Dr James Nicholas Carleton Paget

Biography

James Carleton Paget studied as a graduate in the universities of Cambridge and of Tübingen, Germany. Since the early 1990s he has been a lecturer in Cambridge University and a Fellow and Tutor of Peterhouse, one of the Cambridge colleges.

Research

Dr Carleton Paget's research interests focus on Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity, ancient Jewish Christianity, so-called inter-testamental Judaism (understood roughly as the history of Judaism from Alexander the Great to the writing of the Mishnah) and the history of ancient biblical interpretation. He has a particular interest in the life and thought of Albert Schweitzer, which partially complements a more general interest in the historiography of New Testament scholarship. He is currently compiling a collection of studies on Schweitzer, co-writing a book on the debate about Jesus' existence which broke out in Germany in 1910, and seeking to author a book on the evolution of second-century Christianity.

Publications

Key publications:

Books

The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background, WUNT II.64 (JCB Mohr [Paul Siebeck]: Tübingen, 1994 [314 pages]).
Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity, WUNT I.251 (JCB Mohr [Paul Siebeck]: Tübingen, 2010 [538 pages]).

Edited Volume

Redemption and Resistance in the Messianic Hope of Jews and Christians in Antiquity,with Markus Bockmuehl (London: Continuum, 2007).
The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Volume 1: From the Beginnings to 600, with Joachim Schaper (Cambridge: CUP, 2013).

Articles in refereed journals

‘Barnabas 9:4: a peculiar verse on circumcision', Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), 242-254.
‘Jewish Proselytism at the Time of Christian Origins: Chimera or Reality?', Journal for the Study of the New Testament 62 no. 2 (1996), 65-103.
'Paul and the Epistle of Barnabas', Novum Testamentum 38 (1996), 359-381.
'Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity', Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 1 (1997), 195-225.
'Clement of Alexandria and the Jews', Scottish Journal of Theology 51 (1998), 86-97.
‘Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity', Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 52 (2001), 539-624.
‘The Epistle of Barnabas’, The Expository Times 117 (2006), 441-446, reprinted in The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, Paul Foster (ed.) (T & T Clark; London, 2007), 72-80.
‘Albert Schweitzer’s second edition of The quest of the historical Jesus’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 88 (2006; imprint 2009), 3-39.
‘After 70 and All That: A Response to Martin Goodman’s Rome and Jerusalem’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 31(2009), 339-365.
‘Theologians in Context: Albert Schweitzer:’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62 (2011), 116-131.
‘Schweitzer and Paul’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (2011), 223-256.
‘Albert Schweitzer and Adolf von Harnack: an unlikely alliance’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 122 (2011), 257-287.
‘Marcion and the Resurrection: Some Thoughts on a Recent Book’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 35 (2012), 74-102.
‘Jewish Christianity Revisited’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63 (2012), 785-91.
‘Albert Schweitzer and Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa 38 (2012), 277-316.

Articles in collective volumes

'The Interpretation of the Old Testament in the Alexandrian Tradition', in Magne Sæbø (ed.), Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The History of its Interpretation Volume 1 From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300). Part 1 Antiquity (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996), 478-542.
'The Idea of the Church in the Apostolic Fathers', in M.N.A. Bockmuehl and Michael J. Thompson (eds.), Vision of the Church. Festschrift for John Sweet (T & T Clark: Edinburgh, 1997), 193-206.
'Jewish Christianity', in William Horbury, W.D. Davies and John Sturdy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), 731-775.
'Quests for the historical Jesus', in Markus Bockmuehl (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 138-155.
'Jews and Christians in ancient Alexandria from the Ptolemies to Caracalla', in Michael Silk and Anthony Hirst (eds.), Alexandria. Real and Imagined (Aldershot: Variorum, 2004), 143-166.
'The Epistle of Barnabas and the New Testament', in A. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds.), The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: OUP, 2005), 229-249.
‘The Four and the Jews', in Markus Bockmuehl and Donald A. Hagner (eds.), The Written Gospel (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 205-221.
‘Egypt’, in M. N. A. Bockmuehl and J. Carleton Paget (eds.), Redemption and Resistance in the Messianiuc Hope of Jews and Christians in Antiquity (Continuum Press; London, 2007), 183-197.
'The Definition of the Term 'Jewish Christian and Jewish Christianity in the History of Research', in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus:The Early Centuries (Hendrickson: Peabody, 2007), 22-54.
‘The Religious Authority of Albert Schweitzer’s Jesus’, in M. N. A. Bockmuehl and A. Torrance (eds.), Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 75-90.
‘Miracles in early Christianity’, in G. Twelftree (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Miracles (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), 131-148.

