N. T. Wright’s creative reconstruction of Paul and his world

The writings of N. T. Wright are so voluminous that one might justly wonder: Why yet another book on Paul from this prolific author? The answer lies in the subtitle: A Biography. In distinction from his earlier works on Paul’s letters, here Wright tells us: “We are searching for the man behind the texts.” The audacity of that goal should give us pause. Even in the case of living authors, their identity, thoughts, formation, and motivations remain necessarily hidden, even to themselves to some degree. How much more so when the writer in question lived some 2,000 years ago?

Undeterred, Wright presses on in the name of “history,” which he repeatedly describes as “thinking into other people’s minds.” For Wright, such thinking (which he distinguishes from “psychology,” albeit without clarification or warrant) depends in turn on a reconstruction of Paul’s context and setting. That reconstruction is the starting point for this “biography,” and in Wright’s view it is an essential key to understanding Paul himself.

Wright begins by setting forth his understanding of history as a discipline and of Paul’s own context in particular. His goal is to invite modern readers to live in Paul’s world so as to understand what he is saying. Along the way he paints a vivid picture of young Saul growing up in Tarsus, zealous for the Torah and for Israel, learning at his father’s knee to distrust the goyim. Wright makes a great deal of the stories of Phineas and Elijah, along with the stories of the Maccabean martyrs, as role models for young Saul, whom he characterizes as driven by violent zeal. Indeed, we can know a good deal of what motivated Saul through reconstructing the “single story” of Jewish hopes in the first century, running from Adam’s fall to the call of Abraham, to the disobedience of Abraham’s heirs, to exile and a future restoration to be accomplished by the Messiah. Those who have read Wright’s other work will find themselves in familiar territory here. For Wright, everything in Paul’s letters fits into this dominant narrative of exile and return, dependent on covenant loyalty.