The New Testament and Hellenistic Judaism

Book excerpt: A substantial portion of the New Testament was either written in the Jewish Diaspora or addressed to members of the Diaspora. This means that Hellenistic Judaism outside of Palestine was to a great extent the matrix from which New Testament thought developed, so that New Testament teachings and presuppositions about the relationship of the followers of Jesus to the "Old Covenant" must be understood in terms of Hellenistic Jewish understandings of that covenant. These papers, which were presented at a conference held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in 1992, investigate different aspects of the relationship of formative Christianity to its Hellenistic Jewish matrix. Contributors are European scholars, such as the volume editors and Marinus de Jonge, and Americans, including James Charlesworth and Adela Yarbro Collins. Topics include: ownership of the covenant according to the "Epistle of Barnabas; "Alexandrian Jewish religious life as seen in texts prior to Philo; the universality of Torah in Hellenistic Judaism as a preparation for gentile Christianity; the Jewishness of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" and of certain magical texts; the Jewish background of Mark's empty tomb account, Mark's "theios aner" christology, and the New Testament love command; comparisons of Philonic and Pauline biblical exegesis; the role of Hellenistic philosophy in the Corinthian conflict; the influence of passion traditions on Pauline hardship catalogs; and the semiotics of the Adam-Christ typology in Romans. All articles are in English, including one newly translated from German for this edition.