Affiliation:
1. Department of Religious Studies, Willamette University,
Salem, OR 97301, USA,
Abstract
A scholarly tradition exists linking the nursling-milk metaphor in 1 Pet. 2.1-3 with Jewish (or Jewish-Christian) motifs from, for example, the Odes of Solomon and Qumran. This article attempts to broaden the cultural associations of this metaphor to include the broader Greco-Roman world—specifically the role of the wet nurse, the idealized mother, and formative moral development of the child through breast-feeding and childminders ( nutrix and nutritor). This article will then link these cultural referents to the rhetorical strategy of this section of 1 Peter's paraenesis.
Reference84 articles.
1. Achtemeier, P.J. 1988 `Newborn Babes and Living Stones: Literal and Figurative in 1 Peter', in M.P. Horgan and P.J. Kobelski (eds.), To Touch the Text: Biblical and Related Studies (New York: Crossroads): 207-36.