Bibliography
| Title: The Function of Autobiographical Remarks in the Letters of Paul. Galatians and 1 Thessalonians as Test Cases Type: Thesis Year: 1982 Abstract: "The present dissertation addresses a neglected area in New Testament scholarship, the literary phenomenon and function of autobiographical remarks in the letters of the apostle Paul. It rejects the widely held, but largely unexamined, assumptions that Paul writes autobiographically only rarely, reluctantly, and apologetically. Chapter I: Autobiography originated as an expression of the emergence of individual self-consciousness in late antiquity well before the Apostle's time. This development, widely exploited among leading intellectual and political figures of antiquity, offended the popular sense of propriety. Consequently, most ancient autobiographies are shaped in part by a concern to mitigate this inherent offensiveness. Cultural ideals and rhetorical objectives further contribute to the tendentious character of the phenomenon in antiquity. A survey of autobiography in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic age, with particular attention to Isocrates, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Josephus, provides the necessary background against which the function of Paul's autobiographical remarks may be correctly perceived. Chapter II: A consensus of New Testament scholarship assumes that the Apostle's autobiographical remarks are generally provoked by the accusations of his opponents. These presumed accusations, reconstructed on the basis of the methodologically questionable application of mirror reading and extra-textual data, in turn have generally provided the basis for determining the function of the autobiographical sections of Paul's letters. A careful examination of this approach as applied to Galatians demonstrates the doubtful character of these assumptions and, thus, most existing solutions to the literary problem of Paul's self-presentation in his letters. Chapters III and IV: Paul's autobiographical remarks are fully intelligible when properly set in the context of antiquity, without the usual scholarly conjectures concerning the polemical context out of which they arose and the reconstructed charges to which they presumably respond. An examination of these remarks in Galatians and 1 Thessalonians suggests that Paul's autobiographical remarks function not to defend his person or authority but to establish his ethos as an embodiment of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to support the major rhetorical aims of the letter in which they appear". Keywords: New Testament / Early Christianity |