Paul's choice of Corinth as his first missionary base reveals much about his character and temperament. A city which took pride in the slogan, 'Not for everyone is the journey to Corinth' (Horace, Epistles 1.17.36; cf. Strabo, Geography 8.6.20) was above all a challenge. A challenge that Paul was prepared to accept because if he won he would have planted the gospel in the most difficult of all environments, a fiercely competitive commercial centre where material gain was the one true god. To be able to say that Corinthians believed in Jesus would be irrefutable proof of the power of the gospel.

Corinth, moreover, offered Paul superb communications. Its position on the isthmus linking the Peloponnese to mainland Greece gave it command over the north–south trade route as well as over the east–west sea traffic. The taxes it levied made it ‘wealthy Corinth’ (Homer, Iliad 2.570). (For more background on the city see my St. Paul’s Corinth.)

Arriving in Corinth from Athens in the spring of AD 50, Paul foundlodging and work with Prisca and Aquila, Jewish Christians who had fledfrom Rome as the result of reprisals taken by the Emperor Claudius againsta turbulent synagogue in AD 41 (many continue to prefer the less probabledate of AD 49). Corinth was an ideal city for all three to ply their trade oftentmaking.

The longest and most influential of Paul's letters has a complex textual history, with fourteen families of texts featuring varied arrangements of the final chapters. While many earlier scholars tended to view chapter 16 as not originally intended for Rome, recent studies have demonstrated that the original version of the letter contained the material of all sixteen chapters. It is likely, but far from generally accepted, that 16:17-20 and 16:25-57 are interpolations reflecting later interpretations of the letter.

Romans is carefully organized, with an introduction in 1:1–15, a thesis statement in 1:16–17, four proofs (1:18–4:25; 5:1–8:39; 9:1–11:36; and 12:1–15:13), and an elaborate conclusion in 15:14–16:24. From the perspective of classical rhetoric, Romans is an ‘ambassadorial’ message in the demonstrative genre that seeks to encourage a particular ethos in the audience so they will support a project that Paul has in mind. The introduction and conclusion indicate that the primary purpose of the original letter was to elicit support for Paul’s mission to Spain, mentioned in 15:24, 28. Since there was no significant Jewish population in Spain at this time, which eliminated the possibility of starting a mission in the usual manner in a Jewish synagogue, advance preparations were required.

STARTING POINT: APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES

The foundation of Paul's thought and practice as a missionary and pastor was a life-changing experience of revelation experienced as grace and call. He gives his most direct account in Gal. 1:11-16:

This first-person testimony is extremely important. It shows us, first, that for Paul the starting point of his Christian self-understanding was a divine gift in the form of a revelation to/in him of Jesus Christ risen from the dead and exalted in glory at God’s right hand as his Son (cf. Rom. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:16–18). Second, Jesus Christ as God’s Son risen from the dead is represented by Paul as the ‘gospel’ (euaggelion), and intrinsic to the gospel is that it is a message to be preached (euaggelizesthai).

Opinions of Paul have always been divided. He had been a man of conflict before his sudden conversion on the road to Damascus, bitterly opposed to the Jesus movement. He remained a subject of controversy after that event not only among his conservative Jewish countrymen but also within the early church. In modern times generations of scholars have hailed or blamed him as the true founder of Christianity, granting that Jesus himself had not crossed the borders of ancient Judaism. Obviously the apostle of the Gentiles was and is a challenge that leaves little room for indifference. Nevertheless sound scholarship must aim at balanced views that have a chance of convincing a majority of those who are ready and able to dig deeper and listen to the sources rather than to the praise or disdain of modern friends or foes. Positive or negative judgments on Paul are usually based upon some well-known doctrinal statements of his, isolated from the argument of their context and quoted without regard to the circumstances of his life and times. Instead of such more or less arbitrary opinions, to do justice to the person and work of the apostle demands a careful consideration of the character of our sources and an interpretation of his teaching as conditioned by his social and religious background and as part of his ministry of founding and fostering young churches in the Mediterranean world outside Judaea.

Paul's letter to the Galatian Christians teems with impassioned fervour unequalled in any other Pauline letter. It reveals an embattled Paul in a fierce struggle to preserve his own apostolic credentials, the gospel that he preached, and of course the spiritual health of Galatian communities that he had founded a few years earlier. It contains some of Paul's most bold and impetuous theological reasoning, reasoning that he seems to have adjusted somewhat in content and tone in his later letter to the Roman Christians. In Galatians, we get a glimpse of Paul in a mode of impulsive reflex, assembling theological arguments to influence the corporate and personal life of the Galatian Christians in a situation that deeply disturbed him.

