This book is an attempt to engage in some detail with Paul's ethics, in a way which is both serious and historically informed, but also in a way shaped by debates in the contemporary field of ethics, specifically the debate between liberals and communitarians.
The first letter of Peter remains a relatively neglected corner of the New Testament: the number of monographs devoted to it is tiny, compared with those on the Gospels and Pauline letters. Yet it is a text - so this book argues - that offers much insight into crucial processes in the development of Christian identity. In particular, 1 Peter illustrates with particular clarity the complex ways in which Christian identity was forged from Jewish traditions and negotiated in the generally hostile Roman empire. As such, studies of this particular letter illuminate central themes in the making of Christianity in the earliest centuries. "Becoming Christian" is a collection of essays that treat various facets of the first letter of Peter, in its social and historical setting, in some cases using new social-scientific and postcolonial methods to shed light on the ways in which the letter contributes to the making of Christian identity. At the heart of the book are chapters 5-7, which examine the contribution of 1 Peter to the construction of Christian identity, the persecution and suffering of Christians in Asia Minor, the significance of the name 'Christian', and the response of the letter to the hostility encountered by Christians in society. There are no recent books which bring together such a wealth of information and analysis of this crucial early Christian text. "Becoming Christian" has developed out of Horrell's ongoing research for the International Critical Commentary on 1 Peter. Together these essays will offer a series of significant and original engagements with this letter, and a resource for studies of 1 Peter for some time to come.
The biblical and Christian traditions have long been seen to have legitimated and encouraged humanity's aggressive domination of nature. Biblical visions of the future, with destruction for the earth and rescue for the elect, have also discouraged any concern for the earth's future or the welfare of future generations. But we now live in a time when environmental issues are at the centre of political and ethical debate. What is needed is a new reading of the biblical tradition that can meet the challenges of the ecological issues that face humanity at the beginning of the third millennium. 'The Bible and the Environment' examines a range of biblical texts - from Genesis to Revelation - evaluating competing interpretations. The Bible provides a thoroughly ambivalent legacy. Certainly, it cannot provide straightforward teaching on care for the environment but nor can it simply be seen as an anti-ecological book. Developing an 'ecological hermeneutic' as a way of mediating between contemporary concerns and the biblical text, 'The Bible and the Environment' presents a way of productively reading the Bible in the context of contemporary ecology.
The second volume in Travis B. Williams' and David G. Horrell's magisterial ICC commentary on first Peter. Williams and Horrell bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the letter. This second covers the major part of the letter, providing commentary on 2.11 to the end of the letter. The exegesis provides for each passage sections on bibliography, text-criticism, literary introduction, detailed exegesis, and overall summary. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography, which covers the whole epistle.
Some of today’s problematic ideologies of racial and religious difference can be traced back to constructions of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. New Testament studies, which developed contemporaneously with Europe’s colonial expansion and racial ideologies, is, David Horrell argues, therefore an important site at which to probe critically these ideological constructions and their contemporary implications. In Ethnicity and Inclusion, Horrell explores the ways in which “ethnic” (and “religious”) characteristics feature in key Jewish and early Christian texts, challenging the widely accepted dichotomy between a Judaism that is ethnically defined and a Christianity that is open and inclusive. Then, through an engagement with whiteness studies, he offers a critique of the implicit whiteness and Christianness that continue to dominate New Testament studies today, arguing that a diversity of embodied perspectives is epistemologically necessary.
In this volume David Horrell focuses on themes of community, ethics, and ecology in Paul, moving from the concrete social circumstances in which the earliest Christian communities gathered to the appropriation of Paul’s writings in relation to modern ethical challenges. Often questioning established consensus positions, Horrell opens up new perspectives and engages with ongoing debates both in Pauline studies and in contemporary ethics. After covering historical questions about the setting of the Paul-ine communities, The Making of Christian Morality analyzes Paul-ine ethics through a detailed study of particular passages. In the third and final section Horrell brings Pauline thought to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, using the environmental crisis as a case study to demonstrate how Paul’s ethics can be appropriated fruitfully in a world so different from Paul’s own.
