In his letters Paul speaks often of his emotions, and also promotes certain feelings while banishing others. This indicates that for Paul, emotion is vital. However, in New Testament studies, the study of emotions is still nascent; current research in the social sciences highlights its cognitive and social dimensions. Ian Y. S. Jew combines rigorous social-scientific analysis and exegetical enquiry to argue that emotions are intrinsic to the formation of the Pauline communities, as they encode belief structures and influence patterns of social experience.
By taking joy in Philippians and grief in 1 Thessalonians as representative emotions, and contrasting Paul's approach with that of his Stoic contemporaries, Jew demonstrates that authorized feelings have socially integrating and differentiating functions; by reinforcing the shared theological realities upon which emotional norms are based, group belonging is bolstered. Simultaneously, authorized emotions fortify the theological boundaries between Christians and others, which strengthens group solidarity in the Church by accentuating its members' insider status. Using this framework heuristically, Jew explores how the interplay of symbolic, ritual, and social elements within Paul's eschatological worldview reinforces emotional norms, and demonstrates that attention to emotion can only deepen our understanding of the social formation of the early believers.
Given the dearth of non-messianic interpretations of Psalm 110:1 in non-Christian Second Temple Jewish texts, why did it become such a widely used messianic prooftext in the New Testament and early Christianity? Previous attempts to answer this question have focused on why the earliest Christians first began to use Ps 110:1. The result is that these proposals do not provide an adequate explanation for why first century Christians living in the Greek East employed the verse and also applied it to Jesus’s exaltation. I contend that two Greco-Roman politico-religious practices, royal and imperial temple and throne sharing—which were cross-cultural rewards that Greco-Roman communities bestowed on beneficent, pious, and divinely approved rulers—contributed to the widespread use of Ps 110:1 in earliest Christianity. This means that the earliest Christians interpreted Jesus’s heavenly session as messianic and thus political, as well as religious, in nature.
Isaac Blois argues that Paul's focus in Philippians on the mutual boasting shared between himself and his converts draws on the mutual boasting shared between Israel and her covenant God, as apparent in both Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Using the appearance of this central theme in the pivotal passages of Phil 1:25-26 and 2:14-16 as his focus, Blois stresses the integral relation between mutual boasting and the role that it plays in Paul's exhortations to the Philippian believers, exploring its backdrop in both the biblical tradition and the surrounding culture.
Blois demonstrates how the mutual boasting that Paul shares with his beloved community is shown to be culturally appropriate as well, since the sharing of honor among friends and family was common in antiquity, as seen through the epistolary writing of prominent Roman authors such as Cicero, Seneca, and Fronto. In light of the Scriptural and cultural basis for this motif of shared boasting, the apostle is thus able to deploy the motif in order to motivate an appropriate response from his audience in the letter. Focusing on the prominence of mutual honor and its use for motivation in Philippians 1 and 2, Blois offers a fresh perspective on the exhortative function of the eschatological boasting that is to exist between Paul and his congregation on the day of Christ.
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