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corpus-paul - the function of a Pauline Topos

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  • From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT mailhost.chi.ameritech.net>
  • To: Corpus Paulinum <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: the function of a Pauline Topos
  • Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:21:35 -0600

Help, please.  Let's say

(1) a member of C-P wanted to write a paper entitled "'Christ Died for us/our sins': The Political and Polemical Nature of a Pauline Topos." and

(2) he thought he'd begin the paper with something along the following lines:

In the light of recent research into the origin and function of Paul's soteriological rhetoric, there are no compelling reasons to think, as some once held, that the topos "X died/gave himself for us/for our sins" --a topos which we find with some frequency in Pauline writings (i.e., in 1 Thessalonians, the Corinthian correspondence, Galatians, and Romans) applied to Jesus -- was one that originated with Paul or was unknown to the audiences of the epistles in which it appears until Paul addressed them with it. As Sam Williams and David Seely have shown, this topos not only came into existence long before Paul in both the Jewish and the non Jewish Greco-Roman world. It was also something that was taken up sufficiently widely and often enough by Paul's time and in each of these environments so as to be something already quite well known to those to whom Paul wrote. What is original in Paul's usage of the topos is his application of it to a figure who, given the means and manner of his death and the nature and character of his teaching and ministry,  was the antithesis of those to whom the topos was normally applied. Indeed, in the light of the function that the topos seems regularly to have served (the inculcation of virtues and attitudes consistent with the Roman imperial ethos), so unique is this application that the only explanation for it is that it was done by Paul intentionally in the service of a (to Paul) divinely mandated anti-imperial polemic. 

The question I have is: Where would you go with this, if you were the one writing the paper?

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

Yours,

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT ameritech.net
 




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