Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment

In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and his Cultural Environment John Barclay and Simon Gathercole have commissioned and compiled a set of essays by world-class contributors designed to open up afresh a central topic in Pauline theology. Together these essays constitute a claim that agency issues are neither stale nor uninteresting, and that new light can be shed on them by adopting a well-tuned comparative approach. Several essays are devoted to Second Temple Judaism in its own right, through a survey of intellectual currents regarding divine and human agency (Gabriele Boccaccini) and through a close analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philip Alexander) and the rabbinic corpus (Friedrich Avemarie). Comparisons between Paul and a range of significant texts from Second Temple Judaism (Francis Watson; Stephen Westerholm; John Barclay) clarify how Paul contributes to a lively Jewish debate on divine grace and human agency, while a study of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (Troels Engberg-Pedersen) sharpens the focus from another side. The volume is completed by an essay on Romans (Simon Gathercole) and an epilogue by J. Louis Martyn.