerome Neyrey writes the following about the reason for the poverty of early Christians. Estranged from family and, thus, their basis of support, they "would not be the objects of compassion or sympathy. They got what they deserved, because they did not suffer 'misfortune'. They experiences shame from family and kin for their rebellion against family tradition." "Loss of Wealth, Loss of Family and Loss of Honor: The Cultural Context of the Original Makarisms in Q" In Philip F. Esler, Modeling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context (Routledge, 1995), p. 156.
My hypothesis
There are significant differences between honor and shame in the society intended by God and that of human construction. Paul substantiates this hypothesis when he writes, "The cross is folly to the Greeks, and a stumbling block to Jews." The reader should be circumspect. When David's rise to power is depicted as a movement from a position of no honor (1 Sam 18:23) to a position of great honor subject to dishonor, the reader must ask whether David's sense of honor is a good thing or not. Does he set himself up as God's rival? Are the battles that happen when he feels dishonored warranted?
In the prophetic material, we
find numerous references to events that put Israel to shame:
'How very frivolously you act to change your way; Indeed, by Egypt
you will be shame as you were shamed by Assyria" ( Jer 2:36);
"Everyone is ignorant of knowledge; every smith is put to
shame by his idol, for his image is false and has no breath"
(Jer 10:14). In the first quotation, Israel has brought shame
upon itself by violating its treaties with other countries, but
these violations are ultimately against God and the covenant.
Israel, as God's wife, should be ashamed in order to protect God's
honor. Feeling a sense of shame drives Israel back to the relationship
with God. In the second quotation, the covenant is also in view
insofar as God has made himself known to the Israelites through
the events of the exodus and the relationship established in response
to his saving the people. The covenantal relationships of the
two testaments requires that honor and shame be categories determined
in reference to the relationship with God rather than with reference
to the opinion of other people.
David deSilva argues:
"The very story at the center of the church's faith already forces a decision concerning the reliability of the world's estimation of honor and shame. Jesus suffered crucifixion, known as an intentionally degrading death, fixing the criminals's honor at the lowest end of the spectrum and serving as an effective deterrent to the observers, reminding them of the shameful end that awaits those who similarly deviate from the dominant cultures' values. Paul no doubt understated the case when he referred to the proclamation of this cross as the wisdom of God as a "stumbling block" to Jews and "folly" to Gentiles. No member of the Jewish community or the Greco-Roman society would have come to faith or joined the Christian movement without first accepting that God's perspective on what kind of behavior merits honor differs exceedingly from the perspective of human beings, since the message about Jesus is that both the Jewish and Gentile leaders of Jerusalem evaluated Jesus, his convictions and his deeds as meriting a shameful death, but God overturned their evaluation of Jesus by raising him from the dead and seating him at God's own right hand as Lord." p. 51
Jesus and New Testament sayings pointing to a reversal of values:
Mark 2:10-11 Have you not read this scripture [Ps 118:22-23]: 'The stone that the builders reject has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?
Mark 10:45 I came not to be served but to serve.
Matt 10:28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last.
Lk 16:15 What is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.
John 5:44 How can you believe when you accept glory [doxa] from one another and do not seek the glory [doxa] that comes from the one who alone is God?
Acts 5:41 They rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.
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Gottwald, Norman K. The Tribes
of Yahweh : a Sociology of the Religion of Liberated
Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. Orbis Books, 1979.
Malina, Bruce. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. Atlanta: John Knox. 1981.
Matthews, Victor H. and Don C. Benjamin, ed. Honor and Shame in the World of the Bible. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
Matthews, Victor H. Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Sheffield: JSOT, 1998.
Neyrey, Jerome H. Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew. Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
Neyrey, J.H. ed. The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991.
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