IT IS a joy to acknowledge the assistance of colleagues and friends who graciously read and commented on this book at various stages in its evolution. At the top of the list are three who alternately challenged, instructed, and inspired me: Ward Blanton, Brigitte Kahl, and Laura Nasrallah. Several others read the first draft of the manuscript and provided valuable criticism and advice: Dale Martin, Gerd Luedemann, Terrence Tilley, Ben Dunning, Neil Elliott, John Penniman, Yung Suk Kim, Deborah Wallace, and Gary Luttrell. Only after the manuscript was finalized did I think to send it to my former Fordham colleague Christophe Chalamet (now of the Université de Genève); Christophe’s observations were so insightful that I wish I had contacted him when the work was still in genesis.
Many years ago (in the summer of 1979) in Freiburg, Lloyd Spencer (Leeds University) introduced me to the writings of Walter Benjamin. The consequences of that encounter are still working themselves out in my thought and in my life.
A partial précis of this book was presented as a paper at a symposium in honor of the retirement of Daniel Patte from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in April, 2013. I am grateful to the organizers and participants in this symposium for critical observations and encouragement to complete the manuscript.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the editors of Insurrections, Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, and Jeffrey W. Robbins, for including my work in their series. Wendy Lochner, my editor at Columbia University Press, her assistant Christine Dunbar, and copyeditor Robert Demke, as well as the entire production staff, especially Anne McCoy and Kathryn Jorge, have been exemplary; without them, the book would be far less readable.
This book arose from a prolonged dialogue with the three people to whom it is dedicated: my sons, Locke and Mark, and my friend Bernard Barsky. Each challenged me to make the argument of the book more forthright and accessible. In many respects, this book is a continuation of the graduate seminar on Paul and the philosophers that I taught with Rabbi Barsky in the spring of 2007.
My beloved wife and partner of thirty years, Diane, listened to drafts of this book read aloud on the patio on long summer evenings and offered many helpful suggestions; she is my best and truest critic.