Paul The Convert
Paul The Convert
Paul The Convert
CONVERT
The Apostolate and
Apostasy of
Saul the Pharisee
Alan F. Segal
CONTENTS
Introduction
xi
3
34
72
187
2x4
254
285
Abbreviations
301
Notes
Indexes
307
353
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
man, Jonathan Lupkin, Allan Pantuck, Terry Todd, and Tommy Williams
for assisting me with editing, proofreading, and indexing.
Several parts of this book were published previously in slightly different forms. Short segments appeared in a different context in my book
Rebecca's Children. Parts of chapters i and 3 were published in volume 3
of Anti-Judaism and in SBL Seminar Papers of 1988. Chapter 2 was
published in the SBL Seminar Papers of 1986. Chapter 7 was published in
Studies in Religion in 1986 and republished in The Other Judaisms of Late
Antiquity. All are republished here with the permission of the publishers,
though some have been altered substantially.
New Testament quotations are from the Revised Standard Version
(RSV), unless otherwise noted.
INTRODUCTION
Jesus left no writing, thereby preventing any direct reconstruction of his self-consciousness. We must suppose his intentions indirectly,
from the reports of his disciples, which were often filtered orally through a
generation or two of well-meaning and deeply committed reporters. By
contrast, Paul wrote directly to his contemporaries, so his thoughts and
motivations lie open to analysis. Like Luke (i:z) but earlier chronologically, Paul admits to having never met Jesus in the flesh. He is our earliest
witness to the faith in Christ rather than to the life of Jesus. For that reason
alone, he has been the subject of innumerable books in Christian history.
Paul is also important for Jewish history. He is one of only two Pharisees to
have left us any personal writings (e.g., Phil. 3:$).1 As the only firstcentury Jew to have left confessional reports of mystical experience (2 Cor.
12:1io),2 Paul should be treated as a major source in the study of firstcentury Judaism.
Yet Paul is hardly ever read seriously by Jewish historians, for he
angers Jews of today as much as he angered his contemporaries, both
Jewish and Christian. His experience of the postresurrection Christ in
visions, though never in the flesh, also made his apostolate suspect to his
fellow apostles.3 But Paul's meditations on the significance of the Christ
became the basis of Western understandings of Jesus' purpose, at least as
much as those of the disciples did.
Paul's letters are hardly easy to read now, for they are full of ambiguities, complexities, and attacks on half-forgotten adversaries. Yet they
reveal the thought and sensibility of one of the most influential persons in
the West, as well as glimpses of a continually fascinating personal religious
quest. Paul is familiar with Greek rhetoric, as well as Hellenistic Jewish
xi
INTRODUCTION
xiv
INTRODUCTION
thousand years ago should not prevent scholars from appreciating genuine
religious sentiments, even though they may contradict their own. Paul's
religious insights were surely valid ones for him. Religion must take many
forms to speak to the different needs of human society. Although Paul met
opposition from many Jews of his own day, because they believed Jesus to
be neither messiah nor God, his greatest battles were fought against other
Christians, especially Jewish Christians. Further, there is little evidence in
Paul's letters that he thought of himself as leaving Judaism, though he was
aware that his opinions could be construed as transgression. Rather, Paul
considered himself as part of a new Jewish sect and hoped to convince both
fellow Christians and Jews of his vision of redemption. When Paul perceived the widening gap between Judaism and Christianity, it caused him
much pain.
History after Paul has judged Christianity to be different from Judaism. That fact seems undeniable today, but it was hardly evident in the first
century. Paul would have objected strenuously against any distinction
between his faith and his Judaism, for he continuously preached unity in
Christ between Jews and Christians. Yet Paul's inclusion of both gentiles
and Jews equally in his community was ironically one great step separating
Judaism from Christianity. Paul's Jewish past and the terms of his conversion are the keys to understanding why he advocated inclusion in Christianity. Knowing where he came from and where he was determined to
gowhat his conversion meant to himfurthers our appreciation of
Paul's achievements.
JEWISH H I S T O R Y IN PAUL'S WRITINGS
A Jewish scholar can make a further contribution to the study
of Paul: he or she can clarify Jewish history from Paul's writings. Many
fundamental rabbinic traditions can no longer be assumed to date from
the time of Jesus, though they purport to be even more ancient.6 Although
rabbinic Judaism claims the Pharisees as forebears, the differences between the rabbis and the Pharisees are great. The Pharisaic movement was
but one among a variety of sects in the first century, and rabbinic Judaism
matured with the publication of the Mishnah around 2Z0 C.E. The Pharisaic traditions described in the Mishnah are of uncertain date. Preserved
in oral form, the Pharisaic traditions may have originated in the first two
centuries or much earlier, as is often claimed. As in any oral literature,
these traditions may have been altered in transmission, especially by rabbinic editors in the late second century. Rabbinic documents transform the
Introduction
xv
xvi
INTRODUCTION
Paul with new insights for Christians, rarely read Paul at all, and almost
never as valid religious experience; instead, they think of him as an apostate. There is some justification for this evaluation, from the perspective of
Judaism, as we shall see below. But the term apostate must be carefully
discussed and nuanced.8
To be used effectively, the New Testament should be read with allowance for its anti-Pharisaic and sometimes anti-Jewish tone. Almost every
page of the New Testament reveals an intolerance of its Jewish milieu that
is borne of an intensely aggravated family conflict. Unfortunately the
animosity increases over time. Since Paul's letters are the earliest documents, they are in some ways least affected by dogmatic vituperation.
Eloquently describing the lack of acceptance by his peers of his radical
interpretation of Torah, Paul's letters turn out to be the easiest to control
against the bias of Christian anti-Judaism, although this is not easy.9
Modern studies of the attitude changes that accompany conversion are
helpful in separating fact from opinion in Paul's writing. Paul is, in fact,
our best witness to the issues that affected first-century Jews. In spite of his
complex feelings about Judaism and his uniquely Christian perspective,
Paul is, ironically, one of the most fruitful and reliable sources for firstcentury Jewish religious life.
CHAPTER ONE
transmitting their teachings anonymously; so too the lack of an autobiography of Jesus or Paul implies a Jewish religious sensibility, according
to which individuals might transmit religious truths but did not claim to
innovate.
By contrast, Hellenistic Jewish writers give us biographies of the great
figures of Jewish history. Philo writes biographies of each patriarch and
concentrates on Moses in several works. Joseph us gives us a full account of
his own life, clearly meant to justify his radical change of allegiance during
the great revolt against Rome. Curiosity for biographical detail and the
search for historical significance were no less prevalent in the Hellenistic
world than in our own. In Christianity the Hellenistic conventions for
discussing religious figures won out over native ones. As important as
Paul's concerns were, he did not answer all the questions of the early
Christian community. Mark, Matthew, and John realized the need for an
account of the life of Christ, and Luke, after writing his gospel of the
Christ, also realized the need for a biography of Paul, which he provides in
Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote perhaps fifty years after Paul and in an
atmosphere of more confident gentile Christianity. His writing seems to
reflect gentile and diaspora sensibilities rather than the sensibilities of the
rabbis and the earliest church, though he is concerned with the rift between Jewish and gentile Christians.
The Gospels tell the story of Jesus' life, but they are not what we would
call biographical; they exemplify and illustrate the theological beliefs of
the evangelists through the events of Jesus' life. Luke's description of Paul
is not impartial biography either, for it was intended to dramatize the early
church's journey from Judea into the gentile world. In some ways Luke
downplays Paul's claims, but he uses Paul's life and mission to illustrate
the destiny of Christianity. Luke's biography of Paul brings the story of
Christianity to Rome, just as Paul's thought makes the universal church
mission possible for Luke. Luke purposely eliminates the disorganization,
disunity, and rancor of early Christianity. He portrays the earliest church
fathers as united on most important issues, although Paul himself writes
angrily about the conflict between the gentile and Jewish factions of the
church. The resulting Lukan portrait of Paul lacks the fire and controversy
of the Pauline letters. Many New Testament scholars suspect that Luke
entirely abandons historical accuracy.3
Many of the details of Paul's life come directly from Luke and from
nowhere else. The most obvious biographical details are missing from
Paul's own letters. Without Luke, we could not suppose that Paul's origins
were in Tarsus, that he traveled to Jerusalem, where he studied with the
In the first two accounts Paul's mission is revealed in Damascus by Ananias immediately after the conversion narrative (Acts 9:15-17; 22:1416). In the first account Ananias describes Paul's experience as a vision
(9:12). In the second, he says that Paul has seen the Just One (2z: 14). Only
in Luke's third version (26:1617), a shortened narrative, is Paul's commissioning made part of the revelation itself.
We are left with this perplexing problem: Was the commission part of
the vision itself (Acts 26:1518), or did it come later, after Paul had
learned more of the Christian message (9:1-19; 22:1-21)? Perhaps the
commission was suggested by Paul's teachers of Christianity, symbolized
by Ananias. Of course, Luke may be historically accurate on all three
occasions, merely recounting what Paul actually said. But this imports to
Luke a higher degree of accuracy than was expected of ancient historians.
In fact, the conventions of ancient historiography called on historians to
invent speeches appropriate for their characters. Possibly, having related
the scene twice, Luke intentionally shortens the third narration of the
account. But by relating it three times, Luke signals his interest in emphasizing and dramatizing Paul's conversion experience. It thus appears that
Luke is trying to place Paul's mission as close to the conversion as possible.
In Paul's own writing, however, the connection is more ambiguous.
Although Paul understands his commission to have started in the womb
(Gal. 1:15), he concludes more slowly that he was destined to become the
apostle to the gentiles. Luke sees that Paul's destiny is to be the apostle to
the gentiles, an evaluation that Paul himself shares, but Paul's writing does
not unambiguously report that he realized his destiny immediately (e.g.,
2 Cor. 11:24-26). Paul's description of himself as the apostle to the
gentiles could easily have been the result of his experience of success
among gentiles and his rejection among Jews. Evidently there was a period
of time when Paul tried less successfully to convince his Jewish brothers. In
the hands of Luke, and even occasionally in Paul's own writing, the connection between Paul's vision and the command to proselytize is therefore
clear. But the clarity of this connection could have been realized more
slowly by Paul, after years of Christian experience. Both the Lukan and
Pauline accounts seem to dramatize the effect of the conversion by portraying the outcome as present in the original revelation.
Paul's Vision of the Kavod According to Luke
The importance to Christianity of the divine commissionings in LukeActs lies primarily in the thread uniting them, the sudden about-face
IO
11
Christ" (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49), which again resembles Ezekiel's language of "the appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord" (Ezek.
1:28, cf. LXX). Central to Paul's Christian experience is the transformation of believers at the apocalypse. More important, Paul anticipates the
technical terminology of the transformation of believers into angels in
Jewish mysticism.
Luke ascribes Paul's blindness to the "glory of that light" (22:11) and
describes Paul as seeing the "Just One" (22:14). Although the importance
of these phrases is debatable, Luke did not fabricate a relationship between Paul and Ezekiel; he is not alone in seeing the identification between
Christ and the Glory of the Lord. This unusual feature of identification
between the believer and Christ, closely related to Paul's own conversion,
is a fascinating unexplored aspect of Paul's thought. It is the mystery that
can be most clearly addressed by the serious study of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism. To comprehend Paul's experience, we must therefore inquire into the secret and imperfectly understood Jewish mysticism
of the first centurylater called Merkabah mysticism, after the Mishnaic
term for the chariot that Ezekiel sawwhich sought this same vision. In
doing so, we find that Paul is indeed one of our best witnesses to the
existence and content of these traditions in the first century (see chapter 2
below).
The connection made by Luke between Paul and the call of Ezekiel can
be seen clearly in Paul's own writing. The theological implications of this
hypothetical identification are staggering. Is Paul's Christianity rooted in
the identification of Jesus with the Glory of God (the Hebrew Kavod),
God's sometimes human appearance in the visions of the Hebrew Bible?
Luke provides the first interpretation of Paul's conversion by figuring it in
terms of Ezekiel's prophetic commissioning: as a conversion, commission,
or vocation, Paul's movement to Christianity is interpreted as the result of
a revelation of the image of God's Glory.
Luke describes Paul explicitly as a new prophet, but he also portrays
Paul's experience as a radical conversion. A deeply disturbing and emotional experience, which turns Paul's life completely around, is offered as
the model experience for other believers. To call Paul's experience a conversion not only has the effect of authenticating it with great emotional
power and mystery, but it also clarifies Paul's call to Christianity as a call
to join and later define a new community. Paul's conversion is best defined
in terms of the Pharisaic Jewish community he left behind and the gentile
Christian community he joined.
IZ
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mission before birth. Before his conversion, all is equally irrelevant for
Paul. His training in Pharisaism, however, does frequently affect his perception and analysis.
Although predestined for his task, Paul maintains that the radical
change in his life is still a sign of the spirit's activity. The vivid contrast
between his former life as a persecutor of Christianity and his present one
as an apostle starts as a personal reflection on his conversion experience,
which Paul sees both in terms of the commission of a prophet and a radical
reversal of his previous life. Its personal meaning for Paul lies not only in
his Christian commitment but in his personal knowledge of Christ as well.
Paul believes that he himself has met the Christ, though he never met the
man Jesus. Paul may cast his mission to the gentiles in terms of a prophetic
commission, but his explicit use of prophetic forms of speech is restricted.
He never explicitly calls himself a prophet either, preferring instead the
term apostle.21 There is some relationship between the terms apostle and
prophet in Christianity, but the two are not identical. Paul's great change
of direction is better understood as a conversion.
PAUL AND LUKE C O M P A R E D
There are important differences between Paul and Luke, rooted in their different purposes. Paul wants to vindicate his position as an
apostle, while Luke wants to portray the progress of the church from the
Jewish community to the gentile one. The chronology of Luke's history of
the church is unemphasized in Paul's own writing. Paul tries to express the
content of his revelation, and Luke uses Paul's ecstatic experience as a
model for gentile conversions. Most important, although Paul calls his
conversion a revelation, Luke substitutes a revelatory audition unknown
in Paul's writing.
Luke wrote with more historical perspective than Paul and, of course,
less personal knowledge of the experience, but he understood the importance of Paul's conversion in ways that Paul himself perhaps did not fully
realize. Luke's description of Paul's conversion contains a radical distinction between resurrection appearances of Christ and experiences of the
spirit.22 Neither Paul himself nor John distinguishes so clearly between
spiritual and "resurrection" appearances. In i Cor. 15:45, for instance,
Paul shows no sensitivity to Luke's interpretive categories when he conflates the appearance of the risen Jesus with "a life-giving spirit." Luke,
however, distinguishes Paul's experience from that of the original twelve
apostles. For Luke, the authentic resurrection appearances of Jesus in the
15
gospel and Acts are far more mundane and "realistic." Jesus walks and
talks with wayfarers, blesses them, eats, and is sometimes unrecognized at
first. These are not visionary appearances but descriptions of ordinary
consciousness to Luke. He understands the first sightings of Jesus as actual
physical manifestations. The resurrection appearances are then brought to
an end by the ascension (Acts i:9ff).23 Conversely, for Luke, Paul's conversion is a visionary audition, with no specific image described. Although
Paul's experience may have been visionary, it falls into a second category
of sightings, an expression of the spirit after Jesus' ascension.24 Luke
identifies the original twelve disciples as apostles, limiting apostolic status
to those who had accompanied Jesus during his ministry (Acts 1:21-2.6);
by implication, Paul falls into the secondary category of converts to Christ
by means of the holy spirit.
Paul may accept the status of the twelve as special disciples, but he
argues that the appearance of Christ to him vindicates his equal status as
apostle, even though it occurred in a revelation and vision. Indeed, he
includes himself in the list of those to whom Jesus' resurrection was made
manifest (Galatians 1; 1 Cor. 9:1; i5:8f). Paul may recognize that he is
"last of all" and "untimely born," but he will not give up his claim to the
apostolate because Christ appeared to him. He uses the same simple word
(see) to describe his and the other apostles' experience of Christ. Paul
therefore does not distinguish between the kind of appearance made
known to him and those made known to his forebears.
I. M. Lewis's sociological distinction between peripheral and central
possession offers another way to express the difference between Luke and
Paul's conception of conversion.25 When claims for ecstasy occur in
groups peripheral to power, they tend to function as bids to short-circuit
the legitimate organization of power. In contrast, when spirit possession
or ecstasy occurs close to the center of a political movement, it is carefully
controlled, usually by an established religious authority. Ecstatic religion
represents a peripheral strategy in first-century Judaism; it was an oblique
attack against established order, as when the Qumran sectarians practiced
ecstatic ascent. They were priestly functionaries, locked out of their hereditary temple functions, so they sought contact with the divine in the desert.
Within the Christian movement ecstasy carried different social distinctions. Positing only two social strategies leaves out many intermediate,
ambiguous cases in early Christianity, but one difference between Paul
and Luke emerges from the function of ecstatic experience in their writings. For Luke^ Paul's ecstatic experience was the model for the conversion
of gentiles. But this experience is not the model for resurrection ap-
l6
pearances, which are treated literally and give a special status to the first
apostles. For Paul, in contrast, the revelatory vision of Christ functions as
a bid for power, since he was a peripheral figure in Christianity, as his
battle for apostolic acceptance shows. 26 The motif of realistic appearances
in Luke is similar to a Graeco-Roman apologetic designed to impress
critics and friends with the power of Jesus' resurrection, whereas the
ecstatic visions of Paul are more in line with the original Jewish apocalypticism out of which Christianity arose.
Luke and Paul's description of the risen Christ is socially significant as
well. The contrast between the descriptions points to an incipient crisis in
the churchbetween the (mostly Jewish) Christians who based their new
faith on an experience of Jesus in the flesh and the (mostly gentile) Christians championed by the ex-Pharisee Paul, who based their faith on a
spiritual interpretation of Christ, seen primarily in his resurrection or
spiritual body. The theology, then, parallels the social distinction in early
Christianity between those who knew Christ in a fleshly way and those
who knew him in his spiritual body. This vision and the subsequent success of the gentile mission convinced Paul that the new age was not only
imminent but that it had already begun. It also convinced him that his
Jewish opponents saw the Christ in a fleshly rather than a spiritual way.
ELIMINATING S O M E FALSE D I C H O T O M I E S
An enormous shift in emphasis in the study of conversion has
taken place in the past twenty years: scholars have begun to rely on
sociology more than psychology to understand the phenomenon of conversion, partly because sociological research is more easily quantifiable
than psychological research.27 In L. R. Rambo's "Current Research in
Religious Conversion," only twenty-five psychological studies are listed
since 1970, while there are over one hundred sociologically oriented
studies.28
One major point of contemporary sociological research, as opposed to
the psychological approach, is that there is no universal psychological
definition of conversion. Each community defines what it means by conversion. Psychological studies of conversion have merely accepted. Western religion's definitions of conversion. Some researchers stressed the emotional nature of conversion over rational decision. Others stressed the
speed of some conversions over a long period of education in a new
movement or one of many other concepts: transformation, transcendence,
typology, tradition, institution, affiliation, intensification, apostasy, con-
17
l8
conversion are characterized by long training; they depend on this trait for
their credibility. Therefore Paul is being criticized for thinking to make
converts too quickly. Luke's Paul answers that he does not care whether it
be a quick or slow conversion, provided that the king is converted. Luke
thus certifies that his contemporary Christian missionaries could hope for
quick conversions, as well as slower, more conventional ones. By the time
of Justin Martyr, who keeps to a more philosophical definition of Christianity, such a conversion would have been viewed with suspicion among
some Christians as well. But in Luke's time the quickness of the conversion
apparently emphasizes the miraculous power of the spirit. So Luke also
portrays Paul's conversion as a sudden Damascus Road experience. Luke
uses Paul's example doubly, both as a paradigm of a convert and as the
model for Christian missionaries.
This Christian use of Paul as the role model for a convert is clear in the
pastoral Epistles. First Tim. 1:1217 purports to be Paul's own description of his conversion, but it has more in common with Luke's ideas about
Paul:32
I thank him who has given me strength for this, Christ Jesus our Lord
because he judged me faithful by appointing me to his service, though 1
formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received
mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our
Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners. And I am the foremost of sinners; but I
received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ
might display his perfect patience for an example to those who were to
believe in him for eternal life. To the King of Ages, immortal, invisible,
the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
This pastoral letter stresses the contrast between Paul's life before conversion and after it. But before conversion Paul is portrayed as the foremost of
sinners (1 Tim. 1:16), while Paul himself asserts that he is blameless
according to the law (Phil. 3:6). Although Paul emphasizes his conversion
and may even regret his former life as a persecutor of Christianity, he never
considers himself to be the foremost sinner. This passage in Timothy, then,
has a distinctly post-Pauline character. At least as much as in Paul's version, his conversion is depicted as a model (hypotypsin) for the conversion of all non-believers (1 Tim. 1:16). The theme of repentant sinners,
however, is appropriate to the gentile mission, where repentance from a
19
sinful life was a prominent theme. Although the message is mostly Pauline,
the narrative comes from the historical distance, closer to Luke than to
Paul's authentic voice. And the Timothy passage points out how, by means
of Luke's narrative, Paul's life came to be a model for Christian conversion. Thus we have at least three distinct stages of development in the early
church's understanding of ecstatic conversion: (1) Paul's own ecstatic,
emotional experience, which is intensely personal, special, and visionary
and which he uses to establish his apostolate, as well as to exemplify the
power of the spirit; (z) Luke's contention that Paul's experience is typical
of gentile conversions (but not equivalent to the experience of the disciples); and (3) the deliberate attempt to make Paul into a paradigm for
gentile conversion experiences. Stages z and 3 are typical of Luke, and
stage 3 continues into the pastoral Epistles.
If prophetic commissioning and conversion were analogous to firstcentury Jewish experience, why did Paul not use Jewish terms for conversion to discuss his own experience? Any description of Paul's conversion
must begin with the seeming lack of conversion language in Paul's letters.
In Galatians, Paul describes his entrance into the Christian community in
ways reminiscent of a prophetic call. He does not often use the Greek
words epistrepbo or metanoia, which normally imply conversion, to describe entrance into Christianity, and he never uses them to describe his
own experience. In fact, these Greek terms do not actually mean conversion; they signify repentance. Paul uses these terms consistently with the
Septuagint's translation of the Hebrew terms: "For they themselves report
concerning us what a welcome we had among you, and how you turned
[epestrepsate] to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to
wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who
delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thess. 1:910). Paul is describing
the conversion of gentiles to Christianity, an important clue to his usage of
the term. Paul is actually talking about their repentance from sinful ways.
His other uses of the term clarify its meaning as gentile conversion: "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by
nature are not gods, but now that you have come to know God, or rather
to be known by God, how can you turn back [epistrepbete] again to the
weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once
more?" (Gal. 4:89).
Epistrepbo implies repentance or backsliding, as the context demands.
Paul even makes the point that this gentile conversion is better than Jewish
piety: "Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds,
2.0
but when a man turns [epistrepsei] to the Lord, the veil is removed" (z Cor.
3:15-16).
Paul's does use the term metanoia to refer to the change in status of
both Jews and Christians. Metanoia indicates Jewish as well as gentile
conversions to Christianity (z Cor. 7:9-10; 2. Cor. i2:zi; Rom. 2:4).33
But not all Jews could boast of Paul's Pharisaic blamelessness. The sense of
metanoia, as of epistreph, is that of repentance, which is in keeping with
the Jewish use of the term.
Paul's reticence to apply these terms to himselfindeed, his sparing
use of the terms entirelycan be explained by the nature of Paul's own
conversion. The two relevant terms for conversion are rare in Greek and
just as rare in Paul. Their standard usage derives from the translation of
sbuv (turn or return) from the Hebrew into Septuagint Greek. In Hebrew
the noun construction teshuvah is the most common biblical and rabbinic
idiom for repentance and return to righteousness. Paul thus does not use
them for his own experience. He obviously thought himself to be guilty of
no infraction of Torah before he became a Christian, as Galatians 1 and
Philippians 3 tell us and as Stendahl has emphasized. Nor could Paul use
the Hebrew term gayyar to describe his conversion because it refers only to
gentile adoption of Jewish ways. Since Paul uses the verb epistreph to
describe conversion from paganism to Judaism, it could not be applied to
him. But converting from one variety of Judaism to another is a conversion
as well. Unfortunately there is no term in ordinary Judaism besides repentance to discuss the transformation that Paul undergoes, and that term, as
we have seen, is not relevant to Paul.
PAUL AND T H E M O D E R N STUDY OF
CONVERSION
Methodologically, in the study of Paul, are we limited only to
terms that Paul himself would have used? For generations anthropologists
have distinguished between vocabularies used by their subjects and those
used for analysis. By analogy from linguistics, emic vocabulary is the
terminology that a culture itself uses to describe a cultural artifact; it
corresponds to Paul's self-description. Emic vocabulary is well suited to a
complete and thorough ethnography, because it relies on the terms that the
society or culture itself uses. An anthropologist's first responsibility is to
describe the emic statements of a culture. New Testament scholarship
itself, at least in its most reliable moments, has concentrated on an accurate emic analysis of Paul.
21
Etic vocabulary is modern analytic vocabulary. It is or should be imposed self-consciously on a culture by an analyst as a comparative, analytic tool. To call Paul a convert is to use etic vocabulary. Emic statements are
falsifiable by a truthful informant, and etic statements are never true in the
same way that emic ones are. While emic statements may be worthless for
comparison because they reproduce local distinctions, a carefully drawn
etic statement has worth for some kinds of crosscultural study. Etic analyses may be valid even if the informant denies them.34 In the study of the
New Testament itself, Paul's description of Christ is etic, as is Luke's
description of Paul. Pure emic description is not possible about the beginning of Christianity because a standard vocabulary had not yet evolved.
Anthropologists themselves argue over the merits of the two styles of
description. Bible scholarship obviously needs both. Good exegesis demands an attempt to approximate the emic vocabulary and the meanings
that the informant would have invested in it. But analysis of religious
experience demands broader categories as well. Most New Testament
scholars who claim not to impose categories on the text are merely not
conscious of their own biases. Scholars should try to be self-conscious in
the use of analytic terms.
Paul's resemblance to contemporary converts is too important to be
ignored, even though Paul himself avoided the vocabulary. It is necessary
to understand and use both emic and etic systems of description to do
justice to the complex religious position that Paul represents. It is important not to confuse the two systems of description, to be aware of when a
vocabulary is imposed by outside analysis on the phenomenon and when it
is being used by the informants. The confusion here is that both the
ancients and moderns use the term convert. But the Jews used it with the
implication of repentance, which Paul found inappropriate to his own
circumstances. With these reservations, I maintain that Paul is indeed a
convert in the modern sense of the term. 35
Although Luke described Paul's conversion as a prophetic mission and
Paul uses prophetic language to describe his task, prophecy clearly does
not apply to the conversions of all those whom he evangelized. Paul never
directly calls himself a prophet and the language of prophecy does not
become a standard vocabulary for conversion in Christianity. In describing a believer's change in status, Paul uses a variety of terms.36 The terms
for rebirth, which so often are applied by today's "born-again" Christians, are rarely used by Paul, though John uses this vocabulary sparingly.
As the title of Beverly Gaventa's book implies, From Darkness to Light
shows that the vocabulary of light and darkness is more often used.
22
23
begins new growth. By using the prefix sym-, meaning "in, together with,"
Paul means to imply that faith in Christ brings about a change of equal
miraculousness and magnitude: "Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark
those who so live as you have an example in us. . . . But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power
which enables him even to subject all things to himself" (Phil. 3:172.1).
This process of transformation will end in a glorious new body, spiritual
rather than material, which corresponds with the body Christ has already
revealed to him.
In 1 Cor. 15:374z Paul uses the metaphor of a planted and growing
seed to describe resurrection, possibly interpreting Jesus' parables of
growth in a new way: "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel,
perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has
chosen. . . . So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is
perishable, what is raised is imperishable." In 1 Cor. 15:51 Paul explicitly
says that the dead shall be changed (allagsometha), putting on a new
body as if it were new clothes (endysastbai [15:53]), words normally
associated with baptism but clearly associated with spiritual transformation as well.
Outside of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism the closest analogy to
Paul's experience phenomenologically is also termed a metamorphosis by
the ancient world. Although separated from Paul by culture and by a
century, and ostensibly a fictional account of a transformation, the Golden Ass of Apuleius describes the explicit metamorphosis of the novelistic
hero Lucius from an ass back to his natural form as a young man. While
the entire romance seems like fantasy, the moral is real and religious.
Scholars have pointed out that the story actually discusses a religious
conversion to the mystery religion of Isis, albeit in a fictionalized form.37
The analogy of the transformation in the Golden Ass with religious
conversion must be seen in context. The main character of the novel,
Lucius, is led by his reprobate lifestyle into a careless dabbling with magic,
and as a result he finds himself accidentally transformed into an ass. Each
of his adventures surpasses the previous ones in depravity (and at the same
time seduces the reader's attention with blatant sex and violence). While
seeking escape on the beach at Cenchreae, the same place where Paul
stopped on his way to Jerusalem, Lucius prays to the moon for deliverance. In response to the prayer, the goddess Isis intervenes and tells him
how to regain his human form. He then becomes an initiate into more and
24
more secret rites of the goddess, who gives him not just deliverance from
his earthly predicaments but, through the ever more demanding rites of the
mysteries, heavenly journeys and eventual postmortem salvation: "You
will as a dweller in the Elysian fields constantly adore me whom you now
see, shining in the darkness of Acheron, reigning in the recesses of Styx,
and you will find me gracious toward you" (n.6). 3 8 The reader, at first
seduced by the sex and violence of the narrative, as Lucius himself is
seduced into magically altered form, also undergoes salvation with Lucius,
though some of the rites are too secret to describe openly. This parallels
Christian experience. But unlike Isiac initiations, Christian salvation was
not a carefully guarded secret. Christianity's public mission explains its
success in competing against the mystery cults. Yet when Paul speaks of
the person who has heard unutterable things (2 Corinthians 12), he may
equally be admitting to the existence of secret traditions in Christianity.
Although the process of salvation may be public, some aspects of the
experience may be private and reserved for the lucky few who have undergone visions.
Lucius's metamorphosis is symbolic of his leaving behind his previous
life of vanity, enslaved by sex, magic, and chance, for a new, pure, moral
life destined for divine purposes and guided by the goddess Isis. The Latin
verb is most often reformate, employed as a passive reformari, "to be
reformed" bodily as well as morally, as the context makes clear. Lucius's
reformation involves many experiences of unclothing and reclothing, both
literal and symbolic, a celestial journey within the ritual of the mystery
rites, and the overcoming of mortality with the assurance of semidivine
status, together with a significant advancement in his moral development.
This imagery is characteristic of Christian conversion as well, where the
rite of baptism formalizes the change of status.
Although Apuleius wrote a century after Paul, they share a vocabulary.
Ovid wrote the pagan Metamorphoses around the time of Paul. The Metamorphoses begins with an invocation to the gods and ends with Caesar's
transformation into a star, assuring his celestial immortality. But the body
of Ovid's text describes metamorphoses that seem more like the disease
that afflicted Lucius rather than the cure provided by Isis. Although Ovid's
text presents a much less spiritual description of transformation than the
Golden Ass, it highlights contemporary uses of the term.
The Roman world of course knew how to satirize religious emotions,
as Lucian did in his Death ofPeregrinus. Nevertheless, we miss something
important about the ancient world if we do not take these transformations
and heavenly meetings with divinities seriously as religious experience.
25
2.6
toward conversion, since it implies either that Paul was a religious quester
or that his parents instilled an unusually strict training in him. Both factors
have been identified as predictors of future conversion experiences. If one
adds Luke's contention that Paul or his family came from Tarsus, a
Hellenistic environment, there would be even more evidence for Paul's
religious questing: though Acts claims he came from a Pharisaic family
(z3 :6), he would still have had to make a long journey from the Hellenistic
environment of the Diaspora to the Pharisaic heartland in Judea. Acts
suggests that Paul spent long years in strict training (zz:3), but this is a
conventional detail in religious biographies. According to Acts, Paul could
have shown characteristics of both an acculturated Jew and a religious
quester. But the details are far too questionable to be of specific help in
understanding Paul's writings.
The lack of information about Paul's upbringing is partly due to our
sparse knowledge of Pharisaism. We have little information about Pharisaism in the first century, let alone what form the Pharisees could have
assumed in Diaspora, if Luke is correct. Consequently, all discussion of
Paul's early life, especially with details gleaned from Luke, is bound to end
in pure speculation. Although a sympathetic reading of Luke gives us some
characteristics that might show Paul as predisposed toward conversion
experiences, there is but slim evidence for a psychological understanding
ot Paul's life based on the past that he and Luke supply to us.
As in the history of conversion scholarship in general, a better tack for
understanding Paul's conversion is to be found in the examination of his
social world. Paul came from a Pharisaic community and entered a gentile
one. This is clear from his writing. We can investigate what that means
and, in the process, discover something new about Paul. When we look at
Paul's experience after conversion, we discover that his social context can
be located. From his description in Galatians we know that Paul went off
to Arabia and back to Damascus. Arabia of the time probably included the
area around Damascus itself, so Paul's first Christian atmosphere was
Syrian (Arabian) and Hellenistic. Paul was apparently involved in the
leadership of the Damascus and Antiochene churches but not in intimate
contact with Jerusalem during these years. Yet during that time he obviously lived with and learned from other Christians. As he states, these
Christians were not heavily influenced by the Jerusalem church. Paul lived
in a gentile community during his formative years as a convert. That
community helped him understand the meaning of his revelation.
Paul's disclaimer that his insight into Christianity came not from men
is not contradicted by his having entered a Christian community after
27
conversion. In fact, he states several times that he has received from his
Christian brethren authentic traditions about the Eucharist, baptismal
ritual, and the order of Christ's postresurrection appearance, as well as
other teachings, that he then passed on to his congregations. His claim of
divine guidance refers to his conversion and call to his apostolate. But he
also learned the content of the revelation from his community:
Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you
the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are
saved, if you hold it fastunless you believed in vain. For I delivered to
you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our
sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that
he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more
than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive,
though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all
the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to
me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am
what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I
worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of
God which is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and
so you believed. (1 Cor. 15:111; see also 11:2., 2326)
Paul considers himself the last apostle. Paul's apostolate came later
than those who met Jesus in the flesh. But he does not fail to point out how
much more energetic he has been than other apostles, maintaining that the
success of his mission is a proof of his election as apostle. He also discloses
that the doctrines of Christianity were received by him and passed on
likely to be Greek translations of the two technical terms for the transmission of oral tradition within Pharisaism: kibel and masar.42 If his claim to
the apostolate has a function within his political battles in the church, the
disclaimer of his righteousness under the law has one as well. It shows he
was a success as a Jew, not a failure. Therefore, it is the very unlikeliness of
his conversion, the persecutor who became the latest apostle, that proves
the power of the Holy Spirit. His gentile hearers also participate in this
marvelous process, since they too (like him) have been converted.
Paul might have been a radical convert, as Luke suggests, but he does
not evince all the qualities of the pure type. Although Paul's conversion
possibly came in his adolescence, from his own chronology it is unlikely
that it came at the beginning of his adolescence. While it is possible to
2.8
29
acknowledged; the ancient definition of transformation assumed a metaphysical realm ours does not. Whether transformation is seen as a personality reconstruction, as do modern researchers, or as a transformation in
status from fleshly to immortal body, as did Paul, the language of transformation itself is one continuous metaphor from ancient times to the present. Modern researchers might have an impoverished sense of causation;
however, Paul's transformation could have been active questing in ways
he could not recognize or acknowledge.
The basic metaphor is one of radical disjunction between past and
present, punctuated by a remaking of a person's sense of meaning. This is a
common trait unifying Paul's life with modern subjects. A strict contrast
between present life and past life is a significant aspect of the way converts
describe their lives before and after conversion. This appears to be true in
Eastern and Western cults today and also in Western conversions in the
first century. Whatever may separate us from Paul or separate our understandings of personality from ancient ones, these attributions argue that
there are some simple continuities in the phenomenon of conversion
throughout Western history.
This continuity does not lead to facile generalization. Because community traditions are so strong in evaluating conversion narrative, Brian
Taylor suggests that nothing that a convert relates of his or her life previous to conversion can be taken at face value. It is always mediated
through the values of the convert's new community, which defines what a
conversion is and actually teaches the convert how to think of it. This
emphasizes that the community has an enormous influence on the interpretation of the emotional life of a believer, not only in the case of
gradual conversions, where such control would be expected, but also in
sudden conversions, where the social messages must be both more subtle
and more quickly transmitted. But after the convert settles into the new
life, the community teaches how that life is to be understood, and the past
is revalued accordingly, often erasing previous understandings of the experience. Of course, the more time that elapses after the conversion, the more
time there is for the convert to learn the social significance of the emotional
experience he or she has undergone. Thus, the accounts of Paul's and other
ancient conversions, even the first-person accounts, are retrospective retellings of events, greatly enhanced by group norms learned and appropriated in the years prior to the writing.46
Paul's statements about his past are therefore greatly influenced by his
present commitments. And Luke is obviously even less reliable. Luke's
model of conversion, we have seen, was that of Hebrew prophecy. The
30
31
land which you are entering to take possession of it. . . . I call heaven
and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life
and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your
descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and
cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days, that you
may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give them. (30:15-16, 19-20)
The passage presupposes that the Israelites have been given a rational
choice for religious life and death. But the choice did not come from any
sense of human free will. Instead it was part of the Hebrew mythological
scheme known as the covenant. Making a covenant or agreement demanded a decisive choice. The ancient Israelite custom of covenanting,
which became the model for the relationship between God and his people,
guaranteed a certain amount of religious choice. Theoretically, one could
always refuse; therefore, it was hoped, every worshiper of the LORD, the
God of the Hebrews, had chosen to be his worshiper. For excellent reasons, this passage in Deuteronomy forms the basis for Paul's most extended analysis of the plan for Israel: the Hellenistic world only accelerated the possibilities for religious choice. But Deuteronomy 30 pointed out
that the Israelites had always Jived in an atmosphere of religious competition, which necessarily demanded religious choice as one paradigm of
belonging to Israel.
The atmosphere of religious competition intensified after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians in 587-86 B.C.E. and its
eventual rebuilding by Nehemiah and Ezra under Persian hegemony after
534 B.C.E. During this period foreign influences were strongly evidenced in
Judah because of foreign military domination. After Persian rule gave way
to the armies of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.E.), social conditions
favored the development of competing religions and ideologies within
Judah.48 With Alexander's conquest came not only Greek domination,
but the Greek language and culture. Because virtually the entire city population of the ancient Near East was forced into contact with the Greek
language, for trade as well as political necessities, cultural interaction with
foreign ideas quickened in an unprecedented way.
Yet the common culture that evolved out of Greek order and communication had little to do with the values of ancient Greece. It was an
amalgamation of the religious ideas of all the lands that Alexander conquered, most of which were oriental in religion and political order. The
Jews shared in this cultural pluralism both because exile had dispersed
3^
them throughout the Persian and Greek empires and because tiny Judah
had to face the reality of foreign domination more squarely than the larger
countries.
These developments tended to decrease the political importance of the
agricultural interests and the traditional national agricultural divinities
and their priesthoods. Greater world organization and communication
increased the importance of individual, personal identity over the traditional corporate concepts of the identity of the ancient state.49 Instead of
defining themselves merely as children of Israel, individual Jews among
the developing cosmopolitan culture of Hellenistic cities, like all other
peoples throughout the ancient Near East, began to look at themselves as
individuals with unique personal histories. As the educated classes became
aware of their unique histories among the varieties of cultures in the
Hellenistic world, they exercised a new, broader choice in their religion
and life-style. As in trade, the freer atmosphere brought new competition
between religious establishments, which could no longer take for granted
the allegiance of their populations. As a result, the religious tradition,
which had been an almost unconscious, self-evident assumption about the
world, became a set of beliefs to be marketed.50
Ancient Israel reacted to the influx of Hellenistic culture as colonized
nations have always reacted to imperialism. Colonialism bred both personal choice undreamed of in traditional society and strong resentment of
the imperial order, which oppressed the native population. New politicoreligious movements sprang up to explain God's ultimate plan against
domination by foreign powers and sometimes to foment revolution
against those powers. Meanwhile, other classes of people acculturated to
the new powers and learned to share in the government of the country.51
During the Hellenistic period, Israelite society divided into different sects,
which differed over such religious issues as the existence of an afterlife and
such political, social, and economic issues as the role of priests and scribes
in national life. These sects competed with each other fiercely, but their
interaction was absolutely essential to national unity in the cosmopolitan
and individualistic Hellenistic world, for no one interpretation of Israel's
traditional religious life could have satisfied the enormous spectrum of
personal opinion that had developed. The sectarian rivalry, like the party
system in the United States, allowed for an orderly expression of conflict.
In this atmosphere religious conversion was as common as it is today.
The two other Jewish writers of the period who left us confessional literature, Josephus and Philo, also outline their personal religious quests,
including their experimentation with the sects of the day. Underscoring
33
i*
CHAPTER TWO
PAUL'S ECSTASY
Paul's Ecstasy
35
$6
Paul's Ecstasy 37
did not count years as we do; they could count initial and final fractions of
a year as an entire year. Therefore, Paul's ministry must begin fourteen to
seventeen years before the writing of Galatians, depending on whether the
fourteen years includes the three years between his conversion and his first
visit to Jerusalem. If z Corinthians was written subsequently, as many
scholars believe, it may not be referring to his conversion, but arithmetical
conventions prevent surety. Second Corinthians, however, is certainly a
composite work, and since Paul's life is largely a mystery, it cannot be
dated precisely. It would be unwise to proclaim that z Corinthians 1z was
definitely Paul's conversion. It remains one of innumerable historical
problems that cannot be resolved without further evidence or insight.
It is just as likely that Paul is describing a revelation both similar and
subsequent to his conversion. We know that Paul necessarily had several
ecstatic experiences. This is Luke's opinion as well, for Luke describes
ecstatic revelations in the three narrations of Paul's conversion (9:3^
zz:6f; 2.6:izf). But Acts 16:9t, i8:9f, and especially zz:iyf describe other
ecstatic visions (en ekstasei [xz-.ij]).9 Even allowing for Acts' repetition,
Paul's earliest biographer claimed that he had several ecstatic experiences.
This is not surprising, given Paul's cultural environment. Jewish mysticism, and perhaps apocalypticism as well, sought out visions and developed special practices to achieve them. 10 Thus, we can assume that Paul
had a number of ecstatic experiences in his life, that his conversion may
have been one such experiencethough it need not have been oneand
that the meaning of these experiences was mediated by the gentile Christian community in which he lived.
We know that converts learn the meanings of their experience in their
new community. This appears to be true of Paul's mysticism as well. He
may have learned about ecstatic experience as a Pharisee or merely known
about them generally from his Jewish background. He may also have
learned about them in Christianity, but this merely begs the question;
ultimately, someone Jewish must have brought them into Christianity, and
there is not much time between the end of Jesus' ministry and the beginning of Paul's.
The Christian interpretation by Paul of his visions does mark his long
association with the Christian community. The divine nature of Paul's
revelation does not preclude the influence of his supporting Christian
community. Converts naturally find the meaning of their conversions and
their visions in the community that values them. Thus, we can ask but we
need not answer why a Pharisee would have a vision of Christ. Any
convert and especially a converted Pharisee who knew of mystical and
38
apocalyptic traditions would give these experiences Christian interpretations if that person had chosen to join a Christian community. Instead of
trying to pin these ecstatic visions to Paul's conversion, as evangelical and
Pentecostal Christians try to do, the modern data about conversions suggests that the interpretation of the visions is mediated by an education in
Christian community. Paul may have decided to become a Christian for
the reasons that Luke suggests, or the experience itself may be lost forever
since Paul himself does not tell us how it took place. It may be either
rational or mystical. But it is clear that Paul had visions. He used these
visions to interpret the consequences of his faith and to express the meaning of his conversion. To understand Paul's interpretation we must first try
to understand the features of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism. Indeed, we can understand a good deal more about first-century Jewish
mysticism if we take Paul seriously as a Jewish mystic, with a special
Christian cast.
APOCALYPTICISM A N D MYSTICISM
Apocalypticism and mysticism have remained separate scholarly categories because they refer to two different, easily distinguishable
types of literature. But they are not unrelated experiences. Jewish mystical
texts are full of apocalypses; early apocalyptic literature is based on ecstatic visions with profound mystical implications. This suggests that scholars
have carried a distinction in literary genre into the realm of experience
without sufficient warrant. It is likewise misleading to distinguish strictly
between ecstatic, out-of-body visions as found in mysticism and literal
bodily ascensions to heaven as are more frequently found in apocalypticism.11 In merkabah mysticism the voyager often speaks as though he is
actually going from place to place in heaven, yet we know from the frame
narratives that the adept's body is on earth, where his utterances are being
questioned and written down by a group of disciples.12 Paul speaks at a
time before these distinctions were clear or accepted by his community. He
is not sure whether the ascent took place in the body or out of it. We should
also note that Paul does not utilize the concept of a soul (psyche) to effect
this heavenly travel. Paul's concept of the soul is quite limited, undisturbed
by Platonic ideas of the soul's immortality. Rather, Paul refers to spirit
(pneuma) more frequently. This suggests that Paul understood being in
Christ as a literal exchange of earthly body for a new, pneumatic one to be
shared with the resurrected Jesus at the eschaton.
Under what terms could a credible journey to heaven take place?
Paul's Ecstasy
39
40
Paul's Ecstasy
41
42-
by; then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back; but my face
shall not be seen." Yahweh himself, the angel of God, and his Glory are
peculiarly melded together, suggesting a deep secret about the ways God
manifested himself to humanity.
The Septuagint, the second-century B.C.E. translation of the Hebrew
Bible into Greek, identifies the figure on the throne in Ezek. 1:26 with the
form {eidos) of man. This term has a philosophical history dating from
Plato's Tarmenides 130c, where eidos means the idea of man. For Platonists, eidos meant the unchanging immortal idea of man that survives
death. Because of Plato's fortunate use of language, Hellenistic Jews could
reinterpret the phrase "form of man" to mean eidos. So for Hellenistic
Jewish mystics like Philo, the figure of man on the divine throne described
in Genesis, Exodus, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Psalms (forming the basis of
the son of man speculation) was also understood as the ideal and immortal
man. His immortality and glorious appearance were things Adam possessed in the Garden of Eden and lost when he sinned.27 In this form, the
traditions concerning the son of man are centuries older than Christianity,
and Paul, as we shall see, uses them to good advantage.
In the Hellenistic period many new interpretations of Ezek. 1:26 grew
up. In various Jewish sects and conventicles the foremost name given to the
figure on the throne is Yahoel. The first-century Apocalypse of Abraham
presents Yahoel as a version of the divine name, since it is a combination of
the tetragrammaton and a suffix denoting angelic stature. Yahoel appears
in chapters 10 and 11, where he is described as the one "in whom God's
ineffable name dwells." Other titles for this figure included Melchizedek,
Metatron, Adoil, Eremiel, and preeminently the son of man. Melchizedek
appears at Qumran, in the document called 1 iQMelch, where he is identified with the Elobim of Ps. 82:1, thus giving us yet another variation on the
theme of carrying the name of God. Metatron is called YHWH bakaton, or
28
YHWH, Jr., and sits on a throne equal to God's in 3 Enoch 10.i. The
name of the angel varies from tradition to tradition. Michael is God's
"mediator" and general (archistrategos [z Enoch 33.10; T. Dan. 6.1-5;
T. Abr. 1.4; cf. Life of Adam and Eve 14.12]). Eremiel appears in the
Apocalypse of Zephaniah 6.x-15, where he is mistaken for God. In the
Ascension of Isaiah 7.2-4, an angel whose name cannot be given appears.
Chief angelic mediators appear in Jewish literature of the first several
centuries.29 The chief angelic mediator, whom we can call by a number of
termsGod's vice-regent, his Wazir, his grentis easily distinguished
from the plethora of divine creatures, for the principal angel is not only
head of the heavenly hosts but sometimes participates in God's own being
Paul's Ecstasy 43
or divinity. The rabbis most often call God's principal angel Metatron. In
rabbinic literature and Jewish mysticism Metatron is probably not a proper name but a title adapted from the Greek word Metathronos, meaning
"one who stands after or behind the throne." This represents a rabbinic
softening of the Hellenistic term synthronos, or "one who is with the
throne," that is, sharing enthronement or acting for the properly enthroned authority. The rabbis would have changed the preposition from
one connoting equality (syn-, "with") to one connoting inferiority (meta-,
"after or behind") in order to reduce the heretical implications of calling
God's principal helping angel synthronos.3,0
Alongside these traditions lies the notion more relevant to Christianity
that certain heroes can be transformed into angels as part of their ascension. This may be the most puzzling part of the mystic traditions but it is
important in view of Paul's mysticism.31 In the Testament of Abraham 11
(Recension A), some patriarchs are exalted as angels. Adam is pictured on
a golden throne with a terrifying appearance and adorned with Glory.
Abel is similarly glorified, acting as judge over creation until the final
judgment (chaps, 1213). 2 Enoch 30.811 also states that Adam was an
angel: "And on earth I assigned him to be a second angel, honored and
great and glorious."32 In the Prayer of Joseph, found in Origen's Commentary on John 2.31 and with a further fragment in Philocalia 23.15,
Jacob describes himself as "an angel of God and a ruling spirit," and he
claims to be the "first-born of every living thing," "the first minister
before the face of God," "the archangel of the power of the Lord, and "the
chief captain among the sons of God." 33
Enoch and Moses are the most important non-Christian figures of
divinization or angelic transformation. Philo describes Moses as divine,
based on the word God used of him in Exod. 4:1e and 7:1. In Sir. 45:1-5
Moses is compared to God ("equal in glory to the holy ones," in the Greek
version of the text). Philo and the Samaritans also expressed Moses' preeminence in Jewish tradition by granting him a kind of deification.34 In the
Testament of Moses, Moses is described as the mediator or "arbiter of his
covenant" (1:14) and celebrated as "that sacred spirit, worthy of the
Lord . . . the Lord of the Word . . . the divine prophet throughout the
earth, the most perfect teacher in the world," the "advocate," and "the
great messenger" (11:1619). Wayne Meeks concluded that "Moses was
the most important figure in all Hellenistic Jewish apologetic."35
Evidence of the antiquity of mystical speculation about Kavod is found
in the fragment of the tragedy Moses written by Ezekiel the Tragedian in
the second century B.C.E. or earlier.36 Moses is depicted as seeing a vision
44
of the throne of God with a figure seated on it. The figure on the throne is
called phs gennaios, "a venerable man," which is a double entendre in
Greek, since phos can mean either light or man depending on the gender of
the noun.37 The surviving text of Moses also hints at a transformation of
an earthly hero into a divine figure. Ezekiel the Tragedian relates that the
venerable man handed Moses his scepter and summoned him to sit on the
throne, placing a diadem on his head. Thereafter the stars bow to him and
parade for his inspection. Since throughout the biblical period the stars
were thought to be angels (Job 38:7), Moses is being depicted as leader of
the angels and hence above the angels. Moses' enthronement as a monarch
or divinity in heaven resembles the enthronement of the son of man. This
scene illustrates some of the traditions that later appear in Jewish mysticism and may have informed Paul's ecstatic ascent. The identification of
Jesus with the manlike appearance of God is both the central characteristic
of Christianity and understandable within the context of Jewish mysticism
and apocalypticism.38
Philo often speaks of Moses as being made into a divinity ('eis theon
[e.g., Sacrifices 1-10; Moses 1.15558]). In exegeting Moses' receiving
the Ten Commandments, Philo envisions an ascent, not merely up the
mountain but to the heavens. This possibly describes a mystical identification between God and Moses, suggesting that Moses attained a divine
nature through contact with the logos. In Questions and Answers on
Exodus 1.29, 40, Philo writes that Moses was changed into a divinity on
Mount Sinai. In Moses 1.155-58, he says that God placed the entire
universe into Moses' hands and that die elements obeyed him as their
master; then God rewarded Moses by appointing him a "partner"
(koinonon) of God's own possessions and by giving into his hand the
world as a portion well-fitted for God's heir ( 15 5 ). In the Sacrifices of Cain
and Abel 8-10, Philo refers to Deut. 5:31 as proof that certain people are
distinguished by God to be stationed "beside himself." Moses is preeminent among these people as his grave is not known, which for Philo
apparently means that Moses was transported to heaven.
