James D.G. Dunn - Jesus, Paul and the Gospels

In the course of just over three weeks in April andMay 2009, I was privileged to give several lectures and series of lectures. This was partly the result of the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate the year 20089 as the bimillennial year of Paul. In my view, the celebration came a few years too late, since I think it more likely that Paul was born close to what we now regard as the turn from bce to ce (or from bc to ad). Nonetheless, the interest in Paul which this bimillennial year of Paul aroused among Catholics has been entirely welcome, and I found myself recipient of a number of invitations to lecture on Paul to Catholic (and other) gatherings. The invitations were too inviting for me to turn them all down, and I was more than happy to accept several, though the quickening of the work pace was somewhat more than I had bargained for. But how could I refuse? It was such a thrill for a mere Protestant to know that his Catholic brothers and sisters wanted to rediscover Paulor as a senior Catholic friend corrected me: Not rediscover, but discover Paul!

The first was a series of lectures to an International Seminar on Saint Paul organised by the Societa Sao Paolo at its centre at Ariccia on Lake Alban. The Society kindly invited my wife and me to spend a few days in Rome before and after my one day at the Seminar, an invitation not hard to accept.We are most grateful to BrotherWalter Rodriguez for organising our whole visit, including special arrangements for various excursions in Rome. The invitation to the Seminar was for me to speak on the main themes of Pauls theology. But since I had already written at length on Pauls theology, in the event it seemed more appropriate for me to focus on why Paul remains such a crucial figure for Christianity, who he was, what he stood for, the gospel which he lived and died for, and the church(es) he established and sought to instruct and guide through his letters. These form chapters 69 of this book.

Another invitation was to an international symposium on Jesus and Paul to be held at the Theological Faculty of Catalonia (Barcelona). This involved only one lecture, but gave me the opportunity to respond positively to my old friend Armand Puig and to revisit Barcelona, though sadly, this time on my own (the call of grandparental responsibility keeping my wife in the UK). This lecture forms chapter 5.

I had flown to Barcelona from Israel where I took part in yet another conference on Paul (Paul in His Milieu: Land, Religion and Culture) at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies. My lecture there (In Search for the Historical Paul) overlapped too much with the above lectures for me to include it in what follows. But I wish here to express my gratitude to Fr. Michael McGarry and his staff for organising the conference and its very interesting programme.

Prior to the Tantur conference I had delivered the Deichmann lectures at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, at the invitation of Dr. Roland Deines on behalf of the Deichmann Program for Early Jewish and Christian Literature of the Hellenistic-Roman Era. These were not on Paul, but at Dr. Deiness request, on the Gospels. The concern was that Hebrew-speaking students interested in the New Testament writings and the beginnings of Christianity have too few textbooks in Hebrew with which to work. So lectures on basic and fundamental themes for understanding the New Testament and earliest Christianity are an essential part of the programme. There naturally was interest in the historical value of the Christian Gospels, and it seemed important to me to fill up the gap between Jesus and the Gospels, as well as to explain how the Gospels formed a new literary genre, and how the Fourth Gospel fitted with the others. For the invitation and visit I will always be grateful to Dr. Deichmann, Dr. Deines, and the other members of the Ben Gurion team, Prof. Zipi Talshir and Dr. Cana Werman; also for their memorable hospitality and to Dr. Deines for fulfilling so well the additional role of an accomplished tour guide.

As the three weeks rolled on I became aware that nine of the ten lectures would form a rather coherent and potentially interesting (even valuable) little book. In each case I had had to write out the lectures in full beforehand, since translated texts or simultaneous translation was desirable. So not much more was required to put the nine lectures into publishable form. It made most sense to put them in the sequence used for this publication. On reflection, it seemed best to begin with the four Beer-Sheva lectures on the Gospels (chs. 14), not least since it was probably Paul who gave the term gospel its decisive Christian stamp. And the Barcelona lecture (ch. 5) neatly provides a bridge fromJesus to Paul. The Ariccia lectures on Paul could then provide the follow-through to Paul (chs. 69) and leave the reader with the challenge which the bimillennial Paul still makes to contemporary Christianity, as he did to Christianitys first generation.

In further discussion I have made some emendations to the lectures as originally delivered. This is principally because five of the nine lectures were delivered to almost exclusively Christian audiences, whereas the other four were delivered in a predominantly Jewish setting. To put them all together for publication in both settings called for only a slight moderation of the conclusions to the lectures on Paulit being all the easier to do so, since the Jewishness of Paul was one of the main themes of the Paul lectures. There was also some small overlap between two or three of the lectures, but on balance it seemed best to let the lectures stand as delivered rather than abbreviating the lecture into what would then appear as a somewhat curtailed chapter.

As I prepared the lectures for publication, the other problem confronting me was the extent of the footnotes and cross-references to other bibliography. I had not set out to provide a review of literature on each of the subjects addressed. That would have required additional sections for individual lectures and perhaps a completely new chapter. In fact, I have added some bibliographical references where I could do so without getting into lengthy discussion with other views. But to do more, it seemed to me, would change the character of the lectures and the book itself. I comfort myself with the thought that I have interacted very fully with other literature in the volumes which precede this small offeringThe Theology of Paul the Apostle (Eerdmans, 1998), Christianity in the Making, vol. 1, Jesus Remembered (Eerdmans, 2003), and vol. 2, Beginning from Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2009)and invite those who want further bibliography to follow up particular points or issues in these volumes.

Since I will be unknown to many of my readers, at Dr. Deiness suggestion I have added a brief Personal Introduction after the preface.