Pauline Studies 2: Paul and Judaism

The second chapter of Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies is "Paul and Judaism," by Kent Yinger. Yinger wrote a nice little book on the new perspective on Paul a few years back. Then a couple years ago, he and Craig Evans teamed up to write a nice historical overview of the Pharisees.

I might add that in 2019, I had a book published with Lexington Books that examined Hebrews through the lens of these sorts of developments in recent decades (A New Perspective on Hebrews). It's a bit pricy but I was very proud of the first chapter because it set the groundwork for the book by synthesizing the kinds of discussions in Yinger's chapter. In particular, I tried to systematize previous discussions on the new perspective, the third quest, and the parting of the ways discussions of these last decades. I've uploaded that first chapter of that book to Academia.edu.

1. So the material in Yinger's chapter is very familiar. He begins by giving the older view that is now generally displaced -- the idea that Paul fully departed from Judaism. As Yinger says, "The momentum in Pauline scholarship is undoubtedly toward a Paul who is more comfortable in his Jewish skin than the older consensus allowed" (25). I wonder how much preaching is still in the mid-1900s on this score.

It's fair to say that the majority of scholars today do not think that Paul's mission saw itself as breaking from Israelite faith, although we can debate what the word Ioudaismos ("Judaism" or "Judeanness") might have meant. The gradations of perspectives among scholars is maddening, which is why I was so proud of the synthesis in my book that I mention above. 

To sum up, Paul did not see himself as founding a new religion. He saw his mission as nothing other than the true form of Israelite faith and in full continuity with the Scriptures of the first covenant.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who argue for Paul within Judaism. I find some of these views extreme -- for example, those who would say that Paul had two different systems of salvation, one for Jews and one for Gentile converts. In general, I think that Paul's language is in tension with itself across his writings, which is why there are so many different scholarly perspectives. 

The middle ground is Paul alongside a "reconfigured" Jewish identity. I think it is inevitable that this is what Paul's mission ended up doing whether he entirely saw the extent to which he was doing this. See the material on specific verses below.

2. The middle part of this chapter very briefly mentions some of the key debates. What does "Judaism" mean, for example? Its connection to Judean may indeed come into play in passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. At times Ioudaismos does seem to refer to a pattern of zeal for the Law that Paul rejects.

To what extent is the word conversion appropriate for Paul? I go with appropriate in the sense of shifting between Jewish sects. It really seems more a debate over an English word and thus a bit extraneous to Paul himself. 

How welcome were Gentiles into Jewish synagogues? I would say it varied but probably it was a common phenomenon in the Diaspora. 

How much did Christians remain in the synagogue? I would say it varied again. I think Acts' sense that Paul always started in synagogues very plausible, with him then only separating when the situation was too hostile. I side with the minority on Romans being addressed primarily to Gentile believers since I side with the older view that Romans 16 was originally for Ephesus.

What did Paul find wrong with Ioudaismos? I lean toward Sanders' sense that the starting point is Christ. Because most Jews rejected Jesus, Paul saw their version of Israelite faith problematic. But for Paul, grace through Christ was an alternative righteousing system to grace through Torah. Justification through Christ made it possible for Gentiles to be grafted into the Israelite tree without them keeping the Law. Judaism's problem was that it rejected this whole Christ-system.

3. Yinger helpfully ends the chapter with a quick pass through several key passages.

• Acts 21 -- Paul seems very Law-observant here, even offering sacrifices. I've argued with regard to Hebrews that most Christian Jews did continue to offer sacrifices and that it wasn't until the destruction of Jerusalem that Christians largely began to see the scope of Christ's death as extending beyond the sins of Israel and Gentile converts to all time. At the same time, one can easily see a lot of what Paul does in this passage as tactical -- "To the Jews I became a Jew."
• Romans 9-11 -- This is a passage that leans more on the continuity side of the Judaism debate. It sees Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree and sees a wholesale conversion of Israel to Jesus at the point of his return (I think). But this is Paul in one rhetorical mode.
• Romans 14-15 -- I think Paul's references to conservative Christian Jews is a little rhetorical here. He's trying to get his "Gentile Israelites" to behave a certain way and so the language is a little extreme -- he is siding more with the strong in his rhetoric than he really feels. When he says in effect "some don't observe the Sabbath and some do," this would largely fall along ethnic lines, although not entirely.
• 1 Corinthians 9 -- My own position on Paul is that he was largely Law-observant except when it came into conflict with mission. Like Jesus, I don't think he was scrupulously Law-observant when it came to the traditions of the elders. Paul extends this non-scrupulousness to purity laws that came into conflict with Gentile Christian interaction.
• Philippians 3 -- Here I side with Stendahl and others that Paul is not speaking of the utter worthlessness of his Jewish past but of the relative worthlessness of it in comparison to Christ.

Kudos to Yinger for giving such a good taste of the maddening debates of these last decades. It's not hard to see why there are so many books on Paul and Judaism/the Law. The gradations of perspectives can drive one to the cliffs of insanity, and they are driven by the fact that Paul's language is generally unsystematized and often has a rhetorical dimension. I suspect he would have to reflect to answer some of these questions for us.

Jews and Anti-Judaism 1

I have a book review to write on Terence Donaldson's, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Interpretations.  I read the first chapter yesterday and found it a delight.  What a great presentation of the lay of the scholarly land!  I'm also writing on related issues in Hebrews this week so the convergence is a great serendipity for me.

Chapter 1 is the Introduction, which gives the back discussion on the question of antisemitism and the New Testament.  The issue became very pertinent after WW1, especially with Jules Isaac's book Jesus and Israel.  Isaac had written much of the material on the run from Nazis.  His wife and daughter died in concentration camps.

Isaac was not attacking Christian faith per se, but could legitimately point out that the Nazi perspective on the Jews grew easily from a centuries old tradition that was a Christian tradition.  It included a scholarly and popular climate that painted Judaism as degenerate at the time of Christ, assigned collective guilt to the Jewish people for Christ's death, and considered the dispersion of the Jews a divine punishment for their crime.

The chapter cites other scholars who pursued the issue and some of the helpful distinctions that followed the later discussion.  These included Gregory Baum, who initially put early Christian polemic in the category of denunciations of Israel carried out by the prophets... thus not anti-Semitic.  Rosemary Ruether by contrast argued that there was no way to rid Christianity of anti-Judaism because its view of Christ demands a polemical interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures.  James Parkes argued that it was not until after the war with Rome in AD66 that there ensued a "parting of the ways" (10).

The rest of the chapter is its brilliance.  Donaldson carefully and insightfully divides the issue into its parts.  He does not at this point so much give answers as present the discussion and its options.

