Bible
A Jewish Paul The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles Matthew Thiessen
What was the apostle Paul’s relationship to Judaism? How did he view the Jewish law? How did he understand the gospel of Jesus’s messiahship relative to both ethnic Jews and gentiles? These remain perennial questions both to New Testament scholars and to all serious Bible readers. New Testament scholar Matthew Thiessen offers an important contribution to this discussion. A Jewish Paul is an accessible introduction that situates Paul clearly within first-century Judaism, not opposed to it. Thiessen argues for a more historically plausible reading of Paul. Paul did not reject Judaism or the Jewish law but believed he was living in the last days, when Israel’s Messiah would deliver the nations from sin and death. Paul saw himself as an envoy to the nations, desiring to introduce them to the Messiah and his life-giving, life-transforming Spirit. This new contribution to Pauline studies will benefit professors, students, and scholars of the New Testament as well as pastors and lay readers.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Making Paul Weird Again 2. Radically New or Long-Lost Reading of Paul? 3. Judaism Doesn’t Believe Anything 4. Paul, an End-Time Jew 5. The Gentile Problem 6. Jesus the Messiah 7. The Gentile Problem and Cosmetic Surgery
AUGUST 2023 • 208 pp. • paper • $24.99 • 9781540965714
Matthew Thiessen (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University. He is the author of numerous books, including Paul and the Gentile Problem , Jesus and the Forces of Death , and Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circum- cision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise). He is also the coeditor of several volumes.
8. Pneumatic Gene Therapy 9. The Bodies of the Messiah 10. Living the Resurrected Life 11. Resurrection as the Culmination of the Messiah’s Coming 12. The Messiah and the Jews Conclusion Indexes
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR JESUS AND THE FORCES OF DEATH 9781540964878 • $35.00p
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