Paula Fredriksen
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Comparative Religion, Faculty Member
- Boston University, Religion, Faculty Memberadd
- Roman social history, Second Temple Judaism, Judaism, Social Identity, Comparative Religion, Early Christianity, and 9 moreNew Testament, Jewish Studies, Origen, Roman History, Roman legal and administrative history, Religious and Cultural History, Tarda antichità, Spätantike, and Arnaldo Momiglianoedit
- Paula Fredriksen is the Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University and, since 2009, Distinguished Vi... morePaula Fredriksen is the Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University and, since 2009, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she also holds honorary doctorates from Iona (USA), Lund University (Sweden) and the Hebrew University (Israel). Her single-authored books include, most recently, PAUL, THE PAGANS' APOSTLE (2017), WHEN CHRISTIANS WERE JEWS (2018), and ANCIENT CHRISTIANITIES. THE FIRST 500 YEARS (2024).edit
How do we work with (or against) the rhetorical presentation of Jews, heretics and martyrs to reach the ancient agents we seek to describe?
Research Interests:
... The literary topics did not evolve in a vacuum, and what is even more important, they were exploited by those "whodunnit." It is therefore not at all negligible, for ex-ample, whether Manetho,... more
... The literary topics did not evolve in a vacuum, and what is even more important, they were exploited by those "whodunnit." It is therefore not at all negligible, for ex-ample, whether Manetho, early in the third century BCE and relying on older material, expresses his own anti ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Page 1. Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), 151-183, EJ Brill, Leiden APOCALYPSE AND REDEMPTION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY FROM JOHN OF PATMOS TO AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO' BY PAULA FREDRIKSEN Christianity began ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This consensus gives the measure of the profound influence that E.P. Sanders' fundamental study, Jesus and Judaism, has had on all work in the field. Sanders' Jesus, in that particular study and elsewhere, is an... more
This consensus gives the measure of the profound influence that E.P. Sanders' fundamental study, Jesus and Judaism, has had on all work in the field. Sanders' Jesus, in that particular study and elsewhere, is an apocalyptic prophet. Other, non-apocalyptic Jesuses also stalk the New Testament terrain, some given to social reform and subversive wisdom (Borg's), others to egalitarian commensality (Crossan's),
Research Interests:
Attempts to reconstruct how the first followers of Jesus formed a community in Jerusalem and came to understand him in messianic terms
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Art and Fatherland
Research Interests:
... 3: 26, genealogy, education, party-affiliation, and piety (as to righteousness under the Law I was ... Izates' first contact, Ananias, encourages his piety but urges him not to receive circumcision, so that Izates ...... more
... 3: 26, genealogy, education, party-affiliation, and piety (as to righteousness under the Law I was ... Izates' first contact, Ananias, encourages his piety but urges him not to receive circumcision, so that Izates ... him that, if he would be a Jew, he must convert, ie, be circumcised (20 ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Page 1. Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), 151-183, EJ Brill, Leiden APOCALYPSE AND REDEMPTION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY FROM JOHN OF PATMOS TO AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO' BY PAULA FREDRIKSEN Christianity began ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
An invited response to Denys McDonald’s JSNT essay: ‘“Ex-Pagan Pagans”? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic Reconfiguration’.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In volume 132 (3) of 2020’s The Expository Times, Professor Paul Foster gave my book, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, the very great honor of careful, thoughtful, and collegial criticism. When I wrote thanking him for the courtesy and acuity... more
In volume 132 (3) of 2020’s The Expository Times, Professor Paul Foster gave my book, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, the very great honor of careful, thoughtful, and collegial criticism. When I wrote thanking him for the courtesy and acuity of his critique, he generously invited me into these pages to pursue our conversation further. I accept his invitation with enthusiasm, because the matters addressed in his review are important, we both think, for our understanding of Paul. Some background, first. I am not a theologian. My research training is in comparative religions. I am an historian of Roman-period religious activities, whether those activities were pursued by pagans, by Jews, or by Christians. However, I must immediately qualify my self-description tendered just above. I am a religionist; but I do not work on ‘religion.’ Allow me to explain. Think of ‘Paganism,’ ‘Judaism,’ and ‘Christianity’ as huge identity-bins. Historians pitch our disparate data into these bins in order to distinguish and to compare antiquity’s different ‘religions.’ These terms—all four—have an abstract quality: they suggest trans-local unified systems of beliefs and of doctrine, and clear and stable identities with articulate, demarcated borders, whether for individuals or for groups. In the period of Paul’s activity, however, and for long before, and for long after, there was no such thing as what we think of as ‘religion.’ In antiquity, gods and humans came clustered in family groups. They shared syngeneia, ‘kinship’— sometimes quite literally. Put differently: there were no ‘religiously neutral’ ethnicities in early Roman antiquity. Different kinship groups, genē or ethnē (translated as ‘ethnicities’ or ‘nations’ or as ‘peoples’) constructed biological lineages tracing their descent, or that of their leaders, back to a divine/human coupling in the distant past. Relations between heaven and earth, in this way, were structured as (steeply hierarchical) families, with god(s) at the pinnacle of authority, prestige and power. Power mattered. There were no theologically neutral disasters in antiquity. Disease, drought, fire, flood: catastrophe registered divine discontent. How, then, should humans keep on the good side of their gods? With displays of correct deference and respect (pietas in Latin; eusebeia in Greek). People did not need to improvise these protocols. Most often, they had been revealed by the god(s) themselves. These practices structured time, social life, personal Paul—Apostle to the Pagans: A Response to Paul Foster1
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus’s mission. Mark highlights a “Galilean crisis” as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of... more
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus’s mission. Mark highlights a “Galilean crisis” as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of dramatic reversal (peripeteia) that serve to drive his story home to its conclusion, connecting Jesus’s Jewish mission with his Roman death. Analyzing Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis with Mark’s literary deployment of peripeteia in mind, the essay then raises several questions about Ferda’s reconstruction of the reception of Jesus’s message among his Galilean hearers. Jerusalem, not the Galilee, emerges as the true site of “crisis.” Jesus’s popularity among Jews, not a rejection by them, explains most directly Pilate’s decision to neutralize Jesus. Were it not for the narrative shaping of Mark’s story, would we have any reason to presuppose a “Galilean crisis” at all?
