p. 117—The principle difficulty Paul faced was exclusivism, getting pagans not merely to add another god to their pantheon, but reject all their past gods in favor of the God of Israel. But remember, Paul only converted a small percentage of Gentiles in a given town and it would be another century before paganism saw Christianity as a rival. p. 118—the summary in 1 Thess. 1.9-10 shows Paul’s early message which involved the death, resurrection, lordship, return of Jesus. Sanders... Read more

p. 107– Acts and Romans agree about the results, namely Paul really only succeeded among the Gentiles. There is virtually no trace of any Jews in Paul’s letters who are his own converts (Timothy?). [Really? How does one account for the detailed use of the LXX, for example in Rom. 9-11 in his letters if there were few if any Jews in his congregations to help the audience understand those Scriptures?]. p. 109– He makes the astounding claim that in... Read more

Sanders gives a detailed analysis of the three conversion stories in Acts on pp. 94-97 and argues that what accounts for Luke’s insistence of Paul doing things in Jerusalem soon after his conversion is Luke’s Jerusalem-centric character of Luke-Acts. [This argument however doesn’t work very well for Acts since in Acts the orientation is from Jerusalem to the world.] Sanders may be partially right that the reason Luke says the Jews were after Paul in Damascus rather than Aretas is... Read more

Chapter Two: Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles p. 87— He deduces that Paul was converted in Damascus because Paul says he returned to Damascus in Gal. 1. [This does not follow, but it reflects a pattern of lack of confidence by Sanders in the accounts about Paul in the early chapters of Acts.] p. 88— Sanders says Lightfoot is my favorite of the older commentators on Paul, but he and Burton work with a romantic assumption that Paul worked... Read more

In course of reading through Sanders huge new book on Paul, I came across a saying Sanders learned when he was eight (p. 666) see what you think— There’s enough good in the worst of us And enough bad in the best of us That it doesn’t behoove any of us To talk about the rest of us. Read more

On pp. 58-59 Sanders points out that Exod. 22.27 which has Elohim for God was read, because of the LXX as you shall not revile gods, and interpreted by Josephus and Philo to mean that Jews in the Diaspora should not revile or blaspheme other peoples’ gods, or oppose their building temples for them and Josephus even extended the law to mean that Jews should not steal treasure dedicated to other gods, or rob such temples. On p. 60 Sanders... Read more

Beginning on p. 28ff. there is a description of Pharisaic belief and practice. He lists the following derived mainly from Josephus— they believed in some form of the afterlife, they combined a belief in free will and determinism, they were legal experts who had some distinctive views on some issues, they accepted the ‘traditions of the elders’ which were non-Biblical traditions, and they were lenient in judgment unlike the harsh Sadducees. Sanders argues that the three major parties (Essenes, Pharisees,... Read more

Chapter One deals with Acts, which Sanders thinks was composed in the 80s, or latest in the early 90s. There was an explosion of interest in Paul in the 90s, and Acts was probably a stimulus to the collection of Paul’s letters. Acts ranks as a good piece of Hellenistic historiography, more specifically good Hellenistic apologetic historiography and biography (p. 14). Acts presents Christianity as enlightened, harmless and beneficent. He quotes Thucydides on p. 15 but fails to include the... Read more

This is the beginning of a very long and detailed analysis of one of the most important books to be written on Paul in the last 20 years. It will involve both description and critique. The critique mostly will occur in square brackets [ ], though occasionally it leaks over into the description itself. This discussion will go on for at least a month of blog posts, so I would suggest you strap on your helmets, and prepare for the... Read more

It is wrong to fault a book which has limited goals and a specific purpose for not addressing every hot button issue connected with Romans. Still, there are things one hopes will be more fully addressed in the forthcoming commentary on Romans. From a social context point of view, much more needs to be made of the fact that Paul nowhere speaks of ‘the ekklesia of God in Rome’ as he does, even of the much-divided Christians in Corinth. Indeed,... Read more