Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction : old skins, new wine -- Law in early Judaism -- Torah, nomos, and law : a question of "meaning" -- Paul's anthropological "pessimism" in its Jewish context -- Four Maccabees : a paraenetic address? -- Law in the New Testament -- Law and gospel in Jesus and Paul -- Jesus, the Pharisees, and the application of divine law -- Hearing the gospels of Matthew and Mark -- Pragmatism and the gospel tradition -- The "new perspective" at twenty-five -- Finnish contribution to the debate on Paul and the law -- The righteousness of the law and the righteousness of faith in Romans -- Paul and the law in Romans 9-11 -- On fulfilling the whole law (Gal 5:14) -- The law and the just person (1 Tim 1:3-11) -- Letter and spirit : the foundation of Pauline ethics -- Righteousness, cosmic and microcosmic -- St. Paul and knowledge of the natural law -- The Judaism Paul left behind him -- Is nothing sacred? Holiness in the writings of Paul -- Canonical Paul and the law.

Pious Jews of the Second Temple period sought to conform their lives to Torah, the law God had given Israel, though different sects among them interpreted that law, and assigned competence in its interpretation, differently. Jesus and his earliest followers, while focusing primarily on what they believed God was doing in their own day, were repeatedly confronted with issues raised by its relation to God's prior revelation in Torah. This volume contains studies by Stephen Westerholm devoted to the meaning and place of Torah in Early Judaism as well as to New Testament understandings, particularly those of the Gospels and Pauline literature. Attention is also given to the "new Perspective on Paul," to recent discussions of justification and Paul's relation to Judaism, and to aspects of the transmission of Jesus tradition among his earliest followers.