162 - Paul the Apostle to America: Cultural Trends and Pauline Scholarship

Paul the Apostle to America: Cultural Trends and Pauline Scholarship
By Robert Jewett
Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1994.178 pp. $16.99.

Jewett's purpose is to free Pauline studies from its domination by European scholarship so that an American understanding of Paul can emerge. European scholars traditionally have portrayed Paul as contentious and hierarchical, but recent North American scholarship has revealed a different Paul. Jewett analyzes Paul's alleged anti-Semitism and his views of women and sexuality, slavery, and church organization, He finds Paul to have been a pluralist, an egalitarian, a revolutionary who struggled for personal freedom, and a democratic founder of both tenement and house churches. The issues of consumerism and higher education in America are also analyzed in light of Jewett's reconstruction of Paul.

Jewett's cultural criticism is truncated in some chapters by his subordination of ideology to theology, but he has raised in an engaging way crucial issues for those who are interested in hermeneutics or cultural criticism.

Fred W. Burnett
Anderson University
Anderson, IN.