Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment

by Barclay, John M.G.; Gathercole, Simon J.

• ISBN13: 9780567084439
• ISBN10: 0567084434
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-27
• Publisher: Bloomsbury T & T Clark

Summary

In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and his Cultural Environment John Barclay and Simon Gathercole have commissioned and compiled a set of essays by world-class contributors designed to open up afresh a central topic in Pauline theology. Together these essays constitute a claim that agency issues are neither stale nor uninteresting, and that new light can be shed on them by adopting a well-tuned comparative approach. Several essays are devoted to Second Temple Judaism in its own right, through a survey of intellectual currents regarding divine and human agency (Gabriele Boccaccini) and through a close analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philip Alexander) and the rabbinic corpus (Friedrich Avemarie). Comparisons between Paul and a range of significant texts from Second Temple Judaism (Francis Watson; Stephen Westerholm; John Barclay) clarify how Paul contributes to a lively Jewish debate on divine grace and human agency, while a study of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (Troels Engberg-Pedersen) sharpens the focus from another side. The volume is completed by an essay on Romans (Simon Gathercole) and an epilogue by J. Louis Martyn.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. vii
Abbreviations	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
Inner-Jewish Debate on the Tension Between Divine and Human Agency in Second Temple Judaism	p. 9
Predestination and Free Will in the Theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls	p. 27
The Tension Between God's Command and Israel's Obedience as Reflected in the Early Rabbinic Literature	p. 50
Paul's Anthropological 'Pessimism' In Its Jewish Context	p. 71
Constructing an Antithesis: Pauline and Other Jewish Perspectives on Divine and Human Agency	p. 99
Self-Sufficiency and Power: Divine and Human Agency in Epictetus and Paul	p. 117
'By the Grace of God I Am What I Am': Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul	p. 140
Sin in God's Economy: Agencies in Romans 1 and 7	p. 158
Epilogue: An Essay in Pauline Meta-Ethics	p. 173
Bibliography	p. 184
Index of Biblical and Other Ancient References	p. 194
Index of Modern Authors	p. 206
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