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Title: Reinventing Paul by John G. Gager ISBN: 0195150856 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25
Rating: 1
Summary: Learned egregious nonsense!
Comment: Here a good scholar has really flipped. Certainly the exaggerated views of German Lutherans about Paul of Tarsus need revision. What views of German Lutherans do NOT need revision? But if Paul, as claimed by Prof. Gager, did not think that Jesus came for anyone but the Gentiles, what on earth did Paul think that James of Jerusalem and Simon Peter were up to? It is sad to see historical revisionism and benevolent ecumenism degenerate into near madness.
Rating: 4
Summary: Gager - required reading for the student of Paul
Comment: Gager's text, "Reinventing Paul" is perhaps mislabeled, as he does less re-inventing than "recovering." With the sort of exasperation characteristic of E.P. Sanders' in "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" Gager dismantles, by way of a thorough review of recent Pauline scholarship, the age-old distortions of Paul and first century Judaism that have plagued Christianity from the outset.
His dismay is easily understood as he makes plain the way that Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" was forced into the role of "Paul, critic of all that is Jewish." (my phrase) Indeed, the only regret that I had as I read his book was that he seemed unaware of the groundbreaking work of Mark Nanos' "The Mystery of Romans." Nanos' work would only have bolstered Gager's conclusions, but from a Jewish perspective.
It is no longer excusable for Christian students of the New Testament to set Paul up as an opponent of the "straw man" of Pharisaic Judaism created in the late 19th century and utterly discredited by Sanders, George Foote Moore, and Charlotte Klein. In concise form, Gager has catalogued the breaches in the dam of tradition that will, one hopes, lead to its imminent collapse. The hope, however, falters briefly when one reads critiques of Gager's book that seek to cite brief passages from Romans or Galatians once again as support for Paul's rejection of the meaningfulness of Torah for Jews of his day. Still the misrepresentations of the Judaism of that day raise their misshapen heads to perpetuate the abuses of the past.
His analysis of Romans and Galatians, while hardly exhaustive, give us an exciting taste of the benefits of real rhetorical analysis of Paul's letters, without weighing the reader down with excessive jargon. Perhaps the most wonderful bits of the whole book are the footnotes, which lead the reader from his tight digest to a variety of authors whose works explore the questions in much greater detail.
One hopes that Gager's text will become a staple in the teaching establishments of the Church. It would be a shame if any student graduated from a seminary in the next ten years without having read it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Brilliant Insight, But Only Half the Story
Comment: John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" is a long overdue summation of the latest insights into Paul's beliefs and his mission to the Gentiles. Gager and the others are helping to clear away 2,000 years of Christian perversion of Paul's thinking and activity. Here Gager shows that Paul was very much a Jew and remained anchored within the Jewish tradition. He did not repudiate the law of Moses, he did not argue that God had rejected Israel, his enemies were not Jews outside his movement, but opponents within, and he did not expect Jews to abandon the Law and find salvation through Jesus the Christ.
Gager goes to great lengths to show that the debate over circumcision, or whether Gentiles needed to "become" Jewish and themselves followers of the Law, was at the center of the great controversy. Ultimately, of course, Paul said, "No." Paul believed that a spiritual Christ had arrived and could be experienced through faith as the End Time was near. This has happened as a result of God's promise to Abraham that the Gentiles will also be saved. Faith in Christ is the Gentile's way to salvation, while the Jews retain their Law and covenant with God. Paul's doctrine, in other words, is one of inclusion, not exclusion.
Gager does a solid job of proving his points and his reinventing of Paul is long overdue, but the author leaves a few loose ends. He does not go into Paul's vision of the Son and what implications this has for Christianity. If Paul held that the saving experience is "faith" in God's righteousness and justice as manifest through a spiritual Christ, and that Jews can be saved even without the belief in Christ, what does this say of the Christian belief that a living Jesus walked the earth and performed a redemptive act to save mankind? Paul obviously never believed in it! Yet, Gager is silent on these issues. A sound book, in other words, as far as it goes, but it answers only half the questions concerning Paul and his vision. But, this is an important book that needs to be read.
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Title: The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul's Letter by Mark D. Nanos ISBN: 080062937X Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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Title: The Irony of Galatians: Paul's Letter in First-Century Context by Mark D. Nanos ISBN: 0800632141 Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles by Stanley K. Stowers ISBN: 0300070683 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by E. P. Sanders ISBN: 0192854518 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Paul the Law and the Jewish People by E. P. Sander, E. P. Sanders ISBN: 0800618785 Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: June, 1985 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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