Resident Aliens in Mission: Missional Practices in the Emergent Church of 1 Peter

published in Bulletin for Biblical Research 19.4 (2009): 565-589.

In this study I discusses the issue of mission in 1 Peter in light of the missiological model of  ‘missional’ church. The early Christian communities of 1 Peter are considered here as young emerging congregations living in a kind of liminal state. Being discriminated against in their local communities, they struggled for their own new Christian identity. In these circumstances, the phnomenon of intramural ethics is important, but so also are their missional good works. These are considered to be observed by “the others”,  who are won over and ultimately give glory to God. Contrary to some recent interpreters, the present study argues that the readers are also admonished to be ready to preach and defend their faith, thus becoming a missional church of both works and words in their neighborhoods.

Saul of Tarsus and Early Zealotism. Reading Gal 1,13-14 in Light of Philo’s Writings

It is the thesis of the present article that Philo’s expositions of zeal for God/Torah, particularly his considerations of violent zealotry, strongly support the view that the early zealots probably did not form any consistent party or movement, but were vigilant individuals who took the Law in their own hands when observing cases of gross Torah transgressions. This view should be considered important when trying to understand the role of zeal in the early life of Paul. As most studies of the zeal of Paul also deal with the issue of zealotry in Palestine, we will start by reviewing the positions in recent research concerning the nature of this zealotry, including the various positions taken in recent studies on the zeal of Paul. Our main part, however, deals with the issue of Paul’s zeal in Gal 1,13-14, working out some corollaries from the works of Philo for understanding the statements of Paul about his own zealotry.

Paroikos kai paripedemos:Proselyte characterizations in 1 Peter?

Published in Bulletin for Biblical Research 112 (2001) 239-68

In some diaspora Jewish works, the terms pa/roikoj and parepi/dmoj belong to the semantic field of "proselyte/ proselytism." In 1 Peter, however, they do not indicate that the recipients of the letter are considered former proselytes.
The terms function rather as metaphors drawn from the social world of proselytes (source domain), characterizing the social situation of the Petrine Christians (target domain), especially throwing light on the social estrangement of the Christian converts in the Greco-Roman societies of Asia Minor as understood by the author.