BIRD ET AL 2023 Paul Within Judaism (Mohr Siebeck)

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament
Herausgeber/Editor
Jörg Frey (Zürich)
Mitherausgeber/Associate Editors
Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) ∙ James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala)
Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) ∙ Janet Spittler (Charlottesville, VA)
J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)
507
Paul within Judaism
Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity
Edited by
Michael Bird, Ruben A. Bühner, Jörg Frey,
and Brian Rosner
Mohr Siebeck
Michael Bird, born 1974; 2005 PhD; Academic Dean and Lecturer in New Testament at
Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia (Australian College of Theology).
orcid.org/0000-0001-8575-2583
Ruben Bühner, born 1990; 2020 Dr. theol.; PostDoc and Lecturer at the Department of
New Testament Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
orcid.org/0000-0002-7033-5637
Jörg Frey, born 1962; 1996 Dr. theol.; 1998 Habilitation; Professor of New Testament
Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
orcid.org/0000-0001-6628-8834
Brian Rosner, born 1959; 1991 PhD; Principal and Lecturer in New Testament at Ridley
College, Melbourne, Australia (Australian College of Theology).
orcid.org/0000-0003-3048-2795
The prepress production of this book and the eBook were published with the support of
the Swiss National Science Foundation.
ISBN 978-3-16-162325-7 / eISBN 978-3-16-162440-7

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-162440-7
ISSN 0512-1604 / eISSN 2568-7476
(Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)
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Preface
Our volume Paul within Judaism is based on an on-line scholarly symposium

organized by Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, graciously sponsored by
the Australian College of Theology, held during 21–24 September 2021. The
topic of exploration was chosen because of the western fascination with the
apostle Paul and the persistent challenge of exploring Paul in relation to both his
Jewish heritage and his Messiah-believing commitments. In a sense, the tension
to be explored or explained is how is Paul both “Paul the Jewish/Judean follow-
er of Jesus” and simultaneously “St. Paul” of the church’s faith and witness. This
is the subject which continues to excite and energize scholars in their articula-
tion of both ancient history as well as contemporary theological commitments
and informing inter-faith relationships. The contributors to this volume are not
monolithic and they represent a plurality of perspectives and diversity of ap-
proaches to Paul vis-à-vis ancient Judaism. It is the hope of the editors that this
volume will continue the conversation about Paul and his Jewishness, not de-
spite his being a Messiah-believer, but precisely as part of it.
While the conference took place under the aegis of Ridley College, the vol-
ume itself would not have been possible without the editorial team of Dr. Mi-
chael Bird, Dr. Brian Rosner, Dr. Ruben A. Bühner, and Prof. Jörg Frey, who all
made contributions to the editing, production, and publication of this volume.
Hopefully we have set a new benchmark in Euro-Antipodean cooperation,
bringing Uluru and the Matterhorn (metaphorically) closer together. We re-
main grateful too for the editorial support of the Mohr Siebeck publishing team
for their hard work in bringing this volume to fruition. We also wish to thank
Tsion Seyoum Meren for compiling the indices of authors and ancient sources,
and Ruben A. Bühner for the index of subjects. In addition, funding to make
this volume open access was generously provided by the Swiss National Science
Foundation (SNSF). The convulsions of COVID meant that such a meeting of
learned scholars of religious antiquity and early Christianity were not able to
meet in person. We had to settle for an on-line symposium which, though not
ideal, proved to be adequate to the ask. A happenstance we hope not to repeat at
a future conference on Paul within Paganism which will be a natural sequel to
this project. Another way of continuing the advancement of Pauline scholar-
ship.
Michael F. Bird Easter Sunday, 9 April, 2023.

Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V
Michael Bird
An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr
Agencies of Grace in Paul and James: Two Jewish Voices . . . . . . . . 29
Jörg Frey
The Relativization of Ethnicity and Circumcision in Paul
and His Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Joshua D. Garroway
Messy Metaphors. Ethnic Transformation in Philo, Romans,
and Ephesians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Brian Rosner
Apostle from Israel to the Gentiles. The Jewish Roots
of Paul’s Identity and Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Chris Porter
Which Paul? Whose Judaism? A Socio-Cognitive Approach
to Paul within Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
David Starling
“Those who were not my people”. Paul’s Gentile Churches
and the Story of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi

Paul’s Segmentary Grammar of Identity. Ex-Pagan Gentiles
within Synagogues and the Importance of the Eschatological
Pilgrimage Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ryan D. Collman
For Who Has Known the Mind of the Apostle? Paul, the Law,
and His Syngeneis in the Messiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
VIII Table of Contents
Kathy Ehrensperger
Abraham our Forefather and Herakles our Cousin. Paul’s Genealogical
Reasoning and Jewish Narratives of Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Janelle Peters
Paul and Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Ruben A. Bühner
The Torah in Ethnically Mixed Assemblies. Paul’s Behavioral
Adaptability in 1 Cor 9:19–23 in Context of Jewish Pragmatism
in the Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Joshua W. Jipp
The Lukan Paul as Prophet of God’s Resurrected Messiah. Prophecy
and Messianism in the Lukan Depiction of Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Murray J. Smith
The Theophany of the Resurrected Messiah. The “Jewish” Christology
of Paul’s Speeches in Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Lyn Kidson
Remembering Paul in Asia Minor. A Contested Jewish Identity
in the First Four Centuries of Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Michael Kok
The Heresiological Portrayals of the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans
and Their Reception of Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Index of Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate
Michael Bird
1. The Persistence of Pauline Scholarship
I have spent a large part of my scholarly career as a Neutestamentler wrestling

with the apostle Paul, his life, his letters, and his legacy. The reason for that is
quite simple. The study of Paul is inescapable for anyone concerned with the
New Testament, the origins of early Christianity, Greco-Roman religion, an-
cient Judaism, the development of Christian thought, or even the history of
western civilization. Paul was unknown to the rich and powerful of his time, he
was a divisive figure among those who did know him, and I doubt very much
that anybody thought he was destined to become the towering figure of religious
and intellectual history that he became. Yet here we are with another scholarly
symposium about Paul, another collection of essays about him, and another set
of debates and disagreements over him. This volume and the conference it was
based on, is but another example of the continuing fascination with Paul in
minds of scholars, people of all faiths and none, from different quarters of the
globe, representing diverse streams of human experience, who are yet united by
their abiding interest in Paul. The scholarship that examines Paul is both deep in
its history and now relatively wide in the breadth of people who are drawn to the
topic. Paul continues to have much significance for the academy, for those who
specialize in the study of religion, and for living communities of faith.
What has become clear to me over the years is that “Paul” stands somewhere
between a fragmented mosaic and a Rorschach drawing.
First, studying Paul is like brushing dust off a mosaic in an ancient Ephesian
villa. The mosaic contains the face of a human figure and yet the mosaic con-
tains gaps, a few cracked tiles, distortions of colour, and even some tiles that
have been secondarily added to mosaic. We cannot and therefore do not see Paul
as he really was, only as he was presented by the artist, and even that presenta-
tion is fragmentary. That is not to say we cannot see, understand, or know any-
thing about Paul, but our knowledge of Paul is mediated as it is imperfect. The
quest for the historical Paul is the quest for the Paul who is the most recoverable
and plausible portrait of a historical figure of antiquity. Alas, we shall never find
the holy grail that is Paul as his pure self, only Paul as apostle, author, and art-
work, Paul as martyr and memory, Paul as a diaspora Jew and a symbol of
Christian faith.
2 Michael Bird
Second, studying Paul is also like gazing at a Rorschach drawing. I say that
because Paul is a figure read from history and read into history, a subject of ex-
egesis and eisegesis, an extrapolation and a projection, someone other than us
and a mirror of us. It is not exaggeration to say that every book about Paul tells
you something about Paul and something about the researcher of Paul! A biog-
raphy of Paul, an introduction to his letters, a description of his religion, or a
summation of his thought, is never done in isolation from one’s own biography,
ones own proclivities, and one’s own religious atmosphere. That is not to say
that the study of Paul is purely a mirror, as if all we think we know about Paul
is only what we project onto him. I don’t believe the domain Pauline studies is
reducible to an exercise in interpretive self-construction.
But it is incontestably true that the study of Paul is determined very much by
context, the context that Paul is placed in, and the context that interpreters find
themselves within. E. P. Sanders acknowledges that his own comparative study
of Paul and Palestinian Judaism was not prescriptive. Palestinian Judaism sim-
ply provided the analogue against which Paul’s own religious pattern could be
compared. Sanders writes:
Lots of people think that … somewhere in the pages of Paul and Palestinian Judaism
there is a claim that Paul must be discussed only in the light of Jewish sources of Pales-
tinian origin. There is no such claim: I merely compared him with the material that I had
spent ten years studying.1
Thus, to study Paul in the context Palestinian Judaism remains a choice and the
choices are ample.
Thus, it makes an immense difference if one tries to situate Paul in the context
of the Qumran scrolls, intra-Jewish sectarianism, itinerant philosophers, Gre-
co-Roman associations, imperial cults, Plutarch’s account of Hellenistic reli-
gion, Iranian Manicheanism, Jewish hekhalot traditions, new religious move-
ments, millenarianism, or ancient accounts of gender and ethnicity. Similarly, it
matters much if one studies Paul from the context of fifth century North Afri-
can Christianity, a twelfth century Parisian monastery, intra-Protestant debates
of the sixteenth century, among Indian civil rights lawyers in nineteenth centu-
ry Delhi, in African-American churches in Atlanta in the 1960s, or in a Critical
Theory class at Stanford University in the first quarter of the twenty-first cen-
tury. Context shapes the purpose of study, the language of enquiry, and the re-
sults of research.
The meaning of Paul, that is, the coherences that we try to draw about him,
are really the fusion of these ancient and modern contexts. Pauline scholarship
consists of the backdrop we place Paul in combined with the lens we manufac-
1 E. P. Sanders, “Between Judaism and Hellenism,” in Saint Paul among the Philosophers,
ed. Jack Caputa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 75.
An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate 3
ture to try to understand him. There are of course different ways of doing that,
different ways of locating Paul and looking at Paul.
One could generalize that recent study of the apostle Paul and his letters
breaks down into roughly five camps: Roman Catholic approaches, traditional
Protestant interpretation, the New Perspective on Paul, the Apocalyptic Paul,
and Paul within Judaism.2 Yes, there are other tribes and trends too. Yes, these
are not rigid divisions, each is diverse in its own way, but I think the generaliza-
tion holds true.
2. Introducing Paul within Judaism
2.1 The Many Perspectives on Paul as Jewish and in Judaism

One recent trend in Pauline scholarship is known as Paul within Judaism, which
is a collection of scholars committed to the project of studying Paul in his Jew-
ish context. So rather than speak merely of Paul and Judaism, they are inclined
to speak of Paul’s Judaism.3 Most commonly, Paul is described as a Jewish fig-
ure, addressing Jewish concerns, engaged in Jewish moral, cultic, and scriptural
reasonings with a view to attaining a better gasp of Paul in comparative reli-
gious history. By situating Paul within Judaism, proponents appear to mean
studying the apostle Paul and his letters in relationship to the Jewish people and
cultus, reconsidering Paul’s Jewish identity and his own Jewish devotion, reas-
sessing the relationship of Paul’s Gentile Messiah-believing converts to Jewish
communities, and (in some cases) seeking to cultivate better inter-religious rela-
tionships between Jews and Christians. It means too, put negatively, avoiding
the anachronism of thinking of Paul as a “Christian” theologian, stripping away
caricatures of Judaism as a “religion” of “legalism” or “ethnocentrism,” under-
mining the presupposition that sets Paul’s discourse against Jews and Judaism,
and exposing anti-Jewish perspectives in Pauline scholarship. The “Paul within
Judaism” movement (PwJ) – we cannot call it a faction or school – bears these
general characteristics, though it has its own internal diversities.
The PwJ network of scholars is not a thunderbolt out of the blue, there are
precursors and forerunners. There has been a long history of Jewish intellectu-
als wrestling with Paul as a figure of Jewish antiquity and as an agent of Chris-
2 Cf. Michael F. Bird, ed., Four Views on the Apostle Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2012); N. T. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters (London: SPCK, 2015); Scot McKnight
and B. J. Oropeza, eds., Perspectives on Paul: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,
2020); Ben Witherington and Jason A. Myers, Voices and Views on Paul: Exploring Scholarly
Trends (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2020).
3 Cf. Mark D. Nanos, “Paul and Judaism: Why Not Paul’s Judaism?” in Paul Unbound:
Other Perspectives on the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Given (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010),
117–60.
4 Michael Bird
tian anti-Semitism.4 One can see important pioneers in the studies of William
D. Davies and Johannes Munck who were among the first scholars in the post
Shoah era to reconsider Paul as a consistently Jewish figure.5 In addition, a very
underappreciated figure is Markus Barth, son of the great Swiss Theologian
Karl Barth. Barth the younger argued for rethinking Paul’s Jewishness and re-
framing Jewish-Christian inter-faith relations in such a way that was decades
ahead of its time. For Barth, Paul’s account of “justification by faith” was not a
polemical doctrine, but an ecumenical one, Paul’s attempt to unite rather than
divide Jewish and Gentile Christians.6 In addition, Barth believed that it was
possible to envisage Paul, even saint Paul, as a “good Jew.” What was required to
do that was for Christian theologians to forfeit their superiority complex and
supersessionist impulses as well as reject condescending and caricatured views
of Jewish legalism.7 Barth’s contention, banally self-evident as it might sound
now, was revolutionary back in 1960s and 70s, i.e., the apostle Paul needs to be
rethought and even reclaimed as Jewish thinker. Further, a corollary of a Jewish
re-imagining of Paul was that inter-faith ecumenical relationships between Jews
and Christians need to be refreshed.
4 Cf. Donald A. Hagner, “Paul in Modern Jewish Thought,” in Pauline Studies, ed. Donald
A. Hagner and Murray J. Harris (FS F. F. Bruce; Exeter: Paternoster, 1980), 143–65; Stefan
Meißner, Die Heimholung des Ketzers: Studien zur jüdischen Auseinandersetzung mit Paulus,
WUNT 2/87 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); William D. Davies, “Paul: from the Jewish
Point of View,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 3 – The Early Roman Period,
ed. William Horbury, William D. Davies, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 3.678–730; Sung-Hee Lee-Linke, ed., Paulus der Jude: Seine Stellung im
christlich-jüdischen Dialog heute (Frankfurt a. M.: Lembeck, 2005); Michael F. Bird and Pres-
ton Sprinkle, “Jewish Interpretation of Paul in the Last Thirty Years,” CBR 6 (2008): 355–76;
Daniel R. Langton, The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination: A Study in Modern Jew-
ish-Christian Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); John Gager, “The
Rehabilitation of Paul in Jewish Tradition,” in ‘The One Who Sows Bountifully’: Essays in
Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. Caroline J. Hodge, Saul M. Olyan, Daniel Ullicci, and Emma
Wasserman (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2013), 29–41; Patrick Gray, Paul as a
Problem of History and Culture: The Apostle and His Critics Through the Centuries (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker, 2016), 117–41.
5 William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline The-
ology (London: SPCK, 1948) and Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (Lon-
don: SCM, 1959); idem, Christ and Israel: An Interpretation of Romans 9–11 (Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress, 1967).
6 Markus Barth, “Jews and Gentiles: The Social Character of Justification in Paul,” JES 5
(1968): 241–67.
7 Markus Barth, “Der gute Jude Paulus,” in Richte unsere Füße auf den Weg des Friedens,
ed. Andreas Baudis, Dieter Clausert, Volkhard Schliski, and Bernhard Wegener, FS Helmut
Gollwitzer (München: Christian Kaiser, 1979), 107–37; repr. “St. Paul – A Good Jew,” HBT 1
(1979): 7–45. See reflections on Markus Barth’s article by Stanley E. Porter, “Was Paul a Good
Jew? Fundamental Issues in a Current Debate,” in Christian-Jewish Relations Through the
Centuries, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Brook W. R. Pearson, JSNTSup 192 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2000), 148–74.
The cluster of scholarship called “The New Perspective on Paul” (NPP), as-
sociated with luminaries such as E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright,
Terence Donaldson, and Bruce Longenecker among others was an important
precursor to PwJ. 8 The NPP largely accepted Sanders’ view that first century
Palestinian Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness, a type of moral-
istic legalism, but expressed what Sanders called “covenantal nomism,” a salvif-
ic scheme typified by an efficacious divine election and means of covenantal
grace. But, if Judaism was not legalistic as Protestants had imagined, a legalism
for which Paul’s gospel of grace was the antithesis and antidote, then what did
Paul find wrong with Judaism? Sanders’ answer was that in Paul’s mind the
problem was that Judaism was not “Christianity,” it had not experienced or
embraced God’s revelation of salvation in the Messiah. Yet that was considered
too simplistic an explanation. Instead, it was argued, that Paul’s problem was
not a lack of grace in Judaism, but a belief that God’s grace was reserved only for
Jews to the exclusion of Gentiles. In other words, the problem was not legalism
but trusting in a “national righteousness,” an “ethnocentric covenantalism,” or
an “ethnocentric nomism,” that is, clinging to the Jewish way of life as codified
in the Torah, summed up as righteousness by “works of the law.”
The gain of the NPP was that Paul was now studied as a figure within Juda-
ism, not as a Protestant tackling medieval anxieties about how to find a merciful
God, nor attacking synergistic and sacramental theologies of salvation, and not
an existentialist philosopher on a quest for authenticity. Paul was not interested
in the question of whether justification entailed an imputation of Jesus’s active
obedience by faith alone in opposition to an infusion of grace to energize believ-
ers to work out their faith in charitable deeds. Rather, Paul was dealing with
Jewish questions: Do Gentiles have to become Jews in order to be followers of
Jesus?9 How do Christ-believing Jews and Gentiles inhabit the same spaces, eat
at the same tables, worship in the same tenement when Gentiles have regarded
the Jews as misanthropists and Jews have regarded Gentiles as polluted with
ignorance, idolatry, immorality, and impurity? The NPP made better sense his-
torically, and it operated on the premise that Paul was not against the Jewish
8 Cf. Hans Hübner, “Zur gegenwärtigen Diskussion über die Theologie des Paulus,” JBTh
7 (1992): 399–413; Kent L. Yinger, The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction (Eugene,
OR: Cascade, 2011); Michael F. Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Jus-
tification, and the New Perspective (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007), 88–154; Gar-
wood P. Anderson, Paul’s New Perspective: Charting a Soteriological Journey (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2016).
9 Or as E. P. Sanders (Paul: The Apostles’ Life, Letters, and Thought [Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress, 2015], 8–9 put it: “The major theological battle of his career was whether or not
gentiles (non-Jews) who accepted Jesus must also become Jewish by being circumcised and
accepting other parts of the Jewish law that separated Jew from gentile. Paul argued vocifer-
ously that his converts could remain gentiles, though they had to accept Jewish monotheism
and most aspects of Jewish ethics.”
6 Michael Bird
religion as much as he was transforming it around a particular story of Israel’s

Messiah.10
That is not to say that the NPP did not have its own failings or shortcom-
ings.11 To begin with, Sanders himself was operating with a liberal Protestant
view whereby a religion of grace is eminently better than one of merit; yet that
constituted a theological judgment, not a historical one. Plus, Sanders had reit-
erated the discontinuity between Paul and Judaism by postulating that Paul had
replaced “covenantal nomism” with “participation in Christ.” In addition, Jew-
ish soteriologies of the Persian, Hellenistic, Second Temple, and Rabbinic peri-
ods were not monolithic, there were “variegated” understandings of the pur-
pose of Torah-observance and different “efficacies” as to the nature of divine
grace.12 It is hazardous to over-generalize as to the substance, scope, and instru-
ment of salvation among all Jews and Jewish literature. There was also the dan-
ger that the NPP reduced Paul’s account of righteousness or justification to a
socio-epiphenomenon of in-group identity status and negated the apocalyptic
and theocentric texture of Paul’s whereby a believer’s status vis-à-vis God and
the final judgment was at stake. There was also a caricatured dismissal of the
Medieval and Reformed traditions as misreaders of Paul rather than appreciat-
ing them in their own right as part of the trajectory of Pauline reception.13 Fi-
10 Cf. e.g., James D. G. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, CITM 2 (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2009), 522–30; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, COQG 4 (London:
SPCK, 2014), 1407–72.
11 Cf. e.g., A. Andrew Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
2004); Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God, 88–112; idem, An Anomalous Jew: Paul among
Jews, Greeks, and Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 20; Anderson, Paul’s New
Perspective, 15–56; Kathy Ehrensperger, Search Paul: Conversations with the Jewish Apostle
to the Nations, WUNT 429 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 353–75.
12 Cf. Mark A. Elliott, The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of
Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 245–307; Donald A. Carson,
“Summaries and Conclusions,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1: The Complex-
ities of Second Temple Judaism, ed. Donald A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark Seifrid
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), 543–8; Bird, Saving Righteousness, 93–4, 179–94; Watson,
Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, xvii, 12–9; A. Andrew Das, “Paul and the Law: Pressure
Points in the Debate,” in Paul Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Giv-
en (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 99–116, here 101; Daniel M. Gurtner, ed., This World
and the World to Come: Soteriology in Early Judaism, LSTS 74 (London: T&T Clark, 2011);
Gabriele Boccaccini, “Inner-Jewish Debate on the Tension between Divine and Human
Agency in Second Temple Judaism,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural
Development, ed. John M. G. Barclay and Simon G. Gathercole (London: T&T Clark, 2007),
9–26; Preston M. Sprinkle, Paul and Judaism Revisited: A Study of Divine and Human Agen-
cy in Salvation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), 208–38; Jacob Thiessen, Gottes Ge-
rechtigkeit und Evangelium im Römerbrief: Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Paulus im Vergleich
zu antiken jüdischen Auffassungen und zur neuen Paulusperspektive (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
2014), 112–37; David Lincicum, Ruth Sheridan, and Charles M. Stang, eds., Law and Lawless-
ness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, WUNT 420 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019);
John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).
13 Cf. Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and
nally, one could also argue that the NPP continued with the Christian tradition
of essentializing Judaism, that is, reducing Judaism to the negative foil for Paul’s
gospel, with the exception that the NPP had replaced Jewish “legalism” with
Jewish “nationalism.” The Jews remained the villains and are directly or indi-
rectly vilified as opponents of Paul, Paul’s Christ, and Paul’s God.
Some, however, taking their cue from the NPP, wanted to go further, and
argue that Paul himself had no contention with Jews and Judaism. Paul’s gospel
was about messianic salvation for Gentiles, a gospel which left the Jewish cove-
nant and Jewish way of life completely intact, without any need for conversion
or consolation. Such a view was initially identified as the “Radical Paul” (RP)
since the RP represented a more radicalized approach to reimagining a Jewish
Paul. To give one example, John Gager argues that for Paul, “The law remains in
effect for who are circumcised.” In fact, “Paul’s affirmation of the law’s contin-
ued validity for Israel” means that there can be no “End-time conversion of Is-
rael to Christ.” Paul does not envisage a Sonderweg for Israel, for the Jewish
covenant remains effective. To the contrary, what Paul “taught and preached”
says Gager, “was instead a special path, a Sonderweg, for Gentiles.”14
The RP never really caught on or displaced the NPP as the resident paradigm
for Pauline studies to rival traditional Protestant and Catholic interpretations.
That said, out of the NPP and RP was birthed the PwJ network. PwJ can be
viewed, in some ways, as a follow-up to the NPP, or else as a mopping up exer-
cise to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” and correct a few motifs that the NPP
mistook. PwJ is perhaps the NPP with a kippah!15
2.2 Paul within Judaism: A Preliminary Appreciation

PwJ is among the most exciting and controversial avenues for studying Paul
because it is testing many old assumptions and positing fresh proposal on Paul
vis-à-vis Judaism. There is no single manifesto or definitive publication of its
aims or ambitions.16 I’d aver that above all, PwJ is marked out by the claim that
His Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003); Michael Bachmann and Johannes Woyke,
eds., Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive: Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselproblem der gegen-
wärtigen exegetischen Diskussion, WUNT 182 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); Stephen J.
Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers: Reconciling Old and New Perspectives (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).
14 John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 146.
15 According to Ehrensperger (Searching Paul, 373) what the NPP, RP, and PwJ share is
interest in plotting the social position and theological identity of Paul’s Christ-following
groups.
16 Note should be taken of Paula Fredriksen’s contributions, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle
(New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2017); idem, “What Does It Mean to See Paul ‘with-
in Judaism,’” JBL 141 (2022): 359–80. A few edited collections by Mark D. Nanos and Magnus
Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2015); Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia, eds., Paul the
Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress,
8 Michael Bird
Paul’s Jewishness and Judaism are neither tacit nor token, neither theoretical
nor formal, but lay at the core of his identity, mission, and something he prac-
ticed even as a Messiah-confessor. Beyond that axiom several other claims and
insights stand out.
First, PwJ scholars are freshly probing the meaning of Ἰουδαῖος (“Jew/Ju-
dean”) and Ἰουδαϊσμός (“Judaism”).
To begin with, there is the extant debate as to whether Ἰουδαῖος should be
treated as an ethnic, religious, or geographical identifier (or a mixture thereof).17
While the translation “Judean” gained favor for a time, and in some contexts is
an appropriate translation,18 there is a general recognition now that “Jew” might
be preferable given that Ἰουδαῖος communicates a mixture of common ancestry
and shared custom which transcends the geographical confines of Judea.19
In addition, there is a recognition that Ἰουδαϊσμός means the Jewish/Judean
way of life.20 The complicating fact is that Judaism was of course diverse, some
even prefer to speak of “Judaisms” in the plural, a semantic innovation made
from observing the pluriformity of Jewish communities and practices even if
“Judaisms” is an ultimately unsatisfying nomenclature.21 In any case, there were
2016); František Ábel, ed., The Message of Paul the Apostle within Second Temple Judaism
(Lanham: Lexington, 2020). Useful summaries are Mark D. Nanos, “A Jewish View,” in Four
Views on the Apostle Paul, ed. Michael F. Bird (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 159–92
and Magnus Zetterholm, “The Paul within Judaism Perspective,” in Perspectives on Paul: Five
Views, ed. Scot McKnight and B. J. Oropeza (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2020), 171–218.
17 See survey in David M. Miller, “Ethnicity, Religion, and the Meaning of Ioudaios in
Ancient ‘Judaism,’” CBR 12 (2014): 216–65; and more recent discussion in Jason A. Staples,
The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite
Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 11–21; Matthew V. Novenson, Paul
Then and Now (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022), 25–31.
18 Cf. e.g., Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s
Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003), 63–74; Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing,
Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512; Steve Ma-
son and Philip F. Esler, “Judean and Christ-Follower Identities: Grounds for a Distinction,”
NTS 62 (2016): 439–60.
19 John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323
BCE–117 CE) (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 404; Michael F. Bird,
Crossing over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (Pea-
body, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 13–6; idem, An Anomalous Jew, 47–8.
20 BDAG, 479.
21 According to J. Andrew Overman (Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel ac-
cording to Matthew [Valley Forge, PA: TPI, 1996], 9): “So varied was Jewish society in the
land of Israel in this period, and so varied were the Jewish groups, that scholars no longer
speak of Judaism in the singular when discussing this formative and fertile period in Jewish
history. Instead, we speak about Judaisms. In this time and place, there existed a number of
competing, even rival Judaisms.” However, James C. Vanderkam (“Judaism in the Land of
Israel,” in Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C.
Harlow [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012], 70–94, here 91) rejects the language of “Juda-
isms” because: “The surviving evidence exhibits a richness and diversity in the Judaism of the
Second Temple era, a diversity so great that some have resorted to the neologism ‘Judaisms’ to
express it. Yet, despite the undoubted diversity present in the texts, there are fundamental
different ways of adhering to and living out Jewishness in Judea and the Dias-
pora. In addition, in Christian interpretation, the term “Judaism” has become
defined as the negative foil or anti-thesis to Christianity.22 In other words, “Ju-
daism” was “invented” to be the darkness against which the luminous bright-
ness of Pauline grace shone so brightly. We can certainly contest or qualify any
attempt to provide a simplistic account of the “parting of the ways” between
Christianity and Judaism, just as we need caution as to the reification of Jew-
ish-ness and Christian-ness as discreet identities.23 The PwJ claim is that the
juxtaposition of Judaism and Christianity as distinct and even competing reli-
gions owes much to (mis)readings of Paul rather than something intended by
Paul, misreadings that need to be corrected.
This is why one of the most significant passages to draw attention in PwJ
scholarship is Gal 1:13–14 where Paul narrates to the Galatians, “You have heard
of my former way of life in Judaism” (Ἠκούσατε γὰρ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀναστροφήν ποτε
ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ). What is Paul contrasting here? Does Paul contrast his former
way of life in Judaism with his current way of life as a Christ-follower that is
post-Judaism? Or, does Paul contrast his former way in Judaism with his cur-
rent way of life in Judaism as a Christ-follower?24 Given Paul’s commitment to
Torah, monotheism, avoiding idolatry, affirming Israel’s eschatological hopes,
messianic devotion, and immersing Gentile in such things, it makes no sense to
speak of his abandonment of Judaism.25 Nonetheless, Paul does make a sharp
and jarring contrast between his former and current modes of life with respect
to Judaism. Perhaps the solution is that Paul here means “Judaism” is a particu-
lar sense, not as his dislocation from or denunciation of the entire ethno-reli-
beliefs and practices that would have been accepted by virtually all Jews during those centu-
ries and that justify retaining the singular noun Judaism.” See also E. P. Sanders, “Common
Judaism Explored,” in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, ed. Wayne
O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 11–23, on balancing unity
and diversity in ancient Judaism.
22 See esp. Ignatius, Phild. 6.1; Magn. 8.1; 10.3. While Justin Martyr’s Dialogues with Try-
pho does not use the term “Judaism,” nonetheless, Justin’s presentation of the Jewish tradition
is as a precursor and preparation for the gospel, while also obsolete and even superseded by
Christian faith. See Daniel Boyarin, “Justin Martyr Invents Judaism,” Church History 70
(2001): 427–61; idem, “Why Ignatius Invented Judaism,” in The Ways that Often Parted: Es-
says in Honor of Joel Marcus, ed. Lori Baron, Jill Hicks-Keeton, and Matthew Thiessen (At-
lanta, GA: SBL, 2008), 309–24.
23 On such cautions, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jewish-Christianity and the History of
Judaism, TSAJ 171 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 82–4.

24 See discussion in Susan D. Eastman, Recovering Paul’s Mother Tongue: Language and
Theology in Galatians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 33–43; Markus Cromhout,
“Paul’s ‘Former Conduct in the Judean Way of Life’ (Gal 1:13) … or Not?” HTSTS 63 (2009):
1–12; David Rudoph, A Jew to the Jews: Jewish Contours of Pauline Flexibility in 1 Corinthi-
ans 9:19–23 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 44–6; Daniel Boyarin, “Ioudaismos within
Paul: A Modified Reading of Gal 1:13–14,” in Ábel, The Message of Paul, 167–78.
25 Rightly Novenson, Paul Then and Now, 47–50.
10 Michael Bird
gion of the Jews, but as referring to his dereliction of a zealous and fanatical
mode of Judaism, the Pharisaic tradition.26 It was this zealous Judeanism which
drove his persecution of the churches, who were in his mind, a rogue messianic
cult, 27 who were lowering the currency of Israel’s election and contaminating
Israel’s capacity to worship God in holiness by fraternizing with Gentiles and
by venerating Jesus in unusually intense ways. In other words, what Paul rejects
is a post-Maccabean species of sectarian Judaism typified by its zeal for nation-
al holiness and pharisaic halakhah.28 Whatever solution is preferred, such texts
are ground zero in PwJ to wrestle with Paul’s Jewish identity as well as his many
aggravated denials and relentless affirmations with respect to his Christ-follow-
ing devotion.
PwJ scholarship, therefore, attempts to explore Paul’s language of Ἰουδαῖος
and Ἰουδαϊσμός with greater lexical precision, informed by ancient notions of
ethnicity and religious identity, and without the baggage of essentializing Jews
and Judaism as the anti-type to Christianity.
Second, PwJ scholars take it as axiomatic that Paul himself was Torah-obser-
vant. Paul strenuously rejects the imposition of Torah observance upon Gen-
tiles, especially circumcision and food laws, yet never implies that Jews should
cease from observing the Torah.29 As such, Paul’s remarks that the Torah is not
nullified but upheld by faith in Christ are taken seriously (Rom 3:31). Paul ne-
gates the need for proselytism for Gentiles to be Christ-followers, that is, he
rejects compelling them to judaize to the point of circumcision (see Josephus,
Bell. 2.454) as part of allegiance to Christ (Rom 3:21–4:25; 1 Cor 7:18–20; Gal
5:1–11; 6:12–16) and as the condition for table fellowship in the church (Gal 2:1–
21).30 While Paul would not permit Titus to be circumcised under duress (Gal
2:3), yet the Lucan Paul consented for Timothy to be circumcised which sounds
plausible enough (Acts 16:1–3). An interesting qualification is that Paul does in
26 Paul as a Jewish Christ-believing convert speaks of “Judaism” the same way an ex-Mus-
lim Christian might speak of “Jihadism.” Not all Judaism is about zealous and pharisaic tra-
ditions just as not all of Islam is about jihad.
27 E. P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostles’ Life, Letters, and Thought, 194–5, 494.
28 See Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, rev.
ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 22–4; Matthew V. Novenson, “Paul’s Former Occu-
pation in Ioudaismos,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and
Ethics in Paul’s Letter, ed. Mark W. Elliott, Scott J. Hafemann, and N. T. Wright (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker, 2014), 24–39; Boyarin, “Ioudaismos within Paul,” 173–5.
29 See Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Offene Fragen zur Gesetzespraxis bei Paulus und seinen
Gemeinden (Sabbat, Speisegebote, Beschneidung),” BThZ 25 (2008): 16–51.

30 Whether Gentiles had to be circumcisioned in order to “convert” to Judaism was a mat-
ter of considerable contention even among Jewish communities. Josephus’s account of the
conversion/circumcision of King Izates of Adiabene is case in point (Ant. 20.34–48) and back-
grounds the discussion of Gentile circumcision in Acts 15, Galatians 2–5, and Romans 1–4.
On which, see Bird, Crossing Over Sea and Land, 97–9 and Matthew Thiessen, Contesting
Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
a sense compel Gentile converts to partially judaize, insofar as that he requires

Gentiles Christ-believers to avoid idolatry, sexual immorality, to affirm mono-
theism, messianism, Israel’s election, the divine origins and authority of the
Torah, and prophetic hopes for the future.31 Paul’s own Torah-adherence and
imposition of some aspects of Torah on Christ-believing Gentiles undermines
the entire notion of a Torah-free gospel or a law vs. grace dichotomy.
Paul and the Torah is undoubtedly one of the most complex topics in Pauline
interpretation. True, Paul does say some rather jarring things about himself in
relation to the Torah (e.g., Gal 2:19; Rom 7:4; 14:14; 1 Cor 9:19–23) and the very
nature of the Torah itself (e.g., Rom 5:20; 7:5; 8:2; 1 Cor 15:56). Be that as it may,
there is nothing immensely improbable about Paul adhering to the Torah by
either habit or conviction, something emphasized particularly by Luke (e.g.,
Acts 21:20–25). It remains, then, entirely possible that Paul would have circum-
cised his son if he had one! The PwJ collective suggests that’s Paul adherence to
rather than abrogation of the Torah should be the presumption unless otherwise
proven. Furthermore, Paul’s own Torah-observance and his requirement for
some adherence to the Torah for Gentiles puts to rest any claim that Paul’s gos-
pel is Law-free or that Law and Gospel exist in radical antithesis.
Third, PwJ scholars wrestle with the identity of Paul’s Gentile Christ-believ-
ers. PwJ scholars are generally allergic to identifying the Pauline Gentile-major-
ity assemblies of Christ-believers as incorporated into Israel, as “true Jews,” or
even as a “third race.” There is a concerted effort to affirm them as non-Jews
with adherence to a messianic halakhah appropriate for Gentiles in a new escha-
tological age. Paul’s discourse effectively dissolves the hazy category of “God-
fearer” (θεοσεβής) by assigning an in-group identity to Gentiles through mes-
sianism and a low-level of Torah adherence.32 Yet his Gentile converts are nei-
ther “proselytes” nor “Jews,” which raises the question as to what it means for
Gentiles to be τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ (“the assembly of God”). They are not Jews,
but messianic judaizing pagans.33
Fourth, PwJ remain critical of any reading of Paul that has a whiff of super-
sessionism about it. The tradition of Christian superiority over Judaism, stereo-
typical accounts of Judaism, and the Church replacement of Israel as God’s peo-
31 Rightly, Paula Fredriksen, “Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gos-
pel,” NTS 56 (2010): 232–52.

32 Cf. Bird, An Anomalous Jew, 50; Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle, 111.
33 The PwJ network is very diverse and eclectic, drawing a wide range of adherents from
various spheres. It is a peculiarity that the distinction posited between Jews and Gentile
Christians means that the PwJ has attracted several American Dispensational theologians to
its ranks. On Dispensationalism, see Benjamin L. Merkle, Continuity and Discontinuity: A
Survey of Dispensational & Covenantal Theologies (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020), 26–
107. The PwJ is then a “broad church” in that it encompasses a mixture of Jewish scholars,
secular academics, Dispensational theologians, and others as part of its project to press for a
Jewish reading of Paul and to maintain the distinction between the church and Israel.
12 Michael Bird
ple can still be detected in some strands of Pauline scholarship. The PwJ con-
glomerate is vigilant in critiquing anything that seeks to rehabilitate old preju-
dices and give currency to any position that veers close to supersessionism. In
some ways, PwJ is an anti-supersessionist project, one easy to appreciate after
reading European scholarship prior to the 1940s or even social media posts in
the 2020s!
2.3 Paul within Judaism: A Preliminary Critique

It is because of the PwJ collective, as well as its precursors, that we now have
books that espouse a nakedly Jewish Paul. Titles such as Rabbi Paul, Paul was
not a Christian, Paul the Jew, and Paul, a New Covenant Jew situate Paul, quite
rightly, in the context of the Judaism and early antiquity. The contribution of
PwJ is surely to be welcomed, however, just as with all scholarship, it cannot be
received uncritically. There are several criticisms that can be lodged against it.
First, “Paul was not a Christian – a word that was in any case completely
unknown to him because it had not yet been invented. He was a Jew who under-
stood himself to be on a divine mission” declares Eisenbaum (ἀμήν!) and “Paul
was and remained a Jew” says Sanders (ἀμήν!).34 Yet Paul’s Jewishness needs an
adjective.35 To affirm that Paul is a Jew is to simultaneously say something and
to say nothing. It is “something” in the sense that Paul should be identified as
and among the Jews of Judea and the Diaspora. His own testimony and that of
Luke tell us as much (Gal 2:15; Phil 3:5; 2 Cor 11:22; Rom 9:3–4; Acts 21:39;
22:3). Even so, to say that Paul is Jewish is to say “nothing” precisely because of
the diversities among Jews about their Judaism. We are required to ask about
Paul, “What sort of Jew?” One need only compare Philo, John the Baptist, Honi
the Circle Drawer, Rabbi Gamaliel, Rabbi Akiba, the Qumranite Teacher of
Righteousness, Caiaphas, Tiberius Alexander, and Simon bar Kokhba to ob-
serve the spectrum of beliefs and praxes and as well as the complicated relations
between Jews. How does Paul’s messianic eschatology fit within Judaism and
situate him in relation to other Jews and their respective views of each other?
Paul in the very least was an “idiosyncratic” or even “anomalous” Jew because
of his messianic faith and its social corollaries among Jewish and Gentile
34 Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood
Apostle (New York: Harper One, 2009), 4 (italics original); E. P. Sanders, Comparing Judaism
and Christianity: Common Judaism Paul and the Inner and the Outer in Ancient Religion
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016), 231.
35 Contra Pamela Eisenbaum (“Paul, Polemics, and The Problem of Essentialism,” BibInt
13 [2005]: 224–238, here 228): “Paul as Jewish – period, that is, without qualifiers”; and
Fredriksen (“What Does It Mean to See Paul ‘within Judaism,’” 378–9): “Why is it so difficult
to think of Paul, without apology, as a practicing Jew? Not an anomalous Jew or an exception-
al Jew (though that is certainly how he thought of himself [Phil 3:6]), but just as an ancient
Jew, one of any number of whom in the late Second Temple period expected the end of days in
their lifetimes?” (italics original).
Christ-believers. One wonders then, if the PwJ establishment has, despite its
robust affirmation of Paul’s Jewishness, failed to place Paul within the spectrum
of Judaism and to work out his relationship to other Jews.
Second, following on from the above point, PwJ advocates have tended to
down-play the negative reception that Paul received from other Jews of the Di-
aspora and Judea. We should welcome the observation that many of Paul’s argu-
ments, made in places like Galatians, are primarily an intra-Jewish Christ-be-
lieving debate, narrating Paul’s response as a Jewish Christ-believer against
other Jewish Christ-believers concerning the means for turning pagans into
proper Christ-followers. It is something of an internecine debate rather than an
exercise in the contra Ioudaeus tradition. One too can recognize that when Paul
says that “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one”
(2 Cor 11:24) that itself could demonstrate his willingness to voluntarily submit
to synagogue discipline within a Jewish diaspora community.36 But it also tells
us something of Paul’s own negative reception from his fellow Jews. Paul him-
self asked the Romans to pray for his return to Jerusalem that he would be res-
cued from the “unbelievers in Judea” (i.e., Jews) and that his collection would be
“acceptable to the saints” in Jerusalem (i.e., the Jewish Christ-believing assem-
blies) (Rom 15:31). Paul may well have been accused by Jewish observers of be-
ing a law-breaker (Rom 3:7–8; Acts 21:20–25), eating unclean foods (Rom 14:14),
rejecting Israel’s inherited privileges (Rom 9:3–5), blasphemy (1 Cor 1:23), idol-
atry (1 Cor 8:1–2), and fraternizing with Gentiles (Gal 2:11–16). Paul might well
have protested that he was still “in Judaism” precisely because of rather in spite
of his messianic faith, but that does nothing to prove that his claim would be
met with common affirmation by fellow Jews who may have considered him
somewhere between fanatical, maniacal, misguided, or apostate. Jens Schröter
teases this point out that Paul within Judaism is a matter of perspective:
From the view of a Roman citizen or a civic authority Paul may have been regarded as a
Jew who followed Jewish customs, caused trouble among his fellow Jews and even tried
to convince Romans to take over Jewish customs. This perspective is described in Acts
16 to 19, even if Luke’s depiction of Paul’s relationship to Jews and Gentiles follows a
specific agenda of portraying Paul as a faithful Jew who brought the message of Jesus to
the non-Jewish world. From the perspective of his Jewish contemporaries Paul may have
been regarded as an apostate who not only dismissed Jewish purity rules but also endan-
gered the integrity of Jewish communities with his message of the elimination of the
differences between Jews and Gentiles. From the perspective of communities of Christ
believers Paul may have been regarded as a Jew with a remarkable freedom towards the
openness of God’s people for Gentiles who do not even need to be circumcised or to
36 See E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress,
1982), 192 for whom “punishment implies inclusion.” Though note Markus Oehler, “The
Punishment of Thirty-Nine Lashes (2 Corinthians 11:24) and the Place of Paul in Judaism,”
JBL 140 (2021): 623–40, who argues that corporal punishment was not permitted by Diaspora
synagogues, rather, it was exercised by local authorities in Judea and Galilee.
14 Michael Bird
observe the Sabbath. Paul may also have appeared to them as very restrictive and conser-
vative with regard to regulations for sexual behavior and table fellowship with their
Greek or Roman fellows. Paul himself may have answered the question, “Are you a
Jew?” with: “I am an Israelite, a son of Abraham, who believes in the one and only God
and in his son Jesus Christ.”37
Third, a Torah-observant Paul solves a lot of problems but also generates sever-
al more. Jon C. Olson resonates with PwJ proponents when he argues that “Paul
remains within Judaism and observed the Torah, but opposed full Torah obser-
vance for Gentiles.”38 True, Paul is primarily concerned about Gentile (partial)
non-adherence to the Torah, nonetheless, he reasons that conviction from Jew-
ish experience of the Torah (cf. Acts 15:10). Joshua Garroway is insightful on
this point:
No one disputed that Pau[l]’s ostensible aim in Gal 3:1–29 is to demonstrate for Gentiles
why they should not yoke themselves to the Law, but he does not make his case by sug-
gesting that the Law has lost its significance for Gentiles alone. On the contrary, Paul
constructs his argument around the historical experience of the Jews [hence the “we”
verbs in Gal 3:23–25], concluding that faith has replaced the Law as the mode by which
Jews relate to God. All the more so, Paul intimates, Gentiles would be foolish to pursue
the Law.39
In addition, many of Paul’s statements about the Torah remain nakedly provoc-
ative and jarring on any Jewish metric. For all of Paul’s casual caveats that he
upholds the Torah (Rom 3:31) and that the Torah of God is good, holy, spiritual
(Rom 7:12, 14, 16, 25), he still identifies the Torah as bound up with sin and
death (1 Cor 15:56; 2 Cor 3:6; Rom 7:5; 8:2), bringing wrath (Rom 4:15), magni-
fying transgression (Rom 5:20), unleashing curses (Gal 3:10–14), somehow
reaching a terminus in the Messiah (Rom 10:4). Paul declared too that he and his
assemblies have died to the Torah (Gal 2:19; Rom 7:4).40 It is difficult to square
these statements with contemporary Jewish attitudes towards the Torah. It is
precisely such statements, when carved out of their context, which gave succor
to the diverse antitheses between Law and Gospel that characterized the Chris-
tian tradition from Marcion to Rudolf Bultmann! This observation does not
require returning to the caricature of Pauline grace versus Jewish Law, but Paul
37 Jens Schröter, “Was Paul a Jew Within Judaism? The Apostle to the Gentiles and His
Communities in Their Historical Context,” in Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First
Two Centuries CE?, ed. Matthias Konradt, Judith Lieu, Laura Nasrallah, Jens Schröter, and
Gregory E. Sterling, BZNW 253 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 89–119, here 114.
38 John C. Olson, “Supersessionism or Mutual Blessing on the Menu? Christ-Following
Gentiles Dining among Christ-Following Jews,” Pro Ecclesia 31 (2022): 321–349, here 348.
39 Joshua Garroway, “Paul: Without Judaism, Without Law,” in Law and Lawlessness in
Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. David Lincicum, Ruth Sheridan, and Charles M.
Stang, WUNT 420 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 49–66, here 57.
40 Garroway (“Paul,” 56 n. 2 2) notes that “Paul’s declaration of death to the Law generally
escapes the notice of commentators of this radical new perspective”.

does appear as a “radical Jew” says Garroway, “within Judaism, trying to make
sense of an acute messianic reality by mobilizing Jewish texts, Jewish terms, and
Jewish ideas.”41 The result of Paul’s messianic recasting of his Israelite heritage
was disruptive, even anarchic, for the proselytism of Gentiles and even for the
pragmatic realities of Torah observance for Jews.
One might retort that it is not Paul’s attitude towards the Torah that would be
affronting, but only his specific halakhah that would cause offense.42 However,
Paul does seem to have either a chronological, functional, or ontological view of
the Torah that renders it as ineffective in certain purposes, obsolete in some re-
spects, and inappropriate for some to observe. In the very least, the Torah no
longer defines and delivers people in the messianic age, neither Jews nor Gen-
tiles (Rom 3:19–20). Otherwise, the Messiah died for nothing (Gal 2:19)! Paul
himself retooled Torah as a mixture of prophecy and wisdom (e.g., Rom 3:21;
4:22–24; 1 Cor 9:8–10),43 retained Torah if reduced to the love command (Rom
13:8–10; Gal 5:14), regarded certain parts of the Torah as intensified and other
parts as relativized (e.g., Rom 13:8–10; 14:14),44 even if he continued to person-
ally observe it out of conviction or custom (Acts 21:26).
My point is that Paul’s allegedly pro-Torah and Torah-observant disposition
is complicated by the difference between Torah and halakhah, by the complex-
ities of conducting common meals between Jews and Gentiles, a mixture of
strictness and leniency in negotiating pagan spaces, by Paul’s rhetoric that am-
plifies his socio-religious convictions about the Torah, and by Paul’s willingness
to accommodate himself to others and to live “as a Gentile” or “as a Jew” (Gal
2:14; 1 Cor 9:19–23). Suffice to say, Paul as Torah-observant requires a great deal
of qualification and will depend entirely upon whose perspective Paul’s pro-To-
rah credentials are approved by. For case in point, Paul’s remark that “I know
and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is
unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean” (Rom 14:14) could be treated as tan-
tamount to renouncing Judaism by other Jews (see 4 Macc 4:26).45
Fourth, the identity of Paul’s Christ-believing Gentiles vis-à-vis Jewish cov-
enant identity remains a point of earnest contention. PwJ proponents often
41 Joshua Garroway, “Second Corinthians 3 ‘within Judaism’” in Ábel, The Message of
Paul, 243–6.
42 Cf. Peter Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the
Gentiles (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990); Karin H. Zetterholm, “The Questions of As-
sumptions: Torah Observance in the First Century,” in Paul within Judaism: Restoring the
First-Century Context to the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (Minneap-
olis, MN: Fortress, 2015), 79–105.
43 See Brian R. Rosner, Paul and the Law, NSBT (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013).
44 Markus Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of
Christian Public Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), 10.

45 Cf. John M. G. Barclay, “Who Was Considered an Apostate in the Jewish Diaspora?” in
Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews: Beyond the New Perspective, WUNT 275 (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 141–55 (esp. 151–54).
16 Michael Bird
seem acutely concerned to keep Paul’s Gentile converts safely partitioned from
laying claim to Jewish identity. No matter how much a Gentile might judaize,
“In Paul’s view,” argues Fredriksen, “a gentile is a gentile is a gentile.”46 Thus,
Paul’s Gentile Christ-believers remain Gentiles and do not become Jews or par-
ticipate in the currency of Jewish-ness however defined. This claim, in effect,
ensures that Gentile Christ-believers are not considered “true Jews,” and thus
not given to the pernicious supersessionism that such an appropriation of Jew-
ish identity potentially entails. Everyone remains in their ethnic-status quo
(1 Cor 7:17–20) and in any case Jewish-ness is not transferable because there is a
genealogical divide between Jews and the Gentiles that cannot be traversed even
by messianic faith.47
While such a view might appear to obtain a certain utility, it is problematic on
three fronts.
(1) The partitioning of Gentile-ness from Jewish-ness presumes that Paul en-
dorses a social arrangement of Jews and Gentiles as equal in Christ but without
compromising the distinctiveness of Jewish identity. I find that perplexing be-
cause treating Gentiles as “equal” yet “distinct” from Jews requires “equal” but
“separate” in practice. Yet that is precisely what Paul vigorously protested in
Gal 2:11–14 and arguably in Rom 15:1–13. Yes, there were different ways that
Torah-observant Jews could negotiate pagan spaces and Gentile impurities, but
Paul offers an evangelical basis for shared meals between Jews and Gentiles, the
very truth of the gospel, which for him necessitated unity over purity, commen-
sality without fear of condemnation (Gal 2:14).
(2) The PwJ positions downplay Paul’s negation of difference and his simulta-
neous affirmation of the unity between Jews and Gentiles. To put it bluntly, the
PwJ position requires negating Paul’s negations. Whereas Paul said οὐ γάρ ἐστιν
διαστολή (“for there is no distinction”) between Jews and Greeks in either con-
demnation or salvation (Rom 3:21–23; 10:12); οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην (“one
is neither a Jew nor a Greek”) in Christ (Gal 3:28); and Gentile converts are
former (ὅτε ἔθνη ἦτε) Gentiles/pagans (1 Cor 12:2); the PwJ scheme seem to re-
quire Paul replacing the negation οὐ with the verb “to be” ἐστιν. Yet Paul as-
sumes that all Christ-believers have a shared meta-identity in Christ that reach-
es across ethnic, gendered, and social divisions (Gal 3:28; cf. Col 2:11; Eph 2:11–
3:13). Paul identifies Jewish and Gentile Christ-believers as “us,” those “called,”
and part of God’s “beloved” “people” and “children of the living God” (Rom
46 Paula Fredrisken, “God Is Jewish, but Gentiles Don’t Have To Be,” in Ábel, The Mes-
sage of Paul, 3–19, here 7 (esp. 5 –13).

47 Cf. J. Brian Tucker, “Remain in Your Calling”: Paul and the Continuation of Social
Identities in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011); Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the
Gentile Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); William Campbell, “Paul, An-
tisemitism, and Early Christian Identity,” in Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure
of Second Temple Judaism, eds. Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress, 2016), 318–31.
9:24–26). Jews and Gentiles belonging to the Messiah are members of a new
covenant (1 Cor 11:25; 2 Cor 3:6). Paul even considers the “church of God” as
distinct from Jews and Greeks (1 Cor 10:32), arguably some kind of “third race”
(Aristides, Apol. 2.2; Ep. Diogn. 1.1; Kerygma Petrou frag. 2). While many PwJ
proponents are allergic to that kind of language, others regard it rightfully as a
necessary entailment of Paul’s ethno-religious discourse about his Christ-be-
lieving assemblies.48 Jewish-ness and Gentile-ness are retained in some senses,
but negated in other senses because of a new shared identity that is pneumatic
and participationist. The PwJ view downplays the Pauline negation of a hierar-
chy of identities coram deo and Paul’s affirmation of a shared identity between
them beyond the mere possession of faith. Part of the problem I suspect is that
Paul does not have the category or vocabulary to precisely expresses the messi-
ness of saying that Christ-believing Gentiles are not Gentiles but are Jewish
Gentiles.49
(3) Paul disburses Jewish covenantal privileges to Gentiles. Note, Paul does
not displace Jews as possessors of their inherited privileges (Rom 9:1–5), but he
announces an eschatological distribution of them through faith in Christ in the
new covenant. If Paul’s Christ-faith operated within Judaism, and if Paul him-
self does in a sense compel his Gentile converts to partially “judaize” by avoid-
ing idolatry and sexual immorality, by adopting monotheism, and by crafting
their own group-story around scriptural narratives of messianism and election,
then it is near impossible to erect an ethno-religious palisade between Christ-
identity and Jewish-identity. Both identities may not be co-terminus, but they
must overlap in some sense and become hybridized. To tease that out, the mark-
ers of Jewish identity like circumcision are relativized in the sense of no longer
representing the necessary condition of in-group identity (1 Cor 7:19; Gal 3:28;
5:6, 6:15) even while the cultic capital of circumcision is affirmed (Rom 3:1) and
imputed to Gentiles to bolster their in-group identity (Rom 2:25–29; Phil 3:3).
Fifth, there is the challenging matter of Paul’s problem with Judaism which
necessitated God’s revelation of his Messiah to Israel. Most of the RP advocates
and even a few of the PwJ adherents contend that Israel’s Messiah opens a path
of salvation for Gentiles, while the Jews remain “saved” within the aegis of
God’s election of the nation and eschatological plan for Israel. Yet that runs
roughshod over the evidence. Paul declares that the Messiah was a servant to
Israel (Rom 15:8), sent to redeem those under the Torah from the curse of the
48 See Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 178; idem, “Paul’s Jewishness,” in
Paul’s Jewish Matrix, ed. Thomas G. Casey and Justin Taylor (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical
Press, 2011), 51–73, here 65–8; idem, Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought, 331–2;
Bird, An Anomalous Jew, 51–7; Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 1443–9.
49 Cf. Joshua D. Garroway, Paul’s Gentile-Jews: Neither Jews Nor Gentiles, But Both
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), esp. 45–69, who are argues that baptized Gentiles
become Jews.
18 Michael Bird
Torah (Gal 3:13; 4:4–5), he affirms a mission to the circumcision (Gal 2:7–9),
states that the gospel is for the Jew “first” (Rom 1:16), because “Jew and Gentiles
alike are under the power of sin” (Rom 3:9), he implies his own gospel ministry
to Jews with hope of their “conversion” (1 Cor 1:20–23; 9:20; 2 Cor 3:16), and
states that empirical Israel can be re-grafted into God’s olive tree “if they do not
continue in unbelief” (Rom 11:24). No matter how affronting it might be to
modern pluralistic sensibilities, especially after the Catholic Church’s ground-
breaking Nostra Aetate declaration, there was a Petrine and Pauline mission to
Jews.50 To this, Zetterholm complains how “traditionally oriented scholars”
seem to have an “obsession that Jews and non-Jews must be saved the same way
– through faith alone.”51 To which I would respond that it is not a matter of
obsession as much of literary comprehension, Paul says as much point blank
(Rom 1:16; 3:30; 4:11–12; 10:9–13; 1 Cor 1:23).
We must ask though, why was it thought necessary to proclaim Jesus as Mes-
siah and Lord to Jews? Why do Jews need Jesus as their Messiah? What can Je-
sus do for Jews that Moses, the Torah, and the covenant cannot? The answer to
that question I believe is Paul’s anthropology and narrative of a world enthralled
to “Sin” with “Sin” defined as an evil cosmic power.52 The plight is more than
Gentile idolatry, immorality, impurity, and ignorance. More than Jews needing
to recognize that Messiah Jesus is God’s instrument of healing the Gentile
world. In the words of Bruce Longenecker, there is a problem with humanity
that even Israel’s Torah and covenant cannot fix.53 One weakness of PwJ is its
lack of attention to Paul’s anthropology. The remedy to this neglect does not
entail a return to the Bultmannian paradigm of treating all of Pauline theology
as merely an expression of his anthropology (μὴ γένοιτο). However, Paul’s an-
thropological pessimism implies that Jew and Gentile share in the adamic con-
dition and Torah is not the solution. At best, the Torah was the scaffolding for a
future salvific edifice; at worst, Torah was something used by Sin to keep hu-
mans enslaved to their evil desires. Jason Maston puts it well, “Paul’s pessimistic
anthropology may be a secondary deduction drawn from his belief that God
50 Brant Pitre (“Roman Catholic perspective Response to Zetterholm,” in Perspectives on
Paul, ed. Scot McKnight and B. J. Oropeza [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2020], 194–200,
here 197) says, “As for the passage from 1 Corinthians [9:20–22], I am not sure that one could
ask for a clearer and more explicit statement of the fact that Paul sees his mission as inclusive
of Jews and Gentiles.” Though for Sanders (Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought,
110) it is impossible to imagine Paul zigzagging between kosher and non-kosher mission
fields, so instead, 1 Cor 9:20–22 signifies “a description of his mental readiness to fit in with
present company, whatever it might be.” On Paul’s Jewish “mission,” see Bird, An Anomalous
Jew, 69–107.
51 Zetterholm, “The Paul within Judaism Perspective,” 188 (italics original).
52 Cf. Matthew Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017).

53 Bruce Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in
Galatians (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 120–1.

acted in Christ to save, but it becomes an important point in his claim against
Torah observance as the means to divine blessing.”54
When it comes to Paul’s problem with Judaism, E. P. Sanders famously wrote:
“In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.”55
Riffing off that notion, Lloyd Gaston added: “This is what Paul finds wrong
with other Jews: that they do not share his revelation in Damascus.”56 Kathy
Ehrensperger puts it similarly: “The main problem of Jews who do not share
Paul’s view is that they cannot see the way for gentiles to attain righteousness
apart from the law available to them in Christ.”57 Mark Nanos has tried to turn
the question on its head by stating: “This is what Paul would find wrong in
Paulinism: it is not Judaism.”58 My own suspicion is that what Paul finds wrong
with Judaism, was first, in the sectarian sense, its anti-Gentile ethos which was
inhibiting the revelation of the Messiah to the world; then second, in the anthro-
pological sense, what the Torah could not do due its exacerbation of the sin-flesh
nexus, God did by sending his Son in the likeness of a human being and by be-
stowing his Spirit as a foretaste of the new creation by making Jews and Gentile
co-heirs of Abraham through the Messiah.59
Sixth, there is a need to revisit the matter of Paul and supersessionism. The
PwJ collective are – quite understandably – on a crusade to critique and censure
supersessionism readings and rhetoric, especially in scholarship. This often
yields thoughtful critique and warning, but sometimes segues into animated
denunciations of what many suppose Paul is plainly saying. According to N. T.
Wright “the merest mention supersessionism sends shivers through the narrow
and brittle spine of post-modern moralism.”60 Scot McKnight concurs and reit-
erates the same point: “It has become sport to call the other options in Pauline
scholarship a grand example of supersessionism” and “It is enough for some to
gain the upper hand, like progressives and conservatives in some political battle,
by all but damning the other with the S-word.”61 I and others remain resolute in
54 Jason Maston, Divine and Human Agency in Second Temple Judaism and Paul: A Com-
parative Study, WUNT 2/297 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 171–2.

55 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552. Sanders amplifies this point later (Paul: The
Apostles’ Life, Letters, and Thought, 681): “According to Paul’s argument in Rom. 10:1–4,
what is wrong with the Jews is that they are not Christian; what is wrong with Judaism is that
it does not accept Christianity” (italics original).
56 Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
1987), 140.
57 Ehrensperger, Searching Paul, 363.
58 Nanos, “Paul and Judaism,” 159.
59 Bird, An Anomalous Jew, 68.
60 N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, COQG 4 (London: SPCK, 2014), 784;
idem, Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2013),
403.
61 Scot McKnight, “Saints re-formed: The Extension and Expansion of hagios in Paul,” in
One God, One People, One Future: Essays in Honour of N. T. Wright, ed. John A. Dunne and
Eric Lewellen (London: SPCK, 2018), 211–231, here 211.
20 Michael Bird
rejecting the notion that Paul viewed the church as a replacement of the Jews as
the new Israel because it does not correspond to Paul’s own pattern of thought.
I remain equally committed to responsible readings of Paul in a post-Holocaust
world where we must be mindful and vigilant of how scholarly discourse can
shape inter-religious relationships. 62 That said, there are some important caveats
that need to be mentioned here regarding Paul and supersessionism.
To begin with, supersessionism is not one thing but several different things,
ranging from a replacement theology, all the way through to the belief that Jews
need to abandon their rejection of Gentile inclusion in the covenant without
Torah-observance. 63 I am all for critiquing supersessionism as long as protestors
are clear as to which species of supersessionism they are talking about. In addi-
tion, Jewish groups used supersessionism discourse in their own claims and
counter claims against each other. We see this among Jewish sectarian literature
where authors demanded that they alone stood as the authentic representatives
of Israel’s sacred heritage, that they singularly possessed a mode of piety that
pleased God, that they regarded themselves as the righteous ones of the messi-
anic age, with vehement and vitriolic denunciations of rivals. Paul’s own lan-
guage about Jews and Christ-followers should not be identified as a contest be-
tween two separate religions but as part of intra-Jewish sectarian discourse.
Daniel Harlow rightly observes:
Disagreement over who is elect was certainly part of intra-Jewish debate in the Second
Temple period. This is clear enough from the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls. Paul, however
went a step beyond the covenanters at Qumran: for them not all Jews are elect, but all the
elect are still Jews. Not so for Paul: only those in Christ are in the covenant and among
the elect. In his vision of a new humanity destined for a new creation, ethnicity – so es-
sential to Jewish identity – disappears. If this theology implies no wholescale rejection or
supersession of Israel, it does imply a new definition of ‘Israel’ and a displacement of
historic Israel’s covenantal self-understanding as a community formed by physical de-
scent and ritual observance. 64
There is also a kind of inevitable type of supersessionism between Judaism and

Christianity just as there is between Judaism/Christianity and Islam, Christi-
anity and Mormonism, or between Pharisaic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism.
The reality is that if salvation is of Christ and of Christ alone (somewhere,
somehow, for someone) then alternative paths of salvation (somewhere, some-
how, for someone) are rendered obsolete. Christianity has an inescapable super-
sessionist quality. As Joel Kaminsky and Mark Reasoner soberly note: “Any
62 As I write this paragraph, American singer Kanye West (aka “Ye”) made an anti-semitic
outburst in a TV interview that associated the Jews with several conspiracy theories.
63 See esp. Bruce Longenecker, “On Israel’s God and God’s Israel: Assessing Supersession-
ism in Paul,” JTS 58 (2007): 26–44.

64 Daniel C. Harlow, “Early Judaism and Early Christianity,” in Collins and Harlow, Ear-
ly Judaism, 391–419, here 405.

Christian reading of the Hebrew Scriptures is likely to involve some form of

supersessionism, by which we mean that the early Christians came to believe
that their reading of Israel’s scriptures superseded other earlier and contempo-
rary readings of these sacred texts by other Jewish readers and that God’s acting
through Jesus’s death and resurrection had ushered in the beginning of the es-
chaton, thus opening a path for gentiles to participate in God’s promises to Is-
rael.”65 Now, among religious practitioners, what one does with the superses-
sionist substructure of Christian faith is a serious matter for theological ethics
and inter-religious dialogue, but some type of supersessionism, even if far re-
moved from a replacement theology, is intrinsic to Paul’s thought. On combat-
ting supersessionism in religion, history, and culture, one might feel a kindred-
ness of spirit with the PwJ project, but hold some reservations about the sub-
stance of their approach. 66
To round out the discussion, in the preceding analysis I have tried to provide
a prima facie appraisal of the advances and insights of PwJ even as I have pre-
saged some of its potential weakness. The PwJ scholarly project has corrected
the conversation in many respects, even if certain features remain contestable.
Evidently, then, there are many points to explore, many debates to be had, and
this volume explores many of those pressing questions.
3. The Contributions to this Volume67
Most of the contributions to this volume were delivered at Ridley College’s vir-
tual symposium on “Paul within Judaism” held 21–24 September 2021, during
the height of the COVID pandemic, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the
Australian College of Theology. 68 Several of the presenters had their papers
scheduled for other publication destinations, so other scholars were invited to
contribute to the proceedings in their stead. The result is a truly international
cohort of scholars writing on the topic Paul’s relationship to and within Judaism.
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr opens the volume with a comparison of the Pauline
letters and the letter of James as texts that can be both safely located within Ju-
65 Joel Kaminsky and Mark Reasoner, “The Meaning and Telos of Israel’s Election: An
Interfaith Response to N. T. Wright’s Reading of Paul,” HTR 112 (2019): 498–512, here 422
n. 2.
66 Cf. Michael F. Bird, “Paul’s Messianic Eschatology and Supersessionism,” in God’s Is-
rael and the Israel of God: Paul and Supersessionism, ed. Michael F. Bird and Scot McKnight
(Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2023), 45–64.
67 I am indebted to the many contributors for assistance with summarizing their contribu-
tion to the volume, trying to use their own words as much as possible.
68 The oral presentations that the essays are based on can be found on playlist “Paul within
Judaism” on the you.tube page “Early Christian History with Michael Bird”: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=3IuC1TlcUxo&list=PL_4rhC0z_G8uDRpqzaZAI3I72GbBCGfc2.
22 Michael Bird
daism. In fact, Niebuhr wonders if Paul and James might even comprise an ex-
ample of “mutual perception,” whereby they illuminate each other as texts
which belong to Hellenistic Jewish literature of the common era. Paul and James
are to be valued as two distinct Jewish voices that both speak about the salvific
agency of God executed in Jesus Christ. Niebuhr compares Jas 1:13–18 and
2 Cor 4:1–6 as texts that share a common creational monotheism, an eschatolog-
ical divine act wrought in Jesus, and a possibility of salvation by placing faith in
God and Christ. In Jacobean language, salvation is a direct divine act by God’s
efficacious word, that brings new birth, and makes them children of the Father
of lights. Paul’s discourse in 2 Cor 4:1–6 also refers to God’s direct agency to
enlightenment the minds of believers to perceive and believe the gospel about
the glory of Christ, a glory which is veiled by a darkness caused by the “god of
this age,” but God can pierce through that darkness of unbelief. What is more,
Niebuhr shows that both texts, with their cosmology and theology, fit comfort-
ably into the world of Hellenistic Judaism as comparisons with Philo, Life of
Adam Eve, and the Wisdom of Solomon demonstrate. For Niebuhr, James and
Paul reflect a meta-level agreement on the divine agency of grace, particularly in
the scriptural language about “light,” that is part and parcel of conceptions of
divine agency in Hellenistic Judaism. Thus, James and Paul in their respective
arguments about perceiving the Christ event, prove to be analogous with reflec-
tions in Hellenistic Jewish literary works about the agency of God towards his
creation and towards humankind.
Jörg Frey addresses the apparent relativization of ethnicity and circumcision
in Paul and his communities. Frey affirms the notion that Paul is to be located
“within” Judaism and he explicitly identifies Paul as a Jew. In this sense, he is
clearly aligned with PwJ practitioners. However, one aspect that Frey finds con-
testable is the proclivity of some PwJ exemplars such as Nanos and Fredriksen
to insist that the ethnic difference between Israel and the nations are a funda-
mental and permanent chasm which remain in effect even in an eschatological
state. Added to that are the premises that Paul himself remained Torah obser-
vant and his deflection of the normativity of certain aspects of Torah only ap-
plies to Gentile Christ-believers who themselves still “judaize” in some limited
sense. In other words, what is contestable is the perspective Gentile Christ-be-
lievers do not in any sense become Jews or join Israel, they do however judaize,
only not to the point of circumcision. The problem is that this requires (dis)re-
garding much of Paul’s own remarks about Torah as rhetorical word play (Rom
2:25–29; Gal 3:13; 1 Cor 9:19–23). According to Frey, the PwJ consortium do
not properly grasp how Jewish ethnicity was something fluid, permeable, and
transferable. In any case, Paul himself rarely uses ethnic terms to describe his
congregations, preferring civic terms like “assembly” and “citizens” or cosmo-
logical language like “new creation.” Paul from his time in Antioch, argues Frey,
Paul was deeply involved in fraternizing and fellowshipping with Gentiles in
shared meals which tells against a compartmentalization of Jewish and Gentile

Christ-believers. Paul’s remarks about circumcision relativize its ability to serve
as a marker of Christ’s people, whether Jewish or Gentile, a position deeply of-
fensive to many Jews contemporary with Paul. Yet, Paul adopted such a posi-
tion, not as an enlightened “universalist” but as a self-identifying Jew. Accord-
ing to Frey, Paul construed of Christ-believers as possessing an identity that
was neither nested in nor transcending a Jewish ethnic identity, but was rather a
participation in the eschatological community of God.
Josh Garroway tackles the topic of metaphors for ethnic transformation in
Philo and Paul. Garroway begins by noting how it is now widely acknowledged
that a Jewish concept of conversion emerged in the late Second Temple period
but remained contested and negotiated for several centuries to come. One chal-
lenge for Jewish authors was to explain how Gentiles might reconfigure their
pedigree so as to join Israel, a people to whom they did not naturally or histor-
ically belong. Garroway explores the related metaphors used by three first-cen-
tury writers: Philo, Paul, and the author of Ephesians. The images they choose
– the organism (Virt. 102–103), the olive tree (Rom 11:17–24), and the person
(Eph 2:14–19) – describe the attachment of Gentiles to Israel in a way that com-
plicates the transformation, dividing even as it unites, subordinating even as it
incorporates, with the result that each author intimates, whether intentionally
or not, that Gentiles remain Gentiles even as they cease to be so. The messy
descriptions of Paul’s charges seen throughout Paul’s letters, it turns out, are
part and parcel of first-century ethnic discourse about Israel and the Gentile
admirers, adherents, and converts to its religious way of life.
Brian Rosner explores in his contribution the extent to which Paul upheld his
Jewish identity as the apostle to the Gentiles? Rosner examines the Jewishness
of Paul’s identity, his fundamental beliefs, and his strategy in his Gentile mis-
sion. Rosner concludes that Paul the apostle to the Gentiles from Israel remained
Jewish to the roots. Paul described his own identity in five ways: as apostle,
servant, prophet, priest, and herald. Each of these types or vocations is explicit-
ly derived from the Jewish Scriptures, and significantly for our purposes, and
perhaps surprisingly, each one defines and gives impetus to Paul’s Gentile mis-
sion. In prosecuting this mission among Gentiles, Paul does not abandon his
Jewishness, but rather he reconfigures the fundamental beliefs and practices of
Judaism, including election, Torah and Temple. Finally, Rosner argues that
Paul’s approach to dealing with Gentile believers in Jesus Christ is thoroughly
Jewish and his agenda for them follows emphases and patterns evident in early
Jewish moral teaching. Indeed, Paul’s consistent strategy has striking affinities
with Jewish moral teaching contemporary with Paul. This can be seen in exam-
ples from the Sibylline Oracles and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.
Paul undertook his Gentile mission in ways that are recognizably Jewish.
24 Michael Bird
Chris Porter’s contribution begins by observing that Paul’s status as someone

inside or outside of “Judaism” has become a much-contested interpretive rubric
for modern exegetes. All too often the social categories that contribute to these
heuristics are highly essentialised and treated in an exclusivist fashion. Accord-
ingly, Porter attempts to revisit the complexity of this topic through the so-
cio-cognitive lens of social identity theory. Porter, by treating some of Paul’s
self-descriptions in relation to Judaism, shows how ancient identity spaces
yielded a complex set of overlapping identity concerns that can be juggled and
leveraged for argumentative purpose, without abrogating an internally coherent
identity. As such, Porter argues that Paul considered himself to be affirmatively
and authentically Ἰουδαῖος. But this was only one part of his identity in a com-
plex world. If pressed into a certain direction, such as Pharisaic zeal, Paul could
also consider himself to be no longer Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, and yet still claimed heritage as
a “Pharisee.” Consequently, Paul’s Ἰουδαῖος identity in the ancient world – like
other socio-ethnic identities – resisted easy classification as it incorporated a
vast range of sub-groups.
David Starling focuses on the relationship between the story of Israel and the
identity of the Gentile-majority churches that Paul established and wrote letters
to. The chapter begins with the benediction that Paul pronounced in Galatians
6:16, which Starling reads as referring to the community of Christ-believers as
members of an “Israel of God” that has been restored and reconfigured around
the Messiah, Jesus. Starling goes on, however, to highlight the questions that
such a claim must have raised for Paul himself regarding the identity and future
of the national/ethnic community to whom that language originally referred.
The remainder of the chapter traces the thread of Paul’s argument in Romans
9–11, where he wrestled at length with those questions. Gentiles, Starling ar-
gues, are viewed by Paul as having become inheritors of the promises from Ho-
sea that he quotes in Rom 9:25–26 because of the correspondence between their
own situation as “not my people” and the situation of the Israel addressed by the
prophet. But this typological extension of the scope of the promises’ fulfilment
does not erase their original reference to national/ethnic Israel. The “all Israel”
of Rom 11:26 is, therefore, to be viewed as an enlarged, eschatological commu-
nity that embraces both the Gentiles who have been incorporated into God’s
people through faith in Jesus and the “natural branches” that have been grafted
back into the same tree after having been cut off for a time because of unbelief.
J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi heed the call to account for both the
particular socioreligious location and the theological texture of Paul’s letters
and those whom he recruited to join the early Christ-movement. Their response
addresses three specific issues: (1) The way in which Jewish covenantal identity
continues by deployment of the segmentary grammar of identity; (2) the socio-
religious location of the Pauline Christ-movement within the institutional con-
text of synagogue communities; and (3) the importance of the eschatological
pilgrimage tradition for maintaining distinct identities for Israel and the na-
tions. In turn, they offer a discussion of the grammars of identity, first, since the
presuppositions in regard to the nature of identity being formed are determina-
tive for much of the readings given of Paul’s letters, especially Romans. They
then offer their understanding of ancient synagogues – particularly those orga-
nizationally akin to Greco-Roman associations – and of Paul’s Christ-groups as
part of such synagogue communities. Finally, in light of this socioreligious con-
text, they argue that an approach that sees Paul’s in-Christ gentiles as members
of nations closely associated with Israel, who participate in the eschatological
drama as a member of the nations, rather than as Israel – sometimes described as
the commonwealth or prophetic approach – has the most going for it, both so-
ciohistorically and exegetically.
Ryan Collman explores the available evidence as to what Jewish followers of
Jesus thought about Paul’s teaching on the Torah. After surveying the relevant
data, Collman concludes that while Paul himself and the author of Acts portray
him as being devoted to his ancestral laws, not much else can be confidently said
about what other Jewish followers of Jesus thought about Paul’s teaching on the
Torah. While it is likely that a range of positions existed amongst ancient Jewish
believers regarding Paul, our access to their attitudes toward Paul’s treatment of
the Torah are inaccessible. Collman then provides a revisionist overview of
Paul’s teaching on the Torah, arguing that Paul did not find any substantial
problem with it. Rather, the key problem that pops up in Paul’s discussion of the
Torah is not the Torah itself, but the nature of the things that it seeks to order.
This problem, however, is not solved by doing away with the Torah, but by the
transformation that comes when humans are infused with the divine pneuma.
Kathy Ehrensperger examines how Paul tries to clarify for his addressees
from the nations how the Christ-event impinges on their identity, in referring to
them as seed of Abraham, that is, to Abraham as their ancestor. Ehrensperger
argues that Paul places them on the map or into the lineage of Abraham, by ar-
guing that through Christ a genealogical link has been established which insti-
tutes them as co-heirs to the promises. Genealogical narratives served a variety
of purposes in cultures of antiquity. Evidently the inclusion into the lineage of
an emperor via adoption aimed at controlling the succession to imperial power.
On a collective level narrative maps of kinship relations were a widely shared
means to structure and depict relationships between peoples near and far. Thus,
Josephus knows of Jewish narratives which integrate Heracles into their family
tree and thus claim a relation to Greek tradition. Christ-followers from the na-
tions found themselves in a liminal space since their place of belonging, individ-
ually and collectively was unclear when considered in light of the maps of be-
longing prevalent at the time. Ehrensperger contends that Paul, via genealogical
reasoning, tries to place Gentiles into the lineage of belonging to the God of
Israel, not in place of but alongside the people Israel.
26 Michael Bird
Janelle Peters examines the role of synagogues as formative socio-religious

spheres for the Pauline churches. Peters notes how synagogue culture was very
important to the Judaism of both Judea and the Diaspora. Synagogues were
gathering places for communal matters and communal worship by Jewish/Ju-
dean inhabitants of a city. Synagogues featured furniture and paraphernalia that
were non-cultic but symbolized cultic items in the temple. The synagogues had
their own extra-temple system of worship shaped by Torah reading, prayers,
hymnody, and had their own system for resolving halakhic and legal disputes.
Accordingly, synagogue practices and precedents perhaps influenced the Pau-
line house churches in terms of ethos, structure, and regulation. By submitting
himself to corporal punishment of thirty-nine lashes, Paul was in fact submit-
ting to the discipline of synagogue leaders. Peters also points out that the ability
of the Pauline churches to gather for meals and to take up a collection makes
sense on the premise that they were a type of a synagogue since only Jewish
synagogues had imperial permission to do such things. Paul too in 1 Corinthi-
ans 6 urges the believers not to solve legal disputes between members in a civic
court, but to resolve the disputes among themselves internally as a self-suffi-
cient and legally binding community, in other words, like a synagogue. The
conclusion Peters reaches is that Paul’s remarks about how to lead and regulate
a house-church seems closer to the Jewish milieu of the synagogue, diverse
though it was, than to Greco-Roman assemblies.
Ruben A. Bühner refers to sources from diaspora Judaism, where he shows
the extent to which Jews in Second Temple Judaism found different and at the
same time flexible ways to negotiate between typically Jewish customs, such as
dietary restrictions, and the need to manage one’s life as part of a mostly
non-Jewish environment. By doing so, Bühner takes up some insights from the
Paul within Judaism perspective and brings these insights in dialogue with more
traditional exegesis of the Pauline letters. Thus, the flexibility of Paul’s behavior
described in 1 Cor 9:19–23 remained within the framework of what was accept-
ed as “Jewish” at least by some Jews even before the Jesus movement. Paul does
not “invent” a new way to live among non-Jews, but he gives a new christologi-
cal basis for a long-established way of Jewish life.
Turning to the Book of Acts, Joshua Jipp contends that the Lukan Paul con-
sistently affirms his faithfulness to the central tenets of his Jewish heritage, even
though others accuse him of apostasy from Moses and betraying Jewish ances-
tral customs. Jipp in turn explores the Lukan Paul’s Jewishness by means of
delve into two central christological threads of Acts and their implications for
Luke’s depiction of the people of God, namely, the messianic and prophetic as-
pects of Lukan christology. Luke portrays Paul as a prophet of the resurrected
and enthroned Messiah in order to explain Paul’s task of calling both Israel and
the nations to repentance as well as to establish a precedent that legitimates his
rejection by most of his Jewish contemporaries. Viewed this way, the Lukan
Paul does not in any way reject God’s election of Israel or engage in a replacing
Judaism with Christianity. At the same time, argues Jipp, Luke also sees the
significance of God’s election of Israel as found Jesus the Messiah and where
those who oppose Paul and reject his message find themselves excluded from
their own covenantal blessings.
Murray Smith examines Paul’s Christology in the Pauline speeches in Acts,
asking the doubled-barrelled question, “How Jewish is the Lucan Paul’s Chris-
tology?” and “How high is Paul’s Christology in Acts?” Regarding the first
question, Smith argues that Paul’s Christology is both thoroughly Jewish, and
historically novel. While all of the Lucan Paul’s primary categories are drawn
from the Scriptures of Israel, and many of his major affirmations find parallels
in early Judaism, his specific Christological configurations are shaped by the
history of Jesus of Nazareth and, especially, by his theophanic visions of Jesus
on the road to Damascus and in the Jerusalem temple. Regarding second ques-
tion, Smith contends that Paul, in Acts, proclaims Jesus not only as the cruci-
fied-and-risen Davidic Messiah, but as the one who embodies the very presence
of Israel’s God. Paul’s accounts of his visions of Jesus are best characterized not
merely as epiphanies, or Christophanies, but as Christo-theophanies – appear-
ances of the risen Christ as God.
Lyn Kidson believes we can be in no doubt as to the impression the apostle
Paul left in Asia Minor. Kidson maintains that when one examines the reception
of Paul in many of the early Christian documents associated with Asia Minor
from the first to the fourth century, Paul’s distinctive Jewish identity seems to
disappear. Accordingly, Kidson argues that the battle for a purely “Christian”
identity in contrast to a “Jewish” identity led to a battle over the Pauline tradi-
tion in Christian churches in Asia Minor in the first three centuries, which was
all but over by the fourth century. Following that hunch, Kidson proceeds to
interrogate the Pastoral Epistles, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Acts of
Paul, and Amphilochus’s Against False Asceticism for traces of this negotiation.
Kidson suggests that the contest represented in these documents is a contest
over Paul’s tradition or how the Christian life was to be conducted. In this con-
test, opponents are labelled as “Jewish,” and in this arena Paul’s Jewish identity
disappears. What becomes apparent is that Paul’s nuanced arguments on the
identity of gentile and Jewish believers “in Christ” and the resurrected flesh
seem to become liabilities for later believers. Kidson contends that Paul’s subtle
negotiations, so evident in his letters, collapse in subsequent literature into the
torrid contest over his memory and tradition in Asia Minor.
Michael Kok sets off to examine Jewish Christian Gospels and what they tell
us about perceptions and receptions of Paul and Judaism. Kok begins by noting
that according to the “Paul within Judaism” perspective, Paul did not require
the non-Jewish members of his Christ associations to judaize by adopting the
“works of the law.” Such a perspective he alleges rightly challenges the percep-
28 Michael Bird
tion that Paul himself was an antinomian figure, which is how many of the
Jewish Christ-followers known as Ebionites or “poor ones” during the Patristic
period perceived Paul to have been. Nevertheless, there is some limited evidence
that there were some Jewish Christ-followers in the fourth-century, known to
Epiphanius and Jerome as Nazoraeans, who could affirm Paul’s apostolic and
Jewish vocation and maintain their own Torah-observant way of life. Kok pro-
ceeds, in turn, to offer a critical reconstruction of the Ebionites and the Nazo-
raeans from the heresiological reports about them and to examine their opin-
ions about the “apostle to the Gentiles.”
Agencies of Grace in Paul and James
Two Jewish Voices
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr
1. Introduction
In the following essay, I intend to broaden and to press ahead the debate on
“Paul within Judaism”1 by including in my survey a source contemporary to
Paul that has its own history and place with respect to the “Paul within Juda-
ism” debate. The letter of James has been considered to be “Jewish” by several
modern authors2 although it is exclusively preserved and transmitted as part of
the New Testament.3 In the letter prescript, the author builds his argument on
his self-introduction as “slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Jas 1:1), and
he reminds his “brothers and sisters” to preserve their common faith “in our
glorious Lord Jesus Christ” (2:1).4 Nevertheless, this would not make him a
“real Christian” for some modern exegetes, or his letter a “Christian” source,
because most of the features typical of other “Christian” documents seem to be
missing, particularly in comparison to Paul.5 However, such an argument seems
1 See my review on the “The New Perspective on Paul” and on the “Paul within Judaism”
debate: Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Einführung: Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit: Der Heiden
apostel aus Israel in neuer Sicht, in Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit: Gesammelte Studien,
WUNT 489 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 1–40, esp. 14–40.
2 For references to the discussion on the “Sitz im Leben” of the letter see Dale C. Allison
Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, ICC (New York: Blooms-
bury, 2013), 32–50.
3 For the reception history of James see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Art. “Epistles, Catholic. I.
New Testament,” EBR 7 (2013): 1086–92; idem, “Die Apostel und ihre Briefe: Zum herme-
neutischen und ökumenischen Potential des Corpus Apostolicum im Neuen Testament,” in
Paulus und Petrus: Geschichte – Theologie – Rezeption, ed. Heike Omerzu and Eckart David
Schmidt (FS F. W. Horn), ABG 48 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 273–92; David
R. Nienhuis, Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the
Christian Canon (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007).
4 For a christological interpretation of the letter prescript see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
“One God, One Lord in the Epistle of James,” in Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Ro-
man Antiquity, ed. Matthew V. Novenson, NovTSup 180 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 172–88.
5 For the debate on Paul and James see Scot McKnight, The Letter of James, NICNT
(Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2011), 259–63; Rainer Metzner, Der Brief des Jakobus,
ThHK 14 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 163–6. I have developed my own view
of the origin of the letter in Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “James,” in The Reception of Jesus in the
First Three Centuries, Vol. 1: From Paul to Josephus: Literary Receptions of Jesus in the First
30 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr
to suppose that we have at hand clear-cut distinctions between what is “still

Jewish” or what is necessary to identify something as being “already Chris-
tian.” Yet, this distinction has turned out to be controversial in recent debates
concerning the origins of the early Christian movement. Therefore, it is at issue
to question the terms of “Judaism” and “Christianity” in principle as adequate
for literary documents from the first or even for the first two centuries of the
common era at least. 6
I wonder whether the recent debate on the epistle of James, its place in the
New Testament, and its relevance as part of the early Jesus movement7 may
shed some light on the “Paul within Judaism” debate as well. Perhaps, the debate
on Paul may profit from realizing that the place of other NT writings with re-
gard to ancient Jewish sources contemporary with them is at stake as well. By
taking into account such debates, perhaps, the “Paul within Judaism” discus-
sion may develop to a “Paul within the New Testament” discourse that proves
to be fruitful for both ancient Jewish studies and NT scholarship.
The methodological approach I am going to apply here is borrowed from the
Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum project that undertakes to study ancient Jewish
texts and NT writings in mutual perception (“wechselseitige Wahrnehmung”). 8
By speaking of “wechselseitige Wahrnehmung” I want to indicate that the NT
writings are to be acknowledged as part of Hellenistic-Jewish literature in a
broader sense and can be used to complete our understanding of ancient Jewish
Century CE, ed. H. K. Bond (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 259–75; a German version of parts
of this article appeared as “Der erinnerte Jesus bei Jakobus: Ein Beitrag zur Einleitung in
einen umstrittenen Brief,” in Spurensuche zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament (FS U.
Schnelle), ed. Michael Labahn, FRLANT 271 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017),
307–29.
6 See for the recent debate Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christi-
anity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Tobias Nicklas, Jews and Chris-
tians? Second Century “Christian” Perspectives on the “Parting of the Ways” (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Udo Schnelle, Die getrennten Wege von Römern, Juden und Christen:
Religionspolitik im 1. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019).
7 See for the place of the letter in the NT canon Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Exegese im kan-
onischen Zusammenhang: Überlegungen zur theologischen Relevanz der Gestalt des neutes-
tamentlichen Kanons,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. Jean-Marie Auwers and Henk Jan de
Jonge, BEThL 163 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 557–84; idem, “James in the Minds of the Recipi-
ents: A Letter from Jerusalem,” in The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition, ed. Karl-Wil-
helm Niebuhr and Robert W. Wall (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009), 43–54.
8 For two examples of the approach applied to passages in Romans see Karl-Wilhelm
Niebuhr, “Adam’s Sin and the Origin of Death: Paul’s Argument in Romans 5:12–14 in the
Light of Jewish Texts from the Second Temple Period,” in Studies in Philo in Honor of Greg-
ory Sterling (FS G. E. Sterling), ed. David T. Runia and Michael B. Cover, SPhiloA 32 (Atlan-
ta: SBL Press, 2020), 205–25 (= in: Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit.
Gesammelte Studien, WUNT 489 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022], 297–325); idem, “Das
Neue Testament im Kontext jüdisch-hellenistischer Literatur: Röm 1,19–23 als Testfall,” in
Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit: Gesammelte Studien, WUNT 489 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2022), 259–73.
Agencies of Grace in Paul and James: Two Jewish Voices 31
religion and culture. Applied to Paul’s letters and to the question of their rela-
tionship to the epistle of James, such an approach implies that both documents
own a potential to broaden our horizon when we ask in which way Paul (and
James as well) can be arranged within the plurality of expressions of “Jewish”
practice and belief in the period of the Roman Empire.
Most Pauline scholars meanwhile accept the insight that the Judaism-Chris-
tianity divide has proved to be anachronistic with regard to the historical ori-
gins and the developments of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. This consensus
applies to the terminology used and to the historical “realities” associated with
the plurality of Jewish groups, including “Christ followers,” who belong to this
landscape. I hope that such a consensus will grow likewise in Jacobean studies.
Both Paul and the letter of James (irrespective of the identification of its histor-
ical author) 9 should be listened to as two different voices that express beliefs
and advocate religious attitudes and behaviors that are deeply rooted in the con-
victions of the people of Israel as testified in the Scriptures and in ancient Jewish
sources.
Before I start my brief survey of texts, I want to clarify some of my assump-
tions with regard to the historical circumstances that Paul’s letters and the epis-
tle of James originated in and with regard to the theological convictions ex-
pressed by them. I assume that Paul and James wrote their letters independent
of each other, although both certainly knew of each other as important figures
of the earliest stages of the Jesus movement.10 Furthermore, both authors base
their theological arguments on the conviction that Jesus is “the Lord,” that
means the eschatological representative of the God of Israel, who acted to fulfil
God’s will and to give new life to those who put their faith in him.11 This implies
that both belonged to the variegated and widespread religious movement that
emerged from the impact of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. In addition,
both authors build their theological arguments upon the Scriptures of Israel.
They argue that in the Scriptures God had revealed his eschatological plans for
his elect people. For both James and Paul, the salvation of Israel forms a consti-
tutive part of their religious convictions. Yet, at the same time, both authors
9 For my own view of the letter author see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Wer war ‘Jakobus’ in
den Augen seiner Leser? Zu meinem Ansatz der Kommentierung des Jakobusbriefs im EKK,”
in Who Was ‘James’? Essays on the Letter’s Authorship and Provenance, ed. Eve-Marie Becker,
Sigurvin Lárus Jónsson, and Susanne Luther, WUNT 485 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022),
161–78.
10 For a similar view in recent research on James see Matthias Konradt, Christliche Exis-
tenz nach dem Jakobusbrief: Eine Studie zu seiner soteriologischen und ethischen Konzeption,
StUNT 22 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 241–8.
11 For the understanding of faith in James see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Glaube im Stress
test: Πίστις im Jakobusbrief,” in Glaube. Das Verständnis des Glaubens im frühen Christen-
tum und in seiner jüdischen und hellenistisch-römischen Umwelt, ed. Jörg Frey, Benjamin
Schließer, and Nadine Ueberschaer, WUNT 373 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 473–501.
base their arguments on their faith in Jesus Christ by developing quite different
ways of reasoning to justify their convictions.12
The main difference between Paul and James pertains to the place of the Gen-
tiles in the scheme of the eschatological events and the consequences resulting
from that conviction for the religious behavior and beliefs of the communities
which they address. For Paul, the inclusion of Gentiles into the community of
believers without becoming Jews by undertaking circumcision forms an identi-
ty marker of his mission and his theological arguments.13 This issue, however,
seems to be ignored completely in the epistle of James. Therefore, the theologi-
cal arguments in the letters of Paul and James, although sometimes sounding
very close to each other, should be carefully distinguished.
In the following survey of texts, I argue that Paul and James are to be valued
as two different “Jewish” voices that both speak about the salvific agency of
God in Jesus Christ at the end of ages. Yet they express their voices through
diverse arguments with different intentions towards different groups of ad-
dressees who belong to the variegated early Jesus movement. Both, in their own
ways, represent “agencies of grace in Judaism.”
2. Two Epistolary Arguments on God’s Agency in Christ
I start my analysis by comparing two passages that usually do not play any role
in the debate on Paul and James as related to each other. The argument in Jas
1:13–18, on the one hand, belongs to the “soteriological” basis of the letter.14
What Paul renders in 2 Cor 4:1–6, on the other hand, is part of his argument to
defend his claim to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, both arguments
base upon a reference to God, the creator of the world, who has acted eschato-
logically by sending Jesus Christ, the Lord and savior, to save those who believe
in him (God) by believing in him (Jesus Christ). This renders both texts appro-
priate for our search for “agencies of grace” in Paul and Judaism.
12 It should be highlighted that Paul and James cannot be harmonized with each other in
regard to their understanding of faith according to modern theological dogmatics. However,

this does not mean that their particular views on faith and the arguments they use to substan-
tiate them should be played off against each other. See for this Karl-Wilhem Niebuhr, “Sünde
im Jakobusbrief: Eine vernachlässigte Stimme zur Theologie des Neuen Testaments,” KuD 66
(2020): 290–311.
13 In this regard I side with the proponents of the ‘Paul within Judaism’ approach, see
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer
Darstellung in seinen Briefen, WUNT 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 66–78; idem, “Die
paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre in der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion,” in Worum
geht es in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Das biblische Fundament der “Gemeinsamen Erklärung”
von katholischer Kirche und Lutherischem Weltbund, QD 180 (Freiburg: Herder, 1999), 106–
30 (= in Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit, 235–56).
14 Cf. Konradt, Christliche Existenz nach dem Jakobusbrief, 41–100.
2.1 James 1:13–18

2.1.1 Structure
James 1:13–18 is part of the letter’s introduction (“epitome”, 1:2–27) which over-
ture several themes which will be discussed more thoroughly later in the letter.15
The author here deploys several rather short theological reflections about the
doubts and disturbances that afflict a believer’s minds (vv. 5–8), the origins of
good and evil desires (vv. 13–15), and about God’s agency in the process of be-
coming and remaining a believer (vv. 16–18). In the following paragraph (1:19–
27),16 the author sketches three steps to delineate his basic theological insight
that faith and practice belong together and must form a unity in the life of those
who believe in Jesus Christ. The first step refers to the reception of the salutary
word of God (vv. 19–21). The second step of the argument (vv. 22–25) highlights
the unity of hearing and doing in the life of the believers that results from the
gift of the word to them. By his third step of argument (vv. 26–27), the author
encourages the readers to prove their true faith by developing fair and equitable
social relations among each other.
It is apparent that the theological and ethical intentions of the letter are based
on faith in God and Jesus Christ and direct the addressees to a practice and be-
lief that focuses particularly on fair social relations. However, long before it
comes to “faith and works” (cf. Jas 2:14–26), the thematic concern of the letter
has been highlighted already by referring to the origin of faith in God’s agency.
The unity of hearing and doing, of receiving the word of God and displaying
the faith received by disposing justice to each other, all derives from the faith
bestowed upon the believers. At the soteriological core of his letter (1:13–25),
the author does not speak of the relationship between faith and works. Instead,
he stresses the good gifts of God from above (v. 17), the word of truth by which
the believers are newly born as “firstfruits of his creation” (v. 18), and the pro-
cess of receiving and listening to “the implanted word, which is able to save your
souls” (vv. 21–22). The author thus lays the soteriological basis for his later ar-
guments that focus to a greater extent on ethical instructions.
2.1.2 Interpretation
In Jas 1:17, for the second time in the letter, God appears as a generous giver.
Already in 1:5, the author had appealed to his readers: “If any of you is lacking
in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will
be given you.” Now, in 1:17, he renders it like a mnemonic that “Every generous
15 For the structure of the letter of James see Niebuhr, “Sünde im Jakobusbrief,” 292–8. I
judge 1:2–27 as “epitome” for the letter where the author determines his main intentions and
mentions core elements or keywords of his argument that are developed further in 2:1–5:6,
understood as “exposition.”
16 See for this Niebuhr, “Glaube im Stresstest,” 475–7.
act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Fa-
ther of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”17 The
terms πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθή and πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον seem to be interchangeable. The
pleonastic phrases πᾶσα … καὶ πᾶν express rhetorical power. The addressees
may expect from God anything imaginable good.18
For Philo, the qualities of “good” and “perfect” belong to a philosophically
founded understanding of God.19 When Philo reflects about the origins of good
and evil, he maintains that God himself presents his gifts as benefactions and
donations to human beings only. For God is good and generous by nature, but
he punishes the sinners by the help of other divine powers.20 The reason for this
is that Philo in his philosophical understanding of God would not imagine that
the divine comes in touch to anything “material.” However, in contrast to Philo
and his philosophical backgrounds in Plato and Middle-Platonism, James does
not focus on such philosophical reflections about the origins of good and evil.21
Moreover, good and evil in James’ argument do not refer to God himself, but to
God’s gifts to humankind. What James wants to highlight is God’s agency to-
wards people, not his interior qualities.
Nevertheless, for the author of the letter of James, as well as for his audience,
God is “above,” and is called the “father of lights”.22 Such terminology points to
conceptions of God in the Hellenistic-Roman era, consistent with biblical and
early Jewish sources as well. The “lights” probably refer to the luminous heav-
enly bodies that belong to most ancient conceptions of nature. In the Greek
Bible, however, the plural φῶτα refers to the stars and occurs only once in Ps
17 For an identification of 1:17 as a hexameter see Allison, James, 270.

18 For the metaphorical use of language in James to deploy his understanding of God, see
Michael Glöckner, Bildhafte Sprache im Jakobusbrief: Form, Inhalt und Erschließungspoten-
tial der metaphorischen Rede einer frühchristlichen Schrift, ABIG 69 (Leipzig: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 2021), 81–104.
19 Cf. Philo, Opif. 8: Moses already recognized “that the activating cause is the absolutely
pure and unadulterated intellect of the universe, superior to excellence and superior to knowl-
edge and even superior to the good and the beautiful itself” (quoted from David T. Runia, On
the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary,
PACS 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 48. Cf. also Legat. 5; Praem. 40. For an interpretation of Philo’s
understanding of God see Stefan Wenger, Der wesenhaft gute Kyrios: Eine exegetische Studie
über das Gottesbild im Jakobusbrief, AThANT 100 (Zürich: TVZ, 2011), 109–16.
20 Cf. Philo, Fug. 66: “For it is unbecoming to God to punish, seeing that He is the original
and perfect Lawgiver: He punishes not by His own hands but by those of others who act as
His ministers.” (Quoted from Colson/Whitaker, LCL Philo Vol. V, 47).
21 For the philosophical backgrounds and contexts of Philo’s understanding of God in
hellenistic Judaism see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Biblische Weisheit und griechische Philoso-
phie in der frühjüdischen Literatur,” in idem, Tora und Weisheit. Studien zur frühjüdischen
Literatur, WUNT 466 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 101–48, esp. 139–44.
22 For the religious and philosophical backgrounds of this term see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
“Gott als ‘Vater der Lichter’ (Jak 1,17): Das Vaterprädikat im Jakobusbrief im Kontext von
Platonismus und Frühjudentum,” in Über Gott (FS R. Feldmeier), ed. Jan Dochhorn, Ilinca
Tanaseanu-Döbler, and Rainer Hirsch-Luipold (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 67–82.
135:7–9. The only parallel for the term πατὴρ τῶν φώτων in non-biblical Jewish
texts comes from the Greek Life of Adam and Eve. When Seth and his mother
Eve in a vision watch two Ethiopians in heaven, these gloomy fellows prove to
be sun and moon whose lights appear black in comparison to “the light of the
universe, the father of lights.”23 Even the angels in heaven venerate God as the
“father of lights.”24
To call God “Father” is a common concept in Antiquity.25 The Homeric
phrase about Zeus as “father of Gods and human beings” is perceived in Pla-
tonism and Stoicism to reflect the relationship between the divine and the cos-
mos. In Hellenistic-Roman philosophical theology (as part of metaphysics)
such a combination of reflections about God as father, the origins of the cosmos,
the power of the divine over the cosmos and over human beings, formed an area
of reflection that became fertile soil for early Jewish theological thinking as
well. Certainly, the biblical restrictions for understanding God were delineated
by the first commandment of the Decalogue which remained valid for every
Jewish thinker to avoid any mythic connotations about a divine “procreation”
of the cosmos. However, this prohibition did not prevent them from reflecting
on the relationship between God and the creation by borrowing terms and con-
ceptions from Greek philosophical traditions.
Thus, Philo polemicizes against those who admire the cosmos more than its
creator and demands them to acknowledge and respect the divine powers of
God, the creator and father of the universe:
There are some people who, having more admiration for the cosmos than for its maker,
declared the former both ungenerated and eternal, while falsely and impurely attributing
to God much idleness. What they should have done was the opposite, namely be as-
tounded at God’s powers as Maker and Father, and not show more reverence for the
cosmos than is its due. (Opif. 7) 26
23 LAE 36:1–3; for the understanding of God and his eschatological agency towards hu-
mankind in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Hopes of Resurrec-
tion in Greek Texts of Early Judaism. Narrative Theology in the Greek ‘Life of Adam and
Eve’ in Light of the Septuagint Translation of the Psalms, Sirach, and Job,” in forthcoming.
24 LAE 35:1.
25 For this concept in ancient Jewish and hellenistic-Roman traditions see Reinhard Feld-
meier, “Der oberste Gott als Vater: Die frühjüdische und frühchristliche Rede vom göttlichen
Vater im Kontext stoischer und platonischer Kosmos-Theologie,” in idem, Der Höchste: Stu-
dien zur hellenistischen Religionsgeschichte und zum biblischen Gottesglauben, WUNT 330
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 178–93; Christiane Zimmermann, Die Namen des Vaters:
Studien zu ausgewählten neutestamentlichen Gottesbezeichnungen vor ihrem frühjüdischen
und paganen Sprachhorizont, AGJU 69 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Annette Böckler, Gott als Vater
im Alten Testament: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Entwick-
lung eines Gottesbildes (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2000); Angelika Strotmann,
“Mein Vater bist du!” (Sir 51,10): Zur Bedeutung der Vaterschaft Gottes in kanonischen und
nichtkanonischen frühjüdischen Schriften, FTS 39 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Josef Knecht,
1991).
26 Quoted from Runia, On the Creation of the Cosmos, 48.
The Wisdom of Solomon appeals to God the “father” because in his providence
God steers the course of a ship through the ocean and has given it a path in the
sea and a safe passage through the waves.27 Josephus summons his readers to
recognize the “nature of God” and to imitate his works because he is “the Fa-
ther and Lord of all.”28 The most complete quotation of the Homeric phrase,
together with God’s qualification as creator of the universe, occurs in Philo in
his De specialibus legibus when he explains the Jewish understanding of God:
But if He exists Whom all Greeks and barbarians unanimously acknowledge, the su-
preme Father of gods and men and the Maker of the whole universe, whose nature is in-
visible and inscrutable not only by the eye, but by the mind, yet is a matter into which
every student of astronomical science and other philosophy desires to make research and
leaves nothing untried which would help him to discern it and do it service – then it was
the duty of all men to cleave to Him and not introduce new gods staged as by machinery
to receive the same honors. (Spec. 1.165) 29
The author of James seems to be rather remote to such religious and philosoph-
ical reflections. Nevertheless, the term “father of lights” that he uses points to
the cultural and ideological horizon under which he develops his own under-
standing of the agency of God who has acted to save those who put their faith
in “God and Jesus Christ” (Jas 1:1).
In Jas 1:18, the term βουληθείς refers to God’s unchangeable goodness and his
will to save his people as experienced by the believers.30 The verbal form (Aor-
ist) makes plain that here an action of God is in view, not an abstract attribute.
It points to an event that has happened already and is received by the addressees
as a saving act of God towards them. God is the one who had intended to bring
the believers into new life by his “word of truth” and in fact has done so already.
This act of “birthing” (ἀπεκύησεν) unites James and his audience (ἡμᾶς). For-
mulations in the first person plural are rather rare in Jas. They occur only here
and in 2:1 in the first two chapters. According to the letter prescript, as well as
in 2:1, the author and the addressees appear subordinated together to God and
the Lord Jesus Christ.
The imagery of procreation and childbirth occurs twice in 1:15 and 1:18. By
this terminology, the agency of God as father towards human beings, in this
case, towards the believers, takes on a motherly aspect as well. The sequel of the
argument shows that an act of creation is in view (κτίσματα). However, those
27 Wis 14:3 f. For the Wisdom of Solomon and its background in Jewish-Hellenistic tradi-
tions see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Die Sapientia Salomonis im Kontext hellenistisch-römi

scher Philosophie,” in Sapientia Salomonis (Weisheit Salomos), ed. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
SAPERE 27 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 219–56.
28 Josephus, A. J. 1.20.
29 Quoted from Colson/Whitaker, LCL Philo Vol. VII, 409.
30 For my interpretation of Jas 1:13–18 see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Jakobus und Paulus
über das Innere des Menschen und den Ursprung seiner ethischen Entscheidungen,” NTS 62
(2016): 1–30, esp. 6 –11.
who are the recipients of God’s agency as creator are members of the communi-
ties of believers in God and Jesus Christ. They are encouraged by the author to
maintain their faith and to make it visible in their everyday life. Therefore, the
process of creation here in view refers to the event of having become Christ
followers, not to the creation of all humankind according to Gen 1–2.31 If those
human beings are “fathered” again and born once more, then they become
something else, something new, more than what they had been before. In addi-
tion, by describing the act of becoming a Christ follower as a recurrence of
birth, James highlights the passive attitude of the believers in view of their re-
ception of the gift of faith. Of course, the author wants to encourage his ad-
dressees to an active way of life by pointing them to the needs of the poor and
weak and by reproving them to avoid hostilities in the communities. However,
the beginning of faith is a gift from God, an event of procreation and birth,
where the infant as the neophyte is completely passive.32
Thus, if the author in Jas 1:18 speaks of God’s will and his agency, he refers to
the event of receiving faith in God and Jesus Christ. The “word of truth” there-
fore can be nothing else than the message and the means which have made the
readers something new as they share the faith of the author. This message has its
roots in the destiny of Jesus Christ, the risen crucified One. By accepting such
a message as a gift from God, the addressees have been transformed as members
of “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” into a community of Christ believers, a
fellowship of sisters and brothers, who are on the way to eschatological salva-
tion. Therefore, Jas 1:18 must refer to the salvific agency of God in Jesus Christ,
even though the author does not precisely clarify the “procedure” of salvation
by faith in Christ. In any case, an eschatological event is in view, although by
using Aorist verbal forms, James identifies it as having happened already.33
2.2 2 Corinthians 4:1–6

2.2.1 Structure
The references to God the father of lights and creator of the believers in Jas
1:16–17 remind us of the argument put forward to describe Paul’s ministry as an
31 For an alternative interpretation, see Matt Jackson-McCabe, Logos and Law in the Let-
ter of James: The Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom, NT.S 100
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), 193–239. For a critical review of Jackson-McCabe see Karl-Wilhelm
Niebuhr, “‘A New Perspective on James’? Neuere Forschungen zum Jakobusbrief,” ThLZ 129
(2004): 1019–44, esp. 1033 f.
32 See for my interpretation also Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Geschenkt,” GPM 62 (2008):
135–40.
33 For a discussion about the question of how to interpret a kind of “soteriology” in James
see my interaction with Martin Bauspieß, “Ein Gesetz, das in die Freiheit führt? Überlegun-
gen zum Existenzverständnis im Jakobusbrief,” in Bestimmte Freiheit (FS C. Landmesser),
ed. Martin Bauspieß, Johannes U. Beck, and Friederike Portenhauser, ABIG 64 (Leipzig:
Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2020), 183–203, in Niebuhr, “Sünde im Jakobusbrief,” 308–10.
apostle of Christ.34 In 2 Cor 4:1–6, Paul combines the biblical tradition of the
creation of light in Gen 1:3–5 with the present experience of the believers in
Christ.35 “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 God in the
face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6)
The section functions as a summary of the foregoing argument since 2 Cor
2:14 prepares the way for its continuation until 7:4. The whole argument focuses
on Paul and his call to apostleship (and perhaps on other apostles called to min-
istry like Paul).36 It refers, thus, to Paul’s understanding of apostleship, not to
the faith of every single member of the community. However, the event that
Paul is pointing to is relevant for his audience as well because it forms the origin
and the starting point of his ministry as an apostle that is the precondition of
their faith in Christ. This becomes plain from the letter opening (1:1–2:13) where
Paul intends to create a close relationship between his own experience of suffer-
ing and comfort by faith in Christ which he shares with his church in Corinth
(cf. 2 Cor 1:6–7). Therefore, the particular experience of faith in his conversion
that Paul is referring to in 4:6 must not be separated completely from the faith
that determines the life of his addressees.
Thus, Paul interprets his own conversion by referring to God’s creation of
light.37 Therefore, he can attribute to his gospel the quality of proclaiming the
divine light that shall enlighten everyone who share his experience of faith in
Christ. In the section under consideration, Paul develops his argument by
building up diametrical opposites. His proclamation does not consist of “shame-
ful things that one hides,” but is an “open statement of the truth” (v. 2). The
gospel that he proclaims is “veiled to those who are perishing,” but for the apos-
tle it is “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (vv. 3–4). Still more im-
portant from a theological point of view, the experiences of those who are con-
fronted with the gospel and their reactions are caused by different “divine agen-
cies” opposed to each other. The unbelievers are under pressure from evil
powers. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (v. 4).
34 Cf. Robert Vorholt, Der Dienst der Versöhnung: Studien zur Apostolatstheologie bei
Paulus, WMANT 118 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 209–24; Thomas

Schmeller, Der Zweite Brief an die Korinther, Teilband 1: 2Kor 1,1–7,4, EKK VIII/1 (Neu-
kirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, Ostfildern: Patmos-Verlag, 2010), 232–50.
35 Cf. Stefanie Lorenzen, Das paulinische Eikon-Konzept: Semantische Analysen zur Sapi-
entia Salomonis, zu Philo und den Paulusbriefen, WUNT 2/250 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2008), 231–6.
36 For the argumentative context with regard to Pauline apostleship see Tobias Nicklas,
“Die verborgene Herrlichkeit des Paulusdienstes: Überlegungen zu 2Kor 3,1–4,6,” in Der

zweite Korintherbrief: Literarische Gestalt – historische Situation – theologische Argumenta-
tion (FS D.-A. Koch), FRLANT 250 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 240–56.
37 For the background of Paul’s argument in the Scriptures of Israel, particularly in Gen
1:3 and Isa 9:1 LXX, see Florian Wilk, Die Bedeutung des Jesajabuches für Paulus, FRLANT
179 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 269–74.
In contrast, the creator God has enlightened the hearts of the believers “to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (v. 6).
2.2.2 Interpretation
Paul in this section describes the moment of coming into touch with the gospel
of Christ as a visual experience.38 Therefore, we can assume that he refers to his
visionary experience in the course of his own conversion.39 An “apocalyptic”
background of understanding is manifest with regard to two opposed transcen-
dent powers involved in the proclamation of the gospel, “the god of this world”
(v. 4) and the “true” God (v. 2). Therefore, those who had refused the Pauline
gospel were not able to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is
the image of God,” because their minds (νοήματα) have been blinded (v. 4). Thus,
visual and noetic perceptions belong together. We find the same combination of
seeing and understanding in v. 6 when Paul speaks about the illumination of
knowledge (φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως) to perceive the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.
The term “image of God” attributed to Christ in v. 4 may refer to the creation
of humankind according to which all humankind has been made “in God’s im-
age and likeness” (κατ᾽ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν καὶ καθ᾽ ὁμοίωσιν, Gen 1:26). However,
in the context of 2 Cor 4:1–6, the visual experience points to the perception of
God by receiving the image of Christ. Thus, in v. 6 Paul speaks of “the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (ἐν προσώπῳ
Χριστοῦ)”. Therefore, visual perception and reflective insight here refer to this
particular “human being” called Jesus Christ, and not to every human being as
created in the image of God. The Christological interpretation of the image of
God in 2 Cor 4:6 is underlined by the term δόξα that pervades the whole argu-
ment (15 occurrences between 3:7 and 4:17). By calling his proclamation “the
gospel of the glory of Christ” (εὐαγγέλιον τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ, v. 4), Paul cre-
ates an inseparable link between his ministry and his message. Both are “quali-
fied” by divine glory. Becoming a believer for Paul means hearing the gospel
message and experiencing the illumination of the heart by the divine glory that
leads to the perception of Christ in his divine glory. Of course, as Paul hastens
to add, Christ’s divine glory is the glory of the crucified Jesus. The followers of
Christ, the apostles in particular, are “always carrying in the body the death of
Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (4:10).
38 For the following interpretation see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Jesus Christus und der
eine Gott Israels: Zum christologischen Gottesglauben in den Paulusbriefen,” FuH 34 (1995):
10–29 (= in idem, Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit, 203–17).
39 Cf. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
(Grand Rapids, Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), 113; idem, One God one Lord – Early Christian
Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 119; Carey C. New-
man, Paul’s Glory Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric, NTS 69 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 229–40.
The above-mentioned encounter of human beings with Jesus Christ as pro-

voked by Paul’s proclamation of the gospel can be either successful or not. Yet,
in both cases, this does not depend on the agency of human beings but on the
“divine agent” who possesses the power to preclude or to make such an encoun-
ter possible. If some of the recipients of Paul’s gospel are called “unbelievers”
(ἄπιστοι) or “those who are perishing” (ἐν τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις), it is because “the
god of this world” has blinded their minds (ἐτύφλωσεν τὰ νοήματα τῶν ἀπίστων)
and therefore the gospel has remained veiled for them. The same applies to Paul
himself as the representative of believers. If he claims to having seen in his con-
version “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,” it is because the true and
merciful God (cf. ἠλεήθημεν, v. 1) has enlightened him (ἔλαμψεν ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις
ἡμῶν) to perceive “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Again (as in
James), the events that Paul refers to are described by using Aorist forms to
point to an action of God (ἔλαμψεν) and a passive experience of Paul (ἠλεήθημεν)
that had happened in the past.
Several references to the Book of Wisdom and to Philo would make plain that
such perceptions of the agency of God with regard to the experiences and the
fate of human beings in “soteriological” terms are common in early Jewish
theological reflection as well. Thus, to give only a few examples from each of the
sources mentioned, according to the Book of Wisdom, God and the devil had
been acting towards human beings, with the result that “we,” although created
immortal and according to his eternal image (ἐπ᾽ ἀφθαρσίᾳ καὶ εἰκόνα τῆς ἰδίας
ἀϊδιότητος), fell under the power of death by the deception of the devil.
Because God created human beings for incorruption, and made them the image of his
own, but through envy of the devil death entered the world, and those who belong to his
party experience it. (Wis 2:23–24) 40
Immortality here appears as a divine gift given to human beings that they had
gambled away because they succumbed to the deception of the devil. However,
for the righteous, there is still hope, because:
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God … They are at peace … In the time of
their visitation they will shine out, and as sparks through the stubble, they will run
about. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will be king over
them forever. Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will remain
with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over
his chosen ones. (Wis 3:1–9)
Compared to Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 4:1–6, similarities as well as differences

become plain. Both texts attribute to God the power of giving eternal life to
human beings. Both reflect about a transcendent power of evil that puts at risk
40 Translations of Wisdom of Solomon are quoted from NETS. For textual problems
and annotations see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr (ed.), Sapientia Salomonis (Weisheit Salomos),
SAPERE 27 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 114.
this divine gift, although according to both authors in the end the salvific pow-
er of God will overcome the power of the evil. That is, both authors emphasize
the agency of God with regard to the reception of salvation. However, in the
Book of Wisdom eternal life is an experience of the soul only of the dead who
are in God’s hands already in the present, but also as a promise for the future to
the righteous who currently suffer. According to Paul, believers have received
the light of salvation as a gift from God already in their earthly life. Such an
experience of faith has changed their hearts to recognize the glory of God in the
face of Christ. Therefore, they experience already in their hearts the glory of the
risen Christ, but have to carry the death of Jesus in their bodies. Nevertheless,
they certainly hope that the life of Jesus Christ will also become visible in them.
For Philo, in his treatise De opificio mundi (Opif. 26–35), the creation of light
is part of the first creation account according to Gen 1:3–4, and is the point of
departure for his concept of a double creation. God first created the immaterial
world of ideas (as reported in Gen 1), and only afterwards (according to Gen 2)
he created the material world.41 The phrase “in the beginning” (Gen 1:1) for
Philo means beyond of any course of time, and helps him to distinguish be-
tween the timeless world of incorporeal ideas and the material world arranged
by time and space (cf. Opif. 26–28). The opposition between light and darkness
as mentioned in Gen 1:5 is the biblical source to emphasize that the intelligible
light surpasses the visible as the sun surpasses darkness. Philo then continues
his argument by discussing the relationship between the invisible-intelligible
and sense-perceptible worlds:
That invisible and intelligible light has come into being as image of the divine Logos
which communicated its genesis. It is a star that transcends the heavenly realm, source of
the visible stars and you would not be off the mark to call it “allbrightness.” From it the
sun and moon and other planets and fixed stars draw the illumination that is fitting for
them in accordance with the capacity they each have. But that unmixed and pure gleam
has its brightness dimmed when it begins to undergo a change from the intelligible to the
sense-perceptible, for none of the objects in the sense-perceptible realm is absolutely
pure. (Opif. 31) 42
Once again, we notice distinctions as well as affinities to Paul’s argument in

2 Cor 4:1–6. Both authors use phrases from Genesis to explain their under-
standings of the agency of God towards creation and towards human beings.
For both, the reflection of the present conditions of the world as they experience
it leads them to develop a kind of dynamic in the process of how this world came
into being and what sort of fate it will acquire. Both authors attach to the bibli-
cal account a second, transcendent power opposed to the creator God, as hap-
pens another way in the Book of Wisdom. For Philo, this second power origi-
41 Cf. Opif. 29. For a thorough interpretation of the passage see Runia, On the Creation of
the Cosmos according to Moses, 163–73.

42 Quotations of Opif. are from Runia, On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses.
nated only when the pure intelligible world of ideas mixed with the sense-per-
ceptible world of material things. This abstract, philosophical concept of evil
corresponds to the “god of this world” in Paul or to the devil in the book of
Wisdom by being dangerous for the creation as God intended it to be. Even
though both NT authors do not develop this notion of an anti-creation force
further, the philosophical background is connected with such an interpretation
of the Genesis texts in Philo.43
However, according to Philo, God “separated light and darkness (and) placed
boundaries in the extended space between them” in order to “ensure that they
would not continually interact and be in strife with each other, and that war
would not gain the upper hand over peace and bring about disorder in the cos-
mos.”44 Therefore, to hold this world in existence and to keep humanity alive,
people should respect the boundaries between the two worlds and should orient
their way of life according to the eternal law of nature that corresponds to the
Mosaic Law. This is quite different to Paul’s understanding of what happens
when God is interacting with human beings. Nevertheless, it is another possible
and theologically viable way of understanding God’s agency in ancient Jewish
belief as based on the testimony in the Scriptures of Israel about God’s dealing
with humankind.
3. Comparison and Conclusion
By way of conclusion, I attempt to sum up some of the results of my surveys of

two passages from James and Paul. At the outset, I hasten to emphasize once
again that my argument does not imply any literary or tradition historical rela-
tionship between the texts analyzed here. Likewise, I do not intend to evaluate
the theological positions of James and Paul according to any dogmatic or histor-
ical measures. If I try to compare Jas 1:13–18 and 2 Cor 4:1–6 under the aspect
of agencies of grace as expressed in these texts, it is to search two different ways
of reasoning independently of each other about the question of how God acts in
the Christ event. I assume that both Paul and James ground their theological
reflections in their own experience of faith in Jesus Christ and that both authors
intend to make an impact by their theological arguments to the practice and the
beliefs of their respective audiences. However, I do not intend to argue in favor
of a typically “Christian” understanding of “agencies of grace” as represented
by Paul and/or James, nor do I imply that Paul and James in their theological
43 For an analogous constellation of Paul and James on the one hand and contemporary
Jewish and non-Jewish writings on the other with regard to the reception of hellenistic-Ro-
man philosophical elements see Niebuhr, “Jakobus und Paulus über das Innere des Men-
schen,” 13–30.
44 Opif. 33.
reflections refer to each other in whatever direction. What connects them is a

sort of meta-level agreement. It consists in their rootedness in common religious
beliefs. On the one hand, they share some of the convictions of the early “Jesus
movement.” For both authors, Jesus is the Lord. God and Jesus Christ form a
union in the view of the believers. Those who believe in God and Jesus Christ
will receive eschatological salvation and completion in future.45 On the other
hand, both authors agree by approving fundamental beliefs about God that are
founded in the testimony of the Scriptures of Israel as expressed in a great num-
ber of early Jewish writings of their time, beginning with the Septuagint.
In the two passages analyzed, Paul as well as James refer to God, the creator
of the universe, when they attempt to explain the process by which human be-
ings have come to believe in Jesus Christ. The motif of the creation of light as
part of the biblical account of creation (Gen 1:3–5) occurs in both passages, al-
though in variable interpretations and with different meta-thoughts. For James,
the phrase “father of lights” is just an allusion to the biblical account of creation.
His primary focus is on God who acts as father and as mother likewise to “cre-
ate” the believers in Christ as “firstfruits” of a new creation by granting to them
his “word of truth.” The believers that James addresses shall remember the good
gifts that they have received from God to become newly born creatures. They
shall trust in the power of these gifts that will save their souls (cf. 1:21; 5:20).
For Paul in 2 Cor 4:1–6, the references to the biblical creation account are
more thoroughly reflected and developed. He quotes verbatim several phrases
from the biblical account. By using a term that refers to every human creature in
the creation account of the Genesis, he identifies the Lord Jesus Christ as the
eschatological “image of God.” The motif of light taken from the creation ac-
count in Paul applies to the process of receiving and gathering the gospel. En-
lightened by God the believers are led to recognize Jesus as the eschatological
representative of God. The visual aspects included in Paul’s reference to his
conversion thus take on the character of understanding and knowledge. Thus,
perception, recognition and reflection are parts of the process of becoming a
Christ believer.
Both James and Paul in their arguments about perceiving the Christ event
prove to be cognate with reflections in Hellenistic-Jewish literary works on the
agency of God towards his creation and towards humankind. Again, this does
not mean that they depend on each other on a literary or tradition level. Passag-
es from Philo or the Book of Wisdom examined in our survey discuss different
matters and use discrete motifs different to Paul and James in their epistolary
arguments. Of course, both Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon are by no means
related to Jesus Christ and to the question of how to become a Christ-believer.
45 For such a “binitarian” view of God in James see Niebuhr, “One God, One Lord in the
Epistle of James,” 173–5, 186–8.

