Comparing Groups
New Testament
Classical
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Reverse ComparisonMatthew
Matthew 5:34
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Philo The Decalogue 84
Matthew 5:37
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Philo The Special Laws 2.5
Matthew 6:20
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Philo On the Birth of Abel 1:22
Matthew 6:22
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Cicero De Oratore 3.211
Matthew 6:22
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Philo On Abraham 1:150
Matthew 7:3
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Seneca On the Happy Life 27
Matthew 7:12
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Seneca Moral Epistles 9:3
Matthew 13:8
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Seneca Letters from a Stoic 38
Matthew 13:44
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Philo On the Unchangeableness of God 1:91
Matthew 25:39
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Seneca Moral Epistles 9:5
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
Acts 1:1
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Polybius Histories 4.1
Acts 1:9
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Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 4.320
Acts 2:3
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Philo The Decalogue 1:46
Acts 2:45
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Lucian The Death of Peregrine 13
Acts 4:32
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Philo Every Good Man is Free 85
Acts 4:32
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Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8:9
Acts 4:32
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Iamblichus Life of Pythagoras 30
Acts 17:28
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Aratus Phaenomena 5
Acts 17:28
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Epimenides Cretica 1
Romans
1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians 10:4
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Philo Allegorical Interpretation
1 Corinthians 10:4
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Pseudo Philo Biblical Antiquities 10:7
1 Corinthians 11:10
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Philo On Dreams 1.232
1 Corinthians 12:14
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Livy The History of Rome 2.23
1 Corinthians 15:33
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Menander Thais 218
1 Corinthians 15:44
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Philo Allegorical Interpretation 1:12
2 Corinthians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Timothy
2 Peter
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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