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hagiasophia's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I am struggling to find the best way to write this review. Paul is a very difficult figure for me, and one I'm quite familiar with, seeing as my college honors project focused on a section of 2 Corinthians. That being said, I am not a Christian and don't typically read Christian lit because I dislike the ways it typically characterizes historical and mythical figures. However, this book was marketed as being based in recent scholarship on Paul so I was intrigued, if a little skeptical going in.
I did enjoy this book overall- I think it will appeal most of all to liberal Christians who want to rehab Paul from his sexist, homophobic, etc. reputation. This was certainly the author's agenda, and at times that agenda got in the way of historical accuracies. For instance, in the author's note Parini says that Paul "believed in radical equality between men and women", a claim I am not fully convinced of (Paul's idea of gender "equality" was probably very different that our modern understanding). Nor does he reckon with Paul's vague views on slavery, as explored in Philemon and Paul's heavy use of slavery metaphors in his letters to describe his relationship with Christ (the Greek word for Lord, kurios, is the same term as that of a slave master).
Let me list the things that the author did well and got historically accurate:
-He does not refer to people as "Christians" or gatherings as "churches" , as those things didn't exist yet.
-He shows how the lines between Jews and gentiles in the early movement were blurred, but I don't think he shows that many Jews were semi-assimilated, native Greek speakers who participated in non-Jewish society widely.
-Paul as Hellenistic, drawing from Greek writing, thought, and rhetoric.
-The divisions between leaders of the early church over how strictly Torah law must be observed
-Paul's belief that the apocalypse was going to come within his lifetime and his grappling with the reality that it actually did not.
Now let me get to the things I was less into. I need to allow the author a certain degree of artistic license- he included events from Acts that many deem historically improbable, because the are a part of the Paul mythos and make for a good story (for example, many scholars question whether or not Paul studied under Gamliel and the idea that Gamliel converted himself is dubious). I did like that he included the character Thecla, from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, a non-canonical story tradition. I am not of the camp that believes that Paul fully rejected Jewish law and traditions, but Parini seems to be. His Paul becomes more and more distrustful of Judaism over the course of the book. While there were conflicts between Paul and other Jews, I think he fully engaged with Judaism in various ways throughout his life. Basically, if I had written the book, I would have portrayed Paul's relationship to Judaism differently. People interested in this topic should check out Paula Fredricksen's book Paul: The Pagan's Apostle.
There were a few other things that bothered me, but they were just nit-picky things only people very nerdy about this period and topic of history would notice: some places are given ancient names, others modern, some Hebrew/Aramaic names are transliterated from their original language, others are anglicized (compare Yohanan and Simon, for example), a few details about what stories about Jesus were likely circulating in this time period, etc. I'm not going to really get into those things, especially since this book is more well-researched than many other Christian/Bible inspired novels I've read, so I don't want to be too hard on it.
It's natural in these sorts of stories for Jewish people to be the antagonists, naturally opposed to Paul's message. This trope has its roots in anti-semitism and I was worried I would find it here as well. This was less the case. Jewish people were still portrayed as stuffy, out-of-date rule followers more than I liked, but things were not as egregious as they could have been. Again, I wish the author had showed more of the diversity of Jewish practices in the ancient world, but I don't know how picky I can get. Additionally, many Jewish people DID reject Christianity. That's a historical fact. Parini portrays this in a way that is less filled with old tropes, but still falls into a few. There's nothing wrong with stressing the importance of Mosaic law to Jewish people in this period, or even explore the possibility that Jewish folks reacted negatively to Christianity (which many did). However, that is not the only way they interacted with this new movement and I wish there had been more nuance beyond just a dichotomy of rejection/acceptance.
I am not sure how I feel about the way the author added miracles into the narrative. When things are narrated from Paul's POV, we get them as actually miraculous, but we are led to believe he's a little bit unreliable as a narrator. Meanwhile, Luke provides more reasonable explanations for many miraculous events. I thought this was an interesting comparison and helped explain how people could interpret lucky events as miracles. As the author is Christian-adjacent, if not Christian, this makes sense- he wanted to include miracles while also offering the possibility that some of the miracles were just luck.