Research Interests:
This chapter examines the Pauline idea of the Jewish god's adoption of pagans, noting that the relationship between peoples and god(s)—in this case, between pagan peoples and Israel's god—still depended upon the concept, the... more
This chapter examines the Pauline idea of the Jewish god's adoption of pagans, noting that the relationship between peoples and god(s)—in this case, between pagan peoples and Israel's god—still depended upon the concept, the language, the structure, and the authority of the patriarchal Mediterranean family. Seen from this vantage of divine–human relationships, the cities of Roman antiquity can be viewed as family-based religious institutions. “Family”—blood-kinship—ran vertically, between heaven and earth, uniting peoples with their gods. And “family” also ran horizontally, binding the citizens together in one genos. Jews living in the cities of the western diaspora fit themselves into this civic webbing of divine–human relationships. The chapter considers the presence of Jews in antiquity in pagan places and the presence of pagans in Jewish places such as the temple and the synagogue in Jerusalem.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Journal of Early Christian Studies 12.4 (2004) 537-541 Larry Hurtado's big new book, Lord Jesus Christ, takes as it prototype and anti-type Wilhelm Bousset's 1913 classic, Kyrios Christos (1-26). Hurtado promises... more
ABSTRACT Journal of Early Christian Studies 12.4 (2004) 537-541 Larry Hurtado's big new book, Lord Jesus Christ, takes as it prototype and anti-type Wilhelm Bousset's 1913 classic, Kyrios Christos (1-26). Hurtado promises to concentrate not on texts or on doctrines so much as on early Christian practices, specifically on those that attest to "devotion to Jesus." In so doing, he hopes to demonstrate the falseness of Bousset's view that elevated Christological claims measure the penetration of non-Jewish, specifically pagan Hellenistic ideas, into early Christian proclamation. On the contrary, urges Hurtado, devotion to Jesus as a very elevated figure traces back to the very earliest post-resurrection community in Jerusalem. Thus, it represents a spectacular mutation of Jewish monotheism ("Christian binitarianism"), but not a deviation from it; on this issue Paul and the earliest community were joined. And this tradition was most valued and best preserved by those streams of the Christian movement that we can now identify as proto-Orthodox. To understand how Hurtado gets where he goes with his presentation of second-century Christianity (ch. 9, "Radical Diversity," and ch. 10, "Proto-Orthodox Devotion"), we need to grasp what he establishes in his preceding 518 pages. Hurtado begins with Jewish monotheism. Since ancient Jews, as "scrupulous" monotheists (his term), avoided worshiping any divine figures other than God, the earliest Christians (scrupulous Jewish monotheists themselves) by praying to and calling upon Jesus together with God embarked upon worship practices that were strikingly innovative. Hence Hurtado's "binitarian" coinage for this liturgical "novum": "The incorporation of Christ into the devotional pattern of early Christian groups has no real analogy in the Jewish tradition of the period" (31). Conclusion: these groups thereby claimed a unique and uniquely elevated status for Jesus extremely early on, well before anyone even thought of taking the good news to the Diaspora. Hurtado's definition of Jewish monotheism thus enables him to knock away one of the pillars of Bousset's argument. What chance of Gentile Hellenistic influences, if these practices (and, implicitly, Christological claims) originated in Judea in the very first months and years of the movement? From this the rest falls into place. The early elevation of Jesus did not mean that these earliest Christians denied his full humanity. On the contrary, Pauline vocabulary and the fact that the earliest narratives of Jesus present him as an historical character point in the opposite direction: though Jesus was extremely, uniquely divine, he was also fully human. These texts' insistence on Jesus' Davidic lineage makes the same point. And while the question of Gentile members' status was initially snarled on the issue of Torah-observance, no one in the earliest movement questioned that their proclamation was in a straightforward way congruent with the essential message of the Jewish scriptures. By the time we reach chapter 9 and Hurtado's discussion of "Radical Diversity," his categories are well established. Earliest Christianity was monotheist, incarnational, and congruent with rather than contrasting to Jewish scriptures. (His reference to these scriptures throughout as the "Old Testament" is confused and confusing because neither the category nor the concept "New Testament" was conceived until the mid-second century and then, as we shall see, by a "deviant.") Valentinus and Marcion, we are thus unsurprised to learn, represent "major innovations and rival interpretations . . . over against the comparatively more traditional preferences that marked proto-orthodox circles" (519). Valentinians with their graduated pleromas and superfluity of divine figures were not as "serious" as their proto-orthodox counterparts about maintaining or protecting monotheism (529 and elsewhere). They "downplayed" the Old Testament and its narratives (530), they emphasized redemption from bodily existence as the index of salvation (47), and their Christology was docetic. This Docetism in turn accounts for their disinclination to be martyred (unlike the proto-orthodox 619-625). Marcion, like Valentinus, also deviated from proto-orthodoxy and was on that account expelled from the Roman church (549), setting up his own churches instead. He composed his New Testament canon from a larger body of available texts (553)—another deviation...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter examines the story of redemption by focusing on the characters of its three chief dramatis personae: God, the nations, and Israel. Drawing on stories in the Jewish Bible, attending to both its Hebrew and its Greek voices, it... more
This chapter examines the story of redemption by focusing on the characters of its three chief dramatis personae: God, the nations, and Israel. Drawing on stories in the Jewish Bible, attending to both its Hebrew and its Greek voices, it analyzes the themes shaping Roman-period hopes for the coming of the Kingdom of God. It first looks at the god of Genesis, who simply appears “in the beginning,” and the issue of other gods, before discussing God's vow to never again annihilate all life because of humanity's moral failures. It then considers how God creates Israel by an unexplained choice, over time, through a promise, as well as the exile of the king Zedekiah and the people of the kingdom of Judah. It also explores new themes that begin to sound as prophecy develops and concludes by explaining how Israel's future redemption will redeem as well all of the nations.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper represents the Nils A. Dahl Lecture, which I delivered for his centenary birthday on 11 October 2011. It unites broad themes in his classic essays with current work on the historical Jesus and on Paul.
