Daniel Langton's book on the figure of Paul in modern Jewish thought and culture is an ambitious, pioneering study, which impresses the reader both with the tremendous breadth of scholarship presented and the big questions it addresses about Jews, Judaism, and modernity. Langton's work is a tour de force that looks at how a wide array of Jewish thinkers and scholars, as well as writers and artists, have related to the Apostle Paul in terms of their own (re)conceptions of Judaism and Jewish identity. In setting out to “document the variety of meanings imputed to the iconic figure of Paul in a wide range of Jewish discourses in the modern period” (285), Langton analyzes how these modern Jewish intellectuals and artists have wrestled with the fundamental tension between Jew and Christian-Gentile that Paul represents. His central argument is that by engaging in this process of how to relate to and understand the figure of Paul, Jewish intellectuals and artists were involved in the broader process of Jewish redefinition and the search for “Jewish authenticity” in the post-Enlightenment era. Whether they were renouncing or reclaiming Paul, distancing themselves from or identifying with him, Langton sees his subjects as taking a stand on the vexing problem of identity that became the hallmark of Jewish modernity.

One of the main strengths (and occasional weaknesses) of Langton's book is that he casts his net so widely. He sets his study against a number of important contexts, including Pauline studies, premodern Jewish views of Paul, and modern popular perspectives on Paul, before moving to his real bailiwick: modern scholarly and artistic depictions of Paul. He handles each of these subjects deftly, with sharp insight and a firm command of the relevant literature. Once turning to the main body of his study, Langton provides chapter after chapter of analysis of dozens of writers on Paul, both well known and more unfamiliar. From Spinoza to Buber to Freud; from Felix Mendelssohn to Franz Werfel to Sholem Asch; from Richard Rubenstein to Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer to Daniel Boyarin, Langton critically engages each writer (or artist) in an attempt to see where he or she falls on the broad spectrum of Jewish Pauline interpreters. He spans eras, continents, and genres with great agility, contextualizing each of his subjects and explicating their writings on Paul through incisive close readings.

Langton organizes his material according to common themes, such as building barriers or bridges between Judaism and Christianity (Chap. 2), establishing Jewish authenticity (Chap. 3), and transformative approaches to Jewish self-understanding (Chap. 4). He also constructs chapters around genres, such as novels (Chap. 6), philosophical writings (Chap. 7), and psychoanalytical writings (Chap. 8). Within each of these chapters, Langton addresses the work of at least two and as many as a dozen writers, usually devoting a few pages, sometimes more, to elucidating each one's position on Paul. He then presents a conclusion to each section or chapter in which he links his excursus on each author back to his larger questions about how attitudes toward Paul reflect a variety of modern Jewish sensibilities and self-understandings.

As a reader, I enjoyed being exposed to such a detailed analysis of so many different writings concerning Paul, but at times, this approach felt redundant, and the larger concerns of the book seemed temporarily lost; Langton's micro-readings occasionally overshadowed the macro-history to which he aspired. In some cases, his concluding attempts to patch together all of the works treated in the chapter and to reconnect them to the book's underlying themes seemed overly contrived and were not persuasive. I understand Langton's desire to chronicle such a wide range of writers' views on Paul. However, I think the book would have benefitted from him developing his central arguments more instead of including so many close readings. He raises extremely important points—especially in the introduction and the conclusion—about the ever-changing and highly contested nature of Jewish identity in the modern age and how this identity was often constructed in opposition to or conjunction with intermediary figures like Paul. At the end of the book, Langton reiterates that these ideas are at the heart of his study—and I agree—but sometimes the reader has to work too hard to see this.

Despite my wish to see the balance of his dual focus on micro-readings and macro-history shifted slightly toward the latter, I am thoroughly impressed with Langton's work. It is a bold, ambitious book that combines an incredible breadth of research with answers to vital questions for the study of Jewish cultural history and Jewish-Christian relations. Langton's The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination is an outstanding piece of scholarship that truly stands alone, sui generis.