Discussion Guide: These are questions that accompany every chapter. They are meant to stir up lively discussions.

Study Guide for “Paul Found  in his Letters”

Chapter 1: Introduction 

1.    How will you go about explaining to someone that Paul was never a Christian?

2.    Explain this: no one would ever call themselves a Gentile in Paul's world.

3.    What leads us to be skeptical about the description of Paul in Acts?

4.    How many “Pauls” were there in the memory of those who lived in the 2nd to 4th centuries.? Name some of them.

5.     Why was the author reluctant to use the term Apostle for Paul even though that’s the word he used for himself?

Chapter 2: Paul in Arabia

1.    What are the challenges a historian faces when placing Paul in the history of the first century?

2.     Why does the author think that saying “Paul was persecuting early followers of Jesus” needs to be interpreted carefully?

3.     Is it significant that Paul might have been in the world where Abraham and Sarah lived and where they were buried? And that he also followed in the footsteps of Moses?

4.    How do we find one period in the first century when we think we can date when Paul escaped from Damascus?

5.    How is it that the beheading of John the Baptist ends up as part of this story of Paul in history?

Chapter 3: Paul: What does your name mean?

1.    How is it possible that with Paul we have a case of metanomasia?

2.    What does it mean that with Paul who works with his hands one scholar calls it an act of slave-enslavement?

3.    Discuss the difference between what the author thinks might have been Paul’s height in comparison to how artists have often tended to see him?

Chapter 4: Paul Living God’s Story 

1.    Why could Paul look back on his previous life, but do so without any regrets?

2.    What might have been Paul's imprints from his early years?

3.    How might www understand the role of a pedagogue? 

4.    What is the argument that Paul was called to his missionary work, but was not converted?

Chapter 5: Paul Lost in the Crowd

1.    What is the evidence behind the author’s thesis that Paul adopted the lifestyle of a common tradesman?

2.    What were realities of life for the majority were poor in Paul's world?

3.    What clothes might Paul have worn as a tradesman?

4.    What are the positive parts of Paul as Pharisee that he retained all his life? 

5.    How was it that Part was challenging a narrow definition of “genos” in his world?

6.    What is behind the phrase “the practice of low-disposition”?

Chapter 6: Paul Sent to the Nations 

1.    What does it mean to have a more holistic understanding of Torah and Judaism?

2.    What were Paul’s cultural and bi-lingual skills?

3.    Why does Abraham figure to be such a significant person for Paul?

4.    Who were the “God-fearers”?

5.    Why does the author think that Paul was more of Jewish thinker in his world?

Chapter 7: Paul in Community

1.    What does it mean that Paul placed more emphasis on belonging to the story of Jesus Messisah, in contrast to know it?

2.    How did Paul differ from those who asserted their rights and privileges?

3.    What do we learn about Paul’s friends in the final chapter of Romans (Chapter 16)?

Chapter 8: Paul Found in Letters Heard

1.    How different were the readings of Paul’s letters in an assembly in his time in contrast to our experience of those same letters?

2.    Why would Paul have trouble being called to be a pastor in one of our churches?

3.    Explain the role of an interlocutor in Paul’s letters.

4.    What are the two possible ways to read Romans 7:7-25?

Chapter 9: Paul an Unmanly Man 

1.    What does it mean and how much of a challenge is it for us to say that the world Paul knew in the first century of the common era was “a one-gendered world”?

2.    Explain Paul as malakos, mother, and nurse.

3.    How did Paul affirm all women when it came to asking that all women should have a veil on when in the assembly?

4.    Explain the problem of translations that probably should be of the word “woman”, but which become in some “wife”?

5.    Why does the author Paul wrote down the words “women be silent in church”? What leads us to think Paul never believed that for one second?

6.    What is an interpolation?

7.    What did Paul have to say about equality between a wife and her husband?

Chapter 10: Paul Slave of Christ

1.    What advice did the remembered Paul offer to slaves and slave masters? What is the significance of where this advice is found?

2.    Explain what we now know about the Roman Empire as a slave society.

3.    Explain why the author thinks that Onesimus was not a runaway slave, but had in fact been sent to help Paul while he was in prison.

4.    Did Paul really write “stay in slavery” in 1 Cor. 7:21-24? How else could this be read?

5.    What reservations did the author have about Paul’s silence when it came to slaves and their sexual availability?

Chapter 11: Paul in a Troubled World

1.    Why did the author ask “Was Paul a failed Pastor?”

2.    Explain the idea that 2 Corinthians may be composed of five different letters.

3.    What is the Letter of Tears. What makes it so unique?

4.    What do we know about poverty in Rome?

5.    Why is it important to consider translating the Greek word dikaiosyne more often as “justice” in contrast to the more frequent use of the word  “righteousness” as often happens?

6.    What was “imperial iconography” and how extensive was it?

7.    What did it mean to belong to ekklesia?

Chapter 12: Paul the Mystic

1.    Define and explain eschatology.

2.    How do you explain Paul’s declaration “I have seen the Lord” and what that means in connection to others who would say the same that he knew?

3.    What do we make of the source for the words we hear in the Eucharist?

4.    Explain Paul’s understanding of Satan.

5.    What is Paul’s possible connection to Mekabah Mysticism?

6.    What was Paul’s understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit?

7.    What is the meaning of Paul’s use of the Greek word “allelon” and how should that inform our relationships?

8.    Explain the Greek word “kononia.”

Chapter 13: Paul’s Watch

1.    What are the two Greeks words for time, and which meant more to Paul?

2.    What is “messianic time”?

3.    Explain the idea that Paul’s focus was on geography?

4.    Explain the patron-client system and how Paul thought so differently about it.

5.    What did Paul hope to accomplish with his collection?

6.    What was the arc of Paul’s travels?

7.    What was the purpose of the last war conducted while Augustus was Caesar?

8.    What was the Res Gestae?

9.    Where in Spain might Paul have been headed with his message of Jesus Messiah?

10. Why does the author assume that if Paul went to Spain he could not have gone there as a citizen of Rome?

 Chapter 14: Paul and the Kingdom to Come

 1.    What is the story about a particular verse from the King James bible that led so many in slavery and then in the Jim Crow era to treasure the memory of Paul?

2.    Where in the Bible did slaves hear the harshest words affirming slavery?

3.    What do you make of the author’s concluding comment that it is a lie for someone to say there are a Christian but they don’t belong to a church?