Hellenistic Environment Research Articles

Matthean Allusions and Echoes in the Catholic Epistle of James

The present article aims to examine the theology of the Epistle of James through the lens of the Gospel according to Matthew. James is a unique text in the New Testament deeply rooted in the tradition of Hellenistic Judaism. The writing presents theological ideas in the form of sayings or sentences, closely resembling the wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the Synoptic Gospels. The practical nature, rare doctrinal fragments, and the presence of recurring themes make it challenging to establish a clear division of the five chapters. They can be best grouped around eight homiletic-didactic discourses, mostly built around a macarism or aphorism, adapted by the author to a specific theme. Most allusions and echoes can be linked to the Sermon on the Mount, but not exclusively. Even though some texts resonate strongly with the Matthean text, especially thematically, and the phenomenon of intertextuality is impressive, it would still be quite bold to assert that James had a copy of Matthew in front of him when writing his Epistle. This is confirmed by the lack of exact quotations. It is very likely a catechetical or didactic tradition already present in the first-century Christian teaching at the confluence of the Jewish and Hellenistic environment, strongly influenced by Matthew, whose popularity is beyond doubt. The hypothesis is supported by the presence of similar themes in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, literature highly esteemed in early Christian communities. It is therefore very possible that James was familiar with the Matthean Gospel through his cultic reading, justifying the theological depth evident in the treatment of common themes. Keywords: macarism, aphorism, wisdom, wealth, poverty, good deeds

The God of faith and (or) the God of the philosophers in the light of the conversion of Blaise Pascal

Aim: To discuss the relationship between God as understood in philosophy and God as understood by the Christian faith in the light of the conversion of the scientist Blaise Pascal.Methods: We offered an explanation of the philosophemeattributable to Blaise Pascal, and then examined the mean-ing of the phrase God of the philosophers, with special at-tention to Plato’s and Aristotle’s theology, and then assessed the prominent features of the Christian God. The Hellenistic environment in which early Christianity spread and its influence on early Christian theology were analysed, with special emphasis on the term logos.Results: Blaise Pascal’s Christian faith was not in accordance with Catholic Church, although Pascal considered himself a Catholic. We demonstrated that term God of philosophers is ambiguous term, i.e. what that God is. It appears that most probably God of philosophers is god of Aristotle or Plato because these two philosophers had the biggest impact on the evolution of natural theology. The God of philosophersis more like an impersonal concept than a person like God of faith. We presented the essential features of the Christian God: the doctrine of the Trinity, God’s creation, God’s per-sonality and God’s incarnation, and discussed on the differ-ent understandings of the term logos, and its importance. For us, the term logos served as a point of contact between the philosophical and the Christian understanding of God. Conclusion: Christianity is a faith based on reason, i.e. in Christian God can be known through reason and not just by faith. We tried to go beyond Pascal’s radical distinction between the God of faith and the God of the philosophers, namely through the lens of the philosophical term logos and show the there is no radical difference between the God of faith and God of philosophers

Dwelling and Clothing as Metaphors for the Human Body in 2 Cor 5:1–4

There is an allegory of the human body in 2 Cor 5:1–4 that is discussed by many scholars and has many different interpretations. The author of this article joins this discussion and tries to answer the question of what the theological message of this pericope is. The metaphors that make it up can be divided into two groups: 1) home metaphors; 2) metaphors of putting on and taking off of clothes. In his text, Paul arranges them in an antithetical way and refers to two stages of human life: the earthly life of believers, which a person leads in a destructible body and which ends in death, and the future condition of believers, which begins with the reception of the resurrection body. The analysis carried out in the ar­ticle leads to the conclusion that, in his reflection, Paul does not write anything about the intermediate state which is referred to by the followers of Platonic and Gnostic thought in the Hellenistic environment. He eagerly wishes to stand before the Lord during the Parousia without losing his mortal body in order to pass to eternal life without the experience of death by putting on the glorious body.

Constructing Paul: The Canonical Paul

Constructing Paul: The Canonical Paul

Latar Belakang Hidup Dan Pendidikan Rabinik Paulus Dalam Kaitannya Dengan Perjumpaannya Dengan Kristus

Paul's historical aspects relating to his background in life and education since childhood have had a great impact on Paul's theological mindset and concepts before and after his conversion. Pauline scholars gave much attention to early education in Tarsus and in Jerusalem which later made Saul a respected rabbi Pharisee. The Apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, grew up in a Hellenistic environment and used Greek, which was commonly used in the Roman empire. His Hellenistic and Jewish background of life and education became the main emphasis in this article. Saul was radically changed by God after his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4); however, this article focuses on Paul’s childhood and education in detail in order to understand the Hellenistic and Judaic influence in his theology

“Were the Jews of Qumran Hellenistic Jews?”

