Bible Review

Gaston, Paul and the Torah, p. 23.

Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: Univ. of British Columbia Press, 1987).

As Watson sees it, in the pertinent texts of Galatians and Philippians, Paul was arguing the case for viewing the Church as a sect outside Judaism. In Romans, one of Paul’s goals was to persuade Jewish Christians to recognize the legitimacy of the gentile-Christian congregation and to join with it in worship. This action, on the part of Jewish Christians, would inevitably mean a final separation for them also from the synagogue.

See Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge-London-New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986).

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976).

Compare Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990).

Compare H. Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).

Martin Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991).

See especially Walter Wink’s treatment of Jesus’ attack upon the domination system in his Engaging the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992), pp. 109–137.

See John 11:47–53, where the high priest Caiaphas argues that it is better to put Jesus to death than to take a chance on a popular uprising. In this case, John’s Gospel (in general highly symbolic and not very historical) may be closer to what happened than are the accounts of a Jewish trial in the Synoptic Gospels.