This introduction has three goals: to locate this book’s arguments in contemporary scholarship on Parmenides, to outline its methodology and structure, and to establish the stakes of the project as a whole. The first considers Parmenides’ invention of extended deductive argumentation and the practice of demonstration – the central topic of this book – as a relic of the ‘Greek Miracle’ paradigm; it also addresses discussions of Parmenides’ use of poetry and his relationship to Homer. The second addresses distinctions between actors’ and observers’ categories and between reasoning and discourse, and explores the Foucauldian discourse analysis that anchors the book’s treatment of the relationship between Parmenides and Homer. The third requires setting out what this book does not intend to do in order to specify its main contribution: providing an account of how Parmenides’ use of the image of the hodos helps him invent extended deductive argumentation and the practice of demonstration. The Introduction sketches out the three axes of the book’s argument: an exploration of the physical reality of archaic and classical Greek roads, a discussion of the semantics of the word hodos, and an articulation of the relationship between Parmenides’ and Homer’s poems.

The previous chapter locates Parmenides in his physical and linguistic contexts; this chapter locates him in his poetic, intellectual, and cultural milieux. It argues that we need to understand Parmenides’ poem in light of the late archaic revolution in the way that Homer was conceptualized. This chapter examines the epistemological framework Parmenides inherits from Hesiod and Xenophanes in considering the nature of human enquiry; the way that other poets in the late archaic period make use of the newly emergent figure of Homer and the corpus of Homeric poetry, especially with respect to their claims to knowledge and their relationship to the Muses; and the ways that scholars have characterized developments between Homeric poetry and the poetry of the late archaic period. I show how Parmenides uses the resources this Homeric tradition offers to launch a multipronged response to the challenges set down by Hesiod and Xenophanes. These include: reinitiating contact with a Muse-like figure in the proem; the use of crossroads imagery to articulate fundamental distinctions; ceding the voice of the poem to the unnamed goddess; the use of argument; and the return to the privileged poetic form of epic dactylic hexameter.

This chapter presents an overview of the structure of 1 Peter to lay the groundwork for the analysis of future chapters. Following Lutz Doering, this chapter argues that 1 Peter is a Christian diaspora letter. As such, it has much in common with Jewish diaspora letters. This chapter then examines the epistolary prescript (1:1-2) and postscript (5:12-14) to examine how these features are infused with the letter’s theology and anticipate its themes of diaspora, marginalization, divine regeneration, election, holiness, and peoplehood. Moving to the letter body, the chapter outlines the main structural divisions through attention to rhetorical devices, themes, and other features.

This chapter outlines the key methodological framework to be used to analyse Homer and Parmenides and detail the specifics of their relationship. I first set out the terms that Foucault develops in his Archaeology of Knowledge, and then detail the ways that these terms do and do not make contact with established topics of classical and Homeric scholarship, including text-types and discourse modes, A-B-C patterns, the oimē and theme, and catalogues and catalogic discourse. I use the hodos that Circe spells out in Odyssey 10 as a sample text to analyse according to this methodology; the result is a clearly defined textual architecture that the image of the hodos governs more generally.

This chapter examines modern and ancient conceptions of ethnicity. For Smith, six elements constitute ethnicity: a name, myth of collective descent, history, culture, territory, and a sense of solidary. However, a connection with a special territory and the myth of common descent are particularly important. David Horrell has demonstrated that these six elements are active in 1 Peter. Ethnicities are expressed in culturally specific ways. Therefore, this chapter examines conceptions of ancient Jewish and Greek ethnicity, with particular focus on putative common descent. Most Jews in the Second Temple period were Jewish by birth. However, the possibility of conversion and apostasy complicate the picture. Along with birth, Jewish identity was maintained through social praxis. In the Hellenistic period, “Greekness” came to be identified with paidaeia, or education. Those not born Greek could become Greek. Yet, “Greekness” never fully lost its connection to birth. In both Jewish and Greek culture, birth and paidaeia continued to constitute ethnic identity in a complex tension.

After an introduction (§5.1), this chapter investigates the uses of metaphorical seed language in the Hebrew scriptures (§5.2), Greco-Roman Judaism (§5.3), the New Testament (§5.4), and finally 1 Peter (§5.5). In the Hebrew scriptures, seed language is completely human, though invested with divine promise. This chapter will then look at how the concept of “holy seed” was democratized to all Israel in Ezra and Jubilees (§5.2.4 - 3.3.1). This democratization went hand in hand with the strong concern for Israel’s corporate holiness. The New Testament (§5.4) usage of the seed idiom reflects contemporary Jewish usage. However, a new question was on the table for early Christians: how were Gentiles to be brought into the people of God and included as Abraham’s seed? Philo seems to be the first Jew to actively discuss divine seed, but with Stoic influences (§5.3.2). Divine seed is rare in the New Testament (§5.4). Despite claims (cf. Jn 3:5, 1 Jn 3:9), 1 Peter is the only New Testament text to discuss seed endowed with divine qualities that generates believers (§5.5). This chapter examines 1 Peter’s continuity with tradition, but also its innovation.

In 2:4-10, the author weaves together the source domains of house/household, family, temple, priesthood, stone, and nation to describe believers’ identity and relationship to Christ, each other, and those who do not believe. This chapter first examines the οἶκος language in 1 Peter 2:4-6 (§7.2-3). At 2:5, the author simultaneously actives two meaning of οἶκος to transition smoothly from the semantic domain of the house to that of the temple, the house of God. Next, this chapter briefly surveys “community-as-temple” language at Qumran and the New Testament in order to trace the some of the streams of tradition which may lie behind 1 Peter (§7.4-5). Finally, this chapter looks at 1 Peter 2:4-10 in detail to examine how the construction of Christian ethnic identity concludes the author’s theme of divine regeneration (§7.6-9).