Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group, drawing on a Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism.

With analysis of nearly five thousand Jewish and non-Jewish passages about identity from around the turn of the era, the models presented describe ancient Greek and Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Further, these models become resources for examining the racial character of Paul's self-identity and the continuities and discontinuities between the three races in his social world: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians.

Using historical and...