In 1960, Edwin Judge described the early Christian communities as 'scholastic communities'. Since then, he has continued to explore this aspect of early Christian communities. However, while his pioneering work in this field has become a standard point of departure for the socio-historical study of the early Christian movement, with the search for comparative analogies or models from antiquity dominating research into the formation and character of early Christian communities, the 'scholastic communities' description has received scant attention. This thesis explores the 'scholastic community' description, not to shed light on other, albeit related, socio-historical issues, but to ascertain the appropriateness of the description in light of the place and practice of teaching in early Christian communities. The place and practice is determined through an exegetical study of the vocabulary of 'teaching' in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. Rather than utilizing sociological or comparative models, this thesis deliberately adopts an emic approach for the prior task of social description through an analysis of New Testament texts. The thesis approaches the vocabulary of 'teaching' using a two-pronged approach that takes paradigmatic and syntagmatic sense relations into account. Regarding the first, it studies the vocabulary in semantic groupings based on the lexical base of the target literature. These semantic groupings correspond to the chapters of the thesis, and allow comparison within and across groupings. Ten semantic groupings are identified: 'core-teaching words', 'speaking', 'traditioning', 'announcing', 'revealing', 'worshipping', 'commanding', 'correcting', 'remembering', and 'false teaching'. Regarding syntagmatic concerns, the thesis studies each occurrence of each 'teaching' word in its discourse context. To ensure uniformity of method, each occurrence is studied using an heuristic tool developed here for the collection and analysis of data. This identifies the addresser, addressees, message, type of content, mode, location, authority register, nature of authority, agent, means, manner, purpose and result of the activities indicated in the text. The yield of this detailed exegesis is then used to determine the presence, significance, prominence and practice of educational activities in the Christian communities portrayed in the target literature. The methodology is deliberately text-based, so that the findings are determined by the data of the four letters. The thesis concludes that Judge's description of early Christian communities as 'scholastic communities' is supported by the vocabulary of 'teaching' in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. The detailed vocabulary analysis also enables the description to be filled out, so that it can be understood broadly, reflecting the wide range of educative activities represented by the vocabulary, and occurring within relationships/communities that have a divine as well as human dimension. Indeed, the two elements of the description are found to be in a dialectic relationship, where scholastic activities shape the expression and experience of the community, and reciprocally, the community provides the context for and shapes the educational environment. Given the extra dimensions the thesis adds to the description, and the several inadequacies inherent in a simplistic understanding of it, this thesis proposes the alternative description of 'learning communities'. This description also allows for the priority of the divine dimension of educational activities in which the character, work and purposes of God are seen to provide the context and contours of these 'learning communities'.
| Date of Award | 2009 |
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| Original language | English |
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