Kenotic Imitation of Paul and of Christ in Philippians 2 and 3

In many treatments of the Lener to the Philippians, few have given much anention to a very significant panern in chapters 2 and 3 which proposes for imitation Christ's and Paul's parallel examples of renunciation of their own prerogatives.I Two methodological reasons and one presupposition seem to be especially responsible for this lack of attention in the literature.The approaches to Philippians 2 and 3 have been predominantly source and form criticism focused on the isolated Christ hymn in 2 :6-11 , as well as source criticism of the whole letter resulting in the currently dominant, multiple-lener hypothesis, with chaps. 2 and 3 belonging to fragments of different letters.With such emphases, it would be surprising if many would notice a parallelism berween chaps. 2 and 3.The presupposition that has contributed to neglect of this panern of parallel imitation of Christ and of Paul is a fundamental bias against imitation of Christ in such seminal studies as W. Michaelis's TDNT article on mimesis and E. Kiisemann's analysis of the Christ hymn.