This book, a revision of the author's dissertation, describes the grounds on which knowledge about God is possible according to the Gospel of John. In response to modern questions and doubts about the possibility of religious knowledge, John's answers are identified and illuminated using standard historical method. A major part of this investigation is spent showing that, for readers of all persuasions, it is clear that certain parts of John's Gospel were never intended as either fiction or metaphor. From these parts, the basis on which John thinks that people can have religious knowledge is inferred and described.
David G. Horrell presents a study of Pauline ethics, examining how Paul's moral discourse envisages and constructs communities in which there is a strong sense of solidarity but also legitimate difference in various aspects of ethical practice. Horrell reads New Testament texts with an explicit awareness of contemporary ethical theory, and assesses Paul's contribution as a moral thinker in the context of modern debate. Using a framework indebted to the social sciences, as well as to contemporary ethical theory, Horrell examines the construction of community in Paul's letters, the notions of purity, boundaries and identity, Paul's attempts to deal with diversity in his churches, the role of imitating Christ in Paul's ethics, and the ethic Paul develops for interaction with 'outsiders'. Finally, the pattern of Paul's moral thinking is considered in relation to the liberal-communitarian debate, with explicit consideration given to the central moral norms of Pauline thought, and the prospects for, and problems with, appropriating these in the contemporary world. This Cornerstones edition includes an extended reflective introduction and a substantial foreword from N.T. Wright.
In the tradition of The First Urban Christians by Wayne Meeks, this book explores the relationship between the earliest Christians and the city environment. Experts in classics, early Christianity, and human geography analyze the growth, development, and self-understanding of the early Christian movement in urban settings. The book's contributors first look at how the urban physical, cultural, and social environments of the ancient Mediterranean basin affected the ways in which early Christianity progressed. They then turn to how the earliest Christians thought and theologized in their engagement with cities. With a rich variety of expertise and scholarship, The Urban World and the First Christians is an important contribution to the understanding of early Christianity.
When Paul heard that a Christ-follower in Corinth was in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, the apostle insisted the man be removed immediately from the congregation. This dramatic response is surprising, as Paul responds to other serious situations with much less vehemence. Why did Paul react to the immoral man with such urgency and severity? Using socio-cultural tools, this study explains the importance of group identity and witness for Paul’s ecclesiology. The argument lays a foundation for contemporary readers to appraise contexts where an expulsive response to sin might be appropriate.
This tried and tested introduction to Paul needs little introduction of its own. After considering Paul's importance and influence, and the important sources for the study of Paul, the volume covers the following key topics: the earliest period of Christianity - from Jesus to Paul; Paul's life before and after his 'conversion'; his individual letters; the major elements of his theology; his attitude to Israel and the Jewish law; perspectives on the Pauline assemblies, including their socio-economic location, meeting places, and attitudes towards women; and Paul's legacy in the New Testament and beyond. The volume has been revised throughout and fully updated with respect to bibliography, and to presenting the latest debates surrounding Paul's thought in a manageable format - including those around 'old' and 'new' perspectives, with a new section on the 'radical' new Jewish perspective, and those related to the socio-economic status and character of the Pauline assemblies. The helpful study questions and reading lists have also been revised.
Some of today’s problematic ideologies of racial and religious difference can be traced back to constructions of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. New Testament studies, which developed contemporaneously with Europe’s colonial expansion and racial ideologies, is, David Horrell argues, therefore an important site at which to probe critically these ideological constructions and their contemporary implications. In Ethnicity and Inclusion, Horrell explores the ways in which “ethnic” (and “religious”) characteristics feature in key Jewish and early Christian texts, challenging the widely accepted dichotomy between a Judaism that is ethnically defined and a Christianity that is open and inclusive. Then, through an engagement with whiteness studies, he offers a critique of the implicit whiteness and Christianness that continue to dominate New Testament studies today, arguing that a diversity of embodied perspectives is epistemologically necessary.
A story well-told and subsequently imbibed by its recipients has the power to shape one’s beliefs, identity, and way of life. So, what happens when a person or community is swept up in such a story? In this study, Shaw draws upon the dual methodologies of Narrative Transportation and Social Identity theories to consider how 1 Peter’s use of Old Testament narratives and καλέω language serves to ‘transport’ it’s recipients into an identity defined as ‘elect sojourners’. Amidst suffering, 1 Peter ‘calls’ the Anatolian believers to a priestly ministry, blessing their antagonists as they await their eternal glory in Christ.
