Johan Thom: Popular philosophy and Early Christianity

• Centre for Advanced Studies
• Fellows Brunch

The paper will be a report on work in progress. I am doing research on how philosophical ideas and motifs influenced New Testament and other early Christian authors by comparing these authors and contemporary popular-philosophical texts. My hypothesis is that NT and early Christian authors did not make use of philosophical traditions like Stoicism or Platonism directly, but were influenced by popular philosophical topoi and forms that were part of the contemporary cultural repertoire. In my paper I will discuss the problem of what popular philosophy is and discuss a few example texts from the New Testament, early Christian authors, and other Greco-Roman authors.