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Throughout his letters, the apostle Paul consistently references signs, wonders, visions, miracles, divine healings, prophecies, and speaking in tongues. This book examines Paul's repertoire of divinatory and wonderworking practices and contextualizes them in their historical milieu. Furthermore, the book situates such practices within a framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity. Insofar as Paul extends miraculous abilities tohis gentile followers, these wondrous abilities come in proportion to their faithfulness.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Taxonomy and Pauline Uniqueness
- (The Problem of Categories and Modes)
- Chapter 2: Divinatory Practices and the Palpability of the Gods
- Chapter 3: A Taxonomy of Paul's Divinatory Practices
- Chapter 4: A Taxonomy of Paul's Wonderworking
- Chapter 5: Discursive Claims to Divine Authority
- Chapter 6: Paul, Pistis, and Divine Powers: An Economy of Reciprocity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Jennifer Eyl is Assistant Professor of Religion at Tufts University. She is the co-editor of Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation and has published articles in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal for the Study of the New Testament.
Summary
In much of the scholarship on Paul, activities such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miracle healings are either ignored or treated as singular occurrences. Typically, these practices are categorized in such a way that shields Paul and his followers from the influence of so-called paganism. In Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Jennifer Eyl masterfully argues that Paul did, in fact, engage in range of divinatory and wonder-working practices that were widely recognized and accepted across the ancient Mediterranean. Eyl redescribes, reclassifies, and recontextualizes Paul's repertoire vis-à-vis such widespread, similar practices. Situating these activities within the larger framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity, she demonstrates that divine powers and divine communication were bestowed as benefactions toward Paul and his gentile followers in proportion to their faithfulness and loyalty.
Additional text
an effective, innovative, and provocative treatment of Paul in his religious milieu that will be of interest to many New Testament specialists. One can hope that scholarship increasingly participates in Eyl's unflinching commitment to an analysis of Paul within the Greek and Roman world and in so doing produces an ever clearer and more penetrating assessment of the Apostle and his achievements.
