Lyn Kidson

Alphacrucis college · Faculty of Theology

John Barclay, in his 2020 article, “Household Networks and Early Christian Economics,” outlines the puzzles that “abound” in 1 Timothy 5:3–16. Among his list of puzzles, he asks, “Is it inconsistent to say that a χήρα can be registered only if she has brought up children (5.10), but to deny her support in 5:4–8 if she has children to look after? Wh...

Women are problematic in many evangelical circles.1 For many women attending evangelical churches in Australia, they are barred from holding leadership positions such as the senior minister or pastor, elder, worship leader, or ministry leader. So women are confined to speaking to other women at women's events and teaching children. When I first hea...

[English version] "In his essay, “Medical Imagery in the Pastoral Epistles,” Abraham Malherbe argued that medical terminology was a conventional polemic used to describe the opponents of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. His identification of this medical schema is the starting point in this article to explore the relationship between the opponents’ command...

Most scholars assume that 1 Timothy 3.16b is a hymn, or a fragment of a hymn, belonging to another context. However, Furley (1995) points out that even the ancients had difficulty categorising their poetic materials. 1 Timothy 3.16b has no metre and neither praises God nor asks him for benefits, which are the usual indicators of a hymn. This articl...

The plain-spoken rhetorical style of 1 Timothy belies a tension that simmers beneath the surface of the letter. This tension had already erupted in the removal of Hymenaeus and Alexander. Those who are addressed in the letter are warned that they may be heading toward the same catastrophic failure, shipwrecking their faith. This, according to Lyn M...

Luke’s parable of the lost drachma (Luke 15: 8–10) is sandwiched between the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15: 3–7) and the parable of the lost son (Luke 15: 11–31). In this position, it is easy to overlook the significance of this pithy parable to an ancient audience. Insight can be gained by considering the relationship that the audience had wi...

Despite his relatively short life and his tragic death, Jesus of Nazareth made a profound impact upon the first-century Graeco-Roman world. Almost immediately after he died, the ‘good news’ about him was first announced, only to spread like a tidal wave across that world, before eventually transforming it almost entirely. As that impact continued,...

Sometime int he early fourth century CE an unusual and somewhat puzzling series of bronze coins was minted in the three cities of Antioch, Nicomedia and Alexandria. It is noteworthy that portraits of Emperors and Caesars are missing from these coins. Instead, they mostly depict city gods and goddesses, or in some cases the city tyche...They then ap...

In this paper I propose that much can be gained by identifying 1 Timothy within a broad type of literature that can be described as ‘advice to the young man’ or ‘advice to those who educate the young man’. Many have noted the change in the style of 1 Timothy from the other epistles attributed to Paul. The most obvious difference is that 1 Timothy i...

Der Aufsatz geht von der Beobachtung aus, dass 1 Tim den hellenistischen Königsbriefen ähnelt, und untersucht, diese erweiternd, Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen 1 Tim und behördlichen Briefen des hellenistischen und römischen Ägypten. Zunächst werden die Schwierigkeiten der Klassifizierung des Genres und der Strukturanalyse thematisiert (I), gefolgt von d...

This article seeks to sketch the contribution numismatics has played in the study of Ephesus in a time of profound social and political change from Augustus' early principate (29 BCE) tot he end of Hadrian's reign (138 CE). Both Augustus and Hadrian were concerned about the currency available in Asia Minor and instigated large issues of cistophori...