Paul Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Paul Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle Christopher B. Zeichmann Mark D. Given , ed. Paul Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010. Pp. xiv + 210. Paper, US$24.95. ISBN 978-1-59856-324-5. Paul Unbound is a valuable collection of eight introductions to new and overlooked approaches to the Apostle. While the individual chapters vary in structure, each contains an overview of previous scholarship, a discussion of relevant methodological issues, proposals for new investigations, and a select bibliography for further research. Scope remains limited in each essay, necessarily entailing the occasional omission of major scholarly works; modern discussions of Acts, for example, are marginal or entirely absent. This volume will nevertheless interest educators and their students, whether graduate or undergraduate. Warren Carter (“Paul and the Roman Empire: Recent Perspectives,” 7–26) builds on the recent editorial work of Richard Horsley and Krister Stendhal suggesting that Paul’s writings primarily engaged the Roman Empire, not Judaism. Carter highlights a variety of hermeneutical implications, including the Protestant tendency to understand Paul as apolitical and the ambivalence of the data on Paul’s posturing toward the Roman Empire. Steven J. Friesen (“Paul and Economics: The Jerusalem Collection as an Alternative to Patronage,” 27–54), counteracting the idealist histories of much Pauline scholarship, suggests that shifting the scholarly emphasis to extra-discursive factors is relevant to many exegetical issues. He also tries to remedy the inadequate treatments of economic class in Pauline congregations. Jerry L. Sumney (“Paul and His Opponents: The Search,” 55–70) partakes in the recent attempts to escape the legacy of F.C. Baur’s Hegelian understanding of Paul by sketching its widespread influence. Additionally, he argues that academic works often suffer from category confusion; differences between “opposers of Paul” and “those whom Paul opposes,” not to mention matters of accusation and description require more careful attention than they often receive. Charles H. Cosgrove (“Paul and Ethnicity: A Selective History of Interpretation,” 71–98) discusses readings of Christians as “the third race” in Paul’s letters and its subsequent role in Christian self-understandings of the “universal human.” Later African and African-American analyses of Paul on the matter of ethnicity also receive attention. A. Andrew Das (“Paul and the Law: Pressure Points in the Debate,” 99–116) summarizes the major issues relating to the New Perspective on Paul and its alternatives in order to prime the initiated reader to detect more subtle nuances. He succeeds by drawing attention to a number of “pressure points” around which many arguments revolve (e.g., “Paul’s Jewish milieu,” “works of the Law"). Mark D. Nanos (“Paul and Judaism: Why Not Paul’s Judaism?” 117–160) provides an excellent analysis of scholarship on Paul’s relationship to Judaism. While most scholars have understood the Apostle in contrast to Judaism, Nanos suggests that this position is exegetically weak and suffers from ideological problems. He contests claims that Paul would not have identified as a Jew and did not use any of Judaism’s social identifiers. Nanos therefore situates Paul’s polemic with the emic argumentation patterns of various prophets and sages of late antiquity. Deborah Krause (“Paul and Women: Telling Women to Shut Up Is More Complicated Than You Might Think,” 161–173) traces the historical developments of the interpretation of Paul and women from early investigations of the Apostle’s opinion to more contemporary attempts to glean information about the daily lives of women in the Mediterranean world. She also provides an account of Paul’s strategies of containing Corinthian women’s speech. Mark D. Given (“Paul and Rhetoric: A Sophos in the Kingdom of God,” 175–200) focuses on Paul and rhetoric and its attendant change in methodological questions through the years from comparison with the progymnasmata to postmodern criticisms. [End Page 112] The bulk of the chapter investigates Paul’s adaptive methods of persuasion to properly participate in his congregations. The diversity in topics among the chapters presents this volume’s greatest strength, never lingering longer than their stated purpose necessitates and displaying only modest overlap between any two chapters. Given notes in his introduction (1–5) the possibility of a future edition containing additional...