It seems to me that most modern New Testament scholars do, in fact, question the veracity of everything they are told in the NT texts, so why precisely do we NOT question what Paul says in Romans?  Shouldn’t we be questioning all of it?  Or do we only question that which tells us something other than what we want to think? 

The question here is not merely whether he means it, but what he means BY it.  It’s a rather bizarre statement to make.

Paul was not, to our knowledge, a horticulturalist.  His understanding of the technical process of grafting one plant to another for the purposes of speedier propagation must be assumed to be limited, but the process did exist in his time, and there is a school of thought that says it was controversial in Jewish circles since before Paul’s time–Leviticus states that the people shall not sow their fields with mingled seed–the idea being that you don’t interfere with natural processes–parenthetically, there’s a story about Mohammad telling his followers not to hand pollinate date palms, which he backed down from when the date crop failed. 

What Paul is proposing is, of course, far more controversial–grafting former pagans onto Judaism, without making them become Jews first. The assumption would seem to be that there is no real difference–that the root stock (Jews) and the leaf stock (pagans) are much the same, and highly compatible.  Did Paul believe this?  Most Jews would have vehemently disagreed.  Even Jews who had become followers of Jesus might have blinked. 

And why did people graft one plant onto another?  Not to create a new plant (hybridization), but rather to use the root stock to encourage the growth of the leaf stock–to accelerate maturation.  Is that what Paul meant?  Or did he think that grafting them to Judaism would make them Jews, even without their following any of the Jewish laws?  But how is he grafting them to Judaism when they don’t attend synagogue, don’t study the Torah, don’t get circumcised, and don’t follow the dietary laws?  The statement is nonsensical on its face.  You graft one plant to another, it remains exactly the same plant it was before. 

My own feeling is that he’s trying to justify his mission to the gentiles, in a church that is still largely run by Jewish converts.  But again–converts to what? 

You’re not actually answering any of my questions, you know.  One might suspect you don’t actually know the answers.  Me neither. 

Okay, so why did he say he was grafting gentiles to Judaism if he wasn’t?  How does that help him convert gentiles?  Being grafted to something you don’t understand–does that sound like something you’d want done to you? 

And why is this discussion on the Historical Jesus section of the forum?

So many questions.  So few answers.  I’m leaving work now.  G’night.  🙂

Robert said

godspell said
It seems to me that most modern New Testament scholars do, in fact, question the veracity of everything they are told in the NT texts, so why precisely do we NOT question what Paul says in Romans?  Shouldn’t we be questioning all of it? 

I’ve already said we should. But that in and of itself does not justify merely substituting our own assumptions of what we want to think instead.

godspell said
Or do we only question that which tells us something other than what we want to think? 

The question here is not merely whether he means it, but what he means BY it.  It’s a rather bizarre statement to make.

Paul was not, to our knowledge, a horticulturalist.  His understanding of the technical process of grafting one plant to another for the purposes of speedier propagation must be assumed to be limited, but the process did exist in his time, and there is a school of thought that says it was controversial in Jewish circles since before Paul’s time–Leviticus states that the people shall not sow their fields with mingled seed (the idea being that you don’t interfere with natural processes, which may have been widespread across the Middle East–there’s a story about Mohammad telling his followers not to hand pollinate date palms, which he backed down from when the date crop failed). 

What Paul is proposing is, of course, far more controversial–grafting former pagans onto Judaism, without making them become Jews first. The assumption would seem to be that there is no real difference–that the root stock (Jews) and the leaf stock (pagans) are much the same, and highly compatible.  Did Paul believe this?  Most Jews would have vehemently disagreed.  Even Jews who had become followers of Jesus might have blinked. 

Neither I nor Paul would deny that his theology was controversial, both for messianic and nonmessianic Jews of his time. 

godspell said

And why did people graft one plant onto another?  Not to create a new plant (hybridization), but rather to use the root stock to encourage the growth of the leaf stock–to accelerate maturation.  Is that what Paul meant?  Or did he think that grafting them to Judaism would make them Jews, even without their following any of the Jewish laws?  

No, Paul seems to be pretty adamant that the gentile ‘Christians’ were not Jews and he definitely opposes that they should seek to become Jews in the sense of a full proselyte who, if a male, would be circumcised. He did, however, expect them to turn from idols and worship the Jewish God and to be respectful of the consciences of their fellow believers with respect to eating meat offered to idols, etc.

godspell said
But how is he grafting them to Judaism when they don’t attend synagogue, don’t study the Torah, don’t get circumcised, and don’t follow the dietary laws?    

I would not assume that they never attended synagogues if they were welcome or that they did not study Torah. John Chryssostom complained about gentile Christians attending synagogue services as late as the 4th/5th century. Paul’s letters are full of references to the Jewish scriptures; he obviously considered these writings important for his audiences.

godspell said

My own feeling is that he’s trying to justify his mission to the gentiles, in a church that is still largely run by Jewish converts.  But again–converts to what?  

