The Political Theology of Paul

The late Jacob Taubes held the chair in Hermeneutics at the Free University of Berlin. In the U.S., he taught as a visiting professor at Harvard. Taubes apparently published little during his lifetime, but had a very great influence as a teacher. In addition to the present posthumous volume, the Assmanns and others have edited a collection of his writings from 1953-1983 entitled Vom Kult zur Kultur: Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft; two volumes of his works are currently coming out from Suhrkamp. This would be his first book to be translated into English. Aleida Assmann is Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Konstanz. Jan Assmann is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. Moses the Egyptian: An Essay in Mnemohistory (Harvard, 1997) and Re and Amun: The Crisis of Polytheism in New Kingdom Egypt (Routledge, Chapman, & Hall, 1995) are his books to appear in English.

@fmct:Contents @toc4:Translator's Note and Acknowledgments iii @toc4:Preface iii @toc2:Introduction 1 @toc3:1. Autobiographical Approaches to the Epistle to the Romans 000 2. Paul in Jewish Religious History: Messianic Logic 000 @toc2:Part I: Readings: Paul and Moses, the Establishment of a New People of God @toc3:1. Addresses of the Epistle to the Romans 000 Excursus: The Fate of the Jewish Christian Congregations 000 2. Nomos: Law and Justification; a Reading of Romans 811 000 3. Election and Rejection: A Reading of Romans 8:319:5 and Berakhot 32a 000 4. Pneuma: The Surpassing of Salvation History and the Overcoming of This World; a Reading of Romans 913 000 @toc2:Part II. Effects: Paul and Modernity, Transfigurations of the Messianic @toc2:1. Strangers in This World: Marcion and the Consequences 000 2. The Zealots of the Absolute and of Decision: Carl Schmitt and Karl Barth 000 3. Nihilism as World Politics and Aestheticized Messianism: Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno 000 4. Exodus from Biblical Religion: Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud 000 @toc2:Appendix A: The Jacob TaubesCarl Schmitt Story 000 @toc2:Apprendix B: Two Letters @toc2:Afterword 000 @tocca:Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, Aleida and Jan Assmann @toc3:1. Readings: The Legitimation and Formation of a New Union-Covenant [Ver-Bund] 000 2. Effects: Paul and Modernity 000 3. Political Theology 000 @toc3:Editorial Note 000 @toc4:Notes 000 @toc4:Index of Names 000 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Bible, N, T, Romans Criticism, interpretation, etc, Paul, the Apostle, Saint, Christianity and politics

"As always with Taubes, it is all very apocalyptic and reasonably brilliant or, at least, brilliantly distorted and filled with strokes of genius - the genius of a charlatan at his very, very best." - Hebraic Political Studies