NEW BOOK! The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship with Dr. Nina Livesey

What if everything you thought you knew about Paul’s letters was wrong?

Dr. Nina Livesey’s groundbreaking new book challenges centuries of scholarship, revealing that Paul’s letters weren’t personal correspondences but rhetorical tools—much like Seneca’s Moral Epistles.

Join us for this eye-opening webinar and uncover the true origins of these texts!

Since the late-nineteenth century, scholars have all but concluded that the Apostle Paul authored six authentic community letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonian) and one individual letter to Philemon. In this book, by contrast, Nina E. Livesey argues that this long-held interpretation has been inadequately substantiated and theorized. In her groundbreaking study, Livesey reassesses the authentic perspective and, based on her research, reclassifies the letters as pseudonymous and letters-in-form-only. Like Seneca with his Moral Epistles, authors of Pauline letters extensively exploited the letter genre for its many rhetorical benefits to promote disciplinary teachings. Based on the types of issues addressed and the earliest known evidence of a collection, Livesey dates the letters' emergence to the mid-second century and the Roman school of Marcion. Her study significantly revises the understanding of Christian letters and conceptions of early Christianity, as it likewise reflects the benefit of cross-disciplinarity.

Westar Scholar Nina E. Livesey

Institutional Affiliation

Professor of Religious Studies Emerita at the University of Oklahoma

College of Integrative and Cultural Studies, University of Oklahoma in Norman

Credentials

• Ph.D., Southern Methodist University • M.T.S., Summa Cum Laude, Phillips Theological Seminary • B.A., Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

Biography

Nina E. Livesey is Professor of Religious Studies Emerita at the University of Oklahoma. Her scholarly work focuses largely on Paul and his letters, with a more recent turn to Christian discourse from a rhetorical perspective. Her scholarship includes Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis: Demosthenes, Cicero, Paul (Polebridge 2016), Circumcision as a Malleable Symbol (Mohr Siebeck 2011) as well as several articles. At present, she is working on a third monograph that pertains to Paul and his interpreters. Livesey served on the steering committee of Westar’s Christianity Seminar Phase I and presently serves along with Lillian Larsen and Jason BeDuhn as co-chair of the second phase of this project.

• OU Presidential International Travel Fellowship (2013)• OU Junior Faculty Summer Fellowship (2013)• OU Faculty Enrichment Grant (2012)• OU Presidential International Travel Fellowship (2011)• OU Junior Faculty Summer Fellowship (2009)

Academic Appointments

• Professor of Religious Studies, College of Integrative and Cultural Studies, The University of Oklahoma, 2019–2023• Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Liberal Studies, College of Liberal Studies, The University of Oklahoma in Norman, 2014–2019• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, College of Liberal Studies, The University of Oklahoma, 2008–2014.

Professional Service

• Co-editor with https://westarinstitute.org/membership/westar-fellows/fellows-directory/clayton-n-jefford/ of Westar’s journal https://westarinstitute.org/resources/forum/ (2011–2021)• Educational Coordinator, archaeological excavation in Huqoq, Israel (2012–2013)