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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Paul's lies
  • Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 04:32:25 -0700 (PDT)


Eric,

I have no desire to comment on your nonsense about
Paul no longer thinking of himself as a Jew, or that
"Judaism was trash", as you so delicately put it. I
do, however want to comment on Paul's lies and
deceits, apropos your following comments:

>...if the individual happens to be at
>all deceitful, as Paul certainly was.
>He even, in one of his more stunning admissions,
>confessed in Romans 3:7, that to lie in
>the service of God is no sin;
>instead, he indicated there that he would
>feel proud to do it...

There is nothing stunning about Paul's admission here.
In honor-shame cultures like the ancient
Mediterranean, everyone was engaged in lying and
deception all the time. Paul acknowledges this in Rom
3:4: "everyone is a liar"! Everyone lied, and everyone
assumed that people lied and deceived all the time.
>From an honor-shame perspective, lies and deceptions
are seldom moral failures; more often they are
legitimate strategies to safeguard one's honor. And to
lie in the service of God himself -- as Paul claims he
does in Rom 3:7 -- was the greatest honor of all.

The greatest biblical heroes were liars, not just
Paul. Context Group member John Pilch has written much
on the subject. See his Cultural Dictionary of the
Bible, where he identifies eight kinds of lies and
deceptions employed in the service of honor: (1)
concealment of failure, (2) concealment of
unintentional failure, (3) false imputation, (4)
avoiding quarrels or trouble, (5) for gain, (6) sheer
concealment (habitual), (7) pure mischief, (8) on
behalf of friends/guests/kin.

Jacob deprived Esau of his birthright and blessing by
lying to Isaac (Gen 27:24). Jacob's lie was for
personal gain (type 5); he shafted Esau out of his
rightful inheritance, and today he remains the hero of
the story for both Jews and Christians.

Peter told a triple-lie about being associated with
the arrested Nazarene in order to save his hide; his
was a lie to avoid trouble (type 4).

Jesus lied about his travel plans to minimize a
potential risk to his life. The Judeans were looking
for an opportunity to kill him (Jn 7:1), but his
relatives urged him to go to the festival anyway,
because (so they said) his mighty works would enhance
his honor rating (7:3-4) -- but in reality, they
probably figured his death would rid them of a
perpetual disgrace to the family honor (for in fact
"his brothers did not believe in him" (7:5), and a
prophet was always without honor in his hometown and
in the eyes of his family (4:44)); Jesus declared, "I
am not going to this festival" (7:8) and remained in
Galilee (7:9); but as soon as his relatives left, he
went to the festival, "not publicly but secretly"
(7:10). Jesus' lie is one of sheer concealment (type
6). Lies of concealment are basically the sort of
habitual lies told "out of the unknown and feared
power of the nosey community... in Mediterranean
cultures, unrelenting community curiosity and village
gossip often generates this kind of deception"
(Pilch).

The serpent's deception of Eve stemming from pure
mischief (type 7) (Gen 3:1-15) is well know; indeed,
Satan is renowned as the "deceiver of the entire
world" (Rev 12:9). But seldom is it acknowledged how
God counters Satan's deceits and lies with his very
own. In I Kings 22:19-23, for instance, God "sends a
lying spirit into the mouths of many prophets" in
order to bring about Ahab's disaster.

Rahab lied to the king's men about Joshua's spies, in
order to protect her guests (type 8) (Josh 2:3-6) --
though it was also a lie for gain (type 5), so that
Joshua's armies would spare her and her family (Josh
2:12-13).

(I'm not interested in how factual or historical any
of these events are for the sake of this discussion.)

Back to your passage, Eric. Paul says in Rom 3:7 that
he lies in order to make God's truthfulness abound all
the more to his glory, which is closest to Pilch's
type 8: a lie on behalf of one's Lord. By ancient
Mediterranean standards this is about as honorable as
you can get. And that's how it would have been
received by Paul's audience. I don’t agree with you
that the general admission of Rom 3:7 has anything to
do with Rom 3:31. Paul means exactly what he says in
Rom 3:31. The law is still in force -- for two
reasons: one, because the eschaton has only partly
arrived, and since the present age is still proceeding
apace, the law obviously remains operative from that
angle; two, because while Gentiles are free from an
obligation to observe the law's "works" (circumcision,
some food laws, holy days), they are certainly not
free to Gentilize or paganize with wild abandon. But
you, Eric, will never be persuaded by reasonable
readings of Paul and the law.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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