Abstract

Set in the context of the return to religion in contemporary Theory, this dissertation studies the philosophical resurrection of Paul at the end of the twentieth century. I dedicate one part to each of the following texts: Jean-Francois Lyotard's "D'un trait d'union" , Giorgio Agamben's Il tempo the resta: Un commento alla Lettera ai Romani , and Alain Badiou's Saint Paul: La fondation de l'universalisme . The titles of the parts are: Lyotard's Paul after Freud and the Shoah; Agamben's Paul after Benjamin and the Sabbath; and Badiou's Paul after Nietzsche and the Subject. Each part contains two chapters: "Monstrous Time and Infancy"; "The Ordeal of Time and Paul's Mystery"; "Glossolalia nad the Genesis of The Time That Rests"; "Messianic Time"; "Time and Truth"; and "The Time of the Event." I argue that Lyotard, Agamben, and Badiou read Paul as a founding thinker of time in the Western tradition; and that the weaknesses and strengths of these philosophical readings come to light through inquiry into paradoxes of temporality and subjectivity. The dissertation crosses the boundaries of Pauline Studies, Continental Philosophy, Literary Theory, and Theology