Paul and His Letters

Thinking with Josephus

F. B. A. Asiedu

Paul the apostle and historian Flavius Josephus spent considerable parts of their careers away from Jerusalem. They cultivated Roman audiences under very different circumstances: Paul with his Letter to the Romans, and Josephus with the writings he produced in Rome after the Jewish War. Curiously, Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem coincided with Josephus’s entry into public life, a period about which Josephus is deliberately silent. In Paul and His Letters: Thinking with Josephus, F. B. A. Asiedu selects themes from Josephus’s life to explore Paul’s letters and biography that contribute to his uniqueness in Jewish history. He highlights, for example, the need to read Romans 9–11 as aporetic discourse to appreciate Paul as an existential thinker. Asiedu considers, among other things, the authenticity of Paul’s letters and offers an alternative to the prevailing scholarly consensus. He also maintains that the Pauline collection in the New Testament first took shape in the house of Gaius in Corinth, where Paul composed his Letter to the Romans. Asiedu also suggests that the traditional view that Luke the physician wrote the Acts of the Apostles is probably a mistake. He argues that Titus the Greek, the coworker and friend of Barnabas and Paul, most likely authored it.

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 418 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-9787-0426-8 • Hardback • November 2019 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-9787-0427-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $50.00 • (£38.00)

Subjects: Religion / Biblical Studies / New Testament / Paul's Letters, Religion / Christianity / History, Religion / Judaism / General

Paul and His Letters

Thinking with Josephus

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Paul the apostle and historian Flavius Josephus spent considerable parts of their careers away from Jerusalem. They cultivated Roman audiences under very different circumstances: Paul with his Letter to the Romans, and Josephus with the writings he produced in Rome after the Jewish War. Curiously, Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem coincided with Josephus’s entry into public life, a period about which Josephus is deliberately silent. In Paul and His Letters: Thinking with Josephus, F. B. A. Asiedu selects themes from Josephus’s life to explore Paul’s letters and biography that contribute to his uniqueness in Jewish history. He highlights, for example, the need to read Romans 9–11 as aporetic discourse to appreciate Paul as an existential thinker. Asiedu considers, among other things, the authenticity of Paul’s letters and offers an alternative to the prevailing scholarly consensus. He also maintains that the Pauline collection in the New Testament first took shape in the house of Gaius in Corinth, where Paul composed his Letter to the Romans. Asiedu also suggests that the traditional view that Luke the physician wrote the Acts of the Apostles is probably a mistake. He argues that Titus the Greek, the coworker and friend of Barnabas and Paul, most likely authored it.

Details

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 418 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-9787-0426-8 • Hardback • November 2019 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-9787-0427-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $50.00 • (£38.00)

Subjects: Religion / Biblical Studies / New Testament / Paul's Letters, Religion / Christianity / History, Religion / Judaism / General

Author

F. B. A. Asiedu is a visiting scholar at Duke University.

Table of Contents

Part One: Paul the Former Pharisee: Aspects of His Biography

1. Fragments of Paul’s Biography: In the Days of John the Baptizer and James the Brother of Jesus

2. Paul and the First-Century Synagogue: Between Jesus and the Words of the Prophets

Part Two: Reading Paul with Ben Sira and Josephus

3. Paul and the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira

4. Paul and the Ancestors: Abraham, Isaiah, and the Prophets

5. To the Romans and to Epaphroditus: Josephus, Paul, and the Antiquities of the Jews

Part Three. Paul’s Letters: Before and After Josephus

6. Paul’s Letters and the Matter of Style: Three Propositions and A Contradiction

7. Collecting and Authenticating Paul’s Letters: Gaius’s Library, Pauline Pseudepigraphy, and the Relevance of Josephus’s Writings

Appendix: Titus the Greek: Co-Worker and Friend of Barnabas and Paul, Author of Acts

Reviews

Asiedu has traversed with considerable skill a little-travelled path in Pauline studies, opening up intriguing new insights, calling into question ‘orthodoxies’ of modern scholarship, and positing startling new hypotheses.

— The Journal of Theological Studies

Paul and His Letters

Thinking with Josephus

F. B. A. Asiedu

Paul and His Letters

Thinking with Josephus

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