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The title caught my eye in a bookstore. I asked myself "What could she possibly mean by that?" I browsed through the book trying to answer that question. Author is a Jewish bible-studies professor at a Christian university, who believes her unusual position has given her unique and radical insight on Paul. Best I can figure, her theme is that Paul was not a Gentile Christian, nor indeed truly a Christian at all, but merely some kind of proto-modern religious pluralist, who helped invent Gentile Christianity so that Gentile Christians and Jewish non-Christians could live together in peace and harmony (or something). She seems to be suggesting (but not quite daring to say outright) that Paul did not care whether his fellow Jews accepted Christ or not. The first argument I came across was that Paul could not have been a "Christian" because the word "Christian" had not been invented yet. This is like arguing that the woolly mammoth was not really "woolly" because the word "woolly" had not been invented yet. But we know from "Acts of the Apostles" that the word "Christian" (or its Greek equivalent) was invented during Paul's lifetime, in order to apply it to the followers of Christ -- a category that certainly included "Jews" (as that word was then understood) and which certainly included Paul. The second argument I came across was that Paul could not have been a Christian because he was <gasp> a Jew. He lived a Jew and died a Jew, claims Eisenbaum. He never "converted." Here Eisenbaum seeks to confuse the reader with a fallacy of ambiguity. The word "Jew" can be, and in modern times often is, defined to exclude "Christian," but it need not be. In Paul's time, especially, Christianity was a Jewish religion, and the radical thing that Paul did, among his fellow Jewish Christians, was to argue that Christianity should be extended to the Gentiles, without requiring that the Gentiles first become circumcised or otherwise be bound by certain narrow aspects of the Jewish law. Perhaps Eisenbaum would be correct to object that he did not convert FROM Judaism; but hardly that he did not convert TO Christianity. Paul, by his own account, went from being a persecutor of the followers of Jesus, in support of the Jewish authorities, to being a follower of Jesus himself, being himself persecuted by the Jewish authorities. That is a pretty radical shift, and none may reasonably object if we call it a "conversion", regardless of whether Paul remained, in some broad sense, a Jew. If Eisenbaum had titled her book "Paul was a Jew" perhaps my attitude would have been a bit more tolerant. But nowhere does she define what she means by the word "Christian", or explain what she means when she says Paul was not one. She seems to think it suffices to emphasize Paul's Jewishness, as though Christianity and Judaism were polar opposites. It is as though she imagines Christians do not worship the God of Abraham, nor revere the Hebrew scriptures, nor follow a Jewish messiah. This 200+ page book offers plenty of information, and often summarizes the conclusions of other authors. Since I am no expert on Paul, much of this was new to me, and some may possibly be of value. Eisenbaum is a professor, and it is fair to guess she is reasonably familiar with her subject. But why trust her? If she starts with what is at worst a lie, and at best a loudly trumpeted irrelevancy, why should you or I waste time on the rest? Life is short. Look elsewhere for information on Paul.