Contributions of the Philippian Community to Paul and to Earliest Christianity

Abstract

Pauline studies have long dealt with the theology (and sometimes the ethics) of Paul and the career of the apostle to the Gentiles. Lesser attention has been given to the communities of Paul. When Victor Furnish's Forschungsbericht took up ‘the Pauline congregations’, as part of what he termed an ‘overdue refocusing’, the emphases were on (1) relations with Jewish Christianity; (2) Paul's opponents; and (3) social history. The first area still often reflects hypotheses of the Tübingen School; the second, conflicts with rampant Judaizers or Gnostics or both as the opposition. Social world research looks to accumulate descriptive data from antiquity or also to use some modern sociological theory, to interpret Pauline church life and structures.