Paul: A Very Brief History

by John M.G. Barclay

Even so, how these historical disputes are framed intellectually is a matter of acute sensitivity. Was Paul attacking a form of ‘nationalistic privilege’ and ‘ethnocentrism’ – or does that way of putting it adopt a distinctively (and dangerously) modern preference for universal sameness over the particularities of difference? Was Paul criticizing only the Gentile adoption of Jewish laws, while leaving his Jewish heritage and his fellow Jews unaffected by the Christ event – or does that way of reading Paul (the ‘radical new perspective’) clash with the evidence of the letters, overcorrecting a former one-sidedness out of concern for religious tolerance? Or does Paul’s relativizing of traditional Jewish categories of worth represent part of his larger recalibration of values, arising from his interpretation of the death and resurrection of Christ as an unconditioned gift? The current swirl of opinion on this matter represents not just divergent readings of Paul, but also conflicting ideologies of religion, and different theological (or anti-theological) construals of what lies at the heart of the Christian tradition.