Paul, the stoic and human rights

Abstract

Two recent arguments trace the genealogy of human rights back to either Paul on the one hand or the Stoics on the other. First, Crossan and Reed (2004) suggest that although Paul intended his egalitarian vision and program for Christian communities in the first place, his wish that all humanity should convert to a Christian world of egalitarian justice would logically imply a basic continuity with the ideals of universal human rights. Secondly, the classicist Richard Sorabji (2002) considers whether the concept of human rights is to be found in the Stoic ideas of oikeiosis and natural law. My purpose will be to relate these two archaeological arguments, in the light of recent comparisons between Paul and the Stoics, and to hermeneutically problematize the discourse with reference to Hannah Arendt's perplexities on human rights.