However, in their own ways of thinking and believing they do reflect the prob-
lem of how it happens that the God of Israel, the divine power as perceived in
the Scriptures, can be effective in the world created and can be perceived by
human beings in their everyday life. Disregarding their explicit references to
Jesus Christ, therefore, Paul and James would figure quite suitably among other
Jewish thinkers who reflect on the agency of God towards humankind.
What marks out the reflections of both Paul and James about how to become
a Christ believer are the eschatological prospects they develop in their argu-
ments. However, even this eschatological perspective does not lead them be-
yond the “boundaries of Jewish thinking” (if there ever have been such). In the
Book of Wisdom, the eschatological perspective is determined by the fate of the
ungodly and the righteous. Those who trust in God in the face of their suffer-
ings during their earthly life “will shine forth in the time of their visitation”
(Wis 3:7), whereas the godless “shall be as though they had never been” (2:2) and
their “allotted time is the passing of a shadow” (2:5). In Philo, such eschatolog-
ical perspectives are rare if present at all. However, such “eschatological hesita-
tion” in Philo follows from his philosophical perspective towards the universe
as consisting of the invisible realm of ideas and the material, sense-perceptible
world that is structured by time and space. For Philo, completion of the uni-
verse is a process of purification of the world of ideas from any “material” com-
ponents, not the least by discarding every “ethical” impurity. Nevertheless, if
James and Paul direct their views towards the eschatological completion of the
creation by God and towards the salvation of those who believe in Christ, this
does not make them “un-Jewish.” Rather, their particular way of dealing with
the problem of future expectations result from their faith that is rooted in the
biblical promises about God’s agency towards his people and shaped by refer-
ring to Jesus Christ as the foundation of their eschatological salvation.
Thus, James and Paul agree about the agency of God who enables and brings
forth eschatological salvation for human beings who direct their faith in Jesus
Christ. For both authors, God is the subject of the events that transform human
beings into followers of Jesus Christ by faith. For both, such faith is a gift of
God, not a “work” of the believers. In the understanding of both James and
Paul, believing is a passive attitude that orients the minds and the whole lives of
the believers to the agency of God, an attitude of passivity and receptiveness.
However, both early “Christian” authors also agree that such a faith has to be-
come visible in the attitude and in the performance of deeds by the believers
towards their neighbors in their needs, to the weak and the poor in particular.
The Relativization of Ethnicity and Circumcision
in Paul and His Communities
Jörg Frey
1. Paul the Jew and the “Paul Within Judaism” Perspective
The Apostle to the gentiles was a Jew, from his birth to his death.1 There cannot
be any reasonable doubt about this. This is stated by his own testimonies in his
undisputed letters, 2 and is also confirmed by the narrative of Acts.3 Whereas
some of his Jewish contemporaries might have considered him an unlawful per-
son, ignoring or even deliberately destroying the boundaries of the Jewish peo-
ple,4 his faithful solidarity was with his kinspeople until his last journey to Je-
rusalem. And while some voices in Christian and Jewish scholarship, particu-
larly in continuation of the history-of-religions school, considered him a
renegade or apostate,5 or even a “mythmaker” and the inventor of “Christiani-
ty,”6 these voices have become increasingly silent in recent years. The sources,
1 Cf. Jörg Frey, “The Jewishness of Paul,” in Paul: Life, Setting, Work, Letters, ed. Oda
Wischmeyer, trans. Helen S. Heron with revisions by Dieter T. Roth (London and New York:
T&T Clark, 2012), 57–95, here 57–60; idem, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” in Jewish Identity in the
Greco-Roman World. Jüdische Identität in der griechisch-römischen Welt, ed. Jörg Frey, Da
niel R. Schwartz, and Stefanie Gripentrog, AJEC 71 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 285–
321. See the thorough investigation by Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel. Die
jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen, WUNT 62 (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1992), and also Markus Tiwald, Hebräer von Hebräern: Paulus auf dem Hin-
tergrund frühjüdischer Argumentation und biblischer Interpretation, HBS 52 (Freiburg i. Br.:
Herder, 2008).
2 Cf. Rom 9:3, 5; 11:1; Gal 2:15; 2 Cor 11:22, and also the more extensive accounts in Gal
1:13–14; Phil 3:5–6.

3 Cf. Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:4–5.
4 Cf. Rom 3:31; Acts 21:21, 28.
5 Thus, in more recent scholarship Jürgen Becker, Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles, trans. O. C.
Dean (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), 33; Wolfgang Schrage, Der 1. Brief an die Korinther,
Bd. 2 , 1 Kor 6,12–11,16, EKK 7,2 (Zürich: Benziger and Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener,
1995), 340; and Georg Strecker, Theology of the New Testament, trans. E. Boring (New York:
de Gruyter, 2000), 21, who infers from Gal 1:13–24 and Phil 3:3–11 that Paul’s “self-under-
standing included a fundamental break with Judaism.” Even N. T. Wright can state with 1 Cor
9:19–23 in view: “Being a ‘Jew’ was no longer Paul’s basic identity” (Paul and the Faithfulness
of God [New York: SPCK, 2013], 1436).
6 Thus the Jewish historian Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of
Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1986) who describes Paul as a gentile convert who
introduced concepts of Hellenistic religion and thus “created” Christianity (cf. however, the
critical review by Ellis Rvkin, “Paul’s Jewish Odyssey,” Judaism 38 [1989]: 225–234), and also
46 Jörg Frey
instead, confirm how densely Paul draws on his Jewish heritage, on the Scrip-
tures, Jewish categories, methods of interpretation, and traditions7 even when
promoting the new faith in the Messiah Jesus as being in accord with the Law
and the Prophets, and with the eschatological will of God. The christological
predications adopted and developed by Paul (e.g., Christ, Kyrios, Son of God)
are also thoroughly based on and justified from Jewish traditions. 8 Paul is and
remains a Jew even as an apostle, promoting faith in Jesus, and founding new
communities of his followers. Most scholarly attempts at distancing Paul from
Judaism are shaped from anachronistic theological categories, from the view of
later periods, from the later separation of Judaism and Christianity, and from
anti-Jewish theological traditions from Marcion via Luther, Schleiermacher,
and Harnack to Bultmann. It is one of the most important developments of re-
cent Pauline scholarship, that these scholarly traditions have been criticized and
corrected, in particular by the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” and that
the discovery of Jewish sources, in particular from the Qumran corpus, has
helped to recognize that Paul’s place is “within Judaism.” The question that re-
mains is: “Where in Judaism” was he located? Or what does “Paul’s Judaism”
look like?9
While this seems to be widely accepted in current Pauline research, the pen-
dulum has swung the other direction. After the “new perspective,” there came a
“newer” or “radical” perspective,10 with John Gager’s attempt at – and the title
is meaningful – “Reinventing Paul,”11 within the framework of a disentangling
Gerd Lüdemann (after his “farewell” to Christianity) in Paul: The Founder of Christianity
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002).
7 Cf. Jörg Frey, “Die religiöse Prägung: Weisheit, Apokalyptik, Schriftauslegung,” in Pau-
lus Handbuch, ed. Friedrich W. Horn (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 59–66.
8 Cf. the more extensive discussion in Jörg Frey, “Eine neue religionsgeschichtliche Pers-
pektive: Larry W. Hurtados Lord Jesus Christ und die Herausbildung der frühen Christolo-
gie,” in Reflections on Early Christian History and Religion – Erwägungen zur frühchristli-
chen Religionsgeschichte, ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Jörg Frey, AJEC 81 (Leiden and Bos-
ton: Brill, 2012), 117–168. On the Jewish roots of even “high” christological titles, see most
recently Ruben A. Bühner, Hohe Messianologie: Übermenschliche Aspekte eschatologischer
Heilsgestalten im Frühjudentum, WUNT 2/523 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020); see also
idem, Messianic High Christology. New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism (Waco,
TX: Baylor University Press, 2021).
9 Thus the well-phrased change of the question in Mark D. Nanos, “Paul and Judaism.
Why Not Paul’s Judaism?” in Reading Paul Within Judaism, Collected Essays of Mark D.
Nanos 1, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2017), 3–59.
10 Cf. Alexander J. M. Wedderburn, “Eine neuere Paulusperspektive,” in Biographie und
Persönlichkeit des Paulus, ed. Eve-Marie M. Becker and Peter Pilhofer, WUNT 187 (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 46–64; Pamela Eisenbaum, “Paul, Polemics, and the Problem of
Essentialism,” BibInt 13 (2005): 224–38; Margnus Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul. A Stu-
dent’s Guide to Recent Scholarship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 127–163 (“Beyond the New
Perspective”). On the history of the “Paul within Judaism”-perspective, see Mark D. Nanos,
“Paul – Why Bother?: A Jewish Perspective,” STK 95 (2019): 271–87.
11 John Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Cf. also earlier
The Relativization of Ethnicity and Circumcision in Paul and His Communities 47
construct of two neatly separated covenants.12 From those ideas, the new “Paul
Within Judaism” school could develop. Its beginnings are usually linked with
the name-giving session at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Liter-
ature in 2010.13 Speaking of a “school” or a group does not mean, however, that
the scholars involved hold the same views in every respect. There are manifold
differences, nevertheless a commonality can be seen in the fact that for the
scholars of the “Paul-within” perspective, the ”New Perspective” did not go far
enough, especially when still looking for something Paul wanted to criticize
aspects of contemporary Judaism, e.g. its ethnocentricism.14 “Paul-within”
scholars, therefore are no longer solely concerned with understanding and lo-
cating the apostle within pluriform contemporary Judaism, they do not merely
see Paul as a Jew, but more precisely as an observant Jew. Furthermore, some
scholars such as Mark Nanos and Paula Fredriksen15 programmatically at-
tempt to deny the relevance of Paul’s statements on the Jewish law for contem-
porary (and later) Judaism. Of course, any kind of interpretation of relevant
religious texts, including our understanding of Paul, is connected to our broad-
er “political” perspective and interests,16 but it seems to me, that the “political”
effect or even the “political” aim of the views mentioned is to delegitimize any
further “Christian” critique of Judaism, if based on Paul. This goes beyond his-
torical scholarship and is sometimes connected with high moral claims, which
Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987);
Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven and
London: Yale, 1994).
12 Gager argues in his book that Paul’s criticism of the Jewish law does not refer to it as the
law of Israel, but only to its validity for gentile Jesus followers. While they can participate in
God’s covenant without obligation to the law, the validity of the law for Jewish followers is by
no means restricted. Accordingly, as Gaston and Stowers had previously formulated, for Paul
there were two covenants, one through the Torah for the Jews and one through faith in Christ
for the gentiles. The consequence is that according to this view, Paul did not see Jesus as the
Messiah of Israel or Messiah for the Jews. With such a position, the Jewish-Christian dialogue
can be defused, but it is difficult to reconcile the “two covenant theory” with Paul’s self-testi-
monies, e.g., in Rom 9–11 (cf. the criticism in Wedderburn, “Paulusperspektive,” 53–64). For
Gager, it ultimately remains open whether Paul still saw himself as a Jew and to what extent
he himself observed the Torah (see Gager, Reinventing, 147).
13 Cf. Mark D. Nanos, “Introduction,” in Paul Within Judaism: Restoring the First-Centu-
ry Context to the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 2013), 1–29, here 11.
14 Thus Nanos, “Introduction,” 6–7, with regard to the views of J. D. G. Dunn.
15 Cf. also a number of scholars from a Christian background, especially in the Scandina-
vian school, such as Magnus and Karin Zetterholm (Lund), or Anders Runesson (Oslo).
16 Nanos is well aware of this, but for the “Paul-within” school, he claims that the contrib-
utors of his volume “are committed to the science of historiography more than they are be-
holden to making Paul fit either into what they wish for him to say, or what he has been un-
derstood to have said in the service of the various theological positions that have prevailed”
(cf. Nanos, “Introduction,” 4). Yet, in such a claim there is always the danger of claiming more
objectivity for one’s own views and describing the others as biased. It would be hermeneuti-
cally naïve not to see the circle in which we all are more or less involved.
48 Jörg Frey
is understandable in view of the conflictual and bloody history of Jewish-Chris-

tian relations. But the views presented with such moral impetus must also be
measured against the texts and in hermeneutical self-awareness.
An initial, decisive presupposition of this “school” is that all of the Pauline
letters are addressed only to non-Jewish readers and, therefore, do not address
or even criticize the lifestyle and Torah practice of synagogal Jews. It is rightly
seen that, for Paul, believers in Christ were the fulfilment of the Jewish expec-
tation of an eschatological influx of peoples to worship the God of Israel (cf.
Rom 15:16) and that Paul sees himself as an eschatological agent in that process
with – as I have expressed elsewhere – even “high-priestly” functions.17 It is
further stressed that Paul himself, as a Jew, fully observed the Law.
However, according to the “Paul-Within” school, the ethnic difference be-
tween Israel and the nations is considered a fundamental and permanent dis-
tance which is also considered to remain eschatologically. Even if it is Paul’s aim
to draw others close to Judaism or bring them to a “Judaizing” lifestyle, he does
not want to make them Jews.18 For this reason, it is said, Paul forbade circum-
cision and entry into Judaism for Christ-believing non-Jews. Whereas those
gentile Christ-believers are expected to follow a Torah oriented, in some way
“Judaizing” lifestyle, that is, to worship the God of Israel exclusively and to live
according to the ethical norms of the Torah, they are never expected to become
Jews. For all Jews, instead, the validity and binding force of the Torah remains
unrestricted, even if they decide to follow Jesus.
According to Nanos, Paul’s message is directed exclusively at non-Jews who
were at the same time closely linked with the synagogue, but as separate “sub-
groups,” they did not mix with Jewish Jesus followers in a common congrega-
tion.19 Paul’s “critique of the law,” thus only concerns the validity of the Torah
for non-Jews, but does not imply (and does not allow) a critique of Judaism and
its Torah observance in general. In this perspective, “ethnicity” is considered
17 Cf. Jörg Frey, “Das Selbstverständnis des Paulus als Apostel,” in Receptions of Paul in
Early Christianity. The Person of Paul and his Writings through the Eyes of his Early Inter-
preters, ed. Jens Schröter, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettwiler, BZNW 234 (Berlin and
Boston: de Gruyter 2018), 115–42, here 138–40.
18 Mark D. Nanos, “Paul’s Non-Jews Do Not Become ‘Jews.’ But Do They Become ‘Jew-
ish’?: Reading Romans 2:25–29 with in Judaism, alongside Josephus,” in Reading Paul Within
Judaism, Collective Essays of Mark D. Nanos 1 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 127–54. On the
fundamental function of ethnicity, see also Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 32–7, and 73–7 where she speaks of Gentile Christ fol-
lowers as “ex-pagan pagans,” in order to point out that the ethnic identity is not changed.
19 Mark D. Nanos, “Jewish Context of the Gentile Audience Addressed in Paul’s Letter to
the Romans,” CBQ 61 (1999): 283–304, here 284, speaks of “subgroups” of believers in Jesus
within the larger context of the synagogues. See also more recently idem, “Paul’s Polemic in
Philippians 3 as Jewish-Subgroup Vilification of Local Non-Jewish Cultic and Philosophical
Alternatives,” in Reading Corinthians and Philippians Within Judaism, Collected Essays of
Mark Nanos 4 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 142–91, here 146.
the basic category: The ethnic separation between Jews and non-Jews which is
considered even eschatologically permanent, such that the boundary between
Jews and non-Jews could not be touched or should not be touched.
In my view, there are still open historical questions with regard to the ad-
dressees of Paul’s message which cannot be further discussed in this paper: For
example, is the interlocutor in Romans 2 merely a rhetorical phantom? Is the
“us” in Gal 3:13 (“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law”) really a mere
prosopopoiia with which Paul places himself in the gentile addressees, or does he
associate himself with his addressees and include himself in those freed from the
law? Does 1 Cor 9:19–23 (“becoming all things to all people”) only point to
Paul’s rhetorical adaptability, 20 or does this statement also express an astonish-
ing liberty of the Jew Paul with regard to his own behavior, including the form
and degree of his own observance of halachic rules? And does this apply to
himself alone as a Jewish follower of Jesus or not also to his co-workers in his
communities some of whom were Jews like himself? Would not his commit-
ment to the table fellowship of Jews and gentiles which he reports with regard
to Peter in Antioch (Gal 2) demand of Jewish Jesus followers in daily practice a
considerable tolerance or willingness to compromise in matters of purity and
food halakah? In my view, these demands which were not accepted by every-
one, might be the reason Paul tragically failed in the end with his ideal of table
fellowship in his communities. All these questions would deserve a more thor-
ough discussion which cannot be done in this paper. Here, I will focus, instead,
on one of the most fundamental points of the “Paul within” school, the aspect
of “ethnicity.” Did ethnicity matter in antiquity, or, more precisely, for Paul and
his contemporaries?21 Or: To what extent was it decisive or even inchangeable?
How far could it be negotiated or relativized? And how can we understand a
few generations later sources speak about a new ethnic identity of Christ fol-
lowers, a “new” or “third race” (Diogn. 1:1; KerPetr frg. 5), alongside Jews and
pagans? Is this still a late effect of the processes and developments in Paul’s
time?
20 Thus, Mark D. Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship to Torah in Light of His Strategy ‘to Be-
come Everything to Everyone’ (1 Corinthians 9:19–23),” in Reading Corinthians and Philip-

pians within Judaism, 52–92; and idem, “Was Paul a ‘Liar’ for the Gospel? The Case for a New
Interpretation of Paul’s ‘Becoming Everything to Everyone’ in 1 Corinthians 9:19–13,” in
idem, Reading Corinthians and Philippians within Judaism, 93–108.
21 Cf., most recently, the argument by the Jewish scholar Erich Gruen in his new book
Erich S. Gruen, Ethnicity in the Ancient World: Did it Matter? (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020)
where he answers the question from the title rather negatively, cf. ibid., 218: “[The ancients’]
sense of collective identity rested primarily on common customs, traditions, moral principles,
and manner of life, rather than on birthright and blood-line. In the final analysis, the estab-
lishment of a distinctive ethnicity did not much matter.” See also the volume by David G.
Horrell, Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish
and Christian Identities (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020).
50 Jörg Frey
2. Paul and Ethnicity
Advocates of the “Paul-Within-Judaism” perspective emphasize the importance

of the distinction between Jews and non-Jews for Paul. Herein Paul represents a
characteristically Jewish classification of the world. Any general idea of “uni-
versality” is a modern entry and anachronistic to Paul. However, it must be
critically examined whether and how this distinction is also eschatologically
transformed in ancient Jewish concepts, including Paul. And first and foremost,
there is need to discuss the character of this “ethnic” distinction. What is “eth-
nicity”? Is ethnic identity fixed and unchangeable, or is it – as many other as-
pects of identity – malleable and negotiable? How are ethnicity and religion
linked? And how did Paul use ethnic reasoning? Did he value “ethnicity” as
such, 22 and what is the identity Paul wants to shape, strengthen, and defend?
With the focus on (Jewish) ethnicity, the Paul within Judaism school rightly
points to one of the problems of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” as
their main proponents have explained Paul mostly in the “universal/ethnic di-
chotomy.”23 According to James D. G. Dunn, Paul argues against the particu-
laristic use of Jewish boundary markers in the communities of Christ followers,
in favor of a more universalistic view with regard to the participation of gentile
believers. Thus, while rightly questioning traditional anti-Jewish readings and
distorted views (e.g., about Jewish legalism or self-justification), the New Per-
spective on Paul has actually adopted or continued other tendentially anti-Jew-
ish or even “colonial” clichés according to which universalism supersedes Jew-
ish particularism.24
In contrast, scholars emphasizing Paul’s Jewish identity have demonstrated
how Paul’s perspective is fundamentally shaped by Jewish ethnic categories,25
such as the basic distinction between Jews and gentiles26 or Jews and Greeks.27
Only once, does Paul use the Greek distinction of Greeks and Barbarians (Rom
22 Cf. Charles H. Cosgrowe, “Did Paul Value Ethnicity?” CBQ 68 (2006): 268–90.
23 Thus Caroline J. Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the
Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8; see also Simon Butticaz, “Paul and
Ethnicity between Discourse and Social Practices: Two Examples in Tension,” EC 8 (2017):
309–35, here 310.
24 Cf. also Denise K. Buell, Why This New Race? (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005); also Denise K. Buell and Caroline J. Hodge, “The Politics of Interpretation: The Rhet-
oric of Race and Ethnicity in Paul,” JBL 123 (2004): 235–51. The cliché goes back to enlight-
enment theology, e.g., Johann Salomo Semler, and is forcefully presented in the works of
Ferdinand Christian Baur and Adolf von Harnack who could plainly say that Paul “delivered
Christianity from Judaism” (Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? trans. T. B. Saunders
[New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons and London: Williams & Norgate, 1901], 190).
25 Cf. Jörg Frey, “Die religiöse Prägung: Weisheit, Apokalyptik, Schriftauslegung”; idem,
“Paul’s Jewish Identity.”

26 Rom 3:29; 9:24; Gal 2:15.
27 Rom 1:16; 2:9–10; 1 Cor 1:22–25.
1:14), explained as “the wise and the foolish,” but, then, immediately returns to
the Jewish pattern with the phrase “first to the Jew, and also to the Greek” (Rom
1:16). So, there can be no doubt that “Paul is keenly aware of ethnic matters,”28
of “what we today call ‘ethnicity.’”29 These aspects belong to his basic experi-
ence as a Jew in the Cilician diaspora, and ethnic concerns were also in the
background of his activities in persecuting the group of Jesus followers (Gal
1:13; Phil 3:6) where he probably saw the boundaries of Judaism endangered.
And if there were indeed mixed communities, Paul would have to negotiate not
only religious but also ethnic diversity on a regular basis. In any case, Paul was
concerned with Jewish ethno-religious concepts, or “ethnocentrism.” Instead,
“gentile” is, strictly speaking, not an ethnic category, as those gentiles would see
themselves as Galatians, Pisidians, Egyptians, or Romans.
So, what is “ethnicity”? We cannot discuss the problems of definition here,
but can only consider a few aspects.30 Modern sociological thought has made us
aware of the fact that ethnicity has to be understood “within the framework of
discursive constructions of identity, rather than in terms of genetic origins. Eth-
nicity is a matter of culture and not of nature.”31 Although many people in
antiquity (as even today) might take an “essentialist” stance towards various
aspects of (ethnic, but also social, gender, or sexual) identity, we can hardly ig-
nore the sociological insight that “ethnic identity is socially constructed and
subjectively perceived,”32 it is “a cultural construct, perpetually renewed and
renegotiated through discourse and social praxis.”33 Ethnic discourse is, there-
fore, “a form of rhetoric that is deployed to mark boundaries between and
among groups of people,”34 with the negotiated views “oscillating between
poles of fixity and fluidity.”35 Hutchington and Smith list six criteria that – in
28 Thus Samuel Vollenweider, “Are Christians a New ‘People’?: Detecting Ethnicity and
Cultural Friction in Paul’s Letters and Early Christianity,” EC 8 (2017): 293–308, here 306.
29 Vollenweider, “Christians,” 293.
30 For further discussion, see John Hutchington and Anthony D. Smith, Ethnicity (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Sian Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing
Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997). Richard Jenkins, Rethinking
Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2008); Jonathan M. Hall, Eth-
nic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), see also the
discussion in Christopher D. Stanley, “The Ethnic Context of Paul’s Letters,” in Christian
Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament, ed.
Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 10
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 177–201, here 178–82, and Caroline J. Hodge, “Paul and
Ethnicity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies, ed. Matthew V. Novenson and R.
Barry Matlock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
32 Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 19 (emphasis original).
33 Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 19, see in general 17–33.
34 Cavan W. Concannon, “When You Were Gentiles”: Spectres of Ethnicity in Roman
Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence, Synkrisis: Comparative Approaches to Early

Christianity in Greco-Roman Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 16.
35 Concannon, Gentiles, 17; see Vollenweider, “Christians,” 293.
52 Jörg Frey
varying degrees – constitute ethnicity: “(1) a collective name (an ethnonym); (2)
a foundational myth; (3) a shared history; (4) a distinctive culture (including
religion, customs or language); (5) a common territorial origin, and (6) a ‘sense
of solidarity.’”36 All these aspects are part of the process of rhetorically negoti-
ating ethnic identity and their implications on one’s self-understanding or posi-
tion in society.
In ancient Hellenistic culture such ethnic negotiations were omnipresent.37
All ethnic groups in the Hellenistic Roman world,38 including Jews,39 were
necessarily involved in such reasonings. For Ptolemaic Egypt, for example, Syl-
vie Honigman speaks of a “nested ethnicity”:40 “The overarching category of
Hellenes was extended to encompass all immigrants, including Thracians, Ju-
deans, and other groups” if they participated in Greek language, literacy, and
culture. Many of them adopted Greek names or also dynastic names. So, even
native Egyptians and, of course, also Jews could “make their way into the priv-
ileged category of the Greeks” and, quite practically, enjoy fiscal privileges.
That all these groups did not share the same cultic rites was not an obstacle for
inclusion in this category.41
Of course, there were also essentialist positions, probably among all groups
in the Greco-Roman world. Numerous “ancient Romans and Egyptians did not
see ethnicity in these historically fluid terms,”42 although within their world,
negotiation about ethnic identity and related privileges practically happened ev-
erywhere, if born Egyptians strived for the privilege of being considered Hel-
lenes and if people from all parts of the Roman empire took their chances to get
the privilege of citizenship.
36 Hutchington and Smith, Ethnicity, 6–7, quoted from Butticaz, “Paul and Ethnicity,”
313.
37 Cf. Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2002).

38 Cf., for example, Patrrick J. Geary, “Barbarians and Ethnicity,” in Late Antiquity: A
Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 107–29 or Rachel Mairs, “Intersecting Identi-
ties in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,” in Egypt: Ancient Histories, Modern Archaeologies, ed.
Rachael J. Dann and Karen Exell (New York: Cambria Press, 2013), 163–92.
39 See John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan
(323 BCE–117 CE) (Edinburgh: Bloomsbury Academic, 1996); John J. Collins, Between Ath-
ens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2000); Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004); for a case study in Hellenistic-Roman Egypt, see Sylvie
Honigman, “The Ptolemaic and Roman Definitions of Social Categories and the Evolution of
Judaean Communal Identity in Egypt,” in Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the
Roman World, ed. Yair Furstenberg, AJEC 94 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 25–74.
40 Honigman, “Ptolemaic,” 49.
41 Honigman, “Ptolemaic,” 49; cf. also Dorothy Thompson, “Hellenistic Hellenes: The
Case of Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, ed. Irad Malkin (Cam-
bridge, MA, and London: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2001), 301–22.
42 Cosgrove, “Did Paul Value Ethnicity?,” 269.
Strongly essentialist views were also present in Second Temple Judaism, most
obviously in priestly circles: A priest can only be such by priestly descent and
cannot become a priest by choice or by learning. According to the priestly-
shaped worldview of the Qumran yahad, it is divine predestination that decides
˙
the fate of all humans,43 so that a real “conversion” or the change of one’s reli-
gious status by learning is impossible. However, other Jewish groups such as the
Pharisees embraced the possibility of learning, and in diaspora Judaism Jews
were aware of the possibility of conversion with the effect of a real change of
religious or ethnic status, at least in theory. According to the later rabbis, a pros-
elyte “was equal in all respects to the native-born Israelite”44 although not all
of the rabbis “were entirely convinced […] of the equality between the convert
and the native.”45 But it is obvious that most Jews, especially in the diaspora,
considered a change of ethnicity possible. Again, the idea of a “nested ethnicity”
might be helpful, as those proselytes would of course keep some aspects of their
earlier ethnic identity as Egyptians, Syrians, or Romans. But the historical evi-
dence does not support the idea that for Paul, as a diaspora Jew with Pharisaic
learning, the ethnic boundaries were so fixed and impenetrable that he might
feel it necessary to prohibit gentiles from becoming Jews or that this idea would
stand in the background of Paul’s warning to this Galatian addressees.
The permeability of ethnic boundaries is also evident in the 2nd century,
where Christians appear more and more in the internal as well as the external
perspective as a third group alongside Jews and pagans, as a new ethnos that is
not characterized by origin from a particular earthly country, but by belonging
to a symbolic realm. Such a new identity as a “new” (Diogn. 1:1) or “third genos”
(KerPetr frg. 5; Tert. Nat. 1:8) alongside Jews and Greeks is protreptically advo-
cated in the Epistle to Diognetus.46 The new “genos” is rooted in the cultic
difference, the new worship, and also the new teaching (Diogn. 2:1; 5:3), but
ethnic categories are mixed with civic and political categories, so that “ethnicity
is but one formative pattern among others in the construction of Christian iden-
tity, complemented by other metaphorical clusters that appear more central to
Christian self-definition.”47
43 Cf., basically, the Treatise of the Two Spirits 1QS III, 13–IV, 26, but numerous other
texts from the Hodayot, the Damascus Document, and other writings. See, for overview
Armin Lange, “Wisdom and Predestination in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 2:3 (1995): 340–54.
44 Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Rabbi in Second-Century Jewish Society,” in The Cambridge
History of Judaism, vol. 3: The Roman Period, ed. William Horbury, William D. Davies, John
Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 922–90, here 944.
45 Cohen, “Rabbi,” 944.
46 On this, see Vollenweider, “Christians,” 294–7.
54 Jörg Frey
3. Ethnicity in Paul’s Communities
From these second century developments, we can go back to Paul! Are these
developments, including an “ethnic” description of the new identity in Christ
already laid out in Paul? And how is the identity shaped by Paul in his letters
related to the ethnic identity and praxis of Jews. How does he address aspects of
ethnicity in his letters? And to what extent does it matter?48 Let us start with a
few unsystematic observations:
Of course, Paul speaks of himself as a Jew or an Israelite, and he expresses
solidarity with his kinspeople, Israel, according to the flesh (Rom 9:1–5). He
also enumerates all the merits of his Hebrew, more precisely, Benjaminite ori-
gins, his Pharisaic learning, and his exemplary Jewish way of life, albeit in the
mode of the past, and it is unclear how much of this way of life he has retained
as an apostle. He clearly states that he no longer values these advantages “in
Christ” as advantages, but even (what may be a rhetorical exaggeration) as loss
or rubbish (Phil 3:8). This shows that as an apostle, Paul regards his former eth-
nocentric perspective, his “boasting” in his exemplary Jewish existence, as se-
verely relativized.
Paul also values a salvation-historical priority of “the Jews” (Rom 1:16, etc.),
but he also considers their advantages with regard to their present soteriological
status strongly relativized (Rom 2:25–29). In certain passages, we can see a per-
spective of Jewish ethnocentrism in the background of his verdicts: The gentiles
are sinners (Gal 2:15; cf. also Rom 1:18–32; 1 Cor 5:1; 1 Thess 4:5). However,
compared with Philo or with many other ancient authors, Paul does not use
ethnic or ethnographic stereotypes. For instance, the term “barbarians” is used
very rarely (Rom 1:14; 1 Cor 14:11). Only the author of the Pastorals, then, lets
Paul utter the quote, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Tit
1:12).
With regard to his addressees, Paul rarely uses ethnic categories, but rather
mentions their location according to cities and Roman provinces.49 It is even
unclear whether his insult “O you mindless Galatai” (Gal 3:1) actually address-
es ethnic “Galatai” or rather people of the province Galatia, who were actually
Pisidians or Lykaonians etc. The gentile and sinful past of his addressees is of-
ten mentioned.50 But “gentile” as a category is not at the same level as “Jew”.
From a Jewish perspective, “gentile” is “a counterpart to ‘Jews,’ but not … an
ethnicity or nationality comparable to ‘Jews,’ ‘Greeks,’ ‘Romans,’ ‘Skythians,’
‘Ethiopians,’ and so on.”51 Sometimes, Paul uses “Greeks” also in the sense of
48 On this, see the article by Cosgrove, “Did Paul Value Ethnicity?”.

49 Apart from Gal 3:1, he only uses “Macedonians” in a probably ethnic sense 2 Cor 9:4 (cf.
Stanley, “Ethnic Context,” 186).
50 Cf. 1 Cor 6:11; 12:2 etc.
51 Cosgrove, “Did Paul Value Ethnicity?,” 272.
“gentiles,”52 that is, from his Jewish perspective. But being “from the gentiles”
seems not to be of central importance for the identity Paul wants to address and
shape. Thus, in the openings of his letters, he instead uses other terms, ἐκκλησία
(1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1; Phil 1:1; 1 Thess 1:1) which is a neutral, non-ethnic,
and non-cultic term, or other designations that refer to God’s calling or saving
act, such a οἱ κλητοί, those who are called (Rom 1:6), ἅγιοι, those who are holy
(1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1; Phil 1:1), or, ἡγιασμένοι, who are sanctified (1 Cor 1:2).
Thus, in spite of Paul’s thoroughly Jewish perspective, he does not address his
communities in openly ethnic or cultic terms. He seems to avoid particularly
Jewish terms and likewise all kinds of terms linked with paganism or pagan
cults. Instead, he uses “neutral” terms from the world of political assemblies,
terms that point to the divine activity in Christ, and, at least one, when speaking
of the heavenly πολίτευμα (Phil 3:20), the notion of a very different, namely
“heavenly” citizenship or “ethnic” affiliation.
3.1 Does Paul Not Speak to Jews?

But is this new identity an identity apart from Judaism? Does it only include
gentiles or former pagans who now venerate the one God through Jesus. Is the
Pauline ἐκκλησία void of Jews? Or is the view suggested by the Paul-within-Ju-
daism school in itself anachronistically shaped by the later separation between
synagogal Judaism and the emerging church?
Historically, it is in my view more than plausible that, after his life-changing
vision of Christ, Paul first narrated his experience and also preached his new
insights in the Jewish communities where he used to be hosted, possibly some-
where in the Nabatean area, and also in Syria and Cilicia (Gal 1:17, 21). When he
was later called to work within the community of Christ-followers in Antioch,
he found there a community of Jews53 who were open to gentiles in their escha-
tological mission but did not circumcise them for whatever reason,54 probably
52 Christopher D. Stanley, “‘Neither Jew nor Greek’: Ethnic Conflict in Graeco-Roman
Society,” JSNT 64 (1996): 101–14, here 105, thinks that Paul uses “Greek” in an ethnic sense,
but this is implausible in view of 1 Cor 1:22–24, where it is used in parallel with “peoples” (cf.
also Rom 3:9). In the singular use in Rom 1:16 it simply means an exemplary non-Jew, possibly
even in Rome. Cf. rightly, Cosgrowe, “Did Paul Value Ethnicity?,” 272 f.
53 If these Jews were actually immigrants from Jerusalem, the followers of Stephen who
had involuntarily emigrated from Jerusalem, they might have formed “a special group in An-
tioch from the very beginning, which in fact existed on the fringes of the local Jewry. Such a
marginal existence certainly made it easier to open up to sympathetic non-Jews, but at the
same time it made integration into the local Jewish association, which also had communal
rights, impossible” (Dietrich-Alex Koch, Geschichte des Urchristentums [Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 2013], 197).
54 On the profile of the Antiochene community of Jesus followers, see in particular Martin
Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Antiochien. Die un-
bekannten Jahre des Apostels. Mit einem Beitrag von Ernst Axel Knauf, WUNT 108 (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 300–12. Cf. also Jörg Frey, “Paulus als Pharisäer und Antiochener:
56 Jörg Frey
more practical than strictly theological.55 They also practiced table fellowship
between Jewish and gentile Christ followers. Paul entered that mission, contrib-
uted to it, and later continued to act accordingly, even after the split from the
Antioch community. It is important to see that he did not invent that kind of
mission. Others did so, before him, even if it was Paul who reflected its conse-
quences most thoroughly.
Admittedly, these historical considerations are partly based on Acts. But
what can we say from the authentic testimonies of Paul? Were there Jews in
“his” communities? Did he speak to Jews?
It cannot be denied, in my view, that Paul is not the only Jew in these commu-
nities. Some other fellow Jews are even mentioned by name, including Apollos
who is a Jewish Jesus follower (Acts 18:24) and Prisca and Aquila. According to
Acts 18:2, Prisca and Aquilla were a Jewish couple who, along with other Jews,
were expelled from Rome. Later, they worked together with Paul in Corinth
and hosted an ἐκκλησία in their house (Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19). Paul also calls
Andronicus and Junia, another couple, probably in Rome, his kinspeople
(συγγενεῖς), that is fellow Jews (Rom 16:7). And if the Crispus mentioned in
1 Cor 1:14 was indeed a synagogal leader, as Acts 18:8 claims, he would be an-
other example of an individual of Jewish origin who worked together with Paul
in his missionary work and probably shared his missionary strategy and atti-
tude. Should we really assume that all these Jews, as also Paul himself, did not
mix with the gentile believers, nor have table fellowship with them? This would
be an absurd notion. But if they in fact mixed in some manner – perhaps with
the gentiles adapting to Jewish sensitivities as far as possible56 – how does this
affect the reading of Paul’s letters? Can we really assume that only one part of
the congregation, the sub-group of the gentiles, listened to the reading of the
text, and the others did not attend? But if they were also present in the reading
of the letters, could they really think that Paul’s argument with regard to the
Law concerned only the Pagans and their relationship with the Jewish Law, but
not the Jews? Didn’t Paul at least have to reckon with the fact that Jews (or Jew-
Biographische Grundlagen seiner Schriftrezeption,” in Paulinische Schriftrezeption. Grund-

lagen – Ausprägungen – Wirkungen – Wertungen, ed. Florian Wilk and Markus Öhler, FR-
LANT 268 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 81–112, also in idem, Von Jesus zur
neutestamentlichen Theologie: Kleine Schriften II, ed. Benjamin Schliesser, WUNT 368
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 301–34.
55 Initially, believers from the gentiles could be regarded in analogy with God-fearers who
associated themselves with Judaism within the framework of the diaspora synagogue. When
these gentiles were baptized, however, they were, through this act of initiation, participants in
the messianic salvation, just like the Jesus followers from Israel, so that it could be a natural
consequence not to insist on an additional circumcision. Cf. Friedrich W. Horn, “Der Ver-
zicht auf die Beschneidung im frühen Christentum,” NTS 42 (1996): 479–505.
56 This is what Nanos presupposes in his historical reconstruction. However, within the
New Testament this would correspond the rules of the apostolic decree in Acts 15:28–29, but
not to the claims of Paul himself (cf. Gal 2:3, 9–10).
ish Jesus followers) were also listening? And if so, would he not have considered
that his reasonings also affect those Jewish attendees and listeners?
Even if the composition of the congregations addressed by Paul cannot al-
ways be assured, there are in any case some Jews within and around these
ἐκκλησίαι, and it is inconceivable that they would have separated themselves
from the gentiles without Paul protesting as he did in the Antiochian incident
(Gal 2:11–14). We will have a look at this interesting paradigm, because the most
obvious example of a Jew keeping table fellowship with gentile believers, is
Peter.
Of course, the incident mentioned by Paul in Gal 257 is told from later mem-
ory and with a particular argumentative intention. Paul recalls the incident “be-
cause he recognizes there a […] precedent for the Galatian crisis.”58 He narrates
it from his memory and creates a framework for his address to Peter (Gal 2:15–
21). What actually happened can be left aside here, and it is irrelevant whether or
not Paul actually spoke these words to the historical Peter. If the argument was
to be effective, the narrative and the reported speech had to be plausible for the
Galatian addressees.59 I want to make two important points:
First, there is the clear memory that Peter, as a Jewish follower of Jesus (and
also Barnabas, another Jewish believer who became a leader in the community
of Antioch) had practiced table fellowship with the gentile community mem-
bers over a certain period of time, without separating for reasons of purity and
food laws. In Antioch, at least, a large city with probably many different Jewish
synagogues, one such “mixed” community had developed, and was initiated,
tolerated, or even presided over by Jewish followers of Jesus who were apparent-
ly open to accepting gentiles in their assembly and at their table without impos-
ing on them the Jewish dietary laws. This is historically conceivable, and it is
also conceivable that other Jews disliked this and intervened.
Second, there is the memorized address of Paul to Peter, who is explicitly ad-
dressed as a Jew. Here, Paul clearly adopts a Jewish ethnocentric commonplace:
“We are Jews by birth and not sinners from the gentiles” (Gal 2:15). The “we”
includes himself and his fellow Jew, Simon Peter. Thus, here Paul explicitly
speaks to a fellow Jew about the “truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14). Of course, Paul
did not evangelize Peter, nor could he really teach him, but he makes clear that in
his view, the “truth of the gospel” is also valid for his fellow Jew Peter, and, thus,
also for the attitude of other Christ-following Jews towards the gentiles. We do
57 Cf. Butticaz, “Paul and Ethnicity,” 316–20.

58 Butticaz, “Paul and Ethnicity,” 316.
59 If the Galatians were to think that Paul misrepresented the incident or even told invent-
ed stories this would be disastrous for his argument in the epistle. Moreover, given the severe
consequences of the incident for Paul himself, his further mission and also the way of the
community in Antioch, it is not conceivable that Paul reported things without trying to stick
to the truth.
58 Jörg Frey
not have to discuss the precise meaning of Paul’s words about justification,
“works of the law,” and πίστις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ here, but it is clear that Paul criti-
cizes the fact that Peter did not act according to the “truth of the gospel” when
he (and other Jews) again started separating themselves from the gentiles.
From this example, it is also clear that Paul considered the “truth of the gos-
pel” relevant for other fellow Jews following Christ, in the way they observed
dietary and purity laws in communion with gentile believers. This is, in my
view, an example that shows that the presuppositions of the Paul-within-Juda-
ism school are historically problematic and not in accord with Paul’s explicit
views. When Paul says, with an exemplary 1st person singular, that he is “dead
to the law” and “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:19), this is also potentially valid
for Peter and the other Jews addressed in the memorized speech in Gal 2:15–21,
and, of course for the addressees and the Judaizing “influencers” in Galatia.
3.2 The Fundamental Relativization of Circumcision

In various passages in his letters, Paul deals with circumcision. But in the man-
ner he discusses circumcision and also the Torah, Paul does not appeal to pagan
and certainly not to “Enlightenment” arguments, but instead applies motifs of
the contemporary inner-Jewish debate to the situation of the communities of
the Christ followers and the questions that arose there.
Circumcision60 had been the physical and permanent marker of Jewish identi-
ty for men since the exile and increasingly since the crisis under Antiochus IV
Epiphanes. Greeks and Romans considered it a blemish. Thus it became “the
exclusive nota Iudaica” in the Roman Empire, which was not renounced even in
the diaspora. Male converts became Jews by this act, and thus a proselyte also
agreed to adopt the entire Torah, while uncircumcised “God-fearers” had to ob-
serve it only partially (avoidance of idolatry, ethical behavior), as far as possible,
but were not subject to the social restrictions (meal fellowship, business and
marriage relations). Of course, there were some debates about the difference be-
tween the circumcision performed on the eighth day and the circumcision of
adult converts. 61 ‘Radical’ adherents of a priestly, somewhat ‘ontological’ under-
standing of a Jewish pedigree questioned, e.g., the Jewishness of Herod’s family
and the Idumeans. There were also later Rabbinic discussions whether a circum-
cision by decision was more valuable than the circumcision imposed at the age of
eight days. Yet, despite these debates, circumcision was generally viewed to be
the physical sign of being Jewish and to imply the obligation to follow the Torah.
60 On circumcision, see Andreas Blaschke, Beschneidung, TANZ 28 (Tübingen and Basel:
Francke, 1998); Nina E. Livesey, Circumcision as a Malleable Symbol, WUNT 2/295 (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).
61 On this, see Matthew Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and
Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford: OUP, 2011).

The “Judaizing” agitation against the practice of admitting gentiles without

circumcising them in Antioch and in Galatia (Gal 2:3; 5:2, 11 f.; 6:12–15; Acts
15:1, 5) aimed at the adoption of circumcision, with the opinion that this would
also make the converts committed to other Torah commandments. Those “Ju-
daizers” certainly did not subscribe to the view that gentiles must not become
Jews. They rather thought that those gentile converts should not stop halfway.
In Galatians Paul consequently counters their agitation with a discussion of the
meaning and function of the law.
Paul himself was circumcised on the eighth day (Phil 3:5), and it is probable
that he fully accepted the practice of circumcision among Jews including cir-
cumcising Timothy, who was born from a Jewish mother (Acts 16:3). Paul con-
siders circumcision of high value as a sign of God’s affection to Israel (Rom 2:25;
3:2; 9:4 f.). But, as he explains in Rom 2:25, the historical prae is not a soteriolog-
ical plus. With regard to salvation or divine judgement, circumcision is only
valid when the Law is also observed (Rom 2:25), as the observance of the Law is
the criterion of divine judgement. But in view of the factual sinfulness of all
humans, Jews and gentiles (Rom 3:9–12), circumcision is of no soteriological
use. It is not a reason for “security” of election, nor is it an occasion for “boast-
ing” (Rom 2:17). It no longer has a soteriological value in itself, but is decisively
relativized. Conversely, being uncircumcised is no longer soteriologically rele-
vant (Gal 5:6; 6:15), due to the saving divine action in Christ.
For the soteriological invalidity and insignificance of circumcision Paul cites
his own example (Phil 3:4–8). In spite of his perfect Jewish upbringing, he can
no longer put his confidence in what he calls the “flesh” (Phil 3:4). Not only in
Galatians, but also with regard to his addressees in Corinth, he also rejects the
desire for a change of status after their calling to faith. A change of the “status”
through circumcision (or likewise the removal of circumcision through a resto-
ration of the foreskin) is generally denied. But the reason is not the imperme-
ability of the ethnic borders (1 Cor 7:17–20), it is not the idea that gentiles must
not become Jews. The reason is, instead, that the status granted through cir-
cumcision, and thus ethnic status does not matter: “Circumcision is nothing
and uncircumcision is nothing, but (what matters is) obeying the command-
ments of God” (1 Cor 7:19). In Galatians, he adds a further argument: An addi-
tional circumcision of the gentile Christ-followers subsequent to their coming
to faith would be a denial of the sufficiency of the saving work of Christ (Gal
5:2), an act of unbelief that could even result in the loss of salvation (Gal 5:4).
As some other Jewish authors of his time, 62 Paul speaks about circumcision in
a figurative sense. in which Jewish and gentile Jesus followers have a share (Rom
2:28–30; Phil 3:3). This is not outwardly visible (ἐν τῷ φανερῷ) but in secret (ἐν
62 See Livesey, Circumcision.

60 Jörg Frey
τῷ κρυπτῷ), not in the flesh (ἐν σαρκί), but a circumcision of the heart (περιτομὴ
καρδίας), not in the letter (ἐν γράμματι), but in the spirit (ἐν πνεύματι).
With this notion of the circumcision of the heart (Rom 2:29), Paul can draw
on biblical and early Jewish parallels. 63 But in contrast to other Jewish authors
(e.g. Philo), 64 the figurative circumcision is not an additional dimension but it is
rhetorically used to show the relativization of the “fleshly” circumcision, the
ethnic status. This circumcision of the heart actually redefines who is really a
“Jew” (Rom 2:28) or “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), while outward circumcision
contributes nothing to this. Thus, Paul can even claim that the figurative cir-
cumcision is the real thing: “We are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit
of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3).
Paul justifies the soteriological worthlessness of circumcision by use of the
example of Abraham (Romans 4) whose circumcision (Genesis 17) took place
only after the promise of righteousness to the believer (Gen 15:6). Thus, circum-
cision is merely the “seal of the righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:11), which was
granted to the uncircumcised (Rom 4:10). Thus Scripture ultimately confirms,
in Paul’s view, that humans are being justified without being circumcised.
This severe relativization of the identity rooted in circumcision was conceiv-
ably offensive to many Jews around Paul. Yet, it is presented within the frame-
work of Jewish questions and traditions. Paul relativizes circumcision and its
meaning not as an enlightened “universalist” but as a Jew:
a) An initial element of Paul’s Jewish perspective is the halakic distinction
between Jews and gentiles: The law does not apply equally to all: only Jews (and
proselytes) are obliged to keep the Torah; uncircumcised people are not. Paul
presupposes this distinction in Gal 5:1–2.
b) In the wide consensus of Judaism of his time, Paul presupposes the close
connection between Torah and circumcision: circumcision is not only a “sup-
plement,” but in principle obliges Jews as well as proselytes to observe the whole
Torah (Gal 5:3).
c) The question of the gentiles’ participation in salvation implicitly takes up
discourses that diaspora Judaism had to resolve: Most diaspora Jewish commu-
nities at that time faced the question how gentiles could associate with the syn-
agogues and, thus, with the people of Israel. Paul does not favor the pattern of
the God-fearers, a pattern of “second-order membership.” In his view, gentile
believers in Christ should share full participation without any further restric-
tion, as synagogues only granted to full proselytes.
63 Cf. Ezek 44:7, 9; Jer 9:24–25; further Philo QE 2:2; QG 3:46 etc.
64 Even Philo insists on their implementation among Jews (Migr. 89–94) and proselytes
(QE 2:2). Laxity with regard to circumcision only occurs in the Maccabean period and among
radical allegorists in Alexandria, against whom Philo argues in Migr. 89–94 (cf. Blaschke,
Beschneidung, 210–4).
But as this full access to the community of salvation, or even to the people of
God is now possible without physical circumcision and without the full obliga-
tion to the Torah of Israel, we arrive at a new definition of the “conditions of
access” and, thereby also a new definition of the salvific community. 65 In Paul,
this is justified soteriologically (through Jesus’ vicarious death), pneumatologi-
cally (by the manifestation of the Spirit in the uncircumcised), and exegetically
(as the promise came before the law).
It is quite conceivable that this view and praxis led to conflicts with other
Jews and with diaspora synagogues, not only because of a kind of rivalry with
regard to sympathizers, but also for reasons of principle. From other Jewish
perspectives, this could be considered a fundamental abolition of elements that
seemed unavailable to the vast majority of contemporary Jews. With this posi-
tion, the apostle could appear as an apostate to other Jews, and although he
himself restlessly worked for the ties between Jewish and gentile Jesus follow-
ers, he contributed to the further separation between the growing gentile Chris-
tian Church and Judaism. 66
It is no coincidence that Paul in this context uses fresh terms. He uses the
traditional idea of the new creation when he pinpoints the fundamental relativ-
ization of circumcision: “Neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumci-
sion, but new creation” (Gal 6:15). The reference to the eschatological newness
and to God’s creational activity claims that behind the redefinition of the iden-
tity of the eschatological people of God there is nothing less than God’s escha-
tological acts in the Christ event.
4. Concluding Reflections:
Ethnic Boundaries Removed or Relativized?
How is this related to matters of ethnicity? Is the relativization of ethnic bound-

aries a removal of ethnic distinctions? Are ethnic boundaries now completely
abolished in a universalism of the emerging gentile church? Can we read Gal
3:28 “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is nei-
ther male nor female” in this sense? Are all these boundaries now simply “adia-
phora”67 in Christ? Or are the three pairs of opposites not on the same level? It
is significant that modern interpreters embrace the view that differences with
65 Cf. Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional
World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 215–48.

66 Cf. William D. Davies, “Paul: From a Jewish Point of View,” in Davies, Horbury, and
Sturdy, The Early Roman Period, 678–730, here 730.

67 Thus Judith Gundry-Volf, “Christ and Gender: A Study of Difference and Equality in
Gal. 3:28,” in Jesus Christus als die Mitte der Schrift, FS O. Hofius, ed. Christoph Landmesser
et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 439–77, but see the discussion in Cosgrove, “Ethnicity,” 278–
80.
62 Jörg Frey
regard to gender and social status are or should be completely irrelevant. Per-
haps there are different dimensions of “political correctness” at work here so
that the sensitivity with regard to ethnic aspects is a different one. Be that as it
may, the term “adiaphoron” (taken from later theological debates) is probably
misleading here, and as we can see in many passages, that “Paul is not ethnici-
ty-blind.”68 But the opposing view stressed by Denise K. Buell and Carolyn J.
Hodge that Jewishness or “a Judean identity” is the “‘umbrella’ under which he
locates all those ‘in Christ’”69 seems also to be inappropriate.70
Looking at Paul’s ecclesiological terminology, it is significant that he does not
use “ethnic” terms when addressing his communities, and that he utilizes new
terms, such as “new creation” when circumcision and the “classical” identity
markers of contemporary Judaism are relativized. It is significant, therefore,
that these new communities are something different from “the synagogues” – if
we can avoid the term “Judaism” here – and are, of course, also different from
the associations and cults of the gentiles. But the eschatologically new entity is
not given an “ethnic” name, nor an ethnic definition. There is only the talk
about a heavenly “politeuma,” not an earthly one.
The move of second century authors who, then, begin to label the Christian
communities in ethnic terms, such as a “new” genos, in distinction from Jews
and pagans, is a further step, and it would require some more reasoning to ex-
plain why those authors, then, chose to label and defend Christianity again in
ethnic terms. But this is a different story and is not Paul’s concern. For him, the
aspect of participation in the eschatological community of God is of primary
importance, and therefore, “there is neither Jew nor gentile […] in Christ” (Gal
3:28), and “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith
working through love” (Gal 5:6).
68 Thus Cosgrove, “Ethnicity,” 280.

69 Buell and Hodge, “Politics of Interpretation,” 249.
70 Thus Cosgrove, “Ethnicity,” 283–4.
Messy Metaphors
Ethnic Transformation in Philo, Romans, and Ephesians
Joshua D. Garroway
1. Introduction
The American comic, Mitch Hedberg, famously remarked: “I used to do drugs.

I still do, but I used to, too.” Like so many of Hedberg’s jokes, the humor stems
from the joke’s absurdist riff on our assumptions about everyday language.
When a person says, “I used to do drugs,” one assumes that he no longer does.
The behavior of the past is mentioned precisely to distinguish it from the pres-
ent. When Hedberg adds that he still does drugs, the original statement is retro-
actively rendered a non-sequitur. Why such absurdity makes us laugh is perhaps
impossible to explain, but to Hedberg’s many fans, it does. The laughter is none-
theless tinged with the sadness of knowing that Hedberg died prematurely from
a drug overdose.
I am reminded of Hedberg’s one-liner whenever I read Paul’s instruction in
1 Cor 12:2: “You know that, when you were Gentiles, you were enticed and led
astray to mute idols.” Paul was no absurdist comic. He does not remind the
Corinthians of their Gentile past with the intention of humorously observing
afterward that they are still Gentiles. The readers were Gentiles, Paul intimates,
because now they are not. When they were Gentiles, they worshipped idols;
now, following baptism into Christ, they are no longer idolatrous Gentiles and
ought to be circumspect regarding the spiritual gift of tongues.1 Paul’s de-
scription of his readers as something different from Gentiles resembles similar,
if less obvious, statements to the same effect in 1 Cor 5:1 and 1 Thess 4:5.
The comment in 1 Cor 12:2 thus belies the ubiquitous claim that the commu-
nities Paul founded were Gentile in constitution, that his charges should be
identified as Gentile Christians, Christian Gentiles, Gentiles-in-Christ, or as
any other term implying the continuation of Gentile identity after baptism.
They may have remained Gentiles in the opinion of James, or Peter, or other
mid-first century Jews, and certainly they remain so in the opinion of today’s
1 How exactly the transformation occurs is not clear. Matthew Thiessen (Paul and the
Gentile Problem [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016], 105–60) argues convincingly that
it is the pneuma Gentiles receive through faith that transforms them.
64 Joshua D. Garroway
historians, but not according to Paul (and, based on what Paul tells them, prob-
ably according to their own opinion of themselves). Not only does he insist that
his recipients were rather than are Gentiles, but Paul also accords them the sorts
of titles one would expect for erstwhile Gentiles: “Israel” (Rom 11:26); “Israel of
God” (Gal 6:16); “children of Abraham” (Gal 3:7, 29); “the circumcision” (Phil
3:3); even “Jew” (Rom 2:29). In Paul’s view, there can be no Gentiles-in-Christ
because to be in Christ means ipso facto that one is not a Gentile.
Except, of course, when it does not. Paul suggests elsewhere that a Gentile
baptized into Christ indeed remains a Gentile. Whereas many of Paul’s refer-
ences to Gentiles as Gentiles can be taken as descriptive of their status prior to
baptism – for example, his self-styling as the apostle to the Gentiles might refer
only to his audiences as he first encounters them rather than as they are once he
has won them over – enough such references make it clear that Paul is able to
think about his constituents, even after baptism, as Gentiles. In Rom 16:4, for
instance, he speaks of “congregations of Gentiles.” In recounting the incident at
Antioch, he calls “Gentiles” the (presumably baptized) partakers in table fel-
lowship (Gal 2:11–14). In Paul’s view, then, there can in fact be Gentiles-in-
Christ.
There’s the rub. Any rendering of Paul’s devotees as Gentiles fails to account
for Paul’s description of them as no longer Gentiles, as Israel or as the children
of Abraham; yet, to call them Jews fails to account for their description as Gen-
tiles; and to call them some third entity – Christians, for example – fails to ac-
knowledge that Paul invariably retains the binary ethnic conceptualization of
Israel vis-à-vis Gentiles.2 Many excellent treatments of Paul’s ethnic thinking
in recent years have therefore concentrated less on what the recipients of Paul’s
charges really are, ethnically speaking, or what term adequately describes them,
and more so on why Paul’s discourse yields such inherent contradiction. For
example, the work of Denise Kimber Buell, Cavan Concannon, J. Albert Har-
rill, David Horrell, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Ishay Rosen-Zvi and Adi Ophir,
Joshua Garroway, Paula Fredriksen, and most recently, Denys McDonald asks
not whether Paul’s charges are Gentiles, Jews, both or neither, but rather what it
is about ancient ethnic discourse that makes such determinations so difficult in
the first place.3
2 On this issue in Ephesians, a deutero-Pauline, see Benjamin H. Dunning, “Strangers and
Aliens No Longer: Negotiating Identity and Difference in Ephesians 2,” HTR 99 (2006):
1–16; Daniel K. Darko, No Longer Living as the Gentiles: Differentiation and Shared Ethical
Values in Ephesians 4.17–6.9 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 31–8.
3 Denise Kimber Buell, “Challenges and Strategies for Speaking about Ethnicity in the
New Testament and New Testament Studies,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 79 (2014): 33–51; Ca-
van Concannon, “When You Were Gentiles:” Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and
Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014); J. Albert
Harrill, “Ethnic Fluidity in Ephesians,” NTS 60 (2014): 379–402; David G. Horrell, Ethnicity
and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Iden-
Messy Metaphors 65
I have argued, for instance, that Paul’s messy descriptions result from the
precarious task of reinscribing ancient Jewish identity.4 Paul was an apocalyp-
tic Jew who believed that the resurrection of Christ had inaugurated a brief
phase at the end of history in which the final instantiation of God’s people Isra-
el would be formed, and upon Christ’s return in short order, saved. This convic-
tion led Paul to believe that a dramatic, end-of-times, ethnic transformation was
underway: out was an Israel determined by descent, in was an Israel determined
by faith; out was the Law, in was Christ. Many historic constituents of Israel
were thus becoming excluded, stripped of their historic ethnic identification,
while many Gentiles were enrolling in the ranks of Israel. Drawing on the cul-
tural and linguistic theories of Bhabha, Bakhtin, and others, I have sought to
demonstrate how this reevaluation of ethnic identity yields the unstable, con-
tradictory identities one sees in Paul’s letters.
Central to this reading is my assumption that Paul was dealing with a conun-
drum similar to the one faced by several other first-century Jewish writers en-
gaged in ethnic discourse – namely, how can a Gentile become a Jew? How can
one who is not descended from Israel nonetheless enlist in the people of Israel?
Whether or not conversion is the right word for it, by the first century many
Jews (and Gentiles) believed that Gentiles, in some way or another, could aban-
don their native community and, despite their birth, join the Jewish fold.5
How this ethnic transformation occurred was up for debate, to be sure, and
plenty rejected the idea entirely. 6
Among those who accepted the possibility of such a transformation were
Paul’s contemporary, Philo; an admirer of Paul, the author of Ephesians; and
Paul himself. Each author deploys unique, but related, metaphors to represent
the transformation from Gentile to Jew, from outsider to insider: Philo’s “or-
ganism,” Ephesians’ “person,” and Paul’s olive tree.7 In each case, I argue here,
tities (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020); Caroline J. Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study
of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ishay
Rosen-Zvi and Adi Ophir, “Paul and the Invention of Gentiles,” JQR 105 (2015): 1–41; Joshua
D. Garroway, Paul’s Gentile-Jews: Neither Jew Nor Gentile, But Both (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012); Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2017); Denys McDonald, “‘Ex-Pagan Pagans’? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic
Reconfiguration,” JSNT 45 (2022): 23–50.
4 Garroway, Paul’s Gentile-Jews, 45–80. See also Joshua D. Garroway, “The Circumcision
of Christ: Romans 15.7–13,” JSNT 34 (2012): 303–22.

5 On “conversion” as a potentially problematic term, see Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory
Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go,” SR 35
(2006): 231–46. For one classic treatment of Gentiles crossing the boundary and becoming a
Jew, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew,” HTR 82:1 (1989):
13–33.
6 On the rejection of the possibility of conversion by certain Jews, see Matthew Thiessen,
Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and

Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
7 These are not the only metaphors used by Philo, Ephesians, and Paul to describe the
the metaphor describes the attachment of Gentiles to Israel in a way that com-
plicates the transformation, dividing even as it unites, subordinating even as it
incorporates, with the result that each author intimates, whether by design or
not, that Gentiles remain Gentiles even as they cease to be so. The comparisons
thus reveal that Paul – unsurprisingly – saw the world much like any ancient Jew
would be expected to. However unique and novel was his belief that Jesus was a
risen messiah who would return soon to save an Israel composed primarily of
former Gentiles, Paul’s description of Gentile incorporation into Israel partici-
pated in a prevailing ethnic discourse.
2. Philo
Philo mentions proselytes on several occasions, often in connection with the

biblical Abraham, whom he considers the benchmark (κανών) 8 for proselytes, or
with the various biblical injunctions to care for the stranger. Proselytes are to be
treasured and celebrated, Philo insists, because they have overcome their unfor-
tunate origins. Despite their ignoble birth (δυσγένεια), they have abandoned
their relatives (συγγενεῖς), native land (πατρίδα), temples (ἱερά), and customs
(ἔθη), and come over to piety (εὐσέβεια) and a new citizenship (πολιτεία).9 Pros-
elytes are thus the precise opposite of Jewish apostates, the scoundrels who dis-
regard their noble birth by pursuing vice, idolatry, and untruth – a group to be
considered at greater length below.
As Walter T. Wilson has observed, Philo’s embrace of the proselyte dovetails
with the commonplace he deploys in his treatise on nobility.10 Especially popu-
lar among Stoic philosophers was the rhetorical contrast between ancestry and
virtue, the latter recognized as the preeminent indicator of a person’s worth. As
Seneca put it (misquoting Plato), “every king springs from a race of slaves, and
every slave has had kings among his ancestors.”11 In other words, one should
neither presume the greatness of another on account of noble birth nor allow
humble origins to thwart a person’s efforts to improve. Virtue is attainable by all.
Philo’s exaltation of proselytes is a natural extension of this stoic principle. The
transformation experienced by proselytes. Philo and Ephesians also deploy the metaphor of
the πολιτεία, for example, as emphasized recently by Katell Berthelot, “Entre octroi de la ci-
toyenneté et adoption: les modèles pour penser la conversion au judaïsme à l’époque romaine,”
Pallas 104 (2017): 37–50.
8 Virt. 219. Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
9 Such terminology appears in Philo’s several discussions about proselytes, e.g.: Virt. 101–
103, 211–219; Spec. 1.51–53, 309; Abr. 67–88. Especially on the issue of “new citizenship,” see
Berthelot, “Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adoption,” 37–41.
10 Walter T. Wilson, Philo of Alexandria: On Virtues: Introduction, Translation, and Com-
mentary, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 381–6.

11 Seneca, Epistle 44, as cited in Wilson, Philo of Alexandria, 383.
Messy Metaphors 67
truth and virtue of the Jews can hardly be withheld from aspiring Gentiles, reck-
ons Philo, seeing as Abraham himself had broken free from the most wretched
of Gentile origins to achieve unsurpassed piety, nobility, and virtue. The kinship
(συγγένεια) that truly matters, Philo says, is “the holy fellowship of good men.”12
At the same time, virtue does not eclipse ancestry entirely in Philo’s under-
standing of the Jewish polity. A distinction persists between the native-born
and the latecomer, as revealed in the following passage:
Besides setting down laws regarding fellow nationals (ὁμοεθνῶν), [Moses] maintains that
proselytes are to be considered worthy of every privilege, since, having forsaken their
family by blood, their homeland, their customs, the temples and images of their gods
and the gifts and honors offered to them, they have traveled to a fine new home, from
mythical fabrications to the certainty of truth and the veneration of the One and truly
existing God. So he commands those of the nation (τοῦ ἔθνους) to love the proselytes,
not only as friends and relatives (συγγενεῖς), but as themselves in both body and soul – in
body by acting in common with them so far as this is possible, and in mind by having the
same griefs and joys – so as to appear to be, in their distinct parts, a single organism (ἓν
εἶναι ζῷον δοκεῖν), joined together and naturally united by the fellowship (κοινωνίας)
that it has.13
The tone and perspective of this passage are typical of Philo’s positive treatment
of proselytes, as he notes that Moses demands equal treatment for proselytes out
of respect for their courageous decision to abandon their pagan lives and take up
residence in a new nation. The terminology makes clear, however, that prose-
lytes are different from the native-born. Those Jews who are “born from the
start” (φύντας ἐξ ἀρχῆς), as Philo elsewhere puts it,14 are “fellow nationals,” while
proselytes are not. Those “of the nation” are to love proselytes “as” relatives, but
not because they are relatives. If proselytes are so loved, then the body politic can
appear to be a single creature. But appearance is not necessarily reality.
Rhetorical appeals to the body politic were another ancient commonplace.15
Philo himself uses one in a different passage when examining the laws regarding
the manslaughterer who flees to a city of refuge and remains there until the high
priest dies. Why should the death of the high priest, of all things, mark the end
of the sentence? Philo explains that the high priest corresponds to the vengeful
kin because he himself is the closest of kin, figuratively at least, to the collective
Israelite nation:
12 Mos. 2.171, where the context is not proselytes, but Moses exhorting the Levites to exe-
cute the sinners at Mount Sinai. They should kill without compunction even their kinsmen
because genuine kinship is based on shared goodness rather than shared blood.
13 Virt. 102–103 (trans. Wilson, Philo of Alexandria, 64).
14 Spec. 1.51.
15 Wilson (Philo of Alexandria, 259) points to numerous examples: Josephus, B. J. 5.277–
279; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 6.86.1–5; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 17.19; 39.5; 50.3;
Aelius Aristides, Or. 24.18, 38–39. See also Tet-Lim N. Yee, Jews, Gentiles and Ethnic Recon-
ciliation: Paul’s Jewish Identity and Ephesians, SNTSMS 130 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2005), 176–9.
The whole nation has a kinsman (συγγενής) and close relative common to all in the high
priest, who as ruler dispenses justice to litigants according to the law, who day by day
offers prayers and sacrifices and asks for blessings, as for his brothers and parents and
children, that every age and every part of the nation regarded as a single body (ὡς ἑνὸς
σώματος) may be united in one and the same fellowship (κοινονία), making peace and
good order their aim.16
The high priest becomes for Philo a metaphor for the political body. By his per-
forming the juridical and cultic rites for a nation composed of many diverse
bodies, it is as if the nation converges into a single body united in fellowship.
Here, however, no member of the body is prioritized over another: “every age
and every portion” are united on seemingly equal terms.17
Such is not the case, as we have seen, when Philo deploys a similar metaphor
to describe the incorporation of the proselyte into the Israelite body politic. His
proselyte is portrayed as a secondary appendage whose incorporation, if it is
done through love and equal treatment, might lead to the appearance of a united
whole. The metaphor of the integrated creature thus provides a useful but com-
plicated vehicle for describing ethnic transformation.18 The notion of the Gen-
tile severed from his original national body and affixed to Israel’s promotes a
sense of cohesiveness that will encourage the native-born to admire proselytes
and to treat them with dignity and love. At the same time, it accentuates the
binary differentiation between native-born and newcomer, old and new, real
and apparent.
Philo was not alone in drawing upon the body as a metaphor for the ethnic
transformation of Gentiles. Not much later but in a very different context, the
author of Ephesians did the same.
3. Ephesians
Among its other aims, Ephesians clarifies the mystery that God revealed to
Paul. The elaborative clause of Eph 3:6 puts it succinctly: “the Gentiles have
become co-inheritors (συγκληρονόμα), co-body members (σύσσωμα), and co-
sharers (συμμέτοχα) of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” This
16 Spec. 3.131 (trans. F. H. Colson, On the Decalogue. On the Special Laws, Book 1–3,
vol. 7 of Philo, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937], 559).

17 This is not to say that each Israelite enjoys the same rights and privileges, but simply that
no Israelite is more or less Israelitish than another.

18 On the notion that a proselyte’s exclusive loyalty to the Jewish god might be seen as an
ethnic transformation, Fredriksen (Paul, 54) observes that “forging an exclusive commitment
to a foreign god […] was tantamount to changing ethnicity.” See also McDonald, “‘Ex-Pagan
Pagans’?”; Berthelot (“Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adoption”), by contrast, contends that,
for Philo at least, the metaphor of the πολιτεία, and its unification through law rather than
lineage, does not require a notion of ethnic change. Philo uses more images than just the
πολιτεία to describe the experience of the proselyte, however.
Messy Metaphors 69
section of the letter does not specify which inheritance or body the Gentiles
have joined, or with whom they have been fused, because the author already
addressed these questions in the preceding chapter.19 Ephesians 2:11–22 indi-
cates that Gentiles in Christ have been included in the polity of Israel. The au-
thor first reminds the epistle’s addresses of the time when they were “Gentiles
in the flesh […] without Christ, alienated from the polity of Israel and strangers
to the covenants of the promise” (Eph 2:11–12), and then notes that baptism
brought about a transformation to the effect that “you who were once afar have
been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). Brought near to
what? Surely to that which they had previously been alienated, namely the pol-
ity of Israel and the attending covenants of the promise.20
There’s more, however. This incorporation into Israel became possible be-
cause the Israelite body politic itself became identical to the crucified and resur-
rected body of Christ, a point conveyed through the figure in Eph 2:14–19:
For he is our peace, the one who made both into one and removed the dividing wall – the
enmity – in his flesh, having destroyed the law with its commandments and decrees, in
order to make the two, through himself, into one new person, thus making peace, and in
order to reconcile both to God through one body through the cross, which killed the
enmity. He came to proclaim peace to you who were afar and peace to those who were
near, because both of us have access through him, in one spirit, to the father. Therefore,
you are no longer strangers and aliens but co-citizens with the saints and dwellers in the
household of God.
The language in this passage is knotty, with lots of ambiguous prepositional

clauses, but it seems clear enough that the author posits Christ as a figure for the
body politic in the same way Philo does for the high priest. Philo, recall, depicts
the high priest as the single body in whom diverse Israelites coalesce to present
prayers and sacrifices before God. In Ephesians, access to God comes not
through the high priest but through Christ, now the single body in whom di-
verse individuals are reconciled to God.
The diversity envisioned by the author of Ephesians is of course different
from what Philo describes, and in this sense the figure in Ephesians does double
duty. It mirrors not only Philo’s description of the high priest as the embodi-
ment of Israel in On the Special Laws, but also his description in On the Virtues
of the single, united, harmonious organism created by the attachment of prose-
lytes. Whereas Philo portrays the mechanics of Gentile inclusion as essentially
19 According to Andrew T. Lincoln (Ephesians [Dallas, TX: Word, 1990], 175), the major-
ity of commentators understands Eph 3:3b, “just as I wrote briefly,” as a reference to what the
same author had written above in Eph 1:9–10 and Eph 2:11–22.
20 So Margaret Y. MacDonald, “The Problem of Christian Identities in Ephesians: Inspi-
ration from the Work of Nils Alstrup Dahl,” Studia Theologica – Nordic Journal of Theology
70 (2016): 97–115, cited here at 102: “Most strikingly, Eph 2:11–22, celebrates the unity of Jew
and Gentile in a totality (Israel).” See also Berthelot, “Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adop-
tion,” 46.
ethical – kindness and empathy to the proselyte give the illusion of unity – in
Ephesians it is Christological: Christ, through his death, destroyed the barrier
separating Jew from Gentile, namely the Law, so that Gentiles can join Jews and
coalesce into a single polity. Christ thus becomes the vehicle for the incorpora-
tion of Gentiles into Israel.
Contrary to this view, commentators routinely suggest that the author of
Ephesians has in mind a unification of Jew and Gentile within an entity that
transcends Israel, perhaps even the sort of “third race” Tertullian would invoke
a century later.21 As Andrew T. Lincoln puts it, baptized Gentiles “have be-
come members of a newly created community whose privileges transcend those
of Israel.”22 Accompanying these claims one often finds Christ’s accomplish-
ment hailed as a feat of universalization that puts an end to the ethnic particu-
larism of God’s erstwhile people, the Jews. Again, Lincoln: “In the creation of
the one new person Jew-Gentile distinctions have been overcome.”23 Tet-Lim
N. Yee says that “the author’s ideal is to transpose the exclusive ‘body politic of
Israel’ into an inclusive (and non-ethnic) community-body in which the ‘holy
ones’/Israel and Gentiles who believe in the Messiah could be together as a har-
monious whole.”24 According to Darrell L. Bock, the figure of the new person
in Eph 2:15 represents not merely Jews and Gentiles melded into a common
entity, but “humanity reformed.”25
Neither of these assumptions seems justified. The author of Ephesians signals
his interest in the polity of Israel, not a transcendent third group, with the very
first words of the passage. He exhorts the addressees to remember the time
when, as Gentiles, they were “without Christ, alienated from the polity of Isra-
el and strangers to the covenants of the promise, not having hope and godless in
the world” (Eph 2:11–12). If his point is that baptism has undone the predica-
ments he just listed, then the author means to say that former Gentiles are now
with Christ, members of the covenants of the promise, teeming with hope,
God-full in the world, and yes, un-alienated from the polity of Israel. This in-
corporation into Israel is made explicit at the end of the passage, Eph 2:19, when
the author tells his addressees that they are “no longer strangers and aliens but
fellow citizens with the saints and dwellers in the household of God.” The co-
citizenship (συμπολῖται) in verse 19 points back to the polity (πολιτεία) from
which they were estranged in verse 12, namely Israel.26
21
Nat. 8.1.
22
Lincoln, Ephesians, 139. See also Lynn H. Cohick, The Letter to the Ephesians, NICNT
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 181–9; Darrell L. Bock, Ephesians, TNTC (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2019), 80.
23 Lincoln, Ephesians, 151.
24 Yee, Jews, Gentiles and Ethnic Reconciliation, 176.
25 Bock, Ephesians, 80.
26 On the Roman cultural context of the “citizen” as the ultimate insider, over and against
stranger or alien, see Dunning, “Strangers and Aliens No Longer,” 5–8.

Messy Metaphors 71
The recurring language of “far” and “near” further indicates the inclusion of
Gentiles in the polity of Israel specifically rather than some other unnamed,
transcendent entity. Far-off Gentiles, the author says, “were brought near
through the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). Later he says that Christ “came to
proclaim peace to you who were afar and peace to those who were near” (Eph
2:17). If “you who were afar” refers to the formerly Gentile recipients of the
epistle, are not “those who were near” the Jews who retained their nearness
within Israel by heeding Christ’s proclamation? Nearness in this passage de-
notes the God, the hope, and the covenants of the polity of Israel. The author
simply reorients this ethnic designation around Christ as opposed to kinship,
law observance, or geographic origin.
Accordingly, this new polity scarcely represents a universalized or reformed
humanity. It is rather a re-inscription of the ethnic distinction between God’s
people Israel and the Gentiles outside. The corporate “new person” in Ephe-
sians is no more or less particularistic, or “ethnic,” than the corporate organism
in Philo; it remains a matter of in versus out, God’s people versus not, even if the
criteria for inclusion have changed. And the author of Ephesians hardly shrinks
from acknowledging that most of humanity remains estranged from the elect.
He even calls such outsiders “Gentiles” (Eph 4:17) when distinguishing them
from the former Gentiles to whom he is writing. This identification of outsiders
as Gentiles hardly squares with the claim that Ephesians envisions a “non-eth-
nic” community. It also belies Lincoln’s claim that “the separation of the Gen-
tiles from Israel and her election was a cleft so deep that it took the creative act
of Christ’s death to fill it.”27 A deep cleft between Israel and the Gentiles re-
mains, according to Ephesians. Christ did not fill the cleft; he became it.
Nor did reinscribing the binary in terms of Christ liberate it from the inevi-
table instability it yields when forced to account for relocation across its bound-
ary. Remember that proselytes in Philo’s schema join the Israelite body politic
except to the extent that they remain Gentiles, an incompleteness expressed in
his expectation that affection from the native-born will engender but the ap-
pearance of a single organism. Appearance, not reality. In Ephesians, the incom-
pleteness is more explicit. Even as he acclaims his Gentile addressees as co-citi-
zens in the household of God, the author repeatedly reminds them that they
used to be estranged Gentiles and that to some extent they remain so. He even
opens the very next section of the letter (Eph 3:1) by referring to them directly
as Gentiles. Again, there is no purpose in trying to determine whether the au-
thor thinks that his addressees are no longer Gentiles, which he implies (Eph
2:11; 4:17), or remain Gentiles, which he says explicitly (Eph 3:1). The point is
that any description of Gentile incorporation into the entity that by definition
27 Lincoln, Ephesians, 144.

does not include them, whether it is drawn up by the hand of Philo, the author
of Ephesians, or anyone else, invariably produces ambiguity.
It should be obvious by now that I refer to the author of Ephesians anony-
mously because I do not think the letter was written by its putative author, Paul.
Nonetheless, its ideas and terminology so closely resemble those in Paul’s epis-
tles, especially Romans, that characterizing its author as an admirer and early
interpreter of Paul seems sensible.28 In what follows I propose that Ephesians
depicts Paul’s “mystery” as the eschatological incorporation of Gentiles into
Israel because Paul does the just the same in Rom 11. Though his metaphor is
different, an olive tree rather than an organism or a person, Paul’s effort to nar-
rate Gentile inclusion yields the predictable messiness.
4. Romans 11
The olive tree in Rom 11:17–24 marks the culmination of Paul’s defense of the
claim he introduced at the outset of Rom 9–11: “It is not as though the word of
God has faltered, because not all those descended from Israel are Israel” (Rom
9:6). This claim refutes the assumption that the largescale rejection of Christ by
what appears to be Israel undermines the fidelity of God to the promises he
made to Israel long ago. On the contrary, Paul ultimately insists, all Israel will
be saved (Rom 11:26). Israel will be saved because God now reckons the bound-
aries of Israel in terms of Christ, not descent. Anyone who descends from Isra-
el but nonetheless rejects Christ is, as a matter of fact, no longer a part of Israel.
A remnant continues, as Isaiah had foreseen (Rom 9:27–29), but the remainder
of Israel’s descendants has gone the way of Ishmael, Esau, the worshipers of
Baal, and all the other Israelites who forsook their birthright (whether by choice
or by divine decree). By the same token, as Paul says in Rom 9:24–26, Israel in
its final, Christ-oriented arrangement will be composed of many persons who
lack the proper pedigree. Christ has made it possible for Gentiles who were
previously alienated from the polity of Israel and estranged from its covenants,
as the author of Ephesians would later put it, to be added to Israel’s family tree.
The metaphor of the olive tree thus recapitulates Paul’s case. The people of Isra-
el, whom God will imminently save, comprises two distinct components: the
cultivated olive branches connected naturally to the holy, ancient, patriarchal
roots, and the wild branches grafted in unnaturally. The miraculous inclusion
of Gentiles (and concomitant excision of Jews) in the final hour of history com-
prises the mystery to which Paul refers in Rom 11:25, just as the author of Ephe-
28 I agree with most of the conclusions reached in Gregory E. Sterling, “From Apostle to
the Gentiles to Apostle of the Church: Images of Paul at the End of the First Century,” ZNW
98 (2007): 74–98.
Messy Metaphors 73
sians recognized when later recasting it: “[The mystery] is that the Gentiles
have become co-inheritors, co-body members, and co-sharers of the promise in
Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:6).
Inasmuch as it represents Israel as a single (botanical) body comprised of in-
congruent parts, Paul’s metaphor resembles the “single organism” Philo invokes
when depicting the incorporation of proselytes. Philo does not speak of prose-
lytes explicitly as a prosthesis, but by contrasting them with native-born Israel-
ites (ὁμοεθνής) who are commanded to love them as though they were relatives
so that together they to appear as one entity, Philo suggests that proselytes are
both a part of Israel and not quite Israel at the same time. Paul’s olive tree is
more obvious. Gentile entrants into Israel are composed of different stuff.
Ripped from the uncultivated tree on which they naturally belong, God has
grafted them into a tree on which they do not belong but by whose roots they
are sustained. They are in Israel and not quite Israel at the same time.
In Paul’s metaphor, however, the ambiguous identification extends beyond
baptized Gentles. Unbaptized Jews, broken off from their native tree and strewn
upon the ground, no longer partake in the body of Israel; and yet, because they
are original branches composed of Israelite matter, their re-incorporation into
Israel – should they come to realize that Christ is the demarcation – will be
simple and natural (Rom 11:24). Apostates, on Paul’s reckoning, have ceased to
be Israel insofar as they are no longer attached to the tree, but they nevertheless
remain Israel insofar as their material composition has not changed.
Predictably, Philo’s speaks of apostates (and proselytes) in similar terms in a
passage from On Rewards and Punishments:
The proselyte exalted aloft by his happy lot will be gazed at from all sides, marvelled at
and held blessed by all for two things of highest excellence, that he came over to the camp
of God and that he has won a prize best suited to his merits, a place in heaven firmly
fixed, greater than words dare describe, while the nobly born (εὐπατρίδης) who has falsi-
fied the sterling of his high lineage (εὐγένεια) will be dragged right down and carried into
Tartarus itself and profound darkness. Thus may all men seeing these examples be
brough to a wiser mind and learn that God welcomes the virtue which springs from ig-
noble birth, that He takes no account of the roots (ῥίζα) but accepts the full-grown stem
(στελεχωθὲν ἔρνος), because it has been changed from a weed into fruitfulness.29
The botanical imagery at the end of the passage bears obvious resemblance to
Paul’s olive tree. Here, God delivers proselytes from their ignoble origins not by
grafting them into a superior tree, but by overlooking their roots and focusing
on them instead as newly formed, fruitful shoots. By contrast, it would seem,
God disregards the noble roots of apostates and focuses on the desiccated shoots
they have chosen to become. Philo may not represent the reconfiguration of
lineage in the stark terms Paul does, but his message is about the same: prose-
29 Praem. 152 (trans. F. H. Colson, On the Special Laws, Book 4. On the Virtues. On Re-
wards and Punishments, vol. 8 of Philo [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], 409).
lytes receive a “sure habitation in heaven” despite their humble origins, whereas
apostates are “hurled down to Tartarus” despite their nobility; likewise, prose-
lytes join the family of Israel while apostates become estranged because, as we
saw above, true kinship for Philo is “the holy fellowship of good men.”30 Paul
would no doubt agree, albeit with a modification: true kinship is the holy fel-
lowship of persons in Christ.
5. Conclusion
The experience Paul describes in Gal 1:15–16 was profound and transformative,
obliging him to reorient his understanding of God, Israel, and history. In time,
he came to believe that God – at long last – was making good on the promise to
fulfill the covenant with Abraham. A covenant begun with faith was now cul-
minating in faith, a faith made available by the death and resurrection of Christ,
God’s son. As a result, Paul concluded, the final iteration of God’s elect people
Israel was now being formed on the basis of faith rather than law or descent, and
this Israel would be saved once the message of Christ was proclaimed sufficient-
ly far and wide.
However radical it was theologically speaking, the terminology Paul uses to
describe this new understanding of Israel is typically Jewish. It is ethnic. It is
particularistic. The olive tree of Rom 11:17–24 bears striking resemblance to
Philo’s descriptions of the Jewish body politic as a single organism and of the
proselyte as a botanical shoot that changes its nature to overcome deficient
roots. In all three cases, and in Eph 2:11–22 as well, the metaphors are not ex-
pressions of universalism but solutions to the fundamental problem of transfor-
mation in ethnic identity – specifically, how it is that Gentiles can alter their
pedigree so as to join a people to which they naturally and historically do not
belong, how Gentiles can cease to be Gentiles and become citizens of Israel in-
stead. Moreover, what the metaphors share in purpose they also share in short-
coming. However effectively these figures describe the incorporation of Gen-
tiles into the body politic of Israel, they also highlight the degree to which a
complete incorporation, an assimilation to the point where erstwhile Gentiles
become indistinguishable from erstwhile Jews, remains impossible.
30 Mos. 2.171.
Apostle from Israel to the Gentiles
The Jewish Roots of Paul’s Identity and Mission
Brian Rosner
1. Introduction
To what the extent does Paul uphold his Jewish identity as apostle to the Gen-
tiles?1
Scholarly opinion is divided as to the Jewishness of the Christian Paul. Jürgen
Becker, for example, holds that Paul made a fundamental break with Judaism
following his Damascus Road experience.2 Similarly, Georg Strecker believes
that Paul recognized that in his Gentile mission he had separated himself from
Judaism.3 The Christian Paul certainly seems to have abandoned some Jewish
practices when he lived among Gentiles (1 Cor 9:22) and distanced himself from
his Jewish past (Gal 1:13; Phil 3:7).
By way of contrast, Jörg Frey argues that “Paul never abandoned his Jewish
identity, and some of the convictions he held as a Pharisee remained influential
for his work as an apostle.”4 And Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr’s study of Paul’s au-
tobiographical statements (Gal 1:13–14; Phil 3:5–6; 2 Cor 11:22–23; Rom 11:1)
concludes that Paul’s Jewish identity had ongoing significance for his work as
apostle to the Gentiles and that he uses his Jewish identity in arguing points of
his theology.5 If Paul’s Jewish opponents regarded him as apostate (cf. 1 Thess
2:14–15; Acts 21:28), according to James D. G. Dunn, “Paul could never have
accepted that his apostleship to the Gentiles constituted apostasy from Israel.
Quite the contrary, he was apostle to the Gentiles precisely as apostle for Israel,
1 I wish to thank Nicholas Quient for research assistance for portions of this paper.
2 Jürgen Becker, Paulus: Der Apostel der Völker (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 34: Paul’s
life is divided “aufgrund seiner Berufung in zwei Hälften, wobei der Christ Paulus seine jü-
dische Lebensperiode fast ganz abgestoßen hat.”
3 Georg Strecker, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter,
1995), 24: “Paulus [hat] sich als Apostel an die Heiden verstanden […] und [wusste sich] durch
seine Berufung zum Heidenapostel, die zugleich seine Bekehrung einschließt, nach eigenem
Verständnis […] fundamental vom Judentum geschieden.”
4 Jörg Frey, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” in Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World, ed.
Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, AGJU 71 (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2007), 297.
5 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach
ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen, WUNT 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992).

76 Brian Rosner
apostle of Israel.”6 This statement, along with the title of Niebuhr’s book, Hei
denapostel aus Israel, captures the thesis of this essay and supplies its title: Paul
was the “Apostle from Israel to the Gentiles.”
The choice of the words, “from Israel,” is intentional. In Acts Luke has Paul
calls himself a Jew twice (21:39; 22:3), but Paul prefers to call himself an “Israel-
ite” in his letters (Rom 9:3–4; 11:1; 2 Cor 11:22; Phil 3:5). As Michael F. Bird
suggests, “[t]he designations ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelite’ were evidently positive for
Paul as they denoted continuity with God’s purposes and plan first announced
to the Patriarchs and fulfilled in the economy of God’s action in Jesus Christ.”7
The following three sections of this essay examine the Jewishness of Paul’s
identity, fundamental beliefs, and strategy in his Gentile mission. In each case
I conclude that as apostle from Israel to the Gentiles Paul was Jewish to the
roots8:
1. When Paul describes himself in connection with his Gentile mission, he uti-
lizes identities drawn from the Jewish Scriptures that include a role in ex-
tending the salvation of God to the nations.
2. Paul has not abandoned the central beliefs and symbols of Judaism, but rath-
er reconfigures them in the light of his vision of Jesus Christ.
3. Paul’s approach to dealing with Gentile believers in Jesus Christ is thorough-
ly Jewish and his agenda follows emphases and patterns evident in early Jew-
ish moral teaching.
2. Paul the Apostle, Servant, Prophet, Priest, and Herald
There are many answers to the question of the identity of the Apostle Paul: Paul
was a Jew, a Roman citizen, a follower of Jesus Christ, a tentmaker, a letter writ-
er, a missionary, a community founder, a teacher, a sage, a curator of a collec-
tion, a networker, a team leader, a prisoner, a traveller, and so on. All of these are
best understood when considered in the context of the ancient world and each
has various points of contact with contemporary Greco-Roman and Jewish
comparable identities and occupations.9 They all impinge upon or relate to his
6 James D. G. Dunn, “Paul: Apostate or Apostle of Israel,” ZNW 89 (1998): 256–71, here
269. Italics original.

7 Michael F. Bird, “Salvation in Paul’s Judaism,” in Paul and Judaism: Crosscurrents in
Pauline Exegesis and the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. Reimund Bieringer and
Didier Pollefeyt (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2014), 27.
8 Cf. Morna D. Hooker, “Paul – Apostle to the Gentiles,” Epworth Review 18/2 (1991): 85,
“Paul is Jewish to the roots.”

9 E.g., on Paul as community founder, see James C. Hanges, Paul, Founder of Churches: A
Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of Founder-Figures in the Hellenistic-Roman Pe-
riod, WUNT 292 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); on Paul as teacher, see Devin L. White,
Apostle from Israel to the Gentiles 77
Gentile mission in one way or another. Apart from the first three, they are func-
tional identities, capturing a facet of Paul’s prodigious and varied activity.
However, there are five other descriptions of Paul that stand out from the rest
and relate in a more intrinsic way to his Gentile mission: apostle, servant, proph-
et, priest, and herald. The five are Paul’s self-descriptions, whether explicitly or
implicitly, and overlap in various ways. They each have roots in the Jewish
Scriptures. And most significantly for our purposes, each defines and gives im-
petus to his Gentile mission.
2.1 Called to Be an Apostle

In the traditional Pauline corpus, Paul is identified as an apostle (agent or mes-
senger) of Christ Jesus in the epistolary prescripts of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthi-
ans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. As one sent
by Jesus Christ Paul uses the language of calling (cf. e.g., 1 Cor 1:1: κλητὸς
ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ), to describe his commission. The OT in Greek regu-
larly uses the concept of calling to refer to the granting of roles or tasks by God:
for example, to Abraham to be the father of a nation, to Cyrus of Persia as an
agent of providence, and to Israel to be a light to the Gentiles.
Paul conceives of his call to apostleship as granting him a specific task in
terms of a Gentile mission. This can be seen in the way Paul relates his apostle-
ship to the predominantly Gentile church of God in Corinth (cf. 1 Cor 12:2). In
1 Corinthians 9:1–2 he reminds the Corinthians that their own favorable stand-
ing before God is a result of his “work in the Lord” and that they are “the seal
of [his] apostleship,” thus highlighting the direct relevance of Paul’s status and
stature for the Corinthians’ ongoing spiritual life. Further, in 4:14–16 he ad-
monishes them as their “father,” another way of referring to his role as the ap-
ostolic founder of the church. And in 15:1–2 Paul explicitly reminds them that
their salvation came about when Paul preached the gospel to them.
What is the overall goal of Paul’s apostolic activity? Paul sees the final end of
the mighty salvation-historical drama in which he is caught up to be the glory
of God. While much modern biblical scholarship has marginalized both salva-
tion-history and the concept of God’s glory in Paul’s thought, it is clear that
both themes are frequently present and often linked.10 Paul ascribes glory to
God for his gracious election and blessing of certain people and family groups
in the history of Israel, for his bestowal upon the covenant people of Israel of
certain key redemptive advantages (Rom 3:2, 9:3–5; cf. Eph 2:12), for his revela-
Teacher of the Nations: Ancient Educational Traditions and Paul’s Argument in 1 Corinthi-
ans, BZNW 227 (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2017).
10 Robert W. Yarbrough, “Paul and Salvation History,” in The Paradoxes of Paul, vol. 2 of
Justification and Variegated Nomism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A. Seifrid
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck and Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 297–342, here 322–39.
78 Brian Rosner
tion of truth through Israel’s Scriptures (2 Cor 1:20; Rom 11:33–36), and for his
grace extended even to Paul and to Gentile Christians (Rom 15:7; Gal 1:3–5, 24).
This emphasis on the glory of God is a major theme throughout the Jewish
Scriptures, tied firmly to historical events, and theologically rich.11 The glory
of God is also of fundamental importance for Paul’s mission in relation to the
Gentiles.
For all Jews the establishment of God’s glory necessarily involves the remov-
al of all false worship. The salvation of the Exodus required judgment against
the false gods of Egypt (Exod 12:12). The taking of the Promised Land required
demolition of the false idolatrous worship taking place in Canaan (Deut 4:15–
24; Josh 23:7). A specially chosen place set apart for the worship of God’s glory
and name is required because of the existence of other shrines dedicated to the
worship of false deities by the nations (Deut 12:2–14). The temple, therefore,
stands as the place where all the nations are beckoned to come and worship God
alongside Israel (1 Chr 16:23–33; cf. Ps 96) – abandoning their own idolatrous
practices. The history of Israel herself is a long struggle with idolatry, with the
destruction of the temple as the appalling conclusion to this struggle. Yet it was
not simply a blow for the nation of Israel; more significantly, it was a terrible
indictment of God’s name and glory (Dan 9:15–19; Ezek 36:22–23). Significant-
ly, in connection with Paul’s Gentile mission, as part of Israel’s destiny, the
prophets and psalmists speak of the nations abandoning their idols and wor-
shipping God with lavish praise (Ps 66:1–4; 138:4–5; Hab 2:14; Zeph 3:9–10;
Mal 1:11).
Paul’s apostolic mission is defined by a vision of Gentiles turning from idola-
try to serve the living and true God (1 Thess 1:9). With respect to Paul’s appro-
priation of this theme, Richard B. Hays observes that “Isaiah offers the clearest
expression in the Old Testament of a universalistic, eschatological vision in
which the restoration of Israel in Zion is accompanied by an ingathering of
Gentiles to worship the Lord.”12 A key text for Paul in this regard is Isaiah 66,
to which Paul alludes in his discussion of his gospel preaching to Gentiles as a
priestly service (see “Priest of God’s Good News” below).
2.2 Servant of the Lord

In Romans 1:1 (cf. 2 Cor 4:5; Gal 1:10; Phil 1:1; Titus 1:1) Paul introduces himself
as a servant of Christ Jesus, δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. A good case can be made that
in saying this he is drawing on the scriptural figure of the servant of the Lord
found in Isa 40–55. This servant has a special role with respect to the nations: Isa
49:3, 6b LXX: “He [the Lord] said to me, You are my servant [δοῦλος], Israel,
11
Yarbrough, “Paul and Salvation History,” 336–9.
12
Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989), 162.
and in you I will be glorified. … Behold, I have made you a covenant for the
people, a light for the nations, that my salvation may extend to the end of the
earth.”
Lionel J. Windsor lays out the evidence for Paul’s identification with the Isa-
ianic servant in Romans.13 Paul’s self-description in Romans 1:1 as a servant of
Christ Jesus is immediately followed by an assertion that his gospel is firmly set
in the prophetic Scriptures, a gospel that is directly linked to his own apostolic
vocation. In Isaiah 41:9 the servant, like Paul, is “called” by God. Moreover,
Isaiah is “both statistically and substantively the most important scriptural
source for Paul in Romans.”14 Arguably, Paul links his ministry in a number of
other places with the Isaianic Servant: Gal 1:10–16, alluding to Isa 49:1, 4, 6;
2 Cor 6:2, citing Isa 49:8; and Phil 2:16, alluding to Isa 49:4.15
2.3 Prophet of God

Even though Paul never calls himself a prophet, many scholars argue that proph-
et is a critical identity for Paul’s self-understanding. Sandnes observes that “it is
in fact a commonplace in Pauline scholarship that Paul’s apostolate was more or
less marked by prophetic features.”16
Paul’s famous conversion/calling on the road to Damascus links his identity
to that of a Jewish prophet.17 Luke’s account in Acts 9 echoes the vivid experi-
ences of Isaiah, Jeremiah and, especially, Ezekiel. Both Paul (according to Acts)
and Ezekiel, for example, received a revelation, heard a voice and fell to the
ground. When Ezekiel beheld the glory of God he reports, “I fell upon my face,
and I heard the voice of one that spoke” (Ezek 1:28). Then the Lord said: “Stand
upon your feet, and I will speak with you … I send you to the people of Israel”
(2:1).
With reference to Paul’s own letters, Terrence Donaldson observes that “Paul
himself describes his experience not as a conversion but as a call, using the tra-
ditional vocabulary of prophetic call narratives (Gal 1:15–16; cf. Isa 49:1; Jer
13 Lionel J. Windsor, Paul and the Vocation of Israel: How Paul’s Jewish Identity Informs
his Apostolic Ministry, with Special Reference to Romans, BZNW 205 (Berlin and Boston: De
Gruyter, 2014), 100–4.
14 Windsor, Paul and the Vocation of Israel, 102.
15 Windsor, Paul and the Vocation of Israel, 103–4.
16 Karl O. Sandnes, Paul – One of the Prophets? A Contribution to the Apostle’s Self-Un-
derstanding, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 2. Cf. L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, Paul the Mission-
ary (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 201, who contends that in describing himself as being sent by Je-
sus Christ, “Paul presented his task in direct continuity with the prophets of the Old Testa-
ment. They too saw themselves as ‘sent by God.’”
17 Cf. Sandnes, Paul – One of the Prophets, 242: “It is the conviction of the present writer
that declaring the prophetic element in Paul’s presentation of the Damascus revelation as in
some way accidental is to deprive of it its deepest significance. It is by recalling the tradition
of the biblical prophets that Paul is able to lay a legitimate foundation for his apostolate.”
80 Brian Rosner
1:5).”18 And Jeffrey Aernie’s study of the evidence of 2 Corinthians concludes

that “Ezekiel’s prophetic discourse provides one of the foundations on which
Paul is able to develop this apostolic rhetoric and describe his apostolic perso-
na.”19
Similarly, Seyoon Kim writes:
In view of the form- and tradition- history of prophetic call visions in the OT and Juda-
ism, it is not difficult to imagine that the nature or form of the Damascus Christophany
led Paul to turn to the prophetic call visions such as Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 for an inter-
pretation of its meaning for him, and that from a combined reading of Isaiah 6 and the
call/commission narratives of the Servant passages he obtained his conviction about the
Lord’s call and sending as an apostle for the Gentiles.20
The difference between Ezekiel and Paul is, of course, that Paul was sent pri-
marily not to Israel, but to the Gentiles. Nonetheless, as K. M. Rochester notes,
there are many ways in which Ezekiel may have been a model and inspiration
for Paul:
There is much in common in these prophetic ministries. Both experience a remembered,
personal encounter with Yahweh, in which they are addressed, commissioned and sent
out to bear messages from Yahweh. Both speak of the need to turn away from wicked-
ness in its various forms, and to conform humbly to Yahweh’s requirements. Both must
persevere in unpopular work, in the face of opposition which is, at times, strenuous. Both
call for the person and presence of Yahweh to be regarded more highly than his temple
and its cult. Both give warnings in relation to the fall of Jerusalem and its temple, and
both speak out forcefully against prophets who have not been sent, whose messages are
not from Yahweh, and whose lifestyles and motives are without integrity.21
2.4 Priest of God’s Good News

In Romans 15:15–16 Paul explains his vocation in priestly terms: “the grace God
gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of
proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering
acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” Much of his understanding
here derives from OT texts like Mal 1:11,22 where there is a prophecy of Gentiles
bringing temple worship, which arguably Paul believed was being fulfilled in
his ministry. The Lord says:
18 Terence Donaldson, “Zealot and Convert: The Origin of Paul’s Christ-Torah Antithe-
sis,” CBQ 51 (1989): 655–82, here 690.

19 Jeffrey W. Aernie, “Tablets of Fleshly Hearts: Paul and Ezekiel in Concert,” Journal for
the Study of Paul and His Letters 6:1 (2016): 55–73, here 57.
20 Seyoon Kim, “Paul as an Eschatological Herald,” in Paul as Missionary, ed. Trevor J.
Burke and Brian S. Rosner (London, T&T Clark, 2011), 16.

21 Kathleen M. Rochester, “Prophetic ministry in Jeremiah and Ezekiel,” TB 61:2 (2010):
317–220, here 319.

22 See Brian S. Rosner and Roy E. Ciampa, “The Structure and Argument of 1 Corinthi-
ans: A Biblical/Jewish Approach,” NTS 52:2 (2006): 205–18.

My name will be glorified among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In
every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name
will be glorified among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.
Intriguingly, Philo lends credibility to the notion of a priestly service for the
sake of non-Jews. In Abr. 1.98 he speaks of “the offices of priesthood and proph-
ecy on behalf of the whole human race,” ὑπὲρ παντὸς ἀνθρώπων γένους ἱερωσύνην
καὶ προφητείαν λαχεῖν. And in Spec. 2.162 he writes of “an offering both for the
nation separately, and also a common one for the whole race of mankind; so that
the people by it worship the living God, both for themselves and for all the rest
of mankind,” τὴν ἀπαρχὴν καὶ τοῦ ἔθνους ἰδίαν καὶ ὑπὲρ ἅπαντος ἀνθρώπων
γένους κοινήν.
With reference to Rom 15:16, Arland J. Hultgren explains Paul’s view of his
commission with reference to prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures:
The new age, which has already dawned with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead, is the messianic kingdom, and that kingdom includes in principle all the nations in
its scope, as the eschatological promises of the prophets declared it would. Those prom-
ises had been set forth in the Scriptures of Israel, and they were foundational for Paul’s
mission to the Gentiles.23
Hultgren points to Isa 66 as the backbone of Paul’s account of his mission in

Rom 15. Indeed, a striking and significant vision of the eschatological glory of
God appears in the final verses of Isaiah (66:18–24), where God’s ultimate glory
is described in terms of the involvement of the Gentiles in temple worship.
There is both an ‘outward’ and an ‘inward’ dynamic to God’s glorification:
God’s glory will be declared to the nations by missionaries (v. 19), and the na-
tions will come and glorify God in temple worship (vv. 18, 23). The eschatolog-
ical remnant will act as priests in God’s temple in Jerusalem (v. 20), bringing
those scattered among the nations as an offering to the LORD.
The geographical references to the nations in Isa 66:19 are of particular inter-
est to understanding Paul’s Gentile mission. James M. Scott has argued that the
Table of Nations of Gen 10 (cf. 1 Chr 1:1–2:2) represents an ethnographic and
geographic tradition that pervades the Old Testament and Jewish tradition.24 It
is a verbal ‘map’; a detailed geographical world-view that effectively places Isra-
el in the center of the world (cf. Ezek 5:5, chs. 38–39).25 This ‘map’ is also appli-
cable to Old Testament eschatology. Isaiah 66:18–20, in many of its details, re-
flects the Table of Nations tradition as it announces a positive eschatological
23 Arland J. Hultgren, “The Scriptural Foundations for Paul’s Mission to the Gentiles,” in
Paul and His Theology, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 44.
24 James M. Scott, Paul and the Nations: The Old Testament and Jewish Background of
Paul’s Mission to the Nations with Special Reference to the Destination of Galatians, WUNT
84 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 5–56.
25 Scott, Paul and the Nations, 5–10.
82 Brian Rosner
expectation for the nations.26 In Isaiah 66:19, each of the three sons of Noah is
represented: Shem (Lydians), Ham (Lybians), and Japheth (Tarshish, Tubal,
Greece). The focus of the eschatological expectation is, of course, Jerusalem,
situated in the center of the world.
According to Scott, the Table of Nations is at the forefront of Paul’s mind
when he describes his own eschatological mission to the nations in geographical
terms (Rom 15:19).27 Paul has “fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ … from
Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum.” That is, Paul’s mission to the na-
tions is viewed from the perspective of Jerusalem as the center of a circle em-
bracing the whole inhabited world (cf. Ezek 5:5). Riesner makes the connection
with Isa 66:18–21 even more explicit.28 For Riesner, “Paul read this text as being
fulfilled in his own activity, and traces of this exegesis stand behind Rom 15:16–
24”.29 The striking use of cultic terminology in Rom 15:16 to describe Gentile
evangelization suggests an Old Testament background. Isaiah 66:18–21, with its
unique juxtaposition of Gentile mission and temple-related descriptions of
Gentile worship, is the strongest contender. Riesner presents an impressive ar-
ray of further parallels between these two passages.30 For Paul, the nature of
the eschatological temple and the glory that God is to receive through world-
wide worship are understood in the light of the kingdom God has established
through his Son, the universal Lord.
2.5 Gospel Herald

Paul claims in 1 Cor 1:17 that Christ sent him to preach the gospel, εὐαγγελίζω.
The language of preaching the gospel derives from several texts in Isaiah, where
an end-time herald commissioned by God announces his reign of salvation. Isa-
iah 52:7, which Paul quotes in Rom 10:15, reads: “How beautiful on the moun-
tains are the feet of those who bring good news [ὡς ὡραῖοι οἱ πόδες τῶν εὐαγγελι
ζομένων [τὰ] ἀγαθά], who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God
reigns!’”
Arguably, Paul’s use of εὐαγγελ-terminology (εὐαγγελίζω, προευαγγελίζομαι,
εὐαγγέλιον, εὐαγγελιστής) is indebted to Isa 40:9, 52:7, and 61:1, where, as John P.
Dickson points out, “‘secular’ messenger language had been transposed to a
28 Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology, trans.
Doug Stott (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 245–53. Scott, Paul and the Nations, 145–7, crit-
icizes Riesner for relying overly on this one text. Scott claims that Paul has in mind the whole
Table of Nations tradition, which in turn informs the Isaiah text. But Riesner has found nu-
merous parallels with Isa 66:18–21 in Rom 15:16–28, beyond the geographical references of v.
19.
29 Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 246.
30 E.g., the emissaries of Isa 66:19 are sent to those “who have not yet heard my name” and
Paul in Rom 15:20 evangelizes “where the name Christ has not yet been named” (248–9).
higher, eschatological level, depicting the end-time herald(s) commissioned by

Israel’s God to announce his salvific reign.”31 Peter Stuhlmacher contends that
Paul’s gospel heralding is an eschatological, divinely commissioned activity.32
Although Paul the eschatological herald is less well-known than other ways of
describing his identity, it turns out to be a key ingredient in understanding his
agenda as apostle to the Gentiles.
For Paul, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was the decisive event in the
history of Israel and even the world. Galatians, for example, “reflects a salva-
tion-historical perspective in which the coming of Christ is seen to be the cli-
mactic fulfillment towards which the whole history of Israel has been lead-
ing.”33 The promises to the Jewish forefather Abraham (Gal 3:7–8, 16–17, 29;
4:22–23), the giving of the law (Gal 3:17, 19, 4:24–25), the execution of the curse
of the law in Israel’s exile (Gal 3:10, 13; 4:24–25), and the prophetic promise re-
garding the future salvation and restoration of God’s people (Gal 1:6–9) are all
part of a unified historical drama which climaxes in the coming of Jesus, his
death for sins and his resurrection from the dead. Yet Paul does not regard this
‘fulfillment’ simply as the inevitable outworking of secular historical processes
in Israel’s history; it is, rather, an ‘apocalyptic’ fulfillment, “the dramatic and
climactic inbreaking of the eschatological age of salvation”.34 In Jesus Christ,
God has pierced the barrier between the divine and human (Gal 1:12), heaven
and earth (Gal 4:25–26), Spirit and flesh (Gal 5:16–17), new and old creation
(Gal 6:15). A new age has dawned in which God the Father deals with humanity
as sons, not slaves (Gal. 4:3–5); where humans relate to God not by law, but by
faith working through love (Gal 3:23, 25; 5:6).
The salvation-historical and apocalyptic perspectives are not, for Paul, two
irreconcilable outlooks standing in unresolved tension. Instead, the two per-
spectives converge in Paul’s thought such that he regards the history of the par-
ticular nation of Israel as finding its fulfillment, through Jesus Christ, in salva-
tion for the entire world. The convergence of salvation-historical and apocalyp-
tic motifs is nowhere more apparent than in the two ‘bookends’ to Rom 1:1–5
and 16:25–27. The gospel of Jesus Christ, descended from David according to
the flesh yet declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of
holiness by his resurrection from the dead, has cosmic significance. This ‘mys-
tery’ that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through
31 John P. Dickson, Mission-Commitment in Ancient Judaism and in the Pauline Commu-
nities: The Shape, Extent and Background of Early Christian Mission, WUNT 2/159 (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 176.
32 Peter Stuhlmacher, “The Pauline Gospel,” in The Gospel and the Gospels, ed. Peter
Stuhlmacher (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 156–65.

33 Roy E. Ciampa, “Galatians” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond
Alexander, Brian S. Rosner, and Donald A. Carson, Graeme Goldsworthy (Westmont, IL:
IVP, 2000), 311.
34 Ciampa, “Galatians”, 311.
84 Brian Rosner
the prophetic writings (i.e., the historical Scriptures of Israel) has been made
known to all nations, and must be proclaimed to the world and its authorities. It
is the eschatological “power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16). Paul the Jew re-
gards himself as a herald who has been commissioned by Jesus to perform this
task. Paul has been sent, through a special revelation of his Son, to preach Christ
to the Gentiles (Gal 1:11, 16). He is one of two ‘point men’ in God’s eschatolog-
ical mission, having been entrusted with the gospel to the Gentiles just as Peter
was entrusted with the gospel to the Jews (Gal 2:7).
3. Paul and the Pillars of Judaism
When considering the Jewishness of the apostle to the Gentiles from Israel, to
what are we comparing him? The question of Paul’s relationship to Judaism
raises the thorny question of whether it is possible to speak of Judaism in the
singular, given the diverse beliefs and practices of Jews in antiquity. For exam-
ple, Philo of Alexandria, the Pharisees in the Gospels, and the Qumran Teacher
of Righteousness would seem to have very little in common. What, then, defines
ancient Judaism? Should we only speak of Judaisms?35
Notwithstanding undeniable first-century variations, it is still possible to use
the term “Judaism” in the singular. James C. Vanderkam puts it well:
The surviving evidence exhibits a richness and diversity in the Judaism of the Second
Temple era, a diversity so great that some have resorted to the neologism ‘Judaisms’ to
express it. Yet, despite the undoubted diversity present in the texts, there are fundamen-
tal beliefs and practices that would have been accepted by virtually all Jews during those
centuries and that justify retaining the singular noun Judaism.36
So, what are the fundamental beliefs and practices that define ancient Judaism
and how does Paul measure up against them?37 The most-commonly listed can-
didates for the so-called pillars of ancient Judaism are election, Torah, temple,
35 Cf. e.g., J. Andrew Overman, Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel according
to Matthew (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 9: “So varied was Jewish
society in the land of Israel in this period, and so varied were the Jewish groups, that scholars
no longer speak of Judaism in the singular when discussing this formative and fertile period
in Jewish history. Instead, we speak about Judaisms. In this time and place, there existed a
number of competing, even rival Judaisms.”
36 James C. Vanderkam, “Judaism in the Land of Israel,” in Early Judaism: A Comprehen-
sive Overview, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2012), 91.
37 This section builds on Brian S. Rosner, Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments
of God (Downers Grove: Apollos and Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2013), ch. 7. Cf. David
Horrell, An Introduction to the Study of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2006), 89: “One of the
most difficult areas in the study of Paul lies in trying to understand the ways in which, and the
extent to which, Paul’s perspectives on his ancestral faith were reconfigured in the light of his
vision of Christ.”
the land, and the Shema. Intriguingly, in Acts 21, when Paul arrived in Jerusa-
lem after his third missionary journey, he was greeted with the charge that he
was teaching against “our people, our law and this place [viz., the temple]” (Acts
21:28). How can it be claimed that Paul remains Jewish to the roots when, ac-
cording to some Jews at least, Paul rejects the core beliefs of Judaism?
Did Paul teach against the pillars of Judaism? The charge seems to stick. With
respect to election of Israel, in Romans Paul opposes the notion that the Jews,
Abraham’s sons, constitute the people of God – “For not all who are descended
from Israel are Israel” (9:6). Paul describes the Law of Moses as an enslaving
power, increasing trespass and used by sin to bring about death (Rom 5:20; 7:5;
cf. Gal 4:1–10) and insists that believers in Christ are not under the law (6:14).
And although Paul never explicitly rejects the Jewish temple and its priesthood
and sacrifices, he implies as much in his use of cultic imagery to refer to some-
thing else. From one vantage point, the career of the Apostle Paul, reminiscent
of Samson with his hair cut, shook profoundly the three main pillars of ancient
Judaism.
However, such a judgement may be hasty. Even on such fundamental matters
of election, Torah and temple there is disagreement among Jews in the first cen-
tury. Indeed, it is important to remember that Paul’s churches were not alone in
struggling to define themselves over against the mother faith. Other Jewish
‘sects’, such as the Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots, also fought over
questions of the identity of the people of God. Indeed, intra-Jewish polemic in
the first century was rife and sharp.38
The question to ponder with respect to Paul’s mission is what a smaller group
does with the iconic symbols of the mother group when it begins to break away.
In Paul’s case the Essenes at Qumran make an interesting point of comparison.
The sectarian documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the sectaries did
not abolish but rather reconfigured the pillars of Judaism. First, they denied the
validity of the Jerusalem temple and priesthood, asserting their own alternative
in a new order and a spiritualized dwelling place of God. They asserted the su-
periority of their own interpretation of Torah and supplemented it with their
own sacred interpretations. And they redefined the scope of the election of the
nation, replacing it with a new definition of the sons of light and the sons of
darkness. In each case they continue to affirm a belief in election, the institution
of the Temple and the Law of Moses, albeit one which many fellow Jews would
have strongly contested.
Similarly, it can be argued that rather than abandoning them, Paul reconfig-
ured the pillars of Judaism. With respect to election, in Romans Paul identifies
believers in Christ as the new people of God, whom he describes as the elect
38 See the literature cited in James D. G. Dunn, “Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul’s
Letter to the Galatians”, JBL 112:3 (1993): 459–77.

86 Brian Rosner
(8:33); called (1:6–7; 8:28, 30; 9:7, 12, 24–28); beloved (1:7; 9:25), saints (1:7), be-
loved children of Abraham (4:11–12, 16–17), and the true circumcision (2:28–29).
As I have argued in Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God, if
Paul rejects the law as law-covenant and legal code, he also re-appropriates it in
two ways, as prophecy of the gospel and wisdom for living. As regards the tem-
ple, Paul identifies the church as the dwelling place of God, thereby replacing the
Jerusalem temple. In Romans, for example, Christ is the mercy seat and/or the
sacrifice of atonement (3:21–26); believers offer their bodies as living sacrifices
(cf. cultic terminology in 12:1–2) and Paul himself gives “priestly service” (15:17).
If Paul seems to depart from Judaism with respect to its core beliefs, a closer
look indicates that even as apostle to the Gentiles Paul remains within Judaism
in that he reinterprets rather than rejects such distinctives.
4. Paul’s Agenda and Strategy as Apostle to the Gentiles
A third line of evidence that Paul upholds his Jewish identity as apostle to the
Gentiles concerns the way in which he goes about reforming the conduct of
believers in Christ and forming the new communities of faith. In short, Paul’s
agenda and strategy as apostle to the Gentiles is demonstrably Jewish in both
content and approach. We can see this in his indebtedness to the Jewish Scrip-
tures on such matters and in comparison with early Jewish non-canonical mor-
al teaching.
The vices Paul most commonly seeks to address in his letters, namely sexual
immorality and idolatry, are precisely those that Jews found most abhorrent
about Gentiles. It is widely recognized that in early Jewish thinking Gentiles
were consistently characterized by two particularly abhorrent vices: sexual im-
morality and idolatry. V. P. Furnish writes: “For the apostle as for the Jews, re-
jecting idolatry and abstaining from sexual immorality … are key identity
markers of the faithful community.”39
With reference to Paul’s letters, Peder Borgen notes that the vice lists of Gal
5:19–21 and 1 Cor 6:9–11, which in context contrast pagan and Christian life-
styles, have only these two sins in common.40 The dangers of sexual immorali-
ty and idolatry are in fact major concerns in large parts of 1 Corinthians. In
1 Corinthians 5–7 Paul deals with sexual immorality (5:1–13; 6:12–20) and sex in
marriage (7:1–40).41 The arrangement of ethical material within these chapters is
39 Victor P. Furnish, The Theology of First Letter to the Corinthians (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999), 51. Cf. Peder Borgen, Early Christianity and Hellenistic Juda-
ism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 245: “two vices [sexual immorality and idolatry] are cen-
tral in Jewish characterising of the pagan way of life.”
40 Borgen, Early Christianity, 240. Sexual immorality and idolatry also occur in Col 3:5;
Eph 5:5; Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25; Rev 22:15.

41 1 Cor 6:1–11, on lawsuits, is the only topic unrelated to sex in chs. 5–7.
reminiscent of Hellenistic Jewish parenesis, reported by K.-W. Niebuhr,42

which discusses sexual deviations, such as incest and homosexuality, and sexual
relations in marriage in close proximity. In 1 Corinthians 8–14 Paul addresses
idolatry (8:1–11:1) and worship of the living God (11:2–14:40). The Jewish roots
of Paul’s concerns in both cases is apparent in that Paul explicitly ties the two
vices to Old Testament background in his discussion of Israel’s failures in 1 Cor
10:7–8 and their inclusion in the vice list of 5:11 is based on their inclusion in a
list of sins associated with a Deuteronomic expulsion formula.43 2 Corinthians
carries forward this stress on the dangers of idolatry (2 Cor 6:16–7:1) and sexual
immorality (2 Cor 12:19–21).
A clear example of the same emphases from early Jewish writings is the
Sibylline Oracles, for as J. J. Collins observes, “[t]he sins in which the Sibyl ex-
presses most interest are idolatry and sexual offenses.”44 That the emphasis on
these two vices in early Jewish and Christian thought is based on scriptural in-
terpretation can be seen in William Loader’s observation that much Jewish and
Christian interpretation of the Decalogue elevates the prohibition of adultery
above murder such that idolatry heads the first table and sexual immorality the
second.45
Paul’s moral sensibilities remain thoroughly Jewish. His basic strategy for
sanctifying Gentile believers is also Jewish in key respects. This can be seen in
patterns evident in three of Paul’s earliest letters (1 Thessalonians, Romans and
1 Corinthians) when he expounds the nature of Gentile conversion, the dy-
namics of pagan sin, and his own missionary agenda. Intriguingly, the same
basic approach to moral transformation is found in examples of post-biblical
Jewish moral teaching (the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Sibyl-
line Oracles).
In 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, a passage that Jörg Frey believes shows Paul’s “fa-
miliarity with motifs and forms of Hellenistic-Jewish preaching,46 Paul de-
scribes the conversion of Thessalonian pagans: they “turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he
raised from the dead.” Here Gentile conversion is understood to entail the rejec-
42 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Gesetz und Paränese. Katechismusartige Weisungsreihen in der
frühjüdischen Literatur, WUNT 2/28 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 232.