This book attempts to prove the consistent nature of Paul's financial policy by drawing from his social environment and theological convictions to tease out a three-way relational pattern with God as the source of all possessions. This three-way relational framework not only dictates Paul's decision to accept or reject finances from his churches but also directly challenges long-standing claims made about Paul's financial policy. After outlining the various approaches that scholars have taken to make sense of Paul's seemingly inconsistent financial policy, this book provides a close exegetical analysis of relevant passages in Philippians, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians in order to unearth a three-way relational pattern found in Philippians but that is absent from the Corinthian Correspondence. In Paul's positive gift-exchange relationship with the Philippians, God is acknowledged as the source of all possessions, whereas the Corinthians are criticized for striving after two-way exchanges that result in honor, power, and prestige.After this is demonstrated, a socio-theological reason for Paul's refusal of Corinthian gifts is propounded. Paul refused Corinthian support, not because they desired to patronise him as a dependent client, but because they sought to be under Paul as their superior, an act that neglected God as the superior source of all gifts in the divine economy. Paul therefore refuses their support to avoid two-way relationships of gift so prevalent in ancient society and to underscore the source of the gift of the gospel, the one from whom and through whom and to whom are all things - God.
In this book, the author draws on two original sources, on a Greek biographer, historian, and rhetorician, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as on Pompeian domestic art and architecture. Generally, NT scholars read texts, but Greeks and ancient Romans loved beauty. The walls and floors of their houses were decorated with thousands of colorful frescoes and mosaics, art that two millennia later is still on display in Pompeii. Christians lived and worshipped in those typical houses; relating the art to NT texts generates many intriguing new questions! What stories/myths did Greeks and Romans see every day? What were their sports, and how violent were they? Many NT scholars know as much or more Latin than they do Greek, and they therefore cite the Latin historian Livy rather than the Greek Dionysius, who wrote a century before the first Christian historian, Luke. Dionysius’ rhetoric expressed values shared across cultures, by Greeks, Romans, and Jews (e.g., by the historian—and rhetorician—Josephus), some values that Luke also shares. Dionysius makes clear that cities and ethnic groups had to praise how they treated emigrant foreigners, questions handled differently by Josephus and by Luke. This enables new interpretations of Jesus’ inaugural speech in Luke 4 and of Peter’s second Pentecost speech in Acts 10.
David Rudolph's primary aim is to demonstrate that scholars overstate their case when they maintain that 1 Cor 9:19-23 is incompatible with a Torah-observant Paul. A secondary aim is to show how one might understand 1 Cor 9:19-23 as the discourse of a Jew who remained within the bounds of pluriform Second Temple Judaism. Part I addresses the intertextual, contextual and textual case for the traditional reading of 1 Cor 9:19-23. Weaknesses are pointed out and alternative approaches are considered. The exegetical case in Part II centres on interpreting 1 Cor 9:19-23 in light of Paul's recapitulation in 1 Cor 10:32-11:1, which concludes with the statement, Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Given the food-related and hospitality context of 1 Cor 8-10, and Paul's reference to dominical sayings that point back to Jesus' example and rule of adaptation, it is argued that 1 Cor 9:19-23 reflects Paul's imitation of Jesus' accommodation-oriented table-fellowship with all. As Jesus became all things to all people through eating with ordinary Jews, Pharisees and sinners, Paul became all things to all people through eating with ordinary Jews, strict Jews (those under the law) and Gentile sinners. This Cambridge University dissertation won the 2007 Franz Delitzsch Prize from the Freie Theologische Akademie.
David J. Rudolph raises new questions about Paul's view of the Torah and Jewish identity in this post-supersessionist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. Paul's principle of accommodation is considered in light of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and Jesus' example and rule of accommodation.
