In the wake of recent scholarship attempting to cast light on Paul the Apostle by relating his writings to those of non-Christian Graeco-Roman authors, Justin Reid Allison in Saving One Another compares the ideas of Paul to those of the first-century BC Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara. Since parallels between Paul and Epicurus have already been discussed, for instance, by Norman DeWitt (Saint Paul and Epicurus (Minneapolis 1954)), and the communalities between Paul and Philodemus have even been the object of a separate monograph (C. Glad, Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Greek Psychagogy (Leiden and New York 1995)), Allison does not break new ground with his revised Durham University PhD thesis (as he himself admits). However, in contradistinction to previous authors, who focussed more narrowly on ‘psychagogy’, that is, techniques to care for the soul, Allison attempts to advance the comparative scholarship on the two authors by shifting attention to moral formation in the community more broadly and by focusing on the differing theological views and socio-economic realities of the Philodemean and Pauline communities.

The volume consists of roughly two equally long parts, dedicated to Philodemus and Paul respectively, each consisting of three chapters. In the chapters on Philodemus, Allison discusses Philodemus’ attitude to wealth and the community within which he lived, the role of the divine in moral formation and the strategies of frank criticism, that is, moral formation proper. In the chapters on Paul, Allison discusses the economic status of the members of the Pauline community before turning to two case studies, focussing on 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1 and 12:1–14:40, that work out the process of communal moral formation in Paul. Afinal chapter then compares and contrasts the findings of the analyses of Philodemus and Paul.

Given the specialized nature of the project, scholars of early Christianity, on the one hand, and scholars of Epicureanism, on the other, are the natural target audiences for this work, although the book seems overall more geared towards the former than the latter. For instance, Allison dedicates at least some space in chapter 2 (30–33) to giving the reader a basic acquaintance with Philodemus’ life, whereas he presupposes comparable knowledge about Paul when the discussion shifts to the apostle in chapter 5. Since my primary expertise is in Epicureanism, others will have to evaluate the book’s contribution to Pauline studies. In regard to its contribution to Philodemean studies, Allison himself concedes that it is limited, and Iwould add that his ‘adjustment of certain details of our portrait of Philodemus’ (195) is not always convincing. For instance, in the second chapter, which is otherwise very informative, Allison claims to disagree with Elizabeth Asmis (in ‘Epicurean Economics’, in J.T. Fitzgerald etal. (eds), Philodemus and the New Testament World (Leiden and Boston 2004), 166–67), who maintains that, although the philosopher from Gadara had a more favourable attitude towards wealth than Epicurus and early members of the Garden did, he did not in principle consider wealth decisive for someone’s admission to the community of friends. Allison maintains instead that those without sufficient means were de facto excluded from the Philodemean community, pointing to circumstantial evidence portraying Philodemus as part of the Roman social elite. However, Asmis’ claim is about the theoretical possibility of non-traditional arrangements, not about how the Philodemean community was actually organized. Accordingly, Allison’s observation is compatible with Asmis’ claim. Moreover, Allison’s mere dismissal of On Property Management col. IX (on which Asmis bases her reading) as being an anomaly in a work that deals with slavery on many occasions, is unconvincing (44 n.40). Likewise, pointing to Epicurus’ slave Mys, who was a member of the Epicurean Garden, Allison himself observes that ‘[o]ne cannot preclude the possibility that Philodemus’ circle of friends included those who could only partially live the Epicurean life due to restrictions related to wealth, education, or lack of leisured time’ (51). Once this point is conceded, however, it does not matter that ‘[a]ll available evidence … points away from that possibility [that is, of the poor being included], and towards a community of social and economic elite’ (51), since again Asmis’ claim concerns Philodemus’ theoretical commitments, not the actual make-up of the Philodemean community.

The latest entry in the bibliography is a paper (by Allison himself) written in 2019. Accordingly, it was surprising to me that some important recent works on Epicurean theology are not cited (for instance, E. Piergiacomi, Storia delle teologie atomiste (Rome 2017); M. Veres, ‘Theology, Innatism, and the Epicurean Self’, Ancient Philosophy 37 (2017), 129–52).