While the task of exegesis after Auschwitz has been to expose the anti-Judaism inherent in the Christian tradition, the founding of the Jewish state has also helped show the continuation of the covenant between God and Israel. For Lloyd Gaston, the living reality of Judaism makes possible a better understanding of Paul's prophetic call as Apostle to the Gentiles. In Paul and the Torah, Gaston argues that the terms of Paul's mission must be taken seriously and that it is totally inappropriate to regard his 'conversion' as a transition from one religion to another. Paul's congregations were not made up of Christian Jews: they were exclusively Gentile. Thus he focused on God's promises to Abraham concerning Gentiles, which were fulfilled in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

Lloyd Gaston's profile page

Lloyd Gaston is a professor of the New Testament at the Vancouver School of Theology. He is a past president of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and author of No Stone on Another: Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels (1970).

Overall it is a remarkable work: original, provocative, and lucidly argued. The arguments are such that at times the reader rubs his eyes in astonishment ... I would predict that even those who are not finally persuaded will, like me, never read Paul in quite the same way again ... The debate will go on. But it will not be the same debate now that Gaston's book has appeared.

University of Toronto Quarterly

Gaston's work is a scholarly and thought-provoking attempt to arrive at what Paul really said.  Gaston is to be commended for his courage in presenting a point of view which he admits "runs against the grain of the entire Christian exegetical tradition." His work cannot be ignored; it forces Pauline scholars to re- examine old hypotheses and test new ones.

Religious Studies and Theology

[Paul and the Torah] "is an unqualified success in that it raises in a coherent and self-consistent fashion questions about Paul's view of Judaism itself and of the Torah that is central to Judaism ... Paul and the Torah is must reading for anyone interested in a coherent Paul.

Toronto Journal of Theology