The present work has grown out of a doctoral thesis which was accepted by the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford in January 1984. The thesis was prepared under the supervision of the late Professor G.B. Caird, who patiently watched and assisted its rather wayward progress over a period of five years. Mr Robert Morgan too was a source of much encouragement and many helpful suggestions. However, the thesis has been very thoroughly rewritten from the standpoint of a much more rigorous historical and sociological perspective. The aim is to demonstrate from this perspective that the view of Paul's controversy with Judaism and Jewish Christianity which derives from the Reformation is seriously misleading, and that the Pauline texts become much more readily comprehensible when one abandons this overtly theological approach.

It may be as well at the outset to explain the way in which I have tried to use sociological insights in the study of Paul. Much valuable recent work applying sociology to the New Testament has been interdisciplinary in nature.