Jewish Scriptures Research Articles

Theological-sensitive therapy: The eight keys to forgiveness based on Jewish scriptures.

Theological-sensitive therapy: The eight keys to forgiveness based on Jewish scriptures.

Naskh (“Abrogation”) in Muslim Anti-Jewish Polemic: The Treatise of Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (1247–1318)

A strong case can be made that the concept of naskh, “abrogation” or “annulment”, was the most potent weapon in the arsenal of Muslim polemicists seeking to convert Jews (Burton‘s Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is highly informative but deals almost exclusively with naskh in its internal Islamic contexts, e.g., hermeneutics and legal theory). Naskh did not necessarily involve any rejection of Jewish scripture or tradition as fraudulent or corrupt. It rested on the simple premise, explicitly confirmed by the Qur’an, that the deity may alter or replace His legislation over the course of time. In the first part of this paper, I will briefly review the topic, adding some texts and observations that, to the best of my knowledge, have not appeared in the academic literature (comprehensively surveyed in Adang’s Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, 1996; also in Adang and Schmidtke’s Polemics (Muslim-Jewish) in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 2010). The bulk of this paper will consist of a fairly detailed summary of an unpublished tract on naskh written by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī (RD) (1247–1318), himself a Jewish convert to Islam and a monumental politician, cultural broker, historian, and author.

Hardened hearts and cries for freedom: interpreting biblical narratives in a pandemic

ABSTRACT The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has exposed social fault-lines and inequities not often recognised in such an affluent country. This study explores the relevance of Bible stories about plagues and disasters for the work of preachers, teachers, and pastoral practitioners who were independent voluntary contributors to this study. Each of them was serving with the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) in settings where worship and learning take place. From within the activities of a particular Christian tradition, this article offers examples of practice and interpretive processes used in approaching the questions raised as an unfolding narrative. How did the use of Christian and Jewish Scriptures by these practitioners during the pandemic inform their worship, teaching, learning and social interactions? Examples were brought into dialogue with the work of biblical commentators on texts such as Exodus, Psalms, Prophets, and Gospels. The narrative hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and the biblical scholarship of Walter Brueggemann provided helpful conceptual anchorage for the task and assisted in broadening the perception of how local perspectives may or may not connect with global concerns.

The Bible in the Aramaic Bowls: Between Memorization, Orality, and Writtenness

Abstract The Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls from talmudic Babylonia quoted biblical material as part of their written spells, in order to bolster the apotropaic ritual. Current scholarship is making it increasingly apparent that these spells were part of the Jewish “mainstream,” rather than its margins. The bowl spells were often (sometimes?) produced by professional scribes many of whom—as I argue here —were also steeped in Jewish Scripture and liturgy. Moreover, given the high number of artifacts found, the spells can be considered representative of widespread religious practices and beliefs. The quotations are thus an unparalleled (and the only Babylonian epigraphic) source for the study of pre-Masoretic Bible traditions. The orthographic practices encountered in the biblical quotations become a lens through which to view attitudes to the Bible’s “writtenness” and the functions of writtenness, orality, and different types of memory. On the one hand, many spells provide evidence for the prominence of orality and memorization in Bible transmission and its reproduction. On the other, many bowls also imply a conceptual prestige of writtenness, alongside scribal training. At the same time, most bowls suggest a degree of self-sufficiency of the Bible as an oral, memorized, and liturgical text. While the Bible was construed as a written authority by the rabbis, in practice, its written component was likely neither always present, nor strictly necessary for achieving spiritual efficacy within the spells.

Nothing new under the sun: the Five Scrolls read Houellebecq

The novels of Michel Houellebecq and the Five Scrolls in the Jewish Scriptures are mutually illuminating in their portrayal of human life in the context of a secular or post-secular world with its wistfulness about meaning and about God.

“Listen to Him!”: Angelic and Divine Typology in Mark’s Transfiguration Account

Abstract In this study I will argue that, while Matthew and Luke’s redaction of the Markan Transfiguration present Jesus as the antitype of Moses, Mark’s own account does not. Rather, Mark uses typology to narrate Jesus into the stories of Elijah and Moses, both of whom are described in the Jewish scriptures as ascending a mountain to talk with God in narratives in which the Angel of YHWH also features. Distinctive features of Mark’s account suggest that Mark wishes to associate Jesus, not with Moses, but with YHWH and his angel, using the scriptural ambiguity between the Angel of YHWH and Israel’s God to generate a similar ambiguity around the divine identity of Jesus. Consequently, Mark’s Transfiguration presents a “higher” Christology than that of the Transfigurations in the other Synoptic Gospels. In Mark’s Transfiguration, Jesus is compared, not to human prophets, but to the anthropomorphic manifestations of Israel’s God at Sinai and Horeb.

