The first Paul

Buddy read with Jeananne. This was an interesting book, focusing on Paul's letters. Borg & Crossan's specific argument is that, of Paul's New Testament letters, some of them are “authentic” aka written literally by Paul, some are unclear as to whether historically they were written by him (“pastoral” letters), and some were absolutely not written by him (“disputed” letters). The authors focus on the so-called authentic letters (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon), discussing various subjects like slavery, patriarchy, sacrifice, justice/sanctification using Paul's historical perspective as a lens.Overall it gave me a lot to think about - retributive vs restorative/distributive justice; radical Paul vs conservative Paul vs reactionary Paul - but also this book is so slim and doesn't have a lot of endnotes/sources, and I wanted more from it and also more application. (What am I supposed to DO with the fact that this made me like Potentially Real Paul better, but that the other maybe-Pauline letters are still biblical?)Made for a good discussion, and as always much more reading to do.Turns out these were already my faves of the Pauline letters HMMM. The extensive look at Philemon in particular was excellent, as I had never given that one as much attention as some of the bigger names.