A Je To The Jes [Hardcover]

David J. Rudolph raises new questions about Paul's view of the Torah and Jewish identity in this post-supersessionist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. Paul's principle of accommodation is considered in light of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and Jesus' example and rule of accommodation. Rudolph's fresh and refreshing approach to these verses, which focuses on table fellowship and the kinds of accommodation a good guest would make at the table of a host, is illuminating and, to my mind, very persuasive. Particularly interesting is Rudolph's suggestion that Paul's practice of table fellowship with different groups of people was based on Jesus' practice of table fellowship with all sorts of Jews. This coheres with recent tendencies to see Paul as more dependent on the traditions about Jesus than has conventionally been thought. It gives strong and contextually relevant content to the exhortation with which Paul closes this section of 1 Corinthians: 'Be imitators of me as I am of Christ' (11:1). ... Jewish identity was inseparable from practice of the Mosaic law. A truly Jewish Paul must be a Torah-observant Paul. Rudolph's argument for such a Paul is a key piece in what seems to me to look like an increasingly plausible argument: that in the early Christian movement generally it was taken for granted that Jewish Christians would continue to observe Torah, as Jesus did--and in the way Jesus did. . . . [A]ll of us who want to understand Paul and his role in the early Christian movement need to grapple with the issues Rudolph explores in this significant study. --Richard Bauckham, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies, University of St. Andrews, Scotland; Senior Scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge The Jewish identity of the Apostle Paul has returned to the limelight. Where mainstream scholarship tended to prefer in 1 Corinthians 9 a Paul who observes Jewish law only sporadically as an instrument to advance his mission among Jews and Gentiles, thil³-