salvation, “A ‘lot in the World to come’ … is ultimately assured to every Israelite on the ground of the original election of the people by the free grace of God.”5 The need to earn salvation by merit is not Jewish. However, such voices had little impact on students of Paul and the NT. That impact came with the 1977 publication of E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism. This began a wave of dissatisfaction with the common portrayals of Judaism. Sanders devoted nearly four hundred pages to a
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