As a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. (1 Corinthians 3:10)

Why is a Center for Jewish Studies sponsoring a conference on Saint Paul? It is our contention that Paul is much too important to leave to Christianity alone. Whence comes the Paul of Modernity? Is he the Saul of Tarsus, the intellectual Pharisee who zealously prosecuted early followers of Jesus? Or is he the Paul of the Romans, whose letters to the Gentile nations decisively turn early Christianity away from Judaism? Is he priest, saint, or rabbi? The father of all pogroms or the prophet of communism? In all of these guises, the spectres of Paul haunt Jewish civilization and the long history of its discontents. But our investment in Saul/Paul goes beyond that of cultural historians. Whether we read him as Jewgreek or Greekjew, Paul marks the dialectical fulcrum of the emergence of modernity and invites its redemptive reinvention. Hence, we have come not to bury Paul, nor to praise him, but rather to re-encounter the radicality of his intervention: the costs, risks, and promise of political theology. Our wager is that, now more than ever, in a world increasingly mapped by both globalization and balkanization, we must reread Paul, as the necessary prooftext for all modern ventures into the thought of the universal.