Cultural Translation and Receptions of Paul in the First Four Centuries

The book addresses not only the early reception of Paul’s message in a variety of styles and insights, but also explores the implications of the use of terms, narratives, concepts, and notions transmitted from a Greek Jewish context of the first half of the first century into new contexts. There are two overlapping themes which serve as the focus of Cultural Translation and Receptions of Paul in the First Four Centuries : (a) “reception” of the apostle Paul in subsequent Christian traditions, and (b) the hypothesis that while Paul himself continued to think as a Jew, he was subsequently re-interpreted by non-Jews in non-Jewish and anti-Jewish ways: the so-called “Paul within Judaism” school. The distinctive focus of this volume is on the dynamic of “cultural translation,” meaning, for example, the translation from the cultural world of Diaspora Judaism and its Septuagint to Greek philosophical and Greek Christian categories. The contributions to the book are diverse, ranging from younger to more senior scholars from both North America and Europe.