Reception studies are à la mode. Why this might be the case is not straightforwardly clear. Cynically, one might suggest that the Bible in particular, not least the New Testament, has been interpreted into the ground and scholars have been in need of new approaches to spice up the over-churned soup. In such a context reception studies provide acres of potentially unfurrowed material. More optimistically perhaps, one could argue that the turn against the idea of disinterested histories, encouraged by the relentless march of post-modern assumptions, has in part been aided by and has encouraged reception studies, with a carapace of sophistication provided by Gadamer, and his idea of ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’.

The collective volume under review, based on a bipartite conference held at Geneva and Lausanne in 2016 and in Berlin in 2017, presents a series of studies on the reception of Paul. When precisely we can begin to talk about the latter is a question but there is, as the editors state, a good case to be made for the penning of Paul's first letter. Certainly Paul never comes to us in a neutral way and his reception is dictated by a variety of concerns and contexts, whether his own, or later interpreters, and manifests itself in a variety of ways. The volume is not a history of that reception but a set of studies which reveal something of the complexity of the subject, approached under different headings. Readers of this Journal will be most interested in studies which do not concern themselves exclusively with the New Testament (more than half are concerned with the latter). Andreas Lindemann provides a helpful overview of the subject, arguing as he did in his thesis of more than forty years ago that the post-New Testament period is not, as some had contended, marked by a forgetting of Paul but rather, in various forms, an intensive interest in him. Essays which follow broadly support Lindemann's contention. Tobias Nicklas argues that the Acts of Paul and Thecla, though lacking evidence of a deep theological engagement with Paul, do show in their emphasis on an ascetical image of the latter, some signs of interest in the Epistles. Francis Watson, in a essay on the Epistula apostolorum, shows how the author has sought to integrate Paul among the twelve, here, inter alia, giving voice to a particular reading of 1 Corinthians xv in which Paul pleads for the view that he is an Apostle carrying out his mission on the same basis as them. Christine Jacobi provides a helpful study on the relationship of Paul's resurrection language in 1 Corinthians and that found in the Letter of Rheginus and the Gospel of Philip. James Kelhoffer pens a subtle essay on the relationship of 2 Clement 14's distinctive interpretation of the Church's preexistence and Paul's ecclesiology, positing a critical and corrective interaction of the former with the latter (here Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians). Enrico Norelli shows how Ignatius of Antioch adapted ideas found in Pauline letters to his own circumstances; and Joseph Verheyden does the same for 1 Clement, showing how Clement uses Paul's letters, often without citing them, as if they provided him with significant theological material which could be used with some freedom (hence the failure to cite Paul's words that often). Thomas Kraus and Jean-Daniel Dubois provide further essays on the Gnostic reception of Paul, showing his importance both as thinker and mediator of revelation; and Outi Lehtipu shows how Paul's complex attitude to women, as evidenced in his letters, manifested itself in a sometimes contradictory heritage in the second century. Frédéric Almer discusses the reception of Paul in the Pseudo-Clementine writings, a complex subject because Paul is never in fact mentioned by name in that corpus. Almer helpfully shows the way in which scholars have sought to identify the passages which refer to Paul and how this has led to correspondingly different lists of passages. Almer also shows how the negative reception of Paul in this corpus can present contrasting images of Paul (both as law-breaking and law-abiding) and makes the bold suggestion, inter alia, that the presentation of Barnabas in the corpus is determined by anti-Pauline assumptions. Judith Lieu looks again at the reception of Paul by Marcion, laying bare the complex character of the sources available and eschewing simple binaries in which Marcion is either the man to give Paul prominence in early Christianity or someone who simply reflects a developing tendency. She emphasises the fact that, as with other Christians, Marcion is an interpreter of Paul, but that we should not rush to assume that his text of Paul was determined by his own theological assumptions – it may well have belonged to broad streams of textual transmission in the second century. Jens Schröter looks at the way in which Paul's letters were collected, positing a relatively early date for such a thing, and arguing that a decisive step in the formation of the New Testament came when Paul's letters were brought together with the Gospels, a process which is hinted at in 1 Clement but becomes clearer in Irenaeus. The volume ends with a piece by Cilliers Breytenbach showing the way in which Pauline influence exerted itself on inscriptions, certain forms of praxis (encratism) and nomenclature in Lyaconia where Paul and Barnabas, according to Acts, conducted a significant mission.

As is normally the case with a large collective volume, one is left to ponder what clearly emerges from it – Paul was more often than not used critically rather than as an authority to be parroted; that it would be wrong to talk of Paulinism, if by that we mean a clear and fixed line of development from Paul through a range of authorities; that Paul was rarely used as the expositor par excellence of matters to do with justification, the law or the Gentiles, issues which were to become so important later on; that Paul's Jewishness was soon lost sight of by many writers; and that the image of Paul, reflecting the New Testament itself, varied considerably – he could be an ascetic, a missionary, a defender of varied theological positions, an antinomian Christian apostate, a recipient of heavenly truths. To some these might seem unsurprising conclusions but they are arrived at through careful and thoughtful reading of a range of material, some less familiar than others.