What do you think?
Rate this book
The Political Theology of Paul
This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his “spiritual testament.” Taubes engages with classic Paul commentators, including Karl Barth, but also situates the Pauline text in the context of Freud, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, and Rosenzweig. In his distinctive argument for the apocalyptic-revolutionary potential of Romans, Taubes also takes issue with the “political theology” advanced by the conservative Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt. Taubes’s reading has been crucial for a number of interpretations of political theology and of Paul—including those of Jan Assmann and Giorgio Agamben—and it belongs to a wave of fresh considerations of Paul’s legacy (Boyarin, Lyotard, Badiou, Zîzêk). Finally, Taubes’s far-ranging lectures provide important insights into the singular experiences and views of this unconventional Jewish intellectual living in post-Holocaust Germany.
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
6 people are currently reading
309 people want to read
About the author
Jacob Taubes
17 books22 followersJacob Taubes (25 February 1923 – 21 March 1987) was a sociologist of religion, philosopher, and scholar of Judaism.
Taubes was born into an old rabbinical family. He was married to the writer Susan Taubes. He obtained his doctorate in 1947 for a thesis on "Occidental Eschatology" and initially taught religious studies and Jewish studies in the United States at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton University.
From 1965 he was professor of Jewish studies and hermeneutics at the Free University of Berlin. He has influenced many contemporary thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Susan Sontag, Avital Ronell, Marshall Berman, Babette Babich, Alaida and Jan Assman, Amos Funkenstein and Peter Sloterdijk.
Taubes was born into an old rabbinical family. He was married to the writer Susan Taubes. He obtained his doctorate in 1947 for a thesis on "Occidental Eschatology" and initially taught religious studies and Jewish studies in the United States at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton University.
From 1965 he was professor of Jewish studies and hermeneutics at the Free University of Berlin. He has influenced many contemporary thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Susan Sontag, Avital Ronell, Marshall Berman, Babette Babich, Alaida and Jan Assman, Amos Funkenstein and Peter Sloterdijk.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 24, 2023
من در قاموس آخرالزمانی می اندیشم: بگذار همه چیز فروبپاشد، من در خاک این جهان چنان که هست، بذر هیچ معنویتی نخواهم کاشت.
یاکوب تاوبس
یک روز بحث بر سر یهودیانی بود که هر کداممون شخصا به اونها ارادت خاصی داریم. اولین اسمی که در ذهنم جرقه زد یاکوب تاوبس بود. هر چند کم می نوشت _چون جنس نبوغش اجازه نمیداد یک گوشه بنشیند و تالیف بکند_ اما با سخنرانی ها و نامه نگاری هایش تبدیل به نخ تسبیح جدل به غایت مهمی بود که در اواسط قرن بیستم شکل گرفت. جدلی در باب مشروعیت دوران مدرن که متفکران آن زمان رو در دو جبهه رویاروی هم قرار داد.
الهیات سیاسی پولس قدیس به تعبیر مترجم انگلیسی اثر، "نسخه ویراسته رونوشتی از رخدادی شفاهی" است. تاوبس به قلب مسیحیت می زند و تفسیر نامه های پولس به رومیان تلاش می کند غبار گمراه کنندهی تاریخ را از چهرهی پولس پاک کند. پولسی که تاوبس به تصویر می کشد متفکری انقلابی و آخر الزمانی است که دربرابر تمام نهاد های سیاسی زمانهی خودش می ایستد.
از آنجایی که کتاب پیاده شدهی متن سخنرانی هایی است که تاوبس دربرابر مخاطبان بسیار آگاهی از موضوع ایراد کرده، برای خوانندهی ایرانی ای چون من تجربه مطالعه کتاب تجربه ای گنگ و سردرگم کننده ای بود. لذا یک پیشنهاد: قبل از مواجه مستقیم با متن تاوبس، میتوانید از یادداشت های ویراستار که برای روشن کردن بعضی از مضمون های سخنرانی ها و زمینه هایش نوشته شده و در انتهای کتاب قرار داده شده استفاده کنید.
پ.ن: این کتاب توسط آقای زانیار ابراهیمی با عنوان: الهیات سیاسی پولس به فارسی برگردانده شده
یاکوب تاوبس
یک روز بحث بر سر یهودیانی بود که هر کداممون شخصا به اونها ارادت خاصی داریم. اولین اسمی که در ذهنم جرقه زد یاکوب تاوبس بود. هر چند کم می نوشت _چون جنس نبوغش اجازه نمیداد یک گوشه بنشیند و تالیف بکند_ اما با سخنرانی ها و نامه نگاری هایش تبدیل به نخ تسبیح جدل به غایت مهمی بود که در اواسط قرن بیستم شکل گرفت. جدلی در باب مشروعیت دوران مدرن که متفکران آن زمان رو در دو جبهه رویاروی هم قرار داد.
