![Reinventing Paul](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
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Reinventing Paul
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- USD 21.99
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- USD 21.99
Descripción editorial
Throughout the Christian era, Paul has stood at the center of controversy, accused of being the father of Christian anti-Semitism. But have we misunderstood the man and his teachings for nearly 2,000 years? In this highly accessible book, John Gager challenges this entrenched view of Paul, arguing persuasively that Paul's words have been taken out of their original context, distorted, and generally misconstrued.
Gager takes us in search of the "real" Paul--using Paul's own writings. Through an exhaustive analysis of Paul's letters to the Galatians and the Romans, he provides illuminating answers to the key questions: Did Paul repudiate the Law of Moses? Did he believe that Jews had been rejected by God and replaced as His chosen people by Gentiles? Did he consider circumcision to be necessary for salvation? And did he expect Jews to find salvation through Jesus? To all these questions, John Gager answers no. First, he puts Paul's proselytizing in context. Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles, not the Jews. His most vehement arguments were directed not against Judaism but against competing apostles in the Jesus movement who demanded that Gentiles be circumcised and conform to Jewish law in order to be saved. Moreover, Paul relied on rhetorical devices that were familiar to his intended audience but opaque to later readers of the letters. As a result, his message has been misunderstood by all succeeding generations.
Reinventing Paul brilliantly sets forth a controversial interpretation of Paul's teaching. This thought-provoking portrait is essential reading for theologians and lay people, historians and philosophers, Christians and Jews.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this slim book, Princeton religion professor Gager aims for nothing short of a revolution in Pauline studies; he maintains that Paul was not the founder of Christianity, did not condemn works in favor of faith, never claimed that Jews must accept Jesus as their savior and never criticized Judaism or the Jewish law. Paul's sole concern, Gager argues, was announcing God's intention to save gentiles through Christ. Gager wants to dispel what Paul Meyer has called the "dark Manichean shadow across the pages of Paul and his commentators"--that is, the use of Paul to justify Christian anti-Semitism. He says that once one has crossed over to the new paradigm, every aspect of the old seems incredible--and therein lies the book's central weakness. Gager strains to make contradictory passages fit, resorting to the alleged presence of rhetorical strategies such as the "unreliable author" and a fictive "fellow Jew" in order to disassociate Paul from statements that undercut the new paradigm. The raw truth, as most readers will acknowledge, is that Paul's ad-hoc, hastily written letters are not fully consistent. Yet Gager has still accomplished something important, sketching a new way of reading Paul that, if not always fully persuasive, nevertheless helps us see the man more clearly for what he was: a first-century Jew on fire with the belief that God through Jesus had opened salvation to all people.