The prose was clean and observant, very easy to read and follow. I liked that we had multiple perspectives and got to hear both Luke and Paul's versions of events. The story was engaging and Parini added enough elements that it didn't feel like I was just reading a slightly fleshed out version of the New Testament narrative. Again, I enjoyed this overall, and if it sounds like your type of book, you will probably like it even more than I did.
I did enjoy this book overall- I think it will appeal most of all to liberal Christians who want to rehab Paul from his sexist, homophobic, etc. reputation. This was certainly the author's agenda, and at times that agenda got in the way of historical accuracies. For instance, in the author's note Parini says that Paul "believed in radical equality between men and women", a claim I am not fully convinced of (Paul's idea of gender "equality" was probably very different that our modern understanding). Nor does he reckon with Paul's vague views on slavery, as explored in Philemon and Paul's heavy use of slavery metaphors in his letters to describe his relationship with Christ (the Greek word for Lord, kurios, is the same term as that of a slave master).
Let me list the things that the author did well and got historically accurate:
-He does not refer to people as "Christians" or gatherings as "churches" , as those things didn't exist yet.
-He shows how the lines between Jews and gentiles in the early movement were blurred, but I don't think he shows that many Jews were semi-assimilated, native Greek speakers who participated in non-Jewish society widely.
-Paul as Hellenistic, drawing from Greek writing, thought, and rhetoric.
-The divisions between leaders of the early church over how strictly Torah law must be observed
-Paul's belief that the apocalypse was going to come within his lifetime and his grappling with the reality that it actually did not.
Now let me get to the things I was less into. I need to allow the author a certain degree of artistic license- he included events from Acts that many deem historically improbable, because the are a part of the Paul mythos and make for a good story (for example, many scholars question whether or not Paul studied under Gamliel and the idea that Gamliel converted himself is dubious). I did like that he included the character Thecla, from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, a non-canonical story tradition. I am not of the camp that believes that Paul fully rejected Jewish law and traditions, but Parini seems to be. His Paul becomes more and more distrustful of Judaism over the course of the book. While there were conflicts between Paul and other Jews, I think he fully engaged with Judaism in various ways throughout his life. Basically, if I had written the book, I would have portrayed Paul's relationship to Judaism differently. People interested in this topic should check out Paula Fredricksen's book Paul: The Pagan's Apostle.
There were a few other things that bothered me, but they were just nit-picky things only people very nerdy about this period and topic of history would notice: some places are given ancient names, others modern, some Hebrew/Aramaic names are transliterated from their original language, others are anglicized (compare Yohanan and Simon, for example), a few details about what stories about Jesus were likely circulating in this time period, etc. I'm not going to really get into those things, especially since this book is more well-researched than many other Christian/Bible inspired novels I've read, so I don't want to be too hard on it.
It's natural in these sorts of stories for Jewish people to be the antagonists, naturally opposed to Paul's message. This trope has its roots in anti-semitism and I was worried I would find it here as well. This was less the case. Jewish people were still portrayed as stuffy, out-of-date rule followers more than I liked, but things were not as egregious as they could have been. Again, I wish the author had showed more of the diversity of Jewish practices in the ancient world, but I don't know how picky I can get. Additionally, many Jewish people DID reject Christianity. That's a historical fact. Parini portrays this in a way that is less filled with old tropes, but still falls into a few. There's nothing wrong with stressing the importance of Mosaic law to Jewish people in this period, or even explore the possibility that Jewish folks reacted negatively to Christianity (which many did). However, that is not the only way they interacted with this new movement and I wish there had been more nuance beyond just a dichotomy of rejection/acceptance.
I am not sure how I feel about the way the author added miracles into the narrative. When things are narrated from Paul's POV, we get them as actually miraculous, but we are led to believe he's a little bit unreliable as a narrator. Meanwhile, Luke provides more reasonable explanations for many miraculous events. I thought this was an interesting comparison and helped explain how people could interpret lucky events as miracles. As the author is Christian-adjacent, if not Christian, this makes sense- he wanted to include miracles while also offering the possibility that some of the miracles were just luck.
The prose was clean and observant, very easy to read and follow. I liked that we had multiple perspectives and got to hear both Luke and Paul's versions of events. The story was engaging and Parini added enough elements that it didn't feel like I was just reading a slightly fleshed out version of the New Testament narrative. Again, I enjoyed this overall, and if it sounds like your type of book, you will probably like it even more than I did.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore
Graphic descriptions of executions and circumcision
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