More than any other writer of the New Testament, the apostle Paul transforms Israel’s story—beyond even where Jesus and the Gospel writers took it.
A centerpiece of Paul’s letters is that the Good News of the Jewish messiah Jesus is for everyone, and by everyone he means Jews and Gentiles. Paul argued that Gentiles could be fully part of the family of Israel’s God just the way they are, as Gentiles, without adopting Jewish laws and traditions first. The idea was radical enough to ruffle the feathers of even some of Jesus’s other followers (Paul mentions in the book of Galatians a run-in with Peter).
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