"My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!" Christian Siblingship in Paul‪.‬

"My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!" Christian Siblingship in Paul, by Reidar Aasgaard. Early Christianity in Context; JSNTSup 265. London: T&T Clark, 2004. Pp. xii + 361. $55.00 (paper). ISBN 0567084817. This book, a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation produced at the University of Oslo in the late 1990s, is an examination of the deceptively simple question concerning why Paul speaks of Christians as "siblings." That is to say, what is the precise meaning(s), background, and rhetorical function of this form of address as it is found in the Pauline corpus? (For Aasgaard, the authentic correspondence of Paul is in line with the general scholarly consensus: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.) Aasgaard's justification for selecting this metaphor in particular, from among the many metaphors Paul employs, is most succinctly given by the simple observation that "the sibling metaphor occurs far more frequently in his letters than do any of the others" (p. 3).