In his letter to the churches of Rome, he is directly speaking to gentiles much of the time. Some scholars even defend the position that the letter was exclusively written to gentile Christians in Rome. They would be converts to 2nd-temple Jewish monotheism, abandoning idols, and in this regard similar to nonmessianic Jews. They would also be converts to belief in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and God’s Son in a divine sense, just as Paul himself a Jew had been converted to this belief, but without ever claiming that he was no longer Jewish. He saw the outreach to the gentiles as part of the original promises to Abraham, whom he considered saved by faith prior to his circumcision. I’m certainly not opposed to the idea that Paul is writing, at least in large part, to justify his mission to the gentiles since the Roman churches were not founded by him and he had never visited them before. He may also have been thinking of obtaining their financial support for his future missionary endeavors.

godspell said

You’re not actually answering any of my questions, you know.  One might suspect you don’t actually know the answers.  Me neither.   

Which questions have I neglected? The only one I can think of not answering was whether or not I could come up with reasons for why Luke would have created the story about Paul inciting a riot between the Pharisees and Sadducees. But you agreed that it was an irrelevant question:

Robert: … an assumption that Paul himself was the source for this story in Acts, even if such is a correct assumption, is in no way evidence of Paul and I rationalizing about Paul’s remarks in Romans. 

godspell: … Specifically regarding his remarks in Romans, no …   

You really haven’t answered even the questions you tried to answer.  Your position is a defensive one.  If I can’t prove what I’m saying, your position is secure.  Wrong, because there are multiple viable positions.  Many qualified writers state Paul’s beliefs constitute a new religion in embryo, and therefore there is no ‘default’ position for you to fall back on.  You could be right (or it could simply be a matter of perspective, and there is no factual yes or no answer to give), but you have not been proven right, and Bart Ehrman says Paul himself was in some sense a convert, seeking to make many more converts, none of whom were Jews, as you have admitted.  

He has made them monotheists (albeit monotheists who are binatarians like Paul, and will be Trinitarians later on). They believe the God of Israel is the true God, but do they see Him as a Jewish God anymore?  The ‘graft’ is a facile device he’s come up with to soothe the worries of Jewish Christians who fear, correctly, that they shall be overwhelmed and redefined by these pagans (it’ll get much worse than that, but that’s still in the future).  It’s quite possible Virgin Birth stories are already circulating, and finding an eager audience among the pagan converts, but Paul never, to our knowledge, takes any stance.  In my opinion (which as an opinion, need merely be stated), Paul was aware of such stories (probably quite different from what we have now), and felt there was no profit in him speaking against them.  His agenda was conversion, and as long as these people agreed with him on the crucial issue of Jesus’ divinity–emphasizing that over his humanity–he felt he was making progress.  His graft is taking, but the result will never be Jews, but rather a very different varietal, growing on, but still quite separate from, the unconventional Judaism he and other very early Christians profess.  

It’s a transitional period, but that still begs the question–what are they transitioning to?  We both know the answer.  The question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” ignores the facts of evolution, as well as selective breeding–what would we call a chicken?  It took time to breed the domestic forms from wildfowl.  And suddenly we’re in the field of animal husbandry, as well as horticulturalism.  Aren’t you glad I’m here to help you out?  

It’s been fun, but you really do not have answers to my questions.  Nor I for yours.  There’s a lot of missing data, and we’re both speculating.  I don’t see why my speculations are inferior, and you’ve given me no basis for believing they are.  I’ve changed my opinions many times in response to Bart’s arguments, so it’s not that I’m immutable on this.  Frankly, I just came up with the grafting argument yesterday afternoon.  It was a boring day at work.  🙂

It’s not fun for me either, but it is funny.  Robert, this is getting to be more work than my laborious debates with Bren.  You are more like him than you’d probably like to admit, albeit far better informed.  (And yes, I see the log in my eye as well.)

You again are retreating into a shell where you have to prove nothing and I have to prove everything.  It’s not a productive conversation, because you are acting as if you speak for the settled consensus about Paul, and I don’t think there is one in this case.  If Bart can call Paul a convert, then clearly there is wriggle room with regards to how Jewish he still was, and what he thought he was doing with regards to converting all these pagans to–what?  Not Judaism.  They are no longer what they were, and he knows they will never be Jewish like him (still an important part of his identity), so what can he possibly think he’s doing, if not creating a new religious space for them to inhabit, and him to guide them, shape them?  Could he be so blind as not to recognize that something new is coming into being, and that he’s greatly facilitating that? 

And why is he doing this?  Why, in fact, has he joined himself so passionately (at great personal cost to himself) to that which he was formerly trying to destroy?  Because he’s realized he has a talent for this work, and people, everywhere and always, are passionate about doing things they’re good at, making their mark in the world.  But where is the niche for a born proselytizer, in a religion that has little use for proselytizing, does it only sporadically and half-heartedly at best?  He tried, perhaps, to express this talent of his as a persecutor, but clearly something about that troubled him (one would hope so), leading to his purported vision of Jesus. 

