a person's whole way of life: the observable, settled pattern of how someone lives and carries themselves, not isolated acts
This Greek word gathers a person's entire manner of living into one picture. It is not what someone does on a single occasion but the steady, visible shape of how they live day after day. English Bibles render it "conduct," "behavior," "way of life," or "manner of life," and the older King James "conversation," which once meant one's whole way of living but now misleads.
The word did not start out with this meaning. In earlier Greek it named physical actions like turning back, wheeling around, or living in a place. By the time of the New Testament it had become the standard term, both in public honors for citizens and in Greek-speaking Jewish writings, for the morally observable comportment of a person: how a citizen, an official, or a wise person actually carried themselves in the eyes of others.
In the New Testament its core meaning stays uniform, but its role varies. Writers use it for the old life a convert leaves behind (Paul's former life, the empty inherited ways the readers were rescued from) and for the new pattern believers are called to display. It clusters most densely in First Peter, where a good way of life among outsiders becomes the community's public answer to slander and even a means of winning people over. The heart of the word is simple: who you are shows up in what others see you doing.
Whether ἀναστροφή at Galatians 1:13 is a neutral autobiographical description of Paul's former life in Judaism, or carries the weight of an apocalyptic "old age" now terminated in Christ.
- majorityA descriptive, neutral biographical marker within the letter's narrative self-defense; Judaism as such is not condemned, only Paul's persecuting zeal within it.; Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia, 1979), 67-68; Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41, 1990), 27-28; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (NIGTC, 1982), 89-90
- minorityA marker of the anterior aeon, the old age terminated by God's apocalyptic in-breaking in Christ, read together with a militant, boundary-drawing sense of Ἰουδαϊσμός.; J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (Anchor Bible 33A, 1997), 152-58; Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians (NTL, 2011)
Whether the "empty inherited way of life" at 1 Peter 1:18 identifies the audience as Gentile converts from paganism or leaves open a Jewish (or mixed) audience.
- majorityA Gentile audience: μάταιος ("empty, futile") is standard Septuagint vocabulary for pagan idolatry, and πατροπαράδοτος ("handed down from the fathers") points to inherited pagan tradition.; Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Hermeneia, 1996), 127-29; John H. Elliott, 1 Peter (Anchor Yale Bible 37B, 2000), 369-72
- minorityThe audience may be Jewish or mixed; the language can echo Jesus's critique of the inherited "traditions of the elders," so the question is best left open.; J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter (WBC 49, 1988), 63-65; Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter (BECNT, 2005), 118-19
Disputed
In 1 Peter, where the word is concentrated, scholars disagree over what the call to good conduct among outsiders is doing: cultural accommodation to Greco-Roman respectability, counter-cultural resistance defining a distinct community, a missionary "soft difference," or a subversive reuse of elite honor language.
- contestedAccommodation: the good-conduct and household-code language aligns the Christian communities with respectable Greco-Roman social order to defuse suspicion and hostility.; David L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (SBLMS 26, 1981); Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City (Eerdmans, 1994)
- contestedCounter-cultural resistance: the conduct is sect-defining, marking the household of God off against the surrounding society.; John H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless (rev. ed., Fortress, 1990)
- contestedA missionary "soft difference": neither sectarian withdrawal nor assimilation, but a fearless distinctiveness rooted in new birth.; Miroslav Volf, 'Soft Difference,' Ex Auditu 10 (1994): 15-30
- contestedSubversive reinscription: Peter keeps elite-benefactor vocabulary but reverses its values, giving marginalized Christians an alternative honor system.; Travis B. Williams, Good Works in 1 Peter (WUNT II/337, 2014)