RT Article
T1 Understanding the Letter to the Romans in the Sect-Cult Development of Early Churches
JF Religions
VO 11
IS 3
A1 Kim, Jin Young
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1727128354
AB This article examines how the model of sect-cult development in antiquity helps us understand Paul’s discussion of Jewish traditions in the Letter to the Romans. In the traditional Augustinian-Lutheran scholarship, Romans has often been interpreted within the binary framework of Judaism and Christianity, as Paul showcasing one of the earliest examples of Christian opposition to Judaism. Based on the recent studies on Second Temple Judaism and the modified model of sect-cult reflecting the ancient context, I argue that Romans reveals internal conflicts between cultic and sectarian tendencies present among early churches of the first century C.E. The cultic tendency is reflected in Roman gentile believers’ assimilation of the Jewish tradition with the Greco-Roman virtue of self-mastery and their growing separation from Judaism. Paul, on the other hand, tries to establish the unity between believing gentiles and Israel as exhibiting his sectarian understanding of the gospel and the gentile mission. By placing Romans in the trajectory of sect-cult development of an early church, we stop reading it as a text that justifies the Christian antagonism to Judaism, but as a text that shows an early apostle’s passionate effort to create a unified people of God in the hope for the final salvation.
K1 Jews and gentiles
K1 New Testament
K1 Paul
K1 Roman Empire
K1 anti-Jewish discourses
K1 Cult
K1 Second Temple Judaism
K1 Sect
K1 the letter to Romans
K1 Unity
DO 10.3390/rel11050257