Below is Claude.ai’s summary of the second half of an interview of Paula Fredriksen where she explained her position on Paul’s “conversion” that did not happen as Paul says he was “called”. Below that are the scriptures that support her position.
Based on the transcript, here is a summary of Fredriksen’s position on Paul’s “calling” vs. “conversion”:
The Core Linguistic Argument
Fredriksen’s starting point is simple and textual: Paul himself never uses conversion language. He says he was called — and that word matters enormously. Calling is prophetic language, the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah, of figures summoned by God from within Israel to a specific mission. It does not imply a change of religion, a crossing over, or an abandonment of one’s former identity. Munck’s chapter title — “The Call, not the Conversion” — crystallized this for her: once you see it, she says, it seems obvious you couldn’t have missed it.
Paul Remains Within Judaism
From that linguistic foundation, Fredriksen builds a broader historical case. Paul speaks of a messiah, resurrection of the dead, and quotes Isaiah extensively throughout Romans as his authoritative source. He expects the imminent end of the age and therefore would not be starting a new religion. All of this is thoroughly Jewish discourse. As she puts it, arguing that Paul remains within Judaism “isn’t even a historical question — it’s just what the evidence says.”
She also notes that Paul describes himself as “flawless with respect to the law” and as a Pharisee — one of the expert interpreters of Torah. There is no evidence he abandoned that identity.
The Gentile Question
A second dimension of her argument concerns Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Paul is specifically not converting Gentiles to Judaism — that is precisely why he insists on no circumcision. But in the binary world of the first century, the only alternative to Judaism was paganism. Paul is not sending Gentiles back to paganism either. So what is he doing?
Fredriksen’s answer draws on the classical prophets: in Israel’s eschatological vision, when the end comes, the nations turn to the God of Israel — but they do so as Gentiles. Israel is saved as Israel; the nations are saved as the nations. Paul is operating within that prophetic framework. Gentiles must remain Gentiles precisely because the category only makes sense if Israel remains Israel. If Gentiles become Jews, the binary collapses and the prophetic vision is undone.
Responding to Critics
Derek Lambert raises the objection that scholars like N.T. Wright has accused this reading of being motivated by post-Holocaust sensitivity — a softening of the historical picture out of guilt or political correctness. Fredriksen dismisses this sharply. The evidence is what it is. Paul’s language, his self-description, his theological sources, his eschatological expectations — all of it places him inside Judaism. The post-Holocaust context may make scholars more willing to see what the texts actually say, but that doesn’t make the reading wrong. If anything, she implies, the Lutheran tradition that portrayed Paul as rejecting Jewish legalism was itself the ideologically distorted reading. She said that Luther denounced the Jews as code for his denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church.
The New Perspective on Paul
She extends this critique to the so-called New Perspective on Paul (associated with Dunn and Hays), which arose in the wake of Sanders but redirected Paul’s critique toward Jewish ethnic pride or nationalism rather than legalism. Fredriksen finds this equally unsatisfying. There was no Jewish nationalism in the first-century sense, she argues, and saying Paul rejected circumcision, food laws, and the Sabbath — essentially everything that constitutes Jewish practice — is just the old perspective in new clothing. It still assumes Paul thought something was fundamentally wrong with Jewishness. Her reading rejects that premise entirely.
Here are the key passages where Paul uses calling language about himself:
Galatians 1:15-16 “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the gentiles…”
The Galatians 1:15-16 passage is especially striking in light of Fredriksen’s argument, as it directly echoes the prophetic call narratives of Isaiah (49:1 — “The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me”) and Jeremiah (1:5 — “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you”). Paul is consciously placing himself within that prophetic tradition, not announcing a departure from it.
Romans 1:1 “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God...”
1 Corinthians 1:1 “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God...”
1 Corinthians 15:8-10 “Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am…“
Galatians 1:1 “Paul an apostle — sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father…”
Here are the Isaiah and Jeremiah parallels in the ASV:
Isaiah 49:1 “Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye peoples, from far: Jehovah hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.“
Isaiah 49:5 “And now saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel be gathered unto him...”
Jeremiah 1:4-5 “Now the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.”
The parallel with Jeremiah 1:5 is particularly close to Galatians 1:15-16. Notice the structural echoes:
- Jeremiah: formed in the womb → known/sanctified → appointed prophet to the nations
- Paul: set apart before birth → called through grace → to proclaim among the Gentiles
The resemblance is almost certainly intentional on Paul’s part. He is casting his Damascus road experience not as a conversion out of Judaism but as a prophetic commissioning squarely within it — the same pattern by which God had always called Israel’s prophets to their missions.