Is the New Testament anti-semitic?
Because Christianity became overwhelmingly Gentile, we have to at least address this issue in the use of New Testament texts, but many have argued that it doesn't make much sense to say that documents themselves, since they were written by Jews, were anti-Jew.  Edward Flannery, for example, sees anti-Judaism as different from anti-semitism, as theological.  "It rejects Judaism as a way of salvation but not the Jews as a people" (14).

Is the New Testament anti-Judaic?
Or does it fall more in the category of the prophets or a sect like at Qumran?  Douglas Hare identifies three types of anti-Judaism (what follows are my words): 1) prophetic, 2) sectarian, and 3) outsider.  The prophets were clearly not anti-semitic or anti-Israel.  They were trying to correct it.  The Qumran sect was anti-the rest of Judaism, but were still Jews arguing for the right form of Judaism.  In the second century then, with the outsider comments of Gentile Christians like Ignatius and Justin Martyr, we probably have hit a form of anti-Judaism proper.

Thus Donaldson concludes that the term anti-Judaism would fit the last type but not the first type (into which category Hare put Jesus and John the Baptist).  Whether the second type fits the term Donaldson considers a matter of a spectrum.

Is the New Testament supercessionist?
That is, does the NT see the Christian church replacing and superseding ethnic Israel.  For Donaldson, approaching the issue in this way misses out some pieces.  For example, it formulates the issue negatively--what is the discontinuity--more than positively--what was the continuity.  It also does not include individuals like Marcion or the Gnostics, who did not even believe the OT was legitimate in the first place.

Kendall Soulen has distinguished types of supercessionism, each of which has a different tone.  "Punitive" supercessionism sees the replacement as a matter of punishment for Israel.  "Economic" supercessionism has to do with God's plan for different periods of history.  There is also a mixed view that only sees the Gentiles replacing the part of Israel that did not believe, while the part that did remains unsuperseded.

Does the NT reflect a painful parting of the ways?
A lively discussion has emerged in recent decades, with Ways That Never Parted arguing that Jewish and Christian social groups interpenetrated off and on even to the time of Constantine.  Daniel Boyarin has argued that "partitioning" would be a better word than "parting," and James Dunn has argued for "partings" plural rather than singular.  A key here is that since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we are far more aware of the diversity of first century Judaism (sometimes even put in the plural, Judaisms) than we were before.

Set up for the book
Early in the chapter, Donaldson gives three aspects of any document that need to be taken into account when assessing this issue.  First is the identity of those who are expressing statements (the "subject").  Second is the identify of those to whom they are speaking (the "object").  Lastly there is the tone or the intention behind their expression.  He will use this three fold rubric in the rest of the book, as he looks at the gospels and Paul.

Great start to the book!

Paul: Born at a Place and Time

I know, I know, I'm at it again. I've decided the Paul novel idea is not going to work... again. At the same time, there are too many basic intros to Paul already. Good grief, Michael Bird has just put out two of them!

So here's my thought. Might I do a more reflective version for my own (potential) niche market of Wesleyans? If any of you at Wesleyan Publishing House chance on here, I'm working up a proposal and maybe a couple sample chapters... :-) (By the way, first word back from the publisher I sent Generous Ecclesiology to was positive).

My working title is Life Reflections on Paul's Letters. The idea is to casually walk through Paul's life and letters reflecting on our contemporary situation but at the same time reading them in a more informed way than a lot of what is out there.

I've been working off and on with the first chapter, which is meant to be background on Paul. Here's a half an hour's worth of the chapter, starting now.
__________
(about a page)...

Paul was also born in a particular time and place. He was born a Jew. To most of us who are Christians today, his Jewishness is not a big deal. We neither think his Jewishness made him particularly special nor do we think it was an obstacle he needed to overcome.

Thankfully, most of us do not have the old biases Christians often had against Jews throughout the centuries, especially before the Holocaust. While many Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler, still more acquiesced or even supported his war on the Jews. The way Christians like Martin Luther had portrayed Judaism no doubt played a role in this strange situation, where many Christians talked themselves into thinking it was right or even more godly to persecute or even eliminate the Jews.

The views of many Christians during the civil rights battles of the 1960's and 70's was not entirely dissimilar. Many Christians somehow talked themselves into thinking it was somehow righteous to make sure that African-Americans stayed in "their place" or that they deserved to be penalized for breaking the law by not getting to the back of the bus. This same mindset justified Apartheid in South Africa. And some Christians today might think they were doing God's bidding by beating up or killing someone who was gay.

People try to use the Bible's words in all kinds of ways. But Jesus, Paul, James, John--the New Testament as a whole is rarely more unified on any topic as it is on this one. The central ethic of Christianity, the fundamental rule from which its ethic flows, is to love God and to love your neighbor (e.g., Matt. 22; Rom. 13; Gal. 3; James 2; 1 John 4). Jesus clearly included your enemies in the category of neighbors (Luke 10; Matt. 5), leaving no one we might be justified in acting unlovingly toward. The bottom line is this: no one who acts unlovingly toward anyone has God's support, no matter how many supposed Bible verses he or she might try to produce. This is the mother of all Christian absolutes, to which God makes no exceptions.

Luther's picture of Judaism, one that still prevails in many popular Christian circles, is that of a religion in which people thought they could deserve God's reward because of how good they were. In Luther's mind and the mind of many scholars up to the mid-twentieth century, Judaism taught you could in effect earn a ticket to heaven by enough good deeds or good "works." In one version of Paul's life, he struggled so much with his inability to be good, to be "righteous," that he finally came to the conclusion that a person can only be accepted by God and be "justified" on the basis of faith--by trusting in what Jesus had done on the cross. In this storyline, Paul finally came to believe in "justification by faith alone" and not "by works."

This version of the story is partly true, but it is only a half truth. We will have to wait for a later chapter to get a more accurate picture. Suffice it to say here that it is more untrue than true to say that Jews of the time thought they could strictly earn God's approval simply because of how good they were. It is also probably false to think that Paul felt like a miserable moral failure before he believed in Jesus. And most importantly at this point, Paul did not likely see himself as changing religions when he became a follower of Jesus.

When Paul talks about those Jews who have not believed that Jesus is the messiah, he still speaks of them as "natural branches" (Rom. 11). Yes, we find the seeds of Christian faith as something distinct from Jewish faith in Paul's writings. But it would be Gentile believers generations after Paul who would really develop such possibilities. We have every reason to believe that the earliest Christian Jews--and I phrase it this way intentionally--saw themselves as nothing but the most authentic form of Israel, in full continuity with the Jewish Scriptures (which would only later be called the "Old" Testament) and the Israel of its pages (or scrolls, to be more accurate)...

Aristeas at Night

I have a dream... but because I have so many dreams... here is a tiny drop of the dream I may never finish. Below are excerpts from the Letter of Aristeas that I made the other morning. I don't feel like commenting on it. But I have put in bold things I find interesting.