43 Brian S. Rosner, Paul, Scripture and Ethics: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5–7 (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1999) 69; cf. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 86.
44 John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H.
Charlesworth (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2015), 1:317–472, here 323.

45 William Loader, The Septuagint, Sexuality and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Ee-
rdmans, 2004), 7; “The effect is to make it [adultery] the first of the second table, thus to ele-
vate its significance for hearers who sense this bipartite division of the decalogue, suggested to
hearers by the two tablets of stone (Exod 31:18) and by the changed focus of the content in the
second half. Adultery receives, in that sense, greater prominence.”
46 Frey, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” 294.
88 Brian Rosner
tion of idolatry in favor of the service of the true and living God and his resur-
rected Son. Christine Elizabeth Hayes points out that in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
“peoples who do not know God are described as sexually immoral and impure;
By contrast, those called by God must be sanctified, by avoiding the sexual
immorality (porneia) and impurity of such peoples”.47 Thus, according to
1 Thessalonians, those who convert to the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ
must turn away from both idols (1:9–10) and sexual immorality (4:3–8) to wor-
ship him. The notion of hope expressed by the short phrase “wait for his Son
from heaven” (1:10) is expanded in 4:13–18, where future bodily resurrection is
promised to all those who are “in Christ” when Jesus “descends from heaven.”
When we come to Romans the same priorities are evident. According to Ro-
mans 1:21–28 the typical Gentile vices of idolatry and sexual immorality are
rooted in the futility of Gentile thinking and the senselessness of Gentile hearts
(v. 21): “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (v. 22). It was
their lack of true wisdom (despite their claim to possess it) that led them to “ex-
change the glory of the immortal God for images” of human or other creatures
(v. 23) and as a result “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to
sexual impurity”, especially homosexual behavior (vv. 24–28). All of this is all
tied to the glory of God. The foolishness of the Gentiles is related to the fact that
they “neither glorified [God] as God nor gave thanks to him” (v. 21) and, as in-
dicated above, their idolatry is described as an act of exchanging “the glory of
the immortal God for images” (v. 23). The proper glorification of God, which
should have been expected, was replaced by idolatry and sexual immorality.
Paul’s missionary agenda is laid out most fully in Rom 15. Consistent with
the eschatological vision of Isa 66:18–21 (see “Priest of God’s Good News”
above), Paul’s raison d’être is explained using temple imagery in v. 16: as “a min-
ister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles”, Paul is to discharge his “priestly duty of
proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering
acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (15:16, cf. Isa 66:20). In this
way, Paul demonstrates his continuity with Israel’s salvation-history, while at
the same time presenting a radical eschatological vision where cultic language is
transformed into the noncultic activity of gospel preaching.
1 Corinthians is sometimes thought to have no argument and structure, other
than Paul seeking to unify a divided church by responding to a range of issues
that came to him by oral and written reports. However, Roy Ciampa and I have
argued that the order of material in the letter is Paul’s own.48 In 1 Corinthians
1–4, Paul insists that the proclamation of the death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ is a call to enter the new eschatological age established in and by
47 Christine E. Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Con-
version from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 93.
48 See Rosner and Ciampa, “The Structure and Argument.”
him. It demands that all people submit in unity to Christ, living out the wisdom
of the other-person-centered lifestyle of the cross. In chapters 5–7, believers in
Christ must abandon the Gentile vice of sexual immorality (to the glory of God;
6:20). In chapters 8–14 they must abandon the Gentile vice of idolatry, and give
proper worship to the one true God (to the glory of God; 10:31). And in chapter
15, such Gentiles’ lives are to be characterized by expectant hope for the final
consummation of God’s glory (and so their own glorification) in the future
bodily resurrection.
That Paul’s agenda and approach in his Gentile mission has affinities with
Jewish moral teaching contemporary with Paul can be seen from three examples
from the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. In the Testament of Judah 18–19
the readers are exhorted to abstain from sexual immorality, which blinds the
soul (T. Jud. 18:2, 6), from lewdness and harlotry (T. Jud. 18:2; 23:1–2), and from
idols and idolatries (T. Jud. 19:1; 23:1). These exhortations are framed with a
view to the resurrection unto life of the Patriarchs and martyrs, when all the
people shall glorify the Lord forever (T. Jud. 25:1–5).
In the Testament of Dan 5 the readers are exhorted to speak truth with their
neighbors and to live in peace, united to one another with a true heart (T. Dan
5:2–3) in order not to fall into lust. They are to be on guard against all the spirits
of fornication (T. Dan 5:5–6). Finally, they are to return to the Lord and be
brought into his sanctuary (T. Dan 5:9) in anticipation of the salvation and vic-
tory of the Lord when the saints shall rest in Eden, and the righteous shall rejoice
in the new Jerusalem, which shall be unto the glory of God for ever and ever (T.
Dan 5:10–13).
And in the Sibylline Oracles, Book 3 idolatry is denounced (Sib. Or. 3:35–39,
46, 741–743, 762; 4:34–35,), for the sake of true temple worship (Sib. Or. 3:726–
33, 746) and the great glory of God (Sib. Or. 4:37–38, 760–61). Adultery (Sib. Or.
3:46, 751), immoral widows (Sib. Or. 3:53–55) and homosexuality (Sib. Or.
3:764) are also condemned. This instruction is presented in the context of the
promise of a renewed holy race that fully honors the temple of God (Sib. Or.
3:573–600).
5. Conclusion
Does Paul the Apostle from Israel to the Gentiles uphold his Jewish identity?
Paul saw himself as a Jew who believed that Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s
long-awaited Messiah, had called him to the Jewish roles of servant, prophet
and priest to perform the task of heralding the gospel to the nations. He contin-
ued to hold to the central beliefs of Judaism, including the law, election and the
temple, albeit in a reconfigured form. And he undertook his Gentile mission in
ways that are recognizably Jewish.
Which Paul? Whose Judaism?
A Socio-Cognitive Approach to Paul within Judaism
Chris Porter
1. Introduction
Theological and historical edifices of Paul within Judaism1 have rapidly become
de rigeur within biblical studies, ably supported by a wide range of historical,
ethnographic, philological, linguistic, and other arguments. Nevertheless, while
many of these proposals consider the proper conditions and understanding of
“Judaism” – variously construed as Ἰουδαῖοι, Jew, Judean, etc. – few venture an
approach to Paul’s own self-understanding in the matter. Undoubtedly some of
the hesitance lies within reconstructing any form of psychological understand-
ing or internal mental state. Yet, throughout the Pauline epistles the exegete is
given repeated insights into Paul’s own perception of his relationship to Juda-
ism, not least with the controversial and difficult construction of 1 Cor 9:19–23.
Indeed, Paul’s apparently vacillating presentation of his identity in 1 Corin-
thians not only gives one of the strongest statements of his self-understanding,
but also, on the surface, the most problematic. Therefore, this chapter will look
at Paul’s proclaimed personal identity as it relates to Judaism through the heu-
ristic lens of social identity theory (SIT) – a socio-cognitive approach to identi-
ty. Beginning with existing construals of “Judaism” we will then turn to a brief
overview of SIT, before working through key passages in the Pauline corpus,
culminating with 1 Cor 9.
2. Constructing Ἰουδαῖοι
Before we dive into Paul’s self-conception, we require some terminological clar-

ity regarding what is meant by “Judaism.” Morphologically the category “Juda-
ism” is most often used when translating Ἰουδαῖοι, it is particularly instructive
1 While this terminology is anachronistic it represents an apt challenge to reconstructions
of Pauline self-understanding and therefore will be used in a modern sense.

92 Chris Porter
for this exercise to examine some of the translations of the term and its cog-
nates.2
As indicated the simplest translation for Ἰουδαῖοι is that of Jew or Judaism
which usually imports distinct religio-cultic connotations.3 This basal transla-
tion of Ἰουδαῖοι associates the term with a broader religious framing which has
modern connotations, which raises distinct problems. Foremost amongst these
lies within the challenge presented by a modern translation that is distinctly
coloured by the events of the Shoah.4 In response scholars such as Stephen Ma-
son and Phillip Esler have challenged this basal translation of Ἰουδαῖοι, arguing
that categories of “religion” were unknown in the Roman world, and rather the
term should be translated as having reference to ethnic connotations. This pre-
ferred translation of Judean serves to anchor the term – and associated group –
within an ethnic framework located within the land of Judah. As Esler argues
this translation option links the people group with the ‘territorial relationship
they had with the land of Judea and its temple.’5 Indeed, this option helpfully
emphasises the ethnography of language, and is often reflective of the Greek
usage of the period. 6 Nevertheless, the basic act of translation does serve to lim-
it any term, and potentially introduce misunderstandings and anachronisms.7
Especially with a term so loaded as Ἰουδαῖοι.
Indeed, the relationship between a social-category and the name associated
with that group is more complex – even in the ancient world. Many writers use
varying names when describing the same or similar social groups, as acknowl-
edged by both Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela’s description of “Illyri-
ans.”8 In Natural History Pliny writes of them as those proprieque dicti Illyri
or the “properly named Illyrians,” and Mela describes the same group as sunt
quos proprie Illyrios vocant – “those who are properly called Illyrians.”9 In-
2 See Matthew V. Novenson, Paul, Then and Now (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022),
25–31 for a longer discussion than there is space for here.

3 With this in mind this paper will use Ἰουδαῖος/οι to dissociate later connotations of Ju-
dean and Jew.

4 Indeed, A. J. Levine argues that shifting the translation of Ἰουδαϊοι away from this reli-
gio-cultural option runs the risk of presenting a “Jew free” text, thus running the risk of
further antisemitism: “The Jew is replaced with the Judean, and thus we have a Judenrein
(‘Jew free’) text, a text purified of Jews.” Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The
Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 2006), 160, cited in David
M. Miller, “The Meaning of Ioudaios and Its Relationship to Other Group Labels in Ancient
‘Judaism,’” Currents in Research 9:1 (2010): 89–126, here 99.
5 Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2003),
68.
6 Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 63.
7 Jason A. Staples, The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People,
Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 20.
8 Danijel Dzino, “‘Illyrians’ in Ancient Ethnographic Discourse,” Dialogues d’histoire
Ancienne 40:2 (2014): 45–65, here 46–7.

9 Pliny, Natural History, 3.144. Pomp. Mela., De Choriographia, 2.56.1.
Which Paul? Whose Judaism? 93
deed, while Pliny and Mela use the term Illyrian for this group, others write of
them as “Liburni,” a likely term for out-group denigration.10 As such, an ety-
mological and ethnographic translation for groups, such as the Illyrians, may
not be sufficient. Dzino concludes that group labels “heavily depended on the
historical or political contexts where the label was used,” and that diverse con-
text is linked to differing labels, and therefore varying group descriptions and
interactions.11 As Horrell observes, the same pattern can also be applied to the
usage of Ἰουδαῖοι in distinguishing parts of the group from one another.12 In-
deed Cassius Dio argues that those “of alien race” also “affect their customs”
and can therefore be given the name Ἰουδαῖοι (Ἰουδαῖοι ὠνομάδαται).13
Therefore, we need to extend past a simple translation of socio ethnic terms
and consider more broadly the philology of group descriptions. Particularly
instructive here is the usage of Ἰουδαϊσμός as a descriptor for the actions of a
social category. Rather than examining the labelling of a group, this allows an
examination of the outward interactions and group norms for the category, ap-
proaching a description from within. While often glossed as a religious term
along the lines of “acting like a Jew”14 the data indicates a different tenor. Mason
argued that morphologically Ἰουδαϊσμός cannot simply be interpreted as “act-
ing like a Jew,”15 but rather it is “something that only non-Jews can do.”16 In this
morphological construction it certainly describes the actions which place one as
a member of the Ἰουδαῖοι but critically applies them in an inter-group context,
involving the transfer of social groups.
The transfer of social groups can be easily seen in one of the earliest uses of
Ἰουδαϊσμός, at the end of LXX Esther. There the Ἰουδαῖοι take up arms against
those of Haman’s conspiracy, leading to “many to circumcise and Judaize for
the fear of the Ἰουδαῖοι” (πολλοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν περιετέμοντο καὶ ιουδάιζον διὰ τὸν
φόβον τῶν Ιουδαίων; LXX Esther 8:17).17 Here we see both aspects at work.
First, the taking on of Jewish customs – circumcision – by non-Jews, and the
impetus riding upon the changing of social groups. True to the usage of -ϊσμός
verbs, others can also transfer their group membership by practicing the cus-
toms of another social category. Hence in 2 Maccabees we find a corresponding
10 Dzino, “‘Illyrians’ in Ancient Ethnographic Discourse,” 53.
11 Dzino, “‘Illyrians’ in Ancient Ethnographic Discourse,” 61.
12 David G. Horrell, Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Construc-
tions of Jewish and Christian Identities (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 273.
13 Dio Cassius, Hist. rom. 37.17.1, Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Bound-
aries, Varieties, Uncertainties, Hellenistic Culture and Society 31 (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1999), 150.
14 BDAG ἰουδαΐζω.
15 Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in An-
cient History,” JSJ 38:4–5 (2007): 457–512, here 468.

16 Matthew Novenson, “Paul’s Former Occupation in Ioudaismos,” in Galatians and
Christian Theology, ed. Mark Elliott et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 29.
17 Novenson, “Paul’s Former Occupation in Ioudaismos,” 31.
94 Chris Porter
threat of “Ἑλληνισμός” (Hellenizing; 2 Macc 4:10) in contrast to the group

norms of Ἰουδαῖοι.18
However, the usage in Maccabees also gives rise to a somewhat challenging
use of the term. As Novenson cogently observes, the use in Maccabees relates to
Judah Maccabee and his party, sometimes on violent terms. This promotion of
Jewish tradition does not seem to merely apply to non-Jews seeking to transfer
group allegiances, but also to Jews who are perceived as being insufficiently on
board with the socio-cultural program. Furthermore, as is common with social
groups which feel under pressure, those who practiced Ἰουδαϊσμός sought to
strongly – and sometimes violently – advocate for their cause in an already hos-
tile environment. Therefore, Novenson concludes: “the verb ἰουδαΐζω means for
non-Jews to observe Jewish customs, whereas the cognate noun Ἰουδαϊσμός
means the defense and promotion of Jewish customs by Jewish people”19 and it
“signifies the defense under duress of Jewish ancestral traditions by certain
Jews.”20
3. Social Identity Approach to Group Identity
From this point we have some framework for the content of belief and group
membership for the category Ἰουδαιοι, but we still require a means of applying
this framework. For this we will turn to the socio-cognitive approach to group
identity and self-categorisation. Indeed, the history of Social Identity Theory is
also the history of a wrestling of being “within Judaism.” Before being captured
on the Western front by the German blitzkrieg, Henri Tajfel was a Polish stu-
dent of chemistry at the Paris Sorbonne, and more broadly an avid Franco-
phone. Upon being captured he was mistaken as a French prisoner of war rather
than a Polish Jew, a mistaken identity to which he attributed to his survival of
concentration camps and the war.21 For Tajfel, being “within Judaism” was not
just a series of practices or self-understandings, but rather something that could
be ascribed to him – in a dangerous fashion.22 On the basis of this mistaken
identity, Tajfel started research into group identity and prejudice, which would
eventually lead to the formulation of Social Identity Theory.
While space constraints do not permit a particularly extensive dive into the
theory, for our purposes an overview will suffice.23 At its simplest, social iden-
18 Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism,” 466.
21 Rupert Brown, Henri Tajfel: Explorer of Identity and Difference: Explorer of Identity
and Difference (Routledge: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 32–37.

22 Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1.

23 A longer history of Social Identity within biblical studies can be found in Christopher
tity theory argues that cognitively we are influenced by and derive an integral
part of our personal identity from the groups we are part of. Therefore, as Tajfel
defined it:
[S]ocial identity will be understood as that part of the individuals’ self-concept which
derives from their knowledge of their membership of a social group (or groups) together
with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.24
This may be understood from a tripartite heuristic: normative fit, comparative

fit, and categorisation. Normative fit describes the corporate understanding of
group norms, beliefs, and ideals. The set of self-understandings which contrib-
ute to an understanding of the group’s identity – what makes the group “us” –
and allows for metrics to judge who is in the group.25 Comparative fit describes
the other side of the coin. While a sense of ‘us’ naturally generates a category of
‘them,’ a series of beliefs regarding the boundary between the groups is required
to adequately delineate between them. Therefore, the heuristics used to com-
pare the in-group with other groups is appropriately termed comparative fit.26
Finally, categorisation describes a cognitive means of assessing these fit charac-
teristics and assigning individuals to groups. This categorisation process derives
from a broader neurological pattern of stimuli categorisation inherent within
human cognition, and likely contributes to the inherent and basal nature of
group assignment.27 Taken together these characteristics define and maintain
fuzzy sets to describe groups from the inside outwards.
However, these fit characteristics are not entirely static, as if one set of beliefs
– or social identity – fits all situations. Rather the social identity that is utilised
for construction, comparison, and categorisation varies depending on the social
setting – or contextual salience. This process of contextually varied importance
for presented identities is relatively easily recognisable, as most individuals hold
a series of identity constructions that are deployed in different circumstances.28
A professional identified by their workplace melds seamlessly into a football
crowd upon entering a stadium, and two opposing team players rapidly take on
the same social identity when playing for a national team. So too, as Tajfel expe-
rienced, a Polish Jew may be identified as a French prisoner-of-war when the
social identity cues of a Francophone on the western front prioritise French-
A. Porter and Brian S. Rosner, “‘All Things to All People’: 1 Corinthians, Ethnic Flexibility,
and Social Identity Theory,” CBR 19:3 (2021): 286–307.
24 Henri Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1982), 2.

25 S. Alexander Haslam, Stephen D. Reicher, and Michael J. Platow, The New Psychology
of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2011), 66.
26 Haslam, Reicher, and Platow, The New Psychology of Leadership, 67.
27 Penelope J. Oakes, S. Alexander Haslam, and John C. Turner, Stereotyping and Social
Reality (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1994), 95.

28 S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach (Lon-
don: SAGE, 2004), 34.

96 Chris Porter
ness over Polish-ness. Therefore, we must treat the process of categorisation and
assessment of fit characteristics as intrinsically socially located. That the specif-
ics of group belief which are salient in one context may be unimportant or un-
intelligible in another.
Along with these basal processes two further aspects also impact on our anal-
ysis. The first deals with how deviant members of groups are treated. Those
who deviate from the group norms, but seek to maintain membership within
the group, are often perceived as a threat to the group. Especially if their be-
haviour strays towards other near-group membership. Therefore, group mem-
bers often denigrate – derogate – that group member more harshly than they
would non-members of the group – even if doing the same thing. The degree to
which this Black Sheep Effect is enacted is associated with the strength of the fit
characteristics for the group – its entitativity.29 Groups with stronger norms
and boundaries will naturally seek to disassociate with straying members of the
group so that they will not be perceived similarly.
The final heuristic comes with the means of comparison. In any system it is
insufficient to simply compare between two items. Rather – for an adequate
comparison – one requires three items to determine aspects of similarity and
dissimilarity.30 This is also the case for social groups. Within the group this is
inherent in the use of prototypes and exemplars as a reference point but requires
attention in historical perspective.
4. Paul and “Judaism”?
With this in mind we can now turn to some examples of Paul’s description in
relation to Judaism to see how he possibly understood his group identity.
4.1 Acts
Although Acts is not Paul’s self-description, it provides a helpful basis for un-
derstanding some of the broader context for these discussions. In the initial in-
stance, Paul is ascribed as a “man of Tarsus” (9:11; 21:39; 22:3), but also explicit-
ly introduced as a Ἰουδαῖος (21:39; 22:3). Here – as seen above – the translation
of Ἰουδαῖος as an ethnographic region somewhat breaks down, given that Paul’s
social identity can be subsequently conflated with the specific ethnic region of
Tarsus. Nevertheless, as Barclay highlights this is not an abnormal situation,
29 Adam G. White, Paul, Community, and Discipline: Establishing Boundaries and Deal-
ing with the Disorderly, Paul in Critical Contexts (Lanham: Lexington Books and Fortress
Academic, 2021), 200.
30 Formulation developed in conversation with Kenneth Mavor. Both of us recognise that
we have been using the analogy for a while, but with no common origin.
with Philo being similarly identified as Ἰουδαῖος, despite being resident in

Egypt.31 Therefore, Paul may be appropriately described as a “Diaspora Jew,” a
sub-group of the broader category of Ἰουδαῖος. Furthermore, Acts not only has
Paul self-identify as a Ἰουδαῖος, but also has other characters identify him in the
same way. The angry slave owners of Acts 16 specifically sledge Paul and Silas
by virtue of their identity as Ἰουδαῖοι.32
However, Acts also describes Paul as displaying a remarkable degree of so-
cial-category flexibility. In his defence Paul often claims a Roman identity
(16:37; 22:25), along with that of his identity as Ἰουδαῖος. Indeed, Paul’s Roman
identity even came through birth lineage, rather than purchase, in contrast to
his interlocutor. This Paul displays no compunction as to leveraging specific
social identities for rhetorical purposes. Along with that of his Roman identity,
he also seeks to divide the Sanhedrin because of his claimed identity as a Phari-
see (23:6). It is this degree of identity flexibility and interaction that often causes
consternation for commentators, and which we shall turn to now.
4.2 Galatians
Turning to Galatians, we find a series of explosive passages engaging with
Ἰουδαιοι identity. In the opening of the letter Paul writes of his “former lifestyle
in Ἰουδαϊσμῷ” (1:13) and that he “advanced in Ἰουδαϊσμῷ” (1:14). While some
commentators take this as a basic description of Ἰουδαῖοι group membership, we
have already seen that Ἰουδαϊσμῷ can carry social content of a coercive form of
Judaising. Given that this Judaising related to the “persecution of the gatherings
of God” (1:13) it is probable that this related to those perceived to be breaking
group norms, and therefore derogated as black sheep. As Novenson observes:
Virtually all Jews follow the ancestral traditions, but only a subset fight for the cause of
judaization, defending the traditions even to the point of harassing other Jews whom
they suspect of endangering those traditions, as both Judah Maccabee and Paul did.33
Thus, this zeal which Paul describes likely involved coercing these black sheep
to return to the fold, by any means possible. In the immediate context this is
contrasted with his relinquishing of coercive Judaising by the means of “God[’s]
[…] revelation of his Son to me” (1:15–16). Effectively Paul is enacting the Black
Sheep Effect to derogate those members of the in-group who his group – those
of the Ἰουδαϊσμῷ – perceived to abrogate the group norms.
31 John M. G. Barclay, “Paul Among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?,” JSNT 18:60
(1996): 89–120, here 91; see too John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From
Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE), Hellenistic Culture and Society 33 (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1996), 92–8.
32 Novenson, Paul, Then and Now, 26.
98 Chris Porter
However, this only gives us two points of contact in our comparison. Yet,
Paul rapidly presents us with a third, and soon a fourth. As Paul’s “former way
of life in Judaising” is being compared with his new way of life as a “servant of
Christ” (1:10) he then introduces the trips to Jerusalem to first visit Cephas and
James and then the rest of the supposed pillars of the church (οἱ δοκοῦντες
στῦλοι; 2:9). In these meetings Paul introduces his third point of comparison,
with the confirmation from the apparent in-group arbiters, of the group norms
he is proclaiming. This third point of comparison allows for an understanding
of both similarity and difference. In this case we find a difference between the
“gospel” preached by Paul as Ἰουδαϊσμῷ and that which he preaches in this new
way of life. This is clearly seen with in that Titus, as a gentile, was not compelled
to be circumcised – despite the usage of Ἰουδαϊσμῷ in Esther indicating that this
would be a reasonable option for that group. Critically this also places Paul
within the norms of the new group, and not derogated as a black sheep.34
In contrast, as Paul confronts Cephas in Antioch he strongly derogates him
within the group in two regards. Peter as the fourth point of comparison is de-
scribed as “fear[ing] those of the περιτομῆς” (2:12). The norms of which group
likely align closely with that of the broader group of Ἰουδαϊσμῷ already de-
scribed. In turn this leads to Cephas adopting group behaviours – drawing away
from table fellowship with Gentiles (2:12) – which implicitly eschew his in-
group identity.35 Furthermore, this identity structure is emphasised by Paul’s
own prior involvement with Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, thereby allowing him to concretely
identify Cephas as aligning with those group norms (2:14). In this three-way
comparison, Peter is not only described as dissimilar from the in-group – the
basis for which is described in the content of the gospel presented to the Jerusa-
lem στῦλοι – but also as similar to an out-group – of which Paul has intimate
knowledge from his “prior life” (1:13).
By offering up this comparison Paul can begin to obliquely address the crux
of the Galatian epistle: circumcision. Itself a key tenet of the Ἰουδαϊσμῷ group,
as seen in LXX Esther and 2 and 4 Maccabees, it becomes one of the norms
under dispute here. Therefore, Paul uses his former group identity as a means of
identifying Cephas as a black sheep straying out of the fold and closer to the
Ἰουδαϊσμῷ group. This derogation has two functions, first to discourage any
others from following after Cephas, and secondly to call Cephas back to the
group.
What then can we say of Paul? Certainly, in this case he eschews his previous
group identity as Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, and instead describing himself as a messianic ser-
vant (1:10). Does this place him outside the bounds of Ἰουδαῖος though? Not
34 White, Paul, Community, and Discipline, 206.

35 James Crossley, “Paul within Judaism? A Response to Paula Fredriksen and John
Gager,” JJMJS 5 (2018): 46–54, here 51.
necessarily. Rather, Paul goes on to describe himself as a “natural Jew” and uti-
lises first person pronouns to do so. At least in Galatians we must conclude that
Paul considers himself “within Judaism,” although not within the “coercive”
stream therein.
4.3 Philippians
Following on from Paul’s self-description in Galatians, we see another example
in Philippians of his self-understanding as a Ἰουδαῖος. While Paul may have
stepped away from the coercive stream of Judaism in Galatians, many scholars
place his self-description in Phil 3:4–9 as a declaration of his “apostasy” from
Judaism.36 Here we find Paul responding to those who are “the mutilation” (τὴν
κατατομήν; 3:2), an oblique reference to circumcision mentioned in the following
verse. As such Paul claims his “fleshly” (3:4) resume, as “Israel,” “a Benjami-
nite,” and a “Hebrew” (Ἰσραήλ, φυλῆς Βενιαμίν, Ἑβραῖος ἐξ Ἑβραίων; 3:5) along
with some socio-religious groups: “Pharisee,” “Persecutor,” and “Righteous”
(κατὰ νόμον Φαρισαῖος, κατὰ ζῆλος διώκων τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, κατὰ δικαιοσύνην τὴν
ἐν νόμῳ γενόμενος ἄμεμπτος; 3:5–6). This series of ethnic and socio-religious
groupings all form a variety of interrelated groups within the general orbit of
Ἰουδαῖος. As Eyl highlights, this devolution from the generic Ἰουδαῖος to the
more specific Ἰσραήλ, Βενιαμίν, and Ἑβραῖος serves to prove his “authentic
membership in this more ancient ethnic group whose written stories he (re)in-
terprets to a Gentile audience.”37 Therefore, at this point we should read these
not as declarations separate from Ἰουδαῖος but rather as constituent components
thereof.
But Paul subsequently upends the tables by “declaring all such things worth-
less in comparison to Christ,”38 effectively declaring the comparisons null and
void. Here, Paul’s strong language of σκύβαλα drives interpretations which read
him as apostatizing from Ἰουδαῖος identity and creating something new. From a
social identity perspective, however, this reversal is driven by the contextual
salience of the normative characteristics within the narrative. Here, the “confi-
dence in the flesh” plays a critical role in the argumentation and would seem to
indicate that Paul’s eschewing of identity is related to the “dogs,” “evil work-
ers,” and “the mutilation.”
While two of these appellations have relatively logical referents, the framing
of “dogs” (κύνας; 3:2) has given some pause for exegetes. The traditional reading
of this polemical epithet has located the oddity within a cultural argument –
stemming from Chrysostom – that Jews often denigrated Gentiles as “dogs”
36 Cf. Barclay, “Paul Among Diaspora Jews, “ 113, 118.

37 Jennifer Eyl, “‘I Myself Am an Israelite’: Paul, Authenticity and Authority,” JSNT 40:2
(2017): 148–68, here 155.
38 Novenson, Paul, Then and Now, 54.
100 Chris Porter
and the Philippian discourse represents an inversion of this rhetoric.39 However,

this near consensus appears to have little philological basis, with Nanos con-
vincingly arguing that there is no Jewish tradition of calling Gentiles dogs in
our extant literature.40 Instead Nanos locates a possible alternative within “pa-
gan” cults such as those of “Silvanus, Diana, Cerberus, Hekate, and Cybele.”41
But this generates a new problem, as the socio-cognitive argument does not
cohere strongly with Paul’s own “fleshly” resume. One approach to resolving
this problem comes from Thiessen’s suggestion that the opponents of Philippi-
ans are “a group of rival missionaries who are actually non-Jews themselves.”42
Therefore, he argues, “the dog language, then, is not Paul using a Jewish slur for
gentiles against Jews, but, like Mark and Matthew, using the term in reference
to gentiles. In Paul’s mind, these judaizing gentiles are nothing more than dogs
in sheep’s clothing.”43 Drawing on identity construction this is attractive, as it
provides a strong identity constrict to Paul’s self-disclosure of 3:4–9. Neverthe-
less, this approach may be further strengthened by the proposal from Collman,
which locates the “dog” language within the usage of κύων as vulgar phallic
slang.44 From this usage Collman argues that “for Paul, when it comes to cir-
cumcision, its wrongful adoption by and imposition on gentiles, and the boast-
ing therein, there is no time for pleasantries.”45
Therefore, in the broader context this pattern of out-group argument follows
a similar line to that of Galatians, with Paul’s vitriol being focused on a group
who are coercing Gentiles to Judaize, in a similar fashion to Paul’s own experi-
ence as Ἰουδαϊσμῷ. Whether these “dogs” of “the mutilation” are themselves
Ἰουδαῖοι or Gentile proselytes encouraging circumcision is relatively moot for
Paul’s rhetorical argument. Instead, as Zoccali proposes “for Paul, the gospel
arises from within Judaism, and the Christ community is itself a form of Juda-
ism” and therefore this dispute “may represent an implicit dispute between rival
Jewish factions.”46 Therefore, Paul deploys a qal wa-homer argument, relativ-
39 Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos, 1.2.1–2

40 Mark Nanos, “Paul’s Reversal of Jews Calling Gentiles ‘Dogs’ (Philippians 3:2): 1600
Years of an Ideological Tale Wagging an Exegetical Dog?,” Biblical Interpretation 17:4 (2009):
448–82, here 481.
41 Nanos, “Paul’s Reversal,” 475.
42 Matthew Thiessen, “Gentiles as Impure Animals in the Writings of Early Christ Fol-
lowers,” in Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Michel Bar-
Asher Siegal, Grünstäudl Wolfgang, and Matthew Thiessen, WUNT 394 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2017), 26.
43 Thiessen, “Gentiles as Impure Animals,” 27.
44 Ryan D. Collman, “Beware the Dogs! The Phallic Epithet in Phil 3.2,” NTS 67:1 (2021):
105–20, here 118.

45 Collman, “Beware the Dogs! The Phallic Epithet in Phil 3.2,” 119.
46 Christopher Zoccali, Reading Philippians after Supersessionism: Jews, Gentiles, and
Convenant Identity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), 62–3.

ising his own “fleshly” resume, in order to promote the super-ordinate “in-
Christ” identity (3:9) which itself is a shared-group identity.47
In this way Paul prosecutes two arguments. First, that the “dogs” of “the
mutilation” should be denigrated as black sheep of the community and may be
identified as such because of Paul’s own “fleshly” resume as one “circumcised
on the eighth day.” These “dogs” should not be allowed to wag the community
by coercing them to be circumcised as the “fleshly” confidence is considered
σκύβαλα for Gentiles. Second, Paul argues that all of the “fleshly” resume for
Ἰουδαῖοι is relativised in the “subordination and alteration of his … identity to
the new superordinate identity he has attained ‘in Christ.’”48 This does not ob-
viate the advantages of being Ἰουδαῖοι (Rom 3:1)49 but rather places it within a
broader super-ordinate category of “in Christ” with a broader set of norms and
comparators.
4.4 1 Corinthians
Our final piece of Pauline self-description comes with the challenging passage
of 1 Corinthians 9:
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as
one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under
the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free
from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22
To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all
people, that I might by all means save some. (1 Cor 9:20–23 NRSV).
In this passage Paul appears to describe a personal socio-cognitive infidelity,

where his flexibility in group membership transgresses several different social
categories. Indeed, some have argued that Paul’s “all things to all people” pre-
sentation highlights a form of ethnic duplicitousness in his relationship to the
socio-ethnic context.50 More positively other commentators have suggested
this is an “adaptive mission strategy” focused on outward presentation rather
than inward identity.51 However, even this positive framing yields a problemat-
ically dissonant socio-cognitive identity, due to identity being found within the
cognitive integration of internal understanding and external actions for norma-
tivity.
47 Zoccali, Reading Philippians after Supersessionism, 88–9.

48 Zoccali, Reading Philippians after Supersessionism, 104.
49 Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017),
107.
50 E.g. C. K. Barrett, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 2nd ed. (London: Continuum, 1994),
211.
51 Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, PNTC (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 423.

102 Chris Porter
Rather, I suggest that a way forward lies with further complexifying the group
structures on display. Many commentators suggest that the apparent repetition
of the social categories Ἰουδαίοις (9:20) and “those under the law” (τοῖς ὑπὸ
νόμον; 9:20) is primarily for rhetorical emphasis, so Ciampa and Rosner: “By
Jews here Paul means the same thing, or nearly the same thing, as he does by
those under the law.”52 But rhetorically this also flattens the quadripartite dis-
tinctions between Jew and Gentile that is then suggested in the latter portion of
this pericope. It is within this rhetorical concern that other commentators have
sought to locate Paul’s socio-ethnic flexibility. Nanos associates this flexibility
with other instances of Paul’s rhetorical adaptability, such as the conflation of
Jewish and Gentile concerns in the Areopagus speech of Acts 17.53 It is in this
conflation of ethnic concerns that other scholars – such as Rudolph – locate Jew-
ish ethnic identity as an overlapping set with that of the novel “in Christ” iden-
tity.54 But, as Tucker notes, this leaves Paul open to charges of hypocrisy regard-
ing Torah obedience by “becoming like one not having the law” (9:20).55
In response to these challenges, Tucker represents a helpful initial social iden-
tity approach to the text, arguing that Paul’s ethnic identity falls on a spectrum
of diversity within the broad category of Ἰουδαῖος (9:20). From this perspective
Paul’s Jewish identity finds its salient expression within his “in Christ” identity
in a similar pattern of that of other groups finding “subgroup identity within [a]
broader classification of Jews.”56 Following this structure, Tucker identifies the
group of “those under the law” (ὡς ὑπὸ νόμον; 9:20) as a sub-group within the
super-ordinate category of Ἰουδαῖος introduced in the prior clause – more spe-
cifically identifying them as a Pharasaic sectarian group.57 Indeed this sub-
group approach coheres well with examinations of complex identity structures,
such as that of Ἰουδαϊσμῷ as a sub-group of Ἰουδαῖοι, as examined earlier. In-
deed, I suggest that this group may be further narrowed to a form of coercive
Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, as Paul himself describes in Galatians. Through Paul’s embodying
of salient group norms, he can diffuse through sub-group boundaries and pres-
ent himself as “one-of-us” in the group.
But does this obviate the more contentious clause in this passage: that Paul
apparently reneged on the law to mix with those who themselves are “ἄνομος”?
Does a sub-group structure give enough flexibility to allow the giving up of key
group norms? Tucker argues that Paul’s halakhic flexibility described in 1 Cor-
52 Ciampa and Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, 426.

53 Mark Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship to Torah in Light of His Strategy ‘to Become Every-
thing to Everyone’ (1 Corinthians 9:19–23)” cited in J. Brian Tucker, Remain in Your Calling:
Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock,
2011), 94.
54 David J. Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews, 2nd ed. (Wipf and Stock, 2016), 173.
55 Tucker, Remain in Your Calling, 97.
inthians 7 allows for such an interaction with the ἄνομος, through the caveat of
being “under Christ’s law” not simply being “free from God’s law” (9:21).58
Thus “Paul socially identifies with gentiles by becoming ‘as one without the
Law’; however, his Jewish identity remains salient in his mission among the
nations.”59 “Christ’s law“ in this context becomes a paradigm of “lenient hal-
akah” – following Bockmuehl – that allows for table fellowship with the ἄνομος
whilst also observing Torah. 60 Indeed, this suggested variegated table fellow-
ship finds a strong parallel with the Antioch incident described in Galatians 2.
Paul’s giving up of his Ἰουδαϊσμῷ identity, and constraining others to a strict
halakah, leads him to adopt this same lenient halakah and maintain table fellow-
ship in a flexible fashion.
Critically, the pattern of sub-group relations described here allows for a
strong variegation in how these groups interact. As all the groups mentioned in
the pericope – including the “weak” of 9:22 – are perceived as able to be sub-
groups of the super-ordinate group “in Christ,” the challenge of boundary per-
meability is diminished. Thus, the Ἰουδαίοις, the ὑπὸ νόμον, the ἄνομος, and the
ἀσθενής may all be “won” (9:21) to be sub-groups of the Christ-following super-
ordinate group. Being a part of these sub-group structures does not force a re-
linquishment of their sub-group distinctives, especially given the strong
cross-cutting ethnic identities represented in these sub-groups. As such, the
group norms represented by “Christ’s law” are also secondarily applied to the
other sub-groups represented. Therefore, it is in this form that Paul can write
‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save
some’ (9:22), because the comparative fit between the sub-groups is diminished
by their co-membership within the shared super-ordinate group.
5. Social Identity and being “Within” “Judaism”
What then can we say about Paul’s understanding of what it would mean to be
“within Judaism”? From a social identity perspective this understanding be-
comes easier as it becomes more complex. While it has long been recognised that
identity structures are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the nature of norma-
tive and comparative fit for categorisation within a salience based metric assists
in recognising how different identity structures interact. In modern perspective
this can be seen to good effect in the re-categorisation of Jews as Bulgarians
during World War II to protect Bulgarian Jewish communities and prevent their
deportation. 61 As Reicher et al. observed many of the arguments advanced
61 Stephen Reicher et al., “Saving Bulgaria’s Jews: An Analysis of Social Identity and the
104 Chris Porter
sought to blur socio-ethnic category boundaries and appealed to a complexified

category construction of “Jews are Bulgarians.”62 These arguments argued that
the category of “Jew” should be incorporated within a super-ordinate category
of “Bulgarian” thereby creating a subgroup of “Bulgarian Jew” and halting de-
portations to non-Bulgarian camps. 63 Elevating the salience of a super-ordinate
group in this context does not eliminate sub-group categories such as “Jew,” nor
the self-categorisation of individuals within those groups. Rather, in the salient
context of WWII political debate, it served to generate a novel identity within a
broader category. Indeed, this process of assessing identity salience within nest-
ed and competing categories is a native and common engagement. With exam-
ples easily found in politics, 64 transracial adoptive narratives, 65 and – as we have
seen – ancient arguments over socio-ethnic identity. 66
Returning to the question at hand, these same processes for identity salience
are seen in Paul’s constructions of being “within Judaism.” From Acts we saw
external records of the complexity of Paul’s social identity, encompassing both
Ἰουδαῖος as well as being one from Tarsus and a Roman. Each of these deployed
in different contexts for rhetorical advantage and compared with each other for
similarity and dissimilarity. From Paul’s own self descriptions we gained a
glimpse of his prior life as Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, and his eschewing of that social category
to adopt the social category described as a “messianic servant” while still re-
maining within an understanding of Ἰουδαῖος. Similarly in Philippians we saw
Paul leveraging his “fleshly” resume to argue against a coercive Judaizing – like
Galatians – while remaining within Ἰουδαῖος as a sub-group of a broader “in-
Christ” identity. Finally, we saw in 1 Corinthians the outcome of a salient social
identity flexibility, as Paul can identify with a wide variety of sub-groups that
he perceives as not mutually exclusive within the super-ordinate “in Christ”
group. Just as in Galatians and Philippians, his Ἰουδαῖος identity forms one of
the key sub-groups – but not the sole group – in a complex identity space.
Mobilisation of Social Solidarity,” European Journal of Social Psychology 36:1 (2006): 49–72,
here 50.
62 Reicher et al., “Saving Bulgaria’s Jews,” 66 (emph. orig.).
63 Reicher et al., “Saving Bulgaria’s Jews,” 69–70.
64 See political debates over the nature of dual citizenship in Australian parliament: Sarah
O’Brien and Law and Government Group, “Dual Citizenship, Foreign Allegiance and s.44(i)
of the Australian Constitution,” Issues Brief Background Paper 29 (1992); Re Canavan; Re
Ludlam; Re Waters; Re Roberts [No 2]; Re Joyce; Re Nash; Re Xenophon HCA 45, 2017,
http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/judgment-summaries/2017/hca-45-2017-10-
27.pdf.
65 Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain, and Denise Cuthbert, The Market in Babies: Stories of
Australian Adoption (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2013).

66 As I prosecute at length in Christopher A. Porter, Johannine Social Identity Formation
after the Fall of the Jerusalem Temple: Negotiating Identity in Crisis, BINS 194 (Leiden: Brill,
2022).
As such I suggest that if a modern exegete were to ask Paul whether he con-
sidered himself “within Judaism” we would receive a confused “yes, of course.”
As we have seen in all these examples Paul considered himself Ἰουδαῖος. But this
was only one part of his identity in a complex world. Clearly, he also considered
himself no longer Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, and yet still claimed an identity as a “Pharisee”
along with parallel identity structures in relating to Gentiles in a flexible hal-
akah – like many Diaspora Jews. Is Paul then an “anomalous Jew” – a la Barclay
and Bird – similarly, “of course” – as something which resists easy classifica-
tion. 67 But this is par for the ancient course. A Ἰουδαῖος identity in the ancient
world – like other socio-ethnic identities – resisted easy classification and incor-
porated a vast range of sub-groups. From Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, coer-
cive Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, those with apocalyptic expectations, Diaspora, and Eretz – and
yes, Jesus-messiah – members, the category of “Judaism” in the ancient world is
complexly anomalous. Yet – simultaneously – it is this picture of first-century
Judaism that we see a first-century Paul, in all his complexity. 68
67 Merriam-Webster: 1. something … not easily classified.

68 Pace Paula Fredriksen, “What Does It Mean to See Paul ‘within Judaism’?,” JBL 141:2
(2022): 359–80, here 380.
“Those who were not my people”
Paul’s Gentile Churches and the Story of Israel
David Starling
1. The Story of Israel and Paul’s Gentile Churches (Gal 6:16)
Within the closing verses of Galatians, amidst the settling dust from the urgent
polemic that has occupied most of the preceding chapters, Paul pronounces an
irenically-worded benediction, framed in sweeping, forward-looking language:
“As for those who will follow this rule – peace be upon them, and mercy, and
upon the Israel of God.”1
The meaning of the first half of the benediction (“As for those who will follow
this rule …”) is relatively easy to discern, with “this rule” generally taken as
referring back to the principle Paul has stated in the immediately preceding
verse (“neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation
is everything!”) and “those who will follow” embracing within its scope all
those, Jewish or Gentile, among the followers of Christ who commit to shaping
their conduct in accordance with it.2 The benediction’s second half, however
(“peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God”), has given rise
to a wide variety of scholarly interpretations, implying various different con-
struals of the relationship between Paul’s Gentile-majority churches and the
story of Israel.3
Some (e.g. J. Louis Martyn and Martinus de Boer) interpret it almost entirely
against the near horizon of the immediate crisis in Galatia and only indirectly,
if at all, in relation to any larger story of Israel, Christ, and the Gentiles.4 “The
1 All biblical quotations are from the NRSV.

2 The verb στοιχέω, here as in 5:25, focuses on conduct that accords to a pattern or standard
(cf. Rom 4:12; Phil 3:16), and the future tense form that Paul uses here is probably intended to
function as a signal of the enduring currency of the category on which Paul pronounces his
benediction.
3 Brief surveys of the main scholarly interpretations of Gal 6:16 can be found in Craig S.
Keener, Galatians: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 578–80; A. Andrew Das,
Galatians, CC (St Louis: Concordia, 2014), 646–52; Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Com-
mentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 405–8.
4 Cf. J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary,
AB (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 576: “When [Paul] penned Gal 6:16, he was not thinking of
the Jewish people. And he was certainly not intending to distinguish a true Israel from a false
108 David Starling
Israel of God,” according to this line of interpretation, is a self-designation of

the Jerusalem church, which Paul has borrowed and uses here to refer to that
church and those who identify with its present policy and practice (including, in
this instance, the missionaries it has sent to Galatia). It is for the Jerusalem
church and its missionaries, de Boer argues, that Paul invokes a prayer for God’s
mercy, which “looks to their eventual conversion to Paul’s understanding of the
gospel and indicates that the anathema of 1:6–9 is not eternal.”5
A reading of this sort has in its favor the clear and obvious way in which it
relates the verse to the immediate occasioning context of the letter, resisting the
temptation to leap immediately into larger, less carefully contextualized discus-
sions regarding Paul’s view of Israel or the place of Israel in a broader bibli-
cal-theological synthesis. Counting against it, however, are the speculative na-
ture of the hypothesis that “the Israel of God” is a self-designation of the Jeru-
salem church and the unlikeliness that Paul would have simply accepted without
comment or criticism the legitimacy of the claim implied by it. Nor does the
language in which Paul frames the benediction and the verses that immediately
precede it support an interpretation that relates the verse entirely to the direct
participants in the conflict between Paul, the Jerusalem church, and the mission-
aries it has sent to Galatia. Unlike the grace-wish that concludes the letter in v.
23, the benediction of v. 21 is framed in the third person and (in line with the
universalizing language of the immediately preceding verses) 6 invites interpre-
tation against a horizon somewhat wider than the immediate crisis in Galatia.
Although the word “Israel” has not previously been used within the letter,
the story of Abraham’s offspring, the giving of the law of Moses, the curse that
the law pronounces upon those who do not observe and obey it, and the sending
of Christ to redeem those who were under the law have all been explicit topics
of discussion within the arguments from Scripture that Paul has mounted across
the preceding chapters.7 The logic of Paul’s argument within these chapters is,
one, in the sense that the church has now supplanted the synagogue. On the contrary, his at-
tention was focused quite tightly on developments within the church” (emphasis original).
5 De Boer, Galatians, 407–8. De Boer reads Gal 6:16 as invoking two separate blessings – a
blessing of “peace” on “those who will follow this rule” and a blessing of “mercy” on “the
Israel of God.”
6 E.g. “never [μὴ γένοιτο] … the world … the world” (v. 14), “anything/everything [τί] …
new creation” (v. 15).

7 De Boer’s reading of Paul’s appeals to Scripture within the preceding chapters consis-
tently minimizes the extent to which a story of Israel is presupposed or alluded to by Paul. In
his reading of 4:21–5:1, for example, he follows Martyn in arguing that the “present Jerusa-
lem” in 4:25 represents for Paul not the nation of Israel or its present politico-religious leader-
ship but the Jerusalem of law-observant Christianity, and that the married woman in Isa 54:1
refers in the original Isaianic context not to pre-exilic Jerusalem but to Babylon. Cf. Martinus
C. de Boer, “Paul’s Quotation of Isaiah 54.1 in Galatians 4.27,” NTS 50 (2004): 370–89, here
371, 381. The former point is rendered unlikely by the reference in 4:29 to persecution, which
is associated elsewhere in Galatians not with the actions of the Jerusalem church and its emis-
saries but with hostility emanating from the temple and synagogue authorities (cf. 1:13; 6:12).
“Those who were not my people” 109
at its heart, a narrative logic that seeks to persuade the Galatians by offering
them a plausible reconfiguration of Israel’s story, its climax in the story of
Christ, and its connection to the story of their own remembered experience.8
Given that context, a reference within the letter’s closing verses to “the Israel of
God” must necessarily be related not only to the competing claims of Paul and
the counter-missionaries from Jerusalem but also to the larger stories of Israel
and the Gentiles to which Paul and (presumably) the Jerusalem counter-mis-
sionaries appealed in support of their respective arguments and appeals.9
Unsurprisingly, therefore, most interpreters do relate the benediction in 6:16
to this larger, salvation-historical story, doing so (in the majority of cases) in one
of two main ways. The first and most common interpretation reads Paul’s invo-
cation of a blessing on “the Israel of God” as referring to the church (including
both Jews and Gentiles who have given their allegiance to Jesus as Messiah and
walk by the rule Paul has laid down in the previous verse), and understands the
final καί as epexegetical in its function. On this reading Paul is taken to be pro-
nouncing a single benediction on “those who will follow this rule,” describing
them in the final phrase as “even the Israel of God.”10
Cf. Ernst Baasland, “Persecution: A Neglected Factor in the Letter to the Galatians,” ST 38
(1984): 135–50. The latter point is undermined by the description of the woman in Isa 54:1c as
“desolate,” and elsewhere in the chapter as “forsaken,” “cast off,” and “abandoned” (vv. 7–8)
– descriptions that imply that her present situation is to be understood in contrast with a for-
mer time when she was living with a husband. Cf. the arguments in Joel Willitts, “Isa 54,1 in
Gal 4,24b–27: Reading Genesis in Light of Isaiah,” ZNW 96 (2005): 188–210, here 194–7, for
identifying the married woman in the original Isaianic context as pre-exilic Jerusalem. Whilst
de Boer’s reading is consistent with the interpretation implied by the Isaiah Targum (which
understands the married woman in 54:1d as representing Babylon/Rome), elsewhere in the
Second Temple Jewish interpretive tradition (e.g. Pss. Sol. 1:3–5, and Philo, Praem. 158–63)
the assumption is that the same woman is being spoken of throughout the verse, and is depict-
ed in different, successive, stages of her life.
8 Cf. especially the analysis of Paul’s argumentative strategy in Ian W. Scott, Implicit Epis-
temology in the Letters of Paul: Story, Experience and the Spirit, WUNT 2/205 (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 159–276.
9 For discussions of the role played by narrations of Israel’s story (as variously constructed
and alluded to by Paul and his opponents) within and behind Galatians, see N. T. Wright, The
Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1991), 137–74; Bruce W. Longenecker, “Sharing in Their Spiritual Blessings? The Stories of
Israel in Galatians and Romans,” in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment, ed.
Bruce W. Longenecker (Louisville: Westminster, 2002), 58–84; Morna Hooker, “‘Heirs of
Abraham’: The Gentiles’ Role in Israel’s Story,” in Longenecker, Narrative Dynamics, 85–96;
Scott, Implicit Epistemology, 159–276; David I. Starling, Not My People: Gentiles as Exiles in
Pauline Hermeneutics, BZNW 184 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 23–60; A. Andrew Das, Paul
and the Stories of Israel: Grand Thematic Narratives in Galatians (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2016).
10 Proponents of this view are numerous, and include Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s
Epistle to the Galatians: A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes and Dissertations (London:
Macmillan, 1865; repr., Peabody: Hendrickson, 1999), 225; Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die
Galater, 5th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 283; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of
Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 96; Ben Wither-
110 David Starling
The alternative interpretation of v. 16 reads “the Israel of God” as referring to

ethnic Israel and understands the καί as joining together two parallel benedic-
tions, one on the church and the other on those to whom this phrase refers.
Some of those who argue for this interpretation do so on the assumption that
the fulfilment of Paul’s wish-prayer will be contingent on national/ethnic Isra-
el’s future embrace of Jesus as Messiah,11 whereas others read it as presuppos-
ing a separate path that is open for Israel to follow, under the mercy of God but
without any necessity of faith in Jesus.12
Deciding between these two alternative interpretations of the intended mean-
ing and reference of “the Israel of God” within Paul’s benediction is far from
easy. In favour of the first is the vigor with which Paul, within the previous
chapters of the letter, has argued for the full inclusion of uncircumcised Gentile
believers among the justified people of God and the heirs of his promises. If
“neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything” (6:15; cf. 5:6) and
the Galatian believers are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”
(3:29), children of the (true, heavenly) restored Jerusalem (4:21–31),13 then it is
entirely possible that Paul might go on in the final verses of the letter to include
them among the group that he speaks of as “the Israel of God,” restored and
reconfigured around the Messiah, Jesus.14 Given the rhetorical situation Paul is
addressing in Galatians and the prominence in his readers’ minds of the imme-
diate, presenting issue raised by the counter-missionaries’ demand that they be
ington, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1998), 453; Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013),
400–3; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (London: SPCK, 2013), 538–43.
11 E.g. Franz Mussner, Der Galaterbrief, 5th ed., HTKNT (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 417;
F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1982), 275; Susan Grove Eastman, “Israel and the Mercy of God: A Re-Reading of
Galatians 6.16 and Romans 9–11,” NTS 56 (2010): 367–95; Bradley R. Trick, Abrahamic De-
scent, Testamentary Adoption, and the Law in Galatians: Differentiating Abraham’s Sons,
Seed, and Children of Promise, NovTSup 169 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 341.
12 E.g. Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the
Galatians, ICC (New York: Scribner, 1920), 358, arguing that “the Israel of God” should be
taken as referring to a pious (but not Christ-believing) remnant within the nation.
13 On the reading of Israel’s story that informs Paul’s assertions about his readers’ status in
4:21–31, see David I. Starling, “The Children of the Barren Woman: Galatians 4:27 and the
Hermeneutics of Justification,” JSPL 3 (2013): 93–109, here 100–9.
14 On the overlaps and distinctions between “Israel” and “Jews” within Paul’s letters and
in Second Temple Judaism more broadly, see especially Jason A. Staples, “What Do the Gen-
tiles Have to Do with “All Israel”? A Fresh Look at Romans 11:25–27,” JBL 130 (2011): 371–
90, here 374–8, and The Idea of “Israel” in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People,
Exile, and Jewish Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 339–48. To affirm
that Paul sees Gentiles becoming inheritors of God’s promises as Gentiles and nowhere
speaks of them as proselytes or Jews does not require us to conclude that he thereby “preserves
their separation from Israel” – contra Caroline Johnson Hodge, “The Question of Identity:
Gentiles as Gentiles – but Also Not – in Pauline Communities,” in Paul within Judaism: Re-
storing the First-Century Context to the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 153–173, here 164.
circumcised, a move of this sort in the letter’s final verses has an obvious fitting-
ness. All things considered, it is probably to be preferred as the more likely ac-
count of how Paul intended his benediction to be understood by the original
hearers of his letter as it was read within the assemblies of Galatia.
But (as advocates of the alternative interpretation rightly point out) the imme-
diate question to be answered by Paul’s readers in Galatia may not necessarily
have been the only question on Paul’s mind as he wrote to them. Important as it
was for them to come to a right understanding of their own status in relation to
the story of Israel, Paul can hardly have been oblivious to the importance of the
related question of how they (and he) should understand the present status of
(national/ethnic) Israel in view of God’s turn in mercy toward the Gentiles.
Whilst the arguments Paul has made across the previous chapters of the letter
are focused primarily on the battle he is fighting for the inclusion of the Gentiles
among the people of God, it is difficult to imagine him making them without
any consciousness on his part of the gravity of what was at stake for his fel-
low-Jews who remained outside of Christ, and for the nation of Israel collec-
tively. Susan Grove Eastman makes the point powerfully and poignantly:
[The] typology of 4:21–5:1 is not directed against Jews per se, but against those Jew-
ish-Christian missionaries who seek to circumcise his Gentile converts. But because its
logic explicitly excludes all who are not in Christ from the future promised to those born
according to the Spirit, it also implicitly excludes non-Christian Jews from that destiny.15
The pathos of this exclusion should not be lost on us. Surely Paul’s personal
history and ties with his Jewish kinsfolk, now painfully strained at best, play a
role in his thinking. Is it possible, as he writes to his Gentile converts that
“present Jerusalem is in slavery with her children,” that the city of his ancestors
and its plight do not even cross his mind? Or that, as he emphasizes his con-
verts’ inclusion in the blessing of Abraham, the exclusion of his own kin does
not cause him pain? Or that, when he warns of the disinheritance of those Gen-
tile Christians being born “according to the flesh” through the circumcising
mission, he does not also wonder about the apparent disinheritance of his own
people?
2. Paul’s Gentile Churches and the Story of Israel (Romans 9–11)
It is to questions of this sort that Paul turns in Rom 9–11, addressing a mixed
audience of Jewish and Gentile readers and pursuing an inter-related set of pas-
toral and apologetic purposes that include both a defence of Gentile inclusion
and a rebuke of Gentile boasting.16 He commences the discussion with an em-
15 Eastman, “Israel and the Mercy of God,” 388.

16 Cf. the discussions of the audience and purposes of Romans in Douglas J. Moo, The
112 David Starling
phatic and rhetorically prominent expression of his own personal anguish over
the issue.17 Paul’s anguish over the situation of Israel is not only an expression of
the fact that they are his “kindred” (9:3), or of his empathetic identification with
their plight. It is exacerbated by the convictions that he holds regarding their
identity as the covenant people of God: “They are Israelites, and to them belong
the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and
the promises” (9:4). The nation of Israel, according to Paul, are the people to
whom the promises of God were originally given. If they are cut off, then ques-
tions arise about the trustworthiness of God himself.
For much of chapters 9–11, as Paul addresses these questions, the answer that
he gives seems to hold out little hope for the majority of ethnic Israel. Paul’s
assertion in v. 6 that “it is not as though the word of God had failed” is support-
ed in the immediately following verses by a reminder that “not all Israelites
truly belong to Israel” (οὐ … πάντες οἱ ἐξ Ἰσραὴλ οὗτοι Ἰσραήλ) and “it is not the
children of the flesh who are the children of God but the children of the prom-
ise” (9:6, 8). A series of biblical examples follows,18 illustrating this principle and
affirming the freedom of God to “[have] mercy on whomever he chooses, and
… [harden] the heart of whomever he chooses” (9:18).
In 9:22–24 Paul poses a shocking rhetorical question:
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured
with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has
done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which
he has prepared beforehand for glory – including us whom he has called, not from the
Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
The implication of the question is hard to miss: if it turns out in the end that
national Israel was nothing more than an “[object] of wrath … made for de-
Letter to the Romans, 2nd ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 8–20, and (from a
“Paul within Judaism” perspective) Peter J. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the
Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 59–61.
17 The following paragraphs are adapted from David I. Starling, “The Yes to All God’s
Promises: Jesus, Israel and the Promises of God in Paul’s Letters,” RTR 71 (2012): 185–204,
here 198–201.
18 Paul’s main mode of argument from Scripture in Rom 9 is by example or analogy, citing
instances from the scriptural story of Israel in order to provide illustrations of a more general
pattern (“not all Israelites truly belong to Israel”; “not the children of the flesh … but the
children of the promise”; “not by works but by his call”; “not on human will or exertion, but
on God who shows mercy”) and suggest correspondences between the ways of God in the
past and the claims that Paul is making about God’s action in the present. Nevertheless (as
Francis Watson points out) it is striking that Paul’s string of citations in Romans maintains the
scriptural (i.e., LXX) ordering of his texts from Genesis, Exodus, Hosea and Isaiah, suggest-
ing that he is reading Scripture not only as a repository of general principles and illustrative
types but also as a linear narrative leading (though not leading smoothly or unsurprisingly)
toward Christ. Cf. Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 2nd ed. (London:
T&T Clark, 2015), 21; Starling, Not My People, 150–1.
struction,” in order to serve as part of a divine plan directed toward the salva-
tion of others, then even that would be within the rights of God the creator.
After all, as Paul has just asserted, the potter has the right to make whatever he
wishes out of the clay (v. 21).
The immediate impression conveyed by the verses that follow, at first reading,
is that this is indeed what God has done.19 Gentiles, who once were “not my
people” have been called “my people” (vv. 25–26) and Israel – in a manner anal-
ogous to the judgement prophesied in Isaiah 10:22 – has been reduced to noth-
ing more than a tattered remnant (vv. 27–29).20 In the paragraphs that follow
(9:30–10:21) Paul mulls over the reasons why Israel “stumbled over the stum-
bling stone” (9:32), concluding with a gloomy image, drawn from Isaiah, of the
nation of Israel as “a disobedient and contrary people” (10:21).
But the initial impression most readers take from the rhetorical question in
9:22–24 – that God has indeed done what he has a right to do, and that national
Israel’s part in the story of God’s salvation is over – is never explicitly confirmed
by Paul. In the opening verses of chapter 11 the image of “stumbling” resurfaces
and Paul turns to the question of whether Israel’s rejection is final and irrevers-
ible. He puts the question twice, with deliberate repetition: “I ask, then, has
God rejected his people?” (11:1); “so I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall?”
(11:11). Both times, the immediate answer he gives is the same: “By no means!”
(11:1, 11). But the arguments with which he supports these two emphatic denials
differ.
In the first instance, within 11:1–10, his answer is a reiteration of the earlier
arguments about the remnant that exists in Paul’s own day: “Israel failed to
obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened”
(11:7). But the second answer, in 11:11–32 is more ambitious, pushing beyond the
preservation of a remnant in the present to a larger, more audacious hope. The
depiction of “jealous” Israel in vv. 11–15 draws on an image already evoked in
19 On the dynamics of rhetorical suspence and potential multivalence in Rom 9:22–26, see
Charles H. Cosgrove, “Rhetorical Suspense in Romans 9–11: A Study in Polyvalence and

Hermeneutical Election,” JBL 115 (1996): 271–7; Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 34–83; Wayne A.
Meeks, “On Trusting an Unpredictable God: A Hermeneutical Meditation on Romans 9–11,”
in Faith and History: Essays in Honor of Paul W. Meyerr, ed. John T. Carroll, C. H. Cosgrove,
and E. Elizabeth Johnson (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 105–24.
20 As a number of commentators rightly point out, the “only” in the NRSV (and most
English versions of v. 27) is an interpretive addition; cf. Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 68; Robert
Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 602, John Paul
Heil, “From Remnant to Seed of Hope for Israel: Romans 9:27–29,” CBQ 64 (2002): 703–20,
here 705; Shayna Sheinfeld, “Who Is the Righteous Remnant in Romans 9–11? The Concept
of Remnant in Early Jewish Literature and Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” in Paul the Jew, ed.
Gabriele Boccaccini, Carlos A. Segovia, and Cameron J. Doody (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2016), 43. Nevertheless, it is an addition that seems justified in the light of the notes of threat
and lament in the original contexts of Isa 10:22–23 and 1:9 (respectively) and the direction of
Paul’s thought as he moves from vv. 27–28 to v. 29 – a movement that Heil’s thoroughgoingly
positive translation and interpretation of vv. 27–28 fails to account for.
114 David Starling
10:2, 19 as part of an argument for Israel’s culpability. Now, however, that same
jealousy is portrayed as a force through which Paul hopes that salvation will
come to “some” within Israel (v. 14) – a hope flanked by even more optimistic
references to the “fulness” of Israel (v. 12)21 and an “acceptance” that will
amount to “life from the dead” (v. 15). In support of this hope, the twin analo-
gies of the first fruits and the batch of dough and the root and the branches in v.
16 echo the arguments from Scripture about the remnant of Israel in the preced-
ing chapters, and now uncover their latent implications for the rest of the nation.
“If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is
holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy” (v. 16).
Likewise, the olive-tree metaphor of vv. 17–24 begins by recalling the various
quotations from Scripture in 9:6–11:10 concerning the judgements of God on
hardened Israel and the inclusion of Gentile believers in the place they once
occupied: “Branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted
in their place” (v. 17). Now, however, having spoken in chapters 9–10 about the
way in which Gentiles were grafted by grace into the fulfilment of promises not
originally given to them, Paul makes explicit the question of whether, by the
same grace, the “natural branches” that were pruned because of unbelief could
be grafted back into the fulfilment of the same promises (vv. 23–24).
In the verses that follow, the original reference of the language of the resto-
ration-of-Israel promises (in this case, Isa 59:20; 27:9) reasserts itself emphati-
cally. The picture Paul paints within these verses does not necessarily imply an
expectation of each and every Israelite embracing salvation in (or apart from)
Christ. It does, however, require the inclusion of a sufficient proportion of those
who are currently “hardened” and outside the believing remnant to constitute a
“fulness” of Israel (v. 12) comparable with the “fulness” of the Gentiles (v. 25),
and an “acceptance” which, when compared with their current rejection, stands
out as nothing less than “life from the dead” (v. 15).22
The phrase “all Israel” that Paul uses in v. 26 may well include the Gentiles of
vv. 17–24 who were “grafted in” while the majority of Israel were hardened –
Paul never specifies whether the “olive tree” into which they were grafted stands
for the family of Abraham, the people of the Messiah, the enlarged and expand-
ed Israel of the last days, or some combination of all of the above. But regardless
of whether Paul’s reference to “all Israel” in v. 26 is to be taken as referring to a
Gentile-inclusive or exclusively Jewish community, the larger arc of his ideas
21 NRSV “full inclusion.”

22 Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Romans, WBC (Dallas: Word, 1988), 2:681; Moo, Letter to the
Romans, 706–8. The οὕτως in v. 26 (if it is to be understood in its commonest sense as “thus”
or “in this way”), is probably a pointer to the process by which Paul anticipates this dramati-
cal reversal taking place – i.e., as extension and fulfilment of the hope that he has already ex-
pressed in vv. 13–14, involving the paradoxical means of the Gentile mission and the incite-
ment of Israel to jealousy.
across vv. 11–32 clearly implies a future for ethnic Israel that includes far more
than the preservation of a tiny remnant of Jewish Christ-believers within or
alongside a Gentile-majority church.
In choosing the texts that he quotes in vv. 26–27, Paul seems to have deliber-
ately selected texts that speak of Israel’s salvation not as deliverance from the
Gentiles but as deliverance from their own “ungodliness” and “sins,” in terms
that emphasize the divine initiative in bringing about Israel’s final repentance.
This focus prepares the way for the emphasis on “mercy” in vv. 30–32 as the key
to God’s mysterious workings among Israel and the Gentiles.23 As Paul draws
together the threads of this whole section in these verses, suggesting that “God
has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (v. 32) his
language is reminiscent of the similar formulations in 5:20–21 and 3:19–24 (cf.
Gal 3:22–24). Whilst so much of the energy of Rom 9–11 has been expended on
the task of tracing the different paths of Israel and the Gentiles within the pur-
poses of God, Paul’s summary at the end of this section of the argument sug-
gests not only a final convergence between the two paths but also a paradoxical
symmetry, which he expresses in the complex formulations of vv. 30–31: “Just
as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of
their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the
mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy.”
Read within the context of this intricate, gradually-unfolding argument,
Paul’s use of the Hosea quotations in 9:25–26 regarding the mercy of God to
those who are “not my people” fulfils two primary functions, both of which
contribute to his overall aims in the letter.24 In the first place, within the imme-
diate purposes of the argument in 9:22–29, Paul makes use of the Hosea quota-
tions typologically, to show the correspondence between the calling of the Gen-
tiles in the gospel and the mercy promised to Israel when Israel’s betrayal of the
covenant was such that it had rendered her capable of being described as “not
my people.”25 This first, typological, use of the Hosea texts fits within a larger
hermeneutical pattern in which Paul appropriates “not …” texts originally re-
ferring to Israel (9:30, cf. Isa 51:1; 10:20, cf. Isa 65:1) and applies them to the
Gentiles, 26 as part of the still larger pattern within Romans in which Israel’s
23 The quotation from Exod 33:19 in v. 15 is the first occurrence of the verb ἐλεέω (“have
mercy”) and its cognates and synonyms within Romans. Subsequent instances include 9:18;
11: 30, 31, 32 (ἐλεέω); 9:16; 12:8 (ἐλεάω); 9:23; 11:31; 15:9 (ἔλεος); 12:1 (οἰκτιρμός). The verb
ἐλεέω is also prominent within LXX Hos 1–2 (cf. Hos 1:6, 7; 2:3, 6, 25).
24 Cf. the discussion in Starling, Not My People, 162–5, from which following paragraphs
are adapted.
25 Staples goes a step further, arguing that in Paul’s view the Gentiles called to belong to
Christ are the seed of Ephraim, about whom the promises of Hosea were originally spoken.
Cf. Staples, “All Israel,” 381–3.
26 Cf. J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah “in Concert,” NovTSup
116 David Starling
story of sin, exile and redemption is presented as corresponding typologically

or analogically with the idolatry, judgement and salvation of the Gentiles.
At the same time, within the larger argument of chapters 9–11, Paul’s use of
the Hosea quotations hints at the questions that they raise for the future destiny
of an Israel that is still (or once more)27 in a kind of metaphorical exile that
corresponds to the impending plight of the Israel to whom the promise of resto-
ration was originally given. Given the prominence of those questions within
chapters 9–11 and the way in which Paul resolves them in 11:11–32, it is most
unlikely that this second function of the quotations, bound up with the origi-
nal, contextual reference of Hosea’s words to the nation of Israel, is completely
obliterated by the former, typological appropriation of the promises. If the only
salvation for Gentile believers is through being grafted into God’s people by
faith in promises originally given to a people who had been cut off for unbelief,
then they have no right to boast over the branches that were cut off to make
room for them, or to assume that the branches cut off as “not my people” cannot
be grafted back in by the same kindness of God that was extended to them as
Gentiles.
3. Gentile Churches, Israel’s Story,

and the “Paul within Judaism” Conversation
The multiple layers of significance that Paul perceived within Israel’s story for
the Gentile believers in Galatia and Rome require a complicated set of answers
to the questions raised by the “Paul within Judaism” conversation that is the
theme of this volume.28
Two preliminary (and equally obvious) remarks should be made at the outset.
If, on the one hand, we use the word “Judaism” in the same sense as the
Ἰουδαϊσμός that Paul speaks of in Galatians (i.e. a fierce and potentially violent
exclusionary zeal, aimed at preserving Jews from the contaminating influence
of Gentiles), then the arguments that Paul mounts in Galatians and Romans for
101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 83, 122, 212; Douglas J. Moo, “Paul’s Universalizing Hermeneutic in
Romans,” SBJT 11:3 (2007): 62–90, here 76.
27 Cf. Mark A. Seifrid, “Romans,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old
Testament, ed. Gregory K. Beale and Donald A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 100–1;
Wagner, Heralds, 30, 358.
28 Cf. the surveys of the conversation and its antecedents in Magnus Zetterholm, “Paul
within Judaism: The State of the Questions,” in Nanos and Zetterholm, Paul within Judaism,
31–52; J. Brian Tucker, “Paul within or without Judaism: That is the Question,” JBV 36 (2015):
216–20, and the argument for a particular version of the “Paul within Judaism” approach to
Paul’s letters in Magnus Zetterholm, “The Paul within Judaism Perspective,” in Perspectives
on Paul: Five Views, ed. Scot McKnight and B. J. Oropeza (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020), 171–
93.
the full inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles within the people of God would
rule out of court any attempt we might make to place him “within [that] Juda-
ism.”29 But if, on the other hand (in common with most participants in the
“Paul within Judaism” conversation), the “Judaism” we have in mind is the term
as it is used in modern scholarly conversation (i.e. a shorthand for the various
ways in which Jews in the Second Temple period understood and practised their
Jewish identity), then it is equally clear that the ethnic and ancestral identity
Paul lays claim to in both letters is an explicitly Jewish one. He is, to that extent
at least, undeniably “within Judaism.”
The space between the boundaries inscribed by these two truisms includes a
broad expanse of possibilities, with room for a variety of competing views re-
garding the way in which Paul understood and practised his own Jewish identi-
ty and constructed the communal identity of Jewish and Gentile believers. The
understanding of how Paul viewed the relationship between Gentile believers
and the story of Israel that I have outlined within this chapter (and argued for in
greater detail elsewhere) suggests the following conclusions:
(i) The invitation that Paul’s gospel extended to uncircumcised Gentiles to be
justified in Christ, by faith and not by the works of the law was also extended
on the same terms to his fellow-Jews (cf. Gal 2:15–16; 3:23–4:7; Rom 3:21–31).
His convictions on this matter were informed not only by the Gentile-inclusive
promises originally given to Abraham and the outpouring of the Spirit on Gen-
tile believers in Christ but also by the correspondences that he perceived be-
tween Israel’s story of sin, exile and redemption and the distinct but analogous
story of the idolatry, judgement and salvation of the Gentiles. Gentiles can be-
come “my people” because Israel has first become “not my people”; the Gentiles
become Christ’s not by being grafted through the law into the branches of a
flourishing, obedient Israel, but by being grafted through the new covenant
promises of the prophets into the stump from which the branches of disobedient
Israel have been broken.
(ii) Paul’s convictions regarding the relativisation of circumcision and the full
inclusion of Gentile believers in Christ make it possible, though by no means
certain, that his intended meaning in Galatians 6:16 was one that included them
within the scope of the “Israel of God” on which he pronounces a benediction.
Similarly, in Romans 11:26, the eschatological community of “all Israel” whose
salvation he looks forward to at the end of age may well be referring to an ex-
panded and enlarged Israel that includes within its boundaries the Gentiles who
have been grafted in through faith in Christ while the majority of Israel was
hardened.
29 Cf. Lionel J. Windsor, Paul and the Vocation of Israel: How Paul’s Jewish Identity In-
forms his Apostolic Ministry, with Special Reference to Romans, BZNW 205 (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2014), 88–9.
118 David Starling
(iii) Nevertheless, in Paul’s view, the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles

within the people of Christ (and probably also within the “Israel” he refers to in
Gal 6:16 and Rom 11:26) does not mean that the future of ethnic Israel has be-
come an irrelevance to Paul’s gospel or a dead end in salvation history. Just as
the disobedience of Israel has opened a door of salvation to the Gentiles, so also
the mercy that God has extended to the Gentiles will one day return as salvation
for Israel. In the end, as Paul narrates them, the two distinct but intertwined
stories of Israel and the Gentiles converge within a single, larger story of God
and his mercy to all, and it is that story (with the stories of Israel and the Gen-
tiles nested as subplots within it) that forms the basis for the exhortations that
conclude the letter in chapters 12–16.
Paul’s Segmentary Grammar of Identity
Ex-Pagan Gentiles within Synagogues and the Importance

of the Eschatological Pilgrimage Tradition
J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi
1. Introduction
Michael Bird has recently called interpreters “to identify the particular sociore-
ligious location of Paul and his converts, as well as the theological texture of his
argumentation.”1 This essay does that by addressing three topics important to
the Paul within Judaism perspective: (a) The way in which Jewish covenantal
identity2 continues by the use of the segmentary grammar of identity; (b) The
socioreligious location of the Pauline Christ-movement within synagogue com-
munities; and (c) The importance of the eschatological pilgrimage tradition for
maintaining distinct identities for Israel and the nations. We will begin with the
grammars of identity first since the presuppositions in regard to the nature of
identity being formed is determinative for much of the readings seen in Paul’s
letters, especially Romans. Then we will offer our understanding of the institu-
tional context of the Christ-groups as part of synagogue communities. Finally,
in-Christ gentiles as members of nations closely associated with Israel, some-
times described as the commonwealth or prophetic approach underlines our
approach as these gentiles are seen to participate in the eschatological drama as
a member of the nations rather than as Israel.3 The eschatological pilgrimage
1 Michael F. Bird, An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 47.

2 The definition of Jewish covenantal identity used throughout this essay follows that of
Nanos: “[T]he adjective ‘Jewish’ is used both to refer to those who are Jews ethnically and to
the behavior generally associated with the way that Jews live, albeit variously defined, such as
by different interpretations of Scripture and related traditions, different views of who rep-
resents legitimate authority, and different conclusions about what is appropriate for any spec-
ified time and place. The behavior can be referred to by the adverb ‘jewishly,’ and as the ex-
pression of ‘jewishness.’ In colloquial terms, one who practices a Jewish way of life according
to the ancestral customs of the Jews, which is also referred to as practicing ‘Judaism,’ might be
called a ‘good’ Jew.” Mark D. Nanos, “Paul’s Non-Jews Do Not Become ‘Jews,’ But Do They
Become ‘Jewish’?: Reading Romans 2:25–29 Within Judaism, Alongside Josephus,” JJMJS 1
(2014): 26–53, here 27–8.
3 The commonwealth or prophetic model draws on Isa 11:4, and the way Ephesians pres-
ents the ekklēsia as a prolepsis of this. James, the Jerusalem leaders, and Paul (Acts 15:13–19;
120 J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi
tradition provides the rationale for why Paul thinks gentiles should not prosely-
tize and why the Jew and gentile social categorizations remain salient for him.4
The question that animates much of the research evident here is this: Does Paul
think that called gentiles, those who are in-Christ and thus part of the Pauline
Christ-movement, have become Israel, Israel-redefined, eschatological Israel or
another Israel-like category?5 While we know we cannot resolve that issue fully
here we suggest giving preference to the segmentary identity grammar, seeing
the institutional context for the group within synagogue settings, and recogniz-
ing the organizing role that the eschatological pilgrimage tradition plays for
Paul, when combined, will prove to be probative for the Paul within Judaism
perspective.
Amos 9:11–12 MT) appear to view Israel and the nations in the messianic kingdom as a way to
frame Jews and non-Jews in-Christ.
4 Christopher Zoccali, Reading Philippians After Supersessionism: Jews, Gentiles, and
Covenant Identity, NTAS 10 (Eugene: Cascade, 2017), 35–44, for a defense of the salience of
this tradition for Paul and Anders Runesson, “Placing Paul: Institutional Structures and
Theological Strategy in the World of the Early Christ-Believers,” SEÅ 80 (2015): 43–57, for the
way the institutional context provided the need for this sort of theologizing.
5 Gregory K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testa-
ment in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 708, sees “gentiles as eschatologically restored
Israelites.” Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission, LNTS 331 (New
York: T&T Clark International, 2006), 68, thinks that “Gentiles […] participate in the escha-
tological Israel.” Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Con-
victional World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 247, argues “Gentiles ‘in Christ’ […] share in
righteousness and salvation by becoming full members of a redefined Israel.” George Lind-
beck, “Performing the Faith: An Interview with George Lindbeck,” The Christian Century
123 (28th November 2006), 28–35, 29, suggests “Israel-like.” William S. Campbell, “Unity
and Diversity in the Church: Transformed Identities and the Peace of Christ in Ephesians,” in
Unity and Diversity in Christ: Interpreting Paul in Context: Collected Essays, ed. William S.
Campbell (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), 129, 144, offers “co-heirs as gentiles with Israel” or “fel-
low-citizens with Israelites.” David J. Rudolph, “Describing the Church in Relation to Israel:
The Language of George Lindbeck and Ephesians 2–3” (paper presented at the Annual Meet-
ing of the SBL, San Diego, CA, 23th November 2019), 1–19, here 18, suggests “multinational
extension of Israel.” J. Brian Tucker, “The Continuation of Gentile Identity in Ephesians”
(paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Francisco,
CA, November 2011), 1–20, here 10–11, similarly thinks, in light of Eph 2, “co-citizens of the
‘commonwealth of Israel,’ without becoming Israel.” This represents the presupposition pool
for the arguments evident in this essay. Gentiles in-Christ do not become Jews or Israel; how-
ever, as members of the commonwealth of Israel they are an extension of Israel since this
language avoids the implication of replacement or supersessionism, following Rudolph above.
On gentiles as exiles and part of Israel’s story see David I. Starling, Not My People: Gentiles
as Exiles in Pauline Hermeneutics, BZNW 184 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011) and on whether
Israelite and Jew should be seen as synonymous see Jason A. Staples, The Idea of Israel in
Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Paul’s Segmentary Grammar of Identity 121
2. The Three Grammars of Identity
Readings of Paul’s letters in regard to Israel and the ekklēsia tend to crystallize
contemporary Christian identity in ways that are often dehistoricized and theo-
logically-bound. These letters respond to their context, and thus some qualifi-
cation is in order as to the nature of the group identity Paul seeks to instantiate.
Paul’s literary performance is a contested site over differing truth claims and the
nature of the empowerment the gospel brings. In order to assess more clearly
the relationship between Israel and the ekklēsia in regard to the type of identity
and the nature of the empowerment evident in his letters, the work of Gerd
Baumann and Andre Gingrich will be used to guide our research. In their 2004
work, Grammars of Identity/Alterity, they identify three overlapping gram-
mars that aid in the construction of identity and difference: orientalization, seg-
mentation, and encompassment. 6 The suggestion at this point is that these
grammars are either intentionally or unintentionally used by NT scholars and
contribute to their conceptualization of Paul’s gentile Christ groups as either
within, without, or somewhere in-between local expressions of a Jewish pattern
of life.
2.1 Israel and the Church: Us versus Them

“Orientalization” relies on the resources of binary thinking in order to con-
struct a sense of self and other so that the two are seen as mirror images of one
another. So, that which constitutes the self would be seen as good while that
which identifies the other would be understood as bad. This dualism constructs
two oppositional groups: it is “us” versus “them.” Baumann and Gingrich ex-
pand on the original binary logic found in Edward Said by arguing this mirror
image is more complex (and thus ternary): “‘what is good in us is lacking in
them,’ but it also adds a subordinate reversal: ‘what is lacking in us is (still) pres-
ent in them.’”7 The way in which Jew and gentile may be described by Paul in
Romans as positive and negative images of each other is an example of this ori-
entalizing grammar.8 This occurs in places where Paul points out differences
6 Gerd Baumann and André Gingrich, “Forward,” in Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A
Structural Approach, ed. Gerd Baumann and André Gingrich, EASAS 3 (New York: Berg
hahn, 2004), ix–xiv, here x.
7 Baumann and Gingrich, “Forward,” x.
8 See also Christopher D. Stanley, “Paul the Ethnic Hybrid? Postcolonial Perspectives on
Paul’s Ethnic Categorizations,” in The Colonized Apostle: Paul through Postcolonial Eyes, ed.
Christopher D. Stanley (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 110–26, here 125, who thinks Paul
completely orientalizes gentile identity in Romans, a view we question (i.e., while 1:18–32
others gentiles, 2:14–16, shows this is not completely so). Among contemporary interpreters,
orientalizing, as appropriated by Baumann and Gingrich is seen primarily in viewing Paul as
a binary thinker. Cf. Ben C. Dunson, Individual and Community in Paul’s Letter to the Ro-
mans, WUNT 2/332 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 129 n. 74, who accepts this perspective
between the group he belongs to (i.e., the remnant 11:5) and the group he does
not (i.e., the disobedient 11:30). He sees his own group as superior but also ro-
manticizes the other group (they too receive mercy, 11:31; and continue to have
advantages, 3:1).
2.2 Israel and the Church: Foes but also Allies Extending Israel
“Segmentation” is a situationally specific and sliding hierarchy of the self and
other that relies on processes such as “fusions and fissions.”9 Building on the
work of Evans-Pritchard, the other may be my foe at a lower level of abstraction
but at the same time my ally at a higher level of segmentation. Paul’s view of
Israel’s continued covenantal identity may be an example of segmentary logic.
At one level he views some of his relations as “enemies of the gospel” (11:28)
while still at another level maintaining that God has not “rejected his people”
(11:1), that their covenantal identity continues even after the coming of Christ
(9:4–5) and then eventually “all Israel will be saved” (11:26). What is Paul doing?
In terms of segmentary logic he is asking his gentile auditors, in spite of the
apparent rejection of some first-century Jews, not to consider Jewish identity in
opposition to but as part of a newly integrated community based on God’s mer-
cy poured out to all, both Jews as Jews and non-Jews as non-Jews (11:32). This
social grammar seeks to retain the salience of individual indexes of identity.
Segmentation is the most overlooked grammar among traditional interpreters
of Paul, who hold to a theologically bound Christian identity as contrasted
with an open one.10 It is the one that informs more explicitly the arguments in
this essay.
2.3 Israel and the Church: Absorption into

“Encompassment,” which comes from the work of Dumont, classifies personal
identity and that of the other via the logic of “sub-inclusion.”11 Here the other is
appropriated or co-opted. The larger group identity subsumes those underneath
it. It relies on the logic of synecdoche in which a part can be used to signify the
whole but unlike segmentation, encompassment is non-dialogical.12 All forms
of difference at the lower level must be able to be absorbed/erased at the higher
and Kathy Ehrensperger, “Scriptural Reasoning – The Dynamic that Informed Paul’s Theol-
ogizing,” IBS 26:1 (2004): 32–52, who rejects it.
9 Baumann and Gingrich, “Forward,” x.
10 One interpreter who has explicitly used Baumann and Gingrich is Robert L. Brawley,
Luke: A Social Identity Commentary, SICNT 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 38–9.
11 Baumann and Gingrich, “Forward,” x–xi.
12 Adriana Ramirez de Arellano, “Voice and Identity in Legal Narratives of Gender Vio-
lence and Sexual Torture in the Southwestern United States” (PhD diss., The University of
New Mexico, 2008), 62, while critiquing Baumann and Gingrich on the nature of this gram-
mar offers the following “example of the synecdochical logic of encompassment … the cate-
level or they must be rejected as foreign. This grammar is sometimes seen in the
way Paul defines Jewish identity, e.g., in 2:25–3:2 where he putatively replaces it,
or in 9:6 where he writes “for they are not all Israel who are descended from
Israel,” or finally in 11:7 he describes “the rest” who “were hardened.”13 The
logic of encompassment here seems to be that all those “beloved of God” in
Rome do not include non-Christ-following Jews (1:7) or at least in Christ gen-
tiles have become Israel. This social grammar seeks to align its rhetorical targets
under one transcending and monolithic identity.
These identity grammars are not new; they were developed earlier in the
works of Said, Evans-Pritchard, and Dumont.14 It should be noted that the his-
torical particularly of each of these theorists’ work is removed by Baumann and
Gingrich so that what remains is a barebones theoretical structure. However,
this likely make their model more appropriate when applying them to Pauline
texts. Adriana Ramirez de Arellano highlights three other aspects of their work
that make it particularly useful for discerning the identity formation occurring
in a text. First, Baumann and Gingrich understand these three grammars as
having both cognitive and normative aspects to them. They are not merely de-
scriptive.15 Second, these grammars all involve empowerment though with dif-
fering social implications.16 Third, these grammars can exist within the rhetor-
ical resources of a single author.17 It is likely that all three of these grammars are
functioning within Romans. This may in part account for the divergent inter-
pretations of the letter.18 An interpreter discerns an encompassment or oriental-
izing discourse in a portion of the letter and then reads the rest of it in light of
that discourse. However, this may produce a strained understanding, especially
if the segmentary logic is overlooked because of the rhetorical effect of the bina-
ry or non-dialogical aspects. If such is the case, then what results is a Christ-move-
ment identity that is not fully textually determined. What is needed is a broad
awareness of all three of these grammars and then they can each be discerned
gory ‘man’ stands as the counterpart of the category ‘woman’ at a lower taxonomical level,
while it can simultaneously stand for ‘humanity’ at the higher taxonomical level of the whole.”
13 J. Brian Tucker, Reading Romans after Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish
Covenant Identity, NTAS 6 (Eugene: Cascade, 2018), 131–5, 150–1. In regard to those verses
we take on the issue of whether Paul has divided Israel’s historic covenantal identity.
14 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); Edward E. Ev-
ans-Pritchard, The Nuer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Louis Dumont, Homo
Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
15 Gerd Baumann and André Gingrich, “Debating Grammars: Arguments and Prospects,”
in Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, ed. Gerd Baumann and André Gin-
grich (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 192–203, here 198.
16 Baumann and Gingrich, “Debating,” 194.
17 de Arellano, “Voice and Identity,” 63.
18 See the essays on this in Cristina Grenholm and Daniel Patte, eds., Reading Israel in
Romans: Legitimacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations, RTHC (Harrisburg:

Trinity, 2000).
within the relationships Paul is addressing in order to determine more precisely

the nature of the identity being formed in Romans and whether it is, using Mi-
chael Bird’s classification, “Paul contra Judaism” or “Paul intra Judaism.”19
3. Segmentary rather than Orientalizing

or Encompassment in Romans
Here we would like to focus on the identity hermeneutic that is presupposed in

certain readings of Romans and suggest that the segmentary grammar can lead
to a different understanding of Paul’s relationship to Judaism.20 In Romans,
Paul generally leaves behind the orientalist grammar with its absolute distinc-
tion between “them” and “us” as well as the grammar of encompassment with
its demand to “become like us or get out of here.” These two grammars are the
predominant ones used traditionally for understanding Paul but it is more like-
ly that Paul is primarily a segmentary grammarian. Paul’s thinking aligns more
with this grammar rather than encompassment or orientalization because he
holds to the expectation for the continuation of difference within the Christ-
movement (Rom 14:5; 15:7; see also 1 Cor 7:20). By contrast, encompassment
grammar results in the exclusion of difference (as the new movement enfolds the
old/existing one). Thus, any identity that cannot be encompassed would have to
be regarded as a threat.
In Romans, the threat is all too often seen as Jewish identity as reinforced by
“the synagogue.” This results in the formation of a Christ-movement identity
that is in opposition to Judaism as a whole. Francis Watson is illustrative of this
general approach: “It is argued here that Paul advocates a ‘sectarian’ separation
between the Christian community and ‘Judaism’, rather than an inclusive un-
derstanding of the one people of God as encompassing even uncircumcised Gen-
tiles.”21 The grammar of encompassment evident in this reading of Paul’s argu-
ments in Romans is based on orientalist assumptions in Watson’s work. The
Christ-movement identity in this letter must be understood as an “us” versus
“them” one. In reflecting on his earlier arguments Watson restates his claim: “[t]
he social reality which underlies Paul’s discussions of Judaism and the law is his
creation of Gentile Christian communities in sharp separation from the Jewish
community.”22 Paul is seen as one promoting an ideology of separation and
19 Bird, Anomalous, 45.
20 For a definition of post-supersessionism see Tucker, Reading Romans, 4 n. 11. Lionel J.
Windsor, Reading Ephesians and Colossians after Supersessionism: Christ’s Mission through
Israel to the Nations, NTAS 11 (Eugene: Cascade, 2017), 21, raises important Christological
concerns related to the degree one might embrace the Paul within Judaism approach.
21 Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, rev. and
exp. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 21, emphasis original.

22 Watson, Paul, 21; citing page 19 in the 1986 edition of this book. Windsor, Paul, 39
offering a reading of Israel’s scriptures for the purpose of legitimating their sep-
arate existence. Notice Watson’s explicit orientalist argumentation: “this sepa-
ration in the form of an ongoing argument about scriptural interpretation, an
attempt to show that the true sense of scripture – the one that attests to the truth
of the gospel – belongs to ‘us’ rather than ‘them’.”23 We are not arguing that
there is no evidence of encompassment or orientalist thinking in Romans, as
some of that was highlighted above; it is just that the segmentary grammar is too
often ignored or downplayed. The usefulness of Baumann and Gingrich is clear
here: all three of these grammars overlap and are used in the formation of iden-
tity and difference. It seems to us that Paul’s arguments move more in the direc-
tion of the segmentary grammar rather than the encompassment or oriental
ones since he expects the continuation of difference within the Christ-move-
ment in Rome. Since this is crucial to our claim, we’ll briefly highlight how this
might work in Romans.24
The segmentary grammar is dialogical and is a move away from encompass-
ment which is monological. It works best in settings where shifting and inter-
secting identifications are evident. Rom 14–15 is just such a case.25 Here the
discussion over table fellowship is punctuated not by an “us” versus “them”
mentality but one in which the continuation of difference is expected. In 14:5
Paul writes: “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge
all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds.” Further, the
expectation of different social practices is evident when Paul connects “faith” to
them as well as the even more foundational instruction to “accept” one another
(14:1, 23; 15:1, 7). William S. Campbell and Philip Esler are interpreters who, in
contrast to Watson, recognize the predominance of the segmentary grammar.
Esler points out that one would expect Paul not to tolerate Torah-based social
practices in Rom 14–15 based on his earlier statements concerning the Mosaic
law while Campbell rightly questions even the idea that Paul disparaged the
Mosaic law.26 However, that is not what Paul does; rather in these chapters Paul
n. 110, thinks interpreters (e.g., Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social
Setting of Paul’s Letter [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003], 132) have misunderstood the trajectory
of Watson’s argument in regard to the continuation of Jewish identity. He points out that
Watson thinks Paul wants his Jewish auditors to find their identity in a place other than the
synagogue. See Watson, Paul, 202–5.
23 Watson, Paul, 21–2.
24 Rom 2:24–28 (see below); 4:11b–12; 9:24–26 are three other passages that a segmentary
grammar is operative. These are discussed extensively in Tucker, Reading Romans, 47–56,
62–84, 139–47.
25 These chapters play an important part in the argument of Lampe in terms of separation
from the synagogue. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First
Two Centuries, trans. Michael Steinhauser (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 15. For a different
reading of Claudius’s edict and the way it is misused to suggest the gentiles are no longer part
of the synagogue see Tucker, Reading Romans, 14–9.
26 William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London:
acknowledges the continuation of difference at the subgroup level while seeking

to maintain unity at the higher level of social practice.27 This is classic segmen-
tary grammar and represents a move away from the predominant influence of
encompassment or orientalizing logic often seen in Rom 14–15. Paul seeks to
form an identity for the gentile Roman Christ-followers that embraces existing
ethnic or social identities rather than extinguishing these, or at least a shifting
away from existing institutional contexts, as is evident in Watson’s approach.28
The reliance on encompassment and orientalizing grammars to the exclusion
of the segmentary one is also evident in the work of N. T. Wright. For Wright,
the identity that Paul seeks to form in Romans is one in which Israel’s covenant-
al identity has been redefined. The use of identity redefinition in this manner is
a classic encompassment grammatical move. What we see in Wright is the sub-
sumption of Jewish flesh into a new/third entity Christianity.29 Israel’s identity
is appropriated and co-opted by Paul; its “story had been […] reconfigured by
the cross and resurrection,”30 as “Israel’s history” is “brought to its climax […]
through the Messiah.”31 In the larger context of these quotations, the sugges-
tion is that Israel’s identity has been absorbed into the Messiah’s identity and by
extension those who are found in him are in effect Israel. The polysemy of the
term Israel is evident in the way he handles its presence in Rom 11:25–26: “Isra-
el in verse 25 consists of the whole people of God, within which many Jews are
presently ‘hardened’ but into which many Gentiles are being incorporated, so
‘all Israel’ in v. 26 must reflect that double existence.”32 However, it is unlikely
that Paul changes the referent to anyone other than historic Israel here since it is
referred to also in 11:23 and in the contrast seen in 11:30–32.33 Thus, Wright,
like Watson, relies on the grammar of encompassment when it is more likely
T&T Clark, 2006), 116. Paul and the Mosaic Torah is a topic too big to cover here but we think
that Paul also uses the segmentary grammar when applying his teaching to the law. It func-
tions differently for Jews and non-Jews, while neither are “under law” it does not follow that
this means that Torah has no claims on the life of either group. See Tucker, Reading Romans,
87–113. Brian S. Rosner, Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God, NSBT 31
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), provides the most even-handed approach to this
topic.
27 Esler, Conflict and Identity, 364–5, “Paul does not tell the Judean members of the
Christ-movement to stop being Judeans. He does not ask them to sever any ties that they may
have with the Roman synagogues, and he is tolerant of their continued practice of the Mosaic
law, at least in regard to provisions relating to food, wine, and holy days.”
28 See Esler, Conflict and Identity, 132; Watson, Paul, 181 n. 51.
29 E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1990), 173–5.
30 N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 416.
31 N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, NIB 10 (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 747.
32 Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness, 1244.
33 Michael G. Vanlaningham, Christ, The Savior of Israel: An Evaluation of the Dual Cov-
enant and Sonderweg Interpretations of Paul’s Letters, EDIS 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang,
2012), 215.
that the grammar of segmentation is being used. This would suggest that for
Jews, Israel still maintains its salience as a possible future social identity within
the family of God.
Seeing a continuation of Israel’s covenantal identity rather than the putative
subsumption Wright uncovers would suggest the following interpretive im-
provements in Romans. First, it would support the traditional eschatological
miracle view in 11:25–26 which in turn provides a basis for the continuation of
Israel’s identity. Second, the citation of Deut 32:43 in Rom 15:10: “And again he
[the Davidic Messiah] says: Rejoice, O the nations, with his people,” shows the
continuation of Israel’s identity, especially with the final phrase “with his peo-
ple.” The citation is identical to what is found in the LXX and describes a direc-
tive in which the nations are now to worship with Israel (not instead of Israel) as
encompassment logic would demand.34 Furthermore, performative celebra-
tions such as this actually work against the logic of encompassment; thus seg-
mentary grammar seems more relevant. The gentile audience would thus be re-
minded in Romans that God is still at work among the people of Israel, and
Wright’s perspective that Israel’s identity has been taken up in Christ to the
extent that its unique covenantal identity and history has been resolved into the
life of the new covenant community should be called into question (15:8). Paul’s
solution to the problem he began to address in Rom 14:1 concerning the weak
and the strong is not to seek to encompass, to orientalize, or to remove the iden-
tity of one group or the other; rather, he casts a vision for a doxological identity
(a future, possible, social identity) in which the nations of the world are wor-
shipping together with Israel. This vision, at the same time, subverts the preten-
tious claims of the Roman empire (the more likely outgroup in this letter) who
had claimed they had unified the disparate peoples of the world for Rome’s
eternal glory (Vergil, Aen. 1.371–375). So, Romans is read differently depending
on the presuppositions of the interpreter; both Watson and Wright’s identity
hermeneutical framework led them to weigh the data differently than we did;
Baumann and Gingrich’s work is helpful in categorizing these differences.35
Also, as we will argue in the next section, the segmentary grammar is more
34 See Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury,
2016), 452. Cf. Joshua W. Jipp, Christ Is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2015), 4–16.
35 Though we would suggest using Baumann and Gingrich can expose the undue influence
of hidden presuppositions, see further Andrew D. Clarke and J. Brian Tucker, “Social Histo-
ry and Social Theory in the Study of Social Identity,” in T&T Clark Handbook to Social
Identity in the New Testament, ed. J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker (London: Blooms-
burg T&T Clark, 2014), 41–58, here 43–9, on this. Of course, this includes paying attention to
our own presuppositions as was recently pointed out by Nina Nikki, “Was Paul Tolerant? An
Assessment of William S. Campbell’s and J. Brian Tucker’s ‘Particularistic’ Paul” in Toler-
ance, Intolerance, and Recognition in Early Christianity and Early Judaism, ed. Outi Lehti
puu and Michael Labahn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 113–38.
historically appropriate for this early period, in contrast to the often used orien-
talizing or encompassment grammars, since Paul probably expected his gentile
Christ-followers to remain attached to local synagogue communities and thus
exist within Judaism. Third, the recognition that gentiles are the intended audi-
ence for Romans provides a more narrow and concrete identity-forming project
for Paul’s writing (11:13); rather than seeking to transform Jewish identity in
general, he is seeking to transform gentile identity but not in a way in which
their existing identity is obliterated, since they, as members of the ekklēsia, are
eschatological gentile actors on Israel’s stage (15:8, 10). For Paul, Jewish and
gentile identities continue to remain salient even after the coming of Israel’s
Messiah. Thus, we would suggest interpreters consider allowing the segmentary
identity grammar to find an increasing place in the construal of the type of
identity envisioned in Paul’s letters generally and in Romans specifically.
4. Ex-Pagan Gentiles Going to Synagogue
In our continuing desire to answer Bird’s question concerning the socioreli-

gious context of Paul and the Christ-movement, we might frame our under-
standing of this location by asking the question: Did Paul expect his gentile
Christ-followers to “go to synagogue” or to “go to church”?36 Our answer to
this question will likely depend on whether we conceive of the relationship be-
tween Paul and Israel as “contra Judaism” or “intra Judaism.”37 Bird, in detail-
ing Israel’s problem in relation to ethnocentrism clarifies the Paul against Juda-
ism perspective, “Paul established Christian communities separate from Juda-
ism and resisted attempts at bringing them into closer socioreligious proximity
to Judaism.”38 The work of Francis Watson in Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles,
as we just saw, is one example of this approach. The Paul within Judaism per-
spective, on the other hand, frames the issue of ethnocentrism this way, accord-
ing to Bird, “Paul believed that the eschaton had dawned in Jesus’ resurrection
and that Jesus had become the way for Gentiles to enter into Israel without
having to actually become Jews themselves; Israel must accordingly accept this
36 We take for granted the work done by Ralph J. Korner, “Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue
Term: Some Implications for Paul’s Socio-Religious Location,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 53–78, that
establishes that ekklēsia is a Jewish synagogue term. See further Ralph J. Korner, The Origin
and Meaning of Ekklēsia in the Early Jesus Movement, AJEC 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 81–149.
The question is which segment of the synagogue community, thus the usefulness of thinking
through this with the segmentary identity grammar.
37 Bird, Anomalous, 45. And Paul’s identity as well, see Jörg Frey, “Paul’s Jewish Identity.”
in Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Jüdische Identität in der griechisch-römischen

Welt, ed. Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, AJEC 71 (Leiden: Brill,
2007), 285–321.
fact.”39 The work of William S. Campbell in The Nations in the Divine Econo-
my, is one example of this perspective.40 Bird positions himself between the two
perspectives, one that “straddles the ‘contra’ and ‘intra’ Judaism fence,” agreeing
that “Paul never intended to set up a new religious entity” while recognizing
that his arguments “lower the currency of Israel’s election through the inclusion
of Gentiles as part of the ‘Israel of God.’”41 Bird then is a good example of the
both/and approach found among scholars today; he is a sort of bridge between
the “contra” and “intra” perspectives. While we cannot address even a signifi-
cant number of the exegetical debates that scholars put forward in support of
their position, we would like to, in this second section of the essay, revisit the
“contra” and “intra” perspective via insights drawn from the sociohistorical
world of ancient synagogue studies.42
Scholars such as Paula Fredriksen, Mark Nanos, and Kathy Ehrensperger
have argued and established that “synagogues” were the socioreligious space
from which Paul recruited gentiles variously associated with the God of Israel
to the Christ-movement.43 This view should not be taken for granted, since
some working in the Paul within Judaism paradigm have interpreted the catego-
ry of “gentiles” as those “outside the synagogue” and, conversely, “synagogue”
as a category only for Jews.44 But Fredriksen, Nanos, and Ehrensperger’s argu-
ments do seem to make the best sense not only of Paul’s use of Jewish tradition
in addressing an exclusively gentile audience in his letters but also of the evi-

40 For a summary of Campbell’s approach see J. Brian Tucker, “Diverse Identities in Christ
according to Paul: The Enduring Influence of the Work of William S. Campbell,” JBV Special
Edition: Festschrift for William S. Campbell 38:2 (2017): 1–14.
41 Bird, Anomalous, 46. We apply the segmentary grammar, distinguishing between salva-
tion and vocation.

42 An approach that has begun to penetrate Pauline studies, e.g., Richard Last, The Pauline
Church and the Corinthian Ekklēsia: Greco-Roman Associations in Comparative Context,

SNTSMS 164 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery
of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996). Paula Fredrik-
sen, Paul the Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Tucker, Reading
Romans, 14–9; J. Brian Tucker, Reading 1 Corinthians, Cascade Companions (Eugene: Cas-
cade, 2017), 4. Magnus Zetterholm, “A Covenant for Gentiles? Covenantal Nomism and the
Incident at Antioch,” in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Pre-
sented at an International Conference at Lund University October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger
Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 168–88.
43 Fredriksen, Paul, 54–60, 204–6; Nanos, Mystery, 30–2; Kathy Ehrensperger, Paul at the
Crossroads of Cultures: Theologizing in the Space-Between, LNTS 456 (London: Bloomsbury

T&T Clark, 2013), 130–1.
44 For example, Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Real Message of a Mis-
understood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 12. Examples of scholars not working
within the Paul within Judaism paradigm who follow this line of thought include: Ronald F.
Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: For-
tress, 1980); Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle
Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 80–1.
dence from Acts, which portrays Paul in “synagogues” recruiting both Jews and
non-Jews (Acts 14:1; 17:4, 12; 18:4). So, in light of what we know about the par-
ticipation of non-Jews in “synagogues,” the question is whether Paul expected
his gentile Christ-followers to continue attending assemblies in which non-
Christ-following Jews were present. If we answer “yes” to this question, then it
would suggest an “intra” socioreligious context for the Pauline Christ-move
ment.
One problem we must address, however, is the tendency in some scholarship
to speak about a phenomenon called “the synagogue” in antiquity, as if there
was a monolithic religious institution that exercised supra-local authority over
all Jews everywhere. Concomitant with this tendency is the notion of a mono-
lithic “Judaism,” with the concept of “the synagogue” functioning, then, as a
synecdoche for “Judaism” as a whole. This synecdochizing language is found
especially in Johannine studies,45 but it appears in Pauline studies as well.46
Even behind the better phrasing “the synagogues” there often stands the notion
that synagogues throughout the Mediterranean world were somehow uniform,
in both ideology and social organization.47 Scholarship over the past several
decades has come a long way to appreciate the variegated nature of Jewishness
in antiquity, and it is now time, we suggest, to appreciate equally the variegated
nature of “synagogues.” One of the major developments in recent historical
scholarship on ancient synagogues has been to complicate and variegate “the
synagogue” as an analytical category. One model of “synagogues” growing in
popularity among historians is the theory that “synagogues” in and around the
first century seem to have existed generally as two types of institutions and
were identified by a range of terms.
45 See Wally V. Cirafesi, John within Judaism: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Shaping of Je-
sus-Oriented Jewishness in the Fourth Gospel, AJEC 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 269–77, for a
discussion of this tendency within Johannine studies. Christopher A. Porter, Johannine So-
cial Identity Formation after the Fall of the Jerusalem Temple: Negotiating Identity in Crisis,
BIS 194 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 230–2, navigates this by seeing Ioudaioi as a subgroup of super-
ordinate Judaism, which is inclusive of Jewish Christ-followers. Cf. J. Louis Martyn, History
and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003),
30–50. Thanks to Chris Porter for pointing out this reference.
46 For example, Delio DelRio’s work, titled Paul and the Synagogue, contains no study of
actual synagogues. Delio DelrRio, Paul and the Synagogue: Romans and the Isaiah Targum
(Eugene: Pickwick, 2013).
47 See, e.g., Karl O. Sandnes, Paul Perceived: An Interactionist Perspective on Paul and the
Law, WUNT 412 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 173–4, where the concept of “the syna-
gogues” seems to represent, for Sandnes, a supra-local standardizing authority; so, “Paul sub-
mitting to the authority of the synagogues,” Paul being “persecuted by the synagogues,” as if
“the synagogues” everywhere held such authority.
5. Public/Civic Synagogues
On the one hand was a type of “synagogue” of a local-civic nature. As scholars

such as Anders Runesson and Jordan Ryan have argued, “synagogues” of the
public/civic type could only exist in places where Jews had control of local pub-
lic administration, i.e., the land of Israel.48 This type of local-official “syna-
gogue” was the meeting space and the meeting itself of the popular assembly in
any Jewish town or village. Public synagogues operated as contexts for a variety
of administrative and socio-religious activities, such as adjudication on legal
matters,49 execution of punitive sentences like floggings,50 Torah reading and its
interpretation,51 and political disputes.52 They also functioned as town treasur-
ies and libraries, and, if one agrees that the term proseuchē – prayer hall – has at
least some kind of relation to the activities performed within the building, they
were places of prayer.53 They were led by a variety of public officials, such as
town elders, archons and archisynagogoi, village scribes, and even priests.54 But
ultimately, these civic synagogues were controlled, not by any supra-local
authority, but by the people of a village, the town masses, which sources from
Josephus, the Mishnah, and the Gospels seem to indicate.55
48 Anders Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians? Ancient Institutions be-
yond Normative Discourses,” JBV Special Edition: Festschrift for William S. Campbell 38:2
(2017): 159–72, here 164. Jordan J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 2017), 14.
49 For citations here and below see Anders Runesson and Wally V. Cirafesi, “Reassessing
the Impact of 70 CE on the Origins and Development of Palestinian Synagogues,” in The

Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends, ed. Rick Bonnie, Rai-
mo Hakola, and Ulla Tervahauta, FRLANT 279 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2021), 37–57. See also LXX Sus 28.
50 Matt 10:17; Mark 13:9; m. Mak. 3:1–4, 9–15.
51 Luke 4:16–31; John 6:59; m. Meg. 21b:8. See Wally V. Cirafesi, “Imagining the Everyday
Life of Jewish and Christian ‘Neighbors’ in Late Antique Capernaum: Beyond Church and
Synagogue – and Back Again,” in The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian,
and Islamic Texts and Receptions, ed. Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, ISJCITR (New York:
Routledge, 2022), 189–212, here 189, 202.
52 Josephus, Vita 277–303. While Josephus in Vita 277–304 only mentions that the syna-
gogue in Tiberias was a huge building capable of holding a large crowd, the type of war-time
political deliberations that he recounts as taking place there within a gathering of the popular
assembly is a characteristic function of public synagogues.
53 Korner, Origin, 86 n. 29.
54 See Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Sec-
ond Temple Period, SBLDS 169, 2nd print (Atlanta: SBL, 2001), 343–62.
55 Josephus, Vita 277–303; Luke 4:16–31; m. Meg. 3:1. The archaeological record from sites
such as Gamla and Magdala in the Galilee, and Umm El-Umdan and Kiryat Sefer in Judea,
suggests that these “synagogue” gatherings met in public buildings designed with communi-
tarian architecture quite similar to the Greco-Roman bouleuterion: columns and stepped
benches lining all four walls are present in the remains of each of the structures just men-
tioned. The spatial focal point in these buildings was clearly the center, which made their de-
6. Association Synagogues
On the other hand were the “association-type synagogues,” which are likewise
identifiable through a range of overlapping terms. As scholars like John Klop-
penborg, Philip Harland, Anders Runesson, and Richard Last have shown, this
type of assembly was organizationally modeled upon the kinds of membership
networks found among Greco-Roman associations, such as, to name a few, the
collegia, thiasoi, and hetaeriae.56 These “synagogues” were defined by reference
to, for example, shared occupations, social practices, neighborhood or geo-eth-
nic connections, or shared ideology, such as a particular philosophy or cult de-
votion. In short, association-type synagogues were not public/civic institutions.
This type of local-unofficial “association synagogue” certainly existed in the
land of Israel. The synagogues of the Essenes mentioned by Philo57 and the
synagogue of the Libertines in Jerusalem mentioned in Acts58 are good exam-
ples. However, they were, by nature, more prominent abroad throughout the
Mediterranean, in diasporic contexts where Jews were not politically autono-
mous and the boundaries between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors were
porous or even non-existent. As some examples: Peter Richardson has com-
pared the architectural remains from the first phase of the Ostia synagogue to
the remains of Ostia’s Association of the Housebuilders;59 a decree preserved
by Josephus from Gaius Caesar to the Jewish community either in Delos or
Parium calls the Jewish assembly there a thiasos, a “religious guild;”60 and in
On the Contemplative Life, Philo describes the Therapeutae, a Jewish philo-
sophical association in Alexandria, as gathering together on the seventh day in
a semneion, which seems to have been some sort of room in private house set
apart for special use. But, for our purposes, perhaps the most illuminating ex-
ample comes from Josephus’s brief description of the Jewish community in An-
tioch in J. W. 7.45. According to Josephus, the Jewish population in the city
sign conducive to deliberative-style assemblies. See Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis,”
162.
56 John S. Kloppenborg, Christ’s Associations: Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient
City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues,
and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society, rev. 2nd ed. (Kitch-
ner, ON: Philip A. Harland, 2013). Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 42–67. Last, Pauline, 20.
57 Philo, Prob. 80–83.
58 Acts 6:9–10. For discussion, see Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Ols-
son, The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), no. 18
(hereafter referred to as ASSB).
59 Peter Richardson, “An Architectural Case for Synagogues as Associations,” in The An-
cient Synagogue from Its Origins until 200 CE: Papers Presented at an International Confer-
ence at Lund University October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm,
ConBNT (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 90–117, here 103–5, where he compares the
Ostia synagogue’s floor plan with that of Ostia’s Association of the Housebuilders. See also
Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis,” 159–72.
60 A. J. 14.213–216.
flourished in the years after the brutal rule of Antiochus Epiphanes. This was
evidenced by their attaining a citizenship status equal to the Greeks, their nu-
merical growth, and the elaborate adorning of their “synagogue” (τό ἱερόν). 61
Josephus adds, however, that this flourishing involved bringing a great multi-
tude of Greeks into the realm of Jewish “rites of worship,” and that these Greeks
were, thus, “in some manner made a portion of them.”62 In our view, prosely-
tism does not seem to be what Josephus has in mind here but rather the intro-
duction of non-Jews to Jewish practices within the institutional context of an
association “synagogue.” The result of this introduction is that, to use Jose-
phus’s terms, these non-Jews became, not Jews themselves, but a distinguishable
segment (μοῖρα) within the larger Jewish community.
7. Pauline Assemblies and Association Synagogues
Association “synagogues” are the type of institution most relevant for under-
standing the socioreligious organization of Pauline assemblies. Two more gen-
eral observations about these institutions will help us start thinking about
Paul’s gentile groups. First, Richard Last has argued for the existence of associ-
ations in which devotion to Yahweh was at least one connection among group
members, whether or not the primary one, and that they were often not ethni-
cally homogenous; some were ethnic associations of Jews, but other ethnically
diverse associations with the Yahweh connection existed beside them, with
neighborhood or occupational links being the more socially binding features.63
In other words, it was not unusual in antiquity to see Jews and non-Jews togeth-
er in the same gathering spaces in which the Jewish deity was either the patron
deity of the group or simply one among others. This ethnic heterogeneity of
association “synagogues” reminds us that non-Jews could relate to the Jewish
community in a wide variety of ways and within a wide variety of social frame-
works. For some in, say, occupational associations, cult to the Jewish deity may
have been, in fact, a marginal social aspect of the gatherings. For others, such as
the σεβομένοι mentioned in Acts, Josephus, and several synagogue manumis-
sion inscriptions from the Bosporus Kingdom, Yahweh worship seems to have
been a much stronger, even the primary, social tie between non-Jewish and Jew-
ish members in the group. 64 This would seem to be the case especially for some
61 Josephus refers to this building immediately before this, in J. W. 7.44, as a συναγωγή. On
ἱερόν as a “synagogue” term in this passage, see ASSB no. T10 (= no. 190).
62 ET ours. Greek text (Niese edition) reads: ἀεί τε προσαγόμενοι ταῖς θρησκείαις πολὺ
πλῆθος Ἑλλήνων, κἀκείνους τρόπῳ τινὶ μοῖραν αὐτῶν πεποίηντο.

63 Last, Pauline, 34–8.
64 See Acts 14:1; 17:4, 12; 18:4. Josephus mentions in A. J. 14.110 that it was not only Jews
who were contributing the “sacred monies” that led to the great sum of wealth in the Jerusa-
lem temple but also non-Jews, “those who worshipped God” (καὶ σεβομένων τὸν θεόν), were
of Paul’s gentiles who are described in 1 Thessalonians, for example, as henothe-

istic worshippers of Paul’s “living and true god” (1 Thess 1:9). 65
Second, there is evidence that smaller “Yahweh associations,” with different
social networking priorities, could exist within larger ones. For example,
Tosefta Sukkah 4 describes the Great Alexandrian basilica-synagogue as a large
association of Yahweh worshippers, who, however, did not all sit together but
rather sat in smaller groups according to occupation: goldsmiths by themselves,
blacksmiths by themselves, and embroiderers by themselves. The purpose of
this grouping by occupation was entirely pragmatic: “so that when a poor man
came in [to the synagogue] he joined his fellow tradesmen, and in this way was
enabled to obtain a means of livelihood.” Another example from the Tosefta
comes just before this passage. Here Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah is recount-
ed as saying that, during the days of the water-drawing ceremonies of Sukkot,
he and his disciples “went to the synagogue, and then went to the bet midrash.”
In other words, his rabbinic circle participated in the larger assembly first and
then went to their own membership-only gathering to study Torah according to
the particular ways of their master.
Another example is the Nysa Inscription from Asia Minor, which Last dis-
cusses at length. 66 Although later in date, this inscription mentions that a per-
son named Menandros built “the place for the people and for the assembly of
Dositheos son of Theogenes.” “Dositheos” was a common, though not exclu-
sively, Jewish name. 67 However, it, coupled with the terms τόπος and λαός, 68
suggests that the inscription refers, on the one hand, to a larger, perhaps ethni-
cally coherent, Yahweh association of Jews and, on the other hand, to a smaller
association founded by an individual Jewish man, Dositheos, both of which
used the same building for their assemblies. While the inscription does not make
contributing as well. This suggests that Josephus has the activity of multi-ethnic associations
devoted to Yahweh in mind. For synagogue manumission inscriptions, which mention the
manumission of non-Jews in synagogue space (προσευχή) and stipulate that they must contin-
ue to fear the Jewish deity and revere the “prayer hall,” see ASSB nos. 124–26.
65 Paula Fredriksen, “How High Can Early High Christology Be?” in Monotheism and
Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Matthew V. Novenson, NovTSup 180 (Leiden:

Brill, 2020), 293–319. Fredriksen, Paul, 12, defines henotheism as “the worship of only one
god, without denying the existence of other gods.” She points out in regard to the definition
of monotheism, that “in antiquity, ‘monotheists’ were polytheists.” Cf. Matthew V. Noven-
son, “Did Paul Abandon either Judaism or Monotheism?,” in The New Cambridge Compan-
ion to St. Paul, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020),
239–59.
66 Last, Pauline, 28–9; IJO II, Nysa 26 III–IV CE (Walter Ameling, ed., Inscriptiones Ju-
daicae Orientis. Vol. 2: Asia Minor [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004]).

67 Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity. Part III: The Western Diaspora 330
BCE–650 CE, TSAJ 126 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 249–56 (esp. at 253).
68 ASSB no. 113 notes that τόπος can be used as a reference to a “synagogue” (see also
nos. 114, 136, 137, and 157). The term λαός, “people,” here is clearly a reference to the Jewish
people.
it clear, it is perhaps likely that Dositheos’s group had a different primary social
connection than the larger Yahweh group, and it is quite possible, as Last has
argued, that it was multi-ethnic in composition, unlike the larger one.
Stories about Paul from the book of Acts might also provide evidence of a
similar institutional phenomenon. For example, in Acts 18, the house of the
“God-fearing” gentile Titius Justus, which Luke says was just next door to the
Corinthian synagōgē, seems to have become a gathering place for Paul and his
Corinthian Christ-followers who were, at the same time, attached to this syna-
gōgē. It is possible, then, that this Christ association, which comprised of Jews
and non-Jews, had been formed as a subgroup of the larger “synagogue.”69
8. Pauline Christ-Groups as a Subgroup

within Synagogue Assemblies
To come back to the question of this second section – did Paul expect his gen-
tiles to continue going to synagogue? In light of what we just covered and al-
lowing the segmentary grammar to guide our thinking, we may suggest the
following. However small, Paul’s gentiles certainly formed discernible groups
whose primary social connection was Christ devotion; they formed associa-
tions, designated ekklēsiai, and had their own membership structure, elections,
leaders, bylaws, and financial obligations. Our question, then, is: did Paul in-
tend for these gentile Christ groups to remain attached to associations whose
primary social connection was Yahweh worship, not necessarily Christ wor-
ship, or whether he intended that they disaffiliate from them?
While, according to the book of Acts, Paul himself seems to have encoun-
tered opposition within some Yahweh associations, we get no sense that this
was the case everywhere or that it was the result of some sort of systematic and
supra-local “persecution” or “discipline” of Paul from “the synagogues.” Recall
that, in Paul’s day, there was no supra-local “synagogue authority” that stan-
dardized or centralized halakhah or the interpretation of Torah. Furthermore,
association synagogues do not appear to have meted out punitive discipline,
such as the floggings Paul says he received in 2 Cor 11:24.70 These floggings
69 Cf. also Acts 19:9, on Paul and the gatherings in the Lecture Hall of Tyrannus, where
both Jews and non-Jews “hear the word of the Lord.”