The Hebrew term shutaf (partner), describing any of God's helpers,
became a heresy to the rabbis in first- and second-century Judaism. Thus,
the stage was set for a great conflict over the existence, nature, status, and
meaning of God's primary angelic mediator. Merkabah themes of viewing
God can be seen in Philo's allegory. In light of the subsequent battle, it is
amazing that such a prominent Jew of the first century as Philo could
suggest so clearly a mystical merging of humans with a divine manifestation.39 Philo himself cannot possibly be the author of these traditions. He
Paul's Ecstasy
45
relied on the Hebrew Bible, but he must also have had access to traditions
that amplified these texts in a mystical direction, as did the other
Hellenistic Jewish writers.
Philo also made use of biblical traditions of intermediation in his description of the logos, his name for God's demiurge in creation and for the
pattern of the world. Philo claimed Gen. 1:26 described the creation of the
heavenly man, and he took Gen. 2:7 to refer to the creation of the earthly
man (On the Creation 134; Allegory 1.31,5 3ff, 88f; Questions on Gen. 1.4;
2.56). He calls the heavenly man the image of man {bo kat' eikona antbrpos) and the logos a second God {deuteros theos) : "Why does he say, as
if of another god: 'in the image of God he made man' and not 'in His own
image'? . . . It is because nothing can be made in the likeness of God but
only in that of the second God deuteros theos, who is His logos" (Questions
on Gen. z.6z). On the basis of the divine likeness, Philo calls the visible
embodiment of God a second God. The heavenly man shares his image with
mankind as well, since he is the Platonic form of man.
Philo allegorizes any reference to God's human features in the Hebrew
Bible as the logos. Moses and the elders see the Lord, who is the logos (Of
Flight and Finding 164^. The Lord whom Jacob saw on the heavenlyladder {Gen. 28:13) w a s t n e archangel, that is, the logos, in whose form
God reveals himself (On Dreams 1.157; On the Change of Names 87,
126; On the Migration of Abraham 168; Allegory 3.177; Who is Heir
205). These references anthropomorphize God, because they symbolize
the likenesses he shares with humanity.
Enoch is similarly esteemed as a heavenly voyager. His exploits form
an enormous body of material, second only to Moses. According to the
sectarian book ai Jubilees, Enoch receives a night vision in which he sees
the entire future until the judgment day (4:18-19). He spends six jubilees
of years with the angels of God, learning everything about the earth and
heavens, from their composition and motion and to the locations of hell
and heaven (4:21). When he finally ascends, he takes up residence in the
Garden of Eden "in majesty and honor," recording the deeds of humanity
and serving in the sanctuary as priest (4:23-26); he writes many books
(21:20), and there are indeed references to his writings in many other
pseudepigrapha.40
The various incarnations of God's principal angel carry or personify
his name, which can be identifical to the form of man.41 Exemplary men
can also ascend to divinity by identification with or transformation into
the enthroned figure. The rabbis polemicized against the idea that God has
a partner or that there are "two powers in heaven" (shtei resbuyot b'sham-
46
Paul's Ecstasy 47
tance of mystic transformation between the adept and the angelic viceregent of God, giving a plausible explanation of how the sectarians that
produced the visions in Daniel expected to be transformed into stars. It is
possible to say that 1 Enoch 71 gives us the experience of an adept undergoing the astral transformation prophesied in Dan. n : i , albeit in the
name of a pseudepigraphical hero. If this is true, then Paul gives us the
actual, confessional experience of the same spiritual event, with Christ
substituting for the son of man. In both cases, the believer is subsumed into
the body of heavenly savior and becomes a kind of star or celestial immortal.
Because the ascent of the living is supposed to parallel exactly the
ascent of the dead after death, 1 Enoch 7071 either retells Enoch's earthly ascent or refers to the ascent at the end of his life. The puzzling superscription to chapter 70, the composite nature of the text, and some possible imprecision in chronology prevent complete surety on this issue: "And
it happened after this that his living name was raised up before that son of
man and to the Lord from among those who dwell upon the earth" (70.1).
The journey is taken by Enoch's name, not precisely his soul, again reflecting a level of mystical speculation that predates the importation of the
platonic notion of a soul. It may be that the transformation motif is
particularly important because the notion of the soul had not deeply
penetrated this level of Jewish society. This transformation motif is, of
course, amenable to the explicit concept of the immortal soul as it develops
within Judaism and Christianity.
Whatever the intention of the author of 1 Enoch, the relationship to
Paul's experience is important.48 Like Enoch, Paul claims to have gazed on
the Glory, whom Paul identifies as Christ; Paul understands that he has
been transformed into a divine state, which will be fully realized after his
death; Paul claims that his vision and transformation is somehow a mystical identification; and Paul claims to have received a calling, his special
status as intermediary. Paul specifies the meaning of this calling for all
believers, a concept absent in the Enochic texts, although it may have been
assumed within the original community.
Complete surety about the history of this tradition is elusive. Paul does
not explicitly call Christ the Glory of God.49 And because 1 Enoch 37-71
are missing from the Dead Sea Scrolls, we cannot date them accurately.
They might date from the first century or later and be influenced by
Christianity, since they are extant only in the Ethiopie Version of Enoch,
the official canon of the Ethiopian Christian Church. Whatever the date of
1 Enoch 7071, the stories of Enoch's ascensions in 1 Enoch 14 antedated
48
Paul and would have influenced his conceptions about heavenly journey. 50 Further, as long as the date of 1 Enoch 70-71 cannot be fixed
exactly and the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls remains ambiguous,
Paul himself remains the earliest author explicitly expressing transformation in Judaism. If his discussion of transformation can be related to
apocalyptic mysticism in Judaism, he also becomes the only Jewish mystic
of this period to relate this experience confessionally.
The theme of angelic transformation usually appears in a story of a
heavenly journey. It becomes especially important in Kabbalah, but it is
sparsely attested in first-century Judaism. Since we have no rabbinic works
that can be firmly dated to the first century, Paul's confessional reports are
important as evidence for dating merkabah mysticism.51 Paul's texts provide information about first-century Judaism and Jewish mysticism, as
important as the Jewish texts that have been found to establish the meaning of Christian texts. Indeed, Paul's letters may be more important to the
history of Judaism than the rabbinic texts are to the interpretation of
Christian Scriptures.
Second Enoch, extant only in two Slavonic versions, is an extension of
the Enoch legend, most probably through a Christian recension, since
Torah does not figure in the story. Yet, the possibility of a Semitic, possibly
even a Jewish Vorlage, especially in the shorter version, cannot be ruled
out. In 2. Enoch 22.7, Enoch is transformed into "one of his glorious
ones," an angel, during a face-to-face encounter with the Lord. But note
the use of glorification language to characterize angelic status: God decrees, "Let Enoch join in and stand in front of my face forever," explaining
the rabbinic term Prince of the Presence, which is normally applied to
Metatron. Then Enoch is transformed: "And the LORD said to Michael,
'Go, and extract Enoch from [his] earthly clothing. And anoint him with
my delightful oil, and put him into the clothes of my glory.' And so
Michael did, just as the Lord had said to him. He anointed me and he
clothed me. And the appearance of that oil is greater than the greatest
light, and its ointment is like sweet dew, and its fragrance myrrh; and it is
like the rays of the glittering sun. And I looked at myself, and I had become
like one of his glorious ones, and there was no observable difference"
(2 Enoch 22.8-10, recension A).
This transformation is effected through a change of clothing. The
clothing functions as or symbolizes Enoch's new, immortal flesh, as they
are immortal clothes emanating from the throne room, not from earth.
This parallels Paul's future glorification of the mortal body in 2 Cor. 5:110. 52 Enoch has been put in the body of an angel, or he is in the manlike
Paul's Ecstasy
49
figure in 1 Enoch 71. This could explain Paul's use of the peculiar terminology in Christ.
The Ascension of Isaiah also focuses on ascent and heavenly transformation. In chapters 6-11, usually attributed to a Christian hand, the
theophany of Isaiah 6 is described as a heavenly journey in which the
prophet sees God. The prophet is taken through each of the seven heavens,
stopping to view the glorious figure seated on the throne of each heaven.
When he worships the figure in the fifth heaven, he is explicitly warned not
to worship any angel, as the rabbis warn against the crime of assuming
that there are two powers in heaven. Isaiah is told that his throne, garments, and crown await him in heaven (7.2.2.). All those who love the Most
High will at their end ascend by the angel of the Holy Spirit (7.23). At each
heaven, Isaiah is glorified the more, emphasizing the transformation that
occurs as a human travels closer to God (7.24); he effectively becomes one
of the angels. According to the other angels, Isaiah's vision is unprecedented; no one else has been vouchsafed such a complete vision of the
reward awaiting the good (8.n13). But Isaiah must return to earth to
complete his prophetic commission before he can enjoy the rest that awaits
him in heaven.53
The climax of the story is angelic transformation, but the stated purpose of the journey is theodicyto understand God's justice. The journeys in these early apocalyptic texts usually begin after a crisis of human
confidence about God's intention to bring justice to the world, and they
result in the discovery that the universe is indeed following God's moral
plan. The ancient scriptures about God's providence are proved true, and
it is foretold that the evil ones who predominate on earth, oppressing
God's saints, are to receive the punishment that they richly deserve. The
ascension story, especially if performed by an earthly hero before his
death, functions as a justification for the suffering of the righteous because
it verifies what the community would like to believenamely, that injustices will be recompensed by their ascension to heavenly immortality
after death and that the evil ones will be condemned to hell. Although its
narration describes exotic and amazing events, the purpose is pragmatic,
explaining the structure of heaven and providing an eschatological verification that God's plan will come to fruition. Immortalization is the
explicit purpose of the pagan ascension texts. In some of the Jewish material, where immortality is automatically guaranteed by moral living, more
complex purposes are promulgated. Besides confirming God's plan in the
face of the earthly victory of the ungodly or the slaughter of the righteous,
the stories describe the mechanism by which immortality is achieved.
50
Paul's Ecstasy
51
the supreme deity is protected by giving the figure on the throne a clear
angelic identity, like Metatron. Divinizing Metatron is explicitly labeled
heresy both in rabbinic writings and the hekhaloth texts. These traditions
no doubt reflect different rabbinic understandings of the contradiction
between biblical passages describing God's self-revelation (e.g., Exod.
24:10) and the statements that no one may see God and live (Exod. 3 3 ). 57
In writings of the church fathers and in Gnostic sources, similar ideas
of ascent and mediation are found. Gnostic sources often depict an opposition between two heavenly hypostases, one a savior and other an ignorant
demiurge.58 The difference between the high God and the intermediary
forms can be described in the relationship between an object and its image.
God's image is often the intermediary and can also be described as the
perfect man, as is Adamas in Irenaeus's account of the Barbelognostics
(Against the Heresies 1.29.33).59
In the Merkabah tract now called 3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhaloth), the man
Enoch is transformed into Metatron (3-15). Metatron bears a striking
resemblance to Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian's play. God makes a throne
for Enoch-Metatron in 3 Enoch (10.1); he gives him a special garment of
Glory and a royal gown (11.13); God makes him ruler over all kingdoms
and all heavenly beings (10.3); all the angels of every rank, and the angels
of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, fall prostrate when Enoch sits on his
throne (14.15); he knows the names of all the stars (46.12; see
Ps. i47:4o) 60 ; God reveals to him all the secrets of heaven and earth so
that Enoch knows past, present, and future (10.5; I I . I ; cf. 45.1; 48
(D).7); God calls him YHWH hakaton, another interpretation of Exod.
23:21 (12.5).61 The date of these documents is far too late to be of specific
guidance for Paul.62 Whatever the date of Daniel or the earliest son of man
traditions, this angelic figure, the figure that the Bible sometimes calls the
Kavod or the principal angel of God, is pre-Christian and is a factor in
Paul's description of Christ.63
There is adequate evidence that many Jewish mystics and apocalypticists sensed a relationship between the heavenly figure on the throne and
important figures in the life of their community. The roots of this tradition
are pre-Christian. Further, Jewish scholars have overlooked Christianity
as evidence for the existence of these traditions in first-century Judaism.
Paul did not have to be a religious innovator to posit an identification
between a vindicated hero and the image of the Kavod, the manlike figure
in heaven, although the identification of the figure with the risen Christ is
obviously a uniquely Christian development.64 Paul is the only Jewish
mystic to report his own personal, identifiably confessional mystical expe-
51
riences in the fifteen hundred years that separate Ezekiel from the rise of
Kabbalah.
Paul's Ecstasy 53
only know his Glory, the form in which he chooses to reveal himself. The
terms for likeness, then, suggest two things: first, that the experience is
visionary, not normal; second, that Ezekiel saw an appearance or an image
of the Glory, not the Glory itself, which further safeguards the majesty of
God. No one can see God and live (Exod. 33120), nor apparently can one
see his Glory directly as Moses did, but people do see images of his Glory in
religiously altered states of consciousness. Once the dignity of the divinity
is protected, the human features of his appearance are described with no
sensitivity to anthropomorphism.
Both terms, appearance and image, later become technical terms for
the Glory of God, but in their original context they function to indicate
paranormal experience. In Daniel 7, likeness (demuth is not used, but the
scene is a dream vision [Dan. 7:2]) and the Hebrew preposition k make it
clear that the experience is paranormal. The adept is not seeing these
things in the way one normally sees, but he sees them in a religiously
altered state of consciousness. Hence, the visions look like normal sights
but are not. The scene is a heavenly throne room with two manlike figures,
one an ancient of days and the second a son of man. Son of man is not a
title and can only mean that the divine figure has a manlike form because
the phrase usually means simply a human being. The exact phrase in
Daniel is "one like a son of man" (kbar 'enash), signifying that the next
visionary figure was shaped like a man. 67
The best guess as to the identity of the figure shaped like a man is that
he is simply one of the principal angels, in whose form God deigns to
appear, for some angels were envisioned in human form. At his second
appearance, Gabriel is described as "the man Gabriel whom I had seen in
the vision at first" (9:21). Then in Daniel 10:5 "a man clothed in linen,"
probably an angel, is described in a way reminiscent of Ezekiel's description of God's Glory. Again, in Daniel 10:16, Daniel sees a human figure,
probably, as before, an angel shaped as a man (kdemutb bnei adam).
Because merkabah mysticism is esoteric and the rabbis comment on it
only within works that are fundamentally exegetical in nature, some
scholars have maintained that there is no mystical content to the stories at
all.68 This is a hasty conclusion, however, based only on the exegetical
hints one finds in talmudic literature. There is no firm evidence of ecstasy
or mystical rites among the rabbinic writers because they are exegetes
interested in the legal consequences of these experiences, not the experiences themselves.69 The first century, like all preceding and succeeding
centuries, took experience gained in visions and dreams seriously.70 It also
valued ecstasy or trance as a medium for revelation and developed tech-
54
niques for achieving the ecstasy or trance in which these visions occurred.71 These beliefs pervaded Jewish culture as well and enriched Jewish spirituality. In the Hellenistic period, these terms become associated
with the language of ascension or theurgy, the magic use of shamanic
techniques to stimulate these out-of-body experiences. This vocabulary, as
we shall see, was known to Paul and became a central aspect of Paul's
explanation of the Christian message.72
In the Poimandres, usually considered a later document but which
might date from as early as the first century, many of these themes come
together in a mlange of Hellenistic Jewish exegesis of Genesis and
gnosticizing spirituality. The Nous is the highest God. His son, the Primordial Man, is described as the image or form of the father. The vision
starts with an ecstatic reverie. The purpose of the mystical contemplation
of the Nous is both cosmological in that it gives a coherent view of the
universe and soteriological because that view forms the basis of salvation. 73 The tractate echoes Genesis, using Greek philosophy to reformulate the biblical creation. Poimandres, who is a figure of gigantic size,
identifies himself with the light and embodies the highest god, Nous (1.6).
After revealing the secrets of cosmology, he outlines how a person can
enter into the Good. The person mounts upward through the heavens
until, stripped of all materiality, he or she begins to sing hymns to the
father, accompanied by those who have preceded him or her. All who are
in the eighth sphere give themselves to the powers, and becoming powers
themselves, they enter into God (en tbeginontai[i,z^]). A similar pattern
is revealed in tractate 13, though this is usually regarded as a later document.74
In the Poimandres, the ecstatic nature of the vision is clear and appears
to be sought after by a special technique resembling meditation or contemplation. Philo also mentions meditation as his method for speculating
on cosmological problems in his youth {Special Laws 3.1-6), though he
was forced to abandon these experiences due to his mature responsibilities. Philo's account of revelation occasionally uses mystical terminologyfor example, he mentions ecstasy and korybantic frenzy, described as the root of humanity's most cherished perceptions.75 For Philo,
Moses' visions of the angel of the Lord were also meant to be ecstatic
visions of the logos, the form of man, the sum of the perceptible world that
God makes available to his prophets. Since Philo only alludes to the experiences and prophetic literature contains few explicit instructions about
obtaining visions, it is impossible to define exactly what kind of experience
Paul's Ecstasy
55
56
one palace after another and saw what is there. And there are two mishnayoth which the tannaim taught regarding this topic, called Hekhaloth
Rabbati and Hekhaloth Zutreti."
Hai Gaon is aware of the mystical techniques for heavenly ascent and
describes them as out-of-body experiences where the adept ascends to
heaven while his body stays on earth. It is even possible that he understands the entire journey as an internal, intrapsychic one, but this is not
entirely clear.79 The hekhaloth texts themselves mention the transformation of the adept into a heavenly being, whose body becomes fire and
whose eyes flash lightning, a theme repeated in the Paris Magical
Papyrus.so
T H E M A N L I K E FIGURE AND EARLY
CHRISTIANITY
Heavenly man traditions are crucial to the development of the
Christian meaning of Jesus' earthly mission.81 They inform the New Testament discussions of the son of man in ways that have been infrequently
discussed.82 It is quite likely that some of Jesus' followers thought of him
as a messiah during his own lifetime, though they were disabused of that
idea by his arrest, trial, and death on the cross as the King of the Jews, for
no pre-Christian view of the messiah conceived of the possibility of his
demise at the hands of the Romans.83 Instead, the disciples' experience of
Jesus' resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God confirmed the
originally discarded messianic title retrospectively in a new, dynamic, and
ironic way. Resurrection and ascension had entered Jewish thought in the
century before Jesus as a reward for the righteous martyrs of the Maccabean wars. Thus, although Christianity represents a pure Jewish reaction
to a tragic series of events, the reaction was at the same time absolutely
novel. The process should be of special interest to Jewish scholars as well
as students of Christology, because it is the clearest evidence we have on
the intersection of the historical founding of new religious groups and
Jewish expectations derived from biblical texts. The events were given
meaning by creative interplay between the facts and the hermeneutic
process.
Since Jesus died as a martyr, expectations of his resurrection would
have been normal in sectarian Judaism.84 But the idea of a crucified messiah was unique. In such a situation, the Christians only did what other
believing Jews did in similar circumstances; they turned to biblical prophecy for elucidation. No messianic text suggested itself as appropriate to the
Paul's Ecstasy
57
situation. But Ps. 110:1 was exactly apposite: "The Lord says to my lord:
'Sit at my right hand, 'til I make your enemies your footstool.' " This
description of the enthronement of a Davidic descendant was now understood as a heavenly enthronement after death and resurrection. Yet nothing in the text makes the death or resurrection part of the narrative inevitable. It must have come from the historical experience of the early Christian
community, after they experienced these events. Thereafter, Ps. 110:1
could be combined easily with Dan. 7:913, the description of the enthronement of the son of man. Dan. 7:913 seemed to describe the scene
of Christ's exaltation and ascension, because Jesus could be identified with
the son of man, the angelic figure. Further, Dan. 12:2 had promised astral
immortality to those who taught wisdom, making plausible while it confirmed the entire set of expectations.
Jesus apparently used the term son of man while alive, though deciding
what he meant by the phrase remains problematic. He may have predicted
the future coming of a human figure, or he may not have referred to the
Daniel passage at all. 85 After his crucifixion and the experience of his
resurrection, the son-of-man phrases Jesus used were put in the context of
the statement in Dan. 7:13 about the enthronement of the son of man, and
Jesus' disciples believed that Jesus' victory over death was followed by his
ascension and enthronement in heaven as the gigantic angelic or divine
figure who was to bring God's coming justice. Through the imagery of the
son of man, the man Jesus was associated with the figure on the throne in
Dan. 7:13 while the traditions of Jesus' messianic function were associated
with traditions about the son of man, taking on a uniquely Christian
interpretation. Like the description of the venerable, fatherly figure in
Ezekiel the Tragedian's writing, the scene in Daniel involves the enthronement of an ancient of days with the son of man coming to sit next to the
ancient of days. The traditions themselves were present in Judaism before
Christianity, but it was Jesus' life and mission itself, along with the postEaster expectations of his followers, that brought messianism, judgment,
and heavenly ascent together in this particular way.86
The Christians identified the son of man, the human or angelic representation of God, with the risen Christ.87 Christians took the second lord
of Ps. 110:1 to refer to Jesus and to signify the divine name Lord. Thereafter, the risen Christ was understood as an aspect of the divinity.88 Since
the angel with the human figure was also divine itself, carrying the name
YHWH (Exod. 23:21), Jesus can be said to have attained to divinity. In the
Gospel of John, Christ also became logos, God's intermediary form, and
light, which was Philo's term for God's principal hypostasis as well. Christ
58
Paul's Ecstasy 59
graphical writing. None of the standard discussions of this incompletely
understood phenomenon mentions Paul's confession or the Mishnah.91
Again, Paul may be giving us hitherto unrecognized information about
Jewish culture in the first century that is unavailable from any other
source.
When Paul is not faced with a direct declaration of personal mystical
experience, he reveals much about the mystical religion as it was experienced in the first century. Paul himself designates Christ as the image of the
Lord in a few places (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15 [if it is Pauline]), and he
mentions the morpb of God in Phil. z:6.92 More often he talks of transforming believers into the image of God's son in various ways (Rom. 8:29;
2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:49; see also Col. 3:9). These passages
are critical to understanding Paul's experience of conversion. They must
be examined in close detail to understand their relationship to Jewish
apocalypticism and mysticism, from which they derive their most complete significance for Paul. Paul's longest discussion of these themes occurs
in an unlikely place (2 Cor. 3:184:6), where he assumes the context
rather than explaining it completely:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are
being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for
this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Therefore, having his
ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning
or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth
we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of
God. And even if our gospel is veiled it is veiled only to those who are
perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of
the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. For what we preach is not
ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for
Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of the Lord in the face of Christ. (2 Cor. 3:18-4:6)
Paul again used the imagery of darkness and light, which Gaventa notes is
important to his conversion vocabulary.93 The social aspect of this mysticism-apocalypticism is equally important to Paul. In calling him a mystical Jew, we discover a whole social and ethical side to first-century
mystical writings normally missed in the modern separation of ethics,
apocalypticism, and mysticism. Paul's writings are social and ethical; yet
behind them lies a mystical experience that he calls ineffable and that is
always confirmed in community.
Paul's use of the language of transformation often goes unappreciated.
In 2 Cor. 3:18, Paul says that believers will be changed into Christ's
likeness from one degree of glory to another. He refers to Moses' encounter with the angel of the Lord in Exodus 3334. Earlier in the Exodus
passage, the angel of the Lord is described as carrying the name of God
(2.3:21). Moses sees the Glory of the Lord, makes a covenant, receives the
commandments on the two tables of the law, and when he comes down
from the mount, the skin of his face shines with light (Exod. 34:29-35).
Moses thereafter must wear a veil except when he is in the presence of the
Lord. Paul assumes that Moses made an ascension to the presence of the
Lord, was transformed by that encounter and that his shining face is a
reflection of the encounter.
Paul uses strange and significant mystical language in 2 Cor. 3:18-4:6.
What is immediately striking is that he uses that language to discuss his
own and other Christians' experience in Christ. Paul explicitly compares
Moses' experience with his own and that of Christian believers. The experiences are similar, but the Christian transformation is greater and more
permanent. Once the background of Paul's vocabulary is known, his daring claims for Christian experience become clear. His point is that some
Christian believers also make such an ascent and that its effects are more
permanent than the vision that Moses received. The church has witnessed
a theophany as important as the one vouchsafed to Moses, but the Christian theophany is greater still, as Paul himself has experienced. The Corinthians are said to be a message from Christ (3:2), who is equated with the
Glory of God. The new community of gentiles is not a letter written on
stone (Jer. 31:33), but it is delivered by Paul as Moses delivered the Torah
to Israel. The new dispensation is more splendid than the last, not needing
the veil with which Moses hid his face. Paul's own experience proved to
him and for Christianity that all will be transformed.
Paul's phrase the Glory of the Lord must be taken both as a reference to
Christ and as a technical term for the Kavod, the human form of God
appearing in biblical visions. In 2 Cor. 3:18, Paul says that Christians
behold the Glory of the Lord {ten doxan kyriou) as in a mirror and are
transformed into his image (tn autn eikona).94 For Paul, as for the
earliest Jewish mystics, to be privileged to see the Kavod or Glory {doxa) of
God is a prologue to transformation into his image (eikn). Paul does not
say that all Christians have made the journey literally but compares the
Paul's Ecstasy
61
6z
3 and especially in z Cor. 4:4-6. 9 7 The word phtismos (4:4; 4:6) and the
phrase kain ktisis {5:17) are reminiscent of baptismal liturgy. Since the
words lamp, augaz, and phtismos, which are commonly used in baptismal liturgy, are used by Paul here only, it is quite possible that Paul is
paraphrasing a baptismal liturgy to express this mystic identification.
Paul's quotation might then indicate that it was specifically during baptism that the identification between the image of the savior and the believer was made.
Paul's famous description of Christ's experience of humility and obedience in Phil. Z : 5 - I I also hints that the identification of Jesus with the
image of God was reenacted in the church in a liturgical mode: "Have this
mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was
in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the
likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and
became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has
highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every
name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on
earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
This passage has several hymnic features, indicating that Paul is quoting a fragment of primitive liturgy or referring to a liturgical setting.98
Thus Philippians 2 is probably the earliest writing in the Pauline corpus, as
well as the earliest Christology of the New Testament; it is not surprising
that it is the most exalted Christology."
In Phil. z:6, the identification of Jesus with the form of God implies his
prexistence. Christ is depicted as an eternal aspect of divinity, which was
not proud of its high station but consented to take on the shape of a man
and suffer the fate of men, even death on a cross (though many scholars see
this phrase as a Pauline addition to the original hymn). This transformation of form from the divine to the human is followed by the converse,'the
transformation back into God. Because of this obedience God exalted
Jesus and bestowed on him the "name which is above every name" (Phil.
2:9). For a Jew this phrase can only mean that Jesus received the divine
name Yahweh, the tetragrammaton YHWH, translated as the Greek name
kyrios, or Lord. We have seen that sharing in the divine name is a recurring
motif of early Jewish apocalypticism, where the principal angelic mediator
of God is or carries the name Yahweh, as Exodus 23 describes the angel of
God. The implication of the Greek term morph, "form," in Philippians z
is that Christ has the form of a divine body identical with Kavod and
Paul's Ecstasy
63
equivalent also with the eikn, for man is made after the eikn of God and
thus has the divine morph (in Hebrew: demuth). The climax of Paul's
confession is that "Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father"
(Phil. 2:11), meaning that Jesus, the messiah, has received the name Lord
in his glorification, and that this name, not Jesus' private earthly name, is
the one that will cause every knee to bend and every tongue to confess,100
In paraphrasing this fragment from liturgy, Paul witnesses that the
early Christian community directed its prayers to this human figure of
divinity along with God (1 Cor. 16:12.; Rom. 10:9-12; 1 Cor. 12:3)all
the more striking since the Christians, like the Jews, refuse to venerate any
other god or hero. When the rabbis gained control of the Jewish community they vociferously argued against the worship of any angel and specifically polemicized against the belief that a heavenly figure other than God
can forgive sins (b. Sanhdrin 38b), quoting Exod. 23:21 prominently
among other Scriptures to prove their point. The heresy itself they called
believing that there are two powers in heaven. This heresy mainly (but not
exclusively) referred to Christians, who, as Paul says, do exactly what the
rabbis warn againstworship the second power. 101
Concomitant with Paul's worship of the divine Christ is transformation. Paul says in Phil. 3:10 "that 1 may know him and the power of his
resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him [symmorphizomenos] in his death." Later he says: "But our commonwealth is in
heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
change [metaschmatisei] our lowly body to be like [symmorpbon] his
glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to
himself" (3:20-21). The body of the believer eventually is to be transformed into the body of Christ.
Paul's depiction of salvation is based on his understanding of Christ's
glorification, partaking of early Jewish apocalyptic mysticism for its expression.1 0 2 In Rom. 12:2 Paul's listeners are exhorted to "be transformed
[metamorphousthe] by renewing of your minds." In Gal. 4:19 Paul expresses another transformation: "My little children, with whom I am
again in travail until Christ be formed [morphthe] in you!" This transformation is to be effected by becoming like him in his death (symmorphizomenos t thanat autou [Phil. 3:10]). Paul's central proclamation is: Jesus is Lord and all who have faith have already undergone a
death like his and so will share in his resurrection. As we have seen, this
proclamation reflects a baptismal liturgy, implying that baptism provides
the moment whereby the believer comes to be in Christ. Christianity is a
unique Jewish sect in that it makes baptism a central rather than a pre-
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paratory ritual, but some of the mystical imagery comes from its Jewish
past.
Alternatively, Paul can say, as he does in Gal. 1:16 that "God was
pleased to reveal His Son in me [en emoi]." This is not a simple dative but
refers to his having received in him the Spirit, in his case through his
conversion. Being in Christ in fact appears to mean being united with
Christ's heavenly image. The same, however, is available to all Christians
through baptism. This is not strange since apocalyptic and mystical Judaism also promoted tevilah, ritual immersion or baptism, as the central
purification ritual preparing for the ascent into God's presence. The Jewish ritual of purification for coming into the divine presence and proselyte
baptism has been transformed by Paul's community into a single rite of
passage, though it does not thereby lose its relationship to its source.
Dying and being resurrected along with Christ in baptism is the beginning
of the process by which the believer gains the same image of God, his
eikn, which was made known to humanity when Jesus became the son of
manthe human figure in heaven who brings judgment in the apocalypse
described by Daniel. Paul's conception of the risen body of Christ as the
spiritual body (i Cor. 15:43) at the end of time and as the body of Glory
(Phil. 3:2i) thus originates in Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism, modified by the unique events of early Christianity. The meaning of Rom. 8:29
can be likewise clarified by Jewish esoteric tradition: Paul speaks of God as
having "foreordained his elect to be conformed to the image of his Son"
("prorisen symmorphous ts eikonos tou huiou autou"). Paul uses the
genitive here rather than the dative as in Phil. 3:2.1, softening the identification between believer and savior. But when Paul states that believers
conform to the image of God's son, he is not speaking of an agreement of
mind or ideas between Jesus and the believers. The word symmorph itself
suggests a spiritual reformation of the believer's body into the form of the
divine image. Paul's language for conversionbeing in Christdevelops
out of mystical Judaism.
Paul speaks of the transformation being partly experienced by believers in their preparousia existence. His use of present tense in Rom. iz:z
and x Cor. 3:18 underscores the idea that transformation is an ongoing
event. In 1 Cor. 15:49 and Romans 8, however, it culminates at Christ's
return, the parousia. This suggests that for Paul transformation is both a
single, definitive event and a process that continues until the second coming. The redemptive and transformative process appears to correspond
exactly with the turning of the ages. This age is passing away, though it
certainly remains a present evil reality (1 Cor. 3:19; 5:9; x Cor. 4:4; Gal.
Paul's Ecstasy 65
1:4; Rom. 12:2). The gospel, which is the power of God for salvation
(Rom. 1:16), is progressing through the world (Phil. 1:12; Romans 9n).
First Cor. 15:42-51 is one of the most systematic uses of this apocalyptic and mystical tradition, which is central to Paul's message of the
meaning of Christ:
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable,
what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in
glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical
body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is
also a spiritual body. Thus it is written. "The first man Adam became a
living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the
spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first
man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the
man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne
the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of
heaven. I tell you this, brethren; flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
As Paul connects his own conversion with his resurrection in Christ, it
is resurrection that brings the salvation of God and a return to the pristine
state of humanity's glory before Adam's fall. He says this explicitly in
1 Cor. 15:21: "For as by a man came death; so by a man has also come
resurrection of the dead." Paul makes Adam and Christ contrasting images of fall and salvation respectively. But Paul seems to have more than
Jesus' earthly existence in mind, since he uses the term anthrpos, which
can also refer to his resurrected nature: "Just as we have borne the image
of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven."103
The agent that begins and is responsible for this change on earth is the
spirit. The spirit not only creates the Christ that is within believers, but
itself takes on the character of Christ. The risen Jesus is to be experienced
as a life-giving spirit, explaining how the transformation starts, and culminates in the mystic process in the apocalyptic end.104
When speaking of the resurrection, Paul describes a reciprocal relationship between Adam and Christ: as Adam brought death into the
world, Christ, the second Adam, will bring resurrection. This depends on
interpreting Adam's divine likeness as being identical to the Glory that the
Christ had or received. Because of the first human, all humanity is brought
to death; but because of Christ's divine image all will be brought to life
(15:21-22). The first man, Adam, became only a living soul, whereas the
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last Adam became a life-giving spirit (15:45). The first man was of the
earth and therefore earthly; the last man is from heaven, therefore divine.
Just as humanity has borne the outward image of the old Adam, those who
inherit the kingdom will also bear the inward spiritual eikon of the heavenly man {15:47-49). Paul, however, is not so much talking about the
man Jesus as he is talking about Christ's exalted nature as anthrpos. Since
the imagery depends on the contrast between fallen and raised states, this
passage also implies a baptismal setting. It is interesting that the alternation is conceived in bodily terms, not as a transmigration of souls.
The antonymous pairs, natural/spiritual, earthly/heavenly, corruptible/incorruptible, point to the contrast between the nature of Christ's
resurrected body and ordinary human life. All these contrasts are characteristic of a man who underwent a radical conversion. One cannot ignore
the close relationship between Paul's view of the future immortality of
believers and his description of the risen Christ from his own conversion,
as his conversion experience may have been a process involving several
visions and the search for their meaning. When Paul says that Christians
shall be raised imperishable, as he does in 1 Cor. 15:5158, the background for this conception is his other descriptions of transformation into
the raised Christ, Paul's own context. His view of the coming end is merely
the culmination of the process that has started with conversion and
baptism:
Lo! I will tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable
and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the
imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When
the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
"Death is swallowed up in victory."
"O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?"
[Isa. 25:8; Hos. 13:14]
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul's view of the immortality of believers is parallel to and depends on
his description of the raised Christ in heaven. Paul's imagery for the de-
Paul's Ecstasy
67
scription of the coming resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 fulfills the vocabulary of spiritual body and Glory of God that ultimately derives from his
conversion. Because believers on earth, by virtue of their conversion, have
been transformed into the body of Christ, who is the image of God, the
destiny of believers will be the same as the destiny of Christ. The believer is
to share in Christ's immortality at the last trumpet, as Paul himself experienced transformation by Christ. It appears that Paul considers himself
special in that the whole process of salvation has been revealed to him.
Others have not had his visions, so his visions give him special powers to
speak on the meaning of Christian life. But the process has started within
the Christian community, continuing there, whether those who have acknowledged Christ recognize it or not. Although Jesus' humanity is mentioned here and in Romans 5, it is not the human life that is the point of the
exegesis. Christ's resurrection and metamorphosis into the true man
power the analogy. Christ is the man from heaven. His power on earth is
the spirit.
The relationship between transformation and justification can be seen
in a later part of the Corinthian correspondence, where Paul discusses the
effect of the spiritual transformation. Transformation and community are
clarified there, making the differing social contexts of the two letters
besides the point. In z Cor. 5:15-6:1, Paul speaks of the Christian as a
new creation:
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of
view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of
view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ,
he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has
come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses
against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we
are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We
beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he
made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we entreat
you not to accept the grace of God in vain.
The "human point of view" is literally "according to the flesh" (kata
sarka), whereas the believer is a new creation of spirit. The reformulation
experience changes the believer from a physical body to a new spiritual
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creation. It turns the believer into the righteousness of God, although the
final consummation has not yet occurred. Paul can refer to himself even as
an ambassador and fellow worker with Christ before the final transformation, participating in his body with him as he works. Because the verb is
implied, the passage can also mean that "there is a new creation," giving
the event a cosmic as well as an individual significance.105 It is also clear
that the experience of being made righteous is coterminous with this
transformation. Thus, conversion for Paul means both a transformation
and a parallel process of being made righteous. This process takes place in
community. Like many visionaries, Paul suggests not just a personal transformation but a transformation of community and of the cosmos as well.
The mystical experience of conversion is not only with the risen Christ
but with the crucified Christ. The most obvious relationship between the
believer and Christ is suffering and death (Rom. 7:24; 8:10,13). By being
transformed by Christ, one is not simply made immortal, given the power
to remain deathless. Rather, one still experiences death as Christ did and
like him survives death for heavenly enthronement. This is a consequence
of the Christian's divided state. Although part of the last Adam, living
through spirit, the Christian also belongs to the world of the flesh. As
James Dunn has noted, "Suffering was something all believers experiencedan unavoidable part of the believer's lotan aspect of experience
as Christians which his converts shared with Paul: Rom. 5:3 ('we'); 8:iyf
('we'); 2 Cor. 1:16 ('you endure the same sufferings that we suffer'); 8:2;
Phil, iiz^f ('the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine');
1 Thess. 1:6 ('imitators of us and of the Lord'); 2:14 ('imitators of the
churches of God in Judea: for you suffered the same things'); 3:3f ('our
lot'); 2 Thess. i:4ff."106
Thus, the persecution and suffering of the believers is a sign that the
transformation process has begun; it is the way to come to be in Christ.
Paul is convinced that being united with Christ's crucifixion means not
immediate glorification but suffering for the believers in this interim period. The glorification follows on the final consummation. The connection
between suffering and resurrection is clear in Jewish martyrology; indeed,
the connection between death and rebirth was a prominent part of the
mystery religions as well. The language of transformation is not solely a
Jewish vocabulary. It is also part of Hellenistic religious piety throughout
the period. The identification of the adept with the divinity through a
vision is characteristic of later Hellenistic mysticism, where the mystic
adept may seek a vision of the divinity face to face, intuit the saving gnosis
Paul's Ecstasy 69
as in the Poimandres,107 or end by breathing in the divine to become
divine himself or herself.108 But understanding suffering as the uniting
experience is a special Christian interpretation of the martyrdom theme
underlying the ascension story from Daniel. The genesis of the doctrine
points both to the passion of Jesus and to the persecution of the community.
In the letters of the Pauline school, some of these themes receive even
fuller development. Colossians is a veritable summary of the whole constellation of language describing transformation into the heavenly Kavod,
understood as Christ. Christ is called, "the image of the invisible God"
(1:15zo) and the "firstborn of all creation" (1:16). He is the author of
creation and the captain of the heavenly hosts and is coeternal with God.
As Christ, he is also "firstborn from the dead." He is the head of the body,
the church, a remark that hints at possible relationships with Jewish Sbiur
Koma speculation as well as pagan concepts of the Macranthropos.
In Colossae, important baptismal practices, similar to Jewish mysticism and Qumran, developed.109 Col. 3:10 speaks of Christians as
having taken off an old nature and put on a new nature in baptism, "which
is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." Eph. 4:24
speaks also of putting on a new nature created after the likeness of God.
This language of transformation comes from Jewish apocalyptic mysticism, yet it implies a specifically Christian theology and a baptismal
setting. If contemporary scholars were not convinced of the Pauline authorship of these letters, one can nonetheless say that they give irrefutable
evidence about the popularity of Paul's mystical teaching among his earliest disciples and the direction in which these teachings were interpreted.
Paul's conversion experience and his mystical ascension form the basis
of his theology. His language shows the marks of a man who has learned
the contemporary vocabulary for expressing a theophany and then has
received one. This language of vision has informed his thought in a
number of crucial respects. First, it has allowed him to develop a concept
of the divinity of Christ or the messiah both as a unique development
within the Jewish mystical tradition and as characteristically Christian.
Second, he uses this Jewish mystical vocabulary to express the transformation experienced by believers. Believers warrant immortality because they
have been transformed by becoming formed {symmorphous) like the savior. Third, he uses the language of transformation, gained through contact
with Jewish mystical-apocalypticism and presumably through ecstatic
conversion, to discuss the ultimate salvation and fulfillment of the apoc-
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Paul's Ecstasy
71
CHAPTER THREE
C O N V E R S I O N IN PAUL'S
SOCIETY
Conversion is an appropriate term for discussing Paul's religious experience, although Paul did not himself use it. The modern study
of conversion shows how conversion can be employed as a technical term,
within specific limits. It also illustrates the contention that every community develops its own definition of conversion. This contention is illustrated in the change of the definition of conversion from Paul to Luke to
the pastoral Epistles. Paul, as well as other first century Jews, spoke of
interna! states in prophetic, ecstatic, or mystical vocabularies, developing
several words that approximate modern terms of conversion. The one
expression that Paul uses most comprehensively in his own writing to
describe this experience is transformation. This links Paul's religious experience with both conversion and ancient mystical appearances of the deity.
Once the different boundaries of the ancient and modern vocabularies are
recognized, there are adequate grounds for continuing the study of conversion in the ancient world and applying our results to Paul.
There were many consequences in changing commitment from one
social group in Judea to another, whether from a gentile to a Jewish group,
Jewish to gentile, or from one group within the Jewish community to
another. Arthur Darby Nock defined the study of conversion in the ancient world by showing that conversion was a distinctly specialized and
rare religious experience.1 Most religious rites of the time helped maintain
the political order because they were civic ceremonies. Participation involved adherence, a low level of involvement, as an act of civic piety. But
prophetic religions such as Judaism and Christianity stimulated conversion, raising commitment far above simple adherence. Conversion necessarily involved a radical change of life-style, often a move to a socially
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strong religious commitment and conversion. In Commitment and Community, Rosabeth Kanter examines the psychology of commitment while
investigating the factors influencing the survival of apocalyptic communities.7 After studying nine successful communities and many unsuccessful
ones, Kanter defines commitment not in individual terms but in terms that
serve the community: Commitment consists of internal controls that support the group. Personal commitment and conversion become two aspects
of the same dynamic of socialization in sects and apocalyptic or Utopian
communities. Whenever a group is made up almost entirely of converts, its
cohesiveness tends to be much greater than a group whose membership is
filled by casual affiliates or those not decisively rejecting other choices.
Chronologically, however, conversion most often precedes commitment,
so that the phenomenon of commitment includes more aspects than merely conversion. Conversion merely begins a process of commitment to the
group, though it is often considered the culmination of it. Kanter observed
that groups that present new moral communities, such as those where
members share property and resources to form a single household, evince
the highest degree of cohesiveness. This is a common feature of Jewish and
Christian sectarianism, relevant to first-century Judaism and Christianity.
One characteristic of sects that are highly dependent on conversion for
membership is that they also tend to be highly cohesive, stressing the
differences between themselves and the outside world.
In analyzing the history of these groups, Kanter observed three principal types of commitment and the processes by which the types are enhanced. Her three aspects of commitment are: affective commitment,
instrumental commitment, and moral commitment.8
Kanter's theories allow us to distinguish between these differing definitions of conversion. Instrumental commitment is characterized as a
commitment to the organization and its rules, affective commitment as
commitment to its members, and moral commitment as commitment to
the ideas of the group, as spelled out by its leaders. This results in three
major characteristics of commitment in a particular group: retention of
members, group cohesiveness, and social control. Since these are observations based on evaluations and interpretations of narrative data and not
based on quantified data, they cannot be treated as strict definitions of
every society's mechanism of commitment, but they are important descriptive tools in helping to analyze why conversion galvanizes community and
ensures success.
Two mechanisms for each major aspects of commitment are described
by Kanter. The first mechanism tends to separate the individual from other
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groups, and the second tends to attract the individual to the special group;
for instance, in regard to affective commitment, Kanter discusses both
renunciation of former ties and communion with the new group. Conversion is more likely to occur in people who have few affective commitments
to other groups. For this reason, groups with active missions in the United
States have become a commonplace at airports, where the proselytizers
look for backpacks and other signs of transiency and rootlessness in the
potential convert.9 The new converts are then deliberately isolated from
their other affective ties in an attempt to make them renounce them. This
helps to account for the enormous number of converts to new religious
movements among the children of nonobservant Jews and Christians. In
place of the affective ties, ties of communion with the new group are
developed. As one climbs up the ladder of the internal hierarchy from new
convert to novice to member to leader, the individual makes an affective
investment in the group and gains respect from other members.
Closely associated with this phenomenon is an instrumental level of
commitment. The new member must be convinced that continued association with the group is worth the time and effort it demands. Hence dissonance (see appendix) operates at the cognitive level of commitment. On
the negative side, the individual sacrifices various commonplaces of ordinary life in the larger society. Devotees may be forbidden alcohol, dancing,
drugs, sex, or comforts in order to continue life with the group. The group
may hold all property in common, requiring an enormous price from
wealthier members, ensuring that these become the most committed members. On the positive side, these sacrifices are balanced by investments that
yield a return of status or enjoyment through continued association with
the group. Becoming a leader or making public announcements may have
this desired affect.
The third level of commitment refers to obedience to the norms and
values of the group. Kanter calls the negative mechanisms that separate the
member from previous associations mortification, and she calls the
positive force of attraction transcendence. Grouped under mortification
are the disciplinary measures of the group, often a public confession of
faults, which can in itself stimulate exhilaration because it indicates to the
subject that the group cares about the person's behavior and thoughts.
Difficult and painful psychological pressures such as these also serve to
raise the cognitive dissonance, hence the commitment of the new member.
On the positive side, the successful indoctrination and practice of the
rituals, morals, and ethics of a group lead to a feeling of transcendence of
one's individuality and a sense of ultimate meaning.
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Although radical conversions relate to the affective side of group commitment, they may also have ramifications on the other two scales as well.
Gradual conversions typically address all three aspects of group commitment as part of the training process. This explains why successful groups
encourage gradual conversions. But some radical conversions are also
important for the development of commitment, since emotions are typically important to religious groups. Radical conversions exemplify the
ecstasy or bliss sought within the movement and give dramatic urgency to
the claims of the group. For the stability of the membership, it is important
to balance the emotional contribution of radical converts with the steady
enthusiasm of gradual converts, who appropriate the rules and roles of the
group more thoroughly and so add stability.
Even in conventional religious groups, affective commitment has a
disproportionate effect in cohesion. Gerhard Lenski has noted that communal involvement and close affective interpersonal relationships with
members is a crucial variable for the cohesion of a religious organization
or institution.10 This would also account for the high level of commitment
among participants in a religious movement even when they do not seek or
attain high office. Although the moral factors may be primary in terms of
personal goals and meanings in a religion, the affective commitments
chronologically come first in most believers' experience.
One result of such analyses in the modern world has been the observation that the most rapid church growth tends to be among the most
conservative and demanding denominations. A liberalizing movement
from sect to denomination is the general rule for most religious groups in
American institutional religious life. Liberal churches and sects often do
not attract members as quickly or retain them as surely as conservative
churches, which rely on conversion, strict moral standards, and large
investments of time and money to develop higher degrees of commitment.
People join conservative churches, whereas others tend to disaffiliate from
the liberal ones, ceasing to have affiliations with any church.11
Several psychologists have investigated the relationship between conversion and commitment by examining the language of converts. David
Snow and Richard Machalek12 proposed that the surest way to identify
the phenomenon of conversion would be to look for changes in the subject's "universe of discourse."13 Studying the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist
movement, they suggested that converts can be identified by four "rhetorical indicators": (1) adopting a master attribution scheme; (2.) biographical reconstruction; (3) suspending analogical reason; and (4) embracing a master role. Subsequent research has shown that these four
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ment official would necessarily have different interests than a Jewish community leader in defining a conversionafter all, a conversion might
affect not only a person's private status but also his or her tax bill.
Christianity was not the only proselytizing sect within Judaism. Its
proselytizing style was rooted in Judaism, though Christianity and Paul in
particular might have relied on missionizing more than other sects, transforming Jewish heritage by moving beyond the Jewish milieu into the
wider world. Other Jewish sects, like the Essenes, the monastic group that
left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, depended on converts regularly and operated
successful propaganda programs for the purposes of educating the populace to the value of repentance. But they seem to have limited their mission
to other Jews. This group, with its enormous interest in purity rules and
the responsibilities of priesthood, qualifies as a highly cohesive, communitarian movement. Without doubt it was the most cohesive sectarian
group in Graeco-Roman Judea, even when Christianity is included. But
unlike Christianity it was totally uninterested in a gentile mission.
Since Hellenization also took place at different speeds among the various classes of Judea, several different and competing sects and denominations arose in the first centuryamong them the Pharisees, Sadducees,
Essenes, and later the Christians, representing different ways in which
Hellenistic religious values could be interpreted in Judean culture. This
sectarian life was functional to the extent that it constructively channeled
conflict between manifold expressions of Hellenistic Jewish life. But it also
prepared the way for a new concept of religious changeconversion
among the various sects of the day and into Judaism itself.16 Although
Christianity eventually surpassed the bounds of its sectarian status within
Judaism, becoming an international Hellenistic movement, it began by
disturbing greatly the equilibrium of sectarian life within Judea by virtue
of its success in converting gentiles to something that resembled the other
varieties of Judaism but also differed from them.
The perception that strong personal decisions lead to highly cohesive
groups can be profitably applied to sectarian life in Judaism. One rule can
be promulgated initially: gradual conversion was the typical and expected
pattern for virtually every sectarian group in Judaism, although sudden
and emotional conversion may have occurred occasionally. Admittedly
little is known about the many messianic movements that left no documents, and even the community formed by John the Baptist cannot be
defined. But Graeco-Roman Judea valued the learning of special meanings
of difficult texts. In providing instruction in the truths of the sect, each of
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about his religious feelings, which he calls epithumia, as Paul does (Rom. 7),
and he may be talking about a conversion experience when he became
Bannus's disciple. He also evidences the converse phenomenon, what Nock
called adherence and what many social psychologists call alternation, in his
education by the Pharisees. We can see that a Jew's association with one of
the Jewish sectarian positionseither Essenism or Pharisaismmight
have involved a radical change of some aspects of existence. But at the same
time, it might not be a radical change in every respect. Alternatively, one
might go to some religious figures or communities for educational purposes,
without anticipating a conversion experience.
Had Josephus actually joined the Essenes, as well as lauding them, he
would have had to become a convert, although conversion to this group
was normally envisioned as a gradual process of internalizing group
norms. Essene membership came only by conversion. Even an orphan
would have had to go through the same lengthy initiation as any other
convert. Virtually no member of this group could be called merely an
adherent because all members adopted a radically different life-style.21
The single most obvious characteristic of the Essenes or Dead Sea
Scroll sectarians was their dualism. Strongly apocalyptic, the community
divided the world into a battle between the children of darkness and the
children of light. This should not be confused with a philosophical impetus
toward dualism, for they believed in a single deity. The distinction, rather,
has as much to do with sociology as theology. Their dualism was parallel
to their division of the world, which served to separate members of the
group from everyone else. From another perspective the dualism was
parallel to the strong distinction between pre- and postdecision cognitive
dissonance in their community. It functioned to keep the new member
away from contradictory information. It is interesting how thoroughly
this distinction affects their thinking, for they virtually identify themselves
with the community of the saved at the end of time. There is thus a perfect
symmetry between their personal decision-states in joining their community and their views of the ultimate purpose of history.
In this respect the Qumranites are quite close to the modern group
expecting salvation from "flying saucers," which Festinger studied in the
classic When Prophecy Fails,22 or to many of the new religions today,
which set up monastic, ascetic, or retreat communities based on the notion
that they alone will survive. Although ecstasy appeared to be part of their
rites, the Qumran group did not describe conversion in ecstatic or emotional terms, stressing the stages and rigors of the life of purity instead.
