A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race
Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group, drawing on a Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism.

With analysis of nearly five thousand Jewish and non-Jewish passages about identity from around the turban of the era, the models presented describe ancient Greek and Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Further, these models become resources for examining the racial character of Paul's self-identity and the continuities and discontinuities between the three races in his social world: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians.

Using historical and literary methods of exegesis for passages in the Pauline corpus, Sechrest describes Paul as someone who was born a Jew, but who later saw himself as a member of a different race. Analyzing Christian identity in Galatians in terms of membership criteria, membership indicia, and inter-group dynamics, a final section of the book con­trasts the portrait of Paul that emerges from this study with those in Daniel Boyarin's A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity and Brad Braxton's No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience. This section engages all three of these descriptions of community and identity, and illuminates the problems and opportunities contained in a modern appropriation of a racial construction of Christian identity.

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A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race
Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group, drawing on a Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism.

With analysis of nearly five thousand Jewish and non-Jewish passages about identity from around the turban of the era, the models presented describe ancient Greek and Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Further, these models become resources for examining the racial character of Paul's self-identity and the continuities and discontinuities between the three races in his social world: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians.

Using historical and literary methods of exegesis for passages in the Pauline corpus, Sechrest describes Paul as someone who was born a Jew, but who later saw himself as a member of a different race. Analyzing Christian identity in Galatians in terms of membership criteria, membership indicia, and inter-group dynamics, a final section of the book con­trasts the portrait of Paul that emerges from this study with those in Daniel Boyarin's A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity and Brad Braxton's No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience. This section engages all three of these descriptions of community and identity, and illuminates the problems and opportunities contained in a modern appropriation of a racial construction of Christian identity.

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A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race

A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race

A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race

A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race

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Overview

Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group, drawing on a Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism.

With analysis of nearly five thousand Jewish and non-Jewish passages about identity from around the turban of the era, the models presented describe ancient Greek and Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Further, these models become resources for examining the racial character of Paul's self-identity and the continuities and discontinuities between the three races in his social world: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians.

Using historical and literary methods of exegesis for passages in the Pauline corpus, Sechrest describes Paul as someone who was born a Jew, but who later saw himself as a member of a different race. Analyzing Christian identity in Galatians in terms of membership criteria, membership indicia, and inter-group dynamics, a final section of the book con­trasts the portrait of Paul that emerges from this study with those in Daniel Boyarin's A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity and Brad Braxton's No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience. This section engages all three of these descriptions of community and identity, and illuminates the problems and opportunities contained in a modern appropriation of a racial construction of Christian identity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780567462749
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 01/05/2010
Series: The Library of New Testament Studies , #410
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Love Sechrest, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, USA



Chris Keith is Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway. He is the author of The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John and the Literacy of Jesus, a winner of the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, and Jesus' Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee. He is also the co-editor of Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, and was recently named a 2012 Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: "The Third Race" and Pauline Studies
A. Race, Ethnicity, and NT Scholarship
B. Studying Race and Ethnicity

Part 1 - Models of Racial and Ethnic Identity

Chapter 2: Race and Ethnicity in Modernity
A. The Modern Idea of Race
B. Ethnicity in Late 20th Century Scholarship
C. Models of Race and Ethnicity
D. Focal Images

Chapter 3: Race and Ethnicity in Antiquity
A. Etymology of Race and Ethnicity
B. Race and Ethnicity in non-Jewish, Jewish, and Christian Authors
C. Greek and Jewish Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
D. Ethnicity and Race: Ancient and Modern Perspectives

Part 2 - The Racial Character of Pauline Christianity

Chapter 4: Paul's Self-Identity and Relational Matrix
A. Community and Kinship in Paul
B. Paul's Self-Identity and Group Affiliation
C. A Former Jew

Chapter 5: The Dialectics of Christian Racial Identity
A. Eschatological Criteria
B. Eschatological Indicia
C. Eschatological Relationships
D. Continuity and Discontinuity in Paul

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Scandal and Opportunity in Racial Christianity
A. Paul and Daniel Boyarin's A Radical Jew
B. Paul and Brad Braxton's No Longer Slaves

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