Research Interests: Philosophy and Judaism
Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2. P FREDRIKSEN Journal of theological ...
Research Interests:
Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history's closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first... more
Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history's closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first was incandescent with apocalyptic hopes, expecting God through his messiah Jesus Christ to fulfill his ancient promises of redemption to Israel. The second teemed with ancient actors, not only human but also divine: angry superhuman forces, jealous demons, and hostile cosmic gods. Both worlds are Paul's, and his convictions about the first shaped his actions in the second. Only by situating Paul within this charged social context of gods and humans, pagans and Jews, cities, synagogues, and competing Christ-following assemblies can we begin to understand his mission and message. The book offers a dramatically new perspective on one of history's seminal figures.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Philosophy and Judaism
Research Interests:
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with... more
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with contemporary Mediterranean cultures. We will see how ancient ethnic essentialism—the conviction that different peoples evinced different behaviors because of their very “nature” (ϕύσις)—shapes Paul’s thought about gentiles no less than it shaped Greek thought about Persians, or Roman thought about Greeks. We will see how Jewish law provided not the contrast to Paul’s gospel but in fact much of its content. We will see that there is no reason to assume that Paul stopped living Jewishly (Ἰουδαϊκῶς) just because he wanted gentiles to stop living “paganly” (ἐθνικῶς). We will let Paul reside coherently in a world radically different from our own—the ethnically essentialist, behaviorally variegated, god-congested world of first-century Jewishness.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... a" Va-yasem lo shtei ruhot lehithalckh bahem, ruah ha-emet ve-ruah ha-avel," Community ... He and they both looked to Paul for the premier statement of spiritual conflict in the seat of the self:" For I do... more
... a" Va-yasem lo shtei ruhot lehithalckh bahem, ruah ha-emet ve-ruah ha-avel," Community ... He and they both looked to Paul for the premier statement of spiritual conflict in the seat of the self:" For I do not do the good I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I do" (Romans 7: 19 ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: History and Persecution
This chapter reconstructs the views of Paul's communities and especially of his opponents, taking into consideration the fact that he had a good education, he was passionate in his convictions, and he was a fierce (and trained)... more
This chapter reconstructs the views of Paul's communities and especially of his opponents, taking into consideration the fact that he had a good education, he was passionate in his convictions, and he was a fierce (and trained) word-warrior. It begins with a discussion of “spirit” and “flesh,” which represent two of Paul's favorite and frequent verbal pairings, focusing on the question of circumcision involving Jews. It then considers Jewish missions to turn pagans into Jews through circumcision, along with Jewish speculations about the ultimate fate of gentiles at the End of the Age and eschatological traditions about receiving gentiles into the Kingdom of God. The chapter proceeds by examining the context for Paul's remarks in Galatians that “preaching circumcision” entailed no persecution.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: History and Anachronism
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Christianity and History
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
When Paul says ‘Israel’, what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradition has long answered that by ‘Israel’, a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific ‘Christians’. But a great deal of evidence in Paul’s letters... more
When Paul says ‘Israel’, what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradition has long answered that by ‘Israel’, a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific ‘Christians’. But a great deal of evidence in Paul’s letters weighs against such an idea. This chapter examines, in turn, the modern myth of a post-ethnic Paul, ancient ideas about divine and human ethnicity, Paul’s language about Jewish and gentile ‘natures’, Paul’s language about Jewish and Gentile kinds of sins, Paul’s application of different Jewish laws to Jews and Gentiles, respectively, and finally Paul’s actual usage of the ethnonyms ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’. It is concluded that, for Paul, Jews are Israel, and Israel, his own family, is the Jews. God, through Christ, at the end of the ages (mid-first century ce), was graciously calling all humanity into the redemption that he had promised to Israel long ago. Eschatological humanity thus remains two different people groups—Israel and the nations—embraced by a single salvation.
Research Interests: Mythology, Theology, New Testament, Early Christianity, Race and Ethnicity, and 13 moreSecond Temple Judaism, Romans, New Testament and Christian Origins, Apostle Paul and the Pauline Letters, Eschatology, Judaism, Israel, Religious Studies, Humanity, Apostle Paul, New Testament Studies, Ethnic Group, and Ancient Ethnicity and Identity
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? ANCIENT CHRISTIANITIES traces the evolution of this mutagenic movement, with its sprawling... more
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? ANCIENT CHRISTIANITIES traces the evolution of this mutagenic movement, with its sprawling cast of characters: not only emperors, bishops and theologians, but also gods and demons, angels and magicians, astrologers and ascetics, saints and heretics, aristocratic patrons and millenarian enthusiasts. All played their part in the development of what became and always remained an energetically diverse biblical religion.
Research Interests:
Als Christen Juden waren Dieses Buch fragt, wie es dazu gekommen ist, dass eine kleine Gruppe charismatischer Juden eine Bewegung begründete, die sich zu einer weltweiten Kirche unter den Völkern entwickelte. Sie sahen ihre Aufgabe darin,... more
Als Christen Juden waren Dieses Buch fragt, wie es dazu gekommen ist, dass eine kleine Gruppe charismatischer Juden eine Bewegung begründete, die sich zu einer weltweiten Kirche unter den Völkern entwickelte. Sie sahen ihre Aufgabe darin, die Welt für die unmittelbar bevorstehende Inkraftsetzung von Gottes Verheißungen für Israel vorzubereiten, indem sie den baldigen Anbruch des Gottesreichs erwarteten. Nach ihrem eigenen Selbstverständnis waren sie die letzte Generation der Geschichte-in den Augen der Geschichte jedoch wurde mit ihnen die erste Generation der Christenheit geboren. Paula Fredriksen zeichnet mit einer sozio-kulturellen Analyse dieser frühen Jerusalemer Gemeinschaft ein lebendiges Bild der messianischen Bewegung von den hoffnungsvollen Anfängen um Jesus, über die Streitigkeiten, die die Bewegung Mitte des 1. Jahrhunderts zu spalten drohten, bis hin zur Zerstörung Jerusalems durch die Römer.
