For understandable reasons, Engberg-Pedersen situates Paul's thought-world in the contexts of competing ancient thought-worlds: Plato (and Aristotle to a lesser extent), Middle Platonism during the Hellenistic period, ancient Greek and Roman stoic thought, and ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought.
However, even though Engberg-Pedersen repeatedly refers to the conceptual construct and personification that Paul refers to as "Satan," Engberg-Pedersen does not explicitly discuss Zoroastrianism. During the period of time when the ancient Jewish homeland was under the rule of the Persian empire, before Alexander the Great conquered the Jewish homeland, ancient Jews came into contact with Zoroastrianism. During the later period when the ancient Jewish homeland was under Greek rule, ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought emerged. As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that Zoroastrianism contributed to the emergence of ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought, including the conceptual construct of "Satan" as the adversary of God. (In the book of Job, the adversary figure referred to as "Satan," which etymologically means "adversary," is not the adversary of God, but the adversary of humans such as Job.)
That Paul the Apostle was an apocalyptic preacher is beyond debate. He was. Indeed, in accord with ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought, he had so convinced himself that the end of the world as we know it was about to occur that he expected to live to see it occur in his lifetime. But as we know, it has not yet occurred. Nevertheless, let us pause here and consider how we might feel if we thought that the end of the world as we know it was going to occur in the near future and that we would live to see it and experience it. Exciting thoughts, eh? Let's also say that this upcoming event would include a great dividing of people into the good guys who would be saved and thereafter live in heaven on earth or earth in heaven, and bad guys who would be consigned to eternal pain and suffering in hell. Exciting thoughts, eh? For people who have convinced themselves that the present world is evil, this apocalyptic vision of the impending future might be welcome.
For example, the recent mid-term gains by Republicans might convince many liberals that the present world is evil because Republicans are up to no good. After all, Republicans contributed mightily to deregulation and the economic crisis, and they also got us into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, Paul's apocalyptic thought-world might appear tempting to liberals in light of the mid-term elections. However, as is well known, certain movement conservatives over the last half century or more have sounded apocalyptic about liberals and so-called "big government." Indeed, an apocalyptic thought-world is arguably the signature characteristic of movement conservatism. Then again, our contemporary Islamist terrorists advance their own kind of apocalyptic thought-world. In light of the appeal of the apocalyptic thought-world to movement conservatives and Islamist terrorists, I hope that liberals can resist subscribing to another version of an apocalyptic thought-world, even though Republicans are up to no good. Liberals today should fight the good fight against movement conservatives without subscribing to an apocalyptic thought-world.
Digression: Despite my serious reservations about the apocalyptic thought-world, I do want to credit the ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic tradition with one deep insight: Justice will not prevail in this world unless and until divine invention brings it about, which I do not expect to see in the near future. In plain English, our utopian efforts are not going to establish justice in the world. But this is no reason to stop striving to establish justice in the world, as long as we recognize that our efforts will be imperfect and incomplete, as President Obama's efforts certainly have been.
As a result of Paul's thoughts about the impending end of the world as we know it, he traveled around the Mediterranean world preaching that this momentous event was about to occur and urging people to get ready for it. Evidently, his excitement was catching, at least among certain people. But exactly how should people get ready for it? According to Paul, people should get ready for it by putting their faith in the conceptual construct and personification that he referred to as "Christ Jesus," where the Greek-derived term "Christ" refers to the Hebrew-derived term "Messiah." For Paul, the historical Jesus was Jesus the Messiah (Jesus the Christ, or "Christ Jesus" for short).
Here I would like to interject Gabriel Marcel's useful distinction between belief-in and belief-that. Belief-in refers to our experiences of belief in a person, which we can expand to include belief in the personifications known as "God" and as "Christ Jesus." By contrast, belief-that refers to our experiences that certain stated propositional statements are true, so that belief-that means belief-that a certain proposition is a true statement. An example of a proposition would be the statement that the historical Jesus was the Messiah (a.k.a. the Christ). For Paul, this propositional statement is truncated down to the combination of words "Christ Jesus" that mean that Jesus is the Messiah. But for Paul, his claim about "Christ Jesus" is not a debatable claim; he does not want to invite debate about this claim. Instead, he wants evoke in people belief-in "Christ Jesus," who in Paul's presentation is presumed to be a living person. So if we want to catch his excitement and enter into his excitement and share in his excitement, then we have to share his belief-in this vividly imagined "Christ Jesus." In short, Paul wants people to use their imaginations to imagine the personification "Christ Jesus" as a living person whose living presence one can feel in one's psyche, as Paul himself claims to have felt such a presence in his psyche.
Two comments are in order here. (1) In his treatise known as the RHETORIC, Aristotle identifies three different appeals that the speaker in civic debate uses to help make his arguments for a particular course of action persuasive: (A) logos (reason), (B) pathos (emotion), and (C) ethos. Paul as a speaker used pathos in the form of fear about the impending end of the world as we know it and about the impending great divide of people into good guys and bad guys. But he also relied heavily of his use of ethos to persuade people in his audience. To use ethos as an appeal, Paul projected his identity as a good guy and thereby invited the people in the audience to identify with him as a good guy. Thus through the process of projection and identification, Paul could communicate his sense of excitement about "Christ Jesus" in a way that people in his audience who were disposed to his message could catch on to what he was saying and thereby catch his excitement and make it their own. No doubt Christian proclamation has relied on this kind of use of ethos over the centuries.
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