I hear you, but there is so much more there – and your quotes are embedded in others that negate the positive meaning – for example in Romans “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law” Rom 3:21 is as good as saying ‘ “I mean, yes of course he showed through the prophets and the law but that’s all done now. “Do we then overthrow the law …. ” is a logical inconsistency with the entire previous paragraph, rather than a reasonable conclusion. Its i’m afraid a talking out of both sides of the mouth, a strategy which Paul states clearly enough to make that a reasonable reading (even if there could be others).
We see this again in Galatians where the law is explained as maybe having been beneficial in a tough love kind of way, but that’s done. It’s very hard to look at language like “Christ has ransomed us from the curse of the law” and think – here is a man who fundamentally respects the Torah.
Paul may have come to feel that parts of the Law were no longer needed, because of the coming transformation. That’s a very different thing from saying he has rejected the Torah. Only a very small part of which is devoted to dietary codes, circumcision, etc. And Paul is only saying that the rules are different for whose who were not part of God’s original covenant.
And I will say again that Paul was, in many ways, a politician–all things to all men. In order to achieve what he believes is a divinely mandated purpose. And to use the talents he was given to that end. Different gifts, same spirit. But for all his dissimulation, he does tell us who he is in his writing, and he is a Jew who believes he was tasked with converting gentiles, and will do it by any means at his disposal.
Paul is treading a very fine line here that is worth noting – he is selling Jewish messianism to Gentiles, and to do so he needs to strip out the parts that is distinctly Jewish, i.e. the Law and in particular that parts that define separateness, while not jettisoning the backstory that legitimizes Jesus’ messiahood. What you see in that paragraph in Romans is a good example of that.
Baligomingo said
Paul is treading a very fine line here that is worth noting – he is selling Jewish messianism to Gentiles, and to do so he needs to strip out the parts that is distinctly Jewish, i.e. the Law and in particular that parts that define separateness, while not jettisoning the backstory that legitimizes Jesus’ messiahood. What you see in that paragraph in Romans is a good example of that.
I think that’s fair.
I also think it’s fairly common for people in that line of work–and I don’t just mean religious missionaries.
Robert wrote
In the seven mostly undisputed letters of Paul, one can pretty easily see that he did have a fundamentally positive attitude toward the law.
Yeah one of the sad ironies of history is that Paul’s views have been distorted by the forged letters to the degree that many folks don’t really get what the real Paul is actually saying.
Is there any significant thinker in history whose ideas haven’t been distorted? With or without things being forged in their names. It’s difficult to fully understand the genuine letters without a lot of context most people will never have. And experts argue the fine points constantly.
Famous misunderstandings of modern thinkers who were around to explain their ideas, whose writings have all survived, and they still got dumbed down and turned into parodies of themselves.
Darwin: We evolved from monkeys, and if somebody does better than you, that means he’s naturally superior.
Nietzsche: God died, so we don’t have to worship Him anymore. Oh, and blondes are superbeings.
Don’t even get me started on Freud and Marx.
Point is, people can misunderstand ideas very easily without forgery. In fact, they inevitably will. Anything that catches on will be applied in ways that would horrify whoever came up with it. Even applies to math–Einstein said he wished he’d become a watchmaker.
The problem is people, as Bart said not long ago.
baligomingo, before I got my hands dirty in some of the (recent?) Paul scholarship, I had a similarly jaundiced view of Paul. However, EP Sanders and his scholarly descendants (direct or indirect) changed my view.
If you haven’t read EP Sanders’s Paul: A Very Short Introduction or Paula Fredricksen’s Paul: Pagan’s Apostle, I’d highly recommend them. There’s a ton of other great stuff, which I’m sure my friends here (not to mention Bart) could recommend as well. These two (amongst many others) were particularly impactful to alter my perspective.
Hngerhman said
baligomingo, before I got my hands dirty in some of the (recent?) Paul scholarship, I had a similarly jaundiced view of Paul. However, EP Sanders and his scholarly descendants (direct or indirect) changed my view.If you haven’t read EP Sanders’s Paul: A Very Short Introduction or Paula Fredricksen’s Paul: Pagan’s Apostle, I’d highly recommend them. There’s a ton of other great stuff, which I’m sure my friends here (not to mention Bart) could recommend as well. These two (amongst many others) were particularly impactful to alter my perspective.
Thanks for the suggestions! I will eventually look into them – sadly life is intervening and will most likely reduce my free time in the near future. But this is an area of great interest to me, for better or worse. So I will get to these eventually, and try to keep an open mind.
