James Dunn passed away a week ago today, We have been going through one of his key works each day. So far we have looked at...
1.
The Evidence for Jesus (1985)
2.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970)
3.
Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977)
4.
Christology in the Making (1980)
5.
"Once more, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ" (1991)
6.
The New Perspective on Paul (2005)
I have also slipped in
Jesus and the Spirit (1975),
Romans 1 and 2 (1988),
Jesus, Paul, and the Law (1990),
Galatians (1993), and
Paul and the Mosaic Law (1996).
1. The seventh book I want to mention is
The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity (1991).
The "new perspective" on Paul had at its core the surprisingly obvious realization that Paul was a Jew and, in his own mind, remained an Israelite his whole life. One of Dunn's final compilations was a 2011 book called
Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels. Included in that volume is a great article from 1999 called, "Who Did Paul Think He Was?" It's just a perfect example of Dunn's lucidity, clarity, and evidence-based approach to questions.
So one side of the new perspective was a sense of the continuity between Paul and Judaism. The other side of the new perspective was a more balanced perspective on the nature of Judaism itself. Embarrassing stereotypes were called into question. For example, the writer of the Qumran hymns prays, "What is someone born of a woman among all your awesome works? ... His base is the guilt of sin... Only by your goodness is humanity acquitted" (1QH 5.20-21, 23). Sure doesn't sound like he thinks he can earn his salvation! [1]
2. This more accurate reassessment of Judaism was bound to prompt a similar reassessment of the historical Jesus. In the 1980s,
Tom Wright coined the phrase, the "third quest" for the historical Jesus. It's core feature was, unsurprisingly, interpreting Jesus against a more accurate understanding of Judaism. For example, it has been all too easy over the years to function with a pretty cardboard sense of the Pharisees. Picture a cartoon villain with a long curly mustache. They just might have been a little more complex than that.
So the great trio of new perspectives--Sanders, Dunn, and Wright also made contributions to Jesus studies in the late twentieth century. Sanders' key work was
Jesus and Judaism (1985). Wright's summative work on the historical Jesus was
Jesus and the Victory of God (1997). I'll mention Dunn's work
Jesus Remembered (2003)
in three days.
3. The progression was all too predictable. Once Jesus, Paul, and Judaism were reassessed, the question arose--"If there was no immediate parting of Christianity from Judaism, when exactly was the 'parting of the ways'?" Dunn, once again, was right on top of the wave with our book
d'jour,
Partings of the Ways.
Even before Dunn gave his own answer to this question, there had been another Durham-Tübingen Symposium in 1989 on this topic. Dunn as usual sat in the driver's seat, about to assume the mantle in 1990 as Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham. This chair was beyond the role of Professor, named after the greatest British New Testament scholar of the late nineteenth century. The conference volume was published as
Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways AD70-135.
4. Notice the slight difference in title between the conference volume and Dunn's 1991 book. The conference spoke of a "parting" in the singular, and located this parting to a specific time period between the destruction of Jerusalem and the bar Kokhba revolt. One take-away from that meeting must have been a sense on Dunn's part that it was more complicated than one monolithic parting: thus "partings" plural in the title.
This sentiment would follow in a number of other works by other authors in the years that ensued. Take, for example, the 2007 book,
The Ways That Never Parted, edited by Becker and Reed. Daniel Boyarin would write a 2006 book called
Border Lines, in which he uses the word "partitioning" of the ways, suggesting a much more complicated and fuzzy border between Judaism and Christianity in the centuries following Jesus. [2] I recently finished writing up my own thoughts on Hebrews on this question, finally published last year,
A New Perspective on Hebrews: Rethinking the Parting of the Ways. Whether I am right or not on Hebrews, I'm proud of the summaries I gave in this book of the new perspective, the partings discussion, and debates over development of the worship of Jesus.
5. One might wonder when I am going to get to Dunn's book! His book is organized around what he calls the "four pillars" of Judaism. Of course he is going to get flack for this. I seem to remember that Jacob Neusner had at him, for example, just as he did at Sanders. Judaism is more a religion of practice than ideology, not to mention that Dunn here was echoing the concept of the five pillars of Islam.
The four are monotheism, election, covenant/law, and land/temple. The concept of monotheism itself has been deconstructed in the meantime, not least at a conference I attended at St. Andrews in 1998. It's essays were published as
The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism.
Despite its imprecision, I often use this framework when I am explaining Deuteronomistic theology to students. There was one God for Israel, and one people for Yahweh. If they would serve him exclusively, he would bless them in their land. I think this is a fair summary of Deuteronomy 28-29 as well as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
6. Dunn proceeds to the temple. In chapter three he notes that "Jesus had a very positive attitude to the Temple" (49). On the other hand, it seems true that Jesus "did not share the concerns or degree of concern regarding purity" that Pharisees did (58). Perhaps in that regard he was regarded as a threat. Dunn thinks Jesus' action in the temple is what likely set in motion his arrest (69). Dunn believes Jesus anticipated his death (71). These positions all seem credible to me, as is Dunn's conclusion to this chapter: "Jesus appears on this subject to stand well within the diversity of second Temple Judaism" (74).