Research Interests:
Triangulating between Paul, inscriptional evidence, and Josephus, this book reconstructs the origins and early history of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem in the period between Pilate and Titus.
Research Interests:
Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history's closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first was... more
Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history's closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first was incandescent with apocalyptic hopes, expecting God through his messiah to fulfill his ancient promises of redemption to Israel. The second teemed with ancient actors, not only human but also divine: angry superhuman forces, jealous demons, and hostile cosmic gods. Both worlds are Paul's, and his convictions about the first shaped his actions in the second.
Is "god-fearer" a usable term, despite the ambiguities of the inscriptional evidence? This essay argues "YES!" God-fearers were active pagans who added the Jewish god into their native pantheons. And their attachment to their own gods... more
Is "god-fearer" a usable term, despite the ambiguities of the inscriptional evidence? This essay argues "YES!" God-fearers were active pagans who added the Jewish god into their native pantheons. And their attachment to their own gods notwithstanding, they were welcomed into diaspora synagogue communities as patrons and as participants.
"Paul, Augustine, and Krister on the Introspective Conscience of the West."
Research Interests:
N OT MANY GOOD THINGS came out of the year 2020, but Matthew Thiessen's A Jewish Paul is definitely one of them. The author of cutting-edge books on ancient conversion, on Paul, and on Jesus, Thiessen was poised to begin a fresh cycle of... more
N OT MANY GOOD THINGS came out of the year 2020, but Matthew Thiessen's A Jewish Paul is definitely one of them. The author of cutting-edge books on ancient conversion, on Paul, and on Jesus, Thiessen was poised to begin a fresh cycle of research when he-like the world-was overtaken by events. He recast his plans, instead beginning an introduction to Paul, to show how Paul "could be read intelligibly but without the common anti-Jewish baggage that attends most interpretations of his letters" (p. xi). And that is what he achieves.
Research Interests:
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus's mission. Mark highlights a "Galilean crisis" as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of... more
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus's mission. Mark highlights a "Galilean crisis" as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of dramatic reversal (peripeteia) that serve to drive his story home to its conclusion, connecting Jesus's Jewish mission with his Roman death. Analyzing Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis with Mark's literary deployment of peripeteia in mind, the essay then raises several questions about Ferda's reconstruction of the reception of Jesus's message among his Galilean hearers. Jerusalem, not the Galilee, emerges as the true site of "crisis." Jesus's popularity among Jews, not a rejection by them, explains most directly Pilate's decision to neutralize Jesus. Were it not for the narrative shaping of Mark's story, would we have any reason to presuppose a "Galilean crisis" at all?
Research Interests:
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, PAUL, THEN AND NOW. This collection of twelve essays (four previously unpublished) considers... more
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, PAUL, THEN AND NOW. This collection of twelve essays (four previously unpublished) considers core questions in current Pauline scholarship. When does writing about Paul, he asks, become a form of "hermeneutical ventriloquism," a means to use Paul's words to make one's own theological point? How weird--defamiliarized--are we willing to let Paul be?
Research Interests:
This essay reviews David Nirenberg's ANTI-JUDAISM: THE WESTERN TRADITION
Research Interests:
When does principled resistance and voluntary martyrdom tip over into suicide? This essay reviews the important study by A.Droge and J. Tabor, NOBLE DEATH.
Research Interests:
A double review on Vermes' scholarship on Jesus, and on his riveting story of how he survived the Shoah in Hungary, helped to dissolve the Dead Sea Scroll cartel, left the church and found Jesus--as a historical subject.
Research Interests:
Exile, displacement, wandering, loss: in Biblical tradition and in later rabbinic commentary, in the medieval poems of Yehudah ha-Levi and the modern political screeds of Theodor Herzl, the idea of diaspora has dominated Jewish identity.... more
Exile, displacement, wandering, loss: in Biblical tradition and in later rabbinic commentary, in the medieval poems of Yehudah ha-Levi and the modern political screeds of Theodor Herzl, the idea of diaspora has dominated Jewish identity. In its religious mode, "diaspora," perceived as punitive, has served as a penitential device. The people sin, and God uses foreign armies (Babylonians for the first exile, Romans for the second exile) as the instruments of his wrath, to call the people to repentance. In its secular mode, "diaspora" has served as Zionism's foil. Modern Jews renounce their exile, take control of their history,
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It's hard not to root for the Emperor Julian once you read Drake on Constantine's empowerment of bishops as a well-muscled arm of a decaying empire. The separation of church and state seems like a very good idea once one contemplates the... more
It's hard not to root for the Emperor Julian once you read Drake on Constantine's empowerment of bishops as a well-muscled arm of a decaying empire. The separation of church and state seems like a very good idea once one contemplates the sequelae of 312 CE.
Research Interests:
Miles' GOD: A BIOGRAPHY was a masterpiece of literary theodicy: How can evil be endured if humanity's ultimate moral agent, God, is himself morally flawed? CHRIST: A CRISIS IN THE LIFE OF GOD continues the arc of this story, pursuing its... more
Miles' GOD: A BIOGRAPHY was a masterpiece of literary theodicy: How can evil be endured if humanity's ultimate moral agent, God, is himself morally flawed? CHRIST: A CRISIS IN THE LIFE OF GOD continues the arc of this story, pursuing its overburdened protagonist into the writings of the New Testament.
