Jew Among Jews

Rehabilitating Paul

Ambrose

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498218474
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Misunderstanding of Paul had started already in his lifetime, and his letters offer many examples of this. Throughout the centuries, Paul has continued to be misunderstood by both Jews and Gentiles, especially in relation to his view of the law and the covenant. Paul has often been misunderstood because his form of argument, his use of Scripture, his view of Jews and Gentiles in Christ (especially of those Jews who were not convinced that Jesus was Messiah), and his view of what constitutes true Judaism do not seem to conform to our expectations and perceptions of the apostle. We have been accustomed to read his letters as of one who was emancipating people from Judaism, as one who sought to obliterate all ethnic and other distinctions rather than maintaining the identity of Jews and Gentiles even in Christ. By building on some of the insights of the New Perspective, and developing other more recent insights as well, a more consistent and credible Paul as a first-century Diaspora Jew organizing a mission to Gentiles will be presented.

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Why Paul’s Jewishness Matters

Misunderstanding of Paul had already started in his lifetime—and his letters offer many examples of these misunderstandings. Through the centuries, Paul has continued to be misunderstood by both Jews and Gentiles, especially in relation to his view of the law and the covenant.

However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other texts, many new sources now enable us to better understand Paul’s first-century background. The outcome of this and other developments in scholarship offers potential for a new scholarly attempt at discovering the historical Paul.

A Pharisee of Pharisees

Paul’s own self-understanding is crucial because he, as a Pharisee, struggled with the law and sought to comprehend it afresh in the light of Jesus the Messiah. In the epistle to the Romans, he used the term “law” more than seventy times, which demonstrates its significance in Paul’s thought. As a Jewish scholar of Torah, Paul had formerly been a champion of law-keeping—and even as a Christ-follower, he was an expert commentator on giving midrashim of the law in the Pharisaic tradition. For this reason, when we try to understand Paul’s conception of the law, we ought to understand him and his epistles in his own cultural milieu and in his own time, instead of in the light of later developments.

Paul’s understanding of the law is important as a corrective to the tendency of Christians throughout the centuries to misinterpret the law. Christians, especially in the last two centuries, have sometimes equated the law with legalism and regarded the law as being totally abolished. Some more radical scholars believe that Paul set aside the law, the Jewish people, and the Old Testament. This sort of belief is not entirely new, but emerged as early as 144 CE with Marcion, who was condemned in Rome for denying the Old Testament and for proposing only one gospel, among other things. Despite this, even today some scholars continue to underestimate the place of the Old Testament and the Jewish people in God’s covenant.

Paul understood that the consistency of God’s grace is demonstrated through his people Israel and manifested most completely through Jesus the Messiah. Paul proclaimed God as faithful and Jesus as the one who was promised. When he preached against those who misused the law, Paul sought to demonstrate righteousness by faith from the old covenant and reapplied this to the new covenant. He certainly did not generalize and stereotype all first-century Judaism as legalistic. Nowhere does Paul say that Jews should not keep the Torah. Rather, he used the Old Testament (the law) to give guidance on how to walk with God, even when the Christ had come (e.g., Rom 13:8–10).

Although Paul was clearly a product of both Judaism and Hellenism, Paul’s thinking is, in my perspective, more properly understood within the context of the Jewish thought of his time. In his theological thinking, Paul did not abandon his earlier Pharisaic training, but emerged and developed from it. This being the case, we would do well to ask how Paul’s thought differed from that of other Jews. One key difference originates in Paul’s calling—which in many essentials was like that of the prophet Jeremiah, but possibly also very similar to Ezekiel’s.

In Paul’s understanding, God had personally revealed himself and guided Paul to an understanding of the law’s true meaning, which pointed to Jesus, the Messiah, as it’s ultimate goal (Rom 10:4). If Paul was properly trained in Jerusalem in accordance with Luke’s image of him, which scholars believe holds some historical foundation, then Paul had authority to interpret the Torah in relation to Christ. Paul made good use of his Pharisaic training by applying it to new contexts in the light of Christ. As a person brought up in the Diaspora, Paul read and used the Septuagint and communicated the gospel in Greek. However, the basis of his thought patterns appears to have been predominantly Jewish.

