Description: This digital document is an article from Sojourners, published by Sojourners on March 1, 1999. The length of the article is 3078 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
From the supplier: Instruction in the letters of St. Paul should focus on his intended audience, so that his writings retain their original meaning and context. Creating lectionary readings from the letters risks removing them from their historical and literary framework, which can lead to misinterpretation. This could have a significant impact on understanding the gospel and its relation to specific social and ethical problems.
Description: This book is novel in its questioning of the adequacy of interpreting Paul from the perspective of the Reformation and in its application of sociological methods to the New Testament.
Description: The Household of Caesar and the Body of Christ addresses the writings of the Apostle Paul in the political context of the Roman Near East of the first century for the first time. The author begins by addressing Paul's worldview, placing special emphasis on his conception of time and human history. Then he explores Paul's most common images of community beginning with the household, which Paul uses as a metaphor in a way that is at times consistent with and at times critical of Roman social practices. The next discussion involves "the body of Christ" which is not strictly metaphorical, but in some sense literal, goes beyond the social critique of his household imagery and poses a deep threat to the Roman world view, and thus to the Roman order, when understood in combination with Paul's conception of time and history.
