90 SCOTT HAFEMANN Reub. 3.1,3; T. Sol. 4.5; T. Job 3.3; Let. Aris. 44.2; 56.3; 250.4. Sig- nificantly, Let. Aris. 257.5 states that God, “according to his nature” (κατὰ φύσιν), welcomes that which is humbled, and Let. Aris. 288.4 asserts that the best king is determined not by whether he has royal blood or not, but by how he acts toward his subjects, i.e., by what is best by nature (to.n a;riston th|/ fu,sei) as seen in his actions. Liv. Pro. (Daniel) 4.8 refers to the grass normally eaten by oxen becom- ing the food of human nature” (evge,neto avnqrwpi,nhj fu,sewj trofh), i.e., becoming that which accords with what a person’s na- , ture can eat and digest. If original, Sib. Or. 12.81 refers to Nero as a “terrible snake by nature” (φύσεως) due to his murderous ways 34. According to Ps-Phocylides, Sent. 125, every “nature” (φύσις) or “creature” has from God a “weapon” (i.e., a particular capacity or ability) that enables it to protect itself, here exhibiting the simple periphrastic use common also in Plato 35. IV. Fύσις and the Eschatological Interpretation of 2 Peter 1,4b The use of φύσις in profane, Jewish, and biblical texts shows that its reference to one’s character entailed the capacity to include the thoughts, words, or deeds inextricably linked with that character. The sense of φύσις is thus best understood to be “action-determined char- acter”, or “character expressed in actions”, depending on whether the emphasis in the context lies on the actions determining “nature” or on “nature” as determining the actions. The latter view was clearly predominant in the popular philosophies of the culture, since in the ancient world one’s “nature” was widely viewed as the determining power of one’s life. This common understanding of φύσις corres- ponds both to the biblically informed world-view in general and to the context of 2 Pet 1,4 in particular. Ten of the eleven uses of φύσις in Paul and its two uses in Jas 3,7 confirm that the early church, like OTP, 447 n.o, in view of Sib. Or. 5.29, emends the text to read, “breath- 34 ing grievous war”. So P.W. VAN DER HORST, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, With In- 35 troduction and Commentary (SVTP 4; Leiden 1978) 200. See also the state- ments concerning the nature of sexuality in Sent. 176, 187, 190, which WILSON, Sentences, 189, interprets in terms of the common reference to the “laws of nature” regarding sexuality in the ancient world, including Judaism (cf. Aristotle, Eth. nic. 8.12.7; Philo, Contempl. 59; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.199). © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati