Paul (in Romans) and Plutarch (in On Superstition)

The scope of this paper is a comparison of Paul (as we can understand him from his letter to the Romans) and Plutarch (in his treaty On Superstition) in order to determine how Paul is like the Greek philosopher and how he is unlike him. We will work from the assumption that it is possible to compare Paul to Plutarch, not by asking if both works surveyed occupy any specific literary genre, but by looking at the voice that speaks in each text. Thus, we will attempt to look at (i) what the text does, and (ii) how it does it. The comparative task at hand is to find out how these different authors express their views on the fear of God and on the practice of true religion. In order to come closer to achieving that goal, we will look briefly at: how do the authors make use of citations, how do they use the first person singular, and how do they designate “the other.”