During the first century C.E., Paul was one of the early proselytizers of Christianity and Philo was a prominent Alexandrian Jew. Winter (director, Institute of Early Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World, Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK) examines their rhetoric in an investigation of their connections to the Sophist movement that originated out of Greece. He argues that Philo and Paul cannot be understood without knowledge of their Sophistic counterparts, even when they were violently opposed in argument. Likewise, knowledge of the rhetoric of Philo and Paul sheds important light on the nature of the spread of the Sophists from their Hellenistic origins. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
