The Utility of Models for the Ancient Mediterranean

Here's more from Esler's book on ancient Israel, a well-formulated statement about the use of social models:

"Models are essentially simplifications...of data used for comparative processes. Those who employ them in exegesis know they are merely tools available to enable comparison. It is senseless, therefore, to ask if models are 'true' or 'false', as one certainly could ask of some alleged social law. Rather, one must judge a model by whether or not it is helpful... Models of phenomena such as identity, ethnicity, religion, sect, kinship, time, honor and shame, patron and client, collective memory, and so on allow us to interrogate those issues in biblical texts in helpful and socially important ways... Models that are employed heuristically in this way cannot reasonably be tarred with the brush of social nomism or deductivism, as some have tried to do. Nevertheless, most users of models, including the members of the Context Group, of which I am a member, do accept the existence of certain regularities of social life, even though these regularities fall short of 'social laws'... These probabilities can be used predictively... Indeed, to deny the reality or importance of [these regularities] could, in some circumstances in the Middle East, be dangerously irresponsible." (Philip Esler, Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its Social Context (edited by Esler), "Social Scientific Models in Biblical Interpretation", pp 3-4,9)