They prescribed ritual immersion for purity, as did the Pharisees. But it
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had a mark that was unequivocally Essene. Ritual immersion made the
Dead Sea Scroll community pure enough to fight with the angels at the end
of time. Hence, the member could be saved at the final battle. The practice
fills in the gaps between rabbinic views of community and Christian ones,
as it adds the missing steps between Jewish ritual immersion and Christian
baptism. Because of the Dead Sea Scrolls we can investigate the internal
organization of the Essenes and see that they would score high on the
scales of commitment developed by Kanter.
C O N V E R S I O N A M O N G DIASPORA
JEWISH GROUPS
Conversion among Jewish groups was a subspecies of the phenomenon of conversion known throughout the Hellenistic world. Philosophers in particular specialized in redeeming their contemporaries from
human error; philosophical schools resembled religious associations as
much as anything else.23 Philosophers used the same term as did Hellenistic Judaism, epistrephein or epistrophe, to describe the turning or coming
to oneself. The Septuagint's vocabulary came from this philosophical
usage. Occasionally the philosophers even used the term metamorphosis,
which Paul himself uses so significantly. The philosopher's audience was
observed to experience a quickly changing palette of emotions, including
repentance, joy, or wonder, "and even have varying facial expressions and
changes of feeling as the philosopher's speech affects him and touches his
recognition of that part of his soul which is sound and that which is
sick."24
Normally, the conversion process was a gradual process of interest,
followed by commitment. But it could also be miraculously fast, stimulated by some personal crisis like a shipwreck, financial or political ruin, or
exile. The accounts of conversion in response to speeches tend to stress the
spontaneity of the conversion as a way of underlining the power of philosophical speech and reason.25 Christian stress on the speed and completeness of conversion seems equally to stress the power of the spirit. We
can expect that Jewish proselytism relied on similar tactics to praise the
power and Tightness of its converts' choices.
Hellenistic Judaism, deeply influenced by classical thought, was the
majority Jewish culture of the day. Even within the small area of Judea and
the slightly larger area of the land of Israel, which included Samaria and
the Galilee, we have evidence of a large number of Hellenized Jews. These
Jews produced the majority of the materia! evidence that has come down
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to us from the first centuries. It is their culture whose ruins we find scattered over Israel and the Mediterranean landmasses. Josephus mentions
the "representations of animals" that Herod Antipas put in houses in
Tiberias {Life 65). Although the Galilean synagogues with their beautiful
mosaicscontaining zodiacs, the seasons, and depictions of Heliosdate
from the third century and later, they show the extent of Jewish acculturation to Hellenism, the willing interplay of Jewish and pagan beliefsas
long as some major tenet of Jewish belief was not flagrantly violated. In the
Jewish Diaspora, acculturation can only have been all the more evident.26
Philo, the spokesman for Hellenistic Judaism, evinces a large degree of
universalism. He discusses the wisdom of the Greeks as one standard of
truth in the world. He takes pains, of course, to show that everything good
in Greek thought is paralleled by Jewish thought and that Judaism contains moral and philosophical truths only hinted at by the Greeks. He
never explicitly mentions an active Jewish mission to convert gentiles.27
He sometimes appears to believe, however, that gentiles can attain to
salvation, as gentiles without conversion, just as Jews can attain to the
philosophical mind. He does not actively promote a mission to gentiles, as
he was a sensible Diaspora Jew and is sensitive to gentile fears. Though he
mentions with pride that some gentiles have even sought fit to convert to
Judaism and exhorts Jews to accept them, he seems to believe that there are
some gentiles who have the advantages of a moral and philosophical life
without conversion to Judaism (Special Laws 1.52; 1.3089; Virtues
103-4).28
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gotten that universal values must be envisioned through particular material circumstances.35
The leniency of Philo's reproach of the extreme allegorizers can be seen
in comparison with apostates, for whom he has less kind words: "being
incontinent . , . [they] have sold their freedom for luxurious food . . . and
beauty of body, thus ministering to the pleasures of the belly and the organs
below it" (Virtues 34,18z). This discussion is reminiscent of 3 Maccabees
where the apostates are called "those who for their belly's sake had transgressed the divine command" (7:11). The apostates are not virtuous but
merely indulge themselves in degradation. Desiring complete assimilation,
they make no attempt to live up to the virtues of Judaism. The extreme
allegorizers continued to consider themselves Jews and maintain the moral
laws of Judaism, though they neglected the special customs.
The ferocity of hatred directed against gentiles by some of the apocalyptic literature should be noted. Jubilees stresses the strict separation of
Jews from the gentiles, who are their inferiors in morality (15.31). Jubilees
considers the gentiles to be demonically related to the evil powers. The
Qumran texts outlining the war of the children of light on the children of
darkness depict the gentiles in similar villainy. Fourth Ezra too condemns
the gentiles after the destruction of the Temple (6.55-57). These are
hardly discussions of Jewish identity or conversion, but they show the
range of choices available to Jews of the time and the range of opinions
about the gentiles. Conclusions about such modern ideas as assimilation
and conversion can be teased out of the context because some of the social
conflicts are quite similar to those of the modern world.
Shaye Cohen (among others) has suggested that Jewish identity in this
period resembles citizenship because it was usually determined by birth
and was not easily obtained otherwise. The Greek Ioudaios and the Latin
ludaeus, like the Hebrew Yehudi, meant "Judean," describing more geographical and national connotations than the word Jew in modern languages. The analogy is not complete because a Jew could become a citizen
of another place through naturalization without losing his Jewish identity.
Citizenship in Greek cities was jealously guarded, but it was sometimes
bestowed on foreigners on the basis of habitation, property ownership,
religious rite, and, primarily, local benefactions.
The Jewish path to citizenship was still not an easy one. Jews in Alexandria aspired to and obtained citizenship on an individual basis, but
because of civil conflict between the Jews and the Greeks, the best the Jews
could receive was isopoliteia, separate-but-unequal rights to citizenship.36
The legal issues surrounding Jewish rights were closely associated with
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their status as a collegium licitum or possibly a religio licita.37 The situation in Alexandria was, of course, unique, but it is likely that fear of Jews
multiplied anywhere in the empire where enough Jews settled to become
politically, economically, and socially powerful. The history of each community differed, but some of the underlying forces were universal.
Some Jews were satisfied with such gains, content to develop independently; other Jews were not. Still other Jews, like Philo, probably came
from families that had been part of the citizenry for generations. Paul was
apparently a citizen of the empire. Citizenship was often bestowed on the
basis of religious preference, rather than the other way around, which
meant that it was never easy for Jews to become citizens of other areas.
One way to become a citizen of Athens was to seek initiation into the
Eleusinian mysteries.38 This kind of religious devotion to a foreign cult
was obviously more difficult for a Jew than other natives (one could own
property in Athens without being a citizen) seeking citizenship. One
should not expect to find many practicing Jews in civic office before the
edict of the emperors Severus and Caracalla (between 198 and zio CE.)
because of the special religious nature of jobs imposed on officeholders.
Thereafter it was less rare, for Ulpian adds to his description of the ruling
of Severus and Caracalla that the emperors did not infringe on the superstitio of Jewish officeholders.39 Jewish identity in parts of the Diaspora
was like foreign nationality, as it is today, though it is hardly identical with
the ancient understanding of citizenship. Jewish identity in the ancient
world could often be subject to the same stresses as it is even in the modern
secular American Jewish community, which has its many examples of
apostasies to both established religion and the new religious cults, based
on psychological needs as well as perceived career necessities.
There is a Diaspora Jewish sensitivity to the whole issue of conversion.
Unlike Paul, the Septuagint does not use terms associated with metamorphosis to any special advantage.40 Philo uses metamorphosis three
times, describing: (1) Emperor Gaius Caligula's insane attempt to become
Apollo {Gaium 95); (z) Moses' transformation to a prophet by means of
divine inspiration (Mos. 1.57); and (3) the virtue of piety, which is transformed by the slightest alteration {Spec. leg. 4.147). Speaking about
Moses, Philo brings together the notions of prophecy and religious transformation, which we see in Luke's biography of Paul and to a lesser extent
in Paul's writing itself. For the greatest religious leaders, Philo uses the
language of transformation freely, without the satirical bite of his description of Caligula. Philo believes that Moses was a unique figure, a divine
figure in many ways, and the perfection of earthly paradigms for prophet,
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being is the guide and lord of all" (16). Judaism is presented as a nonviolent, nonaggressive philosophy and especially not as an exclusive or
closed fraternity; rather, it is a gift to all humanity, since God's providence
is universal. If this characterization evinces a sensitivity to pagan charges,
there can be no doubt as to why proselytism is downplayed. It is not
suggested that God will show special consideration for the Jews simply by
virtue of their being Jews. The Jews follow their own rites, which attain a
desirable religious end, but the same end can be attained by moral Greeks,
though their rites are different.44 Some of the most acculturated Jewish
writers apparently soft-pedaled conversion when it was viewed as threatening by the gentile community, arguing that monotheism and virtue
would be rewarded wherever it was found. These Jews asked gentiles to
worship the one true God, which entailed a rejection of idolatry or, as it
was often expressed, worship of the dead, and avoidance of sin, with
emphasis on adultery and homosexuality as the two characteristic gentile
sins. Both proselytism and the avoidance of it can thus be seen as characteristic of aspects of the Jewish community.
In spite of Jewish sensitivities to the charge of breaking up gentile
families, some Jews welcomed converts. A brief mention of conversion
occurs at the end of the book of Judith, which is probably from the
Hellenistic period. After Judith has killed Holofernes, Achior the Ammonite general is so impressed with the saving acts of the Israelite God that
he becomes a believer, even accepting circumcision. He is thus incorporated "in the house of Israel forever" (14.10). No doubt this is meant to
illustrate the highest possible form of pagan admiration for Judaism.
The romance of Joseph andAsenath is an account of gentile conversion
to Judaism set during Joseph's sojourn in Egypt, but it is meant to be the
model of proselytism in the Hellenistic world. Since Asenath is a woman,
the issue of circumcision does not arise. The ritual that is mentioned,
however, is completely puzzling. Joseph is described as eating the blessed
bread of life, drinking the cup of immortality, and anointing himself with
the blessed oil of incorruption. When Asenath converts after throwing her
idols away, she attains to these rites, which are apparently symbolic of
Jewish life in general rather than representative of a specific conversion
ritual. 45 The rabbinic document Shabbat 17b forbids gentile wine, bread,
and oil: "the bread and oil of the heathen on account of their wine, and
their wine on account of their daughters, and their daughters on account
of idolatry." The symbols can be used conversely to illustrate Asenath's
entrance into the community. The context of Joseph and Asenath is apposite to the rabbis' warning, implying that the rules of commensality
92.
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imately and without losing its Old Testament roots." 47 Kraabel's skepticism was based on his contention that we lack firm archaeological or
inscriptional evidence for God-fearers in any synagogue site, though he
himself describes the synagogue at Sardis as designed to be a showplace of
Jewish ritual for the gentile passersby.48 But the evidence is less one-sided
than Kraabel suggests, since the term does exist in a few inscriptions,
where its interpretation is moot, as it may refer to a Jew or a gentile.
The literary evidence contradicts Kraabel's methodological reserve.
Many pagan writers attest to the attractiveness of Jewish ways of life,
reporting that gentiles were interested in some Jewish ceremonies but did
not convert. Plutarch speaks of the freedman Caecilius "who was accused
of Jewish practices [henoch t 'ioudaizein]" (Life of Cicero 7.6). Seneca
may be referring to Judaism when he says that he became a vegetarian in
his youth {Letters 108.22). Dio Cassius says that in 41 c.E. Claudius
forbade the Jews in Rome from holding meetings because they had increased so greatly in numbers {Historia 60.6.6). He also says that many
who were drifting into Jewish ways (ta tn 'loudain etb) were condemned for atheism (67.14.1-3). Suetonius suggests that the persecution
of Domitian was against "those who followed the Jewish way [vitam] of
life without formally professing Judaism" (Domitian 12.2). The precise
behavior among potential converts to Judaism occasioning these attacks is
probably not consistent. But the fear and derision of the gentile observers
is obvious enough.
Two recently published inscriptions from Aphrodisias in Caria seem to
settle the question of the existence of God-fearers.49 Besides identifying
Jewish donors, with a mixture of Jewish, biblical, and Hellenistic names,
the texts identify a whole group of people with exclusively Greek names as
tbeosebeis, some with likely gentile occupations such as city councillors.
Within the list there is a sprinkling of people with biblical names who are
described as proselytes. God-fearer is a title with a special technical meaning, distinct from Jews and proselytes. The inscriptions indicate that some
gentiles were fellow travelers with Judaism, supporting the synagogue but
not converting outright. They can be thought of as similar to the wellattested, noninitiated, but interested throngs who visited the public ceremonies of a mystery cult; from this group came the more seriously interested fellow travelers with the cult, and eventually some declared their
allegiance through conversion. In the case of the Aphrodisias synagogue,
one can assume that the commitment of God-fearers varied from monetary support to participation in some of the synagogue's customs, including the establishment of a soup kitchen, if Reynolds and Tannenbaume
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ably asked to make their commitments slowly and with great care for fear
of gentile backlash. Others in the Jewish community surely saw a providential progression in gentile interest in Judaism, just as the pagan community did, though they evaluated its divine sanction differently.
C O N V E R S I O N A M O N G T H E PHARISEES
A N D RABBIS
We cannot be sure that the rabbinic reports about conversion
reflect Pharisaic practice of the first century. Rabbinic rules grew out of
first-century practice, but without outside corroboration, we cannot be
sure how or exactly when any particular custom developed. Some scholars
have maintained that the Pharisees converted only Jews to their special
sect and were unconcerned with gentiles. To claim this, they have ignored
an enormous body of material about gentile conversions in later rabbinic
writing, when conversion had grown yet more difficult. The rabbis clearly
know of both kinds of converts. Although Akiba was a famous rabbi who
came to Pharisaism only in his middle years, the rabbis also tell many
stories of gentiles seeking admission to Judaism. They developed special
vocabularies for both types of converts. So the hypothesis of a solely
Jewish mission among the Pharisees seems wildly off the mark.
With regard to commitment, both Pharisaism and early Jewish Christianity would have fallen into intermediary positions between Hellenistic
Judaism and Essenism, the two extremes of commitment, since both accepted converts, viewed themselves as a sect, but lived in the community
rather than in monastic orders. It is probable from the description in the
New Testament that Pharisees did not attain or need the same social
cohesion that early Christianity evidenced. Pharisees did not live communally, for instance, though they surely lived close to each other. Conversion into the Pharisaic order of the first century meant accepting a new
level of cohesion, although whether the community was limited by the
rules of the haburothtaking on the purity regulations at table, giving
heave offerings, and being meticulous in observing the tithing regulationsis a moot point. The haburoth may have been special groups within the Pharisees. These regulations, as Jacob Neusner has pointed out,
were used to create a self-contained community defined by its ability to
marry within its ranks, eat in its own houses and touch only its own
implements. At first, the Pharisaic order would have been sectarian in
nature: most of those who entered the order would have been socialized to
Judaism.51 The later rabbis, reflecting on their traditions, idealized the
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and to whom is given the famous answer of Hillel: "What you do not like
to have done to you, do not do to your fellow." The important part for the
rabbis is the instruction to go out and study. If each of these groups
represents an actual possibility, then some gentiles could be accepted into
Judaism by non-Pharisaic Jews without having to accept the whole law, a
category that Paul discusses as well.
The problem with the rabbinic evidence lies not only in what it means
but also in the date in which it became the standard practice within Judaism. 52 Like the Essenes, the rabbis favored the slow conversion of a highly
indoctrinated convert over the rapid conversion of an emotionally involved one. What became rabbinic doctrine may have only been a formalization of earlier general practice within the Jewish community or it
may have been the explicit beliefs of the first-century Pharisees. One effect
of Hillel's answer is to encourage the convert to enter the stages of training
to become socialized as a Jew. This is why gradual conversions are emphasized: Gentile conversions to Judaism were decisions to leave one kind of
cultural milieu and enter another, moving from one socialization to another. They therefore demanded long training. Whether or not an emotional crisis precipitated conversion, the rabbis emphasized the process of
education. The rabbis here must mean study in whatever rabbinic schools
of study then existed. The stories of Rabbi Akiba do not emphasize the
suddenness of his decision so much as the stringent training he undertook
so late in life. In later tradition, the cultic requirements of conversion were
three, as the statement attributed to R. Judah the Prince (fl. zoo CE.)
makes clear: "Rabbi says: Just as Israel did not enter the covenant except
through three thingsthrough circumcision, through immersion, and
through the acceptance of a sacrificeso it is the same with proselytes"
(Sifre Num. 108).
The story establishes the rabbinic model for the acceptance of proselytes: the Sinai theophany. To the three ritual obligations one must add
the fourth obligation to know and practice the Torah of Israel, as interpreted and taught by the rabbis. When the rabbis said Torah, they
meant the written and oral law, but other kinds of Jews practiced a lessexacting Judaism. For purposes of legal precedent, all Israel is assumed to
have been circumcised, been baptized, and made sacrifices before Sinai. By
the end of the second century, the ideal of the rabbis was to insure that
proselytes kept every single aspect of Torah (e.g., t.Dem. 1.5), but there is
no telling how close actual practice throughout Judaism, including nonPharisaic Judaism, came to this ideal, nor when the rabbinic ruling became
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normative for the entire world community of Jews. Yet this statement does
not contradict the practice of Hillel in first-century B.C.E. Judea.
There is evidence outside of rabbinic literature of Jews seeking converts. Matt. 23:15 reports that the Pharisees were zealous to make converts. The most famous of Josephus's accounts, the conversion of the royal
house of Adiabene (Antiquities 20.2.34 [34_48]), illustrates the importance of the Pharisaic opinion in matters of conversion. It also gives us a
sense of how the differing views of conversion worked in real cases. A
Jewish merchant named Ananias visited the royal house of Adiabene and
taught the king's wives to worship the Jewish God.53 His efforts to convert
began with the women and were continued on a person-to-person basis.
Through the harem, he won over the crown prince, Izates, but his mother,
Queen Helena, had already been won over by another Jew.
The issue of circumcision becomes problematic in this conversion account, since Izates is a male and needs circumcision to convert. In fact, he
wishes to be circumcised. But his mother disagrees, thinking that his subjects would reject him as king if he practiced Judaism openly. Interestingly,
Ananias takes the part of Queen Helena, not recommending circumcision
under the circumstances. Josephus has Ananias recommend that Izates
remain a God-fearer, since "he could worship the divine [to tbeion sebein]
even without circumcision, if he had fully decided to be devoted to the
ancestral customs of the Jews, for this was more important than circumcision." These words are Josephus's, not Ananias's, but they do articulate a
rational and defensible position within Judaism, one which is compatible
with the archaeological record about God-fearers. It shows us how the
problem of conversion was actually handled, outside of the prescriptive,
legal requirements discussed by the rabbis. Malherbe and other scholars'
suspicion is confirmed: many Jews simply preferred that a God-fearer
bypass formal conversion when a complex social situation was involved,
relying on the universalism that God loves all moral people. In this case,
Izates is ready to accept circumcision but his mother prevents him for
reasons of state. Whether or not Josephus agreed with the practice, his
narrative implies that becoming a God-fearer was the functional equivalent of becoming Jewish. More important, it saved the sensitive Hellenistic Jewish community from the ire of the convert's relatives or, in this case,
the irate subjects of the convert. Such a tolerant position could hardly have
arisen from one of the Jewish sects. It is another example of the acculturated, culturally plural universalism characteristic of the Diaspora. But
this is not the end of Josephus's storyEleazar, a pious Jew from Galilee,
IOO
PAUL T H E JEW
loi
IOZ
103
I04
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Palestinian rabbis did not normally face the same kinds of pressures and
threats ^ r e P r i s a l that Hellenistic Jews did. Rabbinic discussion about
policy was accompanied by the most rigid instruction, change of life-style,
circumcision for men, immersion and sacrifice for all, followed by a stria
and permanent regimen of purity and dietary prohibitions. The dangers of
undergoing circumcision as an adult, given the state of medical knowledge, is reason enough to believe that conversion to Judaism was itself a
high-dissonance-producing situation (j. Yeb. 16a). We also know that
converts rejected their previous friends and relations, an attitude that was
fostered by the decision for a new faith. Others were ostracized by their old
friends.
io
came, for they were an anomalous group, alienated from their gentile past
yet not fully Jews, or fully accepted as such by the rabbinic definition, and
under some suspicion. To take the final step into Judaism was a dangerous
operation surgically and often politically inexpedient. Such people were
attracted to the message of Paul during the first century. They must have
been yet more easily evangelized.
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Judea was not only an occupied country, it had been severely repressed
by its governors. The Maccabean revolt in 165 B.C.E. against the Syrian
king Antiochus IV had been but the beginning of a number of revolts,
either actively political or religious. The opposition was located in a
number of differing sects whose membership was gained by conversion.
The Roman occupation made the situation worse. The rule of the procurators, who tried to enrich themselves personally during their brief time
in office, made the situation worse still. But under these political extremes,
and in a country with a strong tradition of providing religious explanations for historical events, the stage was set for messianic and apocalyptic
cults.
The evidence available about conversion in Judea is confined almost
entirely to recountings of the conversion of Jews from ordinary Jewish
practice to a specific cult. The motivation of people joining these movements was manifold but difficult to define. We must confine ourselves to
motivations known to operate universally in movements of this type.
Deprivation, either absolute or relative, should be considered a prominent
one. Converts often feel deprived of something, either material or spiritual, that seems present in the lives of others.56 The deprivation can be
material and is often due to colonization and exploitation, but it can also
be deprivation from the sources of religious meaning in the society. The
deprivation can be as subtle as the achievement of a certain status or
prestige in life, which might not even be valued highly by the society as a
whole. Or it can be as great as feeling unable to gain access to the rewards
of religion.
Status ambiguity was another common problem in the Graeco-Roman
world, where trade provided an avenue for economic advancement but
status was strictly defined in legal terms. A range of people, from those
who were newly (barely) self-reliant in economic terms to those who were
affluent, found no legal avenue for advancement commensurate with their
economic and personal achievements. Some were tempted to join cults,
where their accomplishments were viewed with more respect. For these
social concerns to galvanize into religious movements involving the classic
phenomenon of conversion, rather than into purely political movements,
there must be a predisposition in the society to explain events in religious
ways. These factors came together in first-century Judea to produce different religious movements of which the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls sectarians
Io8
and the followers of John the Baptist and Jesus were prime examples. The
groups differed widely in most areas, and prominently in their political
positions. They also differed greatly in the ways they sought and gained
converts; for instance, the Essenes appeared to have been attractive to
young aristocrats, as both Philo and Josephus testify. They might have
attracted others as well, but only aristocrats left us their memoirs. More
generally, the underlying forces that stimulated the differing kinds of
conversion in each group could have been similar. The forces that made
one group more attractive than another to a specific religious quester are
best outlined after the commonalities are described.
Conversions in Diaspora Judaism
Jews in Diaspora should have been more tempted to convert to other
cults than those within sectarian Judea. The phenomenon of the Godfearers and Jewish involvement in trade make the Diaspora situation more
complex and subtle. The evidence of Christianity as well as the meager
Jewish sources show that a wider variety of gentiles were attracted to
Judaism and Christianity than simply the materially disadvantaged.57 The
issues of millenarianism do not disappear. Christianity appears to be a
major source of the spread of Jewish apocalypticism in the Roman world.
No doubt this is one reason that it was viewed as dangerous by Jews and
Romans alike. The high level of commitment in Judaism and Christianity
is, as we have seen, one important reason for their success in conversion.
According to reports in Paul, Acts, and Josephus, targets for conversion
also included a number of well-placed, prominent women, whose positions were marginal, exemplifying status ambiguity.
In this situation, no one theory of conversion can explain the attractiveness of Judaism and Christianity. A number of anthropological studies
of conversions in other cultures can be helpful in suggesting additional
motivations for gentiles to convert. Robin Horton has outlined a relevant
African cosmology of two tiers, in which events in the microcosm are
handled by the lower, local spirits, whereas events in the wider world are
handled by the high god.58 Horton contends that Africans tend to convert
to Islam or Christianity, if they enter the wider world of trade contacts
with the West, for both Western religions have more sophisticated rites
directed to the high god than traditional African religions. The mechanism
and applicability of this observation has been challenged, and some antithetical phenomena, such as the function of keeping African rites alive in
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England, have been noted. But the possible application of Horton's comments to Hellenistic Judaism cannot be dismissed. Other cults besides
Judaism dealt with the wider issues of life, and some of the God-fearers
must have been adherents to the synagogue in Nock's sense of limited
commitment, perhaps because some public contribution was helpful to
their office or career. But other God-fearers probably converted to the
religion of the Jews (without taking up full Jewish nationality). They may
have been attracted for any number of reasons, including a universal
understanding of the purpose of history, not to mention international
trade contacts with Jerusalem and other Jews. The attractions of international trade and the awareness of salvation were parallel in the sense that
they both involved perceptions of human significance beyond the local
level. Judaism was one religion to provide both. 59
Another phenomenon leading to conversion was the continuing demonization of the religious world of the empire. Peter Brown and others60
have noted that although Christians and Jews were often accused of magic, promise of protection against magic also played an important role in
conversion to Judaism and Christianity. Since both Judaism and Christianity subordinated earthly powers to God they could function as antiwitchcraft cults do in African religion. They can free the convert from
subjugation to these forces. The Golden Ass contains the most famous
example of antiwitchcraft as a motivation in conversion. It is not strictly
speaking historical data and does not involve either Judaism or Christianity, yet its point is more general than Lucius's attraction to the Isis
mysteries. As the goddess Isis frees Lucius from his animal state, brought
on by dissolute and carefree curiosity about magical powers, so the mystery cults free the convert from fate to a new destiny of salvation.61
Whether millenarianism, antiwitchcraft cultism, status ambiguity, or
something else was the motivation for joining Judaism and Christianity
would depend on individual case histories, which are few and far between
in the extant historical record of the ancient world. One or another mechanism can be more applicable on average to a particular situation in the
church, but they must all be mentioned as possibilities. None of these
motivations are particularly relevant for understanding the conversion of
Paul, though they are likely to be important to the converts that Paul made
after his conversion. Paul's discussions about conversion, however, help
explain the dynamics of Jewish acculturation in the Roman world. Paul's
preaching had a particularly important role in the later distinction between Judaism and Christianity for a potential convert.
HO
in
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the transfiguration was a transformation (kai metamorphthe emprosthen auton [Mark 9:2; Matt. 17:2]). Luke, who does not use this
vocabulary, probably had sensibilities similar to Philo in not wanting to
sully true spirituality with a pagan language of deification. The transformation is a common sign of divination in the Hellenistic world and may be
what Mark has in mind. Instead Luke says simply that the appearance of
Jesus' countenance was altered (Luke 9:2.9). The relationship of these
terms to the heavenly journey motif in Jewish mystical apocalypticism is
unmistakable. Further, in the hands of Paul they also reveal an explicit
conversion setting. Evidently, the evangelists were trying to use the language of transformation to express an aspect of Jesus' divinity and its
acceptance by his disciples. Paul can express the same sentiments, but he
uses this vocabulary to discuss the conversion of believers and their occasional visions of the risen Jesus. So the traditional view that the transfiguration is a kind of misplaced resurrection appearance is correct in an
ironic way. It is an anticipation of the way in which converts come to know
Christ.
The Revelation of John, the last book of the New Testament, is a
treasure trove of apocalyptic images of transformation. According to
Rev. 1:18 the son of man, clearly identified with Christ in this place,
affirms: "I died, and behold I am alive." At the end of his discourses to the
seven churches he says: "He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me
on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his
throne" (Rev. 3:2.1). In Revelation, to conquer is virtually synonymous
with undergoing martyrdom.68
In late antiquity then, there were at least two major ways to deal with
gentile interest in Judaism: (1) some Jews favored conversion for the
gentiles; (2) others recommended that gentiles give up their sinful ways
and recognize the one God, but they need not convertthis appears
roughly to correspond with what Luke and other sources call God-fearing
and was favored by those Jews who feared a gentile backlash against
Jewish proselytism of pagans. Some sectarian Jews, as represented by
Jubilees, felt that only those circumcised on the eighth day could be part of
God's plan for the future. Conversion became the dominant Christian
solution to the issue of gentile interest, because Paul's definition of conversion was more popular with gentiles than the traditional Jewish definition
of conversion. The Noahide commandments became the dominant Jewish
solution because of the opposition to conversion from the Roman world.
It would be unfair to say that Judaism stopped proselytizing. The
Romans often felt that persecuting Jews was not worth their while; per-
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haps the rule against proselytism was entirely rescinded for a time. As the
Christian church gained in power, however, it had quite a different view of
these laws and strengthened them. Jewish proselytism and Jewish Christianity, however, probably remained a force in the Roman world after the
canonization of the New Testament.
This permanently alters an easy understanding of the sociology of
Jewish life. First, Christianity must be placed within the realm of sectarian
Judaism where conversion was the norm rather than the exception. Second, Paul takes that characteristic of conversion religion, an apocalyptic
trait of the most sectarian aspects of Judaism, and successfully transfers it
to the Diaspora where conversion was much less common, because Godfearing and ethnic pluralism were the rule. Paul is suggesting that Jews as
well as gentiles need to undergo a significant transformation before they
can enter the new community. This would contrast with the position
attributed to James, who felt that the teaching of Jesus and his messianic
mission can be accommodated within the sphere of traditional Judaism. It
means for Paul, as it cannot for James, that to be a Jew who has accepted
Christ is not enough. For Paul, the Jew as well as the gentile must be
converted, and the new community that Jesus founded must be a community of converts.
Paul has retained the more sectarian and millenarian notion of conversion, though he has chosen to speak to the gentiles. Unlike Philo, who
envisioned a slow degree of progress to perfection for every philosophically minded person with Jews having a divinely revealed advantage in the
progress, Paul sees a stronger moment of decision, though he shares Philo's opinions partly by cautioning against the excesses of emotionalism.
Further, after outlining the radical decision of conversion, presumably in
baptism, Paul also talks about a period of training and growth. Paul
discusses the metamorphosis of believers from one degree of glory to
another through the action of the spirit (z Cor. 3:18), suggesting that the
transformation process is on-going in the life of the believer. Further, Paul
never forgets that the new Christian must live in an unredeemed world
(e.g., 1 Cor. 5:1 o). Thus, no simple contrast between quick conversion and
long training separates Paul from Philo. Quick conversion is not mentioned often in Judaism, though visionary experience of recent converts
are occasionally part of the tradition. Paul shares the first century Jewish
suspicion of emotionalism. He is reticent in z Corinthians 11iz to give
emotionalism much credence. The same cannot be said of Luke, who uses
Paul's experience to model Christian conversion.
In one respect the impetus toward quick conversion seems stronger in
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Pauline Christianity than in other sectarian forms of Judaism. Paul effectively gives gentile and God-fearing pagans the ability to join Judaism
without the drawn-out period of education in the special laws and without
the necessity of circumcision. This is an effective promise, but it carries the
danger of lower commitment. The concern about this danger is obvious in
Paul's pastoral writings. Paul also shares some of the attitudes of Greekspeaking Jewish Hellenism in that he intends to view God-fearing gentiles
as the complete equals of Jews.
Although Pauline Christianity theoretically lacks the degree of commitment that circumcised converts to Judaism and Jewish Christianity
exhibit, the Pauline community presumably developed different mechanisms of commitment, based on the conversion experience itself, apocalyptic ideas of the quick return of the messiah, and the moral rules of
community entailed by that coming. The cost of leaving Pharisaic Judaism
was also not a small one. The special laws of Judaism were a source of
solace and pride to all who observed them. The commitment that Paul
made in giving them up should not be undervalued. As he himself says, he
gave up everything of significance to follow the consequences of his vision.
So would all those who followed him out of Torah-centered Judaism.
C H A P T E R FOUR
THE CONSEQUENCES
OF C O N V E R S I O N :
PAUL'S EXEGESIS
Il8
I2.0
according to the Pharisees and the rabbis after them, one must be willing to
take on oneself all of Torah, ignoring not even one light ordinance.7 This
piece of rabbinic lore has entered Paul's argument (hence it can be dated
from the first century), but it is transformed by him from a Pharisaic
doctrine into a taunt against the Jewish Christians, less pious than the
Pharisees, who yet oppose Paul's understanding of a faith conversion. It
functions as a warning to his readers, enemies and friends alike, that if they
desire to adopt Jewish law they must be prepared to do it all, as he had
done before he became a Christian: "Cursed be he who does not confirm
the words of this law by doing them" (Deut. 27:26).
Paul speaks rhetorically. He has already rejected the Pharisaic approach to conversion and surely did not want his hearers to adopt it. He
counts on the impossibility of such a strict life for his gentile hearers, but
his insistence on a firm decision for the new spiritual, unfleshly way of life
is the core of his understanding of Christianity. The fact that, as an exPharisee, he could claim more piety than any of his opponents makes his
arguments stronger. His perspective on the meaning of Scripture has
changed, reflecting the change from one community to another. This
shows up in his entirely new assumptions about the meaning of Scripture,
which he does not argue so much as present. His job is to reveal the
implications of his revelation as he sees it. This is what makes him a
convert.
His exegesis takes another unexpected turn, which argues for a new
direction to the Christian mission. He shows that Deut. 27:26 conflicts
with Hab. 2:4: "He who through faith is righteous shall live." There
would be no contradiction between the two statements for a Pharisee;
both faith and the commandments are integral and noncontradictory parts
of the love, obedience to, and worship of God. For Paul, whose conversion
turned him from being a righteous persecutor of the church to a persecuted
believer, the two statements cannot both be true any longer. His new faith
based on spiritual absorption into the risen Christ, not his observance of
Torah, followed his conversion. He attempts to impress this on his gentile
Christian audience. However much he may have attempted to preach to
Jews in his early mission, by the time he wrote his letter to the Galatians he
had lived in a gentile Christian community for a long time. He now represents their position and also sees the unexpectedly good result of his gentile
mission. Searching for a precedent for gentiles who have strong faith yet
did not perform the ceremonial observances of Torah, Paul finds Abraham, whose faith was great enough to leave his own home and to risk
sacrificing his son without the ordinances of Torah to guide him. This is
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not merely an adventitious example, for it is quite likely that Abraham had
been used by the Pharisees as a role model for potential converts, as he was
thereafter by rabbinic Judaism. Because Abraham left his gentile home and
made the great journey to the one God, rabbinic and Philonic Judaism, as
well as Christianity, use him as an example of conversion.8
The truly extraordinary aspect of the passage is the new meaning that
faithfaith in Christhas for Paul. It goes beyond any doctrine of the
inherent value of God-fearing in Jewish tradition. Abraham's faithfulness
would not have been denied by any Jew. But faith means more to Paul than
remaining faithful and steadfast to the covenant. It is not something that
Judaism or Jewish Christianity exhibits, but it is inherent in gentile Christianity. The paradigm for this type of religion is Paul's own conversion
from the surety of his Pharisaic observances to the freedom and uncertainties of his gentile Christianity. By faith, Paul essentially means a radical
reorientation and commitment, as social science describes a radical new
commitment in contemporary conversions. This also means a radical
change in the community to which Paul gives allegiance. Those who are
faithful are those who believe in Christ without the works of the law, the
gentile Christian community.
Instead of trying to define Paul's new faith and the nature of his audience, most exegetes of Paul have pursued the implicit contrast between
law and faith, supposing that since Paul believes that Jesus was the messiah, the law must be wrong.9 Such a tack is mistaken in two respects:
(1) Paul does not here say that Torah is wrong, rather he asserts that its
meaning is different from what he thought at first and that properly
performing Torah is an all or nothing proposition; (2) he is not pursuing
an intellectual argument about the value of abstract concepts; rather, he is
exegeting a passage from the perspective of his experience of conversion,
hence his justification and anticipated salvation. He is trying to legitimate
a new concept of gentile community. Further, he is trying to show that
those who have faith can also count themselves as part of the covenant
relationship with Abraham.
Judaism before Paul could conceive of gentiles as righteous without
their following the explicit ordinances of Torah, believing that this righteousness is part of God's plan. But Paul must have known that the one
thing that did not follow from these traditions is that the gentiles were part
of the Mosaic covenant. So Paul trots out all his Pharisaic acumen to
underline his new invention. His exegesis also depends on his conversion
experience and his postconversion experience living with gentiles, though
he addresses that experience through an analysis of biblical texts. Hab. 2:4
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gentiles is concerned.12 Although "works of the law" is a direct translation of the Hebrew Ma'asei ba-torah, Paul is not referring to Torah but to
the observance of Jewish ceremonial practices. James D. G. Dunn says, "In
my view, however, 'works of the law' is precisely the phrase chosen by
Paul (as either already familiar to his readers or self-evident to them in its
significance), by which Paul denotes those obligations prescribed by the
law which show the individual concerned to belong to the law, which
mark out the practitioner as a member of the people of the law, the
covenant people, the Jewish nation."13 "Works of the law" means the
ceremonial Torah, those special ordinances that separate Jews from gentiles. Dunn shows that the term is reflected in Qumran writings where
ma 'asei torah, "deeds of the law," is understood as the day-to-day responsibilities of remaining within the community. Paul uses the phrase to mean
the typical ways Jews assert their identity (Rom. 3:192.0). This approach
is associated with boasting (Rom. 3:27-8; 4:2), paralleling Paul's earlier
attack on the Jews as a people of the law (Rom. 2:17zo, 23), with
circumcision serving as the primary sign of this identity (Rom. 2:25-9).
Dunn also shows that Paul makes the same point with his contrast between "within the law" and "outside the law," "of the law" and "of
faith" (Rom. 2:1214; 3:19-21; 4:14-16; 1 Cor. 9:20; Gal. 4:5). The
distinction is between two different communitiesthose who keep the
law as a mark of their identity and those who can be identified by faith.14
What is important here, and what few New Testament scholars seem
to see, is that Paul is not theologizing. He is talking about the proper role of
Jewish observances in the Christian community. Works of the law are the
material effects of the special laws of Judaism on the unity of Christian
community; they are almost synonymous with dietary laws, holiday observances, purity, and circumcision. Throughout Paul's career, he will
attempt to specify case by case in what ways the ceremonial law can be
avoided. Observance of the law fixes a particular social identity as Jewish,
apparently encouraging in Jewish Christians a sense of superiority to those
gentile Christians who rely on their conversion experience and their abstinence from idolatry, immorality, and blasphemy. The legitimate question
posed to the gentile Christian is, How much of the ceremonial law should I
perform? Now that they are halfway to Judaism by becoming God-fearers,
should they not go all the way? Paul answers: "No." Paul says nothing
about the value of law-abiding or moral behavior. If asked, he would
certainly be in favor of Torah as a standard for moral behavior. He is
advocating a new definition of community in which the performance of
the special laws of Judaism does not figure. This new definition is an
12.6
ble in the Jewish community. It became even more dangerous because Paul
insisted that he remained a Jew.
These anomalous traits, which ultimately put Paul in danger, are rooted in the nature of his conversion experience. Paul is a person who has
revalued his life on the basis of his conversion. The traditional dichotomies
in Paul's thought can be seen as originating in his conversion experience.
The dualismof flesh and spirit, life and death, darkness and light, life
apart from the law and under itderives from the perspective of a person
who is trying to look at his previous values within Pharisaic Judaism after
having adopted a new basis for salvation in gentile, God-fearing communities of faith. He is also using older, apocalyptic imagery to express
something new.16 John Gager writes:
Just as it would be inaccurate now to say that Christianity had not
entered Paul's emotional involvements before his conversion, so it
would be wrong to claim that the law ceased to play a role in them after
it. Thus my contention is that the fundamental system of values and
commitments is preserved intact in this sort of conversion. But it is
turned upside down, reversed and transvalued. The religious goal or
target remains the same in the sense that righteousness or justification
continues as the focus of Paul's religious concern both before and after
the conversion. But whereas the law had been the chosen path to the
goal, and the Christ the rejected one, beforehand, their order is reversed after the event. (700)
Gager summarizes the immediate effects succinctly:
[Paul's] repeated statements that salvation results in a new creation,
a new definition of humanity, a transformation in which our lower
physical nature is supplanted by a higher spiritual nature.
Because of this extraordinary movement from previous life to present one, the most fruitful way of looking at Paul's or any other
conversion is to look at their future consequences, not their past
causes.
His affirmation that the law, as manipulated by the power of sin,
plays an essential, if preparatory role in the divine plan of salvation;
and his undying memory that his own persecution of Christians had
been based on a zealous loyalty to the law.
And finally, his tendency to divide history into two stages, and to
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justified by faith apart from works of law. Or is God the God of Jews
only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since
God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of their
faith and the uncircumcised through their faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we should
uphold the law. (Rom. 3:21-31)
Although Paul says that the law should not be overthrown, he also says
that faith rather than law manifests the righteousness of God. By this he
means faith in spiritual transformation, which defines a new community
of believers. This statement is so radical for Judaism that it would have
been impossible for Paul to have guessed the consequences of his conversion before he had lived with them for years, both in the gentile community
and in polemics with Jewish Christians. When he was a Pharisee, Paul
would have been incapable of saying that faith rather than law manifests
the righteousness of God in any meaningful way. No other Jews in the first
century distinguish faith and law in the way Paul does. For a Jew, faith
fundamentally precedes anything as well, but there is no need to distinguish between it and law. Jews perform the commandments because
they are commanded by God, not because they guarantee justification.
This arrangement assumes a prior faith commitment and a prior act on
God's part in justifying that never needs to be discussed. Paul distinguishes
between these several concepts because he has experienced and learned his
Christian commitment, and he now represents a community of faith, the
gentile Christian community, in which Jewish ceremonial law is not a
significant issue. It is his experience as a Christian that encourages the
reformulation of biblical promises. He is not talking about Torah in general in these places. He only talks about the use of Torah to define the basic
community. He says, in effect, that faith, not Torah observance, defines
the Christian community.
Paul reflected on his personal experience in such a way as to make it a
new model, raising faith to the level of a basic stance in life, a synonym for
conversion. In doing so, he developed a new vocabulary of salvation in
Christianity, both for the Jews and for the gentiles. The first principle of
salvation is the same as the impulse to form a community: conversion.
This is not the whole story: In order to understand the different views of
Torah that Paul promulgates in Romans, one has to trace the progress of
his faith through what little of his personal history we can reconstruct
conversion, apostolic acceptance, and internal conflictoutlining both
his thinking on a variety of important issues in the new faith and facing a
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132,
same phrases. Paul wants to include all humanity in the term flesh, as he
does in so many other places; for instance, in Romans z, where Paul is also
speaking about law and where he addresses largely gentile as well as some
Jewish Christians, Paul uses the word anthrpos, meaning all of humanity.
Sarx (flesh) and anthrpos (humanity) are indeed synonyms in the Bible;
like the Hebrew Bible, Paul characteristically uses flesh to refer to all
humanity without faith. Those who are converted through summorphosis
have a spiritual body and are in Christ, as Enoch is in the son of man.
Again, we see that Paul has adopted a language of opposition to describe
the distinction between the converted and the unconverted. This language
states clearly that all people must be converted. In Romans, Paul means to
condemn both gentiles and Jews equally. There is no reason to suppose
that Paul exempts Jews at this moment. The same appears to be true in
Galatians. He means to include both Jews and gentiles in those who are
excused from observing Torah. In Gal. 2:16, Paul uses the words ean o,
"unless . . . [he is justified] through faith in Christ" to underline his
meaning.27
Paul was trying to make a specific point about the generality of faith.
He uses himself and other Jewish Christian missionizers as examples of
people who have come to the right conclusion. Paul uses the words
"ou . . . pasa sarx," literally " n o t . . . all flesh," in its sense of no one, no
person or human being, to characterize those who are saved by "works of
law," ceremonial observance. One cannot make this term mean "not
all . . . flesh," hence excluding gentiles from those who are made righteous by law, as Gaston and Gager do. Paul means that ceremonial Torah is
of no significance for salvation for anyone.
Stendahl, Gager, and Gaston are right in cautioning against an easy or
confident theological interpretation of Paul that does not take into account his personal and historical situation. They are also right to stress the
importance of Paul's gentile mission as the context out of which Paul
writes. In Galatians, Paul is speaking principally to gentiles and from the
perspective of the spokesperson for the gentile community. Stendahl,
Gager, and Gaston are right as well to stress that Paul does not want to
exclude Jews so much as to include gentiles in the promise. He was defending a gentile minority against a majority opinion in Christianity that they
all must become Jews before they could be accepted as Christians. The
mature Paul takes certain actions to prevent Jewish alienation. But what
Stendahl, Gager, and Gaston apparently miss is the crucial importance
that transformation plays in Paul's understanding of Christianity. All
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statement that the old unity of Jewish ceremonial law is outmoded: "For I
through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me;
and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if
justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose" (Gal.
z:i9~2i).
This image is closely associated with baptism. The idea of defining the
conversion experience in terms of a ritual requirement is commonplace in
Judaism. When Paul speaks of his death and rebirth through Christ, he is
also expressing the meaning of his conversion experience. He needs a new
vocabulary to speak of conversion, because the vocabulary of repentance
is inapplicable to his experience, though probably not to the experience of
the gentile community. He expresses several themes that attack the issue.
He uses becoming just, justification, in a unique way. By speaking of his
past commitments as death and his present commitments as life, Paul uses
the kind of language that modern research associates with conversion
experiences. In Paul's case the language of death and rebirth comes explicitly from his experience of transformation, though Paul gives no detail.
He says that because he practiced the law, he experienced death through
the law and that he has been crucified with Christ so that Christ lives
through him. He lives through Christ and this experience is his faith. The
law, through which he discovered Christ, is now dead for him. It died with
his old self. Were it not so, Christ would have died to no purpose. The
converse language implies that his experience of transformation is also to
be understood as a death and rebirth. Consequently, his new commitments are spiritual and eternal, and his old ones seem fleshly and ephemeral. The difficulty is to see exactly what Paul means by the death of the law.
Does this mean that Torah is abrogated? Does it mean that its importance
has changed? I think the latter, though it still remains to show in what
ways its importance has changed. In this case Paul offers concrete examples rather than principles.
There is something deeply mysterious about Paul's conversion experience, something that will never be available to scientific analysis. Paul does
give us other hints as to what this experience is. In Romans 6, Paul links the
experience of death and rebirth to baptism:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may
abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus
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were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by
baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall
certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that
our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be
destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has
died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that
we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from
the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives
to God. (Rom. 6:1-10)
Paul links the experience of death in Jesus with baptism. Through that rite,
each person of faith experiences death, and with death comes freedom
from sin. Since Christ was crucified and then resurrected, the person of
faith can expect also to be resurrected.
Paul speaks in Galatians about his personal experience of death and
rebirth. In the Romans passage above he speaks of the same experience as
part of baptism. It is not possible to tell how the three eventstransformation, resurrection, and baptisminterrelate from this passage, though
they all appear to relate to the Christian community at large. The community that Paul joined saw the experience of baptism as enacting the drama
of birth and rebirth and the cleansing from sin. Thus Paul makes his
experience consonant with that of his community's. Ever after he virtually
defines what that experience is.
Paul uses a personal language, but some of his language of death and
rebirth comes from Judaism. There was a strong emphasis on baptism in the
communities that sought direct experience of the divine. This is because
many different varieties of Jews believed that God demanded ritual purity
for those who entered his presence, as can be seen from the ablutions of the
Qumran sectarians. It is also true that proselyte baptism in Pharisaic Judaism signified the end of the process of purification from the sinful gentile
world and its impurities; thus it eventually became a definitive mark of
entrance into the Jewish community. When baptism was used for proselyte
conversion, it also signified the rebirth of the convert, commencing a new
identity in Israel. We cannot be sure when this language evolved in Judaism.
Such language might have been part of Paul's gentile community of converts, but it would not have been personally relevant to Paul, who was
Jewish and continued to think of himself in that way. Baptism would have
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been for Paul more like that of the Qumran community, since it signified his
change in purity and status but not his conversion to a new people. Paul
sought an experience that would unify all Christians.30
Many scholars think that Paul relied on a mystery vocabulary that he
learned in his Hellenistic journeys or, less likely, in his original home in
Tarsus. But if so, Paul did not make nearly as much of the analogy as
would later church fathers, who likened Christianity to a mystery cult.
There is no need to posit any particular relationship between Paul and any
known or unknown mystery cult. The vocabulary was probably generally
available throughout the Hellenistic world to express mystic empathy with
the divine. Further, and most important, the language probably already
existed in the Hellenistic church that Paul joined and that would have
baptized him. To say that the language comes from Hellenistic spirituality
is not to say that it was not also part of Jewish tradition as well. The
cultures had had broad contacts. Language of death and resurrection, for
instance, had been absorbed into Jewish apocalypticism. We have seen
that Paul's language also has obvious parallels in Ovid's Metamorphoses,
in the second- and third-century Hermetic literature (which has obvious
Jewish influences), the so-called Mithras Liturgy, and the later mystery
cults, where the initiate goes through a symbolic death and rebirth. In the
Mithras Liturgy and Hermetic literature the adept explicitly takes in a part
of the divine presence or is regenerated for future immortality. The experience of theophany functioned as a guarantee of immortality (promised
through good deeds) in Jewish mysticism as well.31 Though the context is
not wholly parallel, the death of the mystical adept in ecstatic trance is
mentioned as one of the many dangers of the journey.32
Beverly Gaventa's discussion of conversion concentrates on the imagery of darkness and light that adheres to Paul's conversion accounts.33 The
same, I maintain, is true of Paul's language of death and rebirth and his
language of flesh and spirit. Paul experienced, mediated or unmediated by
the language of his community, his death and resurrection with a new
understanding of the value of law. Paul's decision cannot be seen as an
affiliation with some messianic form of Pharisaism. It is a complete personal transformation to a new, immortal, and angelic status anticipated by
continuing early existence. Paul's description of his conversion is often
framed in terms of his symbolic death and regeneration in Christ (Gal.
5:2,4 ; 6:14). On the basis of this experience, he hopes for resurrection after
the death of his body. For Paul, the language of death and rebirth does not
imply generalized Hellenistic mystic empathy. It is specific to his own
experience. This language had developed into a specific technical vocabu-
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rebirth and leaving no mark on the flesh. Paul argues in his letter to the
Galatians for dropping circumcision because God-fearing is sufficient.
This change in the value of the ritual that Paul found in Hellenistic Christianity would spark one of the most divisive controversies of the early
church.
Wayne Meeks points out that the effect of this practice was to define a
new social unity: all Christians, so long as they are in the group, are
brothers and sisters.36 For Paul, they then become intimate enough to
marry each other and to eat in each other's company. For gentiles and Jews
to be able to eat together freely and marry was hardly a commonplace in
Judaism in that time. The two biological drives of hunger and sex are
treated through parallel rules of social acceptability in Judaism.37 For
Jews and gentiles to attain the same level of ritual purity so as to engage
freely in these intimate social activities, there must have been a radical
cultic boundary-crossing ritual. For Paul that ritual was baptism. By
means of baptism the believers take off their old physical body and invalidate old identities. On reclothing they put on Christ (see Col. 3:910).38
The religious meaning of baptism, as expressed here, has a higher priority
than Paul's occasional criticism of the baptismal beliefs and customs of
others (1 Corinthians 1).
DEATH A N D REBIRTH W I T H O U T T H E LAW
Paul's vision is not only of the risen Lord but also of the crucified messiah, as his exegesis in Galatians shows. Inherent in that vision is
the implication that the special laws of Judaism need to be revalued. In
Galatians, Paul says that he died to the law that he might live in Christ, the
messiah. This sentiment is developed in several places in Paul's work,
notably in Rom. 10:4, where Paul proclaims that "Christ is the end of the
Law." In Rom. 7:1, Paul goes further, using an obscure aspect of rabbinic
law in a completely new context: "the law is binding on a person only
during his life." In several places in rabbinic literature the legal maxim
occurs that a dead person is free from the duties of the law (e.g., b. Shabbat
30a, 151b; b. Niddah 61b; b. Pesahim 51b; j. Kilaim9.3). Limitations on
the legal responsibilities of the blind and otherwise disadvantaged people
are likewise derived in rabbinic writings from the principle that the dead
are free from the law. Freeing a wife from the covenant of marriage, for
instance, must be defined by the legally acknowledged death of her husband. In a metaphorical way, Paul uses a doctrine that has significant
consequences for Jewish marital law. Most of the duties from which the
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handicapped are free, however, turn out to be ritual and ceremonial laws.
