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Josmurftay's avatar

I really enjoyed this. Not just because Hays has forever changed my mind on "echoes" and intertextuality, but because of how carefully and creatively you propose possible reasons for Paul's "redactive" work.

Might you know of any older places where these parallels to Proverbs are made? I preached through the second half of Romans 12 recently and consulted a few commentaries, but did not come across this at all and found myself delighted this morning to enjoy your insights. Blessings brother!

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Michael J. Rhodes's avatar

Thanks for the encouragement! To be honest, while people do note the Proverbs references (all of them are listed in the margins of NA28, for instance), most people do not do much with them, I only found a person or two who mentioned that God was left out of the references, and as far as I know, nobody has explored the significance of the way Paul handles the references to God this way. I'm not the kind of scholar who has read everything, and work primarily in the OT, so of course I may have missed something!

On the other hand, a fair number of the kind of suggestions I make resonate with other kinds of arguments about Paul/the NT era in general and Romans 13 specifically (in other words, some of this is new evidence for ideas that have been on offer for a while).

If you email me at michael.rhodes@carey.ac.nz I can send you the academic article on which this is based, as there might be stuff that's interesting in the footnotes.

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Rachael Howard's avatar

I enjoyed this article. Thank you for your thoughts on this. And thank you for insightfully differentiating between our roles as those under authority and our roles as those with authority. It’s good to handle both with the Wisdom that both Proverbs and Paul speak to. It also seems that humility aught to be the guiding principle for both. Reminds me of yet another spokes person, Micah, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

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Michael J. Rhodes's avatar

Thanks Rachel, and great point about humility!

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