Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle As a Figure of Second Temple Judaism

The decades-long effort to understand the apostle Paul within his Jewish context is now firmly established in scholarship on early Judaism, as well as on Paul. The latest fruit of sustained analysis appears in the essays gathered here, from leading international scholars who take account of the latest investigations into the scope and variety present in Second Temple Judaism. Contributors address broad historical and theological questions—Paul's thought and practice in relationship with early Jewish apocalypticism, messianism, attitudes toward life under the Roman Empire, appeal to Scripture, the Law, inclusion of Gentiles, the nature of salvation, and the rise of Gentile-Christian supersessionism—as well as questions about interpretation itself, including the extent and direction of a "paradigm shift" in Pauline studies and the evaluation of the Pauline legacy. Paul the Jew goes as far as any effort has gone to restore the apostle to his own historical, cultural, and theological context, and with persuasive results.

Gabriele Boccaccini is professor of Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the founder of the Enoch Seminar. He received his PhD in Judaic studies from the University of Turin in 1991. He is the author of Middle Judaism (1991), Beyond the Essene Hypothesis (1998), Roots of Rabbinic Judaism (2001), and the editor of numerous volumes including The Origins of Enochic Judaism (2002) and Enoch and Qumran Origins (2005), as well as the international journal Henoch.

Carlos A. Segovia is lecturer in Islamic studies at Saint Louis University and associate professor in religious studies at Camilo Jose Cela University in Madrid. He has written Re-Imagining Islam in the Late Seventh Century and The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet (both forthcoming) and helped launch the Early Islamic Studies Seminar.