The Multifaceted Reception of the Torah by Early Church Fathers

This paper focuses on the reception of the Torah by the Church Fathers who lived up to the beginning of the third century. Christians, having received the whole Torah through the Septuagint translation, became selective in the way they accepted it, adhering to it only with reservations. Christological and ethical concerns were at the heart of their acceptance or rejection of various aspects of the Torah. This article will gauge whether Christians had a positive, negative, or neutral evaluation of the Torah and will seek to identify the ways in which they perceived the Torah. By analysing the ways in which the Torah and at times other Old Testament texts were handled, their presentation of these Jewish Scriptures will be brought to light, highlighting different approaches employed in this regard. One notes the following stances: the Torah’s commandments supplemented the Lord’s teachings (the Didache); the Torah was read allegorically and typologically despite a Midrashic approach (Epistle of Barnabas); certain laws were believed to have been instituted as a result of the people’s hardness of heart (Justin Martyr); natural law is distinct from the demands added to it after the Jews’ wayward actions (Irenaeus); the temporal aspects of the law were superseded by its eternal aspects (Tertullian); whilst upholding the promises of the Law, the prophets were seen as going beyond the Law (Tertullian) or as giving the Law a spiritual interpretation (Epistle of Barnabas); and, rarely, the Law was held in very high regard (Clement of Alexandria). This paper is not concerned with any blatant rejection of the Torah and, indeed, the Tanakh at large (as was the case with Marcion), but rather with the subtler nuances that can be detected in other writers who had to rethink the validity and role/place of the Torah in the faith.

Genesis 1:26 through the Eyes of Manicheans in the Roman Empire

Abstract The present article reconstructs the evolution of the Manichaean exegesis of Genesis 1:26 based on the texts that circulated within the Roman Empire. Mani’s Epistula Fundamenti, Adimantus’ Disputationes, Kephalaia of the Teacher, Faustus’ Capitula 24, as well as polemical works of Christian authors provide ample evidence of the Manichaean use and interpretation of the biblical narrative. Two complementary exegetical traditions can be distinguished: the first one, going back to Mani himself, introduces vetero-testamentary elements in the Manichaean doctrine without directly referencing or criticizing the Jewish Scriptures, while the second tradition that directly engages in the exegesis of the Jewish Scriptures text emerged through polemics with Christians and is likely to originate from Adimantus. The study illustrates a dual role of the Book of Genesis in Manichaeism: as one of the sources of the Manichaean mythology and as a central point of contention in Christian-Manichaean polemics.

When did Daimones become Demons? Revisiting Septuagintal Data for Ancient Jewish Demonology

AbstractRecent research on Jewish demonology has been significantly advanced by evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In light of these advances, this article revisits the use of daimones and related terms in the Greek translations of Jewish scriptures commonly called the Septuagint (LXX). Against the tendency to conflate these LXX data into one intermediate stage in the development of the demonology of the New Testament, it calls for further attention to the particular dates and translational tendencies in specific LXX texts, as well as further attention to contemporaneous Aramaic and Hebrew sources. Accordingly, it situates the daimones of LXX Deuteronomy, the Greek Psalter, and LXX Isaiah alongside the emergent demonologies in the Aramaic Enoch literature, Jubilees, 4Q560, and 11Q11. Taken together, these sources attest new literary creativity surrounding transmundane powers among Jews in the Hellenistic period, shaped by distinctive concerns that cannot be reduced to a transitional, proto-Christian moment.

A Wisdom (Not) of This Age: Paul’s Education from His Letters to the Early Acts

This article takes up the matter of Paul’s education and explores it within the Roman world of education. In order to do this, the article draws upon and contributes to reception historical studies of Paul. More specifically, the article illustrates the flexibility of Paul’s education as it is described in his letters, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Acts of Paul. While Paul downplays his education in several autobiographical statements within his letters, his letters nevertheless suggest that Paul received a high level of education. The Acts of the Apostles further contributes to an early Christian portrayal of Paul as an educated figure by giving readers a Paul who speaks eloquently and presents a controversial message that can be narrated with reference to both Jewish scripture and to Graeco-Roman philosophy. The Acts of Paul presents Paul as a persuasive speaker, but the speeches contained within this narrative are generally of a more concise nature. On the other hand, the Acts of Paul presents Paul as a writer who can read and respond eloquently to highly disputed queries from other groups of believers. These texts coalesce in depicting a Paul who is well educated, but they differ in their depictions of how his education was evident in his life.

