Coping with Prejudice
1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective
by Paul A. Holloway
Modern social psychology has devoted a significant share of its resources to the study of human prejudice. Most research to date has focused on those groups that exhibit prejudice. However, a number of recent studies have begun to investigate prejudice from the perspective of its targets. These studies have shown prejudice to be a powerful stressor that places unique and costly demands on its targets. They have also identified a number of strategies that targets of prejudice use to cope with their predicaments. These findings hold real promise for scholars of early Christianity, for not only were early Christians frequently the targets of religious prejudice – they were to become its perpetrators soon enough! – but much of what they wrote sought either directly or indirectly to address this problem. In this study, Paul A. Holloway applies the findings of social psychology to the early Christian pseudepigraphon known as 1 Peter. He argues that 1 Peter marks one of the earliest attempts by a Christian author to craft a more or less comprehensive response to anti-Christian prejudice and its outcomes. Unlike later Apologists, however, who also wrote in response to anti-Christian prejudice, the author of 1 Peter does not seek to influence directly the thoughts and actions of those hostile to Christianity, but writes instead for his beleaguered coreligionists, consoling them in their suffering and advising them on how to cope with popular prejudice and the persecution it engendered.
- By (author) Paul A Holloway
Other Titles in this Series
From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp
Identifying Irenaeus' Apostolic Presbyter and the Author of Ad Diognetum
Volume 186
Persecution, Persuasion and Power
Readiness to Withstand Hardship as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament
Volume 270
Rethinking the Ethics of John
"Implicit Ethics" in the Johannine Writings. Kontexte und Normen neutestamentlicher Ethik / Contexts and Norms of New Testament Ethics. Volume III
Volume 291
Von Texten zu Geschichten
Aufsätze zur Konzeption und Geschichte der Wissenschaft vom Neuen Testament
Witwen, Recht und Gerechtigkeit
Diskurse über Witwen im frühen Christentum als Rezeptionsorte prophetischer und weisheitlicher Kulturkritik
Die Christen als Fremde
'Die Metapher der Fremde in der antiken Welt, im Urchristentum und im 1. Petrusbrief'
Volume 64
Messiah and Exaltation
Jewish Messianic and Visionary Traditions and New Testament Christology
Volume 207
Allgemeines Priestertum
Zur Metaphorisierung des Priestertitels im Fruhjudentum und Neuen Testament
Volume 331
Die distanzierte Darstellung des Wunderbaren in der Apostelgeschichte
Eine erzähltechnische Konvention antiker Historiographie bei Lukas
Revelation and Conflict in John 7 and 8
Historical, Literary, and Theological Readings from the Colloquium Ioanneum 2023 in Vienna
Josephus und das Neue Testament
Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen. II. Internationales Symposium zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum. 25.-28. Mai 2006, Greifswald
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