Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities

Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders

Edited by Fabian E. Udoh, with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum

Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity

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For nearly four decades, E. P. Sanders has been the foremost scholar in shaping and refocusing scholarly debates in three different but related disciplines in New Testament studies: Second Temple Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Pauline studies. This collection of essays by an impressive array of colleagues and former students presents original scholarship that extends—or departs from—the research of Sanders himself. Both apologists and dissenters find their place in this volume, as the authors actively debate Sanders’s innovative positions on central issues in all three disciplines.

The introductory group of essays includes a substantive intellectual autobiography by E. P. Sanders himself. The next three parts examine in turn the three areas in which Sanders made his important contributions. The essays in part 2 engage Sanders’s notion of “common Judaism.” Those in part 3 deal with issues that Sanders raised respecting the historical Jesus and the Gospels. And the essays in part 4 debate Sanders’s contention that participation in Christ, rather than justification by faith, is the central theme of Paul’s soteriology. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Sanders’s works.

“This volume is a fitting tribute to the single most influential scholar in the fields of New Testament and early Judaism of the last half century. . . . A real strength of this volume is that most of the essays not only directly engage the work of Ed Parish Sanders but confirm, refine, and even extend various aspects of his innovative and widely debated positions on central issues in the study of Jesus, Paul, and Second Temple Judaism.”—Daniel C. Harlow, Calvin College

Contributors: Fabian E. Udoh, D. Moody Smith, E. P. Sanders, Jouette M. Bassler, Shaye J.D. Cohen, Albert I. Baumgarten, Cynthia M. Baker, Israel J. Yuval, Martin Goodman, Eric M. Meyers, Jürgen Zangenberg, Seán Freyne, Peter Richardson, Adele Reinhartz, Paula Fredriksen, Stephen Hultgren, John P. Meier, Craig C. Hill, Heikki Räisänen, Richard B. Hays, Stanley K. Stowers, John M. G. Barclay.

Fabian E. Udoh is on the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He is author of To Caesar What is Caesar’s: Tribute, Taxes, and Imperial Administration in Early Roman Palestine.

Reviews

“ . . . A gem of a volume and a fitting tribute to Sanders, the foremost scholar of Second Testament Studies. It contains informative and often controversial portraits of Jesus, first-century Judaism, and Pauline Christianity, as well as detailed information on Jesus’ missions in the Galilee region and his activities in Jerusalem.” — Journal of Ecumenical Studies

“No contemporary New Testament scholar’s work is more important than the work of Sanders. No scholar of ancient Judaism or of early Christianity can afford to overlook this volume. Each of the contributors is a distinguished scholar in his or her own right and the contributions offer generally appreciative, but always stimulating, dialogue with Sanders’s seminal ideas. Every theological library should have a copy of this work.” — Religious Studies Review

“This volume is a tribute to Professor Ed Parish Sanders of Duke University, who is one of the foremost biblical scholars on the topic of the relationship of Judaism and early Christianity. A thread that binds together Sanders’ work and is apparent in most of these essays is his fundamental contention that running through the midst of the cultural and theological diversity of first-century Judaism there was also a “common Judaism” expressed in some fundamental convictions and common practice.” — The Bible Today

“Some of the papers from a 2003 conference in honour of E. P. Sanders form this fine Festschrift. It is organized around the three foci of Sanders’s achievement. . . . Professor Sanders might justifiably view with satisfaction the way his research has stimulated further theological reflection on scripture as well as hugely advancing the study of early Judaism, including Jesus and Paul.” — Journal of Theological Studies