Reckoning with the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of Paul as both a historical figure and a canonical muse.

Matthew Novenson has become a leading advocate for the continuing relevance of historical-critical readings of Paul even as some New Testament scholars have turned to purely theological or political approaches. In this collection of a decade’s worth of essays, Novenson puts contextual understandings of Paul’s letters into conversation with their Christian reception history. After a new, programmatic introductory essay that frames the other eleven essays, Novenson explores topics including:

the relation between theology and historical criticism

the place of Jews and gentiles in Paul’s gospel

Paul’s relation to Judaism

the relevance of messianism to Paul’s Christology

Paul’s eschatology in relation to ancient Jewish eschatologies

the aptness of monotheism as a category for understanding antiquity

the reception of Paul by diverse early Christian writers

the peculiar place of Protestantism in the modern study of Paul

the debate over the recent Paul-within-Judaism movement

anti-Judaism in modern New Testament scholarship

disputes over Romans and Galatians

the meta-question of what it would mean to get Paul right or wrong

Engaging with numerous schools of thought in Pauline studies—Augustinian, Lutheran, New Perspective, apocalyptic, Paul-within-Judaism, religious studies, and more—while also rising above partisan disputes between schools, Novenson illuminates the ancient Mediterranean context of Paul’s letters, their complicated afterlives in the history of interpretation, and the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of it all.

Table of Contents

1. Our Apostles, Ourselves

2. Romans 1–2 between Theology and Historical Criticism

3. Ioudaios, Pharisee, Zealot

4. Did Paul Abandon Either Judaism or Monotheism?

5. Romans and Galatians

6. The Self-Styled Jew of Romans 2 and the Actual Jews of Romans 9–11

7. The Messiah ben Abraham in Galatians

8. “God Is Witness”: A Classical Rhetorical Idiom in Its Pauline Usage

9. What Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Gentiles?

10. Whither the Paul within Judaism Schule?

11. The Pauline Epistles in Tertullian’s Bible

12. Anti-Judaism and Philo-Judaism in Pauline Studies, Then and Now