Paul Within Judaism: Restoring The First-Century Context To The Apostle
Co-edited with Magnus Zetterholm
Fortress Press, 2015
Description:
In these chapters, a group of renowned international scholars seek to describe Paul and his work from “within Judaism,” rather than on the assumption, still current after thirty years of the “New Perspective,” that in practice Paul left behind aspects of Jewish living after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah). After an introduction that surveys recent study of Paul and highlights the centrality of questions about Paul’s Judaism, chapters explore the implications of reading Paul’s instructions as aimed at Christ-following non-Jews, teaching them how to live in ways consistent with Judaism while remaining non-Jews. The contributors take different methodological points of departure: historical, ideological-critical, gender-critical, and empire-critical, and examine issues of terminology and of interfaith relations. Surprising common ground among the contributors presents a coherent alternative to the “New Perspective.” The volume concludes with a critical evaluation of the Paul within Judaism perspective by Terence L. Donaldson, a well-known voice representative of the best insights of the New Perspective.
“The anthology… aspires to disentangle itself from the new perspective on Paul by presenting a view which—building upon insights of the new perspective—strives to take Paul’s Judaism one step further…. The primary aim is to present a Paul who is unarguably Jewish.”
— Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Journal for the Study of Judaism
Reviews
By James D. G. Dunn, in Journal of Theological Studies 66.2 (2015): 782–784.
By David Kadin, in Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 44.3 (2015): 404–6.
By Anders Klostergaard Petersen, in Journal for the Study of Judaism 47 (2016): 287–290.
By Mark M. Mattison, in Reviews of Biblical Literature, Sept., 2015.
By Zane B. McGee, in SCJ 21 (Fall, 2018): 306–7.
By Gordon W. G. Raynal, reviewed for Westar.
By J. David Stark, in The Stone-Campbell Review 21 (Spring, 2018): 146–47.
By Thomas D. Stegman, in Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 10 (2015): 1–4.
By A. Chadwick Thornhill, in Reviews of Biblical Literature, July, 2015.
By J. Brian Tucker, in Journal of Beliefs & Values 36.2 (2015): 216–223 (a review essay entitled, “Paul within or without Judaism: that is the question”).
By a panel of James Crossley, Christine Hayes, Amy-Jill Levine, Shelly Matthews, and Emma Wasserman, at the Society of Biblical Literature, Nov., 2015 (unpublished).