Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

Habits of the Heart Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Ideology-An Introduction

1. On Romanization 2. Roman power and the Gauls 3. The civilising ethos 4. Mapping cultural change 5. Urbanising the Gauls 6. The culture of the countryside 7. Consuming Rome 8. Keeping faith? 9. Being Roman in Gaul.

Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. By G. Woolf. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1998/2000. Pp. xv + 296, figs 20. Price: £40.00 (bound); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0 521 414456 (bound); 0 521 789826 (paper).

Hellenism and Empire explores identity, politics, and culture in the Greek world of the first three centuries AD, the period known as the second sophistic. The sources of this identity were the words and deeds of classical Greece, and the emphasis placed on Greekness and Greek heritage was far greater now than at any other time. Yet this period is often seen as a time of happy consensualism between the Greek and Roman halves of the Roman Empire. The first part of the book shows that Greek identity came before any loyalty to Rome (and was indeed partly a reaction to Rome), while the views of the major authors of the period, which are studies in the second part, confirm and restate the prior claims of Hellenism.

Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, A. D. 50-250

This article examines the spatial organization and architecture of Khirbet Qumran using Hillier and Hanson's Space Syntax theory, commonly called access analysis. The results show strong social boundaries and the division of the site into distinct clusters, in a specific hierarchical structure that entails ritualization. The access analysis map of Kh. Qumran is compared with those of seven other contemporaneous manor houses or villas, in which all the spatial boundaries are substantially weaker (indicated by a lower mean-depth calculation, following Hillier and Hanson). The spatial characteristics of Kh. Qumran correspond to a sectarian social organization and ideology as defined by sociologists of religion and documented in studies of different sects; these characteristics are typical of the spatial organization of several modern sects, especially the Shakers. The general characteristics are also typical of the Yahad sect of the Community Rule (1QS). They may relate to a certain social correspondence between the inhabitants of the site and the Yahad.

Access Analysis of Khirbet Qumran: Reading Spatial Organization and Social Boundaries

The archaeological excavations of the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho and the numismatic evidence on the Hasmoneans are examined in order to understand the Hasmonean rulers’ approach to Hellenistic culture. They enable us to see not only the extent of Hellenistic influence, but also how and why Hellenistic markers were used. Hellenistic art, swimming pools, bathhouses, and symbols on the coins that represent victory, success, government and power, shaped Hasmonean cultural and political identity. At the same time, however, their scope, meaning, and use were limited by the observance of ritual purity and the maintenance of local ethnic identity. Certain Greek symbols were altered to reflect Jewish religious messages. Thus, the Hasmoneans’ adoption of Hellenistic culture, while balanced, mainly served political ends.

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The Hellenization of the Hasmoneans Revisited: The Archaeological Evidence

With regard to Qumran and the New Testament, this chapter demonstrates that wealth is not merely a matter of social conditions or social reality concerning the relationship between the rich and the poor in society. It presents some of the approaches towards wealth in the Qumran sects and the early Christian communities. It explains similarities and significant differences between Qumranic and early Christian approaches. The chapter also shows that certain approaches to wealth and its conceptualisation as a social boundary are markers of sectarian ideology. In doing so the author is following his own treatment of the subject in his book Sectarianism in Qumran: A Cross-Cultural Perspective . Hence, it is possible to observe whether the early Christians adopted sectarian approaches to wealth, quite similar to the Qumran sects, or were they rather more conformist in relation to the surrounding society. Keywords: early Christian approaches; New Testament; Qumran; sectarian ideology

Wealth And Sectarianism: Comparing Qumranic And Early Christian Social Approaches

Two leading figures in the social-scientific study of the NT declared in the 1980s that the view that early Christianity was a sect within Judaism had become “a commonplace.”1 Since then, a growing number of scholars have adopted this view. Consequently, different groups and communities reflected (whether directly or implicitly) in the NT Gospels and epistles are usually regarded as having departed from Jewish society (but not necessarily from the Jewish religion, that is, the later “parting of the ways”) already in the initial phases of early Christianity . In the present article, I will question this claim by showing that the sociological concept “sect” is narrower than many NT scholars realize. I will survey the studies expressing the consensus and discuss the models of sectarianism they employ and the ways they apply them to the NT, in whole or in part. Later on, I will demonstrate the absence of three essential sectarian criteria from many NT texts: social separation, social requirements and sanctions, and a fixed organization or institutionalization. By examining whether the community reflected in a given Gospel or epistle was a sect—or at the very least, displays a sectarian worldview—I aim to question whether the author perceived his group or close associates as a distinct social body apart from the larger Jewish society. The following discussion will not be limited to the Jewish Christians and their relationship with fellow Jews; given the blurred distinctions between the so-called “Jewish” and “Gentile” Christian communities, and since many communities were mixed,2 many of the NT writings will be examined for the insights they offer.

Were the Early Christians Sectarians

Quand Pompee arriva en Palestine en 63 avant JC, Jean Hyrcan II et Aristobule II se disputait le trone d'Israel. Israel finit par tomber aux mains des Romains apres la prise de Jerusalem. Flavius Josephe decrit le siege de la Montagne du Temple par Pompee dans les Antiquites juives (XIV 58-68). Ce recit revele une foule de details problematiques sur le plan historique. L'A. se propose de poser ces problemes et de les resoudre pour comprendre les circonstances dans lesquelles des decrets ont ete edictes pour interdire le combat durant le Sabbat pendant cette periode

Eyal Regev

Papers

Access Analysis of Khirbet Qumran: Reading Spatial Organization and Social Boundaries

The Hellenization of the Hasmoneans Revisited: The Archaeological Evidence

Wealth And Sectarianism: Comparing Qumranic And Early Christian Social Approaches

Were the Early Christians Sectarians

How Did the Temple Mount Fall to Pompey