The Life and Afterlives of the Apostle Paul

While the writings of the Apostle Paul are commonly understood as early Christian scriptures, the Apostle Paul never converted to “Christianity.” He was and remained Jewish. We must therefore reexamine his writings within his Jewish context, not apart from it. We also need to see how the earliest “Christians” talked about Paul within the context of an emerging “Christianity.” In this course, we will first dive into both the authentic and spurious letters of Paul in the New Testament. We will then turn to the figure of Paul in later Christian texts, both canonical and non-canonical.