Abstract The people who produced and used the scrolls offer us a particularly fascinating example of the extent to which we might call the people/communities of the scrolls “Hellenistic Jews.” The default concept of antiquity that scholars use, the way the term “sectarian” gets employed, and the geography of the Hellenistic world all separate the yaḥad from the larger Hellenistic world. Yet, the scrolls compare well with Hellenistic discourses and practices of collection, textual scholarship, and scientific knowledge. Moreover, if we read the scrolls alongside of other Jewish texts usually considered Hellenistic, we see similar patterns of thought and common interests. In this sense, then, the yaḥad and the scrolls fit well into their Hellenistic environment.

4QInstruction’s Mystery and Mastery of Wisdom

To paraphrase Victor Shklovsky, the idea that 4QInstruction presents a combination of distinct apocalyptic and sapiential components has survived the downfall of the theory that supports it. Scholars increasingly describe wisdom and apocalypticism as coexistent, mutually influencing currents of thought within a broader Hellenistic environment. Nevertheless, characterizations of their co-presence in texts like 4QInstruction tend to rely upon more simple, typological notions. This paper explores how the relationships of similarity and difference among various texts alter significantly when we discard such typologies and instead adopt a more complex, structural approach to the logic underlying their discursive components. I discuss several texts from Proverbs, Job, Daniel, and Ben Sira, but I focus on 4QInstruction, which I argue presents apocalyptic-infused teachings within a framework that is congruent with—even more logically rigorous than—traditional wisdom. However, amidst Second Temple Judaism’s heightened concerns with knowledge, this logical advance accompanies dangerous sociopolitical consequences.

Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics Edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon (review)

Reviewed by: Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics Edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon Gideon Reuveni Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics Edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2012. In an opening scene in the satirical comedy film Airplane, one of the passengers asks for something light to read. Without much hesitation the stewardess replies: “How about this leaflet, Famous Jewish Sports Legends?” While it might well be the case that the number of Jewish sport legends did not significantly increase since the release of the film in 1980, over the last couple of years we are witnessing a burst of publications on the topic of Jews and [End Page 156] sport. This volume thus corroborates a recent trend in research. Exploring sporting activities from the period of King Herod to Omri Casspi, the first Israeli player in the NBA, the range of disciplinary approaches and scope of topics dealt with in this volume is vast and it is difficult at time to find a common thread that pervades all fourteen essays of this collection. The articles vary in their length, structure, and meticulousness. For the sake of consistency, in my view, a thematic division and more textual uniformity would have strengthened the volume’s coherence and sense of continuity. Given the multiplicity of topics, an index would have assisted readers to find their way around the text. Many of the essays deal with the question of integration as well as representation. Organizing the book around these categories is one option of how to format Jews in the Gym. What is then new and innovative about Jews in the Gym, as Leonard Greenspoon notes in his introductory comments, that hasn’t been already covered in previous research? Beyond filling some research gaps and adding information about Jewish involvement in various physical activities, one of the volume's main contributions is its focus on the complex interplay between Judaism and sport; an aspect that is frequently overlooked in research on Jewish sports in Europe. The volume commences with an essay on Jewish attitudes towards sports and spectacle during the Second Temple period. Based on a diverse body of sources, Loren Spielman shows how Jewish attitudes to sports during this period implied that Jews were more integrated in their Hellenistic environment than previously assumed. Spielman's article devotes lengthy sections to the question of Jewish spectatorship, a topic that has not previously received much study. Moving from the Second Temple period to the twenty-first century, Ori Soltes explores, in his contribution, representations of sporting Jews in graphic novels alluding to the importance of physical exercise as a vehicle of integration and a medium that helped Jews hold positive images of their bodies. Representation is also the topic of the third essay in the volume. Nathan Abrams provides a concise analysis of the ways in which the Jews and their bodies are represented as “almost the same” in films such as the 1984 British drama Chariots of Fire. Steven Riekes seeks to answer the question “is life a game?” Based on a close reading of Maurice Samuel’s almost forgotten book The Gentleman and the Jew, Riekes qualifies the argument regarding the incompatibility between competitive sport and Judaism. He suggests that the Jewish faith is not an ascetic religion but a way of life that advocates enjoyment and recreation. [End Page 157] The complex relationship between Judaism and sports is further explored in Danny Rosenberg’s study of Jewish athletes of faith. Inspired by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s notion of The Lonely Man of Faith, Rosenberg probes the challenges the world of high-performance sports imposes on Orthodox Judaism. He depicts the Jewish athlete of faith as “a rare person who experiences a special kind of loneliness”(95). The difficulties of negotiating the world of faith with the world of sports is also the topic of Ori Soltes second contribution to this volume in which he offers a comparative analysis of the different ways Jews, Muslims, and Evangelicals cope with the tension between their religious convictions and their athletic desires. Challenges of a different kind of integration are the topics of Steven A. Riess...

