Volume 113, Issue 2

Interpreters who have claimed that Paul viewed the heavenly bodies of 1Cor 15,40–41 as living beings have used two basic arguments that are each beset by inherent weaknesses. One enumerates the views of various Hellenistic philosophers and others concerning the animate nature of the stars. The other argument claims that all usages of σῶμα in Paul refer to organic entities. Scholars have often ignored handbooks such as those of Aetius that include many alternative views. Paul based his affirmations on sense experience and probably believed that the heavenly bodies were creations of God — but not animate beings. A corollary of this conclusion is that Paul’s statements about heavenly bodies do not indicate anything about the composition of the σῶμα πνευματικόν in 1Cor 15.

Zusammenfassung Die vorliegende Untersuchung fragt nach dem argumentationsstrategischen Potential der Mehrdeutigkeit der Gottgleichheitsaussage in Phil 2,6b. Es wird die Annahme durchgespielt, dass Paulus diese Mehrdeutigkeit strategisch in seiner Argumentation in 1,27–2,18 einsetzt und seine Adressaten durch die elliptische Formulierung von 2,5b auf diese Mehrdeutigkeit vorbereitet. Auf inhaltlicher Ebene ist die Mehrdeutigkeit von 2,6 in besonderer Weise geeignet, gleichzeitig zwei Handlungsorientierungen vom Christusereignis her für die Menschen in der Jesusnachfolge grundlegend auszuschließen: Den Menschen „in Christus“ darf es weder zentral um Statusbewahrung noch um Statusverbesserung gehen.

The combined wording in 1 Tim 1:18 of στρατεύω + στρατεία can be rendered in English “fight the fight,” “battle the battle,” or more generally “perform military service” or “serve in a military campaign.” The combination surprizingly occurs often throughout Greco-Roman literature to express a patriotic warfare idiom for good character revealed by persevering through warfare or military campaigns. This idiom is applied to Timothy to demonstrate his good Christian character and reputation over against the false teachers’ bad character. The idiom also occurs often in a legal context to affirm a person’s character and good reputation, which qualifies a person to be an officer of the court or endorses a person’s character before the court in a legal dispute, showing him to be worthy of an innocent verdict. In 1 Timothy this idiom is used in a legal context (accompanied repeatedly by the μάρτυς word group, as in the Hellenistic occurrences of the idiom) that demonstrates and acquits Timothy’s character and reputation before the false teachers. The redundant word combination of ἀγωνίζομαι + ἀγών (“struggle the struggle”) in 1 Tim 6:12 and 2 Tim 4:7 is recognized by commentators as a development of the phrase in 1 Tim 1:18. In the Greek world, this also is a well-worn idiom used in the same way as the στρατεύω + στρατεία expression, most likely highlighting the difficulty of the fight. This is why the expression ἀγωνίζομαι + ἀγών is synonymous with the expression in 1 Tim 1:18, even with the added adjective “good.” This is also why some English translations even translate the redundant expressions in 1 Tim 1:18, 1 Tim 6:12, and 2 Tim 4:7 as “fight the good fight,” clearly seeing στρατεύω + στρατεία and ἀγωνίζομαι + ἀγών as synonymous. This lexical study of Greco-Roman backgrounds endorses the conclusion that the two expressions are idioms and are synonymous.

In the twenty-five years since Richard Ascough’s article, “Translocal Relationships among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity,” scholarship has largely swung the pendulum away from viewing the translocality of early-Christ groups as an anomaly and using that “uniqueness” as justification for denying the heuristic value of Greco-Roman associations for understanding Christ-groups. A side-effect of this shift, however, has been that scholars often only compare Greco-Roman associations and Christ-groups on the basis of local instantiations. This article, in contrast, recovers a focus on the translocal relationships between associations, examining various motivations for translocal relationships between voluntary associations and showing the heuristic payoff for comparing translocal voluntary associations with early Christ-groups. Additionally, the article concludes that the comparison should work in both directions. That is, the nature of the evidence of the translocality of early Christ-groups actually allows these groups to function as an important heuristic for translocal Greco-Roman associations.

Scholarship on children and childhood in the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible increasingly uses the term “agency” for children’s actions. However, the use of this term remains undertheorized. This article offers a theoretically informed usage of the concept “agency” so as to analyze the dynamics in children’s actions. With a comparative study of Synoptic and early rabbinic parables, it is examined how a son’s agency interrelates with his father’s exercise of authority. It is also shown how the behaviour of these sons is implicitly or explicitly assessed from the adult male perspective of the head of the household. Finally, since the agency of sons frequently represents the human free will in relation to God, the article explains how the Synoptic and early rabbinic parables socialize their audiences in their correct attitude toward God.

Zusammenfassung Nicht nur bei zahlreichen griechisch-römischen Autoren der Antike, sondern auch in jüngsten Publikationen findet sich die Annahme, dass die Ablehnung jeder Form von Tischgemeinschaft mit Nichtjuden ein weit verbreitetes und weitgehend einheitliches Merkmal jüdischer Frömmigkeit im Judentum zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels war. Demgegenüber wird hier anhand einer exemplarischen Untersuchung des Buches Judith und der Erzählung von Josef und Asenet argumentiert, dass das antike Judentum von komplexen und teilweise widersprüchlichen Diskursen zu diesem Thema geprägt war. Verschiedene Formen der Essens- oder Tischgemeinschaft zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden konnten als legitim angesehen werden, solange bestimmte Bedingungen erfüllt waren.