In recent studies by an increasing number of scholars, the center of Pauline thought is being shifted from justification by faith to the essential meaning of his Jewishness and his commission as apostle to the Gentiles.
By John McRay
Emeritus Professor of New Testament and Archaeology
Wheaton College Graduate School
Wheaton, Illinois
June 2006
I. Paul Before Schweitzer
William Ramsay, the intrepid Mediterranean traveler and follower in Paul's footsteps, once wrote: "the life of Paul partakes of the uncertainty that envelops all ancient history."1 The perusal of Pauline studies in modern times only corroborates this century-old assessment. In many ways, the study of Paul is more complex and further from consensus today than it has ever been. Putting Paul in his place has become a complex, if not virtually impossible, task in modern scholarship. Victor Furnish stated in his 1993 presidential address to the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature that "If Paul commands attention still, it is not because he is or ever can be fully understood, nor because anybody can ever succeed in putting him in his place…."2
Older studies on Paul focused on him as an antinomian, one who was opposed to the Law of Moses and who is best understood as an opponent of first-century Judaism. He was seen as one who converted from Judaism to Christianity and became a defender of the doctrine of salvation by faith only as opposed to the meritorious works of the Law demanded by the Judaism of Paul's day. These studies argued that there was a fundamental antithesis between Paul and Judaism, whether Palestinian or Hellenistic, and that this antithesis was the core, the functional center, of Paul's understanding of redemptive history.
The argument was that in reaction to a Jewish system which offered salvation by human works of merit, Paul taught justification by faith only as the only appropriate response to God's extended grace in Christ. One system of religion was contrasted with the other: Judaism with Christianity, works with faith. The greatest proponent of this perspective was considered to be Martin Luther, whose reaction to the medieval Catholic system of selling meritorious indulgences sparked the Protestant Reformation and emphatically emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith alone (despite the fact that the only place in the New Testament where the phrase "faith alone" occurs specifically states that one is "not justified by faith alone," James 2:24). The endless periods of self-denial and mortification spent in his cell as an Augustinian monk, futilely attempting to procure the feeling of satisfaction that he had earned God's acceptance, had driven Luther to the diametric conclusion that God's favor could not be earned.
The conclusion was inescapable: his own Catholic Church was requiring the impossible. The works it demanded, he felt, were no different in essence than those works required by Paul's Jewish opponents who also erroneously taught a system of salvation by human merit. This, Luther concluded, was what Paul referred to when he wrote "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). Thus was ignited in Luther the spark that blazed into the Reformation Movement, the conviction that a person is justified by faith alone.
Rudolph Bultmann, Ernst Käseman, and F.C. Baur, three of the most influential European New Testament scholars in recent history, championed this perspective. Baur saw Paul from a Hegelian perspective. Hegel divided history into recurring phases which he delineated as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Baur saw Paul as a representative of the antithesis in Hegel's dialectical reconstruction of historical development. Jewish Christianity (its earliest expression) was the thesis, Paul's Gentile Christianity was the antithesis, and the subsequent amalgamation of the two became the synthesis. This synthesis he saw in Acts and Ephesians, as well as other books which he dated late in the first century.
Before Albert Schweitzer wrote his Mysticism of Paul the Apostle in 1931, it was normative to look at Paul through the eyes of Luther and see the doctrine of justification by faith as the heart of Pauline teaching. Since Judaism was commonly viewed as a religion through which righteousness was attained by works, Paul was predictably postured as antinomian.
Arguments by Liberals, Neo-orthodox, Bultmanians, and Post-Bultmanians, therefore, tended to focus on Paul's understanding of salvation as the product of faith and not obedience to a law. Paul was widely viewed as a first-century Protestant theologian who held authority to lie in Scripture rather than the church and that righteousness before God was to be found in believing Scripture rather than in doing the works of the church.3
Many scholars who did not feel that Paul's Jewish heritage continued to be a significant factor in his thinking after he became a Christian minimized the Jewishness of Paul and emphasized rather his exposure to Hellenistic religions as more influential on his thought.4 The failure to contextualize Paul's teaching in its first-century milieu was as old as the Post-Apostolic church.5
II. PAUL SINCE SCHWEITZER
However, after Albert Schweitzer wrote Paul and His Interpreters in 1911, the scenario changed.6 In this study, he rooted Paul squarely in the matrix of Judaism rather than in Protestant-Catholic history, and his book became a pivotal point in the history of Pauline studies.
