Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism By Paul T. Sloan

With gospel scholarship in the throes of debate over what it means to be read ‘within Judaism’, appropriating the careful scrutiny of Jewish halakha in Second Temple scholarship and rabbinic Judaism into the foray is most welcome. Paul Sloan’s new book engages these subjects from its own perspective: constructing a model, building on the work of E. P. Sanders (Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], Chapters 2 and 3), that sees the gospels through the framework of ‘restorationist eschatology’. In this model, Jesus is Israel’s promised deliverer who relieves her of her punitive discipline, teaching her the authoritative interpretation of the Law to aid its full keeping ‘in light of the dawning of the eschatological age’ (p. 6). For this to work, Sloan must address the place of the Law and put to rest the caricatures of ‘legalism’ that remain in gospel scholarship (not from anti-semitism per se, but from unfamiliarity with the sources and their contexts). This he sets out to do, with skill and tenacity.