matthew novenson & friends on paul: the prologue (as dialogue)

# matthew novenson & friends on paul: the prologue (as dialogue)

Canonical: https://fragments.ikon.io/pieces/a-symposium-on-paul-prologue-as-dialogue

Type: essay

Published: 2026-08-28T15:05:16.657Z

Published version created: 2026-08-28T15:05:16.657Z

## Summary

The dramatised version of "matthew novenson & friends on paul", kept for comparison with the account that replaced it.

## Writing

*The earlier dramatised version, kept for comparison. Each contribution is pastiche built from the participants' published positions, and an invented sentence is not marked as one. [The current opening](/pieces/a-symposium-on-paul) reports these positions instead of speaking them.*

PAUL & JUDAISM AT THE END OF HISTORY

Matthew V. Novenson 
Cambridge University Press, 2024

❦

discussed chapter by chapter, the author defending, by 
Martin Luther · Albert Schweitzer · E. P. Sanders 
Paula Fredriksen · N. T. Wright · David Bentley Hart

WITH THE APOSTLE PAUL, THE SUBJECT, PRESIDING

“…upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” 
— 1 Corinthians 10:11

❦ 
PROLOGUE

A constructed dialogue, imagined into being with Fable's able assistance. The table convenes to review a real book: Matthew V. Novenson's Paul and Judaism at the End of History (Cambridge, 2024), taken chapter by chapter in order. Each contribution — unless quoted directly from source — is mere pastiche built from the participants' published positions.

A seminar room, outside of time. A blue-jacketed volume lies at each place. Novenson sits alone at the near end.

MODERATOR. Our business today is this book — Professor Novenson's Paul and Judaism at the End of History, nine chapters. Its wager, in the author's words, is that Paul saw the end of history as present, not future — and that this, not a new religion, explains everything strange in him. We go in order.

Professor Novenson, you are the thesis. Chapter one: The Christian Problem of Paul and Judaism