The Christians to whom Paul wrote were Gentiles (4:8) living in churches spread over some distance in the area of Asia Minor known to us today as Turkey. (Scholars continue to dispute the precise location of these churches, whether to the north towards the Black Sea or to the south closer to the Mediterranean.) They had affectionately received Paul and his message at an earlier date (3:1; 4:13–15), sometime in the late 40s. As a consequence of Paul’s ministry among them, the Galatian Christians had profound experiences of the Spirit (3:2–5) that instilled in them a hardy sense of Christian identity that continued for some time (5:7a).

Fresh winds are blowing through the corridors of Pauline studies, and in many ways it is an exciting time to be studying the apostle to the Gentiles' correspondence. In this chapter we will be exploring four areas where new perspectives and methodologies have led to further light being shed on the Pauline corpus. The areas of our discussion will include: (1) Jewish perspectives on Paul; (2) feminist and liberationist perspectives on Paul; (3) rhetorical studies of Paul's letters; and (4) the examination of Paul's letters as scripture.

SAUL THE PHARISEE/PAUL THE CHRISTIAN IN JEWISH PERSPECTIVE

The study of Saul of Tarsus’ life andworks by Jewish scholars is certainlynot an entirely new phenomenon. A generation ago, H. J. Schoeps wrotea lively account of the apostle’s life and work, and there were always afew treatments, like that of S. Sandmel, which suggested that the subjectdeserved closer scrutiny by Jewish scholars. But in recent years some of themost influential studies on Paul have been offered by Jewish scholars suchas A. Segal, D. Boyarin, or M. Nanos.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

On a day in the late 40s or early 50s, after some years of missionary work in Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor, Paul sailed from Troas and landed in Europe, acting on his intention to spread his gospel proclamation in territory 'where Christ had not yet been named' (Rom. 15:20). Travelling along the Via Egnatia, the major thoroughfare from the East to Rome, Paul would have encountered a great range of artisans, peddlers, slaves, sailors, traders, farmers, and civil servants, alongside the formidable presence of the Roman military. When he stepped off the highway in Macedonia, first at Philippi and then at Thessalonica, Paul entered cities known for long and fervent associations with the cult of Roma and the Emperor. He came bearing a message crystallized in the proclamation, Kyrios Iesous ('Jesus is Lord', 1 Cor. 12:3), a confession destined to collide with the customary acclamation, Kyrios Caesar, 'Caesar is Lord' (see Acts 17:7). In this early encounter, the 'living and true God' (1 Thess. 1:9)was preached in the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, whose local coins a mere half century before had boldly designated Julius Caesar as theos, 'god'. Thessalonica’s position, as both trade station on the Via Egnatia and chief Macedonian port on the Thermaic Gulf, ensured a rich and cosmopolitan mix of available religious options – the Hellenistic-Egyptian cults of Isis, Osiris, and Sarapis, the local cult of the Kabeiroi, and the Olympian gods Zeus (Hypsistos, ‘the highest’), Apollo, and Aphrodite, as well as Herakles, the Dioskouroi, and the ever-popular Dionysos.

Ernst Käsemann once remarked that in the generations after his death Paul was 'for the most part unintelligible'. But even when he was intelligible he was often either misunderstood or despised. In the late first or early second century, for example, the letter of James challenged Paul's gospel of justification by faith alone without regard to works (2:24). Around AD 200, the Kerygmata Petrou (Proclamations of Peter) vilified Paul as the enemy, a helpmate of the evil one, and an impostor preaching a false gospel. It attacked his legitimacy, calling him a liar for claiming an apostolic commission that came directly from Christ in a vision. If Paul were a true apostle, Peter continues, he would not contend with 'me', 'the foundation stone of the church' (Clem. Hom. 17.19.1-4).

While many suspected him of using dark, magical arts, others eitherwere unacquainted with his letters or simply ignored them. In the secondcentury, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch,was arrested and sent to Rome in chainsto a martyr’s death. In seven letters he wrote on the way to Rome he madeonly five or six references to the Pauline corpus, and even in those, Paulineinfluence was superficial.

Addressing Paul's understanding of the church (ekklēsia) means raising other difficult questions that a brief essay cannot adequately answer. The most critical question concerns which of the letters ascribed to Paul should be considered. Ephesians and 1 Timothy, for example, provide fuller information on aspects of the church than do some undisputed letters. But they are commonly regarded as pseudonymous. Should they be excluded altogether, read as a faithful continuation of themes in the authentic letters, or adjudged betrayals of the authentic Paul's spirit? In order to maintain conversation with the dominant scholarly position, this essay will discuss the evidence of the undisputed letters before that in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Letters, even though there are strong reasons for accepting all thirteen letters attributed to Paul as authored by him through a complex process of composition. The present analysis does, however, emphasize thematic links between the disputed and undisputed letters, in order to respect the genuine lines of continuity among them and the marked diversity within even the collection of undisputed letters.

