Neither Jew nor Greek


Book Description

In Christianity in the making, James D.G. Dunn examines in depth the major factors that shaped first-generation Christianity and beyond, exploring the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, the Hellenization of Christianity, and responses to Gnosticism. He mines all the first- and second-century sources, including the New Testament Gospels, New Testament apocrypha, and such church fathers as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, showing how the Jesus tradition and the figures of James, Paul, Peter, and John were still esteemed influences but were also the subject of intense controversy as the early church wrestled with its evolving identity.




Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman


Book Description

What does it mean to study Paul the Apostle as Jew, Greek, and Roman? The framing of the question exposes the fact that the distinctions themselves involve a complex of ethnic, social, and cultural designations. Paul is both a complicated individual of the ancient world, because he combines in his one personage features of life in each of these cultural-ethnic (and even religious) areas of the ancient world, and one of many people of that world who evidenced such complexity. This volume, Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, explores a number of the important and diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious dimensions of the multi-faceted background of Paul the Apostle. Some of the treatments are focused and specific, while others range over the broad issues that go to making up the world of the Apostle.




Translation and Survival


Book Description

The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was the first major translation in Western culture. Its significance was far-reaching. Without a Greek Bible, European history would have been entirely different - no Western Jewish diaspora and no Christianity. Translation and Survival is a literary and social study of the ancient creators and receivers of the translations, and about their impact. The Greek Bible served Jews who spoke Greek, and made the survival of the first Jewish diaspora possible; indeed, the translators invented the term 'diaspora'. It was a tool for the preservation of group identity and for the expression of resistance. It invented a new kind of language and many new terms. The Greek Bible translations ended up as the Christian Septuagint, taken over along with the entire heritage of Hellenistic Judaism, during the process of the Church's long-drawn-out parting from the Synagogue. Here, a brilliant creation is restored to its original context and to its first owners.




The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature


Book Description

This landmark contribution to ongoing debates about perceptions of the Jews in antiquity examines the attitudes of Greek writers of the Hellenistic period toward the Jewish people. Among the leading Greek intellectuals who devoted special attention to the Jews were Theophrastus (the successor of Aristotle), Hecataeus of Abdera (the father of "scientific" ethnography), and Apollonius Molon (probably the greatest rhetorician of the Hellenistic world). Bezalel Bar-Kochva examines the references of these writers and others to the Jews in light of their literary output and personal background; their religious, social, and political views; their literary and stylistic methods; ethnographic stereotypes current at the time; and more.




Fault Lines


Book Description

The Ground Is Moving The death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the summer of 2020 shocked the nation. As riots rocked American cities, Christians affirmed from the pulpit and in social media that “black lives matter” and that racial justice “is a gospel issue.” But what if there is more to the social justice movement than those Christians understand? Even worse: What if they’ve been duped into preaching ideas that actually oppose the Kingdom of God? In this powerful book, Voddie Baucham, a preacher, professor, and cultural apologist, explains the sinister worldview behind the social justice movement and Critical Race Theory—revealing how it already has infiltrated some seminaries, leading to internal denominational conflict, canceled careers, and lost livelihoods. Like a fault line, it threatens American culture in general—and the evangelical church in particular. Whether you’re a layperson who has woken up in a strange new world and wonders how to engage sensitively and effectively in the conversation on race or a pastor who is grappling with a polarized congregation, this book offers the clarity and understanding to either hold your ground or reclaim it.




Greece--a Jewish History


Book Description

K. E. Fleming's Greece--a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis. For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece--a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece--as deportees to Auschwitz or émigrés to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common.




A Jew to the Jews


Book Description

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 Jews in the Greek Age


Book Description

A history of the Jews in the Greek age, charting issues of stability and change in Jewish society during a period that ranges from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in the fourth century, until approximately 175 B.C.E. and the revolt of the Maccabees.




A Jew to the Jews


Book Description

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.