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Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

Paul’s short, affectionate letter to the Philippians has been much belabored of late by biblical scholars keen to analyze it in light of Greco-Roman letter-writing conventions. Yet Ben Witherington argues that Philippians shouldn’t be read as a letter at all but, rather, as a masterful piece of long-distance oratory—an extension of Paul’s oral speech, dictated to a scribe and meant to be read...

“Christ has done all that and has been exalted so that you might work out …” goes the logic. The term sōtēria is of course much debated in this verse because some would see a certain reading of this verse as contradicting the Pauline doctrine of salvation by faith alone, thought to be obvious from other Pauline texts. Thus some have argued for the translation “well-being” with the idea that the word could have a social sense of bringing about harmony and well-being and spiritual health within the
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