Paul and the Gentile Problem

The answers that Thiessen offers to perennial Pauline puzzles are elegant in their simplicity, but they are embedded within a rich appreciation of the historical and methodological complexities of interpreting late Second Temple texts and traditions. As important as it is innovative, Paul and the Gentile Problem belongs on your bookshelf - and on your syllabus. * Paula Fredriksen, Reading Religion *
Thiessen presents a rich volume in which he offers a systematic understanding of Paul's solution to 'the gentile problem.'...This is a bold volume, which certainly provides food for thought for further debates...[A] creative and stimulating contribution to the important conversation about the role of the apostle to the nations within his first century context. * The Enoch Seminar *
Matthew Thiessen's re-reading of Paul - bold, learned, and comprehensive - presents an apostle compelled by his apocalyptic convictions to reimagine the relationship of the nations to Israel's god, to the patriarch Abraham, and to Abraham's seed, the Christ. Seemingly intractable passages of Galatians and of Romans shift suddenly into sharp focus. With Paul and the Gentile Problem, Thiessen moves New Testament scholarship into a new age. * Paula Fredriksen, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem *
Matthew Thiessen demonstrates the implications of reading Paul within Second Temple Judaism; moreover, he eschews the traditional impulse to find something wrong in Judaism to understand Paul. By maintaining a historically responsible reading of Paul, one that identifies his target audience as Christ-following non-Jews, Thiessen delivers on several central issues in Pauline studies, including how Paul defined his non-Jews as Abraham's seed and conceptualized their receipt of pneuma, identifying the so-called Jew in Romans 2, and decoding the enigmatic allegory of Galatians 4. Uniquely illuminating is Thiessen's interpretation of Paul's understanding of the promise to Abraham that his seed would be like the stars. * Mark D. Nanos, co-editor of Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle *
Drawing on his wide knowledge of ancient Judaism, Thiessen here reframes Paul's theology of his gentile mission, insisting that his polemics are directed only against gentiles attempting the impossible, not against Jews, Judaism, or Jewish practices as such. This combination of fresh thinking and deep research is exactly what we need: it generates many original proposals which are bound to provoke new and important debate. * John Barclay, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, Durham University *
This book poses a noteworthy challenge to traditional construals of the apostle's theology. The chapters are sequenced to build on one another ... this is a volume that deserves widespread attention. * John K. Goodrich, Religious Studies Review *