ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

AND ITS ANCIENT CONTEXT

CONTRIBUTIONS TO BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND THEOLOGY

EDITORIAL BOARD

A. van der Kooij (Leiden)

G. van Oyen (Louvain-la-Neuve)
E. Noort (Groningen)
K. De Troyer (St Andrews)

ADVISORY BOARD

C. Breytenbach (Berlin)
R. Collins (Washington)
P. van Boxel (London)
F. Garca Martnez (Leuven)
MICHAEL LABAHN and OUTI LEHTIPUU (Eds)

ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT AND ITS
ANCIENT CONTEXT

Papers from the EABS-Meeting in

Piliscsaba/Budapest

PEETERS
LEUVEN PARIS WALPOLE, MA
2010
 A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

2010 Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven

ISBN 978-90-429-2342-3
D. 2010/0602/XX

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan-
ical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publisher.
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

Ida FROEHLICH (Hungary)

Dealing with Impurities in Qumran Some Observations on Their
Nature and Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Tom HOLMN (Finland)

Jesus Inverse Strategy of Ritual (Im)purity and the Ritual Purity of
Early Christians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Lorenzo SCORNAIENCHI (Italy)

srz und sma bei Paulus: Der Mensch zwischen Destruktivitt
und Konstruktivitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Martin MEISER (Germany)

Some Facets of Pauline Anthropology How Would a Greco-
Roman Reader Understand It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

George VAN KOOTEN (The Netherlands)

The Anthropological Trichotomy of Spirit, Soul and Body in Philo
of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Pivi VHKANGAS (Finland)

Platonic, Sethian and Valentinian Views of the Tripartition of the
Human Soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Miguel HERRERO DE JUREGUI (Spain)

Ancient Conversion between Philosophy and Religion: Conversion
and Its Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Outi LEHTIPUU (Finland)

Biblical Body Language: The Spiritual and Bodily Resurrection . . 151

Imre PERES (Slovakia)

Sepulkralische Anthropologie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
VI CONTENTS

Margareta GRUBER (Germany)

Anthropologie der Bilder im Johannesevangelium . . . . . . . . . 183

Walter BELACKER (Sweden)

Anthropologie und Vollendung Perspektiven im Hebrerbrief . . . 209
 INTRODUCTION

The anthropological quest is still one of the classic approaches in histor-

ical-critical as well as in other methodological approaches to the New
Testament texts reflecting perhaps the old connection between system-
atic and biblical theology. Nevertheless, anthropological ideas in the
New Testament are seldom explicit, even less frequently are they
expressed in clearly defined terms. Instead of independent reflections on
human nature, there are stories about human beings and their (inter-)
actions and / or parenetic teaching that is based on some, often unstated,
presuppositions of what humans are like. This vagueness makes it diffi-
cult to construct any coherent New Testament anthropology. And
even greater obstacle is the complexity of anthropological discourses in
the New Testament. The oversimplified distinction between Jewish psy-
chosomatic monism and Greek body-soul dualism has long been rejected.
The texts from the Second Temple period especially show that there
existed a variety of anthropological ideas in Jewish thinking and that
even mutually contradictory ideas could coexist. All this has shown that
it is as impossible to write a coherent New Testament anthropology as it
is to write a coherent New Testament theology.
However, at the same time, anthropological issues have become even
more crucial. Discussions on the nature of humanity have been advanced
in many fields including philosophy, biology, psychology, neurophysiol-
ogy, sociology, and cultural studies. Religious studies and theology
can add another important aspect to the efforts of understanding what
humanity is all about, even in present-day discourses. Anthropology is
not only a theoretical construction but it has profound effects on the
overall worldview of individuals and societies, not least on ethical deci-
sions and praxis.
This recent collection of essays offers some new angles, new meth-
odological approaches and important insights relevant to the anthropo-
logical views in the New Testament. Most of the articles were presented
and discussed at the seminar Early Christianity between Judaism and
Hellenism at the annual meeting of the European Association of Biblical
Studies in Piliscsaba and Budapest, Hungary, in August 2006. The out-
come is a truly European collection with contributions from scholars
VIII INTRODUCTION

