Comparing Groups
Classical
New Testament
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Reverse ComparisonAratus Phaenomena
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
Callimachus Hymns
Dio Chrysostom Discourse
Dioscorides Materia Medica
Epimenides Cretica
Iamblichus Life of Pythagoras
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book 1
Livy The History of Rome Book 2
Lucian Voyage to the Lower World
Menander Thais
Philo Allegorical Interpretation
Philo Who is the Heir of Divine Things
Pliny Letters
Polybius Histories Book 4
Pseudo Philo Biblical Antiquities
Seneca Moral Epistles
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book 4
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book 18
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book 19
Lucian The Death of Peregrine
Pliny Natural History Book 5
Pliny Natural History Book 30
Philo On Dreams Book 1
Virgil Eclogues
Hymn to a Universal God
Philo The Special Laws
Philo The Decalogue
Tacitus Annals Book 15
Euripides Hecuba
Seneca On the Happy Life
Philo On the Birth of Abel
Philo On the Unchangeableness of God
Josephus The Jewish War Book 5
Philo On the Confusion of Tongues
Philo On Abraham
Philo Every Good Man is Free
Cicero De Oratore
Philo On the Virtues
Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament
What has Troy to do with Jerusalem? How can the venerable Greek traditions of epic poetry, drama, and mythology help us understand early Christians and their literary products? ... although Jesus and his closest followers are all understood to be Jews, their home ground had long been politically and culturally separate from Judea, a fact reflected in its majority-Gentile population. This has profound implications for our understanding of Jesus’s message and the earliest stages of his movement. As the twenty-first century comes into its own, the growing field of Greco-Roman backgrounds to early Christianity owes, if not its existence, certainly its increasing prominence in large part to MacDonald.
In the tug-of-war between moral instruction and entertainment, thinkers like Plato, Plutarch, and Strabo attempt to discern which texts are worthy not only of imitation, but of reading at all (and why), and in the process invent critical exegesis. Pervo turns the attention of this argument to fictive/historiographical texts such as the Acts of the Apostles and 2 Maccabees to show that pleasure can act in the service of instruction, as a lure and a hook.
In the tug-of-war between moral instruction and entertainment, thinkers like Plato, Plutarch, and Strabo attempt to discern which texts are worthy not only of imitation, but of reading at all (and why), and in the process invent critical exegesis. Pervo turns the attention of this argument to fictive/historiographical texts such as the Acts of the Apostles and 2 Maccabees to show that pleasure can act in the service of instruction, as a lure and a hook.
Froelich, Margaret Christian Origins and the New Testament in the Greco-Roman Context: Essays in Honor of Dennis R. MacDonald (pp. 1-6) Claremont Press, 2016
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