Ancient Jewish Letters and the Beginnings of Christian Epistolography
by Lutz Doering
Ancient Jewish letter writing is a neglected topic of research. Lutz Doering’s new monograph seeks to redress this situation. The author pursues two major tasks: first, to provide a comprehensive discussion of Jewish letter writing in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods and, second, to assess the importance of ancient Jewish letter writing for the emergence and early development of Christian epistolography. Although individual groups of Jewish letters have been studied before, the present monograph is the first one to look at Jewish letters comprehensively across the languages in which they were written and/or handed down (chiefly Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek). It operates with a broad concept of letter and deals with documentary as well as literary and embedded letters. The author highlights cross-linguistic developments, such as the influence of the Greek epistolary form on Aramaic and Hebrew letters or the non-idiomatic retention of Semitic peace greetings in some letters translated into Greek, which allowed for these greetings to be charged with new meaning. Doering argues that such processes were also important for early Christian epistolography. Thus, Paul engaged creatively with Jewish epistolary formulae. Frequent address of communities rather than individuals and the quasi-official setting of many Jewish letters would have provided relevant models when Paul developed his own epistolary praxis. In addition, the author shows that the concept of communication with the Diaspora, in both halakhic-administrative and prophetic-apocalyptic Jewish letters, is adapted by a number of early Christian letters, such as 1 Peter, James, Acts 15:23-29, and 1 Clement . Ancient Jewish and early Christian letters also share a concern with group identity and cohesion that is often supported by salvation-historical motifs. In sum, Lutz Doering addresses the previously under-researched text-pragmatic similarities between Jewish and Christian letters.
- By (author) Lutz Doering
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Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias
Mt 5,13-20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie
Bibelkritik und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift
Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Exegese und Hermeneutik
Die Nichtigkeit des Menschen und die Ubermacht Gottes
Studien zur Gottes- und Selbsterkenntnis bei Paulus, Philo und in der Stoa
Volume 377
Der Hochste
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Volume 330
Authoritative Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
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Übergemeindliche Verbindungen in den Briefen der paulinischen Mission
Vorkommen, Bedeutung, Funktion und Plausibilität
Studien zum Neuen Testament
Band II: Bekenntnisbildung und Theologie in urchristlicher Zeit
Volume 192
Paul, Founder of Churches
A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of Founder-Figures in the Hellenistic-Roman Period
Volume 292
Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament
Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen. Internationales Symposium in Verbindung mit dem Projekt Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT) 17.-20. Mai 2012, Heidelberg
Paul and the Emergence of Christian Textuality
Early Christian Literary Culture in Context. Collected Essays, Volume 1
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Exegesis and History of Reception
Reading the New Testament Today with the Readers of the Past
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Religiöse Erfahrung in Korinth
Paulus und die frühchristliche Bewegung im Kontext ihrer griechisch-römischen Erfahrungswelt
Expressions of the Johannine Kerygma in John 2:23-5:18
Historical, Literary, and Theological Readings from the Colloquium Ioanneum 2017 in Jerusalem
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