Another procedural question concerns consistency and variation amongthe expressions of Paul’s thought. Which images and understandings areof fundamental character, and which are only brought to the surface bythe peculiar circumstances that Paul faces in a specific community?

INTRODUCTION

Although the main center of the development and maturation of Jewish philosophy came to an end with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Jewish philosophy did not disappear. The exiled Sephardic Jews who were interested in philosophy took with them their philosophical libraries and continued their philosophical pursuits in their new domiciles. Some of these transplanted Spanish émigrés continued to do philosophy in the ways they knew and were used to; some, however, absorbed in various degrees the philosophical environment of their new abodes, which were considerably different from the philosophical culture in which they were educated. This was most notable in Italy, where some of the more prominent Sephardic exiles settled. After all, Italy was the home of the Renaissance, during which philosophy, as well as the arts and literature, underwent some significant transformations.

The very existence of a distinctive Renaissance philosophy has sometimes been questioned, and consequently a distinctive Renaissance Jewish philosophy has been challenged. There is no question that medieval Aristotelianism, in its various forms, continued unabated throughout the fifteenth–seventeenth centuries, especially in the universities. And it found its adherents and advocates amongst Jewish philosophical thinkers, as we shall see. But there is no doubt that the philosophical climate in fifteenth-century Italy was changing and that new or different philosophical books were being read and made part of the philosophical culture of the period.

It is difficult to give an account of Swift's life without talking of the ways in which it has been represented. This does not mean that his life is merely “textual,” that whatever facts or certainties shared by his biographers are of less significance than the competing interpretations which they provide. Rather, it means that any account should acknowledge the history of Swiftian biography. That history was itself anticipated and imagined by Swift, who realized that his life would become as contentious as his work, and that he would be recreated and reinvented by friends and enemies alike. The extent to which a literary work reflects, betrays, or conceals its author is an issue which concerned Swift as much as it has concerned his biographers.

Right from the gate, Swift emerged as an original. He shocked, amused, perplexed, and outraged his first readers just as he has three centuries of readers since. Swift desired the lasting fame that even his earliest writings secured, but he originally addressed these works to specific people in specific historical circumstances that they might change. Although Swift often despaired of satire's efficacy, no satirist more forcefully provokes in his audience an embarrassed discomfort with the world as it is. The sharp aggression in Swift's writing speaks of the writer's deeply held beliefs about the true and the good and his outrage at their violation. And yet even in this conviction Swift betrays an equally deep vein of skepticism. From this volatile mixture of faith and distrust, Swift's early writing usually confronts us not with clear affirmation but with irony and unsettling contradiction - a particularly dangerous tack for a reformer to take. Swift's perilous strategy effectively puts his readers off balance, and that is precisely where the satirist wants us.

The most revealing aspects of Swift's relationship to Ireland are the contradictions at its very core, suggested by his own often conflicting statements about his place of birth and the antithetical attitudes he expressed about his native land, as well as by the widely divergent views about him put forward by readers over the years, their disagreements often hinging on whether they locate him in a primarily Irish or English context. This chapter, while recognizing the significance of the latter context, will explore the many reasons why Swift cannot be understood apart from his multi-varied ties to Ireland. There is room for disagreement about the precise nature and meaning of these ties, but there can be no disputing the fundamental connection itself - a kind of umbilical cord which, though sometimes perversely denied or concealed, was never severed and in fact greatly strengthened during the final quarter-century of his life. Ireland did not simply provide an inert background for Swift's life; it was an integral part of his identity, an essential ingredient in the way he viewed the world, an indispensable thread in the recurring patterns and textures of his writings. A man exceptionally sensitive to his immediate surroundings in all their concrete detail and steadfastly refusing to turn a blind eye to the material conditions of his existence, Swift settled into Dublin life with the whole of his being, fully inhabiting the spaces of St. Patrick's Cathedral and the surrounding area, known as the Liberties, with a physical as well as intellectual presence that demanded not only acknowledgment but also active engagement.

Like the rest of his writing, Swift's poetry is often disturbing and uproariously funny at the same time. It can be excessive, ungenteel and informal: equally it can be surprisingly conventional in form and dry in tone. Its language may be robust or, on occasions, almost prim. One of the things that makes the poems so appealing and accessible is their gusto, which comes in part from a scorn for false solemnity, self-pity, and existential complaints. The famous Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift provide a case in point.