Paul in his letters models himself as a leadership figure to accomplish various objectives in his role as apostle to the Gentiles. As an interpreter of Paul's letters, Luke finds in them perspectives on Paul's leadership that help him understand the course of salvation history.
A new take on the long-standing debate on the images of Paul in his letters and the images of Paul in Acts!
Erich Benjamin Pracht advances scholarship on the Paul of the letters and the Paul of Acts in two ways. First, the author introduces a modern concept of leadership, namely transformational leadership theory, as the lens through which he interprets modeling and remodeling images of Paul. In this way, Pracht takes a major step forward from previous perspectives in the Paul-and-Acts debate, which typically approach the issue by probing the historicity of the Lukan Paul, or by comparing how well the Lukan Paul resembles the Paul of the letters in terms of theological themes, style and language use, or major biographical claims. Second, this study shows that Cicero and Sallust can also be read in terms of modeling and remodeling images of leadership. Accordingly, Pracht undertakes a detailed investigation of this pair of authors to generate perspectives that inform the Paul-and-Acts debate.
