Comparing Groups
Classical
New Testament
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Explore the connections between the Classical and New Testament in an interactive visualization.
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Reverse ComparisonAratus Phaenomena
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
Callimachus Hymns to Zeus
Dio Chrysostom Discourse
Dioscorides Materia Medica
Epimenides Cretica
Iamblichus Life of Pythagoras
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews
Livy The History of Rome
Lucian Voyage to the Lower World
Menander Thais
Other
Philo Allegorical Interpretation
Philo Who is the Heir of Divine Things
Pliny Letter to Sabinianus
Polybius Histories
Pseudo Philo Biblical Antiquities
Seneca Letters from a Stoic
Seneca Moral Epistles
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book
Lucian The Death of Peregrine
Pliny Natural History
Philo On Dreams
Virgil Eclogues
Philo The Special Laws
Philo The Decalogue
Tacitus Annals
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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