The book under review is real: Matthew V. Novenson, Paul and Judaism at the End of History (Cambridge University Press, 2024), in nine chapters as titled here. All nine chapters were corrected against the book's own pages. Verbatim quotations from the book include, from chapter 1: the 4 Ezra ambush, the thesis ('the religion of Paul is neither what we normally think of as Judaism, nor what we normally think of as Christianity'), and the verdict that inaugurated eschatology 'makes for good theology… but it certainly makes for bad history'; from chapter 2: 'The scholarly convention that calls Paul's opponents "judaizers" is therefore exactly the wrong way around,' Cohen's 'Jews do not judaize, any more than Medes medize or Greeks hellenize,' the Gal 5:11 verdict 'Maybe. I am not certain that this view is wrong, but neither do I have much confidence that it is right,' and Luther's own gloss 'the pope, the Turks, the Jews, and all such as trust in their own merits'; from chapter 3: Luther's 'Turks, Jews, papists, or heretics,' Wright's 4QMMT assessment (quoted and retracted at the table), Watson's coinage argument, 'Silly gentiles, circumcision is for Jewish mortals,' 'a strategy for not buying what Paul is selling,' 'Albert Schweitzer had it very nearly right almost a century ago,' Hayes's 'robo-righteousness,' and 'modern religious experience, whether Jewish or Christian, is not admissible as evidence'; from chapter 4: the Baur 'colossal non sequitur' and 'grand unified theory' critique, Munck's thesis, Watson on the super-apostles as 'Jewish Christians uninterested in imposing circumcision on Gentiles,' 'gentile poseurs,' 'Jews do not make proselytes; proselytes present themselves,' and 'it was Paul versus the gentiles'; from chapter 8: the Bellamy/Pledge frame, 'rightwised away from sin,' 'an angel in a corpse,' freedom from the law by the law ('Ironic, don't you think?'), 'mortality is to sin as fire is to smoke,' 'Paul did not dream of and work toward such a world. He simply announced that that world was now here,' Kennedy's 'grotesque misconception' (quoted to be overturned), and the Schweitzer–Stowers synthesis of Paul as 'an architect of transhumanism'; from chapter 5: Nixon's rule for legality, Neusner's 'With friends like Sanders, Judaism hardly needs any enemies,' Alexander's 'What's so bad about legalism?', Kugel on the genius of a religion of laws, and the ruling that Schweitzer's three-Todsünden theory 'is basically right'; from chapter 6: the Lenny Bruce riff, Wright's Climax of the Covenant p. 170 ('lapse back into some sort of paganism'), 'he thinks that he is beholding it with his own eyes,' and 'Paul remained a chauvinist'; from chapter 7: Origen's 'as if there were' (Princ. 4.3.6), the absence of 'true' and 'real' from the Greek manuscript tradition of Rom 2:28–29, the Spartan parable from 1 Maccabees 12, and 'carnal Israel was the only Israel there was'; from chapter 9: Eliyahu Kohen of Izmir's rearranged letters (via Scholem), the disabled angels of Song of Songs Rabbah, Origen's two righteousnesses as two kinds of life, 'Christ is the end of the law just to the extent that Christ is the end of human mortality,' 'demigods who can fulfil the δικαίωμα of the law perfectly, effortlessly, and forever,' and the book's closing sentence, '…still dust, and to dust we shall return.' All speeches, including Novenson's defenses, remain pastiche in the participants' voices, built from their published positions: Luther's Preface (1545) and Freedom of a Christian; Schweitzer's Mysticism of Paul and Quest; Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism; Fredriksen's Paul: The Pagans' Apostle; Wright's Climax of the Covenant, Justification, and Surprised by Hope; Hart's New Testament: A Translation, Aeon essay (2018), and That All Shall Be Saved.
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SOURCES CITED
THE BOOK UNDER REVIEW
Novenson, Matthew V. Paul and Judaism at the End of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Chapters: 1. The Christian Problem of Paul and Judaism; 2. Paul's Former Occupation in Ἰουδαϊσμός; 3. Who Says Justification from Works of the Law?; 4. Paul versus the Gentiles; 5. The Legalism of Paul; 6. The Ethnic Chauvinism of Paul; 7. Carnal Israel; 8. Liberty and Justice for All; 9. The End of the Law and the Last Man.
ALSO BY NOVENSON
Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs (Oxford, 2012); The Grammar of Messianism (Oxford, 2017); Paul, Then and Now (Eerdmans, 2022); “Paul's Former Occupation in Ἰουδαϊσμός,” in Galatians and Christian Theology (Baker Academic, 2014).
THE INTERLOCUTORS
Luther, Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Writings (1545); The Freedom of a Christian (1520); Lectures on Galatians (1535).
Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931); The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910).
Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress, 1977); Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Fortress, 1983).
Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans' Apostle (Yale, 2017).
Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (T&T Clark, 1991); Justification (IVP, 2009); Surprised by Hope (HarperOne, 2008).
Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (Yale, 2017); “Everything You Know About the Gospel of Paul Is Likely Wrong,” Aeon (2018); That All Shall Be Saved (Yale, 2019).
Qumran: 4QMMT (Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah), “some of the works of the law.”