Chapter 4 looks at evidence from the early church in Acts. He sees evidence here in Stephen as "the beginning of a radical critique of the Temple on the part of the infant Christian movement" (90). He sees here "the beginning of a breach between Christianity and the predominant Temple-centered Judaism of the mid-first century." He also suggests Hellenists like Stephen represented a split within the Jesus movement itself (99). I'm a little hesitant about this wording, but he was writing in 1991 (second edition 2006).
Chapter 5 then finishes the series of temple-related chapters. Dunn concludes that, with Paul's theology of sacrifice, "there is no longer a need for the sacrificial cult" (105). He takes the traditional view that Hebrews "was written to warn against the danger of a relapse into traditional Judaism" (117). Accordingly, he concludes that "it is difficult to avoid talking of a parting of the ways in the case of Hebrews" (121). He concludes similarly with John: "the movement for which he speaks has parted company with mainstream Judaism precisely at the point of the cult" (123). In scholarship, "cult" refers to the sacrificial system.
Well, I ended up parting with Jimmy on this chapter. If Hebrews and John were written after the destruction of the temple, it makes a difference. Rabbinic Judaism has not parted with Judaism because it doesn't need a physical temple! So if these books were written after the destruction of the temple, which I think they were, then they cannot be said to depart from Judaism on this score, in my opinion. Hebrews can then be seen as much as a consolation in the wake of the temple's destruction as a polemic against it.
As a side note, Dunn first delivered this book at a series of lectures at the Pontifical Institute in Rome (see p.119n.61). Let's just say that his teaching on Hebrews as precluding the need for any priest or human intermediary sparked some discussion! He was never in your face or had an animus to these things, but he was definitely a "T" personality who didn't shy away from saying what he thought, even if it was very controversial for the context. I remember the Q & A session at Asbury having a similar dynamic.
7. Chapters 6-8 deal with the question of covenant and land. Here Dunn brought his new perspective understandings to bear on the question of continuity and discontinuity. With regard to the Law, Dunn concludes that Jesus was not calling the Law itself into question but "the law understood in a factional or sectarian way" (149). With regard to Paul, Dunn saw the incident at Antioch in Galatians 2 as the beginning of a fissure that would eventually undermine the covenant pillar of Judaism (178). He concludes, "It was Paul who effectively undermined this third pillar of second Temple Judaism (183).
I might clarify that Paul himself did not see himself as undermining the Law (cf. Rom. 3:31), even if he started a trajectory that later Gentile Christianity would widen. As Dunn himself says, "Paul was attacking neither the law, nor the covenant... but the law as a boundary round Israel, marking off Jew from Gentile" (182).
Chapter 8 then looks at the New Testament in relation to Israel. He concludes, "they still wrote for those for whom the issue was not closed" (212). For example, "John was still fighting a factional battle within Judaism" (209). I have thus often said, along with others, that it is more accurate to speak of "Christian Jews" in the New Testament rather than "Jewish Christians." Indeed, I have even used the expression "Gentile Jews" for early Gentile Christians.
8. The next three chapters end the sequence with monotheism. He covers much of the same ground as
Christology. He concludes chapter 9 on Jesus with a sense that "Jesus himself still stood well within the boundaries of second Temple Judaism at the point of Jewish monotheism" (240). Dunn ends chapter 10 with what I believe is a very important observation about Paul: "Had Paul's christology been equally, or more contentious [than his position on the Law] at this time for his fellow Jews, we would surely have heard of it from Paul's own letters" (270).
For John, Dunn draws a mixed inference. "John saw himself still as a monotheist" (299). But from the standpoint of emerging rabbinic Judaism, "Christian claims for Jesus had taken a step too far. From their perspective the parting of the ways had already happened" (300).
9. Dunn concludes the book with a sense that Judaism before AD70 was quite diverse and thus that something like a normative Judaism did not emerge until the rabbinic Judaism following the destruction of Jerusalem (312). Even this claim can be questioned, however. He would thus say that "the period between the two Jewish revolts (66-70 and 132-135) was decisive for the parting of the ways."
More significant, he would argue, was a parting of the ways "between mainstream Christianity and Jewish Christianity" (313). He would argue that what was more in continuity with earliest Christianity would become heretical Jewish Christianity in the second century (e.g., the Ebionites). He concludes, "By the end of the second Jewish revolt, Christian and Jew were clearly distinct and separate" (318). Again, the book mentioned above by Becker and Reed would dispute even this conclusion, as would Boyarin.
[1] If I might wend my wares a little, I suspect that some of the inaccurate assessment came from the fact that Lutheran and Reformed thinkers were doing it. These branches accuse Methodism of the same sort of works righteousness that they saw in Judaism. The irony is that this "works righteousness" is none other than what the New Testament teaches!
N. T. Wright has done a good job of showing the role of works even in justification in Paul's writings. See, for example,
Justification. As a small sample, see 2 Corinthians 5:10: "It is necessary for us all to appear before the judgment seat of Christ for each to give an account for the things s/he did in the body, whether good or evil."
The two volume "the Reformation strikes back" was
Justification and Variegated Nomism.
[2] I listened to the conclusion yesterday of the Enoch Seminar conference on the Origins of Evil. Boyarin was critiquing the too facile use of terms like
Judaism,
Gnosticism,
monotheism, etc. He reminded me of Heikki Räisänen--so detailed oriented that he finds it difficult to label these entities. He sees only the differences. In his mind they all fall apart.
