Paul In His Hellenistic Context

Universalism in Judaism and Christianity / Alan F. Segal -- Yes, No, How Far?: the participation of Jews and Christians in pagan cults / Peder Borgen -- Paul and the Hellenistic schools : the evidence of Galen / Loveday Alexander -- Transferring a ritual : Paul's interpretation of baptism in Romans 6 / Hans Dieter Betz -- Enthymemic argumentation in Paul : the case of Romans 6 / David Hellholm -- Romans 7.7-25 as a speech-in-character / Stanley K. Stowers -- The quest for honor and the unity of the community in Romans 12 and the oration of Dio Chrysostom / Halvor Moxnes -- Determinism and free will in Paul : the argument of 1 Corinthians 8 and 9 / Abraham J. Malherbe -- Stoicism in Philippians / Troels Engberg-Pedersen -- Human nature and ethics in Hellenistic philosophical traditions and Paul : some issues and problems / David E. Aune.

This insightful book intends to do away with the traditional strategy of playing Judaism and Hellenism out against one another as a context for understanding Paul. Case studies focus specifically on the Corinthian correspondence.

Paul is traditionally seen as one of the founders of Christian sexual asceticism. As early as the second century C.E., church leaders looked to him as a model for their lives of abstinence. But is this a correct reading of Paul? What exactly did Paul teach on the subjects of marriage and celibacy? Will Deming here answers these questions. By placing Paul's statements on marriage and celibacy against the backdrop of ancient Hellenistic society, Deming constructs a coherent picture of Paul's views. According to Deming, the conceptual world in which Paul lived and wrote had substantially vanished by 100 C.E., and terms like "sin," "body," "sex," and "holiness" began to acquire moral implications quite unlike those Paul knew. Paul conceived of marriage as a social obligation that had the potential of distracting Christians from Christ. For him celibacy was the single life, free from such distraction, not a life of saintly denial. Sex, in turn, was natural and not sinful, and sex within marriage was both proper and necessary. Superbly researched and reasoned, this book corrects misinterpretations of Paul and restores him to his proper place in the history of Christian thought on marriage and sexuality.

Many scholars and readers of the Bible have a romantic image of Paul: born in a pious Jewish family, educated in Jerusalem at the feet of the famous Pharisaic scholar Gamliel and fluently speaking Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. However, does this fit in with the data from the genuine letters of Paul? In this book the author shows that the above mentioned image of Paul is especially derived from the Acts of the Apostles, in which the evangelist Luke has adapted the image of Paul to his own almost Pharisaic idea of the messianic time. In contrast however, Paul himself presents a completely different Christology (doctrine about Christ) in his letters. His language and way of thinking are more cognate with the Hellenistic, Greek speaking Judaism of his days. The author discusses successively: 1) Hellenism, the dominant culture of the Greek-Roman world of those days; 2) the Hellenistic Judaism of the Diaspora, which differed greatly from the Aramaic Judaism of Jesus and his early disciples; 3) the Septuagint, the Greek Bible translation, which had already existed about 300 years in the days of Paul and which deviated in many respects from the Hebrew Bible. Next the author researches what of these three phenomena could be found in the letters of Paul. Which turned out to be a lot more than he presumed at the start of his research. The Hellenistic Judaism is so intertwined with Paul's thought that the most obvious conclusion is that Paul has spent his youth and early years in a Hellenistic-Jewish milieu. This background clarifies many difficult passages in the letters of Paul and leads to a better understanding of his theology.

Reassesses Paul's thinking on marriage and his place in the history of Christian asceticism.

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.