RBL 04/2019

Marius Nel, Jan G. van der Watt, and Fika J. van

Rensburg, eds.

The New Testament in the Graeco-Roman World:

Articles in Honour of Abe Malherbe

Theology in Africa 4

Münster: LIT, 2015. Pp. 328. Paper. €39.90. ISBN

9783643906328.

Christopher R. Hutson
Abilene Christian University

This collection of essays is the product of the Abe Malherbe Memorial Seminar, held in
2013 at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Several contributors
comment on how Malherbe impacted their own careers and thinking.

Jan van der Watt reviews Malherbe’s well-known 1977 essay (reprinted in 1983) on 3 John.
In a 1986 Semeia article, Bruce Malina criticized Malherbe for not engaging social-
scientific methods in his study of social aspects of the relationships among Diotrephes,
Clement, and the Elder. Malina’s rhetoric was oddly sarcastic and personal for an
academic article and created a buzz among Malherbe’s students (among whom was the
present reviewer), but Malherbe ignored the attack and continued with his scholarly
agenda. Van der Watt describes Malherbe and Malina as “two of the ‘greats’ of the past 30
years” (32), but he mounts a vigorous defense of Malherbe’s argument, wondering
whether at the time Malina “really understood (or tried to understand) what Malherbe
was doing” (28), and regrets that his polemics obscured the value of Malina’s arguments.

Cilliers Breytenbach offers an intellectual biography of Malherbe that shows how a “lad
from Capitol Park,” a working-class suburb of Pretoria, became “one of the most respected
Biblical scholars of our time” (43). Breytenbach sketches Malherbe’s development from
his interaction with Church of Christ missionaries to his time at Abilene Christian
College to his graduation (first in his class) from Harvard Divinity School. Breytenbach

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also traces an intellectual trajectory from Heinrici, von Dobschutz, Windisch, and
Deissman, through Willem C. van Unnik at Utrecht and Arthur Darby Nock at Harvard.
From those scholars, Malherbe learned to read Hellenistic authors—pagan, Jewish, and
Christian—carefully and fully, so as to engage the New Testament with a first-century
mindset.

Jan A. du Rand discusses the “three unclean spirits like frogs” (Rev 16:13–14) in the
context of Rev 12–16. He finds several Exodus allusions, including the second plague, but
argues that Exodus allusions do not exhaust the metaphor. Du Rand cites, without
discussing details, numerous ancient texts in which frogs appear as cowardly, arrogant,
foolish, noxious, or disgusting (58–59). In contrast to three angels who call people to
glorify God and predict the fall of Babylon (Rev 14:6–14), the three “unclean spirits like
frogs” call the kings of the world to battle against God (60). Revelation 16 belittles those
spirits as foolish and ridiculous.

Gregory E. Sterling, the only non-South African contributor, reprises a study previously
published in Leaven (1997) and lightly retouched in Fanning the Flame: Probing the Issues
in Acts (College Press, 2003). This third iteration makes explicit how Sterling’s work
expands previous insights of Malherbe. Sterling collects and discusses a wide array of
pagan criticism of Christianity from the first two centuries. He shows how Acts fits into a
trajectory toward a full-blown Christian apologetic literature that would emerge in the
second century but is more restrained. Narratives in Acts about interactions between
Christians and pagans helped early Christians “understand their place in the larger world”
(68). Acts presents early Christianity in “dialectical relationship between allegiance to the
values of Christianity and the need to take a place in the world” (83).

Andries van Aarde nods to Malherbe’s close readings of Hellenistic philosophers

alongside New Testament texts in order to clarify both similarities and differences in
thought. He explores Paul’s “reasonable worship” (λογικὴ λατρεία, Rom 12:1) in light of
Epictetus’s assertion in Diss. 1.16.20–21 that the essential obligation of a rational (λογικός)
human is to sing to God in gratitude for the gift of mind (νοῦς). Drawing philosophical
insights from Kant, Wittgenstein, James, and Bultmann, van Aarde makes a pragmatic-
linguistic distinction between the meaning of language and its “implicature” in specific
contexts. Paul and Epictetus shared a philosophical perspective but differed in theology.
For Paul, Epictetus’s quest for freedom and self-rule (αὐτονοµία) through assertion of
one’s “rational” human nature amounted to living κατὰ σάρκα. Paul advocated instead
that a truly rational religion is living κατὰ πνεῦµα, in accordance with new creation and
with a trusting submission in the will of God.

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Gert J. Steyn examines the hapax legomena in Hebrews and considers the frequency,
occurrence, and distribution of these words in all other Greek literature, with particular
attention to the Septuagint and to five contemporary corpora: Philo, Josephus, Plutarch,
Strabo, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Steyn identifies 133 words, plus five proper
names, as New Testament hapax legomena (122) but only eight “absolute hapax
legomena” that appear nowhere in extant Greek literature prior to Hebrews, even if that
word occurs more than once in Hebrews (123). Steyn identifies thirty-five New Testament
hapax legomena not found in the LXX, but ninety-eight New Testament hapax legomena
do appear in the LXX, of which seventy appear only once in the LXX and in exactly the
same form as in Hebrews, and those are widely distributed through all parts of the LXX.
The hapax legomena in Hebrews are clustered mainly in nine passages. Steyn corrects
previous lists of hapax legomena in Hebrews and demonstrates that the author of Hebrews
wrote in Hellenistic Greek that was contemporary to his times.

