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Book: Judaism in Five Minutes

Chapter: Was Paul Jewish?

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.46867

Blurb:

One of Jesus’s most influential first-century followers, Paul was born to a Jewish family and composed a series of letters that have become a central part of the New Testament. Different sources and thinkers have answered “Was Paul Jewish?” in different ways, depending on how they understood the question. Over the centuries, he has been portrayed as someone who abandoned Judaism and helped found Christianity by disseminating anti-Jewish teachings, as a figure who secretly worked on behalf of the Jewish people, and as a faithful Jew whose views are consistent with Jewish teachings and who himself claimed to practice Judaism.

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