Putting Family Language Back into the Family of God

Siblingship is a common metaphor Paul uses in describing the family of God. As twenty-first-century readers of the NT, it is hard for us to understand firstcentury ideas. This paper investigates (1) the first-century Greco-Roman concept of siblings in actual families, (2) the ideal roles siblings should fulfill toward one another within Plutarch’s treatise, “ Peri; Filadelfiva” (Peri Philadelphia, “Concerning Brotherly Love”), and (3) Paul’s use of the Greco- Roman concept of siblingship within his writings, specifically 1 Thessalonians and Romans.