Jacobus Kok brings diological self theory to bear on the phrase “worship of angels” in Col
2:18. Diological self theory explores how group identity leads to a group ethics and then
to a group ethos. In Kok’s view, Col offers an “intervention strategy” (163, 167) against
teachers before their identification with a hierarchy of angels and their misguided ascetic
ethics can harden into an ethos. Colossians emphasizes a high Christology and argues
that the identity of the Christian community is found in Christ alone, through whom
believers have direct access to the “fulness of God” without angelic intermediaries.

Stephan Joubert reviews the extensive literature on reciprocity in Greco-Roman

relationships and calls on New Testament scholars to become familiar with more recent
classics studies so as better to distinguish Greek euergetism from Roman patrocinium, a
“patron” from a “benefactor,” and general categories of patron-client relations from
specifically Roman conventions of patrocinium.

In a similar vein, Jeremy Punt calls for greater precision distinguishing between empire
studies and postcolonial studies. He defends such approaches against critics who dismiss
them as projections of modern political ideologies and/or those who privilege theological
studies (207–10) and especially postmodern theologians who put “too much faith in the
ability of [a text] to construe its own world” (210 n. 39). But he resists simplistic readings
of New Testament texts as pro-Roman or anti-Roman. Scholars should seek to
understand the “symbiotic relationships” (206) at play in particular, local contexts. “First-
century Empire was a complex, intricate constellation of interrelations between powerful
and marginalized, characterized by uneven power relations and kept intact by constant
social negotiations” (203). Postcolonial studies probe those negotiations by moving
beyond the social-historical description of empire to focus on its ideological assumptions.

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Johannes Wessels summarizes Malherbe’s life and career and expresses appreciation for
the ways Malherbe integrated faith and scholarship.

Wim C. Vergeer admires how Malherbe represented a low-key influence for women in
ministry within the Churches of Christ while maintaining fellowship with those who
disagreed. Vergeer outlines the structure of the argument in Rom 14:1–15:13 and offers
section-by-section commentary. He aims to tease out principles for dealing with
“Christian disputes” (237), allowing for differences in perspective and practice, as long as
all parties maintain a core Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus
Christ (236). Vergeer develops a five-step process for dealing with Christian disputes and
applies it to the issue of ordaining women for ministry in the Reformed Churches of
South Africa (RCSA). He identifies the “weak” with traditional gender restrictions based
on the order of creation and the “strong” with Paul’s focus on a new dispensation of
freedom in Christ (Gal 3:28). Both sides should respect one another and seek mutual up-
building and growth. Vergeer might strengthen his argument by engaging the so-called
New Perspective and its aftermath, which could help him frame more robustly the
question of restrictions based on gender in light of Paul’s concern about restrictions based
on ethnic identity.

Hendrik Goede proposes a “sociojuristic” reading of Philemon in light of the social history
of legal relations between masters and slaves, though he discusses no Greek or Roman
laws. He comments on theological connotations of a few key words and summarizes
various interpretations of the relation between Onesimus and Philemon but does not
consider Allen Dwight Callahan’s theory that Onesimus was Philemon’s brother. He
concludes that the letter offers no sociojuristic data and Paul’s language is ambiguous.

Jaco Putter gathers observations from secondary scholarship since Malherbe’s Anchor
Bible commentary concerning the “difficult situation” reflected in 1 Thessalonians.

Marius Nel lists seventeen points in which Mark 13 differs from the characteristics of
typical Jewish apocalypses (304–6). He suggests that Mark 13 is “anti-apocalyptic” (296,
307) in that it presents “a counter-move against overheated apocalyptic expectations” of
early Christians who associated events in Rome and Judea in the late 60s as indicators
that the end of the age was imminent.

Malherbe would have wished some essays had engaged primary sources more thoroughly
and deeply, although in fairness, not all the contributors are New Testament specialists. A
copyeditor should have corrected errors in Greek spelling and accents throughout the
book and helped several contributors with English grammar, style, and clarity. Readers
should beware of errata: Carl Holladay was Malherbe’s student at Abilene Christian and a

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faculty colleague at Yale Divinity School, but he wrote his doctoral dissertation at
Cambridge University, not under Malherbe (9). The opinions of Greenspahn are
misattributed to Freedman (122, 138, 141). The word εὐστοµώτερος in Strabo, Geog.
17.1.51, is from στόµα, not from τοµέω, so has no relation to τοµώτερος in Heb 4:12 (132).
On page 227, the correct name of the conference in question was the “Joint Conference of
Academic Societies in the Fields of Religion and Theology” (and note 2 is missing). The
definition of apocalyptic on pages 294–95 is a verbatim quotation of John Collins and
should be set off with quotation marks.

Despite flaws, this volume makes clear what a significant impact Malherbe had in his
native South Africa and how much he is admired there as scholar and churchman. Surely
Malherbe—Abe, as the conference and his friends and students knew him—would be
gratified to see so many South African colleagues endeavoring to raise their game in New
Testament studies and to do so in service to the church.

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