Paul: A Biography

In this definitive biography, renowned Bible scholar, Anglican bishop, and bestselling author N. T. Wright offers a radical look at the apostle Paul, illuminating the humanity and remarkable achievements of this intellectual who invented Christian theology--transforming a faith and changing the world. For centuries, Paul, the apostle who "saw the light on the Road to Damascus" and made a miraculous conversion from zealous Pharisee persecutor to devoted follower of Christ, has been one of the church's most widely cited saints. While his influence on Christianity has been profound, N. T. Wright argues that Bible scholars and pastors have focused so much attention on Paul's letters and theology that they have too often overlooked the essence of the man's life and the extreme unlikelihood of what he achieved. To Wright, "The problem is that Paul is central to any understanding of earliest Christianity, yet Paul was a Jew; for many generations Christians of all kinds have struggled to put this together." Wright contends that our knowledge of Paul and appreciation for his legacy cannot be complete without an understanding of his Jewish heritage. Giving us a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of the human and intellectual drama that shaped Paul, Wright provides greater clarity of the apostle's writings, thoughts, and ideas and helps us see them in a fresh, innovative way. Paul is a compelling modern biography that reveals the apostle's greater role in Christian history--as an inventor of new paradigms for how we understand Jesus and what he accomplished--and celebrates his stature as one of the most effective and influential intellectuals in human history.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member MarthaJeanne

This biography of Paul is both deep and accessible. Wright makes a point of placing Paul in his own time and cultures, often making even well known passages suddenly make sense.

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LibraryThing member revchrishemyock

Wow! I am always reluctant to use the word genius but you have to hand it to Tom Wright as he is the complete master of his material and his subject. What I would really like is for him to reduce the book to about 12 illustrated lectures and then I would feel that I knew Paul

LibraryThing member thornton37814

Respected biblical scholar N. T. Wright offers an insightful look at the life of the Apostle Paul. He correctly bases his insights on first century culture. He examines the Scriptures and looks at recent scholarship, offering his interpretations. He looks at Paul's writings in relation to what was

going on in Paul's life at the time. This book will be studied for many years to come.

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LibraryThing member deusvitae

What I have always appreciated about Wright is how he has worked very diligently to demonstrate how one can still hold on to canonical Christian beliefs and understand them in historically intelligible ways.

Such is on display in Paul: A Biography (link in picture). Wright attempts to reconstruct

the life of Paul based on Paul’s letters and Luke’s account in Acts of the Apostles, contextualizing his development, the experiences he endures, and the letters he wrote situated in their appropriate chronological order and contexts. In short, Paul: A Biography is a diachronic and more popularly directed condensation of Paul and the Faithfulness of God.

By virtue of necessity such an exposition will be speculative in many respects, although the speculation is historically informed by what is known about the Eastern Mediterranean world of the first century. I still remain unconvinced by his early Galatians hypothesis (I understand it as written around the same time as 2 Corinthians), but walked away with a far greater willingness to countenance an Ephesian imprisonment in which Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon were written.

I would thus highly recommend Paul: A Biography just like I tend to recommend a lot of Wright’s popular level writing: it is great for an audience which is not well versed, and not much interested, in the “inside baseball” of the world of scholarship on Paul, as long as one recognizes there is a lot of analysis going on which may not be explicitly manifest in this work but can be found in Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, etc. Likewise, it is good to remember he is crafting a story for coherence and there are a lot of questions behind the scenes which cannot be fully resolved. But he provides a well-reasoned portrait which can help believers better understand Paul in his context.

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