Research Interests:
Hurtado argues that the first generation of the Jesus movement represented a radical "mutation" in Jewish monotheism. This review urges that ancient "monotheism" was a type of polytheism. Christological monotheism--a fourth-century... more
Hurtado argues that the first generation of the Jesus movement represented a radical "mutation" in Jewish monotheism. This review urges that ancient "monotheism" was a type of polytheism. Christological monotheism--a fourth-century ecclesiastical thought--should not be imputed to first-century apocalyptic, messiah-minded Jews.
Research Interests:
Who was Augustine, and how do we know him? Answers O'Donnell, by not letting ourselves be seduced by the rhetorical power of his self-presentation. Reading against the grain of 5 million extant words, O'Donnell reveals the face of... more
Who was Augustine, and how do we know him? Answers O'Donnell, by not letting ourselves be seduced by the rhetorical power of his self-presentation. Reading against the grain of 5 million extant words, O'Donnell reveals the face of Augustine as combat theologian, Roman magistrate, driven ecclesiastical politician--in short, the face of a late Roman bishop.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Ancient monotheism wasn't modern monotheism, but rather a type of polytheism. That fact complicates Larry Hurtado's reconstruction of early "devotion to Lord Jesus Christ" among the earliest Christ-followers.
Research Interests:
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 241. Hardcover. $39.99. ISBN 9781540961945. Paula Fredriksen The Hebrew University, Jerusalem "This is not a book about the historical Jesus," Matthew Thiessen states firmly in the first line... more
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 241. Hardcover. $39.99. ISBN 9781540961945. Paula Fredriksen The Hebrew University, Jerusalem "This is not a book about the historical Jesus," Matthew Thiessen states firmly in the first line of his latest book (xi). Disposing of that project's abiding historiographical problems in a few deft paragraphs, Thiessen puts his own task front and center: to read the canonical gospels' varied depictions of Jesus within the larger framework of ancient Jewish construals of ritual purity. It is an ambitious goal, since "commentators through the centuries have almost universally misconstrued the Gospel writers' portrayals" (xii), exactly on this issue so central to Second Temple culture. Availing himself of Jacob Milgrom's great work on Leviticus (ix and passim), unpacking the evangelists' stories about Jesus as within, not against, Jewish purity concerns, Thiessen stands these received interpretations on their (collective) head. His rereading of this familiar material is utterly fresh and innovative, important both exegetically and ethically. To frame his reading, Thiessen has a lot to work through, not least our own secular culture's difficulties in grasping the lived significance of ancient purity laws. Purity and impurity, for us, have long functioned as metaphors for morality, a kind of code for good and bad or, in more theistic parlance, for sinless and sinful. In antiquity, whatever these terms' metaphorical purchase, they also pointed toward enactments of protocols governing proximity to the divine. Further, in Roman antiquity, divine presence-whether of Israel's god or that of his many Mediterranean colleagues-registered particularly around altars.
Research Interests:
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 241. Hardcover. $39.99. ISBN 9781540961945. Paula Fredriksen The Hebrew University, Jerusalem "This is not a book about the historical Jesus," Matthew Thiessen states firmly in the first line... more
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 241. Hardcover. $39.99. ISBN 9781540961945. Paula Fredriksen The Hebrew University, Jerusalem "This is not a book about the historical Jesus," Matthew Thiessen states firmly in the first line of his latest book (xi). Disposing of that project's abiding historiographical problems in a few deft paragraphs, Thiessen puts his own task front and center: to read the canonical gospels' varied depictions of Jesus within the larger framework of ancient Jewish construals of ritual purity. It is an ambitious goal, since "commentators through the centuries have almost universally misconstrued the Gospel writers' portrayals" (xii), exactly on this issue so central to Second Temple culture. Availing himself of Jacob Milgrom's great work on Leviticus (ix and passim), unpacking the evangelists' stories about Jesus as within, not against, Jewish purity concerns, Thiessen stands these received interpretations on their (collective) head. His rereading of this familiar material is utterly fresh and innovative, important both exegetically and ethically. To frame his reading, Thiessen has a lot to work through, not least our own secular culture's difficulties in grasping the lived significance of ancient purity laws. Purity and impurity, for us, have long functioned as metaphors for morality, a kind of code for good and bad or, in more theistic parlance, for sinless and sinful. In antiquity, whatever these terms' metaphorical purchase, they also pointed toward enactments of protocols governing proximity to the divine. Further, in Roman antiquity, divine presence-whether of Israel's god or that of his many Mediterranean colleagues-registered particularly around altars.
Research Interests:
The review explores Kahlos's illuminating exploration of the interactions between imperial and episcopal power, ecclesiastical trash talk, and local Real Politik in the post-Constantinian Roman Empire.
Research Interests:
Chazan surveys the history of Western ancient and medieval Jew-hatred. The roots of Christianity may lie deep in Judaism; but the roots of anti-Semitism, alas, lie deep in Christianity.
Research Interests:
Exhuberantly revisionist, THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL invites you to re-imagine everything you thought you knew about the origins of Christianity, to see a history hidden within the texts of the New Testament.
Research Interests:
Review of a French conference volume on patristic interpretations of Paul's Letter to the Galatians.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Theology and history. Identity and ethnicity. Sameness and difference. Using these huge abstractions as optics, I want to consider together with you the ways that ideas of “Jews” and of “Judaism” figure in three particularly active areas... more
Theology and history. Identity and ethnicity. Sameness and difference. Using these huge abstractions as optics, I want to consider together with you the ways that ideas of “Jews” and of “Judaism” figure in three particularly active areas of current scholarship on Paul’s letters and Christian origins. Lecture I, “Gods and the One God,” considers ancient ideas of divinity. Lecture II, “Gods in the Blood,” looks at ancient people-groups and constructions of ethnicity. Lecture III, “God’s Kingdom,” contemplates resurrection and eschatology, cosmos and transformation. From this brew of ideas I hope to distill both a coherent historical description of the first generation of the Jesus movement, and a compelling ethical lesson on the importance of history for contemporary theology.