Religion, politique et hellénisme à Carthage: approches historiques

The Carthage’s pantheon derived clearly from the Phoenician religious traditions in the West. Nevertheless, hierarchy and representations of the divinities appear to be influenced by the Hellenistic environment. The present contribution focuses on some specific aspects, such as the introduction of the cult of the Thesmophoria goddesses, and the evolution of the representation of Eshmun in Carthage. Hellenism in the Punic city was used as means of power in the hand of the aristocracy which handles its ideological models for its own interest.

Book Review: Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Environment

Book Review: Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Environment

"I overcame fate, fate harkens to me"

”I overcome Fate (to heimarmenon); Fate harkens to me". In order to understand the tension in this proclamation of Isis, which forms the conclusion of the Isis aretalogy from Cyme, we must make a closer acquaintance with the two dramatis personae. With what right could Isis make a claim like this? How was to heimarmenon understood and experienced in the Hellenistic environment to which the Cyme hymn belongs? This paper considers the Egyptian goddess and her relation to Fate, by pointing out a few `fatalistic traits' in Isis' character. But first we have to ask another question: How did the Egyptians understand Fate in general? What concepts did they use in order to define Fate and its effects? What was the relation between the god(s) and Fate?

The Historical Element in Christianity

CHRISTIANITY IS historical in at least two senses: (I) it drives toward a historical goal, and (2) its message takes the form of a historical narrative, an old, old story. (I) Not all religions drive toward historical goals. For the mystic type of religion that has generally prevailed in India, time is a wearisome meaningless round, the of rebirth, and salvation consists precisely in escape front history. The Buddhist temples and pagodas which add so much to the loveliness of the landscape throughout the Far East are not meant to be lighthouses to guide men on their way toward distant historical goals; they are meant to be houses of refuge to which men may repair when disillusioned with life, sick of the social struggle, and hungry for the peace of a timeless eternity. The cryptic smile on the lips of the great stone Buddhas is halfcompassionate, half-humorous: compassion for the poor victims so feverishly revolving the wheel of life like slaves in a treadmill; humorous contempt for the utter futility of the whole historical process. The way of salvation, for the Orient, does not lie onward and forward along the plane of history, but up and out into the Great Beyond that is impervious to time and change. Christianity belongs to quite another type of religion, prophetic rather than mystic. Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Islam belong to this same type. Although all four of these prophetic religions have imbibed a good deal of other-worldly mysticism from their oriental or Hellenistic environment, their attitude toward history is fundamentally different. Mystical piety or monastic withdrawal, marked as they have been at times in prophetic religions, can never mean the same thing in this context which they mean in the context of a purely unhistorical religion. They do not mean deliberate desertion and final escape from the social struggle; they mean temporary retreat, in order to recover strength and perspective for renewing the battle. For history, to all prophetic religions, is as William James would say, a real fight, where great issues are at stake, and much depends upon the loyalty and valor of each participant. History is a drama with an intelligible plot, giving meaning to every new deed, while its denouement still remains in suspense, giving urgency and responsibility to each new decision. Prophetic religions, so long as they keep the true prophetic spirit, are always pressing forward toward new historic objectives. It may be asked whether the goal of prophetic religion is definable in purely historical terms; whether its ultimate outreach does not involve some super-temporal goal lying beyond all temporal goals. It is true that most prophetic religions hold out the hope of heaven to their adherents, and think of the whole historical process as rounding off at last into eternity. But eternity as they conceive it represents rather the fullness of time than the absence of time; and one's eternal destiny depends not upon despising all temporal affairs, but upon faithful and humane dealing with such obviously temporal matters as food and drink and neighborly help: a cup of cold water to the tired traveler, a friendly lift to the wounded man fallen among thieves. World-weariness is not unknown in prophetic religion, but the most religious men were long ago defined by Zoroaster as those that make this world advance

The Next Step in New Testament Study

In the textual study of the New Testament methods have been standardized and the results of critical investigation generally accepted. This is also true of linguistic study and literary criticism. In contrast to the literary interest in the New Testament as a collection of documents there has just emerged a genuinely historical interest in first-century Christianity as a great social movement. As a result the Jewish background of primitive Christianity has been carefully studied. But the Hellenistic environment is still waiting adequate investigation. Preliminary studies need to be made in the field of gentile religions. Early Christianity itself should be investigated from a social and genetic point of view. The varied, syncretistic life of the Graeco-Roman world provides a host of problems concerning the genesis and function of early Christianity for the New Testament student who is willing to do pioneer work. Typical of the whole problem complex are questions concerning the hope, the present experience, the agent, and the guaranties of salvation. The developments marked in first-century Christianity show how the new movement strove to meet the needs of Gentiles in the Graeco-Roman world.