Reinventing Paul - Paul G. Gager

Advantages: An interesting new approach
Disadvantages: Less a reinvention as a furthering development, not yet completed

Gager could perhaps be starting a quest similar in intent if not in form to that of the Jesus Seminar, namely, the search for the ‘real’ Paul, or at least the ‘real meaning’ of Paul. Paul has been reinterpreted and recast in many ways over the past 2000 years, for denominational and sociological reasons. To build upon Schweitzer’s observations about the changing images of Jesus, just as each age reinterprets Jesus to, in one way or another, recast ...
...Paul undergo a similar change. What Gager is doing, however, is not merely reinterpreting the meaning of Paul -- he is offering a new way of asking the interpretative questions, offering a paradigm shift that casts doubts upon traditional interpretations and offers a new way of thinking about the texts. ‘Once we begin to question not just specific texts or issues within that paradigm, but the paradigm itself, nothing in the old model makes sense.’ ... Read review