The Rules of Engagement: Porphyry’s Attack on Christian Allegory

Abstract Book 6 of Eusebius’ Church History contains a fascinating fragment of Porphyry’s Against the Christians in which the latter lambasts Origen’s allegorical reading of the Jewish Scriptures. Though many aspects of this text have received abundant scholarly attention, relatively little has been written on the theory underlying the critique, that is, why exactly Porphyry thought Christian allegories were illegitimate. Furthermore, among the few scholars who have treated this topic at any length, there is no consensus about the precise nature of Porphyry’s objection. In this article I will argue that Porphyry denies the legitimacy of Christian allegories because he thinks the texts they exegete are clear and simple. They are not, for Porphyry, full of the mysteries and enigmas that indicate allegorical exegesis is appropriate. Consequently, Porphyry understands Christian allegories as an attempt to save a text that is plainly immoral rather than genuinely mysterious.

Gershom Scholem’s ‘laments project’ and the question of gender

This article proposes a new strategy for expanding the conversation on gender and Jewish philosophy with an emphasis on modern German-Jewish thought. The works of German-Jewish thinkers touch on a variety of issues, but almost always engage with Jewish Scriptures. The scriptural texts are abundant and include a gallery of female and male voices. The article asserts that by examining the way Scriptures are selectively interpreted and integrated into philosophical arguments, we can learn about the suppression of women’s voices, as well as concepts of gender and femininity in Jewish thought. I develop this assertion by examining Gershom Scholem’s early philosophical-theological essay ‘On Lament and Lamentation’ (1917), written as an epilogue to the book of Lamentations. Scholem’s principal claim is that laments epitomize a realm that does not represent concrete content and thus can allude to two radical categories of language: Divine revelation and absolute silence. The article argues that by emphasizing the absolute categories and neglecting the heterogenic content of laments, Scholem specifically suppresses the voices of women within the liturgical text. I illuminate Scholem’s oversight by comparatively reading his essay alongside the book of Lamentations and Midrash Lamentations Rabbah. The comparative reading demonstrates how the concepts which occupy Scholem (silence/revelation) are represented in Scriptures not only as absolute categories, but also through the bodies and voices of women.

The Scriptural Shape of God: Divine Anthropomorphisms in Synoptic Perspective

AbstractAlthough an increasing number of works are focusing on depictions of God in the New Testament, none so far specifically focus on how these depictions rely on anthropomorphic language in their presentation of God. This article attends to this oversight by turning to the Synoptic Gospels (and the book of Acts) as a test case. Not only do these narratives lack an explicit anti-anthropomorphic agenda, but they also rely on divine anthropomorphisms that are derived from Jewish Scripture. To demonstrate this claim, the article concentrates on how Matthew and Luke expand Mark's anthropomorphic presentation of God and how Luke's presentation emerges as the most anthropomorphic of all. It also discusses how Mark, Matthew, and Luke's respective narratives depict God's human, or human-like, characteristics according to the following four categories: (1) God's human roles and titles, (2) God's depiction as an acting subject who speaks and desires to be in relationship with humans, (3) God's concrete presence located in space, and finally, (4) God's description as a character with recognisable body parts and other markers of corporeality. In the end, we shall see that anthropomorphism is a central component of God's characterisation in the Synoptics and that this anthropomorphic characterisation better enables readers to see the Jewish, scriptural shape of God as a personal deity who desires to be in relationship with humans.