Paul, as a Pharisee within first-century Judaism—a culture that held an expectation of the messianic age—transformed his theology after his encounter with Christ. In other words, he renewed his theological thought in the light of Jesus, the Messiah, rather than founding a new religion (e.g., Rom 3:31).

Paul used Pharisaic methods to exegete the law in the light of the actualization of the Messiah’s presence in Jesus. In Jewish contexts, Paul followed the prescribed pattern of Jewish life, but he was adamant that Christ-following Gentiles should not become Jews (Gal 5:2). He believed that these Gentiles as well as Jewish Christians would be saved through Jesus Christ because of the covenant God made with Abraham.

The reinterpretation Paul achieved in light of Jesus the Messiah was that God made a covenant with Abraham for blessing all nations, both Jews and Gentiles (Gen 15:1–21), and that he demonstrated this covenant through his people—Israel—in history, thus fulfilling the promise he made to his servant Abraham. God faithfully worked out his covenant through Moses (Exod 19; Lev 27) and David (2 Sam 7:5–16; Ps 89:1–37). Finally, God renewed his covenant through Jesus the Messiah, thus affirming his promises to the Jewish people and enabling the Gentiles to enter the kingdom.

For Paul, after God accomplished his covenant through Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection, the way to salvation was open to Gentiles as well. Though not the first to come to this new understanding, Paul became its most eminent proclaimer. He believed that Jesus called apostles to proclaim this good news first to Jews and then to Gentiles (Rom 1:16). In this sense, God had called Paul as his messenger to Jews but particularly to the Gentiles. God sought the restoration of Israel in a roundabout way via the “fullness” of the Gentiles in Christ (Rom 11:17–25).

Paul—as a Pharisee who had encountered Jesus—regarded himself as called by the resurrected Jesus, who had proved to him that was the Messiah, the promised one. Paul was a faithful Jew who served his Messiah with all his heart throughout his life. No breach occurred between Paul and Judaism or the Jewish people. Paul himself did not abandon the law, his own people, or a Jewish pattern of life, though he interpreted this more broadly than some of his contemporaries, many of whom were critical of his flexibility in eating with Gentiles.

Turning against Tradition

Today, the New Perspective1 influencing the scholarly community has begun to turn the tide against some traditional interpretations of Paul, and divergent views on Paul’s understanding of the law and covenant have emerged. The insight of this New Perspective is significant insofar as it helps us to understand more precisely the social context and cultural background of Paul’s theology.

Ever since E. P. Sanders’s study characterized first-century Judaism as “covenantal nomism,” scholars have begun to discover (or rediscover) that Paul’s understanding of first-century Judaism was not legalistic. Although Sanders demonstrated that first-century Judaism was not legalistic, Sanders still reads Paul’s epistles in the traditional way, as though Paul had made a breach with Judaism. In the end, Sanders sets Judaism in antithesis to Christianity and holds that Paul created, or was instrumental in creating, a third entity that was neither Jewish nor Gentile.2 Along with Sanders, contemporary scholars such as Heikki Räisänen,3 Francis Watson4 and N. T. Wright5 hold that Paul left Judaism for various reasons. Taken together, these New Perspective scholars all collectively disagree with the conventional view of whether and why Paul left Judaism,

The New Perspective has gone some way toward redressing the balance in interpretations of the image of Judaism in the New Testament, especially in the area of Pauline scholarship. Yet even New Perspective adherents such as Sanders, Dunn, and Wright still tend to view Paul as somehow rising above or leaving behind his Jewishness. Even after the advent of the New Perspective, there is still a need for Paul to be interpreted from the perspective of his Jewish context, which is what this study seeks to accomplish.

Paul has often been misunderstood because his form of argument, his use of Scripture, his view of Jews and Gentiles in Christ (especially of those Jews who were not convince...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Why Paul’s Jewishness Matters
• Chapter 2: Paul and Hellenistic Thought
• Chapter 3: More Recent Views of Paul
• Chapter 4: Divergent Perceptions of Paul’s Theology
• Chapter 5: How Paul Uses Scripture
• Chapter 6: Paul, Judaism, and Unbelieving Jews
• Chapter 7: Paul and True Judaism
• Chapter 8: Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews
• Bibliography