الهیات سیاسی پولس قدیس به تعبیر مترجم انگلیسی اثر، "نسخه ویراسته رونوشتی از رخدادی شفاهی" است. تاوبس به قلب مسیحیت می زند و تفسیر نامه های پولس به رومیان تلاش می کند غبار گمراه کنندهی تاریخ را از چهرهی پولس پاک کند. پولسی که تاوبس به تصویر می کشد متفکری انقلابی و آخر الزمانی است که دربرابر تمام نهاد های سیاسی زمانهی خودش می ایستد.
از آنجایی که کتاب پیاده شدهی متن سخنرانی هایی است که تاوبس دربرابر مخاطبان بسیار آگاهی از موضوع ایراد کرده، برای خوانندهی ایرانی ای چون من تجربه مطالعه کتاب تجربه ای گنگ و سردرگم کننده ای بود. لذا یک پیشنهاد: قبل از مواجه مستقیم با متن تاوبس، میتوانید از یادداشت های ویراستار که برای روشن کردن بعضی از مضمون های سخنرانی ها و زمینه هایش نوشته شده و در انتهای کتاب قرار داده شده استفاده کنید.
پ.ن: این کتاب توسط آقای زانیار ابراهیمی با عنوان: الهیات سیاسی پولس به فارسی برگردانده شده
May 28, 2020
Nun werden Sie sagen: Das kann doch nicht sein! Alles kann sein. Das ist Zentral-Erfahrung der Thora an zwei Stellen, im Exodus 32-34 und in einer Kurzversion Numeri 14-15
August 15, 2020
Taubes was in an advanced stage of cancer when he gave these lectures in February 1987, just weeks before he died. He could not even stand up to deliver them, and was in the ICU for one of the days of that week. But in spite of these circumstances, or indeed because of them, these talks are incredibly lucid and intellectually rigorous beyond compare. They truly do come across as they are described: as a spiritual testament, charged with an existential urgency, centered around questions that surely animated Taubes throughout his entire life. This book is a testament to that life and these questions. It is scholarly but free-flowing, challenging but often humorous, grounded in facts and yet deeply meditative and personal.
No one will doubt the importance of Paul's contribution to the world and to human thought. Love him or hate him, he is there, and the talk about him and his letters does not appear to be dying down anytime soon-- if anything, it's only picking up. But Taubes is not interested in partisan arguments, choosing sides here or there, or in recruiting Paul for his own aims. Taubes has no "agenda" here; he simply wants to get the story straight. To do so, he demands that every theme be thread "through the eye of a philological needle." In other words, he sticks with the text(s), resisting interpretations of Paul that project their own ideas on him or simply follow the standard lines of the Christian church(es). "It's easy to read the story of Paul one-sidedly and to overlook latent elements within him", he reminds us. "No one understood him, one might say, but then no one completely misunderstood him either." Taubes sticks to these latent elements and tries to understand the misunderstandings. Above all, he is concerned with Paul's experience-- whatever it is that animated his unprecedented spiritual innovations and prompted his politically explosive letters and his new vision of Israel. This means studying in depth how that experience got translated, first into Paul's own Letters, and from there into its countless interpretations (or misunderstandings), from Marcion to Schmitt. But the implicit hypothesis seems to be that Paul's political theology can only be understood beginning from this experience. It is that experience that I think Taubes tried to live (he describes himself as a Paulinist) and to which these talks give body.
The first section, "Paul and Moses", paints a picture of Paul in his historical context as someone concerned above all with the establishment and legitimization of a new people of God, against the Roman and rabbinical powers that were out to separate him from the love of God. We're reminded here that the word "Christian" never once appears in Paul, and that he is really concerned with a new understanding of Israel as "all Israel". In other words, Paul is trying to outbid Moses himself, animated by the same concerns of guilt and atonement. But Paul, against a kinship of the flesh, interprets a kinship of the promise. This kinship is not based in religious, institutional, or worldly things (no Jew, no Greek-- and no Christian!). Nothing in nature, flesh, or "works". Indeed, it is not based in anything immanent, but solely in SPIRIT and LOVE. Taubes points out what is latent in Romans 9:1-3, when Paul tells us that he would have himself accursed from the Messiah, from his people, the covenant, the fathers, etc., all for the sake of establishing this community in love (i.e., "all Israel") and to show the true meaning of the "promise" (which amounts to a promise of the transcendence of love and the promise of a new kind of human community). After countless excursus, analyses, and touching anecdotes from his long life, Taubes goes so far as to show how Paul is polemical against Jesus himself, namely in Romans 13:9. In his view, what Paul says there constitutes an "absolutely revolutionary act": he no longer professes the dual commandment of Jesus [love the Lord and love your neighbor, Luke 10:27], but a single one: "'love thy neighbor as thyself'". Of course, this is just a taste of all that Taubes shares in this first section (which includes some beautiful passages discussing the experience of the Day of Atonement à la Rosenzweig) but ultimately what drives Paul's "political theology" appears to be this: "all members are equal... in pneuma and in agape with one another. Sociologically this means: a new kind of union, a new intimacy is created" (p 52).