70 There is an assumption in some Pauline scholarship that Paul’s floggings mentioned in
his autobiographical statements in 2 Cor 11:24 took place in diaspora synagogue settings and
are thus representative of a general opposition of “the synagogues” to Paul’s message. It is
more historically likely that Paul’s disciplinary floggings took place in a public/official syna-
gogue setting in the land of Israel, even more specifically in Jerusalem (Acts 21:27–22:29,
esp. 22:5, 17–21). On this historical point specifically, we agree with the argument put forward
recently by Markus Oehler, “The Punishment of Thirty-Nine Lashes (2 Corinthians 11:24)
and the Place of Paul in Judaism,” JBL 140:3 (2021): 623–40. The public synagogue is the only
were localized incidents in Jerusalem. Romans 11 might suggest that Paul’s gen-
tiles there were tempted to disassociate from the larger Jewish community from
which they had been originally recruited, but this sort of disassociation seems
to be precisely what Paul attempts to prevent.71
9. Three Arguments that Paul Expected His Gentiles to Remain

in Synagogue Communities
Rather, we suggest at least three features arise from Paul’s letters that indicate
that he expected his gentiles to continue participating in their local Yahweh as-
sociations.
Acts and Former God-fearers: First, however the book of Acts may or may
not help us fill in the gaps, in his letters Paul is clearly not interested in his gen-
tiles remaining mere god-fearers. Remember, gentiles who had an interest in the
Jewish deity existed on a continuum, with most feeling perfectly fine about
maintaining their devotion to their native gods and cults. Paul, however, placed
a henotheistic demand upon his gentile Christ-followers, that they offer cult
only to the god of Israel (1 Thess 1:9; Rom 3:29–30). This demand, as Paula
Fredriksen has noted, is a fundamentally Judaizing demand, and one that as-
sumes a continued link between Paul’s gentiles and the larger Jewish communi-
ty.72 In Paul’s day, the practice of a Judaizing henotheism by gentiles, as gen-
tiles, was perhaps a social aggravation to some non-Jews, but it was not unheard
of in connection with larger Jewish communities: Philo, for example, speaks of
foreskinned gentiles among Jewish groups who have “alienated” themselves
from πολύθεος and honor the one and only father of all things (QE 2.2).73 Con-
versely, we have no evidence from the time of Paul of henotheistic gentiles wor-
institution – and perhaps Jerusalem the only city – that could have taken formal punitive
measures against Paul (e.g., the 39 lashes). In the diaspora, Paul would have simply been ex-
cluded from the association or, if legal charges were sought, brought before a city’s politarchai
(Acts 17:6). The account in Acts 17:1–9 (in Thessalonica) presents Paul’s conflict within the
“synagogue” as much more politically-oriented and ad hoc – mob like – than systematic Jew-
ish opposition over the matter of Torah observance. Acts 19:8 suggests that Paul’s “conflict”
within the Ephesian assembly arose not from an individual instance of law-breaking, but
rather resulted from a specific context of an extended period of time in which Paul was steeped
in lively debate – he eventually gets frustrated enough and leaves on his own accord, taking is
disciples with him, only to set up another Jewish association in the Hall of Tyrannus, in which
Jews and Greeks “heard the word of the Lord” (19:10).
71 Pace Watson, Paul, 203; Mark D. Nanos, “To the Churches within the Synagogues of
Rome,” in Reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ed. Jerry L. Sumney, RBS 73 (Atlanta: SBL,
2012), 11–28, here 24.
72 Paula Fredriksen, “Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel,” NTS
56:2 (2010): 232–52.

73 Terence L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to
135 CE) (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 493–8.

shiping the Jewish God apart from the larger Jewish community. The social and
political concern of the Romans for gentile “atheists” does not really become an
issue until the second century, and even in this period there must have been
enough gentile henotheists in synagogue settings for the early rabbis to develop
halakhic expectations for “righteous gentiles” that included the proscription of
idol worship (t. Avod. Zar. 8:4; b. Sanh. 56b).74 Thus, as Mark Nanos has men-
tioned, if Paul expected his gentile Christ-followers to neglect their native cults
and worship Israel’s god apart from affiliation with larger Jewish communities,
it is highly likely that they would have been known early on, while still a small
and marginal social group, as a threat to the welfare of the empire. It seems rath-
er that Paul’s desire to see regular old god-fearers “converted” into exclusive
worshippers of the Jewish deity by means of their being in-Christ is a natural
outworking of his expectation that they would continue participating in the
types of associations that would have attracted the greatest number of Jewish
henotheists. In what setting could gentiles practice a Judaizing henotheism oth-
er than in association synagogues that had Yahweh devotion as its principal
social connection?
Scriptural Argument and Staying: The second feature that suggests Paul ex-
pected gentile Christ-followers to remain within their larger Yahweh associa-
tions is his scriptural argument. Nanos has observed that Paul’s argument, par-
ticularly as set forth in Romans, presupposes not only competence in the con-
tents of Jewish scripture but regular exposure to them in social settings in which
scriptural texts were read, translated, and interpreted (e.g., Rom 2:17–20).75 Jew-
ish scripture does not appear to have been widely studied or well known outside
of and apart from Jewish groups in Paul’s day. And to own copies of these texts
would have required both a level of wealth and, more importantly, competent
readers. From a socio-historical perspective, the question is whether we should
expect Paul’s gentile groups – some of which were perhaps quite small in num-
ber – to have had such resources at their disposal apart from larger association
synagogues.76 It is, indeed, possible – and certainly by the time Justin Martyr
writes his First Apology this appears to be the case (1 Apol. 67). But in Paul’s
time, a time when the Christ-movement is still very much finding its footing
within the gentile world, it seems more likely that his gentile Christ-followers
would have continued receiving instruction in Jewish scripture from their local
Yahweh associations and Christ-oriented instruction in their sub-group gather-
ings. This is, then, a good example of the segmentary grammar of identity.
74 Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew,” HTR 82:1 (1989):
13–33, here 22. On other expressions of universalist attitudes in early rabbinic literature, see
Marc Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries,” HTR 93:2
(2000): 101–15.
75 Nanos, “To the Churches,” 21.
76 Last, Pauline, 81, suggests “nine or ten members” for the Corinthian group.
Keeping the Commandments as Evidence: Third, far from proclaiming a

“Law-free gospel,” Paul seems to have invited his gentiles to take on a level of
Jewishness through “keeping God’s commandments.” For example, as Mat-
thew Thiessen has argued, in the case of Rom 2:17–29, Paul expresses his desire
for foreskinned gentiles to keep the requirements of the law, which involves
their not practicing proselyte circumcision.77 Paula Fredriksen has also made a
strong case that, in 1 Cor 7:17–20, Paul is addressing the issue of gentile circum-
cision versus gentile foreskin: while he expresses a level of indifference to both,
he stresses that what matters is that gentiles “keep the commandments of
God.”78 In other words, following Nanos, Paul might not want his gentiles to
become Jews but he certainly wants them to become “Jew-ish.” For Paul to ex-
pect gentiles to maintain a Jew-ish identity, he must envision a socioreligious
setting for that identity to be cultivated and shaped around Jewish teaching for
gentiles. So, for example, Paul’s fictive interlocutor in Romans 2, who acts as a
sort of pedagogical stand-in for Paul’s readers,79 not only “names himself an
Ioudaios” but is also “instructed from the Law” and “knows God’s will.” Cer-
tainly, Paul’s language here is rhetorical, as he aims to expose the interlocutor’s
hypocrisy as, perhaps, a judgey Judaizing gentile, but the point is that Paul en-
visions among the Roman Christ-groups a type of gentile reader who openly
identifies with the Jewish community and who is actively receiving instruction
from the Law (see also Rom 7:1).80 It is hard to imagine this type of gentile
Christ-follower in Rome having such an identity apart from a larger Yahweh
association in which gentiles – proselytes as well as those with foreskin – were
being taught the commandments. In other words, Paul has no qualms with the
gentile being law observant – and where else in the ancient world would you
find law observant gentiles than in “synagogues”?
Now, precisely which of the commandments Paul had in mind when he calls
gentiles to observe them is not necessarily clear. Surely, they include the stan-
dards of community behavior as described in the Decalogue.81 The Decalogue
77 There continues to be significant debate over the identity of the “self-named Jew” in
Rom 2:17. See the arguments put forth by Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 68–70; Fredriksen, Paul, 156–7.
78 Fredriksen, Paul, 107–8, 111, 118. See Tucker, Reading Romans, 52.
79 Fredriksen, Paul, 156, citing Thorsteinsson, Interlocutor. Cf. Markus Öhler, “‘If you are
called a Judean …’ (Rom 2:17): Paul and his Interlocutor,” in Israel and the Nations: Paul’s
Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectations, ed. František Ábel (Lanham: Lexington, 2021),
219–42, here 227, concludes it is slightly more likely to be a Judean rather than a person from
the nations. Windsor, Paul, 162, sees here a Jewish teacher in the synagogue. Cf. Tucker,
Reading Romans, 48.
80 See my (J. Brian Tucker) openness to this in Tucker, Reading Romans, 47–51, while ac-
knowledging the challenges associated with it, thus the perhaps above. An idealized in-Christ
Jewish teacher of gentiles remains a strong possibility (48), who teaches in the association
gathering, rather than the larger Yahweh association as envisioned by Windsor.
81 Rosner, Paul, 163–4, who highlights the role of the Decalogue in forming group norms.
is mentioned explicitly in Rom 13:8–10, where Paul takes a Hillel-like approach

to summing up the Law through the principle of love of neighbor (b. Šabb. 31a).
Perhaps also included here are other parts of Torah aimed at non-Israelites, such
as the various prescriptions against idolatry in Lev 17–18, or something akin to
the Noachide Laws for righteous gentiles.82 In 1 Cor 5:8, Paul encourages his
gentiles to “celebrate the festival” (i.e., Passover) with Christ as their τὸ πάσχα.
While, as Jane Lancaster Patterson has shown, Paul’s language here draws on the
paschal metaphor and demonstrates his continuity with Jewish cultic practice,
it is possible that Paul nevertheless envisions a “real” ritual practice in which
gentiles really do celebrate the Passover with imbued messianic significance.83
Additionally, in Rom 14, Paul seems to treat gentile observance of Jewish holi-
days and food halakhah as a viable way of life for Christ-followers who seek to
honor the Jewish god. 84 These observant gentiles are the ones that Paul especial-
ly expected to continue participating in the ritual life of their local Yahweh as-
sociations. Sabbath observance, after all, is explicitly connected to synagogue
practices in some ancient Jewish texts, and it was apparently widely practiced in
antiquity among Judaizing gentiles, henotheist or not. 85 In later centuries, we
see the phenomenon of observant gentile Christ-followers in “synagogue” set-
tings continue. Origen, for example, tells his gentile Christ-followers not to
discuss in his Christian assembly questions they had heard raised in synagogue
the day before, that is, on the Sabbath. 86 This implies, of course, that members
of his congregation were observing the seventh-day. A hundred and fifty years
His reference to the T. Naph. 8:7–9 provides nuance in regard to the traditional debate over
fulfilling and doing Torah (122). Cf. Tucker, Reading Romans, 92–3, 96.
82 Acts 15:19–32; 16:1–5; 21:25; cf. Nanos, Mystery, 52; Peter J. Tomson, Paul and the Jew-
ish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990),
50, 273–5. Pace Philip La Grange Du Toit, God’s Saved Israel: Reading Romans 11:26 and
Galatians 6:16 in Terms of the New Identity in Christ and the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Pickwick,
2019), 142–4.
83 Jane Lancaster Patterson, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors of Sacrifice in 1 Corinthians and
Philippians, ECL 16 (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 54, 59–60. Tucker, Reading 1 Corinthians, 74–5.
84 Assuming that the “weak” here are Judaizing gentiles and/or former god-fearers, see
Tucker, Reading Romans, 200; cf. A. Andrew Das, “The Gentile-Encoded Audience of Ro-
mans: The Church outside the Synagogue,” in Reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ed. Jerry
L. Sumney, RBS 73 (Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 29–46, here 36–7. See Horace, Sat. 1.9.68–72, in re-
gard to a Sabbath-observing non-Jew described as “a somewhat weaker brother, one of the
many.”
85 E.g., Juvenal, Sat. 14.96–106; Tertullian, Nat. 1.13.3–4. See Das, “Gentile Encoded,”
36–7.
86 Origen, Hom. Lev. 5.8; Sel. Exod. 12.46. Cited in Paula Fredriksen, “Compassion is to
Purity as Fish is to Bicycle and Other Reflections on Constructions of ‘Judaism’ in Current

Work on the Historical Jesus,” in Apocalypticism, Anti-Semitism and the Historical Jesus:
Subtexts and Criticism, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and John W. Marshall (London: T&T Clark,
2005), 55–67, here 67. See also Wally V. Cirafesi, “The Socio-Economic Context of Caper-
naum’s Limestone Synagogue and Jewish–Christian Relations in the Late-Ancient Town,”
Scandinavian Jewish Studies 32:1 (2021): 46–65, here 56, for further citations.
after Origen, John Chrysostom infamously lamented that many gentile Chris-
tians in his Antiochene congregation “fast on the same day as the Jews, and keep
the Sabbaths in the same manner.”87 In addition to going to synagogue, they
take oaths in front of Torah scrolls and celebrate Passover and Sukkot along with
the broader Jewish community. Karin Hedner Zetterholm has argued that the
Pseudo-Clementine Homilies represents a Jewish reception of Acts and Paul
shaped by a Jewish milieu. The Homilies, she argues, are best understood to
reflect the ideology of a Jesus-oriented sub-group within a broader Jewish com-
munity that addresses its teaching exclusively to gentiles.88 Therefore, it does not
seem unreasonable to suggest that what Origen, John Chrysostom, and perhaps
others saw as a problem in their time, Paul before them considered a social im-
plication of his Judaizing gospel: that, while gentile Christ-followers should not
circumcise and become Jews, they could, even should, live “Jewishly” by, for
example, becoming good henotheists, keeping the standards of conduct as pre-
scribed in Jewish law, and, as Fredriksen has put it, “keeping Jewish time.” This
living “Jewishly” assumed the maintenance of one’s membership in associations
that were oriented around the worship of the Jewish god.
10. Eschatological Pilgrimage Tradition
Placing Paul’s groups within the institutional context of association “syna-

gogues” as we’ve done here, opens up new interpretive possibilities. As Anders
Runesson has argued, this institutional setting drives the production of Paul’s
theology. 89 The theoretical resources found in the segmentary grammar of iden-
tity leads to the construction of theology. As Paul observes the social phenom-
enon of in-Christ gentiles worshipping with Jews in synagogue spaces as mem-
bers from the nations, the eschatological pilgrimage tradition begins to emerge
in his theologizing.90 Terence Donaldson comments that those of the Paul with-
in Judaism approach are “unanimous in drawing on such eschatological pil-
87 John Chrysostom, Hom. Gal. 1.7 (PG 61:623–24). ET is from NPNF1 13:8.
88 Karin Hedner Zetterholm, “Jewish Teachings for Gentiles in the Pseudo-Clementine
Homilies: A Reception of Ideas in Paul and Acts Shaped by a Jewish Milieu?,” JJMJS 6 (2019):
68–87.
89 Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 44–5.
90 The fact that none of the sources for association-type synagogues that we have discussed
presents non-Jews as participating in such institutions in Jerusalem specifically should not

prevent us from seeing the relevance of the eschatological pilgrimage as a whole for Paul’s
theologizing. Further, if we follow Binder’s theory, that Second Temple period synagogues
functioned variously as ideological extensions of the Jerusalem temple courts – within which
gentile pilgrims certainly had a place, even if restricted – then we might, indeed, have reason
to believe that Paul’s vision of in-Christ gentiles worshiping alongside the Jewish people in
association synagogues represents his own ideological extension of the Jerusalem-centric es-
chatological pilgrimage tradition. See Binder, Into the Temple Courts.
grimage expectations” in understanding Paul’s gospel or the status of the ethnē-

in-Christ.91 Matthew Novenson rejects the idea that this approach guided Paul’s
conception of the gentiles, since he never cites the key passages: Isa 2:2–5/Mic
4:1–5 and Zech 8:22–23. Paul within Judaism interpreters have failed to address
the idea that all three aspects of the tradition need to be present: eschatology,
pilgrimage, and gentiles, for it to be clear that Paul relied on this tradition.92
Here we offer a few comments to address this gap.
Novenson claims Paul does not cite from this tradition. There is a citation of
Isa 11:10 in Rom 15:12, but he uses this as an example that lacks pilgrimage, and
citing Roberts, shows it should be excluded from the tradition.93 The reason
Paul cites Isa 11:10 and not 2:2–5 in Rom 15:12 is because there is a messianic
“eschatological subjection” of the nations but not “eschatological pilgrimage of
the gentiles to Zion.”94 However, the oracles in Isa 2:4 and 11:3–4 both include
a righteous ruler, and 11:5–9 describes his knowledge filling the earth. Even
Roberts acknowledges that 11:10 parallels closely the vision of 2:2–5, though
again the nations go to the “root of Jesse” instead of “the divine mountain.”95
This may be a case of metonymy, where “In that day the root of Jesse, which
remains standing, will be like a flag for the peoples,” can stand for a reference to
the city – in which case there is pilgrimage here. Even if the focus is on the king
and not the city, the city is not ignored: “and his resting place will be glorious”
(11:10e), and in Ps 132:14, the “resting place” is Zion, God’s eternal abode.96 It is
likely then that Rom 15:12 with its citation of Isa 11:10 does have all three com-
ponents: eschatology, pilgrimage, and gentiles.
91 Terence L. Donaldson, “Paul within Judaism: A Critical Evaluation from a ‘New Per-
spective’ Perspective,” in Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context of the
Apostle, ed. Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 277–301,
here 285, he rejects this idea opting instead for the Jewish proselytizing approach, see Donald-
son, Paul and the Gentiles, 51–78. Donaldson’s approach suffers from an overreliance on the
encompassment grammar of identity.
92 Matthew V. Novenson, “What Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Gentiles?,” in Israel and
the Nations: Paul’s Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectations, ed. František Ábel (Lanham:
Lexington, 2021), 61–73, here 62, he opts for the eschatological obedience of the gentiles in its
place (67). He cites Tob 13:9–11; Sib. Or. 3.715–719; 1 En. 90:29–31, as developments within
this tradition (63), one wonders if Paul may be part of such a development as well, and that
accounts for the differences scholars notice. See the discussion in Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
“Paul, the Israelite, on Israel and the Gentiles at the End of Time: Reflections on Rom 9–11,”
in Ábel, Israel and the Nations, 271–88, here 276–80.
93 Novenson, “What Eschatological,” 65, 70 n. 17; Jimmy J. M. Roberts, “The End of War
in the Zion Tradition,” HBT 26 (2004): 2–22.

94 Novenson, “What Eschatological,” 66.
95 Roberts, “The End,” 11.
96 Roberts, “The End,” 12. The Isaiah 2 oracle is paralleled in Mic 4, which also shows the
king ruling from Mount Zion (Mic 4:7), as the city itself is restored to his former glory (4:8),
and is ruled by a new king from Bethlehem (5:1–3). The hopes and expectations of a renewed
Davidic empire seen in Isaiah and Micah is one centered in Jerusalem.
In Galatians 4:27 Paul cites Isa 54:1. This does not deter Novenson, who
points out that generally speaking there is a lack of Zion-discourse in Paul but
when it occurs Israel is in view.97 “Gentiles-in-Christ (like Jews-in-Christ, pre-
sumably) have the Jerusalem above as their metropolis (Gal 4:26), not the pres-
ent Jerusalem (Gal 4:25), which perhaps is why Paul does not exhort them to
make pilgrimage there.”98 Similar to the Rom 15:12 citation of Isa 11:10, the
context of Isaiah 54 reflects the eschatological pilgrimage tradition; Paul’s use
of it here in Galatians 4 is to be expected. In Paul’s argument in 4:21–31, “Jeru-
salem above” (4:26) serves as an element of his argument that holds little seman-
tic information, while “present Jerusalem” (4:25) as a category is problematic
since the Temple in Jerusalem is still standing and restricts full access to in-
Christ gentiles. According to Ryan Heinsch, it is unlikely that a bifurcation
between the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem is in view in the sense that
Jewish writers of the period could think of the physical city and the heavenly
one as the same thing.99 Novenson’s claim here in regards to the binary relation-
ships, often a result of the orientalizing grammar, is not convincing. A return to
a “Jerusalem above” would in some sense also be a return to the “present Jeru-
salem;” while there may be a de-centralizing of the present Jerusalem it is not a
displacing of the Temple.100 It is, according to Heinsch, “envision[ing] Jerusalem
as thirdspace: a space were gentiles can worship Israel’s God as gentiles. This
view […] is in line with the prophetic promises that the nations would one day
flock to Jerusalem: promises that Paul believed were being fulfilled in his own
time (e.g., Isa 2:2; 54:1–3; 55:4–5, 10; 56:6–8; 60:5).”101 It is also likely then that
Gal 4:27 with its citation of Isa 54:1 also includes eschatology, pilgrimage and
gentiles, and should be included as evidence that this tradition informed Paul in
rejecting the idea that in-Christ gentiles should be absorbed into Israel without
remainder.102
97 It occurs in Rom 9:33 citing Isa 28:16 and Rom 11:26 citing Isa 59:20, both sections have
Israel in view and not in-Christ gentiles (though there is relevance for gentiles in terms of the
connected-to-Israel nature of their in-Christ identity, as to be expected reading with the seg-
mentary grammar of identity).
98 Novenson, “What Eschatological,” 67. David I. Starling, Not My People, 28, rightly
picks up “Paul’s aim in this section … is to win his readers’ obedience to the imperative with
which the section closes in 5:1b.”
99 Ryan Heinsch, “What does Hagar have to do with Mount Sinai and Jerusalem: Critical
Spatial Theory and Identity in Galatians 4:24–26” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the SBL, Boston, MA, 20 November 2017), 1–14, here 12, citing 1 Kgs 8:48; 9:3; Ps 87:1–3; Ezek
43:6–7; Sir 24:1–12; 1 En. 89:50–73.
100 Kathleen Troost-Cramer, “De-Centralizing the Temple: A Rereading of Romans 15:16,”
JJMJS 3 (2016): 72–101, here 92–9; Fredriksen, “Judaizing,” 250. The issue is the Temple and
what it does to the gentiles but not the Temple per se.
101 Heinsch, “What Does,” 12–13.
102 Starling, Not My People, 30, may go too far in claiming a text originally written to
historic Israel applies directly to uncircumcised gentiles; rather, Paul still views Isa 54:1 ad-
dressing Israel’s restoration that is now underway, and this end to exile results in the blessing
While not a significant part of Novenson’s argument, the Jerusalem collec-

tion is often pointed to as evidence that the eschatological pilgrimage tradition
is salient for Paul’s view of the end-times gentiles, though not as much recent-
ly.103 Novenson recognizes the early work of Johannes Munck and Dieter
Georgi in this regard but then sets aside the idea that “Paul’s collection of mon-
ey from the gentile Christ-assemblies abroad to give aid to the poor among the
saints in Jerusalem” had the pilgrimage tradition in view: (a) Paul nowhere pres-
ents the gathering as a pilgrimage; (b) Paul delivers the collection not the gen-
tiles; and (c) he delivers it not to the temple on Mount Zion but to the Messi-
ah-Followers in Jerusalem.104 The Jerusalem collection seems to fail Novenson’s
framework since it does not include eschatology or pilgrimage. Gentiles are in
view in 1 Cor 16:3, assuming the Corinthians would “approve” gentiles to de-
liver their “gift to Jerusalem,” though by Rom 15:28 it appears Paul is going to
deliver it, though this is formally an argument from silence and 2 Cor 8:16–24
does suggest a potentially mixed ethnic group of administrators for the collec-
tion. Either way, it is still the money from the nations coming to Jerusalem. As
regards eschatology and pilgrimage, Julien Ogereau argues concerning the Je-
rusalem collection, “the whole enterprise was rooted in the conviction that the
advent of the eschatological kingdom of God had inaugurated a new socio-eco-
nomic order, which was to become distinctive of the emergent Christ-believing
communities on a global scale.”105 Munck, Nickle, and Georgi, in different
ways, contend that the eschatological pilgrimage tradition influenced Paul’s
collection project. This has not been widely accepted since there seems to be
little textual basis for the connection; however, Paul’s Jewish interpretive-con-
text, its socioreligious synagogue setting within the broader Jewish communi-
ty, and its potential reconciliatory impulse are important contributions from
the work of these scholars that combine to suggest this should be given further
consideration. Second Corinthians 8:14, with its reference to “in the now time”
(ἐν τῷ νῦν καιρῷ), may suggest Paul views the collection as an eschatological
event, where the wealth of the nations flows into Zion (Isa 60:5).106 The recipi-
of Abraham extending now to the nations (Ryan Heinsch, The Figure of Hagar in Ancient
Judaism and Galatians, WUNT [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming]). Is it possible that
this is a both/and, an interpretive option that the segmentary grammar opens up. David J.
Rudolph, “Zionism in Pauline Literature: Does Paul Eliminate Particularity for Israel and the
Land in His Portrayal of Salvation Available for All the World?” in The New Christian Zion-
ism, ed. Gerald R. McDermott (Downers Grove: IVP, 2016), 167–94, here 176, discussing Isa
54:2–3 reflects this segmentary approach: Israel inherits the cities of its enemies and also bless-
es the nations (Gen 22:17–18; 28:14).
103 Samuel Auler, “More than a Gift: Revisiting Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem and the
Pilgrimage of Gentiles,” JSPL 6 (2016): 143–60. 1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8–9; Rom 15:25–28.
104 Novenson, “What Eschatological,” 64.
105 Julien Ogereau, “The Jerusalem Collection as κοινωνία: Paul’s Global Politics of Socio-
Econom ic Equality and Solidarity,” NTS 58:3 (2012): 360–78.

106 Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (London: SCM, 1954), 299–305.
ents as “the saints” could be an inclusive group of Jews (messianic and non-mes-
sianic), offering further support for seeing a continued intra-synagogal sociore-
ligious setting. In regard to the distribution of the resources, it would be ex-
pected that the network associated with the Temple on Mount Zion would have
been accessed. It is this sort of institutional engagement that may account for
Paul’s concern for the acceptance of the gift in Rom 15:31.107 At least initially, it
looks like the Jerusalem Collection too can pass Novenson’s framework of es-
chatology, pilgrimage, and gentiles.
11. Conclusion
Michael Bird’s orienting call for scholars “to identify the particular socioreli-
gious location of Paul and his converts, as well as the theological texture of his
argumentation” has proven helpful in clarifying our thinking on three import-
ant issues. First, through the recognition of the segmentary identity grammar
we were able to uncover the way in-Christ gentiles could remain distinct as
gentiles at one level of their identity while being included in an Israel-like iden-
tity without becoming Jews at another level. Some refer to this as the prophetic
or commonwealth of Israel model.108 This is a hermeneutical issue that impli-
cates the texts we read and the presuppositions of the interpreters as well. The
continuation of gentile identities raises questions as to whether Paul’s gentile
groups could still be described as part of the synagogue community. It was dis-
covered that recent work in Greco-Roman associations provides historical jus-
tification for claiming that Paul expected these ex-pagan gentiles to still go to
synagogue. In other words, Paul’s mission was not to roam around the Mediter-
ranean basin in order to empty local synagogues. He presupposes this as the
continuing institutional context for the Pauline Christ-groups. This segmen-
tary subgroup identity was important to Paul theologically. Third, it was found
that the eschatological pilgrimage tradition informed his thinking and provided
the basis for the continuation of gentile identity in-Christ, since members of the
nations need to be distinct from God’s people Israel, though in that distinction
they are an eschatological extension of Israel, part of the commonwealth of Is-
Keith Nickle, The Collection: A Study of Paul’s Strategy (Naperville: Alec R. Allenson, 1966),
136. Dieter Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1992), 119.
107 Kathy Ehrensperger, “The Ministry to Jerusalem (Rom 15:31): Paul’s Hopes and
Fears,” TZ 69:4 (2013): 338–52.

108 Cf. Erich Zenger, “The God of Israel’s Reign over the World (Psalm 90–106), in The
God of Israel and the Nations: Studies in Isaiah and the Psalms, ed. Nobert L. Lohfink and
Erich Zenger, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2000), 161–90; Richard Bauck-
ham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker,
2012), 44; Rudolph, “Zionism,” 167–94.
rael. While there are still other issues to address in order to argue more fully
whether the “contra,” “intra,” or “bridge” perspective account most fully for
Paul’s letters, these three points at least address reoccurring criticisms of the
Paul within Judaism perspective.
For Who Has Known the Mind of the Apostle?
Paul, the Law, and His Syngeneis in the Messiah*
Ryan D. Collman
1. Introduction
In an essay from 1988, Philip Alexander highlights two key assumptions in

New Testament scholarship when it comes to approaching the subject of Jesus
and the law: (1) that we know what the Torah is and (2) in what ways it was cen-
tral to the lives of ancient Jews.1 Based on standard assumptions about defining
what the law is (i.e., the Pentateuch/Torah of Moses) and its centrality in ancient
Judaism, interpreters then set off to compare the teachings of Jesus with “Juda-
ism” in order to see if Jesus was or was not a “law-observant Jew.” Alexander
problematizes these assumptions – and this general enterprise – by noting the
difficult questions that arise when one seeks to define the law in the first centu-
ry: What non-biblical traditions were a component of the law? Who enforced
the law and how? According to whose interpretation of the law? Etc. After ex-
ploring these questions and examining how the law was applied in the Jewish
law courts of the first century, he argues that the law in first century “cannot be
identified simpliciter with the Pentateuch.”2
Like Alexander, a number of other scholars of ancient Judaism and early
Christianity have recently highlighted the diverse nature of Jewish law in the
first century. Building on the work of Alexander, Anders Runesson explores the
issue of the law and law observance in the first century through his work on the
ancient synagogue.3 Looking at inscriptions and archaeological findings, Ru-
* I am grateful for the invitation from Mike Bird to present this essay at the Paul and Juda-
ism conference he graciously hosted. I must also extend gratitude to my fellow participants at
the conference for their interaction with my work, notably Ruben Bühner, Jörg Frey, Josh
Jipp, David Starling, and Paula Fredriksen. My writing group, The Covid Collective, also
provided me with valuable feedback that improved this essay.
1 Philip S. Alexander, “Jewish Law in the Time of Jesus: Towards a Clarification of the
Problem,” in Law and Religion: Essays on the Place of the Law in Israel and Early Christian-
ity, ed. Barnabas Lindars (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1988), 44–58, here 44–6.
2 Alexander, “Jewish Law,” 46.
3 Anders Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul: First-Century Torah Observance,”
in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, ed. Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 11–26.
148 Ryan D. Collman
nesson notes, “the institutional climate in which Torah observance was formed
was open and non-static, lacking supra-local authority structures and thus al-
lowing for local variation with regard to what constituted Torah observance and
which texts would be important for establishing this.”4 Similarly, Shayna
Sheinfeld offers a survey of some prominent discussions of the law in Philo,
Josephus, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch, and highlights the broad diversity of meanings
and referents ascribed to Torah.5 Sheinfeld proposes that the view of the law
amongst first-century Jews is “variegated, flexible, and chang[es] depending on
the circumstance.”6
Returning to the work of Alexander, in addition to these central definitional
issues, he also notes that we cannot assume that all ancient Jews viewed the
centrality of the Torah in the same way.7
To put it boldly there was no universally acknowledged body of laws at the heart of Ju-
daism in the time of Jesus. Any generalisations to which all Jews would have assented
would have been at such a level of abstraction as to have very little substantive content.
The centrality of the Torah of Moses to Judaism was the centrality of a national flag. All
Jews would have emotively rallied to it: each would have interpreted the meaning of the
flag in his own way; each group would have had its own definition of what beliefs and
practices constituted loyalty to the flag. Attacks on the Torah would have needed to have
been of a gross and very sweeping kind to have been regarded as attacks on Judaism, as
negations of the law. To put oneself beyond the pale, one would have had to spit on the
flag in a very public and conspicuous way. 8
4 Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue,” 24.

5 Shayna Sheinfeld, “From Nomos to Logos: Torah in First-Century Jewish Texts,” in The
Message of Paul the Apostle within Second Temple Judaism, ed. František Ábel (Lenham, MD:
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020), 61–74.
6 Sheinfeld, “From Nomos to Logos,” 71. See also the discussions about the diversity of
opinions about what constitutes Torah observance in Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish
Society, 200 B. C. E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 68; Karin
Hedner Zetterholm, “The Question of Assumptions: Torah Observance in the First Centu-
ry,” in Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, ed. Mark D.
Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 79–103; Kathy Ehrensperger,
“Die ‘Paul within Judaism’-Perspektive. Eine Übersicht,” EvT 80 (2020): 455–64, here 461.
On the continued fragmentation of observance and interpretation of Torah in early Rabbinic
Judaism, see Catherine Hezser, “Social Fragmentation, Plurality of Opinion, and Nonob-
servance of Halakhah: Rabbis and Community in Late Roman Palestine,” JSQ 1 (1993/94):
234–51.
7 Something similar has also been recently argued by Logan Williams, “Is Torah-Obser-
vance the Essence of Judaism? An Historical and Decolonial Critique of the ‘Paul within Ju-
daism’ Schule” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the British New Testament Society,
Durham, UK, 22 August 2021). Williams pushes back against the assumption that Torah-ob-
servance is the essence of Judaism, noting the diversity of interpretation about the law and the
existence of Jewish groups who seems to be unaware that the Torah of Moses even exists (i.e.,
the Jews of Elephantine [c. fifth century BCE]). See also the discussion in John J. Collins, The
Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul (Oakland: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2017), esp. 4 4–79.
8 Alexander, “Jewish Law,” 56.
For Who Has Known the Mind of the Apostle? 149
While Alexander applies his incisive critique to the study of Jesus and the law,
one can easily expand this critique to include the study of Paul and the law. This
brings us to the question this essay has been tasked to answer: “How would
Jewish Christ-believers respond to Pauline halakhah about the Torah?”
This question, however, is not an easy one to answer. As our interpreters
above demonstrate, there was no uniform position on the Torah in first-century
Judaism that we are able to ascribe to any given group. Given the pluriform na-
ture of ancient Judaism and the various attitudes of different groups toward the
law, we can thus only speak to their perspectives on the Torah – and more spe-
cifically Paul’s teaching on the Torah – insofar as they have been recorded and
preserved for us to interpret. While one could speculate about what some hypo-
thetical group of Jewish followers of Jesus9 may have thought about Paul’s
teaching on the law, this essay will focus on the ancient evidence we have con-
cerning Jewish followers of Jesus and Paul.10 As the sources I look at below
demonstrate, our evidence for what Jewish followers of Jesus thought about
Paul and the law is scant. Outside of the perspectives preserved in the New Tes-
tament, the sources we have that speak of Jewish followers of Jesus and Paul are
second-hand and generally of dubious quality and reliability. Despite this min-
imal evidence, I will proceed by first looking at texts that specifically speak of
groups of Jewish followers of Jesus and Paul, to see where and how issues of
Paul and the law are discussed. After discussing the available evidence, in the
second half of the essay I will then offer my own treatment of Paul’s discussion
9 I avoid the language of “Jewish-Christianity” given its inherent anachronism and com-
plicated use in the history of scholarship. On this discussion, see Annette Yoshiko Reed,
Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism, TSAJ 171 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018);
Matt Jackson-McCabe, Jewish Christianity: The Making of the Christianity-Judaism Divide,
AYBRL (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). On the variety of Jewish followers of Je-
sus in the first few centuries, see the various essays in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik,
eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007).
10 If one were to engage in this speculative exercise, they would first have to determine
what Paul’s teaching on the Torah actually was. Thus, the reading this exercise would produce
would not necessarily be what a hypothetical group of Jewish followers of Jesus might have
thought about Paul’s teaching on the Torah, but what they might have thought about this
particular interpretation of Paul’s teaching on the Torah. This is one of the primary reasons
why I am hesitant in engaging in such a speculative exercise; I am not confident that the results
would lead us to a better historical understanding of how Paul’s fellow Jews within the Jesus
movement might have thought about his discussion of the law. How one accesses and conjures
“Paul” as an individual also poses a number of historiographical issues for how one might
engage in this speculative exercise. On this, see Margaret M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet:
John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2002), 428: “Pauline interpretation is fundamentally an artistic exercise in conjuring up and
depicting a dead man from his ghostly images in the ancient text, as projected on a back-
ground composed from a selection of existing sources. All these portraits are based upon a
new configuration of the surviving evidence, set into a particular, chosen, framework.” See
also the discussion in Benjamin L. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests
over the Image of the Apostle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
150 Ryan D. Collman
of the Torah. Our study thus begins in our earliest sources involving Paul and
Jewish followers of Jesus – the epistles of the Apostle himself.
2. Portrayals of Paul, Jewish Followers of Jesus, and the Torah
2.1 Pauline Epistles

At a number of points in his epistles, Paul refers to groups of agitators who he
clashes with over issues of the law and its observance. These intra-Jewish dis-
cussions, however, are rather specific in their scope. Paul’s disagreements with
these groups – be it the pseudadelphoi (Gal 2:4; cf. Acts 15:1),11 the agitators (Gal
1:7; 5:10) or the wicked working, mutilated dogs (Phil 3:2)12 – are not over how
Jews in the Jesus movement relate to their ancestral law, but specifically to the
situation of non-Jews in the ekklēsia.13 What is required of them? To what ex-
tent do they need to keep the Jewish ancestral law (however defined)? Do the
male members need to remove their foreskins? What does not seem to be under
discussion between Paul and these groups – according to Paul, at least – is the
situation of Jews vis-à-vis circumcision and Torah. The general situation of Jew-
ish followers of Jesus and the practice of their ancestral law does not appear to
be a point of contention. As Paul argues in 1 Cor 7:17–20, Jews in the Jesus
movement are to keep the status quo as it pertains to their Torah observance,
which is also the majority position of the Jewish members of the Jesus move-
ment as portrayed in Acts 15.14
11 While Paul polemically refers to them as “psuedo-brothers,” based on the parallel ac-
count in Acts 15 it seems they would have identified as Jewish followers of Jesus.
12 While the identity of the agitators in Galatians and Philippians is not made explicit by
Paul, given the subject matter at hand it is likely that they would identify as Jewish followers
of Jesus. As I have argued elsewhere, this does not mean that these groups are natural born
Jews. Based on the way Paul describes these groups, in both Galatians and Philippians I think
they are most likely Jesus following, gentile proselytes to Judaism. See my discussions in Ryan
D. Collman, “Beware the Dogs! The Phallic Epithet in Phil 3.2,” NTS 67 (2021): 105–20; idem,
The Apostle to the Foreskin: Circumcision in the Letters of Paul, BZNW 259 (Berlin: de Gruy-
ter, forthcoming). See also, Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016), 95–6.
13 Ehrensperger, “Die ‘Paul within Judaism’-Perspektive,” 459–61. In contrast to this per-
spective, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr takes a relatively more traditional approach and argues that
Paul’s discussion of the Torah centers on laws that are directly related to the relationship be-
tween Jews and non-Jews in the ekklēsia. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Jesus, Paulus und die
Pharisäer. Beobachtungen zu ihren historischen Zusammenhängen, zum Toraverständnis
und zur Anthropologie,” RCatT 34 (2009): 317–46, here 334–41.
14 On 1 Cor 7:17–20 and Acts 15, see Peter J. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha
in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles, CRINT 1 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990); Markus
Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Pub-
lic Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000), 170–2; Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a
Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009),
One point at which there appears to be diverging opinions between Paul and
other Jews as it pertains to aspects of Jewish law is the so-called Antioch inci-
dent in Gal 2:11–14. In Paul’s recounting of the narrative, he had to rebuke
Cephas for withdrawing from eating with non-Jews at the behest of “some men
from James.”15 While Paul and Cephas were in the habit of eating with non-
Jews – perhaps even in their homes in the presence of pagan idols, what Paul
calls “living gentilishly”16 – this scandalized the men from James who did not
find this dining behavior acceptable. But this disagreement is not a major dis-
agreement about the Torah, but rather how one navigates table-fellowship hal-
akhah in a diaspora context. Like some Second Temple Jews (Jub. 22:26; Jos.
Asen. 7:1), the men from James were uncomfortable with mixed dining, but like
other Second Temple Jews, Paul and Cephas had no issue with the practice as
long as the food was not forbidden (Dan 1:3–17; Tob 1:11; 2 Macc 7:1–2; Jdt 10:5;
12:17–19; Let. Aris. 181–294).17 Paul does, however, use Cephas’ about-face as a
way to demonstrate a larger point of agreement between them regarding the
law: that eschatological dikaiosynē does not come from works of the law, but
from the faithfulness of the Messiah (Gal 2:15–16; cf. 3:21). This is not said as a
denigration of Torah but a statement of fact that he and Cephas agree upon – one
that Cephas needs to act consistently in line with, or else he risks leading the
gentiles in Antioch astray. Paul’s problem with Cephas is that by withdrawing
from eating with non-Jews, Cephas had sent mixed messages about the necessi-
ty of circumcision and Torah observance (i.e., “works of the law”) for non-Jews,
which is contrary to what he and Paul actually believe.
To briefly summarize, Paul does not present himself as being at odds with
other Jews over his teaching about the Torah. His points of disagreement with
other Jewish groups in the Jesus movement about Torah revolve around the sit-
uation of non-Jews in the ekklēsia and how they relate to Jewish ancestral law.
2.2 Acts of the Apostles

As Isaac Oliver has convincingly proposed, in light of the knowledge the author
of Luke-Acts (henceforth, “Luke”) has about Torah and the finer points of hal-
akhah, it is more than likely the case that Luke was born and raised a Jew.18
62–3; Ryan D. Collman, “Just A Flesh Wound?: Reassessing Paul’s Supposed Indifference
Toward Circumcision and Foreskin in 1 Cor 7:19, Gal 5:6, and 6:15,” JJMJS 8 (2021): 30–52.
15 The exact identity of these men is unclear, but they are “from the circumcision” (i.e.,
Jews; Gal 2:12) and appear to be endowed with some authority from the Jerusalem ekklēsia.
See J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan & Co., 1896),
112.
16 On this phrase, see Matthew V. Novenson, “Did Paul Abandon Either Judaism or
Monotheism?,” in The New Cambridge Companion to St Paul, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 239–59, here 244–5.
17 For a discussion of some of these texts, see Ruben Bühner’s essay in this volume.
18 Isaac W. Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE, WUNT 2/355 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
152 Ryan D. Collman
Thus, Luke’s portrayal of Paul is an important point of contact for understand-

ing how some Jewish followers of Jesus might have thought about Paul and the
Torah. According to Joshua Jipp, Luke’s portrayal of Paul is as a “faithful, To-
rah-observant Jew.”19 Throughout Luke’s narrative, Luke consistently high-
lights how Paul acted in accordance with his ancestral laws and presents himself
in his various speeches as a Jew who is faithful to his Jewish heritage and its
major symbols (notably the Torah, the Temple, circumcision, and the people of
Israel; Acts 16:3; 21:24–26; 22:3; 24:14, 17–18; 25:8; 28:17).20 At a number of
points in Acts, Paul is accused of disregarding the Torah and misleading Jews by
teaching them to forsake the law of Moses, stop circumcising their sons, and
abandon their ancestral customs (18:13; 21:21; cf. Acts 15:1–5). It appears as
though Paul’s teaching on circumcision, Torah, and non-Jews was misconstrued
as being Paul’s teaching on the Torah for everyone. Luke, however, presents
these claims made by other Jews as being patently false. Jervell and Oliver even
go as far as proposing that one of the purposes behind Luke writing Acts was to
correct misconceptions about Paul, his teaching on the Torah, and his obser-
vance of his ancestral customs.21 Luke the Jew raises no concerns about Paul’s
teaching on the Torah, but rather, portrays him as being wholly faithful to it.
Neither Acts nor Paul’s epistles present Paul’s teaching on Torah in relationship
to Jews to be an issue for Jewish followers of Jesus.
2.3 The Ebionites (and Nazarenes)

The Ebionites are the most notable named group of Jewish followers of Jesus
that appear in our ancient sources.22 While we have numerous accounts con-
2013), 447–8. Oliver uses the clever motto that Luke (and Matthew) are “Jewish till proven
Gentile” (447) and even goes as far as claiming that “Luke the Gentile is dead” (450). In light
of Oliver’s arguments, the burden of proof is on those who claim Luke was a gentile, not those
who understand him as a Jew. For a more traditional assessment of the identity of the author
of Luke-Acts, see Walter Schmithals, Das Evangelium nach Lukas, ZBK 3.1 (Zurich: Theo
logischer Verlag, 1980), 9; cf. François Bovon, Das Evangelium Nach Lukas (Lk 1,1–9,50),
EKKNT 3.1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), 22–3.
19 Joshua W. Jipp, “The Paul of Acts: Proclaimer of the Hope of Israel or Teacher of Apos-
tasy from Moses?,” NovT 62 (2020): 60–78, esp. 62–4. Jipp correctly highlights the ambiguity
concerning the content of the Torah and what constituted its proper observance (67 n. 27). On
the law-observant Paul in Acts, see also the classic discussion in Jacob Jervell, Luke and the
People of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972), esp. 153–83.
20 Oliver (Torah Praxis, 230–4) also shows how Luke carefully constructs Paul’s itinerary
on a Jewish calendar, paying attention to feasts and festivals, and not traveling on the sabbath.
21 Jervell, Luke, 16–7; Isaac W. Oliver, “The ‘Historical Paul’ and the Paul of Acts: Which
Is More Jewish?,” in Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Juda-
ism, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini, Carlos A. Segovia, and Cameron J. Doody (Fortress, 2016),
51–80, here 71.
22 On the Ebionites, see Simon Calude Mimouni, Le judio-christianisme ancien: essais his-
toriques (Paris: Cerf, 1998), 257–86; Oskar Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” in Skarsaune and
Hvalvik, Jewish Believers in Jesus, 419–62; Sakari Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” in A Companion to
cerning the Ebionites, all of the extant sources do not come from any self-pro-
claimed Ebionites, but rather from gentile-Christian heresiologists in the first
handful of centuries after Jesus’ death. Thus, the depiction of the Ebionites that
has been preserved is not likely to be wholly accurate. It is possible – if not prob-
able – that the name “Ebionite” became a heresiological tool that was used
somewhat indiscriminately to describes groups of Jewish followers of Jesus
(e.g., Origen, Cels. 2.1), what Joan Taylor calls an “‘Ebionite’ coalition.”23 Thus,
the Ebionites possibly became a category or type that these gentile-Christian
authors used discursively in order to delegitimize forms of Christianity that
appeared to be too Jewish and insufficiently Christian, and to legitimize their
own theology.24
While there may have been an historical group(s) that was called the Ebion-
ites, their own self-description likely differed from the heresiological ones that
have been preserved. With these caveats in mind, for the purposes of this cur-
rent study it is worth noting that the Ebionites are consistently portrayed as
being Torah observant “in the Jewish manner” (e.g., circumcision, kashrut, sab-
bath; Irenaeus, Haer. 1.26.2; Origen, Cels. 2.1; Hom. Gen. 3.5; Hippolytus,
Haer. 7.34.2; 10.22.1; Pseudo-Tertullian, Haer. 3.3; Epiphanius, Pan. 30.2.2).25
In addition to this, they are also said to have repudiated Paul for his apostasy
from the law (Irenaeus, Haer. 1.26.2; Origen, Cels. 5.65; Eusebius, Hist. eccl.
3.27.4). If there is a kernel of truth in these portrayals, then there could be evi-
dence that some Jewish followers of Jesus – like the Jews in Acts 18:13 and 21:21
– rejected Paul’s teaching on the Law. The details on why these groups disagreed
with Paul’s view of the law, and on what specific points, however, are “not that
Second-Century Christian “Heretics,” ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, VCSup 76
(Leiden: Brill, 2005), 247–78; Petri Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gos-
pels, VCSup 110 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Matt Jackson-McCabe, “Ebionites and Nazoraeans:
Christians or Jews?” in Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Her-
shel Shanks (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 2013), 187–205. See also the
helpful discussion by Michael J. Kok in this present volume.
23 Joan E. Taylor, “The Phenomenon of Early Jewish-Christianity: Reality or Scholarly
Invention?,” VC 44 (1990): 313–34, here 327. See also, Georg Strecker, “Zum Problem des Ju-
denchristentums” in Walter Baur, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum,
2nd ed., BHT 10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1964) 245–87, here 274–5; Gerd Lüdemann, Pau-
lus, der Heidenapostel, vol. 2, FRLANT 130 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983),
258–60; Oskar Skarsaune, “The History of Jewish Believers in the Early Centuries – Perspec-
tives and Framework,” in Skarsaune and Hvalvik, Jewish Believers in Jesus, 745–81, here 755.
Cf., Jackson-McCabe, Jewish Christianity, 168–9.
24 On the discursive function of the Ebionites in heresiological texts, see Daniel Boyarin,
Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2004), 207, 213–4.
25 It is likely that these sources rely on each other and simply repeat and adapt this infor-
mation for their own purposes. On this, see Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects,
18–49.
154 Ryan D. Collman
easy to pinpoint.”26 On the other hand, it is possible that the noted rejection of
Paul may also be a feature that was invented by these heresiologists in order to
further delegitimize and “other” these Jewish groups (historical or not).27
Like the Ebionites, the group of Jewish followers of Jesus known as the Naz-
arenes are portrayed as being adherents to the law, but that they did not repudi-
ate Paul (Epiphanius, Pan. 29.7.5; Jerome, Comm. Isa. 3.30 [on Isa 9:1]).28 While
identifying a historical group known as the Nazarenes suffers from the same
pitfalls as the Ebionites, these two competing pictures of Jewish followers of
Jesus and their stance toward Paul and the Torah may indicate that both posi-
tions existed in the ancient world. The problem, however, is that these accounts
stand on shaky historical ground, and that they lack any detail on how they
understood the specifics of Paul’s teaching about the Torah. As Michael Kok’s
essay in this present volume notes, in all likelihood there were Jewish followers
of Jesus that took a variety of positions regarding Paul’s teaching on the law.
The problem is simply that these perspectives have not been preserved for us to
access in any significant way.
2.4 The Pseudo-Clementine Epistula Petri

The key text from the Pseudo-Clementine writings that highlights a deficiency
in Paul’s teaching on Torah is Epistula Petri 2.29 In this text, Peter claims that
some gentiles have rejected his preaching on the law because of the “lawless and
absurd doctrine of the man who is my enemy” (Ep. Pet. 2.3). Here, Paul is pre-
sented as Peter’s nemesis who has misled his gentiles concerning the law. Not
only has Paul misled them concerning the law, but his words are being used as
evidence that Peter himself rejected the law of Moses (2.4–7). As recently
demonstrated by Kristine Ruffatto, in the Epistula Petri, Peter counters these
claims by appealing to his fidelity to Moses and the Torah, which is used to le-
gitimize his authority as a type of Moses.30 Paul’s antinomianism, on the other
hand, is used to show that his apostleship is illegitimate. Like some of the exam-
26 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 437.
27 This is most evident in Epiphanius’ claim that the Ebionites believed that Paul was a
Greek who only became a proselyte in order to marry a daughter of the high priest. It was
only after Paul found out that he could not marry her, that he rejected the Jewish way of life
he converted to and wrote against circumcision, sabbath, and the Torah (Pan. 30.16.8–9).
28 On the Nazarenes and the very little we know about them, see Petri Luomanen, “Naz-
arenes,” in Marjanen and Luomanen, Second-Century Christian “Heretics,” 279–314; idem,

Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects.
29 On the Pseudo-Clementine writings and their usage in understanding ancient Jewish
believers in Jesus, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, “‘Jewish Christianity’ after the ‘Parting of the
Ways’: Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines,” in
The Ways that Never Parted Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 189–231.
30 Kristine J. Ruffatto, “Moses Typology for Peter in the Epistula Petri and the Contesta-
tio,” VC 69 (2015): 345–67, here 351–2.

ples above, specific aspects of Paul’s teaching on the Torah are not discussed,
rather, Paul is simply painted as being against the Torah. The Epistula Petri
shows that long after Paul’s epistles and Acts were written, some Jewish follow-
ers of Jesus believed that Paul and Peter had major disagreements over the law,
and that Paul was on the wrong side of their disagreement.
2.5 Interim Summary

The information we have regarding what Jewish followers of Jesus thought
about Paul and the Torah is limited and not altogether clear. Based on these
texts, all that can be confidently said at this point is that there is diversity
amongst how some Jewish groups thought of aspects of Paul’s teaching of the
Torah. Notably, according to Paul and Luke, Paul’s teaching on the Torah was
within the acceptable range of interpretations. Later on, however – and perhaps
after the rise of a majority gentile Jesus movement – for some Jewish followers
of Jesus Paul’s teaching on the Torah became associated with antinomianism
and apostasy from the ancestral traditions.31 For these individuals, their under-
standing of Paul’s position on the Torah put him beyond the pale.
The task that remains for the rest of this essay is to discuss Paul’s teaching on
the Torah, which is the fullest account we have on the Torah from an early Jew-
ish follower of Jesus.
3. Paul and the Torah, again
Paul is notoriously confusing on the Torah; to some, he is hopelessly so.32 A

simple glance at his epistles and this tension becomes abundantly clear. The
same apostle who says, “all who are from the works of the law are under a curse”
(Gal 3:10), can also list the possession of the law as one of the great privileges of
Israel (Rom 9:4). The same apostle who says that the law is holy and pneumatic
(Rom 7:12, 14) can also say that he died to the law (Gal 2:19). The same apostle
who says that those who are led by the pneuma are not under the law (Gal 5:18)
can also say that those who walk according to the pneuma fulfill the dikaioma
of the law (Rom 8:4). The same apostle who says the Messiah is the telos of the
law (Rom 10:4), can also say that faithfulness does not overthrow the law, but,
rather, validates the law (Rom 3:31). While it is impossible to fully deal with the
issue of Paul and the law in such a short space – or perhaps in any length of space
31 It is conceivable that the majority view of the majority-gentile church and church fathers
on Paul and the Torah may have influenced what Jewish followers of Jesus thought about
Paul’s perspective on the Torah.
32 Thus the classic argument of Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law, WUNT 29 (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983).

156 Ryan D. Collman
– I will attempt to highlight what I think is the underlying framework behind

Paul’s variegated statements on the law.33
What, then, is Paul’s problem with the law?
3.1 The Law and Human Corporeality

To put it boldly, for Paul, there is no problem with the law. The law in and of
itself is holy and pneumatic (Rom 7: 12, 14). The problem that exists is the cor-
poreal condition of those for whom the law was given to regulate; not the law
itself. Humans are made up of flesh, which is susceptible to impurity, corrup-
tion, and – ultimately – death. This physical corruptibility leads to moral cor-
ruptibility, and has given sin 34 the opportunity to take hold of humans and en-
slave them.35 As Christine Hayes comments, this limitation of the law does not
demonstrate that the law or the lawgiver are the problem, but the nature of the
things that the law seeks to order are in some ways incapable of being ordered.36
Despite the goodness of the law, it cannot resolve the issue of human mortality
and corruptibility.37 Or to put it in Paul’s words, the law was weakened by the
flesh (Rom 8:3). God has, however, charted a course to overcome the flesh, sin,
and death through the Messiah and the reception of divine pneuma.38
33 It must be noted that all of Paul’s teaching about the Torah occurs within his epistles
written to a diverse group of assemblies and primarily address specific issues concerning
ex-pagan, non-Jewish followers of Jesus within those assemblies. As Paula Fredriksen notes,
“As a point of orientation for any interpretation, though, the audience of Paul’s remarks must
always be kept in mind. All of his extant letters are addressed to gentiles. This means that,
whatever Paul says about the Law, he says it first of all with reference to gentiles” (Paula
Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017], 130).
34 On sin as a power/force, see Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “The Cosmic Power of Sin in
Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Toward a Widescreen Edition,” Int 58 (2004): 229–40; Paula
Fredriksen, Sin: The Early History of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012),
32–5.
35 Nicholas Meyer, Adam’s Dust and Adam’s Glory in the Hodayot and the Letters of Paul:
Rethinking Anthropogony and Theology, NovTSup 168 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 214.
36 Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2015), 155–6. On this point, Hayes puts Paul into conversation
with Aristotle, Eth. nic. 1137b10–28.
37 David Moffitt notes that this thinking is also present in the book of Hebrews. David M.
Moffitt, “Weak and Useless? Purity, the Mosaic Law, and Perfection in Hebrews,” in Law and
Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. David Lincicum, Ruth Sheridan, and
Charles M. Stang, WUNT 420 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 89–103, here 99.
38 For recent studies that have informed my understanding of how Paul understands pneu-
ma in contrast to sarx, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul:
The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Stanley K. Stowers, “The Di-
lemma of Paul’s Physics: Features Stoic-Platonist or Platonist-Stoic?,” in From Stoicism to
Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE, ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 231–53; David A. Burnett, “A Neglected
Deuteronomic Scriptural Matrix for the Nature of the Resurrection Body in 1 Corinthians
15:39–42,” in Scripture, Texts, and Tracings in 1 Corinthians, ed. Linda L. Belleville and B. J.
Oropeza (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019), 187–211; cf. Matthias
If the law is unable to overcome human mortality, one might ask, why then
the law (Gal 3:19)? Paul’s answer is that it was given on account of transgres-
sions.39 Prior to the coming of the faithfulness of the Messiah, the law served as
a pedagogue for Jews (Gal 3:23–25), to guard them and train them to live righ-
teously.40 Paul himself claims that his own guidance under the pedagogue was
positive: in regard to dikaiosynē in the law, he was blameless (Phil 3:6). But this
dikaiosynē is not enough; this dikaiosynē is unable to give one the kind of escha-
tological life that is linked to the dikaiosynē that comes from trust (Gal 3:21;
Rom 9:30).41 With the coming of the Messiah there was no longer a need for a
pedagogue, because through the divine pneuma, Jews (as well as non-Jews) are
no longer slaves to sin, but rather, are slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:16–19). To
be a slave of sin is to exist in a state in which the law has dominion (cf. Rom
6:14).42 “But since trust has come, we are no longer under a pedagogue” (Gal
3:25). “If you are led by the pneuma, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18). It is
in this way that Paul can say that he died to the law and now lives to God (Gal
2:19; cf. Rom 6:7–11). As Matthew Novenson comments, “Paul’s point about
‘dying to the law’ is not that the law makes for a bad kind of religion, but that
the entire age of sin and death (over which the law exercised benevolent jurisdic-
tion) is now over. ‘Living to God’ here refers not to Christianity (which Paul did
not live to see), but to the immortal, pneumatic life of the age to come.”43
If one is no longer under the law or is dead to the law, one might ask, has the
law been invalidated by trust (Rom 3:31)?44 Of course not – μὴ γένοιτο – Paul
says. The case is actually the opposite; “we maintain the validity of the law.”
The difference is that they can now effortlessly fulfill the dikaioma of the law
because they walk by the divine pneuma and not by the flesh.45 This is what
Klinghardt, “Himmlische Körper. Hintergrund und argumentative Funktion von 1 Kor
15,40 f,” ZNW 106 (2015): 216–44. For an alternative treatment of Paul’s understanding of
pneuma and sarx, see Jörg Frey, “Flesh and Spirit in the Palestinian Jewish Sapiental Tradition
and in the Qumran Texts: An Inquiry into the Background of Pauline Usage,” in Jörg Frey,
Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation: Kleine Schriften III, ed. Jacob
Cerone, WUNT 424 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 701–41.
39 Or “to add to transgressions.”
40 On the pedagogue in the ancient world, see Norman H. Young, “Paidagogos: The Social
Setting of a Pauline Metaphor,” NovT 29 (1987): 150–76.

41 On these two types of dikaiosynē, see Origen, Comm. Rom. 8.2.2. I am indebted to
Matthew Novenson for bringing this text to my attention.

42 Cf. Hayes, Divine Law, 159.
43 Novenson, “Did Paul Abandon,” 248.
44 On the law in Rom 3:19–31, see Yael Fisch, “The Origins of Oral Torah: A New Pauline
Perspective,” JSJ 51 (2020): 43–66, here 50–3.

45 Paul’s ethical teaching and praxis do not run counter to his ancestral law. He highlights
the importance of keeping the commandments of God (1 Cor 7:19) and stands well-within a
Jewish interpretive tradition when he summarizes the law by way of other commands, i.e.,
Lev 19:18 (cf. Philo, Spec. 2.63; Matt 7:12; 22:36–40 parr.; Jas 2:8; b. Shabb. 31a). “For all the
Torah is fulfilled in a single word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:14). “For
the one who loves the other has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit
158 Ryan D. Collman
Hayes refers to as “robo-righteousness.”46 This is not a new idea foreign to

Paul’s world, but was spoken long before him by the prophets.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the
LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be
their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to
each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no
more. (Jer 31:33–34 NRSV)
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove
from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit with-
in you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezek
36:26–27 NRSV) 47
For Paul, the long awaited day when natural, effortless observance of the law
(however defined) had arrived with the resurrection of the Messiah and the
sending of the divine pneuma to dwell in the mortal bodies of those who are in
the Messiah (cf. Rom 8:9–11).
But this is not the end in Paul’s mind. Paul knows of a future existence when
those in the Messiah no longer possess mortal bodies. What happens to the law
then?
3.2 The Law and the Messianic Age

According to Paul’s calendar, the end of the present evil age (Gal 1:4) is immi-
nent. It is so close, in fact, that Paul believes it is likely that he himself will live to
see it (1 Thess 4:15–17; 1 Cor 15:51). Despite that he had been proclaiming this
message for some time and the end had not come, he continued to hold fast to the
impending return of the Messiah: “For now our deliverance is closer than when
we first trusted; the night is gone, the day has drawn near” (Rom 13:11–12).
When the ever-imminent end comes, and the world is transformed, Paul believes
adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet,’ and any other com-
mandment, are summed up in this word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Rom
13:8–9). Does this act of summarizing the Torah count as diminishing it? Not according to the
other ancient Jews who participated in the same activity.
On the usage of Lev 19:18 in Second Temple Judaism, see Kengo Akiyama, The Love of
Neighbour in Ancient Judaism: The Reception of Leviticus 19:18 in the Hebrew Bible, the
Septuagint, the Book of Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament, AGJU 105
(Leiden: Brill, 2018). On the tradition of Jewish summaries of the law, see David Flusser, “The
Ten Commandments and the New Testament,” in The Ten Commandments in History and
Tradition, ed. Ben-Zion Segal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 219–46; J. Cornelis de Vos, “Sum-
marizing the Jewish Law in Antiquity: Examples from Aristeas, Philo, and the New Testa-
ment” in The Challenge of the Mosaic Torah in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Antti
Laato (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 191–204. De Vos, however, argues that – in contrast to other Jew-
ish summaries of the law – Paul places the law as secondary to the love commandment.
46 Hayes, Divine Law, 47–51, 149, 161.
47 Cf. Jub. 1:23–24.
that humans will shed their mortal bodies for an incorruptible, pneumatic exis-
tence that resembles the resurrected body of Jesus (1 Cor 15:49; Phil 3:21).48
Flesh and blood cannot inherent the kingdom of God, nor can the perishable inherit the
imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be
changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will
sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will change. For this perishable
body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. Then
the word that is written comes into being: “Death has been swallowed up in victory …”
(1 Cor 15:50–54)
What becomes of the law in the messianic age when death is no more and the
resurrected righteous enjoy an immortal, incorruptible, pneumatic existence?49
Unfortunately for us, Paul does not give us an explicit answer.50 Others, howev-
er, have attempted to tease out the implications of this future state.
In his recent book on ritual purity in the Gospels, Matthew Thiessen com-
ments: “Once humans become immortal, they can no longer become ritually
impure: they are no longer marked by sexuality, susceptible to illness, or subject
to death […] If at some future point people no longer die, no longer become sick,
and no longer need (or are even able) to reproduce, then the laws pertaining to
ritual impurity are not abolished but have become immaterial.”51 On this read-
ing, in the messianic age, aspects of the law lose their relevance because of a
change in the nature of humanity.52 Similarly, David Moffitt notes, “At least
some of the Law’s regulations will, therefore, go the way of the rest of the cor-
ruptible realm with which it is so closely bound […] When there is no possibili-
ty of impurity from mortality, the need for rituals of bodily purification disap-
48 Cf. Isa 25:8; 4 Ezra 7:97; 2 Bar 73–74; Qoh. Rab. 1.4.3 [citing Isa 25:8]. On the nature of
the transformed and pneumatic body in Paul, see M. David Litwa, We Are Being Transformed:
Deification in Paul’s Soteriology, BZNW 187 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 127–36.
49 For a variety of treatments of the law in the Messianic age, see W. D. Davies, Torah in the
Messianic Age and/or the Age to Come, SBLMS 7 (Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature,
1952); Peter Schäfer, “Die Torah der messianischen Zeit,” ZNW 65 (1974): 27–42; Gershom
Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York:
Schocken, 1995); Andrew Chester, Messiah and Exaltation: Jewish Messianic and Visionary
Traditions and New Testament Christology, WUNT 207 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007),
497–536; David Berger, “Torah and the Messianic Age: The Polemical and Exegetical History
of a Rabbinic Text” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History:Festschrift in
Honor of Robert Chazan, ed. David Engel, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Elliot R. Wolfson,
JJTPSup 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 169–87.
50 Perhaps, however, this is what Paul is trying to communicate with his ever-puzzling
phrase in Rom 10:4: “For the Messiah is the telos of the law unto dikaiosynē for all who trust.”
51 Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Im-
purity Within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 183.
52 That certain laws are only applicable to particular types of bodies is already present in
Paul’s thought, namely circumcision. The law of circumcision does not apply to gentile bodies
that are “the foreskin from nature” or “naturally foreskinned” (ἡ ἐκ φύσεως ἀκροβυστία; Rom
2:27). They can observe the laws of circumcision by simply existing as they are.
160 Ryan D. Collman
pears.”53 Both Thiessen and Moffitt are keen to note that this is not superses-
sionism in the classic sense. The laws concerning ritual impurity (or food, or
procreation, or death, etc.) are not done away with in the here and now because
they are misguided, an undue burden, or a “bad kind of religion,” but in the
future world of immortal, incorruptible, pneumatic existence they simply do
not apply. The Torah continues to exist in the age to come – it is pneumatic, and
therefore fit for this incorruptible age – but it just looks different.54 It is easily
conceivable to conclude that the author of 1 Cor 15 would assent to these con-
clusions. Whether or not – and to what extent – other Jewish followers of Jesus
would hold to a similar vision of the future is unclear.55
4. Conclusion
I now return to where this essay began with the incisive study of Phillip Alex-
ander. If, as Alexander proposes, that the Torah was akin to national symbol – a
flag of sorts – does Paul’s discussion of and teaching about the Torah constitute
a desecration of this flag in the eyes of his syngeneis in the Messiah? Does his
teaching on the law put him beyond the pale? Our scant sources do not paint a
uniform picture of what these groups thought of Paul and why. Undoubtedly
some would find his teaching compelling and others would find him confusing
or too radical, but a clear understanding of who these groups were and how they
understood the details of Paul’s teaching on the Torah has been lost to history.
On my understanding of Paul and his relationship to the law, Paul remains
faithful to the flag of the law. He does not desecrate it or repudiate it in any
meaningful way. The majority of his interpreters throughout history, however,
would disagree with me on this point. Perhaps the majority of the Jewish fol-
lowers of Jesus that knew of Paul and his teaching would disagree with me too;
we simply cannot know.
53 Moffitt, “Weak and Useless?,” 102.
54 It is not unprecedented in ancient Judaism for the Torah to change and evolve, or for the
application of some laws to be overlooked or rendered obsolete (e.g., the death penalty for
breaking the sabbath; Exod 31:14; Num 15:32–36). See, Hayes, Divine Law, 12–21; Alexander,
“Jewish Law,” 53. While direct discussions of the law in the messianic age (or “age to come”)
are effectively absent from our Second Temple sources, rabbinic literature offers more engage-
ment with this question and shifting shape of Torah in the future (e.g., Lev. Rab. 9.7; Midr.
Teh. 146.7; b. Shabb. 151b; Midr. Qoh. 2.1; 12.1). As Scholem notes, for the Rabbis, their theo-
rizing on the Torah in the messianic age was “in purely imaginative fashion: in wishful
dreams, in projections of the past upon the future, and in utopian images which relegated ev-
erything new to a time yet to come” (Messianic Idea, 52). For Paul, however, this was not the
case. Given the outpouring of the pneuma and the transformation of pagans that he was wit-
nessing, he believed he was living in the final moments of history; he was not theorizing about
the end, he thought he was living in it.
55 On Moffitt’s reading (“Weak and Useless?”), the author of Hebrews would have agreed
with Paul on numerous points about the law.

Abraham our Forefather and Herakles our Cousin
Paul’s Genealogical Reasoning

and Jewish Narratives of Belonging
Kathy Ehrensperger
1. Introduction
Paul tries to clarify for his addressees from the nations how the Christ-event
impinges on their identity, in referring to them as seed of Abraham, that is, to
Abraham as their ancestor. He places them on the map or into the lineage of
Abraham, by arguing that through Christ a genealogical link has been estab-
lished which institutes them as co-heirs to the promises. Christ-followers from
the nations found themselves in a liminal space since their place of belonging,
individually and collectively was unclear when considered in light of the maps
of belonging prevalent at the time. Via genealogical reasoning, Paul tries to place
them into the lineage of belonging to the God of Israel, not in place of, but
alongside the people Israel.
2. The Role of Genealogies in Greek, Roman,

and Jewish Traditions
Genealogical narratives served a variety of purposes in cultures of antiquity.

They were part of mapping the world through networks of kinship relation-
ships. It is from the matrix of Jewish genealogical narratives Paul develops a
genealogical narrative for Christ-following non-Jews. These narratives are far
from being unique; they are the Jewish variation of perceiving relationships be-
tween groups and people prevalent among all peoples in antiquity. For the
emerging Christ-movement the specific context to be considered is the Greek
and Roman cultural and political world of which the Jews were part and with
which they engaged in specific ways.
As I have argued elsewhere, genealogies served a number of purposes, beyond
merely establishing or defining group identity. They mapped the world by pre-
senting a network from the perspective of the respective people, who thereby set
out commonality and difference, closeness and distance, enmity and friendship,
162 Kathy Ehrensperger
as well as superiority and power claims in relation to others.1 As far as identity

was concerned, genealogies mapped people not in terms of their essence, or
characteristics but in terms of relational networks. Who a people was, was not
something which emerged in isolation from others.2 They expressed who they
were in relation to whom they were related as kin. Relationality is thus core to
the identity of peoples. To express who one is, is formulated in terms of net-
works and one’s position within a network. Collective identity is relational – if
considered in terms of genealogical narratives. It is not decisive whether these
narratives were fact or fiction. Decisive is how they express the being in the
world of peoples. In that sense they are expressing collective identity in relation
to the other, confirming that “identity needs confirmation by the other, who is
[…] part of the symbolic field that is established not least by narratives.”3 This
relational dimension does not just mean that one differentiates oneself from the
other, it expresses both, commonality and difference in a dialectical process.4
For instance, the Roman narrative of their founding father, Aeneas, a refugee
from Troy, although evidently fictional, expresses numerous aspects relevant for
Roman identity and self-understanding: They were not Greek, since their ori-
gin was beyond the Greek world. The narrative of Aeneas moreover expresses
core claims of Roman values: by carrying his father Anchises all the way from
Troy to Rome, Aeneas lived the pietas owed to the ancestors, by carrying his
family deity, he lived the pietas owed to the divine. The genealogical narrative of
Aeneas came to play a crucial role in the version of Vergil, and the purpose it
served in the ideological claims of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and their exercise
of power.5
Genealogical narratives of course did not just emerge in Greek and Roman
contexts, but throughout the Ancient Near East. Genealogical lists of the He-
brew Bible/LXX are part of this general tradition and share in the multiplicity
of purposes mentioned. The lists in themselves present a network and thus map
the world of Israel (e.g. Gen 10:1–32; 11:10–32; 25:1–18). The lists of these rela-
1 Cf. my “Narratives of Belonging: The Function of Paul’s Genealogical Reasoning,” EC
8:3 (2017): 373–92, now also in my Searching Paul. Conversations with the Jewish Apostle to
the Nations (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 229–46, esp. 233–37.
2 Hannah Arendt has formulated this in a very accurate way, when she noted that human
beings are by birth, or as she calls it due to their natality, interwoven in networks of human
affairs. Cf. ref in Kämpf Heike, “Wer bist Du? Zur ethischen Dimension narrativer Identität,“
Ethica 22:4 (2014): 315–26.
3 Wolfgang Müller-Funk, The Architecture of Modern Culture. Towards a Narrative Cul-
tural Theory (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 10.

4 Monika Fludernik, “Identity/Alterity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative The-
ory, ed. Matthew Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 261.
5 On the significance of the Virgil’s Aeneid for Roman imperial ideology see James R.
Harrison, Paul and Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2011), 118–44, and Ian E. Rock, Paul’s Letter to the Romans and Roman Imperialism: An
Ideological Analysis of the Exordium (Romans 1.1–17) (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 55–65.
Abraham our Forefather and Herakles our Cousin 163
tionships are often filled with narratives, thus the mere mentioning of a repre-
sentative of a people in a list does not yet sufficiently explain the implicit mean-
ing. The mentioning of Moab and Ammon as related to Lot does not merely
serve the stating of family relationships, but as a rationale that despite this rela-
tionship, they were either regarded as hostile towards Israel,6 or Israel was
admonished to keep their distance from Moab and Ammon, as they lived in
regions which had been allotted to Lot when he and Abraham parted ways
(Deut 2:1–22).7 Interestingly, despite their relation, a distinction is made be-
tween Moab/Ammon, that is the sons of Abraham’s nephew Lot and Edom/
Esau, that is Abraham’s grandson, brother of Jacob in LXX Deut 23:3–9. Whilst
Moabites and Ammonites can never become part of the people Israel, not even
after 10 generations, this is considered an option for Edom/Esau – in a three-gen-
erational process.
This pattern of Jewish genealogical narratives was not confined to the scrip-
tures but expanded into the world after Alexander the Great. In negotiating the
Greek cultural and political world, specific emphasis on certain relations with
this world seemed to become more relevant. Although the worlds of Greece and
later Rome were not absent from earlier genealogical maps (it appears that Japhet
was interpreted as Greece already before the so-called Hellenization triggered
by Alexander), Greek culture was not rejected, but Jewish traditions and identi-
ty were now also increasingly negotiated in relation to Greek traditions, in
Greek language, and also in some cases related to Greek narratives. This process
was not one of assimilation as it has often been described but a process of play-
ing and not playing the game of acculturation – a game the Jews played on their
own terms.8 This is evident not least in Philo, but he is by no means the only
one who could play on the keyboard of this instrument by playing his own
tune. This is how Greek Jewish culture evolved, intelligible to some extent to
their host regions and cities in the diaspora, but most of all integrating and re-
taining their own ways of life in majority societies. They lived in, and accultur-
ated as Shem in the tent of Japhet.9 Thus Philo presents Moses as the father of
all philosophy, with all Greek philosophy actually emanating from the highest
6 Cf. Gen 19:30–38 and the narratives in Num 22–23.
7 Nevertheless, there are numerous struggles, and battles between them, as with and
against Edom, that is, Esau, the brother of Jacob/Israel. But the narratives clearly tell that God
had allotted them the land which they inhabited, so it was not for Israel to claim it for them-
selves.
8 I am following Tessa Rajak’s excellent arguments here that the Greek translation of their
scriptures “enabled this minority to have things two ways, both to play and not to play the
game, both to take account of the prevailing power structure, engaging in a degree of mea-
sured acculturation, and at the same time, quietly, but most persistently, to assert their under-
lying independence.” Translation and Survival, The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Dias-
pora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7.
9 James Kugel, ed., Shem in the Tents of Japhet: Essays on the Encounter of Judaism and
Hellenism (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

form of wisdom, that is the wisdom of Torah, with Moses as not merely a noble
man, but close to God, a divine man, with philosophical insights unsurpassed.
Although not genealogical in the sense outlined above, there is an element of
genealogical reasoning in Philo’s depiction of Moses, by making him and his
wisdom the root of all philosophy. This is no small claim, given it comes from a
people which is certainly not in the driving seat of political power, but utterly
subjugated by Rome, not master of its own destiny in that sense, but a barbar-
ian, enslaved people, as far as the Roman overlords were concerned. And at the
time of Philo’s writings, they were more or less in open competition with the
population classified as Greek in Alexandria, for tax privileges.10
But not only Philo makes quite amazing claims of cultural interaction, also
and not surprisingly, explicit genealogical narratives emerged expressing this
cultural interaction. Josephus tells us that the great Greek hero Herakles had
actually married into the lineage of Abraham. He refers to the work of some
Cleodemus Malchus who reported that two of the sons Abraham had with
Keturah, Apher and Aphran, fought together with Herakles against Anteus and
Lybia, subduing these. Herakles subsequently marries a daughter of Apher, the
granddaughter of Abraham. She became the “grand-mother” of African rulers.
The name Africa, in this narrative derived from Apher and Aphran. With an-
other of Abraham’s sons, Assouri being the namesake of Assyria, links are
claimed from Assyria to Africa and into the Greek world, with Herakles being
firmly integrated into the genealogical narrative of Abraham.11 This is not a
story of Jewish assimilation to the Greek world but the other way round, it is a
Jewish claim, an interpretatio Judaica of Greek traditions, similar to Philo’s
claim of Moses being the father of all philosophy.12 Another fascinating con-
nection is found in 1 Maccabees. According to 1 Macc 12:20–23, King Areus
from Sparta had written to the Jewish high Priest Onias in the early third cen-
tury BCE that he found a text which demonstrated that there existed a kinship
relation between Spartans and Jews, since Abraham was the ancestor of both
peoples. Later, the Hasmonean high Priest Jonathan wrote to the Spartans, ac-
knowledging King Areus’ letter and asked to renew the friendship between
their peoples, addressing the Spartans as brothers. Further correspondence is
recorded in 1 Macc 12:6–18 and 14:16–23. Josephus too knows of this tradition
and refers to it in A. J. 12.225–226 and 13.164–170. The interesting aspect is not
the historicity of such claims but the fact that they were made at all, obviously
considered relevant, and indicating some positive relations, even an integration
10 Cf. Sylvie Honigman, “The Ptolemaic and Roman Definitions of Social Categories and
the Evolution of Judean Communal Identity in Egypt,” in Jewish and Christian Identities in
the Roman World, ed. Yair Fürstenberg (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 23–74.
11 Reported by Josephus in A. J. 1.239–241.
12 Erich Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1998), 151–3.

of others, in this case representatives of the Greek world, into Jewish narratives
of belonging. Abraham is claimed to be the forefather of Spartans and Jews.
Sparta had a specific reputation in the Greek world as a people whose military
power was based on rigorous training, loyalty, tolerance of hardship, and adher-
ence to ancestral laws. These were considered virtues held in high esteem, and
Josephus claimed that in this regard the Jews even surpassed the Spartans.
Narrative genealogical links were not only forged into the Greek world but
also to the south, with Abraham’s son Ishmael being fashioned as linked to the
Arab world. Although the Ishmael narrative in Genesis does not make any link
to “Arabs” nor can any such link be found in the Hebrew Bible/LXX, it is stat-
ed in the book of Jubilees that descendants of Ishmael and his twelve sons lived
in the regions of Babylon and up to the north-eastern part of the Nile Delta, and
were called Arabs or Ishmaelites (Jub. 20:1, 11–13).13 Josephus also knows of
this tradition presenting an extended narrative: he locates the descendants of
Ishmael from the Euphrates to the Red Sea, referring to this region as Nabatene
and to the people there as Arabs (A. J. 1.220–221). Moreover, in another of Jose-
phus’ narratives God reminds Amram, Moses’ father, that Abraham had given
Arabia to Ishmael and his descendants (A. J. 2.213; also 1.239).14 In these obvi-
ously widely circulating Jewish narratives the Arabs are kin to the Jews, via
their ancestor Abraham. Nowhere in these traditions is the different lifestyle of
the Ishmaelites/Arabs denigrated, it is merely stated, as already in the narrative
of Genesis, that Ishmael represents a lifestyle as a nomad, outside agricultural
land, a survivor in tough surroundings. He is different, attributed a different
space to live by God who bestowed a blessing also to Ishmael, although one
different from the blessing and promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The key to the call of Abraham is that God promises him that he will be the
father of a people, will have space to live, and be blessed with fullness of life.
However, core to these promises is God’s commitment to Abraham and his
σπέρμα (Isaac, and Jacob) to be their God. This is what the covenant of Genesis
17 is all about, affirmed again to Isaac and Jacob and eventually to the people
Israel in the Exodus narrative. He commits himself to his people. Nowhere in
these narratives do Abraham and subsequently his σπέρμα replace any other
people to whom God would have committed himself before. God’s call and
commitment are unique to Abraham and his σπέρμα. Israel has been called into
being by God. In and through this special relationship they are who they are. To
13 This tradition is also found in the work of the Greek Jewish writer Artapanus (2nd cen-
tury BCE, transmitted in Eus. PE 9.23.1) who notes that Joseph when quarrelling with his
brothers turns to Arabs for him to be sent to Egypt. They comply with this wish because their
kings are descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, brother of Isaac, that is, kin.
14 Josephus also knows of a story concerning Joseph, and confirms the connection be-
tween Arabs and Jews with reference to circumcision, Jews circumcise their sons on the eighth
day, in analogy to Isaac’s circumcision, Arabs circumcise their sons when these are thirteen,
like Ishmael.
refer to this as supersessionism is a grotesque distortion of the narrative of elec-

tion and of the theological significance attributed to it. Supersessionism implies
that a group and their identity and characteristics are taken over and replaced by
another. Nothing of the kind is implied in the narratives of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob and the people Israel.15 The differences between Isaac and Jacob and oth-
er children of Abraham are just that, differences between kin. None of the chil-
dren of Abraham replace another, they all have their place and space. The nar-
ratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob express the specific relation and commit-
ment of God to this lineage.
The narratives of genealogical connections indicate a self-perception of the
Jews not as an autochthonous people but as a people interwoven in kinship net-
works, a migrant people who came from somewhere else (Ur of the Chaldeans),
expressed in Deut 26:5 as “A wandering Aramean was my father.” Depending
on the temporal and cultural context the kinship relations emphasized inclined
more to the Greek context or to the east and south of the Greek influenced re-
gions, but as Josephus indicates both, eastern and western cultural contexts
were considered relevant by Jewish authors.16
So, to perceive one’s identity as a Jew, as part of this particular people, with its
particular traditions, and being part of a wider kinship network was obviously
not considered contradictory.17 Jewish genealogical narratives saw the Jewish
people through family ties connected to and as part of the Greek and Near East-
ern worlds. These genealogical narratives, fictious as they are, did not imply that
those so related were all the same. To be part of a kinship network did not as-
similate the so connected families to each other. They were distinctive family
groups, with their own particular identity, and precisely as such they were seen
as connected. Jews did not see themselves as isolated, or separatist. The connec-
tions did not threaten but express their particular identity. They expressed com-
monality, with a difference. Genealogical reasoning, the expression of one’s
identity through kinship narratives was part of the fabric of Jewish tradition as
15 Contra James M. Scott, The Apocalyptic Letter to the Galatians, Paul and the Enochic
Heritage (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2021), 184–203.

16 An interesting connection is made between Edom and Israel, the former becoming in-
creasingly identified as Rome. That relationship is highly ambivalent as is the relationship

between the brothers Jacob/Israel and Esau/Edom. They are twin brothers, but at logger-
heads with each other, family but marred by deception and threats on the one hand, and rec-
onciliation on the other, but certainly on different paths. Possibly this led to the identification
of Esau/Edom with Rome. The historical relationship between the Jews and Rome started on
quite friendly terms, Rome being seen as an ally of the Hasmoneans in their fight against the
Seleucids. Over time the relationship deteriorated up to the point of open war. Nevertheless,
in some narratives the relationship was depicted not merely as an antagonistic one, Josephus
seeing analogies in virtues between the Jewish and Roman peoples. Interestingly Philo also
refers to Edom not in purely negative terms, an aspect to which I will return below/later.
17 A detailed overview is presented in Erich Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

it was part of the fabric of the traditions of other peoples. It should thus not
come as a surprise to find trajectories of such genealogical reasoning also in the
Pauline letters. After all, he was involved in attempts to integrate pagans who
had turned away from idols to the God of Israel via Christ into the narrative of
belonging to this God.
3. The Lineage of Abraham
Paul himself is a prime example for Jewish genealogical reasoning. He asserts in

Rom 11:1 Λέγω οὖν, μὴ ἀπώσατο ὁ θεὸς τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; μὴ γένοιτο καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ
Ἰσραηλίτης εἰμί, ἐκ σπέρματος Ἀβραάμ, φυλῆς Βενιαμίν (“I ask, then, has God
rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of
Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin”) and also in 2 Cor 11:22: Εβραῖοί
εἰσιν; κἀγώ. Ἰσραηλῖταί εἰσιν; κἀγώ. σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ εἰσιν; κἀγώ (“Are they He-
brews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham?
So am I.”). Moreover, in Phil 3:5, he emphasizes in addition that he is περιτομῇ
ὀκταήμερος, ἐκ γένους Ἰσραήλ, φυλῆς Βενιαμίν, Ἑβραῖος ἐξ Ἑβραίων, κατὰ νόμον
Φαρισαῖος. He clearly identifies himself as a member of the covenantal commu-
nity, one of the sons of Israel, of those who bear the sign of the covenant on their
body, seed of Abraham, the lineage of the bearer of the promise. More specifi-
cally, he stresses that he belongs to the tribe of Benjamin, refers to some Hebrew
heritage (whatever this precisely meant), and has been educated in the knowl-
edge of the Torah. He clearly identifies himself in a Jewish way as part of the
Jewish, covenant people. Such inner-Jewish genealogical reasoning was relevant
as a way to express one’s place within Jewish society.
Without being able to discuss this here in any detail, Paul’s expression of be-
longing is a good example of what mattered in this respect: the lineage to Abra-
ham expressed in eighth day circumcision, and thus a member of the house of
Jacob/Israel. This marks him as a born Jew, son of a Jewish father and mother, a
φύσει Ἰουδαῖος. He is literally a son of Abraham, Abraham is his ancestor.
To be considered part of this people that was called into being by God one
had to be born to parents who performed the ritual of eighth day circumcision
on their new-born son. This implies that one was born to parents who were
descendants, that is, σπέρμα (seed) of the paradigmatic first man who had turned
away from idols to serve exclusively the true and living God. God had commit-
ted himself in a covenant to be Abraham’s and his descendants’ God. (In a pa-
triarchal patrilinear society this is the crucial aspect of the perception, girls and
women would be what their father or husband was). This is the decisive point:
Abraham and his seed were called to trust the one God. Their exclusive trust is
the response to this call. God confirms his commitment in the unconditional
covenant with Abraham and his seed, eighth day circumcision of sons being the
embodied sign of this covenant (Gen 17:10–14). The genealogical link to Abra-
ham, and his seed, that is the lineage through Isaac and Jacob is what designates
a Jew as a Jew by nature (φύσει Ἰουδαῖος Gal 2:15). It is not a genetic lineage as
Abraham obviously had other sons. Rather, this is a covenantal or theological
lineage, called into being by the one God. The promise of land, peoplehood and
blessing is carried on through the child of the promise, Isaac and renewed to
Jacob and his descendants. He is the one to whom the name Israel is given, after
his struggle at the river Yabok (Gen 32:24–32). The theological or covenantal
aspect is intrinsically intertwined with peoplehood, that is, the ethnic dimen-
sion of Israel as a people. To be part of this people Israel is not merely an issue
of trust in the one God, but also of belonging to this people. To belong to this
God and to belong to this people were one and the same thing. It is a both-and
– in antiquity as it is today.
4. Joining the Jewish People: The Question of Conversion
Since belonging to this people is not defined by a mere genetic perception of

genealogy, the possibility of joining this people and her God was considered an
option, at least this is what can be inferred from a number of texts of the Second
Temple period. For the earlier period the situation is more complex, a concept of
“conversion” cannot be found in the Hebrew Bible/LXX.18
What we do find in the Hebrew Bible/LXX are commandments concerning
foreigners who live among the people Israel. They are referred to as ger/prose-
lyte and in many respects are considered equal to the Israelites (Exod 12:48;
20:10; 23:9 etc.) especially if they underwent circumcision to participate in the
Passover meal. A special case are slaves, who had to be circumcised as part of an
Israelite household. But nowhere in the Hebrew Bible/LXX is this taken as an
indication that these outsiders would by the rite of circumcision or any other
rite transform from non-Jews into members of the people Israel, that is Israel-
ites/Jews.19
18 Benedikt Eckhardt notes with reference to Sir 44:20 that “We do not have comparable
information from pre-Hasmonean times. Ben Sira seems to depict Abraham’s circumcision as
the covenant cut into the flesh, but there is no hint at the possibility that non-Israelites could
therefore cut the covenant into their own flesh as well.” (‘“An Idumean, that is a Half-Jew’:
Idumeans and Herodians between Ancestry and Merit,” in Jewish Identity between the Mac-
cabees and Bar Kokhba. Norms, Normativity and Ritual, ed. Benedikt Eckhardt [Leiden:
Brill, 2012], 91–115, here 111.) Concerning the notion in 1 Maccabees he is of the view that
“Although the text allows for apostate Jews to become gentiles by their own will, the possibil-
ity for gentiles to enter Judaism is not envisaged. Genealogical vocabulary abounds; the sup-
posed relationship to the Spartans does not undermine this impression but strengthens it.”
(Ibid. 112.)
19 Whatever Paul opposes when he insists that non-Jews in Christ should not perform ἔργα
νόμου (which I cannot discuss in this contribution), there clearly is no commandment in the
Sometimes it is argued that Ruth is an example of a convert when she commits

herself to stay with Naomi after the death of her Israelite husband. However, in
light of patriarchal notions of antiquity to apply the concept of conversion here
would be anachronistic. It would have been a legal obligation for a wife to be
loyal to the deities/deity of her husband. The noteworthy part in the story of
Ruth is that she remained loyal to her deceased husband’s God. That she even-
tually gets re-married within this family and thus remains loyal to their deity is
a logical consequence of this rather than anything similar to conversion.20
Jacob Milgrom has specified that although the resident alien (‫)גר‬, could and in
some cases should, undergo circumcision (cf. Exod 12:43–49) in order to partic-
ipate in aspects of Israelite cultic life, he does thereby not become an Israelite.
The key issue was holiness, which was a divine gift bestowed on the Israelites.
Only members of the covenant community qualified as holy ones. Although the
resident ger/proselyte was granted full civil rights and some participation in
cultic life on equal par with born Jews/Israelites, holiness could never be trans-
mitted to him. However, devoted he may have been in his loyalty to the God of
Israel, however true he was in his Torah observance, he could not become holy.21
From the Hellenistic period onwards, the joining of the people Israel became
an issue and thus the question of how or who could become a Jew, that is, a son
of Israel/Jacob or member of the house of Jacob, was beginning to be debated.22
The problem that arises when this option is considered in respective texts is the
notion that non-Jews are sinners qua their loyalty to other deities than the God
of Israel. This issue is addressed differently in different texts. The book of Jubi-
lees for instance represents a view that this sinfulness affects gentiles to the ex-
Torah which requires or assumes that a non-Jew who is being circumcised transforms into a
Jew. Cf. Shaye D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness. Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties
(Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 121. Cf. also my article “Identity Trans-
formation in Christ: Struggling with ‘ἔργα νόμου’ in Paul”, in Parting of the Ways. The Varie-
gated Ways of Separation between Jews and Christians and its Consequences for Modern Jew-
ish-Christian Dialogue, ed. Markus Oehler and Markus Tiwald (Vienna: University of Vien-
na Press, 2023) – and also Mark Nanos, “Re-Framing Paul’s Opposition to Erga Nomou as
‘Rites of a Custom’ for Proselyte Conversion Completed by the Synecdoche ‘Circumcision’,”
JJMJS 8 (2021): 75–115.
20 Cf. the respective Roman concept (Plutarch etc.) Also e.g. b. Yebam. 76a and b discusses
Solomon’s marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh arguing that she had converted not for ulteri-
or motives (in which case the conversion would be doubted), hence this was a legal marriage.
Maimonides also argues in Mishneh Torah that the marriages of Solomon with foreign wives
were possible because they had adopted loyalty to the deity of their husband, the problem
being only that they then did not adhere to this loyalty and went back to their old ways, there-
by to some extent also seducing Solomon, directly or indirectly. Hil. Issurei Biah 13:14–16.
21 Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004),
248.
22 It is not entirely clear what caused this debate, for a discussion see Eyal Regev, The Has-
moneans. Ideology, Archaeology, Identity (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), also
Eckhardt, “An Idumean,” 111–3.
tent that it becomes hereditary. This means that through idolatry non-Jews are
so inherently polluted that no action can ever remove this sinfulness, thereby
ruling out that any gentile could ever join the Jewish people. Although not ar-
guing in a genetic way, it is a kind of genealogical reasoning which sees the
transmission of sinfulness unavoidable and gentiles thus as permanently taint-
ed.23 This is an extreme way of dealing with a significant problem (in Jewish
perspective). According to Christine Hayes a similar stance to the one expressed
in Jubilees is found in the Qumran text 4QMMT. It views intermarriage as a
source of impurity and thus an option not possible for members of the Qumran
community, ruling out the option of the wife joining the group and thus the
deity of her husband in a kind of “conversion” similar to the notion found in the
book of Ruth.24 Other Qumran texts such as 4QFlorilegium I, 3–4 share this
approach. Here converts are listed together with non-Jews, and bastards as not
being allowed to enter an anticipated future temple. However, the Temple Scroll
(XIL, 5; XL, 6) on the other hand notes with reference to LXX Deut 23:8–9
(“Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother, do not abhor an Egyptian,
for you were a stranger in his land. Sons born to them of the third generation
can enter into the community (ἐκκλησία/Qahal) of God”) that those joining the
Jewish people can enter the Temple courts, although only the outside one, and
this only after four generations, assuming that this is the generational span re-
quired for them to be fully integrated/socialized into the people.25
Interestingly Philo too discusses the status of proselytes in several texts, in-
dicating openness to the option of an outsider, that is, former pagan joining the
people Israel. Given his diasporic context he is not concerned with entry to the
Temple, like the Qumran text, but in Virt. 102–108 he also discusses LXX Dtn
23:8, the welcoming of strangers generally and of Egyptians in particular. With
reference to these having welcomed the people Israel hospitably (at least initial-
ly) they should be welcomed if they wished to live according to the way of life
of the Jews. Noteworthy is the genealogical dimension of this welcoming. The
proselyte should be welcomed and be regarded as equal to a born Jew as far as
the Law is concerned. However, there is a limitation to this equality in that only
the grandson of the proselyte would actually be welcomed into the assembly/
23 See Christine Hayes’ detailed dealing with this issue in her Gentile Impurities and Jew-
ish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2002), also Matthew Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy,
Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2011).
24 Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 82–9. Martha Himmelfarb interprets the text differently as
referring to the marriage of priest with women of non-priestly descent, “Levi, Pinehas, and
the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the Maccabean Revolt,” JSQ 6 (1999): 1–24.
25 Hannah Harrington, “Identity and Alterity in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Jewish Identity
and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kockbah. Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, ed.
Benedikt Eckhardt (Leiden: Brill 2013), 71–89, here 79 n. 21.
ἐκκλησία of Israel, as only he would be considered a born Jew. This is an inter-

esting variation to the theme and I think deserves further consideration. Philo
does not spell out the reason for this generational span. There may be an as-
sumption that actually only the son of Isaac was the son of a father who had
been circumcised on the eighth day, and it was his son Jacob to whom the prom-
ise was affirmed and who eventually received the name Israel.26 In Spec. 1.51–53
Philo also promotes the welcoming of proselytes, noting that they are equal in
relation to the law, but caution should be exerted when one mentions other dei-
ties, as any negative talk might mislead proselytes to use similar language for the
God to whom they just turned. Interestingly, Philo argues here with regard to
their primary socialization. In some cases the notion of proselytes turning to
the God of Israel is predicated on the notion of welcoming them into the politeia
of the Jews, thus they become co-citizens (Spec. 1.51–52, 309) who are highly
praised for the step of leaving familiar territory and networks to join a new one.
The “laws” of this polis then apply to all equally. But this joining and welcoming
of proselytes into the “politeia of the Jews” is not identical with their integration
into the people Israel. Philo consistently refers to them as proselytes, and they
are thus not part of the Ἱουδαίων ἔθνος, and thus cannot become part of the as-
sembly of God (ἐκκλησία θεοῦ). One possible rationale for this might be the fact
that they previously had been idolators. Although they had turned away from
this wrong perception, they are perceived as still carrying this stigma and thus
cannot enter the assembly of God, that is the holy assembly, and share in the
word of God (λόγων θείων) (Virt. 108). The holiness required of the Ἱουδαίων
ἔθνος cannot be transmitted via adult circumcision. There seems to be no other
way to arrive at such holiness than via an inter-generational process.
Although Philo clearly argues for the welcoming of non-Jews, he nowhere
claims that proselytes can join the assembly. With this emphasis Philo does not
contradict himself in my view, he merely encourages the welcoming of prose-
lytes, rather than their inclusion in the ἐκκλησία κυρίου, which in the text in de
Virtutibus is restricted to the third generation of a proselyte family, making the
inclusion into the ἐκκλησία/qahal of Israel dependent on a genealogical trajec-
tory.
The fact that a similar perception of the possibility of joining the Jewish peo-
ple is found in some Qumran texts as well as in Philo may be an indication that
this might have been a quite widely held view and practice. This may also be the
26 There could be an analogy also in Roman law in that a manumitted slave is not free in
the same sense as a freeborn person. He remains a kind of bond-servant to his former master
– is obligated to serve him, and unless he has more than three children, his possessions will go
back to his master upon his death. Only the freeborn son can pass on his inheritance to his
children without restrictions. For detailed discussion of this issue see Henrik Mouritsen, The
Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 66–119 and
also 248–78.
reason for Josephus’ reference to Herod the Great as merely a half-Jew, an Idu-
mean. This view may be due to the fact that there was a debate whether a suffi-
cient number of generations had passed since Herod’s ancestor’s conversion.
Clearly in the debate recorded by Josephus (A. J. 14.403) Antigonus questions
Herod’s Jewishness in genealogical terms and represents the view that doing
something cannot make anyone a Jew. As Eckhardt notes “Circumcision is not
enough, it can only create people somehow affiliated with, but clearly not be-
longing to, the people Israel. They are not transformed into Ioudaioi by this
act.”27
Was the third generation reckoned inclusively or exclusively? If inclusively
then Herod was fully Jewish, if exclusively then only his children and
grand-children would have been fully Jewish. According to the Qumranite
standard for entering the Temple the question would concern the fourth gener-
ation. Interestingly, Josephus tells a story where precisely this question was
raised with regard to Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great. There was a man,
Simon, from Jerusalem, living faithfully according to the commandments, who
at a meeting claimed that Agrippa was not holy (ὅσιος) and thus should be de-
nied access to the Temple, since this was only allowed for people of proper de-
scent (εὐγένεσιν) (A. J. 19.332–334).28 The story ends with Simon being sum-
moned by Agrippa to explain himself, whereupon he does not push the matter
any further. The fact that the issue was raised at all, and is reported by Josephus
points at least to a matter of debate along the lines indicated by Philo, as well as
texts from Qumran.
Josephus reports a further discussion. In the passage in A. J. 20.17–53 about
the sympathizer Izates we learn of different views of sages as to what is expect-
ed of such a sympathizer who wishes to abandon other gods and devote himself
exclusively to the God of Israel. Although Josephus reports that Izates thought
that by performing the rite of circumcision this would confirm his Jewishness,
(νομίζων τε μὴ ἂν εἶναι βεβαίως Ἰουδαῖος A. J. 20.38), he does not actually say that
Izates became a Jew, but referred to his way of life as following the Jewish ethos
(A. J. 20.17). He also does not have the two advisors Ananias and Eleazar refer
to Izates as a Jew, even after the latter had performed τὸ ἔργον/this rite.
The historicity of the narrative is not the issue here, but the fact that Josephus
presents a debate over what ritual requirements should be completed if one
wished to live a Jewish way of life, is evidence that he considered this switch of
loyalty to the one God an option.29 The story is about someone who is “zealous
for another tradition” (A. J. 20.47), chooses to live a Jewish way of life and per-
27Eckhardt, “An Idumean,” 114.

28See discussion in Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I. The Last King of Judea (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1990), 124–30.
29 For a thorough discussion see Mark D. Nanos, “The Question of Conceptualization:
Qualifying Paul’s Position on Circumcision in Dialogue with Jospehus’s Advisory to Izates,”

forms adult circumcision. This coheres with traditions of the scriptures where
adult circumcision is required for strangers who live in the midst of the people
Israel and participate in some of their customs. Coherent with these traditions,
Josephus does not indicate that this transforms this man into a Jew.
The question that remains open is whether the act of circumcision is seen as
transforming the gentile into a Jew, as in later rabbinic tradition or into a former
pagan, a ger/proselyte. In the latter case circumcision is considered to enable
close interaction between Jews and non-Jews in the land of Israel but would not
render the ger/proselyte a Jew. Josephus does not provide details about this.
What is evident is that joining the Jewish people is seen as a viable option, al-
though it remains unclear at what point membership in the house of Jacob/Isra-
el was evident.
Whether the most likely forced circumcision of Idumaeans and Iturians and
their living according to the Jewish way of life (νόμος) under the Hasmoneans
was a conversion is an open question and controversially debated.30 More gen-
erally I think that the concept of conversion is not helpful for understanding the
debates and processes concerning the status of non-Jews in relation to those
born into Jewish families. As noted, the book of Jubilees witnesses to a view that
becoming a Jew when one was not born one was impossible, Philo and some
texts from Qumran indicate that people, Edomites and Egyptians in particular,
willing to join should be welcomed, be equal with regard to the law, but only the
third generation could join the ἐκκλησία, or only the fourth could enter the
Temple court of Jewish men. And Josephus presents Izates and Helena in a pos-
itive light, especially since they become great benefactors of the Jewish people.
But he does not refer to Izates as a Jew.
Hence the question whether circumcision was considered as transforming a
non-Jew into a Jew maybe answered differently by different Jewish groups, and
it is far from obvious that there was a widely held view that this would have been
the normal perception. The situation comes closer to how Shaye D. Cohen de-
scribed it “A gentile who engaged in ‘judaizing’ behavior may have been regard-
ed as a Jew by gentiles, but as a gentile by Jews. A gentile who was accepted as a
proselyte by one community may not have been so regarded by another. Nor
should we assume that the proselytes of one community were necessarily treat-
ed like those of another, because the Jews of antiquity held a wide range of opin-
ions about the degree to which the proselyte became just like the native born.”31
Inscriptions further testify to distinctions between born Jews and proselytes.
Why would a proselyte indicate this if he or she were considered a Ioudaios –
in Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First Century to the Apostle, ed. Mark D. Nanos and
Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 105–52.
30 Cf. Regev, The Hasmoneans.Ideology, 274–8.
31 Shaye D. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew,” HTR 82:1 (1989): 13–
33, here 14.

without any further qualification? Shaye D. Cohen has drawn attention to all of
these internal differentiations. He also notes that seen from outside, someone so
joining a Jewish group may be seen and called a Jew by pagan neighbors, and
might probably like to call themselves a Jew. Texts by Juvenal, Tacitus, Seneca,
and Epictetus all indicate such outsiders’ views. Juvenal in his 14th satire writes
Some happen to have had a father who respects the sabbath (metuentem sabbata patrem).
They worship nothing except the clouds and spirit (or: deity) of the sky. They think there
is no difference between pork, which their father abstained from, and human flesh. In
time, they get rid of their foreskins. And with their habit of despising the laws of Rome,
they study, observe, and revere the Judaic code, as handed down by Moses in his mystic
scroll, which tells them not to show the way to anyone except a fellow worshipper and if
asked, to take only the circumcised to the fountain. But it’s the father who is to blame,
taking every seventh day as a day of laziness and separate from ordinary life.32
The father here seems to be a sympathizer, rather than a proselyte, although this
is difficult to ascertain, the son however certainly is depicted as further inte-
grated, whether fully however again cannot be confirmed. Tacitus writes that
the Jews “instituted the circumcision of the genitalia in order to be recognizable
by their difference. Those who cross over into their tradition of life adopt the
same practice, and, before anything else, are instructed to despise the gods, dis-
own their native land, and regard their parents, children, and brothers as of little
account” (Histories 5.5.2). These non-Jewish literary sources evidence to the
historicity of non-Jews adopting Jewish practices but it remains unclear wheth-
er they were seen as Jews even by them.
In light of these primary texts, I consider it questionable that there existed a
concept of conversion in Second Temple Judaism.33 All the examples mentioned
above, except Jubilees, provide evidence for some openness to welcoming for-
mer pagans into Jewish communities, and for them to judaize, that is, live ac-
cording to a Jewish way of life. But this is not evidence that they “converted” to
Judaism or were considered Jews, that is, Bnei Israel/Jacob.34 The evidence
points in a different direction – to an inter-generational process through which
outsiders eventually become part of the people Israel.35
32 Sat. 14.96–106; trans. S. Morton Braund, LCL, 465–7.
33 Paula Fredriksen notes with regard to Juvenal Sat. 14.96–102 “that Juvenal has no word
for ‘conversion,’ instead using the language of deserting the romanas leges for foreign laws, the
ius of Moses.” Paul, the Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 67; see also
her “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come
to Go,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35:2 (2006): 231–46.
34 This is also the case with the often referred to examples of Esther and Judith (LXX Esth
8:17, Jdt 14:10). Cf. Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2016), 39. Most recently the discussion by Katell Berthelot, “To Convert or not
to Convert: The Appropriation of Jewish Rituals, Customs and Beliefs by Non-Jews,” in
Lived Religion in the Ancient World. Approaching Religious Transformations from Archaeol-
ogy, History, and Classics, ed. Valentino Gasparini et.al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 493–515.
35 That the integration of non-members of a specific group could be a process which
Excursus: Rabbinical Traditions

The later rabbinical rules for people who wished to join the people Israel differ
fundamentally. The rabbis decided that it was possible to become a Jew through
a process of conversion which required teaching of the commandments, an im-
mersion ritual and for men circumcision, and in principle an offering. Upon
completion of the process the person was considered as of equal standing to
someone born a Jew. He was considered a new creation, like a newborn baby
with all his previous life being completely irrelevant, including his family ties
(b. Yebam. 22a, 48b).36 He is like adopted into a new family, a step which affects
questions such as inheritance, and marriage. Rabbinical concepts of conversion
may differ in certain details, but they all considered a person thus joining the
Jewish people to be Jews in almost every respect. However, despite such a per-
son being equal to born Jews, some rabbinical texts attribute significance to the
fact that their parents had not been Jews. In some texts the convert is considered
as adopted by Abraham, that is, through their conversion they are now Abra-
ham’s children. This does not render them Bnei Israel (sons of Israel) however,
and rabbis thus argued they could for instance not say the words in Deut 26:3
“Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the
LORD swore to our fathers to give us.” But instead, he should say “to give to
the fathers of Israel.” And in prayers which include “God of our fathers” he
should say “God of your fathers.”37 Hence, they postulate that a certain distinc-
tion between a born Jew and a convert is maintained. The issue is further debat-
spanned over a number of generations is also found in the Roman process of the manumission
of slaves. Although their status could change in that they could become freedmen, the stigma
of slavery never left them. Moreover, they remained indebted to their former master, now
their patron, in that they were obligated to render him services as required. Only the freeborn
sons of freedmen would not carry that stigma of slavery with them anymore. This had impli-
cations also in terms of inheritance laws, the right to pass on possessions to the next genera-
tion was limited for freedmen, e.g. their sons could only inherit if the freedman had more than
three freeborn children, otherwise the former master, now patron had the right to inherit
from the freedman. If the freedman had been the slave of a Roman citizen he would get Roman
citizenship, but of a secondary class. Also, marriage into the senatorial class was not possible
for freedpersons. For a detailed discussion of the status of freedmen see Henrik Mouritsen’s
excellent monograph The Freedmen in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
36 Cf. also Claude Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul Two Essays (London: Max Goschen,
1914), 200.
37 m. Bik. 1.4
A. These [people] bring [firstfruits] but do not recite:

B. a proselyte brings but does not recite,
C. because he is not able to say, “[I have come into the land] which the Lord swore to our
fathers to give us,” (Dt. 26:3).
D. But if his mother was an Israelite, he brings and recites.
E. And when he [the proselyte] prays in private, he says, “God of the fathers
F. And when he prays in the synagogue, he says, “God of your fathers.”
G. [But] if his mother was an Israelite, he says, “God of our fathers.”
ed in the Jerusalem Talmud, where an argument for a different perception is

proposed in that it is understood that the name change of Abraham from Avram
to Abraham actually indicates that he is also the father of goyim, understood
here as converts, as distinct from born Jews (y. Bik. 1.4, 64a). In later rabbinical
traditions, such as Genesis Rabbah the notion that the convert is actually creat-
ed emerges (Gen Rab. 39.14) and in the Babylonian Talmud the notion that the
convert is a newborn child nurtured by Sarah, and Sarah thus being their moth-
er can be found (b. Yebam. 22a, 97b). In these later rabbinical texts the notion
that the convert is integrated into the lineage of Abraham, and thus is genealog-
ically integrated via adoption or the notion of “new creation” into the people
Israel indicates the importance attributed to lineage as expression of belonging
to Israel in rabbinical tradition. Katell Berthelot is of the view, that this may be
due to the influence of the Roman concept of adoption.38 This may well be the
case, although the changed political situation after 70 CE and especially after
132 CE possibly played a part in this one generation process of conversion as
well. Since the Romans had an interest to identify who was a Jew for tax purpos-
es, people at the margins or of unclear status could possibly not be tolerated
anymore. One could not be in a transitional or liminal state anymore over gen-
erations, but had to either be a Jew or a pagan. Further research into this would
be interesting but is beyond the scope of this contribution.
5. The Transformation of Gentile Sinners according to Paul
The question of Paul’s genealogical reasoning thus needs to be considered in

light of this context. Since, as argued above, no act or ritual, not even adult cir-
cumcision, could transform a former pagan into a Jew, integrating him into the
lineage of Abraham and thus transforming him into a Ben Israel, who was part
of the ἐκκλησία/qahal of the people Israel, part of the people to whom the prom-
ises apply, how was it possible that such a person could arrive at a “right” stand-
ing in relation to the God of Israel? There would have been a number of reasons
why Paul might have considered this to be a pressing issue. Since he was con-
vinced that he and his contemporaries lived under the conditions of the immi-
nent in-breaking of the end time, there was no time for an inter-generational
process to join the Jewish people except as proselytes (not as Jews). And for the
same chronometrical reason Paul considered it necessary that now that the mes-
sianic time was beginning to dawn, people from the nations would join the peo-
ple Israel in worshipping God, because it had been revealed that he was the God
38 Cf. Katell Berthelot, “Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adoption: Les modèles pour pens-
er la conversion au judaïsme à l’époque romaine,” Pallas. Revue d’études antiques 104 (2017):
37–50.
not of the Jews only but also of the nations.39 How thus was it possible that a
“gentile sinner” (ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἁμαρτωλός Gal 2:15) could be transformed and become
a full member of the ἐκκλησία θεοῦ, part of the holy community who worshipped
the one God together with his people Israel, in these eschatological times ?
Since in antiquity kinship relations and relationships to the divine world were
intrinsically linked, or as Paula Fredriksen has formulated, “gods and humans
form family groups,”40 it was inconceivable to commit in exclusive loyalty to
the one God of Israel without having a kinship connection to the people to
whom this God already had committed himself in an irrevocable covenant.
Loyalty to a deity was not merely a matter of belief, it was not a religious act in
the modern sense, it involved cult practice, and to participate in this one had to
be part of the respective kinship group.41 The polytheistic nature of all except
the Jewish exclusive relation to their God, does not contradict this kinship as-
pect, as the relation to the gods of the family or clan would never be substituted
with the worshipping of deities of other peoples, these would just be integrated
into one’s own pantheon. However, this was not an option if one wanted to be
loyal exclusively to the God of Israel, hence integration into the kinship group
was decisive.
Paul develops a narrative of identity for those from the nations in Christ via
two paradigms, adoption as sons/ὑιοθεσία and transformation into σπέρμα
Abraham. The latter clearly falls into the category of genealogy, but the former
only appears to present a genealogical argument. I will first briefly turn to the
notion of adoption – followed by an analysis of Paul’s genealogical reasoning
through the σπέρμα Abraham argument.
5.1 Adoption as Sons

It has been widely argued that Paul’s use of adoption language with regard to
non-Jews’ status in relation to the God of Israel, predominantly draws on the
Roman legal concept of adoption.42 It may well be that the adoption metaphors
39 Worshipping means λατρεία, that is Temple worship which means cult performance in-
cluding sacrifices. This happened only in the Temple in Jerusalem, and was performed by
priests on behalf of all Israel, that is, the ἐκκλησία θεοῦ, the assembly of God. So, for non-Jews
to worship with Israel, they had to somehow become part of this assembly – in Paul’s view
without becoming part of Israel.
40 Fredriksen, Paul the Pagans’ Apostle, 151.
41 Cf. Patrick McMurray, Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body: Abraham and the Nations
in Romans (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2021), 229–34.

42 Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in its Social and
Political Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), Seon Kyu Kim, “Another Look at
Adoption in Roman 8:15 in Light of Roman Social Practices and Legal Rules,” BTB 44:3
(2014): 133–43; Walters, James C. (rev. by Jerry Sumney), “Paul, Adoption, and Inheritance,”
in Paul and the Greco-Roman World. A Handbook, ed. J. Paul Sampley (New York: Blooms-
bury T&T Clark, 2003), 33–67.
in Romans and Galatians resonate for his gentile addressees with the Roman
concept. However, I am not convinced that this is the primary analogy from
which Paul draws. Firstly, it is not accurate to claim that there was no notion of
adoption in Jewish traditions of the time. But a process of transforming a gentile
sinner into a Jew via adoption into the lineage of Abraham is not attested in
texts of the Second Temple period. This is not to say that the notion of adoption
cannot be found in Jewish traditions, although not in the sense of transforming
a non-Jew/gentile into a Jew, nor in the sense of integrating someone into one’s
lineage for inheritance purposes.43
But there are narratives of belonging which depict the coming into being of
the people Israel in the vein of what looks like an adoption. She was a foundling
of unknown origins, taken care of and raised by God (Hos 11:1; Ezek 16; Deut
32:9–11). It is through his love and call that Israel is Israel, called into being
through God initiating a relationship with her and committing himself to her in
his unconditional covenant. The narratives of Abraham as well as of Hosea
(Hos 11:1–4) tell the story of this coming into being of the people Israel and
God’s binding commitment to her, whether this is expressed in contractual
terms, as in the Abraham narratives of Genesis, or in the image of an adopting
parent and child as in Hosea.44 With adoption, fatherhood, caring for Israel like
for a child, and calling into being, different images are used in narratives of be-
longing or identity in Jewish scriptural traditions.45 As Jon Levinson summa-
rizes “Israel is not a nation like any other […] the new people only comes into
existence through God’s promise to Abram, a childless man with a barren wife.
Israel […] never had an identity unconnected to the God who called it into exis-
tence in the beginning and who has graciously sustained it ever after.”46
The image of the father-child relationship is also found in Second Temple
literature: in Jub. 1:24a–25 God says to Moses “I will become their father and
they will become my children. All of them will be called children of the living
God.” This seems to indicate that some kind of adoption notion lies in this for-
mulation. Moreover, the image of God as father is also found in Wis 11:10 “For
these you put to the test like a father giving a warning.” Ben Sira calls on God
“O Lord, Father and God of my life” (Sir 23:4) , and Philo, especially when re-
ferring to God the Creator often in one breadth also refers to him as father.47
Thus, the image of God as father to his people continues to be relevant during
43 Cf. Walters and Sumney, “Paul, Adoption and Inheritance,” 36.

44 Cf. the similar image with regard to Jerusalem in Ezek 16:2–14.
45 Cf. also Mal 2:10; Isa 43:6–7; 64:7; Jer 3:19; Deut 32:6; cf. also 2 Sam 7:14.
46 Jon Levenson, Inheriting Abraham. The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christian-
ity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 22. Levenson also draws atten-
tion to the image found in Ezek 16 where Jerusalem is the child of a mixed marriage “or un-
known provenance, abandoned and adopted by God taking the place of the lost parent” (22–
3).
47 Opif. 7, 10, 21, 46, 56, 74, 75, 77, 84, 89, 135; Leg. 1.18, 64; 2.67 etc.
the Second Temple period, and although the term ὑιοθεσία cannot be found in
this literature, this does not mean that the notion is absent. James M. Scott and
Jeffrey Tigay have convincingly demonstrated that other terms express the same
aspect as a metaphor for the relationship of God with Abraham or with the
people Israel. As one of numerous examples, Scott discusses Philo, Sobr. 56 in
particular where Abraham is depicted as God’s first-born son, in what is evi-
dently an adoption process (he made him his first-born son).48
To refer to God as father of his children, that is, the people Israel, is not ex-
ceptional but it is not drafted primarily on the notion of adoption in the sense of
the Roman concept.49 In these Jewish perceptions those adopted by God are not
integrated into a divine genealogical lineage. God is not their father κατὰ σάρκα
or φύσει. Through his call they came into being. By this acquisition, Israel be-
comes God’s inheritance, they are his portion in the world, marked by this
special relationship (Deut 32:9). Although inheritance language plays an im-
portant role in this relationship it is not linked with these parental images.
Inheritance is of course a decisive genealogical aspect in the Roman concept
and actually the main purpose of adoption: the adoptee becomes part of the
direct genealogical lineage of the adopter, predominantly to become his heir,
and when the adoptee is a person sui iuris, that is an adult who is not under the
potestas of a paterfamilias, he also takes on the duty for the adopter’s deities. He
genealogically becomes his son, and thus inherits his estates etc. including the
duties towards the family deities.50 These are certainly aspects which resonate
with Paul’s addressees given their Roman context especially in Romans, and
also in Galatians as significant recent research demonstrates.51 However, the
relevance of Jewish notions of “sonship of God” has too lightly been dismissed
in my view. I doubt that the perception of Roman adoption is the most helpful
for understanding Paul’s use of the metaphor. The emphasis on the “spirit of
sonship/adoption as sons” in Rom 8:15 does not refer to a new genealogy for the
addressees, via adoption by God.52 The image of sonship (ὑιοθεσία), or children
48 μόνος γὰρ εὐγενὴς ἅτε θεὸν ἐπιγεγραμμένος πατέρα καὶ γεγονὼς εἰσποιητὸς αὐτῷ μόνος υἱός
(Sobr. 56). Scott interprets this as an image for the adoption of proselytes by God. I am doubt-
ful whether this generalization from Abraham to proselytes can be made, as Abraham al-
though with a paradigmatic function for non-Jews, is presented here as unique, rather than as
an example. James M. Scott, Adoption as Sons: An Exegetical Investigation into the Back-
ground of Huiothesia in the Pauline Corpus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 62–117.
49 Cf. e.g., Jeffrey Tigay, “Adoption,” Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edition, 1:209–11.
50 For details of the Roman adoption procedures see Kim, “Another look at Adoption in
Romans 8.15;” Hugh Lindsay, Adoption in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2009).
51 Robert B. Lewis, Paul’s Spirit of Adoption in its Roman Imperial Context (London,
New York: T&T Clark, 2016).

52 This is Johnson Hodge’s argument. Although I appreciate her work in many ways, the
images of adoption and seed are intermingled in her work which I think is problematic. She
states “indeed the spirit, or pneuma is crucial in this process: it grants the gentiles a new an-
of God presents a relational metaphor indeed, but it is not genealogical. The

starting point for Paul’s use of this metaphor is slavery, or rather the spirit of
fear associated with slavery. It is more likely rooted in the Exodus narrative, the
narrative shaping the identity of the people Israel as being redeemed from slav-
ery to be God’s firstborn son (Exod 4:22), rather than in genealogical narratives.
Thus, the move from slavery to sonship is the key narrative paradigm of the
identity of the people Israel.53 Paul uses this paradigm now also for gentile
Christ-followers, not as a replacement of Israel but in analogy to God’s people
Israel. Paul, by addressing gentiles refers to their slavery to sin, that is, their
bondage to distorted passions, due to their distorted worshipping of idols (Rom
1:18–25). From this, they are freed in that now in Christ they are adopted as sons
and thus empowered by the spirit of sonship. The sonship is linked to inheri-
tance both in Rom 8:12–25 and Gal 4:1–7, indicating that this adoption has ben-
eficial implications for those now so related to the one God.54 Here, Paul’s met-
aphor comes closest to Roman notions, without in my view being identical with
such. It has been argued that this might refer to inheriting the Kingdom of God
– as Paul at several points refers to those “who cannot/will not inherit the king-
dom of God” (Gal 5:21; 1 Cor 6:9–10).55 An indication possibly relevant for this
can be found in 2 Cor 6:16–18 where Paul refers to a number of scriptural texts:
I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
17
Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
18
and I will be your father,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.
This affirmation is the core of their inheritance, this is God’s commitment to

them now also. This commitment is the reason why they, now in and through
cestry, a new kinship with the God of Israel.” (If Sons, Then Heirs. A Study of Kinship and
Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 72.)
53 Cf. John Byron, Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity. A Tradi-
tion-Historical and Exegetical Examination (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 288; idem, Re-
cent Research on Paul and Slavery (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix 2008), 86; although with a
different emphasis also Sylvia Keesmaat, Paul and his Story. (Re)interpreting the Exodus Tra-
dition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999).
54 In Rom 8:17 one could even consider that this is a subjective genitive – so those so adopt-
ed are now also part of God’s inheritance – as is often also noted for the people Israel LXX
Deut 32:9; LXX Ps 27:9; 32:12; 74:2; 77:71; 94:14; 105:40; LXX Mic 7:14; LXX Joel 3:2; LXX
Isa 19:25; 47:6; 63:17; LXX Jer 2:7; 12:14; 27:119.
55 An interesting note is found in 1 Thess 2:12 where Paul reminds his addressees that God
calls them “into his own kingdom and glory.”

