Paul and His Recent Interpreters

Some Contemporary Debates

N. T. Wright

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

PAUL AND HIS RECENT INTERPRETERS

Some Contemporary Debates

Fortress Press Edition © 2015

Copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2015

This book is published in cooperation with Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, England. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/contact.asp or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the New Testament are either the author’s own translation or are taken from his The New Testament for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2011; published by HarperOne, San Francisco, as The Kingdom New Testament), while those from the Old Testament are either the author’s own translation or are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, reprinted by permission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978-0-8006-9964-2

eBook ISBN 978-1-4514-5235-8

To my students, past and present

CONTENTS

Preface

List of Abbreviations

Part I: PAUL AMONG JEWS AND GENTILES?

1 Setting the Stage

1. Introduction

2. History and ‘History of Religion’

(i) Introduction

(ii) Paul between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Hellenism’?

(iii) F. C. Baur

(iv) Life after Baur

(v) A Gentile Origin?

(vi) A Jewish Origin?

(vii) Beyond ‘History-of-Religions’?

3. From History to Theology?

2 The Theological Questions

1. Introduction: The Fireworks and the Framework

2. From Schweitzer to Sanders: A Necessarily Impressionistic Sketch

3 The New Perspective and Beyond

1. The Launch of a Protest

2. Sanders on Judaism

3. Plight, Solution and Critique

4. Paul’s Own Thought

4 Life after Sanders

1. Introduction

2. New Tasks within New Perspectives

5 ‘The Old Is Better’?

1. Introduction

2. The Reaction

3. Life after ‘Life after Sanders’

Part II: RE-ENTER ‘APOCALYPTIC’

6 The Strange Career of ‘Apocalyptic’

1. Introduction

2. What Is ‘Apocalyptic’?

7 From Käsemann to Beker

1. The Käsemann Revolution

2. Triumph Now and Not Yet: J. C. Beker

8 The ‘Union School’? De Boer and Martyn

1. M. C. de Boer

2. J. Louis Martyn

9 An Apocalyptic Rereading of Romans? Douglas Campbell

1. Introduction

2. Campbell’s Rereading of Romans

3. Conclusion: Beyond Old and New Perspectives?

Part III: PAUL IN HIS WORLD—AND OURS?

10 Social History and the Pauline Communities

1. Introduction

2. Social History, Social Science and the Quest for Thick Description

(i) Introduction

(ii) A Determined Desire for Detail

(iii) Leading the Way

(iv) New Proposals from a Loose Coalition

(v) Mapping and Modelling the Symbolic World

(vi) Sect or Reform Movement? The Social Study of Paul

11 Social Study, Social Ethics: Meeks and Horrell

1. The First Urban Christians...