They are obviously not free from moral laws.
In Paul's eyes the limitations of death have more far-reaching conclusions. Paul uses that legal instrument to discuss the end of Torah as well
(Romans 7). Paul is not primarily interested in the legal ramifications of
the principle. He uses the legal principle as a metaphor for his conversion,
carrying the message that the convert need not worry about the law: the
person who has died in Christ is dead to this aeon and has become free
from the law (Rom. 7:6), for the messianic future era of the world has
already begun. Paul states only that Torah is no longer the medium of
justification and salvation. By this Paul does not necessarily negate the
importance of Torah. Paul still understands Torah as the sacred story of
Israel's salvation. What he negates is the value of observing Torah for the
purposes of defining who is part of the community of the saved. Spiritual
people are part of a spiritual process and should not take pride in the flesh.
God provides justification first and the person should respond with faith.
That faith is synonymous with conversion for Paul. So Paul is again saying
that righteousness comes not from the law directly, but from God, who
has provided a way to become a spiritual person. Any other Jew might say
that God's action of justification is first, though there would be no reason
to analyze action so carefully. But Paul wants to change the community's
basic ritual requirements, because he has lived in a gentile community in
which legal requirements are not primary, though faith in God is.
In post-Pauline rabbinic terms, Paul reveres Torah as aggadah, story,
and prophecy, but he ceases to practice it as halakba.39 Functionally, this
works as a description of Paul's legal opinion, but it does not reflect Paul's
own vocabulary for dealing with the issue. Paul promotes the experience
of conversion, out of which faith arises, as the most basic response making
for community. Paul's own experience of death, followed by his experience of life in Christ while living in gentile communities, lies behind his
pronouncements. He assumes that with the conversion the convert will
continue moral behavior or learn new moral behavior.
Paul has adopted God-fearing as the model of righteous behavior.40
The metaphor is significant because, if one ignores Paul's conversion, this
is the effect of his legal position. Pointing out the similarity between Paul's
view of gentiles and the Jewish concept of God-fearers does not tell us
everything we want to know about the situation, since God-fearing could
encompass anything from minimal financial support to proselyte status.
Further, when Paul missionizes, he evinces no sensitivity to the problem of
changing affiliations. He is adamant that everyone declare to be in Christ.
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And Paul does not merely adopt the prevailing rabbinic view of the responsibilities of righteous gentiles. He works it out within the Christian community based on its own precedents. What Paul's complex notion of
metamorphosis in Christ meant about the practice of ceremonial Judaism
had to be worked out case by case over the course of his ministry.
PHILIPPIANS 3
Philippians 3 can be considered a summary of the entire process of spiritual incorporation in Christ. This can be seen by departing
from the conventional discussion of Paul's theology and examining the
social situation in which he is writing. Paul represents and defends those
gentile Christians who do not observe Jewish laws. He strongly opposes
the Jews and Jewish Christians, who are in the majority or have taken an
initiative against him. Otherwise he would not use such polemical language.
He begins by warning his readers to beware of evil workers, whom he
also calls dogs, who attempt to circumcise. Paul is punning in Greek,
calling the circumcisers mutilated or cut off {katatomn [3:2]), while calling his followers the spiritual circumision, literally "cut-around worshiping in the spirit" {peritom hoipneumati theou latreuontes [3:3]). Paul's
opponents are again a party of those Jews or Christians who wish to
perform circumcisions to signify that the new Christian convert has also
entered Judaism. The rite would only be relevant to the gentile community, since Jews were already circumcised. This in itself violates his sense that
all must be transformed. Thus, his opponents are similar to the group in
Galatia and also to the group in 2 Corinthians.41 All opponents boast of
the flesh (Phil. 3:352 Cor. 11:18), since they hold their fleshly lives, their
superior ritual status in Judaism over the gentile converts. The language of
flesh and spirit is not allegorical. It is a reference to the two kinds of
Christian communityone priding itself in the flesh, circumcision; the
other defining itself by means of spiritual transformation, baptism, those
who are converted in faith. He is again talking about Jewish Christians
and gentile Christians.
Paul's rhetoric is ferocious; he immediately begins his well-documented argument that he has more to boast about than they do. He tells us
exactly how law observant he wascircumcised on the eighth day, a
Benjaminite and a Pharisee. Then he tells us of his zeal, ending with his
claim of having overturned everything of worth to him for the knowledge
of Christ, concluding that righteousness comes from Christ and not from
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the law. We can conclude from this that Paul's group is rather estranged
from Jews and Jewish Christians. Paul confesses that he is not yet perfected
(3:1z), seemingly contrasting the finished and unchanging piety of his
opponents with his continuous growth in the faith. This perfection appears
to be associated with the future resurrection because he says that when
Christ returns from heaven, he will transform the lowly bodies of believers
into glorious bodies ("metaschmatisei . . . symmorphon" [3:2.1]).
Paul's appeal to the gentile church depends on his knowledge that he is
not only a Jew, but that he was the most observant Jew imaginable, a
Pharisee. The circumcisers are not as pious as he was. But Paul now sees
circumcision as fleshly religion, recommending instead spiritual transformation. Ultimate transformation occurs in the apocalyptic future when
the Christ returns. In 3:15, however, Paul implies that he has already
achieved a certain high level of perfection, because he uses the past tense.
He and some of his readers have already achieved a great deal of the goal of
perfection (teleioi). In this context, perfection appears to be a result of his
transformation, the realization that knowledge of God comes not from
Jewish law, but from being conformed to Christ, which is apparently a
progressive process.
Although his initial insight may have come at conversion, Paul implies
that the legal consequences of his conversion were worked out over time,
as he began to understand what being in Christ meant for gentiles. He
might be admitting here that there was a time after his conversion in which
he continued to practice Torah. He certainly says that many have not yet
learned the lesson. Thus, Torah as practice must be left behind, but the
process of education is continuous, and some have not yet learned the true
knowledge. Others have been tempted to raise their level of ceremonial
observance. Those who glory in Torah are glorying in the shame of their
belly and members (3:19), while those maturing are being remade into an
eternal body through this both punctual and durative process of transformation. This is not an allegory. It is a literal description of the two Christian communities in conflict, with Paul representing the gentile Christian
one. The Jewish Christians do glory in their physical ceremonial status; the
spiritual community reflects the Glory of God.
In Gal. 3:19 Paul is using the Jewish polemic against apostasy and
gentile immorality, which we have seen illustrated by Philo and others,
against the very people who could use it against him. Ironically, he says
that it is the observers of such ceremonial laws as circumcision who are
glorying in their flesh, not the pagans. This is Paul's clearest linking of his
own conversion experience and transformation with the necessity of giv-
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Paul distinguishes among the Jews, those under the law, those outside
the law, and the weak. He offers the law of Christ as an alternative to the
law. Presumably, this law of Christ approximates the moral law with the
ceremonial laws of Judaism made optional. His stated reasons for abandoning the law are to win those outside of it or, as he also says, to "win the
more" (1 Cor. 9:19). Anyone who had Paul's experience of living in the
gentile Christian community, learning there the content of the Christian
message and coloring the meaning of the vision through the issues relevant
to it, might come to the conclusion that the success of Torahless gospel was
proof of its being protected by the spirit. Besides reflecting on his own
personal conversion experience, then, Paul is reflecting on his postconversion experience in the gentile community and his career in converting
gentiles. These experiences form the basis of his theology.
Paul's experience in gentile Christian communities also explains where
and how he defines his theological battlegrounds. They are, as often as
not, personal and legal battles with Jewish Christians about how to observe the Jewish law. Paul's radical thinking about Torah would naturally
have been suspicious to Jews and even to Jewish Christians. The most
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teach doing evil for good purposes are subverters of Judaism. He does not
agree that he is guilty of the charge. But this is the reaction of some Jewish
Christians to his doctrine that Torah is no longer as valid as it was before
Jesus' arrival.
The irony is, of course, that by continuing to preach his position, by
justifying it in Galatians, he is in danger of a greater charge than transgression or apostasy, that of leading others astray. Paul's direct report is that
without faith his behavior would merely be transgression. Yet, whether
Paul's theology is apostasy because it replaces fleshly, ceremonial Torah
by faith in spiritual transformation is a moot point. For the rabbis it was
apostasy to maintain that Torah was not from heaven. Although Paul does
not maintain this, his behavior was subject to scrutiny and many different
interpretations. Fortunately for Paul, Judaism of the first century did not
seem preoccupied with theological rectitude.44 Such issues, should they
arise, were more likely to have been solved by a local community's attention to the suspect's behavior, as Luke's recounting of Paul's troubles in
Acts makes clear. Paul too describes the Jewish Christian and later the
Jewish community's inquiry into his motives as if his actions and not his
theology first caught hostile attention. Although Paul's theological or, as I
prefer to call it, ideological position is clear from his conversion and never
wavers, his behavior changes on several occasions.45 These changes arise
in the context of Paul's discussion of the ritual requirements of gentiles.
Paul's discussions of Torah begin as explanations and exegeses of his
conversion, and his understanding of how to carry on his mission emerged
from that conversion and his subsequent experience within the church.
But both emerge concurrently; Paul's explanations were born out of his
mission. They are statements that define Paul's conversion within his
community, not primarily theological meditations, though one can make
theological sense of them once the social context is clear. Whether they are
transgression, apostasy, or leading astraythree offenses of ascending
severity in Jewish lawdepend on the evaluation of Paul's observers.
More than his theology, his critics will seek to judge his actions.
Paul's conversion entailed a single factor, faith, for the definition of a
new community, not two different and equal factors, which risked creating different communities separating Jews and gentiles within Christianity. Paul's drive for uniformity is typical. Conversion within an apocalyptic or sectarian environment normally produces a highly cohesive
community, both according to modern observation and inferences from
first-century data. Although Paul recognizes that Jews continue to exist,
and he is aware of Torah-abiding Jewish Christians, he advocates a new
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149
communities, Paul's formula of conversion allowed Christianity to stimulate a high level of sectarian commitment even after the apocalyptic beginnings of Christianity were left behind. Paul and then Christianity's use of
conversionwith its attendant characteristics of high faith commitment
and low practice of Jewish ritualas an effective role model for a convert's behavior was a significant reason for the success of Christianity in
attracting gentile converts. Paul's experience, stressing conversion within
the structure of the community itself, helped bridge the gap between the
apocalyptic Jewish sect and the normative Hellenistic mystery religion of
piety and morality that Christianity was eventually to become. The language Paul used prepared the church for that transference, though it took
place long after Paul. Paul himself was more interested in the consequences
of his perception that Torah was no longer valid in the way he had supposed. He tried to understand how moral behavior was to continue in the
new community of faith.
CHAPTER FIVE
PAUL'S NEW
CONVERSION
COMMUNITY AMONG
T H E GENTILES
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152.
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6 AV). He does not mean that
punctilious observance of law destroys, though God's intent for the law
makes it live, for such thoughts were not new in Judaism. Spirit in 2
Corinthians 3 does not refer to the intention of the law. It refers to the
presence of the resurrected Christ in opposition to the demonic forces of this
world. The definition of his community as those who have faith and who feel
the work of the Holy Spirit is a mark of an apocalyptic community, defining
itself as in Qumran as the children of light and the followers of the angel of
truth. In this passage particularly, Paul stresses that the action of salvation in
the world is from Christ in whose being the saved can share.3 Paul means
that the ceremonial laws of Judaism, understood strictly rather than allegorically, cannot bring one to transformation, as does the Holy Spirit. Paul
expresses the subject of correct faith in eschatological, future terms as the
spiritual glow, radiance or splendor, the special resemblance of Adam to
God before the fall, which is imparted only to those who, like Moses, have
been called into the presence of God. Paul implies that converted Christians
have also received this glow from the presence of God. Paul has been called
into Christ's enthronedpresence by his conversion, as are all in the Christian
community of faith. Only Christian community can maintain the radiance
undiminished: "Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their
[i.e., the Jews' or the Jewish Christians'] minds; but when a man turns to the
Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the spirit of
the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the
glory of the Lord are being changed into His likeness from one degree of
glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor.
3:1518). This passage, which reflects Paul's mysticism of the Kavod, has a
polemical purpose as well. The context for these remarks can help to explain
its importance. It is quite possible that Paul is making explicit use of his
opponents' argumentsperhaps a midrash on Exodus that has been used
by a Jewish Christian community. Indeed, an enormous and rather subtle
scholarly enterprise has been directed at separating Pauline comments from
the possible Jewish Christian opponents' argument underlying it.4
I should like to suggest a supplementary hypothesis: Paul's metaphor
of veiling is not only metaphorical, he is also speaking of a communal
practice. When Paul says that "whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over
their minds, but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed," he is
referring to the ritual of veiling one's head in Judaism. This custom is not
the one most often identified with Jews in commentaries on 2 Corinthians
3. Today some Jewish men do wear head coverings for prayer. The
custom's origin is unknown; the Bible does not explicitly command either
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154
custom of wrapping oneself in the tallit, including veiling one's head with
it, could itself have been the forerunner of head coverings (kippot)
(b. Menachot 39b; b. Baba Batra 98a; especially b. Rosh Hashanah 17b),
as piety provided that a tallit could be used to wrap or veil the head.
Veiling the head with the prayer shawl is a sign of the holiness of Torah
reading, and it is an impressive aspect of orthodox services even today.
Some strictly observant Jews always put the prayer shawl over their heads.
It might reflect the ritual preparation necessary for divine encounters
among Jewish Christian mystics.7 The context of Paul's polemic can imply
that the leaders of the opponents veiled themselves or that the entire
opponent community did. Paul's community worshiped and read Torah
without putting on a tallit, going bareheaded, because they did not characteristically wear such garments. Although there may be a Jewish Christian
polemic behind Paul's argument, his communal defense begins with an
issue of custom, against the practice of veiling one's head while reading
Torah, not against a presumed Jewish Gnosticism. Paul assumes that the
practice is Mosaic, since the ritual is prooftexted in Deuteronomy 22:1z,
He directly contrasts the practice of Moses with a new practice of the
Lord, Christ. But this is not merely a literary figure, it is a symbol of two
different ways of approaching Christianity. Jewish Christians brought
Jewish custom with them into Christianity; gentile Christians obviously
did not, but many Jewish Christians probably insisted that they learn the
proper Jewish procedures. The issue of correct behavior during worship
divided the community. Paul believes that the Jewish custom is immaterial. His comments on ritual practice point out that Christianity is an allor-nothing decision. Of course, he is also making a striking point about
Christ's participation in divinity, using the metaphor of the divine Kavod.
For Paul, the Jewish custom of veiling one's face with the tallit is a symbol
of faded glory, a disgraceful and underhanded tampering with God's word
(2 Cor. 4:2). This is possibly an aside to the practice of interpreting the oral
law. Those Christians who have put aside the oral law are with unveiled
face beholding the Lord, therefore they commend themselves to every
conscience in the sight of God (4:2).
The importance of ritual actions and their unwritten messages cannot
be easily denied. Innovations in ritual would have been especially provocative to traditional Jewish sensibilities, as they were when tried again by
modern Reform Jewish congregations. Although no doctrinal statement
inheres in Paul's change of practice, its symbolic message about the value
of Torah was radical, causing both Jewish Christian distaste and gentile
Christian inquiry as to the reason for the Jewish criticism. Paul defends his
Paul's Nett/
Conversion
Community
Among Gentile
154
custom of wrapping oneself in the tallit, including veiling one's head with
it, could itself have been the forerunner of head coverings [kippot)
(b. Menachot 39b; b. Baba Batra 98a; especially b. Rosh Hashanah 17b),
as piety provided that a tallit could be used to wrap or veil the head.
Veiling the head with the prayer shawl is a sign of the holiness of Torah
reading, and it is an impressive aspect of orthodox services even today.
Some strictly observant Jews always put the prayer shawl over their heads.
It might reflect the ritual preparation necessary for divine encounters
among Jewish Christian mystics.7 The context of Paul's polemic can imply
that the leaders of the opponents veiled themselves or that the entire
opponent community did. Paul's community worshiped and read Torah
without putting on a tallit, going bareheaded, because they did not characteristically wear such garments. Although there may be a Jewish Christian
polemic behind Paul's argument, his communal defense begins with an
issue of custom, against the practice of veiling one's head while reading
Torah, not against a presumed Jewish Gnosticism. Paul assumes that the
practice is Mosaic, since the ritual is prooftexted in Deuteronomy 22:12.
He directly contrasts the practice of Moses with a new practice of the
Lord, Christ. But this is not merely a literary figure, it is a symbol of two
different ways of approaching Christianity. Jewish Christians brought
Jewish custom with them into Christianity; gentile Christians obviously
did not, but many Jewish Christians probably insisted that they learn the
proper Jewish procedures. The issue of correct behavior during worship
divided the community. Paul believes that the Jewish custom is immaterial. His comments on ritual practice point out that Christianity is an allor-nothing decision. Of course, he is also making a striking point about
Christ's participation in divinity, using the metaphor of the divine Kavod.
For Paul, the Jewish custom of veiling one's face with the tallit is a symbol
of faded glory, a disgraceful and underhanded tampering with God's word
(2 Cor. 4:2). This is possibly an aside to the practice of interpreting the oral
law. Those Christians who have put aside the oral law are with unveiled
face beholding the Lord, therefore they commend themselves to every
conscience in the sight of God (4:2).
The importance of ritual actions and their unwritten messages cannot
be easily denied. Innovations in ritual would have been especially provocative to traditional Jewish sensibilities, as they were when tried again by
modern Reform Jewish congregations. Although no doctrinal statement
inheres in Paul's change of practice, its symbolic message about the value
of Torah was radical, causing both Jewish Christian distaste and gentile
Christian inquiry as to the reason for the Jewish criticism. Paul defends his
156
Those who make veiling a significant issue have been blinded by the god of
this world. They cease to focus their eyes on heavenly matters. They may
not see Kavod, Christ, who is the likeness of God.
Second Cor, 4:3 shows that Jewish Christians who visited or joined the
community in Corinth had rejected some of Paul's teachings, probably
using the passage in Exodus as a prooftext. Paul turns his image around by
saying that he and his followers see Christ clearly, without a veil, and
although the true gospel may in fact be veiled, it is veiled only to those who
misunderstand it. Paul's language shows a man well-versed in Jewish Bible
interpretation and also Hellenistic diatribe. His statements also help us
understand the nature of the Pauline gentile Christian community and
some of the ways Paul approached his mission.
Paul reacts to opposition with a typical apocalyptic intuition about the
world, mainly derived from living a life of strong conviction that is strongly disputed by one's neighbors.8 In accordance with apocalyptic dualism,
the "god of this world" in 2 Corinthians is obviously Satan or one of his
principal envoys. Those who do not see the truth are under the sway of
Satan. The opposition can seem like angels of light but they are actually
ambassadors of Satan (2 Cor. 11:1315).9
Whatever underlies this passage, Paul adds his explicit understanding
of Christ as the image of God, the likeness of God that Moses saw (2 Cor.
3:18). Scripture is no longer the bright looking-glass for the image of God,
nor is it totally vacant; instead, it is, like Moses' glowing face, a fading
reflection of the experience of Christ, who has taken on the role of the
transmitter of divine light. Paul believes that the Glory of God is something that one actually sees: "seeing the Glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God" {2 Cor. 4:4). He himself had visions confirming the identification of Christ with the Glory of God. This illumination gives him sure
knowledge of the "Glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). The
center of Paul's gospel is the identification of Christ as the Glory of God.
But can Paul be saying that all converts must have the same vision that
he did? I think not, otherwise he could not claim any special authority for
his own visions, as he does in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul expects the faithful to
accept his identification as revelation, because in 1 Cor. 15:49 he states
that Christians will not fully bear the image of the man from heaven until
the resurrection.10
The possible contradiction between Paul's present and future languages
of transformation has been tentatively resolved by John Koenig in references to 1 Corinthians 4 and 5. 11 Paul parallels the contrast between the
believer's present and future transformation to the contrast between the
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159
world, which is always parallel to the distinction between the saved and
the lost. Thus, expulsion from the apocalyptic group can be the most
serious penalty of the community. In the Qumran community, ostracized
members starved to death because they would not eat the polluted food of
the outside world. For this reason, the group often rescinded its interdiction at the last moment and accepted the sinning member back into the
group (Josephus, Jewish War 2.14Z-44). Such clear differentiation between earthly communities often entails strict dualism within the heavenly
community. Qumranic dualism was not driven by a philosophical impetus; the cosmic battle between the forces for good and evil explained the
heavy opposition that the group faced on earth. Demonization of all
outside of the group also characterized Christianity on occasion.
Paul's apocalyptic view of community is unique in two ways: first,
because he understood that the final days had begun, and second, because
he abrogated the special laws of Judaism in the service of converting
gentiles. Paul's attention to missionizing the gentiles is an extraordinary
aspect of his thinking when compared to other apocalyptic sentiments.
Denying the relevance of many of the ancient ceremonial boundaries between Judaism and the world, his definition of the church as the community of those who have been justified and saved by their faith is based on
apocalyptic sentiment. All else falls under the sway of sin, as the Qumranites believed that there was no possibility of virtue outside their community. Whether they have the law or not, all those within the community are
saved and all those without are damned.
Paul's word for the special knowledge that he has received in his
conversion is apokalypsis or revelation (Gal. 1:2.). Yet he also uses the
term apocalypse for the final future event in 1 Cor. 1:7, and in Rom. 8:19
he speaks of the coming revelation of the sons of God, awaited by creation
with eager longing. In both cases he views the appearance of Christ, both
incamationally and personally to him through the Holy Spirit, as a precursor to the final consummation. Paul's expectation of the end is a consequence of his having seen Christ revealed as the Glory of God in his
conversion experience, as Paul clarifies in Gal. 1:1 z: "For I did not receive
it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation [apokalypsis] of Jesus Christ." As in Daniel 7:9-13 and the Enochian literature, the appearance of the human figure of God was part of a larger
scene in which judgment and reward of the righteous was prominently
featured. What made this a Christian conversion is that Paul identified the
figure with the Christ, Jesus.
Paul was not the sole apocalypticist in early Christianity. Apocalyp-
lo
l6z
Some of the community have died, raising doubts about the anticipated consummation. Paul turns his attention from those who have died to
those who have felt the loss, consoling them with his confidence that the
parousia will not be long delayed. As a confirmed apocalypticist, he speaks
as though he himself will see it. Though Paul does not elaborate a vision of
the end of time, he does volunteer, probably in answer to a direct question,
a brief description of the awaited consummation: "For you, brethren,
became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in
Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they
did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and
drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from
speaking to the gentiles that they may be savedso as always to fill up the
measure of their sins. But God's wrath has come upon them at last!"
(1 Thess. 1:14-16).
The Thessalonian problem comes from hostile gentiles, but Paul takes
the opportunity to build a typology, showing them that the behavior must
be expected since the Jews, the relatives and friends of Jesus and the
disciples, also persecuted them. This is based on the tradition that prophets were persecuted by their hearers. But it goes far beyond this, certifying
that the church already knew of and perhaps exaggerated Jewish opposition to the church. From the strength of the vituperation we know that the
Thessalonians are in grave danger from their gentile neighbors. The deaths
in the community might have been caused by persecution. It is the crisis of
the martyrdom of the saints, who keep God's law, that most often raises
the issue of resurrection in Jewish tradition (see Dan. 12:2, 2. Maccabees
7). Paul relies on Jewish tradition, albeit in a hostile way, to answer their
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question, illustrating one ironic way in which Jewish apocalyptic traditions entered the wider gentile world.
Paul is concerned about the commitment of his community in the face
of this crisis. The letter begins by reminding them of their conversion, a
commitment that they have already made: "What a welcome we had
among you, and how you turned [epestrepsate] to God from idols, to serve
a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised
from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thess.
1:9, 10). The use of the term epestrepsate signifies that the conversion is
from paganism to the living God. Any pagan conversion to Christianity
would have been thus, but the added dimension is that the Thessalonians
must expect the arrival from heaven of God's son, who will protect them in
the coming wrath. Paul also describes a conversion that led to a separation
between them and their relatives and neighbors; hostility came from those
who were formerly their friends (1 Thess. 2:14), as the disciples experienced hostility.
Wayne Meeks suggests that Paul's words of consolation, which use
language of kinship and friendship, are meant to emphasize to the Thessalonians how they have become a new community of relatives together:
"He even reflects the typical convert's experience of being 'orphaned' in
the word he chooses to speak of his pain at being separated from them.
Thus the letter itself becomes part of a process of resocialization which
undertakes to substitute a new identity, new social relations, and a new
set of values for those which each person had absorbed in growing
up." 19
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul exposes his apocalyptic
scheme and uses apocalyptic language in the service of community definition. His opening thanksgiving leads to both a description of a theophany
and a discussion of judgment (1:7-10). The theme is vindication of the
oppressed Christians and the punishment of their oppressors. The converse is also discussed: "love of each one of all of you for one another"
(1:3), as well as "patience and faith" under persecution (1:4). In 1 Thessalonians, the definition of community life is implicit in Paul's admonitions. It aims at a quietness of life (hsoucbia). The apocalyptic language is
thus meant to instill community values, and it parallels the community's
social situation. More often the intent of the apocalyptic language is consolation for persecution [thlipsis), the primary reason for Paul's letter to
the Thessalonians: "For brothers, you have become imitators of the
churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus, because you have
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suffered the same things at the hands of your own people as they at the
hands of the Judaeans" (1:14).
The isolation of the Pauline gentile community is evident in Paul's most
apocalyptic statements.20 Any groups with whom they formerly shared
ties of kinship became their enemies. Like the Jews and unlike the many
clubs and associations that were part of civic life of the Hellenistic world,
the Christians were exclusive in the sense that no truly committed gentile
Christian could maintan cult membership. Thus, Christianity was subversive to the basic religious institutions of gentile society. The Thessalonian
correspondence exemplifies the social forces seen also in the modern period, where a small committed group of millenarians is found to be a civic
threat because it separates children and spouses from their families. This is
one of the major points of tension between the early church and its pagan
neighbors.21
The picture of the community that arises from the Thessalonian correspondence is one of a radical, apocalyptic movement, expecting the end
imminently and alienated by hostility from the wider world. The Thessalonians' separation is more obvious than in the Corinthian case, where the
synagogue may have ostracized the Corinthians because the congregation
was eating meat sacrificed to idols. This charge implies that the Corinthian
community was at least partly integrated in pagan society.22 Since Paul
was one of the founders and leaders of the Thessalonian church, it is likely
to have been Paul himself who communicated Jewish apocalypticism to
his gentile churches, even mentioning his inability to visit as the hindrance
of Satan (1 Thess. z:i8). Like the Qumran sectarians, Paul calls his coreligionists "the sons of light" and predicts that those "of darkness" or
"of the night" will be destroyed as suddenly as a thief attacks in the night
(1 Thess. 5:15).
Some Thessalonians took Paul's apocalypticism to an extreme.23 In the
second letter to the Thessalonians, attributed to Paul but probably not
written by him, the persecutions have grown yet worse (2. Thess. 1:4). The
suffering of the congregation is interpreted as the first sign that the wrath
of God will fall on the persecutors. But, in an abrupt turnabout, Paul or
some disciple writing in his name warns the Thessalonian congregation
against any false letters or reports that claim that the day of the Lord has
come. Some Christians, either in the community or elsewhere, must have
been prophesying not just that the judgment approached but that it had
actually started. Such an exaggerated claim, along with a stern warning
against idleness ("If anyone will not work, let him not eat" [3:10]), might
indicate that some early Christian communities actually became mille-
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narian cults, stopping work entirely because they expected the effects of
God's judgment day immediately. The author of 2 Thessalonians warns
that this is too radical. The community should continue its ordinary social
and economic life with the confidence that God will bring his judgment
soon and at a moment known only to him.
The whole Thessalonian correspondence shows how originally Jewish
apocalyptic ideas could be transmitted to a gentile Christian community.
Apocalypticism, like the European millennialism it spawned, operates like
social revolution, except that it concentrates on reforming the religious
symbols of the society rather than the political order (insofar as they can be
distinguished). The potential converts must first be disposed to interpret
their lives in religious terms and then must feel that commitment to the
new religious movement remedies some lack in their lives or gives them
some benefit that they do not already have. Otherwise, they will simply
foment political rebellion. Apocalypticism was endemic to Roman occupation, in Jewish as well as gentile lands. Jewish apocalypticism appealed to the disadvantaged members of gentile society, and, as Paul
clarifies in Corinthians and Romans, taught them to despise the conventional civic rites of the establishment in their town as idolatry. Active
rebellion did not break out, but even passive resistance became dangerous
when the Roman emperors of the second and third centuries demanded for
themselves public civic rites as immortal gods on earth. The emperors'
claims were ironically similar to the immortal transformation the Christians had been preaching for a century or more. The persecutions that
followed the failure of Christians and Jews to respect imperial wishes often
evinced apocalyptic notions, pointing to an underlying broad dissatisfaction among the potential converts to Christianity and Judaism.
Many Pauline scholars admit that Paul lived in an active apocalyptic
environment, sharing many of its assumptions.24 Our understanding of
apocalypticism has changed enormously over the past few years by the
renewal of research in noncanonical Jewish literature, by the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls, and by the work of Gershom Scholem, who has
shown that Jewish mysticism was a central part of apocalypticism. Apocalypticism continued in Judaism as a living tradition only in the texts of the
merkabah mystics, which had hitherto been supposed to be medieval.25
Scholars have recognized the ecstatic and mystical core of apocalypticism,
revising their understanding of these ancient phenomena. Paul's writing
fits especially well into the reinterpreted apocalypticism. The Thessalonian correspondence shows that Paul's conversion also gave him an apocalyptic sensibility, with many of the more traditional accoutrements of
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a bitter internal dispute, Paul uses language that sounds most like the
exclusivity of the Dead Sea Scrolls:
Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have
righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in
common with an unbeliever: What agreement has the temple of God
with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
"I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord almighty."
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from
every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the
fear of God. (z Cor. 6:14-7:1)
The phraseology is not typically Pauline. This fact along with the strength
of the invective has led some commentators to think that this fragment is
non-Pauline, although it has been ascribed to Paul and is enclosed in the
anthology of writings known as 2 Corinthians. The passage contains two
requirements necessary for a scholarly judgment of interpolation. The
subject matter of the passage has no real connection with its present
context and the passage reads more smoothly with the section removed. It
is also possible that the fragment was originally part of another Pauline
letter to the Corinthians and has been included there.27 However, the
theme of God's residence in the community is crucially Pauline.
The discovery of the Qumran writings has thrown new light on this
passage.28 Paul is either directly quoting or otherwise relying on material
that comes out of an apocalyptic environment similar to Qumran. The role
Christ plays in the fragment substitutes either for God directly or one of
the principal angels of Jewish apocalypticism, such as Michael, Melchizedek, the Spirit or Angel of Truth, or the Angel of Light, as at Qumran. The
demonic opponent to the community is called Belial, as at Qumran. The
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world is divided into believers and unbelievers. Many of the terms dividing
the world into light and darkness, the saved and the damned, the notion of
the community as the temple of God, the need for purification, are direct
parallels to Jewish apocalyptic in general and Qumran in particular. In the
Pauline context, the fragment furthers Paul's recommendation that the
Corinthians welcome Paul and not support those who refuse to welcome
him. Paul says that not to welcome him is to behave like an unbeliever, for
whom he has nothing but apocalyptic scorn. Paul could be talking about
Christian unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4) rather than outsiders, but in apocalypticism, as elsewhere, unbelievers and outsiders are equally scorned.
The passage might have been inspired by or copied from some lost
Essene writing, making it possible that Paul rather than an editor took it
for himself because it fit his context perfectly. In any case, Paul is using a
style of invective that early Christianity inherited from Jewish apocalypticism; the social context of early Christianity presupposes an equally
committed, highly cohesive group, such as was also found at Qumran,
though most Christians did not live separate from society, as many of the
Dead Sea Scroll sectarians did. Given Christianity's birth as an apocalyptic
community, it would be surprising if invective like this did not surface
occasionally.
Paul expressly identifies the Christian community with the Temple of
God (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16-17). This concept of community is prominent in
Qumran. Paul links the community to the purity rules of Lev. 26:1z by
means of a loose quotation from Ezek, 37:27 (LXX), which he interprets
in an eschatological manner. As in Ezekiel, the pronouns from Leviticus
are changed from the original second person to the third: "I will live in
them and move among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my
people" (2 Cor. 6:16). For Paul, as it might have been at Qumran, this
prophecy has been fulfilled. In Qumran the angels could be found in the
sectarian community, because the sectarians themselves scrupulously enforced the necessary purity rules, making possible the angels' presence.
Unlike Qumran, Paul finds the fulfillment of the verse in the incarnation of
Jesus that has ushered in the beginning of the messianic age. But the purity
rules are themselves irrelevant. The church has thus become the people of
God, and as God dwells among them, they are now as holy as God's
temple. By saying that the body is a temple and that God's spirit dwells in
it, Paul has transferred God's presence from the physical temple, the center
of the purity rules, to the believers and the community to which they
belong. This dualism is typical of Qumran sectarianism, though Paul
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develops the theme uniquely, dropping out the cultic requirements and
using his vocabulary of spirit (see Rom. 8:9).Z9
C O M M A N D M E N T S AND PURITY LAWS
E. P. Sanders has shown that Paul sometimes relies on the
vocabulary of law, which he is so much against in his discussion of salvation, when he is discussing communal ethics.30 Paul calls the behavior of
Christians "keeping the commandments" (entolai) of God (1 Cor. 7:19).
The phrase "every good work" in 2 Cor. 9:8 implies the same, as does
"any other commandment" in Rom. 13:9, since he states that the one law
of love includes many commandments. Paul thus appears occasionally to
approve of the commandments of Judaism and to recommend them as
ethical models for Christian behavior, if the issue is ethical behavior rather
than the salvation process. Such an ambiguous use of vocabulary leads to a
logical impasse whenever a modern exegete attempts to write a systematic
account of Paul's theology. But systematic theology was not Paul's purpose. Paul was not trying to outlaw Torah so much as he was trying to
express how his gentile Christian society could maintain its concept of
community and its commitment without what we would call the ceremonial laws. His principle was not systematically to avoid Torah or deny
it categorically but to eliminate the special laws of Judaism from his
definition of conversion to Christianity, thus stressing Torah only where
clarification was needed or where anyone might talk about law.
E. P. Sanders does not maintain my hypothesis explaining Paul's behavior, but he sums up the paradox of Paul's use of law admirably by
asserting that the negative statements of law arise only in the context of
membership requirements, where faith is to be the only criterion. The
positive statements derive from questions of behavior within the Christian
community. When discussing the value of law, Paul sought to answer
practical questions, and there he could rely on the usual Jewish language
for dealing with the problems. Paul's search for ways to express his new
concept of community was obscured by terms taken from his Pharisaic
past, obscured even from those who know rabbinic Judaism because he
begins from assumptions that no rabbi would make. But, like the rabbis
and Qumranites, he often used the language of purity to discuss ethics.
Having located his churches in the houses of prominent patrons,
Paul's discussions of moral precepts within the community resemble the
traditional Hellenistic tables of household ethics. Paul often uses the
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terms of cultic purity, so strong in Qumran and other parts of the Jewish
community, for describing the ideal state of morality within the Christian
community.31 Paul warns: "If any one destroys God's temple, God will
destroy him. For God's Temple is holy and, that temple you are" (i Cor.
3:17), again depending on the identification of Christian community
with the attendant purity of Temple itself. Immorality is thus a crime of
desecration against God's new Temple. Though Paul's ethical system is
designed for the interim until the final consummation, the Christian community must still enforce purity on itself, as the Qumran community enforced cultic purity for the expected eschaton. But the concept of purity is
reinterpreted in strictly moral terms. In 1 Cor. 5:1 the man openly living
with his father's wife must be expelled from the community lest he further contaminate the group, as a little yeast leavens the whole loaf (5:2,
13). The dominant metaphor is the special laws having to do with Passover, which Paul has allegorized to bring out the distinction between
malice and evil, to be put away like the old leaven, and sincerity and
truth, to be fostered as unleavened bread for the festival. Paul also uses
the ordinary rituals of Judaism as a symbol for his new community. One
may not eat with sinners (1 Cor. 5:11). They are to be driven out of the
group. Elsewhere Paul uses uncleanness (akatharsia) to mean impurity of
any kind, but he links it with the crime of sexual immorality (porneia) (2
Cor. 12:21; Gal. 5:i9). 32 The documents from Qumran show us that
this is typical of Jewish mystical and apocalyptic thinking; cultic purity is
demanded wherever God is to be encountered.
The clearest example of Paul's use of the language of cultic holiness is
the passage in 1 Cor. 6:12-20 where he discusses the purpose of the body
in God's scheme and warns against the sins of sexual immorality. The
theme of impurity and the argument against sexual misconduct is the same
in Jewish mysticism and apocalypticism, where the body must be kept
pure to commune with the holiest creatures of God in his heavenly temple:
"Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?
Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes
one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two shall become one flesh.'
But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun
immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but
the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?
You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in
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your body" (1 Cor. 6:15-20). The metaphor is still one of purity but it
functions without explicit allegiance to the special laws of Judaism.
Paul sometimes compares his work of proclaiming the gospel to that
of the priests who serve in the sanctuary (1 Cor. 9:1314), claiming his
personal vocation as a temple servant. Like the priests, he is entitled to a
share in the sacrificial offerings. As such, Paul justifies earning his living
from the gospel.33 Paul speaks of Christ as a sacrificial offering. In
Rom. 3:2425 he states: "Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an
expiation [hilastrion] by his blood, to be received by faith." Paul also
envisions Christians as both priests and living sacrifices offered to God
within the temple: "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to the world
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove
what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom.
12:12).
172.
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as a symbol for society when the unity of the various parts needs to be
stressed.37 Paul's use of the metaphor of the body of Christ defines the
social group of the new believers and suggests a pattern for ethics: all those
who perform rites derived from but not the same as Judaism can enter the
new community and are to be resurrected. Ethics arise because nothing
that Christians do, either Jews or gentiles, males or females, slaves or free,
should separate the unity of the saved. Thus all should treat each other
with love, equality, and humility.38
THE EUCHARIST
Paul's writings give us less information about the other major
ritual of early Christianity, the Lord's Supper (kyriakon deipnon [1 Cor.
n:zo]). Both Jews and gentiles possessed religious customs associated
with home entertaining. Festive meals were characteristic of the voluntary
associations of the Hellenistic world, from the Jewish Sabbath and feasts
to the rites of the mystery religions and the symposia philosophical
schools. The Passover seder of Judaism was and continues to be deeply
influenced by the customs and etiquette of Hellenistic dinner parties,
though it certainly did not contain the lasciviousness of some Hellenistic
entertainments.39 The earliest church set about to memorialize and commemorate Jesus in ritual and tradition, taking their cue from the meal
rituals ascribed to Jesus.40 It would have been natural for the Christian
community to have instituted such meals in ritual remembrance of Jesus'
last meal with his disciples. The Eucharist was already a major theme of
the meal during Paul's time: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in rememberance of me" (1 Cor. 11:24).
Memorial dinners were even a feature of family piety in the ancient world,
where burial clubs hosted such ceremonies for the deceased. But commemoration would have included not just Jesus' memory but the partnership of
the believer in his death and an eschatological element of the commemoration quickening the time of his return. 41 That memorial rituals were common in Hellenistic homes underscores the new location of Pauline gentile
congregations; rabbinic rituals associated with Passover prevent us from
thinking that such rituals can arise from the gentile Christians alone.
Paul discusses the community's meal of commemoration in several
places. In Galatians, which is notoriously lacking in apocalyptic themes
because it is concerned with the threatened unity of the congregation, the
antinomies of Jew and gentile are discussed in the most detail. In 1 Corinthians and Romans, the issue of communal dining threatens disunity. Paul
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Concurrently, converts report heightened feelings of purpose after conversion.48 The theory of cognitive dissonance predicates that a highly cohesive group would better confirm and preserve an individual decision of
such magnitude by erecting high boundaries between themselves and the
disbelieving world. Thus, conversion communities tend to be both more
cohesive than and hostile to the outside world. These feelings help maintain commitment to the group after conversion.
What is automatically seen as Paul's great theological insight was a
chracteristic perception of sectarian groups in the first century. What the
first century termed faith, we might see closely associated with the commitment that comes from living in a small embattled minority community.
Justification therefore is probably one of the basic vocabularies of firstcentury Jews for discussing conversion and its subsequent high levels of
commitment to a sectarian group, with its attendant feelings of salvation
and subsequent personal meaningfulness. The language of justification,
far from being only Pauline, appears also in John, the letter to the
Hebrews, and even in 1 Peter and the pastoral Epistles. It is not, of course,
as common elsewhere as it is in Paul, for whom it was a major topic. Hence
the language of justification appears to have a definite origin in early
Christian tradition, as the response and product of converted minds, possibly as part of the kerygma of the early church.
One example of the use of the term for justification elsewhere in the
New Testament appears in Luke: the tax collector goes "down to his
house justified" (18:14). The language was present in early New Testament traditions, and it is preeminently developed by Paul, though it is not
his invention.49 Paul could have learned the language of justification from
his Christian compatriots after he entered the Christian community. It is
part of the usual language available to Jews to express their feelings after
conversion to a particular sect.
There are some unique aspects to Paul's doctrine, which not only
distinguish Christianity from Essenism, but also distinguish Paul from
other Christian writers. In 1 Cor. 6:911, for example, Paul stresses a fact
that he regards as well-known: "Do you not know that the unrighteous
will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the
immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves,
nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the
kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you
were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
in the Spirit of our God." Paul's rhetoric reminds his readers of something
he assumes they already know: some of those justified needed repentance,
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demonstrating that the concept of justification was general in early Christianity, as well as Qumran. The progression of washing, sanctification,
and justification suggests that Paul is relying on their experience, possibly
even a liturgical fragment, making reference to baptism and the process of
crossing the border into the community. The order is washing, sanctification, then being judged righteous. Interestingly, justification is not linked
to faith explicitly but to the agency of the name of Jesus, suggesting again a
special tradition of Jesus as the divine name in baptism.
The similarities between the Qumranites and Christianity should again
be noted. Both were conversion communities; both used baptism. In each
case, the rite formalized the distinction between the convert's previous life
of sin and the new life within the saved community. Spiritual cleansing
explicitly allowed the convert to enter the adopted community. Yet the
parallelism highlights the difference between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the
New Testament. Only those already initiated were admitted to the rite at
Qumran, and the rite was performed as a daily ablution. Their rite of
baptism was not strictly a rite of admission, but a rite maintaining the
purity that was acquired by the initiate on entering the community. In both
cases, however, the rite was associated with the community's claim that it
approached the divinity in visions and had first-person witnesses of the
divine presence. Ritual purity in Judaism was designed to enable one to
approach God in his temple with a sacrifice. For this reason ritual baths
are closely associated with the ecstatic journey to God's throne in heaven
in Jewish mysticism.
The sociological location of Essenes and Christians is in sharp contrast. The Qumran community was a priestly community whose headquarters were far from the centers of civilization. It was also radically
literal in performing the biblical immersion rituals. Primitive Christianity
was ambivalent and sometimes hostile to issues of ritual purity in Judaism.
Paul's version of Christianity was suited to gentile Christians living in
proximity to the Jewish Diaspora but not part of it. To Paul me special
laws of Judaism were to become entirely irrelevant. His teachings eventually helped turn the tide against the most ritually conservative members
of the church in favor of the burgeoning gentile Christian community.
Thus the unique aspect of the Pauline teaching of justification by faith is
not the concept of justification. Paul's contribution is the role that faith (as
opposed to ritual law) plays in it:
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are
under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole
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to show how sober and rational are the Essenes, an appreciation that
would be lost to us if we were to view them only from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The social implications of these similarities are striking. A direct link
between early Christian circles and the Qumran sect remains a possibility,
but the similar language can also be understood as typical first-century
Jewish reactions to similar social situations. Both in Qumran and early
Christianity the process of personal salvation was inaugurated by membership in a religious sect, which considered itself a new covenantal congregation. The language of sin and justification reflects the high social
cohesion that existed both at Qumran and the early apocalyptic Jewish
community, because it deflects the hostility of the majority of the Jewish
community at the same time as it obviously also generates hostility. Another function of the language, however, is to seal off the group from
contradictory and conflicting evidence about the nature of conversion
experience, which is typical of sectarian groups everywhere. But the particular language of sin and redemption is part of the vocabulary of firstcentury conversion literature in Judaism, as the romance Joseph and
Asenath has shown. In that book, there is an angelophany, confirming the
importance of the conversion, although there is little apocalyptic language.
Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone and not by law goes
considerably beyond what was current in the language of sectarian experience in the first century. It must reflect his own experience and insight, as it
was revealed to him both in his conversion and his subsequent personal
history within the church. Again we find that he is not working out a
systematic theology; rather, he uses scripture to understand his own experience, both in conversion and in the community he joined. His explanation becomes the basis of more general discussions within the Christian
community. Paul's discussion of faith begins in personal experience and
involves itself in the text of the Scripture, as for any Jew, before attempting
to generalize about the meaning of the experience for his society.50
The doctrine of justification by faith is illuminated for Paul by Hab.
2:4, which states that the righteous shall live by faith. In Gal. 3:12., Paul
reads Habbakuk as contradicting the notion that Torah justifies. In
Qumran the same verse was used to prove that those who observe Torah in
the house of Judah will be saved (iQpHab 7.17-8.2). Paul returns to the
converse conclusion. In Rom. 10:5, he states: "Moses writes that the man
who practices righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it."
Paul's exegesis depends on the presupposition that faith and works contradict each other, that they exclude each other and cannot be rectified. This
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is not a perception that any other sect of Judaism would have promulgated
and I doubt that it was a serious part of Christianity before Paul. It is a
perception that Paul traces to his entrance into the Christian community,
when his Pharisaic meaning system was overturned by his experience of
the crucified and risen Christ. It articulates a new community with a new
moral understanding of gentile-Jewish relationships.
In Romans, which is usually viewed as Paul's latest letter and most
mature thought, Paul returns to the theme, began in Galatians, that faith
and law appear to be contradictory. Torah is from God, it was good and
holy: Paul asserts that God never intended the Torah to last forever;
rather, it was a temporary measure, valid only until the coming of Christ.
Paul's own life could easily serve as the example for this, since he himself
had passed from Pharisaism to Christianity. Again, it is no accident that
the story of Abraham is used as the figure illustrating the limitation of
Torah, for Abraham is used traditionally in Judaism to model the faith
of converts.51 For Paul, Abraham becomes not only the model for the faith
of the convert but the model of die sinner who receives justification by
faith. God promised and Abraham believed, even before he was circumcised; therefore, circumcision cannot be a precondition for the fulfillment
of the promise. In midrash, Abraham's circumcision as an adult provided a
different kind of exemplar. Although Paul's logic here can hardly be called
airtight, his point is plain enough: the fulfillment of God's promises cannot depend on adherence to Torah. Those who believe in Christ, and
especially those to whom his rhetoric is most turned, the gentile Christians, are the true children of Abraham. Gentile Christians need not become Jews, not even in part, in order to become full members of the
church. According to Acts, much of the church accepted that gentile Christians do not need circumcision. So Paul hardly invented or singlehandedly
promulgated the idea. He is merely its most famous proponent.
It is not by accident that we find in this context of a discussion of the
doctrine of justification the quotation, "There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are
all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28; cf. 5:6; 6:15; Rom. 3:2931; 10:1213). This statement is the baptismal formula that defines the new church in
Paul's thinking. Paul stresses that justification occurs specifically through
faith, which is described by means of the baptismal formula; as a result, he
can only mean that justification is brought about by faith in Christ. Faith
and baptism belong together, because baptism is the social ceremony
, marking faith as present, signifying that the believer has entered Christ;
undergoing baptism evokes the experience of death and rebirth in Christ, a
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sharing in his resurrection. Baptism does not mark the beginning of a life
of Torah observance, dependent on circumcision, as it would in an ordinary conversion to Judaism. It marks the beginning of a new life not based
on fleshly observances. Paul is not making an abstract theological statement in his discussion of justification. He is reflecting on his own experience, having himself retreated to the moral and ceremonial life of a Godfearer after having been first a Pharisee. This parallels Paul's experience
and participation in the gentile Christian mission. That Paul's arguments
are fitted to missionary work has been noted often before.52 How his
theology actually reflects community norms has not been adequately emphasized; indeed, one wonders how much of Paul's reliance on the exegetical intricacies of Jewish Scriptures was lost on his gentile audience.
Paul was probably arguing these things out for himself, and the gentile
church, which was not as skilled as he in the Pharisaic science of exegesis,
became the heirs to his personal ruminations. Paul's concept of the salvation of gentiles was not an innovation in Judaism, but his reflections on his
own personal experience are a unique definition of community.
Paul's new community was itself a kind of Pharisaism transformed and
made applicable to gentile converts. Instead of Pharisaic rules of community differentiation, Paul substitutes a faith commitment and a pledge to
keep the purity rules in a spiritual, symbolic way. The apocalyptic fervor
that Paul expresses helped to bind the community in the same ways that
the special laws of Judaism did for Pharisaic Judaism. So Paul's emphasis
on righteousness was not only meant to replace Pharisaic Judaism but also
to parallel and reconstitute Jewish moral imperatives among gentile converts. In this sense Paul's Christianity is an alternative religion, analytically
complete in its own terms, based on Paul's experience within Pharisaism
but transformed by his faith in Christ. For Paul it was not so much a moral
transformation as a social one. But for the gentile convert, it was as
complete a moral transformation as were the new religions of the sixties
and seventies in the United States for the so-called hippies who flocked to
them. Steven Tipton's description of the moral community offered by the
new American religions to the youth in the seventies could easily apply to
Paul's community of gentiles and Jews combined: "They bind together
heretofore disparate elements within a pluralistic culture, revitalizing tradition as they change it. They are engaged in a constructive process of
mediating and recombining existing meanings . . . ." S3 So too Paul attempted to mediate the bewildering moral differences within the culturally
plural world, binding together previously disparate aspects of gentile Godfearers and Jews into a single community of the faithful. He tried to create
CHAPTER SIX
CIRCUMCISION
AND T H E N O A H I D E
LAWS
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to me; but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted
with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted
with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter
for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the
gentiles), and when they perceived the grace that was given to me,
James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me
and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the
Gentiles and they to the circumcised; only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do. (Gal. 2:110)
Paul goes on to discuss the issue of dietary laws, which he sees as directly
pertinent to this conference. Circumcision and dietary laws are both special laws incumbent on Jews, but they are different bodies of law with
different implications for the new Christian community, warranting separate discussions (see chapter 7 for a discussion of dietary laws).
Acts 15:1-29 and Gal. 2:110 are apparently discussing the same
incident, the so-called Jerusalem Conference. There are several important
differences in the two accounts: (1) In Gal. 2:1, Paul says that he went to
Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus. Luke reports that the community in
Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas, as well as others, to Jerusalem. (2) Paul
says that he went "by revelation," while Luke says that the reason was a
theological controversy in Antioch instigated by some Jerusalemite Christians. Paul describes some false brethren who sneaked in to spy out Antioch's freedom and bring them into bondage (Gal. 2:4). (3) The Jerusalem
Conference, in both Galatians and Acts, is about gentile Christians' legal
responsibilities and is focused on circumcision. Luke expresses this by
relating that the visitors in Antioch and the Pharisaic party at the conference claimed that circumcision was necessary for salvation (Acts 15:1,
5). Paul says that he lay the gospel to the gentiles before them and that not
even Titus, a gentile, was compelled to be circumcised (Gal. 2:2., 3).
