On "When Christians Were Jews" by Paula Fredriksen ****

I started off with much excitement and anticipation of reading this book, which I'd been wanting to get to for quite some time. Fredriksen promised to approach the subject of early Christianity, it seemed, from a Jewish perspective, which makes sense, given that the early Christians were Jews. Alas, in some ways, I was a bit disappointed, but in yet others this proved a profitable read.

I'll start with what was not as I had hoped. First, while Fredriksen writes very accessibly, I had a hard time following a through argument. A lot of interesting subjects--and some not so interesting--are explored, but I didn't really feel like there was much of a unifying thesis. Second, Fredriksen's approach is very much one informed by in-vogue secular ideas about the Jesus cult: namely that Jesus was not worshipped in the first generation. That veneration grew with time and mythology. It's an easy assumption to make, because that after all is how most myths are born. But to make such an argument, Fredriksen has to assume that all of the New Testament other than Paul's writings was written significantly later, in the last first century or early second. And even problematic passages in Paul's letters are seen as being mistranslations: Jesus isn't "God" as we read Paul's writing in English but "a god." Fredriksen's stance with regard to her biblical sources is further testified to by the way that she often claims there are contradictions. Some of these I can easily see any reasonable person making such a claim about; but others seem preposterous. For example, she claims that Paul's not writing about persecuting Stephen by name means there's a contradiction and that it likely did not happen as it is written about in the much-later-written Acts. The mere fact that someone does not mention an event in specificity but only in general does not make for a contradiction nor excuse for dismissing its reality. If I were to write that many acts of Islamic terrorism happened in the early 2000s but never mentioned 9/11 specifically, that would not mean that 9/11 did not happen.

What I liked about Fredriksen's work, however, came late in the book, when she focused on the interaction of pagans with Jewish Christians. Here she left me with much to think about. That's not to say there aren't interesting points earlier: they are nestled in among the larger text. What is perhaps most refreshing was exactly what I came to the text to read about: that Fredriksen does not read into the early Christian movement an anti-Judaism. She sees Paul as very much Jewish, which is not something many other scholars seem to recognize. Unlike those scholars, Fredriksen sees Paul as part of the movement that Peter and the apostles forged rather than as one who stole into the movement and introduced a Christianity devoid of its roots.