Abstract
These two volumes, together with one in a different series The Language of the New Testament, focus on the relationship between the ancient world and the New Testament. The first of these assesses aspects of the New Testament writings that can be illuminated through consideration of ‘Greco-Roman and related origins’ (p. ix). After the introductory essay by Porter and Pitts, the volume is divided into two sections. The first, comprising eleven essays, is entitled ‘Greco-Roman Social Contexts for Christian Origins’, and the second comprises fourteen essays dealing with ‘Greco-Roman Literary Contexts for Christian Origins’. It may, therefore, seem a little strange that the first three essays in section one all treat the topic of manuscripts. However, the arrangement does make sense, when one realizes that those essays deal with manuscripts as physical entities that are reflective of the material society in which they were produced. Hence Kruger’s opening discussion emphasizes the ‘textual culture’ embedded in the artefact of the physical manuscript (p 40). Porter, the author of the next two essays, takes this insight further by noting that ‘the early Christian community as a worshipping community was integrally connected to its use of scripture, as these scriptural texts were used as liturgical texts as well’ (p. 69). The second section is attentive to the literary features of texts that reflect Greco-Roman conventions rather than to the physical manuscripts themselves. In this vein Dennis MacDonald proposes that features of Euripides’ Bacchae are imitated in the Acts of the Apostles. He states that ‘Luke expected his more educated readers to detect mimesis and to evaluate it for what it was: imaginative remythologizing’ (p. 496). Richards compares the form of Pauline epistolary prescripts to conventions in Greco-Roman letters (pp. 497-514). There are many other highlights in this volume.
The second volume follows the same pattern, introductory essay, then the first major section looks at ‘Hellenistic Jewish Social Contexts for Christian Origins’ (nine essays), and the second major section at ‘Hellenistic Jewish Literary and Religious Contexts for Christian Origins’ (ten essays). Pitts and Pollinger offer a fascinating study on ‘the Spirit in Second Temple Jewish Monotheism and the Origins of Early Christology’ (pp. 135-176). Here they argue that ‘functional Spirit-monotheism’ accounts for the rise of early Christological perspectives since the Spirit is both distinct from, and yet ‘shares in divine identity’ (p. 176). Christopher Stanley’s essay ‘The Ethnic Context of Paul’s Letters’ (pp. 177-201) provides a close reading or the Pauline epistles through an ethnic lens to elucidate the theological and rhetorical significance of Paul’s ethnic language. This is a rich study. In the second section Catherine Hezser’s essay ‘Ancient “Science Fiction”: Journeys into Space and Visions of the World in Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Literature of Antiquity’ (pp. 397-438), playfully employs the category of science fiction to probe cosmological views and the journeys undertaken by characters through the heavens in certain texts. A helpful survey of textual evidence is compiled here.
These volumes bring together essays covering a range of related topics, and they achieve a thematic coherence while also leaving readers with further questions of background and origins. Various methodologies and approaches are showcased, and readers are given a master-class in the use of texts from Greco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish sources to enrich the understanding of the emergence of Christianity.