The Myth of the Jew: Negating the Negation

The Myth of the Jew:Negating the Negation Nitzan Lebovic (bio) Keywords Myth, Jewish thought, Paul Hanebrink, Elad Lapidot, Ole Jakob Løland Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Elad Lapidot, Jews out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. Ole Jakob Løland, Pauline Ugliness: Jacob Taubes and the Turn to Paul. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020. To what degree is jewish studies still engaging with the myth of the Jew? A popular view identifies Jewish monotheism with a consistent opposition to mythological cyclicality and a pantheistic view of nature. In contrast, academic research demonstrated how limited this view is, and how important mythological themes have been to Jewish scripture and commentary.1 Take, for example, the impact of mythological images of nefilim—fallen beings, but also angels or giants—most clearly visible at times of crisis and "political judgments against royal power."2 Three recent books—in political history, critical thought, and political theology—exemplify how vibrant but problematic myth-making still is for our understanding of Jewish culture. Before turning to these recent books, however, it is worth briefly revisiting the history of the problematic relationship between Jews and their myths. If in premodern times Jews were represented in popular imagery as angels and giants, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the mythic [End Page 327] representation of Jews turned antisemitic and hypernationalist. As a result, after 1945 philosophers and historians in the West adopted a skeptical view of myths and prophetic tropes. The German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the Polish-born Israeli historian Jacob Talmon admired myth as a literary and artistic form, but detested its role in modern politics; myth, they felt, had been at the core of the new language of violence and antisemitism that arose with radical nationalism and racism. "Perhaps the most important and the most alarming feature in this development of modern political thought," Cassirer, then a refugee in the United States, wrote in 1946, "is the appearance of a new power: the power of mythical thought."3 Anchored in the ancient language of death and revival, its political form "is nothing but the dark shadow cast by language on the world of human thought."4 A decade later, Talmon identified a "collective state of permanent excitement" that had turned nineteenth-century national mythic language into twentieth-century "political messianism" and "totalitarian democracy" (1956). For Talmon, as for the political thinker Hannah Arendt, whose Origins of Totalitarianism. (1951, 1954) came out shortly before Talmon's first book, capitalism and fascism had certain characteristics in common, such as the popularity of myth among masters of mass media.5 In the following decades, Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Hans Blumenberg, among others, analyzed myth both as a form and as an agent of historical change. Considering it as a multivalent phenomenon was necessary to capture its power as a cultural force and a strange political beast. Instead of biblical catastrophes or Homer's creatures and heroes, the modern nation gave birth to a cult of self-aggrandizing "authoritarian personalities" and an unparalleled play of propaganda that fueled new myths. The post-1945 analysis of myth focused on the relationship between politics and language. Historians and theoreticians showed that the new evocation of power relied on a process of "emptying out" of meaning. For example, Viktor Klemperer's Lingua tertii imperii (Language of the Third Reich, 1947), unpacked the Nazi "emptying out of language" and the injection into it of mythic and collective "excitement." In contrast to Cassirer's historical overview, Klemperer's linguistic analysis focused on recent examples such as Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century or Josef Goebbels's articles in the Nazi dailies. The emptying out of language was [End Page 328] needed in order to dehumanize the Jew and shape the image of the Hitlerian Übermensch. A decade after Klemperer, Cassirer, and Talmon, Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957) interpreted myth from the perspective of semiology—the study of symbols and signs—which he contrasted to the power of poetics. While avoiding a direct confrontation with the fascist use of myth...

The Problem(s) of Reading 1 Peter after Supersessionism

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the creative identity formation strategies found in 1 Peter, especially concerning the way that the letter appropriates the Jewish scriptures and Israel’s privileges, promises, and vocation. While some find these strategies to be beneficial, others regard them as problematic because they promote a posture of supersessionism toward Israel. Some have suggested that the problem of supersessionism can be ameliorated by noting the silence in the letter regarding the relationship between Israel and the gentile addressees. This silence creates theological and hermeneutical space to go outside of the text itself to resolve the tension. But the move to go outside of the text can create its own problems because of the influential “standard canonical narrative”, which fills the silence and exerts pressure on the reader to replace Israel with the church. This article seeks to demonstrate that the text of 1 Peter itself pushes against a supposed supersessionist posture in part because such a reading is inconsistent with the claims made about God, but also because the implicit narrative in the letter along with the exhortations to distance oneself from a gentile way of life necessitate that the addressees “appropriate Israelhood” without expropriating Israel.

Translational Discontent: Robert Alter’s Tanakh , Daniel Matt’s Zohar , and the Scepter of Translation in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible and Daniel Matt’s The Zohar: Pritzker Edition mark a new stage in the continued evolution of the reception, interpretation, and translation of Jewish Scriptures. This article offers a conceptual framework for reflecting on the translation of Jewish scriptures in the twenty-first century, positing the translations by Alter and Matt as the foremost achievements in this field. The proposed framework draws on Freud’s notion of personal discontent in order to reflect on the reasoning, aspirations, and drives underlying the decision to embark on translation projects such as those undertaken by Alter and Matt in the first place.

