Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Philippians 3:1-11, Dogs, mutilators, and a pedigree counted as loss
Paul warns against teachers who press circumcision, calling them dogs and mutilators, lists his own credentials as a born Jew, a Pharisee and a zealous persecutor, and counts them all loss for the sake of knowing Christ.
Philippians 3:1-11, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul warns sharply against teachers who press circumcision on Gentile believers, using insulting names for them. If anyone could boast in Jewish credentials it was Paul, and he lists his birth, tribe, training as a Pharisee, zeal as a persecutor and strict keeping of the law. Yet he now counts all of it as loss compared with knowing Christ, being right with God through faith, sharing in Christ's sufferings and reaching the resurrection.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/circumcision\/","n":"Circumcision and becoming a Jew","s":"Circumcision was the sign of God's covenant with Abraham and the mark of a Jewish man. A Gentile man who joined Israel was circumcised; the first great quarrel in the church was over whether Gentile believers had to be.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/orators-and-sophists\/","n":"Orators, rhetoric and boasting","s":"Public speaking was the great skill of the Greek city. Traveling orators performed for crowds and gathered paying students, audiences judged them on voice and gesture as well as argument, and the fans of rival speakers boasted of their own man against the rest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/pharisees\/","n":"The Pharisees","s":"A mostly lay movement devoted to careful keeping of the law and of oral tradition, respected by the people and watchful of new teachers.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/zeal\/","n":"Zeal for God and the law","s":"Zeal meant burning loyalty to God and his law, and its heroes, Phinehas, Elijah and the Maccabees, had used force against those who betrayed it. Saul the persecutor saw himself in that line.","r":""}
Some scholars see two or three letters joined here, citing the sharp break at 3:1 and Polycarp's mention of Paul's letters to Philippi; Carson, Moo and Morris answer that Paul breaks off abruptly elsewhere and "It is better to see this as one letter", as Keener, the cultural backgrounds notes, the ESV Study Bible and Wright and Bird also hold. The targets are traveling teachers like those in Galatia (Keener and his notes; Wright); Carson, Moo and Morris list other proposals, from non-Christian Jews to perfectionists, and think Paul is "fighting on two fronts". Dogs was a stock insult: Jews viewed dogs as unclean, and some called Gentiles dogs, so Paul turns the insult back (Keener and his notes; the ESV Study Bible); Wright notes that ancient dogs were mostly wild, seldom pets. Mutilation, katatome, puns on circumcision, and Wright hears in it the pagan cults that gashed the body. Eighth-day circumcision put Paul above any convert (Keener and his notes). Hebrew of Hebrews may mean a family that kept the Hebrew language and customs (the Zondervan dictionary), though Keener calls it unclear. Phinehas and the Maccabees, the models of zeal, used violence (Keener and his notes).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Philippians, Unity, introduction to 3:1-16, and on Philippians 3:1, 3:2, 3:4, 3:5, 3:6 and 3:8
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Philippians 3:1-4:1, 3:2 and 3:8
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Philippians 3:2
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 19, Philippians, The integrity of Philippians
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, comment on Philippians 3:1-6
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 12, Philippians, Philippians in Recent Study, The Unity of the Letter and Paul's Opponents
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Hebrew of Hebrews