(4) Both Paul and Luke distinguish between the Jerusalem disciples and a
more conservative faction (Gal. 2:4 and Acts 15:5). (5) Luke portrays the
conference as involving the entire Jerusalem leadership (Acts 15:6). Paul
says that he explained his preaching before a larger group and then privately to those of repute (Gal. 2:2). (6) Paul refers to his recognition by the
pillars (Gal. 2:9). Luke says only that they related what God had done
through them among the gentiles (Acts 15:12). (7) According to both, the
conference ends in agreement. Paul speaks of the right hand of fellowship
extended to him and Barnabas (Gal. 2:9). Acts portrays Peter and James as
speaking in favor of the law-free gospel in Antioch, bringing a letter of
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190
Paul's language raises the issue of the extent of the agreement. The
silence of the council on the issue of Titus's lack of circumcision cannot
be considered an agreement with Paul's position on circumcision. Even
the conference's agreement could not ensure or guarantee the agreement
of all Jewish Christians on the issue of circumcision. Jewish law had an
authority independent of the Christian community. These factors make
for some possible differences between the events and phrases that Paul
quotes from the conference and the way in which he reports them.4 Even
Paul's position as apostle is not acknowledged in so many words, though
that is the conclusion that Paul tries to make of it. Paul seems to be
maximizing the conclusions of the council, while being careful not to
misrepresent the opposition's actual words. Though they might have acknowledged the existence and possibly the Tightness of his uncircumcised
mission to the gentiles, the issue of Jewish law was more complicated
than Paul would have us believe here. Otherwise the Antioch incident
could not have happened.
My approach to the problem is the following: Paul agrees to a position
in Jerusalem that is not fully consonant with his private opinion because he
feels that the Jerusalem conference does not explicitly contradict his opinion. Paul's private opinions are expressed in Galatians, where he says that
the experience of faith overrides the ceremonial Torah by making circumcision unnecessary for anyone. As opposed to the extremist Judaizers,
whose position is known by their proselytes in Galatia, Paul finds the unity
of the church to be most important, so he can compromise with the
opposition, though he disagrees with them. Some of the most important
issues must have been left out, both in Paul's brief narration and likely in
the conference itself, because the conflict flares up again whenever gentile
and zealous Jewish Christians encounter each other. Possibly the validity
of the gentile mission was all that could be agreed on at the conference,
which means that the all-important question of the gentiles' status and
ability to be a single community with Jewish Christians was not resolved.
But the most important thing about this account is that it is only a brief
theoretical statement. Even if the council agreed with Paul in principle, the
formula would still remain to be worked out in actual cases. Paul counsels
the Corinthian church not to exercise all the freedom it wants to arrogate
to itself. But it is also possible that Paul accepted some limitation on his
principle of freedom from ceremonial obligations in order to gain acceptance as an apostle.5 He may then have been seen by others to have
changed his mind on crucial matters, though he could maintain that he
made no essential changes in his position.
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Paul left with the impression that his apostolate had been validated. It
would be unwise to overstate the level of cooperation between Paul and
the other apostles. Paul's letters are full of the conflict that separated him
from Peter and James. Further, almost no Pauline letter forgets to mention
Paul's status as an apostle through God, underlining his constant need to
establish his credentials in the face of Jesus' personal wishes in appointing
only his immediate disciples as apostles. Acts does mention, however, that
the conference endorsed Paul's stand on circumcision for the gentiles.6
LUKE'S PERSPECTIVE O N
THE JERUSALEM C O N F E R E N C E
Luke has a different view of the Jerusalem Conference. According to Acts 15 the issue of circumcision arises at Antioch before the Jerusalem council, because emissaries from Jerusalem maintain that one cannot
be saved unless one is circumcised into the people of Moses ("ean m
peritemthte t ethnei t Muses, ou dynasthe sthnai" [Acts 15:1]).
Luke's chronology can be questioned because he is writing after the fact. It
is possible that the conservative members of the church do not go along
with the Jerusalem church's decision. The restrictive understanding of
salvation is characteristic of some kinds of apocalyptic Judaism, but it is
certainly not a universal doctrine within the Jewish community. Paul's
opinion that gentiles do not need to be circumcised to be saved is, in turn,
characteristic of Pharisaic and later rabbinic Judaism but emphatically not
true of apocalypticism. In this case, the church issue reflects the spectrum
of Jewish as well as Christian opinions.
It is not clear that Luke understands fully or reflects clearly these
distinctions, since he equates the idea that there is no salvation without
circumcision with the party of the Pharisees who say, "It is necessary to
circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses" (15:5).
The two positions that Luke mentions in this passage are not identical. In
the first instance, salvation is discussed; in the second, only proper conversion is being considered. Rabbinic Judaism allows that some gentiles can
be saved qua gentiles, but it requires that all converts to Judaism be strictly
charged to keep the law of Moses.
The rabbinic doctrine that the righteous of all nations have a place in
the world to come is not evidenced by Luke. Whether this is a simple
inaccuracy, a mistaken conclusion by Luke about what was being debated,
or a completely accurate view of the debate can never be resolved. But we
cannot understand the full consequences of the debate unless we look at
192.
the wider context. Rabbinic writings debate the issue of the salvation of
the gentiles, as they debate most every issue.7 It is possible that the Christian Pharisees were of the most conservative persuasion, although this
seems unlikely. This issue is crucial for understanding Paul's program for
Christianity.
Luke also maintains that, though some Christians spied on Paul, they
were acting on their own initiative (Acts 15:24). According to Luke, the
Jerusalem church agreed that circumcision was not necessary for the salvation of the gentiles and outlined a series of more lenient food laws for
gentiles. Then Paul returned as one of the emissaries of the agreement.
Although the principle that circumcision of gentiles is unnecessary for
salvation is accepted in Luke's account, whether it is necessary for Jewish
Christians and gentile Christians is ambiguous. Further, no one says that
Gentiles cannot be circumcised if they want to be. Only Paul himself has
said that he does not advise it, because it tends toward a confidence in the
flesh instead of spirit. No one says that Jews should not be circumcised.
SYNTHESIS
The ambiguity about the actual apostolic agreement colors
every assessment of Paul's intention in Galatians. Since Galatians may
have preceded the conference, it may represent an earlier stage of Paul's
thinking. Paul himself sees his position on law as vindicated and feels that
his apostolate, though untimely born, has been accepted. Yet nothing in
either story explicitly states that all the opposition agreed to accept Paul's
position. At best we have an agreement from the centrist forces, represented by Peter, concerning some of Paul's program. Further, the legal
implications of the agreement were untried and untested. The Acts version
also presents more conservative positions than those of Peter; whether
they agreed with anything that Paul represented is doubtful.8
The legal questions of circumcision and dietary laws can be understood by putting aside the accepted doctrine that Paul was committed to
the theological principle that no human actions can produce righteousness. Instead, let us look at the question from the perspective of a man
who was a Pharisee, who converted into a new community of gentiles with
faith in God, and who strove to make a single community out of a chaotic
group of Jews and gentiles united very loosely by their reliance on Jesus'
teachings. If one takes a Jewish, legal perspective rather than a theological
perspective about Paul's message, Paul's suggestions seem moreflexible.If
Paul were writing a systematic theology, there would be no reason to
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expect compromise. If the issue is legal, then a variety of different theologies can be accommodated by the same ritual actions. Paul is searching
for a procedural solution to a ritual problem that we now know to be the
symptom of a larger social problem. I maintain that Paul's approach is
halakhic, even if the problem he addresses is one that cannot arise within
Pharisaic Judaism.
Paul's polemics are part of a social strategy to maintain unity between
Jewish and gentile Christians. This makes several of the stories that Acts
attributes to Paul become more plausible. I do not maintain that both Acts
and Paul's letters can be right all the time; rather, I suggest that when one
takes into account the principles and precedents of Jewish legal reasoning,
both describe the same phenomenon. In some places Paul argues the force
of his own perceptions; in others he counsels reconciliation with people
whose opinions differ. I try to show that although Paul accommodates his
opponents, he does not do so on issues of ethical principle. His compromises follow the logic of the situation in the manner of Jewish law, and
they are only accommodations based on magnanimity, for the purpose of
maintaining church unity. Paul's discussions of circumcision and food
laws demonstrate that he is familiar with Jewish customs and elucidates
several first-century Pharisaic positions.
As Paul's apostolate was accepted, even provisionally and possibly in
his own mind more than in those of his colleagues, before or after the
conference, he had to balance two occasionally opposing goals: (1) to gain
acceptance for gentile communities that did not observe ceremonial law
and (z) to work for accommodation and reconciliation between the two
opposing factions within the church. His first job was to try to describe the
new unity that he envisioned inside the Christian community. Pious Jews
insisted on circumcision for all Jewish males, most on the eighth day, as
well as circumcision for all male converts to the religion, Jews also stood
out from their neighbors because of their special rules of resting on the
Sabbath. Further, they followed special dietary laws that affected the food
they ate and the way it was prepared. These facts were noticed by others,
but the motivation to observe Torah was not social aloofness or misanthropy, as they were charged; rather, it was the central duty incumbent
on Jews to warrant their Torah-revealed priestly status, for God demanded these sacred duties as a mark of the Jews' service as priesthood.
The laws functioned socially to mark Jewish identity for those both inside
and outside the community.
For the Jewish community as a whole, the special laws, not conversion
experiences, functioned to raise Jewish commitment and ensure Jewish
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195
ings of purity in Judaism, were afraid to allow Jews and gentiles to form a
single community, even in Christianity, because such actions would violate the purity laws. They were right: Pharisaism inhibited such interaction.
The fate of the gentiles is discussed in rabbinic Judaism through the
doctrine of the Noahide Commandments. This rabbinic doctrine is derived from a midrash on the flood narrative in which God makes a covenant with all humanity, not just Jews, never again to destroy the world.
God seals the covenant with the sign of the rainbow, as he thereafter seals
the special Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants with circumcision, indicating membership in Israel. Conversely, the sign of the Noahide covenant,
the rainbow, is available to all humanity to symbolize God's promise of
safety. The rabbis assumed that the covenant with Noah also contained
several revealed commandments defining just and humane behavior. Their
exegesis of the flood narrative extends the benefits and some of the responsibilities of Torah to all the peoples of the world. The Noahide Commandments (e.g., b. Sanhdrin 56b) function like a concept of natural law,
which any just person can be expected to follow by observation and
reason. In Christian theological language, it is available by God's grace to
all humanity.
In rabbinic midrash, the Noahide Commandments include monotheism, avoidance of murder, organizing courts and promulgating justice,
avoiding incest, theft, blasphemy, as well as avoiding eating the flesh of
living creatures and, sometimes, recognition that the Lord, the God of
Israel, is the one true God. All of these ideas can be derived from the Noah
story in Genesis, if they are read together with the rules for sojourners,
principally in Leviticus 17-26. These two passages are associated because
they point to the origin of the laws for the legal treatment of resident
aliens.
Mentioning rabbinic doctrine in the first century raises the issue of
anachronism. To find out what was practiced in first-century Judaism we
have to consult other varieties of Judaism. Although rabbinic doctrine,
enumerating from six to ten Noahide Commandments depending on the
version, cannot be traced to earlier than the third century, other versions
of the Noahide Commandments can be found in Jubilees 7:2021, which
is pre-Christian9: "And in the twenty-eighth jubilee Noah began to command his grandsons with ordinances and commandments and all of the
judgments which he knew. And he bore witness to his sons so that they
might do justice and cover the shame of their flesh and bless the one who
created them and honor father and mother, and each one love his neighbor
$6
and preserve themselves from fornication and pollution and from all
injustice."
The ordinances thought to be universally humane by Jubilees call for
establishing justice, eschewing incest, honoring parents, loving neighbors,
and prohibiting adultery, promiscuity, and pollution.10 In Jubilees, this
short law code forms the basis of the judgment against the giants, which
brings on the flood and sets the scene for the myths contained in Enoch.
It would be unwise, however, to assume that Jubilees is promulgating
such ideas in order to find a basis for humane universalism. On the contrary, Jubilees has a strictly dualistic view of the world, both on the divine
and human level, in consonance with the ideas of Qumran sectarians, in
whose library it figured prominently. Israel is identified as a good kingdom. God selected them as special and above all other peoples (z:ii) to be
marked by circumcision (15:11). They alone can participate in the Sabbath and the other festivals ordained by God. The other nations are condemned, and God has placed spirits in authority over them to lead them
astray. Jubilees zz:i6 warns Jews not to eat with gentiles. Jubilees forcefully says that there is no salvation without circumcision on the eighth day
(15 :%617). This means that conversion of the gentiles is virtually impossible. Even a charitable reading supposes that only the children of converts
can enter the community: "And anyone who is born whose own flesh is
not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant
which the Lord made for Abraham, since (he is) from the children of
destruction. And there is therefore no sign upon him so that he might
belong to the Lord because (he is destined) to be destroyed and annihilated
from the earth and to be uprooted from the earth because he has broken
the covenant of the Lord our God. Because of the nature of all of the angels
of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification he sanctified Israel so
that they might be with him and with his holy angels."11
The obvious reason for the inclusion of the Noahide Commandments
in this place is to provide Jubilees with a legal warrant for condemning the
gentiles. This is appropriate to a sectarian position, where the gentiles and
all but a saving remnant of Israel are scheduled for divine destruction. We
know from this evidence that there were sects within Judaism that did not
subscribe to liberal ideas about the capabilities of gentiles; the relatively
liberal rabbis in later times added only a few more commandments than
we find in Jubilees and deleted the explicit pollution requirement (whose
essence is subsumed under incest). The rabbis also clarified that when a
child is not circumcised, his future reward is not automatically imperiled.
197
Such a lack is, in the opinion of the later rabbis, a sin of his father {Sbulhan
Arukb, "Yoreh Dea" 260.1). Sabbath laws took precedence over circumcision laws for children born by cesarean section. In rabbinic tradition, it
was thus not necessary to be circumcised on the eighth day to be Jewish,
part of Israel, or deserving of the world to come.
The early date and apocalyptic setting of the Noahide Commandments
is clear from the Jubilees reference. But law, like reason, is a two-edged
sword. It condemns the guilty and also upholds the innocent. A legal
structure amounting to the Noahide Commandments is found elsewhere
in Jewish tradition, though its formulation differs depending on the exact
purpose of the law. The converse to the Jubilees vision, that some gentiles
are capable of righteousness, can also be found in Judaism in communities
that were not sectarian or apocalyptic. It is found in rabbinic Judaism,
although the estimate of the number of righteous gentiles was usually
fairly low. Early rabbinic opinions about gentiles were at least partly
formed by the experience of two disastrous wars against Rome and by
observations of the level of gentile morality. We have seen the same issues
surface in Hellenistic Jewish apologetic literature, which might have been
used to missionize gentiles. It follows then that some Pharisees, as well as
other Jews, would have considered God-fearers to be righteous gentiles.
Strangely enough, Luke again helps demonstrate that a positive use for
the Noahide Commandments was known in first-century Judaism. Acts
15:20, 15:29, and 21:25 describe an Apostolic Decree defining a minimum of practice for the new gentile Christians. The specific decrees are
derived from an exegesis of Leviticus 17-18, 1 2 probably under some
influence from the Noah story. In the Christian version, the new Christian
God-fearers had to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols {eidlotbutn),
from bloodshed [haimatos), or alternatively, from the flesh of animals not
ritually slaughtered, from animals that had been ensnared and killed
{pniktri), and from forbidden marriages, incest, and unchastity {porneias). Whether haimatos refers to a moral action or a ritual one is not
entirely clear in church tradition, which has taken it in both ways.13 The
early Christians more closely approximate the ordinances of Jubilees than
did the third-century rabbis.14 It is possible that the reason the Christian
version of the rules is stricter than the other Jewish versions is that a large
section of the church was allowed to remain uncircumcised and impure
from a ritual standpoint. Each version of these minimum moral laws not
only articulates the responsibilities of the gentiles in God's plan but also
reflects the historical situation and values of the particular Jewish sect
198
promulgating it. The Christian Apostolic Decree is more positive than the
rabbinic one. This is a necessity, as the Christian group had a larger
percentage of gentile converts than other Jewish groups. The rabbinic
version is from a time when the righteousness of gentiles, even in nonsectarian circles, was more controversial and proselytization could be considered a capital offense in Roman law. The rabbis mention several times that
bad proselytes informed against the Jews. One can imagine a backsliding
convert informing the authorities that he had been proselytized against his
will and against Roman law, as today's deprogrammed counterconverts
turn against their former communities. So it was wise to be careful.
The rabbis, like the Christians and unlike the apocalypticists, used the
Noahide Commandments for a positive purposenamely, to include
righteous gentiles in the world to come.15 Paul desired not only that the
gentiles be among the community of those saved but that both Jews and
gentiles form one community on earth. This was a step that many Jewish
Christians could not accept. The concept of the Noahide Commandments
is more antique and more widespread in Judaism than can be proved from
the midrash, as the New Testament once again shows us.
The reports in Acts give a clear exegetical sense of how these rules were
derived. Pinned to the Noahide covenant, so that they could apply to all
humanity, they were more directly derived from the biblical rules encumbent on "the stranger in your gates." 16 Resident aliens were obliged to
abstain from offering sacrifices to strange gods (Lev. 17:7-9), from eating
blood in any form (Lev. 17: loff), from incest (Lev. 18:626), from work
on the Sabbath (Exod. zo: iof), and from eating leavened bread during the
Passover (Exod. I2:i8f). 17 The Christian version deliberately parallels
both the order of laws for resident aliens in the Bible and the formulations
of the Noahide Commandments: it does not merely leave out the special
Jewish laws, otherwise it would not have specified that unkosher slaughter
could not be eaten. The Christian form of the rules is based, like the Jewish
ones, on the actual experience of accommodation between Jews and gentiles living together, within a Jewish state or a Diaspora community. Thus,
the Christian form of the rules mentions only those issues that are likely to
be a source of controversy between the Jewish and gentile Christians living
together. The formulation of the Noahide Commandments in the rabbinic
literature arises in the same way but reflects a later time, when the problem
for Jews was how to live in gentile communities, not the other way around.
The issue of righteous gentiles had surfaced in the lives of sectarian
Jews, as Jubilees makes clear. In the first century, the Jewish Sibylline
Oracles specified those rules incumbent on righteous gentiles:
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ZOO
within the Christian community Jews and gentiles were expected to eat
together regularly. Paul, however, did not insist on any Jewish customs in
his gentile mission. He says that he himself adopted the rules of gentile
God-fearers in his mission to them (Gal. 4:12; 1 Cor. 9:21).
As the Sibylline Oracles and other Hellenistic literature show us, the
social location for the promotion of God-fearing and conversion is Diaspora Judaism, where prospective threats from gentile neighbors mitigated Jewish enthusiasm for gentile conversion (see chapter 3), encouraging a preference for God-fearing over conversion. The Pharisees, largely a
Palestinian phenomenon, had no such scruples. They desired committed
converts. But the rabbis also promulgated Noahide Commandments, perhaps with the same social strategy as Jewish missionary and apologetic
literature. Many rabbis simply assumed that becoming Jewish was not the
only way to gain God's love. For the believing Jew, cultic and ceremonial
laws reflected moral principles. Hellenistic Jewish writers chose to emphasize the moral principles, not the ceremonial laws, in discussions with
gentiles. For many varieties of Judaism, a gentile was not excluded from
the rewards of the righteous because of the accident of birth.
Likewise, Paul does not say that all law is worthless, only that its
meaning has changed. Paul's missionary writings occasionally assume that
gentiles are under the law. The Noahide laws help us understand what he
means. As Raeissaenen has shown, Paul's use of the first-person plural in
Gal. 3:2329 implies that the gentile hearers are equally with the Jews
under the sway of the law.20 The law is a custodian or prison guard and a
tutor both to him and the Galatians, who are addressed directly in the
second person: "for in Christ Jesus are all sons of God, through faith"
(Gal. 3:26). In this respect he includes himself as well, since he has undergone a radical conversion: "that we might be justified by faith"
(Gal. 3:24). He has retreated halakhically from Pharisaic observance to
that level demanded of God-fearers, though he still considers himself to be
Jewish.
In Gal. 4:5-6 Paul repeats the pattern of preaching: God sent his son to
redeem those under the law, who receive the status of children. Because
you are children, we have received the Holy Spirit. This is not a double
concept of law, sometimes referring to Torah, at other times to a more
general, moral law. For every Jew, moral law and Torah were coterminous, and Torah was conceived as a transcendent natural law, as well as
a set of ordinances. Paul knows that because of the Noahide Commandments (an anachronistic term in the first century) Torah is the moral guide
for gentiles as well as Jews.21
2.01
Z02
marry with them. Thus, the stage was set for an unprecedented fight in the
Christian variety of sectarian Judaism, precipitated by the new forces
unleashed in Christianity.
For various sects of Jews, the gentiies could either be damned entirely,
saved by conversion, or saved as gentiles as part of their own communities.
But if they were saved as gentiles, Pharisaic Jews would not seek to compromise Jewish ritual purity by intimate contact with them. Although
ordinary Jewish practice was more lax than Pharisaism, especially in the
Diaspora and in the Greek cities of Judea, purity laws theoretically held
throughout Judaism. One can allow a fairly high amount of laxness without assuming that the lax Jews were automatically apostates. It depended
on the perspective of the actors in the first century.
The effect of Paul's preaching and his vision of a new, unified Christian
community was the destruction of the ritual distinction between Jew and
gentile within the Christian sect. Paul was breaking down a ritual boundary in Christianity, not a boundary between saved and unsaved. The same
ritual boundary existed in all Judaism. Many Jews admitted that righteous
gentiles were saved, but they differed wildly in estimating the number of
saved gentiles. Many Jews insisted on ritual distinctions between Jewish
and gentile communities.
Paul's action was an extremely provocative if not unprecedented development within Judaism. The unique aspect of Paul's mission was that he
recommended that gentile converts ignore the ritual law to become one
community with the Jewish Christians, something that could easily appear
as sinning to a Jew, although it fulfilled the purpose of Torah. Paul risked
the charge of apostasy for these ideas, as he ironically characterized himself with the epithet transgressor (Gal. z:i8) from the perspective of a
faithless Christian. Paul, of course, denies that he is a transgressor, since
the application of Torah has been overturned by the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ: "But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we
ourselves were found to be sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly
not! But if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove
myself a transgressor" (Gal. 2:17, 18). 23
Paul's rhetorical point is that if he should return to the law, he would
be admitting that he was a transgressor of it. Paul does not call himself an
apostate; yet in admitting that, without understanding the primacy of his
new faith in the crucified messiah, he can be called a transgressor from the
opposing position. He testifies that others see him as an apostate. The
definition of apostasy is a matter of perspective. On the basis of his experience of the risen Lord, he can abandon circumcision for the gentiles. If he
2.03
were to abandon his faith and return to the position that gentiles needed
circumcision, he would become a Jewish sinner in retrospect, not a faithful
Christian. This is what his opponents think of him. This is also what he
thinks of his Jewish Christian opponents who do not stress the primacy of
faith.
There is precedent for Jews contemporary with Paul who abandon
Torah but do not consider themselves apostates. Philo mentions not only
apostates who gave up Judaism, but also some who remained within the
community and allegorized the law instead of practicing it:
There are some who, regarding laws in their literal sense in the light of
symbols of matters belonging to the intellect, are overpunctilious
about the latter, while treating the former with easy-going neglect.
Such men I for my part should blame for handling the matter in too
easy and off-hand a manner: they ought to have given careful attention
to both aims, to a more full and exact investigation of what is not seen
and in what is seen to be stewards without reproach. As it is, as though
they were living alone by themselves in a wilderness, or as though they
had become disembodied souls, and knew neither city nor village nor
household nor any company of human beings at all, overlooking all
that the mass of men regard, they explore reality in its naked absoluteness. These men are taught by the sacred word to have thoughts for
good repute, and to let go nothing that is part of the customs fixed by
divinely empowered men greater than those of our time. {On The
Migration of Abraham 8993)
Paul's policy resembles Philo's description of the extreme allegorizers,
except that Paul was advising potential gentile proselytes and Jews alike to
ignore the special laws, if they could. The reaction to Paul's teachings in
Jewish Christianity and Judaism was more severe than the reaction to
Philo's ambivalent rebuke of the extreme allegorizers because Paul was
more public in his polemical criticism of the law than the extreme allegorizers and he took this criticism to Jerusalem, where the most conservative members of the Jewish community had enough power to enforce
their jurisdiction over him. Paul's experience ought to be linked to Philo's
report of antinomianism in Judaism as part of a larger question of the
observance of ceremonial laws in an acculturated, first-century Judaism.
The problem of Jewish-gentile separation was greater than the specially Christian communal issues, but the problem became acute in Christianity only because of its successful gentile mission. Some Hellenistic Jews
might wink at the improprieties of the committed but insufficiently obser-
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205
tuperation against those who preach circumcision is evidence for its attractiveness, but pagan writers are equally short-tempered with potential
converts to Judaism. Once a God-fearer had become attracted to Judaism,
there must have been benefits to ending marginal status. Many Godfearers must have been willing to convert, as Josephus's story of Izates
shows us. Conversion of God-fearers was an explosive issue both for
Christianity and for the entire Jewish community. Paul's solution to the
inner Christian fight, that Jewish rulesceremonial Torahwould not
be significant for any Christian's justification, inevitably and logically
meant Christianity's exclusion from Judaism. It confirmed Christianity's
status as a Jewish heresy. This new idea was a historical progression, not a
logical one, dependent on the interaction of a variety of Jewish and Christian communities. Several generations were to pass before new borders
could be clarified. These new borders, representing new definitions of the
terms Christians and Jew, were not apparent until after the death of Paul.
In going from a Pharisaic community to a gentile one, Paul made an
enormous move. His actions about the law came as a consequence of a
conversion. He had to work out for himself what the conversion meant for
his understanding of Torah. Perhaps something important in the law had
to be transmuted, as Paul himself had been transformed by his conversion
and call to missionize the Gentiles. For Paul this meant that Torah's
primary function became propaedeutic and prophetic. It could no longer
be the symbolic mark of the community's border. But by proclaiming his
new idea of community, he alerted the Jewish community to what they
could see as a potential new apostasy.
For Pharisaic Jews, circumcision was the sine qua non for conversion
of a male gentile. Paul could not ignore this issue, though he wanted
acceptance of his God-fearers within the single community of Israel. The
critical difficulty lay within the Christian community, not the Jewish community at all, as Paul must have seen. Many Jewish Christians, who were
also Jews of the more conservative variety, felt that gentiles ought to
become Jews too before they entered the community. This would remove
any bar to full social intercourse with them. Paul believed that Jews and
Christians must be one community based on the same experience and
equality within. The unifying factor was the experience of Christ; both
had received baptism in the crucified messiah. Both had the same faith;
thus, both must recognize that they have the same faith. As he had learned
in his fourteen-year sojourn among gentile Christians, this transforming
mystical identification with Christ had nothing to do with circumcision.
The Jewish community was also alerted to the problem by Christian
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Jewish community did not want a large number of new converts around,
especially when their presence might indict them of a crime. Whenever
gentiles defended their family members from the influence of Judaism or
Christianity by invoking the laws of the principate, the Pauline position
became a more attractive way to enter the covenant. In a Christian empire,
the Pauline Christian position was the only practical way to make converts
to Christianity, just as God-fearing was the only practical way to associate
with Judaism. These developments took place centuries after Paul's life
and were never evident to him, but they ensured the success of his position.
Paul's position made the success of the Christian community possible,
though in ways Paul never anticipated.
The considerable reports about both Noahide laws and God-fearing
say that circumcision was unnecessary for gentiles to partake in the benefits of the life to come. Paul thus had precedent for saying that gentiles need
not be circumcised to become true worshipers of the one God; otherwise,
this position would not have been accepted by James and Peter. If these
thoughts had appeared only in Paul, one could say that he was the innovator. But Josephus echoed Paul's sentiments in his writings. Whereas Paul
may have been a religious genius, Josephus, writing shortly after Paul,
must be close to being Paul's polar oppositea complete opportunist.
Josephus could not have been directly influenced by Paul; nor could he
have come independently to such a position, were it an intellectual breakthrough. So Paul's position about the righteousness of gentiles was not an
innovation. What was innovative was Paul's insistence that all should
become one community in Christ, by virtue of the transformation that all
believers were experiencing and that he himself experienced in his conversion.
Paul's conversion formed the basis for his opinions. But without circumcision Paul's male gentile converts to Christianity could not be considered Jewish by either Jewish Christians or Jews. As a result Pauline converts were different from both their Jewish and their pagan forebears.
They existed by themselves, in some tension with both the Jewish Christian church and the Jewish community. They could not have been actively
involved in Jewish life without stirring up trouble.
CIRCUMCISION IN PAUL'S LETTER TO
THE GALATIANS
Evidence for this fight over circumcision in Christianity is
Paul's letter to the Galatians, beginning in chapter 5 and immediately
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following the passage explaining why Christ has changed the curse of the
law into a blessing for the gentiles. This exegesis is crucial to the case
because it reflects Paul's own experience of conversion, which in turn is a
summary of more than a decade and a half of Christians trying to mediate
between the two communities, Paul writes to clarify his position to the
Galatian community, a place where he had been active as an apostle to the
gentiles.
His opponents in Galatia are a circumcising party (peritemnomenoi),
Christians who accepted circumcision when they converted to Christianity
and proselytes of a conservative Christianity in which conversion to Judaism was a necessary prerequisite. During his absence, the circumcising
party recommended that Paul's converts also undergo the operation, suggesting that Paul himself circumcised others (see the circumcision of Timothy below).
Paul does not treat his opposition charitably. He minces no words with
the circumcisers, at one point suggesting that they should mutilate themselves (5:12). He rhetorically plays on the Hellenistic confusion between
circumcision and castration. The bitterness of the controversy can be
attributed to the emotions of cognitive dissonance aroused by these two
opposing varieties of conversion within Christianity. On one side is Paul,
whose conversion brought with it a new commitment to gentile missionizing. On the other side is that part of the gentile church converted to
Judaism, whose decision for circumcision brought with it an equal and
opposing conviction of the value of Jewish ceremonial law in opening the
Jewish community to Christians. Those gentiles left their families and
found a whole new life in the Jewish Christian community, separate from
their old gentile life. The cognitive dissonance on both sidesa Jew who
decided it was appropriate to live as a gentile as against gentiles who
decided that it was necessary to become Jewsvirtually eliminated the
possibility of compromise. The conflict did not merely concern circumcision. At stake was the source of commitment to the new social group and
the uniqueness of its self-definition. For the Jewish community, special
laws provided the sources of commitment and identity. For Paul, who
experienced the opposition of other Jews and the acceptance of a gospel
without purity rules, special laws could be replaced by conversion. In
opposing circumcision Paul was opposing the traditional view of Jewish
identity. Insofar as it impinged on Christianity, he was claiming that the
presence of Christ created a new community that superseded the old one.
The source of this opposition to circumcision can only be his own experi-
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Pharisees; but those who convert to (Pharisaic) Judaism lose the specific
value of their faith. Paul polarizes the positions in order to stimulate a
radical choice.
Paul has no intention of recommending that his community adopt
Pharisaism. That appears to be a choice only for a few Christians, a kind of
reduction to absurdity in the community. The benefits of the spirit without
law are all that Christians need, since they bring miracles (Gal. 3:15) and
freedom from the demonic powers that inhabit paganism (4:8). He appeals to the gentiles from his personal experience: "Brethren, I beseech
you, become as 1 am, for I also have become as you are" (4:12). There can
be no doubt that Paul himself has not only preached the end of ceremonial
laws, he has given up his adherence to them, though obviously not to their
ethical impulse and statutes.26 He is saying that the power of Christ's
sacrifice has made the route of conversion to Judaism unnecessary and
absolutely outmoded. Paul has decided to live as a righteous gentile or
God-fearer.
C I R C U M C I S I O N AND T H E M E A N I N G O F
TORAH
In order to answer his Galatian critics, Paul states that uncircumcision is not a special dispensation to make gentile Christianity easier
than Jewish Christianity. It is a result of revelation from God, not his
private decision. His apostolate and his opinions emerge directly from his
conversion and subsequent revelation, though we know that the meaning
of these ecstatic experiences is normally mediated by socialization within
the believing community. But what Paul says about his own conversion
differs from the effect of his words on a largely gentile audience intent on
conversion and puzzled by the proper way to effect it. As different as
Judaism and Christianity might appear to us today, they appeared similar
to first-century gentiles; indeed, they were often indistinguishable. Gentile
motivations for converting to either Judaism or Christianity would also
have been similar. The same people tempted to convert to Judaism would
have been tempted to convert to Christianity as well. The converse is also
true: potential converts to Christianity might decide that if Christianity is
good, Judaism is better. We know from Paul's argument that at this point
the people who were interested in Christianity were also tempted by Judaism. Paul's argument was that Christianity had the same benefits as ordinary Judaism. Paul's success is based on this fact: entering the community
of the saved without Jewish law was easier for the gentile convert than
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entering the same community with the law. He fights against other apostles who want to impose the requirement of Torah after the fact. Paul is not
in favor of lower moral standards, but he is in favor of changing and, in
fact, dispensing with many ceremonial rules.
Paul is talking to the gentiles in Galatia about their faith, not giving a
phenomenological analysis of the continued existence of Judaism after the
Christ event. The issue for Paul is the basis of salvation for the Christian.
One cannot become the equal of a Christian by becoming Jewish. It is
unnecessary and insufficient to become a Jew because Judaism does not
include the faith in Christ (Gal. 2:16). Thus, in Gal. 3:1-5, Paul is opposed
to the works of the law and to any attempt to follow the special laws of
Judaism, presenting in its place the preaching of faith {akos pistes).
There are three important reasons for Paul's anger in Galatians. First,
the way in which he expresses himself on the issue of law depends on the
context in which he writes and the question asked of him. Second, the
decision to give up the specific laws of Judaism was an enormous step for
Paul. Third, and more important, publicly to advocate overthrowing the
law of Judaism would have been seen not only as transgression, which
Paul admitted was a possible interpretation of his behavior, but as true
apostasy. Paul, because of his rhetoric, could be accused of subverting
Torah or leading others astray, a crime that could theoretically be punished by death, though the Jewish community's ability to carry out any
capital sentence, either in the Diaspora or in Jerusalem, would be strictly
circumscribed.
At the end of his letter to the Galatians Paul reveals some otherwise
undocumented evidence about the range of feelings of the Jewish community about circumcision: "It is those who want to make a good showing in
the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that
they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who
receive circumcision do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to
have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. But far be it from
me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the
world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" (Gal.
6:12-15). P au ^ questions the motivations of those who recommend circumcision as much as those who accept it. Many do so only because they
are afraid of being persecuted by the Jewish community, but ironically
they themselves do not keep Torah sufficiently. Here again Paul gives us
interesting information about actual Jewish behavior in the first century.
We reach the same conclusion whether Paul is discussing gentile converts
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complete and full system of salvation. Yet its period of instruction is over,
because law simply cannot raise the dead. But raising the dead is precisely
what transformation will do.
Jewish law provided for a death penalty, so Paul can describe it as a law
that kills. But for him, faith in Christ achieves resurrection. As a Pharisee,
Paul already accepted the doctrine of resurrection. Now he has experienced it. This polemic derives from his conversion, where his life/death
imagery emanates, because it comes from the mystical experience of angelic transformation for the coming eschaton. Christ has not only been
raised from the dead; faith in Christ will raise Paul from the dead. Paul
says that faith is what "makes alive." It replaces law and forms a new
community where being Jewish or Greek, being circumcised or uncircumcised, has no more ultimate value than being male or female, slave or free.
With its explicit metaphors of death and life, dressing and undressing,
Gal. 3:2129 relies heavily on the liturgical language of baptism, probably indicating the gentile church's substitution of baptism for circumcision. Paul uses the imagery to discuss a whole new community based on
faith, which has replaced the tutorship of the law. It also reproduces the
chronology of Paul's biography. Now all have been adopted as sons of
Abraham through faith. This mission is to create a single family or community of believers in Christ, who can eat together and marry.
Paul is ready to oppose anyone who dissents from his vision of unity.
Even the pillars {styloi) of the church in Jerusalem cannot legitimately
challenge his authority on this issue. He was ready to stand alone, if
necessary, against those who follow James or Peter at Antioch or Jerusalem. The Galatians should not believe the rumors that Paul preached
uncircumcision to them to please human beings (Gal. 1:10) or that he
teaches circumcision elsewhere, as if others are more worthy of Jewish
responsibilities. Paul has aligned himself against the continued practice of
circumcision in his gentile ministry.
A fuller historical context for these strangely pointed comments is
suggested by Luke. He talks about the conservative party of Pharisees in
Jerusalem (Acts 15:5), who naturally regarded circumcision as the sine
qua non for conversion and defended the complete validity of the Mosaic
law for all Christians. This would be the expected reaction of any PhariseeJew or Christianwhen asked about the rules for entering the
Jewish community. Acts is not automatically trustworthy on these issues,
yet it is interesting to entertain the possibility that it presents a view from a
slightly different perspective of the same Paul that we have been studying.
Acts does not endorse Paul's apostleship to the extent that Paul claims for
2.14
PAUL THE A P O S T L E
his side, so its portrayal probably reflects a more circumspect view of the
outcome. Peter and James could not have belonged to the most conservative group, at least as they are portrayed by Luke, since they eventually
accommodate the gentiles wholly in regard to circumcision and partly in
regard to dietary laws. Therefore, a wide spectrum of opinion existed
among Christian communities in regard to the continued validity of the
Jewish law.27
One need only compare Paul's position with the party that Acts 15:5
calls "the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees," to see how
important was Paul's conversion to his religious convictions. Not every
Pharisaic Christian was converted from Pharisaic Judaism to Christianity.
Many Jews, including some Pharisees, saw faith in Jesus as the continuation and completion of their system of religious practice. Paul is unique in
that he was not only Jewish but a convert to Christianity. His radical shift
in religious sensibility comes out of that tension. The first and longest
conflict was over circumcision. Other conflicts broke out as well. These
conflicts brought Paul into court and ultimately to martyrdom, if church
tradition is correct. But before the conflict was full-blown, Paul outlined
his mature plan for the gentile Christian church.
In Galatians Paul is addressing his gentile converts to Christianity. He
states his position that circumcision (hence ceremonial Torah) is irrelevant
for justification. In the context of circumcision, the issue is theoretical,
since only gentile Christians entering the community need to make a
choice about circumcision. The Jewish Christians were already circumcised. In this respect the conference was a compromise. Paul's position is
not accepted, but the conference did accept Paul as an apostle of an
uncircumcised gentile church. Moreover, they did not necessarily accept
Paul's idea of a single, united Christian community. In return, Paul might
have left vague the implications for Torah of his position on circumcision.
Paul appears to have won some support for his contention that circumcision is not necessary for gentiles, even if he made no progress on the more
radical position that it had no significance for Jewish Christians either.28
Paul did not thereby give up his principle of freedom from the ceremonial laws. He chose not to emphasize the consequences of it. This is a
generous or diplomatic accommodation to the feelings of the circumcised
gentiles and Jews within Christianity, but it is not a compromise in principle. Church unity, to say nothing of Paul's continued acceptance as an
apostle, must have been the overriding consideration.29 Paul states this
diplomatic accommodation in his first letter to the Corinthians: "Only, let
every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which
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God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was any one at the
time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks
of circumcision. Was any one at the time of his call uncircumcised ? Let him
not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor
uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Every one
should remain in the state in which he was called" (1 Cor. 7:1720). Paul
does not shrink from using the language of commandments to discuss
Christian responsibilities. If Paul were maintaining an uncompromising
theological position about the value of Torah, he could not say this. Paul
does not give up his principle of personal transformation through faith; he
advocates an accommodation to the feelings of the circumcised. This is not
a compromise of his ideological position, as he is not recommending that
gentiles be circumcised. Instead, it is a commentary on Gal. 3:28, his
baptismal formula of equality.30
Stendahl, Gager, and Gaston, in emphasizing the gentile audience of
Paul's letter to the Galatians, have tried to prove that all of Paul's discussions about the law make reference only to gentiles, assuming that Paul
thought Torah was appropriate for Jews but not for gentiles. They describe, however, the effect of Paul's accommodation or diplomatic position after the Jerusalem Conference. Paul's communal ruling in 1 Corinthians admits to this standard, but it is a record of his willingness to
compromise for the sake of church unity. In fact, if Acts is correct, he goes
beyond his accommodation in 1 Corinthians: he even circumcises Timothy, a Jew who was uncircumcised from birth. This is credible because the
point of Paul's accommodation is that gentiles need not be circumcised
and circumcision is of no benefit to the Jew either, but it may do no harm if
the person already has faith. So Paul could easily have gone slightly further
to accommodate the Jewish Christians. He says that the commandments
of God are important, which would stymie any theologian assuming that
Paul is opposed in principle to all works of righteousness. He is opposed to
circumcision for gentiles, but he is in favor of church unity. He is able to
accommodate other positions, provided that they do not insist on gentile
circumcision and take out the entire force of his point about the centrality
of faith.
It is misleading to hold Paul to a strictly ideological position about
circumcision, for in the name of church unity he may make an accommodation to his opponents' position, whenever he can do so without
compromising his ideological position (1 Cor. 7:1720). Thus we have an
interesting anomaly. He insists on the primacy of faith and the entrance of
gentiles into the community, but he is willing to accommodate his opposi-
Zl
tion, as long as his principles are not directly violated by the action. He
simply chooses not to exercise the freedom which he has defined for
himself.
Paul appears to be thinking as a rabbinic Jew, not a theologiana
frustrating suggestion for subsequent Christian theology. Whenever there
is a problem in rabbinic practice, the more lenient opinion naturally accommodates the less lenient, if the principle can be preserved, for the
necessity of one overrides the predisposition of another. In modern life,
many nonorthodox Jews wed and divorce according to orthodox law to
avoid any chance of impropriety. Thus, Judaism can accommodate relatively large divergences in theological opinion by expressing symbolic
unity in a conservative ritual.31 No compromise of the magnitude that
Paul suggested has actually been needed in Judaism. But Judaism has never
been forced to face the basic issue of the Christian communityuniting
gentiles and Jews into a single church. Rabbinic Judaism begins from the
opposite premise: gentiles can be righteous but they are not the same
community as Jews. Paul's method of thinking, rather than the solution
itself, is a characteristic Jewish response. Alternatively, Paul's position
itself represents an attempt to weld a single community of Jews and gentiles in Judaism, since the Christian and Jewish communities were not
clearly separate then, although the vituperation shows that tension was
growing fast. Jewish Christians rejected Paul's answer, which foreshadowed the later, more final break of Jewish rejection of Christians. The
ritual actions of the community are important expressions of its unity.
Further, Paul gained acceptance for his ministry with the other apostles
with this accommodation, something he was unlikely to achieve on any
other terms.
If Paul's letter to the Galatians were written before the church conference, there would be no real problem in understanding Paul's action,
for it would represent his own opinion. Assuming that his opinions in
Galatians are after the conference, which seems more likely, the situation
in Galatians is different from Paul's charitable accommodations, for it is a
flagrant violation of the church agreement by the opposing side. Some
from the circumcising party have attempted to circumcise gentiles, which
reneges on the agreement Paul thought he had achieved. This probably
means only that the agreement that Paul thought he had achieved in
Jerusalem was not automatically shared by all Jewish Christians. Paul
might have overinterpreted the agreement, or some Jewish Christians may
not have known about the agreement; others may not have assented to
what was agreed in Jerusalem. Christianity was as disunified at its begin-
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ning as was the Jewish community itself at the time. It began as a group of
interpretations of Jesus' message, not a single orthodox one.
Paul's statements in Galatians show us his ideological position and his
sense of righteous indignation that Jewish Christians have not all accepted
his mission as outlined by the Jerusalem council. Paul does not advocate
twin paths to salvation. He argues that circumcision is of no real account
for anyone. In his ire at the lack of respect for his authority and the doubt it
puts on his position (Gal. 1:610), he states that the ceremonial Torah of
these Jewish Christians is ancillary to God's purpose, having been added
because of Jewish transgressions and having been given by angels or a
mediator instead of God (Gal. 3:19-21). 32 Violations of the council's
actions bring out strong language in return; but such strong statements
would have confirmed Paul's apostasy to Pharisaism. Again, postdecision
dissonance explains the strongly held opinions on both sides.
It is possible to accept Acts' reconstruction of the events without giving
up Paul's essential legal position, if one realizes that the Jewish community
dealt with this issue as it dealt with most others: practice had decisive
import, not theology. This means only that Acts might be right about
Paul's strategy for accommodation. As long as both parties stuck to the
agreement outlined in Acts, there might have been little difficulty between
Paul and his opponents, assuming that they lived in different communities.
If some conservative members of the community did not accept the agreement, if others went back on it, or if there was a battle for dominance
within a community, as at Antioch, a breech could not be avoided. Paul's
ire is the natural result.
The most conservative members of the church advocate gentile circumcision, hence conversion to Judaism. Paul represents those who feel circumcision to be irrelevant, but the compromise allows gentile entrance
into Christianity as God-fearers. This difference of opinion in the Christian community is an extension of the spectrum of Jewish positions about
the salvation of gentiles. Some Jews thought that all had to be converted to
be saved; others thought that gentiles could be righteous according to the
Noahide Commandments. The Christians inherited the conflict in a particularly pointed way because such apostles as Paul desired to make one
community of all believers in Christ.
Scholars have speculated about the outcome of Paul's conflict in Galatia. Wilckens, for instance, is quite pessimistic about Paul's ability to
establish his side of the controversy, seeing in it the seeds of Paul's later
unsuccessful fight with Jerusalem.33 Whatever the outcome among the
congregations of Galatia, the accommodation could continue only as long
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2.19
tion: "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you
cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others
present their side of the issue. The council decides with Paul: "For it has
seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden
than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity" (Acts 15:18, 2.9). The position of the council is supportive of the
theory that the mature rabbinic doctrine of the Noahide Commandments
was being discussed in first-century Judaism, although the rabbis may
have framed the problem differently in their exegesis.
The story of Timothy follows, demonstrating the effect of the council.
After the messengers of the council came, testifying to the agreement about
ritual status in Judaism, the faith of the church was strengthened. It was
Paul's behavior, at first in doubt, later confirmed by the Jerusalem messengers, that helps the success of the church. The issue is made even
sharper by the portrayal in Acts of Paul's later troubles in Jerusalem.
There, the Jewish Christians fear the condemnation of the Jews who will
say that "you teach all the Jews who are among the gentiles to forsake
Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs" (Acts 21:21). In Acts 21:28, the Jews of Asia do cry out that Paul is
the man "who is teaching men everywhere against the people and the law
and this place." The point of Timothy's circumcision from the point of
view in Acts is that, although he has a gentile father and is regarded as a
gentile, he is in fact Jewish. Paul abides scrupulously by the compromise of
the Jerusalem conference, going so far as circumcising a Jew, because
Jewish law requires that Jews be circumcised. The criticism of the Jewish
Christians is therefore unjust.
Whether Acts reflects what actually happened is irrelevant for the
moment. Timothy's mother and father are Jewish and gentile respectively,
although the rabbinic rule about personal status following the mother is
not explicitly stated. It does not need to be; otherwise, the entire incident is
pointless. But the moral of the story is that Timothy is legally Jewish,
though he appears Greek, so Paul obeys the Jerusalem council. The only
thing standing in the way of such an interpretation is the twentieth-century
notion that Paul could not have done so and still logically kept to his
theological principles. But Paul does not violate his principle by circumcising Timothy, if Timothy were an uncircumcised Jew. He was merely
forbearing from the freedom that he has attained. In so doing, Paul was
solving the problem from a halakhic point of view, not a theological one.
Further, Timothy's status follows the usual practice in Judaism, that a
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child of a Jewish mother is Jewish, so there is some support for the idea
that the matrilineal principle existed in first-century Judaism.
If the moral issue is situational rather than a test case for a theology of
works, Paul has more latitude than is normally ascribed to him. It is
certainly possible to imagine a situation in which Paul could have acceded
to Timothy's request, if one assumes that his method of adjudication was
based on Pharisaic analyses of the individual nature of each event. Let us
assume, for instance, that besides being Jewish Timothy himself wanted to
be circumcised to return to the Jewish people in his acceptance of Christ.
Not having been circumcised cannot itself make Timothy a sinner according to the Pharisees, if he corrected the error of his father by undergoing
the rite himself. The commandment of circumcision in rabbinic tradition is
encumbent on the father, but it does not affect Timothy's status as a Jew. If
the father will not perform the rite, rabbinic authorities are to do so.
Timothy's identity as a Jew would be uncontested even in rabbinic
halakha though his circumcision may be lacking. But if Timothy understands the value of faith, feels a complete part of the community without it,
and regularly takes part in Paul's community, would Paul have understood an ethnic or nonreligious reason for desiring to be circumcised?
If Paul's point had been that circumcision is not to be done under any
circumstances because it represents an attempt at self-salvation, he could
never have done so, as many scholars have pointed out. But we know that
Paul may have agreed that circumcision is possible for Jewish Christians, if
the Acts account has any validity. It is irrelevant that he might prefer a
stronger position. He says only that circumcision is not to be effaced, nor is
it necessary for someone who is not already circumcised, for it is of no
relevance to salvation at all. If Paul's motivation were to gain acceptance
for his gentile mission and insure unity in the community, then he would
have performed it for Timothy, especially if that is what Timothy wanted.
Would Paul have forbidden a Jew to be circumcised who wanted to be
circumcised? That would have been a legal folly in Paul's day, when the
Jewish community understood the penalty for such an action to be death!
Thus, if Acts is correct, Paul's letter to the Galatians can be understood as
an answer to his gentile converts, who see in this an inconsistency with his
previous preaching. For gentiles to go on to circumcision proves the weakness of their faith. For a Jew to do so, in spite of the fact that it is unnecessary, is only his legal right. But it all depends on the conclusion that
Timothy is Jewish; otherwise, Paul is inconsistent.
Luke portrays Paul as true to his principles. Luke makes Paul's act of
circumcising Timothy an extreme generosity, since he accommodates
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anyway, merely to have claimed for him his rightful place in the ethnic
community of Jews, though maintaining that it was unnecessary for Christian faith or salvation. The question of the circumcision of Paul's son
would have been crucial for establishing the truth of the allegation that the
Jewish Christians leveled against Paul: that he was teaching Jews to forsake their Torah and give up circumcision. If Paul had a son and failed to
circumcise him, he would certainly have been called a transgressor. If he
had made a public display of his teaching, he might have been accused of
apostasy and been prosecuted wherever possible.
Paul was not a typical case of a Jew quietly leaving Judaism through
assimilation. He made a public display of his christological interpretation
of Judaism and his interpretation of Torah in the synagogues before he
was forced to withdraw to his own communities, as Acts makes clear. He
also openly challenges rabbinic law by consorting with gentiles and disseminating his theories of the limitation to Torah. Further, Paul constantly
makes reference to his conversion as a proof of the power of the Spirit,
using his own history and experience as a paradigm for believers. This
tactic, as I maintained, had certain and unavoidable consequences within
his missionary enterprise.
In Acts, Paul and his compatriots almost unfailingly go first to the
synagogues, finding opportunities to speak and debate at the regular services. When they meet resistance there, they withdraw to the households
of sympathetic individuals, where they continue their preaching (16:13
15; i8:z). In Philippi, Lydia helps (16:15), m Thessalonica it is Jason
(17:5-9), in Corinth Priscilla, Aquila, and Titius Justus (18:24,7). Lydia
is a gentile worshiper of Judaism, a God-fearer, showing one example of
how Christianity spread and to whom it most appealed. Such stories
confirm the uniquely isolated position of Paul's congregations. They also
show that Paul's presence could not have been unnoticed among those
Jews and Jewish Christians who disagreed with him.
Fortunately for Paul, there was no certain evidence to convict him on
the question of circumcision. Though Acts takes great pains to disprove
the allegation, Timothy's circumcision can be viewed either way: as a
strong denial of the allegation or as a sensitivity to the truth of the allegation that Acts wants to cover up. Paul himself was an apocalypticist,
believing in the imminence of Christ's kingdom. He clearly felt that his
position was an interim one and that the problem would shortly be solved
by the parousia. Though he never married, he avers that others might do so
(1 Cor. 7:2540). He was celibate, the state he recommended for everyone, citing as a reason the shortness of time until the parousia. A fortunate
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CHAPTER SEVEN
ROMANS 7 AND
JEWISH DIETARY LAWS
For Paul, the critical issue for faith was to be in Christ. For
people of the spirit, the flesh was secondary. Nevertheless, Paul's community needed advice on fleshly matters. The issue of dietary laws appears to
have given Paul as much or more difficulty as the issue of circumcision.