The Letter of Aristeas probably dates to the first part of the 2nd century BC and was probably written, like Artapanus, in Egypt. It is the earliest version of the story of how the Pentateuch was translated into Greek, that is, the story of the Septuagint. The story would grow and grow over time. In this earliest version, however, it is only the Pentateuch that is being translated, not the whole Old Testament. And also unlike later versions, they do not all separately translate it and miraculously find that their translations are all alike. It is a team effort.

The letter is agreed to be pseudonymous, meaning that it is not a real letter from someone named Aristeas to someone named Philocrates. It is a literary device the author uses to present the story of the Septuagint's translation, an event that was celebrated by the Jews of Egypt each year. The letter is thus one of many examples of a fairly common literary practice at the time.

Here are the excerpts I thought most helpful (with some modifications and paraphrase), taken from R. J. H. Shutt's translation in the OTP vol. 2.
_________
1 I have composed a trustworthy narrative, Philocrates, of the meeting that we had with Eleazar, high priest of the Jews, because you attach great importance to hearing a personal account of the mission, its content, and purpose. I have tried to give you a clear presentation of it by giving details of each aspect, because I realize your scholarly disposition-- 2 a supreme quality in a man who has continually tried to increase his learning and understanding... This is the way to acquire a pure disposition of mind: by attaining the noblest goals and by living by a rule that does not err when it comes to piety, the highest of all goals...

9 When Demetrius of Phalerum was appointed keeper of the king [of Egypt's] library, he undertook many different negotiations aimed at collecting, if possible, all the books in the world... 10 We were present when the question was put to him, "How many thousands of books are there [in the royal library]?" His reply was, "Over two hundred thousand, O King. I shall take urgent steps to increase in a short time the total to five hundred thousand. Information has reached me that the lawbooks of the Jews are worth translation and inclusion in your royal library."

11 "What is there to prevent you from doing this?" he said...

Demetrius replied, "Translation is needed. They use letters characteristic of the language of the Jews, just as Egyptians use the formation of their letters in accordance with their own language" ...

The king, in answer to each point, gave orders that a letter be written to the high priest of the Jews that the aforementioned project might be carried out. 12 I considered that it was an opportunity in connection with the ... release of those deported from Judea by the father of the king...

14 When therefore we came on some opportunity for their release, as we have shown before, we spoke the following words to the king 15 "... The laws have been established for all the Jews, and it is our plan not only to translate but also to interpret them. But what justification will we have for our mission when large numbers [of Jews] are in slavery in your kingdom? ...

16 These people worship God the overseer and creator of all, whom all people worship including ourselves, O King, except that we have a different name. Their name for him is Zeus and Jove...

I beg you to release those held in slavery"

17 He wasted no time, while we offered hearty prayer to God to dispose his mind to release them all. Humanity is God's creation and is changed and transformed by him. Thus with many different prayers I implored the Lord with all my heart that he might be convinced to grant my request" ...

29 To the great king, from Demetrius. Your command, O King, concerned the collection of missing volumes needed to complete the library and of items that accidentally fell short of the required condition... 30 Scrolls of the Law of the Jews ... are missing, for these are written in Hebrew characters and language. But they have been transcribed somewhat carelessly and not as they should be, according to the report of the experts, because they have not received royal patronage. 31 These must also be in your library in an accurate version, because this legislation, as could be expected from its divine nature, is very philosophical and genuine.

35 King Ptolemy to Eleazar the high priest, hearty greetings... 38 We have decided that your Law will be translated into Greek letters from what you call the Hebrew letters, in order that they too should take their place with us in our library with the other royal books...

[83-105 gives a description of the temple and city of Jerusalem, ca. 200BC]

96 It was an occasion of great amazement to use when we saw Eleazar engaged in his ministry, and all the glorious vestments, including the wearing of the garment with precious stones on it... 99 Their appearance makes one awe-struck and dumbfounded. A person would think he had come out of this world and into another one. I emphatically assert that everyone who comes near the spectacle of what I have described will experience astonishment and amazement beyond words, his very being transformed by the hallowed arrangement in every single detail.

121 Eleazar selected men of the highest merit and of excellent education due to the distinction of their parentage. They had not only mastered the Jewish literature, but had made a serious study of that of the Greeks as well. 122 ... They had a tremendous natural facility for the negotiations and questions arising from the Law, with the middle way as their commendable ideal... 126 [Eleazar] was only dispatching them for the common improvement of all the citizens. 127 The good life, he said, consisted in observing the laws...

128 It is worthwhile to mention briefly [Eleazar's] reflections in reply to questions [from the King] raised through us. It is my opinion that humanity as a whole shows a certain amount of concern for the parts of their legislation having to do with meats and drink and animals considered to be unclean. 129 For example, we inquired why--since there is only one creation--some things are considered unclean for eating and others for touching...

132 [Eleazar] began first by demonstrating that God is one, that his power is shown in everything, since every place is filled with his sovereignty. [He showed] that nothing that people do on earth secretly is hidden to him.

134 He proceeded to show that all the rest of humanity--"except ourselves," as he said--believe that there are many gods. Because people are far more powerful than the gods whom they vainly worship, they make images of stone and wood. Then they declare that these are likenesses of those ... whom they worship...

137 Those who have invented these fabrications and myths are usually ranked to be the wisest of the Greeks. 138 There is surely no need to mention the rest of the very foolish people, Egyptians and those like them, who have put their confidence in animals and most of the snakes and monsters, worship them, and sacrifice to them both while they are alive and dead.

139 In his wisdom, the legislator... being endowed by God to know universal truths, surrounded us with unbroken palisades and iron walls to prevent our mixing with any of the other peoples in any matter. We are thus kept pure in body and soul, preserved from false beliefs to worship the only God all powerful over all creation.

142 So to prevent our perversion by contact with others or mixing with bad influences, he hedged us in on all sides with strict observances connected with meat and drink and touch and hearing and sight, after the manner of the Law.

144 Do not take the contemptible view that Moses enacted this legislation because of an excessive preoccupation with mice and weasels or suchlike creatures. The fact is that everything has been solemnly set in order for unblemished investigation and amendment of life for the sake of righteousness...

150 Everything pertaining to conduct permitted us toward these creatures and toward animals has been set out symbolically. Thus the cloven hoof, that is the separation of the claws of the hoof, is a sign of setting apart each of our actions for good, 151 because the strength of the whole body in action rests on the shoulders and the legs. The symbolism conveyed by these things forces us to make a distinction in the performance of action, with righteousness as our goal...

181 The king ordered the finest apartments to be given [the translators] near the citadel and the preparations for the banquet to be made...

195 The king said to the next [guest], "What would be for you the supreme blessing for living?" The reply was, "To know that God is Lord over all, and that we do not ourselves direct our plans in the finest of actions, but God brings to completion the affairs of mortals and guides [them] with his sovereign power."