Schweitzer later wrote The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle7 in which he depicted Paul as a mystic and argued that "cosmic mysticism" was the meaning of Paul's expression "in Christ." Paul meant that the believer is united with Christ in a mystical way -- just as the elect are understood to be one with their Messiah. Adolph Deissmann had argued from essentially the same perspective,8 but the greater impact was made by Schweitzer.
Schweitzer saw a strong distinction between Palestinian Judaism (Semitic) and Diaspora Judaism (Hellenistic). He further divided Palestinian Judaism into Rabbinic and Apocalyptic categories. He put Paul, as he had placed Jesus, in the latter category. Thus, Paul was dissociated from legal issues relating to the Phariseeism which was manifest later in Rabbinic Judaism and was viewed from a different perspective.
By putting Paul in the apocalyptic category of Jewish religious thought, Schweitzer relocated the center of Paul's theology to a concern with the future rather than the present -- to questions about eschatology rather than justification by faith as opposed to works of law where Luther had placed it. The impact of Schweitzer's approach was to shift Pauline concern from the removing of the pangs of conscience to the problem of redirecting the cosmos, of uniting Jew and Gentile into one cosmic body. Thereby he refocused attention from present concerns over sin on a personal level to the problem of sin on a cosmic scale and highlighted Paul's unique role as a first-century Jewish apostle working among Gentiles. This represented a significant change in the emphasis of normative studies on Paul before Schweitzer.
However, since Schweitzer wrote his book on Paul, the essential difference he saw in the two kinds of Judaism, Diaspora and Palestinian, has been largely eliminated due to two basic factors: 1) Gershom Sholem,9 among other authors, has demonstrated that there was a mystical and proto-Gnostic element within Palestinian Judaism itself; 2) The Dead Sea Scrolls have further demonstrated that concepts which had been thought to be mystical, dualistic, Hellenistic, or Gnostic (and therefore diaspora) may actually have been Palestinian and Semitic.10
The Scrolls reveal a community of Judaeans, perhaps Essenes, though this is disputed,11 that was ardently devoted to the Law but also manifestly eschatological in its orientation -- a circumstance unknown at the time Schweitzer wrote. His premise, then, is no longer tenable. Nevertheless, Schweitzer's concentration on the Jewishness of Paul and the nature of the Judaism he represented produced conclusions that continue to influence Pauline studies today.
III. More Recent Studies on Paul
In recent studies by an increasing number of scholars, the center of Pauline thought is being shifted from justification by faith to the essential meaning of his Jewishness and his commission as apostle to the Gentiles.12 The impact of the shift has been great enough to capture the attention of the media. Newsweek carried a brief article on Paul which stated: "... a new generation of Scripture scholars is challenging many of the commonplace assumptions about who Paul was and what his teachings meant."13
The "new look" focuses directly on Paul and Judaism rather than on Luther's problems of dealing with personal guilt inherited through Adam. Francis Watson14 explains Paul's attitudes toward Judaism, the Law, and Gentiles as part of his attempt to legitimate the social reality of sectarian Gentile-Christian communities in which the Law was not observed
Philip Cunningham15 argues that Paul remained a faithful Jew throughout his life, never conceived himself as an "opponent" of Judaism, and thought of his call and conversion as a mission to preach to Gentiles.
