Paul presupposes this story even when he does not expound it directly, and it is arguable that we can only understand the more limited narrative worlds of the different letters if we locate them at their appropriate points within this overall story-world, and indeed within the symbolic universe that accompanies it.108 The story begins with the creation of the world by the one god, a good and wise god. So far, so Jewish, though Paul does not say, as 4 Ezra would later, that the world was made for the sake of Israel.109 It continues, equally Jewishly, with the creation and fall of Adam and Eve,
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