This is an ambitious and thoughtful book. Through an analysis of the use of Paul and his letters by a number of early Christian authors, mainly dating from the third century onwards, as this related to the developing Christian catechumenate, Benjamin Edsall addresses the wider hermeneutical question of Pauline reception. The investigation of a particular subject acts as a springboard for a focused set of hermeneutical reflections.

The main section of the book opens with an examination of the development of the early Christian catechumenate. Following many others, Edsall argues that it only begins to take on anything like a fixed form in the early third century. The next four chapters (iii–vi) are dedicated to a discussion of how Paul's image is shaped in the light of emerging catechetical practices in, respectively, The acts of Paul and Thecla, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and John Chrysostom. Chapter vii presents a synthesis of the findings of the previous four chapters, focusing in part upon the ways in which these broadly similar, yet distinctive, ‘catechetical’ interpretations draw on the same body of texts, in particular 1 Corinthians i.17 and iii.1–6, as well as Romans i.17, and unite in presenting an image of Paul which is at once pedagogical (Paul is presented as a teacher) and ecclesiological (he is a man of the Church and so legitimately understood in relation to that Church). Drawing on these same texts, an attempt is made to situate their interpretation in current exegesis, here as a means of drawing out the way in which ancient interpretations can in fact elucidate contemporary discussion (in this context Edsall skillfully shows how the exegetical difficulties thrown up by 1 Cor. i.17 and iii.1–6, as these relate to the relationship of baptism to preaching, and the neophyte Christian to the mature one, are precisely the concerns of the ancient interpreters he has chosen to discuss and more recent commentators on the text). Edsall then juxtaposes the view of Paul that underpins the ancient catechetical interpretation that he has outlined, one which assumes the central role of Paul as a teacher and a reflector of burgeoning Christian tradition, with the more modern view derivable from F. C. Baur, whose ultimate origins lie in debates between Luther and Erasmus, and which is predicated upon an image of ‘a confrontational and independent Paul’. Edsall is clear that much of Baur's thesis about Christian origins no longer commands the interpretive heights that it did in the mid-nineteenth century but he shows that modern commentators still find elements of his overarching assumptions alluring. In the final chapter, Edsall explicitly rejects the idea that reception should be seen ‘as a marginal curiosity’, akin to studying the afterlife of a work as something distinct from the meaning of the text, which is properly accessed by historical, sociological or narratological criticism. As he notes, ‘our current historically oriented interpretive paradigm is no less an aspect of “reception” than the readings of the early Christians or the Reformers’. But this merely raises the question of how different interpretations from different eras can dialogue with each other. It is at this point that Edsall introduces the idea of iterations of Pauline interpretation, what he terms ‘actualizations of textual potentialities’. As he writes, ‘any particular reading … embodies possible, but not necessary, configurations of Pauline resources, illuminating the contours of the texts in question’. This constitutes to some extent a development of Gadamer's idea of horizons in which the situatedness of the interpreter, of the text and the tradition through which the text is received, become central elements in any understanding of interpretation. A study of reception, then, whether one deems individual interpretations satisfactory or not, enables one to learn something of the interpretative possibilities of a text, and to understand them against the particular circumstances in which they were forged.

This is a stimulating book, which evidences a sure-footedness in more conventional areas of textual and historical study, as well as wider hermeneutical questions. It reflects a changed landscape both more generally in New Testament studies and, more specifically, in Pauline studies, where it was once possible, from the lofty heights of historical criticism, to patronise older interpretative traditions as mistaken. Edsall's more sympathetic approach to these earlier traditions, seen both in his desire to understand the how and why of the latter, but also in the way in which they manifest ‘textual potentiality’, while at the same time relativising our own contingencies, has become a more commonplace viewpoint, at least in principle. His decision to do this through an investigation of the way Paul is understood as a catechist is striking and never straightforwardly explained. Part of it is accounted for by the sense in which Paul the catechist, with his strongly pedagogical and ecclesial character, stands in apparent contrast to the Baurian vision of Paul the apostle of ecclesial opposition and robust individuality (in this respect, it is not perhaps coincidental that Edsall's previous monograph, from 2015, was about Paul's witness to formative early Christian tradition, where some of the binaries presented by ancient and modern interpretive horizons must have emerged). Whatever the grounds, the subject of Paul the catechist is a rich one precisely because it touches upon a range of issues which make for a properly engaged discussion of reception history. Some will wonder whether Edsall's invocation of the idea of seeing variant readings of Paul over time as iterations of Pauline interpretation overcomes the ghost of an incipient relativism – his distinction between an ancient interpreter as being wrong and once being wrong begs more questions than it answers. But such a question, as well as the problems it throws up, go with the territory, as Edsall would be the first to claim. Certainly his study does not suffer from the insouciance which can sometimes go with reception studies. This is a rigorous, intelligent and learned book, which will contribute in a distinctive way to an ongoing debate.