"In addition to its superb treatment of contemporary philosophy and cultural theory, Principe engages with a rich array of early Jewish texts with a breadth and sophistication which distinguishes it from almost everyone else writing about these issues to date. Principe is clearly a thinker of crucial importance, and her work on Paul as a figure of trauma within secularism and universalism will be recognized as having far reaching implications.' - Ward Blanton, University of Kent, UK 'This is a very impressive book that links Lacan to the focus on contemporary messianism and shows how modern secularism repeats Paul's original experience. To read the messiah as an objet petit a is a brilliant move where the messiah is seen as a symptom of the real in secularism. Principe sheds a great deal of light on contemporary messianism in philosophy and our understanding of who Paul was.' - Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas, USA "Principe takes us on a tour of the uncomfortable encounter with the Real of the project of secularization, a Real that according to her discussion is connected to the Pauline formulation of the events of the crucifixion and reincarnation of Christ. In her unique use of the psychoanalytic orientation, she does not fall into the traditional traps of an innocent affirmation of the events nor of the symbolic-philosophical abstraction of them, but recognizes them as the foundation of the Western unconscious." - Itzhak Benyamini, author of Narcissist Universalism: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Paul's Epistles