I think it is very difficult for us, who are mostly the heirs to the Pauline tradition, to see him clearly. There is a great investment in taking him theologically at face value, but refusing to consider him politically. That Paul is also very political is clear from what we can glean from his writings and his career – coming from the Pharisee tradition, having clear Herodian connections, and having worked for the Roman appointed leadership in Jersusalem, physically attacking political opponents of that regime. This is putting aside Acts, which is historically fraught, while also probably having historically relevant data. Sigh.
That he joins the opposition while pretty clearly changing the message and continuing in a variety of ways to attack (now theologically and not longer physically) the same group he persecuted before is simply not to be ignored when analyzing his theology. Paul writes very vividly. We don’t have by any stretch the entirety of his thought. On the other hand, we don’t have that of his opponents at all – except to the degree that the Scrolls represent that line of reasoning.
Well, that my brief summary – no time for the deeper dive now. But I have enjoyed reading the blog here and seeing all your views.
I agree Paul cannot be deemed ‘anti-semitic’ (highly anachronistic term in this context). Not anti-Jewish either. He, like Jesus, considered Judaism to be the only true religion–but even as he helps create a new religion, he’s thinking in terms of the Kingdom, where what religion you were raised in is irrelevant. The Law is important in this world, but it no longer matters in the Kingdom.
I am less certain about the notion that he didn’t play a major role in the deification of Jesus, though he would not himself have seen Jesus as God. He had a vision of Jesus as a supernatural being speaking from beyond the realm of the living–never knew him as a human being. At the time he joined the cult, there were still many who had known Jesus as a man, and the Virgin Birth was at most a fringe idea. Very likely that a higher Christology was going to happen with or without Paul, simply because there would be more and more Christians who never knew him, and many would be pagans. But I’d need quite a lot of convincing to think the push to deify him came from a ‘Jewish matrix’ (now I’m imagining Keanu Reeves in a yarmulke).
This is not to say he rammed his ideas down everyone’s throat, and I agree he was not in a position to do that. But neither was the nascent church in a good position to do much of anything about him, and since they could hardly stop him from making converts (stop him how?), it was better to bring him in than to have him freelancing.
It’s reminiscent of the story in Mark (that I still think contains the original quote)–whoever is not against us is for us. Paul had been against them, now he was really really for them. And in his own way, he was working miracles in Jesus’ name. And that just tells me that story probably really did happen, and Peter remembered it.
Robert said
Baligomingo said
I think it is very difficult for us, who are mostly the heirs to the Pauline tradition, to see him clearly. There is a great investment in taking him theologically at face value, but refusing to consider him politically. That Paul is also very political is clear from what we can glean from his writings and his career – coming from the Pharisee tradition, having clear Herodian connections, and having worked for the Roman appointed leadership in Jersusalem, physically attacking political opponents of that regime. This is putting aside Acts, which is historically fraught, while also probably having historically relevant data. Sigh.
That he joins the opposition while pretty clearly changing the message and continuing in a variety of ways to attack (now theologically and not longer physically) the same group he persecuted before is simply not to be ignored when analyzing his theology. …
But after nearly 2,000 years of ‘Pauline’ tradition, most of the Western world has actually developed a very refined and highly selective, even anti-semitic reading of Paul that does not really do justice to Paul’s own Jewish identity evident in his authentic texts. Unfortunately, taking Paul at ‘theological face-value’ typically entails an anachronistic Lutheran distortion of Paul. Even Augustine had a better understanding of Paul’s own Jewish perspective.
If you really want to put Acts aside, note that the idea that Paul worked for the Roman appointed leadership in Jerusalem is itself a Lukan idea that cannot be found in Paul’s authentic letters. I have no objection whatsoever to seeing the ‘political’ side of Paul, but also keep in mind that he was not opposing the Judaizers from James and Jerusalem from a political position of strength or dominance. He was very much in the minority and constantly needing to defend his position against those who had much better bona fides than he. Did he adapt and distort the message of Jesus? Absolutely. But on the main point of an impossibly high christology, he does not seem to have originated this. Some prominent scholars see this as already developing in a Jewish matrix that Paul largely inherited.
Robert said
Baligomingo said
I think it is very difficult for us, who are mostly the heirs to the Pauline tradition, to see him clearly. There is a great investment in taking him theologically at face value, but refusing to consider him politically. That Paul is also very political is clear from what we can glean from his writings and his career – coming from the Pharisee tradition, having clear Herodian connections, and having worked for the Roman appointed leadership in Jersusalem, physically attacking political opponents of that regime. This is putting aside Acts, which is historically fraught, while also probably having historically relevant data. Sigh.
