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.