203 On the day afterward the seating and banqueting arrangements were again carried out in the same order... 210 [The king asked one of the guests,] "What is the essence of godliness?" He replied, "The realization that God is continually at work in everything and is omniscient. A human cannot hide from him an unjust deed or evil action."

[at the fifth banquet] 250 "How can one reach agreement with a woman?" [The guest] replied, "By recognizing that the female sex is bold, positively active for something it desires, easily liable to change its mind because of poor reasoning powers, and of naturally weak constitution."

[at the sixth banquet] 268 "At what thing ought one to feel pain?" To which [the guest] replied, "At the misfortunes of our friends, when we see them long drawn out and incurable. When they are dead and released from evils, reason does not indicate for them any pain. But when humans attribute to themselves even what is to their advantage, everyone suffers. The escape from evil takes place only through the power of God"

293 When [the seventy-second guest at the seventh banquet] finished speaking there was a long burst of applause accompanied by delighted cheers. When it subsided, the king took a cup and drank a toast to all the assembled company and to the speeches they had made.

295 If I have dwelt at length on these matters, Philocrates, I beg your pardon. I admired these men tremendously... 297 To tell lies concerning matters that are being chronicled is inappropriate. If I were to make a single error, it would be impious...

301 Three days afterward, Demetrius took the men with him... There he assembled them in a house that had been duly furnished near the shore... 302 They set to completing their several tasks, reaching agreement among themselves on each by comparing versions...

304 At the first hour of the day they attended the court daily, and after offering salutations to the king, retired to their own quarters. 305 Following the custom of all Jews, they washed their hands in the sea in the course of their prayers to God, 306 and then proceeded to the reading and explication of each point...

307 The outcome was such that in seventy-two days the business of translation was completed, just as if the result was achieved by some deliberate design... 311 They commanded that a curse should be laid... on anyone who would alter the version by any addition or change to any part of the written text, or any deletion either.

Defining First Century Jewish Monotheism

After years of some general hunches and vague feelings, I believe I am finally ready to formulate a positioned statement on what I think Jewish monotheism was at the time of Christ. This should appear in print with refinement and extensive footnotes in one or two places next year.

A word of preface is in order. The very term monotheism is a product of the Enlightenment and, as we will see, tends to smuggle in anachronistic notions into the discussion. Ancient Judaism was clearly a religion of "one God," but this notion must be defined on their terms, not on modern philosophical or theological terms.

First, Jewish monotheism at the time of Christ was, first and foremost, a statement of God's sovereign power. Power, more than any other thing, was the defining characteristic of a god in the ancient world. (Immortality was the other) The notion that the divine is transcendent, ontologically distinct and unknowable from human categories, is largely anachronistic for the ancient world. Only Philo seems to approach such a view. We should more think in terms of a scale of being, with gods on the top.

So for some Jews at the time of Christ, monotheism might more aptly be described as "monarchism," the idea that there is one sovereign God who is more powerful than any other god or spiritual power. God is the King who reigns supreme over all the other gods.

Artapanus perhaps represents the last outpost of first century monotheism in that he does not seem to deny the existence of other gods or to condemn the other nations from worshipping them. But he presumably would not worship them himself and his God is of course the "master of the universe."

Other Jews took a more adversarial position between the one God and these other spiritual powers. The War Scroll at Qumran looks to a final battle between the sons of darkness and the sons of light. And it uses the word gods in reference to the spiritual forces among the sons of darkness. God will of course defeat them, an aspect of God's sovereignty that Richard Bauckham aptly calls "eschatological monotheism."

God is thus unique not least because He is the most powerful, the supreme deity. One expression of this unique sovereignty is His role as creator, which Richard Bauckham aptly calls "creational monotheism." But God's unique role of creator is really an expression of his sovereignty.

Here it's important to recognize that the Jews of this time had no sense of creation out of nothing, an idea that didn't seem to emerge until the late second century AD. We should think of creation at this time more in terms of giving order to chaos and formlessness than the generation of material.

Presumably, however, God as sole creator means that He created all parent beings. Certainly he created the human parents. But he also created all the angels, some of whom rebelled, whether the watchers at the time of the Flood in the Enoch tradition or Satan with the creation of Adam in the Life of Adam and Eve. Their rebellion was subsequent to their creation.

The second key aspect of monotheism corresponded to God's supreme sovereignty, namely, his exclusive rights to human worship. Again, there were apparently those like Artapanus that did not have a problem with other nations worshipping other (inferior) gods. Meanwhile, they served the "one supreme God" and their "one God." They "had no other gods before Him." Perhaps many of the anonymous and silent Diaspora Jews scattered throughout the world had such a view.

But by far the vast majority of the Jewish literature we have from this period sees YHWH as the sole legitimate God and thus the only God that should be worshipped. Bauckham calls this "cultic monotheism" and Larry Hurtado and others put a big premium on this element in the equation.

In my opinion, however, the way Bauckham and others treat worship in this period is slightly anachronistic in the same way that thinking of God's transcendence often is. To give worship is to honor and reverence a superior power. Since God is the superior power and the legitimate power, He is obviously in a category all its own when it comes to worship.

It is also true that there is a strong tradition within Jewish apocalyptic in which angels refuse worship in deference to the one God. In the words of Hebrews, angels are "ministering spirits." They are servants. You do not worship servants.

Where the line gets blurry is when we are talking about kings of various types. An earthly king is a "son of God," a divine son, not least because a king exerts over humans a power and authority analogous to the sovereignty of God over the cosmos. Indeed, the king mediates God's sovereignty. One can thus "bow the knee" or "worship" a human king as long as this reverence is properly subordinated to the glory of God the Father.

God made Moses "like a god to Pharaoh"--he gave him Godlike power and authority. Satan is told to "worship" Adam in the garden in the Life of Adam and Eve because Adam is his superior and an image of God, while Satan is merely a servant of God. And of course Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian is worshipped on a heavenly throne in a way analogous, but almost certainly subordinate to the worship of Moses' God. The fact that this is a dream does not obviate the basic dynamic of this uncomfortable example.

Things get even blurrier when the "royal" figure is a heavenly being. The Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch is a heavenly king. He is thus worthy of "worship" as long as such worship is clearly subordinated to and a function of the glory of God. Yahoel in the Apocalypse of Abraham similarly occupies an ambiguous space between being a subject of God and participating in God's throne.

In my opinion, Bauckham is "making up the rules" when he assumes that participation in creation and God's throne were absolutely off limits as a function of monotheism. What ancient evidence is there for this other than his definitions? Certainly many if not most ancient Jews might agree with him. But on what basis can he imply that an ancient Jew who did not agree with these parameters was thereby disloyal to the idea of "one God"? As Hurtado has argued, we must let them set the parameters for what we allow under the heading of "monotheism."

