Dunn pioneered an interpretation of Paul’s phrase “works of the Law” that stressed that these were not works in general but works of the Mosaic Law, and in particular, he argued, the “boundary markers,” such as circumcision, Sabbath regulations, and food laws, by which Jews were distinguished from gentiles. On Dunn’s reading, Paul was not criticizing “salvation by works” but an overly “narrow” or “restricted” view of God’s purposes, by which gentiles were being excluded or required to adopt ethnically specific, Jewish markers of identity.10
