Download or read book Paul s Language of Grace in its Graeco Roman Context written by James R. Harrison and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context was originally published by Mohr Siebeck in 2003 and is now reprinted by Wipf and Stock with a new introduction by its author, James R. Harrison. The book was the first major investigation of charis (‘grace’, ‘favor’) in its social, political, and religious context since G. P. Wetter’s pioneering 1913 monograph on the topic. Focusing on the evidence of the inscriptions, papyri, philosophers, and Greek Jewish literature, Harrison examined the operations of the eastern Mediterranean benefaction system, probing the dynamic of reciprocity between the beneficiary and benefactor, whether human or divine. Before Paul’s converts were first exposed to the gospel, they would have held a variety of beliefs regarding the beneficence of the gods. The apostle, therefore, needed to tailor his language of grace as much to the theological and social concerns of the Mediterranean city-states in his missionary outreach as to the variegated traditions of first-century Judaism. In terms of human grace, although Paul endorses the reciprocity system, he redefines its rationale in light of the gospel of grace and transforms its social expression in his house churches. The explosion of ‘grace’ language that occurs in 2 Corinthians 8–9 regarding the Jerusalem collection is unusual in its frequency in comparison to the honorific inscriptions, underscoring the apostle’s distinctive approach to giving. Regarding divine beneficence, Paul accommodates his gospel to contemporary benefaction idiom. But he retains a distinctiveness of viewpoint regarding divine charis: it is non-cultic; it is mediated through a dishonored and impoverished Benefactor; it overturns the do ut des expectation (‘I give so that you may give’) regarding divine blessing in antiquity. Harrison’s book still remains the authoritative coverage of the Graeco-Roman context of charis.
Download or read book Paul and the Gift written by John M. G. Barclay and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Barclay explores Pauline theology anew from the perspective of grace. Arguing that Paul's theology of grace is best approached in light of ancient notions of "gift," Barclay describes Paul's relationship to Judaism in a fresh way. Barclay focuses on divine gift-giving, which for Paul, he says, is focused and fulfilled in the gift of Christ. He both offers a new appraisal of Paul's theology of the Christ-event as gift as it comes to expression in Galatians and Romans and presents a nuanced and detailed consideration of the history of reception of Paul, including Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Barth.
Download or read book Paul and his Theology written by Stanley E. Porter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of fifteen essays by an international group of scholars on a variety of topics in Pauline theology. These include his gentile mission, the concepts of faith, grace, and the law, reconciliation, the temple, eschatology, miracles, gender, and Paul's trinitarian tendencies.
Download or read book Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome written by James R. Harrison and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2011 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James R. Harrison investigates the collision between Paul's eschatological gospel and the Julio-Claudian conception of rule. The ruler's propaganda, with its claim about the 'eternal rule' of the imperial house over its subjects, embodied in idolatry of power that conflicted with Paul's proclamation of the reign of the risen Son of God over his world. This ideological conflict is examined in 1 and 2 Thessalonians and in Romans, exploring how Paul's eschatology intersected with the imperial cult in the Greek East and in the Latin West. A wide selection of evidence - literary, documentary, numismatic, iconographic, archeological - unveils the 'symbolic universe' of the Julio-Claudian rulers. This construction of social and cosmic reality stood at odds with the eschatological denouement of world history, which, in Paul's view, culminated in the arrival of God's new creation upon Christ's return as Lord of all. Paul exalted the Body of Christ over Nero's 'body of state', transferring to the risen and ascended Jesus many of the ruler's titles and to the Body of Christ many of the ruler's functions. Thus, for Paul, Christ's reign challenged the values of Roman society and transformed its hierarchical social relations through the Spirit.
Download or read book Jews in a Graeco Roman Environment written by Margaret H. Williams and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2013 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of articles published previously.
