There are two overlapping themes which serve as the focus of Cultural Translation and Receptions of Paul in the First Four Centuries : (a) “reception” of the apostle Paul in subsequent Christian traditions, and (b) the hypothesis that while Paul himself continued to think as a Jew, he was subsequently re-interpreted by non-Jews in non-Jewish and anti-Jewish ways: the so-called “Paul within Judaism” school.
The distinctive focus of this volume is on the dynamic of “cultural translation,” meaning, for example, the translation from the cultural world of Diaspora Judaism and its Septuagint to Greek philosophical and Greek Christian categories. The contributions to the book are diverse, ranging from younger to more senior scholars from both North America and Europe.
Introduction, František Ábel Part I: Theorizing Paul the Apostle in Cultural Contexts Chapter 1: Did Paul Truly Become All Things to All People? Revisiting the Claim in 1 Corinthians 9, Esther Kobel Chapter 2: From Paul to Nicaea: Social Memory Theory and the Inculturation of the Gospel into Graeco-Roman Contexts, Sandra Huebenthal Chapter 3: Paul and Roman Citizenship, Valéria Terézia Danciaková Chapter 4: Clothes Make the Jew – Even in the Diaspora, Hans Förster Chapter 5: Examining Paul’s Thought and Its Development in Light of the First Jewish Revolt, Kenneth Atkinson Chapter 6: Contextualizing Paul: Between the Maccabean Wars of 167–141 BCE and the Jewish War of 66–70 CE, James Hamilton Charlesworth Chapter 7: The Emergence of Proto-Supersessionism in Rome, William S. Campbell Chapter 8: Cultural Translation in Corinth: An Application of Kathy Ehrensperger’s Method in the Formation of Gentile Identity in 1 Corinthians, J. Brian Tucker Part II: Paul the Apostle Refracted in the Canon Chapter 9: Swimming in the Sea of Paul: Mark, Matthew, Marcion, and the Formation of the New Testament, Joshua D. Garroway Chapter 10: Remembering the Antioch Incident: Pauline Reception in Matthew in an Antiochene Context, Michaela Prihracki Chapter 11: Paul in the Context of the Ephesian Tradition: The Image of the Apostle and the City Through the Lens of Different Genres and Collective Memory, Jirí Lukeš Chapter 12: Was Luke a “Good” Disciple of Paul? Luke’s Reception of the Pauline Gospel of Justification, Simon Butticaz Chapter 13: Pauline and Early Post-Pauline Statements on the “Gospel,” on “Israel,” on the “Law,” and on “Works”, Michael Bachmann Chapter 14: The Transformation of Paul’s “Works of the Law” into “Honest Deeds” in the Letter to Titus, Michael Scott Robertson Chapter 15: Reception of Paul in 2 Peter 3:14–18 as an Early Witness to the Emergence of an Antinomian Paul without Judaism, Jakub Michal Pogonowski Part III: Paul’s Judaism in Later Traditions Chapter 16: Didache 6.2–3 and Paul the Apostle: Getting the Crux in Perspective of the Apostolic Authority, František Ábel Chapter 17: Tertullian, Theodoret, and Augustine on Paul’s Pharisaic Affiliation: Reception of Phil 3:5 and Paul’s Jewishness in the First Centuries, Ruben A. Bühner Chapter 18: The Jewish Paul in Pelagius’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles, Stefan Krauter Chapter 19: Older will Serve the Younger (Rom 9:12): Esau and Jacob in Paul and in Tertullian, Kathy Ehrensperger Chapter 20: Origen Has the Mind of Christ, Daniel Boyarin
František Ábel is professor of New Testament at the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia
Reviews for Cultural Translation and Receptions of Paul in the First Four Centuries
Once again, František Abel has brought together an international assemblage of first-rate scholars to address and assess Paul’s place not only within his own contemporary Jewishness, but also within the post-Pauline world of later Christian commentators. The volume, invigorating and thought-provoking, embodies fresh applications of the ""Paul within Judaism"" perspective while tracing the arc of cultural transmutations of the protean apostle. Cultural Translation and Receptions of Paul marks an important milestone in the field of Pauline Studies. * Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita, Boston University, USA; Distinguished Visiting Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem * Readers will find much to ponder in this wide-ranging collection of essays bringing together familiar and newer voices in international Pauline scholarship. Building on the insights of the ‘Paul within Judaism’ perspective they trace the contextualization and re-contextualization of the Paul of history and of reception in changing cultural, historical, and intellectual frameworks, reaching into the formation of the New Testament canon and to patristic interpretation. The conference where these papers originated evidently generated rich and dynamic conversations, and it is a delight that we can now be invited into those conversations. * Judith M. Lieu, University of Cambridge, UK *
