De-Spiritualizing Pneuma

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 365-383
Author(s):  
Paul Robertson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Physiological Process ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
New Testament Studies

This paper is one of several presented at the 2010sbl naasrsession in Atlanta concerning anachronism and translation in the study of early Christianity. It argues that the concept ofpneuma’s central importance to Paul’s thought makes it a prime candidate to remain untranslated in scholarship. Most scholarship onpneumatranslates this word ‘Spirit’, which imports normative Christian theological implications. This reflects a modern, Western understanding of religion that is derived from thinkers like Kant and Descartes, which privileges dualisms of mind/body and material/spirit, and which foregrounds the importance of a private, internal, subjective religious experience anachronistic relative to Paul. I redress this through a theoretical shift toward contextualizing Paul’s understanding ofpneumaas a physiological process with analogues in ancient Greco-Roman medical thought. This approach is briefly compared to other influential accounts ofpneumain New Testament studies, and subsequently treats several Pauline passages within this new lens.

A Taxonomy of Sin in the New Testament Worlds

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Jewish Scriptures

Understanding the contextual worlds within which the New Testament perceptions of sin arose is crucial. The immediate context for early Christianity was the Jewish world out of which Jesus also operated, which included Jewish understandings of sin especially as delineated in the Jewish Scriptures and as addressed within the sacrificial cult of the Jerusalem Temple. But in turning to the Apostle Paul and other later New Testament writers, it is equally important to understand the moral worlds envisioned in Greco-Roman religiosity and philosophy. In this realm, sin as moral failure was much less prominent than sin as ignorance or error in judgment. As Christianity moved into the second century and beyond we find understandings of sin that retain both Jewish and Greco-Roman sensibilities regarding human sin.

scholarly journals ‘Einer Frau gestatte ich nicht, dass sie lehre‘ (1 Timotheus 2:12): Exegese – Hermeneutik – Kirche

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph W. Stenschke
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Timothy 2 ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
The Church

This article is an exercise in combining the exegesis, hermeneutical issues and application of 1 Timothy 2:12 in ecclesial contexts where this prohibition is still taken seriously as a Pauline injunction or, at least, as part of the canon of the Church. It surveys representative proposals in New Testament studies of dealing with this least compromising assertion regarding the teaching of women in early Christianity. It discusses the hermeneutical issues involved in exegesis and application and how one should relate this prohibition to other New Testament references to women and their role in the early Christian communities. In closing, the article discusses whether and how this assertion can still be relevant in contemporary contexts when and where women have a very different role in society and church.

“Let’s Take the Text Seriously”

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 328-363
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Young
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy

Abstract Mainstream New Testament Studies is often a space of repeating, elaborating on, identifying with, or valorizing the voices of NT writings. These common features of NT Studies resemble what scholars in Religious Studies refer to as protectionism: the privileging of a source’s own claims to such an extent that interpreters let them dictate academic analysis. Through examining debates about NT sources and both Greco-Roman ethnic rhetorics and Hellenistic philosophy, this article argues that protectionism structures the doxa of mainstream NT Studies—the commonsense that shapes what is thinkable and what questions / categories feel the most obvious. The field’s protectionism often manifests itself in confused rhetoric about “taking the text seriously” and in the invalidating of scholarship that does something other than describe (i.e., “exegesis”) or elaborate upon NT writings. Protectionism thus helps explain the gendered hierarchies of knowledge in NT Studies: “exegesis” and supposedly “objective Historical-Criticism” are dominant norms that reproduce the field as a masculine dominated space. As a result, critical and redescriptive research—especially by or about women—gets passed over since it seems “niche” or “political / agenda” driven by comparison. Interrogating the protectionism of NT Studies thus permits rethinking the politics of what kinds of scholarship seem the most obvious.

Sin in the New Testament

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Message

This book examines what the different New Testament writings have to say about sin within the broader historical and theological contexts of first-century Christianity. These contexts include both the immediate world of Judaism out of which early Christianity emerged, as well as the larger Greco-Roman world into which Christianity quickly spread as an increasingly Gentile religious movement. The Jewish sacrificial system associated with the Jerusalem Temple was important for dealing with human sin, and early Christians appropriated the language and imagery of sacrifice in describing the salvific importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Greco-Roman understandings of sin as error or ignorance played an important role in the spreading of the Christian message to the Gentile world. The book details the distinctive portraits of sin in each of the canonical Gospels in relation to the life and ministry of Jesus. Beyond the Gospels the book develops how the letters of Paul and other early Christian writers address the reality of sin, again primarily in relation to the revelatory ministry of Jesus.

Cognitive Dissonance and Early Christianity a Theory and Its Application Reconsidered1

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
Nicholas H. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Cognitive Dissonance Theory ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Dissonance Theory

AbstractCognitive dissonance was one of the first social scientific concepts to be applied in New Testament studies. J Gager in Kingdom and community (1975) used cognitive dissonance theory to account for Christian responses to disconfirmation of their eschatological expectations. In a later article (1981) he used the theory to illuminate Paul's conversion. It was with the same intention that Segal (1990) applied this among other theories. Räisänen implicitly draws upon, if not the theory, then the thinking and observations which lie behind it in his study of Paul and the Jewish Law (1986). In my own previous work (1992; 1993; 1996) I have sought to apply cognitive dissonance both to Paul's conversion and to its much later repercussions for his views on matters of Jewish heritage and observance. Opposition to the use of cognitive dissonance theory in New Testament Studies has been led by Malina (1986). Drawing upon the cautions raised by Snow and Machalek (1982), Malina argues that cognitive dissonance theory is inappropriate to the early Christian situation, as the culture accommodated anomalous beliefs and practices without any consciousness of their incompatibility. Malina therefore suggests that, rather than Festinger's notion of cognitive dissonance (1957), Merton's conception of normative ambivalence (1976) should be used to account for discrepancies in the records of early Christianity. A corollary of this would be that dissonant information would not generate any pressure towards resolution in the early Christian context. This article will examine Malina's criticisms of the use of cognitive dissonance theory in Biblical Studies. Particular attention will be given to the question whether cognitive dissonance and normative ambivalence can in reality be deemed to be mutually exclusive alternatives. It will be argued that situations do occur where anomalies do not generate cognitive dissonance, and these are more adequately accounted for in terms of normative ambivalence. However, there remain situations where the stress occasioned by discrepant beliefs, practices, and experiences is evident. These situations are more adequately accounted for by cognitive dissonance. The theory therefore remains a valid tool for New Testament studies.

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