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In this book, John Frederick compares the words and the governing ethical pattern of thought in the catalogue of virtue and vice in Colossians 3:5, 8, 12-17 with contemporaneous Greco-Roman and Jewish texts. He critiques the arguments of scholars who have proposed that Paul is operating from a Stoic, Cynic, or Aristotelian ethical pattern of thought. On the basis of these comparisons the author argues that the ethical terms and concepts of Colossians are most directly influenced by the words and concepts found in the texts of the Jewish traditions. Also, several of the ethical terms and concepts in Colossians are absent and/or uncommon in the Greco-Roman sources surveyed but widely attested in the Jewish sources. Colossians presents ethical material in the Jewish Two Ways tradition that is driven by a governing pattern of thought which focuses on Christ-like transformation through the enactment and reception of cruciform love.

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