Christ, like the people Israel already, are freed from slavery, sons and heirs and
as such not under the dominion of any other power anymore. They inherit the
promise that they will live in the realm of God’s power.
Thus, the notion of adoption as sons in Paul is a relational metaphor, resonat-
ing with Jewish notions of God’s relationship with his people, it is part of Isra-
el’s narrative of identity as the people belonging to God. Whether they are seen
as called, a foundling, an infant whom God raised for himself, his portion, his
inheritance in his creation – all of these images are part of this narrative. As Paul
emphasizes in Rom 9:4 to them (Israel) belong … the ὑιοθεσία etc. – not in the
past tense, as if they had lost their sonship, but in the presence tense. God’s
continued commitment to them is irrevocable. But now those in Christ are also
adopted as sons. Alongside the people Israel, not in replacing Israel.
This kind of ὑιοθεσία did not and does not create a lineage in the vein that the
narrative of Aeneas creates a genealogical lineage for the Roman people, that
links them and in a more specific claim, the Julio-Flavian clan, to the goddess
Venus. Nor is it analogous with the most prevalent purpose of the Roman con-
cept of adoption, that is the repositioning of a family member in the family lin-
eage. Roman adoptions were hardly adoptions of outsiders. They were rather
shifts in genealogies, in that in the absence or loss of a direct heir, another fam-
ily member was moved into this position. The most that was possible was that a
close friend or the son of close friend could be adopted for that purpose. The
Roman concept of adoption aimed at filling the vacant space of an heir.56 It was
an elitist affair, and hardly ever would a freedman, even less, a slave be adopted
as son and heir.57 Paul, however, argues precisely that, that former slaves have
now received the spirit of adoption as sons. Those so adopted as children of God
do not move into a vacant space, they are not replacing an heir, they are co-heirs
with Christ and through him with those who already have the ὑιοθεσία, the
status as adopted children of God, Israel. Together they are heirs.
Paul’s adoption metaphor resonates with the Roman practice and purpose of
adoption in a limited way and should primarily be heard from within Jewish
narratives and metaphors. A key distinction to the Roman notion is the absence
of a genealogical link with God. Paul’s image of non-Jews in Christ as being
adopted by God and thus participating in his inheritance (or now being also
part of his inheritance) is one of the metaphors Paul uses to formulate the tran-
sition of non-Jews in Christ from the slavery of idolatry to now belonging to the
one God. They are now also God’s portion, but they are not integrated into a
divine genealogy. Like in the parenting metaphors for Israel’s relation to God,
56 Hugh Lindsay notes that “Although there is no hope of raising statistics or telling exam-
ples, adoptions aimed solely at providing heirs would normally occur within close degrees of
relationship or from amongst family friends of suitable standing.” (Adoption in the Roman
World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 134.)
57 See the detailed discussion in Lindsay, Adoption, esp. 123–37.
the distinction between God and humans, the Creator and Creation is clearly
maintained. There is no genealogical link to God. The emphasis of the parent
metaphor lies on the loving, caring relationship of God with his people.
The metaphor should thus not be mingled with the other image linked to in-
heritance, the one which associates these non-Jews in Christ with Abraham as
his σπέρμα. With this narrative a genealogical link is indeed created for non-
Jews in Christ.
5.2 Seed of Abraham

Significantly, Paul does not use the adoption image when he explains to his ad-
dressees in Rom 4 and Gal 3:29 that they are seed of Abraham, and thus heirs to
the promise. This is what might be expected but is absent from Paul’s genealog-
ical reasoning in relation to the gentiles’ integration into the lineage of Abra-
ham.58 They are adopted children of God in Paul – and not adopted children or
adopted seed of Abraham!
Of course, the link to Abraham is decisive. Paul demonstrates in a discourse
of genealogical reasoning that by becoming part of the lineage of Abraham
these non-Jews in Christ qualify as heirs to the promise, but precisely not via
adoption. Paul does argue genealogically to express how they belong to this
God, but not through genealogical reasoning in relation to God but in relation
to Abraham. The affirmation that they are now – also – σπέρμα Abraham is the
confirmation of the promise to Abraham that is designated to be the ancestor/
father of many nations (Rom 4:17). Abraham of course is in one sense already
the father of many nations, through Ishmael as well through Esau and their
descendants. And the mythological link to the Spartans which is reported in
1 Maccabees and Josephus is possibly an extension of this perception. But none
of these descendants are called Abraham’s σπέρμα as Paul differentiates in Rom
9:7 “not all of Abraham’s τέκνα are his σπέρμα.” Σπέρμα Αβραάμ does not denote
merely a genealogical ancestry as I have argued in detail elsewhere.59 According
to the narratives of Genesis, Abraham and his σπέρμα are the recipients of the
specific covenant promises and this renders them also the bearers of the prom-
ises (Gen 15:1–6 and 17:1–9; also Gen 28:13–15). Only they are the recipients and
bearers of God’s pledge that he will be their God, that they will be his people,
or as noted above, they are his portion and inheritance. This inherently and
explicitly includes the promise of blessing, that is, fullness of life for Abraham
and his σπέρμα. For this to be possible they are promised a place to live, living
space; and through them or in their name the nations will also be blessed.
58 There is no trajectory from Paul’s use of the adoption image to the later rabbinical no-
tion of converts as being adopted children of Abraham. Contra Berthelot’s argument in her
otherwise illuminating article, “Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adoption,” 49.
59 Ehrensperger, “Narratives of Belonging,” 373–92, 382–91.
To be σπέρμα Abraham has a specific genealogical connotation, related to

promise and inheritance. The genealogical link for those from the nations is
established for them via Christ. As σπέρμα David (Rom 1:3) Christ is part of the
genealogical lineage of σπέρμα Abraham. As such he represents the hopes of the
people Israel, the trust that despite indications to the contrary God is faithful to
his covenant commitment. This commitment confirmed in Christ has implica-
tions also for those from the nations (Rom 15:8–9). They belong to Christ in
that they have responded in trust (ὑπακοὴ πίστεως) to God’s call in Christ. This
links them to Christ’s πίστις and thus genealogically to Abraham’s πίστις. As
such they are σπέρμα Abraham, in the realm of Christ. God’s call and their re-
sponse places them in the realm of Christ and thus of the promise to Abraham
and his σπέρμα. Christ is the key link but not a means in itself (Gal 3:29). He is
the means through whom those from the nations have access to the promises. 60
This does not mean that they thereby become part of Israel, nor do they replace
Israel. They are not transformed in Christ into sons of Israel, that is, members
of the house of Jacob/Israel. 61 They belong to God through Christ as those
from the nations. As such they are associated to the people Israel, but becoming
part of the lineage of Abraham in Christ does not integrate them into Israel. 62
The emphasis on Abraham’s trust in God, as the God who creates life where
there is death (Rom 4:17) obviously resonates with God’s action in the vindicat-
ing resurrection of Christ. The initiation of eschatological events in the resur-
rection of Christ initiates also the inclusion of those who like Abraham turned
to the one God in trust (πίστις), now as gentile recipients and bearers of the
promise. This is the implication of being σπέρμα Abraham. This link is created
for them via Christ, not via adoption (ὑιοθεσία) into Abraham’s lineage. Becom-
ing Abraham’s σπέρμα is intertwined with Christ’s πίστις, the gentiles’ trust,
60 Cf. Ryan Schellenberg, “Seed of Abraham? Universality and Ethnicity in Paul,” Direc-
tion 44:1 (2015): 16–29.

61 Although Schellenberg makes a compelling argument concerning Christ as the link for
non-Jews, his conclusion that they become thereby part of Israel is problematic. No non-Jew
is integrated into Israel, they are if anything associated to Israel, possibly as associated people
of God, kind of cousins of Israel, but they do not become part of the house of Jacob. Contra
Schellenberg, “Seed of Abraham,” 21.
62 Cf. Campbell who argues that “non-Jews, even as seed of Abraham, are not part of the
covenant and do not keep Torah as do those within the covenant […] They need to learn about,
and are related to, the traditions of Israel, but it is through Christ alone that they become
σπέρμα. This relation to Abraham via Chris prevents ethne being accorded the title ‘Israel’.”
And further “to participate in the promises of Abraham, those from the nations require not
only a connection with Christ but also via Christ (rather than via circumcision) to Abraham.
This is how they have access to the Abrahamic promises; this is how they become children of
God, as other peoples […] without becoming part of Israel.” (The Nations in the Divine Econ-
omy: Paul’s Covenantal Hermeneutics and Participation in Christ [Lanham, MD: Lexing-
ton/Fortress Academic, 2018], 235–6). Cf. also his Romans: A Social-Identity Commentary
(London, New York: T&T Clark, 2022); and Paula Fredriksen, “Judaizing the Nations: The
Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel,” NTS 56 (2010): 232–52, here 243.
and the spirit. 63 In and through Christ those from the nations thus become co-
heirs of the promise. They are not self-standing heirs. Through Christ they are
intrinsically linked with those who are σπέρμα ἐκ τοῦ νόμου. As Paul notes in
Rom 4:16b εἰς τὸ εἶναι βεβαίαν τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν παντὶ τῷ σπέρματι, οὐ τῷ ἐκ τοῦ
νόμου μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ ἐκ πίστεως Ἀβραάμ, ὅς ἐστιν πατὴρ πάντων ἡμῶν. Abra-
ham is thus the father of both, those ἐκ τοῦ νόμου and those ἐκ πίστεως. Only
together with σπέρμα ἐκ τοῦ νόμου can those from the nations be heirs to the
promise.
In Jewish perception, as noted, there were peoples who were part of the gene-
alogy of Abraham without being considered his σπέρμα. Before the Christ
event, inclusion into the lineage of Abraham’s σπέρμα, that is the lineage of
promise, was only possible via joining the people Israel – requiring a three gen-
erational process as noted above. Thus, God’s commitment to Abraham and his
σπέρμα as their God, providing for them his blessing in terms of peoplehood
and living space, could not be inherited by the one former pagan who initiated
the process of joining the people Israel. This commitment only fully applied to
the third generation, those who were the grandsons of the one who turned away
from idols to the true and living God. The proselyte himself could not become
part of the ἐκκλησία of God, the assembly of the holy ones. 64 Only later gener-
ations were possibly considered as not affected by the idolatry of their grandfa-
thers, as they were the sons of fathers who should never have committed idola-
try. However, Paul is convinced that now, at the dawning of the messianic age,
something had happened in and through Christ that rendered these former idol-
ater purified, and thus holy so they could become part of the eschatological as-
sembly of God ἐκκλησία θεοῦ, as those from the nations, that is, as eschatologi-
cally purified gentiles. Now that the messianic age was beginning to dawn, they
were called into existence by God’s grace as σπέρμα Abraham from the nations.
It is decisive that they remain just that, σπέρμα Abraham from the nations, since
God had begun to reveal himself as God of both, Israel and the nations. As
σπέρμα Abraham from the nations they inherit the promise that God will be
their God also, not in the place of Israel but alongside or associated with Israel.
Again, unlike in the Roman practice of adoption no one is replaced in this gene-
alogical integration.
A number of aspects are woven together by Paul in this emerging narrative of
belonging for non-Jews who through association with Christ now were also
σπέρμα Abraham, holy seed. They are ransomed from the debt accumulated by
63 I cannot enter the debate about πίστις Χριστοῦ, but am inclined to agree, e.g., with Ste-
phen Young’s arguments in his article “Paul’s Ethnic Discourse on ‘Faith’: Christ’s Faithful-
ness and Gentile Access to the Judean God in Romans 3.21–5.1,” HTR 108:1 (2015): 30–51.
64 The reason for this was likely the pollution through idolatry that was considered as
permeating them. As a former slave to sin, an idolator could not become holy. This is clearly
the perception in the Book of Jubilees as noted above.
idolatry, as one of the images Paul uses to show what the Christ-event meant for
them “You were bought with a price …” (1 Cor 6:20; 7;23). There are a number
of other images through which Paul tries to clarify the implications of the
Christ-event. The core aspect is that those from the nations are called into being
as people who belong to the God of Israel as precisely that – people from the
nations. Not to replace Israel, but to join Israel, as those who had turned away
from idols. Their narrative inclusion as σπέρμα Abraham integrates them gene-
alogically into a new network of belonging, a network of which Israel is already
part. In analogy to the narratives of Abraham, Hosea, Ezekiel, the Exodus for
Israel, the narrative of these non-Jews in Christ is the narrative of their coming
into being as an additional people of God.
6. Conclusions
Paul is treading new territory in his endeavor to formulate a narrative of belong-

ing for those from the nations in Christ. It is a narrative that is deeply rooted in
Jewish tradition, with the innovative dimension that images, visions and hopes
expressed in scriptural and Second Temple Jewish texts concerning the wor-
shipping of God by non-Jewish people is seen as now being actualized in and
through the Christ-event. The integration into the lineage of Abraham, as
σπέρμα Abraham is thereby one of the images Paul uses to explain how these
non-Jews in Christ are now integrated into the narrative of belonging of the
God of Israel who had revealed himself now also as God of the nations. It serves
the purpose of clarifying how they can be heirs to the promise made to Abra-
ham and his σπέρμα – that God will be their God also.
Another image is that of ὑιοθεσία. It also is linked to the notion of inheritance,
but the emphasis is on the transition of these gentiles in Christ from being slaves
(to sin) to being sons (and daughters) of God. This does not stand in contradic-
tion to the image of genealogical integration into the lineage of Abraham. It is a
different image, emphasizing a different aspect of the narrative of belonging to
Christ. Common to both of these images is the dimension of inheritance. By
becoming σπέρμα, Abraham or by receiving the status of sonship through adop-
tion they become heirs to the promise, but significantly co-heirs, not sole heirs.
They are in that sense new creation. They are now through their inclusion
into the lineage of σπέρμα Abraham also holy. Belonging to God means that
they were called through Christ to be holy (Lev 19:2). This is what to be heirs to
the promise implies in my view. Not merely that they are called to belong, and
to inherit something, but that this call asks for a response, ὑπακοὴν πίστεως, a
trustful response. Thus, to be heir to the promise, σπέρμα, means to become a
promise bearer, to live according to this promise, to live life as Paul formulates,
as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). To be σπέρμα Abraham, alongside God’s apple
of the eye Jacob/Israel, includes to live in association with them, according to

the ways of the Lord. If Abraham and his σπέρμα are heirs to the κόσμος, this
inheritance is now also entrusted to those from the nations in Christ. This is the
eschatological hope. Although they live in this hope and trust, they also live in
the not yet, thus patiently awaiting its full revelation. For now, they are entrust-
ed with this promise, which is both, gift as well as task, alongside and together
with God’s people Israel.
Paul and Synagogues
Janelle Peters
1. Introduction
Named the first Poet Laureate of England in 1668, John Dryden mused about
ways to govern states in Absalom and Achitophel (1681):
Nor only crowds, but Sanhedrins may be

Infected with this public lunacy,
And share the madness of rebellious times,
To murder monarchs for imagined crimes (788–791).
A man who oscillated between rival camps like Paul, Dryden touches on the
interplay between elitist and populist politics and the tenuous nature of political
control, using the metaphor of the Sanhedrin to describe councils contempo-
rary to him. Certainly, we can validate this interpretation of the Sanhedrin as
competing with the voice of the populate for Roman favor. There are analogous
dynamics during the Jewish Revolt, which was when an ethnic group within the
Roman Empire and its laws tried to reassert its independence. Moments of in-
tra-Jewish violence such as Jesus’s Temple episode and Paul’s floggings suggest
the Roman hegemony that exerted itself on Jewish processes. We see this in the
primary sources themselves in places such as the intervention in Acts of Paul’s
nephew to have the Romans save Paul from in-transit murder of Paul by a group
of Jews attempting to thwart Jewish religious legal processes. Similar cautions
appear by Paul himself in 1 Corinthians, where he urges those in the house-
churches to avoid taking each other before secular courts.
In this paper, I will argue that Paul’s understanding of group regulation de-
rives partially from contemporary synagogues both in Judea and in the diaspo-
ra. While the Sanhedrin attracts the most attention in the gospels as it indicates
the importance of Jesus and his impending execution by the Romans, smaller
disputes could have been settled based on halakha by teachers in synagogues,
just as Jesus routinely fielded such questions as whether divorce was permitted
and Paul defined sexual immorality. None of these bodies would have had the
power to overthrow the Roman emperor or Roman taxation, but they would
have exerted significant influence over the life decisions of those who came to
consult them. Moreover, we know that individuals like Paul willingly submit-
ted themselves to punishments meted out by Jewish associations such as the 39
188 Janelle Peters
lashes. While shocking to modern sensibilities, Paul lived in a time when corpo-
ral punishment was still present in schools, and other Mediterranean associa-
tions like the “Mysteries” could whip individuals and otherwise enact violence
upon their bodies in a way that would not alarm Roman authorities. Even in
Jerusalem, Peter seems to have been able to flout certain Jewish customs with
the problem of his conscience being the bigger threat than physical violence.
With several Jewish circles eschewing strongly delineated codes of corporal
punishment (e.g., Jesus’ following, Qumran, and the Therapeutae), the occa-
sional instances of bodily punishment could possibly have been reserved in syn-
agogues for extreme cases such as that of Paul. It surely must not have been very
often that a trained Pharisee decided that a fellow human was the resurrected
Christ of the God of Israel, given the relative scarcity of thaumaturges com-
pared to other forms of ecstatic behavior such as engaging in prophecy.
2. Synagogues in Judaism during the Second Temple period
Before considering the role of Paul in the synagogue, we should first review the
possibilities for Jewish gatherings in Judea and in the diaspora in the first centu-
ry C. E. Paul, having heard about Jesus long prior to his conversion, could have
encountered the message of Christ first in one of the synagogues or Judean/
Jewish gatherings he frequented. However, his actual conversion is said to take
place outside the Jewish community in any instantiation and on the road to
Damascus. In our sources from Christ-followers, the synagogue is situated
apart from conversion to following Christ as much as those within it can occa-
sionally hear a message about Christ and become sympathetic to following
Christ. The synagogue has a place in first-century Christian experience, but it
has a role that is often independent of the experience of those following Christ.
Philo’s Therapeutae might share with Christians certain synagogal configura-
tions, but there is considerable variation among what might be considered as a
synagogue apart from reading Scripture and having an interest in a Jewish com-
munity that need not be coterminous with Rome.
2.1 What Constitutes a Judean/Jewish Gathering?

There were many avenues for Jewish expression in the early imperial Roman
period, according to our sources. Most Jewish groups, including those that fol-
lowed Jesus, held positive views of the Temple.1 Yet, the Temple was not avail-
1 Eyal Regev has argued that “there is reason to believe that the actual attitude towards the
Temple displayed by Peter, Paul, and James was not very different from that of their fellow
Jews.” See Eyal Regev, “Temple Concerns and High-Priestly Prosecutions from Peter to
James: Between Narrative and History,” NTS 57 (2009): 64–89, here 88.
Paul and Synagogues 189
able for quotidian expressions of piety, and Jewish groups varied widely in how
they construed faithful observance to be practiced.2 Philo was an Alexandrian
Jewish man of considerable status and leadership experience, and his writings
preserve groups such as the Therapeutae where men and women come together
during a communal meal in order to recreate distinctionless creation, arranging
themselves for Torah instruction based on age.3 The Dead Sea Scrolls contain
the rules for structured membership within the spiritual group. Jesus consid-
ered himself to be an itinerant Jewish teacher who held classes in the Temple,
synagogues, and countryside. Richard Ascough points out that the term “syna-
gogue” could be used by non-Judean groups as well as Judean groups, leading to
some confusion about what constitutes authentic and appropriate synagogue
behavior and Jewish/Judean affiliation.4 Similarly, non-Judeans could have
joined those originally from Judean groups in Judea or the diaspora in syna-
gogues with varying levels of acculturation and leadership. In such variety, who
would be in charge of deciding what was authentic Judean practice?
At the same time, our sources also suggest that there was an attempt to define
Judaism by Romans for the purposes of allowing gatherings. Both Philo (Legat.
311–313, 316) and Josephus (A. J. 14.213–216, 14.235, 14.259–260) inform us that
Jews were accorded privileges during the early Roman imperial period based on
their ancestral customs.5 In Acts 23, the only reason that Paul is diverted from
going before another session with the Sanhedrin, a Jewish disciplinary body, is
that his nephew knows of a credible threat on the part of some Jews to deal with
Paul themselves. Before the Sanhedrin, Paul has described himself as a “Phari-
see” who is the “son of Pharisees,” and he garners some support from among
“some scribes of the Pharisees” for his claim that charges are being brought
against him for his “hope in the resurrection,” with or without belief in Jesus in
a manner that could be consistent with Dan 12. Though Luke does not develop
the erudition of Paul within the space of this chapter in Acts, the Lucan inclu-
sion of Paul’s knowledge of Pharisaic tradition contrasts with other early Chris-
tian traditions about the lack of training of Jesus (John 7:15), John the Baptist
(John 3:26), and the apostles. The Roman interference in Jewish legal processes
at the end of Acts functions positively and suggests that the earliest Christian
groups influenced by Paul allowed some degree of outsider negotiation of what
constituted appropriate Jewish expression and legal reach.
2 Notably, Daniel Boyarin has suggested that Justin Martyr invents the category of Juda-
ism in a more systematic way than previously existed during the time of Jesus and Paul. See
Daniel Boyarin, “Justin Martyr Invents Judaism,” Church History 70 (2001): 427–61.
3 Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 75–91.
4 Richard Ascough, “Paul, Synagogues, and Associations: Reframing the Question of
Models for Pauline Christ Groups,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 27–52, here 51.
5 Philo and Josephus differ somewhat in that Philo agrees with the Hellenistic book of
Judith that conversion to being Judean may happen, where Josephus might not. See Shaye J. D.
Cohen, “Respect for Judaism by Gentiles According to Josephus,” HTR 80 (1987): 409–30.
190 Janelle Peters
Nonetheless, it seems that Roman influence over synagogues was kept to a

minimum. In the Gospel of Luke, as Judith Lieu notes, Jesus is able to teach in
synagogues freely in both Luke’s received material and Luke’s own editing.
Moreover, strong local control over synagogues precludes overarching imperial
intrusions. Luke has a Luke emphasizes Jesus’ preaching and teaching in the
synagogues both in his own material. Luke knows of a mere Roman centurion
who builds a synagogue (7:5), without any type of Roman administrator. Lieu
further notes the Lucan highlight of Jairus is a ruler of the synagogue (8:41). 6
Dining and worship feature commonly in descriptions of Jewish worship ac-
tivities of the Second Temple period in Judea and in the diaspora. Jesus notably
has to admonish Martha not to spend all her time cooking but to come to par-
ticipate in the learning activity of the impromptu gathering (Luke 10:41). At
Qumran, Room 77 has been identified as a synagogue on the basis of its appar-
ent dining and worship remains. Due to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
we have an indication that the liturgy at Qumran extended past the proph-
et-Law debate of Jesus scholarship to include prayers, psalms and hymns. Qum-
ran’s worship connection of dining and hymns seems to match that of the Ther-
apeutae in Egypt, suggesting that the divide between Judea and the diaspora has
been overstated. While the coming together of the genders of the Therapeutae
demonstrates the lack of a women’s section in the ancient synagogue, it doesn’t
automatically mean that all synagogues, including that at Qumran, interpreted
the Genesis creation stories as a primary constitutive feature of their worship
gatherings, as in 1 Corinthians where Paul explicitly cites creational norms to
justify veiling norms. What does seem to be the case is that dining and food
were connected to some degree in Jewish worship settings during the early im-
perial Roman period in places that included the synagogue. Moreover, dining
and worship joined together to form a commensal experience that reinforced a
notion of Judean belonging.
Alternate spaces for Jewish worship practice were not merely participating in
the same Jewish worship culture, but they could directly compete with Temple
hegemony on occasion. Several sources suggest that the place of the Jerusalem
Temple and any affiliated synagogues was challenged by several groups. Qum-
ran, of course, has been believed to have been established by a Jewish movement
seeking to distance itself from the Jerusalem Temple elite and to restart Jewish
spirituality in the desert. In the Gospel of John, we find a memory of the Samar-
itan Temple, which was destroyed in an attempt to force Samaritans to adopt the
Jerusalem Temple. The Fourth Gospel’s Jesus preaches in a Capernaum syna-
gogue about the “bread of life” (John 6:25–59) after he exhorts the Samaritan
woman with “living water” she will not have to repeatedly go to the well to
draw. The idea that the Samaritan woman may stop laboring so hard to collect
6 Judith Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” NTS 45 (1999): 51–69, here 58–9.
water suggests that there is at least some awareness within the text that rituals
are costly in terms of time and labor. Moreover, while it is inevitable that some
of the later recounted prophecies about the Temple reflected the post-70 reality,
there is nonetheless a possibility that the prophecies about the Temple already
would be logical given the general ongoing discussion about rethinking the
Temple found in groups such as that at Qumran.
2.2 Synagogues
Main features of Second Temple synagogues seem to be the Torah reading and
hymns, which necessitated benches, the Torah ark, and ark veil. As Jodi Mag-
ness notes, it was possible to convert spaces into synagogues by adding benches.
At Masada and Herodium, rebels converted available spaces to continue wor-
shipping during the revolt.7 Numerous depictions of synagogue Torah shrines
show veils serving a ritual function for the ark, perhaps indicating a conceptual
connection between the Temple and synagogues as prayer houses.
Presumably, synagogal meetings that did not have a dedicated space would
have at least occasionally had ritual elements connected with Torah reading and
prayer, much like early Christian house-churches.8 There is the important ca-
veat that there are many synagogues and churches that we simply cannot clearly
see in our texts, so it is difficult to tell in our texts when a Jewish or Christian
meeting is being mentioned or what practices might have gone on to delineate a
standard such meeting. In 1 Peter, for instance, it is not clear whether the femi-
nine “co-elect” refers to a female liturgical worker or the church.9
It also seems that simply because a group of Jews has gathered to discuss hal-
akic matters there does not need to be a presumption that said group is governed
by any synagogue. The gospels depict Jesus interacting with Pharisees and oth-
er groups of Jews who do not belong to a shul and claim the authority of one
particular rabbi as many modern Jews do. In the gospels, Jesus’ disciples, the
Pharisees, and other Jews are free to go to synagogues and the Temple without
being strictly defined by any one synagogue. Moreover, policing of purity
boundaries in Judea happens not only at the levels of the Sanhedrin and Judean
synagogue, but also at the level of the more liminal practitioner, as evidenced by
the martyrdom of Stephen which Luke says occurs because of discontent from
the “Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from
Cilicia and Asia)” (Acts 6:9).10 This lack of a well-delineated chain of authority
7 Jodi Magness, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2019), 171.

8 Howard Clark Kee, “The Changing Meaning of Synagogue: A Response to Richard Os-
ter,” NTS 40 (1994): 281–3.

9 Judith K. Applegate, “The Co-Elect Woman of 1 Peter,” NTS 38 (1992): 587–604.
10 Markus Oehler has recently argued that synagogues in Judea would have had more cor-
poral authority than those in the diaspora. Here, we find a possible nuance in that those con-
192 Janelle Peters
is perhaps what leads to so many skirmishes over correct interpretation, in ad-

dition to genuine enthusiasm for Jewish legal interpretation in quotidian spaces
and the overarching popularity of the Pharisees.11
2.3 Synagogues as Distinct from the Temple

Synagogues were a space of learning, discussion, and debate, but they did not
present the same avenue for public protest as the Temple. Like Jesus’ public pro-
test of finances at the Temple, Baba b. Buta drove animals into the Temple to
protest high prices in Jerusalem (t. Hag. 2.11). Various figures affiliated with
Judaism may go into synagogues to speak, but there is not physical protest in-
volving animals at synagogues. This would seem to indicate that the Temple
retained a separate ritual function synagogues did not have prior to its destruc-
tion and that synagogues did not acquire after its destruction. As distinct wor-
ship spaces or itinerant gatherings, synagogues seem not to have been permeat-
ed by Roman influence to the same extent as the Temple.
3. Paul in Jewish/Judean Gatherings
Paul believes that the Judean ethnicity of those in Christian assemblies persists
after distinctionless baptism, but he also holds that former pagans do not have
to adopt all of the practices of Judaism to be saved. It seems that he might have
represented a centrist position, as some groups within his assemblies advocated
circumcision while other groups thought they could visit pagan prostitutes and
eat meat sacrificed to idols. Although Paul goes to the synagogue to preach, he
does not seem to welcome synagogue leaders into the house-churches as fellow
clergy of equal standing, similar to Jesus’s healing of synagogue leaders’ house-
holds but restraint from engaging synagogue officials publicly as equals. As
Paul seems to voluntarily present himself to these Jewish groups in Judea and
elsewhere (e.g., Acts 13:13–43), it is little wonder that he falls within their disci-
plinary jurisdiction, just as other followers of Jesus faced “being handed over to
the synedria and beaten in synagogues” (Mark 13:9). While certainly syna-
gogues would have more legal authority over Paul in Judea, the picture in Acts
sidered foreign to Judea are still able to exercise jurisdiction in bringing people before reli-
gious authorities such as high priests and elders. Markus Oehler, “The Punishment of Thirty-
Nine Lashes (2 Corinthians 11:24) and the Place of Paul in Judaism,” JBL 140 (2021): 623–40.
11 Joel Marcus notes that Matthew says that the Pharisees have members whose authority
allows them to “sit in Moses’ seat” (Matt 23:1–10) and that John claims Pharisaic authority
extends to regulating the member list of the synagogue (John 12:42). Such Pharisaic authority
is corroborated by Josephus (A. J. 13.288, 298, 400–404; 18.15) and the Nahum Pesher (4Qp-
Nah 2, 4, 8; 3, 7–8). Joel Marcus, “Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited,” NTS 55 (2009): 523–51, here
531.
13 of the leading women and men of the city ousting the apostle from the terri-
tory after he spoke at the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia seems to suggest that
the apostle could face bodily discipline from the synagogue either in Judea or in
the diaspora.
If we compare Paul with Peter, we note that Peter does not have as many hal-
akhic departures from what is presumed to be normal observance of Jewish
customs according to Paul, Luke-Acts, and other sources. If we compare them
with Jesus, it seems that the debate over working on the Sabbath does not fea-
ture in the ministries of Peter and Paul in the same way as that of Jesus, though
this could be a post-70 development for Jesus in the case of gospels that came
from predominantly Jewish communities that also followed Christ and began
to experience competing demands as the Christian movement became more es-
tablished.12
Already within the early Jesus movement, there is language distinct from the
synagogue in the term “apostle,” which is shared among Paul, the evangelists,
and many other early Christian authors. While Paul must narrate his conver-
sion story after Jesus already appeared to the Twelve, the need for apostolic
apology evidently does not extend to co-workers such as Junia. Certainly, later
church tradition continues this understanding of an apostle in places, such as
John Chrysostom’s claim that the Samaritan woman “exhibited the actions of
an Apostle, preaching the Gospel to all, and calling them to Jesus, and drawing
a whole city forth to him.”
Richard Last proposes that Paul joined with Aquila and Priscilla in a syna-
gogue of tentmakers as all three are explicitly identified with that trade in Acts
18:1–3. However, the synagogue in which they worship is not claimed to be
comprised only of tentmakers, and the house-church at Corinth has members
that visit prostitutes and have dinner invitations at what might be other associ-
ations, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. Just as we see Paul participate in a num-
ber of different synagogal worship activities, his house-churches could have
been affiliated with multiple synagogues without having challenging any of
their Judean commitments or new beliefs as a result of their exposure to Paul,
Prisca, or Aquila.13 While they may not have made the same financial contribu-
tion at every synagogue or house-church, they certainly would have been able
to share in the communal life of multiple associations, regardless of ethnicity,
occupation, or religious configuration. If the report of Josephus is correct that
societies (thiasoi) from Judea were the only Caesar permitted to collect funds
and have common meals in gatherings, then the incentive to have a Judean affil-
12 Martinus C. Boer notes that sabbath observance contributed to the expulsion of Jesus
followers from the synagogue in John 9:22 (380). Martinus C. De Boer, “Expulsion from the
Synagogue: J. L. Martyn’s History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel Revisited,” NTS 66
(2020): 367–91.
13 Richard Last, “The Other Synagogues,” JSJ 47 (2016): 330–63.
194 Janelle Peters
iation in groups that might have emphasized ancestral customs less in other
circumstances. Meanwhile, Philo found they were schools of temperance and
justice, where people practiced virtue and contributed financially to Jewish
projects such as the Jerusalem Temple.
4. Paul in His House-Churches
Paul did not have influence over all the churches devoted to Christ in his life-
time; he had a set of churches he founded and adopted as his own that seem to
have known of each other but have been semi-independent. Even in his own
house-churches, he may not have spent a significant amount of time, but he
might have instead been aided and abetted by a network of coworkers of vary-
ing genders and social backgrounds.14 His main perceived rivals were Jewish:
Peter, who kept reneging on the agreement to allow non-Jews to ignore kosher
rules, and the so-called “Judaizers” who wanted to have male converts to the
churches of Christ circumcise themselves according to Jewish law. Somehow,
Paul does not perceive his house-churches as having non-Jewish competition to
the same degree that he has Jewish competition for his listeners, and thus he
flaunts his Pharisaic training and his Torah knowledge. It is therefore logical
that Paul would draw upon some but not all Jewish traditions in order to orga-
nize his house-churches. Several features of his instructions to the house-church-
es have correspondences with the features of the synagogues, though Paul him-
self seems to have construed the house-churches he founded as a singular unit.
Paul seems to have retained strong Jewish ties that might have involved the
synagogue, as can be seen in his reliance on the married pair of Aquila and Pri-
sca and also of Apollos as co-workers (Acts 18:2–24). It is possible that Aquila,
Prisca, and Apollos still went to the synagogue and there recruited Jewish con-
verts, God-fearers, or other pagans interested in Judaism. Nonetheless, Paul
directed his letters to cohesive groups that meet for worship, and they are not
synonymous with modern definitions of the synagogue, though they share fea-
tures with Jewish diasporic groups such as the Therapeutae. Moreover, while in
Acts 18:1–8, Crispus the synagogue leader converts as part of Paul’s mission to
Corinth, Crispus’ high rank is not included in Paul’s list of those he has person-
ally baptized (1 Cor 1:14), and thus we perhaps don’t know how well-encultur-
ated Aquila, Prisca, and Apollos – let alone Crispus – would be to the syna-
gogue(s) at Corinth from Acts. Would the presence of Jewish ministers and at-
tendees alongside formerly pagan ones have been sufficient to constitute a type
of synagogue with the label of its subunit (ecclesia)? As Judith Applegate sug-
14 Ian J. Elmer, “I, Tertius: Secretary or Co-Author of Romans,” Australian Biblical Re-
view 56 (2008): 45–60.

gests, if 1 Cor 9:5 means that Peter’s wife traveled with him, then “she could
easily have been known to churches with which Paul was familiar,” including
those of Paul.15 Moreover, the collection for Jerusalem to be taken by the Co-
rinthian church implies some level of familiarity with Judean synagogues in
addition to diasporic ones, given Peter’s high level of Jewish observance com-
pared to Paul. It is hard to say the exact extent to which any of Paul’s churches
would have been conversant in synagogal practices. Certainly, the claim “we are
a synagogue, too” does not feature in Pauline argumentation like Paul’s pride in
his Pharisaic training.
What can be said is that Paul’s house-churches have a high level of familiarity
with Torah reading and commensal meals, though their meals specifically – and
distinctively – commemorate the sacrificial death of Jesus in the form of both
body and blood among a group of individuals initiated via baptism. Whether or
not Paul’s communities were personally familiar with punishments imposed by
synagogues either in Judea or the diaspora, many features of the synagogue have
some rough equivalent in the house-church. Why not discipline?
In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells some members of the church to stop taking others
to court. Alan C. Mitchell has connected this passage (6:1–11) with that of Paul’s
discussion of the prostitutes, noting a common theme of trampling upon the
poor.16 On the other hand, L. L. Welborn has argued that Aquila and Prisca
illustrate a carryover of secular reliance on household structures and thus the
hospitality of the patron, who reinforces his social status as affluent head of
household.17 Were legal matters moved to the house-church controlled by a
patron’s household, it might encourage arbitration conducted by someone priv-
ileged enough to have gained a solid legal education, as Bruce Winter has ar-
gued.18
The legal isolationism of 1 Corinthians certainly has an analogue in the legal
isolation of the synagogue in the diaspora and, perhaps occasionally, even Judea.
To be sure, there are examples of hyperlocal courts with less extreme penalties
in Greek literature such as Daphnis and Chloe. However, Paul brags in 2 Corin-
thians of his receiving lashes from the synagogue, and he notes the violence of
the Roman spectacle in 1 Corinthians. Could Paul not to some extent be includ-
ing his critique of Roman legal punishments and the synagogue’s lesser violence
with his promulgation of internal jurisdiction?
15 Judith Applegate, “The Co-Elect Woman of 1 Peter,” NTS 38 (1992): 587–604, here 596.
16 Alan C. Mitchell, “Rich and Poor in the Courts of Corinth: Litigiousness and Status in
1 Corinthians 6.1–11,” NTS 39 (1993): 562–86.
17 L. L. Welborn, “How ‘Democratic’ Was the Pauline Ekklesia? An Assessment with Spe-
cial Reference to the Christ Groups of Roman Corinth,” NTS 65 (2019): 289–309.
18 Bruce W. Winter, “Civil Litigation in Secular Corinth and the Church: The Forensic
Background to 1 Corinthians 6.1–8,” NTS (1991): 559–72.

196 Janelle Peters
In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul admonished his letter recipients to avoid taking oth-

er members of the Christ assembly to court outside the church. After giving his
instruction, Paul mentions other activities that are not permitted for the Christ
assemblies. Paul’s list of proscribed activities includes fornication, idolatry,
adultery, prostitution, pederasty, thievery, greed, public intoxication, and slan-
der (1 Cor 6:9). Not all of these would have been illegal according to Roman law
in Corinth (e.g., prostitution), and the morals (e.g., being not greedy/being gen-
erous) seem to fit more securely within a Jewish legal or moral framework. Pre-
sumably, Paul’s list of illicit activities could draw from the synagogue and reso-
nate with Jewish members while providing a list of standards to those at Corinth
who were, in fact, visiting prostitutes.
Although Paul’s list of virtues is extensive, the preceding verses compare
those who would seek legal redress outside the church with angels. If followers
of Jesus or Jews will judge angels, they should be capable of judging simple legal
disputes amongst themselves. Elsewhere in the letter, Paul feels as though his
relationship with the Corinthians is sufficiently strong that he may chastise
them for having unequal distribution of food at the worship meal, though he
only tells them to eat excess food at home rather than to share with those in
need. (On the other hand, the Corinthians are collecting money for Jerusalem,
so maybe they are not so greedy.) Why then might Paul use circumlocution for
the sensitive issue of social and economic status?
It should be noted that he does this elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, indicating
perhaps a lack of cohesion as much as group identity. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul
makes an appeal to natural law for backing up his veiling veils, holding that men
should be unveiled and women should be veiled. Though part of his view of
creation corresponds with the second creation story in Genesis where woman
comes from man, he notes the converse that man comes from woman. Thus,
according to Paul, there is still a principle of mutuality and interdependence
rooted in natural order as much as the gendered veiling is rooted in natural or-
der. Appeals to natural law are known from the early imperial period in places
as diverse as Greek romance novels to Roman legal codes, though many of them
perhaps fall in the second century CE.19 As Boaz Cohen notes, Ulpian claims
that “natural law is that which all animals have been taught by nature.”20 There
is therefore the possibility for a law that is not created by human culture and
also not revealed at Sinai but embedded in creation from that start. Since Paul
must justify his position on veils by several appeals – to natural law and church
19 Jean Alvares, “Reading Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and
Clitophon in Counterpoint,” Authors, Authority, and Interpreters in the Ancient Novel:

Essays in Honor of Gareth L. Schmeling, ed. Edmund P. Cueva, Jean Alvares, and Shannon
Byrne (Groningen: Barkhuis, 2006), 1–33, here 10.
20 Boaz Cohen, “The Relationship of Jewish to Roman Law (Continued),” JQR 34 (1944):
409–24, here 442.

custom – it seems that the community does not share his understanding of veils,
which could indicate a departure from house-church veiling practices in
Corinth. Although putting the veils back at the creation would not reinforce
any possible synagogue influence, it would reinforce the idea of communi-
ty-wide practices that help to delineate the boundaries of a religious movement.
Paul, rather than seeking to becoming an antinomian after his running afoul of
multiple legal systems, nonetheless seeks to maintain church codes and group
identity. In giving the veil even to women who have been enslaved, Paul con-
fronts social norms that restricted honorific veiling to social classes.21 Ulti-
mately, he concludes this instruction with an appeal to the practice of all the
churches of God. This seems analogous to the distinctiveness of the synagogues
from other associations, because, while synagogues might count as a type of
association, not all associations could be synagogues.
5. Paul’s Group Regulation
Much has been made of Paul’s receipt of 39 lashes from the synagogue, but this
punishment does not preclude Paul from claiming full birth, training, and cur-
rent standing. Paul is free to continue going back to the synagogue for further
reprimands, garnering more than one punishment without being expelled.22
Still, the synagogue possibly involved some type of recitation of what would
become the Eighteen Benedictions, which featured a curse that may have origi-
nally been intended for Sadducees or other elites and then was redirected to-
ward Christians and other traditions diverging from previous synagogue prac-
tice.23 Although the form of this curse during the time of Jesus and Paul may not
have included expulsion, it does have the effect of asking participants to consid-
er their ritual performance and make commensurate behavioral modifications
in a benign yet serious way.24 Paul, too, does not become open-ended in his ad-
vice for his Christ communities, but he instead encourages excommunication of
those baptized who fail to adhere to certain moral standards of behavior, which
goes beyond the disapproval his communities already may have had in a more
limited capacity. This ritual separation has analogies to Judean group construc-
21 Janelle Peters, “Slavery and the Gendered Construction of Worship Veils in 1 Corinthi-
ans,” Biblica 101 (2020): 431–43.

22 John Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323
BCE–117 CE) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 394.

23 Uri Ehrlich, “On the Early Texts of the Blessings ‘Who Builds Jerusalem’ and the ‘Bless-
ing of David’ in the Liturgy,” Peʿamim 78 (1999): 16–41 (Hebrew); David Instone-Brewer,
“The Eighteen Benedictions and the Minim before 70 CE,” JTS 54 (2003): 25–44; Joel Marcus,
“Birket Ha-Minim Revisited,” NTS 55 (2009): 523–51.
24 John Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 45.
198 Janelle Peters
tion, including that found at the synagogue, the most likely source of inspira-
tion in regulating the Pauline communities.
Adela Collins has pointed out that the use of expulsion in the Pauline letters
(1 Cor 5; see 2 Cor 2:11; 4:3–4; 11:12–15; Phil 2:15–16) participates in the “limited
ethical dualism” of a group of “analogous phenomena” of roughly contempora-
neous Jewish texts, including the Rule of the Community and the Damascus
Document. She concludes: “The more or less explicit reason for expelling the
incestuous man in 1 Cor 5 was to guard the holiness of the community and to
avoid offense to the presence of the Holy Spirit.”25 Similarly, Karin Zetterholm
notes that Jubilees (22:16–17) very clearly authorizes a ritual separation from the
gentiles that is closer to Qumran texts than to later and more lenient rabbinic
texts.26 The Jesus found in the gospels and possibly also the historical Jesus
challenged these purity boundaries.27 Paul, in retreating from Jesus’ more ex-
pansive position, could be keeping the moral boundaries of synagogues, broad-
ly construed to encompass groups from those at Qumran to those authoring
Jubilees.
In their positions, Collins and Zetterholm go past the comparisons of the
Paul’s communities to Greek democracy. Drawing heavily upon classical Greek
democracy, L. L. Welborn has argued that the assembly of God “was the assem-
bly of Christ-believers in each city, both when it met in the houses of individual
patrons and when it assembled as a whole to eat the communal meal.” Accord-
ing to him, in “any given meeting of this assembly, participants might pray and
prophesy (1 Cor 11:2–16), might utter a word of wisdom or a word of knowl-
edge, might share their faith, or might speak in tongues (1 Cor 12:4–11); those
who assembled might decide as jurors to discipline a deviant member (1 Cor
5:1–5), or the majority might vote to punish a wrongdoer (2 Cor 2:5–11).” Wel-
born’s reconstruction relies on Greek civic participation in the polis and does
not consider the democratic assemblies women could have in festival time, since
he cites Aristophanes’s satirization of the Thesmophoria rather than the wom-
an-led ritual itself. Welborn neglects evidence of women’s participation in the
synagogue and Greek assemblies, which could serve as meaningful forms for
government.28 He also does not discuss Paul’s engagement with Moses (2 Cor
25 Adela Collins, “The Function of ‘Excommunication’ in Paul,” HTR 73 (1980): 251–63,
here 263.
26 Karin Hedner Zetterholm, The Question of Assumptions: Torah Observance in the First
Century, Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, ed. Mark
D Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 102.
27 Eyal Regev, “Temple Concerns and High-Priestly Prosecutions from Peter to James:
Between Narrative and History,” NTS 56 (2009): 64–89.

28 Bernadette J. Brooten, “Female Leadership in the Ancient Synagogue,” in From Dura to
Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev
Weiss (Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000), 215–23.
3:13–15).29 This is perhaps significant as Philo finds a prototypical governor

and whom Paul thinks starts the veil that precludes synagogues from seeing the
truth of the proximate religious figure of Jesus. In leaving out the synagogue,
the purity boundaries of it and other Judean forms of governance that show up
quite clearly in Paul’s communities in the forms of prohibition of incest and
admonitions that members might be dying for failure to properly maintain
group harmony also miss a place in the analysis.
As Alan Mitchell has observed, the Corinthians’ failure to address serious
infractions such as incest in 1 Cor 5 and prostitution in 1 Cor 6 “contrasts sharp-
ly with the practice of suing one another in the provincial courts over less seri-
ous matters.”30 This suggests that the Corinthians are not most the moral ex-
emplars of classical Athenian democracy, but that they are actually very willing
to use the political means at their disposal when Paul would urge them to cau-
tion. Paul must chide the Corinthians repeatedly on their pretensions of status,
whether from being the better baptizer to being the most invited dinner guest to
pagan banquets. Mitchell notes that this corresponds with anthropological ten-
dencies and Roman ethnographic data for “downward law” to be practiced: so-
cial superiors take their social inferiors to court, because they feel the court is
on their side and do not feel a sense of social equality with their opponent.31
The Corinthians are not taking their opponents to court at the synagogue;
they are taking their opponents to court in secular law courts just like they
might conceive of themselves as seeking status at other Roman venues like the
arena and dinner parties. In the diaspora, the synagogue can present a venue
that allows for alternate civic discourse, leading to prominent converts to Juda-
ism in some cases. In retracting power back to the Christ assembly from secular
spaces, Paul is reinscribing ideas from Judean groups in the diaspora: that it is
more socially fair and morally righteous to avoid state legal proceedings and
resort to private arbitration in an attempt to maintain holiness boundaries. As
Paul is assuming that the Corinthians will simply know what “judge for your-
selves” means without extensive elaboration, it is more likely that he is drawing
upon Jewish synagogal or even Greek festival (e.g., Thesmophoria) ideas about
ad hoc private juridical bodies outside of state oversight.
29 Ray Barraclaugh, Philo’s Politics: Roman Rule and Hellenistic Judaism (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1984).
30 Alan Mitchell, “Rich and Poor in the Courts of Corinth: Litigiousness and Status in
1 Corinthians 6.1–11,” NTS 39 (1993): 562–86, here 564.

31 Mitchell, “Rich and Poor,” 576.
200 Janelle Peters
6. Conclusion
Although many types of possibilities for Jewish or Judean assemblies existed in

Judea and the diaspora, most of these groups had boundary maintenance pred-
icated on purity with greater intensity than their Greek counterparts. There-
fore, in his promotion of internal juridical procedures for the sake of holiness,
Paul is closer to a Jewish milieu than a Roman or Greek one. Most Jewish groups
could be said to have a type of synagogue or assembly, and Paul seems to have
his Christ assemblies mirror these in their group construction. It is also possible
that the Jewish participants of Pauline communities could have brought over
some norms for collective judgment making from their synagogues, explaining
why Paul doesn’t need to go through legal arbitration protocols and seems to
simply trust that the switch to group judgment will improve the problems in
places such as the Corinthian Christ assembly. Instead, he claims that Moses
began the Torah veil that remains over those hearing the Torah in the syna-
gogues and prevents them from hearing the truth of Jesus’s message as they
presumably otherwise would, given the closeness of the two assembly practices.
The Torah in Ethnically Mixed Assemblies
Paul’s Behavioral Adaptability in 1 Cor 9:19–23 in Context

of Jewish Pragmatism in the Diaspora*
Ruben A. Bühner
1. Introduction
In recent debates about the Jewishness of Paul the simple fact that Paul consid-
ered himself a Jew for his whole life, is taken for granted.1 Yet, in the discussions
about what is called Paul within Judaism, researchers have once again asked
how Paul as both a Jew and Christ follower continued to uphold typically Jew-
ish customs, such as dietary restrictions? Furthermore, how did Paul expect
other Christ following Jews to respond to Jewish halakha? Crucial here is pri-
marily how Paul and other Jews behaved with reference to Jewish halakha when
they were together with non-Jewish believers in Christ in ethnically mixed as-
semblies. Thus, how would Paul want Jewish Christ-believers to interact with
non-Jewish Christ-believers?
Additionally, for our understanding of the Jewishness of Paul the precise con-
ception of the first-century Jewish background against which we read the Pau-
line letters is decisive. We must ask both, how did Paul expect Jewish followers
of Christ to interact with non-Jews, and to what extent is this expectation a
Pauline or even “Christian” innovation? My point is this: not only have the
* Reworked and extended version of the contribution presented at the symposium on Paul
within Judaism held online on 21.–24. September 2021. I am grateful to Jörg Frey and the
other participants for valuable suggestions and to Jacob Cerone for his help with language and
editorial details.
1 For a comprehensive study on the Jewish identity of Paul, cf. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
Heidenapostel aus Israel, WUNT 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992); Jörg Frey, “Paul’s Jew-
ish Identity,” in Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World: Jüdische Identität in der grie
chisch-römischen Welt, ed. Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, AGJU
71 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), 285–321. For the influence of Second Temple thoughts and
biblical interpretation on Paul’s letters, cf. Markus Tiwald, Hebräer von Hebräern, HBS 52
(Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder, 2008). In this context, the enduring Jewish identity and im-
print also of the Christ-believing Paul is impressively shown by the fact that Pauline Christol-
ogy – even in its “high” christological aspects – is still to be understood as part of the early
Jewish messianic discourse; on this cf. Ruben A. Bühner, Messianic High Christology (Waco:
Baylor University Press, 2021), 23–63. And for the broader background of superhuman mes-
sianic expectations before the Jesus movement see Ruben A. Bühner, Hohe Messianologie,
WUNT 2/523 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).
202 Ruben A. Bühner
Pauline letters been subject to subtle anti-Jewish readings in the past. But the
same is true to some extent of other contemporary Jewish literature as well. For
the present discussions about Paul’s Jewishness, it is not helpful, in my opinion,
to subject only Paul himself to a new reading. Rather, we also must reexamine
decisive contemporary sources with the same sensitivity to long-established an-
ti-Jewish interpretations. And only if we take both together are we able to offer
a plausible, new reading of Paul. By referring to sources from diaspora Judaism,
I would like to take up some insights from the Paul within Judaism perspective
and offer a way of understanding that brings these insights at least partially in
dialogue with more traditional exegesis of the Pauline letters.
2. Searching for the Background: Forms of Table Fellowship

between Jews and non-Jews in the Diaspora
Since, in the Pauline letters, the problems around Jews and gentiles living to-
gether mostly arise around issues of food and table fellowship, I will focus on
this aspect when discussing the diaspora Jewish background.
In his widely acclaimed and highly instructive monograph “Jews in the Med-
iterranean Diaspora”, John M. G. Barclay concludes on the question of table
fellowship between Jews and non-Jews: “[I]n general, Jewish dietary laws were
kept in the Diaspora […] and […] such customs did create a habitual distinction
between Jews and non-Jews.”2 Such a relatively uniform picture regarding the
practice of table fellowship between Jews and non-Jews in Second Temple Juda-
ism is then also found in the majority of publications until recently. This applies
not only to comprehensive presentations of diaspora Judaism, such as Barclay’s,
but also to studies that focus specifically on issues of food and table fellow-
ship.3 In recent years, the topic is treated most extensively in the Habilita-
tionsschrift by Christina Eschner, “Essen im antiken Judentum und Urchris-
2 John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998),
437.
3 Another comprehensive study with a similar reading regarding table fellowship is that of
Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993), see especially his conclusion on p. 445. For studies that focus specifically on
matters of food and table fellowship, but which all present a similar and rather uniform read-
ing of the sources, cf. Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2003), 163; Christoph Heil, Die Ablehnung der Speisegebote durch Paulus, BBB 96
(Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 1994), 23–123. A different reading that allows for more com-
plexity is offered by David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food (Berkley, Los Angeles,
London: University of California Press, 2011), 35–40; and Luzia Sutter Rehmann, “Abge-
lehnte Tischgemeinschaft in Tobit, Daniel, Ester, Judit: Ein Plädoyer für Differenzierung,”
Lectio difficilior 1 (2008).
The Torah in Ethnically Mixed Assemblies 203
tentum.”4 In all the early Jewish sources she examines, Eschner identifies a
uniform tendency to avoid table fellowship between Jews and non-Jews. Yet,
this dominant reading in the history of research is, in my opinion, at least par-
tially influenced by a long-established anti-Jewish interpretation which neglects
the complexity of early Jewish discourses in order to read the New Testament as
a document of freedom in contrast to a supposedly narrow-minded Jewish
background. Yet, if we take a fresh look at the early Jewish sources outside the
New Testament, such a contrasting juxtaposition falls apart.
2.1 Daniel
To begin with, this is true for the narrative in the first chapter of the book of
Daniel, which describes how Daniel and other Jewish captives at the royal court
in Babylon are in danger of defiling themselves by eating the food offered at the
royal court (cf. ‫ גאל‬in Dan 1:8).5 Yet, Daniel circumvents this defilement by ask-
ing for vegetables instead of the food originally offered. Within contemporary
commentaries, this defilement is mostly seen as ritual defilement, which is ex-
plained by the fact that the food originally offered to Daniel contained meat
that, like the king’s wine (cf. Esth C 28), had previously been sacrificed to pagan
gods. 6 However, in the text, the food originally offered to Daniel is neither ex-
plicitly characterized as “meat sacrificed to idols,” nor is it explicitly stated that
it contains meat at all. Conversely, the Old Testament as well as the Babylonian,
Greek, and Roman religions also know vegetarian sacrifices. Thus, the common
hypothesis in the commentary literature on Dan 1, which assumes that only
wine or meat could have been used in cultic contexts,7 cannot be justified. 8
Other interpretations argue that ‫ גאל‬in Dan 1:8 bears not the meaning of a
ritual, but rather a moral defilement. According to this interpretation, Daniel
refuses the food as a sign of preserving his Jewish identity and as a refusal of
4 Christina Eschner, Essen im antiken Judentum und Urchristentum, AGJU (Leiden, Bos-
ton: Brill, 2019).

5 On the following, see also Ruben A. Bühner, “Interaktion mit dem Fremden. Grenzen
und Möglichkeiten der Tischgemeinschaft anhand von Daniel und Ester,” ZAW 133:3 (2021):
329–45, here 331–8; cf. also idem, “Zwischen Abgrenzung und Annäherung. Essens- und
Tischgemeinschaft von Juden und Nichtjuden anhand der Diasporanovellen Judith sowie Jo-
sef und Asenet,” ZNW 113:2 (2022): 284–302.
6 For such an argument, see e.g., Eschner, Essen, 65, according to whom this conclusion
would be obvious. See similarly Klaus Koch, Daniel. 1. Teilbd. Dan 1–4, BKAT 22,1 (Neu-
kirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005), 52–3, 61–2. For a comprehensive overview on the histo-
ry of research on this issue, see Michael Seufert, “Refusing the King’s Portion: A Reexamina-
tion of Daniel’s Dietary Reaction in Daniel 1,” JSOT 43:4 (2019): 644–60.
7 See, e.g., Eschner, Essen, 70: “Im Einzelnen will Daniel offenbar vollständig auf solche
Speisen verzichten, die möglicherweise mit Götzendienst in Verbindung stehen. Er verwei-

gert nämlich geradezu jegliche tierische Nahrung.”
8 This is seen rightly by John E. Goldingay, Daniel, WBC 30 (Dallas: Word Books, 1989),
18.
dependency on the king.9 But what is overlooked here is that Daniel receives the
diet he favors from the royal chief eunuch as well. He even explicitly requests it
from him. The dependence on the Babylonian conquerors is, therefore, a given
in both cases and it does not seem to be characterized per se by the narrative as
problematic.10
Rather, in the context of the narrative, the lack of a detailed definition of the
initially offered food with regard to its composition, preparation, and previous
use represents a conspicuous and, in my opinion, deliberate gap, which is in-
tended to refer precisely to this indeterminable and alien character of the royal
food.11 The Hebrew word ‫ פתבג‬used for the food occurs only in the Book of
Daniel (cf. Dan 1:5, 8, 13, 15, 16; 11:26) and the meaning of this Persian loanword
is associated with some uncertainty.12 The repeated pairing together with wine,
as well as the use in connection with the verb ‫“( אכל‬to eat,” cf. Dan 1:13), make it
unmistakable that some form of food is involved. Yet, more striking for the
characterization of the meal is that the choice of the Persian loanword indicates
to every reader of the Hebrew text the foreign or exotic character of the meal
from a Jewish point of view.
Thus, the story in Dan 1 urges its Jewish readers not to eat foreign and unfa-
miliar food when eating together with gentiles and especially at the table of
gentiles, but instead to prefer food that is clearly definable in terms of origin and
composition. With regard to the history of interpretation of the text of Daniel,
it must be emphasized that certain possibilities of interaction between Jews and
gentiles seem unproblematic according to Dan 1. This applies to table fellowship
between Jews and non-Jews in general. Nowhere is it said that Daniel eats the
vegetables he desires in isolation or alone with Jews. Rather, the protagonist
Daniel lives in close contact with the gentile elite and makes an unprecedented
career within the Babylonian and Persian royal court. Nor does the acceptance
of food from the hand of a gentile pose a fundamental problem for the Book of
9 This is argued, e.g., by Sutter Rehmann, “Abgelehnte Tischgemeinschaft.” Cf. similarly
Goldingay, Daniel, 18–9, and Dieter Bauer, Das Buch Daniel, NSK.AT 22 (Stuttgart: Kath.
Bibelwerk, 1996), 72–5.
10 Additionally, the advocates of a moral defilement face the difficulty that, within the Old
Testament, ‫ גאל‬II, even when used in connection with matters related to food, generally refers
to aspects of ritual defilement.
11 Cf. similarly Goldingay, Daniel, 25: “It is difficult to be sure precisely what was thought
to be defiling about the Babylonians’ food, and this may be because it was nothing more
sharply conceptualized than that it was Babylonian.”
12 It represents a Persian loanword (patibaga), which originally meant “allotment” but is
also used in Syriac (‫ܓܐ‬‫ )ܦܬܒ‬in the sense of “morsel.” For the Hebrew ‫פתבג‬, therefore, either the
meaning “part (of the royal meal)” (see Seufert, “Refusing,” 648) or else “precious food” (see
Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros [Leiden:
Brill, 1958], 786) is variously suggested. Whether specifically precious food or generally a
portion of the royal food is meant can no longer be determined with certainty. In the context
of the Book of Daniel, food from the table of the Babylonian king implies precious food.
Daniel. Instead, just as king Jehoiachin sat with the Babylonian king every day
since his exile (2 Kgs 25:29–30), such a meal fellowship also represents a perfect-
ly legitimate form of interaction with gentiles for the narrative in Dan 1. The
acceptance of an invitation to a meal in a non-Jewish house with food from a
non-Jewish kitchen, thus, represents a legitimate possibility of coexistence in
Dan 1, as long as food that is known and clearly definable in terms of its nature
is served.
2.2 Esther
A rather different view on issues of food and table fellowship between Jews and
gentiles is attested to by the different ancient versions of the book of Esther.13
Here it can be noted for the MT that – with the exception of the refusal to wor-
ship people and gods other than the God of Israel – no restrictions on interac-
tions with gentiles can be discerned. No references to typical features of Jewish
life, such as issues of circumcision, purity of food or Sabbath observance, can be
found in the Book of Esther. Conversely, the narrative implies that Esther lives
a life largely conformed to the surrounding majority culture in many of these
matters.14 For example, Esther is provided with all the necessities of life for
twelve months in preparation for the royal bridal show in the Persian palace
(Esth 2:9–12). In 2:9 it is explicitly mentioned that Esther was also provided
with ‫( מנותה‬literally: “her share” / “what was due to her”) by the royal palace,
which most modern translations render with “food” or similar. Since the text at
the same time emphasizes in the immediately following verse that she keeps her
Jewish identity secret (Esth 2:10), it is probably meant to convey to the reader
that Esther – at least during this time – does not preserve Jewish dietary laws or
similar characteristics of Jewish life.15
However, the reader of the Septuagint version of Esther is confronted with a
clearly different picture. Through its recharacterization of the figure of Esther
in particular, the Septuagint fundamentally rejects participation in meals at the
13 On the following, cf. also Bühner, “Interaktion,” 338–42.

14 But see differently, Frederic W. Bush, Ruth, Esther, WBC 9 (Nashville: Nelson, 1996),
368–9.
15 See also the comment by Carey A. Moore, Esther. Introduction, Translation and Notes,
AB 7B (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 28: “In order for Esther to have concealed her
ethnic and religious identity […] in the harem, she must have eaten […], dressed, and lived like
a Persian rather than an observant Jewess.” But cf. differently, Eschner, Essen, 123 n. 293, and
similar, Susanne Plietzsch, “Eating and Living: The Banquets in the Esther Narratives,” in
Decisive Meals: Table Politics in Biblical Literature, ed. Nathan MacDonald, Luzia Sutter
Rehmann, and Kathy Ehrensperger, LNTS 449 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 27–41, here
38–9. In my opinion, however, they underestimate the immediate context of the narrative,
which makes it explicit twice that Esther keeps her Jewish identity secret during her time at
the royal court. If, however, Esther does not reveal her ethnic origin at the Persian court, then
this also implies that she did not practice typical features of a Jewish way of life.
table of gentiles. Thus, in Esth 2:20 LXX the Septuagint immediately after the
note about Esther’s marriage to the king adds the remark, “And Esther did not
change her manner of life” (καὶ Εσθηρ οὐ μετήλλαξεν τὴν ἀγωγὴν αὐτῆς). And in
Esth C 28 Esther prays to God, “Your handmaid has not eaten at Haman’s table,
I have not graced a royal banquet (by my presence), and I have not drunk sacri-
ficial wine.” As a reason for the rejection of table fellowship the Septuagint ver-
sion notes the previous use of wine in cultic contexts. Other sources of ritual
impurity of the food served at gentile tables may also be in the background, but
are not explicitly named.
2.3 Judith and Joseph and Aseneth

Another and again quite different picture is found in the Book of Judith. Here
Judith does not refuse to eat with the Assyrian general Holofernes and his
household (cf. Jdt 12:1, 14–16).16 Rather, table fellowship with a non-Jew presup-
poses that the food and drink consumed by a Jew in the non-Jewish house come
from a Jewish kitchen (cf. Jdt 12:2, 19).17 Judith’s practice of bringing her own
food, drink, and dishes is one way of fulfilling these conditions.
Additionally, the narrative of Joseph and Aseneth adds further aspects to the
diverse picture.18 Here, the possibility of table fellowship between Jews and
gentiles appears to be contradictory in nature.19 While such table fellowship is
assumed in the narrative without further comments in Jos. Asen. 20:6–8 as well
as in 21:8, Joseph refuses to eat at the same table with the gentile Pentephres in
Jos. Asen. 7:1. The wider context of the book makes it difficult to provide a
plausible answer to this contradiction.20 One possible option could be that Jo-
16 See similarly, Jordan Rosenblum, Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 38–9. But differently, Eschner, Essen, 127–30, ac-
cording to whom the narrative would advocate strongly against any form of table fellowship
between Jews and non-Jews. For such an interpretation, see further Thomas Hieke, “Torah in
Judith. Dietary Laws, Purity and Other Torah Issues in the Book of Judith,” in A Pious Seduc-
tress: Studies in the Book of Judith, ed. Géza G. Xeravits, Deuterocanonical and Cognate
Literature Studies 14 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 98.
17 Cf. also E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1990),
276.
18 For the Jewish origin of Joseph and Aseneth, see John J. Collins, “Joseph and Aseneth:
Jewish or Christian?” JSPE 14:2 (2005): 112–27; cf. also Edith M. Humphrey, Joseph and
Aseneth, GAP (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 28–37. But see differently Ross S.
Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His
Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 245–93,
who argues that the book was written by Christians in the third or fourth century CE.
19 For a more extensive discussion see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Ethik und Tora. Zum
Toraverständnis in Joseph und Aseneth,” in Joseph und Aseneth, ed. Eckart Reinmuth,
SAPERE 15 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 187–217.
20 Cf. also Niebuhr, “Ethik und Tora,” 198.
seph only refuses to sit at the same table, but not to eat the same food as his
gentile hosts.
2.4 Outcome
One could easily expand this list with a look at the issue of table fellowship in
the book of Tobit or in the Letter of Aristeas. All these different pieces of Jewish
literature from Second-Temple Judaism present complex and diverse forms of
interactions between Jews and non-Jews, especially when it comes to the ques-
tion of table fellowship. And even beyond the Jewish literature this picture is
further confirmed by the extant inscriptions and papyri. There we have plenty
of evidence that Jews, especially in the diaspora, participated, for example, as
ephebes in Greek gymnasiums,21 or as athletes and spectators in the different
forms of gymnastic, hippic, or musical competitions.22 But all these forms of
interactions between Jews and non-Jews do, at least to some extent, also imply
some forms of table fellowship.23
And the same applies even more, for example, to the tens of thousands of
Jewish slaves in the Roman Empire who had to live and work in the household
of a gentile.24 During enslavement, the preservation of one’s Jewish existence
had to face great challenges. In this context, certain forms of Jewish piety, such
as Sabbath observance or pilgrimages, seem to have been largely excluded. And
the reasoning of Josephus in A. J. 16.1–4 that the sale of Jews as slaves had to be
rejected because they would be forced to obey the orders of their owners who
did not share the Jewish way of life makes it clear that also for the question of
eating and table fellowship a continuity of the Jewish way of life must have been
possible only to a limited extent for those who were enslaved in a non-Jewish
house or to a non-Jewish owner. This applies all the more to those cases in
which Jews were enslaved as children in a non-Jewish environment, as well as to
the descendants of Jewish slaves who already had to cope with their lives in a
state of slavery from birth.
Similar forms of table fellowship are implied by the evidence we have of Jews
serving as soldiers, working as political representatives, or for Jews who live in
21 See the discussion and evidence collected by Feldman, Jew, 57–9; Gerhard Delling, “Die
Bewältigung der Diasporasituation durch das hellenistische Judentum,” in Studien Zum

Frühjudentum: Gesammelte Aufsätze 1971–1987, ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Karl-Wilhelm
Niebuhr (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 83–5; Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 123–4; Barclay, Jews, 234–5; Stefan Krauter, Bürger-
recht und Kultteilnahme, BZNW 127 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 268.
22 On this, see the comprehensive monographs by Harrold A. Harris, Greek Athletics and
the Jews (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), and recently Loren R. Spielman, Jews and
Entertainment in the Ancient World, TSAJ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).
23 On this, see, e.g., Wolfgang Decker, “Sportfeste,” DNP 11:847–55.
24 See the collected evidence by Delling, “Bewältigung,” 79–81, and the chapter on “Isolat-
ed Jews” by Barclay, Jews, 325–6.

isolated conditions, where, for example, the purchase of kosher food was only
possible to a limited extent.
This is not the place to offer a comprehensive study of all this material. My
point is that it is implausible to draw a more or less uniform picture of how Jews
in the diaspora interacted with their non-Jewish neighbors with respect to table
fellowship and Jewish dietary laws. Instead, what the sources reveal and what is
most likely, is that in Paul’s time and in the Jewish communities of the cities
where Paul proclaimed the gospel, there was already a long-established and di-
verse experience of finding pragmatic and viable options for interacting with
non-Jews. Long before the apostle Paul and even long before the early Jesus
movement, Jews had to deal with these issues. And the sources at our disposal
reveal that they found very different and flexible solutions.
Needless to say, none of these forms of interaction or table fellowship imply
an abandonment of Judaism or a critique of the Jewish way of life.
3. How Did Paul Expect Jewish Christ-Believers to Follow the Torah

When Interacting with non-Jewish Christ-Believers?
For the question of this paper, how Paul expected Jewish Christ-believers to
follow the Torah when interacting with non-Jewish Christ-believers, the task of
identifying the implied addresses of the Pauline letters is most important. Is it
legitimate for Paul’s statements to include their relevance to Jewish believers in
Christ? Or are his letters exclusively addressed to non-Jewish followers of
Christ and are Jewish brothers and sisters therefore generally excluded from his
instructions?25 Caroline J. Hodge has rightly stated: “There is perhaps no more
pivotal issue for determining one’s reading of Paul than audience.”26 There are
not many other heavily debated issues within Pauline scholarship where the
outcome of the discussion is so prejudiced from the – conscious or unconscious
– presuppositions. But at the same time it is a mine-filled terrain. Thus, for the
present purpose I would like to put these questions aside. Instead of discussing
whether Paul included Jews among the addresses of his letters, I want to focus
on the apostle Paul himself and, thus, on a follower of Christ whose Jewishness
is beyond doubt. The question which I want to discuss in the following is, there-
fore, not how Jews in general, but how the Christ-believing Paul followed the
Torah when interacting with non-Jewish Christ-believers?
25 For such a conclusion, see, e.g., Paula Fredriksen, Paul. The Pagans’ Apostle (New Hav-
en: Yale University Press, 2017), 113: “The fact that all of his [Paul’s] extant letters are ad-
dressed solely to gentile assemblies gives us no opportunity to hear him discourse on Jewish
practice by Jews.”
26 Caroline E. J. Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Let-
ters of Paul (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 9.

To deal with this question, I want to take a new look at Paul’s biographical
notes in 1 Cor 9:19–23 and put them into context with the above-mentioned
variety of Jewish behavior in community with non-Jews, especially in the dias-
pora.27 Particularly two issues are of major importance for our understanding
of the short passage in 1 Cor 9. First, who are the people or groups of whom Paul
says he has become like them, the “Jews,” “those under the law,” “those without
law,” and “the weak”? And second, what does Paul mean when he says he be-
came (ἐγενόμην in v. 20 and 22a; γέγονα in v. 22b) like those people or groups?
Whereas the answer to both questions seemed settled and fairly safe for a long
time within Pauline scholarship, they are being discussed anew within the
scholarly debates about Paul within Judaism.
Of the four different terms Paul uses in 1 Cor 9:20–22 the group called Jews
(τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις, v. 20) is the only one whose reference seems clear, at least with
respect to ethnicity. But beyond ethnicity, there are good reasons to assume
Paul uses the term here to refer specifically to Jews who do not – or, in Paul’s
perspective, not yet – follow Christ.28 More difficult is the question regarding
the identity and ethnicity of the other three groups.
The traditional answer interprets them along the Jewish / non-Jewish line.
Thus, “those under the law” (τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον) are understood as Jews, who do not
follow Christ, just as the preceding term τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις.29 Following this tradi-
tional line of interpretation the third term τοῖς ἀνόμοις refers to non-Jews, or
pagans, who are not, and have never been, “under the law” and are, thus “with-
out law.” The fourth and last term is then either interpreted as a reference to the
same group of people who are called τοῖς ἀσθενέσιν in 1 Cor 8, or the term
27 Interestingly, many scholars within the Paul within Judaism perspective have not writ-
ten much about the passage in 1 Corinthians – although it obviously provides important in-
sights into the extent to which Paul continued his Jewish behavior when he became a follower
of Christ. For example, to the best of my knowledge, Magnus Zetterholm has written nearly
nothing about 1 Cor 9. The same is true for Pamela Michelle Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a
Christian. The Real Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York, NY: HarperSanFancis-
co, 2009). And in Paula Fredriksen’s monograph on Paul, this passage is dealt with only in two
sentences including a footnote (cf. Fredriksen, Paul, 165 and 228–9 n. 38). But see differently
Mark D. Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship to Torah in Light of His Strategy ‘To Become Every-
thing to Everyone’ (1 Corinthians 9:19–23),” in Reading Corinthians and Philippians Within
Judaism. Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos, Vol. 4 (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers,
2017), 52–92 and already Nanos, “The Myth of the ‘Law-Free’ Paul Standing Between Chris-
tians and Jews,” SCJR 4:1 (2009): 16–8; Nanos, “Paul and Judaism. Why Not Paul’s Judaism?”
in idem, Reading Paul Within Judaism. Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos 1 (Eugene, Ore-
gon: Cascade Books, 2017), 1–21, here 6–9.
28 If Paul referred to Jews regardless of their relationship to Christ, it would seem at least
odd that he still wants to “win” (κερδαίνω) them. For the meaning of κερδαίνω in 1 Cor 9 in the
sense of “to add to the community” or “to save,” cf. the parallel use of σῴζω in v. 22; cf. further
Matt 15:15; 1 Peter 3:1.
29 See, e.g., Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 702 “The phrase τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον simply explicates the reference
to the Jews.”
“weak” is understood as a reference to people who are disadvantaged in a social

and economic sense.30 Thus, Paul’s change of behavior includes different forms
of Jewish customs depending on the ethnicity of the people he is living with.
Such an interpretation is, then, often used to at least relativize Paul’s Jewish-
ness or his Jewish way of life. For example, N. T. Wright concludes from his
interpretation of 1 Cor 9:19–23: “Being a ‘Jew’ was no longer Paul’s basic iden-
tity.”31 And Hagner declares from such an interpretation of 1 Cor 9 that this
would clearly imply Paul’s “break with Judaism.”32 Similar conclusions can be
found in numerous publications.33 And even beyond such explicit interpreta-
tions that read the passage as evidence for Paul rejecting or breaking with Juda-
ism, readings that understand Paul’s described behavior in 1 Cor 9:19–23 as a
specific “Christian” freedom which stands against Paul’s former Jewish way of
life are very widespread. Thus, the passage is commonly read against the back-
ground of the linguistically related argumentations in Rom 6:15–23 and Gal
5:1–15. There Paul is talking about the absolute and mutually exclusive contrast
between bondage under sin and law and freedom in Christ. From taking this as
the background for 1 Cor 9, it follows a maximalist understanding of the idea of
freedom introduced in 1 Cor 9:19a. The ἐλεύθερος ὢν ἐκ πάντων then forms, for
instance, the “opposition to all kinds of enslaving human conditions,”34 includ-
ing “the traditions given with Jewish origin.”35 The anthropological passages
from Rom 6:15–23 as well as Gal 5:1–15 are also in the background of the inter-
pretation of 1 Cor 9 where they are not explicitly cited, but where it is said that
30 For such an interpretation, see Gerd Theißen, “The Strong and the Weak in Corinth:
A Sociological Analysis of a Theological Quarrel,” in Understanding Paul’s Ethics, ed. John

H. Schütz (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 107–
28. Cf. also the conclusion by Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 705: “In this context
the weak may mean those whose options for life and conduct were severely restricted because
of their dependence on the wishes of patrons, employers, or slave owners.”
31 N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (New York: SPCK, 2013), 1436. In the
following Wright defends the conception of Christians as a “third race” (ibid., 1448).
32 Donald A. Hagner, “Paul as a Jewish Believer – According to His Letters,” in Jewish
Believers in Jesus, ed. Reidar Hvalvik and Oskar Skarsaune (Peabody: Hendrickson Publish-
ers, 2007), 113.
33 See, e.g., most recently, Udo Schnelle, “Über Judentum und Hellenismus hinaus: Die
paulinische Theologie als neues Wissenssystem,” ZNW 111:1 (2020): 124–55, here 139–40
with n. 48, who argues from 1 Cor 9:19–23 that Paul can no longer be a real Jew (Jude “im
Vollsinn”), since the adaptability which Paul describes would be impossible for a Jewish iden-
tity (“weit über das hinaus, was für eine jüdische Identität zumutbar wäre”).
34 Dieter Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, KEK 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2009), 316: “Gegensatz zu allen möglichen versklavenden menschlichen Verhältnis-

sen.” Cf. also Gabriele Boccaccini, Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2020), 151: “Being no longer ‘under the law’ (1 Cor 9:20) meant for him that he was no longer
under the power of sin and was justified in Christ, not that he was free from the obligations of
the Mosaic covenant.”
35 Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 316: “[D]ie mit der jüdischen Herkunft gege-
benen Traditionen.”
only freedom would enable the renunciation of the ἐξουσία.36 Thus, the freedom
Paul speaks of in 1 Cor 9:19 is understood not as simple contrast to enslavement
(cf. 1 Cor 9:19b), but as a specifically “Christian” freedom.
Such interpretations, although well established in many commentaries, leave
many questions unanswered. For example, why – according to these interpreta-
tions – does Paul use the first two terms τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις and τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον when
they basically refer to the same group of people?37 And, more important, how
do the anti-Judaic implications which were drawn from such an interpretation
fit other Pauline passages, wherein Paul unequivocally confesses his Jewish-
ness? Questions like these have led scholars especially from the Paul within Ju-
daism perspective to challenge the traditional interpretation in recent years.
Within recent attempts to offer a different reading of 1 Cor 9:19–23 Mark
Nanos provides the most elaborate and differentiated reading. Yet the structure
of argument is quite different than with respect to other debates among Paul
within Judaism scholars.38 Whereas Nanos regularly argues that Paul’s state-
ment on the Torah solely refer to non-Jews, he does take the four terms in 1 Cor
9:20–22 as referring to different ethnic groups.39 Thus, whereas the first term,
“Jews,” refers to Jews in general, the second term, “those under the law,” refers
either to proselytes or to Jews “representing stricter standards like Pharisees.”40
For the third term, τοῖς ἀνόμοις, then, Nanos suggests “lawless (perhaps
non-practicing) Jews” or, alternatively, “non-Jews”41 and the fourth term, τοῖς
ἀσθενέσιν, refers to “non-Christ-believing polytheists.”42
In v. 22b Paul gives his own summary of the preceding verses saying, “I have
become all things to all people.” This conclusion, however, would be overblown
if he only meant, “I have become all things to all Jews.” Even more striking, in
1 Cor 9 Paul uses his own behavior as an example for what he expects his ad-
36 For such an interpretation cf., for instance, Wolfgang Schrage, Der 1. Brief an Die Ko-
rinther. Bd. 2 : 1Kor 6,12–11,16, EKK 7 (Zürich, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Benziger; Neukirchener,

1995), 337: “Nur die ἐλευθερία ermöglicht auch das Freisein von Praktizierung und
Durchsetzung der ἐξουσία.”
37 This question is already asked by Origen, cf. Schrage, Korinther, 2:341 n. 362.
38 At other places Nanos regularly identifies specific people or groups, especially in Paul’s
letter to the Romans, in contrast to the majority of interpretations as Jewish. With respect to
Rom 13:1–7, see Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996),
289–336; and with respect to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, see Nanos, “The Inter- and In-
tra-Jewish Political Context of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” in The Galatians Debate: Con-
temporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody:
Hendrickson, 2002).
39 See Nanos, “Myth,” 17 n. 53.
40 Nanos, “Myth,” 17.
41 Nanos, “Myth,” 17.
42 On this rather new suggestion for interpreting “the weak” in 1 Corinthians, see Mark D.
Nanos, “The Polytheist Identity of the ‘Weak,’ and Paul’s Strategy to ‘Gain’ Them: A New
Reading of 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1,” in Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, ed. Stanley E. Porter,
Pauline Studies 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 179–210.
dresses in Corinth to do in chs. 8–10. But how could he use his own behavior
toward Jews as an example for his (at least mostly) non-Jewish audience? Con-
sequently, although it is difficult to identify specific groups behind the terms
Paul uses in 1 Cor 9:20–22, it nevertheless seems unlikely that all these terms
refer only to different groups of Jews. At least the term τοῖς ἀνόμοις is most
likely a reference to non-Jews.43 In other texts this term can also refer broadly
to “unjust people” regardless of their ethnicity (cf. Acts 2:23; 3 Macc 6:9; Ezek
18:24 LXX; Luke 22:37).44 Therefore, in 1 Cor 9 it most likely includes Jews as
well as non-Jews who live unrighteous lives, or it is used in contrast to the pre-
ceding τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον and meant to refer specifically to non-Jews, to whom the
Torah was not revealed.45 But if we agree that Paul refers to different ethnic
groups in 1 Cor 9:19–23 and his different behavior among those groups, then the
issue arises how to combine such an interpretation with the idea of a Paul who
continued his Jewish way of life? This issue is even stronger if we consider
Nanos’ interpretation of the “weak” in 1 Cor 9 as referring to non-Christ-be-
lieving polytheists. Since, how could Paul say that he has become or even be-
haved like polytheists?
Thus, Nanos’ and, to a lesser degree, Fredriken’s basic challenge to the tradi-
tional interpretation of 1 Cor 9:19–23 addresses what it means when Paul says he
“became,” or “has become” (ἐγενόμην in v. 20 and 22a; γέγονα in v. 22b) like
those people. If the majority reading is right, and Paul refers to his change of
behavior, how then could he say in v. 20 that he himself who is a Jew since birth,
“became like a Jew”? Moreover, does Paul really recommend a “chameleon-like”
behavior?46 Such behavior could be regarded as inconsistent and morally dis-
honest, since Paul would only pretend to live according to the Torah when
among Jews, but would neglect Jewish customs when among non-Jews.
To avoid such implications, scholars like Fredriksen and, again, Nanos, have
suggested a reading that understands Paul’s adaptation not as an adaptation of
his behavior, and even less so a different attitude towards the Torah. Instead,
what Paul means when he says that he “has become” like those different groups
of people is that he changed his way of reasoning. Thus, Fredriksen explains
Paul’s remarks on his own conduct: “Paul the Pharisee, expert in his ancestral
traditions, argued with his syngeneis on the basis of Jewish scriptures. But with
god-fearing non-Jews he preached not only through appeals to biblical texts but
also ‘in the demonstration of spirit and of power’ (1 Cor 2.4; cf. 9.21).”47 And in
43 Concerning the fourth term, weak, I do not think Paul had a certain (ethnic) group in
mind. Instead, Paul chooses this term as the last of his list in order to create a link between his
own behavior which he had just mentioned and his instructions in 1 Cor 8, where he talks
about the “weak” in Corinth.
44 On this see Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 703.
45 Cf. also Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 703.
46 Nanos, “Paul and Judaism,” 6.
47 Fredriksen, Paul, 165; cf. 228–9 n. 38.
a similar way Nanos concludes, “Such ‘rhetorical adaptability’ consists of vary-

ing one’s speech to different audiences: reasoning from their premises, but not
imitating their conduct in other ways.”48
Especially Nanos has elaborated his interpretation of 1 Cor 9 in several es-
says. In his essays, he refers to Paul’s proclamation of the gospel in Acts 17 as an
example of his rhetorical adaptability. In Acts 17, Paul begins his argument by
mentioning the idol with the designation “To the unknown God.” Thus, Paul
adapts his way of reasoning to his audience and argues from within their world
view. But regardless of this plausible example from Acts, such an interpretation
has its problems when compared with the immediate context of 1 Cor 9, since in
1 Cor 8 Paul demands from his addressees a real change of their behavior. They
are supposed to stop eating food offered to idols, if it causes a brother to stumble
(cf. 1 Cor 8:9, 12–13). In ch. 9, therefore, Paul uses his own behavior as an exam-
ple of how the Corinthians should put the interests of their brothers and sisters
in the community above their own. Thus, Paul starts with examples from his
own life, where he also waived his own rights and privileges for the sake of oth-
ers. He says he abstained from certain kinds of food (1 Cor 9:4), he did not
marry (1 Cor 9:4), and he voluntarily works to earn his own living (1 Cor 9:6).
In v. 12, he even repeats his point that he did not make use of his rights (οὐκ
ἐχρησάμεθα τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ ταύτῃ). Therefore, in the immediate context it is clear
Paul is talking about a real behavioral adaptability for the sake of others.49
Now, in 1 Cor 9:19 the question of 1 Cor 9:1, “Am I not free?” is taken up again
and answered with “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself
a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.”50 Thus, I find it hard to deny
Paul is still talking about his behavioral adaptability in vv. 19–23. This is even
clearer if one interprets the following ἐγενόμην as an explanation of the initial
πᾶσιν ἐμαυτὸν ἐδούλωσα (see the similar wording in v. 22: τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα
πάντα).51 Paul made himself a slave to all through putting their interests above
his own behavioral habits. If Paul was only talking about his change of rhetoric,
we not only must imply a hard break with the immediate context, but the initial
48 Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship,” 68–9.

49 Nanos is well aware of this striking argument against his interpretation, but he offers no
explanation for it. See, Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship,” 74: “He [Paul] calls the knowledgeable
to change their lifestyle, to be sure, something he does not describe seeking among the recip-
ients of his evangelistic tactics in 9:16–23.”
50 The intentional reference back to v. 1 becomes all the more clear by the fact that ἐλεύθερος
is placed emphatically at the beginning of the sentence in v. 19: “Free is what I am”; on this, cf.
also Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 700–1. Consequently, the γάρ in v. 19 is either
used in a continuing or an explaining sense, but not opposing (on this cf. Schrage, Korinther,
2:336).
51 Cf. the structural analysis by Schrage, Korinther, 2:334–36, with the persuasive conclu-
sion: “Sachlich ist V 19 der programmatische Grundsatz, dem dann in V 20ff vier Illustra-
tionen und in V 22 das Resümee folgen” (Schrage, Korinther, 2:335).
wording ἐμαυτὸν ἐδούλωσα would be only an unsatisfying rendering of Paul’s

rhetorical adjustment.
If Paul does indeed have behavioral adaptability in mind, it is necessary to ask
what kind of behavior Paul has in mind. Two points are striking in this debate.
First, obviously, Paul’s formulation includes a wide range of behaviors and does
not only target one specific behavior.52 When Paul states that he has become
“all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22), it is clear he is no longer talking about the
specific issue of the consumption of meat, which was the focus of the previous
chapter.53
Second, the fact that Paul cites various groups to illustrate his behavioral
adaptability, whose distinctive differences lie precisely in their ethnicity and in
their relation to the Torah, makes it compelling that Paul’s adaptability also in-
cludes these two areas. If Paul was not concerned with ethnicity-specific behav-
ior, he could have just as easily pointed out that he behaved differently during
his stay in Corinth than he did in Ephesus or Tarsus. Thus, Paul is concerned
about an adaptation of behavior depending on whether the surrounding group
consists of Jews or non-Jews. And it is about an adaptation of behavior that in-
cludes different relations to the Torah depending on the contextual situation.
This does not necessarily mean that Paul is only talking about different attitudes
towards or interpretations of the Torah, though it certainly includes such To-
rah-related differences.54 In this broad spectrum, the specifically Corinthian
problem about different behaviors related to the consumption of meat, while
not explicitly highlighted, is certainly included.
In light of the above-mentioned variety of Jewish interactions with non-Jews
in the diaspora, the adaptation of Paul’s behavior must neither be called a “cha-
meleon-like” inconsistency nor can it be used to argue that Paul no longer saw
his Jewish identity as a central aspect of his life or that he must have broken with
Judaism.55
If it is true, that Jews – especially in the diaspora – have had already a long
tradition of adapting their Jewish behavior and ancestral customs to their indi-
52 See differently, Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 318, who points specifically to
the ritual laws of the Torah (“Um dies klarzustellen, hält er sich gerade bei den Heiden nicht
an das Ritualgesetz”).
53 But see differently Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988), 472: “when he [Paul] was among Jews he was kosher; when
he was among Gentiles he was nonkosher;” similar, but with caution, Schrage, Korinther,
2:334: “Es ist nicht ganz auszuschließen, daß sich diese Beispiele speziell auf die Speisegesetze
beziehen.”
54 Cf. differently, Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 317, who argues that it is all
about Torah observance (“tora-konforme Praktiken”).

55 This is also shown by the fact that when Paul is writing about his adaptation to Jews (v.
20), he omits the negation μὴ ὢν (Ἰουδαῖος) (“although I am not [a Jew]”) which follows his
designation for the second and third group. This clearly shows that he still and permanently
identifies himself as a Jew.
vidual living conditions, then Paul’s behavioral adaptability described in 1 Cor

9:19–23 is nothing that can be called “un-Jewish” or incompatible with a genu-
ine Jewish identity. As a matter of fact, what Paul describes in 1 Cor 9 is neither
a real Pauline “invention” nor is it only possible on the basis of a specifically
“Christian” freedom.56 It is simply a possible form of a first-century Jewish life
in the diaspora with a tradition that goes beyond Paul and the early Jesus move-
ment. Furthermore, it is a way of Jewish life which gained an entirely new mo-
tivating force and a new significance through the gospel. What is rather new, is
the reason for his behavior and not the behavior itself. At the end, it is “for the
sake of the gospel” (1 Cor 9:23) that Paul adapts his behavior to his audience.
4. Concluding Theses
1. Even long before the Jesus movement, interaction with non-Jews did not re-
quire a renunciation of Jewish identity.
2. When interacting with non-Jews Paul showed some flexibility in his behav-
ior in relation to typical Jewish practice. In his flexibility Paul remained
within the framework of what was accepted as “Jewish” at least by some Jews
even before the Jesus movement.
3. Therefore, Paul’s pragmatism does not mean an abandonment of Judaism, or
a critique against the Jewish way of life.
4. Paul does not criticize “Judaism” in general, but his behavior in 1 Cor 9:19–
23 implies a critique of some Jewish interpretations of the Torah and certain
Jewish behaviors towards non-Jews. Paul does not abandon “Judaism,” but
his behavior implies a distance from certain currents of Judaism.
5. What is new, however, is the reason for Paul’s flexible behavior, not his be-
havior itself. Paul does not “invent” a new way to live among non-Jews, but
he gives a new christological basis for a long-established way of Jewish life.
56 For a detailed explanation why 1 Cor 9:19 is not about a special “Christian” form of
freedom, see Ruben A. Bühner, “Die paulinische Rede von der Selbstversklavung in 1 Kor 9,19
vor dem Hintergrund jüdischer Identität im Sklavenstand,” NTS 69,2 (2023), 195–209.
The Lukan Paul as Prophet of God’s Resurrected Messiah
Prophecy and Messianism in the Lukan Depiction of Paul
Joshua W. Jipp
1. Introduction
In an earlier essay I probed the accusation made against the “Lukan Paul,” and
reported by the “Lukan James,” that there are “thousands of believers among
the Jews, all of whom are zealous for the Law” who have heard that Paul “teach-
es the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses” (Acts 21:20–21).1 Seven
days later, Jews from Asia grasp hold of Paul and claim that Paul is the man
“who is teaching everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this
place [i.e., the temple]” (21:28). Neither James the character nor Luke’s narrative
as a whole, of course, agrees with the assessment that Paul rejects Moses. And
thus, begins the lengthy section of defense speeches in Acts 22–28 where Paul
consistently answers the charges that he opposes his own people and ancestral
customs (e.g., 24:10–13; 25:10–11; 28:17).2 One of the obvious rhetorical func-
tions of Paul’s speeches is to persuade his listeners that Paul is a faithful Jew and
that the charges brought against him are false. More than half of Paul’s words,
in fact, are taken up by these apologetic speeches highlighting the fact that, at
the time of the writing of Acts, Paul was both well-known, controversial, and
(for Luke) in need of a strong apologetic.3
Paul’s repetitive arguments conform nicely to definitions of ancient notions
of ethnicity, namely, shared ancestral customs, family, paideia, land, language,
and the gods and their cults.4 In the Hebrew language (Acts 22:2), Paul claims
that he is a “Jewish man” (22:3), educated at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem
(22:3b), and is zealous for his people’s ancestral customs (22:3c; also 26:4–5).
1 The present essay expands upon some of the claims made in Joshua W. Jipp, “The Paul of
Acts: Proclaimer of the Hope of Israel or Teacher of Apostasy from Moses,” NovT 62 (2020):
60–78.
2 On Acts 27:1–28:10 as offering a reminder of Paul’s missionary activity among the gen-
tiles see Joshua W. Jipp, Divine Visitations and Hospitality to Strangers in Luke-Acts: An In-
terpretation of the Malta Episode in Acts 28:1–10, NovTSup 153 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 219–287.
3 Jacob Jervell, The Theology of the Acts of the Apostles (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi-
ty Press, 1996), 86.

4 See here, for example, Paula F. Fredriksen, “How Jewish is God: Divine Ethnicity in
Paul’s Theology,” JBL 137 (2018): 193–212.

218 Joshua W. Jipp
Paul emphasizes that he is a Pharisee according to Torah observance (23:5–6;

24:14–16). His visit to Jerusalem was not in order to profane the temple but, rath-
er, in order to give alms “for my ethnos” (εἰς τὸ ἔθνος μου, 24:17b). From the Lu-
kan Paul’s standpoint, Israel is God’s elected people; Torah-observance for Jews
is good; and the Law and the Prophets reveal the will of God. But if the charges
brought against Paul are nonsense, then why does Luke so frequently portray
Paul as encountering intense opposition amongst the Jewish people in every city
and synagogue he frequents? Paul is chased from city to city precisely by those
fellow Jews to whom he proclaims his message (e.g., 13:42–52; 14:4–7).
Making sense of the plausibility of the charges of apostasy brought against
Paul requires, I suggest, an understanding of the two central “Christological”
threads of Acts and their implications for Luke’s depiction of the people of God,
namely, the messianic and prophetic aspects of Lukan Christology. Jens Schröter
has rightly argued, in my view, that “the conception of the people of God devel-
oped by Luke must be viewed in close connection with the Christology of his
work.”5 I will argue first (and more briefly given I’ve written on this elsewhere)
that the Lukan Paul’s primary claim is that Jesus of Nazareth is the resurrected
and enthroned Messiah who has, through his life, death, and especially his res-
urrection, inaugurated Israel’s restoration and deliverance. But Jesus is also un-
derstood by Luke as Israel’s greatest prophet who warns God’s people to repent
in light of God’s visitation of his people. Paul’s ministry is best understood as
an extension of Jesus’s prophetic ministry as he, Luke’s star witness, testifies
that God has sent the Messiah and raised him from the dead thereby offering
salvation to both Israel and the gentiles. The Lukan Paul believes that the divine
plan for Israel’s restoration consists in God’s resurrection of the Messiah (as the
foretaste of the final resurrection from the dead). Paul does not give up on Isra-
el as God’s elect people, though he – like Jesus – prophetically warns the Jewish
people of the consequences of failing to recognize the fulfillment of God’s cov-
enantal purposes brought to fruition in the resurrected Messiah. I unpack how
the messianic and prophetic strands of Lukan Christology are necessary for
understanding the Lukan Paul in three steps. First, Luke depicts Jesus as the
Davidic Messiah who will save Israel and establish an everlasting kingdom over
Israel. But Jesus also prophetically warns Israel to embrace this divine visit.
Second, while Israel’s leaders reject and crucify the agent of the divine visitation,
the Lukan Paul argues that this act conforms to the foreknowledge of God and
is, ironically, the means by which God fulfills his promises to restore the David-
ic monarchy, namely, by means of resurrecting and enthroning-in-heaven the
Davidic Messiah. Thirdly, and finally, the Lukan Paul is God’s prophet who
5 Jens Schröter, “Salvation for the Gentiles and Israel: On the Relationship between Chris-
tology and People of God in Luke,” in From Jesus to the New Testament: Early Christian
Theology and the Origin of the New Testament Canon, trans. Wayne Coppins (Waco, TX:
Baylor University Press, 2013), 227–46, here 242.
The Lukan Paul as Prophet of God’s Resurrected Messiah 219
proclaims repentance to Israel and the nations. Paul is a rejected prophet in the
mold of Jesus.
2. Jesus the Eschatological Prophet and Davidic Messiah

in the Gospel of Luke
To set some critical context for understanding Paul’s Jewishness in Acts, a look
at Luke’s Infancy Narrative will be helpful as it sets forth both the centrality of
Luke’s presentation of Jesus as Israel’s Davidic Messiah and his birth into a
prophetic people. Both themes are critical for understanding the Lukan Paul as,
I will argue, the Gospel of Luke anticipates, and the Book of Acts narrates, how
Jesus of Nazareth is the agent who fulfills God’s promises to reconstitute the
Davidic monarchy and establish an everlasting kingdom over his people. But
even as Luke emphasizes Jesus’s primary role as Israel’s Messiah, he shows how
Jesus is born into a family and a people of prophets.6 Luke’s Infancy Narrative
(Luke 1:5–2:52) is peppered with pious Torah-observant Jews who are waiting
for “the consolation of Israel” (2:25) or “the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38).
They are filled with the Holy Spirit and give prophetic utterances that interpret
God’s work of salvation for Israel within history (see, for example, 1:15–17;
1:41–56; 1:67; 2:28b; 2:36). Their prophetic role, evidenced especially in John the
Baptist, is also seen in their task to prepare Israel for God’s new work by calling
the people to repentance (1:16–17, 76). More specifically, these prophetic charac-
ters engage in all kinds of liturgical expressions of praise, confession, and
prayers expressing the conviction that Jesus is the one who inherits the promis-
es made to David and the one who will reign forever as Israel’s Messianic king
(see Luke 1:31–35).7
Jesus’s role as Davidic Messiah is indicated through:
– Gabriel’s claim to Mary that her child will be called “Son of the Most High”
and that God will give him “David’s throne” so that “he will reign over the
house of Jacob forever and his kingdom shall never end” (1:32–33).
– The parallels between Luke’s Infancy Narrative and 1 Sam 1–2 which centers
upon stories of barren women and their royal hymns (see esp. 1 Sam 2:1–10;
Luke 1:46–55).8
6 Helpful here is Luke Timothy Johnson, Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church: The Chal-
lenge of Luke-Acts to Contemporary Christians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 54–6.

7 See, further, Mark L. Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts: The Promise and Its
Fulfillment in Lukan Christology, JSNTSup 100 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
8 In more detail, see Sarah Harris, The Davidic Shepherd King in the Lukan Narrative,
LNTS 558 (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 41–3.

220 Joshua W. Jipp
– Luke’s note that Jesus has Davidic lineage given that Mary is engaged to Jo-
seph – a man who is “from the house of David” (1:27). Jesus is, furthermore,
born in Bethlehem “the city of David” (2:4, 11; cf. Mic 5:1).
– The use of scriptural messianic titles such as the “horn of salvation in the
house of David” (1:69–70); “the dayspring from on high” (1:78–79); and the
“Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11).
The Infancy Narrative is emphatic that the target of God’s salvation through
Messiah Jesus is Israel. Jesus is the agent who will fulfill the covenantal promis-
es made to Israel’s patriarchs (1:54–55, 73–74), the embodiment of God’s visita-
tion for the redemption of his people (1:68, 78), and the one who inaugurates
“the consolation of Jerusalem” (2:38; cf. 2:25). God’s provision of Israel’s resto-
ration is the impetus for the extension of salvation to the nations. Simeon ex-
presses Luke’s convictions that this salvation for the nations cannot bypass Isra-
el: “My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared before the pres-
ence of all peoples, that is, a light for revelation to the nations and glory for your
people Israel” (2:30–32). Israel and the nations are distinguished even as both are
recipients of God’s salvation. Throughout Luke-Acts, in line with many of Isra-
el’s Prophets (e.g., Isa 42:6; 49:6; 60:1–11), salvation for the gentiles requires first
the restoration and redemption of Israel.9
Isaac Oliver helpfully summarizes how Luke 1–2 make the point that Jesus,
as the Davidic Messiah, is the agent of Israel’s restoration.
The soteriological terminology in Luke 1–2, be it in the declarations of Mary, Zechariah,
Simeon, or Anna, could not be more Jewish in texture. […] Nothing in Luke’s infancy
narrative suggests that this salvation for Israel should be denied, internalized, spiritual-
ized, or transferred to another realm. Restoration is to be experienced by Israel on this
earth.10
Oliver’s point cannot be stated too strongly: God is acting to help “his servant
Israel” (1:54); Jesus the Messiah will reign “forever over the house of Jacob”
(1:33); the salvation of God results in “glory to your people Israel” (2:32).
And yet the Lukan infancy narrative tempers one’s hopes through its charac-
ters’ frequent prophetic warnings. The task of John the Baptist, for example, is
that of announcing repentance and thereby making a people ready to respond to
God’s visitation of his people (1:16–17; 1:76–79; also 3:4–6; 7:27). John is called
a “prophet of the Most High” (1:76) whose task is “to turn many of the sons of
Israel to the Lord their God” (1:16). His prophetic goal is to make the people
ready and prepared to “see the salvation of God” (3:6). A second, and more om-
inous, prophetic warning is found on the lips of Simeon who immediately after
his prophetic declaration of Jesus as the agent of salvation for Israel and the na-
9 Isaac W. Oliver, Luke’s Jewish Eschatology: The National Restoration of Israel in Luke-
Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 36–7.

10 Oliver, Luke’s Jewish Eschatology, 39.
tions, declares to Mary: “Behold this one is appointed for the falling and rising
of many in Israel and for a sign that will be opposed – and even your soul will
be pierced by a sword – for the revelation of the thoughts of many” (2:34b–35).
Simeon testifies to what Jervell refers to as the Lukan notion of “the divided
people of God,” namely, how Jesus and his followers will provoke a division
within Israel.11 While it is possible that the “falling” and “rising” refer to a
temporal sequence of Israel’s experiencing judgment and then salvation, I think
it more likely foreshadows the mixed response of Israel to the proclamation of
Jesus’s Messiahship.12 Throughout Luke-Acts, Jesus’s Messiahship is the “sign
that will be opposed” even to the very end of the Acts of the Apostles where
Paul describes how fellow Jews “oppose” him and his message (28:19, 22). Sime-
on’s prophecy anticipates how most of Israel will reject Jesus as Israel’s messian-
ic deliverer and, yet, the oracle looks forward equally to a “rising” of Israel, that
is, a day when the people will be restored.13
Jesus himself plays the role of Israel’s eschatological Prophet who warns the
people of God of the consequences that follow should they reject him as the
messianic agent of God’s visitation. For example, in Luke 11:37–54, Jesus speaks
prophetic words of “woe” against the Pharisees and accuses them of continuing
their ancestors’ practice of rejecting the prophets: “Woe to you. For you build
the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you are witnesses and
approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their
tombs” (11:47–48 NRSV). Note that Jesus declares that this generation (ἀπὸ τῆς
γενεᾶς ταύτης, 11:50, 51) will be held responsible for “the blood” of all the reject-
ed and killed prophets, a comment that indicates Jesus sees himself as “the con-
summating point of all the prophets’ tragic sending.”14 Jesus is the final eschato-
logical prophet calling Israel to repent and recognize the time of salvation so
that it might escape divine judgment.
Similarly, in Luke 13:31–35 Jesus warns some Pharisees to welcome its divine
visitation as he makes his way to Jerusalem (see 9:51–56).15 His words are por-
tentous, however, for Jesus knows that prophets are not welcomed in Jerusalem
and that the people will not embrace him (13:33–34). Like Israel’s Prophets who
warned the people of the consequences for the Temple if they failed to repent
11 See Jacob C. Jervell, “The Divided People of God: The Restoration of Israel and Salva-
tion for the Gentiles,” in Luke and the People of God: A New Look at Luke-Acts (Augsburg:
Minneapolis, 1972), 41–74.
12 For the former interpretation, see Mark S. Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Ris-
en: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise (Eugene, OR: Cas-
cade, 2018), 33–4.
14 David Paul Moessner, “Paul in Acts: Preacher of Eschatological Repentance to Israel,”
in Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’: A New Reading of the
‘Gospel Acts’ of Luke, BZNW 182 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 292–301, here 294.
15 I have written on this in more detail in Divine Visitations and Hospitality, 231–3.
222 Joshua W. Jipp
(e.g., Ezekiel 9–11; Jeremiah 7:8–15; 12:7; 22:5), so Jesus pronounces a condition-
al warning of judgment against the Temple and its leaders should they reject
him: “Behold your house is left to you” (13:35a).16 Jesus’s final statement: “you
will not see me until you say, ‘blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord’” (13:35b; Psalm 118:26) is a warning to respond to the divine visitor with
the welcome of blessing. Given the Lukan use of sight as recognition, the reader
understands that those who proclaim the blessing on Jesus see him as the agent
of God’s visitation. Jesus’s warning is fulfilled in 19:28–40 as Jesus enters Jeru-
salem as Israel’s messianic lord (19:31, 33; cf. 2:11). Some in the crowd rejoice and
praise God, using the language of Psalm 118:26: “Blessed is the one who comes,
the King, in the name of the Lord” (19:38). The language of kingship and lord-
ship draws the reader back to the messianic destiny and vocation marked out for
Jesus in Luke’s Infancy narrative, particularly the promises that Jesus would
have an everlasting kingdom as the Davidic Messiah. The people’s cry draws
upon Jesus’s promise in 13:35 and thereby marks them as those who see Jesus’s
entrance into Jerusalem as the messianic Lord’s coming to his city. But, of
course, it is notable that within the scene there are no priests, scribes, or temple
leaders; the Pharisees, in fact, demand that the Messiah silence his followers
(19:39).17 And this leads to Jesus’s climactic prophetic warning of judgment as
he weeps that the people have rejected his offer of peace (Luke 19:41–44). The
destruction of Jerusalem will be, Jesus declares using the language of Jeremiah
(see Jer 6:15 LXX), “because you have not recognized the time of your visita-
tion” (Luke 19:44b). Jesus’s words of judgement, however, do not indicate the
rejection of Israel as God’s people. Again, Oliver: “Luke mixes Jesus’s condem-
nation of Jerusalem with an emotional quality that expresses a strong attach-
ment to the city, an affection that Israelite prophets frequently show even when
they relay oracles of judgment against their own people.”18
Allow me to make two summary comments. First, Luke depicts Jesus as the
final Davidic Messiah and the eschatological prophet. Second, both the messi-
anic and prophetic aspects of Lukan Christology are significant for understand-
ing Jesus’s relationship to Israel. Given that Jesus is God’s promised Davidic
Messiah whose vocation is to establish an eternal kingdom over Israel, the time
of Israel’s restoration has arrived. Jesus’s prophetic role consists in calling Israel
to repent by recognizing God’s eschatological visit and warning of the dire con-
sequences of rejecting God’s salvation.
16 See Klaus Baltzer, “The Meaning of the Temple in the Lukan Writings,” HTR 58 (1965):
263–77.
17 See Brent Kinman, “Parousia, Jesus’ ‘A-Triumphal’ Entry, and the Fate of Jerusalem
(Luke 19:28–44),” JBL 118 (1999): 279–94.

3. Paul’s Proclamation of the Resurrected Messiah

in the Acts of the Apostles
Luke reports two of Jesus’s disciples giving voice to their belief that the cruci-
fixion of Jesus has shattered their hopes for Israel’s salvation and restoration.
Their response to the resurrected-and-disguised Jesus on the Emmaus Road is
as follows:
The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet powerful in word and deed be-
fore God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to the
sentence of death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one about to re-
deem Israel (ὁ μέλλων λυτροῦσθαι τὸν Ἰσραήλ). And even more it is now three days since
these things happened (Luke 24:19–21).
The words of the two disciples foreshadow what is perhaps the major theme of
Acts as well as what animates the activity of the Lukan Paul, namely, how the
resurrection of Jesus the Messiah constitutes the hope for Israel’s salvation. That
is, the two disciples voice their fear that Jesus’s death marks the end of the hopes
for Israel that were declared by so many pious prophetic Jews in the Lukan In-
fancy Narrative, whereas in fact Israel’s hope of salvation is wed to the resurrec-
tion of the Messiah who is “the first to rise from the dead” (Acts 26:23). While
Israel’s leaders are accountable for their sin of rejecting and crucifying Jesus,
their acting in ignorance is the means whereby God’s plan to resurrect the Mes-
siah and set him at God’s right hand initiates restoration for Israel and salvation
for the nations. Their putting Jesus to death is, in fact, the means by which God,
according to the Lukan Peter, “has fulfilled all the things which he foretold
through the mouth of all the prophets, namely, that his Messiah should suffer”
(3:18). Therefore, now is the time for Israel to repent and turn to God which will
unleash God’s promised covenantal blessings from the resurrected and en-
throned-in-heaven Messiah (3:20–21).
Luke portrays Paul, then, as Torah-observant, devoted to Jerusalem, and loy-
al to the people of Israel. But the Lukan emphasis is clearly upon arguing the
controversial claim that Paul’s faithfulness to his ancestral customs and heritage
consists in his proclamation that Jesus is the resurrected Davidic Messiah, the
one who fulfills the hopes of Israel. Paul’s proclamation reaffirms the expecta-
tions and hopes for Israel’s redemption narrated in the Infancy Narrative, albe-
it in a new era of salvation history. As I have recently made this argument in
more detail elsewhere, I will be briefer here and offer three lines of evidence
which indicate how the Lukan Paul associates Israel’s restoration and salvation
with the resurrection of the Messiah.19
19 Jipp, “The Paul of Acts,” 68–72.

224 Joshua W. Jipp
3.1 Paul’s Formulaic Proclamation: Jesus is the Resurrected Messiah

After Saul’s transformative encounter with the risen Jesus, he proclaims that
Jesus is risen from the dead. It is notable that the location for Paul’s proclama-
tion are the Jewish synagogues in Damascus (9:19–25) and Jerusalem (9:26–30).
The honorifics Paul uses to proclaim the significance of Jesus are one’s the read-
er is familiar with from the Lukan Infancy Narrative, namely, Jesus is “the Son
of God” (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, 9:20; e.g., Luke 1:31–35) and “the Messiah”
(οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστός, 9:22; Luke 2:11, 26). These summary statements preview
the content of the Lukan Paul’s proclamation in his later missionary journeys.
So, in Thessalonica, we are told that it was Paul’s regular habit to attend the
synagogue meetings, just as it was Jesus’s custom (κατὰ δὲ τὸ εἰωθὸς τῷ Παύλῳ,
Acts 17:2a; κατὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς αὐτῷ, Luke 4:16b), and to expound from the Jewish
Scriptures that: “it was necessary for the Messiah (τὸν χριστόν) to suffer and to
be raised from the dead, and saying ‘This is the Messiah Jesus (οὕτός ἐστιν ὁ
χριστὸς ὁ Ἰησοῦς) whom I am proclaiming to you’” (Acts 17:2b–3; cf. 17:31–32).
Likewise, Luke narrates that Paul’s regular habit in Corinth was to try to per-
suade “both Jews and Greeks” that “Jesus is the Messiah” (εἶναι τὸν χριστὸν
Ἰησοῦν, 18:5).
3.2 Paul’s Davidic-Messianic Interpretation of Israel’s History and Scriptures

In his narration of Paul’s time in Pisidian Antioch, Luke offers his readers one
representative scene which contains Paul’s proclamation to “the sons of Israel”
(9:16) in the synagogue (Acts 13:13–41). Paul’s sermon is given during the week-
ly “reading of the Law and the Prophets” (13:15). The note that Paul is speaking
“to the people” (13:15), his reference to his audience as “Israelite men and those
who fear God” (13:16) and “brethren” (13:26, 28) make the point that Paul is
addressing the elect people of God. Paul engages in the common literary prac-
tice of retelling the history from Israel, here beginning with God’s election of
Israel and redemption out of Exodus up until the time of King David. Paul’s
summary of Israel’s history should be seen as his intentional attempt to frame
and interpret the significance of Israel’s history, not unlike Stephen’s retelling in
Acts 7, Ezra’s history centering upon Israel’s exile and covenant unfaithfulness
(Neh 9:6–36), or the Animal Apocalypse’s summary of Israel’s history culmi-
nating in the remnant of faithful sheep (1 En. 90:6–12).20 In other words, Paul’s
summary of Israel’s history is preparing the reader to accept Paul’s very partic-
ular and controversial interpretation of the meaning of Israel’s history. I will
make three points.
20 On the role of retellings of the history of Israel in a variety of Jewish texts, see Robert
G. Hall, Revealed Histories: Techniques for Ancient Jewish and Christian Historiography,
JSPSup 6 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991).
First, Paul’s sermon is oriented toward God’s reconstitution of the Davidic

monarchy. Paul’s interpretation of Israel’s history focuses on God’s consistent
activity and working within his people Israel but moves quickly to its high
point, namely, God’s “promise” to raise up a “descendant” from David’s house
who would reign forever over Israel. Israel requested a King and so God gave
them Saul whose disobedience resulted in God having him “removed” (13:21–
22a), but God “raised up David as a king for them” since he is “a man according
to my heart who will do the entirety of my will” (13:22b).21 It is “from the seed
of [David] (ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος κατ᾽ἐπαγγελίαν)” that God, “according to his
promise,” has sent Jesus as Israel’s “Savior” (13:23). The language of “promise”
and “seed” clearly draw upon the oath that God made to David in 2 Sam 7:12 –
“I will raise up your offspring after you who will come from your loins and I
will establish his kingdom” (so also 2 Sam 22:51; 1 Chr 17:4–14; Ps 89:20–38).
Second, God has fulfilled this promise to rescue Israel through a descendant
of David by raising Jesus from the dead (13:30). Paul interprets the Psalter’s (Ps
16:11 [15:10 LXX]) claim that God’s holy one will not “see decay” (ἰδεῖν δια
φθοράν, 13:35b) to refer, not to David who “saw corruption” (εἶδεν διαφθοράν,
13:36) but to his descendent Jesus “whom God has raised, he has not seen cor-
ruption” (ὃν δὲ ὁ θεὸς ἤγειρεν, οὐκ εἶδεν διαφθοράν, 13:37a). God’s resurrection
of Jesus from the dead is the means whereby God establishes his plan to give one
of David’s descendants an everlasting reign over the people of God. God’s
promise is brought to fruition through his “raising up Jesus” (13:33) which is
what was promised in Ps 2:7 – “You are my son. Today I have begotten you”
(13:34b). Given that the entire discussion of 13:33–37 focuses upon a scriptural
demonstration of Jesus’s resurrection as his enthronement as the messianic king,
this “raising up” makes best sense not as a reference to God’s act to bring Jesus
into the world but, rather, as referring to God’s resurrection of the Messiah as
his enthronement and installation of God’s king (see also Ps 2:1–2 in Acts 4:25–
27). Thus, Psalm 2, originally a declaration of God’s election of the Davidic
dynasty is now fulfilled in the messianic Son of God’s resurrection and en-
thronement.22
Third, Paul’s messianic interpretation of Israel’s history and claim that God
has raised the Messiah from the dead means that covenantal blessings of salva-
tion are available for those who embrace Jesus. Note, for example, Paul’s claim
that God “has brought to Israel a Savior – Jesus” (ἤγαγεν τῷ Ἰσραὴλ σωτῆρα
Ἰησοῦν, 13:23) and that his sermon is a “message of salvation” (ὁ λόγος τῆς
σωτηρίας, 13:26) for the children of Israel. Paul claims that God’s resurrection
of the Messiah results in the unleashing of God’s promise from Isa 55:3 – “I will
21See Oliver, Luke’s Jewish Eschatology, 64.

22So Luke Timothy Johnson, Septuagintal Midrash in the Speeches of Acts (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 2002), 61.
226 Joshua W. Jipp
give to you the holy and faithful things of David” (δώσω ὑμῖν τὰ ὅσια Δαυὶδ τὰ
πιστά, 13:34b). Oliver comments on the phrase: “Whatever its precise meaning,
it seems to concern an ensemble of blessings […] sworn to David, the fulfillment
of which Paul proclaims in Acts to the people of Israel.”23 In other words, God’s
climactic act to reconstitute the Davidic kingdom results in justification and
forgiveness of sins for Israel while grave warnings of judgment are spoken for
those who would refuse to submit to the resurrected Messianic king (13:40–41).
3.3 The Hope of Israel is the Resurrection of the Dead

Paul’s defense speeches in Acts 22–28 revolve around two broad themes. First,
Paul is in every way a faithful and Torah-observant Jew who is loyal to his peo-
ple and his ancestral customs. He speaks Hebrew and was educated in Jerusa-
lem (22:1–3), he believes everything written in the Law and the Prophets (24:14–
15; 26:27), and he does nothing against his own people (28:17–19). But, second,
Paul is emphatic that he is on trial for “the hope of Israel” which he identifies as
God’s resurrection of Messiah Jesus (see 24:14–15; 26:6–8; 26:19–23; 28:17–20).24
Paul does not proclaim “resurrection” or “the Messiah” as a replacement of, or
in contrast to his Jewish heritage but, rather, as the true content of the Scrip-
tures of Israel. God’s resurrection of the Messiah is the sign, the foreshadowing
of the final eschatological resurrection of the dead – which Paul refers to as
something “the twelve tribes” hope to obtain (26:7) and “the hope of Israel”
(28:20). The Messiah is the first among the resurrection of the dead” (Acts
26:23a). Again, Oliver: “In Luke’s estimation, to uphold the resurrection of the
messiah is to sustain the hope in the resurrection of the dead, which remains
indissolubly linked with Israel’s eschatological destiny.”25
4. Paul is the Messiah’s Prophetic Witness

to Israel and the Nations
Given the Lukan Paul’s emphatic association between Israel’s restoration and
the Messiah’s resurrection, Luke’s primary characterization of Paul is that he is
God’s eschatological prophet sent to both Israel and the nations in order to
proclaim the necessity of repentance. Luke draws upon a variety of prophetic
motifs and intertexts from both the Scriptures of Israel and his Gospel in order
to explain why Paul’s Jewish audience so often rejects him. In what follows, I

24 See Klaus Haacker, “Das Bekenntnis des Paulus zur Hoffnung Israels,” NTS 31 (1985):
437–51.
25 Oliver, Luke’s Jewish Eschatology, 128; see also Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem
Risen, 133–4.
argue that the importance of Luke’s prophetic characterization of Paul enables

one to better understand how he can simultaneously be depicted as one who is
loyal to the God of Israel and yet considered a pest or even an apostate by many
of his Jewish contemporaries.
4.1 Paul’s Prophetic Commission

Luke provides three accounts of the risen Christ’s initial appearance to Paul
(Acts 9, 22, and 26), and scholars are right to prefer the language of call/commis-
sion (rather than conversion) to describe the event whereby Paul becomes a pro-
phetic witness for the risen Christ.26 Thus, firstly, Paul experiences not just a
theophany but, rather, a Christophany (9:1-9). Note here the blinding light
“from heaven” (ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, 9:3b), heaven now being the location of the risen
Christ (e.g., 1:9–11; 2:30–36; 3:19–21),27 the voice that declares “I am Jesus whom
you are persecuting” (9:5), and the repeated title “Lord” – a Lukan designation
for the resurrected Jesus (9:1, 5, 10, 11, 13). Luke speaks of Paul as one elected for
a task. Thus, Paul is Christ’s “chosen instrument” (σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς, 9:15); the
“God of our ancestors has chosen you (προεχειρίσατό σε)” (22:14); and Christ has
“appointed you” (προχειρίσασθαὶ σε, 26:16). Many have recognized that Paul’s
call conforms to the pattern of God’s commissioning of Israel’s Prophets – most
notably that of Isaiah and Jeremiah (e.g., Isa 6:1–13; Jer 1:1–19).28 For example,
the risen Christ declares to Paul: “I will rescue you from the people and from the
Gentiles to whom I am sending you” (Acts 26:17). To Jeremiah, God declares:
“You will go to all to whom I send you…I am with you to deliver you, says the
Lord” (Jer 1:7, 8). Or compare Acts 26:17, where the risen Christ commissions
Paul “to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to the light” (Acts
26:18) with the Isaianic Servant who is appointed as “a light to the Gentiles, in
order to open the eyes of the blind…who sit in darkness” (Isa 42:6–7).29
Second, the risen Christ commissions Paul with the prophetic task “to take
my name before nations and kings and the children of Israel” (9:15b). The pur-
pose of Paul’s Christophany is consistently seen to be that of enabling Paul to
engage in testimony to the risen Christ (Acts 22:14–16; 26:15–16). This con-
forms to the risen Christ’s initial commission of the disciples as “my witnesses
26 For example, Paul S. Minear, To Heal and To Reveal: The Prophetic Vocation According
to Luke (New York: Seabury Press, 1976). Also, see Benjamin Hubbard, “The Role of Com-
missioning Accounts in Acts,” in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. Charles H. Talbert (Edin-
burgh: T&T Clark, 1978), 187–98.
27 See here Matthew Sleeman, Geography and the Ascension Narrative in Acts, SNTSMS
146 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

28 See here, for example, Jocelyn McWhirter, Rejected Prophets: Jesus and his Witnesses in
Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 117; also, Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Com-
mentary: Volume 2 (3:1–14:28) (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 1609.
29 On these parallels, see Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polem-
ics, History (New York: T&T Clark, 2021), 85–6.

