Ancient ideas about ‘the End’, and theories about an afterlife, are inevitably varied (Adams 2007). Many are pessimistic, envisioning a catastrophic destruction of the cosmos, as in the Stoic ‘conflagration’ (ekpyrōsis) (Salles 2009). For Paul, the beginning of the eschaton has begun (1 Cor 10:6), but in a penultimate sense. ‘The Christ-event is the turning…

First: some words about these -ology words. ‘Cosmology’, from the Greek word for ‘world’ (kosmos), refers to ideas about the composition, demography, and operation of the universe. Every reader of these words has a cosmology. In this most basic sense, one’s cosmology emerges intuitively through experience and the tutelage of culture and tradition. But in…

The effort to turn Gentiles to the god of Israel, Munck urged, originated uniquely within Christianity, and even then only because it was linked there, from the beginning, to the over-arching faith of these earliest Christians as Jews in the biblical promises of (Jewish) Israel’s redemption (1959: 264–271). The apostles’ conviction that they stood at…

It should also be emphasized that Even though it creates the perception that it is something “immaterial” for us moderns living in the Cartesian Dualist paradigm because it is translated as soul, pneuma (πνεῦμα) was a very material thing for the people of that period. The most “refined” form of matter, but still matter. Although…

Paul was not against the Law, the Torah, or Judaism in any way. What he was against was the Gentiles adopting Jewish customs. Because for Paul the problem of the Gentiles is too deep for the law to solve. “Paul did not reject circumcision or the Law, but rejected their application to the gentiles.” “Just…

Paul thought that the end of the age was near so he tells people to not marry and to minimize all their dealings with society. “apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology” -Ernst Käsemann “The early community around Jesus, both before and after his crucifixion, awaited the approaching End. This belief bound them together…

Paula Fredriksen, on the nature of Paul’s persecution of followers of Jesus. https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/42/2/532/1703659?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false What did Paul mean when he said, “I persecuted the church” (Philippians 3:6) ? And why did he “persecute”? No, oppressing does not mean “killing”. Paul uses this word to mean “to impose disciplinary punishment.” So why was he subjecting Christians to…

Paul does not have much to say about his supposed conversion. Krister Stendahl’s argumnet better captures Paul’s Damascus experience. Christianity did not exist as a separate and distinct religion. Paul barely makes mention of his conversion.

First 📜After a discussion of the validity of the methodology normally used to determine interpolations, i.e. additions to a text after it had left its author’s hands, the chapter passes in review thirteen passages in 1 Cor, which various authors have suggested were interpolations. Only 1 Cor 4: 6 and 1 Cor 14: 34–35 are…

Yes and he got it wrong. That certainly seems to be the case. It was a common Christian expectation that Jesus was coming back soon until the destruction of the temple in 70 CE (which was after Paul’s death). That’s also why some scholars believe that the gospels were written post-70 (starting with Mark around…