Hughson-Ong

Since the last time I mentioned the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, several new articles have been posted to the 2016 volume. These are:

• Preston T. Massey, “Women, Talking and Silence: 1 Corinthians 11.5 and 14.34-35 in the Light of Greco-Roman Culture
• Hughson T. Ong, “The Language of the New Testament from a Sociolinguistic Perspective”
• Jonathan M. Watt Geneva, “Semitic Language Resources of Ancient Jewish Palestine”
• Stanley E. Porter, “The Use of Greek in First-Century Palestine: A Diachronic and Synchronic Examination”

For context, the latter three essays are introduced by the additional entry “The Languages Of First-Century Palestine: An Introduction To Three Papers.”

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Stanley Porter and Hughson Ong have the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Judaism and Christianity: “‘Standard of Faith’ or ‘Measure of Trusteeship’?: A Study in Romans 12.3—A Response.” The article’s opening paragraph explains its responsive character and general argument as follows:

John Goodrich has recently published an article regarding the interpretation of μέτρον πίστεως in Rom. 12.3 in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. We have tried to respond to his article in that journal, but regrettably, the journal does not publish responses to articles, although we think that Goodrich’s article warrants a response. Goodrich argued ’that μέτρον πίστεως in Rom 12:3 refers to the believer’s charism, addressed shortly and explicitly thereafter in 12:6’ (p. 753). Against the typical view that takes μέτρον πίστεως as ‘standard/measure of faith’, he proposes that this charism should be seen as ‘a trusteeship’ God grants to each believer. Specifically, the genitive construction in μέτρον πίστεως, regarded as appositive, is ‘a measure, namely a trusteeship’ (pp. 769, 772). This old alternative that Goodrich seeks to revive, however, poses some significant problems that can be neither resolved nor sustained by the arguments and evidence he marshals in this article. We assess critically each of these in what follows, followed by our own interpretation of μέτρον πίστεως in Rom. 12.3. (97)

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