Kevin James Bywater says: The study and discussion of the literature of the Second Temple Judaism has grown popular in recent years. With this increased interest has grown a corresponding number of attempts to dredge through this literature and cull together material that can be employed in current polemics, especially those swirling around the so-called ''new perspective on Paul.'' Several critics of the new perspective recently have set out to illustrate how some of the literature of Second Temple Judaism betrays not the gracefulness of Ed Sanders's covenantal nomism1 but all the telltale signs of ''Judaic legalism.''