ABSTRACT
‘The gods are not models for ethical behaviour … and seldom provide the warrants for ethical conduct.’ So Neil Richardson concludes with regard to pagan religions in the sketches of ‘God-language’ in Jewish and then in Graeco-Roman paraenesis which introduce his very thorough analytical survey of ‘Paul’s language about God’. Much more clearly with Paul, avers Richardson, do we find ‘a marked continuity with the Old Testament and Jewish tradition in the deployment of God-language in a warranting function’. 2 In fact, Richardson finds little in his Jewish sources, either, to suggest that God’s character be taken as a model to be imitated. 3
