Past Paul’s Jewishness: The Benjaminite Paul in Epiphanius of Cyprus
Paul’s Jewishness has often acted as a pivot in scholarship about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, especially in recent conversation about the date and duration of the so-called "Parting of the Ways." Too little attention has been paid, however, to who represented Paul as...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2022
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2022, Volume: 115, Issue: 3, Pages: 309-330 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Epiphanius, Constantiensis 315-403
/ Paul Apostle
/ Jews
/ Ethnicity
|
| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations HC New Testament KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity |
| Further subjects: | B
Ethnicity
B Epiphanius B Late Antiquity B Identity B Paul B Jewish |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Paul’s Jewishness has often acted as a pivot in scholarship about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, especially in recent conversation about the date and duration of the so-called "Parting of the Ways." Too little attention has been paid, however, to who represented Paul as Jewish (or not) and why. I examine the late antique reception of Paul’s ethnic identity in Epiphanius of Cyprus, heresiologist, bishop, and someone for whom representation of Jewishness often served as a foil for the manufacture of orthodoxy. I argue that for Epiphanius, when Paul’s ethnic identity is relevant at all, the focus falls on an Israelite, Benjaminite Paul. Paul’s Jewishness becomes peripheral. Building on this observation, I suggest that we must understand even the reification of Jewishness familiar to current scholarship as only one of the late antique Christian behaviors that governed identification as Israelite. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000219 |
