Conflicting Worldviews in Acts
This article examines the conceptual encounter of coexisting worldviews in the lands around the Mediterranean through the concept of the oikoumene, ‘the inhabited world’. Different cultures, such as the Roman and the Jewish, adopted the term, but distinctively adapted it around their own understandi...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Sage
[2020]
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In: |
The expository times
Year: 2020, Volume: 132, Issue: 2, Pages: 53-62 |
Further subjects: | B
Oikoumene
B Empire B Worldview B Luke-Acts B Paul |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
Summary: | This article examines the conceptual encounter of coexisting worldviews in the lands around the Mediterranean through the concept of the oikoumene, ‘the inhabited world’. Different cultures, such as the Roman and the Jewish, adopted the term, but distinctively adapted it around their own understanding. The result was a tension for early Christians between two parallel worldviews. The biblical authors considered it significant to elucidate the genuine Lord of the oikoumene, who was thus its centre. Luke employs the oikoumene in Luke-Acts and provides his own worldview, particularly, in Acts 17. Here he intends to suggest that the Roman oikoumene is to be gradually supplanted by the Christian oikoumene (17:6). At the same time, Luke claims that the Acts’ narrative portrays the inhabited world where the early Christians lived as restored into the authentic world created and ruled by God through Jesus (17:31). Similarly, the inhabited world represented in Acts is the world that God designed all nations (God’s offspring) to inhabit, and God has allotted the boundaries of the nations where the people are to dwell. |
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ISSN: | 1745-5308 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: The expository times
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/0014524620908790 |