Research Interests:
Since Elizabeth Clark has drawn attention to the functions of ancient rhetoric, how can we move from our texts' rhetorical Jews, heretics and martyrs to the social reality of these ancient actors? And in so doing, how do we avoid the... more
Since Elizabeth Clark has drawn attention to the functions of ancient rhetoric, how can we move from our texts' rhetorical Jews, heretics and martyrs to the social reality of these ancient actors? And in so doing, how do we avoid the lures of anachronism and the aesthetic shaping of narrative, to write ethically informed history?
Research Interests:
Was geschieht, wenn wir das "jüdische Gesetz" nicht als eine Kategorie der christlichen Theologie betrachten, sondern als ein Element der antiken Verwandtschaftskonstruktion, als "Überlieferung der Väter" (Galater 1,14)? Es wird deutlich,... more
Was geschieht, wenn wir das "jüdische Gesetz" nicht als eine Kategorie der christlichen Theologie betrachten, sondern als ein Element der antiken Verwandtschaftskonstruktion, als "Überlieferung der Väter" (Galater 1,14)? Es wird deutlich, wie viel das Judentum der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels mit den zeitgenössischen Mittelmeerkulturen gemeinsam hat. Es wird deutlich, wie der antike ethnische Essentialismus-die Überzeugung, dass verschiedene Völker aufgrund ihrer "Natur" (φύσις) unterschiedliche Verhaltensweisen an den Tag legten-Paulus' Denken über Nicht-Juden nicht weniger prägte als das griechische Denken über Perser oder das römische Denken über Griechen. Es wird deutlich, wie das jüdische Gesetz nicht den Kontrast zu Paulus' Evangelium bildet, sondern gerade einen Großteil seines Inhalts. Es wird deutlich, dass es keinen Grund für die Annahme gibt, Paulus habe aufgehört, jüdisch zu leben (Ἰουδαϊκῶς), nur weil er wollte, dass die Nicht-Juden aufhören, "heidnisch" zu leben (ἐθνικῶς). Paulus wird kohärent in einer Welt verstanden, die sich radikal von unserer eigenen unterscheidet, der ethnisch essentialistischen, verhaltensmäßig vielfältigen, dicht von zahlreichen Gottheiten bewohnten Welt die den Kontext des Judentums des ersten Jahrhunderts bildet.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, Paul, Then and Now. This collection of twelve essays-four of which were previously... more
The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, Paul, Then and Now. This collection of twelve essays-four of which were previously unpublished-considers core questions in current Pauline scholarship. Novenson addresses these forthrightly in his introductory chapter. When does writing about Paul, he asks, become a form of "hermeneutical ventriloquism," a means to use Paul's words to make one's own theological point (2)? If we seek to set Paul firmly in his first-century historical context, how "weird"-defamiliarized-are we willing to let Paul be (6-7)? Further, how do we perform these interpretive tasks with intellectual and moral integrity (7-12)?
Research Interests:
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with... more
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with
contemporary Mediterranean cultures. We will see how ancient ethnic essentialism—the conviction that different peoples evinced different behaviors because of their very “nature” (φύσις)—shapes Paul’s thought about gentiles no less than it shaped Greek thought about Persians, or Roman thought about Greeks. We will see how Jewish law provided not the contrast to Paul’s gospel but in fact much of its content. We will see that there is no reason to assume that Paul stopped living Jewishly ( Ἰουδαϊκῶς) just because he wanted gentiles to stop living “paganly” (ἐθνικῶς). We will let Paul reside coherently in a world radically different from our own—the ethnically essentialist, behaviorally variegated, god-congested world
of first-century Jewishness.
contemporary Mediterranean cultures. We will see how ancient ethnic essentialism—the conviction that different peoples evinced different behaviors because of their very “nature” (φύσις)—shapes Paul’s thought about gentiles no less than it shaped Greek thought about Persians, or Roman thought about Greeks. We will see how Jewish law provided not the contrast to Paul’s gospel but in fact much of its content. We will see that there is no reason to assume that Paul stopped living Jewishly ( Ἰουδαϊκῶς) just because he wanted gentiles to stop living “paganly” (ἐθνικῶς). We will let Paul reside coherently in a world radically different from our own—the ethnically essentialist, behaviorally variegated, god-congested world
of first-century Jewishness.
Research Interests:
An investigation of Paul in four sections--Paul the Persecutor, Paul the "Convert," Paul the Apostle, and Paul the Persecuted--which places him within the context of a Mediterranean world thick with ancient social agents both human and... more
An investigation of Paul in four sections--Paul the Persecutor, Paul the "Convert," Paul the Apostle, and Paul the Persecuted--which places him within the context of a Mediterranean world thick with ancient social agents both human and divine.
Research Interests:
The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, Paul, Then and Now. This collection of twelve essays-four of which were previously... more
The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner's piercing observation provides the perfect epigram for Matthew Novenson's latest book, Paul, Then and Now. This collection of twelve essays-four of which were previously unpublished-considers core questions in current Pauline scholarship. Novenson addresses these forthrightly in his introductory chapter. When does writing about Paul, he asks, become a form of "hermeneutical ventriloquism," a means to use Paul's words to make one's own theological point (2)? If we seek to set Paul firmly in his first-century historical context, how "weird"-defamiliarized-are we willing to let Paul be (6-7)? Further, how do we perform these interpretive tasks with intellectual and moral integrity (7-12)?
Research Interests:
An invited response to Denys McDonald's JSNT essay: '"Ex-Pagan Pagans"? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic Reconfiguration'.
Research Interests:
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Research Interests:
Did Jesus oppose the temple? Did he predict its destruction? Against the recent proposals of Dale Martin, this article argues that the evidence is controvertible. However, the article does agree that Jesus' followers were probably armed... more
Did Jesus oppose the temple? Did he predict its destruction? Against the recent proposals of Dale Martin, this article argues that the evidence is controvertible. However, the article does agree that Jesus' followers were probably armed with μάχαιραι; but so was a significant proportion of Jerusalem's male population, specifically at Passover. These 'arms', then, cannot explain Jesus' arrest and execution.