Nathanael Vette. Writing with Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark

Nathanael Vette. <i>Writing with Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark</i>

Education toward Rooted Cosmopolitanism Viewed from a Religious Prism: The Case of Rabbi Ashlag’s Social Altruistic Doctrine

Cosmopolitanism, which has recently become a matter of great scholarly interest, is an ethical and political theory that envisions all human beings as citizens in a single community. This paper presents a “rooted” approach to cosmopolitanism, claiming that local attachments can be essential to our ability to nurture a cosmopolitan orientation. More specifically, this paper explores the potential that lies in the connection between the ideas of 20th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (1884–1954), which stem from the mystical interpretation of reality and Jewish scriptures, and cosmopolitanism, viewed from an educational prism. To exemplify how a cosmopolitan-oriented religious education might look, the author presents a hermeneutic account of the social doctrine of Ashlag, whose writings, mediated by both orthodox and secular successors, have influenced millions. Relying on Ashlag’s approach to otherness—one of the main themes in cosmopolitanism—the author shows how religious affiliations can serve as a strong impetus for the cultivation of cosmopolitan values.

What Is Man? A Journey through Biblical Anthropology by Fearghus Ó Fearghail and Adrian Graffy

Reviewed by: What Is Man? A Journey through Biblical Anthropologyby Fearghus Ó Fearghail and Adrian Graffy Donald Senior the pontifical biblical commission What Is Man? A Journey through Biblical Anthropology(trans. Fearghus Ó Fearghail and Adrian Graffy; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2021). Pp. 366. £19.99. This is the latest document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) and may be its longest to date. For those less acquainted with the role of the PBC, it is a commission of some twenty biblical scholars from all over the world intended to serve as a resource on biblical matters for the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and, through the Congregation, for the pope himself. First established under Pope Leo XIII, it evolved under Pius X as a monitor for Catholic biblical scholarship at a time when the church was highly suspicious of the reductionist spirit associated with historical biblical criticism. Over time, particularly under Pius XII, the monitoring role gave way to a more constructive approach. After the Second Vatican Council, Paul VI placed the PBC under the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith and confirmed its purpose as a Vatican resource on biblical interpretation. In recent years, the PBC has produced a series of expansive statements on such topics as various methods of biblical interpretation, on the key role of the Jewish Scriptures in the Christian Bible, on the moral horizons of the Bible, and on biblical inspiration. Several of these topics were expressly requested by the reigning pope (e.g., on the Jewish Scriptures by John Paul II, on inspiration by Benedict XVI); this latest presentation on biblical anthropology was requested by Pope Francis. These documents derive from the intertwined contributions of the PBC's members. Typically, the work of producing the document takes two or three years, beginning with an agreement on the overall format, and then various members producing papers on specific aspects of the topic, and finally the weaving together of this disparate material into a coherent text. The end result is that the PBC's statements are thorough, more like a state of the question than innovative, and, at times, their style reflects the somewhat patchwork nature of the production. [End Page 506] In this instance, however, the PBC's study of biblical anthropology has a unique and rich format. As stated at the outset, the document takes its cue from the account of human origins in Genesis, particularly chaps. 2–3, but with substantial reference to Genesis 1–11. The focus is, therefore, primarily on OT texts. Basic motifs from the Genesis account that reflect fundamental descriptions of what it means to be human, and the essential relationships that define the human, are described across the major components of the Bible: the Torah, the prophetic literature, and the wisdom traditions (often with particular attention to Psalms). Each segment, however, ends with the exemplification of the motif in the Gospels and in the letters attributed to Paul. The document states that its overriding methodology is that of "narrative theology"; however, this term should be taken in a very broad sense—distinguishing the document's thematic approach from a more systematic or philosophical analysis. The contents of the document are rich and accessible to the broad audience it has in mind: "members of theological faculties, catechists, students of the sacred sciences." Broad expositions of biblical motifs are bolstered (in smaller type) by incisive technical analyses of key texts (e.g., a thorough discussion of the nuance of the term "image" of God in Gen 1:26). The document is arranged in four "chapters" or major sections: (1) The Human Being as Created by God (both frail and of the earth but also in the image of God); (2) The Human Being in the Garden (taking up topics of food, work, and relationship with animals); (3) The Human Family (love between husband and wife, between parents and children, and between "brothers and sisters" understood broadly); (4) The Human Being in History (God's commands; human obedience and transgression; God's intervention in history and ultimate salvation in Christ). The opening "chapter," taking its cue from Genesis 1–11, sets the tone for the entire document and...

