Pauline Literature (EABS)

Call For Papers: Historical-critical scholarship has as a goal to interpret ancient texts in their historical contexts. In his letters Paul frequently quotes the Jewish Scriptures, sometimes in crucial places of his letters. In order to know how Paul understood these texts, a historical-critical interpretation of the meaning intended by the author may not be very helpful. The more important question is, how these texts were interpreted by other Jewish readers at the time of Paul in the middle of the first century, and in ancient Jewish writings of the Hellenistic and Roman periods more generally. We propose to devote our 2017 session to the interpretation and reception in Second Temple Judaism of select scriptural texts which Paul quotes. We shall study some of the most significant biblical quotations in Romans, not from the perspective of the Pauline letters, but from ancient Judaism perspective. While there is a significant body of literature on Paul’s use of the Scriptures, often including discussion of ancient Jewish interpretation of the same texts, the focus is usually on Paul, and work is done mainly by New Testament scholars. For this panel we plan to invite specialists in ancient Jewish literature as presenters, and Pauline scholars as part of the dialogue. Please note that there is also an ISBL section devoted to Paul and the Pauline Literature, and that this year the EABS Orality and Literacy in Early Christianity group will also be focusing on the Pauline letters, so if you are interested in presenting a paper on a topic unrelated to the above theme, we suggest that you consider submitting your abstract to one of these units.

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