This collection of essays glimpses one thriving expression of the distinguished history of religions school approach to the New Testament and early Christian literature. Applied to a range of topics and themes, the results of these new investigations convincingly demonstrate the method's enduring value today.
The present volume offers a glimpse at one currently thriving expression of the distinguished history of religions school approach to the New Testament and early Christian literature. Begun circa 1884 at the University of Göttingen and pioneered by scholars such as Albert Eichhorn, Wilhelm Bousset, Johannes Weiss, and William Wrede, today applications of this approach are diverse. Scholars adapt the method, incorporating the latest technologies and insights, to optimize the school's original goal of accurate biblical interpretation. In North America, the University of Chicago has long been a hub of this type of investigation. Over the last century, many of these Chicago studies have produced groundbreaking results. Still, the approach has never been without its critics. Applying the history of religions school approach to a range of interesting topics and themes, the essays in this collection demonstrate against current opposition how the history of religions school continues to steer scholarly innovation in the field of New Testament studies by offering constructive new interpretations of early Christian and other writings and advancing discussion in key areas of research.
Table of contents:
I.
Clare K. Rothschild: Introduction
II. New Testament
Paul
Mark Reasoner: Paul's God of Peace in Canonical and Political Perspectives -
Robert Matthew Calhoun: Romans 1:18-32 among Ancient Accounts of the Origin of Religion -
Meira Z. Kensky: The Hymnic Conclusion to Romans 11
Deutero-Pauline Literature
Jeff Asher: Missiles, Demagogues, and the Devil: The Rhetoric of Slander in Ephesians 6:16
Gospels/Acts
Laurie Brink, O.P.: Going the Extra Mile: Reading Matt 5:41 Literally and Metaphorically -
David G. Monaco, C.P. : The Rhetoric of Narrative in Acts 8:26-40: Ramifications of the Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch for the Author of Luke-Acts
Apocalypse
Paul B. Duff: The Scroll, the Temple, and the Great City: The Crisis in the Asian Assemblies and the Interlude of Rev 10:1—11:13
Jewish Christianity
Matt Jackson-McCabe: Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Jewish Christianity: Reflections on Categories in Edwin Broadhead's Jewish Ways of Following Jesus -
Jeffrey A. Trumbower: Christians, Sabbateans, and the Dead Sea Sect: A Comparative Case Study in Jewish Sectarian Logic
III. Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts
Clare K. Rothschild: Παιδεία as Solution to Stasis in First Clement -
Andrew Langford/Matthijs den Dulk: Polycarp and Polemo: Christianity at the Center of the Second Sophistic -
Annette Bourland Huizenga: On Choosing a Wet-Nurse: Physical, Cultural and Moral Credentials -
Justin Howell: Lucian's
Hermotimus: A Fictive Dialogue with Marcus Aurelius -
Thomas R. Blanton IV: De caelo patrocinium: The Economy of Divine Patronage in Apuleius' Metamorphoses Abstract
