Book Review: Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Mapping Metaphors of Family, Race, Nation.

The first epistle of Peter tells the readers that, as Christians, they have a new ethnic identity. The author of the letter uses a complex metaphor of divine regeneration with its “familial entailments” to convey this concept. Just as humans are born into a particular ethnic group, so also by divine regeneration, they are born into a new ethnic group, metaphorically speaking. They become members of a new race, the race of Christians, born anew as children of God.

“However, ethnic membership is not a matter of birth alone: it is a social construct that must be taught, negotiated, maintained and defended. It is a process of socialization that stretches from infancy to childhood and finally to adulthood.” (1–2) In pursuit of this process of socialization, the author marshals a range of metaphors drawn from the realms of procreation, family, cult (temple and priesthood), and ethnicity.

Marcar states that Christians are only explicitly described as an ethnic group in 1 Peter. Having outlined six elements of ethnic identity, following a scholar called Anthony Smith, and showing (following David Horrell) how these elements are taken up in 1 Peter, she considers the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period understood ethnic identity, with a brief look also at Greek understanding (Chapter One).

As the bulk of her book considers a series of metaphors that make up the overarching concept of divine regeneration, in Chapter Two, Marcar provides “a field guide to metaphors”. Here, she analyses the make-up of a metaphor: how one image, word or concept, a “vehicle” or “source domain”, can be transferred to provide a metaphor in a “target domain”, we might say, becoming a “tenor”. Simple metaphors can combine into systematic metaphors, which can then be summarised to bring out the core meaning. Systematic metaphors only have meaning within a specific, given context. For example, in 1 Peter various metaphors to do with ethnicity or family, can collectively yield a systematic metaphor such as “God’s family is an ethnic group”. I did wonder whether some of the discussion of a systematic metaphor was better understood as a statement of the meaning of a complex metaphor, rather than a metaphor itself.

Marcar draws on what is called Metaphor Identification Process (MIP) to determine what a metaphor is. Simply put this means identifying the basic core meaning of a word or phrase, and if, in the context in which it is found, the meaning of the same word or phrase contrasts with the basic meaning, but can be related to the basic meaning, it is a metaphor. An example from 1 Peter is the use of the word “father” for God. As the basic meaning of a father is a biological male parent, and God is obviously not that, then the word “father” used of God is a metaphor. This provides a nice, clear method of determining a metaphor, though I am in two minds as to how useful a heuristic tool it really is. The same result may be arrived at without the MIP technique. In fact, much of Marcar’s later discussion is carried on in terms of “vehicle” and “tenor”. Unfortunately, she later introduced another acronym, an extension of MIP, which addresses the issue of new formations: MIPVU (102). But no explanation is given of the meaning of MIPVU. MIP is introduced in a footnote of page 44 (footnote 95) where MIPV and MIPVU appear, but without explanation.

After an overview of the structure of 1 Peter (Chapter Three), and an identification of 1 Peter as falling within the genre of a “diaspora letter,” Marcar attends to the series of metaphors found in 1 Peter 1:3 to 2:10. In Chapter Four, she considers the metaphor of being “rebegotten” or “begotten anew”, and well as the fatherhood of God. In Chapter Five, she considers the “seed metaphors” (e.g. “imperishable seed”, 1 Peter 1:23). Chapter Six considers the metaphor of Christians as “new born babies”, part of a rhetoric in linking together themes of infancy and growth, with other metaphors of household, temple and finally nationhood and all building to the definitive statement of identity in 1 Peter 2:9–10. Chapter Seven sees a shift to building type metaphors of “house” and “temple”, metaphors which nevertheless contribute to a corporate understanding of God’s people as a “household” and a community, indeed, a chosen race.

Each of these chapters provides a rich description of the metaphors as Marcar draws upon Old Testament, Jewish intertestamental and second temple literature, as well all other New Testament writings, to explore the well of concepts and the thought-worlds, that may inform an understanding of the Petrine usage. It is impossible to capture this discussion in a brief review. However, to give an example: in examining the “seed metaphors”, Marcar examines the concept of “seed” as offspring, and descendants, leading to an examination of “royal seed” in the line of the Davidic monarchy, the “pure seed” of the Levitical priesthood, and the concern of Ezra, and Jubilees for “holy seed”. The concepts embedded in these metaphors will surface again elsewhere, as in the idea of Christians as a holy nation, or a royal priesthood.

All come together in Chapter Eight, where divine regeneration is seen as only the beginning. The believers must be “socialized” into the values of God and Christ; their identity redefined around Christ. 1 Peter makes extensive use of Jewish and early Christian traditions, repurposed for the author’s own ends. 1 Peter 1:3–2:10 establishes a framework for imagining Christian identity in terms of family and an ethnic group (257).

Marcar writes clearly and fluently. The book does show its origins as a doctoral thesis as Marcar explicitly and carefully states where she is going with her argument. The final Chapter Nine provides a summarising overview of the whole. There are some unfortunate typographical errors: such as “worldly” for “wordly” (269, a neologism), “having brother lovely” (114), or “now born” for “new born” (195; translating the Greek, artigennēta, where confusingly arti, as a temporal adverb, can mean “now”).

Marcar ably and expertly draws out the riches of 1 Peter’s systematic metaphor of divine regeneration. She deepens and enriches one’s understanding of this fascinating text. An aspect of the text where she feels she breaks new ground is in discussing the gendered nature of some of the Petrine imagery, for instance, in seeing the masculine character of the begetting language, and the feminine nature of the nursing infant imagery. I hope that she will one day share her insights in a more popular form, and thus convey the author’s desire to socialise Christians into their new ethnic identity for twenty-first-century believers.

Derek Tovey is the book review editor for Stimulus.