Paula Fredriksen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1014287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paula Fredriksen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paula |
| FAMILY NAME | Fredriksen |
| SIGNATURE | FREDRIKSEN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A Jewish Paul
Paul Within Judaism Within Paganism
Judaism was not Paul's background, but his context, and much of his gospel's content. Modern Pauline Studies, however, often see Paul's mission as an expression of what he found wrong with Judaism, a Judaism that supposedly discouraged relations with Gentiles. This essay investigates all the various ways that Jews and Gentiles comfortably cohabited the Graeco-Roman Diaspora. What spurred Paul's mission was not a critique of an ethnically exclusiv…
The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity
The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, an…
Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis, by Tucker Ferda
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus’s mission. Mark highlights a “Galilean crisis” as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of dramatic reversal (peripeteia) that serve to drive his story home to its conclusion, connecting Jesus’s Jewish mission with his Roman death. Analyzing Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis with Mark’s literary …
Paul, Pagans and Eschatological Ethnicities
An invited response to Denys McDonald’s JSNT essay: ‘“Ex-Pagan Pagans”? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic Reconfiguration’
What Does It Mean to See Paul “within Judaism”
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with contemporary Mediterranean cultures. We will see how ancient ethnic essentialism—the conviction that different peoples evinced different behaviors because of their very “nature” (φύσις)—shapes Paul’s thought about …
Philo, Herod, Paul, and the Many Gods of Ancient Jewish “Monotheism”
Many gods lived in the Roman Empire. All ancient peoples, including Jews and, eventually, Christians, knew this to be the case. Exploring the ways that members of these groups thought about and dealt with other gods while remaining loyal to their own god, this essay focuses particularly on the writings and activities of three late Second Temple Jews who highly identified as Jews: Philo of Alexandria, Herod the Great, and the apostle Paul. Their l…
When Christians Were Jews
Violent Words, Violent Ways
Violent Words, Violent Ways : Brent Shaw on Catholics, Donatists, and Jews in Late Roman North Africa Paula Fredriksen Brent Shaw’s panoramic investigation of fourth-century North African sectarian hatred explores the meaning(s) of catholic/dissident violence, its social modalities and effects, its rhetorical “repertoires of hatred.”1 As his study makes clear, the number and the ferocity of actual incidents of dissident/catholic “hard” violence w…
Judaizing the Nations
Much current NT scholarship holds that Paul conducted a ‘Law-free’ mission to Gentiles. In this view, Paul fundamentally repudiated the ethnic boundaries created and maintained by Jewish practices. The present essay argues the contrary: Paul's principled resistance to circumcising Gentiles precisely preserves these distinctions ‘according to the flesh’, which were native to Jewish restoration eschatology even in its Pauline iterations. Paul requi…
Mandatory retirement
Historians of ancient Christianity routinely describe its social and religious environment by relying on certain common-sense academic terms. In this essay, the author argues that four of these termis-conversion, nationalism, religio licita ("legit cult") and monotheism-in fact import anachronism and distortion into historical descriptions of the cultural context of Christianity and its origins, in the end obscuring precisely the evidence that th…
Part One
Part One:Just Like Everyone Else, Only More So Paula Fredriksen (bio) David Biale , ed. Cultures of the Jews: A New History. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. Pp. xxxiii + 1196. Hard science deals with facts: it explains and successfully manipulates the physical universe. Its empirical successes attest to the validity of its truth-claims, and to the proximity (or identity) of its laws to and with Reality. Hard science is to facts as philosophy is t…
Jewish Law in Gentile Churches
Augustine
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
As a Jesus of History "Scholar wannabe" 1 looked forward to reading and reviewing Paula Fredriksen's recent work on the historical Jesus.It came to me with some strong recommendations.Unfortunately my overwhelming reaction to the book remains a profound disappointment.Not surprisingly, in the welter of widely divergent reconstructions of the historical Jesus, 1 find myself drawn powerfully to some, such as John Dominic Crossan and William R. Herz…
The Immerser
The Two Souls and the Divided Will
Torah‐observance and Christianity
What You See is What You Get
Savior et Salut
Augustine, Confessions . James J. O'Donnell
A Noble Death
Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity. From John of Patmos to Augustine of Hippo
Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity From John of Patmos To Augustine of Hippo1
From Jesus to Christ
Paul and Augustine
Journal Article PAUL AND AUGUSTINE: CONVERSION NARRATIVES, ORTHODOX TRADITIONS, AND THE RETROSPECTIVE SELF Get access PAULA FREDRIKSEN PAULA FREDRIKSEN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 37, Issue 1, April 1986, Pages 3–34, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/37.1.3 Published: 01 April 1986
Mandatory retirement
Historians of ancient Christianity routinely describe its social and religious environment by relying on certain common-sense academic terms. In this essay, the author argues that four of these termis-conversion, nationalism, religio licita ("legit cult") and monotheism-in fact import anachronism and distortion into historical descriptions of the cultural context of Christianity and its origins, in the end obscuring precisely the evidence that th…
