Paul and His Letters: Thinking with Josephus. By F. B. A. Asiedu

Abstract

F. B. A. Asiedu’s stimulating monograph pursues a little-explored but important comparison of two pivotal figures in Second Temple Judaism: the Apostle Paul and the Jewish prophet–historian and apologist, Flavius Josephus. Asiedu claims that Josephus represents ‘an expression of self-consciously post-Pauline Judaism’ from first-century Rome (p. 179; cf. p. xv). The contrast between both thinkers is not structured around common theological themes (i.e. their views of God, Mosaic Law, etc.). Rather, uniquely, it is biographically focused, drawing out similarities between each writer’s life, mostly overlooked by historians and critics (pp. xiii–xiv). The Jewish parameters for the investigation are made clear. Josephus provides important primary evidence for ‘the attested practices . . . for what a first-century Jewish writer affiliated with the Pharisees . . . was likely to do’ (p. xiv). In this regard, Paul and Josephus ‘represented themselves as Pharisees and as former Pharisees and in the company of Pharisees’ (p. xxiii). Asiedu posits that the Judaism of Josephus stands somewhere between Paul and Philo and the rabbis and the Rabbinic tradition (p. xxiii), helpfully setting the similarities and differences between Paul and Josephus in first-century Jewish life (pp. xxiii–xxxv). Nevertheless, Asiedu more gravitates towards the evidence of Paul’s letters than a continuous biographical comparison with Josephus throughout the monograph.