Paul within Judaism - FREE ACCESS

Just published Michael F. Bird, Ruben A. Bühner, Jörg Frey, and Brian Rosner (eds). Paul within Judaism: Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity (WUNT 507; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023). Now available as open access thanks to a generous grant from the Swiss National Sciences Foundation.

This book is based on an on-line scholarly conference sponsored by the Australian College of Theology and hosted by Ridley College back in 2021. In sum:

This conference volume features cutting edge research from an international cohort of scholars on the still-controversial debates regarding Paul's relationship with Judaism. Taken together, the contributions represent a sympathetic but critical assessment of the Paul within Judaism approach to Pauline interpretation. They take up many of the key questions germane to the debate, including different perspectives on Jewish identity, ethnicity, Torah-observance, halakha, the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Christ, and the contested character of Jewish identity in antiquity. By combining a broad swath of both German- and English-language scholarship, the volume attempts to bring different perspectives into conversation with each other.

The essays include:

Michael Bird: An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate – Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr: Agencies of Grace in Paul and James: Two Jewish Voices – Jörg Frey: The Relativization of Ethnicity and Circumcision in Paul and His Communities – Josh Garroway: Messy Metaphors: Ethnic Transformation in Philo, Romans, and Ephesians – Brian Rosner: Apostle to the Gentiles from Israel: The Jewish Roots of Paul's Identity and Mission – Chris Porter: Which Paul? Whose Judaism? – A Socio-Cognitive Approach to Paul within Judaism – David Starling: »Those who were not my people«: Paul's Gentile Churches and the Story of Israel- J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi: Paul's Segmentary Grammar of Identity: Ex-Pagan Gentiles within Synagogues and the Importance of the Eschatological Pilgrimage Tradition – Ryan D. Collman: For who has known the mind of the Apostle? Paul, the Law, and His Syngeneis in the Messiah – Kathy Ehrensperger: Abraham our Forefather and Herakles our Cousin: Paul's Genealogical Reasoning and Jewish Narratives of Belonging – Janelle Peters: Paul and Synagogues – Ruben A. Bühner: The Torah in Ethnically Mixed Assemblies- Joshua W. Jipp: The Lukan Paul as Prophet of God's Resurrected Messiah: Prophecy and Messianism in the Lukan Depiction of Paul – Murray Smith: The Theophany of the Resurrected Messiah: The »Jewish« Christology of Paul's Speeches in Acts – Lyn Kidson: Remembering Paul in Asia Minor: A Contested Jewish Identity in the First Four Centuries of Christianity – Michael Kok: The Heresiological Portrayals of the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans and Their Reception of Paul

If you want a good overview of the state of the debate about Paul within Judaism, then you might like my opening essay where I partly explain the lay of the scholarly land, try to set out prima facie the pros and cons of the Paul within Judaism “network” of scholars, and summarize the individual contributions in the book.

Again, note, it is free access to this first-class scholarly volume on the apostle Paul.