Paul as homo novus

Authorial Strategies of Self-Fashioning in Light of a Ciceronian Term

Eve-Marie Becker, Jacob P.B. Mortensen, Eve-Marie Becker, Jacob Mortensen, Eve-Marie Becker, Jacob Mortensen

• Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783525540480
• eBook ISBN:
  9783647540481
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

20ths century research in St. Paul is widely impacted by Adolf Deissmann's prominent view on the apostle as a "homo novus" (1911). But where does this concept originate from, and what does it imply? This collection of articles does not only re-evaluate Deissmann's concept by tracing it back to its historical and socio-political origins in Cicero and exploring how authors from (early) Imperial Time perceive and transform the homo novus paradigm by diverse modes and strategies of literary self-fashioning. Scholars ranging the fields of New Testament Studies, Greek and Latin Philology, Ancient History, Patristics, and Comparative Literature also examine how the Ciceronian paradigm was early on transformed, disseminated, and applied as a literary concept and an authorial topos of self-molding. One of the leading questions throughout the volume thus is: How do authors like Cicero, Horace, Paul, Tacitus, Seneca, Athanasius, and Augustine fashion themselves in accordance to or in difference from the idea of being a "new man"? It is argued that by means of literary self-configuration, indeed, some of these writers – such as Paul and Augustine – want to appear as "new men" by either altering traditional social, moral, religious, or political roles, or by creating new patterns of social behavior and religious self-understanding.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Preface
• Eve-Marie Becker and Jacob Mortensen: Paul Among the Homines Novi
• I. Epistemic Background: Deissmann's Idea of the Homo Novus and Current Research
• Andreas Mehl: The Homo Novus in the Society and Political Culture of Rome
• Henriette van der Blom: Cicero's Self-Presentation as a Homo Novus
• Oda Wischmeyer: Paul: A Homo Novus?
• II. Historical Contexts of the Homo Novus: Socio-political Agency and Literary Strategy
• Christopher Degelmann: A Homo Novus's Self-Fashioning in Practice
• Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser: Horace, the Self-Made Poet
• Eve-Marie Becker: Paul as Homo Humilis
• Maik Patzelt: Seneca as a Homo Novus
• Andreas Mehl: Tacitus's Self-Configuration as an Historian
• Uta Heil: Athanasius of Alexandria
• III. Anthropological Transformations: From the Concept of the Homo Novus to the Notion of the “New Man”
• Lauri Thurén: The New Person in Paul
• René Falkenberg: Fall and Rise of Adam
• Tobias Uhle: Renewal in Seneca's Epistulae Morales
• Therese Fuhrer: Orator Humilis
• IV. Reception Processes: Suppressing and Recovering the Homo Novus
• Henriette van der Blom: The Reception of Cicero's Self-Presentation in the Early Imperial Period
• Christopher Mount: Spirit Possession in Christ Cults Associated with Paul and Roman Discourses of Political Power
• Johanna Schumm: Being New as Being Text
• List of Contributors
• Indices
• Authors and persons (ancient and modern)
• Subjects