Revealing Paul: Life, Letters, Legacy

Includes the NRSV Bible

Thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are letters attributed to the apostle Paul. This fact, coupled with the inestimable influence of many of these letters, has often caused Paul to be seen as the true “founder” of Christianity. Revealing^® Paul is designed to equip students to engage appreciatively, knowledgeably, and critically with Paul, his letters, and his complex legacy. Students will acquire a sophisticated understanding of ancient pseudonymity, and understand why it is that Paul could not have written all the letters attributed to him and what is at stake in that realization. They will internalize “the new perspective on Paul,” and consequently understand that Paul had no concept of a Christianity separate from Judaism and continued to identify as a Jew even while proclaiming Jesus as Messiah. They will apprehend the theological content of all thirteen Pauline letters in relation to their circumstances of production. And they will grapple with such consequential issues in the letters as anti-Judaism, both real and apparent; the subordination of women; the condemnation of homosexuality; and the proper attitude toward empire.

Revealing^® Paul aims to be the most accessible introduction to the Pauline letters available. No prior knowledge whatsoever of the gospels, or of the New Testament in general, is presupposed, nor is any familiarity with Christian church life and the biblical knowledge it generates through osmosis. But this introduction does not patronize the student either. Students are not required to accept on the authority of the author any position on any important textual matter independently of the evidence or reasoning that has led to it. The evidence and the arguments are clearly and meticulously laid out for students throughout, enabling them to draw different conclusions or construct alternative explanations. Ultimately, this introduction is designed to equip the student to become an informed participant in the vigorous, consequential, open-ended debate that is critical scholarship on the foundational texts of Christianity.

As courseware, in addition to the text content, which is as robust as that of traditional textbooks, Revealing^® Paul contains integrated resources that no print textbook or etextbook can match. Each biblical chapter-and-verse reference is linked to the text of the New Revised Standard Version. Reading the primary source material thereby becomes an altogether more inviting experience for the student than having to trawl through a print biblical text separate from the textbook. Even extracanonical sources, such as the Acts of Paul or Irenaeus’s Against Heresies, are linked to the text when they are referenced. Each technical or potentially unfamiliar term in the text is linked to a glossary definition. Creatively designed activities distributed throughout each module facilitate understanding and retention by the student. Over a thousand images from ancient material culture and the history of biblical reception are available to the reader and the entire text is narrated

About the Author: Stephen D. Moore, Ph.D. (Drew University)

Stephen D. Moore is Edmund S. Janes Professor of New Testament Studies in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. A native of Ireland, he received the Ph.D. in New Testament from the University of Dublin (Trinity College) long ago. He is the author or co-author, editor or co-editor of around two dozen books, including Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (Yale University Press, 1989); The Postmodern Bible (Yale University Press, 1995); God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (Routledge, 1996); God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and around the Bible (Stanford University Press, 2001); Empire and Apocalypse: Postcolonialism and the New Testament (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006); Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (with Janice Capel Anderson; Fortress Press, 2008, 2nd ed.); The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto (with Yvonne Sherwood; Fortress Press, 2011); and Untold Tales from the Book of Revelation: Sex and Gender, Empire and Ecology (SBL Press, 2014). He has served on the editorial boards of many journals, including the Journal of Biblical Literature. He has been learning from teaching the New Testament for more than thirty years, and his most treasured professional achievements are the teaching awards he has won.