This article attempts to analyze the important role of God-fearers in informing early Christian identity. Luke and Acts use an ethnic-reasoning define community. uses words gentiles, unbeliever other ethnic groups, such as Romans Greeks, describe outsiders. When outsiders join community, they need a new identity that contrasts with their former. study employs ethnicity theory understand how peo...

We contend that Paul consciously alludes to Deut. 9-10; 29-30 and to Jer. 31:30-34 in Rom. 2:1-16. These allusions shape and inform Paul’s discourse and, therefore, provide a new approach to old exegetical questions, such as, the rhetorical nature of vv. 6-11 and whether vv. 13-16 refer to ‘Gentile Christians’. On the basis of our intertextual approach we assert that: (1) Romans 2 is essentiall...

Human society and its religions and cultures have laid out numerous guidelines, often involving dietary restrictions (Deut. 14:4-5; Lev. 11:2-7). One such set of restrictions still observed by many Jews today relates to the distinction between pure and impure, edible and forbidden mammals (Talmud Bavli, Avoda Zara 35b). The ancient Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) have often perplexed both gentile...