228 Joshua W. Jipp
(μου μάρτυρες) in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and until the end of the earth
(ἕως ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς)” (1:8b). Note here that Christ’s commission is in response
to their question as to whether now is the time when “you will restore the king-
dom to Israel” (ἀποκαθιστάνεις τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ Ἰσραήλ, 1:6b). Space precludes
providing the necessary details, but suffice it to say that the disciples’ question
raises the same expectant hopes as did the characters in the Lukan Infancy Nar-
rative and that Acts also makes the closest of links between the hope of Israel
and the resurrection of Israel’s Messiah. If Luke only has the disciples ask the
question in order to portray them as foolish, then Luke’s emphasis here on the
kingdom of God, the Spirit, the distinctly Israelite geographic language in 1:8,
and the emphasis on Jesus as the enthroned Davidic Messiah are inexplicable.30
Here I simply note that the language of “my witnesses” and “the ends of the
earth” derive from Isa 40–66 where the people of God will function as prophet-
ic witnesses to God’s accomplishment of salvation and restoration of Israel (Isa
43:10–12; 44:8).31 Furthermore, the language of “the end of the earth” also al-
ludes to Isa 40–66 where the phrase evokes how the Servant accomplishes salva-
tion for the gentiles. So, Isa 49:5–6:
“And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob
back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him…he says, ‘It is too light a thing that
you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of
Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of
the earth” (NRSV).
Paul himself quotes this portion of Isaiah in his response to some Jews in Pisid-
ian Antioch who reject his proclamation of the word of God.32 He has, as Isaiah
foretold, spoken God’s word first to the Jews and now he is taking it “to the
gentiles” (13:46). Paul plays the role of the Isaianic Servant when he claims the
Scriptures spoke about him: “I have appointed you as a light for the nations so
that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth” (13:47). The characters of
Acts, then, including Paul, play the role of the Isaianic servant in bearing wit-
ness to Israel’s restoration and salvation – an event which results in salvation
going to the gentiles.33
Third, Paul is equipped for his prophetic task through divine intervention
and Christophanies. For example, Christ sends him the disciple Ananias who
30 I have argued this in more detail in Joshua W. Jipp, Reading Acts (Eugene, OR: Cascade,
2018), 34–8.
31 See David W. Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 88–
93.
32 The explicit quotation of Isaiah 49:6 (LXX) in Acts 13:47 supports the claim that this
portion of Isaiah also lies behind Acts 1:8 (and Luke 24:47). So Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New
Exodus, 96–7.
33 See here Holly Beers, The Followers of Jesus as the ‘Servant’: Luke’s Model from Isaiah
for the Disciples in Luke-Acts, LNTS 535 (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2015), 130–3.
grants Paul hospitality, the Holy Spirit, and baptism (9:17–19; also 22:16). The
risen Christ continues to make epiphanic appearances to Paul whereby he en-
courages him and strengthens him for his prophetic task. For example, Paul’s
so-called first missionary journey (Acts 13:1–14:28) begins when the Holy Spir-
it speaks to the “prophets and teachers” (13:1) in Antioch: “Set apart (άφορίσατε)
for me both Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them (εἰς τὸ
ἔργον ὃ προσκέκλημαι αὐτοῦς)” (Acts 13:2).34 After experiencing hostility in
Corinth, the Lord appears to Paul in a vision and says: “Do not fear, but speak
and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will lay a hand on you to
harm you. For I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:9–10). The promise
“fear not” resonates with numerous oracles in the Scriptures of Israel, not least
the mission of the Servant in Isaiah (Isa 41:10; 43:1–5; see Acts 13:47). But most
important here for the Lukan Paul’s mission is the commission of Jeremiah who
not only proclaims God’s word to Israel but is also “a prophet to the nations”
(Jer 1:5b; also 1:10). So, in one account of Paul’s commissioning, Christ declares,
“I am sending you to [the nations]” (Acts 26:17a). God’s promise to Paul is sim-
ilar to his promise to Jeremiah: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to
deliver you, says the Lord” (Jer 1:8). Christ continues to appear to Paul either to
encourage him or to move him in new directions. Thus, during Paul’s imprison-
ment in Jerusalem, Luke declares “that night the Lord stood by [Paul] and said,
‘Be courageous! For just as you have testified about me (διεμαρτύρω τὰ περὶ
έμοῦ) in Jerusalem so you must testify (μαρτυρῆσαι) about me in Rome” (23:11).
While on board the ship bound for Rome, the imprisoned Paul receives visits
from “God’s angel” (27:23) to encourage Paul that he will indeed make it safely
to Rome as will everyone on the boat (27:24–26).
4.2 Paul the Rejected Prophet

The portrayal of Paul as the preacher of eschatological salvation and repentance
to Israel comes to a tragic climax (for Luke) when he is rejected by his fellow
Jews in Rome. I’ll focus my comments here, then, primarily on Acts 28:17–31
where we see four themes which establish Paul as Israel’s prophet.35
First, in Acts 28:17–20 Paul’s trials parallel Jesus’ trials.36 Both are faithful to
the Jewish law (Luke 23:14–16; 24:26–27); neither have acted against the Jewish
people (Luke 23:14–15); both have been delivered into the hands of the Romans
(Luke 24:7, 20); neither deserve death (Luke 23:15, 22); and both are declared
innocent (Luke 23:4, 15, 22). Paul’s prophetic suffering witness, then, recapitu-
lates and follows the same pattern as that of Jesus. The parallels between Paul
34 See also Acts 16:7–10.
35 In more detail, see my argument in Jipp, Divine Visitations and Hospitality, 272–81.
36 Walter Radl, Paulus und Jesus im lukanischen Doppelwerk: Untersuchungen zu Parallel-
motiven im Lukasevangelium und in der Apostelgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,

1975), 252–67.
230 Joshua W. Jipp
and Jesus, however, are ominous as they suggest that Paul’s fate will mirror that
of Jesus as his fellow Jews will again reject the agent of the divine visit.
Second, Paul’s chains are a sign of his loyalty to “the hope of Israel” (v. 20b).
He has been called to take “the name” of the Lord not only to the Gentiles but
also to “the sons of Israel” (9:15b). His regular practice of seeking out the local
Jews when he arrives in a new city confirms this.37 Despite opposition and per-
secution, Paul never ceases from proclaiming to the Jewish people that this hope
of Israel has been fulfilled through the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus (23:6;
24:15; 26:6–7). Throughout the trial scenes Paul declares that he stands trial as a
result of his commitment to the promised hope of Israel for which the twelve
tribes have been longing (26:6–7a). Paul spends night and day trying to persuade
the Roman Jews by “giving witness” to the kingdom of God based on interpre-
tations “from the law of Moses and the Prophets” (28:23b). Paul, then, is no
Jewish apostate. He is a faithful, loyal, and persistent prophet to Israel as he
proclaims the fulfillment of God’s promises and warns of the consequences of
rejecting them. His chains, representative of the Jewish people’s rejection of his
message, confirm his status as God’s rejected prophet to Israel.38
Third, Paul’s quotation of Isa 6:9–10 marks him out as continuing the Isaian-
ic prophetic ministry. Commentators note correctly that Luke has been saving
this text for the final scene in Acts 28, but fewer comment upon Luke’s decision
to include the command given to the prophet: “Go to this people and say …”
(πορεύθητι πρὸς τὸν λαὸν τοῦτον καὶ εἰπόν, Acts 28:26).39 The effect of Luke’s
inclusion of Isaiah 6:9a is that it allows the reader to identify Paul as the proph-
et who fulfills the command given to Isaiah. The language of the sending of the
prophet reminds the reader of Paul’s call to the Gentiles which, as we have seen,
is also cast in the form of a prophetic call narrative (Acts 9:15–16; 18:9–10;
22:10–21; 26:15–18).40 The evocation of Paul’s prophetic call and his identifica-
tion with God’s mandate to Isaiah evoke Luke’s larger literary pattern of the
rejected prophet, preparing the reader for Paul’s final encounter with the Jews.41
The scene functions as Paul’s third and final encounter with Jewish resistance to
his message, resistance which has taken place in Asia at Pisidian Antioch (13:42–
47), in Greece at Corinth (18:5–6), and now in Italy at Rome (28:23–28).42 The
37 See here Acts 13:5, 14; 14:1; 16:13; 17:1; 18:2–4; and 19:8.
38 Paul’s chains in his imprisonment are referred to in Acts 22:5, 29; 23:29; 24:27; 26:28, and
31.
39 See, however, Daniel Marguerat, The First Christian Historian: Writing the ‘Acts of the
Apostles,’ trans. Ken McKinney, et. al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 225.
40 David P. Moessner, Lord of the Banquet: The Literary and Theological Significance of
the Lukan Travel Narrative (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 298–9.

41 See Johnson, The Literary Function of Possessions; Marguerat, The First Christian His-
torian, 139–40.
42 So also David P. Moessner, “Paul in Acts: Preacher of Eschatological Repentance to Is-
rael,” NTS 34 (1988): 96–104, here 101–3.

three scenes follow the pattern: a) proclamation to the Jews, b) Jewish rejection
of the proclamation of the divine visit, c) a statement by Paul that he will turn to
the Gentiles, and d) Gentile acceptance of Paul’s message.
Paul acts the role of the prophet in Pisidian Antioch as the proclaimer of the
word of God. So, Paul proclaims “a word of exhortation” (λόγος παρακλήσεως,
13:15) and “this word of salvation” (ὁ λόγος τῆς σωτηρίας ταύτης, 13:26) by means
of interpreting “the Law and the Prophets” (13:15). He criticizes those leaders of
Israel who put Jesus to death for their “ignorance of the words of the prophets
(τὰς φωνὰς τῶν προφητῶν) which are read every sabbath” (13:27). Paul warns
them lest they too act the part of those who hear the words of the prophets but
reject their warnings. Furthermore, when some Jews hear “the word of the
Lord” (τὸν λόγον τοῦ κυρίου, 13:44) and then reject “the word of God” (τὸν
λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, 13:46), Paul (and Barnabas) performs a prophetic sign: “they
shook off the dust from their feet against them” (13:51; cf. Luke 10:11). This
leads to Paul’s claim that he will turn to the Gentiles who “give glory to the
word of the Lord” (ἐδόξαζον τὸν λόγον τοῦ κυρίου, 13:48). Luke’s concluding
statement regarding Paul’s prophetic ministry here is: “So the word of the Lord
(ὁ λόγος τοῦ κυρίου) spread throughout the region” (13:49). Paul is, then, clearly
an agent of the divine word. Similarly, in Corinth, Paul’s proclamation of the
word of God is rejected by the Jews resulting in Paul, again, “shaking out his
garments” (18:6; cf. Luke 10:11) as a testimony against them for their rejection of
the word, and he claims that now he will go to the Gentiles (18:6b).
While the response is notably less hostile, Luke also interprets the Roman
Jews’ response to Paul and his message as one of rejection. After Paul’s christo-
logical witness to the Jews, Luke tells the readers that “some were persuaded by
his words while others did not believe” (οἱ μὲν ἐπείθοντο τοῖς λεγομένοις, οἱ δὲ
ἠπίστουν, 28:24). Luke’s narration of a mixed response is stereotypical (cf. Acts
2:12–13; 13:42–45; 17:32–34; 18:4), and there is no reason to deny that Luke pres-
ents some Jews as convinced by Paul’s message. Yet given the heightened inten-
sity of the scene it is apparent that Luke intends that the reader view Paul’s
preaching as an anticlimactic failure. Luke’s emphasis is found in the tragedy
that Paul’s preaching about Jesus produces “disunity” in the Jewish people
(ἀσύμφωνοι δὲ ὄντες πρὸς ἀλλήλους, 28:25). Luke’s portraits of the unity of the
early Christian community and their ability to overcome conflict (e.g., Acts
2:42–47; 4:32–35; 8:1–25; 10:1–11:18) stand in contrast to the division of the Jew-
ish people in Acts 28:24–25.43 Further, the disunity of the Roman Jews stands
in contrast to the unity of the witness of Paul, the Prophet Isaiah, and the Holy
Spirit who all agree in their “one word” of judgment: “Paul spoke one word,
43 So David W. Pao, “Disagreement among the Jews in Acts 28,” in Early Christian Voices:
in Texts, Traditions, and Symbols: Essays in Honor of Francois Bovon, ed. David H. Warren,
Ann Graham Brock, and David W. Pao, BiInS 66 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 109–18.
232 Joshua W. Jipp
‘Rightly did the Holy Spirit speak through the Prophet Isaiah to your fathers.’”
(εἰποντός τοῦ Παύλου ῥῆμα ἕν, ὅτι καλῶς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἐλάλησεν διὰ Ἠσαΐου
τοῦ προφήτου πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας ὑμῶν, 28:25b). As a result of their rejection, Paul
takes on the role of the prophet Isaiah while the people take on the guise of the
ancient Israelites who rejected the prophets. Paul identifies the Roman Jews
with the people of Isaiah’s time by referring to the latter as “your fathers”
(28:25b; cf. Luke 6:23; 11:48; 13:33–34; Acts 7:51–53).44
Fourth, Paul speaks a prophetic word of judgment to the unbelieving portion
of Israel. Paul quotes Isaiah 6:9–10 in full as a message of judgment against
them. They have had ample opportunity to “hear” (ἀκοῇ ἀκούσετε) and “see”
(βλέποντες βλέψετε) but their sensory perceptions are dull and hardened (28:26b).
Luke heightens the intensity of the scene and the literary finality of Paul’s mis-
sion to the Jews by moving the Isaiah 6 quotation from Jesus’ Parable of the
Sower (Mark 4:12; Matt 13:14–15) and saving the bulk of it for this final scene.
In Luke 8:10 Jesus explains that to those who do not receive the mystery of the
kingdom, the parables work such that “while seeing they may not see and while
hearing they may not understand” (Luke 8:10b). But the full quotation is not yet
used against them in judgment. The first rejection of the divine visitation
through Jesus is explained briefly with the short quote from Isaiah, but the final
rejection of the second visitation through the prophetic emissaries receives a
note of rebuke with a full citation of Isa 6:9–10 and occurring as it does at the
end of the narrative.45
The inability of the Roman Jews to “see” God’s salvation is ironic and tragic
given that one of the fundamental components of Jesus’ ministry was to give
sight to the blind.46 In his inaugural and programmatic sermon in Nazareth,
Jesus quotes Isa 61:1 and declares that the Spirit of the Lord “has sent me…to
open the eyes for the blind” (Luke 4:18). Given that the healing of blindness is
one of the main components of Jesus’ mission, one finds that vision and the
healing of blindness function as metaphors for salvation and the recognition of
God’s salvation throughout Luke-Acts (see Luke 7:21–23; 10:23–24; 18:35–43;
Acts 9:1–19; 26:18).47 The connection between vision and God’s salvation is
stated clearly by Simeon who, upon encountering the child Jesus gave praise to
God and declared: “my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:30). This salva-
tion is said to be not only for Israel but also “a light of revelation for the Gen-
tiles” (Luke 2:32a; cf. Acts 13:47). But already in Jesus’ promise to heal the blind
44 See also Marguerat, The First Christian Historian, 225; Susan Wendel, Scriptural Inter-
pretation and Community Self-Definition in Luke-Acts and the Writings of Justin Martyr,
NovTSup 139 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 193–5.
45 So also Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, 476; Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus,
105.
46 Cf. Robert C. Tannehill, “Israel in Luke-Acts: A Tragic Story,” JBL 104 (1985): 69–85.
47 See Dennis Hamm, “Sight to the Blind: Vision as Metaphor in Luke,” Bib 67 (1986):
457–77.
there is an ominous note of rejection sounded by the Nazareth synagogue (Luke

4:25–27), foreshadowing that Jesus’ promised healing will not be embraced by
everyone. Further, in Luke 3:4–6 John the Baptist quotes another Isaianic text
at length, this time Isa 40:3–5, which ends with the promise that “all flesh will
see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).48 Here too salvation is something that is
seen by all peoples, but again it is something which will not be met with full
acceptance (Luke 3:7–9). Luke’s literary project is, then, bracketed by Isaianic
references to sight and blindness. Between this Isaianic inclusio centering on
sight, light, and salvation (Luke 3:4–6; 4:18–19 and Acts 28:25–28), Luke also
narrates Paul’s mission through an Isaianic lens whereby Paul’s task is to illu-
mine the Gentiles with God’s salvific light: “for so has the Lord commanded us:
‘I have appointed you as a light to the Gentiles (εἰς φῶς ἐθνῶν) so that you may
bring salvation to the end of the earth” (Acts 13:47; Isa 49:6). Before Herod
Agrippa II Paul summarizes his prophetic ministry as an encounter with the
exalted Lord who commissions Paul “to open their [i.e., Jews and Gentiles]
eyes” (ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν) and to bring them “to the light” (εἰς φῶς, 26:18;
cf. 26:23). Thus, the Gospel begins with the promise of the vision of God’s sal-
vation for “all flesh” and “Gentiles” (Luke 3:6//Isa 40:3; cf. Luke 2:30–32) and
with Jesus’ mission to give sight to the blind (Luke 4:18//Isa 61:1), a prophetic
mission which is continued in Acts by the apostolic witnesses who are commis-
sioned by the exalted Lord to bring light to the Gentiles (Acts 13:47 and 26:18//
Isa 49:6), but concludes with a judgment against the Jews who have “seen” but
not “perceived” and have closed their eyes to God’s salvific healing (τοὺς
ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἐκάμμυσαν, 28:27b). Isaac Oliver strikes the right balance be-
tween judgment and hope for Israel: “Luke accordingly cites Isa 6:9–10 to ac-
count for the present condition of the Jewish people rather than to deny Israel’s
future restoration. At the end of Acts, Luke reaches an impasse.”49
5. Conclusion: The Lukan Paul’s “Jewishness” in Acts
In this essay, I have argued that the Lukan Paul’s relationship to his Jewish her-
itage is best understood by way of Luke’s two major christological categories:
messianism and prophecy. Paul’s messianic convictions results in a strong ap-
propriation of Israel’s ancestral heritage. Lukan messianic Christology has di-
rect implications for understanding his view of the people of God. On the one
hand, there is no doubt that Luke wants his audience to embrace the view that
Paul is Torah-observant, faithful to his ancestral customs, and loyal to his own
people. Nevertheless, he does not shy away from tackling what must have been
48 On this cluster of Isaianic texts, see Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus, 105–9.
234 Joshua W. Jipp
a significant perception of Paul as an apostate from Moses and as one who pro-
vokes his fellow Jewish contemporaries. It is not just that Paul equates the hope
of Israel with the resurrection from the dead that is disruptive; rather, it is Paul’s
argument that the hope of Israel has surprisingly taken place, at least as a fore-
taste, through Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, resurrected, and now enthroned-
in-heaven Messiah that provokes controversy. God’s resurrection of the Messi-
ah has inaugurated Israel’s restoration but full restoration, the final resurrection
of the dead, requires repentance and an embrace of the messianic king. It seems
easy to imagine listening to Paul’s sermon, for example, in Pisidian Antioch and
agreeing with Paul’s Davidic-messianic interpretation of Israel’s Scriptures and
history or advancing arguments that would contest his interpretation and offer
a different alternative. The starting point, however, would depend upon wheth-
er one grants Paul’s claim that God has indeed raised Jesus from the dead and
enthroned him to a position of heavenly rule.
Luke portrays Paul as a prophet of the risen Messiah in order to explain his
task of calling both Israel and the nations to repentance as well as to establish a
precedent that legitimates his (and Jesus’s) rejection by most of his Jewish con-
temporaries. Luke employs a variety of prophetic motifs and prophetic scrip-
tural intertexts that work to establish Paul’s task as consisting in testimony to
the risen Messiah and to explain why his mission was consistently rejected by
his fellow Jewish contemporaries. Acceptance of Luke’s pro-Jewish depiction
of the Lukan Paul should not be at the expense or minimization that Luke is
positive regarding Jews who believe in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. Those Jews
who do not believe Jesus is the Messiah are characterized as those who reject
and kill the prophets, that is, they are “jealous” (5:17; 13:45; 17:5), instigate mob
violence (e.g., 7:54–60; 14:1–7, 19; 17:5–9), and are blind to the meaning and sig-
nificance of their own institutions and Scriptures (e.g., Luke 19:41–44; Acts
28:25–28). This puts one in the place of simultaneously affirming that the Lu-
kan Paul does not in any way reject God’s election of Israel or as replacing Ju-
daism with Christianity but also where the significance of God’s election of Is-
rael is found in Jesus the Messiah and where those who oppose Paul and reject
his message find themselves excluded from their own covenantal blessings
(13:46; 18:6; 28:25–28).
The Theophany of the Resurrected Messiah
The “Jewish” Christology of Paul’s Speeches in Acts
Murray J. Smith
1. Paul’s Christology: How Jewish? How High?
In discussions of the apostle Paul’s relationship to Judaism, the question of

Christology is never far from the surface. Among those recently seeking to lo-
cate “Paul within Judaism,”1 Paula Fredriksen argues that while Paul makes
“very high claims for Jesus,” he stops short of identifying Jesus as God.2 In
making this case, Fredriksen takes issue with what she calls the “Big Bang
Christology” championed by other members of the “Early High Christology
Club,”3 and warns against the danger of anachronistically reading Nicaea and
Chalcedon back onto Paul.4 Her case, like that of her interlocutors, understand-
ably focusses on Paul’s letters. My goal in this essay, however, is to advance this
discussion of Paul and the origins of “Christological monotheism” by approach-
ing it from a different angle – the Christology of Paul’s speeches in the book of
Acts.5 In approaching the question from this angle, I make no attempt to assess
the historical veracity of Acts’ portrait of Paul’s Christology, or to compare it
1 For an introduction to the “Paul within Judaism” approach, see esp. Mark D. Nanos and
Magnus Zetterholm, Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-century Context to the Apostle
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 1–30; Paula Fredriksen, “What Does It Mean to See Paul
‘within Judaism’?,” JBL 141:2 (2022): 359–80.
2 Paula Fredriksen, “How High Can Early High Christology Be?,” in Monotheism and
Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Matthew V. Novenson, NovTSup 180 (Leiden:

Brill, 2020), 293–320.
3 Fredriksen primarily engages David B. Capes, Richard J. Bauckham, Larry W. Hurtado,
and Carey C. Newman, especially their essays in Novenson, Monotheism and Christology.
4 Fredriksen, “How High?,” 293–5.
5 For recent surveys and analysis of the debate see esp.: Jörg Frey, “Eine neue religionsges-
chichtliche Perspektive: Larry W. Hurtados Lord Jesus Christ und die Herausbildung der
frühen Christologie,” in Reflections on the Early Christian History of Religion. Erwägungen
zur früchristlichen Religionsgeschichte, ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Jörg Frey, AJEC 81
(Leiden: Brill, 2013), 117–69; Brandon D. Smith, “What Christ Does, God Does: Surveying
Recent Scholarship on Christological Monotheism,” CBR 17:2 (2019): 184–208; David B.
Capes, “New Testament Christology,” in The State of New Testament Studies, ed. Scot Mc
Knight and Nijay K. Gupta (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 161–81; Larry W. Hurta-
do, “The New religionsgeschichtliche Schule at Thirty: Observations by a Participant,” in
Novenson, Monotheism and Christology, 9–31.
236 Murray J. Smith
systematically with Paul’s letters. 6 My limited goal is to assess the testimony of

the book of Acts to Paul’s Christology, with a view to answering the questions
implied by my title: “how Jewish is it?” and “how high?”7
My broad thesis is that Paul’s Christology in Acts is thoroughly Jewish, but
also remarkably new: while all of his primary categories are drawn from the
Scriptures of Israel, and many of his major affirmations find parallels in early
Judaism, Paul’s specific Christological configurations are shaped by the history
of Jesus of Nazareth and, especially, by his theophanic visions of Jesus on the
road to Damascus and in the Jerusalem temple. My primary contention is that,
in the book of Acts, Paul proclaims Jesus not only as the crucified-and-risen
Davidic Messiah, but as the one who embodies the very presence of Israel’s
God. In what follows, I examine each of Paul’s major public speeches as he pro-
claims Jesus in increasingly exalted terms as the Saviour of Israel (13:16–41,
46–47), the Judge of the nations (17:22–31), the Lord of his church (20:17–35),
and the very presence of God (22:1–21; 24:10–21; 26:2–29). The final section of-
fers a synthesis and assessment.
2. The Saviour of Israel: The Christology of Paul’s Synagogue

Exhortation in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:16–41, 46–47)
Paul’s “word of encouragement” (13:15: λόγος παρακλήσεως) in the synagogue in

Pisidian Antioch (13:16–41, 46–47) is the book of Acts’ most extended presenta-
tion of his preaching of Jesus among the Jews. This speech appears as a model of
the Scriptural reasoning Paul regularly employed in his ministry to the Jews (cf.
14:1; 17:2–3; 18:5; 28:23), 8 and primarily presents Jesus as the Saviour of Israel.
Three features of the speech locate Paul’s proclamation firmly within Juda-
ism. First, in the three vocative addresses which structure the speech, Paul iden-
tifies his audience in classic Jewish categories: he speaks to “Men of Israel”
(13:16: Ἄνδρες Ἰσραηλῖται), “sons of the family of Abraham” (13:26: υἱοὶ γένους
Ἀβραὰμ), and “brothers” (13:26, 38: ἀδελφοί).9 Second, Paul employs a classic
6 For the issues here, see Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–2015), 1:221–319; Isaac W. Oliver, “The ‘Historical Paul’ and
the Paul of Acts,” in Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism,
ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 51–80.
7 For the sake of simplicity, I refer to “Paul” rather than “the Lukan Paul” or “Luke’s pre-
sentation of Paul,” or “the testimony of Acts to Paul.” These more cumbersome phrases
should be assumed throughout.
8 Similarly, K. L. Anderson, “But God Raised Him from the Dead”: The Theology of Jesus’
Resurrection in Luke-Acts, PBM (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), 235; Brandon D. Crowe,
The Hope of Israel: The Resurrection of Christ in the Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids: Bak-
er Academic, 2020), 49.
9 Cf. Acts 13:16, 26: “God-fearers” (οἱ φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν). For a survey of structural
The Theophany of the Resurrected Messiah 237
Jewish rhetorical strategy by locating his audience at a climax within biblical

history, in order to call for an appropriate response.10 His “word of encourage-
ment” follows “the reading from the Law and the Prophets” (13:15: μετὰ δὲ τὴν
ἀνάγνωσιν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν), and is grounded in those Scriptures.11
In the first part of the speech (13:16–25), he efficiently surveys the biblical nar-
rative, beginning with God’s “choice” of Israel (13:17),12 and reaching a climax
when God “raised up David to be their king,” (13:22: ἤγειρεν τὸν Δαυὶδ αὐτοῖς εἰς
βασιλέα; cf. 1 Sam 13:14; 16:12–13; Ps 89:20; Isa 44:28). In the last part of the
speech (13:38–41), Paul locates himself in the prophetic tradition of cri-
tique-from-within, applying words from Habakkuk to warn his hearers against
rejecting his message (13:40–41 citing Hab 1:5 lxx).
Third, and most significantly, Paul’s characterization of Jesus – especially in
the middle section of the speech (13:26–37) – is thoroughly Jewish. In broad
terms, Paul draws on the language of the Psalms and Isaiah when he declares
that in proclaiming Jesus, he is “bringing good news” to Israel (13:32: εὐαγγε
λιζόμεθα; cf. 14:15), “the word of salvation” (13:26: ὁ λόγος τῆς σωτηρίας).13 More
specifically, Paul picks up his earlier proclamation of Jesus as “Christ” (ὁ
χριστός), “Son of God” (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ), and “Lord” (ὁ κύριος) (9:20, 22, 28),
and develops these categories, which are central to his preaching of Jesus
throughout Acts.14 In particular, Paul characterizes Jesus as the Davidic Messi-
ah when he declares that it is from David’s “offspring” (σπέρμα) that “God has
brought to Israel a Saviour […] as he promised” (13:23: ὁ θεὸς […] κατ’ ἐπαγγελίαν
ἤγαγεν τῷ Ἰσραὴλ σωτῆρα),15 and when he identifies Jesus as “the Son” prophe-
proposals, with arguments for this three part structure, see: John E. Morgan-Wynne, Paul’s
Pisidian Antioch Speech (Acts 13) (Eugene: Pickwick, 2014), 62–8.
10 For this strategy see, e.g.: Deut 26:5–11; Josh 24:1–15; 1 Sam 12:6–18; Ps 78; 105–106; 136;
Neh 9:6–36; 1 En. 90:6–12; Acts 7:2–53; Heb 11:1–12:3. Cf. Joshua W. Jipp, “The Paul of Acts:
Proclaimer of the Hope of Israel or Teacher of Apostasy from Moses?,” NovT 62:1 (2020):
60–78, here 69 and literature there.
11 Cf. Carl Mosser, “Torah Instruction, Discussion, and Prophecy in First-Century Syna-
gogues,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Literary and Social Contexts for the
New Testament, ed. S. Porter and A. W. Pitts (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 523–51.
12 For God “choosing” Israel (‫ ָבַּחר‬/ ἐκλέγομαι), the Lord’s “elect” (‫ ָבּׅחיר‬/ ἐκλεκτός), see:
Deut 4:37; 7:6 [LXX: προαιρέω]; 7:7; 10:15; 14:2; 1 Chr 16:13; Ps 33:12; 105:6, 43; 106:5; 135:4;
Isa 41:8–9; 42:1 [?]; 43:10, 20; 44:1–2; 45:4; 65:9, 15, 22; 66:23 LXX; Ezek 20:5 [LXX: αἱρετίζω].
Cf. Wis 3:9; 4:15; Sir 46:1; Tob 8:15; 1 En. 48:9; 56:6; 62:11–12; Jub. 2:19; Pss. Sol. 9:9; T. Mos.
4:2; 4 Ezra 15:21; 16:73–74; 1QpHab IX, 12; 4Q534 I, 10.
13 The book of Acts commonly uses “gospel” (εὐαγγελ-) language to characterize Paul’s
message: 14:7, 21; 15:35; 16:10; 17:18; 20:24. For the combination of “good news” (‫ בשר‬/
εὐαγγελίζω) and “salvation” (‫ ישועה‬/ σωτηρία), see: Ps 40:10–11; 68:12 (with 68:20, 21); 96:2; Isa
52:7. Cf. 1 Chr 16:23 [LXX: ἀναγγέλλω]; Joel 2:32; Nah 1:15; Isa 40:9; 41:27; 60:6; 61:1–2; Pss.
Sol. 11:1. See: “εὐαγγέλιον,” NIDNTTE 2:307.
14 See esp. Acts 16:31; 17:3; 18:5; 20:21; 24:24; 26:23; 28:31.
15 Note, especially, the language of “promise” (ἐπαγγελία) and “offspring” / “seed”
(σπέρμα), which – connected with “David” (Acts 13:22–23) – evokes God’s promise to David
ָ ‫עך ַאֲח‬
(2 Sam 7:12: ‫ֶריך‬ ָ ֲ ְ ‫ ַוֲהִקימֹ ִתי ֶאת־ַז ְר‬/ καὶ ἀναστήσω τὸ σπέρμα σου μετὰ σέ), and the biblical “seed”
238 Murray J. Smith
sied in Psalm 2:7 (13:32–33). In these ways, Paul roots his proclamation of Jesus
in Israel’s Scriptures, declaring that those Scriptures have reached their divinely
appointed climax in him (cf. Rom 1:2; 16:26; 1 Cor 15:3–4; 2 Tim 3:15).
At the same time, as Paul himself recognizes, his proclamation of the gospel
of Jesus involves a reading of Israel’s Scriptures, and a configuration of messiah-
ship, which is genuinely novel within early Judaism (13:27). Five features of the
speech are significant. First, while the Scriptures do not “in direct terms, antic-
ipate a χριστός who would suffer and die,”16 and there is no strong early Jewish
parallel for a crucified Messiah, Paul asserts that the condemnation of Jesus “ful-
filled the utterances of the prophets” (13:27: ἐπλήρωσαν […] τὰς φωνὰς τῶν
προφητῶν), and that, in crucifying Jesus, his enemies “completed all that was
written of him” (13:29: ἐτέλεσαν πάντα τὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένα).17 Paul does
not here cite or allude to any specific biblical texts, but – as elsewhere – affirms
generally that “the prophets” predicted the suffering of the Messiah.18 G. R. La-
nier points to four possible biblical sources for this affirmation, namely, “the
‘Suffering Servant’ (Isa 52–53), the righteous sufferer of the psalms, the violent
fate of the prophets, and the eschatological role of various ‘saviour’ or ‘anointed’
figures.”19 He rightly concludes, however, that Paul’s general appeals to Scrip-
ture “reflect what appears to be a burgeoning apostolic hermeneutic” according
to which “the entire OT is retrospectively seen as containing a messianology of
suffering.”20 In the context of the wider narrative of Luke-Acts, Paul’s state-
(‫ ֶזַרע‬/ σπέρμα) promise which stands behind it (Gen 3:15; 15:5; 17:7–8). Cf. Rita F. Cefalu, “The
Sufferings and Glory of Jesus the Messiah in Acts 2–3,” in The Seed of Promise: The Sufferings
and Glory of the Messiah, ed. Paul R. Williamson and Rita F. Cefalu (Wilmore: Glossa House,
2020), 285–98.
16 Gregory R. Lanier, “‘As It Is Written’… Where? Examining Generic Citations of Scrip-
ture in the New Testament,” JSNT 43:4 (2021): 570–604, here 578.
17 Two possible exceptions provide only weak parallels. (1.) 4 Ezra 7:29 announces that “my
Son the Messiah shall die,” perhaps reflecting on Dan 9:25–26 (see Michael E. Stone, Fourth
Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1990), 216, n. 59). This text, however, likely dates from “the time of Domitian (81–96 C. E.)”
(Fourth Ezra, 10), and thus post-dates Paul, and (likely also) Acts. (2.) Targum Pseudo-Jo-
nathan identifies the Isaianic “servant” (Isa 52–53) as the Messiah (Tg. Ps.-J. on Isa 52:13:
‫“[ ַעב ִדי ְמִשׁיָחא‬my servant, the Messiah”]; 53:10: ‫“[ ְבַמלכוּת ְמִשׁיְחהוֹן‬in the kingdom of their Mes
siah”]). This text, however, also post-dates Paul, and sees in the text a triumphant rather than
a suffering Messiah (see Jostein Ådna, “The Servant of Isaiah 53 as Triumphant and Interced-
ing Messiah: The Reception of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 in the Targum of Isaiah with Special Atten-
tion to the Concept of the Messiah,” in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Chris-
tian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004),
189–224).
18 Acts 17:2–3; 26:22–23; Rom 3:21, 25; 1 Cor 15:3; cf. Luke 24:25–27, 44–47; Acts 3:18; 1 Pet
1:10–11.
19 Lanier, “As It Is Written,” 578–9. Cf. Kenneth D. Litwak, Echoes of Scripture in Luke-
Acts: Telling the History of God’s People Intertextually, JSNTSup 282 (London: T&T Clark,
2005), 119–41.
20 Lanier, “As It Is Written,” 579. Lanier here refers specifically to Acts 3:18 and 17:2–3;
26:22–23, but his assessment applies equally well to Acts 13:27, 29.
ments may especially evoke the biblical pattern highlighted in Stephen’s speech
according to which God’s people reject those sent to them – first Moses (7:25, 27,
35, 39), then the prophets (7:52), and now “the Righteous One,” Christ (7:52–
53).21 More specifically, his reference to Jesus’s cross as “the tree” (13:29: τὸ
ξύλον) probably relies on Deuteronomy’s solemn affirmation that the one hung
on a “tree” (‫ ֵעץ‬/ ξύλον) is “cursed by God” (Deut 21:22–23; cf. Gal 3:13).22 Fur-
ther, given the prominence of Isa 52–53 in Christian interpretation of Jesus’s
suffering, not least in Luke-Acts, Paul’s affirmation likely also evokes that pro-
phetic text.23 Thus, Paul’s characterization of Jesus as the rejected and suffering
Messiah is profoundly biblical, being rooted in the Law and the Prophets, even
as it also appears as a novelty within early Judaism.
Second, and similarly, Paul’s affirmation of Jesus’s resurrection is simultane-
ously deeply biblical and remarkably new (13:30–37). The biblical promise of
resurrection is rooted in the identity of Israel’s God as “the living God,” the
“creator of the ends of the earth,”24 and is thus far more pervasive in all three
divisions of Israel’s Scriptures than has often been recognized.25 Since, howev-
er, the explicit promise of bodily resurrection only appears in the Prophets and
the Writings,26 the resurrection hope, while accepted among the Pharisees and
at Qumran,27 was rejected by the Sadducees.28 Crucially, however, there is no
evidence for Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be raised, on his own,
in the “middle of history,” ahead of the resurrection of all God’s people, at the
end.29 Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as “the first to rise from the dead” (26:23:
πρῶτος ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν) is, therefore, unprecedented in early Judaism.
Third, and closely related to this, Paul’s identification of Jesus as the resur-
rected “Son of God” is, again, both deeply biblical, and startlingly new (13:30–
37). In biblical perspective, “Son of God” is primarily a covenantal category,
and is used metaphorically to describe the filial relationship between God and
21 Cf. Keener, Acts, 2:2067. For Luke’s theme of ironic fulfilment in Jesus’s death, see: Jerry
L. Ray, Narrative Irony in Luke-Acts: The Paradoxical Interaction of Prophetic Fulfillment

and Jewish Rejection, MBPS 28 (Lewiston: Mellen Biblical Press, 1996), 155–6.
22 Note also: Acts 5:30; 10:39; 1 Pet 2:24. Cf. Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament
(Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1965), 142.

23 UBS5 identifies allusions to Isa 53 in Luke 22:37; 23:33–34; 24:27, 46; Acts 8:32–33; 10:43.
For extended discussion, see: Peter Stuhlmacher, “Isaiah 53 in the Gospels and Acts,” in
Janowski and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant, 147–62.
24 E.g. Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10; 1 Sam 17:26, 36; Ps 42:2; 84:2; Isa 40:28; Jer 10:10; Dan 6:20, 26;
Hos 1:10.
25 See esp. J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory
of the God of Life (Yale: Yale University Press, 2006).

26 Job 19:23–27; Isa 25:6–7; 26:19; Ezek 37:1–14; Dan 12:1–2, 13; Hos 13:14.
27 Josephus, A. J. 18.11–25; 4Q521 frg. 2+4 ii,12; frg. 7+5 ii, 6–12; Acts 23:6–9; 24:15.
28 Luke 20:27–40; Acts 23:6–9; 24:15. See N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God,
COQG 3 (London: SPCK, 2003), 129–206.

29 So Wright, Resurrection, 372, 415; idem, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, COQG 4
(London: SPCK, 2013), 1046, 1099, 1101, 1211.

240 Murray J. Smith
his human covenant partners, first Adam (Gen 1:26–28 with 5:1–3; cf. Luke
3:38), then Israel (Exod 4:22–23; Jer 31:20; Hos 11:1),30 then David and his de-
scendants (2 Sam 7:14; 1 Chr 22:10; 28:6; Ps 2:7).31 Following this trajectory,
“Son of God” functions as a messianic title in some texts from Qumran (4Q246
II, 1; 4Q174 I, 11 citing 2 Sam 7:14),32 and in Fourth Ezra (7:28–29; 13:32, 37, 52;
14:9).33 Paul draws on this biblical trajectory to declare Jesus as the messianic
“Son of God,” but further connects this identity – in an entirely unprecedented
manner – to Jesus’s resurrection from the dead (13:32–33). Nevertheless, Paul
sees Jesus’s resurrection and ascension prefigured in God’s “lifting up” (ὕψωσεν)
of his typological “son,” Israel, in the Exodus (13:17),34 and in God’s “raising
up” (ἤγειρεν) of his royal “son,” David, to the kingship (13:22–23).35 He identi-
fies, further, three Scriptures – Ps 2:7 (13:33), Isa 55:3 (13:34), and Ps 16:10 (13:35)
– which, he declares, speak prophetically of Messiah Jesus’s resurrection to in-
corruptible life. Indeed, Paul also finds the theological ground for Jesus’s resur-
rection in these texts: unlike David, the typological “son” who “saw corrup-
tion” for his sin, Jesus is the Lord’s “Holy One” (τὸν ὅσιόν) – his perfectly
obedient Son – whom the Lord would not allow to “see corruption” (ἰδεῖν
διαφθοράν) (13:35–36 citing Ps 16:10 [15:10 LXX]),36 and so raised from the dead
(cf. Acts 2:24–32).37 These connections between the Messiah’s obedient life, res-
urrection, and identity as “Son of God” find clear parallels in Pauls’ letters,
where Jesus’s perfect obedience (esp. Rom 5:18–19; cf. Phil 2:8) provides the
ground for his resurrection and exaltation as “Son of God in power” (Rom 1:3–
4; cf. Phil 2:9–11).38
30 Cf. plural constructions in Deut 14:1; 32:19; Isa 1:2. Note also God as “Father” of Israel:
Deut 32:6; Ps 103:13; Isa 63:16; 64:7; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9; Mal 1:6; 2:10.
31 Angels appear as “sons of God,” but always in the plural (Job 1:6; Ps 29:1; 89:7).
32 Tucker S. Ferda, “Naming the Messiah: A Contribution to the 4Q246 ‘Son of God’
Debate,” DSD 21:2 (2014): 150–75; Ruben A. Bühner, Hohe Messianologie: Übermenschliche
Aspekte eschatologischer Heilsgestalten im Frühjudentum, WUNT 2/523 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2020), 283–92; idem, Messianic High Christology: New Testament Variants of Second
Temple Judaism (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2021), 114–8.
33 Michael E. Stone, “The Concept of the Messiah in 4 Ezra,” in Religions in Antiquity:
E. R. Goodenough Memorial, ed. Jacob Neusner, SHR 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 295–312; Büh-
ner, Hohe Messianologie, 152–71; idem, Messianic High Christology, 75–82.
34 Cf. Luke 1:52; Acts 2:33; 5:31 which employ ὑψόω to speak of Jesus’s exaltation.
35 In Acts 13:23 several MSS read ἤγειρεν (“he has raised up”; cf. Jdg 3:9 LXX) rather than
ἤγαγεν (“he has brought”). While ἤγαγεν is likely original, the presence of ἤγειρεν in the tex-
tual tradition indicates that early readers of Acts recognized Paul’s emphasis on Jesus’s resur-
rection in this speech. See Crowe, Hope of Israel, 50–2.
36 In Acts 13:36–37, Paul employs yet other Scriptures to interpret Psalm 16:10, arguing
from the record in 1 Kgs 2:10 – that David “fell asleep” (ἐκοιμήθη), “was laid with his fathers”
(προσετέθη πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας αὐτοῦ), and “saw corruption” (εἶδεν διαφθοράν) – that the psalm
does not apply to David himself but to his promised seed, Jesus.
37 Cf. Crowe, Hope of Israel, 64.
38 Acts 13:22–23, 33–34 and Rom 1:1–4 share reference to: (1.) God’s “promise” (ἐπαγγε-
λία / προεπαγγέλλω); (2.) “the gospel” (εὐαγγελίζω / εὐαγγέλιον); (3.) the “seed of David” (ἀπὸ
There is, moreover, at least a hint in Paul’s declaration of Jesus as “Son of

God” that he is also the pre-existent, divine “Son”. Israel’s Scriptures anticipate
the pre-existence, and even the divinity, of certain eschatological “son” fig-
ures,39 and some early Jewish texts develop this expectation.40 Certainly, in
Luke-Acts, Jesus’s identity as “Son of God” evinces both messianic and divine
dimensions,41 not least in Paul’s initial proclamation of Jesus as “Son of God”
(9:20), which immediately follows his encounter with the heavenly Lord on the
Damascus Road (9:3–5).42 In this context, Paul’s declaration of Jesus’s en-
thronement as the royal “Son of God” (13:33–37; cf. Luke 24:26) suggests that
his resurrection and ascension are the eschatological manifestation of his iden-
tity as the eternal, divine “Son.”43 This understanding again finds a parallel in
Paul’s letters, where the apostle speaks not merely of Jesus’s “descent” from
David, but of the divine Son’s incarnation in the line of David – he “became”
(τοῦ γενομένου) Son “according to the flesh” (κατὰ σάρκα) – followed by his en-
thronement in power (Rom 1:3; cf. Phil 2:6–7).44 Paul, then, draws a line, in an
unprecedented manner, from the divine “Son’s” pre-existence, to his incarna-
tion, obedient life, resurrection, and exaltation.
Fourth, Paul’s characterization of Jesus as “Saviour” (13:23: σωτήρ) is similar-
ly rooted in Scripture, but unusual in early Judaism.45 While Greco-Roman
τοῦ σπέρματος + Δαυὶδ / ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ); (4.) Jesus as “son of God” (Υἱός μου εἶ σύ / υἱοῦ
θεοῦ), and; (5.) “raise” / “resurrection from the dead” (ἐγείρω / ἀνίστημι / ἀνέστησεν αὐτὸν ἐκ
νεκρῶν / ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν). The significance of the parallel is well recognized. E.g.
R ichard B. Gaffin Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology, 2nd ed.
(Phillipsburg: P&R, 1987), 113; Frederick F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, ed. Gordon D. Fee, rev.
ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 270; Wright, Resurrection, 451; Crowe, Hope
of Israel, 57.
39 E.g. Ps 45:7; Ezek 37:25; Dan 7:13–14; Mic 5:1. Cf. Benjamin B. Warfield, Christology
and Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1–49.

40 E.g. Ps 109:3 LXX; 1 En. 39:6–7; 46:1–2; 48:2–3, 6; 62:7; 4 Ezra 12:32; 13:26, 52. Cf. John
J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient
Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 235–6; Bühner, Hohe Messianologie, 65–73,
102–05, 134–37, 160–62.
41 For Jesus as “Son of God” in Luke-Acts, see: Luke 1:32, 35; 3:22, 38; 4:3, 9, 41; 8:28; 9:35;
10:21–22; 20:41–44; 22:28–30, 70; Acts 9:20; 13:33. The divine dimension is especially evident
in Luke 1:32–35; 3:22; 9:35; 10:21–22; 20:41–44; 22:28–30; Acts 9:20. For discussion, see esp.
Simon J. Gathercole, The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark
and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 231–42, 281–2.
42 See § 5.2 below for the Damascus Road encounter as a theophany.
43 Crowe, Hope of Israel, 57–61.
44 Cf. Geerhardus Vos, “The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of Spirit,”
in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos,
ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1980), 104–5; Matthew W. Bates, “A Christolo-
gy of Incarnation and Enthronement: Romans 1.3–4 as Unified, Nonadoptionist, and Non-
conciliatory,” CBQ 77 (2015): 107–27, here 115–23.
45 𝔓74 E L 𝔐, and several minuscules, read σωτηρίαν (“salvation”), but σωτῆρα (“saviour”)
is more likely original. It is found in the major Codices ℵ A B C Ψ, several minuscules, the
Vulgate, Syriac, Sahidic, and Bohairic versions, and citations in Athanasius and Theodoret.
242 Murray J. Smith
sources commonly designate human benefactors, including the emperor, as

“Saviour,”46 Luke-Acts especially relates Jesus’s identity as “Saviour” to Israel
(Luke 1:47; 2:11; Acts 5:31; 13:23).47 It is therefore significant that while the
Scriptures occasionally refer to human deliverers, especially the Judges, as
God-given “saviours” (‫ מוִֹשׁיַע‬/ σωτήρ or ‫ ישע‬/ σῴζω),48 they far more commonly
identify God himself as Israel’s “Saviour” (‫ מוִֹשׁיַע‬or ‫ ישע‬/ σωτήρ), or “salvation”
(‫ ישע‬/ σωτηρία or ‫ ְישׁוָּעה‬/ σωτήριον),49 or celebrate the Lord God as the one who
“saves” (‫ ישע‬/ σῴζω).50 In the Psalms and the Prophets, especially Isaiah, the
Lord emphatically declares that he alone is the “Saviour” of his people; there is
no other.51 By contrast, the Scriptures never refer to the Messiah or any other
eschatological deliverer as “Saviour,” and this emphasis continues in the Apoc-
rypha and Pseudepigrapha, where “the title σωτήρ […] is confined to God”.52 It
is striking, therefore, that while God appears once as “Saviour” (σωτήρ) in
Luke-Acts (Luke 1:47), it is especially Jesus who appears in this role (Luke 2:11;
Acts 5:31; 13:23).53 Consistent with this, Paul declares this it is Jesus who now
This reading is also supported by Luke-Acts’ identification of Jesus as σωτήρ (Luke 2:11; Acts
5:31). Cf. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed.
(London/New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 359.
46 Gary Gilbert, “Roman Propaganda and Christian Identity in the Worldview of Luke-
Acts,” in Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse, ed. Todd Pen-
ner and Caroline V. Stichele, SBLSymS 20 (Atlanta: SBL, 2003), 237–42.
47 Cf. Jacob Jervell, Die Apostelgeschichte, 17 ed., KEK 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1998), 208, n. 576.

48 The substantives ‫ע‬ ַ ‫ מוִֹשׁי‬/ σωτήρ are applied to human “saviours” at: Judg 3:9, 15; Neh 9:27
[pl.]; Obad 21; cf. 2 Kgs 13:5 [LXX: σωτηρίαν]; Isa 19:20 [LXX: ἄνθρωπον, ὃς σώσει αὐτούς].
The verbs ‫ ישע‬/ σῴζω describe the actions of human “saviours” throughout the book of Judges,
but it is clear that, properly speaking, the Lord saves Israel, through human “saviours” (esp.
Judg 2:16, 18; 3:9; 6:36; 7:2, 7; 10:12–14).
49 Gen 49:18; Exod 14:13; 15:2; Deut 32:15; 1 Sam 2:1; 10:19; 14:45; 2 Sam 22:3 [x2], 5, 36, 47,
51; 1 Chr 16:23, 35; 2 Chr 20:17; Ps 3:3, 9; 9:15; 12:6; 13:6; 14:7; 18:3, 36, 47, 51; 20:6; 21:2, 6;
24:5; 25:5; 27:1, 9; 28:8; 35:3, 9; 42:6, 12; 43:5; 44:5; 50:23; 51:14; 53:7; 62:2–3, 7–8; 65:6; 67:3;
68:20; 69:14, 30; 70:5; 74:12; 78:22; 79:9; 80:3; 85:5, 8, 10; 89:27; 91:16; 95:1; 96:2; 98:2; 106:4, 21;
116:13; 118:14, 21; 119:123, 155, 166, 174; 132:16; 140:8; 149:4; Isa 12:2 [x2]; 17:10; 25:9; 26:1;
33:2, 6; 43:3, 11; 45:8, 15, 21; 49:6, 8 (mediated by the Lord’s “servant”), 26 [LXX: ὁ
ῥυσάμενός]; 51:5–6, 8; 52:7, 10; 56:1; 59:17; 60:16; 61:10; 62:1, 11; 63:8; Jer 14:8; Hos 13:4; Jon
2:10; Mic 7:7; Hab 3:13, 18.
50 E.g. Exod 14:30; Num 10:9; Deut 33:29; Judg 2:18; 1 Sam 10:19; 14:39; 17:47; 2 Sam 22:4;
23:12; 1 Chr 11:14; 18:6; Ps 3:8; 6:5; 7:2, 10; 12:2; 17:7; 18:4, 28; 20:7, 10; 22:22; 28:9; 31:3, 17; 34:7,
19; 36:7; 37:40; 44:8; 54:3; 55:17; 57:4; 59:3; 60:7; 69:2, 36; 71:2–3; 72:4, 13; 76:10; 80:4, 8, 20; 86:2,
16; 98:1; 106:8, 10, 47; 107:13, 19; 108:7; 109:26, 31; 116:6; 118:25; 119:94, 117, 146; 138:7; 145:19;
Isa 25:9; 30:15; 33:22; 35:4; 37:20, 35; 38:20; 43:12; 45:17, 22; 49:25; 59:1, 16; 63:1, 5; 64:5 (cf. 63:9:
“the angel of his presence” as subject); Jer 17:14; 23:6; 31:7; 33:16; Ezek 34:22; Hab 3:13; Zech
8:7; 9:9. Note the negative statements in Ps 33:16; 44:3, 7; Isa 45:20; 46:7; 47:13 (false gods and
human strength cannot save).
51 Ps 62:3, 7; Isa 43:3, 11; 45:15, 21–22; 49:26; 60:16; 63:8; Hos 13:4.
52 Moises Silva, ed., NIDNTTE, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 4:426. E.g.
1 Macc. 4:30; 3 Macc. 6:29, 32; 7:16; Wis 16:17; Sir 51:1; Pss. Sol. 17:3; Bar 4:22; Jdt 9:11.
53 Note also “salvation” language associated with Jesus: (1.) ἡ σωτηρία: Luke 1:69, 71, 77;
uniquely exercises the divine prerogative of granting “forgiveness of sins”

(13:38–39: ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν; cf. 5:31).54 Indeed, he does so in a manner which
transcends the God-given Mosaic economy in both efficacy and scope: the for-
giveness he offers brings “justification” beyond that offered by the law of Moses
(13:39: ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσέως δικαιωθῆναι […] πᾶς ὁ
πιστεύων δικαιοῦται),55 and is not for Israel only, but for “everyone who believes”
(13:39: πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων; cf. 13:46–48 with Isa 49:6). Thus, Paul’s declaration of
Jesus as “Saviour” is rooted in Israel’s Scriptures, but applies that title in an
historically novel way, to ascribe to Jesus prerogatives normally reserved for
God alone.
Finally, Paul’s reference, in the sequel to this speech (13:46–47), to Jesus as the
“Lord” (κύριος) who “commanded” his Gentile mission further exhibits the
same pattern of biblical foundation and historical novelty. C. K. Rowe has
shown that the Gospel of Luke already applies the title κύριος to both the
“Lord” God and the “Lord” Jesus in such a way that “the totality of the life of
Jesus κύριος” appears “as the embodied revelation of κύριος ὁ θεός”.56 In Luke
3:4–6 (with Isa 40:3–5) and 7:22, 27 (with Isa 26:19; 35:5; Mal 3:1), for example,
the Gospel applies prophetic promises of the coming of the Lord God to the
arrival of the Lord Jesus.57 By the end of the Gospel Jesus is “worshipped”
(προσκυνέω) with the devotion that belongs to “the Lord … God” alone (Luke
24:52 with 4:7–8 citing Deut 6:13).58 This exalted κύριος-Christology is then
confirmed in Peter’s Pentecost speech at the beginning of Acts: Jesus has now
been enthroned as “Lord” and “Christ” at God’s “right hand” (2:32–36 citing Ps
110:1); from this exalted position he has exercised the divine prerogative of
pouring out the Holy Spirit (2:33 with 2:17–18 and Joel 3:1; cf. Luke 3:16–17);59
19:9; Acts 4:12; 13:26, 47; 16:17; (2.) σωτήριος: Luke 2:30; 3:6; Acts 28:28; (3.) σῴζω: Luke 6:9;
7:50; 8:12, 36, 48, 50; 9:24; 17:19; 18:42; 19:10; 23:35, 37, 39; Acts 2:21, 40, 47; 4:9, 12; 11:14; 15:11;
16:30–31.
54 Note esp.: Exod 32:32; Num 30:5, 8, 12; Deut 29:20; Josh 24:9; 1 Kgs 8:30, 34, 36, 39, 50;
2 Chr 6:21, 25, 27, 30, 39; 7:14; Neh 9:17; Ps 32:5; 85:3; Isa 40:2; Jer 31:34; 33:8; 36:3; Dan 9:19;
Hos 1:6; Amos 7:2; Mic 7:19. See Daniel Johansson, “‘Who Can Forgive Sins but God Alone?’
Human and Angelic Agents, and Divine Forgiveness in Early Judaism,” JSNT 33 (2011): 351–
74.
55 In Acts 13:39 Paul’s reference to “being justified” (δικαιοῦται) by Jesus possibly alludes
to the “servant’s” role in Isaiah 53:11 (‫ ַיְצ ִדּיק‬/ δικαιῶσαι). If so, this strengthens the case that
Paul’s earlier statement about the suffering of the Christ (13:27, 29) evokes Isaiah 53.
56 Christopher K. Rowe, Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke,
BZNW 139 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 218.

57 Cf. Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel
Witness (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 62–4; Steve Walton, “Jesus, Present and/or
Absent? The Presence and Presentation of Jesus as a Character in the Book of Acts,” in Char-
acters and Characterization in Luke-Acts, ed. Frank Dicken and Julia A. Snyder, LNTS 548
(London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 123–40, here 137–8.
58 προσκυνέω appears only in these two texts in Luke. Cf. Hays, Reading Backwards, 69.
59 See: Douglas Buckwalter, The Character and Purpose of Luke’s Christology, SNTSMS
244 Murray J. Smith
and so to call on Jesus’s “name” is to “call on the name of the Lord,” that is, God
(2:21 citing Joel 3:5: ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου; with 2:36, 38). 60 Peter subse-
quently affirms of Jesus that “he is Lord of all” (10:36: οὗτός ἐστιν πάντων
κύριος). 61
In this narrative context, Paul’s repeated designation of Jesus as “Lord” sug-
gests that he, too, recognizes Jesus as the one who embodies Israel’s God. 62
Certainly, Jesus’s appearance to Paul on the Damascus Road evokes the appear-
ance of the Lord God at Sinai: he “appears” as “Lord” (9:5, 17: κύριος + ὁράω
pass.), with a “flashing light from heaven” (9:3: περιήστραψεν φῶς ἐκ τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ), and an audible “voice” (9:4, 7: φωνή), to reveal his name – “I am Jesus”
(9:5: Ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰησοῦς). 63 The Lord Jesus then commissions Paul, through Ana-
nias, “to carry my name before the Gentiles” (9:15: τοῦ βαστάσαι τὸ ὄνομά μου
ἐνώπιον ἐθνῶν), and Paul begins to preach boldly “in the name of Jesus,” that is,
“in the name of the Lord” (9:27: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ; 9:28: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ
κυρίου). In this light, Paul’s appeal, in Acts 13:47, to “the Lord” who “com-
manded” his Gentile mission naturally includes reference to the Lord Jesus.64
89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 194–6; Max Turner, Power from on High:
The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts, JPTSup 9 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1996), 277–9.
60 For “calling on the name of the Lord” (‫ קרא‬+ ‫שׁם ְיהָוה‬ ֵ ‫ ְבּ‬/ ἐπικαλέω + τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου) in
Israel’s Scriptures: Gen 4:26; 12:8; 13:4; 21:33; 26:25; 1 Kgs 18:24; 2 Kgs 5:11; Ps 116:4, 13, 17;
Joel 3:5; Zeph 3:9; cf. Ps 80:19; Isa 12:4; Zech 13:9. For “calling on the name” (ἐπικαλέω + τὸ
ὄνομα) of the Lord Jesus in Acts: 9:14, 21; 22:16; cf. 7:59; 19:13. For the “name” of Jesus else-
where in Acts: 2:21, 38; 3:6, 16; 4:7, 10, 12, 17, 18, 30; 5:28, 40–41; 8:12, 16; 9:14–16, 21, 27, 28;
10:43, 48; 15:26; 16:18; 19:5, 13, 17; 21:13; 22:16; 26:9. Cf. C. F. D. Moule, “The Christology of
Acts,” in Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays Presented in Honour of Paul Schubert, ed. Leander E.
Keck and James L. Martyn (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966), 161; Charles A. Gieschen, “The Di-
vine Name in Ante-Nicene Christology,” VC 57:2 (2003): 115–58, here 146–8; idem, “The
Divine Name as a Characteristic of Divine Identity in Second-Temple Judaism and Early
Christianity,” in Novenson, Monotheism and Christology, 62–84, here 79–80; Larry W. Hur-
tado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2003), 179–85, 197–206.
61 Cf. Steve Walton, “Identity and Christology: The Ascended Jesus in the Book of Acts,”
in The Earliest Perceptions of Jesus in Context: Essays in Honour of John Nolland, ed. Aaron
W. White, David Wenham, and Craig A. Evans, LNTS 566 (London: Bloomsbury T&T
Clark, 2018), 141: the κύριος-Christology of Peter’s Pentecost speech places Jesus “in the same
category as Israel’s God”.
62 Paul refers to Jesus as κύριος at Acts 9:5, 28; 13:10–12, 47–48; 15:36; 16:31; 21:13; 22:8, 10,
19; 26:15. Cf. 9:17; 13:2, 44; 14:3, 23; 15:26, 35, 40; 16:14–15, 32; 18:8–9; 19:5, 10, 13, 17, 20; 21:14;
23:11; 28:31.
63 See below § 5.2 for the echoes of Sinai and the biblical theophany tradition. For extended
analysis of Acts 9, compare esp. Timothy W. R. Churchill, Divine Initiative and the Christol-
ogy of the Damascus Road Encounter (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 191–249.
64 Cf. Martin Rese, “Die Funktion der alttestamentlichen Zitate und Anspielungen in den
Reden der Apostelgeschichte,” in Les Actes des Apôtres: Traditions, rédaction, théologie, ed.
Jacob Kremer, BETL 48 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 77–79; Gert J. Steyn, Sep-
tuagint Quotations in the Context of the Petrine and Pauline Speeches of the Acta Apostolo-
rum, CBET 12 (Kampen: Pharos, 1995), 197; David W. Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus,
Significantly, Paul immediately identifies this command with the Lord God’s
prophetic word through Isaiah (13:47 citing Isa 49:6). The result is that Paul –
consistent with Luke-Acts elsewhere – identifies Jesus with the Lord who
spoke through Isaiah. 65 The Lord Jesus’s commissioning of Paul’s Gentile mis-
sion appears as the eschatological confirmation of what the same “Lord” spoke
beforehand, through the prophet.
Paul’s Christology in his synagogue exhortation in Pisidian Antioch lays the
groundwork for the other speeches in Acts: it is thoroughly Jewish, being root-
ed in the Scriptures and focussed on Jesus’s identity as the Davidic Messiah; it is
also historically novel, affirming that Messiah Jesus suffered God’s curse, was
raised from the dead ahead of the rest, and is now declared “Son of God,” “Sav-
iour,” and “Lord” in the most exalted sense.
3. The Judge of the Nations: The Christology of Paul’s

Athens Address (Acts 17:22–31)
Paul’s address to the Areopagus in Acts 17:22–31 is the most extended presenta-
tion in Acts of his proclamation of Jesus in a Gentile context, and presents Jesus
as the Judge of the nations. 66
This speech is, again, deeply rooted in Israel’s Scriptures. The major emphasis
of the first part of the speech (17:22–29) is the supremacy of God as the creator,
ruler, and sustainer of all that exists: he is “the God who made the world (ὁ θεὸς
ὁ ποιήσας τὸν κόσμον) and everything in it (καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ) […] the Lord of
heaven and earth (οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς ὑπάρχων κύριος) […] [who] gives to everyone
(διδοὺς πᾶσιν) life and breath and everything” (ζωὴν καὶ πνοὴν καὶ τὰ πάντα)
(17:24–25; cf. 14:15–17). Paul’s here asserts a radical distinction between the sole
creator and his creation: he is the sole source of all reality outside of himself, and
the only sovereign over all that exists. These formulations, of course, reflect the
common biblical teaching that the Lord alone, Israel’s God, is the one, true,
WUNT 2/130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 101. Contra Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the
Apostles: A Commentary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), 414, n. 5; Bart J. Koet, Five Studies on
Interpretation of Scripture in Luke–Acts, SNTA 14 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 113.
65 In Acts 26:23, Paul also identifies “Messiah” Jesus as the Lord’s “servant” of Isaiah 49:6
and 42:6 (cf. Luke 2:23), and so characterizes Paul’s Gentile mission as an extension of Jesus’s
mission as the “servant of the Lord”. Paul thus recognizes Jesus as both the Lord who sends,
and the servant who is sent. The same juxtaposition is evident in Luke 3:4–6 (citing Isaiah
40:3–5 and identifying Jesus as the coming Lord) and 3:22 (alluding to Isaiah 42:1 and iden-
tifying Jesus as the Isaianic “servant”).
66 For a review of scholarship on the Areopagus speech, see Claire K. Rothschild, Paul in
Athens: The Popular Religious Context of Acts 17, WUNT 341 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2014), 157–60.
246 Murray J. Smith
and living God, 67 the sole creator of heaven and earth, 68 who has no equal, 69 and
brooks no rivals.70 Indeed, the Scriptures affirm that he is “the only God,”71 that
there is “none like him,”72 that beside him “there is no other,”73 and that before
him the “gods” of the nations are “worthless idols,”74 and “no gods at all.”75
While the biblical and early Jewish texts recognize the existence of other heav-
enly beings, and even sometimes designate them “gods” (‫ ֱאלִֹהים‬/ θεοί), they nev-
ertheless maintain a fundamental ontological distinction between the creator
God and his creatures, over whom he exercises sovereign rule, and from whom
he requires exclusive worship.76 Paul certainly echoes these affirmations in his
letters, declaring that Israel’s God is the “only God” (μόνος θεός), “the living
and true God,”77 and Paul’s formulations in Acts 17:22–29 affirm the same.
It is, therefore, significant that in this same speech, Paul applies to Jesus bib-
lical texts which, in their original contexts, refer to the one true God of Israel,
and so includes Jesus within the identity of God himself.78 Paul does not men-
tion Jesus by name, but the introduction indicates that his preaching at the
Areopagus concerns “Jesus and the resurrection” (17:18: τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ τὴν
ἀνάστασιν), and “the man whom he [God] has appointed” is clearly Jesus
(17:31).79 Crucially, Paul’s affirmation that God “has fixed a day [ἔστησεν
ἡμέραν] on which he will judge the world in righteousness [ἐν ᾗ μέλλει κρίνειν
τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ]” (17:31) echoes a series of biblical texts which af-
firm God’s righteous final judgment. The reference to a fixed eschatological
67 Deut 6:4–5; Jer 10:10.
68 Gen 1:1; Exod 19:5; Neh 9:6; Ps 24:1–2; 96:5; 103:19; 148:1–5; Isa 37:16; 40:28; 44:24; 54:5;
Jer 10:11.
69 Exod 8:10; 15:11; Deut 3:24; 33:26; 1 Sam 2:2; 1 Kgs 8:23; 22:19; 2 Chr 6:14; Ps 29:1; 71:19;
95:3; 97:9; 113:5; Isa 40:18; 46:5, 9; Jer 10:6–7, 16; Dan 4:35.
70 Exod 20:3; Deut 5:7.
71 Ps 86:10; Isa 37:20.
72 Exod 8:10; 15:11; Deut 3:24; 33:26; Jer 10:16; 1 Sam 2:2; 1 Kgs 8:23.
73 Deut 4:35, 39; 32:39; 1 Sam 2:2; 1 Kgs 18:39; 86:10; Isa 37:16, 20; 43:10; 44:6, 8; 45:5, 14, 18,
21–22; 46:9; Joel 2:27.

74 1 Chr 16:26; Ps 31:7; 96:5; 115:2–8; 135:5, 15–18; Isa 2:6–21; 37.19; 41:22–24; 42:8, 17; 44:6–
20; 45:14–25: Jer 2:11, 28.

75 Jer 2:11; 16:20; cf. Deut 32:17.
76 See esp. Richard J. Bauckham, “The Throne of God and the Worship of Jesus,” in Jesus
and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology
of Divine Identity, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 152–81. Cf. Mi-
chael S. Heiser, “Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assess-
ment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible,” BBR 18:1 (2008): 1–30, here 4–13; idem,
“Monotheism and the Language of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea
Scrolls,” TynB 65:1 (2014): 85–100. Contra Fredriksen, “How High?,” 295–303.
77 Rom 3:30; 16:27; 1 Cor 8:4–6; Eph 4:6; 1 Thess 1:9; 1 Tim 1:17; 2:5.
78 For this phenomenon in Paul’s letters, see esp. David B. Capes, “Jesus’ Unique Relation-
ship with Yhwh in Biblical Exegesis: A Response to Recent Objections,” in Novenson, Mono-
theism and Christology, 85–98.
79 D it ar, d Irenaeuslat read ἀνδρὶ Ἰησοῦ, but most mss lack explicit reference to Jesus, and this
is also the lectio difficilior.

“day” evokes the biblical “day of the Lord” tradition, 80 especially those texts in
which the “day of the Lord” (‫ יֹום ְיה ָוה‬/ ἡμέρα κυρίου) is associated with final,
universal, judgment.81 More specifically, Paul’s affirmation reflects a series of
texts in the Psalms, which declare that God “will judge the world in righteous-
ness” (Ps 9:9; 96:13; 98:9: ‫ ִיְשֹׁפּט־ֵתּ ֵבל ְבֶּצֶדק‬/ κρινεῖ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ).
Across the Scriptures, righteous judgment is an exclusively divine prerogative,82
and the Lord’s judgment on the “day of the Lord” is often associated with the
“coming of God” himself. 83 This is certainly the case in the psalms Paul evokes,
which call on creation to rejoice “before the Lord” (‫ ִלְפֵני ְיהָוה‬/ πρὸ προσώπου
κυρίου), because “he comes to judge the earth” (96:13; 98:9: ‫ ָבא ִלְשֹׁפּט ָהָאֶרץ‬/
ἔρχεται κρῖναι τὴν γῆν / ἥκει κρῖναι τὴν γῆν). Thus, Paul’s declaration is thorough-
ly Jewish – it repeats the biblical affirmation that God will come to judge.
The striking new emphasis in Paul’s declaration is that God will judge the
world “by a man whom he has appointed” (17:31: ἐν ἀνδρὶ ᾧ ὥρισεν). 84 This af-
firmation has no direct precedent in Israel’s Scriptures, but is neither without
biblical foundation, nor lacking in early Jewish parallels. His affirmation is con-
ceptually similar to Ps 110:1–7 and Dan 7:13–14, both of which present visions
of an eschatological human figure – a “Lord” or “son of man” – who participates
in, and even embodies, the final coming of God to judge. The parallel to Psalm
110 has not been widely recognized, but Ps 110:1 is prominently associated with
Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation in the narrative of Luke-Acts,85 and may
stand behind Paul’s reference to Jesus being “appointed” (ὁρίζω) as “judge”
(Acts 17:31; cf. 10:42; Rom 1:4; 8:34). Certainly, Paul’s declaration parallels the
psalm’s eschatological vision: God will “execute judgment” (Acts 17:31; cf. Ps
110:6: ‫ דין‬/ κρίνω), over “the world” (Acts 17:31: οἰκουμένη; cf. Ps 110:6: ‫ ּגֹוִים‬+
‫ ֶא ֶרץ‬/ ἔθνοι + γῆ), on the eschatological “day” (Acts 17:31; cf. Ps 110:3, 5: ‫ יֹום‬/
ἡμέρα), through his chosen human agent (Acts 17:31: ἀνήρ; cf. Ps 110:1: ‫ ֲאֹד ִני‬/
κύριος). 86 Similarly, Paul’s declaration parallels Dan 7:13–14 with its vision of a
80 The precise phrase ‫ יֹום ְיהָוה‬occurs sixteen times in fourteen texts: Isa 13:6, 9; Ezek 13:5;
Joel 1:15; 2:1, 11, 31; 3:14; Amos 5:18 [x2], 20; Obad 15; Zeph 1:7, 14 [x2]; Mal 4:5. The motif of
a “day” of the Lord’s powerful action appears in a range of other closely related descriptions:
Isa 2:12; 3:13; 34:8; 61:2; Jer 46:10; Lam 1:12; 2:22; Ezek 7:19; 30:2–3; Joel 2:2; Mic 7:4; Zeph
1:18; 2:2–3; Zech 14:1, 7; Mal 3:2, 17; 4:1, 3. A number of other phrases are also relevant, includ-
ing “on that day” and “in those days.” For a brief survey, see Joel D. Barker, “Day of the
LORD,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, ed. Mark J. Boda and J. Gordon Mc-
Conville (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 132–43.
81 E.g. Isa 2:11–12; 61:2; Joel 3:4; 4:14; Mal 3:23; Zeph 1:7, 14, 17–18; Zech 14.4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 20,
21.
82 E.g. Gen 18:25; Judg 11:27; 1 Sam 2:10; Ps 67:5; 82:8; 94:2; 96:10; Isa 33:22.
83 E.g. Isa 2:5–22; Joel 4:14–21; Zech 14:1–9.
84 The prepositional phrase ἐν ἀνδρί is instrumental: “by / through a man.”
85 Luke 20:42; 22:69; Acts 2:33–34; 3:20–21; 5:31; 7:55–56.
86 The Lord God – ‫אֹדָני‬ ֲ (ʾᵃdōnāy) not ‫( ֲאֹדִני‬ʾᵃdōnı̂ ) – is the grammatical subject at the begin-
ning of verse 5, and there is no clear grammatical indication that the subject changes at any
point before the end of the psalm. See Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3: A
248 Murray J. Smith
human figure – the “one like a son of man” (‫ ְּכַבר ֱאָנשׁ‬/ ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου) – who
embodies the final coming of God.87 Daniel’s vision is also prominent in the
wider narrative of Luke-Acts, being especially associated with Jesus’s eschato-
logical return. 88 Although Daniel’s “son of man” is never explicitly said to
“judge,” he comes “with the clouds of heaven,” as only God does (Dan 7:13:
‫ ִעם־ֲעָנֵני ְשַׁמָּיא‬/ og: ἐπὶ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ / Θ: μετὰ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ), 89 receives universal “worship,” as only God should (Dan 7:14, 27:
‫ פלח‬/ og: λατρεύω / Θ: δουλεύω),90 and is entrusted with the universal and ever-
lasting “dominion” that properly belongs to God alone (Dan 7:14: ‫ ָשְׁלָטן‬/
ἐξουσία).91 He thus comes as God, and is co-enthroned with “the Ancient of
Days,” which suggests that he might play a role in the final judgment. Certainly,
several early Jewish texts – especially 1 En. 37–71 and 4 Ezra 13 – develop Dan-
iel’s vision in this direction, and depict a human figure executing the final judg-
ment on earth.92 Still, Paul’s declaration in the Areopagus speech is unprece-
dented in one important respect: it affirms that the identity of this “man ap-
pointed by God” has been revealed ahead of time; the once-crucified Jesus will
be the judge on the final day.93
Paul appeals to Jesus’s resurrection as the “proof” that God has appointed
him as judge: God “has given assurance to all (πίστιν παρασχὼν πᾶσιν) by raising
him from the dead (ἀναστήσας αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν)” (17:31). Paul does not here
Commentary on Psalms 101–150, trans. Linda M. Maloney, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: For-

tress, 2011), 143–44. Note, similarly, Ps 2:7–12, which lacks explicit reference to “judgment.”
87 The allusion to Dan 7:13–14 is recognized, but not developed, by: Bruce, Acts, 341; Dar-
rell L. Bock, Acts, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 570; David Peterson, The
Acts of the Apostles, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 503. For Dan 7 as a vision of the
“coming of God,” see esp. George R. Beasley-Murray, “The Interpretation of Daniel 7,” CBQ
45:1 (1983): 44–58.
88 Luke 9:26; 12:40; 17:24, 30; 18:8; 21:27, 36; 22:28–30; Acts 1:9–11.
89 E.g. Exod 19:9; 33:9; 34:5; Num 11:25; 12:5; 2 Sam 22:10; Ps 18:10; Isa 30:30; Ezek 1:4;
Nah 1:3. Cf. Markus Zehnder, “Why the Danielic “Son of Man” is a Divine Being,” BBR 24:3
(2014): 331–47, here 337–40. The Old Greek Translation makes this coming as God explicit
(Dan 7:13 OG: ὡς παλαιὸς ἡμερῶν). See Benjamin E. Reynolds, “The ‘One Like a Son of Man’
According to the Old Greek of Daniel 7.13–14,” Bib 89 (2008): 70–80.
90 Dan 3:12, 14, 17, 18, 28; 6:17, 21; 7:14, 27. Cf. Zehnder, “Divine Being,” 340.
91 Dan 2:44; 3:33; 4:31; 6:26. Cf. Zehnder, “Divine Being,” 340–1.
92 1 En. 45:2–5; 46:4–5; 51:3; 55:4; 61:8; 62:2–12; 69:27 B and C, 29; 4 Ezra 13:1–13; cf. 12:32–
34; 13:37–38. Note also Testament of Abraham A 13:2–3, which depicts “the Son of Adam, the
first formed,” that is “Abel,” “seated on the throne […] to judge the entire creation”. Indeed,
Acts 17 and the Testament of Abraham also both affirm: (1.) the organic unity of the human
race descended from Adam (T. Abr. A 13:5; Acts 17:26), and; (2.) the fittingness of judgment
by a “son” of Adam (T. Abr. A 13:5; Acts 17:31). The parallel is, however, only partial, since
the judgment executed by Abel is not the final judgment, which remains the prerogative of
God alone (T. Abr. A 13:5–14). Cf. E. P. Sanders, “Testament of Abraham,” in The Old Testa-
ment Pseudepigrapha: Volume 1 – Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, ed. James H.
Charlesworth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 878.
93 This teaching is anticipated by Jesus in the Gospels (esp. Matt 13:41; 16:27; 19:28; 25:31–
46; Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; 22:28–30; John 5:22, 27), and by Peter earlier in Acts (10:42).
elaborate on how the resurrection provides this assurance that Jesus will judge,
but statements elsewhere in Acts supply a two-fold logic. First, Jesus’s resurrec-
tion indicates that God has “set the day” (ἔστησεν ἡμέραν) for the judgment
(17:31): since Jesus was “the first to rise from the dead” (26:23: πρῶτος ἐξ
ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν; cf. 4:2), his resurrection has inaugurated the general resur-
rection;94 since that general resurrection will involve “both the just and the un-
just” (24:15: δικαίων τε καὶ ἀδίκων; cf. Dan 12:2), it will be a resurrection to judg-
ment.95 Second, Jesus’s resurrection indicates that Jesus himself has been “ap-
pointed” (ὥρισεν) as judge of the final day (17:31): since Jesus’s resurrection and
ascension constitute his enthronement at God’s “right hand” as “Lord and
Christ” (2:32–36), “Leader and Saviour” (5:31), and “Son of Man” (7:55–56),96
they also indicate his “appointment” (ὁρίζω) as judge (Acts 10:42; 17:31; Rom
1:4).97 This twofold understanding finds clear parallels in Paul’s letters, where
Jesus’s resurrection and ascension provide the ground for his “appointment”
(ὁρίζω) as “Son of God in power” (Rom 1:4), at the “right hand of God” (Rom
8:34; cf. 1 Cor 15:25; Eph 1:20; Col 3:1), which supports the conclusion that God
will judge people’s secrets “through Christ Jesus (διὰ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ)” (Rom
2:16). Accordingly Paul, in his letters, regularly speaks of the fixed eschatologi-
cal “day” (ἡμέρα) of judgment, and interprets this in Christo-centric terms as
“the day of Christ Jesus.”98 The remarkable Christological conclusion – for Paul
in Acts no less than Paul in his letters – is that Jesus will embody the final com-
ing of God to execute the judgment; every knee will bow before his throne; ev-
ery person will receive just recompense from his hand (17:31; cf. Rom 14:10–12;
Phil 2:10–11; 2 Cor 5:10; 2 Tim 4:1).
Paul’s Areopagus speech thus confirms and extends the Christology in the
earlier synagogue address. In this Gentile context, Paul draws on the funda-
mental biblical distinction between God and creation, and characterizes Jesus as
the eschatological “Lord-son of man,” who will embody the final coming of
God, and execute God’s judgment on the final day.
94 Cf. Rom 1:4; 8:11, 29; 1 Cor 6:14; 2 Cor 4:14; 15:20–23; Col 1:18; 1 Thess 4:14–16.
95 For resurrection associated with final judgment, see: John 5:28–29; Acts 10:42; 1 Thess
1:10; Heb 6:2.
96 The Son of Man “standing” (contrast Luke 22:69 “sitting”) likely indicates his forensic
function: he stands as Stephen’s advocate, ready to judge. For surveys of the major interpreta-
tions, with arguments for this view, see: Darrell L. Bock, Proclamation from Prophecy and
Pattern: Lucan Old Testament Christology, JSNTSup 12 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 222–4;
Keener, Acts, 2:1440–3.
97 Cf. I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Commentary,
TNTC (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 307; Peter J. Scaer, “Resurrection as Justification
in the Book of Acts,” CTQ 70:3–4 (2006): 219–31, here 224.
98 Rom 2:5, 16; 13:12; 1 Cor 1:8; 3:13; 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14; Phil 1:6, 10; 2:16; 1 Thess 5:2, 4, 5, 8;
2 Thess 1:10; 2:2; 2 Tim 1:12, 18; 4:8.

250 Murray J. Smith
4. The Lord of His Church: The Christology of Paul’s

Ephesian Exhortation (Acts 20:17–35)
Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders gathered at Miletus (20:17–35) further

draws on the language and categories of Israel’s Scriptures – reworked in light
of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection – to present Jesus as the “Lord” of his
church (20:19, 21, 24, 35: κύριος).
As we have seen (above § 2), within the narrative of Luke-Acts, Paul’s repeat-
ed designation of Jesus as κύριος already implies that he mediates and embodies
God’s lordship in the world. Three further features of Paul’s characterization of
Jesus in this speech confirm this identity. First, Paul co-ordinates “repentance
towards God” (τὴν εἰς θεὸν μετάνοιαν) with “faith in our Lord Jesus” (πίστιν εἰς
τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν) in a manner that closely aligns Jesus with God (20:21).
While the Scriptures commonly call for repentance towards God,99 and God
(θεός) is also the one towards whom people repent throughout Luke-Acts,100
several texts call for repentance towards the “Lord” (κύριος), in terms which
probably include reference to the Lord Jesus (8:22; 9:35; 11:21).101 Similarly,
while the Scriptures typically call for faith in the Lord God, or in his servants,
or his words,102 in Luke-Acts, the general call for faith in God or his word,103 is
sharply focussed on faith in the Lord Jesus and his word, or the gospel concern-
ing him.104 In this context, Paul presents “repentance towards God” and “faith
in our Lord Jesus” as distinct but inseparable responses to God-in-Christ, and
so implies that God and Christ are themselves distinct but inseparable (20:21).
Second, Paul’s charge to the Ephesian elders – to “care for the church of God,
which he obtained with his own blood” (20:28: ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ
θεοῦ, ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου) – most likely characterizes Je-
sus as God.105 It is possible that the crucial phrase – διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου –
does not mean “with his own blood” [= God’s blood], but “with the blood of his
99 “Turn” or “return” to God (‫ שוב‬/ ἐπιστρέφω): Deut 4:30; 30:2; 1 Kgs 8:33, 48; 2 Kgs 23:25;
2 Chr 6:24; 30:9; Neh 1:9; Job 22:23; Prov 1:23 [LXX alters the sense]; Isa 6:10; 9:13 [LXX:
ἀποστρέφω]; 44:22; 55:7; Jer 3:7 [LXX: ἀναστρέφω], 12, 14, 22; 18:8; 24:7; Lam 3:40; 5:21; Hos
14:1; Joel 2:12–13; Amos 4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11; Zech 1:3. Cf. 2 Cor 3:16; 1 Thess 1:9; 1 Pet 2:25.
100 Acts 14:15; 15:19; 26:18, 20; 28:27. In several other texts, God is the implied object of
“turning back” (ἐπιστρέφω) or “repenting” (μετάνοια / μετανοέω): Luke 3:3, 8; 5:32; 10:13;
11:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 16:30; 24:47; 22:32: Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 13:24; 17:30; 19:4.
101 Certainly, Peter explicitly declares that it is the risen and exalted Lord Jesus who per-
forms the divine function of “giv[ing] repentance to Israel” (5:31; cf. Luke 24:47). For repen-
tance as a divine gift, see: Deut 30:6; 1 Kgs 18:37–39; 2 Chr 30:12 [with 30:9]; Ps 23:3; Lam 5:21.
102 E.g. Gen 15:6; Exod 4:31; 14:31; Ps 106:12; 119:66; Jon 3:5.
103 Luke 1:20, 45; 24:25; Acts 16:34; 24:14; 26:27; 27:25; cf. Luke 16:31; 17:5–6.
104 Luke 5:20; 7:9, 50; 8:12–13, 25, 48, 50; 17:19; 18:8, 42; 22:67; Acts 2:44; 3:16; 4:4; 5:14; 8:12;
9:42; 10:43; 11:17, 21; 13:39, 48; 14:23; 15:7, 11; 16:31; 18:8; 19:4; 22:19; 24:24; 26:18; cf. Luke
16:31.
105 The mss are divided between those which read “the church of God” (τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ
θεοῦ), and those which read “the church of the Lord” (τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου). Although it
own” [= God’s Son, Jesus].106 This reading takes ὁ ἴδιος as a kind of Christolog-
ical title. Its strengths are that (1.) it avoids the unusual notion that God has
blood; (2.) it is supported by the common use of ὁ ἴδιος in the papyri as “a term
of endearment referring to near relatives,”107 and (3.) it finds a partial parallel in
Paul’s reference to Jesus as “his [God’s] own son” (Rom 8:32: τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ; cf.
Diogn. 9:2: τὸν ἴδιον υἱὸν). The more natural reading of the Greek, however, is
that Paul identifies Jesus as God (ὁ θεός), affirming that God obtained the church
with “his own blood” (cf. Heb 9:12).108 Although Acts does not elsewhere ex-
plicitly apply the noun θεός to Jesus, the narrative – as we have noted – includes
Jesus within the identity of the Lord God of Israel,109 and the designation of
Jesus as “God” (θεός) certainly finds parallels in Paul’s letters (Rom 9:5; Tit
2:13–14).110 Further, while the idea of God’s “blood” is foreign to Israel’s Scrip-
tures and early Judaism,111 and also unusual in early Christian literature, Igna-
tius and Tertullian do refer to “God’s blood” in reference God’s redemptive
work in Christ (Ign. Eph. 1:1: ἐν αἵματι θεοῦ; Tertullian, Ux. 2.3.1: sanguine dei).
Christian theology can account for the striking phrase by reading it as short-
hand for how “God,” in the person of his Son, through his human nature, shed
“his own blood.”112 Thus, while it is possible that Paul refers here to Jesus as
God’s “own [Son],” he more probably speaks of Jesus as God.
Third, Paul’s affirmation that God “obtained” (περιεποιήσατο) “the church”
for himself further confirms this reading (20:28).113 The affirmation probably
is difficult to be certain, the former reading is more likely. See Metzger, Textual Commentary,
425–7.
106 Bruce, Acts, 416, n. 59; Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos
in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 139–41; Steve Walton, Leadership and Life-
style: The Portrait of Paul in the Miletus Speech and 1 Thessalonians, SNTSMS 108 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 91, 94–9; Larry W. Hurtado, “Christology in
Acts: Jesus in Early Christian Belief and Practice,” in Issues in Luke-Acts: Selected Essays, ed.
Sean A. Adams and Michael W. Pahl, Gorgias Handbooks 26 (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2013), 22
n. 17.
107 Metzger, Textual Commentary, 426 citing James H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Tes-
tament Greek. Vol. 1, Prolegomena, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 90; idem and G.
Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other
Non-literary Sources (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930), s.v.
108 So: Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, AB 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998),
680; Keener, Acts, 3:3039. Note that, unlike Rom 8:32, Acts 20:28 lacks reference to God’s
“son” (υἱός).
109 Cf. Peter’s similarly paradoxical statement, “you killed the Author of Life” (Acts 3:15).
110 See esp. Harris, Jesus as God, 143–72 [on Rom 9:5]; 173–85 [on Tit 2:13–14]. Cf. George
Carraway, Christ is God Over All: Romans 9:5 in the Context of Romans 9–11, LNTS 489
(London: Bloomsbury, 2013). Possibly also: 2 Thess 1:12.
111 E.g. Exod 20:4; 33:20; Deut 4:12, 15–16; 1 Kgs 8.27; Jer 23:23–24; Ezek 1:28; Mal 3:6.
112 See Westminster Confession of Faith §8.7 citing Acts 20:28. Cf. Herman Bavinck, Re-
formed Dogmatics: Vol. 3 – Sin and Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2006), §371 (p. 308).
113 The phrase ἡ ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ is unique to Paul in the New Testament (1 Cor 1:2;
10:32; 11:22: 15:9; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:13. Cf. pl.: 1 Cor 11:16; 1 Thess 2:14; 2 Thess 1:4). It evokes
252 Murray J. Smith
alludes to the Lord’s declaration, through Isaiah, that he is doing “a new thing”
in bringing about a “new Exodus,” “obtaining” a people for himself (Isa 43:21
lxx: λαόν μου, ὃν περιεποιησάμην; cf. Ps 74:2).114 In the narrative of Luke-Acts,
this new Exodus theme is especially connected with Jesus’s reference to “the
new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20: ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου; cf. Exod 24:8; Jer
31:31; 32:40; Zech 9:11).115 In this context, Paul’s affirmation that God has “ob-
tained” a people for himself, with “his own blood” – that is, the blood of Jesus
– again serves to identify Jesus as God.
Paul’s Christology in the Miletus speech thus again has deep roots in Israel’s
Scriptures and is, in that sense, thoroughly Jewish. At the same time, Paul devel-
ops these biblical themes in striking ways, declaring that Jesus himself is “Lord”
and the proper object of “faith,” that Jesus’s blood is – in some sense – God’s
“own blood,” and that by this blood God has obtained a people for himself in a
remarkable “new Exodus.”
5. The Presence of God: The Christology of Paul’s Defence

Speeches (Acts 22:1–21; 24:10–21; 26:2–29)
Paul’s three defence speeches in the latter part of Acts – before the crowds in
Jerusalem (22:1–21), before Felix (24:10–21), and before Festus, Agrippa, and
Bernice (26:2–29) – exhibit common Christological emphases, and may be ex-
amined together. According to Paul in these speeches, Jesus is both “the Righ-
teous One,” whose resurrection effects the resurrection of all, and the highly
exalted one, whose appearances to Paul embody the presence of the Lord God
himself.
5.1 The Resurrected Righteous One

Paul first draws on biblical language to characterize Jesus as “the Righteous
One” (22:14: τὸν δίκαιον).116 This designation finds broad antecedent in the fre-
the biblical characterization of Israel, from the Exodus and Sinai onwards, as “the assembly of
the Lord” (Deut 23:3–4, 9; 1 Chr 28:8; Mic 2:5 LXX: ἐκκλησία κυρίου) or “the assembly of
God” (Neh 13:1 LXX: ἐκκλησία θεοῦ; cf. Judg 20:2).
114 The verb περιποιέω, in combination with “blood” (αἷμα), carries the sense of redemp-
tion by sacrifice (cf. Rom 3:24–25; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14, 20; 1 Pet 1:2, 18–19). The cognate noun
περιποίησις is used in Exodus / new Exodus contexts, reflecting the understanding of God’s
people as his “treasured possession.” See: Mal 3:17 LXX; Eph 1:14; 1 Pet 2:9. Cf. Keener, Acts,
3:3038.
115 The echoes of the Exodus are further underlined by Paul’s reference to “the inheritance
among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32: τὴν κληρονομίαν ἐν τοῖς ἡγιασμένοις πᾶσιν; cf.
26:18 with Deut 33:3–4; Wis 5:5).
116 “Righteous One” is used as title or descriptor for pagan rulers, but Acts uses it only in
Jerusalem speeches (3:14; 7:52; 22:14). Ananias’s references to “brother Saul” (Σαοὺλ ἀδελφέ),
quent references to “the righteous” in the psalms (‫ ;ַצִּדיק‬often δίκαιος or ὁ

δίκαιος),117 and especially in the prophets’ application of the adjective ‫ ַצִּדיק‬/
δίκαιος (“righteous”) and the noun ‫ ְצָדָקה‬/ δικαιοσύνη (“righteousness”) to prom-
ised eschatological figures.118 “The Righteous One” appears as something of a
title for such a figure in both Isa 53:11 (‫ ַצִּדיק‬/ δίκαιον),119 and Hab 2:4b (‫ ַצִּדיק‬/ ὁ
δίκαιος).120 Among the early Jewish texts, the Parables of Enoch apply the title
“the Righteous One” to the highly exalted eschatological figure also identified
as “the Son of Man,” “the Elect One,” and “the Messiah.”121 Other early Jewish
texts employ the designation in similar ways.122 Among the early Christian
texts, Jesus’s identity as “the Righteous One” is especially prominent in Luke-
Acts (Acts 3:14: τὸν ἅγιον καὶ δίκαιον; 7:52: τοῦ δικαίου; cf. Luke 23:47: δίκαιος),123
and in Paul’s letters (Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11: ὁ δίκαιος; cf. Hab 2:4b),124 but also ap-
pears elsewhere (1 Pet 3:18; 1 John 2:1; Justin, Dial. 16.4; possibly Heb 10:38; Jas
and “the God of our fathers (Ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν) confirm this Jewish context (Acts
22:14). Cf. Richard B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s
Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 126–7; Keener, Acts, 2:1091.
117 Ps 5:13; 7:10; 11:3, 5; 14:5; 31:18; 34:20, 22; 37:12, 16, 21, 25, 30, 32; 55:23; 58:11–12; 64:11;
72:7; 75:11; 92:13; 94:21; 97:11; 112:6. Cf. similar use in Wis 2:12–20; 4:10–20.
118 Isa 11:4–5; 53:11; Jer 23:5–6; 33:15–16; Hab 2:4b; Zech 9:9.
119 Some omit ‫דיק‬ ּ ִ ‫ ַצ‬on the ground of supposed dittography of the verb ‫( ַיְצ ִּדיק‬Anthony
Gelston, “Some Notes on Second Isaiah,” VT 21 (1971): 517–27), or a judgment that it “over-
burdens the verse” (Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction
and Commentary, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 346). Against this, see John Os-
walt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 399
n. 45: “the word is represented in all the versions.”
120 The masculine singular ‫דיק‬ ּ ִ ‫ ַצ‬could be generic (NIV: “the righteous person”) or monad-
ic, referring to a particular individual. The LXX translates with the article as ὁ δίκαιος (“the
righteous one”) and so provides a “messianic” reading. See: Desta Heliso, Pistis and the Righ-
teous One: A Study of Romans 1:17 against the Background of Scripture and Second Temple
Jewish Literature, WUNT 2/235 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 40–53.
121 1 En. 38:2–3; 53:6; cf. 46:3; also possibly 91:10; 92:3–4. See esp.: James C. VanderKam,
“Righteous One, Messiah, Chosen One, and Son of Man in 1 Enoch 37–71,” in The Messiah:
Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapo-
lis: Fortress Press, 1992) 169–91; George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch
2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 37–82, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 2012), 113–23.
122 Pss. Sol. 17:23–51 esp. 32; 18:7–8; 4Q161 frg. 8 X, 16; 4Q252 V, 3. Note, also, the com-
mon description of Enoch and Noah as “righteous”: T. Lev. 10:5; T. Jud. 18:1; 24:5–6; T. Dan.
5:6; T. Ben. 9:1; 1 En. 1:2; 2 En. 1a:1 rec. A; 4 Bar. 7:8–9.
123 On Acts 7:52, see Gerbern S. Oegema, “‘The Coming of the Righteous One’ in Acts
and 1 Enoch,” in Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables, ed. Ga-
briele Boccaccini (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 250–9.
124 See esp.: Heliso, Pistis, 122–64. Cf. Stephen L. Young, “Romans 1.1–5 and Paul’s Chris-
tological Use of Hab. 2.4 in Rom. 1.17: An Underutilized Consideration in the Debate,” JSNT
34 (2012): 277–85; Joshua W. Jipp, Christ is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 2015), 253–7.
254 Murray J. Smith
5:6).125 In this broad context, Paul’s characterization of Jesus as “the Righteous

One” (Acts 22:14) identifies him as the promised eschatological deliverer.
More specifically, Paul’s designation probably identifies Jesus as “the Righ-
teous One, my Servant” of Isa 53:11 (‫)ַצִּדיק ַעְבִּדי‬, who is vindicated and exalted
after his suffering (Isa 52:13; 53:10b, 12a). Earlier in the narrative of Luke-Acts,
Peter’s declaration of Jesus as “the Righteous One” draws on Isa 53:11, and con-
nects this to Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 3:13–15).126 Paul’s affirmation in Acts
22:14 evokes that earlier text,127 and – in the wider context of the defence speech-
es – has similar connections with Isaiah’s “servant” passages (26:18 with Isa 42:7,
16; 61:1 LXX; 26:23 with Isa 42:6 and 49:6), and with “the resurrection” as the
common “hope of Israel” (23:6; 24:14–15, 21; 26:6–8, 22–23; cf. 28:20: ἡ ἐλπὶς τοῦ
Ἰσραήλ). Significantly, in Acts 26:22–23 Paul draws on Isa 42:6 and 49:6 when he
declares that “the Christ […] by being the first to rise from the dead (πρῶτος ἐξ
ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν) […] would proclaim light both to our people and to the
Gentiles” (φῶς μέλλει καταγγέλλειν τῷ τε λαῷ καὶ τοῖς ἔθνεσιν). Since these Isa-
ianic texts present the “servant” as “a covenant for the people, a light for the
nations” (Isa 42:6: ‫ ִלְב ִרית ָעם ְלאֹור ּגֹוִים‬/ εἰς διαθήκην γένους, εἰς φῶς ἐθνῶν; Isa 49:6:
‫ ְלאֹור ּגֹוִים‬/ εἰς διαθήκην γένους εἰς φῶς ἐθνῶν), Paul is able to draw on them to af-
firm a covenant union between “the righteous servant” – Jesus – and those
whom he represents such that his resurrection will effect theirs (26:23). More-
over, this recognition of Jesus as “the Righteous One,” who will “make many to
be accounted righteous” (‫ ַיְצִּדיק‬/ δικαιῶσαι) (Isa 53:11), also provides the basis
for Paul’s declaration that Jesus’s resurrection secures the justification of those
who belong to him (cf. Acts 13:38–39; Rom 4:25).128
In addition to all of this, Paul’s recognition of Jesus as “the Righteous One”
may also hint at his divine identity (22:14; cf. 3:14: τὸν ἅγιον καὶ δίκαιον).129 Cer-
tainly, God is regularly described as “righteous” (‫ ַצִּדיק‬/ δίκαιος) in Scripture,130
125 For Hebrews 10:38, see Heliso, Pistis, 61–68. For James 5:6, see Richard N. Longeneck-
er, The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, SBT 17 (London: SCM, 1970), 47.
126 See: Morris, Cross, 141; David P. Moessner, “The ‘Script’ of the Scriptures in Acts: Suf-
fering as God’s ‘Plan’ (βουλή) for the World for the ‘Release of Sins’,” in History, Literature,
and Society in the Book of Acts, ed. Ben Witherington III (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 228; Keener, Acts, 2: 1092.
127 Note: (1). “the God of our fathers” (ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν) (3:13; 22:14); (2). “the
Righteous One” (τὸν δίκαιον) (3:14; 22:14).

128 Cf. Scaer, “Resurrection,” 219–31; Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Justification in Luke-Acts,”
in Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World, ed. Donald A. Carson (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1992), 106–25. For the similar conception in Romans 4:25, see: idem, Resurrec-
tion, 99–125; Michael F. Bird, “Justified by Christ’s Resurrection: A Neglected Aspect of
Paul’s Doctrine of Justification,” SBET 22:1 (2004): 72–91.
129 Keener, Acts, 2: 1091.
130 Note esp. Isa 24:16 which refers to God as “the Righteous One” (‫דיק‬ ּ ִ ‫)ַצ‬. Cf. Deut 32:4;
2 Chr 12:6; Ezra 9:15; Neh 9:8, 33; Ps 11:7; 116:5; 145:17; Isa 45:21; Lam 1:18; Dan 9:14; Zeph
3:5; Zech 9:9.
and in early Jewish texts,131 and in the Parables of Enoch, “the Righteous One”
appears as a highly exalted, pre-existent figure (1 En. 46:1–2; 48:2–3, 6; 62:7; cf.
39:6–7), who bears the divine name (1 En. 48:2–3),132 and – as we noted already
– embodies the final coming of God (§2). Thus, while Paul’s use of “the Righ-
teous One” as a title for Jesus primarily evokes the Isaianic servant, in the con-
text of the highly exalted Christology we have sketched so far, a further hint of
Jesus’s divine identity cannot be ruled out.
5.2 Christo-theophany
Above and beyond this recognition of Jesus as “the Righteous One,” Paul char-
acterizes his visions of Jesus on the Damascus Road (22:6–11; 26:12–18), and in
the Jerusalem temple (22:17–21), as nothing less than visions of God himself.
While the accounts have some parallels with Greco-Roman-style epiphanies,133
the most important connections are with the biblical accounts of the great the-
ophany at Sinai (esp. Exod 3–4; 19–24, 33–34; Deut 4–5), and the wider biblical
theophany tradition.134 Paul establishes this connection through four basic
echoes of the Sinai theophany, and eight further allusions to subsequent biblical
theophany texts.135
131 E.g. 4 Ezra 10:15–16; 14:32; 2 Bar 44:4; 78:5; cf. Sib. Or. 3.720: δικαιότατος; b. Sanh. 26b;
y. Ḥ ag. 2:1 §12; Pesiq. Rab. 14:6.

132 Charles A. Gieschen, “The Name of the Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch,” in Enoch
and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 238–49.
133 See, for example: Jan N. Bremmer, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Heliodorus in
the Temple and Paul on the Road to Damascus,” in Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and
the Ancient Near East, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2008),
215–33; Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia 65 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2009), 631–2.
134 For the foundational significance of the Sinai theophany and its influence on subse-
quent theophanies, see esp. Jeffrey J. Niehaus, God at Sinai: Covenant and Theophany in the
Bible and Ancient Near East, SOTBT (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 181–332. Note esp. the
echoes and remembrances of the Sinai theophany at: Judg 5:4–5; Neh 9:13; Ps 18:8–17; 68:8–11,
18; 74:12–17; 77:17–21; 78:12–66; 97:2–6; Isa 4:5; 29:5–6; 30:27–30; 51:9–11; 60:1; 64.2; Ezek 1:4,
13, 27–28; 10:4; Hab 3:3–15; Zeph 1:15–16.
135 The theophanic character of Paul’s visions has sometimes been observed, but the foun-
dational significance of Sinai does not appear to have been recognized. For a review of major
proposals, see Churchill, Divine Initiative, 1–31. Churchill himself does not include Exodus
19–24, 33–34 or Deuteronomy 4–5 in his (necessarily) selective analysis of Old Testament
“epiphanies” (42–58). He characterizes the “Damascus Road Encounter” as a “Divine Initia-
tive epiphany” (204–249). For brief observations on the theophanic character of Paul’s visions,
see: Fergus Kerr, “Paul’s Experience: Sighting or Theophany?,” New Blackfriars 58 (1977):
306–13; Otto Michel, “Das Licht der Messias,” in Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Stud-
ies in Honour of David Daube, ed. Ernst Bammel, Charles K. Barrett, and W. D. Davies (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1978), 40–50, esp. 4 4; V. S. Poythress, Theophany: A Biblical Theology of
God’s Appearing (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 56, 392.
256 Murray J. Smith
First, Paul repeatedly refers to the Lord “appearing” to him (ὁράω: 22:18;
26:13, 16; cf. 9:17), and in this context describes “the glory of that light” (τῆς
δόξης τοῦ φωτὸς ἐκείνου) that blinded him (22:11).136 This language evokes the
Lord’s “appearance” in “glory” at Sinai, and in the subsequent theophany tra-
dition, which regularly combines the verb ‫( ראה‬LXX: ὁράω) with reference to
“the glory of the Lord” (‫ ְּכבֹוד ְיהָוה‬/ ἡ δόξα κυρίου / θεοῦ) to speak of the Lord’s
visible manifestation of his presence on earth.137 Crucially, both Exodus and
Isaiah declare that the Lord’s “glory” is his unique possession, closely associ-
ated with his “name,” such that to “see” the Lord’s “glory” is to come as close
as is humanly possible to seeing the Lord himself (Exod 33:18–19, 22; 34:5–7;
Isa 42:8; 48:11). The early Jewish texts continue to associate “glory” with the
manifestation of God’s presence on earth,138 while the Greco-Roman epiphany
texts, by contrast, do not use δόξα language in this way.139 Earlier in Acts, Ste-
phen speaks of “the God of glory” who “appeared” to Abraham (7:2: Ὁ θεὸς τῆς
δόξης ὤφθη), and then sees “the glory of God” and the risen Jesus at God’s
“right hand” (7:55: εἶδεν δόξαν θεοῦ καὶ Ἰησοῦν ἑστῶτα ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ). In
this context, Paul’s use of the same language characterizes his vision as a the-
ophany. Certainly this pattern of speech finds significant parallels in Paul’s let-
ters, where the apostle regularly speaks of how Jesus “appeared” (ὁράω) to him,
and identifies Jesus as the revelation of “the glory of the Lord / God” (ἡ δόξα
κυρίου / θεοῦ).140
Second, Paul describes “a great flashing light from heaven” (22:6: ἐκ τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ περιαστράψαι φῶς ἱκανὸν; 26:13: οὐρανόθεν ὑπὲρ τὴν λαμπρότητα τοῦ
ἡλίου περιλάμψαν με φῶς; cf. 9:3) through which the Lord Jesus manifested his
136 Modern translations render δόξα with “brightness” (RSV, NRSV, ESV, CSB), “bril-
liance” (NIV), or “Klarheit” (Lutherbibel 2017). This is correct at the level of denotation, but
misses the theophanic connotations. Better is the KJV, which renders δόξα with “glory”.
137 ‫ ראה‬/ ὁράω with ‫כבֹוד ְיהָוה‬
ּ ְ / ἡ δόξα κυρίου / θεοῦ: Exod 16:7, 10; 33:23; Lev 9:6, 23–24;
Num 14:10, 22; 16:19; 17:7; 20:6; 2 Chr 7:3; Ps 63:3; 97:6; 102:17; Isa 35:2; 40:5; 60:2; 66:18–19;
Ezek 1:28; 3:23; 8:4; 10:22 LXX; 44:4. Related to this: (1.) ‫מראה‬: Exod 24:17 [LXX: τὸ εἶδος];
Ezek 1:28 [LXX: ἡ ὅρασις]; (2.) ‫חזה‬: Ps 63:3; Isa 33:17. See, further, Carey C. Newman, Paul’s
Glory Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric, NovTSupp 69 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 24, 133, 190;
“God and Glory and Paul, Again: Divine Identity and Community Formation in the Early
Jesus Movement,” in Novenson, Monotheism and Christology, 109–110, 112–3.
138 E.g. 1 En. 25:3–4; 27:2–4; 102:3; Pss. Sol. 17:31; Tob 3:15–16; T. Abr. A 13:4; T. Levi 8:11;
4 Ezra 7:38–42, 87, 91 (cf. Stone, Fourth Ezra, 223: “In 4 Ezra, going back to biblical usage,
‘glory’ is connected with the appearance of God on earth”); 2 Bar. 21:23, 25. Note, however,
that Pss. Sol. 17:31–32 applies Isaiah’s vision of “the glory of the Lord” (Isa 66:18–20) to “the
Lord Messiah.” (Cf. William T. Horbury, Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ (London:
SCM, 1998), 103).
139 Newman, “God and Glory,” 102–9.
140 For Jesus “appearing” (ὁράω) to Paul: 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8; cf. Gal 1:16 (ἀποκαλύπτω). For Je-
sus as the revelation of “the glory of God”: 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4, 6; Phil 3:21; Col 3:4; 2 Thess 1:9;
2:14; Tit 2:13; cf. Rom 5:2; 6:4; 8:18–25; 1 Cor 2:7. See Paul’s Glory Christology, 157–247,
esp. 186; “God and Glory,” 99–138, esp. 124; cf. Sigurd Grindheim, “A Theology of Glory:
Paul’s Use of Δόξα Terminology in Romans,” JBL 136.2 (2017): 451–65.
presence (cf. 2 Cor 4:6). This further evokes the biblical theophany tradition –
again beginning at Sinai– which often associates the Lord’s presence with
“lightning” (‫ ָּב ָרק‬/ ἀστραπή),141 or with bright “light” described in other terms.142
Third, Paul’s description of the “voice” (φωνή) which addressed him from heav-
en (22:7, 9, 14; 26:14: φωνή; cf. 9:4, 7) also evokes the biblical reports of the the-
ophany at Sinai, the only places in Israel’s Scriptures where the Lord God ad-
dresses his people with an audible “voice from heaven”.143 Some early Jewish
texts similarly describe a voice from heaven as the voice of God,144 and in the
New Testament, a “voice from heaven” is almost always either the voice of
God,145 or – in Acts and Revelation – the voice of the risen and exalted Lord
Jesus, himself divine.146 Finally, in this context, Paul’s description of how the
“Lord” (κύριος) revealed his name to him (22:8; 26:15: κύριος + Ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰησοῦς;
cf. 9:5) evokes the Lord’s progressive revelation of his “name” to Moses at Sinai
(Exod 3:14 lxx: Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν; Exod 3:15; 33:19; 34:5 LXX: ὄνομα + κύριος).147
The collocation of references to the “Lord” (κύριος) and his “appearing” (ὁράω)
in “glory” (δόξα) and “light” (φῶς) with an audible “voice” (φωνή) to reveal his
“name” (ὄνομα) seems deliberate: Paul characterizes his encounter with the risen
Lord Jesus as a further, climactic, revelation of the “name” of the God of Sinai.148
141 ‫ב ָרק‬
ּ ָ (LXX: ἀστραπή): Exod 19:16; 2 Sam 22:15; Ps 18:15; 77:19; 97:4; 144:6; Ezek 1:13; Dan
10:6; Hab 3:11 LXX; Zech 9:14 (note LXX strengthens the identification of the Lord with the
lightning by omitting the Hebrew text’s reference to “his arrow”: καὶ κύριος […] ἐξελεύσεται
ὡς ἀστραπὴ βολίς / “the Lord […] will go forth as a lightning bolt”).
142 (1.) ‫[ ַלׅפּיד‬LXX: λαμπάς]: Exod 20:18; (2.) ‫[ אוֹר‬LXX: φῶς]: Job 36:30, 32–33; 37:3, 11, 15
(esp. 36:33: “its crashing declares his presence”); (3.) ‫ָבָּזק‬: Ezek 1:14; (4.) ‫( ֺנ ַגהּ‬LXX: φέγγος):
2 Sam 22:13; Ps 18:13 [LXX: τηλαύγησις]; Isa 4:5 [φῶς]; 60:3 [λαμπρότης]; 60:19 [φωτίζω; com-
pared with the moon]; Ezek 1:4, 13, 27–28; 10:4; Hab 3:4, 11. In the early Jewish literature,
compare: Wis 5:21; 2 Bar. 53:8–10. The latter text describes the Messiah’s appearance in these
terms.
143 Exod 20:22; Deut 4:12, 15, 33, 36; 5:4, 22; Neh. 9:13. Cf. Dan 4:28 where an unidentified
“voice from heaven” addresses Nebuchadnezzar.

144 2 Bar. 22:1–2; T. Lev. 2:6; 18:6–7. The latter references may reflect Christian influence.
145 Matt 3:17 // Mark 1:11 // Luke 3:22; Matt 17:5 // Mark 9:7 // 9:35; cf. 2 Pet 1:18; John
12:28–30.
146 Acts 10:13, 15; 11:7, 9; Rev 4:1; 10:4, 8; 11:12; 12:10; 14:13; 18:4. For Revelation, see Bran-
don D. Smith, “The Identification of Jesus with YHWH in the Book of Revelation: A Brief
Sketch,” CTR 14 (2016): 67–84.
147 The self-identification Ἐγώ εἰμι does not necessitate a reference to the divine name (e.g.
Luke 1:19; Acts 10:21; 22:3; 26:29), but carries this connotation when associated with the oth-
er indications of theophany noted above. Cf. Gen 15:7; 17:1; 26:24; 28:13; 31:13; 35:11; 46:3;
Exod 3:6, 14–17; 20:2; Isa 41:4; 43:10, 25; 45:8, 18–19, 22; 46:4, 9; 48:12, 17; 51:12; 52:6. Within
Acts, note 7:32; 18:10. In Acts 22, the allusion to God’s revelation of his name at Sinai is fur-
ther strengthened by Ananias’ reference to “the God of our fathers” (22:14: Ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων
ἡμῶν; Exod 3:13, 15, 16 LXX: ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ὑμῶν). For the revelation of the divine
“name” associated with theophany, see esp. Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology:
Antecedents and Early Evidence, AGJU 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 30–3. For these associations
in Acts 9:5, see: Keener, Acts, 2:1638.
148 See esp. Exod 3:1–15: κύριος + ὁράω + ὄνομα; 24:9–18 LXX: κύριος + ὁράω + δόξα; 33:18–
258 Murray J. Smith
In addition to these echoes of the Sinai theophany, Paul also alludes to no less
than eight other texts from the biblical theophany tradition.149
1. Ananias’s affirmation that “God […] appointed you [Paul] to know (γνῶναι)
his will, to see (ἰδεῖν) the Righteous One and to hear (ἀκοῦσαι) a voice from
his mouth” (22:14) echoes Balaam’s description of himself as one who “hears
(ἀκούων) the words of God […] knows (ἐπιστάμενος) the knowledge of the
Most High […] [and] sees (ἰδὼν) the vision of the Almighty” (Num 24:16
LXX).150
2. Ananias’s injunction to Paul – “wash away your sins, calling on his name
[ἐπικαλεσάμενος τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ]” (22:16) – evokes the biblical pattern of call-
ing on the name of the Lord, applied to Jesus throughout Acts, and especial-
ly recalls Joel’s prophecy, cited earlier in Peter’s Pentecost speech (2:21), that
“everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [‫ ֹּכל ֲאֶשׁר־ִיְק ָרא ְּבֵשׁם ְיה ָוה‬/ ὃς ἂν
ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου] shall be saved” (Joel 3:5; cf. Acts 2:36, 38; 4:12;
9:14).151
3. The Lord Jesus’s instruction to Paul – “rise and stand on your feet” (26:16:
ἀνάστηθι καὶ στῆθι ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας σου) – alludes to the Lord’s words to Eze-
kiel (Ezek 2:1: ‫ ֲעֹמד ַעל־ַר ְגֶליָך‬/ στῆθι ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας σου), which immediately
follow the prophet’s vision of “the glory of the Lord” by the Chebar canal
(Ezek 1:1–28).152
19 and 34:5–7 LXX: κύριος + δόξα + ὄνομα; Deut 5:24 LXX: κύριος + ὁράω + δόξα + φωνή. This
constellation of terms does not occur in the same concentration anywhere else in Israel’s
Scriptures.
149 Cf. I. Howard Marshall, “Acts,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old
Testament, ed. Greg K. Beale and Donald A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007),
597–9 observes allusions (2.)–(8.) but does not draw out the implications for Paul’s vision as a
theophany.
150 Keener, Acts, 3:3233. In addition to the three verbs highlighted, there are two further
interesting parallels between Num 24:16 and the descriptions of Paul’s vision in Acts and
Paul’s letters. (1.) Balaam sees the “vision of the Almighty” (‫ ַמֲחֵזה ַשַׁדּי‬/ ὅρασιν θεοῦ), and Paul
speaks of “the vision from heaven” (Acts 26:19: τῇ οὐρανίῳ ὀπτασίᾳ; cf. 2 Cor 12:1: ὀπτασίας καὶ
ἀποκαλύψεις κυρίου). (2.) Balaam describes himself as “falling down with eyes uncovered”
(‫ וּ ְגלוּי ֵעיָניּם‬/ ἀποκεκαλυμμένοι οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτοῦ), and Paul has his “eyes” (οἱ ὀφθαλμοί) opened
(Acts 9:18), is called “to open … eyes” (ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμοὺς …) (Acts 26:18), and speaks of re-
ceiving the gospel “through a revelation / unveiling of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12: δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως
Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; cf. Gal 1:16; 2:2; Rom 1:17; 16:25; 1 Cor 2:10; 2 Cor 12:1, 7; Eph 3:3, 5).
151 See above n. 60. Paul’s letters make the same connection (esp. Rom 10:13 with Joel 3:5;
Phil 2:9–11 with Isa 45:23; cf. 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Tim 2:2). See: Christopher K. Rowe, “Romans 10:13:
What is the Name of the Lord?,” HBT 22 (2000): 135–73; Bauckham, “Paul’s Christology of
Divine Identity,” 195–210; Gieschen, “Ante-Nicene Christology,” 128–31; idem, “Character-
istic,” 74–5.
152 The allusion to Ezekiel 2:1 is well recognized. See: E.g. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel
according to Luke X–XXIV, AB 28A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 759; Bruce, Acts, 467;
Pervo, Acts, 632. These commentators, however, do not observe the theophanic context. The
allusion is strengthened by Paul’s description of how “we all fell to the ground” (26:14: πάντων
τε καταπεσόντων ἡμῶν εἰς τὴν γῆν; cf. 9:4; 22:7), which is characteristic of Ezekiel’s response to
4. Jesus’s command – “I am sending you” (26:17: ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω σε) echoes the
Lord’s call to the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 1:7: ‫ ֶאְשָׁלֲחָך‬/ ἐξαποστείλω σε),153 and
perhaps also the Lord’s call to Ezekiel (Ezek 2:3–4: ‫ ׁשֹוֵלַח ֲא ִני אֹוְתָך‬/ ἐξαποστέλλω
ἐγώ σε), and Isaiah (Isa 6:8: ‫ ֶאת־ִמי ֶאְשַׁלח‬/ τίνα ἀποστείλω), both of which follow
dramatic theophanic visions (Ezek 1:1–28; Isa 6:1–6).
5. Jesus’s promise to Paul – “I will appear to you, delivering you from your own
people and from the Gentiles” (26:17: ἐξαιρούμενός σε ἐκ τοῦ λαοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν
ἐθνῶν) – echoes the similar promise to Jeremiah – “I am with you […] to de-
liver you” (Jer 1:8, 19: ‫ ְלַה ִצ ֶּלָך‬/ ἐξαιρεῖσθαί σε), and further alludes to the words
of Asaph, crying out to the Lord God to “deliver us from the nations” (1 Chr
ּ ִ ‫ ְוַה‬/ καὶ ἐξελοῦ ἡμᾶς ἐκ τῶν ἐθνῶν).154 Indeed, Paul’s use of
16:35: ‫ציֵלנוּ ִמן־ַהּגֹוִים‬
the verb ἐξαιρέω here is particularly significant, since the LXX reserves this
verb, and the designation “the Lord who delivers,” for the Lord God
alone.155
6. Jesus’s description of Paul’s mission as his “servant” – “to open their eyes”
(26:16, 18: ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν) – echoes the Lord’s promise, through
Isaiah, that he [God] will send his “servant,” to “open” blind “eyes” (Isa
42:6–7: ‫ ִלְפֹקַח ֵעיַנִים‬/ ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμούς; cf. 61:1 LXX).156
7. Jesus’s further affirmation that he will, through Paul, cause the Gentiles to
“turn from darkness to light” (26:18: τοῦ ἐπιστρέψαι ἀπὸ σκότους εἰς φῶς) re-
flects the Lord’s promise, through Isaiah, describing what he [God] will do
(Isa 42:16: ‫ ָאִשׂים ַמְחָשְׁך ִלְפֵניֶהם ָלאֹור‬/ ποιήσω αὐτοῖς τὸ σκότος εἰς φῶς).157 Indeed,
although biblical and early Jewish texts apply “light” imagery in a range of
ways, in the immediate context it is Jesus who appears to Paul in “light” (9:3;
22:6; 26:13: φῶς; cf. 26:23). The parallel between turning people “from dark-
ness to light,” and “from the power of Satan to God” thus implies that he
[Jesus] stands in the place of God (cf. Col 1:12–14).
8. Jesus’s final promise that the Gentiles will “receive […] a place among those
who are sanctified by faith in me” (26:18: τοῦ λαβεῖν […] κλῆρον ἐν τοῖς
his theophanic visions (Ezek 1:28; 3:23; 43:3; 44:4), although not unique to him, or theopha-
nies (note esp. Dan 8:17–18; 10:9). Cf. Keener, Acts, 4:3512, 3518 recognizes these connections,
but does not draw out the Christological implications.
153 In Acts 26:17, the allusion to Jeremiah 1:5–8 is established by the combination of “send-
ing” (ἐξαποστέλλω / ἀποστέλλω), “delivering” (ἐξαιρέω), and “the nations” (ἔθνος; pl. forms).
Cf. Keener, Acts, 4:3517.
154 1 Chr 16:35 LXX and Acts 26:17 share the verb ἐξαιρέω and the prepositional phrase ἐκ
τῶν ἐθνῶν.
155 Churchill, Divine Initiative, 170–1, 217, 240. See also: John J. Scullion, “God in the
OT,” ABD 2:1044.

156 For the allusion, see: Fitzmyer, Luke X–XXIV, 760; Keener, Acts, 4: 3517. Cf. Acts
13:47, where Paul includes his mission within that of the Isaianic “servant” of Isa 49:6 (cf. 42:6).
In Acts 26:18 there may be a further allusion to Isa 35:4–5, where God’s coming causes the
“the eyes of the blind” to be “opened”.
157 For the allusion, see: Fitzmyer, Luke X–XXIV, 760.
260 Murray J. Smith
ἡγιασμένοις πίστει τῇ εἰς ἐμέ) recalls Acts 20:32 and, behind that, Moses’s
celebration that when “the Lord came from Sinai,” and “all his holy ones”
(‫ ָּכל־ְקֹדָשׁיו‬/ πάντες οἱ ἡγιασμένοι), they received “a possession” (‫ מֹו ָרָשׁה‬/ κληρο
νομίαν) from the Lord himself (Deut 33:3–4; cf. Wis 5:5).
This rich network of allusions to biblical theophany texts cannot be accidental.
In his defence speeches, Paul consistently characterizes his visions of Jesus in
terms which evoke the Lord’s advent at Sinai, “the Almighty’s” encounter with
Balaam, “the day of the Lord” prophesied by Joel, “the glory of God” seen by
Ezekiel, the Lord’s commissioning of the prophets, and the Lord’s promise,
through Isaiah, of his own return. By drawing on these texts, Paul claims that
on the Damascus Road, and in the Jerusalem temple, he experienced not merely
an epiphany – an appearance of a heavenly being – or a Christophany – an ap-
pearance of the Christ – but a Christo-theophany – an appearance of the risen
Christ as God.158
This inclusion of an exalted human figure in the appearance of the God of
Israel is certainly striking. It is, however, consistent with the trajectory of
Christ-centred theophanies in Luke-Acts, which runs from Jesus’s transfigura-
tion in “lightening”-like “glory,” accompanied by a Sinai-like “cloud” (Luke
9:28–36: ἐξαστράπτω + δόξα + νεφέλη),159 through to his promised eschatological
return “in a cloud with power and great glory” (ἐν νεφέλῃ μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ
δόξης πολλῆς) (Luke 21:25–27; cf. 9:26; Acts 1:9–11).160 Moreover, this whole
trajectory – including Paul’s Christ-centred theophanic vision – is not without
precedent in Israel’s Scriptures, or parallel in early Judaism. As we have already
noted, Dan 7:13–14 presents the “son of man” as an eschatological Adam, who
embodies the final coming of God (above §2), and a number of early Jewish
texts – especially the Parables of Enoch and Fourth Ezra – develop Daniel’s vi-
sion by locating a “son of man” figure at the centre of the final divine advent.161
In these texts, the exalted human figure appears not merely as an intermediary,
158 This conclusion is consistent with the echoes and interpretations of the event in Paul’s
letters, where the apostle claims to have seen “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor
4:6), and declares that Jesus Christ is “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8). See esp.: Seyoon Kim,
The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, WUNT 2/4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 5–13; Newman,
Paul’s Glory Christology, 229–40; “God and Glory,” 124.
159 See esp. I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text,
NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 380–9.

160 Note, especially, the singular “cloud” (Luke 9:34–35: νεφέλη [x3]; 21:27; Acts 1:9),
which recalls the singular “cloud” at Sinai (esp. Exod 34:5; Num 11:25 LXX). See further:
Marshall, Gospel of Luke, 774–7; Fitzmyer, Luke X–XXIV, 1348–51; François Bovon, Luke 3:
A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28–24:53, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Min-
neapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 116–20; Robert H. Stein, “Jesus, the Destruction of Jerusalem,
and the Coming of the Son of Man in Luke 21.5–38,” SBJT 16:3 (2012): 18–27.
161 1 En. 38:2–4; 45:3–5; 48:5–7; 51:1–4; 52:4–6; 53:1–3, 7; 62:1–16; 63:11; 69:26–29; 4 Ezra
13:1–13.
or angelic figure, but as a manifestation of God himself.162 Nevertheless, there is

still a crucial difference between Paul’s preaching and these biblical precedents
and Jewish parallels. For while Dan 7 and the early Jewish texts dependent upon
it include a human figure at the centre of the final theophany, they never identi-
fy that figure with a known individual from recent history, let alone one who
was crucified on a Roman cross.
6. Paul’s Christology within Early Judaism:

Synthesis and Assessment
How “Jewish” is Paul’s Christology in Acts? How we answer that question

depends, of course, on how we define the adjective “Jewish.”163 Although much
could be said, it is enough for our purposes to summarize the ways in which
Paul’s presentations of Jesus in Acts lay claim to Israel’s God, Scriptures, and
traditions, while “reconfiguring” and “re-evaluating” them in light of the resur-
rection and exaltation of Messiah Jesus, “the hope of Israel” (28:20).164
As we have noted, the Paul of Acts regularly claims that “the God of Israel,”
“the God of our fathers,” who is “the God who made the world […] the Lord of
heaven and earth,” also raised Jesus from the dead (13:17, 32; 17:24; 24:14). The
book of Acts regularly presents Paul as appealing to “the Law and the proph-
ets,” and reasoning “from the Scriptures,” as he proclaims Jesus as the crucified
and risen Messiah (13:15; 17:2–3; 28:23). Indeed, Paul explicitly claims that his
proclamation of Jesus is both consistent with the Scriptures (24:14; 26:22–23),
and in full accord with Jewish beliefs (24:15; 26:6–7) and customs (28:17).165
Moreover, Paul’s warnings to his contemporaries against rejecting his procla-
mation take the character of critique-from-within, on the basis of the prophets
(13:40–41; 28:25–28). He even justifies the most immediately controversial as-
pect of his message – the Gentile mission – by identifying Jesus as the Isaianic
“servant” destined to bring “light […] to the Gentiles” (26:23 with Isa 42:6;
49:6), and by locating his own ministry within that commission (13:47 with Isa
162 See George R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1986), 39–42; Michael E. Stone, Features of the Eschatology of IV Ezra (Atlanta: Schol-
ars, 1989), 127–8; Gieschen, “Name of the Son of Man,” 238–49; Daniel Boyarin, “Enoch,
Ezra, and the Jewishness of ‘High Christology’,” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Recon-
struction after the Fall, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini, Matthias Henze, and Jason Zurawski, SJSJ
164 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 337–62; Bühner, Messianic High Christology, 79–82, 135–9.
163 For the definitional issues, see Cynthia M. Baker, Jew, Key Words in Jewish Studies 7
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 16–46.

164 Jipp, “Paul of Acts,” 73.
165 Cf. Rom 1:2; 3:21; 16:26; 1 Cor 15:3–4; 2 Tim 3:15–16.
262 Murray J. Smith
49:6).166 It is Jesus, Paul claims, the risen and exalted Jewish Messiah, who has
sent him to the nations (13:47; 22:21; 26:18–19).167
The content of Paul’s proclamation of Jesus is fundamentally consistent with
these claims. His gospel is deeply rooted in the Scriptures, and unmistakably
Jewish. His speeches are soaked in the Scriptures, and he regularly cites or al-
ludes to Scriptures not only from the Torah,168 but also from the Prophets,169
and the Writings.170 Moreover, Paul’s proclamation of Jesus – including his
characterization of his message as “the gospel” (13:32; 14:15; 20:24; cf. 14:7, 21;
15:35; 16:10; 17:18), his primary designation of Jesus as “the Christ” (9:22; 17:3;
18:5; 24:24; 26:23; 28:31), and his announcement of the “resurrection from the
dead” (17:18, 32; 23:6; 24:15, 21; 26:23) – consistently make use of fundamentally
Jewish categories.171 He further announces Jesus as the “seed” of David (13:23),
“the Son of God” (9:20; 13:33), the “Saviour” (13:23), “the Righteous One”
(22:14), the “man […] appointed [to] judge” (17:31), and the “Lord” himself (9:28;
16:31; 20:21; 28:31), in each case manifestly drawing on biblical designations.
Paul, however, recognizes that his Jewish contemporaries do not all read the
Scriptures the way he does. He charges that “those who live in Jerusalem and
their rulers” did not “understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read
every Sabbath” (13:27).172 He divides the Sanhedrin by drawing attention to the
Sadducean denial of the resurrection (23:6–10; cf. 26:5–8; Luke 20:27–40).173 He
affirms that he worships “the God of our fathers,” but acknowledges that he
does so “according to the Way, which they call a sect” (ἣν λέγουσιν αἵρεσιν)
(24:14). This last statement highlights the central reason that Paul’s reading of
166 Cf. Jacob Jervell, Luke and the People of God: A New Look at Luke-Acts (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1972), 44–64; Jens Schröter, “Salvation for the Gentiles and Israel: On the Rela-
tionship between Christology and People of God in Luke,” in From Jesus to the New Testa-
ment: Early Christian Theology and the Origin of the New Testament Canon, Baylor-Mohr
Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013), 227–46.
167 Jipp, “Paul of Acts,” 72.
168 Acts 13:29 (Deut 21:22–23); 14:15 (Exod 20:11); 17:26 (Deut 32:8); 17:29 (Gen 1:27); 22:14
(Num 24:16); 26:18 (Deut 33:3–4).

169 Acts 13:23 (2 Sam 7:12; Isa 11:1); 13:34 (Isa 55:3 LXX); 13:41 (Hab 1:5 LXX); 14:17 (Jer
5:24); 17:24 (1 Kgs 8:27); 17:29 (Isa 40:18–20); 17:24, 25 (Isa 42:5); 17:27 (Isa 55:6; Jer 23:23);
17:29 (Isa 44:10–17); 20:28 (Isa 43:21 LXX); 22:14 (Isa 53:11); 22:16 (Joel 3:5); 26:16 (Ezek 2:1);
26:17 (Jer 1:7, 8, 19; Ezek 2:3–4; Isa 6:8); 26:18 (Isa 35:5; 42:7, 16; 61:1 LXX); 26:23 (Isa 42:6;
49:6).
170 Acts 13:33 (Ps 2:7); 13:35 (Ps 16:10 LXX); 14:17 (Ps 146:6; 147:8); 17:24 (Ps 146:6); 17:25
(Ps 50:12); 17:27 (145:18); 26:17 (1 Chr 16:35).

171 Cf. Paula Fredriksen, “How Jewish is God? Divine Ethnicity in Paul’s Theology,” JBL
137 (2018): 193–212, here 211–2 makes this point in relation to “the Messiah” and “the resur-
rection from the dead.”
172 In this regard, the rejection of Messiah Jesus is also a rejection of Moses and the proph-
ets, who speak of him (cf. Luke 24:44).

173 For discussion, see esp. Wright, Resurrection, 131–40.
the Scriptures differs from that of many of his contemporaries: he recognizes

the crucified and risen Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and Lord.
There are, therefore, several aspects of Paul’s Christology that are historical-
ly novel. Paul proclaims that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer (13:27, 29;
17:3; 26:22; cf. Luke 24:46–47), and that God has now raised him from the dead,
in the middle of history, ahead of the rest (13:23, 30–37; 17:31; 26:23). He affirms
that Jesus is both the only “Saviour” (13:23), granting “forgiveness of sins”
(13:38), and the one who will execute God’s final judgment on earth (17:31). He
speaks in striking terms of Jesus’s blood as God’s “own blood” (20:28) and – yet
more remarkably – he characterizes Jesus’s appearances to him from heaven as
theophanies – dramatic appearances of the Lord God himself (22:6–11, 17–21;
26:12–18). None of these affirmations finds a direct antecedent in Israel’s Scrip-
tures, or a straightforward parallel in the early Jewish texts. Nevertheless, as we
have seen, all of them are deeply rooted in the Scriptures, and plausible within
early Judaism. Thus, while many of Paul’s Christological affirmations are his-
torically novel, they remain, in that important sense, deeply Jewish. Indeed, the
book of Acts has Paul himself assert that in proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, he
declares “nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass”
(26:22). According to Acts, the historical novelty of Paul’s gospel lies not in any
departure from Moses or the Prophets, but in his declaration that those Scrip-
tures find their surprising fulfilment in the once-crucified and now-resurrected
Lord Jesus Christ.174
7. Conclusion: Paul’s Very Jewish, Most High Christology
Paul’s Christology in his speeches in Acts is simultaneously deeply rooted in

Israel’s Scriptures, and historically novel. At the heart of this “novel fulfilment”
is Paul’s declaration that the once-crucified and now-resurrected Davidic Mes-
siah also embodies the very presence of God. Despite Fredriksen’s incredulity
that this “most high” Christology was “already articulated and proclaimed in
Jerusalem […] among Jews” in the earliest days of the church, the book of Acts
testifies that Paul did exactly that.175 Paul in Acts both affirms the fundamental
biblical distinction between the creator God and his creation, and speaks of Je-
174 This is reflected in the significant construction used throughout Acts, which takes the
known category of “the Christ” and identifies “the Christ” as “Jesus” (5:42; 9:22; 17:3; 18:5,
28).
175 Fredriksen, “How High?,” 295. Fredriksen refers to “this new movement” in scholar-
ship which claims that “Jesus is God” (italics original). While it is true that the “Early High
Christology Club” (EHCC) is a relatively recent phenomenon, the explicit confession of Jesus
as God dates to the earliest days of the church. Moreover, the mode of reasoning adopted by
EHCC scholars is explicitly anticipated in earlier Christian confession (E.g. Westminster
Larger Catechism, Q11 [AD 1647]).
264 Murray J. Smith
sus in ways that include him within the unique identity of the one true God.176
If this “most high” Christology anticipates the church’s later confessions at
Nicea and Chalcedon, the testimony of Acts suggests that this is only because
the church was following its Jewish Lord, and his Jewish apostle to the Gentiles,
who recognised Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, as God.177 It would be a mistake, how-
ever, to conclude that Paul radically re-interpreted Israel’s Scriptures in the ser-
vice of his proclamation of Messiah Jesus. For Paul – both in Acts and in his
letters – understands Israel’s Scriptures as divinely inspired (28:25; 2 Tim 3:16),
and affirms that their meaning cannot be fully grasped apart from his own ap-
ostolic gospel, which is nothing less than “the gospel […] of God” (20:24).178
Indeed, both in Acts and in his letters, Paul assumes that the Scriptures are
“forward-stretching and forward-looking” and already “postulate” the gospel
he proclaims (26:22; cf. Rom 1:2; Gal 3:8; 1 Cor 15:3–5).179 Consistent with these
Pauline convictions, Christian theology affirms that the “true and full sense” of
the prophetic Scriptures cannot be known in advance of, or in abstraction from,
their divinely ordained fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit-in-
spired interpretation of that fulfilment in the apostolic writings.180 From this
point of view, Paul’s Christology in Acts, while historically novel, is not a re-in-
terpretation of the Scriptures, but a demonstration of their truest and fullest
sense.
176 Paul does not, however, give any indication that Jesus became God at any point in time.
Such a thought is inimical to the biblical and Jewish understanding of God as the eternal cre-
ator (e.g. Gen 1:1; Isa 40:28). Cf. Charles K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary
on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994, 1998), 1:152: “he who
is God is what he is from and to eternity – otherwise he is not God.”
177 This does not mean that Paul, in Acts, remains trapped “between the Scylla of Sabel-
lianism and the Charybdis of ditheism” (Fredriksen, “How High?,” 293 n. 1). Paul simultane-
ously identifies Jesus as God, and as God’s “Son” (9:20; 13:33), and so recognizes a personal
distinction within the one God.
178 Cf. Rom 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor 11:7; 1 Thess 2:2, 8–9; 1 Tim 1:11: “the gospel of God”.
179 Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1948), 299.

180 I allude here to the Westminster Confession of Faith §1.9 and the doctrine of sensus ple-
nior.
Remembering Paul in Asia Minor
A Contested Jewish Identity

in the First Four Centuries of Christianity
Lyn Kidson
1. Introduction
We can be in no doubt as to the impression the apostle Paul left in Asia Minor.
Aberkios, bishop of Hierapolis died in the late second century and left an epi-
taph composed by himself. In this epitaph he tells of going on a long trip to
Rome and Syria and to the farthest point East in the Roman Empire, and was
accompanied “with Paul beside me on my wagon.”1 He was in some ways re-
tracing Paul’s missionary trips and symbolically extending them.2 Earlier epi-
taphs in the remote Çarşamba Valley, south of ancient Iconium, have been found
and a number of these commemorate Christian men bearing the name of Paul.3
Stephen Mitchell argues that the use of Paul’s name indicates the impact of the
mission of Paul in the region as described in Acts 14:1–23 and 15:36–16:5.4 In a
district east of Colossae, there is an epitaph that has been described as the earli-
est belonging to a Christian.5 This epitaph is dedicated to Eutyches and is dated
to the Sullan year 264, or 180 CE. Eutyches is depicted as standing with a roll of
bread with a cross on it in his right hand and bunch of grapes hanging from a
cross in his left hand. This imagery strongly suggests, along with the name, that
this is the gravestone of a Christian. Eutyches’s father was also named Eutyches.
If this Eutyches was a Christian also, suggested by his name, then the memory
1 ICG 1597; Paul McKechnie, Christianising Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and
Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2019), 151.
2 McKechnie, Christianising Asia Minor, 162–3.
3 Stephen Mitchell, in a British Institute at Ankara lecture, “The Enemy Within. Rome’s
Frontier with Isauria between Konya & Taurus Mountains” (9 May 2013), https://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=KwD-UkZY3Io; Lycaonia more broadly, Cilliers Breytenbach and
Christiane Zimmermann, Early Christianity in Lycaonia and Adjacent Areas: From Paul to
Amphilochius of Iconium, ECAM 102 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 60.
4 Mitchell, “The Enemy Within;” for an extensive survey of the epigraphic evidence see
Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Early Christianity, 73–87; 90–1.

5 ICG 1224; William M. Calder, “Early-Christian Epitaphs from Phrygia,” Anatolian
Studies 5 (1955): 25–38, here 33–4, Plate 2 (b) no. 2 (= MAMA 10 App. I, 181, 13); McKechnie,
Christianising Asia Minor, 155–6.
266 Lyn Kidson
of Paul’s raising Eutychos from the dead in Troas (Acts 20:7–12) was preserved
in Phrygia in the early second century. 6 Perhaps we are meant to see the connec-
tion between the Phrygian Eutyches holding the bread and the grapes and the
celebration of the Lord’s supper by Paul after he had raised the Troas Eutychos
back to life (Acts 20:11). Whatever is the case, what we seem to have is the com-
memoration in the name of Eutyches of Paul’s activity, which we might call his
“tradition.” We will take “tradition” here to mean “that which is handed down”
(LSJ 3: παράδοσις) to be in terms of how things are done (Mark 7:3; Matt 15:2).
In turn we will take “the memory of Paul” to be a subset of παράδοσις; in other
words, the figure of Paul as a historical figure which is now legendary (LSJ 2).
This will help us to distinguish between the recollection of Paul’s identity as
Jewish and his practice of Judaism. What we are investigating in this paper is the
preservation of Paul’s memory as a Jew in Asia Minor.
When one examines the reception of Paul in many of the early Christian doc-
uments associated with Asia Minor from the first to the fourth century, his
distinctive Jewish identity seems to disappear. I will be arguing that the battle
for a purely “Christian” identity in contrast to a “Jewish” identity led to a battle
over the Pauline tradition in Christian churches in Asia Minor in the first three
centuries, which was all but over by the fourth century. Dennis MacDonald in
The Legend and the Apostle argues that the Acts of Paul preserve oral legends of
Paul and Thecla circulating in Asia Minor in the second century.7 Macdon-
ald’s argument is quite persuasive and what I wish to argue is that the reception
of Paul’s memory was not confined to written sources. Lurking behind our
written materials are oral histories and traditions about Paul.8 What our writ-
ten resources are testament to is the negotiations of these memories and tradi-
tions of Paul the apostle. In this chapter, I will be interrogating the Pastoral
Epistles, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Acts of Paul, and Amphilochus’s
“Against False Asceticism” for traces of this negotiation. I will be suggesting
that the contest represented in these documents is a contest over Paul’s tradition
or how the Christian life was to be conducted. In this contest opponents are
labelled as “Jewish,” and in this arena Paul’s Jewish identity disappears. The
writers of the Pastoral Epistles and the story of Thecla, along with Ignatius, all
appear to be distancing themselves from what they thought was “Jewish.” By
the end of the fourth century, this contest was over. Various Christian groups in
Lycaonia continued to practice their versions of Christianity, but they were la-
belled by the incoming bishop Amphilochus as “heretics” and “schematics.”
Paul’s Jewishness and his practice had ceased to be an issue.
6 Εὔτυχος (Acts 20:9) is in the second declension whereas Phrygian Εὐτύχης is in the third
declension.
7 Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and
Canon (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1983), 18–33.

8 Ibid., 23.
Remembering Paul in Asia Minor 267
2. Parameters for this Study
Before beginning with the study proper, I wish to set out some parameters for
my study. Paul Trebilco argues quite persuasively against Bauer’s earlier thesis
that Paul’s memory had disappeared from Western Asia Minor in the second
century, “It is very unlikely […] that Paul was forgotten in Western Asia Minor,
as Bauer suggested. Rather, Pauline Christianity remained influential.”9 He
builds his case using the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp. Bauer had argued that
the writer of Revelation does not mention Paul because his memory had been
lost, so much so that even the church in Ephesus had lost the name of its found-
er.10 Instead, Trebilco makes the case,
The much more likely explanation is that John and some of John’s readers know the
Pauline tradition well, but John has chosen not to speak of that tradition. […] It is much
more likely that John made no use of the knowledge of Paul that he had. The reason for
this is that John’s main opposition in the seven churches was the Nicolaitans, who were
involved in eating food offered to idols and in idolatry. Scholars have often drawn paral-
lels between “the strong” at Corinth and the Nicolaitans, and suggested that the Nico-
laitans may have been influenced by Paul, or may have radicalized Paul’s teaching. Thus
the Nicolaitans probably appealed to Paul for support.11
Trebilco makes a very salient argument that Paul’s memory and his teaching
were contested and selectively used. While Trebilco argues that John of Revela-
tion chose to ignore Paul, what I want to suggest is that other writers working
within the Pauline tradition made selective use of the Pauline epistles, or more
correctly those that they had access to, and his tradition in oral form. Trebilco’s
argument was over Bauer’s view that Paul’s memory had disappeared in Western
9 Paul Trebilco, “Christian Communities in Western Asia Minor into the Early Second
Century: Ignatius and Others as Witnesses against Bauer,” JETS 49.1 (2006): 7–44, here 34;
Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. Robert A. Kraft and Ger-
hard Krodel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1971), 33–4; Tertullian, Bapt. 17.5, locates the ori-
gin of The Acts to Asia Minor, which suggests that legends about Paul were in circulation in
the early second century.
10 Bauer, Orthodoxy, 85.
11 Trebilco, “Christian Communities,” 34; Trebilco here is offering a conservative assess-
ment among the various views on what the Nicolaitans were promoting; on “eating idol food”
and fornication as metaphors for idolatry or involvement in certain social practices see Leon-
ard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1990), 121–4; Philip A. Harland, “Honouring the Emperor or Assailing the
Beast: Participation in Civic Life among Associations (Jewish, Christian and Other) in Asia
Minor and the Apocalypse of John” JSNT 22 (2000): 99–121, here 118. Others see the Nicolai-
tans as actually indulging in sexual misconduct, David. E. Aune, “The Social Matrix of the
Apocalypse of John,” in Apocalypticism, Prophecy and Magic in Early Christianity: Collected
Essays, ed. David Aune, WUNT 199 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 175–89; George R.
Beasley-Murray, Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 85–7; Adolf von Harnack, “The
Sect of the Nicolaitans and Nicolaus, the Deacon in Jerusalem,” Journal of Religion 3 (1923):
413–22, here 414, 417. For a comprehensive discussion of the Nicolaitans, Kenneth A. Fox,
“The Nicolaitans, Nicolaus and the Early Church,” Studies in Religion 23:4 (1994): 485–96.
268 Lyn Kidson
Asia Minor in the second century. But I think we can extend his findings based
on his observation that there was a contest over competing “orthodox” tradi-
tions.12 Trebilco argues that the contest was over church structure rather than
doctrinal disputes in Ephesus and Tralles.13 Putting this together, our starting
point is Trebilco’s observation that Paul’s tradition, including his letters, are still
in active use in Western Asia Minor. Our study will be extending this view, fo-
cusing on the reception of Paul from Western Asia Minor to Lycaonia in the
east, examining it for the use of his Jewish identity or otherwise. The time frame
for this reception will roughly cover from the latter first century to the mid
second century; or from the Pastoral Epistles, which I date with Trebilco from
80 CE to the writing of the Acts of Paul, which dates from about 170–175 CE.14
Unlike Trebilco and more like Bauer, I wish to move away from the ideas of
“heresy” and “orthodoxy” in our study. History is written by the victor; he or
she also preserves those documents that align with his or her view of that histo-
ry. With Bauer I wish to think of “Christianities” in Asia, not just within a
geographical region, but within the churches themselves.15 In other words, var-
ious views of the Christian life laid side by side in this period and in these
churches.16 Unlike Trebilco, I wish to argue that it was not just church struc-
ture that was the central issue in the churches of Ephesus and Tralles, but in
these churches, indeed in all the churches of Asia Minor, there were competing
views on the practice of Christianity.17 These are what I would call competing
identities and alignments with various strands of Christian tradition. As in
Corinth, in Paul’s time, there quickly sprang up competing groups, most likely
centred around a household and a householder.18 The various groups held to
12 Trebilco suggests that there was an “orthodox group” in both the Pauline and the Johan-
nine tradition that was “early, strong” and continuous. He assumes that there was a “pro-
to-orthodoxy” shared between the two communities, “Christian Communities,” 41.
13 Trebilco, “Christian Communities,” 28–9.
14 Date of the Pastoral Epistles, Trebilco, “Christian Communities,” 20, 39; cf. Jerome D.
Quinn and William C. Wacker, The First and Second Letters to Timothy, repr., vol. 1, ECC
(Grand Rapids; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000), 19. It is unlikely that the Pastoral Epistles
were written by the historical Paul, Lyn M. Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men: Rhetorical
Strategies of 1 Timothy 1, WUNT 526 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 11–3. On the date of
Acts of Paul, Richard I. Pervo, The Acts of Paul: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2014), ebook, “Introduction.”
15 Bauer and his underlying assumption of “lost Christianities,” see Trebilco, “Christian
Communities,” 18.
16 For an overview of the issues see Bradley J. Bitner, “Unity and Diversity in Emergent
Christianity,” in Into All the World: Emergent Christianity in its Jewish and Greco-Roman
Context, ed. Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 74–104.
17 “A way of life handed down to us from our forefathers” in response to competing “cus-
toms” between Christian and “pagan,” Clement of Alexandria, The Exhortation to the Greeks
(Protrepticus), trans. G. W. Butterworth, LCL 92 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1919), X.89; Competing practices Tertullian, Jejun. 1; Lyn M. Kidson, “Fasting, Bodily
Care, and the Widows of 1 Timothy 5:3–15,” EC 11:2 (2020): 191–205.
18 J. Brian Tucker, You Belong to Christ: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in
various strands of practice and tradition. Although they shared overlapping

theological doctrines, they were competing for members and for a distinct iden-
tity. We should not discount the four parties that Paul mentions. Factionalism
like this was a feature of Roman life.19 I suggest each householder claimed to be
a receiver of Paul’s or Apollos’ or Peter’s or Jesus’ way of doing things; that is,
their “tradition.” That all shared theological commonalities did not spare them
from factionalism. Indeed, it has been observed that the most intense rivalries
occur between those with the closest shared similarities; in other words, identi-
ty brawls are likely to be fieriest over commonly shared ground and the need to
distance oneself from one’s rival.20 Therefore, the working hypothesis for this
paper is that the various rival Christian groups within Asia cannot be divided
up into “orthodox” and “heretical” camps. What we have, as Trebilco suggests,
is a common pool of tradition handed down, including various written materi-
als, which the varying groups availed themselves of or did not; or emphasised or
demoted as it suited their particular claims to hold to the Christian tradition.
Therefore, while the surviving materials in our possession take a distinct
“them” and “us” stance, we cannot allow ourselves to be drawn into “taking
sides.” All educated men were trained in rhetoric.21 They all understood, at
least, the basics of making a persuasive argument. The aim of Ignatius and the
writer of the Pastoral Epistles is to persuade their audiences that the “Other” is
indeed the “other” and not to associate with them.22 These are polemical mate-
rials or at the very least materials that contain polemical materials.23 In 1989,
John Barclay published an article on Paul’s opponents in Galatians.24 In this
1 Corinthians 1–4 (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 158–66, here 174; Adam G. White,
Where Is the Wise Man? Graeco-Roman Education as a Background to the Divisions in 1 Cor-
inthians 1–4 London: (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), 10–1.
19 Peter N. Singer, “The Fight for Health: Tradition, Competition, Subdivision and Philos-
ophy in Galen’s Hygienic Writings,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22:5 (2014):
974–95; Giovanni Salmeri, “Reconstructing the Political Life and Culture of the Greek Cities
of the Roman Empire,” in Political Culture in the Greek City after the Classical Age, ed.
Onno van Nijf and Richard Alston (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 197–214. Odd Magne Bakke,
“Concord and Peace”: A Rhetorical Analysis of the First Letter of Clement with an Emphasis
on the Language of Unity and Sedition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).
20 Lloyd K. Pietersen, “Despicable Deviants: Labelling Theory and the Polemic of the Pas-
torals,” Sociology of Religion 58:4 (1997): 343–52, here 346–7.

21 Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 2; 148–9; Bruce W. Winter, Philo and Paul
Among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement,

2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
22 For a sociological definition of “othering” see Michal Krumer-Nevo and Mirit Sidi,
“Writing against Othering,” Qualitative Inquiry 18:4 (2012): 299–309: “Othering, which re-
fers to Otherness as the process of attaching moral codes of inferiority to difference.” On this
tactic against community leaders in the PE, Pietersen, “Despicable Deviants,” 349.
23 Robert J. Karris, “The Background and Significance of the Polemic of the Pastoral Epis-
tles,” JBL 92:4 (1973): 549–64.

24 John M. G. Barclay, “Mirror Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case,”
JSNT 31 (1987): 73–93.

270 Lyn Kidson
article he outlined a method for identifying those opponents. He warned those

wanting to reconstruct the situation behind Galatians not to rely on a mirror
reading of the polemics in a simplistic fashion:
If we are to understand such polemics, we must make every effort to clarify the origin
and nature of the relevant dispute; and an indispensable ingredient of that effort will be
the attempt to reconstruct the attitudes and arguments of the other side in the debate.
However much we may be predisposed to agree with the New Testament authors’ argu-
ments, we will not understand their real import until we have critically reconstructed the
main issues in the dispute and allowed ourselves to enter into the debate from both
sides.25
Like Galatians, we have no independent witness to the views of the opponents

of Ignatius or the writer of the Pastoral Epistles:
But here we run up against a formidable obstacle. In most cases we have no independent
witness to the arguments of those under attack in the New Testament; our only access to
their thoughts and identities is via the very documents which oppose them. Hence the
necessity for one of the most difficult and delicate of all New Testament critical methods:
we must use the text which answers the opponents as a mirror in which we can see re-
flected the people and the arguments under attack.26
Barclay identified two problems in reconstructing the opponents’ arguments:

– In the first place, Paul is not directly addressing the opponents in Galatians,
but he is talking to the Galatians about the opponents.
– The second point to remember is that this is no calm and rational conversa-
tion that we are overhearing, but a fierce piece of polemic in which Paul feels
his whole identity and mission are threatened and therefore responds with all
the rhetorical and theological powers at his command.27
The same can be said for the writers we are interested in and their use of Paul’s
tradition and memory. They are not directly addressing their opponents nor are
they systematically outlining their opponents’ views. My assumption is that
they are doing two things at the same time. They are both constructing an im-
age of Paul that suits their needs and utilizing rhetorical devices to reduce the
influence of those they see as “other.”
3. The Memory of Paul as Jewish: Two Hypotheses
Numerous scholars have tackled Paul’s formation of a new identity “in Christ”
for Jews and gentiles. Paul in his letters was not constructing a systematic
scheme for this identity; unlike his Roman counterparts he was not writing a
25 Barclay, “Mirror Reading,” 73.
26 Barclay, “Mirror Reading,” 73.
27 Barclay, “Mirror Reading,” 74–5.
new mythic epic of the origins of a new identity.28 In commenting on this Car-
oline Johnson Hodge observes that although Paul argues that Jews and gentiles
share a common ancestor, Abraham, he “does not collapse them into one group
(of ‘Christians,’ for example). Gentiles-in-Christ and Jews represent separate
but related lineages of Abraham.”29 Further she argues that Paul’s Jewish iden-
tity nested identities that could “operate independently of the others” (Rom
11:1; Phil 3:5–6; Gal 1:16; 2:16; 2:20).30 In these facets of his identity, she argues,
“Paul reprioritizes” in order to gain access to gentile communities.31 Paul thus
does not give up being a Jew, but “adjusted his own observances so that he can
eat and live with gentiles without asking them to observe the Law.”32 This care-
fully crafted identity, I would argue, could not be sustained by the Christ fol-
lowers who came after Paul. As Johnson Hodge notes at the beginning of her
study, there was a shift to a universal identity, which transcends ethnicity.33
Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) crafted a Christian identity that was
inclusive and transcendent.34 Denise Buell points out that for Clement “ethnic
distinctions consist especially of differences in how one worships.”35 Utilizing
an earlier work, Preaching of Peter, she says “accordingly from the Hellenic
training and also from the law, who accept into the one genos of the saved peo-
ple.”36 For Clement, pagans, Jews, and Christians “differ not in what they wor-
ship but in how they worship; Christians constitute the race that not only cor-
rectly understands the deity it venerates but also knows the proper practices of
veneration.”37
Given this framework, our investigation will be looking closely for how the
memory of Paul’s identity and tradition was negotiated in terms of race and
practice in the literature of Asia Minor. I will be testing two hypotheses: The
first hypothesis I will be testing is whether each writer is utilizing the same strat-
egy to style Paul as the originator and defender of their tradition.38 Do the
writers downplay Paul’s Jewish identity? The second hypothesis I will be testing
28 Caroline J. Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters
of Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5; the formation of new mythical origins
for Augustan Rome see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan
Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 167–263.
29 Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 5.
30 Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 120–1.
31 Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 121–2.
34 Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 4; Denise Kimber Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race
for Early Christian Self-Definition,” HTR 94:4 (2001): 449–76.

35 Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 461.
36 Strom. 6.42.2; Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 461.
37 Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 462.
38 Jens Herzer, “Was ist falsch an der ‚fälschlich so genannten Gnosis‘? Zur Paulusrezep-
tion des Ersten Timotheusbriefes im Kontext seiner Gegnerpolemik,” EC 5:1 (2014): 68–96,
here 77–8.
272 Lyn Kidson
is whether they are characterising their opponents’ tradition as “Jewish,” as dis-

tinct from a universal “Christian” tradition.
It is difficult to trace strands of Paul’s identity into reception history, given
the patchiness of preservation of material. Our greatest hurdle is actually the
preserved letters that we have in the New Testament. Our writers have access to
an oral tradition outside of the letters, and they did not necessarily have access
to all the letters as we have them.39 We, on the other, have a corpus of letters,
but we no longer have access to the oral tradition of Paul that was preserved in
Asia Minor.
4. Pauline Tradition in Asia Minor
We will now work through the material chronologically from the Pastoral Epis-
tles to the Acts of Paul. What we are hoping to do here, as Barclay suggests, is to
“critically reconstruct the main issues in the dispute” for our writers. We also
need to describe the memory of Paul in these documents.
4.1 The Pastoral Epistles

The greatest difficulty with piecing together the underlying memory of Paul in
the Pastoral Epistles is the assumption by the writer that his audience is familiar
with Paul’s history.40 In the opening salutation of 1 Timothy relies on shared
knowledge between the writer and the audience, built, it seems, on the Corin-
thian correspondence:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus [according to a command] of God (κατ’ ἐπιταγὴν θεοῦ)
our saviour, and Christ Jesus, who is our hope. (1 Tim 1:1)
It is structured in a similar way to 1 and 2 Corinthians:

Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God (διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ). (1 Cor
1:1)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God (διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ). (2 Cor 1:1)
I have argued that the change from διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ to κατ’ ἐπιταγὴν θεοῦ was
an indication that the writer was styling the Pauline biography in the terms
common in Asia Minor:
The phrase “by a command of God” in 1 Timothy is evocative in the Asia Minor context.
It relates to the appearance of a deity, who commands the devotee in a vison or dream.
39 Wilhem Schneemelcher and Robert L. Wilson note that it cannot be assumed that all
communities “possessed a complete exemplar of the NT” and had “probably only separate
writings,” in the second century, Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related
Subjects, rev. ed., New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK; Louisville: James
Clarke; Westminster, John Knox Press, 1992), 3.
40 Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 49–54, 98–7, 102.
For readers in Ephesus or anywhere in Anatolia, the appellation “Paul, an apostle of

Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God” in 1 Timothy would imply that
Paul had seen a vision and had received a command. This indicates the writer of 1 Timo-
thy has made a conscious decision to select the phrase “by the command of God” to
describe pastoral Paul’s appointment as an apostle.41
Thus, the writer of 1 Timothy is aware of the Pauline tradition that historical
Paul had become an apostle by seeing the Lord (1 Cor 9:1) through a vision (Acts
9:3–8; Gal 1:11–2). But the writer of 1 Timothy eschews the self-image of Paul as
one who had “advanced in Judaism” and was “zealous for the traditions of my
ancestors” (Gal 1:14). His image of Paul in 2 Timothy is moderated: Paul wor-
shipped “as my ancestors did” (2 Tim 1:3). This reflects Timothy’s upbringing in
“faith” by his mother and grandmother. However, nothing is said of their Juda-
ism; the reader must rely on his or her knowledge of the tradition of Paul meet-
ing Timothy in Lystra (cf. Acts 16:1–3). We should notice that 2 Tim 3:11 reflects
the story of Paul’s journey from Antioch to Iconium and Lystra (Acts 13:13–20).
This reminds the reader of the persecution Paul received at the hands of the Jews
(Acts 13:50). On the other hand, the writer seems not to know the entirety of
Paul’s itinerary as laid out in Acts.42 Rather, the writer appears to be relying on
the itinerary that Paul lays out in 1 Cor 16: he intends to travel to Corinth “after
passing through Macedonia,” but in the meantime he is staying in Ephesus to
deal with “many adversaries” (1 Cor 16:5–9). According to this timeline, Paul
has left Ephesus to travel to Macedonia leaving Timothy in charge (1 Tim 1:3). In
Titus, Paul writes to Titus in Crete from Nicopolis (Tit 3:12), so we can surmise
that the writer pictures him writing to Timothy from there as well. Acts rep-
resents another Pauline biography that is almost impossible to reconcile with the
Pastoral Epistles.43 On the positive side, what we have is the possible blending of
an oral tradition and Paul’s firsthand account of his plans in 1 Corinthians.44
The important picture we have of Paul from 1 Timothy is a Paul who uses
Scripture. The wrangle with the opponents in 1 Timothy seems to be over the
use of Scripture (1 Tim 1:7). But pastoral Paul asserts that “the law is good, if one
uses it lawfully” (1 Tim 1:8). He uses Genesis 1–3 twice (1 Tim 2:13–14; 4:3–5) to
combat the opponents’ teaching. We are on the safest ground here to identify the
use of Scripture as a distinctive of Paul’s Jewish upbringing. In 1 Timothy both
pastoral Paul and the opponents value the Scriptures but they are at variance in
41 Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 95.

42 Christopher R. Hutson, First and Second Timothy and Titus, Paideia (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 2019), 8.
43 Hutson, First and Second Timothy and Titus, 8; Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timo-
thy and Titus, NICNT (Grand Rapids; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2006), 10–5.
44 A Pauline tradition preserved in Ephesus and centred on the Corinthian correspon-
dence? 1 Tim 1:3; 2 Tim 1:18; 4:12; 1Cor 15:31; 16:8: “But I will stay in Ephesus until Pente-
cost.” Further, Ignatius quotes 1 Cor 1:19, 20, 23; in Eph. 18.1.
274 Lyn Kidson
some way, most likely in their use of them.45 At the very least the memory of
Paul here is that he is skilled in Jewish methods of interpretation.
This brings us to the characterization of the opponents in the Pastoral Epis-
tles. Using Barclay’s method for identifying “the main issues in the dispute”
eight points can be discerned:
1. The opponents are believers in the Christian community (1 Tim 1:3–4), but
have been expelled (1 Tim 1:20).
2. They teach the “law” (1 Tim 1:6–7). This involves a lot of discussion and re-
search (1 Tim 1:4; 6:4–5).
3. This research is into origins and genealogies (1 Tim 1:4; Tit 1:14; 3:9) and this
produces arrogance and ignorance, “a madness about research and disputes”
(1 Tim 1:3–4; 6:4; Tit 3:9).46
4. They are ascetics (1 Tim 4:1–5). They forbid marriage and abstain from cer-
tain foods (a special diet calculated to reduce sexual urges).47
5. Pastoral Paul responds with an interpretation of Genesis arguing that mar-
riage is good (1 Tim 4:3–4).48 This implies that the first chapters of Genesis
are under debate.
6. In Titus the “myths” of 1 Tim 1:4; 4:7 and 2 Tim 4:4 are defined as “Jewish”
(Tit 1:14).49 However, in 2 Timothy Pastoral Paul utilizes non-canon Jewish
literature or folklore – Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim 3:8).50 The mention of these
Egyptian magicians suggests a reliance on extra-canonical material by both
Pastoral Paul and the opponents.
7. Some claim that the resurrection has already happened (2 Tim 2:18). As
Thornton argued “the most likely interpretation of 2 Tim 2:18 is that the op-
ponents immaterialized the resurrection. For the false teachers in Ephesus,
ἀνάστασις was a purely spiritual event, fully realized in the present.”51
8. This does imply a focus on eschatology by the opponents.
In summary, the opponents of Pastoral Paul appear to be as Jewish as he is. This
makes the process of distancing those who are now “the other” difficult as there
are overlapping identities. Yet in Titus Pastoral Paul calls “myths” or stories of
origin, “Jewish.” We cannot take this at face value; it does not necessarily mean
45 Herzer, “Was Ist Falsch,” 78.

46 Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 124–32.
47 Kidson, “Fasting, Bodily Care,” 192–205.
48 Robert W. Wall, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, The Two Horizons NT Commentary
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 93.

49 Perplexingly Dillion T. Thornton excludes Titus in his study, Hostility in the House of
God: An Investigation of the Opponents in 1 and 2 Timothy, BBRSup (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2016), 7.
50 Jerome D. Quinn and William C. Wacker, The First and Second Letters to Timothy,
repr., vol. 2, ECC (Grand Rapids; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000), 727–30.
51 Thornton, Hostility in the House of God, 250.
that the opponents are Jewish Christians.52 The writer has engaged in a familiar
rhetorical strategy where he characterises his opponents with negatively valued
descriptors; what Karris called “name calling.”53 The opponents are occupying
their time with “myths and genealogies” in 1 Timothy and the “myths” are Jew-
ish in Titus. Thus “Jewish” is a negative descriptor. What we don’t have is any-
thing that could be readily identifiable as a “Jewish myth”: such a search would
be futile. What we have are either oral traditions (?) or literature being utilised
in a Christian context that could be labelled as “myths” and as “Jewish” by an
opponent. Certainly, we can surmise that the writer of the Pastoral Epistles
would wish to distance Paul from the opponents, their interpretive methods,
and their literature or oral traditions that could be labelled as “Jewish myths.”
Paul’s Jewishness is thus downplayed except for his skill as an interpreter of
Scripture.
4.2 Paul in Ignatius

We will now briefly turn to Ignatius’s letters. Recently, John Marshall has made
the persuasive case that the Christians that Ignatius was opposed to were not
two groups but one: “understood as a single group of Jewish Christians who
understand Jesus to be an angel.”54 Marshall utilizes a similar method to Barclay
to identify the points at issue. He identifies three characteristics, the third of
which is “Judaising.” As Marshall describes “It seems that the practices under-
taken, the texts interpreted and the associations kept by the objects of Ignatius’
wrath were oriented towards Judaism more strongly than Ignatius thought
proper.”55 In Magnesians 8.1–2a, Ignatius in similar strains to the Pastoral Epis-
tles, urges his readers:
Do not be deceived by false opinions (ταῖς ἑτεροδοξίαις) or old fables that are of no use.
For if we have lived according to Judaism until now, we admit that we have not received
God’s gracious gift. For the most divine prophets lived according to Jesus Christ (Magn.
8.1–2).56
As Marshall sums up, “This demonstrates two of the areas of Judaism that Ig-
natius sees as incompatible with Christianity: texts (strange doctrines or old
52 Herzer, “Was Ist Falsch,” 76; Jerome D. Quinn, The Letter to Titus, AB (New York:
Doubleday, 1990), 109–12; Douglas Boin describes how the writer of 2 Maccabees stigmatizes
Jews who engage in “Greek” cultural practices as “Greeks,” “‘Hellenistic Judaism’ and the
Social Origins of the ‘Pagan-Christian’ Debate,” JECS 22:2 (2014): 167–96, here 176–80.
53 Karris, “The Background and Significance,” 549.
54 John W. Marshall, “The Objects of Ignatius’ Wrath and Jewish Angelic Mediators,”
JEH 56:1 (2005): 1–23, here 18.

55 Marshall, “The Objects of Ignatius’ Wrath,” 7.
56 All quotes from Ignatius taken from The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 1: I Clement. II
Clement. Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache, ed. & trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
276 Lyn Kidson
fables) and practices (living according to Judaism).”57 Whereas the writer of

1 Timothy inveighs against those promoting the “other educational program”
(ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν; 1 Tim 1:3; 6:3), Ignatius rails against the “heterodoxies” (ταῖς
ἑτεροδοξίαις) and old myths that are profitless (cf. 1 Tim 1:4b, 6–7; Tit 1:16).58 We
find out from Ignatius that these other Christians were keeping the Sabbath
(Magn. 9.1). Similarly, in the letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius castigates cer-
tain Christians for promoting Judaism:
But if anyone should interpret Judaism to you, do not hear him. For it is better to hear
Christianity from a man who is circumcised than Judaism from one who is uncircum-
cised. (Phld. 6.1)
As Marshall describes, “Ignatius indicates the complexity of the issue of Jewish

Christianity, but he should be taken (almost) literally: there are people who are
ethnic Jews and who preach what Ignatius calls Christianity and there are peo-
ple who are not ethnic Jews and who preach what Ignatius calls Judaism, though
a scholarly observer might call it Jewish Christianity.”59 In contrast, Daniel Bo-
yarin rejects the idea that “Jewish Christianity” ever existed, but the point re-
mains that Ignatius is fashioning a conception and practice of Christianity that
he thinks is in contrast to Jewish practice or in his terms “Judaism.”60
Marshall then goes on to make the case that the opponents’ claim that Jesus
only seemed to be suffering was rooted in Judaism. 61 In his letter to the Trallians
he says “But if, as some who are atheists – that is, unbelievers – say, that he only
appeared (τὸ δοκεῖν) to suffer (it is they who are the appearance)” (Trall. 10.1).
These people are “atheists” and in Smyrn. 2 they are “faithless.” Although Igna-
tius does not make explicit that he considers those who hold this view as “Jew-
ish,” Marshall makes the case that such a view is built on the Jewish ideas about
angelic mediators found both in the Septuagint and in the Jewish literature. 62 In
Tobit the angel Raphael reveals his other worldliness:
As for me, when I was with you, I was acting not of my own will, but by the will of God.
Bless him each and every day; sing his praises. Although you were watching me, I really
did not eat or drink anything – but what you saw was a vision. (Tob 12:18–19) 63

58 “Other educational program”: Kidson, “Fasting, Bodily Care,” 204; William R.
Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 118.
59 Marshall, “The Objects of Ignatius’ Wrath,” 8–9.
60 Daniel Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Du-
bious Category (to which is appended correction of my Border Lines),” JQR 99:1 (2009): 7–36;
Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), passim.
62 Cf. Amphilochius of Iconium, “Previously it seemed to some of them that He appeared
to Abraham through angels …,” Homily 1, ll.26–49; trans. J. H. Barkhuizen, “Amphilochius

of Iconium: Homily 1 ‘on the Nativity,’” APB 12:1 (2001): 1–23.
And at Qumran, the evidence suggests the archangel Michael was a “angelic,
messianic redeemer figure.”64 This evidence makes it feasible to suggest that
some Christians thought that Jesus was a mediating angel. Both the Gospel of
Thomas and Hebrews (Heb 1:5–14) combat the idea that Jesus was an angel.65
On the other hand, the Shepherd of Hermas, whose Christology is not all that
clear, does “imply [at several points] that the angel who is in charge of the salva-
tion of the recipient of the visions and of humanity as a whole is the same figure
as the Son of God elsewhere in the work.”66 Other Christian works, such as the
Sibylline Oracles (8.456–64) and the Ascension of Isaiah (9:33–7), also suggest
that Jesus is an angel. 67 Epiphanius in the fourth century describes the Ebion-
ites, or Jewish Christians, as teaching that Jesus was not begotten of God the
Father “but created like one of the archangels, [they understand] him to rule
also angels and everything made by the almighty” (Pan. 30.16.4). 68 Thus Mar-
shall’s argument that Ignatius was defending against a non-corporeal Jesus that
he labelled as “Jewish” is quite cogent. Specifically, in the letter to the Magne-
sians, those who have been deceived by “false opinions or old fables” (as quoted
above) are also Sabbath keepers who deny the reality of Jesus’ death, “and so
those who lived according to the old ways came to a new hope, no longer keep-
ing the Sabbath but living according to the Lord’s day, on which also our life
arose through him and his death – which some deny” (Magn. 9.1).
While I agree with Marshall that Ignatius is disparaging his opponents as
“Jewish” and that they hold to Jewish practices, we should be careful in describ-
ing these Christians as “Jewish Christians.”69 Ignatius takes a step further than
the writer of the Pastoral Epistles by jettisoning a Jewish identity for Christians
and developing a new identity. As Douglas Boin argues:
He is the first to juxtapose ᾿Ιουδαϊσμός with a new word of his own, “Christianism”
(Χριστιανισμός), a term that historians customarily translate “Christianity.” Ignatius
coins this term, however, not to give birth to a new religion but in order to set up a con-
trast between followers of Jesus who rely too much upon identifiably Jewish practices
and others who have given them up.70
Boin then goes on to make the case that Eusebius develops this idea from Igna-
tius and other earlier writers, such as Clement of Alexandria, “who had present-

69 For a summary of the term “Jewish Christianity,” see Paul McKechnie, “Jewish Chris-
tianity to AD 100,” in Into All the World: Emergent Christianity in its Jewish and Greco-Ro-
man Context, ed. Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 134–
157, here 135–8; cf. Joan E. Taylor, “The Phenomenon of Early Jewish-Christianity: Reality
or Scholarly Invention?” VC 44:4 (1990): 313–34.
70 Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism’,” 167–96.
278 Lyn Kidson
ed Christians as a race, or ethnic group, unique among Mediterranean peo-

ples.”71 And this is a salient point in our discussion: what makes Christianity
“Judaism” (Phld. 6.1) is what Ignatius perceives as Jewish practices like keeping
the Sabbath (Magn. 9.1). Such people deny the flesh of Jesus, and these people,
he says to the Ephesians, bear the name as a wicked deceit (Eph. 7.2). Instead the
Ephesians are told that there is “one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, born
and unborn, God come in the flesh (ἐν σαρκὶ γενόμενος θεός), true life in death,
from both Mary and God, first subject to suffering and then beyond suffering,
Jesus Christ our Lord” (Eph. 7.2).
In a very similar manner, the writer of 1 Timothy confesses that the “living
God” “was revealed in flesh (ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί)” (1 Tim 3:7–16). Earlier in the
letter, the writer, again in quasi-poetic form assures the believers in Ephesus
that “there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind
(ἀνθρώπων), Christ Jesus, himself human (ἄνθρωπος), who gave himself a ran-
som for all” (1 Tim 2:5–6). Although we see little of the “other instruction” of
the opponents in 1 Timothy, the language endorsing Jesus as truly human, who
appeared in the flesh, points strongly toward a docetic understanding of Jesus
by the opponents, much like Ignatius’ opponents. It is at this point that the
writer of 1 Timothy and Ignatius stand furthest apart from Paul. Or perhaps we
should say Pauline tradition as interpreted by some Christians. I suggest that
Paul’s discussion of the flesh at the resurrection in 1 Cor 15 could be miscon-
strued and may have contributed to a docetic interpretation:
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is
raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a
physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam,
became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the
spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from
the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 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.
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the
man of heaven. 50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (1 Cor
15:42–50)
One could read this to mean that the body with which one is born cannot “in-
herit the kingdom of God.” Jesus was the man from heaven and was a life-giving
spirit. Such an interpretation ties neatly into the docetic view as Marshall de-
scribed it. The emphasis of 1 Timothy on God in the flesh (σάρξ), which else-
where Paul equates with a sinful nature (eg Rom 7:5, 18, 25; 8:3–13), appears to
be contradicting a view that the flesh is sinful, unfit for the coming age. For the
writer of 1 Timothy, however, God in the flesh was vindicated in spirit, was seen
71 Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism’,” 184.
by angels, and was taken up in glory (1 Tim 3:16). The flesh for the writer of
1 Timothy is no barrier to Jesus carrying out his mission nor admission to “into
glory,” just as it is in Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 7.2).
It is only in Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians that Paul’s name makes an ap-
pearance. In the New Testament literature Paul is the founding father of this
church with a long standing relationship (cf. Ign. Eph. 12.2). On the other hand,
Paul did not have such a relationship with the other churches Ignatius writes to.
In Ignatius’ Ephesians, Paul is described in superlative fashion as “the holy one
who received a testimony and proved worthy of all [blessedness]” (Eph. 12.2).
For Ignatius Paul is the ideal apostle who is holy and so can testify supremely
(cf. 1 Tim 2:7) and is blessed supremely. The true Christian adheres “to the faith
and love that are in Jesus Christ” (Eph. 14.1; cf. 1 Tim 6:3). Since the divine
prophets “lived according to Jesus Christ” (Magn. 8.2) and the faithful Chris-
tian adheres to the faith and love in Jesus Christ, thus Paul, the supreme Chris-
tian, must for Ignatius also live “according to Jesus Christ” and not according
to Judaism.
It thus appears that Ignatius is reshaping the image of Paul as the superlative
Christian in the new race that he is fashioning. Salvation and eternal life, as he
says in Ephesians, raises from the very being of “our God, Jesus Christ, was
conceived by Mary according to the plan of God; he was from the seed of David,
but also from the Holy Spirit” (18.2). While Jesus may have what looks like
Jewish roots “from the seed of David,” Ignatius will be pleased:
if the Lord shows me that all of you to a person are gathering together one by one in
God’s grace, in one faith and in Jesus Christ – who is from the race of David according
to the flesh (τῷ κατὰ σάρκα), and is both son of man and son of God – so that you may
obey the bishop and the presbytery […] breaking one bread, which is a medicine that
brings immortality, an antidote that allows us not to die but to live at all times in Jesus
Christ. (Eph. 20.2)
Christians are a new race, who are not connected in the flesh to the Jewish race
as Jesus is, but through obedience to the bishop and presbytery and in the prac-
tice of “breaking one bread” they will not die but live “in Jesus Christ.” It is the
practice of “breaking bread” that is the medicine that brings immortality (as we
might deduce from Phrygian Eutyches’ epitaph). At this point one might think
that Ignatius would allude to Paul’s tradition of breaking bread in 1 Corinthians
since he comes close to quoting 1 Cor 1:20 at the start of this section (Ign. Eph.
18.1). Yet in the course of Ignatius’ argument Paul’s Jewish identity and his tra-
dition look irrelevant. This new race of Christians for Ignatius is rooted in Jesus
Christ and his flesh and joined to him through a mystical union of breaking
bread.
280 Lyn Kidson
4.3 Paul in the Story of Thecla in the Acts of Paul

When we shift our focus to the east of Asia Minor a different Paul appears. As
indicated at the beginning of the paper, the name Paul occurs on epitaphs all
over the region of Lycaonia. Cilliers Breytenbach concluded that it exceeded all
other Christian names in this region.72 A memory of Paul and his tradition were
firmly planted in the church, judging by the epigraphic and documentary evi-
dence. As we already have suggested, this could stem from the work of the his-
torical Paul during his visits there. The primary document we are going to con-
sider is the Acts of Paul, which contains the story of Thecla. Thecla’s story is set
in Iconium and Syrian Antioch and it is possible that these stories circulated
independently.73
The first thing we need to establish is whether the story of Thecla as it is pre-
served in the Acts of Paul is from that region. The first mention that we have of
the Acts of Paul comes from Tertullian in his homily On Baptism, written
around the turn of the third century.74 Tertullian is arguing that women should
not baptise (chapter 17). He makes the case that the bishop has the right and so
do elders, deacons and laymen if they are delegated the right by the bishop.
However, baptism by these men should only be conducted in the most extraor-
dinary circumstances since “emulation of the episcopal office is the mother of
schisms.”75 He reasons that if a woman cannot teach neither should she baptise.
In this polemical context, he dismisses the Acts of Paul as not authoritative be-
cause some “claim Thecla’s example as a licence for women’s teaching and bap-
tizing.” It would appear that some women in some parts of the African church
were doing these duties. Tertullian’s response is that this work did not possess
apostolic authority because it was written by a presbyter in Asia, “who com-
posed that writing, as if he were augmenting Paul’s fame from his own store, af-
ter being convicted, and confessing that he had done it from love of Paul.” This
presbyter was convicted and removed from his office. The practice of Paul in the
Acts of Paul did not match with what Tertullian knew about women’s conduct in
72 Cilliers Breytenbach, “Authority and Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor
and Greece,” in Authority and Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor and Greece,
ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Julien M. Ogereau, AJEC (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018), 144–67,
here 160–1.
73 Chapter 4 of the Acts of Paul the original story is about “a marriage-rejecting virgin”
expanded by the writer to integrate it into his narrative (chapter 3): Pervo, The Acts of Paul,
chapter 3; MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle, 18–33; Philipp Pilhofer, “Die Löwen der
Berge: Lebendige, steinerne und literarische Löwen im Rauhen Kilikien,” in Authority and
Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor and Greece, ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and
Julien M. Ogereau (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018), 193–4 n. 124.
74 Earnest Evans, ed. and trans., Tertullian’s Homily On Baptism (London: SPCK, 1965),
xi; Pervo argues that he knew of the complete Acts not just the story of Thecla, The Acts of
Paul, introduction.
75 On Baptism from New Advent website: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm.
1 Cor 14:34–35, which he quotes, and 1 Tim 2:12, which he alludes to. The ques-
tion that needs to be answered is whether this work did originate in Asia.
We do have preserved on papyri the remains of the Acts of Paul. There are 4
fragments preserved that are written in Greek.76 There are also near complete
copies in Coptic, as well as fragments.77 So popular was this work that it was
translated into numerous ancient languages.78 There is enough evidence for
scholars to conclude that parts of what we now have as the Acts of Paul circulat-
ed as separate documents.79 However, MacDonald’s argument is that the The-
cla portion is derived from oral traditions circulating in Asia Minor before they
were composed into a literary unit that Tertullian knew in Africa. The epi-
graphic evidence supports this.80 The overwhelming number of instances of
“Thecla” as a name come from Cilicia and Isauria, followed closely by Lycaonia
and then Phrygia and Galatia. Of course, this might be an indication of the
popularity of a name favoured by the inhabitants; however, nearly all the epi-
taphs from Cilicia and Isauria have a cross engraved next to the inscription.
Some of these Theclas are accompanied by male Christian names: John (SEG
40:1310) at Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos; Peter (MAMA III 664), and a Paul and
Thecla (CIG 9223). 81 There is a similar pattern in Lycaonia. A Thecla Lilaina
was a “slave of Christ” (MAMA VII 104) and a Thecla from Laodicea Combus-
ta had a relative, who was a presbyter (MAMA I 231). This evidence strongly
76 Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Pap. bil. 1, pp. 1–11 (3rd/4th c. CE.); P.
Oxy xiii.1602 (4th/5th c. CE); Mich. inv. 1317 (3rd/4th c. CE), P. Mich. inv. 3788, P. Berol. 13893
(3rd/4th c. CE); George D. Kilpatrick and C. H. Roberts, “The Acta Pauli: A New Fragment,”
JTS 47:187/188 (1946): 196–9, here n. 1; William Ramsay notes a report that there were 8–9
manuscripts in the monastery at Mount Sinai, The Church in the Roman Empire before A. D.
170 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1893), 376, n.
77 Cologny, Bodmer Library, P. Bodmer XLI (4th c. CE) ~ ep. 9; Manchester, John Rylands
Library, Copt. Suppl. 44 (4th c. CE) ~ ep. 1; Heidelberg, Universität Heidelberg, inv. Kopt.
300&301; London, British Library, Or. 6943(19) (6th c. CE); for a complete bibliography see
North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature website: https://
www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/acts-of-paul/.
78 Syriac: Catherine Burris, “The Reception of the Acts of Thecla in Syriac Christianity:
Translation, Collection, and Reception” (PhD diss., Chapel Hill, 2011); Arabic: Stephen J.
Davis. “From Women’s Piety to Male Devotion: Gender Studies, the Acts of Paul and Thecla,
and the Evidence of an Arabic Manuscript,” HTR 108:4 (2015): 579–93; Latin, Armenian, and
Slavonic, Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 376.
79 “Three components enjoyed separate existence,” Pervo, The Acts of Paul, “Introduc-
tion”; an expanded work, Benjamin Edsall, “(Not) Baptizing Thecla: Early Interpretive Ef-
forts on 1 Cor 1:17,” VC 71.3 (2017): 235-60, fn. 18.
80 As indicated by a search in the PHI Greek Inscriptions database 33 matches for Asia
Minor. In comparison there are 15 Thecla’s listed in the PHI Greek Inscriptions database for
Egypt. Crosses are inscribed on most of these epitaphs. One Thecla is named before 250 CE
in the papyri P.Oxy 12 1464 (Sel. Pap. II 318).
81 A sanctuary existed for Thecla at Seleukeia on Kalykadnos, Pilhofer, “Die Löwen der
Berge,” 193.
282 Lyn Kidson
suggests that “Thecla,” as a Christian name, was inspired by the legendary

Thecla, whom we read about in the Acts of Paul.
Paul, in the Acts of Paul, preaches a message that is very reminiscent of the
message of the opponents in the Pastoral Epistles and the letters of Ignatius.82
The story of Thecla (Acts of Paul 3–4) begins with Paul fleeing Syrian Antioch
to Iconium (3:1).83 This story bears only marginal similarities to the journey of
Paul in Acts (13:50–14:1). In Acts Paul is accompanied by Barnabas and they are
persecuted by “the Jews” in Antioch (Acts 13:45, 50) and “unbelieving Jews” in
Iconium (Acts 14:2). In the story of Thecla, Jews do not appear. The persecution
is carried out by her own family and by the gentile authorities. Instead of Barn-
abas, Paul is accompanied by two hypocrites, who act as if they love him but
“this was pure deceit” (3:1), much like the opponents in 1 Timothy. 84 Onesipho-
rus offers Paul hospitality, having been told his physical description by Titus
(3:2). Onesiphorus does not appear in Acts, but a disciple with the same name
appears in 2 Timothy (4:19). It is perhaps to be taken that this Onesiphorus is
from Iconium since Paul remembers the persecution he experienced in Antioch,
Iconium and Lystra (2 Tim 3:11). Titus in the Pastorals is also Paul’s faithful em-
issary (2 Tim 4:10; Tit 1:4). It is somewhat perplexing that it is Titus in the Acts of
Paul and not Timothy, who in Acts is a resident of Lystra, Lycaonia. Syrian
Antioch is the geographical locus, as Onesiphorus sets out toward Lystra, which
is in the opposite direction to the way Paul would be travelling if he were to flee
from Pisidian Antioch. 85 Only in the story of Thecla do we have a physical de-
scription of Paul; Onesiphorus sees Paul approaching who is “short, bald, bow-
legged, healthy-looking, single-browed, a bit of long nose, and bustling with
beneficence” (3.3). He at times looked like “a mortal and at others like an angel.”
Paul is welcomed into Onesiphorus’ house where he preaches a sermon with
thirteen points (3:5). This sermon is styled like Jesus’ sermon on the mount:
“blessed are they …” is the refrain. Of interest to us is the emphasis on purity of
the flesh (point two). They are blessed who are self-controlled because God will
speak to them; and blessed are they who have kissed the world goodbye (points
three and four). The next point is about sexual renunciation in marriage – “bless-
ed are they who have wives but do not have sexual relations with them, for they
will be heirs of God.” And point 13, the most significant of all is “blessed are the
bodies of virgins, for they will please God and not lose the reward for chastity
for the Father’s word will become saving action for them on the day of his son
82 Translations by Pervo, The Acts of Paul.
83 The reader of the canonical Acts 14 would presume Paul is fleeing from Pisidian An-
tioch, but in the previous chapter of The Acts of Paul, Paul is stoned in Syrian Antioch, Pervo,
The Acts of Paul, 84–5, 90–1.
84 Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 264–6.
85 An oddity noted by Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Early Christianity, 72; see Pervo’s
discussion on the attempt to add clarity to Paul’s journey by calling this road the “the King’s
Highway,” 90–1.
and they will enjoy eternal rest.” The emphasis on sexual renunciation by Paul
is diametrically opposed to the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles. 86
The heroine Thecla hears Paul preaching and sees “any number of women and
girls arriving to see Paul.” The emphasis is on Paul’s relationship with women
– he has a charismatic magnetism. Thecla becomes a teacher and a missionary;
she baptises herself and is martyred twice! This stands in contrast to the care-
fully negotiated activity of women in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim 2:9–15; 5:1–16;
Tit 2:3–5). Paul and Thecla travel together. They are able to do this without any
hint of impropriety because of Paul’s ascetic message. He spends most of his
time healing and preaching. In many ways the image of Paul in the Acts of Paul
is much like Jesus in the gospels. But in spite of this, Paul is not presented as
“Jewish.” Neither is he a teacher of the Scriptures, as he is in the Pastoral Epis-
tles. There are no Jewish opponents or any opponents other than gentile unbe-
lievers. Certainly, there are no critical Christian voices, only Thecla’s pagan
mother, who objects to her vow of chastity: “Burn this enemy of matrimony in
the middle of the theatre,” she cries (3:20).87 True spirituality lies in renuncia-
tion. Virgins are especially blessed. Thecla receives an amazing salvation from
the Lord, which we are to take to be related to her continued virginity and re-
fusal of wealth. Those who revere God will become God’s angels, says Paul in
his sermon (3:5–6). And indeed, Thecla in the arena has a vision of Paul as the
Lord, who then ascends into heaven (3:21–22). This may hint at an underlying
docetism. However, later in chapter 10 (3 Corinthians), docetism is explicitly
rejected in Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians.88 Paul may be preach-
ing sexual renunciation but his Christology is “orthodox” if we use Ignatius as
a guide. Given the possibility that 3 Corinthians was inserted into the Acts of
Paul, this could be an attempt to redeem a much beloved story for those holding
an orthodox Christology. 89
In summary, Paul’s physical presence in the Acts of Paul looms large. One can
conclude from the epigraphical evidence that the memory of his presence and
ministry in Lycaonia was significant. Paul’s tradition in Acts of Paul is an ascet-
ic one. It is in Thecla’s story that Paul’s Jewishness is completely stripped away.
In fact, no Jews are present in Thecla’s story at all, although they later appear in
the story in Tyre (7.1) and Jerusalem (8).90 It is in the section on Paul’s visit to
Jerusalem that his Jewish identity comes back into view. Unfortunately, the

87 The hypocrites Demas and Hermogenes (3.1) act as foils for Paul’s graciousness.
88 What is now called 3 Corinthians is the two letter correspondence between Paul and the
Corinthians with accompanying narrative. This correspondence did circulate independently

(P.Heid has both the letters and the narrative), and appears to have had a life of its own before
its incorporation into the Acts of Paul, Pervo, The Acts of Paul, 253–5.
89 Benjamin L. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image
of the Apostle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 108–9.

90 Jews as the first to receive the prophets in 3 Corinthians (10.4.9).
284 Lyn Kidson
manuscript evidence is very damaged but there is mention of Moses, and Paul
may be saying that he has submitted to the Torah. What we can conclude, I
think, is that in Lycaonia Paul is remembered for being an ascetic and leading a
movement of a new humanity, who transcend their earthly lives.
5. The Vanishing Point of Paul’s Jewishness in Lycaonia
In 374 CE Amphilochius the Younger arrived in Iconium to take up the position

of bishop. He was an ascetic but “orthodox.”91 What Amphilochius found, es-
pecially in Isauria, were churches that he did not believe conformed to orthodox
practices as he understood them. The main point of contention for Amphilochi-
us was the recognition of the baptism of schismatic groups such as Novatians,
Montanists, and “encratites.”92 Amphilochius had discovered that the Council
of Laodicea had recognised the baptism of “encratites.” Amphilochius’ mentor
Basil of Caesarea had initially agreed with the council ruling since they baptised
in the name of the Trinity, but later his attitude hardened and said that “they
abominate marriage, reject wine, and claim that God’s creation is pollution.”93
It might come as a surprise that the ascetic bishops, Basil and Amphilochius,
found fault with the ascetic “encratites.” Fortunately for us Amphilochius left a
treatise, “Against False Asceticism,” dealing with the problematic practices of
the schismatics. At the centre of the problem was the issue of taking wine and
bread at the Eucharist; the encratists used water.94 In the Acts of Paul, Paul cel-
ebrated the “holy deeds of Christ” with water outside of Iconium (3.25). Sec-
ondly, they not only renounced marriage but “call the fathers that begat them
adulterers, and consider their mothers prostitutes” [6].95 Amphilochius ties the
schematic practices to “Samaritans,” who are “keepers of the Law,” and Jews,
whose Jesus censured for not honouring their parents [6].96 Virginity is “a mar-
vellous thing” says Amphilochius, but the schismatics “remove honourable
marriage” (Or. II, §1, ll. 1).97 Similarly, the prohibition of marriage is the core of
the problem in 1 Timothy. Virgins were to be found in the church in Ephesus
but were to be kept by their family (1 Tim 5:11–16).98 Further, Pastoral Paul
urges Timothy to “no longer drink only water, but take a little wine” (1 Tim
91 Peter Thonemann, “Amphilochius of Iconium and Lycaonian Asceticism,” JRS 101
(2011): 185–205, here 86–7.

92 Thonemann, “Amphilochius,” 188.
96 Tran. Andrew S. Jacobs, “Amphilochus of Iconium,” Against Heretics: http://andrew
jacobs.org/translations/asceticism.html.
97 Thonemann, “Amphilochius,” 193–4.
5:23); in the light of the Acts of Paul and Amphilochius this perhaps should be
read as an instruction to use wine at the Lord’s supper. Amphilochius argues
that Paul did not keep to any such practices since he went into Onesiphorus’
house and shared all the vessels [Haer. 18]. He uses the story of Thecla to argue
against the “Jewish” tradition of the schismatics! Paul is no longer Jewish but
holds to the tradition of the apostles [Haer. 20].
6. Conclusion
The evidence we have gained from the Pastoral Epistles and Ignatius is that
Paul’s memory and tradition was highly contested in Asia Minor after his death.
Those practices that the writer of 1 Timothy and Ignatius rejected were labelled
as “Jewish” and Paul’s identity as a Jew was carefully brushed into the back-
ground. Even more starkly, Paul’s identity in the story of Thecla is stripped of
its Judaism; instead he becomes a universal man. He is almost indistinguishable
from Jesus, who also lacks any Jewish identifiers. What can we deduce about
Paul’s Jewish identity in Lycaonia? Was it viewed as a liability in the contest
with those like the writer of 1 Timothy and Ignatius who labelled their practic-
es as “Jewish”? Or was it irrelevant since Paul was the universal man? The writ-
er of 1 Timothy could not escape Paul’s Jewish identity as he and his audience
had, at least, a copy of the Corinthian correspondence. Perhaps the believers in
the remote highlands of Lycaonia were without this resource and relied on their
received tradition. What we can conclude is that in Asia Minor Paul’s Jewish
identity had to be managed, if not jettisoned altogether. For many, Paul was not
Jewish but a universal man; his asceticism a sign of a new humanity that was
destined for a spiritual existence without worldly flesh. All our writers seem to
distance themselves from Judaism. In many ways they share a lot of common
ground. But the writer of the Pastorals and Ignatius do not share in the Chris-
tology of their opponents and in this reflect a Pauline view of Christ. However,
Paul’s nuanced arguments on the identity of gentile and Jewish believers “in
Christ” and the resurrected flesh seem to become liabilities for later believers.99
His subtle negotiations, so evident in his letters, collapse in the torrid contest
over his memory and tradition in Asia Minor.
99 On Paul’s negotiation of his Jewish identity as a convert to Christ see Steven J. Chester,
Conversion at Corinth: Perspectives on Conversion in Paul’s Theology and the Corinthian

Church (London; New York: Bloomsbury 2005), 26–9; on the difficulties of Paul’s discussion
on the resurrected flesh see James D. G. Dunn, “How Are the Dead Raised? With What Body
Do They Come?: Reflections on 1 Corinthians 15,” SWJT 45:1 (2002): 4–18.
The Heresiological Portrayals of the Ebionites and
the Nazoraeans and Their Reception of Paul
Michael Kok
1. Introduction
In their monographs surveying the reception of the “Apostle to the Gentiles”

among Jewish interpreters in the pre-modern and modern eras, Daniel R. Lang-
ton and John G. Gager agree that the vast majority of Jews over the last two
millennia have not had any familiarity with the contents of Paul’s letters, much
less vilified their author.1 Langton concludes that “[t]he truth is that until rela-
tively recent times Jewish treatments of Christianity have very rarely mentioned
Paul, the focus of attention and hostility having been Jesus until the time of the
Enlightenment and Emancipation.”2 Gager concurs that Jewish scholars rarely
polemicized against Paul before the nineteenth century, so “[t]he idea of a cen-
turies-long, unbroken chain of anti-Pauline writings among Jews just doesn’t
exist.”3
The increasing Jewish engagement with the Pauline Epistles coincided with
certain developments in Protestant scholarship on Paul. Ferdinand Christian
Baur and the Tübingen School positioned “Pauline Christianity” as the antith-
esis of “Jewish Christianity.”4 In characterizing Paul as a critic of legalism or
ethnocentrism, some supporters of the Old and New Perspectives on Paul may
1 See Daniel R. Langton, The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination: A Study in Modern
Jewish-Christian Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 23–31; John G.

Gager, Who Made Early Christianity? The Jewish Lives of the Apostle Paul (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 2015), 39–45.
2 Langton, The Apostle Paul, 30.
3 Gager, Whom Made Early Christianity, 39.
4 For instance, see Ferdinand Christian Baur, Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche
der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen: L. Fr. Fues, 1853), 41–158. For the continuing influ-
ence of Baur’s approach to Christian origins, see Adolf Hilgenfeld, Judenthum und Juden
christenthum: eine Nachlese zu der “Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums” (Tübingen: L. Fr.
Fues, 1886); Gerd Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity, trans. M. E. Boring
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); Michael D. Goulder, St. Peter versus St. Paul: A Tale of Two
Missions (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995). For early criticisms of Baur, see
Albrecht Ritschl, Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche: Eine kirchen und dogmengeschicht-
liche Monographie (Bonn: Adolf Marcus, 1850); Joseph Barber Lightfoot, The Epistles of St.
Paul: II. The Third Apostolic Journey 3. Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan and co,
1896), 311–45.
288 Michael Kok
have caricatured Paul’s Jewish contemporaries.5 Some scholars advocating for

the “Paul within Judaism” approach, on the other hand, are involved in the in-
tramural Jewish conversation about Paul’s legacy. This perspective has been
shaped by the significant contributions of Jewish biblical scholars such as Mark
Nanos, 6 Pamela Eisenbaum,7 and Paula Fredriksen.8 It re-envisions Paul as
a Torah-observant, Second Temple Jew whose prophetic vocation was to sum-
mon non-Jews to repent and commit their allegiance to the god of Israel and
Jesus the Messiah.9
Nevertheless, there were Jewish Christ followers, or “Ebionites,” who ma-
ligned Paul for his alleged antinomianism long before the nineteenth century
(cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.26.2; Origen, Hom. Jer. 19.12; Cels. 5.65; Eusebius, Hist.
eccl. 3.27.4; Epiphanius, Pan. 30.16.8–9; Jerome, Comm Matt. 12.2).10 In Baur’s
model of Christian origins, their anti-Paulinism was in continuity with the op-
position that Paul faced in Jerusalem.11 Alternatively, in his catalogue of eighty
sectarian groups, Epiphanius insisted that the Ebionites were an offshoot of the
“Nazoraeans” (Ναζωραῖοι; cf. Pan. 30.1.1),12 Jewish believers in Christ who
5 For an overview of scholarship on Paul’s relationship with “Judaism” from a proponent
of the “Paul within Judaism” approach, see Magnus Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul: A Stu-
dent’s Guide to Recent Scholars (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).
6 See Mark Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minne-
apolis: Fortress, 1996); idem., The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002); idem, Reading Paul within Judaism: The Collected Essays of
Mark D. Nanos, Vol. 1 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017); idem, Reading Romans within Judaism:
The Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos, Vol. 2 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018); idem, Reading
Corinthians and Philippians within Judaism: The Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos, Vol. 4
(Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017).
7 See Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul was not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunder-
stood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009).

8 See Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2017).
9 Several essays presented at the “Paul within Judaism” section at the Society of Biblical
Literature have been compiled together by Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm. See Mark
D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century
Context to the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015).
10 Langton and Gager devote only a few pages to the Jewish Christ associations during the
Patristic period in their surveys. See Langton, The Apostle Paul, 24–5 n. 10; Gager, Who Made
Early Christianity, 99–100.
11 Baur, Das Christenthum, 85–93, 172–4; Hilgenfeld, Judenthum, 52–122; Hans-Joachim
Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte Des Judenchristentums (Tübingen: Mohr, 199), 256–305;
Idem, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church, trans. Douglas A. Hare
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 18–37; Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Inven-
tion of Christianity (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 172–83; Lüdemann, Opposi-
tion to Paul, 31–2; 196, 198–9; Goulder, St. Peter versus St. Paul, 107–13; Petri Luomanen,
Recovering Jewish Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 23–4, 47–9.
12 “Nazarene” (Ναζαρηνός; cf. Mark 1:24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6; Luke 4:34; 24:19) and “Nazo-
raean” (Ναζωραῖος; cf. Matt 2:23; 26:7; Luke 18:37; John 18:5, 7; 19:19; Acts 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 6:14;
22:8; 24:5; 26:9) are attested in the New Testament. Epiphanius characterizes the “Nazorae-
ans” (Ναζωραῖοι) as a Jewish sect of Christ followers, who should be distinguished from the
Heresiological Portrayals of the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans 289
seemingly approved of the same creedal formulations and canonical books that
he did (29.7.2–5, but cf. 7.6; 9.4). Their canon may have included Paul’s letters
(29.7.2; cf. Jerome, Comm. Isa. 9.1). Several scholars are convinced that this
group’s history stretched back to the apostolic era, for Paul was accused of being
one of their ringleaders (Acts 24:5).13
Due to space considerations, I will concentrate on select Patristic testimonies
about the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans. The heresiologists’ portrayals of the
Ebionites and Nazoraeans as sects may be misleading. What their data may
show is that Jewish Christ followers during the Patristic period generally per-
ceived Paul to have been an antinomian figure. Many of them may have held
that Jesus was qualified for his messianic office due to his obedience to the
Sinaitic covenantal stipulations and that his disciples, Jews and non-Jews alike,
ought to imitate his example. Be that as it may, some Jewish Christ followers, at
least by the fourth century, esteemed the Pauline Epistles as authoritative writ-
ings and managed to reconcile their interpretation of them with their covenant-
al nomism.
“Nazirites” (Ναζιραῖοι) who are consecrated for the service of God and the “Nasareans”
(Νασαραῖοι) as a pre-Christian sect (cf. Pan. 29.5.7; 29.6.1). Jerome uses the terms Nazaraei
(= Ναζωραῖοι) and Nazareni (= Ναζαρῆνοι) interchangeably and other variant spellings are at-
tested in the manuscript tradition. For further discussion about the nomenclature, see R. A.
Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its
Disappearance in the Fourth Century (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), 11–8, 45–7; Simon
Claude Mimouni, “Les Nazoréens Recherche Étymologique Et Historique” RB 105:2 (1998),
216–60; Martinus C. de Boer, “The Nazoreans: Living at the Boundary of Judaism and Chris-
tianity” in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Graham N. Stan-
ton and Guy G. Stroumsa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 253 n. 1; Wolfram
Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans” in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, ed. Oskar Skar-
saune and Reidar Hvalvik (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 468–71; Edwin K. Broadhead, Jew-
ish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity, WUNT 266 (Tubin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 163, 163 n. 2; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 51–3;
Andrew Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 292–3.
13 See Ritschl, Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 152–(154), 171; Lightfoot, Galatians,
318, 317–8 n. 3; Jean Danielou, A History of Early Christian Doctrine: Volume 1 The Theology
of Jewish Christianity, ed. and trans. John A. Baker (London and Philadelphia: Westminster,
1964), 56; Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 14–7, 39, 75; de Boer, “The Nazoreans,” 243–5,
252; Richard Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites” in The Image of the Judaeo-Chris-
tians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature, WUNT 158, ed. Peter J. Tomson and Doris
Lambers-Petry (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 162–3; Stephen G. Wilson, Related Strang-
ers: Jews and Christians 70–170 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 156–7; Kinzig, “The
Nazoraeans,” 481; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 163, 178–9, 186; Simon Claude
Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity: Historical Essays, trans. Robyn Fréchet (Leuven:
Peeters, 2012), 63–6.
290 Michael Kok
2. The Oldest Patristic Testimonies about the Ebionites
The heresiological sources should be handled with caution. Not only were the
heresiologists polemical and tendentious, but they also tended to paint the tar-
gets of their opprobrium along the lines of philosophical schools, often named
after their founders, which had distinct ideas, ethics, and rituals.14 This is no-
where more evident than in the invention of Ebion, the fictive founder of the
Ebionites (e.g., Ref. 7.35.1; Tertullian, Praescr. 10.8; 33.3–5, 11; Virg. 6.1; Carn.
Chr. 14; 18; 24).15 Instead, the Greek Ἐβιωναῖοι or Latin Ebionaei is a transliter-
ation of the Aramaic form of the Hebrew plural noun for “poor ones.”
Although Paul delivered a collection of money to Jerusalem as a gift for the
“poor” (πτωχοί; cf. Gal 2:10; Rom 15:26), there is no indication that the recipi-
ents of his act of charity called themselves “the poor.”16 Epiphanius repro-
duced the information from his informant(s) that the name Ebionite harkened
back to the voluntary poverty of the members of the Jerusalem Christ congre-
gation, an explanation that he cast aside when mocking Ebion’s poor nature
(Pan. 30.17.2–3).17 Some Ebionites may have put forward this etiological exe-
gesis of Acts 2:43–47 and 4:32–37 in response to the insulting etymologies sup-
plied for their title by their detractors (e.g., Origen, Cels. 2.1; Princ. 4.3.8;
Comm. Matt 16.12; Hom. Gen. 3.5; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.27.1, 6).18 At some
point, this title became a popular self-designation. Oscar Skarsaune may be
right that it was picked up by a variety of Jewish Christ followers rather than by
a single faction.19 It either reflected their actual socio-economic status or the
valorisation of poverty in the Hebrew Bible or in the sayings of Jesus.20
14 Oskar Skarsaune, “The Ebionites” in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds., Jewish
Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 420–1.

15 Hilgenfeld ( Judenthum, 101) may be alone in accepting that Ebion was a historical fig-
ure.
16 Contra Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, 11, 102; Goulder, St. Peter versus St. Paul, 70, “A
Poor Man’s Christology” NTS 45 (1999): 333–4; Wilson, Related Strangers, 149; Luomanen,
Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 23. This position was refuted in Leander E. Keck, “The
Poor Amongst the Saints in the New Testament” ZNW 56 (1965): 100–29; idem, “The Poor
Amongst the Saints in Jewish Christianity and Qumran” ZNW 57 (1966): 54–78; cf. Lüde-
mann, Opposition to Paul, 195, 306 n. 14; Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 178;
Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 425; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 188–9; James
Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity, WUNT 251 (Tubingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 345–6; Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 289.
17 Goulder (“A Poor Man’s Christology,” 332–3) and Skarsaune (“The Ebionites,” 452) re-
gards this explanation as historically plausible.

18 Keck, “The Poor Amongst the Saints in Jewish Christianity,” 59; Bauckham, “The Or-
igin of the Ebionites,” 178; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 35; Paget, Jews,
346.
19 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 421–4.
20 See Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, 11, 101–2; Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,”
177–80; Sakari Häkkinen, “Ebionites” in A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Here-

tics,” SVC 76, ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 247;
The earliest extant references to the Ebionites are in Irenaeus’s Against Here-
sies. In his first excerpt on them (Haer. 1.26.2), he summed up their scepticism
about the virginal conception of Jesus, privileging of Matthew’s Gospel to the
exclusion of all other Gospels, and abhorrence for Paul as an “apostate from the
law” (apostata legis).21 For examples of how they conducted their lives in accor-
dance with the biblical commandments and kept their Jewish customs, he spec-
ified that they expounded on the prophetic corpus, circumcised their sons, and
adored Jerusalem as if it were the deity’s house. This last point may imply that
their prayers were directed towards Jerusalem 22 or that the city was central to
their millenarian hopes.23 Leaving aside the question over whether or not they
would have agreed with Paul’s standpoint on the admission requirements for
non-Jews participating in the Jesus movement for the moment, this notice indi-
cates that they were chiefly offended that Paul had garnered the (false?) reputa-
tion of encouraging his fellow Jews to follow in his footsteps in abandoning
their ancestral customs (cf. Acts 21:21).24
Irenaeus neglected to explain the meaning of the Ebionites’ appellation and
his brief statements about them are vague and stereotypical.25 This suggests
that he had little firsthand knowledge about them and consulted an older here-
siological catalogue.26 Some scholars guess that he had an updated copy of
Justin’s Syntagma against All the Heresies,27 for Justin does not list the Ebion-
ites among his opponents (cf. 1 Apol. 26.1–8). Despite Justin’s tirades against his
Jewish interlocutor Trypho, he was surprisingly tolerant of Jewish Christ fol-
lowers who adhered to the Law of Moses, so long as they did not impose it on
others, and of non-Jewish, Christ-following Judaizers (Dial. 47.1–4; contra Gal
1:8–9).28 Still, he disapproved of anyone who acknowledged Jesus’s messianic
Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 421, 425–7; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 188–9;
Paget, Jews, 344–7; Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 289.
21 For the text of Haer. 1.26.2, see Albertus F. J. Klijn and Gerrit J. Reinink, Patristic Evi-
dence for Jewish-Christian Sects (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 104–5.

22 Schoeps, Theologie, 141; idem, Jewish Christianity, 113; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic
Evidence, 20; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 271; Paget, Jews, 357.

23 Maccoby, The Mythmaker, 176–7. For further discussion of the Ebionites’ possible chil-
iasm, see Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 379–80; Schoeps, Theologie, 78–89;
idem, Jewish Christianity, 62–5.
24 Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 176; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 270; Skarsaune,
“Ebionites,” 437; Paget, Jews, 361.

25 For the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 104.
26 Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul, 195; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 250; Luomanen, Recover-
ing Jewish Christian Sects, 18; Paget, Jews, 326.

27 Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 251; Paget, Jews, 318.
28 De Boer, “The Nazoraeans,” 260 n. 70; Wilson, Related Strangers, 283; Häkkinen, “Ebi-
onites,” 249; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 18; Paget, Jews, 326; Mimouni,
Early Judaeo-Christianity, 97. For this reason, Baur (Das Christenthum, 135–140) did not
think that Justin could be comfortably placed in his categories of Jewish or Pauline Christi-
anity and Hilgenfeld ( Judenthum, 36–40) moved Justin closer to the Jewish side of the debate,
292 Michael Kok
status but not his pre-existence and divinity (48.4) and, aware that some Jewish
believers championed this human Christology, he put it on Trypho’s lips in the
Dialogue to refute it (e.g., 49.1; 67.2; 68.5).29
The Ebionites’ fidelity to Jesus and to the Torah is a recurrent feature of the
Patristic testimonies. They did not consider their Jewish and Christian commit-
ments to be irreconcilable. For instance, Eusebius had an unknown source, per-
haps one of Origen’s lost writings, on how they commemorated the Sabbath and
the Lord’s Day (Hist. eccl. 3.27.5).30 The early-third century Roman author of
The Refutation of All Heresies represented the Ebionites as claiming “to be jus-
tified” (δικαιoῦσθαι) “according to the law of Moses” (κατὰ νόμον Μωϋσῆ; cf.
7.34.1; 10.22.1).31 Whatever verdict specialists on the Pauline Epistles reach
about the meaning of Paul’s dikai-terminology or phrases such as ἔργα νόμου
(“works of the law”), it is hard to not see this as an inversion of his sentiments in
Gal 2:16 or Rom 3:28 (but cf. Rom 2:13). For Tertullian, Ebion’s “heresy” (haer-
esis), consisting of the observance “of circumcision and the Law” (circumcisionis
et legis), had already been discredited in Paul’s epistle to the Galatians (Praes.
33.3–5).32 It is less clear whether Tertullian was insinuating that Ebion, like
Paul’s opponents in Galatia, was actively ministering among non-Jews.33
Irenaeus was fixated on the Ebionites’ Christology. He defended the incarna-
tion and virginal conception of Jesus by appealing to specific biblical texts (i.e.
Isa 7:14 LXX; Matt 1:23) and his theology of recapitulation (cf. 1.26.2; 3.11.7;
3.21.1; 4.33.4; 5.1.3). He compared the Ebionites’ cosmology and Christology to
two demiurgical thinkers named Cerinthus and Carpocrates (cf. 1.26.2). The
Ebionites differed from those two in assigning the creation of the cosmos to the
supreme deity rather than to an inferior divine power or to angels (1.25.1; 1.26.1).
There is a text critical issue about whether his text originally stated that the
Ebionites’ opinions about the lord were also “not the same” (non similiter) as the
opinions of Cerinthus and Carpocrates. The author of the Refutation omitted
but Ritschl (Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 298–311) disagreed in positioning Justin
as a representative of a non-Jewish Christian viewpoint. For a recent study on the tension
between Justin’s project of constructing a distinctive Christian identity and his concessions
towards non-Jewish Judaizers in the Christ congregations, see Benjamin L. White, “Justin
between Paul and the Heretics: The Salvation of Christian Judaizers in the Dialogue with
Trypho” JECS 26:2 (2018): 163–89.
29 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 429–30, 432–3.
30 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 446–7; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Sects, 30.
31 For the Greek passages in the Refutation, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence,
112–3, 120–1. See also the overview of the scholarly debate over the authorship of this text in
M. David Litwa, Refutation of All Heresies (Atlanta: SBL, 2016), xxxii–xlii.
32 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 21; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus,
194. For the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 108–9. Joseph Barber Light-
foot concurred with Tertullian’s assessment in his classic commentary on Galatians (cf. Epis-
tle to the Galatians, 422).
33 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 439; Paget, Jews, 358.
the negation before ὁμοιώς (“same”) when copying Irenaeus’s Greek text (7.34.1;
10.22.1). According to Irenaeus (Haer. 1.26.1), Cerinthus judged that Jesus was
conceived in the same non-miraculous way as all humans, yet, because his righ-
teousness, prudence, and wisdom far surpassed his peers, the Christ aeon chose
to possess him at his baptism. Likewise, Irenaeus recapped Carpocrates’s teach-
ing that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph, but an undefined power was be-
stowed on him due to the purity of his soul (1.25.1).34
A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. Reinink are adamant that the non in the Latin transla-
tion of Irenaeus’s text should be retained for the following reasons: this section
focuses on the contrasting philosophies about the creator (1.25.1–26.2), it is un-
likely that the Ebionites equated the spirit with the Christ aeon, and the theolo-
gians who divided the human Jesus from the divine Christ favoured Mark’s
Gospel (3.11.7).35 Their case is not compelling.36 Irenaeus’s antecedent clause
narrowed in on a major theological disagreement between the Ebionites and the
demiurgical theologians, so his following clause beginning with the adversative
“but” (autem) called attention to the similarities between their Christologies
insofar as they all denied that Jesus was born to a virgin and professed that he
was possessed by a spirit at his baptism. It may be more accurate to categorize
the Christologies of the Ebionites, Cerinthus, and Carpocrates as “possession-
ist” rather than “adoptionist.”37
Yet the similarities between their possessionist Christologies are superficial.
The Ebionites did not share Cerinthus’s conviction that the “Christ” was a ce-
lestial aeon sent to reveal a previously unknown, transcendent deity who was
superior to the creator (1.26.1), nor Carpocrates’s viewpoint that the spiritual
power revealed to Jesus the means by which he might escape the angelic creators
34 This reference to the purity of Jesus’s soul challenges the uncritical acceptance of the
heresiological depictions of the Carpocratians’ excessive libertinism. See Winrich Alfried

Lōhr, “Karpokratianisches” VC 49:1 (1995): 33. However, the Carpocratians’s rejection of the
custom of monogamy, which was rooted in their radical ethic of renouncing the ownership of
private property and sharing everything in common, is multiply attested (cf. Irenaeus, Haer.
1.28.2; Clement, Strom. 3.2.3.2). See Thomas J. Whitley, The Greatest Blasphemy: Sex, Souls,
and the Carpocratian Heresy (unpublished PhD thesis, Florida State University, 2016), 107,
115.
35 Klijn and Reining, Patristic Evidence, 20.
36 See the criticisms of Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul, 305 n. 5; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,”
265 n. 49; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 428; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Sects, 20–1; Paget,
Jews, 352; Michael F. Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 114 n. 18. Broadhead ( Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 193) seems
open to Klijn and Reinink’s text-critical case.
37 On this point, see Goulder, St. Peter versus St. Paul, 110; idem, “A Poor Man’s Christol-
ogy,” 335–7; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 268–9; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Sects, 20–1, 46;
Peter Ben-Smit, “The End of Early Christian Adoptionism? A Note on the Invention of
Adoptionism, Its Sources, and Its Current Demise” International Journal of Philosophy and
Theology 76:3 (2015): 177–199, here 180–4; Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son, 112–20; Michael J. Kok,
“Classifying Cerinthus’s Christology” JECH 9:1 (2019): 30–48, here 35–9.
294 Michael Kok
of the world (1.25.1).38 It is doubtful that the Ebionites were not cognizant of the
fact that the Greek noun χριστός should be translated as “anointed one,” for
prophets, priests, and rulers were anointed or empowered by the spirit of Yah-
weh in the Hebrew Bible.39 Tertullian opined that the Ebionites’ prophetic
Christology could be strengthened if they had cited Zech 1:14 LXX, for this
verse has an angel speaking in the prophet (Carn. Chr. 14), but this does not
entail that the Ebionites identified the spirit that indwelt Jesus as an angel.40
Cerinthus was guided by the philosophical notion that divine beings are impas-
sible, which is why the Christ aeon departed from Jesus before he was crucified
(1.26.1), so it may be more fitting to apply the taxonomic category “separationist
Christology” to his Christological beliefs.41 Michael Goulder’s efforts to read
back this separationist Christology back into first-century sources is not con-
vincing.42
There is tension between Irenaeus’s assertions that the Ebionites had an ex-
clusive preference for Matthew’s Gospel on the one hand and disputed its infan-
cy narrative on the other. Irenaeus derided the Ebionites for overlooking how
Matthew’s Gospel undermined their stance on Jesus’s biological origins (Haer.
3.11.7; cf. Matt 1:18–24). Noticing the problem, Eusebius switched the Gospel of
Matthew with the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Eccl. Hist. 3.27.4), while
Epiphanius charged the Ebionites with circulating a mutilated version of Mat-
thew’s Gospel by removing its opening chapters (Pan. 30.3.7; 13.2, 6; 14.3). This
issue cannot be resolved by inferring that Irenaeus was really referring to an-
other Jewish Gospel.43 He denounced the Ebionites, the spokespersons for a
separationist Christology, Marcion, and Valentinus for not accepting the “four-
fold gospel” (τετράμορφον εὐαγγέλιον) and appropriating the Gospels of Mat-
thew, Mark, Luke, or John respectively for their own sectarian ends (Haer.
38 See the critique of Goulder’s identification of the Ebionites’ Christology with that of
Cerinthus and Carpocrates in Paget, Jews, 352.

39 See Kok, “Classifying Cerinthus’s Christology,” 36, 39.
40 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 21; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 252–3; Skarsaune,
“The Ebionites,” 431–2; contra Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son, 116, 119–20.
41 Kok, “Classifying Cerinthus’s Christology,” 36–9.
42 For instance, Goulder (St. Peter versus St. Paul, 112) translates ἀφῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα in Matt
27:50 as “he let the spirit go” and, in light of Jesus’s invocation of Psalm 22:1 from the cross in
27:46, interprets it in reference to a separationist Christology. I agree with Paget (Jews, 353
n. 115) that “Goulder’s case is based upon often speculative mirror reading of New Testament
texts, none of which is straightforwardly convincing.”
43 Contra Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels” in New Tes-
tament Apocrypha I: Gospels and Related Writings, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R.
McL. Wilson (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 136, 140–1; Bauckham, “The Origin
of the Ebionites,” 163–4; Pier Franco Beatrice, “The ‘Gospel According to the Hebrews’ in
the Apostolic Fathers” NovT 48:2 (2006): 147–195, here 173; James R. Edwards, The Hebrew
Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 10–2,
18–9, 26; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 386–8; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Chris-
tianity, 222.
3.11.7–8). He had no other Gospel in mind besides the canonical Gospel of Mat-
thew and Origen confirmed that the Ebionites were fond of quoting Matt 10:5–
6 (Princ. 4.3.8) and 24–25 (Comm. ser. Matt. 79).44
The solution to this conundrum may be found in Origen’s observations about
a division between the Ebionites over the acceptance or rejection of the virginal
conception of Jesus (Cels. 5.61; 5.65). Irenaeus presumed that Matthew’s Gospel
addressed a Jewish audience due to Papias’s tradition that the apostle composed
this work in his native language (3.1.1; cf. Papias, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16).
Undoubtedly some Jewish Christ followers loved Matthew’s Gospel, with its
Sondergut about how Jesus came to fulfil rather than abolish the Law and
warned against breaking the least of the commandments (Matt 5:17–20; cf. Luke
16:17). There is no hint before Epiphanius that the Ebionites cut out Matthew’s
genealogy and infancy narrative. I would suggest that Mark’s narrative, which
commences at Jesus’s baptism rather than his birth, may have been the Gospel
of choice for Jewish Christ followers who rejected the virgin birth. It is true that
some interpreters took the descent of the spirit in Mark 1:10 and Jesus’s cry of
divine abandonment in Mark 15:34 as supporting a separationist Christolo-
gy.45 Yet Mark’s baptism account could have been construed in a more tradi-
tional sense as the moment when Jesus was anointed as a messianic candidate,
especially as the voice from heaven may allude to a royal Psalm about the David-
ic ruler and the Isaianic servant (Mark 1:11; cf. Ps 2:7; Isa 42:1), and Jesus’s rec-
itation of Ps 22:1 in Mark 15:34 as a lament could be uttered by any righteous
person. Scholars miss how amenable Mark’s Gospel may have been to the Ebi-
onites because they often interpret it as rendering the Law of Moses obsolete, in
spite of the Markan Jesus’s instructions to a wealthy man to obey the Decalogue
(Mark 10:18) or complaint that the Pharisees were disregarding the commands
for the sake of their oral traditions (7:6–8). For one case study, innumerable ex-
egetes read Mark’s parenthetical aside in 7:19b as clarifying the part of Jesus’s
aphorism in 7:15 (cf. 7:18–19) that nothing that enters into a person from the
outside can defile him or her as, in effect, declaring all foods as permissible to
eat.46 In the literary context (7:1–23), though, the Jewish dietary restrictions
44 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 20, 23–4; Albertus F. J. Klijn, Jewish Christian
Gospel Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 4; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 260; Skarsaune, “The Ebi-
onites,” 435–6, 460; Paget, Jews, 327, 328, 329 n. 28, 352; Jörg Frey, “Die Fragmente juden
christlicher Evangelien,” in Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung. I. Band:
Evangelien und Verwandtes. Teilband 1, ed. Christoph Markschies und Jens Schröter (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck 2012), 547–75; idem, “Die Fragmente des Ebionäervangeliums” in Antike
christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, 608; Gregory, The Gospel according to the
Hebrews, 181.
45 See Michael J. Kok, The Gospel on the Margins: The Reception of Mark in the Second
Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 243–5.

46 See the long list of scholars who support this traditional reading footnoted in John van
Maaren, “Does Mark’s Jesus Abrogate Torah? Jesus’ Purity Logion and its Illustration in
Mark 7:15–23” JJMJS 4 (2017): 21–41, here 23–4 n. 5.
296 Michael Kok
would have been taken for granted by all of the Jewish participants in the de-
bate. Jesus was repudiating the Pharisees’ extra-biblical tradition that impurity
can be transmitted from the hands via a liquid to the eater, thus “cleansing all
foods” (καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα) that were thought to be contaminated by
unwashed hands.47
Petri Luomanen has another hypothesis for why Origen deduced that there
were two schools of the Ebionites. He conjectures that Origen had access to the
Greek text of the Refutation and the Latin translation of Against Heresies that
differed over whether the Ebionites’ opinions about Jesus were similar or dis-
similar to the ideas of Cerinthus and Carpocrates, so he supposed that the Ebi-
onites who denied the virgin birth were the referent of the former text and the
Ebionites who affirmed it were the referent of the latter.48 Origen may have
drawn on Irenaeus for his information that both groups of Ebionites despised
Paul (Cels. 5.65; cf. Hom. Jer. 19.12), since this point is not explicit in the Refu-
tation.49 Luomanen highlights the linguistic parallels between Origen’s descrip-
tion of the Ebionites (Cels. 5.61) and the description of Cerinthus in the Refuta-
tion (7.33.1), including that Jesus was born “like the other people” (ὠς τοὺς
λοιποὺς ἀνθρώπους) or “similar to all other people” (ὁμοίως τοῖς λοιποῖς ἅπασιν
ἀνθρώποις) and not “of a virgin” (ἐκ παρθένου).50 The latter text, Luomanen
avers, further conformed its description of the Ebionites to that of Cerinthus,
for the Ebionites’ insistence of the necessity “to be justified according to the
law” (κατὰ νόμον […] δικαιοῦσθαι) in 7.34.1 echoes Cerinthus’s declaration that
Jesus was “more righteous” or “just” (δικαιότερος) than other people in 7.33.1.51
This last parallel between the views of Cerinthus and the Ebionites in Refu-
tation 7.33.1 and 7.34.1 may be stretched. Cerinthus did not reckon that Jesus
was righteous or just according to the standards of the Mosaic Law and the
Ebionites did not distinguish between the human Jesus and the divine Christ.
Even assuming that Origen had a Greek text of the Refutation and a Latin text
of Against Heresies with the textual variant at 1.26.2 in front of him, which is far
from certain, he may have presumed that non similiter implied that the Ebion-
ites did not entertain Cerinthus’s and Carpocrates’s opinions about Jesus being
47 James G. Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Chris-
tianity, LNTS 266 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 191–204; Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels:
The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012), 102–28; Van Maaren, “Does
Mark’s Jesus Abrogate Torah,” 26–40.
48 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 19–20, 28–9. Klijn and Reinink (Patristic
Evidence, 26) had an identical hypothesis for why Eusebius assumed that there were two
kinds of Ebionites (Eccl. Hist. 3.27.3).
49 Petri Luomanen, “The Nazarenes: Orthodox Heretics with an Apocryphal Canonical
Gospel?” in The Other Side: Apocryphal Perspectives on Ancient Christian “Orthodoxies,”

NTOA 117, ed. Candida R. Moss, Tobias Nicklas, Christopher Tuckett, and Joseph Verhey-
den (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 68.
50 Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 68–9.
51 Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 68–9.
temporarily inhabited by a celestial Christ aeon.52 After all, Irenaeus con-

demned the Ebionites for disavowing the virgin birth at other points in his her-
esiological treatise (3.21.1; 5.1.3). The flaw in Luomanen’s hypothesis is that
there is not a single passage in Against Heresies or the Refutation disclosing that
there were any Ebionites who accepted the virgin birth, so Origen would have
no basis in either text to invent a second group of Ebionites who did so. It seems
more likely that Origen obtained his information about the Ebionites, from the
meaning of their sobriquet to their varying Christologies, independently from
Irenaeus through his personal contacts with Jewish Christ followers.53
There may be more merit to Luomanen’s argument that Eusebius did not have
any independent knowledge about the two types of Ebionites apart from Origen
(cf. Eccl. Hist. 3.37.3). His additional point that not even the second group of
Ebionites confessed Jesus’s divinity as the pre-existent word or wisdom of the
deity may have depended on Origen’s similar contention about the Ebionites
and the Valentinians (cf. Comm. Tit. 3.11), which may be grounded in nothing
more than the supposition that aberrant Christologies consistently deviated
from the Christology of the Johannine Prologue (cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.11.3).54
Moreover, Eusebius was the first to label the biblical translator Symmachus as
an Ebionite. This assumption was based on the appearance of “young woman”
(νεᾶνις) in Symmachus’s translation of Isaiah 7:14 and commentaries where he
may have defended his translation choices (Eccl. Hist. 5.17; Dem. Ev. 7.1; cf. Je-
rome, Comm. Hab. 3.10–13; de vir il. 54). His characterization of Symmachus
as an Ebionite who was critical of Matthew’s proof-texting of Isa 7:14 LXX can
be accounted for by recognizing that he employed the term Ebionite for all Jew-
ish believers in Christ.55 Yet Symmachus may not have been a Christian at all.56
The Ebionites’s Christology, soteriology, and ethics were interconnected. Be-
fore Irenaeus, Trypho objected that it would be more reasonable for Christians
to believe that Jesus was elected to be the Messiah due to his perfect obedience
to the commandments (cf. Dial. 67.2; 67.5, 6, 46–49).57 In Against Heresies
1.26.2, Irenaeus inferred that the Ebionites agreed with Cerinthus to the extent
that Jesus was an ordinary human who was exalted to a higher status as a reward
52 See Paget’s counterargument that Origen did not impute Cerinthus’s key distinction
between the human Jesus and the divine Christ to Cerinthus (cf. Jews, 356 n. 137).
53 Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 254–5; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 445; Broadhead, Jewish
Ways of Following Jesus, 195; Paget, Jews, 328, 35.

54 Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 70–2; cf. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 27; Klijn
and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 25.

55 Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 261.
56 Contra Schoeps, Theologie, 33–7, 350–80; Idem, Jewish Christianity, 15, 31, 65, 72 n. 18,
80–1, 84, 93, 114; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 54; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Fol-
lowing Jesus, 233; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 233–5. See Skarsaune, “The Ebion-
ites,” 448–9; Paget, Jews, 359–60.
57 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 440–1.
298 Michael Kok
for his righteous behaviour. The author of the Refutation built on Irenaeus’s
testimony in 7.34.1–2 by declaring Jesus “to have been justified by doing the
law” (δεδικαιῶσθαι ποιήσαντα τον νόμον). Indeed, anyone who acts in the same
way as Jesus is able “to become anointed ones” (γενέσθαι χριστούς). An imitatio
Christi theme undergirds this passage.58 Moreover, Edwin K. Broadhead under-
scores that the citation of Matthew 10:24–25 as a proof-text for why the disci-
ples of Jesus must imitate their teacher (Pseudo-Tertullian, adv. omn. Haer. 3;
Origen, in Matt. comm. ser. 79; Pseudo-Hieronymus, indic. de haer. 10; Epipha-
nius, Pan. 28.5.1; 30.26.1–3; 30.33.4) is multiply attested and was a cause of em-
barrassment for the Patristic writers who were unable to refute the logic.59 For
the Ebionites censured in these passages, membership in the Sinaitic covenant
and faithfulness to its terms was non-negotiable for everyone who wished to be
disciples of Jesus. 60 Their stance was the polar opposite of Paul’s stance.
3. Epiphanius’s Innovative Portrait of the Ebionites
While the heresiological profiles of the Ebionites have seemed fairly consistent
thus far, Epiphanius drastically altered the picture of them in the thirtieth chap-
ter of his Panarion. 61 The proposals that Jesus was born from Joseph’s “seed”
(σπέρμα; cf. Pan. 30.2.2; 3.1; 16.3) and that the spirit descended on him at his
baptism (30.3.6; 13.7; 14.4; 16.3) sounds like Irenaeus’s Ebionites, but Epipha-
nius created confusion in treating the names Jesus and “Christ” as interchange-
able on the one hand and mixing up the spirit with Cerinthus’s Christ aeon on
the other. What is more, he described the Ebionites’ Christ as an archangel who
rules over creation, as a being of gigantic proportions, and as the original human
Adam or a pre-existent spirit who has been reincarnated in several bodies since
Adam (30.3.3–6; 16.4; 17.6–7). In another section, Jesus is envisaged as Moses’s
prophetic successor (30.18.4–5). As for the Ebionites’ praxis, he reaffirmed their
adherence to the Jewish Law, singling out customs like circumcision and the
Sabbath (30.2.2; 17.5; 26.1–2). He scorned their post-baptismal ritual immer-
sions (30.2.4–5; 15.3; 16.1), vegetarianism (30.13.5; 15.3–4; 18.7; 22.4), forbid-
dance of celibacy and allowance of remarriage (30.2.6; 18.2–3), and dismissal of
the Hebrew prophets as well as the passages in the Pentateuch pertaining to the
sacrificial cult (30.15.2; 16.5, 7; 18.4–5, 7–9). The premise that false pericopes
were interpolated into the Pentateuch, especially the directives to offer animal
58 Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 439; Paget, Jews, 358.

59 Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 211.
60 Schoeps, Theologie, 135–43; Idem, Jewish Christianity, 75; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,”
439–40; Paget, Jews, 358.

61 Although some parts of Pan. 30 are not reproduced (e.g., 30.3.8–12.10), much of the
Greek text can be found in Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 174–193.
sacrifices, may have had a long pre-history or may have been an attempt to ad-
just to the loss of the temple cult.62 Most of his information is unparalleled in the
prior heresiological sources. Irenaeus did not attest that the Ebionites champi-
oned the theory of false pericopes when he remarked that they exegeted the
prophets in a “curious” (curiosius) way (cf. Haer. 1.26.2). 63 The adjective meant
that they studied the Jewish Scriptures in a diligent or overscrupulous way. 64
When Irenaeus reproached the Ebionites for refusing the “commixture” (com-
mixtio) of the heavenly wine and wishing it to be water only, he was using met-
aphorical language to chide them for admitting Jesus’s human nature but not his
divine one (5.1.3). 65 He was not hinting that they celebrated the Eucharist with
water rather than wine (contra Epiphanius, Pan 30.16.1). 66
Epiphanius ascribed a wealth of material to the Ebionites. First, two of his
sources, Circuits of Peter (Περιόδοι Πέτρου; 30.15.1–3) and the Ascents of James
(Ἀναβαθμοί Ἰακώβου; 30.16.7), were related to the Pseudo-Clementines. This ex-
plains the depiction of Jesus as the prophet like Moses, the repeated ritual wash-
ings, and the critique of the sacrificial cult. F. Stanley Jones reckons that Circuits
of Peter was the Grundschrift or “Basic Writing” redacted in the Homilies and
Recognitions, 67 but other scholars are unsure that Epiphanius’s source can be
matched to a known text. 68 There is an academic consensus that another source
underlies Recognitions 1.27.1–71.6 or 1.33.3–71.6. Robert E. Van Vorst’s mono-
graph on the source identified it as the Ascents of James, the title of which may
have been coined based on the scene where James ascended the stairs of the
62 For analysis of this theory, see Schoeps, Theologie, 155–169; idem, Jewish Christianity,
82–4, 88–92.
63 Schoeps, Theologie, 159, 166, 466; Idem, Jewish Christianity, 88; Häkkinen, “Ebion-
ites,” 259–60. Häkkinen, (“Ebionites,” 259 n. 35) also suggests that Irenaeus may have found
the Ebionites’ reading of Isa 7:14 to be a curious one.
64 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 20; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 437; Luomanen,
Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 46–7; Paget, Jews, 358.

65 Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 266 n. 50; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 430, 434, 434 n. 40. For
the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 106–7.
66 Contra Schoeps, Theologie, 194 n. 3; idem, Jewish Christianity, 113; Klijn and Reinink,
Patristic Evidence, 20; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 21–2.

67 F. Stanley Jones, “Jewish Christianity of the Pseudo-Clementines” in A Companion to
Second-Century Christian “Heretics”, 315–34; cf. Georg Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in

den Pseudoklementinen, TU 70 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1958), 265; Schoeps, Theologie,
461–79; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 31; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 453. However,
Jones rejects the reconstruction of another hypothetical document behind the Grundschrift
entitled the “Preaching of Peter” (Κηρύγματι Πέτρου) as one of the “fantasies of scholarly
imagination” (p. 316). Likewise, Graham Stanton (“Jewish Christian Elements in the Pseudo-
Clementine Writings” in Jewish Believers in Jesus, 311) comments that the existence of the
hypothetical Κηρύγματι Πέτρου “seems to be disappearing into thin air.” See the earlier
source-critical reconstructions in Strecker, Das Judenchristentum, 137–220; Schoeps, Theol-
ogie, 37–67, 457–79; Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 59–62.
68 Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 263; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 244.
300 Michael Kok
temple, 69 while F. Stanley Jones’s monograph on this source contests this iden-
tification.70 Richard Bauckham concedes that the identification of the source is
debated, but designates it as the Ascents of James as a matter of convenience.71
Van Voorst deems Epiphanius’s classification of the source as Ebionite to be
incompatible with its incarnational Christology (e.g., Rec. 1.43.1; 60.7; 63.1) and
its lack of any idealization of poverty,72 while Jones speculates that the author
was a Jewish bishop serving under the authority of the non-Jewish Christian
bishop of Jerusalem Narcissus.73 Bauckham has poked holes into their argu-
ments against the Ebionite character of the Ascents of James,74 but he does not
question whether Epiphanius was actually correct about the origin of this
source.75
Second, Epiphanius had a Gospel in his possession that he mistook as the
Gospel according to the Hebrews, though he deprecated it as a falsified version
of Matthew’s Gospel (30.3.7; 13.2).76 Most scholars distinguish it from the
Gospel according to the Hebrews by labelling it the Gospel of the Ebionites. His
citations of the Gospel of the Ebionites (cf. 30.13.2–3, 4, 6, 7–8; 14.3, 5; 16.5; 22.4)
do not overlap with the Patristic quotations of the Gospel according to the He-
brews, harmonize details from all three Synoptics in the baptismal narratives
(30.13.4, 6, 7–8), and signal that the text was originally written in Greek due to
the wordplay between ἐγκρίς (“honey-cake”) and ἀκρίς (“locust”) in 30.13.4 or
the addition of μή (“not”) before ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα (“I desired with desire”) in
69 Robert E. Van Voorst, The Ascents of James: History and Theology of a Jewish Christian
Community, SBLDS 112 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 45–6; cf. Klijn and Reinink, Patristic
Evidence, 31; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 265; Bauckham (“The Origin of the Ebionites,” 165)
notes that this is unclear yet labels that section of the Recognitions as the Ascents of James as a
matter of convenience.
70 F. Stanley Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity:
Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1:27–71, SBLTT 37 (Christian Apocrypha Series 2; Atlanta:

Scholars Press, 1995), 35, 147–8; cf. Stanton, “Jewish Christian Elements,” 318–9.
71 Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 165.
72 Van Voorst, The Ascents of James, 179–80. Note that Jones (An Ancient Jewish Christian
Source, 161) and Bauckham (“The Origin of the Ebionites,” 171) argue that the phrase “eternal
Christ” may not entail that the Messiah was personally pre-existent and that these verses may
be redactional insertions.
73 Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source, 166–7.
74 Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 165–71; cf. Stanton, “Jewish Christian Ele-
ments,” 318 n. 39. For instance, the absence of the epithet “poor ones” or an ideal of poverty
does not prove that the source was not written by an Ebionite and the antagonistic attitude
towards Paul as a “certain hostile person” (1.70.1) is consistent with the Patristic depiction of
the Ebionites.
75 Alfred Schmidtke, Neue Fragmente und Untersuchungen zu den judenchristlichen
Evangelien: Ein Beitrag zur Literatur und Geschichte der Judenchristen, TU 37.1 (Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1911), 175–241; Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 423–4; Paget, Jews, 338–9.
76 For scholars who judge Epiphanius to have been right in his assessment, see Schmidtke,
Neue Fragment, 166–246; Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 58; Pritz, Nazarene
Jewish Christianity, 83, 84–5, 86–7; Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 473; Beatrice, “Apostolic Fa-
thers,” 158–9, 169–76, 188–9; Edwards, Hebrew Gospel, 26–7, 65–75, 102–7.
30.22.4.77 The substitution of “honey-cakes” for “locusts” when recounting

John the Baptizer’s diet and the insertion of μή in Luke 22:15, negating Jesus’s
stated desire to eat the Passover meal, was designed to avoid the implications
that John and Jesus ate meat.78 In another verse from their “Gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον),
Jesus warned his hearers of the consequences if they did not cease sacrificing
(30.16.5). The title Gospel of the Ebionites may be a misnomer, for Epiphanius
may have discovered the Gospel in Cyprus and misattributed it to Irenaeus’s
Ebionites.79
Third, Epiphanius reasoned that Elxai had joined the ranks of Ebion’s follow-
ers (30.3.2; 17.5), which is why they allegedly visualized Christ as a gigantic
angel (30.3.2; 17.6–7; cf. 19.4.1–2; 53.1.9; Ref. 9.13.2–3), contemplated that Christ
had been reincarnated several times since Adam (30.3.3–4; cf. 53.8.1), and recit-
ed a formula from the Book of Elchesai after immersing when falling ill or get-
ting bitten by a snake (30.17.4; cf. 19.1.6; 6.4; Ref. 9.15.2, 5). No one before
Epiphanius associated the Elchasaites with the Ebionites, but, as Luomanen
stresses, it is not impossible that the Ebionites whom Epiphanius met had come
into contact with Elchesaite missionaries. 80 It is more probable that Epipha-
77 Vielhauer and Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels,” 166–71; Schoeps, Theologie, 25–30,
366–80; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 30–1; Klijn, Gospel Tradition, 27–8, 30, 38–9,
41, 65–77; Klauck, Apocryphal Gospels, 51–4; Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 164,
172; Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” 188–200; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 262–3;
Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 457–61; Luomanen, Jewish-Christian Sects, 83, 145–61, 251–2;
Paget, Jews, 339–41; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 177–8, 181–2, 221–33; Michael J.
Kok, “Did Papias of Hierapolis Use the Gospel according to the Hebrews as a Source?” JECS
25:1 (2017): 29–53, here 43–4; Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 8, 10, 171–261.
In light of this evidence, Mimouni’s confidence that the Gospel of the Ebionites originated in
Hebrew or Aramaic before it was translated into Greek seems to be mistaken (cf. Early Ju-
daeo-Christianity, 223).
78 Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 59; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evi-
dence, 31; Vielhauer and Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels,” 168; Klijn, Gospel Tradition,
41, 68, 77; Klauck, Apocryphal Gospels, 51–2; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 262; Edwards, Hebrew
Gospel, 76; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Sects, 37; Gregory, The Gospel according to the
Hebrews, 223–6, 253–4, 258–9. Skarsaune challenges the consensus that the Gospel of the
Ebionites promoted vegetarianism. He argues that Epiphanius discovered the Gospel of the
Ebionites at a late stage and that he interpolated quotations from it into an earlier draft of his
chapter only in 30.13–14, so he attributes the passage in 30.22.4 to the Circuits of Peter (cf.
“The Ebionites,” 457–8, 459–60). Skarsaune does not interpret the passage in 30.13.4 as con-
cerned to transform John into a vegetarian, for locusts may not have qualified as meat (cf.
30.18.7–19.4), and the point was to compare John’s diet to the manna that the Israelites ate in
the wilderness (cf. Exod 16:31; Num 11:8). I disagree with confining Epiphanius’s quotations
of the Gospel of the Ebionites to 30.13–14 and, since Skarsaune grants that the prophet Chris-
tology of the Gospel of the Ebionites shows that it was a “near theological relative” of the
Grundschrift of the Pseudo-Clementines (p. 261), it is not unlikely that it shared the same
ethical concern for vegetarianism. Jones (An Ancient Jewish Christian Source, 148–9) even
goes so far as to argue that the source of Recognitions 1.27–71 was dependent on the Gospel of
the Ebionites.
80 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 43.
302 Michael Kok
nius constructed “the Elchasaite bridge,” to employ Broadhead’s metaphor, to

artificially link the Ebionites to the Elchasaites. 81 Earlier heresiologists re-
ported that the Elchasaites regarded Christ as a mere human who had been re-
born over many lifetimes (cf. Ref. 9.14.1), practiced circumcision and the pre-
cepts of Moses (cf. Ref. 9.14.1; 16.3), and spurned Paul’s letters (cf. Origen, in
Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 6.38). Jewish circles in Western Syria and the Transjordan
who disseminated the sources of the Pseudo-Clementines may have been famil-
iar with the Book of Elchasai or crossed paths with Elchasaite preachers, given
their doctrine of the successive manifestations of the true prophet since Adam
(cf. Hom. 3.20.2) or the mystical veneration of water in their rites (cf. Rec. 6.8–9;
Hom. 11.24–26). 82 Epiphanius may have noticed these parallels in forging a
connection between Irenaeus’s Ebionites and the Elchasaites. 83
Some scholars place too much credence in Epiphanius’s reconstruction of the
Ebionites, maintaining that they were the successors of Hellenistic wing of the
Jerusalem Church (cf. Acts 6:1–7:53) or came under Essenic, Samaritan, or
Elchesaite influences. 84 It is more plausible that Epiphanius erred in assuming
that the Ebionites were a single group and that the variety of sources that he had
at his disposal were all Ebionite works. 85 He did not hesitate to fabricate dia-
logues between himself and the Ebionites (e.g., 30.15.4; 18.7, 9; cf. 23.4.1–7;
24.5.5); he was much more detailed when recounting his actual interaction with
a Jewish Christian named Joseph of Tiberius (cf. 30.4–12). 86 Epiphanius’s pre-
sentation of the Ebionites’ theological worldview as syncretistic and internally
inconsistent was intentional, for he began his exposé on the Ebionites in 30.1.1
by painting Ebion as a “monstrosity with many shapes” (πολύμορφον τεράστιον)
or “a many-headed hydra” (πολυκεφάλου ὕδρας) who borrowed all kinds of
81 Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 203.

