Paul and his contemporaries

Literary techniques are part of the shared cultural heritage of a given society at a particular time in its history. Apart from a few brave souls who are constantly testing the limits of the established conventions, the great majority of writers in any society will consciously or unconsciously model their compositions on the prevailing cultural norms. As a Jewish writer of the first century C.E. who traveled extensively throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, Paul was nurtured in the values and practices of both Jewish and Greco–Roman culture from his infancy. It therefore comes as no surprise to discover a close correlation between the citation technique of the apostle Paul and that of his Jewish and GrecoRoman contemporaries.

(1) Though he quotes his ancestral Scriptures for a variety of purposes, there is no questioning the fact that Paul regarded the words of Scripture as having absolute authority for his predominantly Gentile congregations. How this is to be reconciled with his insistence that the Jewish Torah is no longer in force for these same Gentile Christians has perplexed numerous investigators, and cannot be resolved here. The important point for now is that, however his theological pronouncements are to be understood, Paul's reliance on the authority of Scripture is wholly in line with contemporary Jewish practice. While most Greco–Roman authors appear to have held the words of Homer in high regard, their tendency to subject the Homeric epics to “scientific” or moral criticism finds little parallel in the Jewish sources.