Research Interests:
Many gods lived in the Roman Empire, and all ancient peoples, including Jews, knew this to be the case. This article explores how three men who highly identified as Jews--Philo, Herod, and Paul--dealt with other gods while remaining loyal... more
Many gods lived in the Roman Empire, and all ancient peoples, including Jews, knew this to be the case. This article explores how three men who highly identified as Jews--Philo, Herod, and Paul--dealt with other gods while remaining loyal to their own. "Monotheism" occludes this complex divine-human environment, and thus misdescribes the religious sensibility of Jewish (and, later, of Christian) antiquity.
Research Interests:
A Donatist theologian praised by Augustine, Tyconius wrote a now lost commentary on the Book of Revelation that became foundational for all subsequent works on Revelation in the post-Roman and medieval West. Scholars paradoxically hold... more
A Donatist theologian praised by Augustine, Tyconius wrote a now lost commentary on the Book of Revelation that became foundational for all subsequent works on Revelation in the post-Roman and medieval West. Scholars paradoxically hold both 1) that this later tradition was anti-millennarian and 2) that Tyconius himself was a millennarian thinker. A close consideration of Tyconius' surviving work, the LIBER REGULARUM, compels a different conclusion.
Research Interests:
When Paul says 'Israel', what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradi tion has long answered that by 'Israel', a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific 'Christians'. But a great deal of evidence in Paul's... more
When Paul says 'Israel', what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradi tion has long answered that by 'Israel', a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific 'Christians'. But a great deal of evidence in Paul's letters weighs against such an idea. This chapter examines, in turn, the modern myth of a post-ethnic Paul, ancient ideas about divine and human ethnicity, Paul's language about Jewish and gentile 'natures', Paul's language about Jewish and Gentile kinds of sins, Paul's application of different Jew ish laws to Jews and Gentiles, respectively, and finally Paul's actual usage of the eth nonyms 'Jew' and 'Israel'. It is concluded that, for Paul, Jews are Israel, and Israel, his own family, is the Jews. God, through Christ, at the end of the ages (mid-first century CE), was graciously calling all humanity into the redemption that he had promised to Israel long ago. Eschatological humanity thus remains two different people groups-Israel and the nations-embraced by a single salvation.
Research Interests:
'Paul the "Convert"?' has three goals: to track the history of this construction of Paul from its origins in antiquity through to the present; to examine scholarly assessments of its utility; and to offer a synthetic historical account of... more
'Paul the "Convert"?' has three goals: to track the history of this construction of Paul from its origins in antiquity through to the present; to examine scholarly assessments of its utility; and to offer a synthetic historical account of how and why Paul acted as he did to either side of his affiliation with the Jesus movement. In various sections the chapter ex amines the fundamental contributions of Munck, Stendahl, and Dahl and those of E. P. Sanders and James Dunn; the work of Alan Segal, Daniel Boyarin, and N. T. Wright; and the proposals of Gaston, Gager, and Stowers. Finally, the chapter explores newer work ar guing that both the content and the context of Paul's mission to pagans continued to be Second Temple Judaism, inflected through the peculiar eschatology of the Jesus move ment. For this reason, the essay concludes, Paul's transformative moment is best concep tualized as his 'call'.
Research Interests:
Enactments of Torah are vigorously variable. In conversation with Michael Wyschogrod, I argue that one person's "orthodoxy" is another person's minut ("heresy").
Research Interests:
Paul did not know and could not know what later generations, looking backward, did know: that the messiah would not return in his lifetime. That shortly after his death, Rome would destroy the temple in Jerusalem. That by the second... more
Paul did not know and could not know what later generations, looking backward, did know: that the messiah would not return in his lifetime. That shortly after his death, Rome would destroy the temple in Jerusalem. That by the second century, a collection of his letters would give rise to gentile forms of Christianity that were independent of and hostile to Judaism. Paul lived his life innocent of the future. If we want to reconstruct his thought without anachronism, we must conjure that same innocence through a disciplined act of imagination, placing Paul within, not against, his native religious tradition.
Research Interests:
Christian identity with Second Temple Judaism as its dark contrast
Research Interests:
"If Jesus preached the end of the world in his own lifetime, then he was mistaken." This unimpeachably correct observation has caused frissons of anxiety among New Testament scholars, encouraging them variously to deny, redefine, or... more
"If Jesus preached the end of the world in his own lifetime, then he was mistaken." This unimpeachably correct observation has caused frissons of anxiety among New Testament scholars, encouraging them variously to deny, redefine, or simply ignore the compressed time-table of the Christ-movements's first generation--who thought that they were history's last generation. What happens if we take seriously Schweitzer's and Allison's exhortation to theological courage, and endeavor to reconstruct the movements's historical origins within their contemporary, and temporally-conceived, eschatology?
