Introduction

The previous chapter demonstrated how both agrarian societies and the New Testament text world are more complex than the cultural stereotype of a normative Mediterranean honour culture offered by members of the Context Group. It revealed that social actors are not simply constrained by such allegedly normative values but may also appropriate cultural resources, frequently religious ideologies, to form alternative structures within their social worlds which may provide a means for mediating the cultural contradictions that more customarily define agrarian societies. However, social approaches to New Testament texts have repeatedly neglected the social potential of religious social actors. This chapter reveals a pattern of sidelining such actors which is evident in the normative values promoted by members of the Context Group and is paralleled in current discussions of ‘asceticism’, which predominantly associate ‘asceticism’ with the self-mastery of an individual who stands apart from the social world. Indeed, this pattern continues despite an interpretative context within the sociology of religion in which the nature of ‘asceticism’ is being critically revised. This neglect is addressed, not by offering an alternative overarching model, but rather by focusing on just one form of practice which such religious social actors may manifest: ‘virtuoso religion’, i.e. forms of piety that may lead to the formation of religious orders. ‘Virtuoso religion’ is a particularly pertinent focus for study because its loci of operation are frequently prominent at the interface of values and practices.