An Early Christ-Group Self-Designation and Paul's Rhetoric of Faith

Abstract

Although it is widely recognised that was a self-designation of the early Christ groups, this is not reflected in scholarship on Romans and Galatians, where the participle is usually taken as a generic substantive. Such a rendering obscures the force of Paul's rhetoric, which presupposes the status of as a shared self-designation and mobilises it in an effort to naturalise Paul's claims regarding the exclusive justificatory value of his addressees' Accordingly, in Rom 3.22 and Gal 3.22, where appears in close connection with it is unlikely that the latter phrase designates Christ's own faithfulness.