Paul within Judaism Reading List

Here is my reading list for Paul within Judaism. I developed this list by finding a few writers in dialogue with one another, and finding the journals and volumes where they have published, who else writes there, what books they tend to cite, and who endorses or forewords whose books. This started because I happened to check out the 2012 Paul and Judaism: Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis volume right before quarantine, and then the seminary library let us keep our books all summer, so I used that volume for my summer class term paper.

Before this gets going, a word from Paula Fredriksen on the diversity of views that go under this label:

the so-called “Paul within Judaism” [school] is a doctrinal mess. Important differences within it abound. Significant ones… distinguish my views on particular issues from those of John Gager. Gager’s Paul is no longer Law-observant; mine continues to be. (Why wouldn’t he be?) Gager’s Paul thinks that Christ has redemptive relevance only for gentiles; my Paul sees Jesus quite precisely as the eschatological Davidic messiah, thus and therefore the christos of Israel as well. And so on. Do we then represent “a school” or “a perspective”? Or something more like a “network”? A movement, maybe? Whatever.

But the label represents some unity. She continues:

The interpretive point of principle that binds us all together is the
recognition that no one in Paul’s generation would have looked at his euangelion as anything other than a particular — perhaps peculiar — inflection of late Second Temple Judaism. Thus our commitment, no matter what our various conclusions, to construing Paul’s letters within and with those criteria of meaning specific to late Second Temple Jewishness. “Christianity” as an idea and as an entity is born only long after Paul’s lifetime. To echo Pam Eisenbaum’s felicitous title, Paul was not a Christian.

From Paula Fredriksen, “Putting Paul in His (Historical) Place: A Response to James Crossley, Margaret Mitchell, and Matthew Novenson.” JJMJS No. 5 (2018), 105-106.

With that said, here is my list of journals, key scholars, edited volumes, studies, and commentaries. I will update with any suggestions.

Journals

Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting (online)

Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations (online)

Key Scholars

Frantisek Abel, Michael Bachmann, Thomas R. Blanton IV, Daniel Boyrain, William S. Campbell, James D.G. Dunn, Kathy Ehrensperger, Paula Fredriksen, Jorg Frey, John Gager, Joshua Garroway, Amy-Jill Levine, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Joel Marcus, Mark Nanos, Isaac W. Oliver, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Matthew V. Novenson, Rafael Rodriguez, Anders Runesson, Matthew Thiessen, J. Brian Tucker, Magnus Zetterholm.

Edited Volumes

Abel, Frantisek, ed., Israel and Nations: Paul’s Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectation. Minneapolis, MN: Lexington Fortress, 2020.

Abel, Frantisek, ed., The Message of the Apostle Paul within Second Temple Judaism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020.

Avery-Peck, Alan, et al., eds. Earliest Christianity within the Boundaries of Judaism: Essays in Honor of Bruce Chilton. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2016.

Baron, Lori, Jill Hicks-Keeton, and Matthew Thiessen, eds., The Ways that Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2018.

Bieringer, Reimund and Didier Pollefeyt, eds., Paul and Judaism:  Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis and the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations. London, UK: T&T Clark International, 2012.

Boccaccini, Gabriele, and Carlos A. Segovia, eds., Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.

Johnson Hodge, Caroline et al., eds., The One Who Sows Bountifully: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2013.

Nanos, Mark and Magnus Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015.

Nanos, Mark. Reading Paul within Judaism: Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos Vol. 1. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2017. See also Reading Romans within Judaism (Vol. 2), Reading Galatians within Judaism (Vol. 3), and Reading Corithians and Philippians within Judaism (Vol. 4).

Thiessen, Matthew and Rafael Rodriguez, eds., The So-Called Jew in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.

Studies

Boyarin, Daniel. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Campbell, William S. Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity. London, UK: T&T Clark International, 2008.

Eisenbaum, Pamela. Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle. New York, NY: HaperOne, 2010 ed.

Fredrikson, Paula. Paul: the Pagan’s Apostle. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2017.

Fredrikson, Paula. When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2019.

Johnson Hodge, Caroline. If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Novenson, Matthew V. The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Uses. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Stowers, Stanley K. A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1994.

Thiessen, Matthew. Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Thiessen, Matthew. Paul and the Gentile Problem. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Thiessen, Matthew. Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.

Thornhill, A. Chadwick. The Chosen People: Election, Paul and Second Temple Judaism. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Tucker, J. Brian. Reading Romans after Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish Covenantal Identity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.

Windsor, Lionel J. Paul and the Vocation of Israel. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.

Commentaries

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marc Zvi Brettler. The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017 2nd ed.

Tucker, J. Brian. Reading 1 Corinthians. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.

Rodriguez, Rafael. If You Call Yourself a Jew: Reappraising Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014.