The last four decades have witnessed an upheaval of seismic proportions in the academic study of Paul. The New Perspective on Paul has challenged settled exegetical opinion and proposed new approaches to Paul with far reaching implications. It is fair to say that the initial shock of the New Perspective has subsided. Contemporary exegetical and thematic studies of Paul’s letters have begun to reexamine some of the assumptions and conclusions that have proven so influential in recent Pauline studies.

Dane C. Ortlund’s published dissertation, Zeal without Knowledge, is one such study. Ortlund’s primary conversation partner is James D. G. Dunn, who has argued that the zeal that characterized Paul’s Jewish contemporaries and to which Paul so vigorously responded was “ethnic or social” rather than “ethical or moral or theological” in character (pp. 1–2). Ortlund concludes that Dunn has effectively proposed a false antithesis. For Paul, “zeal” was both “horizontal” and “vertical” (p. 2, et pass.). At the same time, Paul does not ascribe equal weight to these dimensions of “zeal.” For Paul (as for the OT writers and Second Temple literature), “zeal is generally that which pleases God and expresses obedience to God’s will—not that which, in the first instance, distinguishes from gentiles” (p. 5). It is not that there is no “horizontal” component to “zeal” in Paul. It is that this horizontal component is “secondary” and not “primary” in the apostle’s letters (p. 5).

After a brief discussion of how scholarship since Stendahl has understood “zeal” in Paul (pp. 6–23), Ortlund explores how the OT (pp. 24–61) and such Second Temple literature as the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, and Josephus (pp. 62–114) employ this motif. The OT writers, Ortlund concludes, understand human zeal primarily in terms of “intense fervor for Yahweh” (p. 59). While “corporate set-apartness” was necessarily implied in Israel’s obedience to God, it was nevertheless “not in the foreground” (p. 59). The Second Temple literature, Ortlund observes, maintains this emphasis, although not without “something of a horizontalizing of zeal”—the locus of zeal falls increasingly upon “the law” or “piety” or “the Jewish nation” (p. 113).

Ortlund then proceeds to address “zeal” in Paul’s letters (pp. 115–65). He offers a compelling justification for restricting his discussion to three texts—Rom 10:2 (9:30–10:3), Gal 1:14, and Phil 3:6 (pp. 115–16). It is in these three texts in particular that Paul most clearly reflects upon his former zeal in Judaism, and does so in conjunction with “several key Pauline themes beyond the references to zeal” (p. 115). Helpfully surveying the thicket of exegetical questions that have arisen in connection with Rom 9:30–10:2, Ortlund concludes that, for Paul, Israel’s zeal is her “ardency to keep Torah” (p. 136). Paul’s critique of that zeal lies not so much in Israel’s “failure to discharge the law” but in her “success,” that is, pursuing the law in “ignorance of, and refusal to submit to, God’s righteousness freely available in Christ” (pp. 135–36). Ortlund further argues that Paul’s former zeal for the “traditions of his fathers” (Gal 1:14) was a zeal especially directed towards authoritative “oral traditions” (p. 142). Even so, Paul does not represent that former zeal primarily in terms of “Jewish set-apartness” (pp. 146–47). The structure and content of Gal 1:11–16 show that Paul’s “concerns” are largely “vertical” (p. 146). Similarly, Paul’s representation of his former Jewish zeal in Phil 3:6 is in predominantly moral or ethical terms (pp. 150–62). While Dunn correctly observes the Jewish character of Paul’s former zeal, he nevertheless fails to grasp the primarily Godward orientation of that zeal (pp. 164–65).

In summary, Zeal without Knowledge is a balanced, perceptive, and irenic study of “zeal” in the letters of Paul. Whether or not Ortlund’s characterization of Dunn’s project as “ha[ving] set forth the ‘horizontal’ and the ‘vertical’ in inverse proportion to the way these dimensions worked in Paul’s theology” is an adequate one, one can only appreciate Ortlund’s textual demonstration that Paul understood Jewish “zeal” overwhelmingly in reference to God (p. 175). Ortlund is also correct to say that such a conclusion need not militate against recognizing the specifically Jewish character of this zeal and the ethnic separatism that it often spawned.

Ortlund is an engaging writer. His use of the spatial terms, “horizontal” and “vertical,” to set the terms of his project is well-defined, thoroughly documented, and consistently applied. On occasion, however, he employs terms that could benefit from further definition. The “form / essence” distinction, for example, is employed on several occasions, parallel to the “horizontal / vertical” distinction (cf. p. 175). A fuller explanation of that distinction and more precise explanation of its application to the questions under review would have strengthened the work.

In summary, Zeal without Knowledge demonstrates the ongoing exegetical viability of traditional and evangelical readings of Paul. It is also willing to learn from positions with which it differs. If only for these reasons, Zeal without Knowledge has made a valuable contribution to the study of Paul in the post-New Perspective landscape.

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