Monday, December 23, 2024

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.

No comments: