Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Eerdmans, new revised and expanded edition, 2007), 400pp (with thanks to Eerdmans for review copy)
In 1986 Francis Watson published his first book Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. Since then he has become a renowned New Testament scholar, publishing in the areas of biblical theology (Text, Church and World, 1994 and Text and Truth, 1997) and Pauline theology (Agape, Eros and Gender, 2000 and Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 2004). This new book brings him back to his first book and gives us a mature reading of how Watson understands Paul's relationship to Judaism and Gentiles. Watson suggests that the book should 'serve to complement the argument of my Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith' (p. xxi).
The book is in places radically re-written. Starting most clearly with the book's new subtitle 'Beyond the New Perspective,' which signals Watson's intention to offer a different direction to the 'New Perspective movement'. The most fascinating part of this book is the twenty-six introduction to this revised and expanded edition. It begins by tracing the history and circumstances that led to the publication of the first edition. Watson completed his doctoral thesis at Oxford in 1983, and it was accepted for publication in 1984. However, in the end very little of the thesis made its way into the book, which was vastly rewritten in 1985. Watson's sees his argument as a different response to Sanders than that found in Dunn, Wright and others. So although he uses the language like 'covenantal nomism' and 'works of law', he is not using them in the way the New Perspective scholars have done.
The main argument of the book is to say that there are sociological reasons behind Paul's letters, especially with regard to those passages that discuss Judaism, the law and Gentiles. Too much Pauline scholarship has treated and still treats Paul's letters 'as papers delivered to a seminar in systematic theology' (26) and as a result 'are often characterized by a total lack of social realism' (26), that is, why does Paul write to his congregations of the themes he does. According to Watson, Paul argues for the Christian congregations to move away from Judaism (which he identifies with Pharisaism) and become a sect and so 'the problem for Paul was that other Christians did not accept his solution to the problem of Jewish unbelief, maintaining that the church should continue to exist as a reform movement with the Jewish community and to adhere to its way of life' (344).
This book, together with Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, we have mature Watson, giving us his reading of Paul's theology. It offers a critique of the Lutheran Paul found in twentieth-century scholars and also of the 'New Perspective', which Watson finds wanting with regards to its exegesis and conclusions. Watson offers us a different perspective, to go along side Dunn's 'New Perspective' and Wright's 'Fresh Perspective'. With Douglas Campbell's forthcoming book on Paul, the next few years set to offer some great debate on Paul's theology. Even if you've read this first edition of Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, this second edition is worth engaging with, because it is a major revision - offering a fantastic introduction, Watson's views on the pistis christou debate (he tries to find a middle way), and also as an appendix, a paper he gave at a 1993 King's conference on 'God and Freedom', which offers a response to the questions he concluded with at the end of the first edition.
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