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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul's persecution of the Church
  • Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 13:17:11 -0400




>>is not Hyam's point that this aspect has not been referred
to in the postings by Eric Zuesse and that it is an aspect
which needs to be addressed by him.<<

I think, then, that you are suggesting that Hyam was
reacting to Eric's statement to the effect that "Paul, of
course, could not openly admit that he was rejecting the
covenant because he rejected circumcision rather than the
other way around as he claimed," but I took Hyam to be
referring to Mark Nanos' reply to Eric that Hyam had quoted:
"...if by this [i.e., Eric's statement that the Jerusalem
Church did not require circumcision as a means of
conversion] you mean no proselyte conversion for gentiles.
[I] Agree."

Mark has had quite a bit to say on the subject, both in his
books and on this list. Hyam, though, made this statement in
order to emphasize his own position that proselyte
conversion has never been necessary for Gentiles who desire
to worship the Jewish God. This I took as a qualification
for his assertion that James was in fact the one trying to
include Gentiles in the Jewish covenant, and that Paul
conversely wanted to abolish all distinctions within the
movement by eliminating the obligations of the Jewish
covenant.

Essentially, I objected to Hyam's characterization that
James' terms for admittance of Gentiles as full members of
the Jesus movement "are identical with the Seven Laws
incumbent on 'God-fearers' (his arguments are in chapter 13
of _The Mythmaker_). The obligations listed by James are not
the seven laws of Noah of the Rabbis, but a smaller set. I
feel that considering James' terms as "identical" to the
Rabbinic concept of the Noachic covenant projects later
Rabbinic understanding into pre-70 times. Still, Hyam has
reasons for thinking that such laws were formalized in the
period in question, which he has spelled out for me by
citing references.

>>Once again, I ask for help in understanding your point for
it seems like you are suggesting that there is some problem
about how and why Gentiles would be attracted to Paul's
preaching when Acts clearly lays Paul's first contact with
Gentiles as already present in the Jewish congregations in
the Diaspora to whom he preached. Thus, neither Paul nor
James invented any practice of accepting gentiles as fit
associates (with certain minimal requirements); thus, any
issue for James would have been whether or not to accept
such pre-existing Jewish practices of the Diaspora,
practices which Paul as a citizen of the Diaspora had grown
up with and presumably accepted as a matter of course.<<

Hyam was commenting upon problems that engendered the whole
Gentile membership issue to begin with: How James chose to
deal with Gentiles seeking association with an essentially
Jewish messianic movement when the issues of Jewish
messiah(s) and any associated messianic kingdom could
legitimately be considered a properly Jewish matter. I had
to wonder whether this takes into proper consideration the
reasons why the early Jesus movement appealed to some
Gentiles, and whether the Gentiles who were attracted to
Paul's movement were attracted for the same reasons. Hence
my comments.

>>But would not such a prior history of Diaspora Judaism
provide explanatory context for not just Paul and his
mission but the influx of gentiles into the Christian
communities[?]<<

We have much more information available about the
relationship of Diaspora Jews and Gentiles who sought their
patronage or attended their synagogue readings or who
adopted this or that provision of Jewish law (mainly sabbath
observance), than we do about the attraction that some
Gentiles may have had to Jewish messianism. The existence of
(presumably) Jewish messianic propaganda (e.g., some of the
Sibylline books and the "rumors" about a future ruler of the
world rising from Jewish soil mentioned by Josephus and
Tacitus) suggests that *some* Gentiles were interested in
it.

I would say that Paul's movement (mainly urban oriented) and
a Jewish messianic movement such as the Jesus movement may
have been (rural in origins, but capable of producing
propaganda for urban consumption) probably did NOT attract
the same kinds of people. While Acts and the anomalous
"Peter" passage in Galatians 2 would have us believe that
these two movements were interconnected, I have strong
doubts. In my view, it is a mistake to lump them all
together too casually.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA






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