Abstract
[...]it aimed (2) to explore the potentialities and implications of sociological method for the understanding of biblical Israel. Since this initial consultation, the aim of incorporating social-scientific methods and theories into biblical studies has played a prominent role in successive and multiple SBL program units. [...]the contemporary scholarly atmosphere, which was conditioned by traditional European biblical scholarship, neo-orthodoxy, and the Biblical Theology movement, was mostly unconducive to social-scientific research programs. [...]Heather McKay (in this volume) can raise questions about the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife and offer a new interpretation from the perspective of hotel management, an approach that many traditional, modernist interpreters might deem illegitimate. [...]he argues that patronage, in conflict with the earlier kinship structures of tribal Israel, functioned as the mechanism that produced the unequal distribution of wealth and power necessary for the formation of the monarchy.