Bibliography
| Title: Teios Anthropos: Zur Verwendung teios anthropos und sinnverwandten Ausdrücken in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit Secondary Title: WUNT 2.91 Type: Book Year: 1997 Abstract: Begg, Christopher T. in: OTA 20.3 (1997), 561: "Since R. Reitzenstein (1910) is has been widely haled by historians of religion that the terms theios/daimonios/theopesios anthropos/aner as applied by Greco-Roman pagan or Jewish writers to past or contemporary figures designate the given figure as "a divine man, god, son of god", or in any event, as a (wandering) charismatic wonder-worker. This view has, in turn, been taken up by many NT scholars who maintain that the application of the theios aner typology to Jesus led o his being represented as "divine/son of God" by the early Church. In this 1996 dissertation from the Humboldt University in Berlin (C. Breytenbach, director), d.T. challenges the above viewpoints. His examination of the relevant material, both pagan (e.g. Philostratos Vita of Appolonius of Tyrana and Lucian of Samostrata's account of Alexander of Abonuteichos) and Jewish (Philo, Josephus) leads him to conclude that the terminology in question is not, in fact, used by tun-of-the-era authors in the manner claimed by Reitzenstein et a. Rather, those authors use the theios aner terminology in one of three senses: 1) as a title designating a given person as the originator or par excellence exponent of some branch of Knowledge or skill; 2) as an ethical qualification in the sense of "extremely pious"/"most pleasing to God"; and 3) occasionally, in a relational sense to indicate that the one so designated stand in a particular relation to God(the gods. Against the background of this usage, it becomes understandable why neither the NT or early Christian writers apply the terminology to Jesus, i.e., they did not conceive Jesus along the lines expressed by it. Concluding d.T.'s work are the Greek text of the "Anabura inscription" first published in 1888, an extensive bibliography and indexes of modern authors, persons and topics, Greek words, and (a selection of) passages cited". |