A book recently edited by Richard Horsley sees Paul's gospel and mission as being set over against the Roman Empire, not Judaism. He argues that Paul never says anything to indicate that he was abandoning Judaism or Israel.16
David Wenham in a comprehensive survey of the question of how Paul related to Jesus argues that Paul was very dependent upon the teachings of Jesus and that his "gospel" is much more like the works of Matthew, Mark, and Luke than has usually been recognized.17
Jewish scholars have entered into the discussion of Paul just as they have into the discussion of Jesus.18 Geza Vermes in a recently published book on Jesus wrote that Paul was "the true founder of Christianity"19 and "was a poetic and mystical genius capable of construing a multifarious, impressive and exciting theological complex. Without any doubt, Paul was the most imaginative and creative writer among the authors of the New Testament, even though his ingenuity often resulted in twisting and sometimes undoing the genuine message of Jesus. But he was also a brilliantly gifted organizer without whose contribution Christianity would not exist or would be something totally different."20 J.G. Montefiore21 took Schweitzer's dichotomy between Palestinian Judaism and Hellenism as valid and argued that had Paul, the diaspora Jew, known the superior Judaism of Palestine he would never have embraced the Gospel. This view was also espoused by Joseph Klausner,22 and later the argument was essentially repeated and defended by Samuel Sandmel.23 Sandmel roots his study squarely in the Jewish background of Paul, which he views as fundamentally Hellenistic.24
In 1959, Westminster Press published an English translation of a major book on Paul written by Hans J. Schoeps, a Jewish professor at Erlangen University in Germany.25 The book was hailed by W.D. Davies as "the most significant contribution to Pauline studies since the appearance of J. Munck's Paulus und die Heilsgeschichte (1954)."26 The work is highly critical of Paul as a Jew but works from the premise that he must be understood as a Jew, primarily a Hellenistic Jew, of the first century, and not treated as though he were a Gentile Reformation theologian.
Alan Segal, a Jewish author in a recent book on Paul,27 argues that most Jewish authors have ignored Paul, treating him as no more than an "antagonistic apostate who broke completely with his Jewish past." On the contrary, he feels that Paul's Jewishness must be taken seriously. He argues that "Paul's goal was the creation of a new community of Jews and Gentiles. He used Pharisaic legal methodology, learned in his past, to resolve issues that separated Jew from Christian in this community. Thus, he was not writing systematic theology but was reacting to individual issues and trying to define proper practice."28
Johannes Munck writes: "Looking back on Pauline research in the last decades there is one trend which is generally accepted in international scholarship, namely that Paul is a Jew, and that he must be understood on the background of Judaism and the O.T."29
Munck elsewhere30 attacks the lingering theology of the 19th-century German Tübingen school, which argued that Christianity was the product of Pauline teaching that was later than and different from Judaism in kind as well as degree. Paul, Munck argues, belongs in the center of primitive Christianity, and if we place him there we will see him as he was -- a Jew and an apostle with a mission to Israel and to the Gentiles.
He argues further that Christianity was not a revision of Judaism which became a religion for Gentiles but rather that Jewish Christianity existed from the beginning as a new phenomenon. It was different from Judaism from the start, and this was due to the work of Jesus himself. It was not Paul but the unbelief of the Jews that altered the course of Christianity, Munck insists.31
Ernst Käsemann, another prominent German scholar, argues, contrary to the majority of his countrymen, that the teaching on justification by faith in Paul's writings did not have so much to do with individual conscience as it did with the inclusion of the Gentiles in the True Israel.32 His commentary on Romans33 continues the move away from Bultmann and anchors the justification or righteousness of God in the Old Testament, finding it expressed also in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Distancing himself from Bultmann, he finds justification to be concentrated not on the individual but views it as God's reclaiming the world, thus reflecting the cosmic implications of Paul's preaching as did Schweitzer.
Munck has further argued that Paul thought of himself as a kind of second Messiah to the Gentiles when he said in Colossians 1:24: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…."34 This view is also shared by Oscar Cullmann.35 They both argue that "the one who restrains" in II Thessalonians 2:6-7 is none other than Paul, who delays the coming of Christ by preaching to Gentiles.
Krister Stendahl wrote a watershed article in 1963,36 which argued that the teaching that a Christian inherently lives with a guilty conscience became prominent only in later church history. Stendahl maintained that Luther, as an Augustinian monk, inherited the idea through medieval theology from Augustine's Confessions and interpreted Romans in the light of his own problems rather than those who actually confronted Paul as a Jew. In contrast to Luther, neither Paul nor his ancestors lived with a guilty conscience. This may be seen from statements attributed to Paul in Acts 23:1: "Brethren, I have lived before God in all good conscience up to this day" and in II Timothy 1:3: "I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, as did my fathers..."