In the second section, "Paul and Modernity", Taubes linkes Paul with a whole wealth of thinkers and movements old and new: Marcion, Harnack, Barth, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Schmitt, Benjamin, Nietzsche, and Freud among others. The last three I've listed appear to be the most important to Taubes in relation to Paul. Romans 8, he tells us, has its strictest parallel in Walter Benjamin's "Theologico-Political Fragment." There, Benjamin writes, "for nature is Messianic by reason of its totally and eternal passing away," echoing the message in 1 Cor 7:31. He also presents a "nihilistic method" of world politics directly in line with Romans 13. As for Nietzsche, Taubes weaves a web of associations and aversions between him and Paul that truly fascinate, from the critique of the concept of law, to the transvaluation of values, to questions of guilt (which N wants to get rid of), to martyrdom (which N wants Dionysian, anti-Christian), and inspiration (which N wants immanent, atheistic). Taubes refers to him as an "opponent" but for that very reason presents him as incredibly formidable (and as a professor of philosophy, he's quite equipped to do so). But the book ends with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction: to Freud, a direct descendant of Paul in that he teaches us that guilt is constitutive of our human being. The focus is on his Moses And Monotheism , and with that Taubes runs out of time. However, it is clear that both of these figures point toward an "exodus from Biblical religion", an exodus rooted, strange as it may seem, in Paul and his desire to establish a new community rooted in pneuma and agape. (In my opinion, no matter how strange this will sound to contemporary Christians, it is time to start rereading Paul as the herald of an exit from religion, not as the founder of one.)
I should also mention that there is an Appendix which includes letters between Taubes and Schmitt, a bit on their story, and an Afterword written by the editors that takes the book section by section, connecting the dots where Taubes is often only suggestive. The scholarly apparatus, in general, is top notch, and the editors deserve a lot of credit for making this work accessible in book form.
Upon completing my review, I feel like I've gotten nowhere near conveying the beauty of this book, and especially nowhere near conveying the sense of "Paul's experience". I believe it takes an encounter with the book, which I hope you will chance. For those interested in a real reading of Paul and the history of the complicated reception of his political theology, as little colored by partisan lenses as possible-- but also rooted, it can't be denied, in the spirit-- this book welcomes you. I would also point you to Giorgio Agamben's The Time That Remains: A Commentary On The Letter To The Romans, which takes up many of the themes in this book and is dedicated to Jacob Taubes.
No one will doubt the importance of Paul's contribution to the world and to human thought. Love him or hate him, he is there, and the talk about him and his letters does not appear to be dying down anytime soon-- if anything, it's only picking up. But Taubes is not interested in partisan arguments, choosing sides here or there, or in recruiting Paul for his own aims. Taubes has no "agenda" here; he simply wants to get the story straight. To do so, he demands that every theme be thread "through the eye of a philological needle." In other words, he sticks with the text(s), resisting interpretations of Paul that project their own ideas on him or simply follow the standard lines of the Christian church(es). "It's easy to read the story of Paul one-sidedly and to overlook latent elements within him", he reminds us. "No one understood him, one might say, but then no one completely misunderstood him either." Taubes sticks to these latent elements and tries to understand the misunderstandings. Above all, he is concerned with Paul's experience-- whatever it is that animated his unprecedented spiritual innovations and prompted his politically explosive letters and his new vision of Israel. This means studying in depth how that experience got translated, first into Paul's own Letters, and from there into its countless interpretations (or misunderstandings), from Marcion to Schmitt. But the implicit hypothesis seems to be that Paul's political theology can only be understood beginning from this experience. It is that experience that I think Taubes tried to live (he describes himself as a Paulinist) and to which these talks give body.