The first letter of Peter remains a relatively neglected corner of the New Testament: the number of monographs devoted to it is tiny, compared with those on the Gospels and Pauline letters. Yet it is a text - so this book argues - that offers much insight into crucial processes in the development of Christian identity. In particular, 1 Peter illustrates with particular clarity the complex ways in which Christian identity was forged from Jewish traditions and negotiated in the generally hostile Roman empire. As such, studies of this particular letter illuminate central themes in the making of Christianity in the earliest centuries. "Becoming Christian" is a collection of essays that treat various facets of the first letter of Peter, in its social and historical setting, in some cases using new social-scientific and postcolonial methods to shed light on the ways in which the letter contributes to the making of Christian identity. At the heart of the book are chapters 5-7, which examine the contribution of 1 Peter to the construction of Christian identity, the persecution and suffering of Christians in Asia Minor, the significance of the name 'Christian', and the response of the letter to the hostility encountered by Christians in society. There are no recent books which bring together such a wealth of information and analysis of this crucial early Christian text. "Becoming Christian" has developed out of Horrell's ongoing research for the International Critical Commentary on 1 Peter. Together these essays will offer a series of significant and original engagements with this letter, and a resource for studies of 1 Peter for some time to come.
The biblical and Christian traditions have long been seen to have legitimated and encouraged humanity's aggressive domination of nature. Biblical visions of the future, with destruction for the earth and rescue for the elect, have also discouraged any concern for the earth's future or the welfare of future generations. But we now live in a time when environmental issues are at the centre of political and ethical debate. What is needed is a new reading of the biblical tradition that can meet the challenges of the ecological issues that face humanity at the beginning of the third millennium. 'The Bible and the Environment' examines a range of biblical texts - from Genesis to Revelation - evaluating competing interpretations. The Bible provides a thoroughly ambivalent legacy. Certainly, it cannot provide straightforward teaching on care for the environment but nor can it simply be seen as an anti-ecological book. Developing an 'ecological hermeneutic' as a way of mediating between contemporary concerns and the biblical text, 'The Bible and the Environment' presents a way of productively reading the Bible in the context of contemporary ecology.
The second volume in Travis B. Williams' and David G. Horrell's magisterial ICC commentary on first Peter. Williams and Horrell bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the letter. This second covers the major part of the letter, providing commentary on 2.11 to the end of the letter. The exegesis provides for each passage sections on bibliography, text-criticism, literary introduction, detailed exegesis, and overall summary. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography, which covers the whole epistle.
This volume offers a concise and accessible introduction to 1 Peter, especially aimed at undergraduate-level students. It provides information on the likely historical and social setting of this letter, on its literary form and theological content, and on issues involved in its interpretation. In particular, this volume suggests that 1 Peter is an important text not least for the ways in which it both reflects and constructs early Christian identity, in its relationships with Judaism and the Roman Empire. Although 1 Peter remains neglected compared with the canonical gospels and the major Pauline letters, Horrell argues that the letter deserves much more attention for the pivotal contribution it makes to the development of early Christianity and for the ways in which it reveals this development in progress.
This tried and tested introduction to Paul needs little introduction of its own. After considering Paul's importance and influence, and the important sources for the study of Paul, the volume covers the following key topics: the earliest period of Christianity - from Jesus to Paul; Paul's life before and after his 'conversion'; his individual letters; the major elements of his theology; his attitude to Israel and the Jewish law; perspectives on the Pauline assemblies, including their socio-economic location, meeting places, and attitudes towards women; and Paul's legacy in the New Testament and beyond. The volume has been revised throughout and fully updated with respect to bibliography, and to presenting the latest debates surrounding Paul's thought in a manageable format - including those around 'old' and 'new' perspectives, with a new section on the 'radical' new Jewish perspective, and those related to the socio-economic status and character of the Pauline assemblies. The helpful study questions and reading lists have also been revised.
This collection of essays by an international team of New Testament scholars focuses on various kinds of christological claim, whether by the historical Jesus, in the Q tradition, John, Paul or the synoptics, and their connection with controversy and community.
In this volume David Horrell focuses on themes of community, ethics, and ecology in Paul, moving from the concrete social circumstances in which the earliest Christian communities gathered to the appropriation of Paul’s writings in relation to modern ethical challenges. Often questioning established consensus positions, Horrell opens up new perspectives and engages with ongoing debates both in Pauline studies and in contemporary ethics. After covering historical questions about the setting of the Paul-ine communities, The Making of Christian Morality analyzes Paul-ine ethics through a detailed study of particular passages. In the third and final section Horrell brings Pauline thought to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, using the environmental crisis as a case study to demonstrate how Paul’s ethics can be appropriated fruitfully in a world so different from Paul’s own.
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