Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - Re: Paul as apostate (was Paul obligated to Torah?)

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul as apostate (was Paul obligated to Torah?)
  • Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 09:57:32 -0600


Dear Moon,
I will reply below. I agree essentially with your early comments, so will omit them. But they are very clear and helpful for discussion.

[large snip]



3:11-12. It is a sort of explanatory digress. Note that 3:13 resumes the
theme
of the curse of the Law. The fact that the people of the Law were under
the
curse of the Law might have prompted Paul to say what the Law was and was
not.
Here Paul asserts tha the Law has nothing to do with being righteoused,
which is
well-known in Judaism: The RIGHTEOUS shall live by FAITH. What is the Law,
then?
Those who do them, that is, the people of the Law, are supposed to live in
them.
That is, the Law was the sphere in which the covenant people were commanded
to
live in. Faith and the Law have two different purposes ("the Law is not of
faith").
The attempt of the Galatians to become the people of the Law by getting
circumcision
comes down to confusing the roles assigned to faith and the Law. The Law is
what makes
Jewish people Jewish. It was given specifically to them in the salvation
history.

This is the implicit problem of what the Galatian gentiles are considering, from Paul's argumentative perspective, not necessarily what they are thinking they are concerned with. That seems to be undisputed acceptance by the keepers of the communal norms who find their assumptions of identity unacceptable apart from completion of proselyte conversion.


3:13. Resuming 3:11-12, Paul asserts that Christ has redeemed "us", the Law
people,
from the curse of the Law, by being cursed at the cross.
3.14. The purpose of redeeming the Law people from the curse of the Law was
to get
the BLESSING of Abraham (the key phrase in the supporting thesis of 3:9) to
reach
the Gentiles, so that we (= the whole humanity, both Jews and Gentiles) may
receive
the promise of the Spirit (the key phrase in the target thesis of 3:2)
through
faith in Christ. 3:14b echoes the target thesis 3:2. All the arguments
between
3:2 and 3:14b are used to support the target thesis 3:2.
It is not clear to me what is the connection between redeeming the Law
people, the
covenant people, from the curse of the Law, and the Gentiles' receiving the
Spirit
through faith in Christ. Do you have any idea?

Another way of trying to get at what is said in 3:21ff. The problem is to explain the way that Israel's role is confined until the promise comes, and then the other nations receive the benefits of Israel's role. But the absurd thing he is trying confront is that representatives of the nations would now want to turn back the clock for themselves, so to speak, and become Israelites, as though this time of promise for the nations (and Israel is of course the implied premise) has not arrived. They are not thinking that this is the implication; they just want to reduce the social dissonance of their current identity in a Jewish communal setting when other significant Jewish leaders who do not share their faith in Christ find their claims to identity unacceptable.


I am tempted to think that Paul meant to say:
Even the people of the Law needed redemption from the curse of the Law
through Christ.
This was the blessing they themselves were waiting for. So, you
Galatians, just enter
this blessing through faith in Christ, why do you want to go into the
sphere of the
Law which threatens its people with curses?

You would object to this inference? You might say: the "curse" associated
with the
unfaithful are common both in Judaism and Paul's gospel. But I would say
that
Paul somehow thought that the curse associated with the Law was
something
severe to require redemption through Christ once for all. Apparently Paul
did not
think that the people of the Law could remain righteoused by means of
repentence
provided in the Law.

In a way I agree that this is in implied in Paul's argument; at least he believed this applied to himself. I will leave off trying to explain my caveats here.

[large snip}

Your comments from 3:14-26 are excellent.


Here go my questions on Gal 4.

4:3 So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental
spirits
of the universe. 4:4 But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his
Son,
born of woman, born under the law, 4:5 to redeem those who were under the
law,
so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Q1: Whatever "the elemental spirits of the universe" means, it is obvious
that it is
something that has enslaved "us", the Jews. If it refers to the Law, it
seems to be
an great obstacle to your position.

