New piece by Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker. One takeaway early on:
A detailed story of Paul’s travels and mission, Acts is also generally agreed among scholars to be largely, if not entirely, fictionalized, containing an improbable number of shipwrecks and prison breaks and snakebites and other twists typical of Greek storytelling from the period.
While not expressly citing A.N. Sherwin-White, who noted in "Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament," that the "we" passages of Acts were essentially a literary trope from this type of Hellenestic "historical romance" or whatever we should call it, of the 1st-2nd centuries CE, this clearly reflects similar thinking. More here.
Second point he notes is the genuine letters of Paul fall on one side of the Jewish Revolt and Acts, along with everything else with the possible exception of a Baptizer-disciple core of Revelation, is on the other.
Third, some of Paul's own rhetoric gets a reality check:
He became aware of the Jesus cult very shortly after its emergence, in the thirties C.E., and at first, by his own account, he “persecuted” the new faith—though, given how small the cult still must have been and how few public powers were available to Jews to enforce their prejudices, this was more likely persecution by argument than by torture.
Right. But why? And, if we identify this as a rhetorical trope, it spurs us to look carefully at other such tropes, ie, "Pharisee of Pharisees."
But then Gopnik has a big fail:
The most remarkable thing that emerges from these texts is what you might call Paul’s emotional availability. He instructs, cajoles, gives shrewd advice—“be all things to all people” is his positive counsel on how to build coalitions—and sometimes engages in what certainly sounds like the hyper-cynical placation of opposing poles: cagily paying off that rival Jerusalem sect, warning against heretical influences, begging his far-off correspondents to avoid “splitting,” praising competitive apostles, and taking exasperated digs at obscure obstacles to his work, oddly personal in tone for one so inspired by the Lord. “Alexander the coppersmith,” he sighs at one point, “did me great harm.” Then Alexander and his copper disappear from the record.
We all know that 2 Timothy is not Pauline and is from the second century. So, Gopnik is not so well read on this subject after all. (There's no authorial caveats by Gopnik in this or surrounding paragraphs, and Gopnik frames it just as though Paul were the author.)
It then gets worse, when he compares Paul to Trotsky, leading him to this:
His mode of argumentation resembles nothing so much as Marxist dialectics, sinuously arguing from opposites and forcing a desired conclusion upon unobliging texts.
Uhh, the Stoic diatribe already existed, Adam.
It sounds like what he is doing is Hegelian dialectic, with the thesis of Greek Paul, the late 20th century move to Hebrew Paul, leading to the synthesis of Hellenistic Paul. In reality, no such moves are needed. For starters, much of Jerusalem, let alone diaspora Judaism, was never implacably opposed to Athens.
One might think he recovered somewhat with the idea that Paul's letters were literary performance as much as anything, and perhaps weren't even actually sent. He notes Nina E. Livesey as a leader in reading a revisionist Paul, including with the idea that even the authentic letters are second century. It's an idea I reject, including the comparison with Seneca's letters, but it's interesting.
That said, what would that do to Marcion? Maybe Livesey postulates him as the author? Her book is here; one 1-star reviewer, speaking of that, says she's overly dependent on Markus Vinzent. It also has a Wiki piece. Per it, Jesus mythicists have lapped up her book. Shock me. Some even use it to support their claims of Paul mythicism.
Gopnik appears at least fairly open to the idea. I think he's wrong.
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