The most recent issue of NTS (61.2) <\/a>has a summary of the SNTS conversation that took place between George Van Kooten, Oda Wischmeyer, and N.T. Wright on the subject \u201cHow Greek Was Paul\u2019s Eschatology?\u201d Van Kooten urges that there are such clear substructural similarities between Paul and Stoic thought and this should affect how we analyze Paul\u2019s eschatology. N.T. Wright is obviously suspicious of such an argument and argues that Paul\u2019s eschatology fits entirely within a Jewish-religious framework transformed through the Christ event. Oda Wischmeyer offers what I think is the most helpful essay regarding this question. Wischmeyer points out that in the Pauline letters, Paul does not explicitly quote Stoics or refer to any philosophy\u00a0directly. That should warrant caution.<\/p>\nAlso, most Greeks tuned in to philosophy did not think in thoroughgoing eschatological terms, she argues; \u201ccosmology\u201d is more central to Greek philosophy than \u201ceschatology,\u201d but the Stoics (in particular) did have a view of the shaping of things to come. Wischmeyer concludes: \u201cwe will fail to find\u00a0influences<\/em> of distinct philosophical schools such as the Stoa or Platonism, when we look for elements of Greek eschatological ideas in Paul. What we will come across, however, is something like a philosophical\u00a0koine<\/em>, words or even terms that are used in Jewish and non-Jewish Greek philosophical and religious language \u2014 \u2018language\u2019 understood in terms of terminology [e.g.,\u00a0eikon<\/em>,\u00a0kosmos<\/em>]\u201d (247).<\/p>\nPart of the discussion involves Paul\u2019s own education. Again, Wischmeyer explains: \u201cAs far as I can see, we should seek to understand Paul as one of the so-called Jewish-Hellenistic diaspora writers with more or less loose relations to their cultural environment, but we should not feel inclined to put him especially close to figures such as Philo or Josephus \u2013 Jews with a profound education in both Jewish and Greek religious, ethical and philosophical tradition and literature, who are not only aware of Greek philosophical debates but often explicitly discuss the position of philosophers.\u201d (247).<\/p>\n
Again, this little summary of engagement is a fun read.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The most recent issue of NTS (61.2) has a summary of the SNTS conversation that took place between George Van Kooten, Oda Wischmeyer, and N.T. Wright on the subject \u201cHow Greek Was Paul\u2019s Eschatology?\u201d Van Kooten urges that there are such clear substructural similarities between Paul and Stoic thought and this should affect how we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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