Is Jesus king? A critical examination of Paul's thought in the context of the Hellenistic kingship topos

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Ancient philosophers employed the topos of ideal kingship as a way to think about monarchyand the superior person who could ascend to this office. Following those modern scholars who have used topoi from Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman moral philosophy to study the apostle Paul's writings as part of the intellectual milieu of the first century, I compare the Hellenistic topos of ideal kingshipwith Pauline Christology. This comparison is achieved by examining the origins of the ideal kingship topos in fourth-century texts by Isocrates (To Nicocles) and Xenophon (Cyropaedia). These two classical writers emphasize the superiority of the king and the virtues that establish this superiority. The king's care for his subjects forms the core of this construction of ideal kingship. With the exception ofthree Neopythagorean tracts entitled On Kingship, no kingship treatises produced by the Hellenistic philosophical schools have survived. Nevertheless, by studying how Cynic, Stoic, and Epicurean thinkers deal with kingship in other contexts, I am able to postulate the silhouette of the ideal king ashe might have been conceived of in each of these schools. The portrait that emerges from the Neopythagorean writings contributes further to the Hellenistic topos of ideal kingship. Selected texts from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible are also studied in order to determine what Paul mighthave learned about ideal kingship from them. Next, three Hellenistic Jewish texts (the Letter of Aristeas, Philo's Life of Moses, and Wisdom of Solomon) are discussed in order to demonstrate the fusion between Jewish and Greek constructions of ideal kingship. Finally, the undisputed Paulineletters are examined alongside the various configurations of ideal kingship found in the preceding chapters. I conclude that Paul has drawn on both Hellenistic and Jewish traditions in order to write about Jesus the Messiah to nascent groups of Graeco-Roman believers.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University