In Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (2017), Paula Fredriksen reminds us that gods and their cults were intertwined with ancient ethnic groups so much so that, when Gentiles committed themselves exclusively to Israel’s God, some Jews considered this ‘tantamount to changing ethnicity’. Fredriksen claims, however, that Paul’s Gentile addressees – whom she terms ‘ex-pagan pagans’ – remain separate ethnically from Jews despite forsaking their ancestral gods for Israel’s. Given that gods and ethnicity were intertwined, this article examines if it is reasonable to conclude that Paul thinks Gentile Christ-followers remain strictly Gentiles after they have abandoned their ethnic gods and entered into a relationship with Israel and its God. I argue that, similar to Philo’s proselyte inclusion strategy, Paul incorporates Gentiles-in-Christ into ethnic Israel. As Abraham’s ‘offspring’, Paul suggests that his addressees not only gain membership in Israel’s covenant on account of Israel’s messiah, but that they also acquire a new ethnic identity despite that their prior identities as ‘the Gentiles’ are not erased. This study, then, seeks to destabilize the binary that Fredriksen posits between ethnic Israel and Paul’s Gentiles-in-Christ as ethnic ‘other’. In the end, I demonstrate that Paul’s ethnic reconfiguration of Gentile identities resembles Philo’s proselyte discourse and is more disruptive ethnically than Fredriksen’s phrase ‘ex-pagan pagans’ would suggest.

Matthew Thiessen's Paul and the Gentile Problem proposes a coherent reading of Paul's gospel in relation to his letters' seemingly disparaging remarks about Torah. Contrary to the "anti-legalistic" ("Lutheran") and the "anti-ethnocentric" ("new perspective") approaches, Thiessen provides two "hermeneutical keys" that reveal Paul is not opposed to Judaism, the Law, or even ethnocentrism. First, Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 7:19 that what matters is not being Jewish (circumcision) or being gentile (uncircumcision) but "keeping the commandments of God." This assertion, coupled with it being a rule in all his assemblies (v. 17), is evidence that Paul teaches that God requires Jews and gentiles to keep different commandments (pp. 8-11). Second, interpreters must recognize that Paul's authority derives from his call to preach to gentiles; therefore, his statements about the Jewish law must be read from the perspective that they are intended for gentiles-in-Christ (p. 11). Taken together, these assumptions anchor Thiessen's overall argument that Paul is against Torah being adopted by non-Jews, not its continuing relevance for Jews.Part 1 develops this thesis by first surveying Jewish attitudes toward gentile participation with Jews/Israel and then by situating Paul within this context (ch. 1). Thiessen concludes from this analysis that Paul does not reject Torah for a law-free gospel; rather, he opposes one of the available strategies for gentile inclusion. That is, Paul once believed conversion solved "the gentile problem" (cf. Gal. 5:11), but now he preaches to gentiles a "circumcision-free gospel of Jesus Christ" (p. 41). To further this thought, Thiessen challenges the traditional reading that Paul's interlocutor in Romans 2:17-29 is Jewish, insisting instead that he is a "judaizing gentile" who teaches that non-Jews become Jews through the Law (ch. 2). In a similar discussion of Galatians 4:21-31, Thiessen contends that Paul rejects the idea that gentiles must be circumcised to become Abraham's descendants (ch. 3). He suggests Paul's position on circumcision is, like that of some Jews (e.g., the author of Jubilees), based on Genesis 17:9-14, which reveals that if the rite is not performed on the eighth day after birth, it has no covenantal value. As such, Paul warns the Galatians that if they want to undergo circumcision it would make them "modern-day Ishmaels" rather than Isaacs. They would then be required to "listen to the rest of the story" (Gen. 16:21; 21:10), and consequently, like Ishmael, would not be Abraham's covenantal seed (94). For this reason, Thiessen explains that Genesis 15,