What distinguishes" the perspective on Paul" and what lies beyond it? What are scholars saying about Paul and the Roman Empire or about the intersection between feminist and postcolonial interpretation of Paul? Magnus Zetterholm provides a clear and reliable guide to these and other lively issues in the contemporary study of Paul, surveying the history of the principal perspectives on Paul's relation to Judaism and the Jewish law and showing the relationships between answers given to those questions and the assumptions scholars bring to other issues as well. This is an indispensable handbook for the beginning student of the apostle and his thought.
I work as a scholar and teacher in New Testament Studies, a discipline which deals with the New Testament texts in their original environment, i.e., what the texts meant when they were written, and what they later were understood to mean.
My main research area is the early Jesus movement's development and its transition from a Jewish movement to a non-Jewish, new religion, Christianity, in the beginning of the second century. In my dissertation (The Formation of Christianity in Antioch, Routledge, 2003) I specifically addressed the issue of the separation between Jews and non-Jews in the early Jesus movement. In my second monograph (Approaches to Paul, Fortress, 2009) I treat the emergence of the traditional perspective on the Apostle Paul, which is essentially a normative theological paradigm.
I am currently working on a third monograph, based on the hypothesis that Paul never left Judaism, arguing that the conflicts within the movement probably concerned various strategies for dealing with the relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Jesus movement.