Although circumcision is a physically difficult and painful operation for
adult men, psychologically raising cognitive dissonance, it is a rite that
need only be performed once, cannot be easily undone, and is not normally
available to public scrutiny. In Paul's growing discussion of Jewish law,
dietary laws prove to be the more difficult case; as public rites easily open
to view, they are constantly an issue. It is also possible to vacillate between
customs. Thus dietary laws become central to Paul's discussion of Jewish
ceremonial law in a way that circumcision had not. This irony, that the less
severe laws are the most troublesome ones, has been insufficiently appreciated.
By analyzing the symbolic issues inherent in the performance of dietary
laws, the difficult and much debated passage in Romans 7, in which Paul
makes some personal remarks about Torah, can be clarified. In the thicket
of Pauline scholarship, Romans 7 is no doubt the center of the darkest,
thorniest, and most disputed territory. In this passage Paul speaks in the
first person about his inability to do the good that he desired while he was
keeping Torah. Readers of the New Testament from the second century
onward have argued about Paul's meaning. He appears to be meditating
on the problem of volition and self-salvation. Is Paul speaking about his
personal experience? Does he have a guilty conscience? Does he refer to
experience before or after being a Christian? All the logical possibilities
have been investigated, though none seems to satisfy all the data. If Paul is
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2.2,5
speaking about his Christian experience, why is he making uncharacteristically critical statements about the Christian life? If he is only speaking universally, with no reference specifically to himself, why does he
adopt the first person so straightforwardly? Any argument about the
meaning of these passages must begin with a new exegesis that appears to
fit Paul's words.1
Some scholars have suggested that Paul's first person is an impersonal
figure of speech signifying all Israel, citing the Psalms and especially the
Hodayoth of the Dead Sea Scrolls as example of an impersonal "I." 2 But
the most convincing analogies produced in biblical and later Qumranic
Psalms come from confessional poetry appropriated into liturgy, which is
quite a different Sitz im Leben from Paul's letters. Throughout his letters
Paul uses the first person in the ordinary way. In Romans he addresses
himself to his readers both in the first person singular and plural in order to
generalize from their mutual experience to conclusions about the life of
faith.3 But Paul cannot here be using liturgy.4 Rom. j:zx2.^ makes an
impersonal reading of Romans 7 virtually impossible: "For I delight in the
law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war
with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which
dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from
this body of death?" This is not liturgical language but is a purely private
observation. The most obvious interpretation of Romans 7 begins with the
idea that Paul is speaking personally.5 This does not mean that Paul feels
his experience to be eccentric; rather, he mentions his own experience
because, he believes, it illustrates a general religious truth with which he
hopes his audience will come to agree.
PAUL'S JEWISH AUDIENCE
The letter to the Romans is addressed to the church (or churches) in Rome, which evidently included both Jews and gentiles. The mixed
population makes it one of the crucial tests of the Christian community.
Much of the letter cautions the gentiles not to act superior to the Jews and
Jewish Christians because of their understanding of the obsolescence of
Jewish ceremonial laws. Chapter 7, however, defines a special audience
for the letter. Paul speaks to his brothers (adelphoi), "those who know the
Law" (Rom. 7:1). The context clarifies the identity of his brothers as
primarily the Jewish Christians and their followers in the community at
Rome, as Paul immediately mentions Jewish marriage and divorce law.
Whether or not he implicitly speaks to the audience he expects in Jerusa-
Z2.6
PAUL THE A P O S T L E
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in Tarsus (Acts 23:6), but several scholars have questioned the meaning of
being a Pharisee in the Diaspora.9 Paul might then have been following a
pattern of religious questing when he became a Pharisee, before he entered
Christianity. Though this theory has much to recommend it, I find no
evidence supporting it in Paul's writing.
4. Paul could be describing his life as a Pharisee when he talks about his
inability to do the good that he wants: though Torah is good and holy, it
led him to some wrong conclusions and, therefore, needs to be revalued.
Paul's statements in Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 of the blamelessness of
his behavior as a Pharisee argue against understanding Romans 7 as a
reference to his Pharisaism. This is not conclusive since Paul may have
been guilty of no infraction against Torah yet had a guilty conscience as a
Pharisee. Some modern converts report a great dissatisfaction with their
previous life so the interpretation is plausible, but in this case his statement
of being outside Torah is too obscure to unravel. The most cogent argument against this position is that Paul had a "robust conscience."10 Paul's
discussion of these issues proves to be less ethereal and more practical.
5. Paul could be describing his experience with Torah after his conversion. This is not a new interpretation: Augustine and various other Latin
fathers, as well as Luther, Calvin, Barth, Nygren, and Cranfield (among
others), have read Paul in this way.111 think that this is the most profitable
possibility. We have raised the possibility that Paul continued to keep
Torah for a while after his conversion, and his fourteen years in gentile
community slowly convinced him of the irrelevance of Torah. The testimony of Acts that Paul circumcised. Timothy is not impossible either. In
neither of these cases, however, do jve have direct testimony from Paul to
corroborate the change. In the case of the dietary laws, we have evidence
that Paul did practice them on occasion, when he was present in Jewish
communities (1 Cor. 9:2022).
The strongest and most often raised objection to interpreting Romans
7 as Paul's experience after conversion can be found in Romans 8. Many
scholars have noted that the two sections naturally set off each other, so
that chapter 7 describes a person under Torah, and chapter 8 describes a
person redeemed by grace. This makes simple theological sense, but it may
not be the kind of sense that Paul wanted to make. It does not necessarily
follow that Paul is distinguishing between Judaism and Christianity. He
could as easily be talking about the distinction between two types of
Christianitybeing under Torah as a Christian and being saved by faith
as a Christian, for the distinction between the two religions was not clear
ZZ8
22.9
23
2,31
with gentiles at all and especially could not sit at table with gentiles. To the
contrary, there is no law in rabbinic literature that prevents a Jew from
eating with a gentile. Although eating only with one's coreligionists is not
a law explicitly enjoined on Jews, Paul, when he was a Pharisee, could not
easily have eaten either with gentiles or impure Jews, because they carried
ritual impurities to the table and were ignorant about how to prevent
impurities from being transferred to the faithful. He might not trust a
gentile host to know which foods Jews cannot eat.14 If rabbinic rules were
in effect, the Pharisaic Paul also would have been careful to avoid eating
certain foods with gentiles on account of idolatry.
The Pharisaic position represents a very conservative approach to Jewish dietary law, because the Pharisees were noted for their punctilious
observance of food laws. We do not know exactly how other Jews may
have behaved in these circumstances. It is quite likely that Jewish practice
of the time encompassed every strategy from total abstinence to virtual
commensality. We can perceive some of the possibilities from tracing
Paul's behavior. From his Pharisaic past Paul learned how important table
fellowship is for unifying a community. Paul carried the oral, unwritten
law and his legal acumen into his new community, but he left the specific
rabbinic solutions behind.
Although Jewish commensality was frequently noted by Roman and
Greek writers, we do not know how ordinary Jews, as opposed to strict
Pharisees, observed the dietary laws in the first century. Since there was no
explicit law forbidding Jews and gentile from eating together, we must
assume that some, possibly many, ate with gentiles, despite qualms. There
was obviously a range of practice that we cannot precisely reconstruct,
since we have to rely on the mishnaic laws, codified a century and a half
after Paul, which represent a prescriptive idealization by the successors to
the Pharisees. We can find some hints in rabbinic literature. It is too
inexact to consider that the issue separating Peter and Paul is kashrut, the
special food laws for Jews, as many scholars have done.15 The issue in the
Corinthian community is how gentiles are to eat with Jews. They are
trying to come to terms with the fact that some Jews say that they may only
eat with them if the Corinthians abstain from certain foods thought to be
dedicated to idols. So the issue has more to do with idolatry than food
laws. Rabbinic law actually discusses similar problems to Paul's in mentioning the kind of foodstuffs produced by gentiles that can be eaten.
Mishnah Avodah Zarab 2.3 specifically mentions that gentile wine and
meat offered to idols should not be eaten: "These things that belong to
gentiles are forbidden, and it is forbidden to have any benefit at all from
Z32
them: wine, or the vinegar of gentiles that at first was wine. . . . Flesh that
is entering in unto an idol is permitted, but what comes forth is forbidden,
for it as the sacrifices of the dead [Ps. io6:z9]the words of Rabbi
Akiba."
These rules could not overrule the other laws of kashrut: a Jew who
eats foodstuffs produced or marketed by gentiles is assumed to be following the rules of kashrut. Eating meat that has been dedicated at a temple is
thus forbidden, though eating meat obtained from gentiles itself is not.
This leniencythat is, in allowing some meat obtained from gentiles to be
eatenin regard to idolatry only is usually attributed to its great expense.
Since meat was too great a luxury to be wasted, close definition of avoiding the stigma of idolatry was deemed appropriate. Such leniency is
characteristic of rabbinic writings; in fact, they are in some ways more
accommodating than Paul, suggesting that Paul was a very conservative
Pharisee.
Buying and using gentile wine is also forbidden because it is assumed to
have been used for a libation. The "sacrifices of the dead" are probably
discussed in relation to all gentile foodstuffs and are elsewhere mentioned
both by rabbis Akiba (d. 135 C.E.) and Simeon (Aboth 3.3. See also Ps.
io6:z8, Prov. 15:8; znxj). By the mid- and late second century, these
reviled gentile customs probably referred to the commemorative libations
for heroes and ancestors, which were frequent at Graeco-Roman dinners
and which evidently displeased the rabbis. Analogously, the central rite of
Christianity, the Lord's Supper, may have attracted rabbinic suspicion,
since it commemorates a person who died and is worshiped as a god. (In
regard to idolatry, other differences in moral sensibility between Christian
and pagan dinner customs could be overlooked.)16
Much can be learned of the rites of first-century Judaism by comparing
the differing solutions to the problem in the various Jewish and Christian
communities. The rabbis may well be codifying in the second century what
was common practice in the first. A Pharisee who observed the purity rules
and tithes would have difficulty eating with any Jew who did not observe
these rules. We can speculate about other possible areas of conflict between Paul's congregations and a variety of Jewish Christians; for example, if a Jewish Christian were observing rules about wine, he or she might
have insisted that the Eucharist be dispensed by a Jew to avoid the problems associated with a gentile serving wine. Whatever else may have been
at issue, Paul certainly has to deal with the questions of serving meat and
wine.
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23e
that he has prescribed for his churches. From Paul's perspective the accommodation is a kind of magnanimity. He outlines two axioms, an ideological position of strength and a diplomatic principle of conciliation. All
Christians should eat with each other, even if doing so means that the
strong diplomatically avoid foods that the weak despise, a position that he
argues to each side of the controversy (Rom. 14:15; 1 Cor. 8:12),
Paul feels that the church's unity is more important than any food
prohibitions or even the principle that all foods are clean: "Do not, for the
sake of food, destroy the work of God" (Rom. 14:20). The ritual laws of
Judaism are supposed to unite the community. So the dietary laws of the
new community should unify it, not separate it. In 1 Corinthians Paul
cautions against giving offense to either Jews or Greeks. Neither should
offend the other in the interest of Christian unity. His personal behavior is
the pattern for all to follow: "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever
you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or
to the church of God, just as I try to please all men in everything I do, not
seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be
imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor. 10:3111:1).
Paul's ideological position, as commonplace as it might seem to Christianity today, was an extreme position in his own time; his diplomatic
principle of reconciliation would have been controversial in the church, to
say nothing about the Jewish community. The Apostolic Decree sets aside
the radical ideological position of Paul, regardless of Acts' contention that
Paul was a participant in the decree (Acts 15:20,29; 21125).19 Revelations
predicts damnation for any who put a stumbling block in front of Israel by
leading them to eat food sacrificed to idols (2:14, 20). For the Didacbe,
proper behavior includes keeping away from all food offered to idols. It
uses language that is more reminiscent of the Mishnah than Paul's letters:
"Now about food: undertake what you can. But keep strictly away from
what is offered to idols, for that implies worship of dead gods" {Didacbe
6.3). The Didacbe exhorts Christians to observe as many of the dietary
laws as possible. It even mirrors the mishnaic warning against worshiping
the dead, interpreting the phrase as pagan gods now known to be dead.
Throughout early church history, the dominant position is more like the
Didacbe or the Apostolic Decree than Paul's ideological position.20
PAUL'S A C C O M M O D A T I O N S
With his opinions, Paul could no longer have been a practicing
Pharisee, though he considered himself a Jew and honored Torah in other
Z37
ways. Paul's ideological position could only be seen as yet more extreme
by the Jewish community than by the Christian community. To the Pharisees it could only be seen as a radical antinomian revolution. Paul had no
qualms about maintaining that the value of Torah had changed. As C. K.
Barrett points out, Paul is nowhere less Pharisaic than when he states that
food laws are of no consequence. This position can be seen as transgression of the dietary laws, or it can be seen as leading other Jews astray, a
more serious crime. It is no wonder that Paul counsels a diplomatic principle of conciliation, rather than insisting on his position.
Having come to a radical analysis of the situation, Paul's principle of
reconciliation takes him in the opposite direction of the weak position. If
Acts is correct in regard to circumcision as well, Paul was willing to
accommodate in order to preserve the unity of the church. In the case of
circumcision, we have Paul's statement that all should remain as they are,
but we do not have complete evidence about the extent of his attempt at
reconciliation. We must judge the account in Acts to be questionable (see
chapter 6 above).
In 1 Corinthians Paul does not merely recommend that the strong be
respectful of the misguided weak sensibilities; he himself swears not to eat
any flesh, if eating flesh offends his fellow Christians. This oath is in the
first person singular: "If meat offends my brother, I will not eat meat
forever, lest I offend my brother" (1 Cor. 8:13). There is no reason to
believe that this oath was rhetorical. It is an honest obligation taken in
writing. Since it is a written and unambiguous pledge, it would even be
valid in a rabbinic court (see Mishnah Nedarim i). 2 1 Using oaths in this
way is a sensible ritual strategy in later Judaism, pledging to avoid a
material of suspicious purity. Thus, Paul again evidences Jewish practice
otherwise unmentioned in the earliest rabbinic writings but known from
later ones. The legal situation raised by communal meals in Christian
communities is unusual for first-century Judaism. Paul personally might
have thought that food laws were entirely irrelevant. His accommodationist position may have been only to avoid meat when the idolatrous
connection might tempt others to sin. He also takes the principle of reconciliation to its extreme, volunteering to abide by a more conservative
position, stricter than either the Corinthians' weak position or the Jewish
practice outlined in the Mishnah. He goes further than Pharisaism to make
his point. By seeking the most stringent answers in matters of ritual, Paul
adopts the traditional Pharisaic means of avoiding situations in which
doubt could be thrown on his ritual status.
There must have been a serious reason for such an accommodation.
Z38
Since Paul says specifically that he would swear to avoid offending his
fellow Christian, he wants at the least to avoid an open breach with some
of the more conservative Christians. He might have his fellow Jews in
mind as well, for it is likely that first-century Jewish opinion encompassed
legal positions far more conservative than the rabbinic one of the second
century. It is possible that the Apostolic council intervened, and the church
took a more conservative line than Paul was preaching. In this case, Paul
himself might easily have taken a more conservative tack in order to
maintain his recognition as an apostle and to preserve church unity.22
It is important to see the gravity of Paul's behavior and the possible
reasons for his accommodations. Not only is Paul recommending ideologically that gentiles not eat kosher food, he is also saying that Jews need not
do so, as he believes that he himself need not do so. This endangers not
only himself but every Jewish Christian, who would thereafter come under
suspicion for apostasy. What Paul might consider to be a behavior justifiable by his faith might be seen as transgression or apostasy to Judaism by
others and as leading astray by yet others. To counter the charge that he is
unclean or untrustworthy for having eaten meat sacrificed to idols, he
swears that he is willing to become a vegetarian. For the most stringent
Pharisee, this would eliminate the issues of acceptable slaughter of meat,
idolatry, and possibly even tithes on fruit, leaving only the relatively minor
problem of tithing vegetables, which was irrelevant outside the land of
Israel. But, in approaching Jerusalem, it would have removed the major
issue preventing Paul's full acceptance by observant Jews, whether or not
they be Christians.
Acts maintains that Paul also took a Nazirite vow (Acts 18:18) in
Cenchrea on his way to Jerusalem. Although Acts does not specify what
the oath was, and the ambiguous syntax allows for the alternative interpretation that Aquila performed the rite, Acts appears to describe the
unique conditions under which (temporary) Nazirite vows can be terminated, if a minimum of a month had passed after the vow. 23 After cutting
his hair, Paul needed to bring a temple offering, which would mark the
completion of the vow. Acts implies that this is what happened. It records
that Paul was indicted in Jerusalem in spite of his attempt to prove his
loyalty to Judaism by paying for the guilt and thanksgiving sacrifices of
four other Nazirites who underwent purification with him (Acts 21:17
26). We do not know if Acts is historically accurate, but paying for the
sacrifices of others completing Nazirite vows was another act of contemporary Jewish ritual piety and would have been understood as a desire for
239
communal respect.24 From the perspective of Paul's detractors, his behavior could be seen as dissembling or hypocrisy.
For Paul to have taken on a Nazirite vow would, of course, have had
serious implications beyond the immediate context of table fellowship
with gentiles. But taking on any obligation would have meant subjecting
himself to Jewish ritual law again. When salvation itself is not the issue,
and especially when church unity is the issue, Paul, however, seems ready
to accommodate. The compromise might even have been that if the Jewish
Christians abide by the Apostolic Decree, so will Paul, though his own
personal position is far more radical. Although this is a compromise ritual
position, Paul is not compromising his ideological position. Since Paul
believes that this ritual is of no importance for salvation, whether he
observes it or not is irrelevant. He chooses not to exercise his freedom to
ignore them.
In Acts this conflict is expressly linked to Paul's last visit to Jerusalem
and his pilgrimage to the temple. Even his most conservative behavior does
not assuage the ire of some Jews, who accuse him of teaching others to
overthrow Torah. Acts, of course, implies that the charge is false. Although Acts is not above reproach as a historical source, it could be correct
in portraying Paul's decision at this juncture, for Paul himself tries to avoid
open conflict (e.g., 2 Cor. 1:13). Jerusalem is a logical place for these issues
to come to a head. The charge against Paul is also logical, because Paul
comes close to advocating overthrowing Torah in his opinion of its inapplicability to food laws or circumcision. From his own letters we know
that Paul's conservative Christian brethren are angry (and Paul himself is
angry as well). Other parties in the Jewish community could only have
reflected still more conservative sentiments.
If we consider the nature of the charge, there is a sense in which it is true
from some Jewish points of view. Paul could have lived as a Jew "in order
to win Jews" in Jewish communities, and he could also have lived "lawlessly" around gentiles in order to win them (1 Cor. 9:20). But he could not
have done both at once, which was exactly the problem when Jewish and
gentile Christians ate together. In Jerusalem, with both communities present, Paul could not have practiced both. Nor would the strategy have
worked as well where the Pharisaic issues of tithing fruits and vegetables
were relevant. Paul's compromise fails when members of the two communities eat together or directly confront each other. Thus, as soon as Paul
leaves the gentile Christian environment, he is judged according to Jewish
law; his strategy of conciliation is a tightrope walk between transgression
24
and apostasy or subversion. The issue is not merely what Paul himself did;
it is that his practice reflected the gentile community's definition of piety,
which he then advocated for Jewish Christians, and Jewish Christians
were Jews as well. The result, according to Acts, is that Paul's life is put in
danger by the allegations of Jewish Christians who denounce him to the
Jewish authorities. This begins the process that brings him to Rome and, as
legend has it, to his martyrdom.
Even without Acts' contention, the one place where Paul could not
have avoided open conflict is Jerusalem. Paul's insistence on the presence
of his gentile brother, Titus, as well as other unnamed members of his
party, is likely to have been a provocation (z Cor. 8:20 Z3). Paul not only
left open the option for compromise with his colleagues, he also made sure
that his ideological position was properly represented. He offered both the
compromise and the confrontation. But to see the full issue one must
realize that Paul offered a clear compromise (which was rejected by the
most conservative members of the church in Jerusalem).
PAUL'S CLARIFICATION T O THE
GENTILE C O M M U N I T Y
Paul's actions in swearing not to eat meat and possibly in
taking a Nazirite vow would have been troublesome to almost anyone in
the church, including his gentile followers, the strong. By promising not to
eat flesh, Paul appears to reverse his opinion and observe Jewish law. If
Paul were abiding by the compromise of the Jerusalem council, the issue
would only be sharper. Paul's response to the Galatians made it appear to
some converts that Paul was preaching circumcision (Gal. 1:10). Finally, if
Acts' account of Timothy's circumcision is to be believed, the question is
acute, because Paul might have circumcised the Jew Timothy, who looked
like a gentile. Neither Jews nor gentiles, hearing the reports at a distance,
could be expected automatically to thread the legal argument that makes
these stances consistent. Thus, there is no reason to reject Acts ipso facto.
Paul's conciliatory actions cast doubts on his own position, as outlined in
Corinthians, that the ritual laws are no longer relevant in Christianity.25
If Acts is correct the whole picture is consistent. Parallel issues, however, can be adduced from Paul's own writing itself. With the conservative
methodology of accepting only Paul's own testimony, more must remain
in doubt, but the importance of the symbolic messages that Paul sent
throughout the Jewish world can still be noted. Paul's vow in 1 Cor. 8:3 z
had halakhic consequences and would itself have led to ambiguities in his
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I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came,
sin revived and I died; the very commandment which promised life
proved to be death for me. For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. So the law is holy, and the
commandment is holy and just and good. Did that which is good, then,
bring death to me? By no means! It was sin working death in me
through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and
through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. . . .
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I
do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the
law is good. . . . (Rom. 7:9-15)
The death that Paul mentions might be linked to baptism, as many
scholars have noted, but this explanation does not correspond to the
chronology of Rom. 7:912. Paul mentions rebirth when describing his
baptism, but chronologically the death he mentions here must come after
his conversion. He may be speaking elliptically of the risk of losing the
salvation he has gained or even anticipating capital punishment if charges
against him are sustained.
Paul seems to be talking about his experience as a Christian after
rejecting Jewish observance. He begins in mdias res as a convert without
the law: "I was once alive apart from the law." Sin is thereafter pictured as
"deceiving," bringing death, "finding opportunity in the commandment"
(7:11).26 Paul's opinion in Romans 7 is that the law is good, thoughfleshis
under the sway of sin, and the law is concerned with flesh, thus bringing
one to death. Paul may be suggesting here that going back to the law
imperils his future life because it risks his salvation. Reading this passage
along with his description of transformation makes such an interpretation
the most likely alternative. Having achieved a state of transformation, in
which the laws that govern the body become pleonastic, he states that his
return to ceremonial Torah makes him a transgressor.
Paul's observation could be based on legal difficulties in Paul's life: he
is aware that he can be condemned by means of the law. It is misleading to
theologically analyze the human situation when Paul emphasizes his personal experience by use of the personal pronoun. His deception by sin by
means of the law began not when he was a Pharisee and not when he lived
without the law as a gentile Christian, but afterward. Possibly it began
before he completely understood his role as apostle to the gentiles or, more
likely, when as a Christian he accommodated to it out of concern for
Christian unity. By journeying to Jerusalem, he would have been subject-
2.43
244
doing the ceremonial Torah, but it is a trap for him. Though many Christian exegetes present this passage as a discussion of sexuality under the old
covenant, I think that a critique of sexual license would be out of context
here. He turns to such issues in the Corinthian correspondence, but sexuality is not the primary referent of his desires in Romans. He speaks of
covetousness, envy of the position of religious surety presented by a life
under the commandments, because he wishes to contrast the life of ceremonial Torah, a life of the body, with the life of transformation in Christ, a
life of the spirit. The ethical aspects of Torah, however, are still important.
In Rom. 13:910 he lists four specific prohibitionsadultery, murder,
theft, and covetousnessshowing that he considers each to be different.
He uses them as examples, not as an exhaustive list of unacceptable behaviors. Among the objects of covetousness is a life depending on the fleshly
ordinances of law but without faith.28
The basic issue is a political one caused by the social breach in the
community. Paul's attempt to mediate between the different customs in
the early church created misunderstandings in his own community and
alienated his opponents so completely as to put him in danger. Placed in
this position, his conclusion is breathtaking. He shows that his personal
difficulty is neither accidental nor abstractly existential. It is the same
material predicament of all Christians under Torah. He discusses the good
that he wishes to do and suggests that attempting to follow the ceremonial
Torah as a Christian inevitably leads to sin, whether intentional or not:
"For I do not do what I want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which
dwells in me" (Rom. 7:16, 17). This could be another statement to his
listeners on not recanting his position on law. He might not have foreseen
at first that the effects of his compromise put him in real danger (7:15).
Paul reiterates, as he always believed, both that Torah is good and that he
enjoyed fulfilling it when he was a Pharisee, but Christ has saved him from
observing those laws because he was converted, died, and was reborn in
Christ and was transformed to a spiritual being who needs to put fleshly
desires and covetousness behind him.
This is not a theoretical or theological discussion of why humanity is
unable to keep the law. It is the self-description of a man relating his
personal experience: his attempt to find a compromise between the two
sociological groupings in Christianity and discovery that he could not. It is
the confession of a man who could and did live as a Pharisee but finds
ceremonial Torah a backsliding temptation after his transformation to a
new spiritual body. He still has desires to live as a Pharisee; indeed, it is a
245
simpler position because it is easier to observe the laws than to try to walk
the fine line between the two communities of Christians. But he overcomes
his desires and continues to live a life of faith.
Paul is not a man who was constitutionally unable to practice the law.
In this passage he appears to be a man who still feels the desire to observe
the law. Paul is tempted to return to the law, since he enjoyed it and since it
might prevent some internal dissension within Christianity. He represents
the struggle in this way: "For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,
but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and
making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members" (7:22,
23 ). This is analogous to the desire to perform ceremoni'al law. Though the
law is holy and good, the ceremonial laws, in dealing with circumcision
and proper food are literally and metaphorically the laws of his members,
bring him under the sway of sin again, possibly because they tempt him to
pride and actually misrepresent his position on law to his congregations.
Keeping the law, for whatever reasons of conciliation, is not a means for
his salvation, though Torah is good and holy and points out what sin is.
His perception that the law of sin dwells in his members arises from his
diplomatic struggle to find an accommodation to ceremonial laws in the
new Christian community. It is a struggle that Paul cannot win, because he
cannot both observe the laws and ignore them at once, and both communities appear to be watching him for guidance or criticism. It is a struggle
that no Christian can win as long as Torah observance is a serious option
within the Christian community. But Christianity can win the battle by
ignoring observance of the special laws of Torah entirely. A lawless gospel
is the only Christian solution that will yield a single community. Stendahl
described the problem in Romans as salvation history, but he is right only
when one realizes that the crisis that precipitated the discussion is a personal and legal crisis in Paul's life. Thus, Paul uses his own experience as an
apostle in trying to mediate the dispute, to show that the only solution is
faith and faith alone. Paul is not discussing sexual desire in this passage.
He is talking about the temptation to covet the religiously easier life of the
Jewish Christians, with their emphasis on law. Those who live according
to the spirit are those Christians who have participated in the spiritual
baptism, which unites them with Christ. Those who live in the flesh are the
Jewish Christians, who still have confidence in their special laws. Those
who live in the spirit are transformed by Christ and look forward to a
complete spiritual transformation with him, though now they are only
united with him in being reviled and in suffering.
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Ironically, the so-called weak were vastly more powerful around Jerusalem because they could rely on the feelings of their Jewish brothers.
Paul's final ideological point is always that, although the law is spiritual, it
is played out in the flesh, which is unredeemable. Faith is spiritual and
conquersfleshlyattempts at salvation. The law has been replaced by faith
(8:2), though the Torah-true converts might seem more vociferous. All of
this is an understandable intellectual position, but it is not possible to
make a single acceptable ritual practice out of it. Therefore, whenever Paul
encountered a group of Christians composed of Jews and gentiles, as when
he entered Jerusalem and deliberately created a mixed group, he was
doomed to be misunderstood by one side or the other, if judged on the
basis of his ritual actions: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the
law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh" (8:2).
It is also ironic that Paul should make his strongest statements about
the relationship between Torah and grace in Romans, in the context of
having to justify a retreat. But he conquers the bitterness of his misfortune,
turning it into an occasion for meditation. By means of his personal predicament, he illustrates that it is the flesh and not the law itself that causes
the law to bring men to death rather than to life. His rhetoric has the added
advantage of addressing his Christian listeners in the same position, those
who were wondering whether and how to keep the law of the flesh after
they had become persons of the spirit. Paul does not begin with an evaluation of Torah in general so much as describe his experience. He feels he can
generalize in warning people that their new Christian commitment has
implications in regard to all Jewish Christians' previously learned attitude
toward Torah. One can avoid the foods that offend the sensibilities of the
weak and one can even swear to avoid all flesh in order to satisfy those
who demand it, but it is faith and notfleshlyobservance that brings about
salvation. He could be warning his readers that his attempt to compromise
is unwise, but the letter appears to address gentile Christians who are not
affected by the compromise in the same way. To them he preaches forbearance, tolerance, and understanding of the opposing opinion.
There are limits to Paul's toleration. For him, the life of faith is life
immortal, life under the law ends in death. In Romans 8 Paul talks about
the social manifestations of the distinction between law and faith. There
are two communities, one defined by law and the other defined by faith.
Those who are defined by law are a fleshly community:
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But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of
God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does
not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are
dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If
the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who
raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies
also through his Spirit which dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are
debtors, not to flesh, to live according to the fleshfor if you live
according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death
the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of
God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall
back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we
cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our
spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of
God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order
that we may also be glorified with him. (8:9-17)
Paul is again speaking of the transformation of believers, which he
links to baptism and faith. Paul strongly contrasts the life in the spirit to
that under the flesh. Life in the flesh corresponds to life dedicated to the
special laws of Judaism, whether as Jew or gentile convert to Christianity
("for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you
put to death the deeds of the body you will live"). Paul contrasts this with
the spiritual life of his community, in accordance with his apocalyptic
vision. Those who put confidence in the works of the law are condemning
themselves to death, as the body itself dies. But those who put their confidence in the spirit of God, which has entered their lives through baptism,
will become sons of God. Paul is relying on a metaphor of adoption.
Roman law provided that even slaves could be adopted as the master's
children and heirs.29 Paul relies on this exceptional change in status to
express the value of the speaker. The adoption metaphor must have
seemed especially apt for a gentile, who in entering Christianity could be
adopted into Israel's destiny.
The adoption image develops in multiple ways in Paul's mind. His
argument moves forward by association; he states that this spiritual process culminates in being glorified with Christ, although all that is evident
to earthly eyes so far is a likeness in suffering. In this context Paul plays on
another implication of sonship:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth compar-
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ing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits
with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation
was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who
subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of
God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail
together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who
have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were
saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he
sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with
patience. (Rom. 8:1815)
In the context of the travail of creation, adoption and sonship become
synonymous with redemption. Paul mentions the liberty of the children of
God that will be evident when the sons of God are revealed. Since sonship
in this case appears related to the apocalyptic end and since sons of God in
8:19 appears to refer to angels, it is possible that Paul is again referring to
the apocalyptic transformation that is central to his spiritual experience.
The spiritual Christians will live eternally by virtue of their sonship, their
angelic status. But even in describing the apocalyptic hope, Paul is discussing his sense of how God's plan differs for the two different Christian
communities. Observing law in these end-times is of no concern. What is
important is spiritual transformation, which will soon be made evident to
everyone at the last judgment. Paul's language of social distinctions is
sectarian, resembling the Qumran community in some respects. But his
vision goes beyond anything that has so far been discovered at Qumran.
One can expect opposition to Paul's vision. For this reason, he councils
patience in the face of opposition and persecution. Paul takes his own
sufferings over his legal perspective as exemplary of unification with
Christ's sufferings and counsels his churches to take the same patient
attitude. Soon the glorious aspect of identification with Christ will also be
evident.
R O M A N S 12
Paul discusses several interesting aspects of Torah with his Jewish
Christian brethren. He also speaks to the gentiles, showing that the Roman church was a mixed group, containing both Jews and gentiles. In fact,
Paul speaks far more often to the gentile Christians than to the Jews.30 It is
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possible that the tensions in the Roman community were a result of the
Edict of Claudius, expelling the Jews in 49 or 50 CE., followed by their
gradual return to a predominantly gentile community.31 Romans 12
should thus be seen as an appeal to the gentiles for tolerance and understanding, first for the sudden departure of their Jewish brethren and then
for their slow return. They are not to pride themselves on the defeat of
their opponents but to recognize that despite their differences they form
one body in Christ (12:4-6); indeed, they must compete with one another
in showing honor (12:10). The chapter seems to be an enumeration of
what toleration is: "contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality" (12:13), "live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but
associate with the lowly," "never be conceited" (12:16); "take thought
for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon
you, live peaceably with all" (12:17-18).
The strong are adjured not to be tempted to return to Jewish Christian
practice either, but only to tolerate it where necessary. Their sacrifice is to
be spiritual. As John Koenig has pointed out, it is quite striking in this
context that Paul should appeal to his readers to present themselves as
"living men" (zntas [6:13]) and as "a living sacrifice" (thusian zsan
[12:1]). This must mean that the living sacrifice he demands in 12:1 is
related closely to the baptismal speech in Romans 6, where believers are
not to yield their members into sin but to "yield yourselves to God as men
who have been brought from death to life, and your members [ta mel
human] to God as instruments of righteousness" (6:13). They are not to
submit to circumcision or to be tempted by such desires, but their whole
bodies are to be sacrificed through the immersion in baptism to the new
spiritual understanding of law. Since they ritually die as they are sacrificed,
the special ordinances of Judaism no longer apply to them. These phrases
refer to and contrast with a Pharisaic understanding of the requirements of
ceremonial law. He warns the Roman community not to yield to ceremonial law as he appeared to do; moreover, he explains what his position
actually is.
The commands not to be conformed (m syscbmatizesthe), rather to
be transformed (metamorphousthe), are in the present tense, showing that
the action is continuous. The temptation to rely on a fleshly Christianity is
continuous. The pressure to conform is constant. It is clear, then, that Paul
has continually felt the pressure to return to the observance of Jewish law;
thus, he assumes that others in his congregation also feel it. He wants to
combat this desire, which is foreign to modern Christians, who have
largely missed the significance of these statements.
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PAUL T H E APOSTLE
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Therefore, any doctrinal conclusions from Paul's discussion must begin with an appreciation of Paul's personal voice and the reasons for his
apologia. Paul's intention was to meld two communities together; the
result was that he himself was brought into danger. Paul's own commitment to Christian unity and to bringing the Jewish and gentile wings of the
church into fellowship spelled disaster for him. Though neither Jewish nor
Christian tradition has sufficiently appreciated it, Paul's soliloquy in Romans 7 is his own reflection on his attempt to make a single community by
accommodation in ritual but not in principlethe issue that brought him
into trouble at Jerusalem. Romans 7 is the stuff of tragedy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SALVATION OF
ISRAEL
PAUL'S C H O I C E AND C O N F R O N T A T I O N
Paul not only accommodated his practice in going to Jerusalem, he also confronted the Jerusalem church with an entirely different and
apparently offensive way of understanding the new Christian community.
Though Paul was willing to retreat on all issues for the sake of one community, he was unwilling that there be two, separate communities. He insisted that Titus and at least one other uncircumcised Christian accompany
the offering to Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8:2023). Acts 20:4 names several other
gentiles, thus calling into question the nature of Christian community.
Would the Jerusalem church be one community with Sopater of Beroea,
Aristarchus, Titus, and the others? Paul is adamant in his desire for a single
Christian community; but Acts portrays Paul's attempt as a failure. There
is no reason to disbelieve Acts on this subject, since we have seen the
evidence for the failure within Paul's writing itself. There is, however, no
reason to believe that the specific events transpired as Acts maintains.
Neither the Jewish community nor the Jewish Christian community
shared Paul's conception of a single community of Jews and gentiles. The
gentiles appeared to have been as happy as the Jewish Christians to remain
separate. Jewish ritual, either present or absent, was bound to symbolize a
communal conflict. First the Jerusalem church and then, with its instigation, the Jewish community itself raised strong voices against Paul. From
their perspective, he had encouraged the people to give up their ancestral
customs. If he had preached that a gospel without Jewish ceremonial laws
was appropriate for gentiles, then the hostility of the Jewish Christian
community would have been less vehement. Many Jews would have sym2-54
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pathized with Paul's mission to enjoin morality on the gentiles and would
have agreed that they need not keep the special laws of Judaism. The
problem was that he wanted to create a single community with unconverted gentiles, which offended a sizable section of the Jewish church.
Paul's life was apparently endangered by his preaching that Jews give up
special laws. The audience Paul met first in Jerusalem and then possibly at
Rome was hostile, for in Rome, as in Jerusalem, there was a significant
Jewish community before the Christian community was formed, and the
Christianity that first took root was one that accepted significant parts of
the Jewish law.
We cannot assume that the Jewish-gentile argument was past history
by the time of Acts. The continued importance of eating rules in Christianity in the second century, witnessed by such documents as the Didache, suggests that the Jewish mission was partly successful and that
Jewish practices continued to be a question. Robert Wilken has shown
that as late as Chrysostom (350--407 C.E.) there was a tendency in the
Christian community to want to visit synagogues.1 Gentiles were attracted
by the special laws of Judaism because they were mandated by the Bible
and performed with seriousness and dignity by the Jewish community.
The influence on Christians of Jewish law observance, promoted by a
Jewish contingent in the church, must have continued for centuries,
though it became less critical. It certainly cannot be dismissed in a generation.
R O M A N S 1 AND 2
It is generally acknowledged that Romans represents the latest
extant statement of Paul and that it is, therefore, a summary of Paul's
mature thinking. But the importance of Romans can be misleading, for
nothing in the letter suggests that Paul means it to resolve or replace his
earlier thought. It was also written at the verge of Paul's greatest disappointment, his (partly anticipated) rejection by the Jerusalem leadership of
Judaism and the Jewish Christians. Though Romans may reflect his latest
apostolic thinking, the situation to which it was written is also most
pressing, so it is as occasional as the other letters, not a systematic theology. Paul's formula for Christian unity did eventually work, once the
Jewish component of Christianity was attenuated enough to be powerless
to oppose it. But it could not be practiced while the performative utterances of Jewish law were clearly understood by many Christians, since
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in some ways his most challenging writing. Though Romans states Paul's
position clearly, it is also written in anxiety and in the hope of conciliation.
Paul's sense of foreboding is best expressed in Rom. 15:30-33: "I
appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the
Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that
I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for
Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may
come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. The God of peace
be with you all. Amen." The unbelievers in Judea might be Jews but they
must also include some of the most conservative Jewish Christians who are
unfaithful in the sense that they continue to insist on the Jewish ceremonial
law for gentile Christians. The saints in Jerusalem are, presumably, the
more moderate Jewish Christians living there, perhaps the family and
immediate successors of Jesus. But Paul does not feel confident of their
approval or acceptance, to say nothing of his acceptance by the unbelieving Jews.
Romans 2 should be seen in the context of Paul's scrapes with the law
and his anxiety about coming to Jerusalem and Rome. It is also one of the
most puzzling pieces of Pauline writing, because Paul appears to contradict his earlier discussions of the value of faith. Paul begins by quoting his
favorite passage in the Hebrew Bible, Hab. 2:4, "He who through faith is
righteous shall live," declaring that salvation shall come to all who have
faith, "to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16). He still gives
priority of position to the Jews because God called them first. By the end of
the letter Paul will sadly admit that the order of the call to faith has been
reversed. But immediately thereafter Paul depicts both Jew and gentile as
condemned on the same basis, since God shows no partiality (2:11). The
gentiles are condemned universally in Rom. 1:18-32. In chapter 2, he
begins with a meditation on the limitations of law, addressing himself to
"man"that is, humanity in general.4 He says ironically that God will
"render to all persons according to their works" {2:6). And again: "For it
is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of
the law who will be justified" (2:13). This starts a diatribe against the Jews
who, though they have the law, are as sinful as the gentiles who do not
have it. Circumcision is of benefit for those who possess the law, but it
becomes uncircumcision to Jewish sinners, whereas a righteous gentile is
to be regarded as truly circumcised. The true Jew is one inwardly and the
truly circumcised man is one whose heart is purified.5
The difficulties with this passage are manifold. Although Paul states
that redemption is through faith, he goes on to say that people are judged
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PAUL THE A P O S T L E
Jews or by Jewish courts using Torah, by judges who are likely to be as lax
about practice as he is now and more lax than he was when he was a
Pharisee, because ordinary Diaspora Jewish Torah practice was often no
more pious or consistent than Christian God-fearing practice of Torah. As
a lapsed Pharisee he would see all other Jewish practice as insufficiently
pious. He is therefore questioning the assumptions by which he has been
and could be judged. One difference between Paul's behavior and other
nonpious Jewish behavior was that he recommended his practice to gentiles as an alternative to practicing the law, rather than simply practicing
Judaism according to the dictates of his conscience. But from Paul's exPharisaic perspective, any judgment against him by ordinary Jews was
bound to seem hypocritical. This meaning emerges if Paul's use of nomos
is completely understood. Paul normally uses nomos to mean Torah, for
Torah had been translated into Greek as custom or law by all major
Hellenistic Jewish writers. Many scholars have wrongly pointed out that
nomos is a bad translation for Torah, since nomos can mean ordinary
custom and Torah. Although Torah is partly legal enactment, it is essentially the story of the covenant, hence transcendent and revelatory.8
But nomos itself does not exactly mean law in our sense of statute or
court decision. It is rather a procedure or practice. Greek papyri refer to
marriage as a nomos keimenos, enduring practice, implying a mutual
agreement, which is close to what the Hebrews called a covenant and has,
in fact, been translated as covenant.9 Further, nomos did have many
transcendent connotations, especially in stoicism. When the Septuagint
translated Torah as nomos it was not mistaken. Nor does Paul misunderstand torah as ordinance because of his use of nomos. Of course, no two
words in different languages ever precisely translate each other. Paul,
however, always understands Torah to be divinely given law. But because
nomos means gentile law and practice as well as the Jewish Torah, he can
use the same word to refer both to Jewish justice and gentile justice.
In Romans, Paul uses the ordinary Greek understanding of nomos as
coterminous with the ordinary Jewish understanding of it. He is merely
taking up felt injustices of Jewish and pagan law in turn. He is thus playing
on the similarity in Greek terminology between ordinary civil, Roman law
and divine Torah. Scholars have misunderstood the latitude of nomos,
describing everything from divine law to human judgment. Hence they
have misunderstood Paul's ability to depend on that latitude when
necessary.
Paul is discussing the value of ordinary, civil legal procedure or
custom, which can include Jewish law as well. He begins with the human
2.62.
is what one would expect after a discussion of the injustices done to him, in
which Jewish disobedience is so clearly outlined: "Then what advantage
has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way"
(Rom. 3:1z). When Paul speaks of the role of Torah in salvation, he
points out that its purpose is to foretell the coming of Christ (Rom. 3:1),
his least controversial understanding of its value to Christianity. Then,
with the rhetorical change of direction typical of his writing, he begins a
discourse that defends the value of God's law, maintaining that law's value
is relative to the greater value of faith. In the midst of this discussion Paul
meditates on the ultimate value of belonging to Israel (Rom. 9-11).
Paul uses the term Israel consistently to refer to the Jewish people, as
opposed to the church fathers who formalized a doctrine of the church as a
"New Israel."10 He likewise does not use the word Christian to refer to the
new religion, for either Paul did not know it (possibly it had not even been
coined) or he objected to it. Had he used it, the term Christian, like the
Pauline phrase in Christ, would not have necessarily designated a completely new phenomenon.
Paul's phrase in Christ represents his closest approximation of a definition of community; but he never allows that term to serve as a proper
noun. Paul's lack of a specific term to refer to Christianity is puzzling, but
it is understandable both in terms of Paul's polemical object, as well as his
other goals of reconciliation between Jews, Jewish Christians, and gentile
Christians. Paul did not desire to describe Christianity as a completely
different phenomenon from Judaism, for, as he clarifies in Romans, he saw
it as the fulfillment of Judaism and as part of it. In Christ is also consonant
with the general use of language in the first century. Paul's imprecision of
language is paralleled by other sectarian groups; for instance, at Qumran
the term Israel is used for the whole people, though the community
thought of itself as the only righteous remnant destined for salvation.
Although one might ordinarily expect a strong and well-developed term of
self-reference, Qumran had a variety of designations for itself, including
sons of light. They apparently only refer to themselves as Israel when
speaking of the apocalyptic future, when the unbelieving sons of Israel
have been destroyed.
E. P. Sanders says, following N. A. Dahl, that a similar situation obtained in Paul's thinking. Paul normally uses such terms as new creation or
body of Christ, to describe the church. Sanders maintains that he uses
the term Israel of God (Gal. 6:16) to refer to the church. Sanders thinks
that Paul might have intended this term to cover the future period when
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Though the differences between Jew and gentile were not solved during Paul's life, whenever the social cohesion he desired was achieved within Christian churches it was by the means he suggested: transformation or
conversion. In spite of the ferocious battles between Jewish and gentile
Christians, no other Jewish sect developed the same kind of cohesion with
gentiles that Christianity didwith both Jew and gentile wedded to one
single concept of community, which is precisely what Paul wanted. Further, no other Jewish sect succeeded in producing a community so thoroughly adept at successful proselytism.
Paul was not the first convert to Christianity, but his life became a
model for gentile Christians and Jews to follow. His work fueled the
Christian community even after its apocalyptic vision of the world
dimmed. All the variables that modern scholars see as important to the
creation of social cohesion were addressed by Paul's concept of metamorphosis. Further, it was a spiritual or psychic phenomenon whose effects in the world could be transmitted to the next generation of believers
by means of education and training. This balanced and emotionally predictable kind of metamorphosis, a continuously developing process of
salvation, was more valuable to the growth of the community than a
concept of a sudden, soon-to-arrive eschaton. All aspects of Paul's theory
did not, however, find ready acceptance even in a largely gentile church;
for instance, wherever charismatic leadership threatened to destroy
church polity, Paul's theory still needed to be controlled by apostolic
authority. Paul's idea of conversion into the community of repentant
sinners was a potent factor in the success of Christianity, no matter how it
might have offended the dominant Jewish Christian sector of the church in
Paul's own day.
Paul's thinking was radical for the later church as well. He left open the
possibility of Gnostic interpretation.14 In fact, his letters became the principal New Testament texts of a large section of gnostic Christianity. In
Gnosticism, the necessary control was also correlated with apostolic authority, which mounted an apologetic for the importance of Old Testament prophecy. Paul can no more be blamed for the free interpretations of
his Gnostic readers than he can for those of twentieth-century scholars.
Yet on the issue of Jewish-gentile relations, the basic issue of the earliest
church, Paul was invaluable despite his failure to achieve his vision in his
own day.
Once the gentile church came to predominate, the failure of Paul's
attempt to effect a reconciliation in his own day was forgotten. The social
ramifications of using Paul's experience as normative for all Christianity
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emotional experience, such as gifts of the spirit. Nor did he feel he had
sinned in any way in his previous life. Luke and the pastoral Epistles saw
Paul as a convenient model to pattern future gentile conversions. Paul the
sinner and the emotional convert was a more relevant portrait for a burgeoning gentile church than Paul the metamorphosized Pharisee.
By contrast, Paul's letters represent the novelty and isolation of a
number of gentile Christian communities seeking self-definition as a growing minority within the church. Paul records their first defense against
some of the Jewish-Christian communities' criticism of gentiles. As Paul's
letters outline a new idea for a unified community, so too they suggest the
dynamics separating the two communities. The width of the chasm between them is suggested by Paul's vituperation. But the nature of the
cohesion that internally bound each of the two communities and separated
them from each other differed radically, preventing the kind of unification
that Paul desired. The gentile Christians, like the rabbis, saw the distinction between Jew and gentile to be one of purity and impurity but no bar to
gentile salvation, provided they remained in their own communities. They
advised gentiles wishing to join with Jews in a single community to be
circumcised and to practice ritual purity. Gentiles converted to Judaism
would have found Paul's gentile Christianity without circumcision to be
specious. Jewish Christians who found Christianity to complete their Judaism were in a peculiar bind, especially if their Judaism was heavily
tinged with traditional Jewish apocalypticism, because Paul, speaking for
the new gentile Christian communities, insisted on the total unification of
the movement. In the gentile churches, surrounded by the larger gentile
community, the wall separating unconverted and converted gentiles may
on occasion have been higher than the one separating the ordinary Jew
from a gentile, due to apocalyptic sentiments and cognitive dissonance.
This wall was held up by the apocalyptic notion that outside the group all
were damned and reinforced by the internal cohesion of a community
based on conversion. The high number of conversion experiences in gentile Christianity would have reinforced group cohesion among the more
gradual converts as well. The greater number of radical conversions, the
higher the morale of the group. In the area of religion, as in other human
endeavors, success breeds success. If Paul's letter are, however, representative of a split, the Jewish Christians could not trust gentiles to keep away
from their former coreligionists. Jewish Christians probably were still part
of the Jewish communities in several important ways, as the issue of meat
sacrificed to idols suggests. The widespread success of gentile Christianity,
with its differing possibilities of interaction with ordinary gentiles, made
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most salient characteristic of this group was their double sense of ambiguity: having opted to change their ways, they could not be accepted fully
into Jewish life until they were circumcised and began the practice of
Jewish law. The attachment of this group of God-fearers to the synagogue
varied from a neighborly financial support to potential conversion. Although women did not have to undergo circumcision in order to convert to
Judaism and women in rabbinic Judaism also attained to an equality of
status that was not guaranteed elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, the
promise of higher status for women in early Christianity might have attracted some gentile and Jewish women alike.
As biased and ahistorical as Luke's reporting of Paul might have been,
there was no reason for him deliberately to fabricate the details of the
mission when they were known to him. If the social situation that Luke
describes does not apply fully to Paul's time, it certainly describes the time
of Luke, which is as important from this viewpoint. Luke reports that
when Paul arrived in a new town, he often turned to the synagogue for
lodging and support, as would any Jewish traveler, but also sought out the
synagogue as a pulpit from which to advance his mission. Luke clearly has
actual experience of this kind of proselytism, whether or not it corresponds to Paul's experience.
This mission would not have been turned exclusively to Jews, for there
were always gentile listeners in synagogues. Many religions attracted gentile attention by virtue of their exotic beliefs and ceremonies or because of
the ethics and morality with which they governed their lives, and Jews
were no exception. We have evidence of the continuing attraction of
gentiles to the synagogue. The Christian mission would have been most
effective where Jews gathered and where there was a population of transients away from their closest family ties. Though Jews welcomed proselytes, it is unlikely that the synagogue itself indulged in the kind of
missionizing that characterized early Christianity.
According to Luke, the results of Paul's synagogue missionizing were
mixed. Gentiles were often intrigued but Jews were scandalized. Diaspora
synagogues could have had understandings of Torah different from the
early rabbinic movement, but they did not welcome the rancor and competition instigated by Paul and the Christian missionaries. Nor did they
appreciate any interruptions of their services to discuss an apocalyptic
end. The most obvious charge against Christian proselytism in synagogues, given the Lukan description, was disturbing the peace. This was
not a misdemeanor, as it is in our society, but a crime that in theory risked
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neither Jewish food laws nor the apocalyptic end were well understood.
On the opposite extreme of gentile interpretation of apocalypticism was
Thessalonica, where apocalypticism appears to have crossed the border
into millenarianism. From the evidence of Paul's letters, apocalypticism
and Jewish ritual law, with the attendant commitment to group maintenance, were still dominant in the majority of the early churches.
In spite of the occasional pulpit that Christianity found in the marketplaces and synagogues, it also spread by one-to-one evangelizing. The
spread would not have appeared fast to the casual observer. Yet, over a
generation or two, the results must have been clear enough to anyone
concerned. Paul's record supports the idea that some Jews must have been
proselytizing pagans; the Hellenistic literary remains leave no doubt that
some Jews were interested in clarifying the status of God-fearing pagans.
