Poor Paul (as I often think of him) simply cannot catch a break. For most of the past two thousand years, his letter to the Romans -- especially chapters 9-11 (the only passage in the genuine Pauline letters that speaks directly about Israel)  -- served as a primary source of proof-texts undergirding theologies that explained how Christians displaced the Jewish people in God's favor. Interpreters succeeded in employing Paul in an enterprise so totally at odds with his gospel and his mission to first-century gentiles only because they yanked him out of his own historical, religious, social, cultural, and rhetor-ical contexts and read Romans as if it had been written to the churches of Augustine and Martin Luther. In too many quar-ters, Paul is still read the same way today; but the Paul of Augustine and Luther is not the author of Romans, and the Romans of Augustine and Luther is not the letter Paul wrote. Ironically, post-Holocaust Christian thinkers rely heavily on Romans 9-11 in their attempts to repair the damage caused by anti-Judaic displacement theologies that had once been buttressed by those same three chapters. Unfortunately, in most cases, heavy reliance by modern interpreters on tradi-tional readings of Romans does little to repair the damage done to Paul's theology and generally succeeds only in making Paul's thought more confusing and even harder to understand.

In 2001 and 2002, the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies offered a mini-course called "Rescuing Paul." That course mounted a serious effort to liberate Paul from the distorting effects of his portrayal in The Acts of the Apostles, of Pauline legends, of New Testament epistles that Paul did not write, and of egregiously inaccurate translations of the letters he did write. A large portion of the course was devoted to a close and careful study of what Romans 1:16-3:26 actually says and of what, therefore, Paul was most likely trying to tell the gen-tiles in the church at Rome about God's action in Jesus Christ.

In 2005 the ICJS will present the sequel to "Rescuing Paul": a five-week mini-course called "Rescuing Romans 9-11." The course will run on the five Tuesday evenings in March from 7-9 p.m. It will be taught by Janis L. Koch, who is as obsessed as ever with uncovering the authentic thought of the Jewish apostle to the gentiles. Enrollment in "Rescuing Romans 9-11" will not be restricted to people who attended "Rescuing Paul," since this new course will begin with a brief review of the most important information presented in the earlier course. Following that review, those in attendance will pick up where the first course left off and will not stop until they can say, along with Paul, the "Amen" at the end of Romans 11.

Please join us as we dare to speak truth to the power of tradi-tional misinterpretations and tortured translations of Paul's most important contribution to Jewish and gentile relations in his day, and Jewish and Christian relations in our own.

For further information on "Rescusing Romans 9-11" contact Laura Riger at 410-523-7227 x10.