82 Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, “Elchasaites and Their Book” in A Companion to Second-Cen-
tury Christian “Heretics,” 352–6; Jones, “Jewish Christianity,” 323–4.
83 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 28–38, 43; Josef Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the
Ebionites” in The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature,
187 n. 23; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 257, 259; Luttikhuizen, “Elchasaites and Their Book,” 350–
3, 353–6; Skarsaune, “Ebionites,” 453; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 203–6;
Paget, Jews, 335.
84 Ritschl, Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 204–48; Hilgenfeld, Judenthum, 88–
108; Lightfoot, Epistle to the Galatians, 322–31; Schoeps, Theologie, 457–79; Danielou, The
Theology of Jewish Christianity, 57–65; Bauckham, “The Origen of the Ebionites,” 163–180;
Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 41–9, 161–5; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christi-
anity, 220–33, 238–47.
85 For a more critical handling of the wealth of material attributed to the Ebionites in
Panarion 30, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 28–38, 43; Wilson, Related Strangers,
148–9; Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” 185–208; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 256–7,
259–65; Skarsaune, “Ebionites,” 423–4, 450–561; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus,
190–206; Paget, Jews, 329–41.
ideas from competing schools of thought indiscriminately. 87 He aimed to show

that they fell short of both Christian and Jewish “orthodoxy” in their selective
dismissal of the parts of the Hebrew Bible that did not align with their attitudes
concerning vegetarianism and sacrifice.88 Joseph Verheyden’s verdict on
Epiphanius is apt: “To the opinion of many modern scholars, he has also com-
posed the most confusing survey, an achievement that is not to be underestimat-
ed in the field of patristic heresiology.”89
Considering Epiphanius’s penchant for (mis)ascribing a range of sources to
the Ebionites, we cannot determine whether any of the heresiologists were
aware of the salacious gossip about Paul’s backstory that Epiphanius relayed in
Panarion 30.16.8–9. Granted, the Ebionites’ disdain for Paul was widely noted
and Origen complained that, just as Paul was struck at the order of the Jerusa-
lem high priest (cf. Acts 23:3), the Ebionites attacked Paul “with shameful
words” (λόγοις δυσφήμοις; cf. Hom. Jer. 19.12).90 Epiphanius was the first to re-
port the allegation that Paul had a Greek ethnic background and that his deci-
sion to get circumcised and become a “proselyte” (προσήλυτος) was motivated
by his infatuation with the daughter of a priest in Jerusalem. Enraged over his
failure to marry her, he denounced circumcision, the Sabbath, and other Jewish
legislations in his writings. Epiphanius’s source for this story is ultimately un-
known.91 It may have been contained in a text that parodied the narratives told
in the canonical Acts of the Apostles (cf. 30.16.6).92 Other scholars attribute it
to the Ascents of James (cf. 30.16.7),93 though, if Epiphanius was referring to the
source behind Recognitions 1.27[33]–71 under this title, then he either had a
different version of the text or the story was excised out of it. Hyam Maccoby
may be the only modern scholar who judged that this tale had some credibility.
Few Pauline scholars have followed him in disallowing that Paul had a Jewish
and Pharisaic pedigree altogether.94 He conceded that the image of Paul as a
disappointed suitor was a romantic invention.95 Even so, he saw a glimmer of
truth in the depiction of Paul as a non-Jewish proselyte who had a superficial
grasp on Jewish traditions and who briefly served the Sadducean high priest’s
87 Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” 182.

90 For the Greek text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 126–9. Häkkinen (“Ebi-
onites,” 270) and Skarsaune (“The Ebionites,” 442) suspect that Origen may have known the
slander reported in Panarion 30.16.8–9. Alternatively, Paget (Jews, 361) may have been allud-
ing to the depiction of Paul as the hostile person in the source of Recognitions 1.70.1–8.
91 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 37.
92 Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” 200; Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” 264, 270.
93 Van Voorst, The Ascents of James, 45; Jones, An Early Jewish Christian Source, 147;
Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” 442; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 202. This is re-
jected by Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 164 n. 10.
94 Maccoby, The Mythmaker, 15, 17.
95 Maccoby, The Mythmaker, 181–2.
304 Michael Kok
interests in suppressing the Jesus movement.96 Most scholars rightly set aside
the yarn that was spun about Paul as a regrettably typical example of vitupera-
tion in ancient polemical discourses.
4. The Oldest Patristic Testimonies about the Nazoraeans
In the myth of origins that Epiphanius devised for the Ebionites, their founder
Ebion was a successor of the Nazoraeans (30.1.1; 2.1). His history of the Nazo-
raeans in Panarion 29 is self-contradictory.97 The gist of his convoluted account
is that Jesus’s disciples were initially known as Nazoraeans (29.1.2–3; 6.2–8; cf.
Acts 24:5), then changed their name to Iessaeans when they withdrew to Egypt
where Mark was evangelizing (29.1.3–4.9; 5.1–4), and finally were christened as
Christians at Antioch (29.4.10). A smaller subsection of them never relinquished
the epithet Nazoraeans. Epiphanius’s uncertainty over whether the Nazoraeans
existed at the same time as or after Cerinthus (29.1.1), a teacher whom he dated
to the lifetime of the apostles (cf. 28.2.3–5; 4.1–2; 6.1–6), or emerged after the
flight to Pella to escape the Roman siege of Jerusalem (cf. 29.7.7-8) reveals the
depths of his confusion. In his influential monograph on the Nazoraeans, R. A.
Pritz surmises that, behind the fictional story about Ebion, there was a genuine
memory of a split between the Nazoraeans and Ebionites over Christology after
70 CE.98 Yet there may be no historical core behind this account.
There are few items in the list of the Nazoraeans’ beliefs and practices in
29.7.2–8 that separated them from other Christians. They valued both biblical
Testaments (29.7.2), expected the corporate resurrection of the dead (29.7.3),
proclaimed that there is one creator (29.7.3), and declared that Jesus Christ was
the creator’s “son” or “servant” (παῖς; 29.7.3). They differed from their fellow
Christians in reading the Jewish Scriptures and Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew
(29.7.4; 9.4) and practicing the rite of circumcision, the Sabbath, and other Jew-
ish laws (29.5.4; 7.2, 5; 8.1–7). However, Epiphanius was ignorant about whether
or not they espoused Cerinthus’s viewpoint that Jesus was a mere man who was
not born of a virgin (29.7.6) or removed the genealogies out of their Hebrew text
of Matthew’s Gospel (29.9.4), so he could not have had direct contact with them
where he might have received answers to these questions.99 His final judgment
96 Maccoby, The Mythmaker, 183.

97 For much of the text of Pan. 29, minus some of Epiphanius’s tangential excurses (e.g.,
29.1.4–5.3), see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 168–175.For attempts to recap Epipha-
nius’s historical account of the Nazoraeans, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 44–5;
Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 35–43; De Boer, “The Nazoreans,” 245–6; Kinzig, “The
Nazoraeans,” 479–80; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 174–5; Luomanen, Recov-
ering Jewish Christian Sects, 53–7.
98 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 337–8.
99 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 35; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 46;
on the Nazoraeans was that they were strictly Jews, not Christians (cf. Pan.
29.7.1; 9.1). Indeed, they were not welcomed in Jewish circles either, for they
were cursed three times a day in the prayers in the synagogue (29.9.2).
At first glance, Epiphanius’s information seems to be corroborated by Je-
rome. In his epistle to Augustine, Jerome mentioned that there were Nazorae-
ans who recited the creed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God, was
born to the virgin Mary, and suffered under Pontius Pilate before rising again
(Ep. 112.13).100 This letter was part of Jerome’s extensive correspondence with
Augustine over his construal of the Antioch incident in his Commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians (cf. Gal 2:11–14). Augustine was rebutting Jerome’s exe-
gesis that Peter and Paul staged a fake conflict over mixed table fellowship in
Antioch and, in the process, allowed that there was a time when it was permis-
sible for ethnically Jewish believers in Christ to keep their customs. Repudiat-
ing Augustine’s tolerant position, Jerome raised the counterexample of the
creedally-orthodox Nazoraeans whose efforts to maintain their Jewish and
Christian identities, nevertheless, entailed that they did not belong to either
community. This was supposedly proven by how they were cursed in the syna-
gogues in the east in the benediction “of the Mineans” (Minaeorum). Jerome was
not comfortable with how the Nazoraeans’ hybridity transgressed the social-
ly-constructed boundaries between Christians and Jews.101 From his vantage
point, at least their Christology was orthodox.102 He was not contradicting
himself when he faulted the Nazoraeans for presuming that Jesus was just the
son of a carpenter (Comm. Matt. 13.53–54),103 for, in this instance, he was not
talking about the fourth-century Nazoraeans but the residents of Nazareth in
Jesus’s day.104 Jerome was also not just making an extrapolation about the
Nazoraeans’ orthodoxy based on Epiphanius’s chapter about them,105 for
Epiphanius divulged his ignorance concerning what they believed about the
virginal conception of Jesus (cf. Pan. 29.7.6). All the same, Jerome wanted to
score a point in his debate against Augustine by stipulating that it was not ac-
ceptable for a Jewish Christian to continue practicing the Torah even if he or she
Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 473; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 62–3; Grego-
ry, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 295; Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 295.
100 For the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 200–1. The correspon-
dence between Jerome and Augustine on this matter is extensively analysed by Mimouni,
Early Judaeo-Christianity, 114–25.
101 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 207–9.

102 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 53–5; De Boer, “The Nazoreans,” 240; Wilson,
Related Strangers, 155; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 122–3.

103 Contra Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 47.
104 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 54–5; Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 474 n. 56;
Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 173.
105 Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 474.
306 Michael Kok
affirmed the Nicene Creed, so this might call into question the objectivity of his
synopsis of the Nazoraeans’ Christology.106
Jerome bragged that he inherited the Gospel according to the Hebrews from
the Nazoraeans in Beroia, which he believed was the same one that was pur-
portedly housed in the library of Caesarea, and translated it (e.g., Vir. ill. 3;
Pelag. 3.2).107 His initial confidence that this Gospel was a primitive, Semitic
version of Matthew’s Gospel was eventually shaken.108
The majority view among scholars today is that Jerome did not have the Gos-
pel according to the Hebrews in his possession, but another text labelled as the
Gospel of the Nazoraeans, or at least some fragments from it, for him to trans-
late.109 On the other hand, there are overlaps between some of Jerome’s quota-
tions of the Gospel according to the Hebrews with earlier citations of the text
(e.g., Comm. Mich. 7.6; Comm. Isa 40.9–11; Comm. Ezech. 16.13; cf. Origen,
Comm. Jo. 2.12; Hom. Jer. 15.4). The Gospel according to the Hebrews could
have been translated into different languages and contained synoptic and apoc-
ryphal material like the Gospel of Thomas did, so that may dispel two criterions
for differentiating the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the
Nazoraeans.110 The Nazoraeans may have passed on a handful of excerpts from
their own translation of Matthew’s Gospel to Jerome (e.g., Comm. Matt. 2.5;
6.11; 23.35; 27.16; 27.51),111 but otherwise Jerome could have just been citing ear-
lier commentaries on the Gospel according to the Hebrews that he hoped to track
down in the library of Caesarea.112 Further, Jerome cited extracts from the
Nazoraeans’ commentary on Isaiah (Comm. Isa. 8.11–15, 19–22; 9.1; 11.1; 29.17–
21; 31.6–9), which evinces their polemical engagement with rabbinic authori-
106 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 27, 68–71; idem, “The Nazarenes,” 64–
6; Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 298.

107 For the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 210–1, 226–9. Some schol-
ars accept that Jerome was telling the truth that he had access to the Gospel according to the
Hebrews, which he copied and translated. See Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 83, 86–7;
Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 473; Beatrice, “Apostolic Fathers,” 154–8, 169–76; Edwards, He-
brew Gospel, 28–37, 76–96, 102–7.
108 See Vir. ill. 3; Tract. Ps. 135; Comm. Matt. 12.13; Pelag. 3.2. In the final passage, Jerome
seems to have been more cautious in conceding that it is commonly maintained that Matthew
authored the Hebrew Gospel. See Jörg Frey, “Die Fragmente des Nazoräerevangeliums” in
Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, 626; Gregory, Gospel according to
the Hebrews, 50.
109 Vielhauer and Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels,” 154–65; Klijn and Reinink, Patris-
tic Evidence, 47–9; Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, 29–30, 31–2; Klauck, Apocryphal
Gospels, 43–51; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 164–6, 172–3; Frey, “Die Frag-
mente des Nazoräerevangeliums,” 623–54.
110 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 84–5; Gregory, The Gospel according to
the Hebrews, 14–6.

111 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 109–14.
112 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects, 85–9, 89–119; Kok, “Did Papias Use,”
41–3; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 182–9; Gregory, The Gospel according to the He-
brews, 10–6, 43–52; Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 56–9.
ties.113 In the commentary on Isaiah 9:1, Paul was commended as the last of the
apostles who multiplied the preaching of the gospel throughout the world.114
The existence of followers of Jesus in Epiphanius’s and Jerome’s time who
were known as Nazoraeans is not in doubt, but Epiphanius’s reconstruction of
them is once again an artificial creation. Epiphanius’s account of their history is
primarily indebted to the book of Acts and Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History.115
According to the author of Acts, the message of the apostles was that Israel’s
deity, the maker of heaven and earth (4:24), has raised and glorified his παῖς
(“son/servant”) Jesus (3:13, 26; 4:27, 30). Since Jesus was from Nazareth (2:22;
3:6; 4:10; 6:14; 10:38; 22:8; 26:9), his devotees were dubbed Nazoraeans and Paul
was put on trial as one of the agitators among them (24:5), though his only crime
was articulating his expectation of the future resurrection of the dead (23:6;
24:15, 21). According to Eusebius, the Evangelist Mark travelled to Egypt (Eccl.
Hist. 2.16.1) and the Therapeutae discussed by Philo were Mark’s students
(2.16.2–17.24). The Christ followers in Jerusalem heeded the warning of an ora-
cle and fled the city to Pella during the Jewish War against Rome (3.5.3). Since
Epiphanius’s portrayal of the Ebionites ended up looking so dissimilar from the
one put forward by Irenaeus, he relied on the data from Acts and Eusebius to
construct a traditional picture of a Jewish messianic sect. Luomanen observes
that Epiphanius’s Nazoraeans embodied Jewish Christians in their “simplest,
stereotypic form” to facilitate comparison with the heterodox Ebionites.116
The Nazoraeans never appeared on heresiological catalogues prior to Epipha-
nius’s Panarion. Pritz’s explanation for this is that none of the heresiologists
before Epiphanius appraised their beliefs to be unorthodox.117 Additionally, he
identifies the two distinct groups of Jewish Christ followers in the writings of
Justin (Dial. 47.1–4), Origen (Cels. 5.61; 5.65), and Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.27.2–3)
as the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans.118 On the contrary, Justin’s two groups
113 For analysis of the Nazarenes’ commentary on Isaiah, see Pritz, Nazarene Jewish
Christianity, 57–70; Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 49–50; Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,”
475–7; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 166–71; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish
Christian Sects, 71–5.
114 For the Latin text, see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 222–3.
115 Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” 184–5 n. 13; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish
Christian Sects, 53–7, 63–5; cf. Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 46 n. 1; Gregory, The
Gospel according to the Hebrews, 297; Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 61; Gregory, The Gospel
according to the Hebrews, 296.
116 Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 65–6.
117 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 75; cf. Lightfoot, Epistle to the Galatians, 317–8
n. 3; De Boer, “The Nazoreans,” 252; Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” 163; Broad-
head, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 178–9.
118 Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 20–1, 23–4, 25–8; cf. Lightfoot, Epistle to the Ga-
latians, 317–8 n. 3; Wilson, Related Strangers, 148–9; Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebion-
ites,” 163; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus, 181; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christi-
anity, 96, 98, 107, 111.
308 Michael Kok
were not divided over Christology,119 but over whether non-Jewish Christ fol-
lowers were obligated to obey the Law of Moses.120 It is not certain that the one
group who did not encourage non-Jews to do so were necessarily fans of Paul,
because Justin never explicitly mentioned Paul or Paul’s epistolary correspon-
dence in his extant texts. Andreas Lindemann enumerates four possible reasons
for Justin’s silence: he had no knowledge of the Pauline tradition, suppressed the
Pauline Epistles because Marcion appropriated them, refrained from bringing
Paul up in a dialogue with someone who did not recognize Paul as an authority,
or advanced his take on Paul’s theology without ever naming Paul.121 Justin
could very well have suppressed the animosity that both groups may have felt
for Paul.122 As for the reports of Origen and Eusebius, it is true that the division
between the Ebionites was over a matter of Christology, particularly the virgin-
al conception of Jesus. Regardless, we cannot ignore Origen’s admission that
both groups hated Paul (Cels. 5.65), nor Eusebius’s charge that neither group
embraced a divine Christology.123
The Nazoraeans may have been a Jewish, Christ-believing faction who were
aligning their beliefs to the creeds and canon enshrined by Catholic Christians
in the fourth century.124 As argued about the Ebionites above, however, it may
be wrong to view the Nazoraeans through the lens inherited from Epiphanius
as a sect. Rather, any non-Greek and non-Latin speaking Christ followers who
did not adopt the title “Christian” (Χριστιανός or Christianus) may have been
commonly known as Nazoraeans.125 The antiquity of the title is well attested
by the author of Acts and by Tertullian (e.g., Marc. 4.8), not to mention the rab-
binic and Persian evidence.126 Without Epiphanius’s input, though, we might
not have imagined that these references to the Nazoraeans denoted a marginal
Christian sect. For instance, at one point Jerome seems to have been swayed by
Epiphanius that the secondary insertion of notzrim in the Twelfth Benediction
targeted the Jewish Christian Nazoraeans (Ep. 112.13; cf. Pan. 29.9.2), but else-
where he seems to understand this addition to the birkat ha-minim as including
all Christians in its scope (Comm. Am. 1.11–12; Comm. Isa. 5.18–19).127 An-
119 Mimouni (Early Judaeo-Christianity, 96) oddly reads the expression “the Messiah of
God” in Dial. 46.1 as expressing Jesus’s divinity or “Christ-God.”

121 A. Lindemann, Paulus in ältesten Christentum, BHT, 58 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1979), 353.
122 Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul, 152–4.
123 Paget, Jews, 356; Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 67.
124 Schmidtke, Neue Fragmente, 41–2, 105, 124–5, 301–2; Schoeps Theologie, 19–20; Mac-
coby, 175–6.
125 Kinzig, “The Nazoraeans,” 470–1; Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects, 51–
3; Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 291, 293, 300.

126 See the extensive review of the textual evidence for the term in Mimouni, “Les
Nazoréens Recherche Étymologique Et Historique,” 216–60.

127 See Solomon Schechter and Israel Abrahams, “Geniza Specimens” JQR 10 (1898): 654–
drew Gregory contends that Epiphanius needed the Nazoraeans to be a sect to

fill out his taxonomy of eighty deviant sects, twenty of which were pre-Chris-
tian, as adversarial foils for the one true bride of Christ (Pan. Proem.1.3, 5.9; cf.
Song 6:8–9).128
This is not to say that Jerome was not acquainted with some ethnically Jewish
Nazoraeans. Luomanen has corrected misunderstandings of his argument
when clarifying that “it is easy to agree that, historically, there were Nazarenes
who were of Jewish origin and who considered themselves as followers of Je-
sus.”129 They may not have abandoned their Torah-observant way of life. Luo-
manen overreads the declaration that Christ “had shook off” (excussit) the
“yoke” (iugum) “of the Jewish traditions” (traditionum Iudaicarum) in the
Nazoraeans’ commentary on Isaiah 9:1 as implying the rejection of the Jews’
traditional heritage in its entirety,130 rather than specifically the “errors” (er-
rōrēs) or the oral traditions of the scribes and Pharisees and their rabbinic suc-
cessors. The Matthean Jesus invited his audience to take on his light yoke (Matt
11:29–39), but this did not mean throwing out the law and the prophets (5:17–
20). Much to Jerome’s chagrin, there were Jewish Nazoraeans whose sole differ-
ence from other Catholic Christians was their continuing observance of Jewish
customs. Despite the concerted efforts by elite ecclesiastical leaders to establish
boundaries separating Jews and Christians, there were social interactions be-
tween Jewish and Christian communities on the ground and even non-Jewish
Christians participating in Jewish customs to various degrees for centuries.131
Evidently, the Nazoraean who penned the commentary on Isaiah did not think
that Torah observance was delegitimized by allowing for the legitimacy of
Paul’s mission to the nations. This commentator may have remembered what
9, here 656–7. Space does not permit an extended discussion of the meaning of notzrim. Some
scholars agree with Epiphanius that the Nazoraean sect was targeted in this version of the
birkat ha-minim. See Reuven Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an
Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 2
vols., ed. E. P. Sanders (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 237–8; Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christi-
anity, 102–7; Joel Marcus, “Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited” NTS 55:4 (2009): 523–551, here
537–40; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, 144–7, 154–5. Others argue that it cursed
Christians in general. See Lawrence Schiffman, Who Was a Jew: Rabbinic and Halakhic Per-
spectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1985), 57–
60; Pieter W. Van den Horst, “The Birkat ha-minim in Recent Research” ExpTim 105 (1994–
1995): 267–8; William Horbury, Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1998), 73–7, 109; Wilson, Related Strangers, 183, 366–7 n. 51; Boyarin, Border
Lines, 71–2, 262 n. 9 0; Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians: A History of the Birkat HaMinim
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–2, 269–70 n. 85.
128 Gregory, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 293–4.
129 Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 60.
130 Luomanen, “The Nazarenes,” 62.
131 On this topic, the important study of Michelle Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile
Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE, SCJ 13 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2004).
310 Michael Kok
Jerome had forgotten about Paul’s advocacy for mutual respect between the
Jewish and non-Jewish members of his Christ associations (cf. Rom 14:1–15:13;
1 Cor 7:17–20).
5. The Ebionites, the Nazoraeans, and the Reception of Paul
The older picture of the Ebionites and the Nazoraeans as two discreet sects
should be discarded. These titles were popular with numerous Jewish Chris-
tians. Again and again the Patristic writers testified that one popular Jewish
conception was that Jesus was exalted to his messianic status due to his exem-
plary obedience to the commandments handed down by Moses and that his
followers who imitate his lawful example will receive the same post-mortem
vindication. It is unlikely that those who held this worldview endorsed Paul’s
“law-free mission to the nations” and some were suspicious that Paul had also
persuaded his fellow Jews to abandon the Torah. The most extreme perspective,
attested by Epiphanius, was to deny that Paul was Jewish at all. On the other
hand, Jewish Christians were as diverse as Gentile ones in advancing a variety
of messianic, prophetic, angelic, or divine Christologies, though Epiphanius
was wrong in assigning a number of conflicting Christologies to a single group.
There were some Jewish Christians, certainly by the fourth century if not ear-
lier, who did not see any conflict between recognizing the divinity of Jesus and
the canonicity of Paul’s letters and maintaining a Torah-observant way of life.
It may be hazardous to draw a straight line of continuity from Paul’s Jewish
supporters and opponents to the Jewish Christ communities that flourished
during the Patristic period. It is true that Paul had to correct misperceptions
that he was fostering antinomianism in his ethnically-diverse congregations
during his lifetime (Rom 3:8; cf. Acts 21:21). Irrespective of how scholars evalu-
ate the historicity of Eusebius’s tradition about the flight to Pella,132 the earliest
account of the Ebionites in Irenaeus’s Against Heresies is separated from Paul’s
undisputed epistles by over a century. Much transpired during this gap, includ-
132 For scepticism about this tradition, see S. G. F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the
Christian Church, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1957), 167–84; Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul,
200–13; Josef Verheyden, “The Flight of the Christians to Pella” ETL 66:4 (1990): 368–84;
Maccoby, The Mythmaker, 174–5. For rebuttals, see Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, 22–8; M.
Simon, “La Migration à Pella – Légende ou réalite?” RSR 60 (1972): 37–54; Pritz, Nazarene
Jewish Christianity, 122–7; Craig R. Koester, “The Origen and Significance of the Flight to
Pella Tradition” CBQ 51:1 (1989): 90–106; Vicky Balabansky, Eschatology in the Making:
Mark, Matthew and the Didache, SNTSMS 97 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 100–34; Wilson, Related Strangers, 145–8; Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus,
89. Interestingly, despite discounting the Pella tradition as a myth of origin of a Jewish com-
munity that lived there, Lüdemann (Opposition to Paul, 31, 198–9) finds substantial continu-
ity in the anti-Paulinism of pre- and post-70 CE Jewish Christ followers.
ing two failed Jewish revolts against Rome in 66–73 CE and 132–135 CE. It
would be almost another two centuries before Epiphanius provided an account
of the Nazoraeans in his Panarion, in a post-Constantinian Christian Roman
Empire. Moreover, Paul’s Jewish interpreters in subsequent centuries may have
been formulating their opinions about Paul in reaction to the interpretations of
Paul’s letters that prevailed in their day. What this review of the reception of
Paul among Jewish Christ-believing interpreters during the Patristic period
shows is that Paul’s treatment of the “works of the law” in his letters is amenable
to different interpretations. Some regarded him as an apostate and others as a
prophet to the nations. The debate over whether Paul was “within Judaism” has
roots in the Patristic era.
List of Contributors
Michael F. Bird, Academic Dean and Lecturer in New Testament at Ridley Col-
lege, Melbourne, Australia (Australian College of Theology).
Ruben A. Bühner, PostDoc and Lecturer at the Departement of New Testament

Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Wally V. Cirafesi, Pro Futura Scientia XVI Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for
Advanced Study and Researcher in New Testament Studies at Lund University,
Sweden.
Ryan D. Collman, Tutor in Biblical Studies at the University of Edinburgh and

Research Assistant at the University of Sheffield.
Kathy Ehrensperger, Research Professor New Testament in Jewish Perspective,

Abraham Geiger College, University of Potsdam.
Jörg Frey, Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Zurich,

Switzerland.
Joshua Garroway, Sol and Arlene Bronstein Professor of Judaeo-Christian

Studies, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion.
Joshua W. Jipp, Associate Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical

Divinity School, Deerfield, IL, USA.
Lyn M. Kidson, Honorary Research Fellow, Macquarie University.
Michael J. Kok, New Testament Lecturer and Dean of Students at Morling Col-
lege Perth Campus (Australian College of Theology).
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Senior Professor of New Testament Studies at the Uni-

versity of Jena, Germany.
Janelle Peters, Lecturer of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount Universi-

ty.
314 List of Contributors
Christopher A. Porter, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, at Trinity College Theo-

logical School (University of Divinity), Melbourne, Australia.
Brian Rosner, Principal and Lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College, Mel-
bourne, Australia (Australian College of Theology).
David I. Starling, Chief Academic Officer and Lecturer in New Testament at

Morling College (Australian College of Theology).
Murray J. Smith, Lecturer in Biblical Theology and Exegesis at Christ College,

Sydney, Australia (Australian College of Theology).
J. Brian Tucker, Professor of New Testament and Dean of Faculty at Moody

Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois, and Plymouth, Michigan.
Index of Ancient Sources
Hebrew Bible
Genesis 28:14 143
1–3 273 31:13 257
1–2 37 32:24–32 168
1 41 35:11 257
1:1 41, 246, 264 46:3 257
1:3–5 38, 43 49:18 242
1:3–4 41
1:3 38 Exodus
1:5 41 1:9–11 248
1:26–28 240 3:1–15 257
1:27 262 3–4 255
2 41 3:6 257
3:5 238 3:13 LXX 257
4:26 244 3:14–17 257
4:27 142 3:14 LXX 257
5:1–3 240 3:15 LXX 257
10 81 3:16 LXX 257
10:1–32 162 4:22–23 240
11:10–32 162 4:22 180
12:8 244 4:31 250
13:4 244 8:10 246
15:1–6 182 12:12 78
15:5 238 12:43–49 169
15:6 60, 250 12:48 168
15:7 257 14:13 242
17 60, 165 14:30 242
17:1–9 182 14:31 250
17:1 257 15:2 242
17:7–8 238 15:11 246
17:10–14 168 16:7 256
18:25 247 16:10 256
19:30–38 163 16:31 301
21:33 244 19:5 246
22:17–18 143 19:9 248
25:1–18 162 19:16 257
26:24 257 19–24 255
26:25 244 20:2 257
28:13–15 182 20:3 246
28:13 257 20:4 251
316 Index of Ancient Sources
20:10 168 3:24 246

20:11 262 4–5 255
20:18 257 4:12 251, 257
20:22 257 4:15–24 78
23:9 168 4:15–16 251
24:8 252 4:15 257
24:9–18 LXX 257 4:30 250
24:17 256 4:33 257
31:14 160 4:35 246
31:18 87 4:36 257
32:32 243 4:37 237
33:9 248 4:39 246
33:15 115 5:4 257
33:18–19 256–257 5:7 246
33:19 115, 257 5:22 257
33:20 251 5:24 LXX 258
33:22 256 5:26 239
33:23 256 6:4–5 246
33–34 255 6:13 243
34:5–7 and LXX 256, 258 7:6 237
34:5 and LXX 248, 257, 260 7:7 237
10:15 237
Leviticus 12:2–14 78
9:6 256 14:1 240
9:23–24 256 14:2 237
17–18 139 21:22–23 239, 262
19:2 185 23:3–9 LXX 163
19:18 157–158 23:3–4 LXX 252
23:8–9 LXX 170
Numbers 23:8 LXX 170
10:9 242 23:9 252
11:8 301 26:3 175
11:25 and LXX 248, 260 26:5–11 237
12:5 248 26:5 166
14:10 256 29:20 243
14:22 256 30:2 250
15:32–36 160 30:6 250
16:19 256 32:4 254
17:7 256 32:6 178, 240
20:6 256 32:8 262
22–23 163 32:9–11 178
24:16 and LXX 258, 258, 262 32:9 LXX 179
30:5 243 32:15 242
30:8 243 32:17 246
30:12 243 32:19 240
32:39 246
Deuteronomy 32:43 127
2:1–22 163 33:3–4 252, 260, 262
Index of Ancient Sources 317
33:26 246 22:10 248

33:29 242 22:13 257
22:15 257
Joshua 22:36 242
23:7 78 22:47 242
24:1–15 237 22:51 225, 242
24:9 243 23:2 242
Judges 1 Kings
1:2–27 33 2:10 240
2:1–5:6 33 5:11 244
2:16 242 8:23 246
2:18 242 8:27 251, 262
3:9 242 8:30 243
3:10 239 8:33 250
3:15 242 8:34 243
5:4–5 255 8:36 243
6:36 242 8:39 243
7:2 242 8:48 142, 250
7:7 242 8:50 243
10:12–14 242 9:3 142
11:27 247 18:37–39 250
20:2 252 18:39 246
22:19 246
1 Samuel
1–2 219 2 Kings
2:1–10 219 13:5 LXX 242
2:1 242 23:25 250
2:2 246 25:29–30 205
2:10 247
7:12 237 Isaiah
10:19 242 1:2 240
12:6–18 237 1:9 113
13:14 237 2:2–5 141
14:39 242 2:2 142
14:45 242 2:4 141
16:12–13 237 2:5–22 247
17:26 239 2:6–21 246
17:36 239 2:11–12 247
17:47 242 2:12 247
30:30 248 3:13 247
4:5 255, 257
2 Samuel 6 80, 232
7:12 225, 262 6:1–13 227
7:14 178, 240 6:1–6 259
22:3 242 6:8 259, 262
22:4 242 6:9–10 230, 232–233
22:5 242 6:9 230
6:10 250 40:3–5 233, 243, 245

7:14 and LXX 292, 297, 299 40:3 233
9:1 and LXX 38, 307, 309 40:5 256
9:13 250 40:9 82, 237
9:33–37 277 40:18–20 262
10:22–23 113 40:18 246
10:22 113 40:28 239, 246, 264
11:1 262 41:4 257
11:3–4 141 41:8–9 237
11:4 119 41:9 79
11:4–5 253 41:10 229
11:5–9 141 41:22–24 246
11:10 141–142 41:27 237
12:2 242 42:1 237, 245, 295
12:4 244 42:5 262
13:6 247 42:6–7 227, 259
13:9 247 42:6 220, 245, 254, 259,
17:10 242 261–262
19:20 LXX 242 42:7 254, 262
19:25 LXX 180 42:8 246, 256
24:16 254 42:16 254, 259, 262
25:6–7 239 42:17 246
25:8 159 43:1–5 229
25:9 242 43:3 242
26:1 242 43:6–7 178
26:19 239, 243 43:10–12 228
27:9 114 43:10 237, 246, 257
28:16 142 43:11 242
29:5–6 255 43:12 242
30:15 242 43:20 237
30:27–30 255 43:21 LXX 252, 262
33:2 242 43:25 257
33:6 242 44:1–2 237
33:17 256 44:6 246
33:22 242, 247 44:6–20 246
34:8 247 44:8 228, 246
35:2 256 44:10–17 262
35:4–5 259 44:22 250
35:4 242 44:24 246
35:5 243, 262 44:28 237
37:16 246 45:4 237
37:19 246 45:5 246
37:20 242, 246 45:8 242, 257
37:35 242 45:14–25 246
38:20 242 45:14 246
40–66 228 45:15 242
40–55 78 45:17 242
40:2 243 45:18–19 257
45:18 246 55:7 250

45:20 242 55:10 142
45:21–22 242, 246 56:1 242
45:21 242, 254 56:6–8 142
45:22 242, 257 59:1 242
45:23 258 59:16 242
46:4 257 59:20 114
46:5 246 59:47 242
46:7 242 60:1–11 220
46:9 246, 257 60:3 257
47:6 LXX 180 60:5 142–143
47:13 242 60:6 237
48:11 256 60:16 242
48:12 257 60:19 257
48:17 257 61:1–2 237
49:1 79 61:1 and LXX 82, 232–233, 254,
49:3 78 255, 259, 262
49:4 79 61:2 247, 256
49:5–6 228 61:10 242
49:6 and LXX 78, 220, 228, 233, 62:1 242
242–243, 245, 254, 62:11 242
259, 261–262 63:1 242
49:8 79, 242 63:5 242
49:25 242 63:8 242
49:26 242 63:9 242
51:1 115 63:16 240
51:5–6 242 63:17 LXX 180
51:8 242 64:2 255
51:9–11 255 64:5 242
51:12 257 64:7 178, 240
52–53 238–239 65:1 115
52:6 257 65:9 237
52:7 82, 237, 242 65:15 237
52:10 242 65:22 237
52:13–53:12 238 66 78, 81
52:13 238, 254 66:18–24 81
53 238–239, 243 66:18–21 82, 88
53:10 238, 254 66:18–20 81, 256
53:11 243, 253, 254, 262 66:18–19 256
53:12 254 66:18 81
54 142 66:19 81–82
54:1–3 142 66:20 81, 88
54:1 108–109, 142 66:23 and LXX 81, 237
54:5 246
54:7–8 109 Jeremiah
55:3 and LXX 225, 240, 262 1:1–19 227
55:4–5 142 1:5–8 259
55:6 262 1:5 80, 229
1:7 227, 259, 262 Ezekiel

1:8 227, 229, 259, 262 1 80
1:10 229 1:1–28 258–259
1:19 259, 262 1:4 248, 255, 257
2:11 246 1:13 255, 257
2:28 246 1:14 257
3:4 240 1:27–28 255, 257
3:7 250 1:28 79, 251, 256, 259
3:12 250 2:1 79, 258, 262
3:14 250 2:3–4 259, 262
3:19 178, 240 3:2 256
3:22 250 3:23 256, 259
5:24 262 5:5 81–82
6:15 LXX 222 7:19 247
7:8–15 222 8:4 256
9:24–25 60 9–11 222
10:6–7 246 10:4 255, 257
10:10 239, 246 10:22 LXX 256
10:11 246 13:5 247
10:16 246 16 178
12:7 222 16:2–24 178
12:14 LXX 180 18:24 LXX 212
14:8 242 20:5 LXX 237
16:20 246 30:2–3 247
17:14 242 34:22 242
18:8 250 36:22–23 78
22:5 222 36:26–27 158
23:5–6 253 37:1–14 239
23:6 242 37:25 241
23:23–24 251 38–39 81
23:23 262 43:3 259
24:7 250 43:6–7 142
27 LXX 180 44:4 256, 259
31:7 242 44:7 60
31:9 240 44:9 60
31:20 240
31:31 252 Hosea
31:33–34 158 1–2 LXX 115
31:34 243 1:6 and LXX 115, 243
32:40 252 1:7 LXX 115
33:8 243 1:10 239
33:15–16 253 2:3 LXX 115
33:16 242 2:6 LXX 115
36:3 243 2:25 LXX 115
46:10 247 11:1 178, 240, 250
11:1–4 178
13:4 242
13:14 239
Joel Habakkuk
1:15 247 1:5 LXX 237, 262
2:1 247 2:4 253
2:2 247 2:14 78
2:11 247 3:3–15 255
2:12–13 250 3:4 257
2:27 246 3:11 and LXX 257
2:31 247 3:13 242
2:32 237 3:18 242
3:1 243 6:2 249
3:2 LXX 180
3:4 247 Zephaniah
3:5 244, 258, 262 1:7 247
3:14 247 1:14 247
4:14–21 247 1:15–16 255
4:14 247 1:17–18 247
1:18 247
Amos 2:2–3 247
4:6–11 250 3:5 254
5:18 247 3:9–10 78
5:20 247 3:9 244
7:2 243
9:11–12 120 Zechariah
1:3 250
Obadiah 1:14 LXX 294
15 247 8:7 242
21 242 8:22–23 141
9:9 242, 253–254
Jonah 9:11 252
2:10 242 9:14 257
3:5 250 13:9 244
14:1 247
Micah 14:1–9 247
2:5 LXX 252 14:4 247
4:1–5 141 14:6 247
4:7 141 14:7 247
4:8 141 14:8 247
5:1–3 141 14:9 247
5:1 220, 241 14:13 247
7:4 247 14:20 247
7:7 242 14:21 247
7:14 LXX 180
7:19 243 Malachi
1:6 240
Nahum 1:11 78, 80
1:15 237 2:10 178, 240
3:1 243
3:2 247
3:6 251 21:6 242

3:17 and LXX 247, 252 22:1 294–295
3:23 247 22:22 242
4:1 247 23:3 250
4:3 247 24:1–2 246
4:5 247 24:5 242
25:5 242
Psalms 27:1 242
2 225 27:9 and LXX 180, 242
2:1–2 225 28:8 242
2:7–12 248 28:9 242
2:7 225, 238, 240, 262, 29:1 240, 246
295 31:3 242
3 247 31:7 246
3:3 242 31:17 242
3:8 242 31:18 253
3:9 242 32:5 243
5:13 253 32:12 LXX 180
6:5 242 33:12 237
7:2 242 33:16 242
7:10 242, 253 34:7 242
9:9 247 34:19 242
9:15 242 34:20 253
11:3 253 34:22 253
11:5 253 35:3 242
11:7 254 35:9 242
12:2 242 36:7 242
12:6 242 37:12 253
13:6 242 37:16 253
14:5 253 37:21 253
14:7 242 37:25 253
16 (LXX 15):10 225, 240, 262 37:30 253
16:11 225 37:32 253
17:7 242 37:40 242
18:3 242 40:10–11 237
18:4 242 42:2 239
18:8–17 255 42:6 242
18:10 248 42:12 242
18:13 257 43:5 242
18:15 257 44:3 242
18:28 242 44:5 242
18:36 242 44:7 242
18:47 242 44:8 242
18:51 242 45:7 241
20:6 242 50:12 262
20:7 242 50:23 242
20:10 242 51:14 242
21:2 242 53:7 242
54:3 242 80:20 242

55:17 242 82:8 247
55:23 253 84:2 239
57:4 242 85:3 243
58:11–12 253 85:5 242
59:3 242 85:8 242
60:7 242 85:10 242
62:2–3 242 86:2 242
62:3 242 86:10 246
62:7–8 242 86:16 242
62:7 242 87:1–3 142
63:3 256 89:7 240
64:11 253 89:20 237
65:6 242 89:20–38 225
66:1–4 78 89:27 242
67:3 242 91:16 242
67:5 247 92:13 253
68:8–11 255 94:2 247
68:12 237 94:14 LXX 180
68:18 255 94:21 253
68:20 237, 242 95:1 242
68:21 237 95:3 246
69:2 242 96 78
69:14 242 96:2 237, 242
69:30 242 96:5 246
69:36 242 96:10 247
70:5 242 96:13 247
71:2–3 242 97:2–6 255
71:19 246 97:4 257
72:4 242 97:6 256
72:7 253 97:9 246
72:13 242 97:11 253
74:2 LXX 180, 252 98:1 242
74:12–17 255 98:2 242
74:12 242 98:9 247
75:11 253 102:17 256
76:10 242 103:13 240
77:17–21 255 103:19 246
77:19 257 105–106 237
77:71 LXX 180 105:6 237
78 237 105:40 LXX 180
78:12–66 255 105:43 237
78:22 242 106:4 242
79:9 242 106:5 237
80:3 242 106:8 242
80:4 242 106:10 242
80:8 242 106:12 250
80:19 244 106:21 242
106:47 242 148:1–5 246

107:13 242 149:4 242
107:19 242
108:7 242 Job
109:3 LXX 241 1:6 240
109:26 242 19:23–27 239
109:31 242 22:23 250
110 247 36:30 257
110:1 243, 247 36:32–33 257
110:1–7 247 36:33 257
110:3 247 37:3 257
110:6 247 37:11 257
112:6 253 37:15 257
113:5 246
115:2–8 246 Proverbs
116:4 244 1:23 250
116:5 254
116:6 242 Canticles
116:13 242, 244 1:3–5 109
116:17 244 6:8–9 309
118:14 242 9:9 237
118:21 242 11:1 237
118:25 242 17:3 242
118:26 222 17:23–51 253
119:66 250 17:31–32 256
119:94 242 17:31 256
119:117 242 17:32 253
119:123 242 18:7–8 253
119:146 242
119:155 242 Lamentations
119:166 242 1:12 247
119:174 242 1:18 254
132:14 141 2:22 247
132:16 242 3:40 250
135:4 237 5:21 250
135:5 246
135:7–9 35 Esther
135:15–18 246 2:9–12 205
136 237 2:9 205
138:4–5 78 2:10 205
138:7 242 2:20 LXX 206
140:8 242 8:17 LXX 93, 174
144:6 257
145:17 254 Daniel
145:18 262 1 203–205
145:19 242 1:3–17 151
146:6 262 1:5 204
147:8 262 1:8 203–204
1:13 204 1:9 250

1:15 204 9:6–36 224, 237
1:16 204 9:6 246
2:44 248 9:8 254
3:12 248 9:13 255, 257
3:14 248 9:17 243
3:17 248 9:27 242
3:18 248 9:33 254
3:28 248 13:1 252 LXX
3:33 248
4:28 257 1 Chronicles
4:31 248 1:1–2:2 81
4:35 246 6:21 243
6:17 248 6:25 243
6:20 239 6:27 243
6:21 248 6:30 243
6:26 239, 248 6:39 243
7 248, 261 7:14 243
7:13–14 241, 248, 260 11:14 242
7:13 248 16:13 237
7:14 248 16:23–33 78
7:27 248 16:23 and LXX 237, 242
8:17–18 259 16:26 246
9:14 254 16:35 and LXX 242, 259, 262
9:15–19 78 17:4–14 225
9:19 243 18:6 242
9:25–26 238 22:10 240
10:6 257 28:6 240
10:9 259 28:8 252
11:26 204 30:9 250
12 189 30:12 250
12:1–2 239
12:13 239 2 Chronicles
6:14 246
Ezra 6:24 250
9:15 254 7:3 256
12:6 254
Nehemiah 20:17 242
1:3 248 30:9 250
Deuterocanonical Books / Books of the Septuagint
Judith 12:1 206

3:9 LXX 240 12:2 206
9:11 242 12:14–16 206
10:5 151 12:17–19 151
12:19 206 Wisdom of Solomon

14:10 174 2:2 44
2:5 44
Tobit 2:12–20 253
1:11 151 2:23–24 40
3:15–16 256 3:1–9 40
8:15 237 3:7 44
12:18–19 276 3:9 237
13:9–11 141 4:10–20 253
4:15 237
1 Maccabees 5:5 252, 260
4:30 242 5:21 257
12:6–18 164 11:10 178
12:20–23 164 14:3 36
14:16–23 164 16:17 242
2 Maccabees Susanna
4:10 94 28 131
7:1–2 151
Sirach / Ecclesiastes
3 Maccabees 23:4 178
6:9 212 24:1–12 142
6:29 242 44:20 168
6:32 242 46:1 237
7:16 242 51:1 242
51:10 35
4 Maccabees
4:26 15
Early Jewish Literature
Writings from the Hellenistic-Roman 1 Enoch

Period 1:2 253
2 253
2 Baruch 25:3–4 256
4:22 242 27:2–4 256
21:23 256 37–71 248
21:25 256 37:71 253
22:1–2 257 37:82 253
44:4 255 38:2–3 253
53:8–10 257 38:2–4 260
73–74 159 39:6–7 241, 255
78:5 255 45:2–5 248
45:3–5 260
4 Baruch 46:4–5 248
7:8–9 253 46:1–2 241, 255
46:3 253
48:2–3 241, 255 14:32 255

48:5–7 260 15:21 237
48:6 241, 255 16:73–74 237
48:9 237
51:1–4 260 Joseph and Aseneth
51:3 248 7:1 151, 206
52:4–6 260 20:6–8 206
53:1–3 260 21:8 206
53:6 253
53:7 260 Jubilees
55:4 248 1:23–24 158
56:6 237 1:24a-25 178
61:8 248 2:19 237
62:1–16 260 20:1 165
62:2–12 248 20:11–13 165
62:11–12 237 22:16–17 198
62:7 241, 255 22:26 151
63:11 260
69:26–29 260 Letter of Aristeas
69:27 248 181–294 151
89:50–73 142
90:6–12 224, 237 Life of Adam and Eve
90:29–31 141 35:1 35
91:10 253 36:1–3 35
92:3–4 253
102:3 256 Sibylline Oracles
3:35–39 89
2 Enoch 3:46 89
1:1 253 3:53–55 89
3:573–600 89
4 Ezra 3:715–719 141
7:28–29 240 3:720 255
7:29 238 3:726–733 89
7:38–42 256 3:741–743 89
7:87 256 3:746 89
7:91 256 3:751 89
7:97 159 3:762 89
10:15–16 255 3:764 89
12:32–34 248 4:34–35 89
12:32 241 4:37–38 89
13 248 4:760–761 89
13:1–13 248, 260 8:456–464 277
13:26 241
13:32 240 Testament of Abraham
13:37 240 A 13:2–3 248
13:37–38 248 A 13:4 256
13:52 240–241 A 13:5 248
14:9 240 A 13:5–14 248
Testament of Moses Pesher Nahum (4QpNah)

4:2 237 II 4 192
II 8 192
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs III 7–8 192
Testament of Levi Temple Scroll

2:6 257 XL 6 170
8:11 256
10:5 253 4Q161
18:6–7 257 frg. 8 X 253
frg. 16 253
Testament of Naphtali
8:7–9 139 4Q246
II 1 240
Testament of Dan
5 89 4Q252
5:2–3 89 V3 253
5:5–6 89
5:6 253 4Q 521
5:9 89 frg. 2+4 ii 12 239
5:10–13 89 frg. 7+5 ii 239
Testament of Judah 4Q534

18–19 89 I 10 237
18:1 253
18:2 89 Jewish Authors and Works
18:6 89 Josephus
19:1 89
23:1 89 Jewish Antiquities
23:1–2 89 1.20 36
24:5–6 253 1.220–221 165
25:1–5 89 1.239–241 164
1.239 165
Testament of Benjamin 2.213 165
9:1 253 7.44 133
7.45 132
Dead Sea Scrolls 12.225–226 164
13.164–170 164
Rule of the Community (1QS) 13.288 192
III 13–IV 26 53 13.298 192
13.400–404 192
Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab) 14.110 133
IX 12 237 14.213–216 132, 189
14.235 189
Florilegium (4Q174) 14.259–260 189
I 3–4 170 14.403 172
I 11 240 16.1–4 207
18.11–25 239
18.15 192 De praemiis et poenis

19.332–334 172 40 34
20.17–53 172 152 73
20.17 172 158–163 109
20.34–48 10
20.38 172 De sobrietate
20.47 172 56 179
Jewish War De specialibus legibus

2.454 10 1.18 178
5.277–279 67 1.51 67
7.45 132 1.51–53 66, 171
1.51–52 171
The Life of Flavius Josephus (Vita) 1.64 178
277–303 131 1.165 36
277–304 131 1.309 66, 171
2.63 157
Philo of Alexandria 2.67 178
De Abrahamo 2.162 81
1:98 81 3.131 68
67–88 66
De virtutibus
De fuga et inventione 101–103 66
66 34 102–103 23, 67
102–108 170
De migratione Abrahami 108 171
89–94 60 211–219 66
219 66
De opificio mundi
7 35, 178 De vita Mosis
8 34 2.171 67, 74
10 178
21 178 Legatio ad Gaium
26–35 41 5 34
26–28 41 311–313 189
29 41 316 189
31 41
33 42 Quaestiones et solutions in Genesin
46 178 3.46 60
56 178
74 178 Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum
75 178 (QE)
77 178 2.2 60, 136
84 178
89 178 Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit (Prob.)
135 178 75–91 189
80–83
132
Rabbinic Writings
Mishnah 76b 169

97b 176
Bikkurim
1:4 175 Talmud Yerushalmi
Makkot Bikkurim
3:1–4 131 1.4 175
3:9–15 131 64a 176
Megillah Hagiga
21b:8 131 2.1 §12 255
3:1 131
Other Rabbinic Works
Tosefta
Genesis Rabbah
Avodah Zarah 39.14 176
8:4 137
Leviticus Rabbah
Hagiga 9.7 160
2:11 192
Qohelet Rabbah
Sukkah 1.4.3 159
4 134
Midrash Tehilim
Talmud Babli 146.7 160
Sanhedrin Midrash Qohelet

26b 255 2.1 160
56b 137 12.1 160
Šabbat Pesiqta Rabbati

31a 139, 157 14:6 255
151b 160
Maimonides
Yebamot Mishne Torah
22a 175, 176 Hil.Issurei Biah
48b 175 13:14–16 169
76a 169
New Testament
Matthew 3:17 257
1:18–24 294 5:17–20 295, 309
1:23 292 7:12 157
2:23 288 10:17 131
10:24–25 298 1:32–35 241

11:29–39 309 1:32–33 219
13:14–15 232 1:32 241
13:41 248 1:33 220
15:2 266 1:35 241
15:15 209 1:41–56 219
16:27 248 1:45 250
17:5 257 1:46–55 219
19:28 248 1:47 242
22:36–40 157 1:52 240
23:1–10 192 1:54 220
25:31–46 248 1:54–55 220
26:7 288 1:67 219
27:46 294 1:68 220
27:50 294 1:69–70 220
1:69 242
Mark 1:71 242
1:10 295 1:73–74 220
1:11 257, 295 1:76 219–220
1:24 288 1:76–79 220
4:12 232 1:77 242
7:1–23 295 1:78 220
7:3 266 1:78–79 220
7:6–8 295 2:4 220
7:15–23 295 2:11 220, 222, 224, 242
7:15 295 2:25 219–220
7:18–19 295 2:26 224
7:19 295 2:28 219
8:38 248 2:30 232, 243
9:7 257 2:30–32 220, 233
9:35 257 2:32 220, 232, 245
10:18 295 2:34–35 221
10:47 288 2:36 219
13:9 131, 192 2:38 219–220
14:67 288 3:3 250
15:34 295 3:4–6 220, 233, 243, 245
16:6 288 3:6 220, 233, 243
3:7–9 233
Luke 3:8 250
1–2 220 3:16–17 243
1:5–2:52 219 3:22 241, 245, 257
1:15–17 219 3:38 240–241
1:16–17 219–220 4:3 241
1:16 220 4:7–8 243
1:19 257 4:9 241
1:20 250 4:16–31 131
1:27 220 4:16 224
1:31–35 219, 224 4:18–19 233
4:18 232–233 16:17 295

4:25–27 233 16:30 250
4:34 288 16:31 250
4:41 241 17:5–6 250
5:20 250 17:19 243, 250
5:32 250 17:24 248
6:9 243 17:30 248
6:23 232 18:8 248, 250
7:5 189 18:35–43 232
7:9 250 18:37 288
7:21–23 232 18:42 243, 250
7:22 243 19:9 243
7:27 220, 243 19:10 243
7:50 243, 250 19:28–24:53 260
8:10 232 19:28–44 222
8:12–13 250 19:28–40 222
8:12 243 19:31 222
8:25 250 19:33 222
8:28 241 19:38 222
8:36 243 19:39 222
8:41 189 19:41–44 222, 234
8:48 243, 250 19:44 222
8:50 243, 250 20:27–40 239, 262
9:24 243 20:41–44 241
9:26 248, 260 20:42 247
9:28–36 260 21:5–38 260
9:34–35 260 21:25–27 260
9:35 241 21:27 248, 260
9:51–56 221 21:36 248
10:11 231 22:15 301
10:13 250 22:20 252
10:21–22 241 22:28–30 241, 248
10:23–24 232 22:32 250
10:41 189 22:37 212, 239
11:32 250 22:67 250
11:37–54 221 22:69 247, 249
11:47–48 221 22:70 241
11:48 232 23:4 229
11:50 221 23:14–16 229
11:51 221 23:14–15 229
12:40 248 23:15 229
13:3 250 23:22 229
13:5 250 23:33–34 239
13:31–35 221 23:35 243
13:33–34 221, 232 23:37 243
13:35 222 23:39 243
15:7 250 23:47 253
15:10 250 24:7 229
24:19–21 223 2:42–47 231

24:19 288 2:43–47 290
24:20 229 2:44 250
24:25–27 238 2:47 243
24:25 250 3:6 244, 288, 307
24:26–27 229 3:13–15 254
24:26 241 3:13 254, 307
24:27 239 3:14 252–254
24:44–47 238 3:15 251
24:44 262 3:16 244, 250
24:46–47 263 3:18 223, 238
24:46 239 3:19 250
24:47 228, 250 3:19–21 227
24:52 243 3:20–21 223, 247
3:26 307
John 4:2 249
3:26 189 4:4 250
5:22 248 4:7 244
5:27 248 4:9 243
5:28–29 249 4:10 244, 288, 307
6:25–59 189 4:12 243–244, 258
7:15 189 4:17 244
9:22 193 4:18 244
12:28–30 257 4:24 307
12:42 192 4:25–27 225
18:5 288 4:27 307
18:7 288 4:30 244, 307
19:19 288 4:32–35 231
4:32–37 290
Acts 5:14 250
1:6 228 5:17 234
1:8 228 5:28 244
1:9–11 227, 247, 260 5:30 239
1:9 260 5:31 240, 242–243, 247,
2–3 238 249, 250
2:12–13 231 5:40–41 244
2:17–18 243 5:42 263
2:21 243–244, 258 6:1–7:53 302
2:22 288, 307 6:9–10 132
2:23 212 6:9 191
2:24–32 240 6:14 288, 307
2:30–36 227 7 224
2:32–36 243, 249 7:2–53 237
2:33–34 247 7:2 256
2:33 240, 243 7:25 239
2:36 244, 258 7:27 239
2:38 244, 250, 258 7:32 257
2:40 243 7:35 239
7:39 239 10:36 244

7:51–53 232 10:38 307
7:52 239, 252–253 10:39 239
7:52–53 239 10:42 247–249
7:54–60 234 10:43 239, 244
7:55 256 10:48 244, 250
7:55–56 247, 249 11:7 257
7:59 244 11:9 257
8:1–25 231 11:14 243
8:12 244, 250 11:17 250
8:16 244 11:18 250
8:22 250 11:21 250
8:32–33 239 13 193
9 79, 227, 244 13:1–14:28 229
9:1–19 232 13:1 229
9:1–9 227 13:2 229, 244
9:1 227 13:5 230
9:3 227, 244, 256, 259 13:10–12 244
9:3–8 273 13:13–43 192
9:3–5 241 13:13–41 224
9:4 244, 257–258 13:13–20 273
9:5 227, 244, 257 13:14 230
9:7 244, 257 13:15 224, 231, 237, 261
9:10 227 13:16–41 236
9:11 96, 227 13:16–25 237
9:13 227 13:16 224, 236
9:14–16 244 13:17 237, 240, 261
9:14 244, 258 13:21–22 225
9:15–16 230 13:22 225, 237
9:15 227, 230, 244 13:22–23 237, 240
9:16 224 13:23 225, 237, 240–242,
9:17–19 229 262–263
9:17 244, 256 13:24 250
9:18 258 13:26–37 237
9:19–25 224 13:26 224–225, 231,
9:20 224, 237, 241, 262, 236–237, 243
264 13:27 231, 238, 243,
9:21 244 262–263
9:22 224, 237, 262–263 13:28 224
9:26–30 224 13:29 238–239, 243,
9:27 244 262–263
9:28 237, 244, 262 13:30–37 239, 263
9:35 250 13:30 225
9:42 250 13:32–33 238, 240
10:1–11:18 231 13:32 237, 261–262
10:13 257 13:33–37 225, 241
10:15 257 13:33–34 240
10:21 257 13:33 225, 241, 262, 264
13:34 225–226, 240, 262 15:13–19 119

13:35–36 240 15:19–32 139
13:35 225, 240, 262 15:19 250
13:36–37 240 15:20 86
13:36 225 15:26 244
13:37 225 15:28–29 56
13:38–41 237 15:29 86
13:38–39 243 15:35 237, 244, 262
13:38 236, 263 15:36–16:5 265
13:39 243, 250 15:36 244
13:40–41 226, 237, 261 15:40 244
13:41 262 16 97
13:42–52 218 16:1–5 139
13:42–47 230 16:1–3 10, 273
13:42–45 231 16:3 59, 152
13:44 231, 244 16:7–10 229
13:45 234, 282 16:10 237, 262
13:46 228, 231, 234 16:13 230
13:46–48 243 16:14–25 244
13:46–47 236, 243 16:17 243
13:47–48 244 16:18 244
13:47 228, 232–233, 16:30–31 243
243–245, 259, 16:31 237, 244, 250, 262
261–262 16:32 244
13:48 231, 250 16:34 250
13:49 231 16:37 97
13:50 273, 282 17 102, 213
13:51 231 17:1–9 136
14:1–23 265 17:1 230
14:1–7 234 17:2–3 224, 236, 238, 261
14:1 130, 133, 230, 236 17:2 224
14:2 282 17:3 237, 262–263
14:3 244 17:4 130, 133
14:4–7 218 17:5–9 234
14:7 237, 262 17:5 234
14:15–17 245 17:6 136
14:15 237, 250, 262 17:12 130, 133
14:17 262 17:18 237, 246, 262
14:19 234 17:22–31 236, 245
14:21 237, 262 17:22–29 245–246
14:23 244, 250 17:24–25 245
15 10, 150 17:24 261–262
15:1–5 152 17:25 262
15:1 59, 150 17:26 248, 262
15:5 59 17:27 262
15:7 250 17:29 262
15:10 14 17:30 250
15:11 243, 250 17:31–32 224
17:31 246–249, 262–263 21:26 15

17:32–34 231 21:27–22:29 135
17:32 262 21:28 45, 75, 85, 217
18 135 21:39 12, 76, 96
18:1–8 194 22 227, 257
18:1–3 193 22–28 217, 226
18:2–24 194 22:1–21 236, 252
18:2–4 230 22:1–3 226
18:2 56 22:2 217
18:4 130, 231, 133 22:3 12, 45, 76, 96, 152,
18:5–6 230 217, 257
18:5 224, 236, 237, 22:5 135, 230
262–263 22:6–11 263
18:6 231, 234 22:6 256, 259
18:8–9 244 22:7 257–258
18:8 56, 250 22:8 244, 257, 288, 307
18:9–10 229–230 22:9 257
18:10 257 22:10–21 230
18:13 152, 153 22:10 244
18:24 56 22:11 256
18:28 263 22:14–16 227
19:4 250 22:14 227, 252–254,
19:5 244 257–258, 262
19:8 136, 230 22:16 229, 244, 258, 262
19:9 135 22:17–21 135, 263
19:10 136, 244 22:18 256
19:13 244 22:19 244, 250
19:17 244 22:21 262
19:20 244 22:25 97
20–28 262 22:29 230
20:7–12 266 23 189
20:9 266 23:3 303
20:11 266 23:5–6 218
20:17–35 236, 250 23:6 45, 97, 230, 254, 262,
20:19 250 307
20:21 237, 250, 262 23:6–10 262t
20:24 237, 250, 262, 264 23:6–9 239
20:28 250–251, 262–263 23:11 244
20:32 252, 260 23:29 230
20:35 250 24:5 288–289, 304, 307
21 85 24:10–21 236, 252
21:13 244 24:10–13 217
21:20–25 11, 13 24:14–16 218
21:20–21 217 24:14–15 226, 254
21:21 45, 152, 153, 291, 310 24:14 152, 226, 250,
21:24–26 152 261–262
21:24 244 24:15 230, 239, 249,
21:25 86, 139 261–262, 307
24:17–18 152 28:22 221

24:17 218 28:23 230, 236, 261
24:21 254, 262, 307 28:23–28 230
24:24 237, 250, 262 28:24–25 231
24:27 230 28:24 231
25:8 152 28:25–28 232, 234, 261
25:10–11 217 28:25 231–232, 264
26 227 28:26 230, 232
26:2–29 236, 252 28:27 233, 250
26:4–5 45, 217 28:28 243
26:5–8 262 28:31 237, 244, 262
26:6–8 226, 254
26:6–7 230, 261 Romans
26:7 226 1–4 10
26:9 244, 288, 307 1:1–5 83, 253
26:12–18 263 1:1–4 240
26:13 256, 259 1:1 78–79, 264
26:14 257–258 1:2 238, 261, 264
26:15–18 230 1:3–4 240
26:15–16 227 1:3 183, 241
26:15 244, 257 1:4 247, 249
26:16 227, 256, 258–259, 1:6–7 86
262 1:6 55
26:17 227, 250, 259, 262 1:7 86, 123
26:18–19 262 1:14 51, 54
26:18 227, 232–233, 250, 1:16 18, 50–51, 54–55, 84
252, 254, 258–259, 1:17 253, 258
262 1:18–32 54, 121
26:19–23 226 1:18–25 180
26:19 258 2 49, 138
26:20 250 2:5 249
26:22–23 238, 254, 261 2:9–10 50
26:22 263–264 2:13 292
26:23 223, 226, 233, 237, 2:14–16 121
239, 245, 249, 254, 2:16 249
259, 261–263 2:17–29 138
26:27 226, 2:17–20 137
26:28 230 2:17 59, 138
26:29 257 2:21–28 88
26:31 230 2:21 88
27:1–28:10 217 2:22 88
27:25 250 2:23 88
28 230–231 2:24–28 88, 125
28:17–20 226 2:25–3:2 123
28:17–19 226 2:25–29 17, 22, 48, 54
28:17 152, 217, 261 2:25 59
28:19 221 2:28–30 59
28:20 226, 230, 254, 261 2:28–29 86
2:28 60 7:16 14
2:29 60, 64 7:18 278
3:1 17, 122 7:25 14, 278
3:2 59, 77 8:2 11, 14
3:7–8 13 8:3 156
3:8 310 8:3–13 278
3:9 18 8:4 155
3:9–12 59 8:9–11 157
3:19–31 157 8:11 248–249
3:19–24 115 8:12–25 180
3:19–20 15 8:15 179
3:21–4:25 10 8:17 180
3:21–31 117 8:18–25 256
3:21–26 86 8:28 86
3:21–23 16 8:29 249
3:21 15, 238, 261 8:30 86
3:24–25 252 8:32 251
3:25 238 8:33 86
3:28 292 8:34 247, 249
3:29–30 136 9–11 4, 24, 47, 72, 111–113,
3:29 50 115–116, 141
3:30 18, 246 9–10 114
3:31 10, 14, 45, 155, 157 9 112
4 60, 182 9:1–5 17, 54
4:10 60 9:3–5 13, 77
4:11–12 18, 86, 125 9:3–4 12, 76
4:11 60, 86 9:3 45, 112
4:12 107 9:4–5 59, 122
4:15 14 9:4 112, 155, 181
4:16–17 86 9:5 45, 251
4:16 184 9:6–11:10 114
4:17 182–183 9:6 85, 112, 123
4:22–24 15 9:7 86, 182
4:25 254 9:8 112
5:2 256 9:12 86
5:18–19 240 9:16 115
5:20 11, 14, 85 9:18 115
5:20–21 115 9:21 113
6:4 256 9:22–29 115
6:7–11 115 9:22–26 113
6:14 157 9:22–24 112–113
6:15–23 210 9:23 115
6:16–19 157 9:24–28 86
7:1 138 9:24–26 16–17, 72, 125
7:4 11, 14 9:24 50
7:5 11, 14, 85, 278 9:25–26 24, 113, 115
7:12 14, 155–156 9:25 86
7:14 14, 155–156 9:27–29 72, 113
9:27–28 113 12:1–2 86

9:30 115 12:1 115, 185
9:30–10:21 113 12:8 115
9:32 113 13:1–7 211
9:33 142 13:8–10 15, 139
10:2 114 13:8–9 158
10:4 14, 155, 159 13:11–12 158
10:9–13 18 13:12 249
10:12 16 14 139
10:13 258 14:1–15:13 310
10:15 82 14:1 125, 127
10:19 114 14:5 124–125
10:20 115 14:10–21 249
10:21 113 14:14 11, 13, 15
11 72, 136 14–15 125–126
11:1–10 113 14:23 125
11:1 45, 75–76, 113, 122, 15 81, 88
167, 271 15:1–13 16
11:5 122 15:1 125
11:7 113, 123 15:7 78, 124, 125
11:11–32 113, 115–116 15:8–9 183
11:11–15 113 15:8 17, 127–128
11:11 113 15:9 115
11:12 114 15:10 127–128
11:13–14 114 15:12 141–142
11:13 128 15:15–16 80
11:14 114 15:16 48, 81–82, 142, 264
11:15 114 15:16–28 82
11:16 114 15:16–24 82
11:17–24 23, 72, 74, 114 15:17 86
11:17 114 15:19 82
11:23–24 114 15:20 82
11:23 126 15:25–28 143
11:24 18, 73 15:26 290
11:25–26 126–127 15:28 143
11:25 72, 114, 126 15:31 13, 144
11:26–27 115 16:3 56
11:26 24, 64, 72, 114, 16:7 56
117–118, 122, 139, 15:16 88
142 16:25–27 83
11:28 122 16:25 258
11:30–32 115, 126 16:26 238, 261
11:30–31 115 16:27 246
11:30 115, 122
11:31 115, 122 1 Corinthians
11:32 115, 122 1–4 88, 269
11:33–36 78 1:1 77, 272
12–16 118 1:2 55, 251, 258
1:14 56, 194 9 91, 101, 209–213, 215

1:17 82 9:1–2 77
1:18 249 9:1 213, 256, 273
1:19 273 9:4 213
1:20 273, 279 9:5 195
1:20–23 18 9:6 213
1:22–25 50 9:8–10 15
1:22–24 55 9:12 213
1:23 13, 18, 273 9:16–23 213
2:4 212 9:19 210–211, 213, 213 n.
2:7 256 50
2:8 260 9:19–23 11, 15, 22, 26, 45, 49,
2:10 258 91, 102, 201,
3:13 249 209–213, 215
4:14–16 77 9:20–23 101
5–7 86, 89 9:20–22 18, 209, 211–212
5 198–199 9:20 18, 102, 209–210,
5:1–13 86 212, 214
5:1–5 198 9:21 103, 212
5:1 54, 63 9:22 75, 103, 209, 211–214
5:5 249 9:23 215
5:8 139 10:7–8 87
5:11 87 10:31 89
6 26, 196, 199 10:32 17, 251
6:1–11 86, 195, 199 11 196
6:1–8 195 11:2–14:40 87
6:9–11 86 11:2–16 198
6:9–10 180 11:16 251
6:9 196 11:22 251
6:11 54 11:25 17
6:12–20 86 12:2 16, 54, 63, 77
6:14 249 12:4–11 198
6:20 89, 185 14:11 54
7 103 14:34–35 281
7:1–40 86 15 89, 160, 278, 285
7:17–20 16, 59, 138, 150, 310 15:1–2 77
7:18–21 10 15:3–4 238, 261
7:19 17, 59, 151, 157 15:3–5 264
7:20 124 15:3 238
7:23 185 15:8 256
8–14 87, 89 15:9 251
8 209, 212–213 15:25 249
8:1 - 11:1 87, 211 15:31 273
8:1–2 13 15:39–42 156
8:4–6 246 15:42–50 278
8:9 213 15:49 159
8–10 212 15:50–54 159
8:12–13 213 15:51 158
15:56 11, 14 Galatians

16 273 1:1 55
16:1–4 143 1:3–5 78
16:3 143 1:4 158
16:5–9 273 1:6–9 83, 108
16:8 273 1:7 150
1:8–9 291
16:19 56 1:10–16 79
1:10 78, 98
2 Corinthians 1:11–12 273
1:1–2:13 38 1:11 84
1:1 55, 250, 272 1:12 83, 258
1:6–7 38 1:13–24 45
1:20 78 1:13–14 9, 45, 75
2:5–11 198 1:13 51, 75, 97, 98, 108,
2:11 198 251
2:14 38 1:14 97, 273
3:6 14, 17 1:15–16 74, 79, 97
3:13–15 198–199 1:16 84, 256, 258, 271
3:16 18, 250 1:17 55
3:18 256 1:21 55
4:1–6 22, 32, 37–43 1:24 78
4:1 40 2–5 10
4:2 38, 39 2 49, 57, 103
4:3–4 38, 198 2:1–21 10, 11
4:4 38, 39, 256 2:2 258
4:5 78 2:3 10, 56, 59
4:6 38, 39, 256–257, 260 2:4 150
4:10 39 2:5 177
5:10 249 2:7–9 18
6:2 79 2:7 84
6:16–7:1 87 2:9–10 56
6:16–18 180 2:9 98
7:4 38 2:10 290
8–9 143 2:11–16 13
8:14 143 2:11–14 16, 57, 64, 151, 305
8:16–24 143 2:12 98, 151
9:4 54 2:14 15, 16, 57, 98
11:7 264 2:15–21 57
11:12–15 198 2:15–16 117, 151
11:22–23 75 2:15 12, 45, 50, 54, 57,
11:22 12, 45, 76, 167 168, 177
11:24 13, 135, 135, 192 2:16 271, 292
12:1 258 2:19 11, 14, 15, 58, 157
12:7 258 2:20 271
12:19–21 87 2:29 155
3:1–29 14
3:1 54
3:7–8 83 5:19–21 86
3:7 64 5:21 180
3:8 264 5:25 107
3:10–14 14 6:6 107
3:10 83, 155 6:12–16 10
3:11 253 6:12–15 59
3:13 18, 22, 49, 83, 239 6:12 108
3:16–17 83 6:14 85
3:17 83 6:15 17, 59, 61, 83,
3:19 83, 157 107–108, 110, 151
3:21 151, 157 6:16 24, 60, 64, 107,
3:22–24 115 109–110, 117–118,
3:23–4:7 117 139
3:23–25 14, 157
3:23 83 Ephesians
3:25 83, 157 1:7 252
3:28 16, 17, 61–62 1:9–10 69
3:29 64, 83, 110, 182, 183 1:14 252
4 142 1:20 249
4:1–10 85 2–3 120
4:1–7 180 2:11–3:13 16
4:3–5 83 2:11–22 69, 74
4:4–5 18 2:11–12 69–70
4:21–5:1 108, 111 2:11 71
4:21–31 110, 142 2:12 70, 77
4:22–23 83 2:13 69, 71
4:24–27 109 2:14–19 23, 69
4:24–26 142 2:15 70
4:24–25 83 2:17 71
4:25–26 83 2:19 70
4:25 108, 142 3:1 71
4:26 142 3:3 69, 258
4:27 108, 110, 142 3:5 258
4:29 108 3:6 68, 73
5:1–15 210 4:6 246
5:1–11 10 5:5 86
5:1–2 60 4:17 71
5:1 142 7:2 278
5:2 59
5:3 60 Philippians
5:4 59 1:1 55, 78
5:6 17, 59, 62, 83, 110, 1:6 249
151 1:10 249
5:10 150 2:6–7 241
5:11–12 59 2:8 240
5:14 15, 157 2:9–11 240, 258
5:16–17 83 2:10–11 249
5:18 155, 157 2:15–16 198
2:16 79, 249 1:9 256

3:2 99, 100, 150 1:10 249
3:3–11 45 1:12 251
3:3 17, 59–60, 64 2:2 249
3:4 59, 99 2:4 256
3:4–9 99, 100
3:4–8 59 1 Timothy
3:5–6 45, 75, 99, 271 1:1 272
3:5 12, 59, 76, 99, 167 1:3–4 274
3:6 12, 51, 157 1:3 273, 276
3:7 75 1:4 274, 276
3:9 101 1:6–7 274, 276
3:16 107 1.7 273
3:20 55 1.8 273
3:21 159, 256 1:11 264
1:17 246
Colossians 1:20 274
1:14 252 2:5–6 278
1:18 249 2:5 246
1:20 252 2:7 279
2:11 16 2:9–15 283
3:1 249 2:12 281
3:4 256 2:13–14 273
3:5 86 3:7–16 278
3:16 279
1 Thessalonians 4:1–5 274
1:1 55 4:3–4 274
1:9–10 87–88 4:3–5 273
1:9 78, 134, 136, 246, 4:7 274
250 5:1–16 283
1:10 88, 249 5:3–15 268
2:2 264 5:11–16 284
2:8–9 264 5:23 284–285
2:12 180 6:3 276, 279
2:14–15 75 6:4 274
2:14 251 6:4–5 274
4:3–8 88
4:5 54, 63 2 Timothy
4:13–18 88 1:3 273
4:14–16 249 1:12 249
4:15–17 158 1:18 249, 273
5:2 249 2:2 258
5:4 249 2:18 274
5:5 249 3:8 274
5:8 249 3:11 273, 282
3:15–16 261
2 Thessalonians 3:15 238
1:4 251 3:16 264
4:1 249 1:18 33, 36–37

4:4 274 1:19–27 33
4:8 249 1:19–21 33
4:10 282 1:21–22 33
4:12 273 1:21 43
4:19 282 1:22–25 33
1:26–27 33
Titus 2:1 29
1:1 78 2:8 157
1:4 282 2:14–16 33
1:12 54 5:6 253–254
1:14 274 5:20 43
1:16 276
2:3–5 283 1 Peter
2:13–14 251 1:2 252
2:13 256 1:10–11 238
3:9 274 1:18–19 252
3:12 273 2:9 252
2:24 239
Hebrews 2:25 250
1:5–14 277 3:1 209
6:2 249 3:18 253
9:12 251
10:38 253 2 Peter
11:1–12:3 237 1:18 257
James 1 John
1:1 29, 36 2:1 253
1:2–27 33
1:5–8 33 Revelation
1:5 33 4:1 257
1:13–25 33 10:4 257
1:13–18 22, 32–33, 36, 42 10:8 257
1:13–15 33 11:12 257
1:15 36 12:10 257
1:16–18 33 14:13 257
1:16–17 37 18:4 257
1:17 33–34 22:15 86
Graeco-Roman Literature
Aelius Aristides Aristotle

Orations Nicomachean Ethics
24.18 67 1137b.10–28 156
24.38–39 67
Dio Cassius 14.96–102 174

History of Rome
37.17.1 93 Pliny the Elder
Natural History
Dio Chrysostom 3.144 92
Orations
17.19 67 Pomponius Mela
39.5 67 De Choriographia
50.3 67 2.56.1 92
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Seneca

Roman Antiquities Epistles
6.86.1–5 67 44 66
Horace Tacitus
Satire Histories
1.9.68–72 139 5.5.2 174
Juvenal Vergil
Satire Aeneid
14.96–106 174 1:371–375 127
Early Christian Literature
Amphilochius 10.4.9 283 [3 Corinthians]

Against False Asceticism 13:50–14:1 282
Haer. 18 285
Haer. 20 285 Clement of Alexandria
Stromateis
Aristides 3.2.3.2 293
Apology 6.42.2 271
2.2 17
Homiliae Clementinae
Acts of Paul 3.20.2 302
3:1 282 11.24–26 302
3:2 282
3:3 282 Diognetus
3–4 282 1:1 17, 49, 53
3:5–6 283 2:1 53
3:5 282 5:3 53
3:20 283 9:2 251
3:21–22 283
3:25 284 Epiphanius
4 280 Panarion (Adversus Haereses)
7:1 283 1.3 309
8 283 2.1 304
10 283 [3 Corinthians] 3.1 298
4.1–2 304 29.7.1 305

5.1–4 304 29.7.2–8 304
5.9 309 29.7.2–5 289
6.1–6 304 29.7.2 289, 304
6.2–8 304 29.7.3 304
6.4 301 29.7.4 304
7.2 304 29.7.5 154
7.5 304 29.7.6 289, 304–305
8.1–7 304 29.7.7–8 304
9.1 305 29.9.2 305, 308
9.4 289, 304 29.9.4 304
13.2 294, 300 30.1.1 288, 302, 304
13.6 294 30.2.2 153, 298
13.7 298 30.2.4–5 298
14.3 294, 300 30.2.6 298
14.4 298 30.3.2 301
14.5 300 30.3.3–6 298
15.3 298 30.3.3–4 301
15.3–4 298 30.3.6 298
16.1 298 30.3.7 294
16.3 298 30.4–12 302
16.4 298 30.13–14 301
16.5 298, 300 30.13.2–3 300
16.7 298 30.13.4 300–301
17.5 298 30.13.5 298
17.6–7 298, 301 30.13.6 300
18.2–3 298 30.13.7–8 300
18.4–5 298 30.15.1–3 299
18.7 298, 302 30.15.2 298
18.7–9 298 30.15.4 302
18.9 302 30.16.1 299
19.1.6 301 30.16.4 277
19.4.1–2 301 30.16.5 300–301
22.4 298, 300 30.16.6 303
23.4.1–7 302 30.16.7 299, 303
24.5.5 302 30.16.8–9 154, 288, 303
26.1–2 298 30.17.2–3 290
28.2.3–5 304 30.17.4 301
28.5.1 298 30.18.4–5 298
29 304 30.18.7–19.4 301
29.1.1 304 30.22.4 301
29.1.2–3 304 30.26.1–3 298
29.1.3–4.9 304 30.33.4 298
29.1.4–5.3 304 53.8.1 301
29.4.10 304 53.1.9 301
29.5.4 304
29.5.7 289
29.6.1 289
Eusebius To the Magnesians

Ecclesiastical History 8:1–2 275
2.16.1 307 8:1 9
2.16.2–17.24 307 8:2 279
3.5.3 307 9:1 276–278
3.27.1 290 10:3 9
3.27.2–3 307
3.27.3 296 To the Philadelphians
3.27.4 153, 288, 294 6:1 9, 276, 278
3.27.5 292
3.27.6 290 To the Trallians
3.37.3 297 10.1 276
3.39.16 295
5.17 297 To the Smyrnaeans
6.38 302 2 276
Demonstratio evangelica Irenaeus

7.1 297 Adversus Haereses
1.25.1–26.2 293
Praeparatio evangelica 1.25.1 292–294
9.23.1 165 1.26.1 292–294
1.26.2 153, 288, 291–292,
Gospel of the Ebionites 296–297, 299
(see Epiphanius, Panarion 30) 1.28.2 293
3.1.1 295
Hippolytus 3.11.3 297
Refutatio ominium haeresium 3.11.7–8 294–295
1.26.2 296 3.11.7 292–294
7.33.1 296 3.21.1 292, 297
7.34.1 292, 296 4.33.4 292
7.34.2 153 5.1.3 292, 297, 299
7.35.1 290 7.34.1–2 298
9.13.2–3 301 7.34.1 293
9.14.1 302 10.22.1 293
9.15.2 301
9.15.5 301 Jerome
10.22.1 153, 292 Epistulae
16.3 302 112.13 305, 308
Ignatius Commentary on Matthew

To the Ephesians 2.5 306
1:1 251 6.11 306
7:2 279 12.2 288
12:2 279 12.13 306
14:1 279 13.53–54 305
18:1 273, 279 23.35 306
18:2 279 27.16 306
20:2 279 27.51 306
Commentary on Isaiah 47.1–4 291, 307

3.30 [on Isa. 9:1] 154 48.4 292
5.18–19 308 49.1 292
8.11–15 306 67.2 292, 297
8.19–22 306 67.5 297
9.1 289, 306 67.6 297
11.1 306 67.46–49 297
29.17–21 306 68.5 292
31.6–9 306
40.9–11 306 Kerygma Petrou (Fragments)
2 17
Commentary on Ezekiel 5 49
16.13 306 5 53
Commentary on Amos Pseudo-Clementines

1.11–12 308 Recognitions
1.27–71 301
Commentary on Micah 1.27[33]-71 303
7.6 306 1.27.1–71.6 299
1.33.3–71.6 299
Commentary on Habakkuk 1.43.1 300
3.10–13 297 1.70.1–8 303
6.8–9 302
Tractatus in Psalmos 60.7 300
135 306 63.1 300
De Sancta Pelagia virgine et martyre Epistula Petri

3.2 306 2 154
2.3 154
De viris illustribus 2.4–7 154
3 306
54 297 Pseudo-Hieronymus
Indictio de haereticis
John Chrysostom 10 298
Adversus Judaeos
1.2.1–2 99 Pseudo-Tertullian
Adversus omnes haereses
Homilies 3 298
Gal. 1.7 140 3.3 153
Justin Martyr Tertullian

First Apology Ad nationes
67 137 1.8 53
26.1–8 291 1.13.3–4 139
8.1 70
Dialogus cum Tryphone
16.4 253 Ad uxorem
46.1 308 2.3.1 251
Adversus Marcionem Commentary on Romans

4.8 308 8.2.2 157
De baptismo Commentary on Titus

17 280 3.11 297
17.5 267
Contra Celsum
De carne Christi 2.1 153, 290
14 290, 294 5.61 295–296, 307
18 290 5.65 153, 288, 295–296,
24 290 307–308
De præscriptione haereticorum De principiis

10.8 290 4.3.8 290, 295
33.3–5 290, 292
33.11 290 Homilies on Genesis
3.5 153, 290
De virginibus velandis
6.1 290 Homilies on Leviticus
5.8 139
Origen
Commentary on John Homilies on Jeremiah
2.12 306 15.4 306
19.12 288, 296, 303
Commentary on Matthew
16.12 290 Selections on Exodus
79 295, 298 12.46 139
Index of Modern Authors
Ábel, František 8–9, 15–16, 138, 141, 148 Bauer, Dieter 204, 267
Abrahams, Israel 308 Bauer, Walter 153, 267–268
Adams, Sean A. 251 Baumann, Gerd 121–123, 125, 127
Ådna, Jostein 238 Baumgartner, Walter 204
Aernie, Jeffrey W. 80 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 50, 287–288,
Akiyama, Kengo 158 291
Alexander, Haslam 95 Bauspieß, Martin 37
Alexander, Philip S. 147–149, 160 Bavinck, Herman 251
Alexander, T. Desmond 83 Beale, Gregory K. 116, 120, 258
Allison, Dale C. 29, 34, 227 Beasley-Murray, George R. 248, 261, 267
Alston, Richard 269 Beatrice, Pier Franco 294, 300, 306
Alvares, Jean 196 Beck, Johannes U. 37
Anderson, Garwood P. 5–6 Becker, Adam H. 154
Anderson, K. L. 236 Becker, Eve-Marie M. 31, 46
Applegate, Judith 191, 194–195 Becker, Jürgen 45, 75
Arendt, Hannah 162 Beers, Holly 228
Ascough, Richard 189 Belleville, Linda L 156
Auler, Samuel 143 Ben-Smit, Peter 293
Aune, David. E. 267 Berger, David 159
Auwers, Jean-Marie 30 Bernier, John 197
Berthelot, Katell 66, 68–69, 174, 176
Baasland, Ernst 109 Bieringer, Reimund 76
Bachmann, Michael 7 Binder, Donald D. 131–132, 140
Baker, Coleman A. 127 Bird, Michael F. 1, 3–6, 8, 10–11, 17–19,
Baker, Cynthia M. 261 21, 76, 119–120, 124, 128–129, 144, 254,
Baker, John A. 289 293, 294
Bakke, Odd Magne 269 Bitner, Bradley J. 268
Balabansky, Vicky 310 Blaschke, Andreas 58, 60
Baltzer, Klaus 222 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 253
Bammel, Ernst 255 Boccaccini, Gabriele 6–7, 16, 113, 152,
Barclay, John M. G. 6, 8, 15, 52, 96–97, 210, 236, 253, 255, 261
99, 197, 202, 207, 269–270, 272 Bock, Darrell L. 70, 248–249
Barker, Joel D. 247 Böckler, Annette 35
Baron, Lori 9 Bockmuehl, Markus 15, 150
Barraclaugh, Ray 199 Boda, Mark J. 247
Barrett, Charles K. 101, 255, 264 Boin, Douglas 275, 277–278
Barth, Markus 4 Bond, H. K. 30
Bates, Matthew W. 241 Bonnie, Rick 131
Bauckham, Richard J. 144, 235, 246, 258, Borgen, Peder 86
289, 290–291, 294, 300–303, 307 Boring, M. E. 45, 190, 287
Baudis, Andreas 4 Bovon, François 152, 231, 260
352 Index of Modern Authors
Bowersock, G.W. 52 Clausert, Dieter 4

Boyarin, Daniel 9, 10, 30, 153, 189, 261, Cohen, Boaz 196
276, 296, 305, 309 Cohen, Shaye J. D. 53, 65, 93, 137, 169,
Brandon, S. G. F. 310 173–174, 189
Brawley, Robert L. 122 Cohick, Lynn H. 70
Bremmer, Jan N. 255 Collins, Adela Y. 198
Breytenbach, Cilliers 46, 207, 235, 265, Collins, John J. 8, 20, 52, 84, 87, 148, 206,
280, 282 241
Broadhead, Edwin K. 289–294, 297–298, Collman, Ryan D. 25, 100, 147, 150–151
302–307, 310 Cologny, Bodmer 281
Brock, Ann Graham 231 Colson F. H. 34, 36, 68, 73
Brooten, Bernadette J. 198 Concannon, Cavan 51, 64
Brown, Peter 52 Cosgrove, Charles H. 50, 52, 54–55, 61,
Brown, Rupert 94 113
Bruce, F. F. 4, 110, 241, 248, 251, 258 Cover, Michael B. 30
Buckwalter, Douglas 243 Croasmun, Matthew 18
Buell, Denise Kimber 50, 62, 64, 271 Cromhout, Markus 9
Bühner, Ruben A. 26, 46, 147, 151, 201, Crossley, James 98
203, 205, 240–241, 261 Crouch, James E. 260
Bultmann, Rudolf 14, 46 Crowe, Brandon D. 236, 240–241
Burke, Trevor J. 80 Cueva, Edmund P. 196
Burnett, David A. 156 Cuthbert, Denise 104
Burris, Catherine 281
Burton, Ernest DeWitt 110 Danielou, Jean 289, 291, 299–302
Bush, Frederic W. 205 Dann, Rachael J. 52
Butterworth, G.W. 268 Darko, Daniel K. 64
Butticaz, Simon 48, 50, 52, 57 Das, A. Andrew 6, 107, 109, 139
Byrne, Shannon 196 Davies, Stephen J. 281
Byron, John 180 Davies, William D. 4, 53, 61, 159
De Arellano, Adriana Ramirez 122–123
Calder, William M. 265 De Boer, Martinus 107–109, 193, 289,
Campbell, William S. 16, 120, 125, 127, 291, 304–305, 307
131, 183 De Vos, J. Cornelis 158
Capes, David B. 235, 246 Dean, O. C. 45
Carraway, George 251 Decker, Wolfgang 207
Carroll, John T. 113 Delling, Gerhard 207
Carson, Donald A. 6, 77, 83, 116, 254, DelRio, Delio 130
258 Dettwiler, Andreas 48
Casey, Thomas G. 17 Dicken, Frank 243
Cefalu, Rita F. 238 Dickson, John P. 82–83
Cerone, Jacob 157 Dochhorn, Jan 34
Charlesworth, James H. 87, 248, 253 Donaldson, Terence L. 5, 61, 79, 80, 120,
Chester, Andrew 159 136, 140, 141
Chester, Stephen J. 7, 285 Doody, Cameron J. 113, 152
Churchill, Timothy W.R. 244, 255, 259 Dryden, John 187
Ciampa, Roy E. 80, 83, 88, 101, 102 Du Toit, Philip La Grange 139
Cirafesi, Wally V. 24, 119, 130–131, 139 Dumont, Louis 123
Clarke, Andrew D. 127
Index of Modern Authors 353
Dunn, James D. G. 5–6, 47, 50, 75–76, Gaffin, Richard B. 241, 254
85, 114, 285 Gager, John 4, 7, 46–47, 98, 287–288
Dunne, John A. 19 Garrett, Matthew 162
Dunning, Benjamin H. 64, 70 Garroway, Joshua D. 14–15, 17, 23,
Dunson, Ben C. 121 63–65
Dzino, Danijel 92–93 Gary, Gilbert 242
Gasparini, Valentino 174
Earnest, Evans 280 Gaston, Lloyd 19, 47
Eastman, Susan Grove 9, 110, 111 Gathercole, Simon G. 6, 241
Eckhardt, Benedikt 168–170, 172 Gaventa, Beverly Roberts 156
Edsall, Benjamin 281 Geary, Patrrick J. 52
Edwards, James R. 294, 300–301, 306 Georgi, Dieter 143–144
Ehrensperger, Kathy 6–7, 19, 25, 122, Gieschen, Charles A. 244, 255, 257–258,
129, 144, 148, 150, 161, 182, 205 261
Ehrlich, Uri 197 Gingrich, André 121–123, 125, 127
Eisenbaum, Pamela 12, 46, 129, 150, 209, Given, Mark D. 3, 6
288 Glöckner, Michael 34
Elliott, Mark A. 6, 10, 93 Goldingay, John E. 203–204
Elmer, Ian J. 194 Goldsworthy, Graeme 83
Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 156 Gollwitzer, FS Helmut 4
Engel, David 159 Goulder, Michael D. 287–288, 290,
Eschner, Christina 202–203, 205–206 293–294
Esler, Phillip 8, 92, 125–126 Grabar, Oleg 52
Evans, Craig A. 244 Gray, Patrick 4
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 122–123 Gregory, Andrew F. 289, 290–291, 295,
Exell, Karen 52 301, 305–309
Eyl, Jennifer 99 Grenholm, Cristina 123
Grindheim, Sigurd 256
Fee, Gordon D. 214, 241 Gripentrog, Stefanie 45, 75, 128, 201
Feldman, Louis H. 202, 207 Gruen, Erich S. 49, 52, 164, 166, 207
Feldmeier, Reinhard 34–35 Gundry-Volf, Judith 61
Ferda, Tucker S. 240 Gupta, Nijay K. 235
Fisch, Yael 157 Gurtner, Daniel M. 6
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 251, 258–260
Fludernik, Monika 162 Hafemann, Scott J. 10
Flusser, David 158 Hagner, Donald A. 4, 210
Fox, Kenneth A. 267 Häkkinen, Sakari 152, 290–291,
Fréchet, Robyn 289 293–295, 297, 299–303
Fredriksen, Paula 7, 11–12, 16, 47–48, Hakola, Raimo 131
64–65, 68, 101, 105, 129, 134, 136, Hall, Jonathan M. 51–52
138–140, 142, 147, 156, 174, 177, 183, Hamm, Dennis 232
208–209, 212, 217, 235, 246, 262–264, Hanges, James C. 76
288 Harding, Mark 268, 277
Freidenreich, David M. 202 Hare, Douglas A. 288
Frey, Jörg 22–23, 31, 45–46, 48, 50, 55, Harland, Philip A. 132, 267
75, 87, 128, 147, 157, 201, 235, 295, 306 Harlow, Daniel C. 8, 20, 84
Furnish, V. P. 86 Harnack, Adolf von 50, 267
Furstenberg, Yair 52 Harrill Albert J. 64
Harrington, Hannah 170 Jackson-McCabe, Matt 37, 149, 153

Harris, Harrold A. 207 Jacobs, Andrew S. 284
Harris, Murray J. 4, 251 Janowski, Bernd 238
Harrison, James R. 162 Jenkins, Richard 51
Haslam, S. Alexander 95 Jervell, Jacob 152, 217, 221, 242, 262
Hayes, Christine Elizabeth 88, 156–158, Jewett, Robert 113
160, 170 Jipp, Joshua W. 26–27, 127, 147, 152, 217,
Hays, Richard B. 78, 87, 109, 113, 243, 228–229, 237, 253, 261–262
253 Johansson, Daniel 243
Hedberg, Mitch 63 Johnson, E. Elizabeth 113
Heike, Kämpf 162 Johnson, Luke Timothy 219, 230, 232
Heil, John Paul 113 Jones, Sian 51
Heinsch, Ryan 142–143 Jones, Stanley F. 299–303
Heiser, Michael S. 246 Jonge, Henk Jan de 30
Heliso, Desta 253 Jónsson, Sigurvin Lárus 31
Hengel, Martin 55
Henze, Matthias 261 Kalin, Everett R. 144
Heron, Helen S. 45 Kaminsky, Joel 20–21
Herzer, Jens 271, 274–275 Karris, Robert J. 269, 275
Hezser, Catherine 148 Kartzow, Marianne Bjelland 131
Hicks-Keeton, Jill 9 Keck, Leander E. 244, 290
Hieke, Thomas 206 Kee, Howard Clark 191
Hilgenfeld, Adolf 287–288, 290–291, 302 Keener, Craig S. 107, 227, 236, 239, 249,
Himmelfarb, Martha 170 251–254, 257–259
Hirsch-Luipold, Rainer 34 Keesmaat, Sylvia 180
Hock, Richard F. 129 Kerr, Fergus 255
Hodge, Carolyn Johnson 4, 50–51, 62, Kidson, Lyn 27, 265, 268–269, 272–274,
64–65, 179, 208, 271 276, 282–284
Hofius, Otfried 61 Kilpatrick, George D. 281
Honigman, Sylvie 52, 164 Kim, Kyu Seop 177, 179
Hooker, Morna D. 76, 109 Kim, Seyoon 80, 260
Horbury, William T. 4, 53, 61, 256, 309 Kimber, Denise Buell 64, 271
Horn, Friedrich W. 26, 46, 56 Kimelman, Reuven 309
Horrell, David G. 49, 64, 84, 93 Kinman, Brent 222
Horst, Pieter W. Van der 309 Kinzig, Oskar Skar 289, 300, 304–308
Hubbard, Benjamin 227 Klauck, Hans-Josef 301, 306
Hübner, Hans 5 Klijn, Albertus F. J. 291–307
Hultgren, Arland J. 81 Klinghardt, Matthias 156–157
Humphrey, Edith M. 206 Kloppenborg, John S. 132, 139
Hurtado, Larry W. 39, 46, 235, 244, 251 Koch, Dietrich-Alex 38, 55, 203
Hutchington, John 51–52 Koch, Klaus 203
Hutson, Christopher R. 273 Koehler, Ludwig 204
Hvalvik, Reidar 149, 152–53, 210, 289, Koester, Craig R. 310
290 Koet, Bart J. 245
Kok, Michael 27–28, 153–154, 287,
Ilan, Tal 134 293–295, 301, 306
Instone-Brewer, David 197 Konradt, Matthias 14, 31–32
Korner, Ralph J. 128, 131
Kraemer, Ross S. 206 Luttikhuizen, Gerard P. 302

Kraft, Robert A. 267
Krauter, Stefan 207 Maccoby, Hyam 45, 288, 291, 303–304,
Kremer, Jacob 244 310
Krodel, Gerhard 267 MacDonald, Dennis 266, 280–281
Krumer-Nevo, Michal 269 MacDonald, Margaret Y. 69
Kugel, James 163 MacDonald, Nathan 205
Magness, Jodi 191
Laato, Antti 158 Mairs, Rachel 52
Labahn, Michael 30, 127 Malkin, Irad 52
Lampe, Peter 125 Maloney, Linda M. 248
Landmesser, Christoph 61 Marcus, Joel 9, 192, 197, 309
Lange, Armin 53 Marguerat, Daniel 230, 232
Langer, Ruth 309 Marjanen, Antti 153–154, 290
Langton, Daniel R. 4, 287–288 Marshall, Howard 249, 258, 260
Lanier, Gregory R. 238 Marshall, John W. 139, 275–278
Last, Richard 129, 132–135, 137, 193 Martyn, Louis J. 107–108, 130, 193, 244
Lee-Linke, Sung-Hee 4 Mason, Steve 8, 93–94
Lehtipuu, Outi 127 Maston, Jason 18, 19
Levenson, Jon D. 178, 239 Matlock, R. Barry 51
Levine, Amy-Jill 92 Mavor, Kenneth 96
Levine, Lee I. 198 McConville, J. Gordon 247
Lewellen, Eric 19 McCready, Wayne O. 9
Lewis, Robert B. 179 McDermott, Gerald R. 143
Lieu, Judith 14, 190 McDonald, Denys 64–65, 68
Lightfoot, Joseph B. 109, 151, 287, 289, McKechnie, Paul 265, 277
292, 302, 307 McKinney, Ken 230
Lincicum, David 6, 14, 156 McKnight, Scot 3, 8, 18–19, 21, 29, 116
Lincoln, Andrew T. 69–71 McMurray, Patrick 177
Lindars, Barnabas 147 McWhirter, Jocelyn 227
Lindbeck, George 120 Meeks, Wayne A. 113, 129
Lindemann, Andreas 308 Meißner, Stefan 4
Lindsay, Hugh 179, 181 Merkle, Benjamin L. 11
Litwa, M. David 159, 292 Metzger, Bruce M. 242, 251
Litwak, Kenneth D. 238 Metzner, Rainer 29
Livesey, Nina E. 58–59 Meyer, Nicholas 156
Loader, William 87 Meyer, Paul W. 113
Lōhr, Winrich A. 293 Michel, Otto 255
Longenecker, Bruce 5, 18, 20, 109, 134, Milgrom, Jacob 169
151 Miller, David M. 8, 92, 147
Longenecker, Richard N. 254 Milligan, George 251
Lorenzen, Stefanie 38 Mimouni, Calude 152, 289, 291, 294, 297,
Lüdemann, Gerd 46, 153, 287–288, 299, 301–302, 305–309
290–291, 293, 308, 310 Minear, Paul S. 227
Luomanen, Petri 153–154, 288–289, Mitchell, Alan C. 195, 199
290–293, 296–297, 299, 301–302, Mitchell, Margaret M. 149
304–309 Mitchell, Stephen 265
Luther, Susanne 31 Moessner, David Paul 221, 230, 254
Moffitt, David M. 156, 159–160 Olyan, Saul M. 4

Montefiore, Claude 175 Omerzu, Heike 29
Moo, Douglas J. 110–111, 114, 116 Ophir, Adi 64–65
Moore, Carey A. 205 Oropeza, B. J. 3, 8, 18, 116, 156
Morgan-Wynne, John E. 237 Oswalt, John 253
Morris, Leon 239, 254 Overman, J. Andrew 8, 84
Mosser, Carl 237
Moule, C. F. D 244 Paget, James C. 290–295, 297–303, 308
Moulton, James H. 251 Pahl, Michael W. 251
Mouritsen, Henrik 171, 175 Pao, David W. 228, 231, 232, 244
Munck, Johannes 4, 143 Patte, Daniel 123
Munck, W. D. 255 Patterson, Jane L. 139
Murry, Michelle 309 Paul, C. E. 188
Mussner, Franz 110 Pearson, Brook W. R. 4
Myers, Jason A. 3 Peerbolte, L. J. Lietaert 79
Penner, Todd 142
Nanos, Mark 3, 7–8, 15, 19, 46–49, 56, Peppard, Michael 177
100, 102, 116, 119, 129, 136–139, 141, Pervo, Richard I. 255, 258, 268, 280–283
148, 169, 172–173, 198, 209, 211–213, Peters, Janelle 26, 187, 197
235, 288 Peterson, David 248
Nasrallah, Laura 14 Pietersen, Lloyd K. 269
Newman, Carey C. 39, 235, 256, 260 Pilhofer, Peter 46
Nickelsburg, George W. E. 253 Pilhofer, Phillip 280–281
Nicklas, Tobias 30, 38, 296 Pitre, Brant 18
Nickle, Keith 143–144 Pitts, Andrew W. 51, 237
Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm 10, 21–22, 29–37, Platow, Michael J. 95
39–40, 42–43, 45, 75, 87, 141, 150, 201, Plietzsch, Susanne 205
206–207 Pollefeyt, Didier 76
Niehaus, Jeffrey J. 255 Portenhauser, Friederike 37
Nienhuis, David R. 19 Porter, Christopher A. 24, 91, 94–95,
Nijf, Onno van 269 104, 130
Nikki, Nina 127 Porter, Stanley E. 4, 51, 81, 211, 237
Nobbs, Alanna 268, 277 Pritchard, Evans 122–123
Novenson, Matthew V. 8–10, 29, 51, Pritz, R. A. 289, 297, 300, 304–307, 309,
92–94, 97, 99, 134, 141–144, 151, 157, 310
235, 244, 246, 256
Quartly, Marian 104
O’Brien, Peter T. 6, 77 Quinn, Jerome D. 268, 274–275
O’Brien, Sara 104
Oakes, Penelope J. 95 Radl, Walter 229
Oegema, Gerbern S. 253 Räisänen, Heikki 155
Ogereau, Julien M. 143, 280 Rajak, Tessa 163
Öhler, Markus 13, 56, 135, 138, 169, 191, Ramsay, William 281
192 Ray, Jerry L. 238
Oliver, Isaac W. 151–152, 220–222, 226, Reasoner, Mark 20–21
233, 236 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 9, 149, 154
Olson, John C. 14 Regev, Eyal 169, 173, 188, 198
Olsson, Birger 129, 132 Reicher, Stephen D. 95, 103–104
Reinhartz, Adele 9 Scholem, Gershom 159–160

Reinink, Gerrit J. 291–307 Schrage, Wolfgang 45, 211, 213–214
Rese, Martin 244 Schröter, Jens 13–14, 48, 218, 262, 295
Reynolds, Benjamin E. 248 Schütz, John H. 210
Richardson, Peter 132 Schwartz, Daniel R. 45, 75, 128, 172, 201
Riesner, Rainer 82 Schwemer, Anna Maria 55
Ritschl, Albrecht 287, 289, 292, 302 Scott, Ian W. 109
Roberts, C. H. 281 Scott, James M. 81–82, 109, 179
Roberts, Jimmy J. M. 141 Scullion, John J. 259
Rochester, Kathleen M. 80 Segal, Ben-Zion 158
Rock, Ian E. 162 Segovia, Carlos A. 7, 16, 113, 152, 236
Rosenblum, Jordan 206 Seifrid, Mark 6, 77, 116
Rosen-Zvi, Ishay 64–65 Semler, Johann S. 50
Rosner, Brian S. 15, 23, 75, 80, 83–84, Seufert, Michael 203
87–88, 95, 101–102, 126, 138 Shanks, Hershel 153
Roth, Dieter T 45 Shapiro, Alan 271
Rothschild, Claire K. 245 Sheinfeld, Shayna 113, 148
Rowe, Christopher K. 243, 258 Sheridan, Ruth 6, 14, 156
Rudolph, David J. 9, 102, 120, 143, 144 Sidi, Mirit 269
Ruffatto, Kristine 154 Siegal, Michel Bar-Asher 100
Runesson, Anders 47, 120, 131–132, 140, Silva, Moises 242
147–148 Simon, M. 310
Runia, David T. 30, 41 Singer, Peter N. 269
Rvkin, Ellis 45 Skarsaune, Oskar 149, 152–154, 210,
Ryan, Jordan 131 290–295, 297–303, 308
Sleeman, Matthew 227
Said, Edward 121, 123 Smith, Anthony D. 51–52
Salmeri, Giovanni 269 Smith, Brandon D. 235, 257
Sanders, E. P. 2, 5–6, 9–10, 12, 13, 17–19, Smith, Dennis A. 202
126, 206, 248, 309 Smith, Murray J. 27, 235
Sandnes, Karl O. 79, 130 Snyder, Julia A. 243
Saunders, T. B. 50 Spielman, Loren R. 207
Scaer, Peter J. 249, 254 Sprinkle, Preston M. 4, 6
Schäfer, Peter 159 Stang, Charles M. 6, 14, 156
Schechter, Solomon 308 Stanley, Christopher D. 51, 54–55, 121
Schellenberg, Ryan 183 Stanton, Graham 299–300
Schiffman, Lawrence H. 159, 309 Staples, Jason A. 8, 92, 110, 115, 120
Schlier, Heinrich 109 Starling, David I. 24, 107, 109–110, 112,
Schließer, Benjamin 31, 56 115, 120, 142, 147
Schliski, Volkhard 4 Stein, Robert H. 260
Schmeller, Thomas 38 Steinhauser, Michael 125
Schmidt, Eckart D. 29 Sterling, Gregory E. 14, 30, 72
Schmidtke, Alfred 300, 308 Steyn, Gert J. 244
Schmithals, Walter 152 Stichele, Caroline V. 242
Schneemelcher, Wilhem 272, 294 Stone, Michael E. 238, 240, 256, 261
Schnelle, Udo 30, 210 Stott, Doug 82
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim 288, 290–291, Stowers, Stanley K. 47, 156
297–299, 301–302, 308, 310
Strecker, Georg 45, 75, 153, 294, 299, 301, Vos, Geerhardus 158, 241, 264
306
Strotmann, Angelika 35 Wacker, William C. 268, 274
Stuhlmacher, Peter 83, 238, 239 Wagner, J. Ross 115–116
Sturdy, John 4, 53 Wall, Robert W. 30, 274
Sumney, Jerry L. 136, 139, 177–178 Walters, James C. 177–178
Sutter Rehmann, Luzia 202, 204–205 Walton, Steve 243–244, 251
Swain, Shurlee 104 Warfield, Benjamin B. 241
Warren, David H. 231
Tajfel, Henri 94–95 Wasserman, Emma 4
Talbert, Charles H. 227 Watson, Francis 6, 10, 112, 124–128, 136
Tanaseanu-Döbler, Ilinca 34 Wedderburn, Alexander J. M. 46–47
Tannehill, Robert C. 232 Wegener, Bernhard 4
Taylor, Joan E, 153, 277 Weiss, Zeev 198
Taylor, Justin 17 Welborn, L. L. 195, 198
Tervahauta, Ulla 131 Wendel, Susan J. 147, 232
Theißen, Gerd 210 Wenger, Stefan 34
Thiessen, Jacob 6 Wenham, David 244
Thiessen, Matthew 9, 10, 16, 58, 63, 65, Westerholm, Stephen 6
100, 138, 150, 159–160, 170, 174 Whitaker, G. H. 34, 36
Thiselton, Anthony C. 209–210, 212–213 White, Aaron W. 244
Thompson, Dorothy 52 White, Adam G. 96, 98, 269
Thompson, Leonard L. 267 White, Benjamin L. 149, 283, 292
Thonemann, Peter 284 White, Devin L. 76
Thornton, Dillion T. 274 Whitley, Thomas J. 293
Thorsteinsson, Runar 138 Wilk, Florian 38, 56
Tigay, Jeffrey 179 Williams, Logan 148
Tiwald, Markus 45, 169, 201 Williamson, Paul R. 238
Tomson, Peter J 15, 112, 139, 150, 289 Willitts, Joel 109
Towner, Philip H. 273 Wilson, R. McL. 294
Trebilco, Paul 267–269 Wilson, Robert L. 272
Trick, Bradley R. 110 Wilson, Stephen G. 289–291, 302, 305,
Troost-Cramer, Kathleen 142 307, 309–310
Tucker, Brian J. 16, 24, 102–103, 116, Wilson, Walter T. 66–67
119–120, 123–127, 129, 138–139, 268 Windsor, Lionel J. 79, 117, 124, 138
Turner, John C. 95, 244 Winter, Bruce 195, 269
Turner, Max 244 Wischmeyer, Oda 45
Witherington, Ben 3, 254
Ueberschaer, Nadine 31 Wolfgang, Grünstäudl 100
Ullicci, Daniel 4 Wolfgang, Müller-Funk 162
Wolfgang, Schrage 45, 211
Van Voorst, Robert E. 299–300, 303 Wolfson, Elliot R. 159
Vanderkam, James C. 8, 84, 253 Woyke, Johannes 7
Vanlaningham, Michael G. 126 Wright, N. T. 3, 5–6, 10, 17, 19, 21, 45,
Verheyden, Joseph 301–303, 307, 310 109–110, 126–127, 210, 239, 241, 262
Vielhauer, Philipp 301, 306
Vollenweider, Samuel 51, 53 Xeravits, Géza G. 206
Vorholt, Robert 38
Yarbrough, Robert W. 77–78 Zenger, Erich 144, 247

Yee, Tet-Lim N. 67, 70 Zetterholm, Karin H. 15, 47, 140, 148,
Yinger, Kent L. 5 198
Young, Norman H. 157 Zetterholm, Magnus 7–8, 15, 18, 46–47,
Young, Stephen L. 253 116, 129, 132, 141, 148, 173, 198, 209,
235, 288
Zanker, Paul 271 Zimmermann, Christiane 35, 265, 282
Zehnder, Markus 248 Zoccali, Christopher 100, 101, 120
Zeller, Dieter 210, 214 Zurawski, Jason 261
Index of Subjects
Abraham 25, 60, 66, 83, 108, 161, 167, commensality 15, 16, 23, 26, 56, 57, 98,
176, 179, 183, 271 103, 151, 194, 202ff, 305
– see also lineage of Abraham conversion 168, 174–175
– see also seed of Abraham – of Gentiles 87, 111, 170
Adam 298 court 196, 199
adoption 177–179, 181, 293 covenant 17, 24, 74, 119, 167–168
Aeneas 162 – covenantal identity 122, 126–127
Ammonites 163 – covenantal nomism 289
angel Christology 277, 294 creation 35–36, 41–42, 196, 245, 263
anthropology 40 – new creation 22, 61, 175, 185
anti-Pauline writings 287 creator 245, 263, 304
anti-Semitism 4, 12 cross 39, 69, 239
Antioch 55, 57 cults, pagan 100
apostasy see apostate
apostate 45, 61, 75, 99, 227 Davidic lineage 220, 262
apostleship of Paul 23, 38, 73, 75, 77, 84, death of Jesus see cross
86, 193, 272–273 defilement 203
archangel Michael 277 diaspora, Jewish 51, 60, 97, 105, 207–208,
ascension of Jesus 249 214
asceticism 285 dietary laws 194, 205, 208, 295–296
assemblies, Pauline 133, 144, 194–196, dog 99–101
200, 201
Ebionites 152–154, 287ff
baptism 63, 73, 280, 284, Elchasaites 301–302
– of Jesus 293, 295 election 85
birkat ha-minim 308 emperor 2242
blessing 182, 226, 234 encratites 284
blood 251–252 enthronement 225, 228, 234, 241, 248
boasting 111 epiphany 255–258, 260
Essenes 132
calling of Paul 79, 227, 236 ethnicity 7, 22, 48–53, 209, 212, 214, 218,
celibacy 298 270
Christology 31, 43–44, 46, 218 – essentialist conceptions of ethnicity 53
– high Christology 27, 46, 235–236, 255, – ethnic transformation 23, 50, 63–65,
263–264, 296 68, 270
churches (building) 191 ethnocentrism 47, 287
circumcision 10, 18, 22, 58–60, 62, 111, eucharist 279, 284
140, 150, 152, 171, 173 Eutychos 265–266
collection for Jerusalem 143–144, 196, exile 116
290 exodus 180, 252
362 Index of Subjects
faith 14, 74, 250 Judean 92

father, as divine predicate 35, 36, 178–179 judgment 232, 233, 247–249
flesh 156, 278 justification 117, 157, 254
flogging of Paul 187
food 203–204, 274 king David 219–220, 228, 237
– offered to idols 267 – see also Davidic lineage
freedom 203, 210–211, 215 kinship 25, 66, 74, 161, 164, 166, 177
– see also lineage of Abraham
glory of God 78, 81, 82, 89, 256
God fearers 133, 135, 136, 172, 174 land of Israel 92, 173
grace 22, 32, 42 law of Christ 103
life, eternal 40
Hebrew Bible 31, 46, 76, 84, 234, light 34–35, 38, 41
236–238, 263 lineage of Abraham 164–165, 167–168,
henotheism 137 184, 185, 271
Herakles 164 liturgy 190
herald of good news 77, 82
Herod the Great 172 manumission inscriptions 133
high priest 68, 69, 303 marriage 274, 284, 298
history of Israel see story of Israel meals see commensality
history of research on Paul 1–7, 31, 130 memory of Paul 266ff
Holy Spirit see spirit Messiah 27, 217ff, 237, 238, 253, 263
household churches 268–269 Middle-Platonism 34
human mortality 157, 158–159 Moabites 163
monotheism 9, 225, 246
identity markers, Jewish 62, 84 Montanists 284
idolatry 11, 78, 86, 184, 203, 267 Moses 164
image of God 39
immorality, sexual 86–88 Nazarenes 152–154, 287ff
immortality 40 New Perspective on Paul 5–7, 46
impurity 159–160, 206 Nicene Creed 306
inclusion of Gentiles 32, 69, 72, 114, 116, Noachide laws 139
117, 120, 124–125, 129, 171, 176, Nostra Aetate 18
184–185 Novations 284
infancy narrative 219, 220, 223
inheritance 183, 186 Old Testament see Hebrew Bible
Israel 8, 24, 108, 112, 118, 126, 155, 167, olive tree 72, 74
178
Israel see also remnant parousia 158
– eschatological 121, 126, 142, 222, 226 Passover 301
Izates 172 Pauline biography 273
persecution of Paul 13, 195, 197, 218, 230
Jerusalem 142, 220, 220 Pharisees 10, 24, 53, 97, 102, 188, 189,
Jesus’ death see cross 192, 195, 211, 218, 303
Jewish revolt 187 pilgrimage 207
Judah Maccabee 94 – eschatological pilgrimage 24–25,
judaizing 16, 17, 27, 48, 59, 93, 94, 97, 104, 119–120, 140–142, 144
138, 173–174 poverty 300
Index of Subjects 363
pre-existence of Jesus 241, 292 Spartans 164–165

priest 77, 80 spirit 155, 156, 159, 181, 198, 229, 243,
prophet 77, 79, 221, 228, 230, 238 293
– eschatological prophet 219, 221 Stoa 66
proselytes 15, 60, 66–67, 73, 120, 168, story of Israel 111, 118, 126, 219, 224
170–173, 184, 303 suffering of the Messiah 238–239, 245
punishment of Paul see persecution of supersessionism 19–21, 166
Paul sympathizers see God fearers
purity 191, 199–200, 203, 282 synagogue 24, 26, 56–57, 119–120,
128–130, 131–136, 147, 187ff, 198
rabbinic Judaism 53, 58, 175 – in Israel 188
Radical New Perspective on Paul 7 – in the diaspora 189
remnant, eschatological 81, 113, 122
repentance 250 table fellowship see commensality
resident alien 169 Tarsus 96
restoration of Israel 114 temple 85, 86, 170, 172, 173, 188, 190
resurrection 158, 188, 218, 223–226, 234, – Samaritan temple 190
240, 246, 249, 254, 274, 278 – eschatological temple 82
righteous 253–255, 262 Thecla 280–283
Roman empire 125, 127, 164 theophany see epiphany
Ruth 169 Therapeutae 132, 307
third race 11, 49, 64, 70, 279
Sabbath 139, 205, 207, 277–278 Torah 9–11, 15, 18, 25, 70, 147, 150, 151,
sacrifices 203, 298–299 154–156, 200–201, 208
salvation see soteriology – observance 14, 26, 48, 58, 102–103, 147,
salvation-history 88, 108–109, 220 148–149, 152, 212–215, 276, 305–310
saviour 242, 245, 262 – observance of Gentiles 137, 138
Scripture see Hebrew Bible – reading 131, 191
seed of Abraham 110, 165, 177, 182
segmentary identity 128 universalism 61
separationist Christology 294
servant, Isaianic 77, 78, 228, 238, 254, vegetarianism 303
259, 261 veils 197
sexual renunciation 283 virgin 283
sin 18, 19, 87, 169–170, 243, 263 virgin conception of Jesus 291, 293,
Sinai 244, 256, 258, 260 296–297
slaves 207
social identity theory 91, 94–96 weak 210, 212
soldiers, Jewish 207–208 wine 206
son of god 240–241, 245, 304 works of the law 5, 27, 177, 311
son of man 248, 260
Sonderweg 7, 110 yahad 85
soteriology 32, 33, 37, 41, 59, 72, 77, 88,
113, 220, 223, 232 Zion 142, 144

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen

zum Neuen Testament

ISBN 978-3-16-162325-7 / eISBN 978-3-16-162440-7

© 2023 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

Our volume Paul within Judaism is based on an on-line scholarly symposium

Michael F. Bird Easter Sunday, 9 April, 2023.

J. Brian Tucker and Wally V. Cirafesi

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

1. The Persistence of Pauline Scholarship

I have spent a large part of my scholarly career as a Neutestamentler wrestling

2. Introducing Paul within Judaism

2.1 The Many Perspectives on Paul as Jewish and in Judaism

religion as much as he was transforming it around a particular story of Israel’s

2.2 Paul within Judaism: A Preliminary Appreciation

Judaism, TSAJ 171 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 82–4.

Gemeinden (Sabbat, Speisegebote, Beschneidung),” BThZ 25 (2008): 16–51.

a sense compel Gentile converts to partially judaize, insofar as that he requires

pel,” NTS 56 (2010): 232–52.

2.3 Paul within Judaism: A Preliminary Critique

escapes the notice of commentators of this radical new perspective”.

Christian Public Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), 10.

sage of Paul, 3–19, here 7 (esp. 5 –13).

50 Brant Pitre (“Roman Catholic perspective Response to Zetterholm,” in Perspectives on

Oxford University Press, 2017).

Galatians (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 120–1.

parative Study, WUNT 2/297 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 171–2.

There is also a kind of inevitable type of supersessionism between Judaism and

ism in Paul,” JTS 58 (2007): 26–44.

ly Judaism, 391–419, here 405.

Christian reading of the Hebrew Scriptures is likely to involve some form of

3. The Contributions to this Volume67

shared meals which tells against a compartmentalization of Jewish and Gentile

Chris Porter’s contribution begins by observing that Paul’s status as someone

Janelle Peters examines the role of synagogues as formative socio-religious

to suppose that we have at hand clear-cut distinctions between what is “still

2. Two Epistolary Arguments on God’s Agency in Christ

regard to their understanding of faith according to modern theological dogmatics. However,

2.1 James 1:13–18

17 For an identification of 1:17 as a hexameter see Allison, James, 270.

tions see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Die Sapientia Salomonis im Kontext hellenistisch-römi­

2.2 2 Corinthians 4:1–6

Paulus, WMANT 118 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 209–24; Thomas

“Die verborgene Herrlichkeit des Paulusdienstes: Überlegungen zu 2Kor 3,1–4,6,” in Der

The above-mentioned encounter of human beings with Jesus Christ as pro-

Compared to Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 4:1–6, similarities as well as differences

Once again, we notice distinctions as well as affinities to Paul’s argument in

the Cosmos according to Moses, 163–73.

3. Comparison and Conclusion

By way of conclusion, I attempt to sum up some of the results of my surveys of

reflections refer to each other in whatever direction. What connects them is a

Epistle of James,” 173–5, 186–8.

1. Paul the Jew and the “Paul Within Judaism” Perspective

1:13–14; Phil 3:5–6.

is understandable in view of the conflictual and bloody history of Jewish-Chris-

come Everything to Everyone’ (1 Corinthians 9:19–23),” in Reading Corinthians and Philip-

2. Paul and Ethnicity

Advocates of the “Paul-Within-Judaism” perspective emphasize the importance

“Paul’s Jewish Identity.”

tions see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Die Sapientia Salomonis im Kontext hellenistisch-römi