But Paul offered something that no other Jewish proselytizer had been able
to offerthe promises of Judaism but with the peculiar responsibilities of
the special laws entirely optional (Rom. 14:5-9). This was to be an explosive new formula that changed the spiritual picture of the late Roman
Empire. It attracted Hellenistic Jews, like Timothy, as well as gentiles, like
Titus. The stories in Acts underline the truth of the statements for his time
more than for the time of Paul himself. It was Paul's clearly articulated
transformation, his experience of conversion, that made this new insight
possible. In the first generations, Paul's promise fell short because both the
Jewish Christian community and the Jewish community viewed the inclusion of antinomian gentiles and observant Jews in one community with
alarm.
Time was on the side of the gentile community. Christian communities
formulated on Pauline conversion experiences might have had a higher
degree of commitment than the Jewish Diaspora communities, for instance, which continued to observe Jewish law in an attenuated way. If the
gentiles were an embattled group within Christianity, their commitment
would have been far higher because of cognitive dissonance.
The gentile community eventually surpassed the Jewish Christian one.
But even when the trend was overwhelmingly in favor of gentile Christianity, the balance would have depended on local populations for generations. As an embattled minority, ostracized by Judaism and Christianity,
the Jewish Christian group could then have attained more commitment
than the growing gentile one. There is evidence of their continued existence, but their political and economic situation seems to have deteriorated as the gentile Christian community increased and flourished. It is likely
that Christianity continued to gain converts from the Diaspora syn-
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2.74
T H E JEWISH R E A C T I O N
As Christianity spread, the rabbinic movement also spread.
Both entered the cities of Judah and Galilee. Rabbinism, however, became
most powerful in the smaller cities of the Galilee where Jesus preached,
and Christianity spread most quickly in the large Hellenistic cities, where
more anomolous and uprooted people were to be found. The social structure of the small cities and towns favored rabbinism. Within the Jewish
community Christianity proved just as fractious. But the issue of law was
not the only issue dividing Christianity from Judaism. The rabbis mention
a heresy called "two powers in heaven," which must certainly refer to
Christian beliefs, among others.18 Rabbinism shows that the divinity of
the risen Lord was a primary theological offense in the eyes of the Jews.
There were, however, other Hellenistic and apocalyptic Jews of the first
century who valorized one particular biblical hero or angel to the point of
divinity. In those cases we cannot be sure whether the rabbis, or any other
group in the Jewish community, would have called the sectarians heretics
or done anything about it.
In the case of Christians there could be no doubt. Christianity firmly
proclaimed the divinity of the second Lord and offered prayers to him as a
god.19 Breaking down the distinction between God and man directly
paralleled their breaking down the distinction between Jew and gentile.20
Thus, the rabbinic community evolved specific theological reasons for
objecting to Christianity. The Christians against whom the rabbis railed
were probably Jewish Christians. Most of the rest of Judaism was officially opposed to Christianity as well, though one can imagine that some
less-committed members of the Jewish Diaspora community were attracted to Christianity. We do not know how often interested Christians
listened to synagogue sermons or how much Jews cared about what was
happening in the churches. But certainly some knowledge was transmitted
through polemic. We find that the same terms used by Jews against Christians find their way into internal orthodox Christian polemics against
Gnostics.21 So as the rabbinic community gained strength, it fought the
Christian community as a heresy; but if rabbinic records are accurate, the
active confrontations were infrequent and involved vituperation or ostracism rather than punishment.
ACTS OF T H E APOSTLES O N
THE PEOPLE OF G O D
This is a rough picture of the growing religious sect, no longer
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ROMANS 9 - 1 1
The emerging failure of the Christian message to the Jewish
and Jewish Christian community informs Paul's discussion of the purpose
of Israel. The end of Romans is Paul's mature thinking about the future of
Israel. Though Romans 911 has often been read dogmatically as a meditation on free will and predestination, the conclusions for theology arise
only secondarily, as a result of Paul's personal ruminations about the
traditional role of Israel after Christ.23 In Galatians, Paul had been concerned with clarifying that new converts did not have to observe Torah. In
Romans, by contrast, Paul turns to the issues of the election of Israel and
the ultimate fate of the Jews. These issues are not internal ones between
gentile Christians and Judaizers siding with the Jewish Christians. Paul
addresses the rejection of the Christian mission in toto by the majority of
the Jewish community. Paul's argument divides neatly into three parts.
First, he propounds that the failure of Israel to convert is not incompatible
with God's promises to Israel (Romans 9). Second, he maintains that the
hardening of Jewish hearts is due to their own lack of faith and is a
response to their own guilt (9:3010:21}. Third, Paul maintains that the
Jewish rejection of Christ will not last forever, for God will eventually
show mercy and save all Israel (Romans n ) . 2 4
These statements are offered independently, and it is not clear that they
can all be held simultaneously. But philosophical consistency was not the
purpose of Paul's remarks; rather, they express Paul's sorrow that the rest
of Israel has not followed him in seeing the truth of the Christian message,
combined with his desire to protect the promises of the Hebrew Bible from
the allegation of inconsistency, based on his novel interpretation of them.
These are not likely to be theoretical issues, for they are criticisms that
could have been plausibly leveled at him in discussions with Jewish Christians. His basic answer is that God has not changed his mind about the
promises offered to Israel; they are still valid. But the way in which they are
valid must be seen in a different light after Christ.
Paul states that not all who are descended from Israel belong to it. This
is a natural sectarian understanding of the promises of the Hebrew Bible
and illustrates how conflict enforces the pariah mentality of the sectarian.
The prophets and the apocalyptic movements for which we have any
literary evidence, from the book of Daniel through the Qumran community, held that only a righteous remnant of Israel would survive the coming
judgment of God. There is nothing unusual in this thinking. But Paul's
exegesis is quite different from those of the prophets and the apocalyp-
27
[telos] of the Law, that everyone who has faith may be justified." Paul uses
biblical exegesis to support this strong statement. He cites two pieces of
Scripture that apply to the righteousness under the law and under faith. He
contrasts Lev. 18:5, "The person who does them will live by them," with a
whole section of Deut. 30:1214 (amplified by such passages as Deut. 9:4,
Ps. 106 [107]: 2.6 LXX), which begins: "Say not in your heart, who shall
ascend to heaven?" Paul then adds his commentary: "that is to bring
Christ down from above."
Anyone who has read the Midrash will recognize Paul's midrashic
method. This passage is crucial for the understanding of religious choice in
Israelite culture, for it is an exegesis of the passage in Deuteronomy where
Moses exhorts the people to opt for the religion of God, providing the
basic warrant for religious conversion in Judea (see introduction above).
Paul, like Moses in Deuteronomy, is attempting to make his hearers understand the importance of their choice.
Like Moses, he exhorts them to choose life. He comments on "who
shall descend into the deep" with the words "to bring Christ again up from
the dead." Although this may seem like an unjustified reinterpretation, its
form is not unlike many other rabbinic remarks in which the relevance of a
biblical passage is asserted. The point of the passage, however, appears in
Rom. 10:8 where Paul emphasizes that the word of faith that Christ
teaches is near.
Paul has again set up a contradiction that would not have occurred to a
believing Jew, for whom both passages would have applied to Torah as
revealed on Mount Sinai. For Paul, after his conversion, the two passages
conflict. On the one hand, he describes the righteousness of Torah, including all the ordinances and prohibitions, that promises life; on the other
hand, he describes the righteousness of faith as close and easy to accomplish,
because it is based on accepting Christ and not on performing all the details
of Jewish ceremonial law. Paul does not deny either one, but tries to show
that the Deuteronomy passage contains the universal statement about
God's plan for humanity, whereas the Leviticus passage refers only to
ceremonial Torah in the most narrow sense. His point here is to make the
two paths equivalent because faith is the underlying point of similarity.25
The purpose of Paul's argument is not to eliminate Israel; rather, the
problem continues to be what it always was during his lifethe inclusion
of the gentiles into the community. Further, as has become clear in his
conflicts with Jewish Christians, all, not only gentiles, need to be evangelized. From Paul's perspective, most of the Jewish Christians have
missed the point of Christ's presence. There has never been more than a
z8o
gentile Christians (with faith) are equal, not that Jews and Christians are
equal. This is the meaning of his statement in Rom. i o : i z - i 3 , "For there
is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and
bestows His riches upon all who call upon Him. For 'Every one who calls
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.' " It would be better to take this
statement literally, as the rabbis did, that all who fear the Lord (and
therefore act justly) are assured a place in the world to come. In this
passage, however, Paul is implying that the name of God is Jesus the
Christ, as he himself had discovered in his ecstatic metamorphosis. Apocalypticism and Jewish mysticism consider that YHWH, the Lord, the proper
name of God, could signify God's principal angelic manifestation, his
Glory. Paul had seen the Glory of God in a vision, as Ezekiel had seen the
human figure of God on his throne approach from his temple in Jerusalem
and join the exiles on the banks of the Chebar River. The difference is that
Paul had identified the Glory of God as Christ. Relying on Jewish mystical
tradition and his private revelation that Christ is the principal mediator of
God, Paul is interpreting the name of the Lord to be Christ and faith to be
faith in Christ exclusively. Paul, however, does not draw a detailed picture
of what he envisions at the end of time, when some of Israel will embrace
Christianity.
Paul implies that only those who accept Christ will be saved, a momentous statement about the future of Israel; but, strangely, he does not
actually state it. Paul's refusal to spell out the implications of his reasoning
is extremely important. Having virtually committed himself to the proposition that only a remnant of Israel will be retained, the standard apocalyptic notion, he then surprisingly asserts the rabbinic notion that all Israel
will be saved (n:z6). That doctrine, which appears in rabbinic literature
in Mishnah Sanhdrin 10:1, is thus proven to be first-century Jewish
thought as well. It also demonstrates Paul's continuing allegiance to major
aspects of the rabbinic understanding of Torah, in spite of his conversion.
But, at this point, it adds mystery (11:2,5) not logical clarity to Paul's
discussion. Rather than merely abandon the unbelieving members of the
Jewish community, Paul asserts that God's promises to them are still
intact: "For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" (11:29). Of
course, he hopes that the remaining Jews will come to Christ as he did,
freely and without coercion. Though the mission to the Jews has been a
failure, God will eventually reveal the reason. Therefore, there need not be
a continuing Christian mission to the Jews.
Paul does not state exactly how the process of redemption for Jews will
come about. The ambiguity appears to be deliberate, as it is in line with
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2.84
never gave it a single name. Whatever it was, he never felt that he had left
Judaism. Like the early rabbis, Paul understood that God's ways are mysterious, hence human understandings must always leave room for ambiguities. Paul and the rabbis understood as well as anyone before or after that
the truths inherent in the biblical text are manifold, complex, and sometimes opposing. Scripture is a gem that gives off a different glint each time
it is turned in the light of analysis. It is time for us to realize this. Perhaps no
single point of view can do scripture justice.
APPENDIX
PAUL'S C O N V E R S I O N ;
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L STUDY
2.86
APPENDIX
A CRITICAL VOCABULARY
In an attempt to create a standardized vocabulary, psychological researchers call the religious change a conversion, even when the subjects themselves would call it a rebirth or a calling. Almost all researchers
used the term conversion to describe a dramatic religious change, even if
the change was between different denominations of the same religion. This
is important to the study of Paul because he was aware of no change in
religion when he entered Christianity. If the psychological vocabulary
could be maintained systematically, consistency alone would justify the
use of conversion to describe Paul. Yet, psychologists' definitions of conversion have also differed widely. Although many native vocabularies for
conversion have been rejected by modern research, no standard definition
has replaced it. Since empirical findings of early scholars have also not
proven stable, the lack of a uniform definition might have affected the
results of their research. Coe found that 31 percent of a group of seventyseven converts had experienced a sudden or striking transformation.6 E.
T. Clark found radical conversion in only 6.7 percent of his ,174 cases.7
Among students entering theological schools the incidence of sudden conversions has ranged from zero in an Anglo-Catholic seminary8 to 56
percent in an evangelical seminary.9 In a 1978 survey of over a thousand
American teenagers, 3 3 percent reported having had a conversion experience, of which 18 percent had sudden experiences. This included 2.0 percent of Protestant youth, 20 percent of the Southerners, and 14 percent of
young Catholics.10 Coe found zox experiences among ninety-nine men,
suggesting that multiple conversions are not uncommon.11 Neither the
figures nor the definitions can be directly compared because of enormous
differences in the way conversions were defined and described by the
researchers and the way in which the data was obtained.
In one attempt to clarify terms, Starbuck called the two types of conversion self-surrendering and volitional or voluntary. Others distinguished between active and passive conversions.12 Ames, and others,
wanted to restrict the word conversion to sudden religious changes and
emotional experiences only.13 Similarly, Coe carefully noted at least six
Appendix
2.87
senses of the term conversion but sought to restrict its use scientifically to
those that are both intense and sudden.14 The sudden, crisis-oriented
conversion was the central object of early studies, following the attention
given to Paul, Augustine, and other famous Christian conversions. The
studies proved that conversion, if understood as a dramatic psychological
event, is a significant feature in the history of Christianity and is still
common in many Christian denominations, though more common in
evangelical Protestant communities, where they are taken as a proof of
faith, than in Catholicism and the established Protestant denominations.
C O N V E R S I O N AND GUILT
According to Starbuck and James, the convert's preconversion
feelings of unworthiness, self-doubt, and self-deprecation are released or
overcome by the conversion process. Psychologically, conversion becomes
the solution to unbearable guilt and sin, which is in keeping with the
traditional Lutheran view of Paul's conversion. In fact, many writers mention Paul as the prime example of sudden conversion. Starbuck distinguished between conversions that take place in early adolescence and
those that take place thereafter. He found that feelings of sin and guilt
were present in two-thirds of all conversions, but he suggested that by late
adolescence the process was likely to become an extended and gradual
progress toward an integrated life rather than a single overwhelming emotional experience. These simplistic findings have been disputed. For instance, F. J. Roberts found that crisis converts had experienced guilt no
more often than gradual converts prior to their conversions. His study also
showed that those who converted to another faith were no more likely to
become neurotic or psychotic.15 His subjects, however, do not represent a
normal cross section of the population since they were made up entirely of
seminarians.
Although they attempted to free themselves from traditional religious
discourse, the early researchers' own theological categories unduly affected their findings. A step forward was made by E. T. Clark, who characterized three different kinds of conversion experiences among his subjects.
He outlined the sudden or crisis awakening in 6.7 percent of his subjects
and the gradual conversion experience in 27.z percent, and he also posited
an intermediate position, where a gradual process of religious growth is
accelerated by an emotional event that results in sudden religious change
(66.1 percent), which he called the emotional stimulus conversion. His
classification allows for the distinction between crisis and gradual conversions, but he admits tacitly that the ideal types are rarely evidenced in real
life. For Clark, most conversions tended to fall into the intermediary type.
Nevertheless, he was able to show that, proportionally, men showed
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APPENDIX
about six times as many definite crisis awakenings as did the women, who
evidenced more gradual conversions. The average age for the emotional
stimulus convert was twelve to fourteen years. A stern theology was closely associated with the pure type of crisis awakenings, suggesting that fear
and anxiety were large components in sudden conversions. Since 41 percent of the emotional stimulus conversion experiences studied by Clark
occurred during revivals, which not only were highly emotional settings
but opportunities for social control, his improved definition might have
left out important social variables. Purely psychological processes were
often found to be operant in sudden religious conversions. In his widely
cited research, Coe studied two groups of converts. Seventeen persons
reported that they expected striking transformations and actually experienced them, whereas twelve who anticipated the same changes did not. As
expected, Coe found that emotional factors were dominant in the former
group while cognitive factors dominated in the latter group. Persons who
experienced the striking transformations were likewise shown to be more
susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Whenever the conversion is sudden,
subjects usually report a resulting change in their behavior and mental
states.16 The change in behavior is always toward the moral values that
the religious groups espouse, and it is normally understood as repentance.
Extramarital sex, alcoholism, profanity, gossip, criticism, and aggression
diminish, while positive values, like generosity, charitableness, or the desire and ability to communicate with individuals or to spend time with
family and friends all increase.
O T H E R DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GRADUAL
A N D RADICAL CONVERTS
Another recent finding about people who undergo radical
emotional experiences is that they evidence a characteristic disharmony in
their cognitive evaluation of the new group. Those who undergo long
periods of training are more accepting of the beliefs of the new sect, for
they have longer periods in which to internalize them. Those who have
radical conversions may find that they have as many rational doubts about
the doctrine as before their emotional conversion. The process of education or resocialization in the new group has an important effect that is not
perceivable when focusing on a single individual's emotional experience.
In one group, the devotees distinguished between verbal converts, who
professed membership on the basis of their emotional experience, and
total converts who not only made verbal professions of belief but exhibited their commitment through knowledge of the group's values and took
an active interest in the group's maintenance.17 The literature suggests
that gradual conversions involve cognitive struggles with issues of mean-
Appendix
Z89
ing and purpose. Strickland observed that sudden conversions are less
frequent in a community where gradual conversions are common and
especially where they are encouraged through religious education and
where conversion is evaluated positively. As such, gradual converts
find purpose and meaning through their conversion in a socially approved
way. Initial enthusiasm, however, normally wanes, reaching a low but
stable level, suggesting that conversion alone cannot explain an individual's commitment to a specific group; rather, conversion is the initial
impetus that helps the believer find other sources of commitment.18 In his
early studies Coe said that sudden and gradual conversions should effectively complement each other for a community to function well. Sudden
conversion might be good for morale and motivation, but the emotional
instability and lack of knowledge of the sudden convert endangers the
continuity of a group. Building a stable commitment necessarily involves a
strong educational program. Even persons who themselves were sudden
converts often attempt to socialize their children via gradual conversion
processes.
RECENT STUDIES
The study of conversion was greatly accelerated by a new wave
of revivalism in a variety of radical sects among American youth in the
1960s and 1970s. One of the most famous and influential studies is by
John Lofland and Rodney Stark, who studied the Unification church of the
Reverend Sun Myung Moon.19 They developed a nonempirical, informal
guide for predicting a conversion, based on several interrelated variablespsychological, social, and accidental. They suggest that factors
influencing conversion are (1) an experience of tension or dissatisfaction
that is (2) interpreted within a religious perspective by (3) persons who
perceive themselves as active religious seekers. The person is likely to
convert if several environmental factors cooperate: (4) a cult is encountered at a crisis point; (5) a strong affective attachment is established with
one or more committed believers; (6) minimal contact is made with nonbelievers; and (7) intensive interaction is made between the subject and the
group. This description arises as much from logic and deduction as from
the data, though it has been used as an empirical, testable model.20
Lofland and Stark's model has often been criticized both for its lack of
relevance and for its lack of analytic value.21
The term brainwashing has also been employed to understand conversions. Brainwashing was a slang term coined to describe the torture of
American servicemen during the Korean War by the communist Chinese
and North Koreans for the purposes of gaining their cooperation. The
term was used by popular writers to describe the radical personality
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APPENDIX
changes that religious sectarians often underwent, implying that the conversions achieved by the new groups involved an unethical manipulation
of their devotee's rationality through mind-altering meditative techniques
or coercive persuasion.22 Recent studies have also noted a similarity to
religious conversion in hostages incarcerated by terrorists, as happened
most dramatically to Patty Hearst and to a lesser extent to hostages taken
in Iran and Beirut.
There is a nagging but incomplete analogy between these two kinds of
sudden emotional change. William Sargant noted that these experiences
might be stimulated by one of two contrasting techniques, which are used
to varying extents in prison camps and religious revivals. The first is
sensory deprivation, best illustrated by solitary confinement and sleep
deprivation, but similar to the sensory deprivation of contemplation and
meditation. The second method is its opposite, overstimulation, as
achieved in interrogations with strong lights and loud noises, but also in
relatively benign activities such as music making, drumming, and dancing.
Mind-altering drugs can function in either or both ways. Sargant also
noted that learning acquired under stressful conditions can evince greater
strength and retention. He recalled that some of Pavlov's dogs were
trapped in their laboratory cages during a flood. After being rescued they
were frightened of water, and some lapsed into a state of torpor wherein
their previously learned behaviors (conditioned reflexes) were completely
wiped out. New behaviors were readily learned in place of the conditioned
responses. So, Sargant reasoned, a lifetime of religious ideals might be
wiped out and replaced by a new faith acquired under strong emotional
duress.
Although there are obvious analogies between the two phenomena,
brainwashing is an indefinite and tendentious term. The changes that are
evident in concentration camps are stronger and more unstable than religious conversion. Some popular books describing religious conversion as
brainwashing evince outright hostility to the whole phenomenon. These
books are often based on biased researchreports by hostile observers
and no first hand observation of the groups.23 One can assume that conversions and brainwashing are similar in some respect and that different
phenomena are subsumed under each term. It is tempting to say that crisis
conversions are affected by emotional conflicts and are less stable than
gradual conversions, but there are many exceptions. A significant factor in
the outcome of conversion experiences is the nature of the communities
that the subject leaves and that he or she enters. Conversion can apply to
many different changesthe movement between denominations within
the same religion or the movement to an opposing religious philosophy
with a radically different life-style.
Appendix
291
E M O T I O N A L CRISIS IN RADICAL
CONVERSIONS
Modern groups accused of brainwashing are often those
whose life-style is radically different from the community left behind, even
if the highly charged emotions they produce are enticed rather than tortured out of subjects. Highly charged emotional experiences are not unknown in American life. Revival meetings throughout American history
have typically had as their main purpose the stimulation of public conversion, with music, sermons, and the related publicity of personal witness all
directed toward that end. These revivals have been criticized as insincere
Christianity, fakery, and fraud. But since they were dramatic and viewed
as Christian mission, as well as improving workers' morals, morale, and
efficiency, they are often evaluated as more positive than foreign sects in
contemporary media. Religious groups have greatly increased their popularity among the young by developing the manipulation of emotional
experience to a science. Some recent studies on cult activities point out that
the social dynamic and attitude change effected in conversion events are
more reliable measures of the event than the emotion itself, though it is the
emotion that is sought after and elicited by the cult leaders.
The meaning of the heightened emotions, whether understood as the
infusion of spirit or as internal joy accompanying contemplation as taught
by oriental disciplines, appears to be learned in the context of the individual cult. Sometimes even radically differing interpretations of emotional states cannot be distinguished physiologically. Stanley Schachter's
attributive theory of emotion bears heavily on the meaning of an intense
emotional experience in conversion.24 Emotions, as opposed to reason,
are relatively nonspecific and crude responses to situations. According to
Schachter's theory, a subject has a large range of possible interpretations
of physical arousal. The subject first feels an undefined physiological state
and labels it as a specific emotion depending on the social context. In one
situation, a person will interpret a fast pulse as fright, in another as sexual
arousal, in a third as physical illness. The emotional system of a human
being depends heavily on perception and cognition, as well as on social
context for interpretation. Anxiety combined with various deprivation
stateslack of sleep, food, or waterand contemplation, meditation, or
feelings of happiness in the company of a group of caring friends could
bring on ecstasy, and hence it can be interpreted by religious subjects as the
activity of the Holy Spirit.25
The relevance of these experiments to conversion literature is easy to
see: ecstatic states are important cues in some communities for thinking
that conversion has taken place, but they are relatively nonspecific emo-
292.
APPENDIX
tional states that can be generated by a number of techniques and are not
universally necessary for conversion. Emotional states influence learning
but apparently influence commitment more. A convert does not cognitively know more about the group after an ecstatic experience than
before, though the subject's motivation and attachment might be radically
changed. Subjects might continue to question the group's explicit doctrines or outrightly disbelieve them, although they join with and feel happy
in the group. As time goes on, however, subjects usually begin to believe
more of the doctrine, possibly because they encounter fewer conflicting
opinions. But what usually changes in an emotional encounter is primarily
the motivation of the believer.
Many social scientists have been misled into thinking that emotional or
ecstatic experience is the sine qua non for conversion. It is merely one
dimension of the conversion process that can be given special meaning in
various conversion communities.26 Some social science stresses the comparison between conversion and brainwashing, implying that the persuasion is the result of the suggestion that compliance will yield a relief from
the brainwashing techniques or the conflict that a person might feel acutely. The conflict in the case of conversion could be rooted in many sources
other than incarceration and torture. It could come from doubt, stress,
consciousness of incoherent or wrong beliefs, the perception of hypocrisy
or contradiction. But this definition depends on considering conversion a
rapid phenomenon. Other religious communities, like Judaism for instance, understand conversion entirely on the cognitive levelas a change
in ritual and purity status, a decision embarked on after long training.
Anxiety and stress are often products of new social environments.
These strong emotions, brought on by the renunciation of a past life,
together with the desire for communion with the new group, are always
given effective religious meanings by a religious group. Though the image
of brainwashing might not be helpful, some unscrupulous religious groups
might manipulate the emotions of potential converts deliberately and
other sincere religious groups might unintentionally manipulate emotions;
except in cases of deliberate fraud, the manipulation might be a strong
form of the same kind of manipulation that any society uses to educate its
members.
There is an important analogy between brainwashed subjects and convertsnamely, value inversion. Brainwashed subjects evince characteristic and radical value changes, for instance, calling something good
that they once believed was bad. In concentration camps, inmates often
imitate the behavior of their jailorsfor instance, pinning on scraps of
Appendix
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294
APPENDIX
merits of converts are likely to be typical of all the converts to the same
group. Converts subscribe to the norms of their newfound groups, not the
group to which the clinical psychologists subscribe. Although a group's
converts may contain its share of psychopaths, conversion to extreme
groups cannot be adequately explained or predicted by psychopathology.
Numerous empirical studies illuminate the positive problem-solving value
of conversions on the individual and social level.32 Psychoanalytic studies
of Paul have been more biased than psychoanalytic studies of conversion
in general. An exception is Gerd Theissen's Psychological Aspects of
Pauline Theology.33 It does a remarkable amount of good exegesis from a
psychoanalytic and cognitive point of view. But it suffers from the methodological issue that infects every attempt at psychohistory. The psychoanalytic datareports from the give and take of analysisare not
available for ancient personalities. Some psychohistory has been relatively
successful, such as the psychohistory of Augustine, which is still highly
idealized. Paul, by comparison, gives us almost no biographical information, making the best possible psychoanalytic analysis flagrant speculation.
Research in the phenomenon of conversion has been changing from
psychological to sociological orientations. In place of a passive subject,
converted by external powers over which he or she has no control, as in
Luke's description of Paul's conversion, the sociological research stresses
the social dimension of the conversion experience and a subject who
actively develops a new world of meaning by conversion and entrance into
a new community. It also sees that the community itself has an enormous
effect on the meaning of a conversion.34 This perception of the active role
of the convert in reforming the world is important to understanding Paul's
writing. More important is the effect that Paul's social context has on
evaluating the meaning of his letters.
PAUL A N D THE M O D E R N STUDY OF
CONVERSION
Some important issues in traditional New Testament scholarship can be clarified by use of modern data. Luke's account of Paul's
emotional crisis conversion was probably as much the result of Luke's
genius as Paul's reported experience. It has been used for centuries within
Western religion as a definition of conversion in general, biasing the scientific literature of the twentieth century, predisposing many researchers to
see conversions as isolated, personal, psychological happenings without
Appendix
2.95
2.^6
APPENDIX
Appendix
z$j
298
APPENDIX
Appendix
Z99
that the strength of the new belief structure will be directly proportional to
the difficulty or strength of the conversion experience. The stronger and
more difficult the conversion experience, the stronger and more difficult it
will be to dissuade the beliefs held.44 People who are paid a small amount to
make a counter-attitudinal statement, for example, will later agree more
with the statement than will people paid a larger amount. 45 If a decision
produces insufficient rewards, a person might change his or her beliefs so as
to make the decision seem more rewarding. "Rats and people come to love
the thing for which they have suffered," said Festinger with a healthy degree
of cynicism.46 But insufficient rewards or difficult circumstances can enhance the attractiveness of the choice that led to the suffering, provided that
there is an incentive to make the decision. This implies that groups in which
conversions are common will have a more committed membership, as well
as an incentive to proselytize. It also implies that such a convert as Paul, who
goes from one religious community to a radically different one, and who
obviously has a strong conversion experience, will have a greater chance of
developing a strong commitment to his or her new community and a greater
chance of revaluing his or her past than other converts. There are, however,
a number of important intervening values in this equation, especially in the
role of the community itself in developing commitment (see chapter 3
above).
The most recent data, on religious defection and disaffiliation, shows
how complex and individual the process of religious change can be. Four
studies in JSSR 2,8 (1989) outline a number of different situations ranging
from radical conversion to a new group to slow growth away from an old
one into a mainstream group. The most important conclusion from these
studies is to note all the kinds of interactions in values between groups that
an actively questing subject can provide. Thus, while Paul's conversion
brought a high degree of commitment to his Christian group, and a disaffiliation from Pharisaism, he may still have valued his Jewish identity
and brought much Pharisaic skill into his new community. But others may
have called him an apostate.
Two problematic issues appear to have curtailed recent psychological
investigation into conversion.47 The first is the realization that historical
data rarely is appropriate for psychoanalytic or therapeutic discussion, so
the most it can do is illustrate some particular facility of the given psychoanalytic notational scheme for describing experience. The second factor is
the realization that the term conversion is culturally relative. Each group
defines what it means by conversion; even ecstatic conversions seem to be
300
APPENDIX
ABBREVIATIONS
AJS
ANRW
Antiocb
Apologetic
Binitarian
BJS
BZ
CBQ
Q
Conscience
9i-
Conversion
-t
r\T
302
Abbreviations
CSBS
Darkness
Abbreviations
Jews
JJS
JQR
JR
JSJ
JSNT
JSSR
JTS
Kommentar
Law
Magical Papyri
Name
303
NHS
NovT
NTS
One God
Open Heaven
1988).
Opponents
Origin
Origins
Faul
Paul's Gospel
304
Abbreviations
WUNT z/4, zd ed. (Tbingen: Mohr,
1984).
a
RB
Rebecca's Children
RHR
Romans i-~8
RRR
RSR
SBL
SJT
Snow and Machalek
Spirit
SR
ST
Studies
Synopse
TAPA
Abbreviations
TDNT
Thessalonians
Things Unutterable
305
Transformation
Two Powers
Urban
VG
VTSup
WUNT
ZAW
ZKG
ZNTW
ZNW
ZRGG
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
3o8
Harper and Row, 1972.) actually admits that this is so, and this from the Freudian
perspective that all scholarship is ultimately a projection of our own personal
predicaments.
9. See especially the contribution of J. Christiaan Beker in the first volume of
the series of books slated for publication in the next few years as supplements to the
new journal Explorations. Both the series and the journal are edited by James
Charlesworth.
CHAPTER
1. See P. Eduard Pfaff, Die Bekehrung des H. Paulus in des Exegeses des 20.
Jahrhunderts (Rome: Pontificae Universitatis Gregorianae, 1942); Emil Moske,
Die Bekehrung des Heil. Paulus: Eine exegetisch-kritische Untersuchung (Mnster:
Aschendorffschen Buchhandlung, 1907); Ottfried Kietzig, Die Bekehrung des
Paulus: Religionsgeschichtlich und Religionspsychologisch neu Untersucht
(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 19 3 2.) ; G. Lohfink, The Conversion of
St. Paul: Narrative and History in Acts (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976),
3 3-46; U. Wilckens, "Die Bekehrung des Paulus als religionsgeschichtliches Problem," ZTK 56 (1959): 273-93; H. J. Schoeps, Paul (1959; reprint, Philadelphia:
1961); M. E. Thrall, "The Origins of Pauline Christology," in Apostolic History
and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin (Grand Rapids: Paternoster
Press, 1970); H. G. Wood, "The Conversion of Paul: Its Nature, Antecedents, and
Consequences," NTS 1 (1955): 27682; J. Dupont, "The Conversion of Paul and
Its Influence on His Understanding of Salvation by Faith," in Apostolic History; Philippe Menoud, "Revelation and Tradition: The Influence of Paul's Conversion on His Theology," Interpretation 7 (1952.): 131-41. See H. D. Betz,
Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 64, n. 82, for extensive bibliographical
information.
2. The discipleship of Peter or Andrew on the Sea of Galilee seems more
typical of earliest Christian experience than Paul's sudden dramatic conversion as
described by Acts. They are evangelized by Jesus himself. They become his followers as one might adopt a person as a teacher. They might have been converted
to their new calling, but the New Testament is silent about their internal feelings
and states.
3. See Introduction, 97-147. See especially Gerd Luedemann, Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) from the
German Paulus, der Heidenapostel, vol. 1 of Studien zur Chronologie, FRLANT
123 (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1980). He takes a strong position
separating Luke from Paul and emphasizing that Luke cannot be trusted unless
there is evidence in Paul to establish Luke's position. Antioch exemplifies the other
side of the issue.
4. Conscience.
5. These concerns serve as the background for the exegesis of other interpreters of Paul-Lloyd Gaston and John Gager, who concentrate on Paul's views about
the salvation of the Jews. See Origins, esp. p. 210. John Gager, however, would
dissent in seeing Paul's conversion as essential to understanding his thought; see his
309
3io
15. See, for example, Bornkamm's opinion (Paul, 2zf) that Paul's few references to his Damascus Road experience have little to do with the content of his
gospel.
16. Paul's Gospel, 3-31.
17. The difference between Kim's treatment of the passages and mine is that
Kim automatically assumes that this spiritual experience must have come from
Paul's Damascus Road experience; I see that experience as unrecoverable but am
sure that Paul's spiritual experience continued throughout his career and informed
it continuously. In turn, Paul's recollection of these events was influenced by his
communal experience.
18. For a recent appraisal of the'difficulties involved in reconstructing the
conversion account from the memoirs of a convert, see Paula Fredriksen, "Paul
and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self," Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986); 3-34. The consequences
of this problem will be discussed below.
19. The new book Darkness contains an important argument on this point.
Beverly Gaventa suggests that changes in religious status can be subdivided into
conversions, alternations, and transformations (12.). Paul's experience, she argues,
is a transformation, falling midway between the jarring discontinuities of conversion and effortless experience of alternation. I like the term transformation and use
it for other reasons. As I try to show, Paul's experience can just as easily be
understood as a conversion, since the vocabulary of conversion and transformation is imposed from the outside and the distinction between them is artificial.
Nevertheless, I regret that Gaventa's intriguing work did not become available to
me earlier. Though I appreciate her work, I fear she underplays the discontinuity
between Paul's previous identity as a Pharisee and his Christian commitment.
Because of the general scope of her work, she also leaves Paul before she spells out
all the implications of his conversion. But her work is a must for any scholar,
interested in understanding Paul's conversion. From her work, I also found the
dissertation Transformation, which is a major piece of research on Paul's understanding of Christian conversion.
zo. N. Habel, "The Form and Significance of the Call Narratives," ZAW 77
(1965): 297-3Z3.
zi. See David. E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), Z47-6Z.
zz. Spirit.
Z3. Indeed, there are two different ascensions in his history. The gospel implies
an ascension with the resurrection, which is fulfilled at the beginning of Acts.
Z4. Ananias, Peter, and others receive visions optasiai, e.g., Acts z:i7; 9:10;
10:3, 17; 11:5. Paul's experience is also a trance, ekstasei {ZZ:IJ}.
Z5. loan M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit
Possession and Shamanism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971).
z6. Of course, one can take the distinction too far, for in z Corinthians iz, the
same passage that Paul describes a revelation and ascent to the heavens, he argues
against other Christians who claim yet more authority for ecstatic experiences. So
Paul represents a compromise position between pure periphery and pure centrality
311
313
3. See Things Unutterable. James Tabor illustrates his contention that this
mystical experience is meant to be taken very seriously as a part of Paul's religious
life. Although Paul means to criticize those who make claims on the basis of their
spiritual gifts, this is not merely a strange corner of Paul's universe, and it is
certainly not a parody of an ascent in the tradition of Lucian's Death ofPeregrinus,
4. Paradise or the Garden of Eden was often conceived as lying in one of the
heavens, though the exact location differs from one apocalyptic work to another.
See Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: The Development and Transmission of an
Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984). Second Enoch, for example, locates them in the third
heaven. But 2 Enoch may have been influenced by Paul's writings, though the
shorter version mentions worship in the Temple in a way that suggests it is still in
existence, thus antedating 70 CE.
5. In different ways, the close relationship between mysticism and apocalypticism has been touched on by several scholars of the past decade, myself included.
See my Two Powers; Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism
(Leiden: Brill, 1979); and especially Open Heaven, and Name, The Pauline passage is also deeply rooted in Jewish and Hellenistic ascension traditions, which
imposed a certain structure of ascent on all reports of this period. See also Heavenly
Ascent; Mary Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys: A Study of the Motif in Hellenistic
Jewish Literature (Frankfurt-New York: Peter Lang, 1984); loan Petru Culianu,
Psychoanodia I: A Survey of the Evidence of the Ascension of the Soul and its
Relevance (Leiden: Brill, 1983), Culianu has also published a more general work,
Expriences de l'extase: Extase, ascension et rcit visionnaire de l'hellnisme au
moyen ge (Paris: Payot, 1984), with an introduction by Mircea Eliade. The verb
harpaz in Greek and its Latin equivalent rapto is sometimes shared with pagan
ascensions {sol me rapuit, etc.), but also probably initially denotes both the rapture
of vision and the specific heavenly journeys of Enoch (in Hebrew, laqah; in Greek,
metethken) and Elijah (in Hebrew, 'alah; in Greek, anelphthe). Similar ascensions can be seen in apocalyptic literature, for instance, 1 Enoch 39.3, 52.1, and
71.1-5, as well as 2 Enoch 3, 7, 8, 11, and 3 Baruch 2. In rabbinic literature, the
Aramaic word denoting the journey is often ithnagid. Paul's reference to the third
heaven confirms the environment of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism.
6. Whether or not Paul's experiences typified the rabbis has been debated
vigorously with acute attention to the implications for rabbinic rationalism. The
debate misses the obvious point that the evidence for these experiences occurs all
over Judaism in the Hellenistic period and is coterminous with Pharisaic Judaism.
If Paul is a mystic, there is a close connection between this apocalypticism and
Pharisaic Judaism. The connection still cannot be defined, but Paul gives us interesting hints about it. It is ironic that scholars who accept almost all rabbinic
datings at face value seem reluctant to believe these traditions, supposing that all
mystical experience is something despicable for the rabbis. Debating the reliability
of talmudic reports that the early rabbis engaged in such practices regularly becomes theoretical, as the Mishnah's testimony for the first century is now suspect
315
13. See Pseudepigrapha to see how vast this literature is. But even the two
ample volumes edited by Charlesworth could not contain other, separate bodies of
apocalyptic and pseudepigraphical literature, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag
Hammadi library, the Mani Codex and the Hekhaloth Literature.
14. See the interesting theory of Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement
ofSabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies, Coniectanea Biblica Old
Testament Series 18 (Lund: Gleerup, 1982) for the origin of the Kavod idea and its
original function in biblical literature.
15. See the recently published work Faces of the Chariot.
16. H. Odeberg, The Hebrew Book of Enoch or Third Enoch, zd ed. (New
York: Ktav, 1973); Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New
York: Schocken, 1961); Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic
Tradition, 2d ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965). See also M.
Smith, "Observations on Hekhaloth Rabbati," in Studies and Texts, ed. A. Altmann, vol. 1 of Biblical and Other Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1963), and A. Altmann, "Sacred Hymns in Hekhaloth Literature," Melilah 2
(1946): 1-24; A. Altmann, "Moses Narboni's 'Epistle on Shiur Koma,'" Jewish
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 225.
17. Two Powers; David Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature
(New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980); Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and
Merkabah Mysticism; J. Dan, "The Concept of Knowledge in the Shiur Komah,"
in Studies in Jewish Intellectual History presented to Alexander Altmann, ed. S.
Stein and R. Loewe (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1979), and "Three
Types of Ancient Jewish Mysticism," (Cincinnati: Judaic Studies Program, 1984);
Ira Chernus, "Individual and Community in the Redaction of Hekhaloth Literature," HUCA 52(1981): 253-74, "Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism," JSJ
13 (1983): 12346 and Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism: Studies in the History of
Midrash (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982).
18. Gnostic; History; and "Cosmic Dimensions and Religious Knowledge
(Eph. 3:18)," in Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift fuer W. G. Kuemmel, ed. E. Earle
Ellis and E. Graesser (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1975), 5775;
Wayne A. Meeks, The Prophet King (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Harne; K. Rudolph,
"Ein Grundtyp gnostischer Urmensch-Adam-Spekulation," ZRGG 9 (1957): 1
20; M. Tardieu, Trois mythes gnostiques: Adam, Eros et les animaux d'Egypte
dans un crit de Nag Hammadi (II,s) (Paris: tudes Augustiniennes, 1974), 85
139; J.W. Bowker, "'Merkabah' Visions and the Visions of Paul," JSS 16(1971):
157-73; Howard Clark Kee, "The Transfiguration in Mark: Epiphany or Apocalyptic Vision?" Understanding the Sacred Text: Festschrift for Morton Enslin, ed.
John Reichman (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1972); Andr Neher, "Le voyage
mystique des quatre," RHR 140 (1951): 59-82; Nicholas Sd, "Les traditions
secrtes et les disciples de Rabban Yohannan ben Zakkai," RHR 184 (1973): 4 9 66; Peter Schaefer, "New Testament and Hekhalot Literature: The Journey into
Heaven in Paul and Merkavah Mysticism," JJS 35, no. 1 (1984): 19-35; Peter
Schaefer, "Engel und Menschen in der Hekhalot-Literatur," Kairos 22 (1980):
201-25; James H. Charlesworth, "The Righteous as an Angel," in Ideal Figures in
Ancient Judaism, ed. G. W. E. Nickelsburg and John J. Collins (Chico: Scholars
3i6
317
31. For the growing consensus that apocalypticism implies visionary or mystical experience as well as secret knowledge of the end of time, see Open Heaven.
See James H. Charlesworth, "The Portrayal of the Righteous as an Angel," Ideal
Figures in Ancient Judaism: Profiles and Paradigms, ed. George W. E. Nickelsburg
and John J. Collins, Septuagint and Cognate Studies 12 (Chico: Scholars Press,
1980); Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988), stresses the theme of transformation but does not consider the
Pauline corpus. This is an amazing confirmation of the transformation vocabulary
noted in chapter 1 above.
32. Translated by M. Pravednoe, in Pseudepigrapha, 1:152.
33. J. Z. Smith, "The Prayer of Joseph," in Religions, 253-94. See A.-M.
Denis, Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum quae Supersunt Graeca Una Cum Historicum et AuctorumJudaeorumHellenistarum Fragmentis (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 6 1 62.
3i8
Philo's allegory on this topic, see Lala K. K. Dey, The Intermediary 'World and
Patterns of Perfection in Philo and Hebrews, SBL Dissertation Series 25 (Missoula:
Scholars Press, 1975); see especially One God.
40. See for example, T. Sim. 5.4; T. Levi 10.5; 14.1; T. Judah 18.1; T. Zeb.
3.4; T. Dan 5.6; T. Naph. 4.1; T. Benj. 9.1. See L. Hurtado, "Exalted Patriarchs,"
in One God.
41. See Two Powers, 182-22.0,144-360.
42. Two Powers, 33-147.
43. Name, 76-95.
44. The Enoch literature is possibly as old or older than the Daniel son of man
traditions in which it participates. See M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopie Book of Enoch
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
45. Charles has bull, E. Isaac, in Pseudepigrapha, 1:71 has cow.
46. This is now reconfirmed by James VanderKam's essay in The Messiah,
ed. James H. Charlesworth with James Brownson, Steven Kraftchik, and Alan F.
Segal (forthcoming). See also George Nickelsburg's ("Salvation Without and with
a Messiah: Developing Beliefs in Writings Ascribed to Enoch," 49-68), Howard
Kee's ("Christology in Mark's Gospel," 187-208), and James Charlesworth's
("From Jewish Messianology to Christian Christology: Some Caveats and Perspectives," 225-64) contributions to Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of
the Christian Era, ed. Jacob Neusner, William S. Green, and Ernest Frerichs
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
47. Translated by E. Isaac in Pseudepigrapha, 1:50,
48. Another unemphasized aspect of the journey motif is that it is a kind of
travel narrative, purporting to be the actual experience of a trustworthy patriarch
of the profoundly moral structure of the cosmos confirming the biblical account,
which reassures the righteous of their final reward.
49. See Quispel, "Hermetism and the New Testament," and Name, 278.
50. See M. A. Knibb, "The Date of the Parables of Enoch: A Critical Review," NTS 25 (1979): 345-59; also J. T. Milik with M. Black, The Books of
Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1976). Though Milik and Black's dating of Hekhaloth literature has been criticized, the book does contain a good summary of the scholarship on the problem.
(See also E. Isaac in Pseudepigrapha, 1:67, wno dates the Parables to the late first
century. Hence, he believes that the parables may be post-Christian.) According to
James Charlesworth, the SNTS Pseudepigrapha session in Paris almost unanimously agreed, including Matthew Black but still excluding Milik, that the Parables are very early. I realize that I am dating the Parables later than most scholars,
but I think that this conservative dating is necessary on account of the lack of any
fragments from the parables in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in spite of Qumranic appreciation for Enochian literature. Therefore, although Milik's late dating of the Parables
may be too extreme, a post-Christian date seems prudent, as a methodological
necessity, until some new positive evidence for the early date of the Parables
appears. For scholarly opinion in print, see Knibb's review of Milik in NTS 1979
and M. E, Stone, "The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century B.C.E.,"
CBQ 40 (1978): 479-92; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee," JBL 100 (1981): 575600. Of course, if the
319
32.1
68. Scholars who question the mystical content of these legends include E. E.
Urbach, "The Tannaitic Traditions of Esoteric Lore" (in Hebrew), Studies in
Kabbalah and the History of Religions Presented to Gershotn Scholem (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1968), 128, though he mentions an "ascetic ecstasy" that he
claims is not mystical, which impresses me as playing with words; Halperin, The
Merkabab in Rabbinic Literature, and the equally excellent Faces on the Chariot,
where the mystical nature of the earliest traditions is disputed; Martha Himmelfarb, "Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the
Hekhaloth Literature," Jewish Spirituality, vol. 2 ed. Arthur Green (forthcoming);
Martha Himmelfarb, "The Experience of the Visionary and the Genre in the
Ascension of Isaiah 6-11 and the Apocalypse of Paul," Semeia 36 (1986): 9 7 111 ; Philip Alexander, "The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch," //S
28 (1977): 17380; Peter Schaefer, "Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Edition und
analyse der Merkava Rabba," FJB 5 (1977): 65-99; "Die Beschwoerung des sar
ha-panim, Kritische Edition und Uebersetzung," FJB 6 (1978): 10745; "Aufbau
und redaktionelle Identitaet der Hekhalot Zutrati," JJS 33 (198z): 569-82; "Tradition and Redaction in Hekhaloth Literature," JSJ 14 (1983): 17Z-81,
69. This should function as a caution to those who insist that there is no
ecstatic experience in the Mishnah. One could never be sure that the rabbis attended a wedding from the mishnaic evidence either, because of the nature of their
reports. The visionary setting of these theophanies is both clear from the original
biblical context and, more important, from the description of the theophany in
apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature. The important point is that rabbinic
literature is not confessional literature; religious experience is almost never directly
discussed. What is of interest to the rabbis in their writings is the implications of a
particular event or experience for legal and exegetical analysis. That is the rabbinic
enterprise. But Judaism, even rabbinic Judaism, never ceased to explore other
genres of religious expression. This is particularly obvious in later periods when
Jewish mysticism develops its own peculiar methods of expression. Paul himself, as
we shall see, gives us certain testimony that such mysticism already existed in the
first century. Whether the leading rabbis of the day also sought out such visions, as
the talmud seems to imply, is a moot point. But the rabbis were clearly not the kind
of rationalists that later generations of apologists have styled them.
70. See Benjamin Kilborne's article, "Dreams," in the Encyclopedia of Religion and John S. Hanson, "Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-Roman World and
Early Christianity," ANRW 11.23:2 (1981): 1395-4Z7. He shows that such
Hellenistic conventions influenced Luke's descriptions in Acts, especially 16:6-12.
For a discussion of the shamanic techniques in healing, see especially Culianu,
Psychanodia I, 35-41.
71. See Helmut Saake, "Paulus als Ekstatiker: pneumatologische Beobachtung zu z Cor. xii 1-10," Nov T 15 (1973): 152-60: Ernst Benz, Paulus als
Visionaer, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Weisbaden: Steiner,
1952).
72. Paul's Gospel, 214.
73. See Robert Alan Segal, The Myth of the Poimandres (Paris: Mouton,
1986).
74. Much gnostic and apocalyptic material is, like the Poimandres, second
3 23
87. As a summary, see Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins: From Messianic Movement to Christian Religion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985); The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Jewish and Early Christian Literature
(Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1974); "The Vision of the Risen Christ in Rev.
1 : i3ff : The Debt of an Early Christology to an Aspect of Jewish Angelology," JTS
31 (1980): 111 and/SNTi4 (1985); Matthew Black, "TheThrone-Theophany,
Prophetic Commission, and the 'Son of Man': A Study in Tradition-History,"
Jews, Greeks and Christians: Festschrift for W. D. Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); Seyoon Kim, The Son of Man as the Son of God (Tbingen:
Mohr, 1983); Name; Two Powers, 182219; in Binitarian, Hurtado agrees with
my view of the novelty of the Christian interpretation within a general context in
which such identifications were possible. In One God he takes the claim of the
uniqueness of worshiping the second power much further than I. While Hurtado
may have overlooked the occasional example of angelolatry in sectarian Judaism,
his point is well-taken. The worship of Christ as a god was characteristic of early
Christianity, even in the eyes of its detractors, while other groups with angelic
heroes seem more circumspect about offering prayer to it.
88. See Juel, Messianic Exegesis.
89. Terrance Callan, "Prophecy and Ecstasy in Greco-Roman Religion and
in 1 Corinthians," NovT 27 (1985): 12540. Callan shows how Paul wished to
limit the term ecstasy. Prophecy for Paul is not ecstatic, in that it need not be
accompanied by trance. Therefore, our use of it, though proper, also remains an
etic term.
90. Neher, "Le voyage," and Sd, "Les traditions."
91. The most recent good analysis of pseudepigraphical writing is David G.
Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition (Tbingen;
Mohr [Siebeck], 1986). Mystical notions are not even mentioned,
92. In this section, I am particularly indebted to Gilles Quispel, "Hermetism
and the New Testament, Especially Paul," ANRW II.22 (forthcoming).
93. The polemical context of this passage (2 Cor 3:1 -17) should be noted but
I cannot deal with it until chapter 5. For the issue of the imagery of darkness and
light, see Darkness, 45-48.
94. The use of the mirror here is also a magicomystical theme, which can be
traced to the word 'eyyin occurring in Ezekiel 1. Although it is sometimes translated otherwise, 'eyyin probably refers to a mirror even there, and possibly refers to
some unexplained technique for achieving ecstasy. The mystic bowls of the magical
papyri and the talmudic era were filled with water and oil to reflect light and
stimulate trance. The magical papyri describe spells that use a small bowl that
serves as the medium for the appearance of a god for divination: e.g., PGM IV,
154285 (MagicalPapyri, 40-43), PDM 14.1-92, 295-308, 395-427, 528-53,
62735, 805-40, 841-50, 851-55 {Magical Papyri, 195-200, 213, 218-19,
22526, 229, 236-39). The participant concentrates on the reflection in the
water's surface, often with oil added to the mixture, sometimes with the light of a
lamp nearby. Lamps and charms are also used to produce divinations, presumably
because they can stimulate trance under the proper conditions. The Reuyoth
Yehezkel, for instance, mention that Ezekiel's mystical vision was stimulated by
98. Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians 2:;11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1983), from the 1967 Cambridge University Press edition. See also
James Sanders, "Dissenting Deities and Phil. z:i11," JBL 88 (1969), 2,7990.
^ . The other candidate, Peter's Pentecost Discourse, in Acts 3 seems to me to
have undergone much more editing before reaching written form. See J. A. T.