The first section, "Paul and Moses", paints a picture of Paul in his historical context as someone concerned above all with the establishment and legitimization of a new people of God, against the Roman and rabbinical powers that were out to separate him from the love of God. We're reminded here that the word "Christian" never once appears in Paul, and that he is really concerned with a new understanding of Israel as "all Israel". In other words, Paul is trying to outbid Moses himself, animated by the same concerns of guilt and atonement. But Paul, against a kinship of the flesh, interprets a kinship of the promise. This kinship is not based in religious, institutional, or worldly things (no Jew, no Greek-- and no Christian!). Nothing in nature, flesh, or "works". Indeed, it is not based in anything immanent, but solely in SPIRIT and LOVE. Taubes points out what is latent in Romans 9:1-3, when Paul tells us that he would have himself accursed from the Messiah, from his people, the covenant, the fathers, etc., all for the sake of establishing this community in love (i.e., "all Israel") and to show the true meaning of the "promise" (which amounts to a promise of the transcendence of love and the promise of a new kind of human community). After countless excursus, analyses, and touching anecdotes from his long life, Taubes goes so far as to show how Paul is polemical against Jesus himself, namely in Romans 13:9. In his view, what Paul says there constitutes an "absolutely revolutionary act": he no longer professes the dual commandment of Jesus [love the Lord and love your neighbor, Luke 10:27], but a single one: "'love thy neighbor as thyself'". Of course, this is just a taste of all that Taubes shares in this first section (which includes some beautiful passages discussing the experience of the Day of Atonement à la Rosenzweig) but ultimately what drives Paul's "political theology" appears to be this: "all members are equal... in pneuma and in agape with one another. Sociologically this means: a new kind of union, a new intimacy is created" (p 52).
In the second section, "Paul and Modernity", Taubes linkes Paul with a whole wealth of thinkers and movements old and new: Marcion, Harnack, Barth, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Schmitt, Benjamin, Nietzsche, and Freud among others. The last three I've listed appear to be the most important to Taubes in relation to Paul. Romans 8, he tells us, has its strictest parallel in Walter Benjamin's "Theologico-Political Fragment." There, Benjamin writes, "for nature is Messianic by reason of its totally and eternal passing away," echoing the message in 1 Cor 7:31. He also presents a "nihilistic method" of world politics directly in line with Romans 13. As for Nietzsche, Taubes weaves a web of associations and aversions between him and Paul that truly fascinate, from the critique of the concept of law, to the transvaluation of values, to questions of guilt (which N wants to get rid of), to martyrdom (which N wants Dionysian, anti-Christian), and inspiration (which N wants immanent, atheistic). Taubes refers to him as an "opponent" but for that very reason presents him as incredibly formidable (and as a professor of philosophy, he's quite equipped to do so). But the book ends with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction: to Freud, a direct descendant of Paul in that he teaches us that guilt is constitutive of our human being. The focus is on his Moses And Monotheism , and with that Taubes runs out of time. However, it is clear that both of these figures point toward an "exodus from Biblical religion", an exodus rooted, strange as it may seem, in Paul and his desire to establish a new community rooted in pneuma and agape. (In my opinion, no matter how strange this will sound to contemporary Christians, it is time to start rereading Paul as the herald of an exit from religion, not as the founder of one.)
I should also mention that there is an Appendix which includes letters between Taubes and Schmitt, a bit on their story, and an Afterword written by the editors that takes the book section by section, connecting the dots where Taubes is often only suggestive. The scholarly apparatus, in general, is top notch, and the editors deserve a lot of credit for making this work accessible in book form.
Upon completing my review, I feel like I've gotten nowhere near conveying the beauty of this book, and especially nowhere near conveying the sense of "Paul's experience". I believe it takes an encounter with the book, which I hope you will chance. For those interested in a real reading of Paul and the history of the complicated reception of his political theology, as little colored by partisan lenses as possible-- but also rooted, it can't be denied, in the spirit-- this book welcomes you. I would also point you to Giorgio Agamben's The Time That Remains: A Commentary On The Letter To The Romans, which takes up many of the themes in this book and is dedicated to Jacob Taubes.
May 5, 2012
Agamben refers often to Taubes take on Paul, and I was pleased (but not that surprised) to find a good dose of Schmitt here too. However, Taubes leaps around, digresses, and, you know, general lecture transcript stuff. Quite a funny translation-- very vernacular, in a way, such that I was very surprised to find out that this even WAS a translation.
March 9, 2013
Taubes' Pauline messianic politics is strictly nihilistic and existentialist. But it somehow opens the door for the marginalized [by the mainstream society and worldly principalities] to be united together around this nihilistic vision.
