Description: The apostle Paul has long been championed, or criticized, as a Christian thinker, as a brilliant theological genius, or an enthusiastic convert who spun arguments to justify his new allegiances. In these essays, Neil Elliott engages some of the most provocative currents in contemporary scholarship, including Paul and the nature of violence; the presumptions of religious, cultural, or national innocence in particular interpretations of the apostle; the recent enthusiasm for Paul in some streams of Marxist thought; competing construals of economic realities in Paul's day (and our own); and questions surrounding Paul's legacy today.
Brief description: Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest and a New Testament scholar (PhD Princeton Theological Seminary) ) who has taught biblical studies, early Christian history, world religions, and American civil religion at the College of St. Catherine and Metropolitan State University. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Romans (1990), Liberating Paul (1994), The Arrogance of Nations (2008), and, with Mark Reasoner, Documents and Images for the Study of Paul (2010).