A critical study of early christian construction of identity in 1 John : a social identity and social network analytic approach

Abstract

This thesis' primary research question revolves around how 1 John created identity and boundaries. The primary methodology of this study is embedded in the social scientific exegesis of the New Testament (Van Aarde & Joubert, 2009). In this study, the elements of Social Identity Theory (Tucker et al., 2014; 2020) will be incorporated with the critical aspects of social network analyses (Roitto, 2019) within the Johannine community to study and evaluate how identity and boundaries were constructed. The contribution of this study is grounded in that it finds the research gap of a combination of three distinct theoretical fields, namely a) the most recent perspectives of 1 John from a Social Identity perspective, b) the social network theoretical perspectives in conjunction with c) social scientific insights with regard to early first century social values such as dyadic personalities, reciprocity, honour, and shame, etc. This study is cordoned off by limiting the field of interpretive analysis specifically to a study of 1 John.