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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Chalmers, Matthew (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2022
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
IxTheo 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
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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.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000219