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{en} Approaches to Paul: A Student's Guide to Recent Scholarship (2009) is a book by Magnus Zetterholm.

Abstract

<What distinguishes" the perspective on Paul" and what lies beyond it? What are scholars saying about Paul and the Roman Empire or about the intersection between feminist and postcolonial interpretation of Paul? Magnus Zetterholm provides a clear and reliable guide to these and other lively issues in the contemporary study of Paul, surveying the history of the principal perspectives on Paul's relation to Judaism and the Jewish law and showing the relationships between answers given to those questions and the assumptions scholars bring to other issues as well. This is an indispensable handbook for the beginning student of the apostle and his thought.>--Publisher description.

Zetterholm’s book does not aim to offer a guide to the discipline of Pauline studies as a whole but specifically, to the recent scholarship on Paul’s relation to Judaism. The "Old Perspective on Paul" saw Judaism as an inferior religion of legalism and interpreted Paul in sharp contrast to Judaism. This view was rooted in the traditional Lutheran opposition between grace and law and was given its modern scholarly shape by authors such as Ferdinand Christian Baur, Ferdinand Wilhelm Weber, Emil Schürer, Wilhelm Bousset, Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann and Günther Bornkamm. In spite of the protests by scholars, such as Claude Montefiore, Salomon Schechter, and George Foot Moore, the "Old Perspective on Paul" remained unchallenged until the 1970s when a "New Perspective on Paul" began to emerge through the works of Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, Heikki Räisänen, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright. The "New Perspective" offers a positive view of Judaism, while still establishing a well-defined distinction between Paul and Judaism. By contrast the Radical New Perspective (Lloyd Gaston, Peter Tomson, Stanley Stowers, Mark Nanos, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Pamela Eisenbaum, Carlos Segovia, and others) reads Paul as a figure within first-century Judaism. A more "Traditional Perspective on Paul" is today advocated by authors such as Frank Thielman, Andrew Das, Simon Gathercole, and Stephen Westerholm.

Editions

Published in Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009.

Table of contents

Paul and history -- The emergence of a paradigm -- The formation of a standard view of Paul -- Toward a new perspective on Paul -- Beyond the new perspective -- In defense of Protestantism -- Breaking boundaries -- Conclusion: History and Paul.

External links

• [ Google Books]