New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career [The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, 41]

Introduction: The Jigsaw puzzle of Paul's life and thought lies in disarray. Discrete pieces of the puzzle-events and letters, money and politics, visits and travel plans, issues and arguments-are scattered across the table of scholarly discussion. Earlier attempts to fit the pieces together have failed because of their faulty methodological assumptions. Older biographies of Paul tailored the information from Paul's letters to fit the narrative sequence of Acts. They hypothesized either a united front of Jerusalem-based Judaizers in Galatia, Corinth, and Philippi or a multiplicity of exotic adversaries. Older theologies of Paul assumed either that his thought was static and coherent, or that it developed in a linear trajectory. The weakness of these assumptions has been demonstrated by three major revisionist critiques.