Käseman had argued the same point, suggesting that Paul's idea of justification by faith had nothing to do with individual conscience but with the inclusion of the Gentiles.37 George Howard continued the discussion in several journal articles and in his book Paul: Crisis in Galatia,38 showing that justification by faith as opposed to works was meant by Paul to refer, not to works of merit, but to Jewish performances of the works required by the Law -- i.e., doing what the Law required.39
W.D. Davies accepted the separation of Judaism into Apocalyptic and Rabbinic by Schweitzer and Montefiore, but against Montefiore he argued that Paul must be understood as a Hebrew of Hebrews who reflected a background of Rabbinic Judaism. Davies felt that although it was to be expected that the Judaism of the Diaspora and that of Palestine should present variations, "it is erroneous to over emphasize the differences between them as does Montefiore."40
However, E.P. Sanders took issue with the conclusions of Schweitzer, Montefiore, and Davies in one of the most influential books on Paul written in our generation, Paul and Palestinian Judaism.41 He argues that Paul does not really represent either Rabbinic or Apocalyptic Judaism, but rather something essentially different. Paul's basic view of Judaism is expressed in the term covenantal nomism while Christianity is best described by the term participationist eschatology . In Judaism, to be justified by faith is to remain in the covenant by keeping its laws and rules. In Christianity, to be justified by faith is to transfer from one domain into another, to participate for the first time in the eschatological kingdom.
Whereas the Jew, Sanders argues, was born into the covenant relationship, the Christian must be transferred into it. Both the Christian transfer and the Jewish birth into the covenant are by God's grace, but once in that relationship, God rewards good works and punishes evil ones. According to Sanders, the Jew entertained no thought of entering the covenant because he had been born into it; his or her only concern was to maintain the relationship established by the covenant.
The Christian, on the other hand, had entered into a new covenant by conversion and had to maintain the relationship by an obedient faith, just as did the Jew. The point to emphasize here is that Sanders, in a tremendously erudite and heavily documented work, rooted the study of Paul squarely in the Judaism of his day rather than in the existentialism of Reformation and Post-Reformation theology.
James D.G. Dunn, in a lengthy critique of Sanders, observed that Paul has, until recently, been understood as "the great exponent of the central Reformation doctrine of justification by faith" and it has been almost universally assumed that there was a "fundamental antithesis between Paul and Judaism."42 This assumption is challenged by Dunn in his commentary on Romans where he writes:
... Paul's negative thrust against the law is against the law taken over too completely by Israel, the law misunderstood by a misplaced emphasis on boundary-marking ritual ... Freed from that too narrowly Jewish perspective, the law still has an important part to play in “the obedience of faith."43
Dunn argues in a later article that Paul continued to identify with the Judaism he had espoused but also embraced the newness of apocalyptic element in Christ's role and teaching. What was new in Paul was a "fresh and final unfolding of ancient promise". There was "continuity in the discontinuity." It was the "apocalyptic climax of the salvation-history which constituted the heart of his gospel."44
An international seminar on Paul associated with the Society of Biblical Literature has tried without success to define a core of Pauline theology upon which its participants could agree. The failure of that effort has been acknowledged by Jouette Bassler, a member of the seminar, who proposes moving in a new direction on the presuppositional level. She charges that the effort to find a consistent theology in Paul by attempting to discover "the theology" of each individual letter and then add them together as the core of "Pauline theology" is flawed in methodology. She proposes another model for construing Paul's theology, which is to move in the direction of discerning what Paul assumes in his letters to be "self-evidently good and desirable" and in this "quest for convictions" find what motivated and guided Paul,45 though we probably will never be able to speak confidently of finding “ the center of Paul's theology.” It no longer seems completely accurate to speak of his theology in this way,” she says.46
Indeed, Heikki Räisanen has recently argued that Paul was consistently self-contradictory in his theology and that the law "was not a direct divine revelation to Moses."47 Victor Furnish feels that the theological task of an interpreter of Paul "is not to delineate the apostle's theological system, because he had none."48
Richard Hays has argued that Paul, in his responses to local problems in the churches to which he wrote, consciously integrated his reactions into a previously conceived "narrative" of God's redemptive plan for humanity. This narrative runs from Abraham to the parousia of Christ at the end of time. He says, "the coherence in Paul's thought is to be found not in a system of theological presuppositions...but in the kerygmatic story of God's action through Jesus Christ."49
IV. Paul and the Law
Recent scholarship has also concentrated on the question of how Paul viewed the Law of Moses and what its implications are for the relation of Jewish Christians to Gentile Christians. Space will not allow discussion of the subject in this article, but it is discussed in chapter fifteen of my book Paul: His Life and Teaching.50
ENDNOTES
[1] St. Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902), 30.
