Great quote
I'm researching for my term paper, and came across this quote. I don't know why it struck me, but I thought it was just an absolutely great quote... For those who think that studying early Christianity is all about reading texts and having your head in a book, consider this -- an example of the direction the academy is going:
-- Wayne A. Meeks, "The First Urban Publishers: The Social World of the Apostle Paul," p. 9. Yale University Press (1983)
Paul was a city person. The city breathes through his language. Jesus' parables of sowers and weeds, sharecroppers, and mud-roofed cottages call forth smells of manure and earth, and the Aramaic of the Palestinian villages often echoes in the Greek. When Paul constructs a metaphor of olive trees or gardens, on the other hand, the Greek is fluent and evokes schoolroom more than farm; he seems more at home with the clichés of Greek rhetoric, drawn from gymnasium, stadium, or workshop.
-- Wayne A. Meeks, "The First Urban Publishers: The Social World of the Apostle Paul," p. 9. Yale University Press (1983)