We might finally mention the matter of sacrifice. It seems doubtful that--perhaps except for some Diaspora Jews on the fridge of what we call Judaism at the time--Jews offered sacrifices to other gods. As far as I can tell, even in those instances where veneration is given to "royal" subordinates of God, they are never given sacrifice.

And why would they? The purpose of sacrifice was to secure the favor of God, including the deflection of God's wrath. Since YHWH was the ultimate sovereign in question even in those instances where other "royal" figures were in play, He would clearly be the one who needed propitiated.

"Cultic monotheism" would thus seem to apply most properly, then, to the fact that no other being was the proper recipient of sacrifice. On this score, therefore, I would suggest that Hurtado is the one who "makes up the rules" as to where non-sacrificial "cultic veneration" could or could not apply to figures other than the one God.

Ancient Jewish "monotheism" was thus primarily a matter of God's superior, sovereign power and rule, a power and position captured most clearly in his role as sole creator. Accordingly, He was the only God appropriate to worship. However, kings and heavenly beings that participate in His throne might also be said worthy of a reverence or "worship" as long as it is clearly subordinated to Him. Few Jews, of course, had any notion of such a being. Those that did were by far the exception rather than the rule.

Dunn's Partings 2: The Four Pillars

A quick summary of chapter 2 of James D. G. Dunn's The Partings of the Ways. This chapter sketches the central principles of Second Temple Judaism--Judaism as we define it rather than the word Ioudaismos as the Jews would have understood it at the time of Christ. As I mentioned in the previous post, Dunn believes that this term was coined in direct opposition to the term hellenismos and thus that it is a term born of the distinction between Jewish practice and Greek, particularly when it comes to the ethnic distinctives of the Law like circumcision, food laws, sabbath observance.

Dunn refers to these things as "common Judaism" in the absence of later rabbinic "orthodox" Judaism, which would represent significant pruning of an earlier diversity (and I remain inclined to think that rabbinic Judaism--as indeed the current Jewish canon--is largely the continuation of the Pharisaic tradition. The Protestant Old Testament, perhaps ironically, is thus the Pharisaic canon rather than the canon of Jerusalem Christianity, which I suspect was more along the lines of the Essene canon (including books like 1 Enoch as Scripture).

It seems to me that N. T. Wright truncates Dunn's list to three pillars, leaving off land. I don't know if he gives rationale for this somewhere, and I'm not in my office right now to look. In any case, the four or three pillar idea is an interpreter's construct. The Jews themselves did not use this language. They are scholarly reconstructions and must therefore be considered very tentative and amendable.

Monotheism
Like Hurtado and Bauckham (and Wright), Dunn considers monotheism one of the key distinctives of Jewish identity in the first century. This was mostly an exclusivist monotheism, meaning that YHWH was not equated with Zeus or Jupiter but was considered God with them not being gods at all. It is true that we do find some incidents of syncretism like this (Letter of Aristeas). Others considered these sorts of powers to be demonic powers of the other nations (cf. Ps. 82). Dunn mentions that at other times the virtues of other gods were captured as the virtues of God himself (e.g., wisdom).

Election
Also common to most of the surviving Jewish literature from this period is the sense that God had called Israel apart to be a special people to Him in distinction from the other nations. Dunn cites here excerpts from Jubilees and the Psalms of Solomon, as well as from the Eighteen Benedictions. The first two are, of course, largely texts that stand on the exclusivist side of Judaism from the time. But our common sense tells us that people groups in a collectivist culture consider themselves special in distinction from others, that syncretism in the matter of gods did not play itself out into any sense that all peoples were equal.

Covenant (based in Torah)
In this section, Dunn confirms the idea of "covenantal nomism" in perhaps slightly broader terms that the way E. P. Sanders used the phrase. The idea is basically that Israel understood its covenant to be the connection between monotheism and election. God had singled out Israel from among the nations, and Israel had YHWH alone as its God. The relationship was codified in the Torah.

The covenant involved certain obligations on Israel's part. If Israel would keep these obligations, God would bless them. If Israel did not keep them, God would curse them until they repented.

We can see the time of the Maccabees as the most important backdrop to the Judaism of New Testament days. Israel was on the brink of complete assimiliation to Hellenism (not to be confused with hellenization in general, which did take place--even 2 Maccabees was written in Greek). "Zeal for the law" was the winning hand, following in the spirit of Ezra, by the time of Christ.

[For those of you who know the chapter, it's clear that I'm doing a targum on Dunn, merging my own thoughts with his]

Dunn suggests two features of the common Jewish understanding of Torah at the time:
1) The law came to be understood as a basic expression of Jewish distinctiveness.

He cites Jubilees, Aristeas (! - pluralist yet big on the distinctiveness of Israel), and Philo. Thus, words like "lawless" came to refer to the Jews in the sense that they do not follow the Jewish law.

2) A sense of privilege as Jews.

This of course plays into Dunn's "new perspective" on Paul. He understands the boasting of Romans to be not an individualistic boasting in good works but a nationalistic boasting in ethnic privilege (so also Wright--"nationalistic righteousness"). A Gentile is thus a sinner by definition.

Naturally, argues Dunn, this distinctiveness and privilege led to a focus on aspects of the law that distinguished Jew from Gentile. As we know from elsewhere, Dunn believes these are the things that would have immediately come to mind when someone used the phrase "works of law": circumcision, Sabbath, and food laws.

Land (centered in Temple)
In Deuteronomy, the focus of Israel's blessing for keeping the covenant is its keeping and flourishing in the land. The temple was seen as the focus of the blessing.

a) The temple was the political center of Israel. The word "Jew" originally meant "Judean," and it is hard to tell when it stopped having this precise connotation. A "Judean" is thus someone connected with the territory in which the temple was located.

b) The temple was the economic center of Israel. In crass terms, Jerusalem was a tourist center. It had little to offer economically except for its temple. The temple drew pilgrims to the three central feasts and a half-shekel tax from Jewish males all over the Mediterranean. Its mount served as a center for trade.

c) The temple was a religious center.

Dunn ends the chapter by considering various aspects of the Jewish world that might be taken as arguments against considering the temple as a pillar of common Judaism:

1. The Essenes decried the temple. But Dunn rightly notes that it is not the institution of the temple per se that the Essenes opposed, but its current priesthood, practice, and general defilement.

2. The Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt that existed at the time of Christ came from about the same time as the Maccabean crisis when the Syrians ended the hereditary priesthood. Dunn thus does not see it as against the Jerusalem temple per se but a similar protest to that of the Essenes.

3. The rise of synagogues in the Diaspora similarly were not against the Temple but the attempt of Jews to maintain their religion at a distance from it. We might note that synagogue at the time of Christ likely does not refer to a building necessarily. It refered merely to a gathering, which of course could take place in a dedicated building but at this time more often than not probably did not.

