Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History

A scholarly critical history written in the early 20th century. It examines how interpretations of the Apostle Paul have evolved, centering on the problem of how Jesus’ originally Jewish, apocalyptic message transformed into Pauline doctrine and then into early Greek theology. The work will appeal to readers interested in biblical criticism, the history of dogma, and the intellectual shifts that shaped Christian theology. The opening of the book sets out a bold agenda: to continue the author’s earlier reappraisal of Jesus by tracing the development from Jesus’ eschatological teaching to Paulinism and on to early Greek theology, exposing the gaps that traditional compartmentalized scholarship left unexplained. The preface argues that critical theology must confront the “Hellenisation” of the Gospel and asks whether Paul marks its first stage or still stands within Jewish apocalyptic thought; it also outlines a historical survey approach and notes the deliberate omission of much English and American literature. The first chapter reviews the beginnings of historical-critical exegesis, moving from Reformation proof-texting to Grotius’ philological independence, Semler’s historical method and literary hypotheses, Schleiermacher’s doubts about the Pastorals, Eichhorn’s broader rejection of them, and early attempts (Usteri, H. E. G. Paulus) to systematize Paul, including the tension between juridical and ethical strands. The next chapter presents Baur’s watershed thesis of a Petrine–Pauline conflict resolved amid second‑century Gnosticism, his privileging of four major epistles, and his Hegelian reading—followed by critiques from Ritschl, Lechler, and Lipsius, the last highlighting two parallel doctrinal lines in Paul. The third chapter sketches later scholarship: emerging consensus on which letters are genuine, debates over Colossians/Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, the tendency to arrange Paul’s thought under dogmatic loci, psychologizing Paul’s development from the Damascus vision, and the insufficiently resolved questions of unity, relation to Jesus’ sayings, and the roles of late Judaism and Greek thought in shaping Paul’s ideas.