That he joins the opposition while pretty clearly changing the message and continuing in a variety of ways to attack (now theologically and not longer physically) the same group he persecuted before is simply not to be ignored when analyzing his theology. …
But after nearly 2,000 years of ‘Pauline’ tradition, most of the Western world has actually developed a very refined and highly selective, even anti-semitic reading of Paul that does not really do justice to Paul’s own Jewish identity evident in his authentic texts. Unfortunately, taking Paul at ‘theological face-value’ typically entails an anachronistic Lutheran distortion of Paul. Even Augustine had a better understanding of Paul’s own Jewish perspective.
If you really want to put Acts aside, note that the idea that Paul worked for the Roman appointed leadership in Jerusalem is itself a Lukan idea that cannot be found in Paul’s authentic letters. I have no objection whatsoever to seeing the ‘political’ side of Paul, but also keep in mind that he was not opposing the Judaizers from James and Jerusalem from a political position of strength or dominance. He was very much in the minority and constantly needing to defend his position against those who had much better bona fides than he. Did he adapt and distort the message of Jesus? Absolutely. But on the main point of an impossibly high christology, he does not seem to have originated this. Some prominent scholars see this as already developing in a Jewish matrix that Paul largely inherited.
I’m willing to believe that the tradition has greatly expanded on Paul’s own issues with the Judaism of his day in the context of the new Gentilized version he was creating. I am being purposefully brief and general here, not arguing my position as much as just indicating it.
I don’t want to put Acts aside – I just realize that many do these days including much of the Acts Seminar crowd and to some degree our host here. And I understand some of their reasons and of course agree that, just as with all this material, there is perhaps historic truth embedded in a lot of other nonsense. Still, while the writer clearly invents and lacks or doesn’t use the content of Paul’s letters, he clearly knows something about Paul – roughly where he has been, that there was some conflict with the Jerusalem community, and that there was a consultation regarding his mission and the rules for Gentiles, for example.
While his letters do not say he worked for the Temple, he does say that he had been busy persecuting Jesus’ followers – and that is a pretty good fit – since even without further evidence that seems the most likely source of persecution given both the crucification and James stoning. So I take Acts to be a correct here – elaborating on what Paul indicates because he has no need in his letter to spell it out. It meshes with his relationship to “Herodion” and others (Aristobulus?) in Romans greeting. Again, perhaps there were Herod’s floating around Rome completely unrelated to that famous family, but maybe not. And that meshes with Acts contention that he carried Roman citizenship from birth – something that i realize many scholars see rather as invented by “Luke.” It would explain too why he was running away from Aretas’ – a man with some beefs according to Josephus with the Herods. These are all fragments but there are there, and raise I think legitimate questions about who Paul was, what his own Judaism looked like, how attached he really was to it and what exactly his goals here were.
There are a spectrum of possibilities – from his being an agent provacateur to more nuanced ones that nonetheless leave him outside the community he claimed he was joining, enticed by the messiah concept but being a cosmopolitan among Jewish nationalists and willing to fight fight fight to change the movement that he just converted to. When I look at all of this, I find Paul very interesting and really alarming.
Some further thoughts – thank you for sharing yours!
Just one addendum – regardless of anyone’s conclusions regarding historical truth – i cannot see any way out of recognizing that “Luke” absolutely sees Paul as connected to the Herod family – from citizenship, to how he pals around with Herodians and Romans, to the large number of troops that rescue him, escort him, etc, to the temple connections to the mention of his well connected sister and nephew (without giving names). “Luke” already mentions a “foster brother” of Herod as an early member of the Christian community. Now he may have made all of it up – and he certainly made a lot of it up – but the underlying idea seems plausible.
There is speculation about that, but we don’t have to believe ‘Luke’ made it all up to know there could be all kinds of garbled transmissions and dodgy folklore in there.
But please note, ‘Luke’ also says Herod Agrippa persecuted Christians, and was struck down by an angel of God and eaten alive from the inside by worms. Ouch.
What part of “All things to all men” did you not understand? Paul was going to do whatever he had to in order to promulgate the word of God. His Roman citizenship doesn’t really have anything to do with the Herodians. Of course he uses it–it keeps him alive a lot longer, allows him to proselytize over a wide swath of territory (most of which the Herodians had no authority in).
I’m not clear on what this argument is about. Was Paul a bad person? I like to think we’re above that level of historiography here, but who am I kidding. 🙄
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