NOTES ABRAHAM AND THE QUEST FOR GOD IN HIS book Conversion, 107 ff., Professor A. D. Nock discusses the "general schema" common to Jewish and Christian literature, and occasionally to be found in pagan writings, in which the convert describes his quest for peace and satisfaction through a variety of religions, until at last he finds the truth. The theme would appear to have a fairly lengthy history behind it in Jewish literature. In Judaism the great "convert" is Abraham; we read of his call in Genesis 12:1 without any explanation of the reason for which he was selected for his special vocation. A thorough-going predestinarian of the type of St Paul would no doubt have said that God chose him for no merit of his own, and that it would be impious to ask for a reason. But it is not given to most men to be consistent predestinarians. The rabbis of a later period were interested in the whole question of predestination; and it would seem from Josephus that the question agitated the schools of Palestine even before the Christian era. 1 The early Pharisees were not predestinarians in theory, though it is quite probable that individuals would have advocated predestination, if driven to do so in order to prove a thesis, just as St Paul does; the general position is merely the ordinary compromise made by every theistic religion (and of course by St Paul himself), that there is a divine predestination, and yet that the will of man is free. So it was natural that Jewish writers should ask the reason for the choice of Abraham. Possibly the question would arise most naturally in the proselytizing Judaism of the Dispersion; the would-be proselyte would enquire why God had selected Abraham to be the father of the chosen people, while the born Jew might take it for granted. At the same time in the case of the latter the curiosity that was the original cause of many rabbinical legends could have found no more stimulating mystery than this sudden call. In any case it is clear that our earliest legends as to Abraham's finding of God come from Hellenistic-Jewish sources.
No abstract
St Paul's conversion to Christianity transformed a vicious persecutor of Christians into one of the most important and influential figures in the foundation of the early church. Paul's broad theological knowledge and his ambitious vision for the faith made him a major force in the development of Christianity from its origins as an obscure Jewish sect. W. L. Knox's 1925 biography examines what influenced Paul's theological ideas and how his desire to extend the church's reach to gentiles and the wider world put him in opposition with other early church figures like St Peter. Placing Paul's work in the social and religious context of Jerusalem following the death of Jesus, Knox evokes the atmosphere of persecution in Jerusalem and the inner social dynamics of the early Christian sect, evaluating Paul's impact on the growing church and the particular ideas and elements of doctrine that prevailed as a result of his involvement.
Wilfred L. Knox (1886–1950) was a theologian and fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Volume I of his Sources of the Synoptic Gospels was published posthumously in 1953. The gospels were written to preach Christ and not to satisfy the curiosities of the modern scholar; but they do contain important historical material of the first importance. That is Dr Knox's contention: and these volumes seek to take Gospel criticism a stage beyond Form-criticism. The result of many years' work, this volume focuses on the Gospel of St Mark, whilst the 1957 Volume II is concerned with St Luke and St Matthew. Following Knox's death. The manuscripts for both of these volumes were edited by the Rev. Henry Chadwick and published in their present form.
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