Troels Engberg-Pedersen

This book explores the process during 100 BCE-100 CE by which dualistic Platonism became the reigning school in philosophy.

The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE

From Stoicism to Platonism

This second volume in the series "Studies in Hellenistic Civilization", published for the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, offers a comprehensive analysis of the Stoic theory of Oikeiosis.

Moral Development and Social Interaction in Early Stoic Philosophy

The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis

Eve-Marie Becker

Mogens Mueller

This volume brings together an international group of scholars on Mark and Paul, respectively, who reopen the question whether Paul was a direct influence on Mark. On the basis of the latest methods in New Testament scholarship, the battle over Yes and No to this question of literary and theological influence is waged within these pages. In the end, no agreement is reached, but the basic issues stand out with much greater clarity than before. How may one relate two rather different literary genres, the apostolic letter and the narrative gospel? How may the theologies of two such different types of writing be compared? Are there sufficient indications that Paul lies directly behind Mark for us to conclude that through Paul himself and Mark the New Testament as a whole reflects specifically Pauline ideas? What would the literary and theological consequences of either assuming or denying a direct influence be for our reconstruction of 1st century Christianity? And what would the consequences be for either understanding Mark or Paul as literary authors and theologians? How far should we give Paul an exalted a position in the literary creativity of the first Christians? Addressing these questions are scholars who have already written seminally on the issue or have marked positions on it, like Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, Gerd Theissen and Oda Wischmeyer, together with a group of up-coming and senior Danish scholars from Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities who have collaborated on the issue for some years. The present volume leads the discussion further that has been taken up in: “Paul and Mark” (ed. by O. Wischmeyer, D. Sim, and I. Elmer), BZNW 191, 2013.

Comparative Essays Part II. For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark

Mark and Paul

This insightful book intends to do away with the traditional strategy of playing Judaism and Hellenism out against one another as a context for understanding Paul. Case studies focus specifically on the Corinthian correspondence.

Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide

James Starr

Was ist frühchristliche Paränese? Im Licht einer hundertjährigen Forschungsgeschichte bieten die 17 Beiträge eine aktuelle Diskussion frühchristlicher Paränese in ihrem griechisch-römischen und hellenistisch-jüdischen Kontext. Der Band, an dem zahlreiche internationale Gelehrte mitgewirkt haben, geht auf ein skandinavisches Forschungsprojekt zurück.

Early Christian Paraenesis in Context

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul challenges the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual, mainly cognitive and metaphorical, ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, such as 'being in Christ', 'having God's pneuma (spirit), Christ's pneuma, and Christ himself in one', must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. Engberg-Pedersen shows that Paul's cosmology, not least his understanding of the pneuma, was a materialist, bodily one: the pneuma was a physical element that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into 'pneumatic bodies'. This literal understanding of the future events is then traced back to the Pauline present as Engberg-Pedersen considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of a range of central themes like his own conversion, his mission, the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way the apostle took the pneuma to inform his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's world view, an explicitly philosophically oriented form of interpretation ('philosophical exegesis') is employed, in which the interpreter applies categories of interpretation that make sense philosophically, whether in an ancient or a modern context. For this enterprise Engberg-Pedersen draws in particular on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology - as opposed to the Platonic, immaterialist and dualistic categories that underlie traditional readings of Paul - and on modern ideas on 'religious experience', 'self', 'body' and 'practice' derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. In this way Paul is shown to have spelled out philosophically his Jewish, 'apocalyptic' world view, which remains a central feature of his thought. The book states the cosmological case for the author's earlier 'ethical' reading of Paul in his prize-winning book, Paul and the Stoics (2000).

The Material Spirit

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul

"Dr. Engberg-Pedersen shows how a range of problems encountered in twentieth-century interpretation of three major Pauline letters (Philippians, Galatians, Romans) may be overcome by reading the epistles in the light of ancient Stoic ethics. He discusses literary, conceptual and theological issues: for example, the unity and purpose of the letters; the relationship in the letters between theology and ethics; the logical character and shape of Pauline exhortation; the relationship in Paul between cognition and participation; the meaning of righteousness from faith; Paul's handling of the Jewish law. The author illuminates the central core of Paul's thought by applying the Stoic perspective and argues that scholars must move beyond the traditional Judaism/Hellenism divide to reach a comprehensive and accurate reading of Paul's letters"--P. [4] of cover.

Paul and the Stoics

John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel offers a Stoic reading of the Fourth Gospel, especially its cosmology, epistemology, and ethics. It works through the gospel in narrative sequence providing a "philosophical narrative reading." In each section of the gospel Troels Engberg-Pedersen raises discusses philosophical questions. He compares John with Paul (in philosophy) and Mark (in narrative) to offer a new reading of the transmitted text of the Fourth Gospel. Of these two profiles, the narrative one is strongly influenced by the literary critical paradigm. Moreover, by attending carefully to a number of narratological features, one may come to see that the transmitted text in fact hangs together much more coherently than scholarship has been willing to see. The other profile is specifically philosophical. Scholarship has been well aware that the Fourth Gospel has what one might call a philosophical dimension. Engberg-Pedersen shows that throughout the Gospel contemporary Stoicism, works better to illuminate the text. This pertains to the basic cosmology (and cosmogony) that is reflected in the text, to the epistemology that underlies a central theme in it regarding different types of belief in Jesus, to the ethics that is introduced fairly late in the text when Jesus describes how the disciples should live once he has himself gone away from them, and more.

A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel

John and Philosophy

Universalism in Judaism and Christianity / Alan F. Segal -- Yes, No, How Far?: the participation of Jews and Christians in pagan cults / Peder Borgen -- Paul and the Hellenistic schools : the evidence of Galen / Loveday Alexander -- Transferring a ritual : Paul's interpretation of baptism in Romans 6 / Hans Dieter Betz -- Enthymemic argumentation in Paul : the case of Romans 6 / David Hellholm -- Romans 7.7-25 as a speech-in-character / Stanley K. Stowers -- The quest for honor and the unity of the community in Romans 12 and the oration of Dio Chrysostom / Halvor Moxnes -- Determinism and free will in Paul : the argument of 1 Corinthians 8 and 9 / Abraham J. Malherbe -- Stoicism in Philippians / Troels Engberg-Pedersen -- Human nature and ethics in Hellenistic philosophical traditions and Paul : some issues and problems / David E. Aune.

Paul in His Hellenistic Context

Ismo Dunderberg

Tuomas Rasimus

An international roster of scholars highlights the place of Stoic teaching in early Christian thought.

Troels Engberg-Pedersen

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