Isaac D. Blois. Mutual Boasting in Philippians: The Ethical Function of Shared Honor in Its Biblical and Greco-Roman Context

This revised University of St Andrews 2017 dissertation by Isaac Blois, under the supervision of Scott Hafemann, examines the role of mutual boasting in Philippians. Focusing on Phil 1:25–26 and 2:14–16, it argues that “Paul’s paraenesis is motivated by a mutuality of honor between God/Christ and the Philippians understood against the backdrop of Deut 26:19, but one that includes Paul within this relationship in light of his sharing the role of the Isaianic Servant in Isa 49:4, albeit now in the new eschatological reality brought about by the exaltation of Christ” (p. 163).This study consists of three parts sandwiched between an introductory and a concluding chapter. Chapter 1 defines key terms and surveys the history of research pertinent to the overall project. Part one (chs. 2–3) investigates the motif of mutual glory in the Jewish Scriptures. Chapter 2 analyzes how καύχημα functions as a sign of mutual honor in Deuteronomy. In Deut 10:21, God is declared to be Israel’s boast; in 26:19, Israel is God’s boast. Chapter 3 outlines the trifold mutuality of glory found in Isaiah, a glory that is shared between YHWH, Israel, and the Suffering Servant. Part two (chs. 4–5) explores mutual honor in Roman antiquity. Chapter 4 looks at the influence and mutuality of honor in the Greco-Roman world. Chapter 5 probes how mutual honor is used within interpersonal communications to persuade others toward appropriate action. Part three (chs. 6–8) interrogates mutual honor in Philippians. Chapter 6 exegetes 1:25–26, examining how Paul’s faithfulness and self- sacrifice garner honor for the Philippians. Chapter 7 shows how 2:14–16 offers the corresponding idea to 1:26. The Philippian’s exemplary behavior garners praise not only for themselves but also for Paul. Blois further argues that the presence of Deuteronomic and Isaianic allusions in Phil 2:12–18 directs us to read Paul’s καύχημα language in 2:16 within the scriptural framework outlined earlier in part one. The boast that accrues to Paul from the Philippians’ behavior in Phil 2:16 parallels the boast that accrues to YHWH from Israel’s behavior in Deut 26:19 (p. 143). The reason Paul dares to insert himself into this parallelism is that he understands his mission in light of the Isaianic servant (note the allusion to Isa 49:4 in Phil 2:16). As the mediator between God and his people, he shares in the honor given to the Servant. Chapter 8 examines Paul’s use of mutual honor to motivate the Philippians to act accordingly to his exhortations. Chapter 9 concludes this study.Blois’s dissertation is a welcome contribution to studies on honor motifs in Philippians. While others have called attention to the theme of reciprocal boasting between Paul and his readers in Philippians, Blois advances the discussion in two ways. First, Blois situates the reciprocal boasting discourse within its cultural context. In particular, Blois effectively shows how Paul’s use of mutual honor as a motivational tool is both similar to and different from the cultural norms within the Greco-Roman world. It is similar in that Paul uses mutual honor as a rhetorical strategy to motivate others toward appropriate behavior. It is nevertheless different in that the mutual honor in Philippians entails a “tridirectional flow of honor between Paul, the Philippians, and God/Christ” (p. 153). Second, Blois situates the reciprocal boasting in Philippians within its theological context. Specifically, he argues that both Deut 26:19 and Isa 49:4 form the scriptural background for appreciating Paul’s language of mutual boasting. He also notes that the trifold mutuality of glory in Philippians (between God/Christ, the Philippians, and Paul) parallels that found in Isaiah (between Yahweh, Israel, and the Servant). Blois has made a case for his reading. Nonetheless, his line of argument requires quite a number of moves. His reading may therefore not be compelling to some.The amount of research that Blois has put into this work is clear. The abundant footnotes show his extensive engagement not only with important primary sources but also with a wide swath of secondary literature in German, French, and Spanish. This volume will therefore benefit others who wish to study the motif of honor in the Pauline letters.