The Chosen People

Election, Paul and Second Temple Judaism

A. Chadwick Thornhill

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780830840830
• eBook ISBN: 9780830899159
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

One of the central touchstones of Second Temple Judaism is election. The Jews considered themselves a people set apart for God?s special purpose. So it is not surprising that this concept plays such an important role in Pauline theology. In this careful and provocative study, Chad Thornhill considers how Second Temple understandings of election influenced key Pauline texts.Thornhill seeks to establish the thought patterns of the ancient texts regarding election, with sensitivity to social, historical and literary factors. He carefully considers questions of "extent" (ethnic/national or remnant), the relationship to the individual (corporate or individual in focus), and the relationship to salvation (divine/human agency and the presence of "conditions"). Thornhill looks at the markers or conditions that defined various groups, and considers whether election was viewed by ancient authors as merited, given graciously or both.Thorough and measured, the author contends that individual election is not usually associated with a "soteriological" status but rather with the quality of the individual (or sometimes group) in view—the collective entity is in view in the Jewish notion of election. While Paul is certainly able to move beyond these categories, Thornhill shows how he too follows these patterns.

1

The Missing Link in Election

Halfway through my seminary studies, I was sitting in a class titled Patristics and Ancient Heresies (my wife always joked about the odd titles of the courses I took) when a shift began for me. A substitute professor, who would later be my doctoral mentor, was introducing us to Greek philosophy and Jewish sectarianism. He made the suggestion, perhaps even implicitly, that understanding these ancient belief systems could actually aid us in understanding the New Testament and Christian theology. Though others had likely offered that suggestion to me before, something clicked that day. I began a series of conversations with this professor that eventually led to a course of study on the Apocrypha.

I had prior to that class only heard the term Apocrypha used as a mild expletive in reference to “those” books filled with heresies and thus shunned by “good Christians.” (I’m only half kidding.) The journey accelerated in that course because of a very simple task. I actually read the Apocrypha. I began to see connections. I started to understand the value. I realized that there actually is quite a lot to glean from reading “those” books. From that beginning with the Apocrypha, I set out on a trajectory through the remainder of my seminary program and through my PhD to explore in more detail the “intertestamental” writings, which most now refer to as “Second Temple” or “early Jewish” texts. What began with the Apocrypha continued with the Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic writings. Through the journey, I was able to get a better sense of what Jews were thinking during and around the time of the New Testament.

The “New Perspective” on Paul

In combination with exploring Judaism, I was likewise introduced to the “new perspective on Paul” (NPP). Most credit E. P. Sanders with igniting somewhat of a revolution among New Testament interpreters in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Sanders, and the NPP in general, contends that Second Temple Judaism, more or less indicating the period from 500 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., did not view “works” as determinative for salvation, as many Pauline interpreters understand in Paul’s contrast between “works” and “faith.” Rather, some form of “covenantal nomism,” Sanders argued, better described what Jews during the Second Temple period understood as “how to be saved” (though they would not have used that language). For Sanders, covenantal nomism puts the covenant at the center of our understand of what “keeping Torah” meant. This would not have meant “earning salvation” but rather represented the appropriate response to God’s offer of the covenant, which was graciously given. Though critiques of Sanders’s view have been offered, myself included in this work, it seems to me the correction prevails.

The NPP contains a good bit of diversity, and its three central figures, E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, certainly have their own share of differences. These differences primarily lie in how to tease out the relationship between Paul and Judaism rather than how to discern the nature of Judaism itself. What interested me at this intersection between Paul and Judaism was the question of election. But whereas the NPP debate has often centered on the question of the meaning of “works of the law,” the “faithfulness of Jesus,” the “righteousness of God” and what Paul’s “justification” language means, “election” itself, something all three authors assume to be vital to the nature of Jewish thought, has received less attention. I was surprised to find many works at the intersection between Paul and Judaism talking “around” election rather than “about” it, which largely prompted my own approach.1 The question this book explores concerns how Jewish authors spoke of election and how this background knowledge relates to Paul.

Election in Judaism

I will spend a great deal of time laying out the various Jewish perspectives on election. Here, and briefly, I wish to tease out some general patterns among scholars concerning Jewish views of election. The headings here are my own, and I intend for them to represent as best as possible the views of the authors represented. There seem to be three basic camps among scholars as to the extent of Israel’s election and the means by which it receives it: “national and unconditional,” “national and cooper­ative” and “remnant-oriented and conditional.”

G. F. Moore’s summary in Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (1927) is frequently referenced in addressing the “national and unconditional” view of Israel’s election. He states, “Salvation, or eternal life, is ultimately assured to every Israelite on the ground of the original election of the people by the free grace of God, prompted not by its merits, collective or individual, but solely on God’s love.”2 W. D. Davies largely echoes this view in his Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, as does also, more recently, E. P. Sanders. Often those who hold this view rely heavily on the rabbinic materials, which many now hesitate to employ as sources for understanding the first century because of their late dating. Sanders’s reason for relying more heavily on the rabbinic materials was primarily pragmatic.3 The central point to his approach was that the view of Judaism as a merit-based religion, proposed by Ferdinand Weber, Emil Schürer and Wilhelm Bousset, among others, was misguided. Sanders’s (now quite famous) explanation of the relationship between election and covenant was that “one is put in the covenant by the gracious election of God; one stays in it by observing the law and atoning for transgression.”4 S. Leyla Gürkan’s more recent work reaffirms the idea of unconditional national election.5 Gürkan envisions election as signifying “that ‘all Israel,’ i.e. the descendants of Jacob, are chosen through ‘an everlasting covenant,’”6 and that “unlike the writings of the Qumran community, the notion of ‘true Israel’ as associated with a particular group within the people of Israel does not appear in the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal books.”7 This statement is, however, in tension with her recognition of the presence of the remnant motif in that body of literature, which of course asserts primarily that there is a particular group within Israel that is the “true Israel.”

