Paul-making history: In search of a Sartrean biographical method

This dissertation describes a historical-biographical method designed to address two problems found in Pauline biographies and interpretations: a missing theory of subjectivity, and a problematic reliance on the critical edition of the New Testament for identification of the 'Pauline' Corpus from which to collect historical-biographical evidence of the life and writings of the historical Paul.;Sartre's Search for a Method provides a methodological framework (using basic historical methods) that challenges sociological and social-scientific portrayals of human actors completely controlled by social structures, and theological interpretations portraying human actors 'floating above' their social world. His Marxist-Existentialist historical anthropology instead portrays human actors conditioned by scarcity arising from 'the given' social situation ('the life'), but also acting to 'go beyond' that conditioning towards a better 'envisioned future.' This dialectical movement of conditioned and free human action is named 'the project' that is objectified in 'the work' (products of human action). To understand the work, one must understand the project in relationship to the life.;After describing the methodological weaknesses arising from our dependence on the critical edition of the New Testament and the scholar-constructed Pauline Corpus for historical evidence, I constructed two empirical records based solely on ancient manuscript evidence: Remembered Paul: The Work (the set of agreed-upon letters as represented in NT papyri and uncials); and Remembered Paul: Biographical Evidence (the biographical statements also gleaned from primary sources). Using Sartre's progressive-regressive method, I categorized these statements into three types: Autobiographical/Agreed-Upon, Contemporaries, and Historians. They were then elaborated by means of social-historical research, temporalized in Jewish-Greco-Roman history, and particularized by focusing on Maccabean zeal and Israelite slavery.;The concluding illustrative biographical reading of Galatians relies on the Sartrean project as the interpretive key. Focus on the particular biographical facts named in Gal. 1:13-14 ( Ioudaismos, zelotes) and Gal. 6:17 (slavery, stigmata) leads to a provisionary interpretation that brings together the life and the work of Remembered Paul and describes him listing proofs designed to correct a 'misunderstanding' concerning his past and present proclamation about circumcision.