[2] Victor Furnish, "On Putting Paul in His Place," JBL 113:1 (Spring, 1994), 17.
[3] See also, J. Christian Beker's references to "the catholic Paul" in Heirs of Paul: Paul's Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 33-34, 94.
[4] H.J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie (Tübingen, 1911) 2 vols., zweite neu bearbeitete Auflage. W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter. ed. by H. Gressmann. (Tübingen: J.C.B.Mohr [Paul Siebeck]), 1926. Richard Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen nach ihren Grundgedanken und Wirkung. 3rd. ed. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1927). English translation, Hellenistic Mystery Religions: Their Basic Ideas and Significance, trans. John E. Steely. (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1978).
[5] See Martinus C. de Boer, "Images of Paul in the Post-Apostolic Period" CBQ 42(1980), 359-80; William S. Babcock, ed., Paul and the Legacy of Paul (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1990); Ernst Dassman, Das Stachel im Fleisch: Paulus in der früchristlichen Literatur bis Irenäus (Münster: Aschendorff, 1979).
[6] Paul and His Interpreters (German, 1911; English, 1912)
[7] Published in German in 1930. English edition published in 1931. Reprinted by Macmillan Co. New York, 1956.
[8] Paul (2nd ed., 1925).
[9] Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1941.
[10] See recent evaluations of Qumran in James VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Eerdmans, 1994); Norman Golb, Jerusalem and the Origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Macmillan, 1993); Ed Cook, The Rediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993); Neil Silbermann, The War for the Scrolls (Gossett Books, 1994); Hershel Shanks, Hershel Shanks, ed. Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader (Random House, 1993); Hershel Shanks, J. VanderKam, K. McCarter, and J. Sanders, The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992); and Joseph Fitzmeyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study (Sources for Biblical Study 20; rev. ed.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990). Oxford University plans publishing a two volume encyclopedia of the scrolls in 1996, edited by Lawrence Schiffman and James VanderKam.
For a recent questionable evaluation of the Dead Sea Scrolls see: Robert Eisenmann and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York City: Penguin, 1994). This is a translation and interpretation of 50 key documents. The authors argue that Christianity arose directly from Qumran. Their viewpoint is rejected by Alan Segal in his review of their work "A First Look at Key Scrolls" Biblical Archaeology Review 19:1 (January/February, 1993), 60-61. See also Michael Wise, et.al., eds., Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1994). A translation of all the known scrolls and fragments is now available in paperback, translated into English out of Spanish: Florencio Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, trans. Wilfred Watson (Leiden/New York: EJ Brill/Cologne, 1992).
[11] Frank Cross wrote, "The scholar who would 'exercise caution' in identifying the sect of Qumran with the Essenes places himself in an astonishing position: he must suggest seriously that two major parties formed communistic religious communities in the same district of the desert of the Dead Sea and lived together in effect for two centuries, holding similar bizarre views, performing similar or rather identical lustrations, ritual meals, and ceremonies. He must suppose that one, carefully described by classical authors, disappeared without leaving building remains or even potsherds behind; the other, systematically ignored by the classical sources, left extensive ruins, and indeed a great library. I prefer to be reckless and flatly identify the men of Qumran with their perennial houseguests, the Essenes.” "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the People Who Wrote Them," BAR 3:1 (March, 1977), 29. A strong case against identifying these as Essenes is now being argued by various scholars. I discuss these in my forthcoming book, Paul: His Life and Teaching, Baker Book House, February, 2003.
[12] For informative surveys of current trends see: Dunn, J.G. "The New Perspective on Paul," Bulletin of the John RylandsUniversity Library 65:2, Spring, 1983; S.J. Hafemann, "Paul and His Interpreters", in G.F. Hawthorne, et.al., Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 666-679; Stephen Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1988); Frank Thielman, Paul and the Law (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Chapter one, "Paul, the Law and Judaism: the Creation and Collapse of a Theological Consensus," 14-47; Donald Hagner, "Paul and Judaism, The Jewish Matrix of Early Christianity: Issues in the Current Debate," Bulletin for Biblical Research 3 (1993), 111-130. For a fuller list of sources see my book on Paul: His Life and Teaching, chapter 18.