Download or read book Paul and the Ancient Celebrity Circuit written by James R. Harrison and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this study, James R. Harrison compares the modern cult of celebrity to the quest for glory in late republican and early imperial society. He shows how Paul's ethic of humility, based upon the crucified Christ, stands out in a world obsessed with mutual comparison, boasting, and self-sufficiency." --
Download or read book Enabling Fidelity to God written by Jason A. Whitlark and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The primary focus of this book is to demonstrate how Hebrews represents, in view of its historical and religious context, human fidelity to God. Thus, the basic thesis is twofold. First, with regard to the divine-human relationship in the ancient Mediterranean world, the belief in the reciprocity rationale was one primary dynamic for establishing fidelity to a relationship and has been applied by some scholars, such as David deSilva, to Hebrews as the way to understand its strategy for creating perseverance. A major problem with the application of this dynamic is that a common optimistic anthropological assumption is associated with the various reciprocity systems in the ancient world, both Jewish and pagan. This assumption is required if reciprocity is to be effective for establishing ongoing fidelity. Second, there was, however, a middle Judaic stream that can be traced from the period of the exile which held to a pessimistic anthropology. This anthropological assumption crippled the perceived success of reciprocity to secure fidelity. Thus, the solution to God's people's inability to remain faithful was an act of God that transformed the human condition and enabled faithfulness to the relationship. The argument of this book is that Hebrews, with its emphasis upon the inauguration of the new covenant by Jesus' high priestly ministry, belongs to this latter stream of thought in understanding how fidelity is secured between God and his people. Hebrews, thus, implicitly rejects the rationale of reciprocity for fidelity. The implications of this offers a fresh perspective on the soteriology of Hebrews.
Download or read book Paul and the Dynamics of Power written by Kathy Ehrensperger and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illuminating study Kathy Ehrensperger looks at the question of Paul's use of power and authority as an apostle who understands himself as called to proclaim the Gospel among the gentiles. Ehrensperger examines the broad range of perspectives on how this use of power should be evaluated. These range from the traditional interpretation of unquestioned, taken for granted for a church leader, to a feminist interpretation. She examines whether or not Paul's use of power presents an open or hidden re-inscription of hierarchical structures in what was previously a discipleship of equals. Paul and the Dynamics of Power questions whether such hierarchical tendencies are rightly identified within Paul's discourse of power. Furthermore it considers whether these are inherently and necessarily expressions of domination and control and are thus in opposition to a 'discipleship of equals'? In her careful analysis Ehrensperger draws on such wide-ranging figures as Derrida, Michel Foucault and James Scott. This enables fresh insights into Paul's use of authority and power in its first century context.
Download or read book The Offering of the Gentiles written by David J. Downs and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monetary fund that the apostle Paul organized among his Gentile congregations for the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem was clearly an important endeavor to Paul; discussion of it occupies several prominent passages in his letters. In this book David Downs carefully investigates that offering from historical, sociocultural, and theological standpoints. Downs first pieces together a chronological account of Paul's fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Jerusalem church, based primarily on information from the Pauline epistles. He then examines the sociocultural context of the collection, including gift-giving practices in the ancient Mediterranean world relating to benefaction and care for the poor. Finally, Downs explores how Paul framed this contribution rhetorically as a religious offering consecrated to God. (Publisher).
Download or read book The Apostle Paul written by Porter and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2016 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There are many introductions to the life, thought, and letters of Paul the apostle. Some concentrate upon his life, while others focus upon his thought, and still others on his letters. A few of them, like this book, try to integrate all three of them -- including on occasion material from the book of Acts -- into a useful portrait of the man and what he said and thought as revealed through his letters." - from preface.
Download or read book Paul s Letters and Contemporary Greco Roman Literature written by Paul Robertson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Paul Robertson re-describes Paul’s letters in a way that facilitates empirical comparison with other understudied texts, and theorizes a new taxonomy of the Greco-Roman literary landscape of the ancient Mediterranean.