Favoring the “national and cooperative” view, Joseph Bonsirven, in his 1964 work Palestinian Judaism in the Time of Jesus Christ, primarily employed the rabbinic sources and used only a handful of texts from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Bonsirven suggested the rabbis understood Abraham’s election as a reward for his righteousness and noted that the same theme is present in the Apocrypha, Philo and Josephus.8 The merits of the patriarchs, and of later Israel, as well as the gratuity of God (what Bonsirven refers to as a “reciprocal choice”9), together brought about Israel’s election, which was of a national nature.10 Bonsirven understands this as a national/ethnic concept, and notes a tension within the Jewish writings between understanding this election as conditional (i.e., dependent on keeping Torah) and unconditional. Simon Gathercole11 seeks to counter the view that Jewish “boasting” was primarily because of either their “works-righteousness” or their “national righteousness” received through their election.12 Gathercole argues that both election and obedience were a part of the Jewish confidence. Gathercole sees election and obedience as compatible when obedience is understood as the “basis for vindication at the eschaton,”13 a theme he also sees in Paul.

The late Mark Adam Elliott, in his 2000 publication The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism, offered a significant critique of Sanders’s view by calling “a third ‘pillar’ belief to the bench. This is the doctrine, widely assumed to belong universally to Judaism, of the irrevocable national election of Israel.”14 Elliott contended that, due to poor historical methodology, the standard interpretation of Second Temple Judaism’s beliefs concerning election has been seen primarily as nationalistic and unconditioned due to an anachronistic projection of the beliefs of rabbinic Judaism onto the Second Temple materials. In his study, Elliott examined the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pseudepigrapha, to argue that an unconditional, nationalistic view of Israel’s election cannot sufficiently account for the preponderance of evidence. He instead contends, rightly in my mind, that a conditional view of covenant was predominant,15 rooted in a soteriological dualism in which the unrighteous are composed of both the nations and apostate Israel while the righteous/elect are members of the preserved “remnant” who are faithful to the covenant. As he summarizes, “The conventional nationalistic view of election theology is not accurately reflective of at least some important pre-Christian Jewish groups; in contradistinction to past treatments, moreover, one must conclude from such evidence that a Jewish theology of special election existed well in advance of the New Testament period.”16 Likewise, Sigurd Grindheim has concluded that election was associated closely with law observance, and was frequently pictured as relevant only to a faithful remnant and not to the whole nation of Israel.17 Grindheim concludes that Paul, at least in part, critiques the idea that visible status claims among the Jewish people acted as evidence of membership in the elect.18 More radically, Chris VanLandingham argues that, within late Second Temple Judaism, “election (like salvation) is not a gift of God’s grace, but a reward for proper behavior.”19 VanLandingham sees the foundation of the argument as resting with Abraham. If Abraham received the covenant by God’s gratuity then Israel likewise receives it as such, but if he received the covenant because of his righteous merits, then Israel has likewise received it. God’s bestowal of the covenants came because of God’s response to Abraham’s righteousness, and “the mercy God grants to Israel is not given to each individual, but only to the entity of Israel.”20

Elliott, Grindheim and VanLandingham rightly recognize that Sanders may have swung the pendulum too far as it relates to Jewish beliefs concerning election. Elliott in particular demonstrates the extent to which a conditional/remnant-focused view of election persisted throughout Judaism. This does not, however, return us to a pre-Sanders understanding of Second Temple Judaism according to which salvation can be earned by tipping the scales of judgment through good behavior. But rather it recognizes that there were both conditional and unconditional elements to the covenant in the thinking of many, if not most, Jewish authors of this time, something that resonates with the Old Testament itself and that I will suggest also helps us make better sense of Paul.21

Method and Approach

The basic thrust of this study will be to answer two key questions: (1) How did Jews during the Second Temple period understand the nature of their election? And (2) how does one’s understanding of Jewish idea(s) of election influence how one might understand the key Pauline texts that address election? The first question contains several subquestions, which I will address to various degrees. I will primarily focus on Jewish concepts of the nature of election as they relate to the questions of “extent” (ethnic/national or remnant?), the relatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 The Missing Link in Election
• 2 God Chose Whom?: Election and the Individual
• 3 Who Are the People of God?
• 4 Who’s In and Who’s Out?: Election and “Conditions”
• 5 How Big a Tent?
• 6 Whose Turn Is It?: Election and Responsibility
• 7 Rereading Romans 8:26–11:36
• 8 Where Do We Go from Here?
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Ancient Texts Index
• Praise for The Chosen People
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright