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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...

Paul is here referring to the church in Philippi and presumably also the one in Thessalonike. Paul was supported financially while in Corinth by the Macedonian churches, but they also contributed to the collection for the Jerusalem saints (see also 2 Cor. 11:9). Note the references to both joy and trials in this excerpt, which also characterizes the discourse in Philippians. It is hard to say who Paul is suggesting was extremely impoverished. Is it the churches in Thessalonike and Philippi, or only
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