The preferred moral curriculum of a Roman education abounded with exemplary stories of Rome’s native heroes. To inculcate conceptions of virtuous leadership, politicians and populace alike deployed exempla as rhetorical vehicles of the mos maiorum (way of the ancestors). James Petitfils explores Jewish and Christian participation in this widespread pedagogical practice. After surveying Roman discourse on exemplary leadership, the author consults several texts, written in significantly Romanized environments, celebrating Jewish or Christian ancestral leaders (Josephus’ Antiquities 2-4, Philo’s Mosis 1-2, 1 Clement, and The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons ). He highlights their respective appropriation, adaptation, and redeployment of the Roman moral idiom on exemplary leadership in the promotion of self-consciously non-Roman ancestral exempla and languages of leadership.
The Imago Dei as Human Identity: A Theological Interpretation
How do we best read Genesis 1 in its literary, historical, and cultural contexts? How should it be read theologically? How should we read Genesis 1 as a canonical text? This book charts a path through these disagreements by offering a dogmatically coherent and exegetically sound canonical interpretation of the image of God. Peterson argues that the fundamental claim of Genesis 1:26–28 is that humanity is created to image God actively in the world. “Made in the image of God” is an identity claim. As such, it tells us about humanity’s relationship with God and the rest of creation, what humanity does in the world, and what humanity is to become. Understanding the imago Dei as human identity has the further advantage of illuminating humanity’s ontology.