Sorry to say but I doubt very seriously that any of the synagogues Wilbur Williams shows on tour were buildings of worship at the time of Jesus.

Friday I'll return (hopefully) to the next chapter of Hurtado. Tomorrow I might have to miss because of other obligations...

Richard Bauckham on Monotheism

I'm writing a little piece on Jewish monotheism and so am trying to organize in my mind a host of materials on the subject. Today I thought I would try to get some of my thoughts on Richard Bauckham's work on the subject down on screen.

Bauckham's work on this topic is great because he has left us with a great paper trail that can function as a kind of archaeological dig in which to trace the development of his ideas. If anyone is looking for a topic for a masters thesis in biblical studies, as soon as his summative work on this subject comes out (we've been waiting for 10 years), the circle will be complete. Perhaps it's not in exactly the form he'd planned initially, but alas, we're glad to get it finally.

Here is the paper trail as best I can tell:

"The Worship of Jesus in Apocalyptic Christianity," New Testament Studies 27 (1980-81).

"Jesus, Worship of," Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3 article (1993).

God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Didsbury Lectures, given in 1996, published by Paternoster in 1998, by Eerdmans in 1999). This is the best single resource available at present.

"The Worship of Jesus in Philippians 2:9-11," in Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2 (1998).

"The Throne of God and the Worship of God," in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (given as a paper in 1998, published by Brill in 1999)

"Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John," in Contours of Christology in the New Testament, Eerdmans, 2002.

"Monotheism and Christology in Hebrews 1," in Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism (2004)

"Paul's Christology of Divine Identity"

"The Divinity of Jesus," The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, forthcoming from Eerdmans, 2008.

Jesus and the God of Israel, forthcoming book that I think will sum up these different articles and papers in one place.

Here's a very brief summary of the first chapter of God Crucified.

1. There are two main approaches to the question of monotheism and Judaism at the time of Christ:

• The first sees monotheism as an essential characteristic of Judaism of the time.
• The second sees Judaism as blurry at the time, with various angels, exalted patriarchs and such as sharing in God's divinity to varying degrees.

Bauckham comes out squarely in the camp of the first, as the remaining points of the chapter will make clear. I think that Bauckham is largely correct on this score.

2. Bauckham argues that Jews made a strict distinction between God and the creation, with God's unique identity consisting in two aspects:

• God as sole creator. Bauckham argues strongly that Jewish texts did not allow for any other angel or exalted being to take part in the creation.
• God as sole ruler. Bauckham argues strongly that only God could rule and sit on His throne. Angels and exalted figures did not rule for God. God ruled and they served.

I have more questions about Bauckham's construct here and want to read the texts he mentions more carefully. Certainly Yahweh is creator over and against the gods of the other nations. Is there really care on the part of Jewish authors to make sure angels aren't thought to have a role in creation?

I'm also unclear about the hard exclusion of angels from participating in God's rule. Would not the royal traditions of the OT imply that the messiah would participate in God's rule?

3. Bauckham's attempt to move beyond the distinction between "functional" and "ontic" Christologies. A functional Christology would consider language of Christ's divinity as a matter of him functioning in ways that divinity functions. An ontic Christology would argue that Christ's divinity is a matter of him having a divine nature.

Clearly Christianity came to view Christ's divinity as a matter of his nature. It is less clear, however, that the New Testament was already thinking in such categories. Bauckham suggests a new way of thinking about Christ's divinity that thinks of Christ as becoming part of God's unique identity, understood more in terms of what God does rather than what God is.

I have generally found the way Bauckham describes this concept as ambiguous, but that's because Bauckham is half theologian :) (I have the same reaction to Barth). Surprise, surprise, Bauckham had been reading Hans Frei's The Identity of Jesus Christ.

4. Bauckham divides Jewish intermediary figures into two categories:

• angels and exalted patriarchs--these Bauckham excludes from divine roles in creation or rule
• personifications of divine attributes--figures like God's wisdom and word are part of God's identity, and so can participate in God's creation and rule, but they are part of God's identity.

5. The inclusion of Christ within God's identity is

• pre-NT and already has the highest Christology of the NT, since Christ participates in the essential, unique aspects of God's divinity
• unprecedented within Judaism, although anticipated by figures like wisdom and word

6. Update:
Since God Crucified, Bauckham has spoken of three dimensions of Jewish monotheism (slight shift from the "creation" and "rule" aspects that imply "sole worship" or monolatry):

• creational monotheism--God as sole creator
• eschatological monotheism--God will be the final ruler of all
• cultic monotheism--God alone is worthy of worship

7. Pre-evaluation
I wonder if some of these distinctions Bauckham makes are somewhat artificially imposed on Jewish literature. It is quite possible that he is thinking more deeply than I have as yet caught on to.

A particular question I have relates to Bauckham's ideas on Jesus inheriting the divine name YHWH. In the Philippian hymn and in Hebrews 1, Jesus receives these divine names at the point of his exaltation to God's right hand, incorporation into God's eschatological monotheism. Bauckham sees no way then that Jesus cannot then also be included within God's creational monotheism, as in 1 Corinthians 8:6.

I am sure that this means something coherent in Bauckham's mind, and I will continue to pursue it. My Dunnian realism, however, leaves me wondering what it could mean in the real world for the real Jesus and ex-Pharisee Paul rather than the esoteric halls of post-liberal theology.

Was Hebrews Written to Jews: What Scholars Have Said

I think we could fairly say that the majority of English-speaking Hebrews' scholars believe Hebrews was written to a primarily Jewish audience. I don't think so, but I wanted to quote some of the reasons that have been given in support of a Jewish audience. I comment after each quote.

1. Although he is commenting on the dating of Hebrews, Richard Longenecker (Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, 144-45) assumes a Jewish audience in the following comment. He has concluded a Jewish audience drawing on William Manson, Yigael Yadin, and especially on Alexander Nairne. This comment is of a piece with this assessment:

"[O]nly on the supposition that the sacrificial worship of the Jerusalem temple still existed as the heart of the nation's life and an intact Judaism continued to offer a live option for the author's readers does the letter become historically intelligible."

The assumption is that the rhetoric of Hebrews is aimed to dissuade a Jewish audience from relying on the Jerusalem cultus. This is a seriously unexamined assumption, however, for Hebrews does not tell its audience not to rely on the Jerusalem cultus (yes, I am aware of 13:9-10). It tells them to rely on Christ's atonement because it works in contrast to the Jerusalem cultus. But such a message might apply as well to console an audience that has lost a temple it relied on as it would apply to an audience tempted to turn to it.

