Re: PISTIS in Josephus

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 18 1999 - 06:02:27 EST


Inasmuch as Josephus writes in Rome and under a good deal of Roman
(Flavian?) influence, it would hardly surprise me if Latin FIDES and its
political associations has a good deal to do with the way he's using
PISTIS. I hasten to add, however, that I haven't looked directly at how
Josephus in fact DOES use PISTIS--I just would suspect that Roman thinking
might have some bearing on his usage.

At 6:54 PM -0600 3/17/99, Jeffrey B. Gibson wrote:
>Steve Long wrote:
>
>> B-Greekers,
>>
>> I've started reading Josephus to expand my Greek horizons and I've
>come
>> across something interesting already. Josephus uses PISTIS in a
>political
>> sense in terms of loyalty or allegiance to Rome. I'm wondering if this
>
>> sense of allegiance would be the more prevalent sense of the word
>rather
>> than belief or faith, or is this just a case of one word having more
>than
>> one meaning depending on context?
>>
>
>Steve,
>
>A great deal of support for your observation that PISTIS/PISTEUW in the
>NT
>has more to do with allegiance than a cognitive process can be found
>Pilch and
>Malina's _Hanbook of Biblical Social Values_ (Hendrickson, 1998). You'll
>also
>probably be interested to know that Tom Wright is making some hay from
>the import of
>the Joesphean usage of the terms to illuminate the PISTIS XRISTOU
>(faithulness
>that Jesus displayed and therefore the faithfulness that his followers
>are to display)
>debate.
>
>Yours,
>
>Jeffrey
>--
>Jeffrey B. Gibson
>7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
>Chicago, Illinois 60626
>e-mail jgibson000@ameritech.net
>
>
>
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
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