What You See is What You Get
Hysteria and the Gnostic Myths of Creation
HYSTERIA AND THE GNOSTIC MYTHS OF CREATION BY PAULA FREDRIKSEN Suffering, ignorance, evil - these are the leitmotifs of Gnostic cos- mogonies, which draw on episodes in the Old Testament and on the dualism implicit in Middle Platonism. The presence of a Greek loan word in the Coptic texts from Nag Hammadi which deal with the Creation may indicate a third, if minor, source for these themes. This clue word is "deficiency". úcr'tÉpl1Jla is not a cla…
Paul and Augustine
Journal Article PAUL AND AUGUSTINE: CONVERSION NARRATIVES, ORTHODOX TRADITIONS, AND THE RETROSPECTIVE SELF Get access PAULA FREDRIKSEN PAULA FREDRIKSEN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 37, Issue 1, April 1986, Pages 3–34, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/37.1.3 Published: 01 April 1986
From Jesus to Christ
Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity. From John of Patmos to Augustine of Hippo
Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity From John of Patmos To Augustine of Hippo1
A Noble Death
Augustine, Confessions . James J. O'Donnell
Torah‐observance and Christianity
What You See is What You Get
Savior et Salut
The Two Souls and the Divided Will
The Immerser
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
As a Jesus of History "Scholar wannabe" 1 looked forward to reading and reviewing Paula Fredriksen's recent work on the historical Jesus.It came to me with some strong recommendations.Unfortunately my overwhelming reaction to the book remains a profound disappointment.Not surprisingly, in the welter of widely divergent reconstructions of the historical Jesus, 1 find myself drawn powerfully to some, such as John Dominic Crossan and William R. Herz…
Augustine
Jewish Law in Gentile Churches
Part One
Part One:Just Like Everyone Else, Only More So Paula Fredriksen (bio) David Biale , ed. Cultures of the Jews: A New History. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. Pp. xxxiii + 1196. Hard science deals with facts: it explains and successfully manipulates the physical universe. Its empirical successes attest to the validity of its truth-claims, and to the proximity (or identity) of its laws to and with Reality. Hard science is to facts as philosophy is t…
Mandatory retirement
Historians of ancient Christianity routinely describe its social and religious environment by relying on certain common-sense academic terms. In this essay, the author argues that four of these termis-conversion, nationalism, religio licita ("legit cult") and monotheism-in fact import anachronism and distortion into historical descriptions of the cultural context of Christianity and its origins, in the end obscuring precisely the evidence that th…
Judaizing the Nations
Much current NT scholarship holds that Paul conducted a ‘Law-free’ mission to Gentiles. In this view, Paul fundamentally repudiated the ethnic boundaries created and maintained by Jewish practices. The present essay argues the contrary: Paul's principled resistance to circumcising Gentiles precisely preserves these distinctions ‘according to the flesh’, which were native to Jewish restoration eschatology even in its Pauline iterations. Paul requi…
Violent Words, Violent Ways
Violent Words, Violent Ways : Brent Shaw on Catholics, Donatists, and Jews in Late Roman North Africa Paula Fredriksen Brent Shaw’s panoramic investigation of fourth-century North African sectarian hatred explores the meaning(s) of catholic/dissident violence, its social modalities and effects, its rhetorical “repertoires of hatred.”1 As his study makes clear, the number and the ferocity of actual incidents of dissident/catholic “hard” violence w…
When Christians Were Jews
Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis, by Tucker Ferda
This article explores the historiographical consequences of depending on Markan chronology to reconstruct Jesus’s mission. Mark highlights a “Galilean crisis” as well as the scene in the temple courts (Mk 11:18) as twinned moments of dramatic reversal (peripeteia) that serve to drive his story home to its conclusion, connecting Jesus’s Jewish mission with his Roman death. Analyzing Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis with Mark’s literary …
Paul, Pagans and Eschatological Ethnicities
An invited response to Denys McDonald’s JSNT essay: ‘“Ex-Pagan Pagans”? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic Reconfiguration’
What Does It Mean to See Paul “within Judaism”
What happens if we think of “Jewish law” not as a category of Christian theology but as an element of ancient kinship construction, “ancestral custom” (Gal 1:14)? We will see more clearly how much late Second Temple Judaism shared with contemporary Mediterranean cultures. We will see how ancient ethnic essentialism—the conviction that different peoples evinced different behaviors because of their very “nature” (φύσις)—shapes Paul’s thought about …
Philo, Herod, Paul, and the Many Gods of Ancient Jewish “Monotheism”
Many gods lived in the Roman Empire. All ancient peoples, including Jews and, eventually, Christians, knew this to be the case. Exploring the ways that members of these groups thought about and dealt with other gods while remaining loyal to their own god, this essay focuses particularly on the writings and activities of three late Second Temple Jews who highly identified as Jews: Philo of Alexandria, Herod the Great, and the apostle Paul. Their l…
The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity
The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, an…
Philosophy (26 works) · Theology (19 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (18 works) · History (15 works) · Art (12 works) · Religious studies (12 works) · Judaism (11 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Christianity (7 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (6 works)