Paul
The Pagans' Apostle

I wasn't expecting it, but this book has changed several of my ideas about Paul and his thinking. I have always seen him very much as a Jew and an believer in an apocalyptic theology about Jesus and the coming kingdom, but Fredriksen has clarified his complex positions on Jewish and ex-pagan members......more

Basically, I swear by Paula Fredriksen's reading of Paul's Epistles. Her interpretation alone appears the most convincing and the most cognizant of Paul's Jewish identity. I feel like I finally understand Romans. Fredriksen is also a dynamic writer, whose prose retains a conversational tone even whi......more

As someone who has followed the developments of Pauline studies in recent years through what has been called the New Perspective(s) on Paul and now into what is often called "Paul Within Judaism" (into which this book belongs) and have found the insights to be indispensable to Christian theology, th......more

Paula Fredriksen writes an important contribution to the field of Pauline studies, in which she attempts to dismantle the common perception of Paul as an anti-Judaism, anti-Torah predecessor of Christianity. Despite the unfortunate tendencies in Christianity to distance the apostle from his Jewish h......more

With this work slightly behind but also now in front of me, I will no longer be able to read with the Pauline letters or the rest of the New Testament as I have read them. This is to me a revolutionary work though I have for some years now not considered Jesus or Paul as Christian. When I read now I......more