Download or read book Paul and Patronage written by Joshua Rice and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how leadership and authority functioned in the Pauline church remains one of the most polarizing issues in New Testament scholarship today. On the one side are egalitarian and counterimperial readings that stake their interpretation of the liberating gospel upon a depiction of the Pauline church as radically countercultural with regard to leadership and authority. On the other side are authoritarian readings that just as easily conceive of Paul as fully embedded within the cultural conceptions and structures of leadership and authority in vogue across the Greco-Roman world. This study employs social-science criticism to construct a model of ancient patronage conventions and power-exchange dynamics in the Greco-Roman world, and this model is then applied to 1 Corinthians. This study finds that when Paul addresses his own apostolic relationship to the Corinthians, he tends toward reinscribing traditional hierarchies, but that when Paul addresses relationships between participants of the Corinthian assembly, he tends toward overturning them.
Download or read book Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness written by T. J. Lang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In general, theological terms this study examines the interplay of early Christian understandings of history, revelation, and identity. The book explores this interaction through detailed analysis of appeals to "mystery" in the Pauline letter collection and then the discourse of previously hidden but newly revealed mysteries in various second-century thinkers. T.J. Lang argues that the historical coordination of the concealed/revealed binary ("the mystery previously hidden but presently revealed") enabled these early Christian authors to ground Christian claims - particularly key ecclesial, hermeneutical, and christological claims - in Israel's history and in the eternal design of God while at the same time accounting for their revelatory newness. This particular Christian conception of time gives birth to a new and totalizing historical consciousness, and one that has significant implications for the construction of Christian identity, particularly vis-à-vis Judaism.
Download or read book Journal of Greco Roman Christianity and Judaism Volume 19 written by Stanley E. Porter and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-04-10 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the nineteenth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.jgrchj.net) since 2000. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, languages and cultures of the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism. The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the ‘larger picture’ of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.
Download or read book Paul and Philosophy written by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies written by Matthew V. Novenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies brings together a diverse international group of experts on the apostle Paul. It examines the authentic texts from his own hand, other ancient texts falsely attributed to him, the numerous early Christian legends about him, and the many meanings that have been and still are made of these texts to give a twenty-first century snapshot of Pauline Studies. Divided into five key sections, the Handbook begins by examining Paul the person - a largely biographical sketching of the life of Paul himself to the limited extent that it is possible to do so. It moves on to explore Paul in context and Pauline Literature, looking in detail at the letters, manuscripts, and canons that constitute most of our extant evidence for the apostle. Part Four uses a number of classic motifs to describe what modern experts describe as 'Pauline Theology', and Part Five considers the many productive reading strategies with which recent interpreters have made meaning of the letters of Paul. It is demonstrated that 'reading Paul' is not, and never has been, just one thing. It has always been a matter of the particular questions and interests that the reader brings to these very generative texts. The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies thoroughly surveys the state of Pauline studies today, paying particular attention to theory and method in interpretation. It considers traditional approaches alongside recent approaches to Paul, including gender, race and ethnicity, and material culture. Brought together, the chapters are an ideal resource for teachers and students of Paul and his letters.
Download or read book Paul s Spirit of Adoption in its Roman Imperial Context written by Robert Brian Lewis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Lewis examines Paul's use of the phrase “Spirit of Adoption” in Romans 8:12-17 against the background of its Roman Imperial context in order to shed light on interpretation of Paul's Letter to the Romans. Whereas other scholars have explored what Paul may have meant when he uses the term “adoption” Lewis instead explores the reasons behind Paul's coupling of it with the term “spirit”. Having examined theories for a possible Jewish antecedent for Paul's use of this phrase, and found them less than persuasive, Lewis unlocks the data within the term's Roman Imperial context that significantly clarifies what Paul means when he uses the phrase “Spirit of adoption". Lewis shows that when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, adoption had become a feature of Imperial succession. Roman religion gave a great deal of prominence to the Roman family spirit - the genius. The Emperor's genius became identified as a deity in Roman religion and its veneration was widespread in Rome as well as the provinces. When Romans 8.12-17 is read against this background, a very different kind of exegetical picture emerges.
