Boyarin D. A Radical Jew. Paul and the Politics of Identity

UCLA Press, 1994. — 253 p.This book is the record of an encounter with some of the most remarkable texts in the canon of western literature, the letters of Paul. If one measure of the greatness of a work of literature isits ability to support many interpretations, then certainly these texts must rank among the very greatest of literature, for they have spawned and continue to spawn — anew every morning — not only new interpretations of particular passages but entirely new constructions of their complete thought-world. Here, then, you have a talmudist and postmodern Jewish cultural critic reading Paul. I think that my particular perspective as a practicing Jewish, non-Christian, critical but sympathetic reader of Paul conduces me to ways of understanding his work that are necessarily different from the ways of readers of other cultural stances. This text fits into the tradition, then, of what has come to be called cultural readings of the Bible, readings that are openly informed by the cultural knowledge and subject-positions of their producers.