working and living in both the east and west, the south and north of the
continent. We wish to thank all the contributors for being ready to present
their work in this collection and as well as everyone who took part in
discussions in Piliscsaba and Budapest.
In the opening article of the volume, Ida Frhlich (Piliscsaba, Hun-
gary) discusses the human body and its purity a key feature in many
ancient cultures and their anthropological systems. She shows how the
purity system structured the worldview and life in the Qumran commu-
nity. For the Qumran dwellers, their community was a holy place where
all impurities must be excluded. Frhlich suggests that a core idea in the
rationale behind the Qumran purity regulations was the danger of the
demonic. Her analysis of the Qumran purity regulations illuminates the
Jewish system of ritual impurity on the whole.
Questions of purity and impurity also constitute the theme of the arti-
cle by Tom Holmn (bo Akademi, Finland). He suggests that despite
the surprisingly relaxed attitude of the early Christians toward the Jewish
purity paradigm, ritual (im)purity had not lost its significance for them.
Holmn introduces the concept of inverse strategy of ritual (im)purity.
Whereas in Jewish thinking, uncleanness was transferable but cleanness
was not, in the New Testament, Jesus contact with the unclean does
not make him impure. Instead of being contaminated, Jesus inversely
transmits purity. Holmn argues that at least some early Christians saw
themselves as having become part of this contagious purity and as com-
municators of purity.
Lorenzo Scornaienchi (Erlangen, Germany) focuses on the key anthro-
pological terms srz and sma in Paul. He discusses several aspects
that he finds problematic in recent research on the theme, such as an
uncritical use of methodological presuppositions from other disciplines,
a tendency to blame Pauls discussion of body as serving a repressive
ethic to strengthen the hierarchic structure of ancient society, a lack both
of an evaluation of the role of eschatology in Pauls anthropology and a
semantic investigation of the key terms. In contrast to Bultmanns view,
Scornaienchi establishes a schema according to which srz represents
the human being in his or her life and activity and describes human
destructivity whereas sma refers to inactivity that, in the power of the
Spirit, is determined by constructiveness based on Christs death and
resurrection.
Pauls anthropological language is also the theme of Martin Meiser
(Nrnberg, Germany) who argues that Paul mostly relies on Biblical
anthropological categories and only seldom on philosophical Hellenistic
 INTRODUCTION IX

ones. This observation leads Meiser to ask how a Greco-Roman reader

would understand Paul. His conclusion is that in his anthropological dis-
course, Paul fails to follow his strategy of becoming to those outside
the law as one outside the law and to engage in philosophical debate.
Despite some affinities between Pauline and Greco-Roman philosophical
anthropology, especially Stoic thought, there are more discrepancies.
Paul seems not to be interested in creating a coherent anthropology intel-
ligible to a philosophically educated member of Greco-Roman society.
George van Kooten (Groningen, the Netherlands) looks at Pauls anthro-
pology from another angle, namely, in relation to Philos view of human-
ity. Both writers build on a tripartite anthropology, already known from
Plato that, at the same time, is strongly colored by their Jewish heritage.
Van Kooten argues against the scholarly opinion that sees Pauls under-
standing of the heavenly and earthly human being as polemical against a
Philonic view. In his reading, Philo and Paul are not that far apart: both
make use of a similar tripartite anthropology that distinguishes between
body, psyche and pneuma and both call the highest part of a human being
not only nous but, due to the verse Gen 2,7, preferably pneuma.
The Platonic, tripartite anthropology is also at the core of the article
by Pivi Vhkangas (Helsinki, Finland). She analyzes the common ele-
ments in the teaching concerning the human soul among Sethian, Valen-
tinian and Platonic writers. Vhkangas shows that a tripartite division
of the human being is not only characteristic of Valentinian anthropo-
logical teaching but also belongs to the Sethian tradition, as well as to
Pauline teaching. Her second theme is to describe the distinct postmor-
tem destinies of souls according to these traditions. This destiny is closely
linked with the way the structure of the soul is envisioned. Despite the
division of the human being into three, however, there are only two alter-
nate destinies, salvation or doom.
Miguel Herrero de Juregui (Bologna, Italy) discusses another kind of
adaptation of a Hellenistic philosophical concept to early Christianity,
namely, conversion. Dealing especially with the so-called protreptic
discourses, he shows how the Christian understanding of conversion
had profound consequences for the view of humanity. Unlike pagan pro-
treptic writers who introduce a choice between two possible ways, Chris-
tian writers advocate a complete change: pagans must abandon their way
of life and replace it with a Christian praxis. From their point-of-view,
the world is sharply divided into two with no neutral space in between.
Non-Christians are already on the wrong side and will be condemned if
they fail to change.
X INTRODUCTION

