My teaching deals primarily with the New Testament, its Jewish, and Graeco-Roman political, social and cultural context. My scholarship has focused primarily on the apostle Paul as a Hellenistic Jew, on his interpretation of the early Christian apocalyptic message for an urban Hellenistic environment, and on his letters to little cells of believers he had established. A new research interest is the rhetoric of sanctified violence in early Christianity.
I have recently joined this Department after having had a rewarding career teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at Macalester College.
Paul: A Jew on the Margins. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2003
Paul: The Man and the Myth. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1998; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. British Edition, T&T Clark, 1999. Winner of 1999 Biblical Archaeological Society award as the best book relating to the New Testament in 1998.
The Letters of Paul, Conversations in Context. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975; second edition, 1982. British edition, London: SCM Press, 1983. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, third edition, 1991; fourth edition, 1998.
The World That Shaped the New Testament. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985. British Edition, SCM Press, 1988. Second edition, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2002.
Judgment in the Community: Eschatology and Ecclesiology in Paul. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972.
Forthcoming in the Abingdon New Testament Commentaries series is a commentary on Paul's "2 Corinthians." Fall 2006.
Under contract is a commentary on Paul's letter to Romans and a reception history of Paul in the second century.
Scores of articles review essays in refereed journals and edited volumes. They deal with such varied topics as "Sex and the Single God," "No 'Race' of Israel in Paul," "Paul as Organic Intellectual: The Shaper of Apocalyptic Myth," "Paul as Mother," and "Paul and the Law: Whence and whither."
Calvin J. Roetzel