Robinson, "The Most Primitive Christology of All," Twelve Hew Testament Studies (London: SCM Press, 1962,), reprinted from JTS 7 (1956): 177-89.
100. The bibliography on the Pauline and post-Pauline hymns in Phil, 2: 6-11
and Col. 1:152.0 appears endless. See E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in
Christology (New York: Seabury, 1979); M. Hengel, "Hymn and Christology," in
Between Jesus and Paul, 78-96; J. Murphy O'Connor, "Christological Anthropology in Phil. 2:6-11," RB 83 (1976): 2.5-50, and D. Georgi, "Der vorpaulinische Hymnus Phil. 2:6-11," in Zeit und Geschichte, Dankesgabe an
Rudolf Bultmann, ed. E. Dinkier (Tbingen: Mohr, 1964), 2.63-93, es P- z91 ^or
bibliography. As Balch reminds me, Kaesemann emphasizes that Paul's metaphoric use of the body and its separate parts is characteristic of paraenetic sections,
emphasizing the relationship between the believer and the risen Lord. See Schweitzer, TDNT 7, 1073. For a discussion of the hymn and the unlikelihood of an
interpolation, see Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians 1:5-11 in Recent
Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, rev. ed. (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 199-228.
101. See my Two Powers, 33158, esp. 6873; a n d Binitarian, 37791.
102. Scholars like Kim who want to ground all of Paul's thought in a single
ecstatic conversion experience, which they identify with Luke's accounts of Paul's
conversion, are reticent to accept this passage as a fragment from Christian liturgy,
because to do so would destroy its value as Paul's personal revelatory experience.
But there is no need to decide whether the passage is originally Paul's (hence
325
received directly through the Damascus revelation) since ecstatic language normally is derived from traditions current within the religious group. Christian mystics use Christian language, Muslim mystics use the languages developed for
mysticism in Islam, and no mystic is ever confused by another religion's mysticism
unless it is the conscious and explicit intent of the mystic's vision to do so. See R. C.
Zaehner, Hinduism and Muslim Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1969); Steven
Katz, "Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism," and Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Steven Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). In this
case the language is not even primarily Christian. The basic language is from
Jewish mysticism, though the subsequent exegesis about the identification of
Christ with the figure on the throne is Christian; the vision of God enthroned is the
goal of Jewish mystical speculation.
103. Robin Scroggs, The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 75114.
104. See Spirit, 3 22.
105. J. Louis Martyn in W. R. Farmer et al., Christian History and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 26987, esp. 274.
106. Spirit, 327.
107. See Segal, The Myth of Poimandres.
108. See the "Recipe for Immortality" from the Paris Magical Papyrus, also
known as the Mithras Liturgy. See Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Temple and the
Magician," God's Christ and His People: Studies in Honour of Nils Alstrup Dahl
(Oslo; Universitetsforlaget, 1977), 233-47. See A. D. Nock, "Paul and the
Magus," in The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp
Lake (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966), 5:164-87.
109. Fred O. Francis, "Humility and Angelic Worship in Col. 2:18," ST 16
(1962): 109-34; Fred O. Francis and Wayne A. Meeks, Conflict at Colossae: A
Problem in the Interpretation of Early Christianity Illustrated by Selected Modern
Studies, rev. ed., Sources for Biblical Study 4 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975); W.
Carr, Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning and Development of
the Pauline Phrase: hai archai kai hai exousiai (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, i98i);C. A. Evans, "The Colossian Mystics," Biblica 63 (1982): 188-205.
110. Of course, apostle was a frequent title for an angelic messenger as well. It
is possible that some apostles thought of themselves as already divinized.
i n , George Nickelsburg, "An Ektroma, Though Appointed from the Womb :
Paul's Apostolic Self-Description in 1 Corinthians 15 and Galatians 1," HTR 79,
nos. 1-3 (1986), 1 9 8 - 2 0 5 .
32.8
17. Josephus, The Life, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 192e), 5-7. The translation must be used
with great care.
18. See the dissertation of Leonard Gordon, Columbia University, in progress.
19. See Justin Martyr, 1; Dial. Dio Chrysostom; and St. Augustine. See
Heydahl, Philosophie und Christentum, 1966.
20. See Alan Mason, "Was Josephus a Pharisee? A Re-Examination of the Life
10-12," JJS 40 (1989): 31-45.
21. See Lawrence Schiffman, Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts,
Testimony and the Penal Code (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1983), 155-74.
22. See appendix for more information.
23. See Thessalonians, 21-27, relying on the past work of Festugire and
Nock, supplemented by Malherbe's own research on the Cynic movement.
24. Musonius Rufus, Fragment 49, quoted in Thessalonians, 25 and n. 81.
25. Thessalonians, 26.
26. See the splendid discussion of Dieter Georgi in Die Gegner des Paulus im 2.
Korintherbrief: Studien zur Religioesen Propaganda in der Spaetantike (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964), which has now been translated into
English as Opponents. The new epilogue brings the book up to date bibliographically and records the author's evolving opinions on these important issues.
27. Peder Borgen, "Debates on Circumcision in Paul and Philo," in Philo,
John and Paul: New Perspectives on Judaism and Early Christianity (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1987), 233-55; a\so Paul Preaches Circumcision and Pleases Men
and Other Essays on Christian Origins (Trondheim: Tapir, 1983). Borgen portrays Philo correctly as demanding literal circumcision, as well as an ethical circumcision. He seems mistaken, however, in maintaining that Paul conversely was
misunderstood by his followers to have advocated literal circumcision when he
merely used the same figure of speech of ethical circumcision that Philo did.
28. See Abraham J. Malherbe, The Social Aspects of Early Christianity, 2d ed.,
enlarged (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 51-52. Ellen Birnbaum is currently working on a dissertation at Columbia, which will try to unpack Philo's ambivalent and
conflicting perspectives on the issue.
29. Ptolemy the Historian, from Josephus, Ant. 13.257, 318. Horace refers to
the Jews' desire for non-Jews to join their group: "in hanc concedere turbam." Also
Seneca, De Superstitione. See Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews
and Judaism, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: IsraelAcademy of Sciences, 1974, i98o),nos. 127,
146, 147, 365. See also Valerius Maximus, Pacta et Dicta Memorabilia 1.3.3;
Horace, Sermones 1.4.142-43; Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.11 and Epistolae
Morales 108.22; Martial, Epigrammata 7.30.5-8, 35.3-4, 82.5-6, 9.94.1-8;
Petronius, Satyricon 68.8; Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. 67.14.1-3. See also Jews, 379
and n. 82. See also Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Conversion to Judaism in Historical
Perspective: From Biblical Israel to Postbiblical Judaism," C/ (Summer 19 8 3 ) : n. 15 ;
and Henry Green, The Economic and Social Origins of Gnosticism, SBL Dissertation Series 77 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 89t; also "Interpersonal Relations,
Ethnic Structure and EconomyA Sociological Reading of Jewish Identification in
Roman Egypt," Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies,
Division B (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986) 1:15-22.
329
30. Philo, Hypotbetica, see Eusebius, Praeparatio 8.6-7, 355036113; Josephus, Against Apion 2.190.
31. See Jews, 128-42, 1 7 4 - 8 0 , 2 0 2 - 4 5 .
32. See Bamberger, Proselytism in the Talmudic Period; Salo Baron, A Social
and Religious History of the Jews (New York: JPS, 1952), 1:1741; Hengel, Judaism
and Hellenism, 1:307; S. Zeitlin, The Rise and Fall of the Judean State, 3:326; S.
Applebaum, "The Social and Economic Status of the Jews in the Diaspora," in The
Jewish People in the First Century, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 2:622t; J. R. Rosenbloom, Conversion to Judaism (Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College Press, 1978); J. Z. Smith, "Fences and Neighbors: Some
Contours of Early Judaism," Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 119; H. A. Green, "Jewish Identification and Assimilation: Continuities and Discontinuities in Roman Egypt," SBL
198j Seminar Papers, ed. Kent Harold Richards (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985),
505-I333. Everett V. Stonequist, The Marginal Man (New York: Scribner's, 1937).
In the latter case, secularized Jews themselves might be tempted to convert to other
groups.
34. See 1 Mace. 1:11-15; 3 Mace. 2:31 and 7:10; also Philo, VitaMosis 1.130
and De Virt. 182.
3 5. See John J. Collins, "A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation
in the First Century," Brown Conference, August 1984, in To See Ourselves as
Others See Us (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 163-86, esp. 171-72.
36. Aryeh Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt; The Struggle for
Equal Rights (Tbingen: Mohr, 1985).
37. George la Piana, "Foreign Groups in Rome During the First Centuries of
the Empire," HTR 20 (1927); 1 8 3 - 4 0 3 ; Pauly-Wissova, Collegium, 4, cols. 3 8 0 4 8 0 ; Jews, 13 3f; J. N. Sevenster, The Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient
World (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 1 4 8 - 5 8 ; W. Ruppel, "Politeuma," Philologus 82
(1927): 2 6 8 - 3 1 2 , 4 3 3 - 5 4 .
38. Plutarch, Theseus 33.2; G. E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, n.d.), 77. My thanks to Holland
Hendrix for this idea and reference.
39. See Jews and God-Fearers, 6667.
40. See Transformation, 7 3 - 8 5 , on which this discussion depends.
41. G. Staehlin, "Fortschritt und Wachtum," in Festgabe, Joseph Lortz, vol. 2
of Glaube und Geschichte, ed. E. Iserloh and P. Manns (Baden-Baden: Bruno
Grim, 1957), 18.
42. John J. Collins, "Symbol of Otherness," n. 47.
43. Italics mine. See Mishnah Avodah Zarah 2.3 and chapter 7, p. 232 above.
44. Moses Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (New York: Harper and Row,
1951), 62.
45. Joseph and Asenath may have some Jewish Christian influence as the
bread is marked with a sign that looks like the cross.
46. J. B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum loudaicarum II (Rome: Pontificcio institute di archeologia cristiana, 1936), 766. The literature on this group is large.
But see L. Feldman, "Jewish 'Sympathizers' in Classical Literature and Inscrip-
49. See Gager, "Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues," n. 48, who cites his indebtedness to Joyce Reynolds and Robert Tannenbaum, the editors of the Aphrodisias
Synagogue Inscriptions, and to G. W. Bowersock, for his public lecture discussing
the inscriptions. Joyce Reynolds and Robert Tannenbaum have now published
their research in Jews and God-Fearers.
50. Opponents, 97.
51. Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,
1973). Even so, the havuroth and the Pharisees are probably not identical. See E. P.
Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 187-88, 388-89.
52. For fuller discussion of Jewish rules of conversion, see Lawrence H.
Schiffmann, "At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian
Schism," Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 2 of Aspects ofJudaism in the
Hellenistic World, ed. E. P. Sanders with A. I. Baumgarten and Alan Mendelson
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 122-56. Schiffman has expanded these
thoughts into a book: Who Was a Jew: Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the
Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1985), where the rabbinic rules are
fully spelled out in convenient form but no serious questions about their historical
validity for the first century have been asked. See also Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Conversion to Judaism in Historical Perspective: From Biblical Israel to Postbiblical Judaism," C/ (Summer 1983).
53. For a recent treatment of the topic see Lawrence H. Schiffman, "The
Conversion of the Royal House of Adiabene in Josephus and Rabbinic Sources," in
Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (De-
331
332
Notes to Pages
xi0-19
333
ing Torah in general. He is talking about its use for defining the believing community.
7. See Sifra Kedoshim 8, b. Shabbath 31a, and chapter 3 above.
8. Converts receive the new family name ben Avraham in Jewish tradition.
The later rabbinic stories of Abraham emphasize that he observed all the commandments (Yoma 28b, Kid. 4.14) in seeming polemic with the Christian view of
the Abraham of faith. For the use of Abraham in Christian tradition, see Jeffrey S.
Siker, "The Making of Orphans: The Use of Abraham in Early Christian Controversy with Judaism from Paul through Justin Martyr" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1988), and Bruce Schein, "Our Father Abraham" (Ph.D.
diss., Yale University, 1972). See also J. Louis Martyn, "A Law-Observant Mission
to Gentiles: The Background of Galatians," Michigan Quarterly Review 22
(i983):22i-3,repr. in Scofft'sfe Journal ofTheology$?,(1985): 307-24; Halvor
Moxnes, Theology in Conflict: Studies in Paul's Understanding of Cod in Romans, Supplements to NovTy (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 13263.
9. See for example A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982).
10. Nils A. Dahl, "Widersprueche in der Bibel, ein altes hermeneutisches Problem," ST 25 (1971): 1-19, translated and reprinted in Studies in Paul (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), 159-77.
11. As Harvey maintains in Jesus and the Constraints of History, n. 47.
12. Marcus Barth, Ephesians (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1977), 246. See
Gager, Origins, 233. Nomos appears to refer to Jewish law in Rom. 7:8, and 2:21
22, with "works of law" nearby in 2:15 and further away in 3:20, 13:9. This is
crucial to understanding what Paul was saying to his own generation. In fact, I
should like to strengthen Gager's observation about this term.
13. James D. G. Dunn, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Galatians 3:10-14)," NTS 31 (1985): 523-42. He explicitly translates the term erga
nomou as "service of the law." I think he could have paraphrased it as observance
of the ceremonial laws, which is what Dunn actually means. Dunn's translation is
justifiable because it is the context of the discussion rather than the word itself that
gives this meaning. Paul is talking to a gentile community about the ceremonial
requirements for entrance into Judaism and Jewish Christianity, arguing away the
gentile doubt that they are necessary for full membership in their new order. Dunn
is supported in his fortunate translation by the work of E. Lohmeyer's translation
Dienst des Gesetzes, in Probleme paulinischer Theologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
n.d.), 33-74, 67, and J. B.Tyson, '"Works of Law' in Galatians," JBL 92 (1973):
4 2 3 - 3 1 , 42-4-2-5-
334
335
of this study. The issue of proselyte baptism in Judaism is, however, very cogent.
Many scholars have noted the lack of any first-century evidence for proselyte
baptism in Judaism. See G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 18-31, for a review of twentieth-century
scholarship on the issue. But this lack of evidence has been overplayed to underline falsely the uniqueness of the Christian rite. While it is true that no firstcentury Jewish source mentions baptism in the context of proselytism, it is not
necessarily true that baptism did not accompany proselytism. It was a widely
practiced rite among Jews. Anyone wishing to join the Jewish band would need to
come to terms with it. The rabbis discuss baptism in later centuries as a border to
the state of proselyte. It seems that it was necessary to practice the Jewish rite
when one took on the rites of Judaism but that its special status only gradually
evolved in the first two centuries. To the historian, the importance of baptism in
Qumran and Christianity in the first century only points out its necessary importance within the Jewish community, hence its necessity for anyone entering it.
The interesting part of its history is its placement in an eschatological framework
by Qumran, John the Baptist, and Christianity. Again, Christian evidence helps
us understand Jewish history.
31. See introduction and chapter 1 above, also my Heavenly Ascent and my
Hellenistic Magic. See also A.J.M. Widderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against its Graeco-Roman Background, WUNT 44 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1987).
32. See the experience of ben Zoma and ben Azzai (b. Hag. i4bf). In Jewish
mysticism there is a close connection between ascent to heaven and baptism as
well.
33. See Darkness.
34. Urban, 23-25, see also Wayne A. Meeks, "Image of the Androgyne:
Some Uses of a Symbol in Early Christianity," HR 13 (1974): 165-208; Dennis
Ronald MacDonald, There is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical
Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).
35. Urban, 155.
36. Urban, 87.
37. See my Rebecca's Children, 96116, for more detail.
38. G. Bornkamm, "Baptism," in Early Christian Experience (New York:
Harper and Row, 1969), 71-86, esp. 76-77; R. Tannehill, Dying and Rising
with Christ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 1012, 21, 32, 38, 81. In Rom. 6:5, Paul
insists that resurrection is future; contrast the baptismal formula in Col. 2:12 and
Eph. 2:6 that speaks of resurrection as a pasti.e., a baptismalevent.
39. This has been suggested by James A. Sanders, "Torah and Paul," in
God's Christ and His People: Festschrift for N. A. Dahl, ed. Jacob Jervell and
Wayne A. Meeks (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977), 132-41 and supported
forcefully by David Balch, in private correspondence to me. This suggestion correlates nicely with the work of Michael Goulder, who, in an unpublished paper
supplied by private correspondence, suggests that to me huper ha gegraptai (1
Cor. 4:6) means that Paul wishes his opponents not to go beyond the dictates of
the written law. Goulder's suggestion in regard to 1 Cor. 4:6 seems inappropriate
337
guments there. On the issue of veiling, see Dennis Ronald MacDonald, There is
No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 6 5 - n z , though he scarcely mentions the issue of
men being veiled. If I am correct that the primary referent here is the practice of
veiling one's face in various parts of the service, as I explain below, Paul's opponents are surely Jewish Christians or Jews (if one can distinguish) rather than
gnostics. This is not the place to enter into a detailed consideration of the many
fine points of their arguments. For a summary of the entire field of scholarship on
the matter, see Origin, 96-108.
5. Gen. R. 17 (12a), Kommentar, y.^z^-d,
6. See Abraham Millgrom, Jewish Worship (Philadelphia: JPS, 1971).
7. They, as Georgi pointed out, may have ascribed to Moses a supernatural
perfection, as Philo himself wrote, Paul's point is primarily that the Christ is even
more divine than Moses, with all the implications attendant on that claim.
8. See Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 2d ed.
(London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1973).
9. See Transformation, 125. The contrast between Paul's style of argument
and mature, nonapocalyptic rabbinic Judaism is striking, for, as we shall see, the
rabbis granted salvation to others for their moral actions, with few exceptions,
not for assent to explicit Pharisaic customs. In rabbinic Judaism, an angelic figure
called the Lord of the World sometimes makes a brief appearance, but the title
refers to the good angel Metatron, who is enthroned in heaven, having as Lord of
the World the job of singing nature's praise of God. In sectarian Jewish life, the
world is hostile, therefore its angelic leader is hostile. In rabbinic Judaism, in spite
of the opposition of worldly authorities, the world remains friendly. For more
detail, see my "Ruler of this World: Attitudes About Mediator Figures and the
Importance of Sociology for Self-definition," in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: Volume z, Aspects ofJudaism in the Greco-Roman Period, ed. E. P. Sanders
with A. I, Baumgarten and Alan Mendelson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 2 4 5 68, 403-13, reprinted in The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987). This demonization of the secular world is characteristic of a sect
with apocalyptic feelings or a pariah status.
10. This involves reading phoresomen as a future rather than a jussive, but
the context itself makes this clear.
n . See Transformation, 147-59. Koenig, in presupposing the analysis of
Schulz and Georgi, must account for several differences between the presupposed
Jewish Christian polemic and the Pauline response. What Koenig, Schulz, and
Georgi attribute to Paul's opponents seems likely to be Paul's own argument. But
Koenig's solution to the issue of present and future transformation is ingenious.
12. This is Isaac's translation in Pseudepigrapha, 1:89. Charles's translation
uses transform in place of change.
13. As we have seen in chapter 2 above, when discussing Paul's mystical
notion of transformation, Paul uses this puzzling language to express the continuity between believers' present existence and their eternal reward in the same
way that the Platonic notion of the soul will express continuity between mortality
and immortality in later Christianity. Paul, however, uses soul in its strictly
339
into a ghetto. He asks: "Would not Erastus (Rom. 16:13) have participated in
civic rites in Corinth?" Possibly he did, though it is not clear exactly how. With
the proviso that not every Christian community was apocalypticCorinthian
and Thessalonian communities seem to differ strongly in this respectapocalypticism was something that Paul could stress to build commitment. The forces at
work in different Christian communities were quite complex, as Paul's varied
methods of arguments against his opponents makes clear.
22. For a discussion of Christian apocalypticism and the relevant bibliography, see my Rebecca's Children, esp. chap. 4, 96-116.
23. See R. Jewett, The Shaken Millennium: The Audience and Rhetoric of the
Thessalonian Correspondence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987). His reconstruction
of the millennial movement depends rather heavily on a similar movement within
the Cabirus cult, which cannot be established. But the millennialism of i Thessalonians seems unmistakable, regardless of the author or intended audience.
24. See, for example, Joerg Baumgarten, Paulus und die Apocalyptik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975); Christiaan Beker, Paul The Apostle:
The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980); and
Paul's Apocalyptic Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). See Purvis, Problems
and Possibilities in Paul's Ethics of Community for an excellent discussion of the
conflicts and continuities between ethics and apocalypticism.
25. The most succinct study of apocalypticism as centered on mystical
knowledge is Open Heaven. Rowland's work, in turn, relies on the work of several scholars who had previously seen the relevance of Jewish mysticism to New
Testament writings. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism;
Merkabah Mysticism, Jewish Gnosticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York:
JTS, 1965). See also History; Gilles Quispel, especially in "Hermetism and the
New Testament, Especially Paul," ANRWII.22 (forthcoming); my Two Powers;
and Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill,
1980).
34
341
Laws
343
zz. Of course, why Paul should here maintain that justification is by works
rather than faith, even to condemn his opponents, is a long story. See chapter 8
below for more on this passage. To understand this passage one has to give up the
theological principle that Paul taught an end to righteousness based on works.
Z3. See Gaston's discussion of "Paul and the Law in Galatians Two and
Three," in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, ed. G. Peter Richardson (Waterloo,
Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986) and Origins, Z33. Gaston's translation of parabatn as apostate is tendentious, even though pretty much the same
sense can be rendered from the passage by translating it simply as transgressor.
24. See From Jesus to Christ, 161-76.
25. See Jews and God-fearers, 85, which agrees with my contention that the
principate's laws tended to make God-fearing rather than conversion a more attractive choice. Once the empire became Christian, some pagans may have chosen
to Judaize rather than subject themselves to Christianity.
2.6. See Urban, 116.
Z7. See Antioch for more detail on the variety of Christian opinions with
respect to Torah.
28. In suggesting that Paul purposely accommodated his thinking, I am in
general agreement with Hans Huebner, Law in Paul's Thought (Edinburgh: T. and
T. Clark, 1984), 6z65. Whereas Huebner states that James must have caused him
to reconsider (63), I am less confident of the circumstances. Origins also implies
that it was the church conference that made Paul reconsider his actions and try to
moderate the practice of the churches he founded, using the Corinthian correspondence as demonstration. All we know for sure is that (/Luke is correct, Paul must
have sought a more conciliatory position. The circumstances might be different
from Luke's portrayal.
29. As to the problems and chronology of the councils, it is not necessary to
solve that vexed issue. But see Kirsopp Lake, "Paul's Controversies," 195222 for
the idea that Acts actually unwittingly includes two different accounts of the same
conference, told from different perspectives. See Paul Achtemeier, The Quest for
Unity in the New Testament Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987}.
30. See Robin Scroggs, "Paul and the Eschatological Woman," 293 ; In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New
York: Crossroads, 1983), 205-41.
31. This is discussed in more detail in chapter 7 below.
32. Terence Callan, "Pauline Midrash: The Exegetical Background of Gal.
3:19b," JBL 99 (1980): 549-6733. U. Wilckens, Rechtfertigung als Freiheit: Paulusstudien (Neukirchen:
1974)- I agree.
34. It has therefore been written about many times, recently by my colleague
Shaye J. D. Cohen. His interpretation is that Timothy was a gentile. Since Paul was
both converting Timothy to Christianity and circumcising him, he was thus accepting the opposition's view of conversion. This argument is governed by the contemporary Jewish issue of the status of children in mixed marriages. Cohen is using the
New Testament as a historical source to set up standards for contemporary Conservative Judaism, which was discussing the issue of the patrilinal principle in
Judaism when he wrote. For Cohen, the events are not only historically important
345
347
349
Study
35*
35 2
I N D E X OF SCRIPTURAL
LITERATURES
H e b r e w Bible
GENESIS
1:26
41,45,5z
*=7 45
5:18-24 46
17:7 l 6 l
31:2.5 3 i 4 8
49:10 161
EXODUS
4:16 43
7:1 43
9:16 277
I 2 : i 8 f 198
2o:iof 198
23 4 1 , 63
23:2.02.1 41
23:21 4 0 , 5 1 , 5 7 , 6 0 , 6 3
24 41
24:10 51
28:4 153
28:37 153
28:40 153
33 Si
3 3 - 3 4 60
3 3 : 1 8 - 2 3 41
33:2-0 53
3 4 : 2 9 - 3 5 60
LEVITICUS
1 7 - 1 8 197
1 7 : 7 - 9 198
17:10fr 198
DEUTERONOMY
5:31 44
6
151. 153
6:24 332H5
9:4 278
21:23 I 2 2 , 235
27:26 I I 9 - 2 O
30 282
3 0 : i 2 - I 4 278
3 0 : 1 5 - 1 6 3O3I
3O:i9-20 3O-3I
32:21 279
2 SAMUEL
7:12 161
15:30 153
19:5 153
I KINGS
18:42 55
ESTHER
14:17 (LXX)
353
233
554
Index
JB
35:7 280
38:7 4 1 , 44
PSALMS
45:7 58
82:1 42
xo6:%6 278
106:28 232
106:29 232
[107:26 (LXX)]
110:1 57
143:2 131
147:40 51
278
PROVERBS
6:23 332W5
15:8 232
21:27 232
7 4 1 , 53
7:2. 53
7 : 9 - i 3 57. 159
7:r3 4 i 5 7 3 . 8 5
9:2-1 S3
10:5 53
10:16 53
11:2 46
12 61
12:2 4 7 , 5 7 , 1 6 2
12:3 41
HOSEA
3 z77
13:14 66
HABAKKUK
120-21,180,258
a:z
New Testament
ISAIAH
6:1-9 9
25:8 66
40:13 280
49 70
6 5 : 1 - 2 279
JEREMIAH
1:5 13
1:5-11 9
1 4 : 3 - 4 153
31:33 60
EZEKIEL
1 3 9 - 4 1 , 32279, 323/194
1:1 52
1:1
5*-
1:26 1 0 , 4 2
1:26 (LXX) 52
1:18 9 . 5 1
1:28 (LXX) 11
i--*9 i
i:I
"3 9
3:12 52
3:23 52
8:4 52
9:3 51
IO:
4 51
10:18-22 52
11:22-25 52
37:27 168
4 3 : 2 - 5 52
44:4 5 a
DANIEL
1:8 233
1:12-13 233
MATTHEW
17:2 112
23:15 99, 104
MARK
3:31-35
in
9:2 112
10:28-31
m
I2
-=3 8 153
LUKE
1:2 xi
9:29 112
9:54-60
III
^gJ
JOHN
z:J
43
ACTS
I:9{
I5
1:21-26 15
2:17 310H24
iJ7
5
^ 2.57
9:1-19
7-8
9: 3 f 37
9:10 310H24
8
9:I2.
9:15-17 8
3io24
IO:3
10:17 3IOKZ4
1 0 : 2 7 - 4 8 231
10:28 275
11:5 310H24
13:39 146
13:50 257
Index
14: 2 2-57
14: 19 2-57
15: 1 188, 191, 219
188
15: 1-29
15:S 71, 188, 191, 2 1 3 - 1 4
15: 6 188
15: 7b--29 189
IS= 10 14e
IS: 12 188
15: 20 189, 197, 199, 23e
15 2-4 1 9 z
IS 28 219
IS 29 189, 197, 219
16 I - - 218
l 9f" 37
l 13--15 222
l 15 222
l 19--24 257
l 15--40 25e
17 5-!) 222, 257
17 5- [o 257
18 2 2 2 2
18 2< i Z2Z
18 7 2 2 2
18 9f 37
18 12--17 25e
18 l8 238
19 8- io 25e
19 21--41 157
20 2 - 3 2-56
zo 4
11
2.1
21
21
21
22
22
22
22
22
22
22
22
22
23
26
26
26
2
2.6
2
28
29
2-54
Z38
219
25 197, 23e
28 219
4 0 93
7-8
I - 11
2 93
3 z, 93
17
21
37
II 11
14 8, 11
14--16 8
17 70, 310K24, 314M9
37
17'
z, 227
ut
37
12--23
15--18
16--17
19 3
24--29
1 46
2 36
R(5 M A N S
1 70
1:1 7 0
1:5t 3 4 7 " 3 0
1:13 25e
i:i 12, 65, 258
1:18-32 258
z
258
2:1 259
2:3 261
2:4 20, 261
2:5 2l
2:6 258
2:11 258
2:12 12e
2:12-14 I Z 4
2:IZ-I
8
17
zoi
2:13 258
2:15 3 3 3 W 1 2
2:1720 124
2:21 zi
2:2122 3 3 3 K 1 2
2:23 124
2:25 209
2:25-29 124
3 261
3:i 2 2 2
3:2 22
3:8 I44
3:19-20 I24
3:19-21 I24
3:19-26 179
3:20 243, 3 3 3 M 1 2
3:21 128
3:24-25 171
3:2728 124
3:29 137
3:2931 l8l
4:2 124
4:14-16 I24
4:15 243
5
5:2
7
i
5:3 68
5:20 243
13, 243
:i 144
6:1-10 135
6:4 10, 137
6:5
7
7-8
355
3353S
6:13 251
6:15
144
-42, 253, 261
7
139, 2 2 4 - 2 6 , 227, 2417:1 138, 225
7:1-10 334M25
7:47 226
7:6 139, 252, 3347*25
7:8 243, 3 3 3 * 1 2
7:9 13, 229
7:9-12 226, 2 4 2
7:9-15 2 4 2
356
Index
Romans (continued)
7:11 242
7:iS
M4
7:16 244
7:17 244
7:22 2 4 5 , 334**5
7:2224 225
7:23 245
7:24 68
7:25b
24e
8 6 3 , 2 2 7 , 247
8:2 2 4 8
8:3 228
8:4 2 4 7 , 252
8:9 169
8:9-13
252
8:9-17
249
8:10 68
8:13 68
8:14 13
8:17 10
8:i7f 68
8:18 10
2
8:18-25
5
8:19 159, 250
8:20 63
8:29 1011, 59
8:30 228
9 276
9 - 1 1 6 5 , 262, 276
9-}t
3473o
9:17 277
9:23
10
9:25 277
9:25-26
277
9:30-10:21
276
I O : I 347*130
I 2
10:24
10:4 138, 277
10:5 180
10:8 278
1 0 : 9 - 1 2 63
1 0 : 1 2 - 1 3 137, 181, 280
10:19 279
11 276
11:1 279
11:13 7> 3 4 7 " 3
11:23 3 4 7 " 3
11:25 z ^
11:26 160, 280
11:28 34730
11:29 29
z
11:33
$o
28
11:34-35
12 252
12:1 251
1 2 : 1 - 2 171
12:2 22, 63
12:46 251
12:10 251
12:13 2 5 [
12:16 251
1 2 : 1 7 - 1 8 251
1 3 : 8 - 1 0 33425
13:9 169, 3 3 3 i 2 , 347026
1 3 : 9 - 1 0 244
13:14 252
1 4 : 1 - 6 235
14=5-9 2-72
14:14 234
14:15 136
1 4 : 1 5 - 2 0 234
14:20 236
15 256
15:1 235
!5:i5
347"3
15:16 70
15:19 256
15:24 257
15:25 256
15:28 257
1 5 : 3 0 - 3 3 258
15:31 256
16:1 256
25 179
I
CORINTHIANS
1 138
1:7 159
1:13 256
I:I
5 59
1:23 123
2:8 10
2:10 70
2:12 137
3:1 137
3:9 59
3:9-10 138
3:16-17 168
3:17 170
3:19 64
4 I5 6
4:3 156
4:6 335"39
4:9 257
5 156
5:1 170
5:2 170
5:9 64
5:10 113, 338K21
5:11 170
5:12 166
5:13 170
6:2 158
6:3 158
6:9-11 177
6:12-20 170
6:1520 171
Index 3
6 : i 7 247
7 : 1 7 - 2 0 215
7 : 1 7 - 2 7 223
7:19 169, 347)226
7 : 2 5 - 4 0 222
8 199, 234
8 : 8 - 9 229
8:12 23e
8:13 237
8:32 240
9:1 12, 15
9:3 229
9 : 1 3 - 1 4 171
9:19 143
9:20 124, 239
9 : 2 0 - 2 2 2 2 7 - 2 8 , 265, 345M11
9:21 143, 200
10 199
1 0 : 6 - 1 0 242
10:1822 230
10:2530 234
10:27 338021
10:29 338021
10:3111:1 236
11:2 27
11:4 153
11:20 173
1 1 : 2 3 - 2 6 27
11:24 173
1213 26
12:3 63
1 2 : 4 70
12:4-13 3ii26
14:19 70
15 67, 256
1 5 : 1 - 1 1 27
15:8 70
1 5 : 8 - 1 0 12
15:8F 15
15:19 117, 256
15:21 ,65
1 5 : 2 1 - 2 2 65
15:25 256
15:31 256
15:32 256
1 5 : 3 7 - 4 2 23
1 5 : 4 2 - 5 1 65
15:45 1 4 , 6 6
1 5 : 4 7 - 4 9 66
15:49
10-11,59,156
15:51 23
1 5 : 5 1 - 5 8 66
15:53 2 3 , 6 4
16:1 256
16:14 256
16:22 63
2. C O R I N T H I A N S
1:16 68
1:23 239
3 61-62,151-152,155
3-5
12
3 : 1 - 1 7 32393
3:2 60
3 : 4 - 1 7 33425
3:6 (AV) 152
3 : 1 5 - 1 6 1920
3 : 1 5 - 1 8 152
3:16 263
3:164:6 10
3:18
59,60,63,113,156,158
3:18-4:6 59-60
4:2 154
4:3 155
4:4 10, 59, 6 1 - 6 3 , I 5 6 , 168
4 : 4 - 6 62
4:6 6 1 - 6 2 , 1 5 6 - 5 7
4:7 257
4 : 1 1 - 1 2 13
4:13 158
4 : 1 5 - 1 7 10
4:17 157
5:1 157
5:110 48
5:4 157
5:5 158
5 : 1 5 - 6 : 1 67
5:17 62, 263
6:14 174
6:14-7:1 166-67
6:16 168
7:4 257
7 : 9 - 1 0 20
8-9
256
8:2 68
8:2023 240, 254
9:8 169
1112 113
11:18 140
1 1 : 2 2 - 2 4 256
11:2229 257
11:24-26 8
11:32 7
11:3233 256
12 24, 3 6 - 3 7 , 58, 61, 156, 310M26,
314H10
12:1 36
1 2 : 1 - 9 35
1 2 : 1 - 1 0 xi
1 2 : 7 - 1 0 36
I 2 : z i 20, 170
GALATIANS
1 15, 20, 35, 70, 227, 314^10
1:1 25
1:2 151, 159
1:4 6 5 , 160
1:6
151
358
Index
Galatians {continued)
1:6-10 217
1:10 144,213,240
I:i2 36, 159, li
1:13 7
1:13-17 12
1:14 25
1:15 8
1:15-16 13
1:16 <4, 70, 161
1:23 117
1:23-24 12
2 34I4
2:1 187-88
2:1-10 188
2:2 36, 161, 188
2:3 188
2:4 188
2:6 189
2 : 6 - 8 70
2:9 1 8 8 - 8 9
2:10 189
2 : 1 1 - 1 2 230
2 : 1 5 - 1 6 130, 146
2 : 1 5 - 2 1 3474
2:16 1 3 0 - 3 2 , 211
2:17 202
2 : 1 7 - 1 8 241
2:18 130, 202
2:19 243,334*25
2 : 1 9 - 2 1 134
1:20 151
3 161
3:i-5 " 0
3-5 i o
3:6-14 118
3:12 180
3:19 1 3 0 , 1 4 2
3 : 1 9 - 2 1 217
3:21 131, 212
3 : 2 1 - 2 9 212-13
3:2-3 I
3:2324 130
3:23-29 200
3:24 200
3:26 200
3:28 137, 146, 181
4 161
4:5 I 2 4
4:5-6 200
4:8 210
4:8-9 19
4:12 200, 210
4:19 63, 150-51
5:1-6 209
5:4 151
5:6 209
5:6f 137, 181
63-64,141'
I42
3:15 142
3 : 1 7 - 2 1 23
y.19
M
3:2021 6364
3:2,1 10, 59, 64, 142
4:I9
IO
6-11
324ioo
3:I2,
COLOSSIANS
1:15-20 69, 324H100
I:l6
J:2.7
IO
2.:i2 335H38
3:4
I0
69
3:IO
I THESSALONIANS
1:3 163
1:4 163
Index
i:6 68
1:7-10 163
1:9 l6l, 163
1:9-10 19
I:lO 163
2:2 256
2:14 68, 163-64
2:1416 162
2:17 243
2:18 164
3:3f
2. B A R U C H
51:3ft 50
(SYRIAC)
I MACCABEES
1 223
1:1115 3 2 9 w 34
2. M A C C A B E E S
7 163
68
4:3-8 161
4:12 166
4:13-18 162
5:1-5 164
3 MACCABEES
2:31 329K34
7:10 329H34
7:11 88
2 THESSALONIANS
1:4 164
1:4t 68
3:10 164
I TIMOTHY
1:12-13 118
1:12-17 18, 311K32
1:16 18
HEBREWS
1:3 10
1:8 58
JAMES
2:1 10
REVELATION
1:18 112
2:14 236, 342013
2:20 236, 342K13
2:24 342K13
3:21
in
SOLOMON
PSALMS OF
14.2 332M5
SOLOMON
1 ENOCH
3 - 7 1 61
14 4 6 - 4 7
37-71 46-47
39 46
45.5
no
46.3 46
46,48 46
49.2-4 46
51.3 46
51.3-5 46
52.4-9 46
55.4 46
61.49 46
61.8 46
6 2 . 2 - 6 46
62.216 46
62.9 46
62.15 46
6 2 . 1 5 - 1 6 157
63.11 46
69.2729 46
7 0 - 7 1 4648
70.1 47
70.27 46
71 47. 49
71.1 46
90.37
no
90.37-39 46
107.1
no
io8.nff
157
2 ENOCH
22.7 48
22.8-IO (Recension A)
30.8-11 43
33.10 42
48
359
3 6o
Index
3
ENOCH
3-15
51
10.1 4 2 , 5 1
10,3 5 1
10,5 51
11,1 51
1 2 . 1 - 3 51
1 4 . 1 - 5 51
23.21 (12.5) 51
45-i Si
4 6 . 1 - 2 51
48 (D). 7 51
JUBILEES
2.21 196
4 . 1 8 - 1 9 45
4.21 45
4 . 2 3 - 2 6 45
6 . 5 5 - 5 7 88
7 . 2 0 - 2 1 195
15.11 196
15.26 27 196
15.31 88
21.20 45
22.16 196
SIBYLLINE ORACLES
2.93 342013
3.218 64 9 0
3.219 90
3-547 49 9
3-573 6oo 90
4 . 2 4 - 3 9 199
Testamentary Literature
T.Abr. 1.4 42
T.Benj. 9.1 318040
T.Dan. 5.6 318M40
T.Dan. 6.1--5 4 1
T.Judah 18 .1 318K40
T.Levi 10.5 318M40
T.Levi 14.1 318H40
N . N a p h . 4. 1 318040
T.Sim. 5.4 318040
T.Zeb. 3.4 318040
4QShir Shab 40
11 QMelch 4 2
Rabbinic Literature
MISHNAH AND TOSEFTA
Avodah Zarah 2.3 2 3 1 , 329H43
Avodah Zarah 7 329043
AvOt I.I
3I242
Avot 2.7 33205
Avot 3.3 232
Avot 5.27 226
H a g i g a 2 . i 39, 58
Kiddushin 4.14 33308
Nazir 1 34724
Nedarim 1 237
Sanhdrin 10 280, 334029, 342H7
Shavuoth 3 3 4 6 2 i
Shavuoth 4 3 4 6 2 i
Tosefta Demai 2.5 98
Tosefta Sanhdrin 13.2 34207
TALMUD
b.Baba Batra 98a 154
b.Baba Kamma 38a 34207
b.Hagiga I 3 a - i 5 b 36
b.Hagiga 14b 1 5 3 , 31408
b.Hagiga 14hl 335032
b.Kiddushin 29b 153
b.Menachot 39b 154
b.Moed Katan 15a 153
b . N i d d a h 6 i b 138
b.Pesahim5ib
138
b.Rosh Hashanah 17b
153 154
b.Sanhdrin 38b 63
b.Sanhedrin 56b 195
b.Sanhedrin 105a 34207
b.Shabbat 10a 153
b.Shabbat 17b
b.Shabbat 30a 91
138
b.Shabbat 31a
b.Shabbat 151b 97, 3337
138
b.Ta'anit 14b 153
b.Ta'anit 20a 153
b.Yebamot 47ab 102
b.Yoma 286 333/18
Index
Exod.R. 5 (17a) 33i5
Ps.R. z.99 153
Sifra Kedoshim 8 97, 333K7
Sifra 86b 342.K7
Sifre Num. 108 98
OTHER HEBREW
361
LITERATURE
GENERAL I N D E X
Antbrpos, 6 5 - 6 6 , 132
Antinomianism, 117, 14445
Antioch, 26, 1 8 7 - 9 0 , 201, 213, 217
Antiochus IV, 107, 222
Apocalypse of Abraham, 42
Apocalypse of Zephaniah, 42
Apocalypse: sociology of, 158-59, 165;
ties to mysticism, 3 i 7 3 i , 339M25
Apokalypsis (revelation), 13
Apostolic council, 2 3 8 - 4 1
Apostolic Decree, 189, 197, 199, 236,
342M13,346M18
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 2324, 54,
3ii37, 3ii38
Aquila, 222, 238, 346M23
Aristeas, 199
Ascension of Isaiah, 42, 49
Astral transformation, 2425, 50
Augustine, 3, 227, 287, 294
ben Azzai, 335M32
Babylonian exile, 3 1 , 52, 280
Baptism, 23, 27, 6 1 - 6 2 , 6 3 - 6 4 , 6% 1 3 4 3 8 , 334M30
Belial, 167
Biography, xi; romantic, xiii, 307^5; in
ancient world, 3 - 4
Caesar, transformation of, 2 4 - 2 5
Canaan, 30; influence on Daniel, 320H67
Index
Asenath, 329045; use of Abraham,
333ns
Christology, 62, 309011, jo^nij,
324062
Circumcision, cognitive dissonance raised
by, 224
Cognitive dissonance. See Conversion
Conversion: Paul's, as paradigm for social
sciences, 3, 9 , 1 8 7 , 293; biographical
reconstruction, 6, 28, 118; definition
and modern examples of, 6 - 7 , 13 ; as
prophetic commissioning in first century,
9; ecstatic, 15, 70, 2 9 1 - 9 3 ; recent emphasis o n sociology, 16, 30, 294; defined
by communities, 1 6 - 1 8 ; emic and etic
vocabularies of, 2 0 - 2 1 ; sociology of religious questing, 25, 299; attribution
theory, 2 8 - 2 9 , Z 9 I J 5onz5i
education,
2-9> 3 7 - 3 8 , 2 8 8 - 8 9 , 295; in ancient
world, 3 0 - 3 3 ; impetus to proselytize,
127; strength in community, 150; sin,
1 7 6 - 7 7 ; cognitive dissonance, 2 9 7 - 9 9 ;
"hippies," 182; surveys, 286, 2 8 7 - 8 8 ,
32606, 352045; most common in adolescence, 2 8 6 , 1 8 8 ; release of guilt, 2 8 7 88; disharmony in radical, 288; American cults, 289, 291, 2 9 5 - 9 7 ; brainwashing, 2 8 9 - 2 9 3 ; value inversion, 292
293; flying saucer cult, 2 9 5 - 9 7 ; avoidance of disconfirmation, 2 9 6 - 9 7 ; disaffiliation, 299, 350019; problems of
historical data, 2 9 9 - 3 0 0 , 310018; Mormons, 311029; commitment of converts,
3 Z 6 K 6 ; Snow and Machalek, 326014;
marriage in ancient world, 327015
2 Corinthians, problems of dating, 37
Covenant, 30, 60, 121, 195, 222, 260
Creation, 46, 54, 69, 147, 250, 2 6 2 - 6 3
Cybele, 54, 206
Cynic movement, 328023
363
364
Index
Index
garments of Glory, 157; and Roman
persecution, 165; sexual purity, 170;
and Graeco-Roman magic, 31 fini8; demonization of world, 33709
Hellenistic, xi; biography in, 4; development of sectarianism, 3 1 - 3 1 ; Moses,
43; and visions, 5455; Torah, ritual
and commitment, 125; Passover seder
in, 173; apologetics, 197, and Noahide
Commandments, 198-2.00; Alexandria
and Poimandres, 321074; primary and
secondary Hellenization, 340039
Pharisaic, xiv, 26, 153, 230, 33206;
compared to Sadducees, z 8 ; Christian,
71, 214; hanging curse, 119; and conversion, 120, 205; law and faith, 128;
baptism, 135, 137; and purity laws,
1 9 4 - 9 5 ; a n d Noahide Commandments,
200201; and circumcision, 205; in Diaspora, 227; table fellowship, 231; food
tithes, 2 3 8 - 3 9 ; and Israel, 277;
havuroth communities, 330051
Rabbinic, xiv, 122, 1 3 1 , 145, 33205,
334029, 3 3 6 0 3 ; triumph in sectarian
Judaism, xivxv, 264, 2 7 4 ; lack of biographical impulse, 34; secret mysticism
of, 36, 53, 6 1 , 31406, 321069; kavod
and Ezekiel, 3 9 - 4 0 ; and Metatron, 43,
48, 33709; Shutaf (partner) heresy, 44;
two-power heresy, 44, 4 5 , 49, 51, 63,
274, 336044; "Prince of the Presence,"
48; mystical ascents in, 58, 31408; gentile salvation, 129, 191, 219, 334019,
33709, 34209; law of dead persons,
1 3 8 - 3 9 ; veils and prayer shawls, 1 5 3 54; heavenly and earthly services joined,
171; God's mercy, 175, 176; dietary
laws, 199, 234, 245; exclusion of gentiles, 216; o n Lord's Supper, 232,
346016; women in, 270; Israel, 277,
280, 282; and Ezekiel 1, 322079; and
Abraham, 33308; conversion and baptism, 334030; angelic Lord of the
World, 33709; on oaths and vows,
346021
Justin Martyr, 10, 18, 342013
Kabbalah, 48, 52, 58
Kanter, Rosabeth, 77, 84, 104, 271
Kashrut, 2 3 1 , 232
Kavod, 10, 3944 passim
Kerygma, 177, 209, 296
Koenig, John, 22, 141, 1 5 6 - 5 7 , 251
Kyrios, 62
Light and dark, 2 1 , 57, 59, 126, 136, 168
Logos, 45, 54, 57
365
3 66 Index
Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, 28, 78
Noahide Commandments, 129, 1 9 5 - 2 0 1 ,
217, 219
Nomos (lav), 25960, 333K12
NOMS, 54
Index
3 4 2 i o ; ethical circumcision, 328M27;
and Noahide Commandments, 2 0 0 2 0 1 , 207; extreme allegorizer, 2 0 3 - 0 4 ;
circumcision of Timothy, 208, 215, 218,
219, 227, 240, 343K34; rhetoric of castration, 2 0 8 , 209; and kerygma, 209;
circumcision of his son, 2 2 0 - 2 2 ; and
marriage, 2 2 2 - 2 3 , i 2 5 > personal voice
in Rom. 7, 2 2 4 - 2 6 , 228, 242, 253,
3 4 4 3 , 3 4 5 7 ; sin and Torah, 2 2 6 - 2 7 ,
229, 2 4 2 - 4 5 , 2 5 1 - 5 2 ; weak and strong,
2 2 8 - 2 9 ; ^335 ^34-37> 2 4 7 - 4 8 , 2 5 1 ;
criticism of Cephas (Peter), 230; and
Pharisaic table fellowship, 231 ; and vegetarianism, 233, 238; Rom. 7 not existential, 2 4 1 , 244, 3445; joy of Torah,
24344; political breach in Rom. 7,
2 4 4 - 4 5 ; metaphor of adoption, 2 4 9 50, 3477*29; preaching persecution and
Glorification, 250; living sacrifice in
Rom. 12, 2 5 1 - 5 2 ; hostile audience in
Rome, 255; catalogue of woes, 257;
circumcision of the heart, 258; nomas,
law, and Torah, 25960, 333H12; unity
by conversion, 26364; influence on
Gnosticism, 266; in synagogues, 270;
non-Christians as Ishmael, Esau, and
Pharaoh, 277; double plan of salvation,
27980; title apostle from transformation in third heaven, 3197751; concept of
sin, 334M30; various chronologies of his
conversion and baptism, 335^38; dating
problems of Thess., 3387718; translation
of apostasy, 3437723; change in Rom. 7
from early dualism, 3477726
- biography of, xii-xiii, 2 5 - 2 6 , 1 2 8 - 2 9 ,
1 4 0 - 4 1 , 307M5, 3117739; autobiography, xi, 34, 1 2 - 1 4 , lI71 did not meet
Jesus, xi, 1 3 , 14; Pharisaic origins, 4 - 5 ,
6, 13, 2 6 - 2 8 , 128, 2 2 6 - 2 7 ; modem
interpretations, 67, 307774; early Jewish mission, 9, 12, 117, 120, 228; interrogation of Agrippa and Festus, 1 7 - 1 8 ;
religious quester, 2 5 - 2 6 , 174; reconstruction and transformation, 2829;
length of ministry in ancient reckoning,
3637; martyrdom of, 214, 240;
Nazirite vow, 23839, 240, 346H21,
3467723; legal scrapes, 2 5 6 - 5 8 , 271; imprisonment in Caesarea, 2 8 1 ; preconversion mission to gentiles, 309/17; theory
that not a Pharisee, 34519
conversion of, 25, 309K10, 345io;
atypical of apostles, 3; Luke's creative
hand in, 3, 9 - 1 1 ; prophetic commissioning, 6, 7, 9, 70, 127, 309778; ambiguity
in own expressions of, 6, 9, 3 8 - 3 9 , 58;
3 67
368
Index
Paul (continued)
Andrew, zo8nz, 2.92; Pentacost Discourse, 324*199
Philo, 121; Hellenistic biographer, 4; religious quester, 32, 174; and Hellenistic
magic, 4 1 ; divinity of Moses, 43, 44, 54,
3377; and Merkabah traditions, 4 4 45> 3 I 7 " 3 9 i heavenly man, 45; logos,
45, 54; vision experiences of, 54; and
light, 57; on Essenes, 1 7 9 - 8 0 ; extreme
allegorizers, z o 3 - 0 4 , 24647; and
Pauline Christianity, 247; on mysticism,
3 0 7 ! ; circumcision, 328H27; on Jewish
assimilation, 32934
Phiiocalia, 43
Philosophical schools, 1 7 - 1 8 , 3 3 t 5 9
Plato, Parmenides and eidos, 42
Platonic soul, 3 8 - 3 9 , 47, 54, 230
Plutarch, 256, 329M38
Poimandres, 54, 32i74
Primordial Man, 54
Psalms, 42, 61, 225
Pseudo-Clementine correspondence,
342K13, 345H9
Pseudo-Phocylides, 199
Quispel, Gilles, 40
Qumran, 124, 168, 250, 318050; ecstasy
and politics, 15; similar to Merkabah,
40; Angelic Liturgy, 40, 6 1 ; Melchizedek and Etohim, 42; purity, 6 1 , 168;
baptism and ritual immersion, 69, 135
37, 178, 334"3; children of light, 152,
164; ostracizing, 159; dualism, 159,
196; exegesis of apocalypse, 1 6 1 ; demon
Belial and Angel of Truth, 167; presence
of angels, 168; purity and ethics, 1 6 9 70; heavenly and earthly services joined,
171, justification and faith, 17480; sociological location, 178; cohesion and
justification, 180; Psalms of, 225; and
Israel, 262, 276; Enoch literature,
318H50
Raeissaenen, Heikki, 200
Rambo, Lewis R., 16
Religious quester, 2 5 - 2 6 , 3 2 - 3 3 , 174,
269, 299
Reuyoth Yehezkel, 323H94
Sabbath, 6 1 , 173, 193, 196
Sadducees, 28, 246
Samaritans, 40, 43, 46
Sanders, E. P., 125, 169, 2 6 2 - 6 4