Making Connections: The Material Expression of Friendship in the New Testament

From: Interpretation | Date: April 1, 2004| Author: Johnson, Luke Timothy | Copyright information

From Luke to James, the writers of the New Testament transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of friendship into a communal ethos. This koinonia was characterized above all by the sharing of material possessions.

Regarding friendship in the New Testament, this essay makes three kinds of connections. The first is the connection between the explicit and the implicit, between denotation and connotation. Although rarely discussed explicitly, friendship (philia) is actually a prominent theme in th...

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