The second unexamined assumption is thus that the audience as Christians did not rely on the Jerusalem temple for atonement in some way. But it remains to be argued that all early Christians understood Christ's atonement to replace the temple cultus in toto. It seems rather more likely to me that many early Christians saw Christ's "sacrifice" as a supplement rather than full replacement. This is exactly the reason why Hebrews is written--to show that Christ's atonement is in fact a full atonement rather than an additional one.

As it plays into the ethnicity of the audience, a third unexamined assumption is that this entire discussion, taken either in the polemic or consolation direction, would obviously apply only to Christian Jews rather than to Christian Gentiles. In other words, it assumes Gentile="liberal in relation to Judaism" while Jew="conservative in relation to Judaism." But this is almost certainly false. In reality there were likely Jewish believers who were far more liberal than many Gentile believers, while there was likely a significant portion of Gentile believers who were more "conservative" in relation to Judaism than Paul.

In short, Longenecker's argument reflects exactly the sort of paradigmatic blind spots that recent scholarship has been working hard to overcome.

I might also mention here a comment James Dunn made in Partings of the Ways some time ago that probably makes the common assumption that Hebrews is a polemic against the Levitical system rather than a consolation in its absence:

"likely we have to envisage a fairly homogeneous Christian-Jewish community somewhere in the diaspora, untouched by the sort of questions Paul raised; but hankering after the ritual and tangibility of the Temple cult, such as the primitive Jerusalem church had enjoyed. In other words, quite likely a group of Christians who had migrated from Jerusalem or Judaea, during or as a result of the Jewish revolt (66-70) and of the Roman suppression of it" (87).

Accordingly, "it is difficult to avoid talking of a parting of the ways in the case of Hebrews" (91).

2. F. F. Bruce (The Epistle to the Hebrews, xxiv-xxx).

Bruce's argument is somewhat nuanced:

a. First, Bruce recognizes a popular argument that is sometimes made for a Jewish audience and rightly dismisses it. In this we affirm Bruce while noting the "unexamined assumption" he thus brings up himself:

"The whole argument [of Hebrews] is conducted against a background of Old Testament allusion; considerable familiarity with the Levitical ritual, and interest in it, are presupposed. Yet all this in itself does not require either the author or the people addressed to be Jewish; we have known at the present time Gentile Christians who were thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament, accepted it as sacred and authoritative scripture, and manifested a lively interest in the details of the Mosaic tabernacle and the Levitical offerings..." (xxv).

Bruce himself, although he favors a Jewish audience, rightly recognizes that this argument is not definitive in any way. I am a Gentile, for example. David deSilva puts it another way: "the Gentile Christian was socialized to view himself or herself as the heir to the titles and promises that belonged to God's chosen people" (Perseverance in Gratitude, 3).

b. Bruce goes on, however, to argue for a Jewish audience:

"[T]he whole 'foundation' of Ch. 6:1ff implies the Jewish antecedents of the readers..." (xxvi)

Let us look at 6:1-2 and see if this comment holds water:

"Therefore, having left the word of the beginning of the Christ, let us bring on perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and faith upon God, the teaching of baptisms and laying on hands, both [the teaching] of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment."

I am frankly flabbergasted at Bruce's suggestion that these words imply a Jewish audience, for the author implies that these items--repentance, faith, baptisms, laying on hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal life--are things that coincided with the "word of the beginning of the Christ." They also presumably correlate with "the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God" mentioned in 5:12. In other words, these are elements of foundation laid for the audience when they began to believe the word about Christ.

But most of these would not likely have been items of foundation laid for a Jew coming to believe on Christ! A Jew would quite likely already believe in repentance in relation to sins ("dead works"), faith in God, resurrecton, and eternal life. In short, rather than point to a Jewish audience, these verses provide the strongest evidence for a primarily Gentile audience!

David deSilva argues for a mixed audience, but he supports some Gentile overtones here in the phrase, "repentance from dead works": "More attractive is the suggestion that 'dead works' refer to idols" (216). Again, it is very difficult to see even a Jewish believer referring to performance of the Jewish law as "dead works." We find a similar blind spot in William Lane's commentary (Hebrews 1-8, 140): "the 'dead works' [here as in 9:14] are defined as the external regulations associated with the Levitical priesthood in the earthly sanctuary."

Yet deSilva argues against a purely Gentile implication for these verses when he says things like, "Jewish converts would also need to reorient their own trust in God to incorporate the role of Jesus in securing God's promises and favor" (217). I think it bears tremendous argument that Christian Jewish saw their faith in God as substantially different from their faith in God before they believed on Christ. The difference is their faith in what God has done rather than their faith in God per se. I can't think of any NT evidence that the phrase "faith in God" took on such substantially different connotations for believers that it would have been obvious that the phrase meant something significantly different for a believing Jew than it did for a non-believing Jew.

Harold Attridge (The Epistle to the Hebrews) notes rightly, "It is striking how little in this summary is distinctive of Christianity" (163). I have failed, however, to find a clear cut statement in his commentary on what he thinks of the ethnicity of the audience is. He presents the arguments for a Gentile audience second and is clearly has no problem with the idea of Gentiles in the audience. My guess is he would go with mixed.

c. Bruce's comment goes on: "... implies the Jewish antecedents of the readers, as does also the description of Christ's death in Ch. 9:15 as procuring 'redemption' of the transgressions that were under the first covenant" (xxvi).

Later on the same page he says that the author's "insistance that the old covenant has been antiquated is expressed with a moral earnestness and driven home repeatedly in a manner which would be pointless if his readers were not specially disposed to live under that covenant."

The false assumption here, however, is of a piece with the very assumption Bruce himself has already dismissed, namely, that Gentile believers would not have adopted a perspective in which they believed the Jerusalem cultus to provide atonement for their sins and that they would not have come to associate themselves with God's covenant with Israel even though they had not submitted to circumcision.

The blind spot is the assumption that the early Christians already had the perspective of Hebrews all along, namely, that Christ's death provided the only necessary atonement for sins, that after his death there was no longer any need for sacrifice at all. But this is not at all likely! They would likely have conceived of Jesus' death more along the lines of the Maccabean martyrs, through whom God brought His wrath on Israel to an end. Such an "atoning sacrifice" certainly would not imply to them the end of any need for sacrifice at all! Indeed, we fail to appreciate the potency of Hebrews when we do not realize how revolutionary its suggestion that Christ is the end of all sacrifice is!

Conclusion
My purpose here has been to show not only how weak most arguments for a Jewish audience for Hebrews are, but even moreso to point out paradigmatic blindspots in false assumptions about Judaism and Jewish Christianity that play into them. Of course I could now turn to positive arguments for a Gentile audience, but that will have to wait for another day...

Friday Review: Jewish Christianity Reconsidered

I'm writing a paper for SBL, the official title of which is "Hebrews and the Parting of the Ways." Don't worry, I'm not going to blog the paper. But I am doing some reading this month in relation to writing it, so my Friday Book Reviews this month will likely feature material from some of the resources I'm reading.

