If Sons, Then Heirs —— A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul

----- 儿子就是继承人：保罗信件中的亲情和种族研究

ISBN: 9780195182163 出版年：2007 页码：259 Johnson Hodge, Caroline Oxford University Press

By extending Christ's redemption to those who were not ethnically Jewish, Paul has long been credited with transforming Christianity into a universal, ethnically-neutral religion. In this book, Caroline Johnson Hodge challenges this interpretation through a detailed examination of kinship and ethnic language in Pauls letters. Arguing against firmly entrenched claims that Paul's Epistles eliminate ethnicity from Christianity, Johnson Hodge claims the exact opposite: Paul treats ethnicity as a central element of the Gentile believer's entrance into communion with Jesus. Paul creates a myth of origins for Gentiles; through baptism Jews and Gentiles alike could share a common ancestor in Abraham. In Johnson Hodge's reading, Paul does not combine Jews and Gentiles under a new, homogenous group of "Christians," but instead sees baptism as a way of creating two separate but related lineages of Abraham.