James and Paul

Recent interest in the person and work of James of Jerusalem and in the community he led has sometimes put the apostle Paul in a negative light—a reversal of the more usual pattern in Protestantism. Rather than exaggerating the opposition between these two figures, V. George Shillington seeks to understand them both without prejudice. Examining what can be reconstructed of both men and their respective missions from our sources read critically, Shillington concludes that the tension between those missions indicates a conflict between different politics of identity.