The chair of the SBL group, "Jewish Christianity," is also the editor of a book called Jewish Christianity Reconsidered--Matt Jackson-McCabe. This week I read his chapter entitled "What's in a Name? The Problem of 'Jewish Christianity.'" In this chapter he overviews the question of what exactly scholars mean by the term, "Jewish Christianity." Here is a review of the players:

Johannes Munck (1959-60)
Although later than most of the figures below, Munck uses "Jewish Christianity" in reference to to the Jerusalem community associated with James, Peter, and John (13). McCabe pin points one difficulty with this approach when he says, "there is presently no single text that a general consensus of scholars would attribute to the early Jerusalem community" (12).

F. C. Baur (1878) and the Tübingen School
For Baur, Jewish Christianity referred to those early followers of Jesus in Jerusalem like Peter, John, and James who did not recognize the universal scope of Jesus' message but limited it to the Jews. So they followed "simply a new and stronger form of the old Messianic expectations" (16, McCabe quoting Baur). So for Baur, Paul was the real beginning of Christianity, and following Hegel's dialectic, the synthesis of Jewish Christianity with Pauline Christianity was "catholic Christianity."

Adolf von Harnack (1896)
For Harnack, Jewish Christianity was not really Christianity at all but those Jews who never recognized the universal scope of Christianity but retained a "national" focus on Israel (18). Unlike Baur, Harnack believed that Peter eventually came to agree with Paul and at that point "ceased to be a Jewish Christian" (19, McCabe quoting Harnack). Harnack did not believe that there are any surviving texts from the category of "Jewish Christian." I'm not sure what he would do with the Gospel of the Ebionites.

Albrecht Ritschl (1857)
In contrast to Baur and Harnack, Ritschl's approach was much more nuanced and, in my opinion, was more helpful. Take the following terms:

Jüdische Christenthum--"Jewish Christianity"--any text or group at the intersection of Christian faith and Jewish practice--a very general term that covers most of early Christianity, including Paul

Judenchristenthum--"Judaeo-Christianity"--Christians who believed that the Mosaic law was the essence of Christianity, thus a law observant form of early Christianity more "conservative" than Paul

judaistisch--"Judaic"--anything influenced in a general way by Judaism in the Second Temple Period--like apocalyptic material in the gospels

alttestamentlich--"Old Testament-ish"--things influenced not by Second Temple Judaism but by the Old Testament in the Protestant sense, thus in distinction from judaistisch.

In my opinion, Ritschl's description of what he called Judenchristenthum stands closest to what most contemporary scholars mean when they refer to Jewish Christianity. "Jewish Christianity" thus refers to Christian Jews who observed the Jewish Law more carefully than Paul, as typified by Peter, James, and Jerusalem Christianity (I regret that I'm at home and don't have Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament handy to give you his definition with the usual caveats).

As McCabe puts it, "the use of the term 'Jewish Christianity' to denote groups or texts that combine veneration of Jesus with practice of Jewish law remains very common" (22).

Hans Joachim Schoeps (1949)
Schoeps used Christology as a dividing line between "Great Church" Jewish Christians and "extremist" Pharisaic Jewish Christians who would become the Ebionites of the second century, for whom Jesus was only a prophet and messiah (23-24).

For me Christology is the primary issue when considering the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity as distinct religions. Larry Hurtado, for example, sees the worship of Jesus in a manner that is heterodox for Judaism very early. As such, he would seem to date the parting of the ways very early also. I generally think that it is probably not until the Gospel of John that we are beginning to see a form of Christianity that is coming very close to crossing this line. In any case, I am arguing that Hebrews doesn't cross that line yet.

Jean Daniélou (1964)
From the standpoint of Christian faith, Daniélou's use of the term "Jewish Christianity" is just fine. For him it is "a category of Christian groups and texts marked simply by a recognizably Jewish discourse" (24, McCabe's description). In other words, it is basically "phase one" of Christianity that ends mid-second century. The Hellenistic is the second phase and the Latin phase is of course the lead up to Nicaea.

Daniélou's use of the term is very loose. It does not, for example, help us to distinguish between "Judaizers," James and Peter, Paul, and antinomians in the early church.

Gabrielle Boccaccini (1991), Anthony Saldarini (1994), Daniel Boyarin (1999)
A number of recent scholars, including myself (forthcoming book on Hebrews), have returned to an old phrase in the light of recent discussions of the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity: "Christian Judaism."

This phrase had been used a century ago by people like Harnack and Fenton J. A. Hort (1894) in reference to the Judaizing "Christians" with whom Paul sparred--in other words, individuals who were not "truly" Christians. I do not, however, use the phrase in this way. Nor do I use it in the manner of Boccaccini and Boyarin. For Boccaccini, Christianity has never stopped being a form of Judaism.

For Boyarin, "Christian Judaism" refers to Christianity up until the fourth century (i.e., Nicaea). I'm not sure I could go with Boyarin here, as the rhetoric of Ignatius and Justin Martyr in the second century seems so anti-Jewish that I can scarcely use the phrase of them. But I hear what Boyarin is saying, and I will likely be reviewing some material from his book, Border Lines (2004), later this month.

McCabe of course does not define "Jewish Christianity" by the end of the chapter, for that is what the book is all about. Next Friday I plan to mention the most interesting points of the rest of the book.

But I will give you my position on this issue in relation to Hebrews:

• I refer to the form of Christianity of all the NT books, with the possible exception of John and Revelation, as "Christian Judaism."
• There are two primary factors in this distinction for me. The first is of course Jewish ethnicity. The leaders of this "Jesus movement" were Jews. I have somewhat awkwardly referred to Gentile converts to this movement as Gentile "Jews." In any case, I find it less problematic to call them "Gentile Christians" since such a description is less likely to import the false assumptions that the phrase "Jewish Christians" usually does--namely, that they belonged to a new religion.
  
  By this definition, like Daniélou, I don't make distinctions between Judaizers, James, Paul, and others in the early church (although I do distinguish Jew from Gentile). It's not that I don't feel free to make such distinctions. I simply do not use the phrase "Jewish Christianity" or "Christian Judaism" to do so.
  
• The more important criterion is the matter of Christology. To me, monotheism is the ultimate dividing line between Jewish faith and "other." I don't think any of the NT books, with the possible exception of John and Revelation, violate orthodox Jewish monotheism. In my opinion, however, Nicaea does. The reason why I "hear" Boyarin is the fact that, in some respects, Arius does not yet seem to "violate" Jewish monotheism. But to call him a "Christian Jew" seems ridiculous to me.

McCabe's chapter provides an excellent conceptual framework for sifting through 150 years of scholarly literature. The summary I've given above would not have been possible apart from his very helpful sorting.