This is so much more satisfying.  He’s found his place in the world, and he wants to keep it.  He is in no hurry for Jesus to return, because to him this is a fine life to lead, and he feels satisfaction in seeing his scattered flocks grow and prosper. The Kingdom will come when it will, if it will, but in the meantime, in-between time–ain’t he got fun? 

Yes, his letters were addressed largely (entirely? do we know this for a fact?) to pagan converts, but obviously he’d use similar language and arguments elsewhere–we have a tiny fraction of his communications with other Christians.  It’s not enough to make any definitive extrapolation from.  Good bet he had used the grafting argument with Jewish Christians, when he was arguing for the need to convert as many gentile pagans as possible to the new Jesus cult, but not force them to become Jews as well. 

You’ve said nothing that remotely persuades me to the contrary.  Not that I reject all or most of what you’re saying (you know your stuff), but most of what you’re saying  misses the point entirely, and no, I’m not going to explain why that is.  I have other projects to attend to, and this has gone on long enough, particularly since we’re not even supposed to be discussing Paul here. 

I do thank you for bringing up Paul’s remark about grafting.  That was productive–just not in the way you thought it would be. 

I write about fiction, elsewhere, and there’s people who’d say I’m not qualified for that either (specialists get so defensive).  It’s an internet forum, and I can write what I damn well please here, so long as I stay reasonably polite (I’m far from the rudest one here) and pay my membership fee, which I believe I just did a few weeks back. 

Motivations matter.  History makes no sense without the understanding of human behavior, and human behavior isn’t always logical.  Human behavior with regards to deeply held beliefs basically never is. I studied Early and Late Modern European History at CUNY Grad for three years, with some absolutely top-rate scholars, and got mainly A’s, before I burned out (the loans are all paid off, thankfully).  I’m no professional scholar, and never will be, but don’t make the mistake of assuming I don’t know how the study of history works (or, sometimes, doesn’t).  

My posting here doesn’t constitute publishing a scholarly article, and neither does anyone else’s. 

I find it interesting, though, that no such lecture gets directed at (let’s say) Steefen.

Why is that, pray tell?  I fondly assume it’s because Steefen is easier to ignore.  You’re actually having some problems with me.  Thanks for the compliment.  I think. 

Are you saying Bart D. Ehrman should never have created this space for people (most of whom have never seriously studied history at all) to discuss early Christianity, and learn from each other?  Or are you saying they should only post here to agree with you? Is that your point, Stephen?  Or do  you have one, other than “Scram!”  😉

Robert, why do you keep responding in this way?  Why can’t  you compose a simple response without using the quote function?  This is the same thing Bren does; it’s distracting and leads to a bogged down obfuscated argument that persuades no one. 

I’m fine with Romans being written to gentiles only, but again, we have no basis for assuming he only used that argument with gentiles, when in fact it sounds like something he came up with to justify his mission to the gentiles.  In practice, when people come up with an idea they like, they use it more than once, and in more than one context.  You certainly do.  So do I.  But I’m tired of repeating the same points over and over, only to keep reading these textual analyses of a text that isn’t that complex. 

My evidence is the historical record, which can be interpreted in different ways, as you already know.  You don’t like my interpretations, that’s fine.  But I’m not making anything up here.  Nor have I said one thing, I’m pretty sure, that qualified scholars haven’t already said elsewhere.  Because there is a lot of room for disagreement here, and if you don’t agree, well–that proves my point, doesn’t it? 

Let me ask the question as simply as I can.

If Paul knew the gentiles he converted would never be Jews, what did he think he was converting them to?  

What did he convert to, when he had his own conversion, as Bart believes he did?

Isn’t is possible that he believed you could be a Jew and a Christian at the same time, since both beliefs were valid–and the latter an extension of the former, an elucidation, let’s say–but that since gentiles did not have valid beliefs as pagans, but could never be Jews, he had to create a new space for them to inhabit, in order for them to be saved through a belief in Jesus as their savior (hardly the same thing as the promised Messiah, who was ONLY for the Jews)? 

And if that is the case, wouldn’t that be more or less the same thing as creating a new religion?  Whether he called it that or not.  That’s what it is.  The terminology isn’t as important as the underlying reality.

I’ll read your response with interest, but please–stick to the point.  I won’t respond, unless you make what I consider to be a valid rebuttal. 

I’m taking myself out of this thread.  The mere possibility of ending up agreeing with Steefen, even tangentially, terrifies me beyond all measure.  😮

Seriously, Robert, don’t bother to respond.  I am absolutely utterly done with this thread.  Which isn’t even in the right section of the forum for a discussion of Paul (does anyone remember how that got started?)  Stephen, I look forward to laughing at your response.  So maybe you shouldn’t type one.  Not leaving the forum, but if people stop calling me out, I might find something else to do.  🙂