Moral Transformation in Greco-Roman Philosophy of Mind: Mapping the Moral Milieu of the Apostle Paul and his Diaspora Jewish Contemporaries

Max J. Lee provides a synoptic picture of the moral traditions - especially those of Platonism and Stoicism - which shaped the intellectual and cultural environment of Greco-Roman antiquity. He describes each philosophical school’s respective teachings on diverse moral topoi such as emotional control, ethical action and habit, character formation, training, mentorship, and deity. He then organizes each school’s tenets into systemic models of moral transformation. For Platonism, the author analyzes the works of Plato, Plutarch, Alcinous and Galen; and for Stoicism, Zeno, Chrysippus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, and Epictetus, among others. He also constructs a taxonomy of six interaction types to gauge how rival religio-philosophical sects, including Diaspora Judaism and Pauline Christianity, appropriated moral traditions from their Greco-Roman environment to articulate their own system of ethics.