God's sons and the logic of the Covenant : divine sonship in 'Jubilees' and Romans
Abstract
This thesis attempts to understand Paul’s deployment of divine sonship language with respect
to the community of believers by bringing Romans into sustained conversation with one text
from the Jewish tradition, namely, The Book of Jubilees. I argue throughout that a
comparison between divine sonship in the two texts is justified because both authors
collocate with the theme of “God’s sons” the same series of motifs, including a divinely
given spirit, law fulfillment, renewed creation, and Abrahamic descent. My central thesis is
that Paul assumes certain characteristics of the sons of God in the logic of Romans, and that
Paul shares similar assumptions with the author of Jubilees. In other words, one can detect a
narrative substructure underlying Paul’s descriptions of the “sons of God” that demonstrates
marked similarities with the narrative of the sons of God in Jubilees. Just as the explicit logic
of covenant membership in Jubilees holds together the collocation of motifs including divine
sonship, the giving of the divine spirit, law fulfillment, new creation, and Abrahamic descent,
so an analogous, though implicit, covenantal logic in Romans brings together the same
motifs. This does not mean, however, that the two authors bring together the collocation of
motifs in the same manner. In fact, reading Jubilees and Romans together highlights clear
differences in conclusions. Nevertheless, these differences only further serve to illustrate that
both Paul and Jubilees work with similar assumptions about the sons of God despite their
theological differences.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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