This book has argued that forms of piety indigenous to first-century Judaea are particularly pertinent for our understanding of both the New Testament's ‘poor’ and the Johannine tradition, accounting for the latter's distinctiveness more plausibly than the currently fashionable ‘sectarian’ interpretations.

In developing this argument a more integrated social-scientific strategy has been advocated, which views the social world as a complex of interacting social dimensions (following Friedrichs, Ritzer, and others). This integrated approach has encouraged a more dynamic understanding of the New Testament world. The utility of viewing the social world in this way has been demonstrated in the critical revision of the model of a normative Mediterranean honour culture as advocated by members of the Context Group of scholars (e.g. Malina, Esler, et al.). This revision has observed how their model obscures both historical and cultural diversity, especially the particular character of first-century Judaea. In addition, the revision has illustrated how attempts to move away from the theologically conceived Sitz im Leben have resulted in the neglect of the role of the religious social actor in the transformation and maintenance of social worlds. This has been shown to be reinforced by the particular tendency within foundational works on the sociology of religion either to absorb such actors totally or to place them at the margins of any given social world (e.g. Weber). This tendency has also been shown to be evident in recent discussions of the ascetic in the New Testament.