In her article, Outi Lehtipuu (Helsinki, Finland) discusses different

early Christian ideas of the resurrected body. She argues that from early
on, there was a diversity in the early Christian resurrection belief: for
some it meant bodily restoration on the renewed earth, for others a resur-
rection of the spirit, and for yet others, an experience prior to death.
A similar kind of diversity already existed in contemporary Judaism. The
New Testament tradition concerning Jesus resurrection is likewise
ambivalent and contains opposing features. Paul, on the other hand, seems
to insist on a bodily resurrection but this body is radically transformed and
in no way resembles the earthly body. She also remarks that even though
in many ancient descriptions the afterlife is reserved for souls only, these
souls are somatized, i.e., described using corporeal language.
Imre Peres (Komarno, Slovakia) shares this last statement. In his arti-
cle, he sketches a new aspect of anthropology that he calls sepulchral
anthropology. This refers to an otherworldly existence or to the hope of
a life after death. In addition to epitaphs, he finds such an anthropology
in texts reflecting popular piety, in ancient Greek mythological beliefs
and in Biblical texts. He argues that even though the body was believed
to remain in the tomb, the surviving part was envisioned in some kind of
a material existence that enables the souls to feel physical pleasure or
pain. For this reason, a postmortem anthropology is not easily described
as either dualistic or monistic.
Margareta Gruber OSF (Hochschule der Pallottiner, Germany) ana-
lyzes selected imagery in the Gospel of John in order to portray the
relationship between God and human beings using a narrative methodol-
ogy. She argues that the Fourth Gospel develops a concept of mutual
interrelation (Gegenseitigkeit) between God and humanity by setting
it into narrative scenes. Her special focus is on two narratives that
describe Jesus encounter with a female character: the Samaritan woman
(John 4) and Mary of Bethany who anoints him (John 12). By develop-
ing a narrative network and using the ancient ideal of friendship, the
author of the Gospel establishes an anthropology of images that aims
at leading the readers into the experience of mutual love between God
and humanity.
In the final contribution, Walter belacker (Lund, Sweden) analyzes
the anthropological perspectives in Hebrews starting with terminology.
He discusses as major themes the importance of seeing humanity as Gods
creation, the human responsibility before Gods demand for faith and obe-
dience and human gratitude toward God. In the last section, he places
anthropology in relation to the high priest Christology of the letter. be-
 INTRODUCTION XI

lacker concludes that the view of humanity contains both negative and
positive aspects. On the one hand, Hebrews refers to human weakness,
sinfulness and mortality but on the other hand, it makes positive state-
ments about how anyone may be redeemed and may contribute to ones
own salvation.
As a final word of thanks, we want to express our gratitude to the staff
members of Uitgeverij Peeters, to the Peeters family and to the Editorial
Board of Series, especially Gilbert Van Belle for accepting our collec-
tion for publication.