“Jewish law provided not the contrast to Jesus’s message but its context and much of its content. By reading closely in biblical and postbiblical Jewish texts, Paul Sloan restores this dimension to the Synoptic Gospels’ representations of Jesus. Jesus and the Law of Moses is an exemplary work of scholarship.”
Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor Emerita, Boston University
“Christian readers of the Gospels often find themselves in the awkward position of explaining away sayings of Jesus about the law, trying gymnastically to square them with theological axioms derived from elsewhere. Against such tortured efforts, Paul Sloan shows in this lucid, readable book how it is possible—and indeed necessary—that Jesus means exactly what he says. Sloan’s Jesus consequently stands much closer both to the prophets before him and to the rabbis after him.”
Matthew V. Novenson, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of New Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary
“‘Who do you say that I am?’ the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels asks. In Jesus and the Law of Moses, Paul Sloan answers, ‘Jesus is God’s eschatological agent sent to Israel to unleash a renewed fidelity to both the covenant and the law of Moses.’ If you want to understand the Synoptic portrayal of Jesus, you need to read this book!”
Matthew Thiessen, associate professor of religious studies, McMaster University; author of Jesus and the Forces of Death
Paul T. Sloan (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is associate professor of early Christianity at Houston Christian University in Houston, Texas. He is the author of Mark 13 and the Return of the Shepherd and the coeditor of Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity, New Studies in Textual Interplay, and Visions and Violence in the Pseudepigrapha.