Favor and Gratitude: Reading Galatians in Its Greco-Roman Context by Ferdinand Okorie
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: Favor and Gratitude: Reading Galatians in Its Greco-Roman Context by Ferdinand Okorie Richard S. Ascough ferdinand okorie, Favor and Gratitude: Reading Galatians in Its Greco-Roman Context (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2021). Pp. xii + 145. $95. In this published dissertation (Loyola University Chicago, 2018; supervised by Thomas Tobin), Okorie presents a reading of Galatians focused on how Paul wants his readers' faith to be expressed toward God, Christ, and one another. To do so he draws on ancient literary texts that span both sides of the turn of the era, presuming that these reflect the values of the culture in which the Galatians were embedded. Following the introductory chapter, O. looks at how manifestations of χάρις ("grace") in divine–human interactions play out in Galatians, drawing on similarities to deities like Isis and Heracles. In chap. 3, O. examines in more detail the deployment of the word χάρις in the letter, showing the need for reciprocity in a benefactory relationship. In the case of the Galatians, Paul can appeal to their cultural understanding, along with the example of Abraham, to have them respond appropriately to divine favor: "the believer's life of faith in action honors God's gift in Christ" (p. 54). The fourth chapter gives attention to human-to-human benefaction, a partnership in which there is mutual giving and receiving in accordance with the conventions of friendship. Paul's appeal to the Galatians to respond to God with faithful living and to one another with friendship stands in stark opposition, argues Okorie, to the demands being made on the Galatians by Paul's opponents (chap. 5). The content of each chapter is structured as a commentary on various sections of Galatians and focuses primarily on word studies from literary texts that treat benefaction. As a result, O.'s claims about patronage and benefaction draw primarily on data that are not fully representative of the nature of benefaction in the ancient world. A broader use of contemporary work on the social world of early Christ-groups, along with engagement with modern rhetorical theories and deeper conversations with the work of scholars in the New Perspective on Paul, would have helped strengthen the appeal of this book. Richard S. Ascough Queen's University, School of Religion, Kingston, ON K7L 4N6, Canada Copyright © 2022 The Catholic Biblical Association of America
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".