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  • From: "Sakari H�kkinen" <sakari.hakkinen AT sci.fi>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul as apostate (was:Paul Not a Pharisee?)
  • Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 13:21:30 +0200


Hi Mark & Antonio,
Nice to have you Antonio as taking part of the discussion. I
must apologize that I have been - and will be - quite busy
with my work, so my contributions to the discussion might
not be as quick and as well thought out as I would like to.

>What do we
> really know about Pharisees who engaged Paul in the
Diaspora before
> these cataclysmic events, including the political changes
leading up
> to the revolt.
Not much. What do we really know about Paul himself?

> >Here are some texts about the Jewish opponents of Paul:
> >apostles 2 Cor 11 especially vs. 4-5, 13, 22-23
> >teachers of the Torah Gal 1, 6-9 implicitly Gal 3 and
4,17
> >and 21; Gal 5,1-11; 6,12-13
> >(2,4 pseudo-brethren, [I have your paper on these])
>
> I do not see that 2 Cor. 11 supports your specific
argument about
> Pharisaic opponents of Paul or that he was an apostate
according to
> their interpretation of Law (would you like to explain?).
I did not claim that the opponents in 2 Cor 11 were
Pharisees, they were apostles and the question here is not
the right interpretation of the Law, but apostleship.

> In other words, I see no evidence that Paul did not
consider himself,
> as a circumcised worshipper of the One God, indebted to
observe the
> whole Law, as he puts it in Gal. 5:3, and that according
to "common"
> Jewish norms of his religious minded contemporaries (to
use Sander's
> standards, for brevity sake). If you know of some
exception to this,
> I would welcome having it explained.

Antonio wrote:
> I'm sure Sakari can answer for himself but since this
topic has
>always been of special interest to me I think I'll step in
with a
>few comments of my own. In one way I believe Sakkari is
>creating unnecessary problems for himself by just focusing
>on the differences between Paul and the Pharisees visavi
>the Law. My impression is that Paul's views on Torah and
>Halakhah would had put him at loggerheads with just about
>any firstcentury Jewish sect we know about, including the
>Pharisees - be they of Hillelite or Shamaite colours.

I did not mean that Paul's view to the Torah was totally
different from other teachers. What was different was his
view that the Gentiles need not obey the Torah. At least
this deviated from the teachers Paul himself attacks to in
Galatia. And it deviated enough to arise accusations of
apostasy - whether or not they were true. Those who accused
Paul might have been closer to him in many other issues than
convert problem.

Tho whole discussion here arose from my earlier statement
that Paul was not necessarily a Pharisee. So far we have
discussed only from one detail that fights against the
common view of Pharisean Paul. I admit that the fact that
Paul was later accused of apostasy of the Torah does not
prove that he was not a Pharisee, although these accusations
are strange if he was one. How many Pharisees do you know
that were accused of apostasy? Perhaps there were some. I
hope we could now move on to other arguments. I present them
once again here:

1) At first there is this spiritual resurrection which does
not
fit well to Pharisees.
2) Secondly it is odd that Paul is said
to have worked with the High Priest when persecuting
Jesus-believers (Paul never said this himself, it is only
reported in Acts 9,1). A Pharisee working with the High
Priest and persecuting Jesus-movement does not at all fit to
the picture I have got from Pharisean movement of that time.

[3) DISCUSSED Thirdly, the opponents of Paul, according to
evidence, never
said he was a Pharisee - they rejected him as an apostate
what comes to Torah. ]

4) Further, it would be quite an odd thing
to a trained Pharisee to cite and refer only to LXX and not
the Hebrew text - even when the Hebrew text obviously gives
a different wording than LXX.

(Hyam Maccoby, in his
Mythmaker, denies that Paul was a Pharisee at all. There you
can read more evidence. Maccoby goes even so far that he
denies Paul being a Jew!)

5) Now there is this Phil 3,5 (cited above), where Paul
argues:
"as to the law, a
Pharisee". This is the only passage he himself claims to be
a Pharisee. Why does he write: "as to the law" (KATA NOMON
PHARISAIOS)? Does that imply that he was not a real
Pharisee, but only comparable to Pharisees what comes to his
attitudes to Torah? (Cf. 1 Cor 9,20). The author of Acts
presents him as a former Pharisee, because that fit well to
his picture of Pharisees as the enemy of Jesus-movement. The
brief mention by Paul of his Pharisean-like attitude to
Torah was enough to consider him as a former Pharisee, who
converted to Christianity.

Waiting for your responses

Sakari Hakkinen, PhD
University of Helsinki
Department of Biblical Studies
sakari.hakkinen AT evl.fi
http://www.helsinki.fi/teol/hyel/henkilo/henkilo.html






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