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Monday, June 25, 2018

Review of Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 319. ISBN 9780300225884. $35.00. Reviewed by Olivia Stewart Lester, University of Oxford (olivia.stewartlester@oriel.ox.ac.uk).
Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle radically recontextualizes Paul within the diversity of Judaism in the ancient Mediterranean and within a compelling history of anti-Judaism in ancient and modern readings of his letters. Against such readings, Fredriksen transforms essential questions in Pauline studies—on gentile inclusion, the Law, christology, and the imminent end of time—with an historically robust portrayal of Paul as a first-century Jewish thinker. This book offers a new paradigm for Pauline scholarship and requires an ethical reckoning for the devastating legacies of anti-Jewish readings of Paul.

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