Research Interests:
Paul's letters evince an early High Christology--but not one so high that it would have slotted comfortably into the Council of Nicea. This essay challenges the recent NT vogue in Early VERY High Christology, resting as that does on a... more
Paul's letters evince an early High Christology--but not one so high that it would have slotted comfortably into the Council of Nicea. This essay challenges the recent NT vogue in Early VERY High Christology, resting as that does on a cosmogonic idea of creatio ex nihilo not conceived until the later second century. And I argue that Paul's Christology, historically reconstructed, must fit not only within contemporary forms of Jewishness, but also within contemporary forms of paganism.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Von seinem ersten Brief (das heißt seinem frühesten, dem 1. Thessalonicherbrief) bis zu seinem letzten (dem Römerbrief) war Paulus überzeugt, dass die Rück-kehr Christi unmittelbar bevorstand, dass er zurückkommen, die Welt erlösen, die... more
Von seinem ersten Brief (das heißt seinem frühesten, dem 1. Thessalonicherbrief) bis zu seinem letzten (dem Römerbrief) war Paulus überzeugt, dass die Rück-kehr Christi unmittelbar bevorstand, dass er zurückkommen, die Welt erlösen, die Toten auferwecken und das Reich seines Vaters heraufführen würde. 2 Wir, die wir leben, werden verwandelt werden, unsere Rettung ist näher denn je. Paulus rechnet damit, die siegreiche Wiederkunft Christi und das Kommen des Gottes-reiches persönlich zu erleben. Die Auferstehung Christi-der Apostel hat den Auferstandenen mit eigenen Augen in einer Vision gesehen-gab ihm die Ge-wissheit, dass das Ende nahe ist (1 Kor 15,8.12). Dass Christus auferstanden war, konnte nur bedeuten, dass die allgemeine Auferstehung, die Auferstehung aller Menschen unmittelbar bevorstand (vgl. Röm 1,4): Christus war der "Erstling" der von den Toten Auferstandenen (1 Kor 15,20). Die diesem einzigartigen Ereignis innewohnende Bedeutung lag darin, dass es die letzte, allgemeine Auferweckung unmittelbar implizierte (V. 12-15). Genau genommen ist die Auferstehung Chris-ti in den Augen des Apostels gerade kein "einzigartiges" Ereignis, sondern das erste in einer ganzen Reihe eschatologischer Ereignisse, die in das Heraufführen des Gottesreichs münden. Jesus ist der Messias; er wurde auferweckt und deshalb wird er bald wieder-kommen; bei seiner Wiederkunft werden auch die Toten auferweckt und das Gottesreich wird Gestalt annehmen. Zu dem Zeitpunkt, als Paulus die Briefe, die uns im Neuen Testament vorliegen, diktiert, hat er ebendiese Botschaft bereits seit über zwanzig Jahren (hauptsächlich) den Heiden verkündet. Die Botschaft von der Kreuzigung Jesu, von seinem Tod, seiner Auferweckung und seiner un-mittelbar bevorstehenden Rückkehr ging einher mit einer weiteren wichtigen Be-stätigung: der Bestätigung nämlich, dass Jesus ὁ χριστóς sei, der Messias. Diese
Research Interests:
'Paul the "Convert"?' has three goals: to track the history of this construction of Paul from its origins in antiquity through to the present; to examine scholarly assessments of its utility; and to offer a synthetic historical account of... more
'Paul the "Convert"?' has three goals: to track the history of this construction of Paul from its origins in antiquity through to the present; to examine scholarly assessments of its utility; and to offer a synthetic historical account of how and why Paul acted as he did to either side of his affiliation with the Jesus movement. In various sections the chapter ex amines the fundamental contributions of Munck, Stendahl, and Dahl and those of E. P. Sanders and James Dunn; the work of Alan Segal, Daniel Boyarin, and N. T. Wright; and the proposals of Gaston, Gager, and Stowers. Finally, the chapter explores newer work ar guing that both the content and the context of Paul's mission to pagans continued to be Second Temple Judaism, inflected through the peculiar eschatology of the Jesus move ment. For this reason, the essay concludes, Paul's transformative moment is best concep tualized as his 'call'.
Research Interests:
Gods and humans cohabited the ancient city. Dedicated festivals, celebrating seasons and times sacred to divine patrons both celestial and imperial, punctuated the civic year. How did Jews-and, later, Christians-cope within this... more
Gods and humans cohabited the ancient city. Dedicated festivals, celebrating seasons and times sacred to divine patrons both celestial and imperial, punctuated the civic year. How did Jews-and, later, Christians-cope within this god-congested environment?
Research Interests:
How do we construct an historical Paul who fits within his context by way of coherence rather than contrast? How do we see Paul as defining his own Jewish identity, even--or especially--once he became committed to the conviction that... more
How do we construct an historical Paul who fits within his context by way of coherence rather than contrast? How do we see Paul as defining his own Jewish identity, even--or especially--once he became committed to the conviction that Jesus as messiah was about to return to establish God's kingdom? In dialogue with Professor Paul Foster, I consider these and related questions."
Research Interests:
In his landmark essay "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?" the renowned British historian G.E.M. de Ste. Croix famously advanced a chronological framework for analyzing Roman anti-Christian coercion which, he claimed, ended with... more
In his landmark essay "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?" the renowned British historian G.E.M. de Ste. Croix famously advanced a chronological framework for analyzing Roman anti-Christian coercion which, he claimed, ended with Constantine. This essay challenges that paradigm, and argues that the widest and most sustained Roman anti-Christian persecutions came AFTER the accession of Constantine.
Research Interests:
The ancient Mediterranean is not the same place that it was in 1933; yet much of AD Nock's meditations on "conversion" still sheds light on Roman-period religions. This essay considers a) late Second Temple Judaism; b) Paul; c) Augustine,... more
The ancient Mediterranean is not the same place that it was in 1933; yet much of AD Nock's meditations on "conversion" still sheds light on Roman-period religions. This essay considers a) late Second Temple Judaism; b) Paul; c) Augustine, and d) the 4th-5th centuries' conversion of Christianity in light of Nock's dated yet ageless classic.
Research Interests:
When Paul says 'Israel', what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradition has long answered that by 'Israel', a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific 'Christians'. But a great deal of evidence in Paul's letters... more
When Paul says 'Israel', what or whom does he have in mind? Christian theological tradition has long answered that by 'Israel', a universalist Paul means ethnically non-specific 'Christians'. But a great deal of evidence in Paul's letters weighs against such an idea. This chapter examines, in turn, the modern myth of a post-ethnic Paul, ancient ideas about divine and human ethnicity, Paul's language about Jewish and gentile 'natures', Paul's language about Jewish and Gentile kinds of sins, Paul's application of different Jewish laws to Jews and Gentiles, respectively, and finally Paul's actual usage of the ethnonyms 'Jew' and 'Israel'. It is concluded that, for Paul, Jews are Israel, and Israel, his own family, is the Jews. God, through Christ, at the end of the ages (mid-first century CE), was graciously calling all humanity into the redemption that he had promised to Israel long ago. Eschatological humanity thus remains two different people groups-Israel and the nations-embraced by a single salvation.