Author Description

Dorothee Dettinger's study is concerned with how Christians of the late first century regarded it as necessary and possible to lead a new, faith-guided life within a non-Christian context. To this end, Christian guidelines regarding the relationships between men and women in marriage as well as between parents and their children are discussed on the backdrop of the Greco-Roman philosophical discourse in the 1st century Mediterranean. In particular, the study focuses on the specifically Christian character of the justifications of these guidelines and their underlying theological insights. As is shown, the structure of these justifications retroacts on the demanded kind of conduct and is thus closely tied to the content of the respective guidelines.