Description
The volume provides new Weberian readings and reconstructions of social and cultural processes in ancient Israel and formative Judaism as evidenced in the literary and material remains of the society. It places Weber's Ancient Judaism into the context of Weber's considered as a whole, and establishes that there is more to the legacy of Weber in biblical studies than reliance on the AJ text suggests.
Readers are introduced to the central themes in Weber's sociology, including his distinctive methodological positions, and are taken through a series of studies that utilize Weber's concepts and theories relating to law, charisma, stratification, work ethics, disenchantment and rationalization in relation to Biblical social worlds. These applications are considered critically, and the overall aim is to establish what a Weberian approach to ancient Biblical would be constituted by at the same time as integrating Weber's approach with the best in contemporary social science criticism and, when necessary, to develop a neo- and post -Weberian stance in relation to certain social variables and social processes.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Max Weber as The Historical Sociologist of Modernity: Introduction to Weber’s Life and Work.
Chapter 2. Weber’s Methodological Approach to the Social Sciences: Ideal Types, Verstehen, Value Relevance and Value Freedom, development and evolutionary schemes.
Chapter 3. The Bible in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Chapter 4. Weber’s Ancient Judaism in the Context of his Economic Ethics of the World Religions.
Chapter 5. Max Weber’s Sociology of Law and the Analysis of Israelite Law Codes
Chapter 6: Types of Legitimation: Traditional, Charismatic and Rational-legal Authority.
Chapter 7: The Sociology of Intellectuals: Disenchantment, Rationalization and the Differentiation of Value Spheres.
Chapter 8: Weber on the Prophets
Chapter 9: Attitudes to Economic Life in Biblical Social Worlds
Chapter 10: Class, Status and Power
Author(s)
David Chalcraft, David J. Chalcraft is Professor of Classical Sociology at the University of Derby. He is a graduate of Biblical Studies at Sheffield and Sociology at the University of Oxford. He edited Social Scientific Biblical Criticism, (Sheffield, 1997) and Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (Equinox, 2007), and is series editor of Rethinking Classical Sociology (Ashgate Publishing).