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Philippians: A Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

Paul’s letter to the Philippians offers treasures to the reader—and historical and theological puzzles as well. Paul A. Holloway treats the letter as a literary unity and a letter of consolation, according to Greek and Roman understandings of that genre, written probably in Rome and thus the latest of Paul’s letters to come down to us. Adapting the methodology of what he calls a new history of...

the latter for the former.33 To realize that a presenting hardship—say, exile or, as in Paul’s case, imprisonment—does not really matter is to be consoled.34 I shall argue that Paul’s prayer in Phil 1:10 that the Philippians learn to identify “the things that really matter” (τὰ διαφέροντα) evokes this theory. As a philosophical hedonist, Epicurus could not deny that “pain” in any form, including grief, was an evil. But he could allow that a person in pain might be distracted from it by recalling
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