As I begin writing this I am quite conscious that the sub-field of Pauline studies is extremely complicated today, perhaps even more complicated than historical Jesus studies. Therefore, I feel even more inadequate in attempting to give some guidance to this complicated field, because I know I am an amateur. I am also quite conscious of how my own biases influence decisions about what to recommend. But wanting to be of some guidance to those doing personal or group Bible study, preaching, or otherwise leading churches, I throw caution to the wind and offer the following survey.

I will begin by mentioning a couple of resources for an overview. Second, I will mention a few popular level resources. Third, I will mention various books on specific topics within Pauline studies.

Some of you will remember that last time I mentioned Ben Witherington’s overview book on Jesus, The Jesus Quest. Well, Witherington has done it again. He has provided us with a very readable and (I believe) reliable guide to the complicated field of Paul studies. This book is appropriately enough called The Paul Quest. In eight chapters he seems to cover, through balanced discussions and engagements, the multiplicity of topics and views abroad in studies of Paul in recent scholarship. And he does so in such a way that it is quite accessible. Witherington offers a different kind of overview in his earlier book, Paul’s Narrative Thought World. In this book Witherington argues that Paul’s thought was shaped by four interrelated narratives: Adam and Eve and a world gone wrong; the people of Israel in that world; the death and resurrection of Christ; and the movement to faith of Christians like Paul himself. Finally, let me mention for reference, the recent Dictionary of Paul and his Letters.

I am not one to be trendy. I don’t believe that the latest is necessarily the best. But, I am almost always leery of Paul studies that pre-date the late 1970s, because that is when the major revolution in Paul studies began to happen. The book I mentioned at the beginning, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles is quite accessible and still worth reading. (One essay within the book, "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West" is considered a classic.) Tom Wright’s popular-style book, What Saint Paul Really Said is well worth reading (and will whet the appetite for his big book on Paul, to come in a few years). It includes an annotated bibliography for those wanting more. E. P. Sanders wrote the books, as Tom Wright says, that "turned the tide." In 1991 he published a little book to summarize his findings. It is in the series entitled, "Past Masters," and is entitled simply Paul. Sanders is not a Christian, but has nonetheless written extensively and helpfully on Paul and Judaism. To list one resource with a significantly different perspective, let me mention a book by Stephen Westerholm. Wright describes Westerholm as providing a "careful, measured, and reasonable argument for a non-Sanders position on Paul and the law." Wright is referring to a scholarly book (mentioned in the next section). But Westerholm has written a popular-style book that caused one person to say: "If C. S. Lewis had been a biblical scholar, he would have written a book like this one." That book is Westerholm’s Preface to the Study of Paul.

The revolution I have undergone over the last twenty years has largely been in relation to Paul, the law, and Jews/Judaism. This revolution is important both because it challenges stereotypes of Jews and Judaism, ancient and modern, and because, I believe, it corrects certain substantial misunderstandings of the Christian faith. And furthermore, some of the (post-Luther) ways of pitting "law" or "works" over against grace tend to cut the nerve of serious discipleship or a serious focus on faithfulness and, in other ways, can distort central understandings of the Christian faith. There would be many things to mention here, in addition to what has already been named. Let me list a few.

A good, brief overview is James D. G. Dunn, "The New Perspective on Paul," in his book of essays, Jesus, Paul and the Law. For lengthier discussions see Frank Thielman’s "Paul, the Law, and Judaism: The Creation and Collapse of a Theological Consensus," in his book, Paul & the Law or the first part of Stephen Westerholm’s Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters.

If one wants to read the work that is as responsible as any for this revolution in understanding Paul, Judaism, and the law see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (and his supplementary book, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People). For those N. T. Wright fans who want a substantial taste of what is likely to come in his big book on Paul see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Again, for an alternative, "careful, measured" non-Sanders perspective see the second half of Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith. Or for a book, growing out of the "new perspective on Paul," that offers an 800-page full-blown theology, see James D. G. Dunn’s, The Theology of Paul the Apostle.

On a related, and important, question David Wenham has written the most comprehensive treatment of Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?. Many of us have believed for years that it is important, for a variety of reasons, to see the continuities between Jesus and Paul, rather than believing that Paul basically distorted the teachings of Jesus and then went on to become the founder of what became of Christianity, post-Paul. This book documents in detail the continuities.

For a way into discussions about Paul and ethics over the last few decades one could read Brian S. Rosner, "‘That Pattern of Teaching’: Issues and Essays in Pauline Ethics," in his edited book, Understanding Paul’s Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches. Also one could look at the bibliographical essay, "Bibliography: Pauline Ethics, 1964-1994," by Wendell L. Willis, in the book, Theology & Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters. Both of these books present a variety of views of Paul’s ethics: the first is a collection of seminal essays throughout the twentieth century; the second provides a collection of current perspectives. For a brief discussion of ethics in Paul and the Pauline tradition see the first two chapters in Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament. In the second half of his book, New Testament Ethics: The Legacies of Jesus and Paul, Frank Matera gives an overview of the ethical teachings in the Pauline writings, book by book. If one wants to pursue an in-depth study of one book, John Barclay’s Obeying the Truth: Paul’s Ethics in Galatians is well worth reading. Also, worth reading is the smaller book by J. Paul Sampley, Walking Between the Times: Paul’s Moral Reasoning. Lest it be forgotten, about half of John Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus is about the social relevance of the Pauline writings. For another brief and more recent discussion of one of the subjects Yoder deals with see James D. G. Dunn and Alan M. Suggate, The Justice of God: A Fresh Look at the Old Doctrine of Justification by Faith. For a much fuller treatment of another subject Yoder devotes a chapter to, one should see the various writings by Walter Wink on the principalities and powers, either in his massive treatment in his trilogy on the subject or one of his recent books that summarize his earlier work.

There have been many efforts to use the theories of René Girard to deal with violence and scapegoating. A variety of questions have been raised about this work, including its insensitivity to the Jewish roots of Christianity. Nonetheless, it is worth wrestling with the questions. One such effort is Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly’s Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross.

There has long been a debate about whether Paul was primarily a social conservative, a radical, or something else. For a survey of these debates see the relevant chapters of Witherington. One might also want to read various books. See Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle. Richard Horsley has co-authored a recent book (The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World) and has edited another (Paul & Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society) that are probably worth engaging. A very different and fascinating book by the post-modern Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin is A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. N. T. Wright says this is "an incredible book. I can’t believe the range, the skill, the chutzpah of it." As Hayden White, an historiographer, has said: Boyarin is "reading the Epistles as if they were contributions to contemporary debates over the issues of feminism, multiculturalism, Zionism, identity politics, and deconstruction, and reading these as if they were germane to an understanding of the Epistles."

Of the many other issues that could be mentioned, let me just mention bibliographical references for one other subject, women. A number of the works listed above have something to say about women. Let me just mention the brief discussion by Richard Hays, pp. 46-56 in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s influential In Memory of Her, portions of which are on Paul, is well worth wrestling with, as are her more recent writings. If you have read Ben Witherington and like his work, he has written three books on women in early Christianity. The most recent, Women and the Genesis of Christianity, which summarizes the other two, has five chapters on Paul. Finally, I would mention Craig Keener’s Paul., Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul. He seems to have read very widely and has dealt with the issues quite carefully.