What was the custom of adoption in Jesus’ day, most…

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1. James Clark says:

   March 9, 2020 at 9:17 pm

   “Roman adoption—which could take place at any age—canceled all previous debts and relationships, defining the new son wholly in terms of his new relationship to his father, whose heir he thus became. ”
   The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
   “Gallio was the son of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a Spanish orator and financier, and the elder brother of Seneca, the philosopher and tutor of Nero. Lucius Junius Gallio, a rich Roman, adopted Gallio, naming him Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeus. Gallio’s name appears on an inscription at Delphi that refers to the twenty-sixth acclamation of Claudius as emperor. This places Gallio in office in Corinth between a.d. 51 and 53. He was apparently proconsul from May 1, 51, to May 1, 52, though dates a year later are possible. The date gives evidence from outside the Bible for the time Paul was in Corinth and founded the church there.” Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
   “, “adoption”). Would a Jew writing a letter to a group of Gentiles in the first century have a mental representation of huiothesia that was primarily Jewish in nature, as James M. Scott would argue?42 Or would it involve more Graeco-Roman associations, as Trevor Burke has proposed?43 Both are justifiably a part of the mental representation evoked by huiothesia in the mind of a first-century Jew. But they are also extremely distinct representations: Graeco-Roman adoption involves legal expectations and requirements for establishing an heir, while Jewish adoption is theological and political, grounded in the ot background of God adopting the king of Israel.” Linguistics & Biblical Exegesis

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