Q2: In what sense do you think did those under the Law, the Jews, need
redemption?

Redemption from the constraints of the present age in the awaited age.

Q3: I would take "we" in 4:5 to refer to the whole humanity as in 3:14?
What do you think?

4:9. now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God,
how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits,
whose slaves you want to be once more?

Q4: Paul rebukes the Galatians because they want to turn back AGAIN to the
weak and beggarly elemental spirits. The language of Gal 4:9 seems to
indicate that
"we" in 4:3 are Galatians. If so, the strategy to distinguish "we" and
"you"
seems to fail here.

There is a way to save this strategy.
Here Paul assumes that the Gentiles were under the weak and beggarly
elemental spirits
before I came to know Christ. When they wanted to be "under the Law" after
having known
God, it was the same as going back to the elemental spirit again, because
Paul said in
4:3 that the Jews, when they were children, were slaves to the elemental
spirits of the
universe. But then in what sense being under the Law was being under the
elemental
spirits? If you object to this very idea, you cannot stick to the
strategy of not luming "you" and "we". Either way, I got stuck.

No doubt. This is sticky indeed. I am working on this one myself, or rather, plan to once I finish up what I am working on, which is the situational language rather than these narratives. I am going to dodge your question in terms of the "we" question for the moment, until I can work this through with some contextual ideas. But one of those ideas is about the behavior described in the return to situational discourse in 4:8-10.

I think that T. Martin is right that the time-elements which define that which the addressees are turning back to are not related to Jewish but idolatrous civic practices such as the imperial cult. They were not Jews and would not thus return to Law-observance, but former idolaters, and thus return to idolatry. I think Martin is wrong that this indicates a turn away from Christ faith or becoming proselytes.

Rather, it is an obligatory implication of their present identity conundrum because of the response of the influencers to their claims that compels them seek identity on the traditional communal norms, i.e., to become proselytes in order to escape this responsibility as "pagans" until proselytes. It seems that until they have chosen the path of proselyte conversion, or perhaps completed this rite, they would be as pagans obliged to continue to practice civic idolatrous life. Remember that people were intimately networked in their social world of family and politics, in which their religious life was embedded. And pagans considered breaches of civic idolatrous practices such as the imperial cult festivities a threat to the entire community, both in commercial and more important perhaps, in terms of the revenge of the gods for this atheism. But the Jewish communities were absolved from participation in these practices without threat to the pagan community, by arrangements and precedents since Caesar's decree, such as the daily burnt offering in Jerusalem.

Thus these gentiles are being informed that what is required of them as pagans has not changed yet, since these leaders of the Jewish community do not accept the addressees' claim to protection from such responsibility as though proselytes, since they are not proselytes. So those influencing the addressees can be charged by Paul with seeking to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ in 6:12. Why? Because they do not share the addressees' understanding of what this death of a Judean martyr of the Roman regime means for them as gentiles--that they are now entitled to full membership. These influencers would thus not want to seek to legitimate the departure of these "pagans" from their civic obligations. This departure, if appeal was made to Jewish communal privileges, breaks with the norms that guide both pagan civic and Jewish communal norms. Who would want to suffer the pressure of pagan civic leaders upon themselves, so that the entire community's privileges are threatened, for a theory they do not believe, and for pagans for whom they are not legally responsible? At the very least these pagans need to become proselyte candidates to make such claims upon them. That is the social constraint defining the exigence for these gentiles, although not Paul, who sees that the way they are considering going, this other message of good for resolving the dissonance, implies that the good news of Christ's death for themselves would be upended, rendered merely gratuitous. They apparently do not realize this grave consequence, as their problem is with resolving a social problem instead. That is the exigence that provokes Paul's response in the letter we call Galatians; in my view, of course.

If that is the context of Paul's comments, then this will help get at the meaning of the prior verses of the narrative discourse.

Regards,
Mark Nanos





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page