Pistis Beyond Parallelomania: Paul’s Notion of Faith and the Study of the Graeco-Roman Context of the New Testament in the Low Countries

Activity: Talk or presentationTalk (lezing)

Description

One of the New Testament contexts whose study has deep historical roots in the Low Countries is the context of Graeco-Roman culture and its surviving literature. This paper first focuses on a few milestones in this area of research, embodied by scholars such as Erasmus, Wettstein, and, more recently, contributors to the Corpus Hellenisticum in Utrecht. In the second part of the paper, the endeavour to fruitfully compare New Testament writings to pagan contemporary literature is reviewed critically against Barr’s criticism of different types of illegitimate meaning transferal and Sandmel’s warning against ‘parallelomania’. In answer to these methodological pitfalls, comparative research into the meaning of pistis and cognates in Paul’s letters is used to demonstrate how insights from cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis help to further the study of the New Testament within its Graeco-Roman cultural habitat.
Period29 Jul 2024
Event titleSBL International Meeting 2024
Event typeConference
LocationAmsterdam, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Graeco-Roman World
  • New Testament
  • Dutch scholarship
  • Contexts of the New Testament