[13] Kenneth Woodward, "How to Read Paul, 2,000 Years Later," Newsweek February 29, 1988, 65.
[14] Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1986).
[15] Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles (Twenty Third Publications, 1986).
[16] Richard Horsley, ed. Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997).
[17] David Wenham, Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? A New Look at the Question of Paul and Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. William Simmons finds a much stronger connection between Paul and the teachings of Jesus than merely a few parallel statements. A Theology of Inclusion in Jesus and Paul (Lewiston, New York: Mellen Biblical Press, 1996).
[18] Significant works by Jewish scholars on Paul include the following: Klausner, Joseph. From Jesus to Paul, 1939; Pinchas Lapide, and Peter Stuhlmacher. Paul: Rabbi and Apostle, Augsburg, 1984 Dialogue between and Christian and a Jew; J. G. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul, 1914; Richard Rubenstein, My Brother Paul, Harper Torchbook, 1972; Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, 1956; idem. The Genius of Paul, Fortress, 1958. Schoeps, H.J., Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History., Westminster, 1959; Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and the Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. Yale University Press, 1990. For bibliography on Jewish aspects of Pauline study by non-Jewish scholars, see my book on Paul: His Life and Teaching, chapter 18.
[19] Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus, (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 2001), 60.
[20] Ibid., 71.
[21] Judaism and St. Paul, 1914.
[22] From Jesus to Paul, 1939.
[23] A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, 1956.
[24] Sandmel, 44.
[25] Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History. Published initially as Paulus; Die Theologie des Apostels im Lichte der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1959).
[26] New Testament Studies 10:2 (January, 1964), 295.
[27] Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and the Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee, Yale University Press, 1990.
[28] From the cover.
[29] Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J.P. Hyatt, 174.
[30] "The Tübingen School and Paul," in Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, (Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1959), 59ff.
[31] Hyatt, 174.
[32] "Gottesgerichtigkeit bei Paulus," ZTK LVIII, 1961, 367-78.
[33] Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980). This is a fourth edition and translation of his German original An die Römer, published in 1974.
[34] Paul and the Salvation of Mankind.
[35] Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 16 (1963), 210-45.
[36] "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," Harvard Theological Review LVI (1963), 199-215.
[37] "Gottesgerichtigekeit bei Paulus," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, LVIII (1961), 367-78.
[38] Cambridge University Press, 1979.
[39] See chapter fifteen in my book Paul: His Life and Teaching, for further bibliography on Paul's View of the Law.
[40] Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: S.P.C.K., 1948, 2nd ed. with additional notes, 1955), 5.
[41] Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977
[42] This was stated in the Manson Memorial Lecture at Manchester University in 1982, and later published as "The New Perspective on Paul," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 65:2, (Spring, 1983), 98. (95-122). It also appears with an "additional note" in Jesus, Paul and the Law. Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 183-214.
[43] Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 38, Romans 1-8, (Dallas, Word Books, Publisher, 1988), lxxii.
[44] James Dunn, "How New Was Paul's Gospel? The Problem of Continuity and Discontinuity," Gospel in Paul: Studies on Corinthians, Galatians and Romans for Richard N. Longenecker, ed. L. Ann Jervis and Peter Richardson, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 108, 1994, 388.
[45] "Paul's Theology: Whence and Whither?" in David May, ed., Pauline Theology, Volume II: I & II Corinthians (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 13.
[46] Ibid, 17.
[47] Paul and the Law, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 266, 268.
[48] "On Putting Paul in His Place," JBL 113:1 (Spring, 1995), 14. See also his "Paul the Theologian," in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John: In honor of Louis Martyn (ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 19-34.
[49] Richard Hays, "Crucified with Christ: A Synthesis of the Theology of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, Philippians, and Galatians," in Pauline Theology, Volume I: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon (Minneapolis: Fortress: 1991), 231-32.
[50] The following bibliography is selective. For a fuller list of books and articles see chapter fifteen of my book Paul: His Life and Teaching. Thomas R. Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993); Stephen Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), see especially his survey of recent scholarship in 13-31; Frank Thielman, Paul and the Law (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994); E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: TPI, 1992); idem. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); James Dunn, The Parting of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1991); Heikki Räisanen in his Paul and the Law argues that Paul delivers no reliably systematic understanding of the Law.