‘Hellenistic and Early Roman Period Jewish Missionary Efforts in the Diaspora’, in Clare K. Rothschild and Jens Schröter (eds.), The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era, WUNT 1.301 (Tübingen: JCB Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2013), 11-49.
S. Avery-Quash and J. Carleton Paget, ‘A few suggestive sentences as pregnant as they are unobtrusive: Sir Charles Eastlake and the Pre Raphaelites’, The British Art Journal XIII, no. 2 (2012), 3-18.
S. Avery-Quash and J. Carleton Paget, 'The artist as Director at the National Gallery, London: intention or happenstance?', in L. Sandino and M. Pye (eds.), 'Artists Work in Museums: Histories, Interventions, Subjectivities' (Bath: Wunderkammer, 2013), 33-47.
‘The Second Century’, in J. Carleton Paget and J. Schaper (eds.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to 600 (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 549-83.

Forthcoming

The Ebionites’ in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception.
‘The British Reception of Ferdinand Christian Baur’, in D. Lincicum, C. Landmesser and M. Bauspiess (eds.), Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des Urchristentums (Tübingen: Mohr, 2013).
‘Albert Schweitzer and the Jews’, in The Harvard Theological Review.
‘Barnabas and the outsiders: Jews and their world in the Epistle of Barnabas’, in M. Grundeken and J. Verheyden (eds.), Christian Communities in the Second Century: Between Ideal and Reality (Tübingen: Mohr, 2014).
‘Barnabas’ anti-Jewish use of the New Testament: fiction or reality?’ in H. Amirav and R. Roukema (eds.), Christian anti-Jewish use of the New Testament (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht).
‘Paul and Barnabas’, in Todd D. Still (ed.), Paul and the Apostolic Fathers (London, Sidney etc.: Bloomsbury/T & T Clark, 2014).
‘The New Testament Perspective on the Second Century’.

Reviews

Professor Carleton Paget has always attributed an important role in his academic life to the reviewing of books. His reviews have appeared in the following journals: Journal of Theological Studies, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Reviews in Religion and Theology, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Catholic Historical Review, Theologische Literaturzeitung, Journal of Jewish Studies, Theology, Times Literary Supplement and Marginalia.

Here are a few samples of those reviews:

Review of Jerome, Greek Scholarship and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim, by Adam Kamesar (Oxford, 1993), in BJGS 13 (1993), 18-21.
Review of M. D. Goulder, A Tale of Two Missions (London, 1994), in RRT 1994/4, 41-5.
Review of Martin Goulder, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1994), in RRT 1995/2, 13-19.
Review of C. Clifton Black, Mark. Images of an Apostolic Interpreter (University of South Carolina Press, 1994), in JTS n.s. 46 (1995), 620-25.
Review of Reidar Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant. The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas and Jewish-Christian Competition in the Second Century (Tübingen, 1996), in JTS n.s. 49 (1998), 807-11.
Review of Daniel Boyarin, Border-Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, 2004), in JJS 56 (2005), 338-41.
Review of R. Bauckham, Jesus and the eyewitnesses. The Gospels as eyewitness testimony (Grand rapids, Mi., 2006), in JEH 59 (2008), 83-4.
Review of L. Nasrallah, Christian responses to Roman art and architecture. The second-century church amid the spaces of empire (Cambridge, 2010), in JEH 62 (2011), 136-9.
Review of J. D. G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making. Vol. 1: Beginnings from Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, Mi., 2009), in JTS 63 (2012), 240-6.

Work in progress

‘The Christian second century: problems and thoughts’
The use of the Old Testament/Tanak in the Apostolic Fathers
Studies in the Thought and Life of Albert Schweitzer
Debating Jesus’ Existence: A Theological Controversy at the End of Wilhelmline Germany

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching:

Dr Carleton Paget has taught courses in all areas of the New Testament, as well as courses in the history of ancient Judaism between Alexander the Great and the end of the second century CE, second century Christian history, and the history of Biblical interpretation since 1800.

Research supervision:

Dr Carleton Paget is willing to supervise in most areas of New Testament studies as well as second century Christianity and nineteenth and twentieth century New Testament historiography. He would also be glad to hear from any student who might be interested in undertaking a study of an aspect of Albert Schweitzer's life and thought.

Subject:

new testament

research

Reader in New Testament Studies

Fellow and Tutor, Peterhouse