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 reports these positions instead of speaking them.
PAUL & JUDAISM AT THE END OF HISTORY
Matthew V. Novenson
Cambridge University Press, 2024
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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
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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