Paul against the Nations

In these essays, some of them never published before, Neil Elliott presents an understanding of Romans at odds with the traditional Protestant understanding (a treatise on justification by faith) or the ＂New Perspective＂ (Paul’s argument with Jewish ＂ethnocentrism＂). The letter that emerges here is an urgent response to a historical situation: Paul engages what would quickly become the supersessionist norm in gentile Christianity, shaped by the Roman construal of subject peoples. Gathered here for the first time, these studies rely on rhetorical criticism, broad attention to Roman imperial ideology, and postcolonial criticism to argue for a strikingly new perspective on Romans.

Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest and a New Testament scholar (PhD Princeton Theological Seminary) with particular interests in the political interpretation of scripture. He has taught biblical studies, early Christian history, and American civil religion at the College of St. Catherine and Metropolitan State University, and served as priest at the University Episcopal Center and St. Paul’s on the Hill in the Twin Cities. His publications include 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).