ABSTRACT
To speak at a fairly high level of abstraction, the first-century Mediterranean world, with its pivotal values of honour and shame (Plevnik 1993:95-99), was demarcated in terms of power, gender and social status. Kinship and its set of interlocking rules formed the central social institution (von Lips 1979:126). Politics was the other major institution, with religion embedded in both of these. First-century people were thus socialized into a world where these values and institutions were part and parcel of their ‘taken-for-granted’ reality.
