“Paul believed that the recognition of the one God by Gentiles was necessary so that they might have a share in the world to come. Thus, Paul was not a Christian—a word that was in any case completely unknown to him because it had not yet been invented. He was a Jew who understood himself to be on a divine mission. As a Jew, Paul believed himself to be entrusted with the special knowledge God had given only to Jews. However, Paul also believed the resurrection of Jesus signaled that the world to come was already in the process of arriving and that it was time to reconcile non-Jews to God. Reconciling non-Jews to God also meant reconciling non-Jews to Jews, not because they were necessarily hostile to each other but because, if all people were potentially children of God, Jews and Gentiles must now be considered part of the same family; this entailed a new level of interaction and intimacy.”