Some people are resolutely unhappy with this but Kotsko is right. There is something pernicious in the “within Judaism” trend in NT Studies, which can be seen by asking the question “therefore what?” What does it mean to read Paul (or, as is a trend in certain circles, numerous entirely anonymous NT texts) “within Judaism”? Kotsko is right here that this is a step beyond what Boyarin and others did previously, pointing out that Paul was Jewish and was writing from a very particular, or in Boyarin’s case, “radical” perspective, which, in the end, should be both a trivial and banal conclusion - there is a strong tendency in doing so to rhetorically de-radicalize Paul and thus blunt the sectarianism of the Pauline position (or that of other resolutely sectarian positions). What this does is turn “Jewishness” into a marker of authenticity, and elide the opposition that many of these texts have to non-Jesus-y Judaism, meaning - at least in the case of the broader “NT stuff within Judaism” crowd - that what these texts are “within” bears little resemblance to Judaism as such which leads inexorably to a single conclusion: this is not about Judaism at all. I posit what should be obvious: A significant portion of “within Judaism” stuff is not even tangentially about Judaism but is instead just a way of talking about (and expiating the historical sins of) Christianity through the image of the Jew - which is the opposite of progressive.

And, while it may be said that my complaints apply to a specific subset of this work, the root of this lies in the broader PWJ movement and the problem started there.