How New Is the New Testament?

First-Century Judaism and the Emergence of Christianity

Donald A. Hagner

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781540960412
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493415809
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

What is so new about the New Testament? Senior scholar Donald Hagner tackles the issue of how distinct early Christianity was from the first-century Judaism from which it emerged. He surveys newness in the entire New Testament canon, examining the evidence for points of continuity and discontinuity between formative Judaism and early Christianity. Hagner's accessible analysis of the New Testament text shows that despite Christianity's thorough Jewishness, from the beginning dramatic newness was an essential aspect of this early literature.

1
The Question of Continuity and Discontinuity

Among the several paradigm-shifting changes in NT scholarship over the past century, none is more important than the new positive emphasis on Judaism as a religion of grace—a change that has begun to erase the common perception of Judaism as the antithesis of Christianity. Rather than having opposing theologies, Jews and Christians are now increasingly perceived as members of the same family of faith, albeit different branches.

More careful research, based on a fairer estimate of the available evidence, has shown that the negative view of Judaism typically held by Christians for centuries rests on traditional assessments of Judaism that are unjustifiable and unwarranted. To be sure, some of this negativism can be traced back to the NT itself. On the other hand, there is much in the NT that supports a more positive appreciation of Judaism.1

Judaism: A Religion of Grace

It was primarily the work of E. P. Sanders in his 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism that moved scholars to this new assessment of first-century Judaism.2 Sanders portrays Judaism as a “covenantal nomism,” a law-based religion within an assumed context of covenant grace, rather than a legalism where salvation is earned by works. This basic understanding conflicts with the common view of Judaism assumed by the so-called Lutheran view of Paul. Sanders’s insight was hardly novel; it was notably adumbrated a half century earlier by several scholars, for example, by George Foot Moore,3 who already in 1921 lamented that legalism “for the last fifty years has become the very definition and the all-sufficient condemnation of Judaism.”4 Even earlier, Jewish scholars such as Solomon Schechter, Arthur Marmorstein, and especially C. G. Montefiore had stressed that Judaism was not a religion where salvation was earned through good works.5 Other scholars—such as R. Travis Herford, James Parkes, and Krister Stendahl,6 as well as more recent Jewish scholars focusing on Paul7—took the same line and argued that Judaism was a religion of grace that depended on God’s sovereign election of Israel.

The New Perspective on Paul

The insights of Sanders were elaborated and applied to Pauline theology especially by James D. G. Dunn, producing a new understanding of Paul, the so-called new perspective on Paul.8 The new emphasis on Judaism as a religion of grace and salvation by election is accompanied by a denial that the doctrine of justification by faith is unique to Christianity. To quote Dunn, “Justification by faith is not a distinctively Christian teaching. Paul’s appeal here [Gal. 2:15–16] is not to Christians who happen also to be Jews, but to Jews whose Christian faith is but an extension of their Jewish faith in a graciously electing and sustaining God.”9

Contrary to the traditional Lutheran reading of Paul—where the law is problematic, to say the least, serving primarily as a propaedeutic to the gospel (a paidagōgos, lit., “child-guide,” a role of the law stressed by Paul in Gal. 3:24)—in the new perspective the law retains a positive function of enabling the achievement of righteousness. What then does Paul polemicize against when he speaks negatively of the law and works of the law, as he so often does? “Works of the law” are understood by Dunn and others not as general observance of the law, but very specifically as referring to “Jewish badges of identity” (or “national righteousness”) that mark out the Jews from the Gentiles, especially circumcision, Sabbath observance, and kashruth (the dietary restrictions). Since Paul was called to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, it is fully understandable that he would have been very much against “works of the law” in this sense, distinguishing the Jews, as the people of God, from the Gentiles. Given the understanding of Judaism as a “covenantal nomism,” where, from the start, grace is an experienced reality, N. T. Wright’s quip is appropriate: the issue for Paul is not grace but race.10

Yet an examination of the Pauline texts shows that Paul has a more fundamental problem with the law, one that applies equally to Jews and Gentiles.11 It is well known that Paul makes both negative and positive statements about the law. Negatively he can write: “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law” (Gal. 3:11). “For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law” (3:21); “For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20); “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (3:28). “For Christ is the end12 of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (10:4). “You are not under law but under grace” (6:14); “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (7:6); “Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian” (Gal. 3:23–25).

It is evident that the issue here is not merely sociological but also soteriological and thus an issue of universal significance, for both Jews and Gentiles. The law had only a temporary role to play in the pursuit of righteousness, and that role has come to an end with the coming of Christ. As in so much of what the NT has to say, a key turning point has now been reached in the history of salvation. We are in a new situation. Righteousness clearly remains the goal of God’s people (e.g., Rom. 8:4), who are God’s people by grace, and in that sense Paul’s gospel upholds the law. The radical difference in the new situation is the dynamic by which righteous living is now possible, namely, the empowering of the Holy Spirit, which so characterizes the remarkable newness that arrives with the coming of the Christ. The Holy Spirit thus accomplishes what the law could not.

This situation is true for both Jews and Gentiles. The conclusion of some that Paul’s view of the law applies only to Gentile converts, not to the Jews, is unjustifiable. Neither the language nor the logic of these passages supports any such idea. Although Paul allows the specialness of Israel because of election, his argument (especially in Romans) applies to all of humanity, including the Jews. Therefore it is necessary that the gospel be preached to Israel—indeed, first to them—as well as to the Gentiles.

But were there really any Jews in the first century, like those Paul seems to criticize, who were attempting to earn God’s acceptance by their righteousness? It is admitted by more and more scholars that Sanders overstated his conclusion that the Jews universally recognized the foundation of their salvation as resting on covenant grace. There is a fair amount of evidence that some, even many, Jews thought of their salvation as dependent upon their obedience to the law. Even Sanders had to take note of 4 Ezra, with its emphasis on works of the law, as an exception to the pattern of religion he presented from the literature of Second Temple Judaism.13 The situation in the rabbinic sources is anything but clear and consistent. Thus it is not difficult to find legalistic-sounding passages in the rabbinic literature. The argument of Sanders and others is that the grace of the covenant is the underlying assumption of such passages. What we appear to have in first-century Judaism is a classic instance of synergism, where grace and merit were held together in tension. In this paradoxical situation, we have an antinomy, famously articulated by Rabbi Akiba: “The world is judged by grace, and yet all is according to the amount of work” (Mishnah, Avot 3.16).14

The balance between covenant grace and works of the law was lost in postexilic Israel. The experience of the exile understandably drove the Jews to observance of the law with a renewed dedication and energy. The result appears to have been a legalism that became dominant and all but obscured the reality of covenant grace. Under these circumstances, it should not be surprising to discover that many or even most Jews of Paul’s day were de facto legalists, in contradiction to a p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. The Question of Continuity and Discontinuity
• 2. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew
• 3. The Gospel of Luke
• 4. The Acts of the Apostles
• 5. The Gospel of John and the Johannine Letters
• 6. The Pauline Corpus
• 7. Hebrews and the Catholic Letters
• 8. The Apocalypse
• 9. Newness in the New Testament
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture and Ancient Sources Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover