Reflections on Culture and Social-Scientific Models (Critical NOTES‪)‬

In an article published recently in this journal, Alan Kirk offered fresh insights into a long-standing problem by using an anthropological model of reciprocity. (1) Kirk dissolved the tension between the seemingly reciprocal "Do unto others" and the more exclusive "Love your enemy" by showing that the texts presuppose but deliberately challenge ancient expectations of reciprocity. Kirk's article provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the importance of methodological clarity, especially in the form of constructing (and choosing) culture-appropriate models. The timing of this opportunity is good because the use of anthropological and sociological models in biblical exegesis is becoming more popular. A consistent thorn in the side of social-scientific criticism, among other fields, has been the validity of applying models cross-culturally. (2) In most instances this concerns taking models developed in the modern world (e.g., honor and shame, psychoanalysis, functionalism, cognitive dissonance, rational choice theory) and applying them to the ancient world. Questions of this sort are valid and the responses complex, but we have in Kirk's article a different sort of cross-cultural application of a model. By relying on a model of reciprocity developed in "primitive" cultures and applied to the Greco-Roman world, Kirk forces us to consider whether all ancient (or premodern) cultures are the same, or whether their differences require alterations in the models we use to understand them.