What does it mean to give honor to someone? When we think of honoring someone, we usually think of retirement banquets, putting flowers on the graves on Memorial Day, or taking Mom out to dinner on Mother's Day. We have our rituals of honor, but frankly, the idea of honoring someone as a matter of daily life sounds foreign to us. In the Greco-Roman world and the Ancient Near East, the idea of honor, and its counterpart shame, was at the center of life. Greek philosophers exhorted folks to do that which was "noble" and "honorable" and to avoid that which was "disgraceful" and "shameful." Rarely do we find the philosophers instructing, as we might in Western Civilization, to do what is "right" or "profitable" versus what is "wrong" or "unprofitable."
Honor is a relational concept. Our honor is ever under scrutiny. When someone embodies the qualities a group values, we say that person is honorable. Honor functions in a couple of different ways. First, honor refers to how we think about ourselves. To the degree we think we embody important qualities, we have self-respect. Second, there is also the ongoing evaluation signaled back to us by significant others and significant groups whose estimation we value. By doing what is honorable in the eyes of our significant communities, we increase our solidarity with that community and strengthen shared values concerning what is honorable. In return, the community reflects to us that we are honorable people worthy of full participation in the community with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.
Shame is largely the converse of honor. Shame comes from exhibiting qualities that fail to match our image of ourselves as honorable people. Our significant others and significant communities reflect back to us displeasure and varying degrees of censure when we do not exhibit the expected qualities. Particularly egregious failures or persistent failures can lead to shunning.
It is hard for us in Western societies to appreciate the powerful pull this concept of honor and shame had on the Greco-Roman world. (Our friends in present-day Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures have a leg up on us here.) We tend to think that if we fall out of favor with one group, we will just join another. It simply was not that easy for most within the world of the biblical era. Honor and shame were thoroughly institutionalized. We tend to give honor to people based on achievement. This was true of the Greeks and Romans, but they also had extensive rituals of honor related to many ascribed qualities like age, class, family line, patron-client relationships, gods worshiped, and many other criteria. Honoring someone, whether for achievement or some ascribed status, was not just about the person being honored. It was about honoring the entire social order. Failure to show another person proper honor was understood as a threat to the entire social order.
This is where Greco-Religion religion played such a central role. Unlike in our era, there was no distinction between the state and religion. Each of the gods, and the various festivals associated with them, were associated with various virtues of Greco-Roman society. By worshiping and honoring these gods, you showed solidarity with what society and the state considered honorable. Each household adopted one of the state-approved gods as the god for the household. The paterfamilias would lead the household in rituals that honored the household god daily. Reinforcement of loyalty to the system of honor and shame was ubiquitous.
To foreshadow a topic that will come up in later posts, reflect on how we typically honor and distinguish people. We honor a king or queen by placing a crown on their head. We use hats to signal various information about an individual in the military. When we go to graduations, people wear caps with a tassel, which they move from one side to the other as a rite of passage. When conducting other tasks like estimating the number of people in a room, we often say we want a "headcount." Ranchers talk about how many "head of cattle" they have. Each of these instances exemplifies the fact that the head is often the most easily distinguished feature of a body and is, therefore, often used as a proxy for the entire body. It is a symbolic representation of the whole being. Thus, in a culture of honor and shame, to honor the "head" was to honor the whole unit symbolically. To dishonor the head was to dishonor the whole unit. That unit could vary from the state to a family line, to a particular household group, but each of these units had something or someone that metaphorically served as the head (i.e., symbolic representation of the whole) for that unit. Paying honor to the head was critical for the cohesion of the honor and shame society.
Next, considering all we have been reviewing, we will look at the centrality of the household as an institution in Greco-Roman society.
God was already subverting this notion back in Ezekiel 18. It was one of my lectionary readings today (I go with the Anglican l. right now). It struck me - because of the renewed attention the h/s "system" is getting because of world events - that though God is not an "individualist", nor are we to be "lone ranger" Christians, God really does hold each person responsible for his/her actions, and nobody else.
Dana
Posted by: Dana Ames | May 24, 2007 at 10:53 AM
I think in scripture, God uses h/s to transform us but it becomes eschatological. Our reference group and significant others become God and his people as we will be in the New Creation. That is precisely why the New Creation is so threatening to the "eternal present" of this world order.
Posted by: Michael W. Kruse | May 24, 2007 at 03:53 PM