April 11, 2025
الهیات سیاسی پولس، ترجمهی زانیار ابراهیمی
« من در چارچوب الهیات نمیاندیشم، بلکه با مواد و مصالح الهیاتی کار میکنم و بر حسب تاریخ اندیشه و تاریخ بالفعل میاندیشم. در استعارههای الهیاتی در پی ظرفیتهای سیاسیام، همانطور که اشمیت در مفاهیم حقوقی در پی ظرفیتهای الهیاتی است. به علاوه، در چارچوب اخلاق نمی اندیشم. قاضی واپسین نیستم.»
« من در چارچوب الهیات نمیاندیشم، بلکه با مواد و مصالح الهیاتی کار میکنم و بر حسب تاریخ اندیشه و تاریخ بالفعل میاندیشم. در استعارههای الهیاتی در پی ظرفیتهای سیاسیام، همانطور که اشمیت در مفاهیم حقوقی در پی ظرفیتهای الهیاتی است. به علاوه، در چارچوب اخلاق نمی اندیشم. قاضی واپسین نیستم.»
October 5, 2024
There are some gems here but it’s a rather rough ride. The fact that these are transcribed lectures makes the reading a slog.
Taubes is of course not interested in a Christian Paul, but he does pull out some unique threads regarding the negativity of Pauline political theology. Pointing to the similarities between Paul and Benjamin on this point, the negative Messianism becomes a key point.
All in all, not astounding. Agamben’s treatment of Paul is clearer and more interesting.
Taubes is of course not interested in a Christian Paul, but he does pull out some unique threads regarding the negativity of Pauline political theology. Pointing to the similarities between Paul and Benjamin on this point, the negative Messianism becomes a key point.
All in all, not astounding. Agamben’s treatment of Paul is clearer and more interesting.
February 27, 2024
La palabra de la promesa es asi: llegaré en el momento oportuno y Sara tendrá un hijo.
Llamaré a un pueblo que no es mío, mi pueblo.
Nueces y chicle, por fin juntos! Igual que Carl Schmitt y Pablo.
Libro de candente actualidad para todo aquel que esté desarrollando una propuesta de liberación universal.
Llamaré a un pueblo que no es mío, mi pueblo.
Nueces y chicle, por fin juntos! Igual que Carl Schmitt y Pablo.
Libro de candente actualidad para todo aquel que esté desarrollando una propuesta de liberación universal.
May 17, 2008
Really cool reading of both Paul and - guess who? Carl Schmitt!
September 26, 2021
If we put content aside (too complex to recount here anyway but Taubes pieces together elements of Weimar intellectual history I had only vaguely intuited and further confirms my impression that all of Western history amounts to a clash between the same 5 or 6 giants), this is an incredible series of lectures. Taubes' style is colloquial, extremely erudite, and oddly enough, rather funny. You get the impression that - as academic lectures go - this was something of an event.
July 21, 2022
Interesting account…..
June 4, 2023
A great interpretation of Paul.
May 23, 2025
Philosophy as a nocturnal bird
December 26, 2025
Holy banger. Rambling and reaching. But this guy is brilliant.
June 17, 2024
I think I am beginning to understand this book.
May 3, 2023
Belangrijke bijdrage aan het wijgerige Paulus-debat vanuit deels Joods perspectief. Het tweede deel leest moeilijker, Omdat Taubes gedachten daar nauwelijks zijn uitgewerkt. Qua sfeer reflecteert dit wel goed de setting van geimproviseerde lezingen. Dit boek vraagt om herlezing met de bijbelteksten ernaast. Van de hedendaagse filosofen (Agamben, Zizek eva) die met Paulus 'aan de haal' gaan, sluit Badiou's duiding nog het dichtst aan bij die van Taubes. Het afterword van de redacteuren vond ik zeer behulpzaam. De briefwisseling met en over Carl Schmitt in de bijlagen doet vooral voelen hoe pijnlijk de situatie voor Taubes moet zijn geweest na de Shoah. Schept nog meer ontzag voor de integriteit van zijn denken en nig meer verontrusting over zijn bi-polaire persoonlijkheid. Lees over datlaatste ‘professor of apocalypse’, Taubes biografie, eldrs in dit blog
March 21, 2008
Fascinating take by a Jewish philosopher on the Apostle Paul, as a Jewish Christian . . .
June 19, 2013
Writing as he talks in a lecture room- translated later. I loved the story he tells of Krister Stendahl.
July 14, 2020
It renewed my hope in what it could mean to think or engage theological questions and reality apocalyptically.
October 6, 2013
Rabin o društvenoj misli sv. Pavla.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews