Was Paul Jewish?
Judaism in Five Minutes - Sarah Imhoff
Elias Sacks [+]
University of Colorado, Boulder
Elias Sacks is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies and Faculty Director for Public Scholarship in the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He studies Jewish thought, philosophy of religion, Jewish-Christian relations, religious ethics, and religion and politics. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), as well as articles on a wide range of medieval and modern thinkers.
Description
One of Jesus’s most influential first-century followers, Paul was born to a Jewish family and composed a series of letters that have become a central part of the New Testament. Different sources and thinkers have answered “Was Paul Jewish?” in different ways, depending on how they understood the question. Over the centuries, he has been portrayed as someone who abandoned Judaism and helped found Christianity by disseminating anti-Jewish teachings, as a figure who secretly worked on behalf of the Jewish people, and as a faithful Jew whose views are consistent with Jewish teachings and who himself claimed to practice Judaism.