The Christ Party in the Corinthian Community by Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), one of the founders of modern New Testament scholarship, is now available in English for the first time. In this ground-breaking work, Baur argued for a diversity of views in the earliest strata of the Christian tradition that shaped the modern study of Paul in lasting ways. Baur's work revealed a tension between Pauline, gentile Christianity, on the one hand, and Petrine, Judaizing Christianity. In addition to Baur’s essay, this edition includes the first English translation of Ernst Käsemann's introduction to Baur's Historisch-kritische Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. Even if some of Baur's concrete historical results have been surpassed by subsequent scholarship, this book offers a compelling glimpse of the critical method and piercing insight into one of the shapers of modern biblical study.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) was one of the intellectual architects of modern scholarship on the New Testament. His method of a thoroughgoing historical approach to the material at hand and his thematization of conflict as an engine for development in early Christianity make his work essential reading for students and scholars of the New Testament.

David Lincicum is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Paul and the Early Jewish Encounter with Deuteronomy, which won a Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2013.