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  • From: "Hyam Maccoby" <h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Deut 21:22-23
  • Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 12:29:48 +0100

 
>One form of the argument (this is actually part of Dunn's argument but is not essential to it; also >W. D. Davies, Ben Meyer and others) builds on Deut 21:22-23: since the Torah pronounces a >curse on anyone hung on a cross, Christ died accursed and outside the law.<
An important point to bear in mind is that this interpretation of Deut. 21:22-23 is not found in any Jewish source of the period.  The only person who seems to have understood the verses in this way is Paul.  Thousands of Jews died by the Roman punishment of crucifixion, and not one of them was ever regarded as accursed by reason of the manner of his death.  On the contrary, they were regarded as martyrs in the cause of Judaism.  The commonest interpretation was that since it was commanded to take down the body of an executed criminal, a curse devolved on the authorities if they disobeyed this commandment.  This interpretation is quite rightly adopted by NEB:  'His body shall not remain on the gibbet overnight;  you shall bury it on the same day, for a hanged man is offensive in the sight of God.'  Another interpretation was that attributed to Rabbi Meir:  Since man was made in the image of God, to treat even the body of a criminal with disrespect is equivalent to cursing God.'
 
Hyam Maccoby
------------------------------
Dr.Hyam Maccoby
Research Professor
Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds.LS2
Direct lines: tel. +44 (0)113 268 1972
                   fax +44 (0)113 225 9927
e-mail: h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk
               hyam.maccoby AT btopenworld.com
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 8:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Morna Hooker on the Law

Mark,

The argument that Morna Hooker presents has been developed in more detail by others (e.g., Jimmy Dunn in his "A Light to the Gentiles," in The Glory of Christ in the NT). One form of the argument (this is actually part of Dunn's argument but is not essential to it; also W. D. Davies, Ben Meyer and others) builds on Deut 21:22-23: since the Torah pronounces a curse on anyone hung on a cross, Christ died accursed and outside the law.

I am in agreement with the general attempt to see Paul's apostolic convictions about the law and the Gentiles as the result of the tensive interaction between his native convictions as a "zealot for the traditions of his ancestors" and his new convictions about Jesus. But I too have difficulties seeing how this particular construal can work.

What is needed is a tension or conflict between "Torah" and "Christ" (as crucified Messiah, or whatever) that continues to be fundamentally unresolvable even after Paul has come to belief in the resurrection of Jesus. One can imagine all sorts of ways in which a "zealot" would have seen the early Christian movement as a threat to Torah religion. But one would expect that, once such a person came to believe that Jesus had been raised -- and thus vindicated -- by God, he would be eager to find some way to align his new belief about Jesus with his old commitment to the Torah. The example of James and of other even more Torah-centred Jerusalem Christians indicates that such re-alignment could readily be achieved. Surely the mere fact of crucifixion itself is not enough to put someone outside the law -- especially when the crucifixion was carried out by the Romans. One could just as easily construe such a death as a martyrdom. Alternatively, the use of the righteous sufferer Psalms indicates another kind of alignment -- Jesus seen as one who is faithful to God and righteous with respect to the Torah (properly understood), who because of his faithfulness in an evil age was persecuted but then was vindicated by God. Or one could see Jesus in representative terms, his death as a means of identifying with Israel in the punishment legitimately meted out by the law to a people who had broken the covenant. But even if we were to leave such alternatives out of the picture, I find it hard to imagine how -- even if one wanted to -- one could construe the circumstances of Jesus' death in such a way that he would be so at odds with the law that for God to vindicate him would at the same time be to set aside the law.

I think it is right that we try to account for Paul's Christ-Torah antithesis as an apostle by seeing it as a continuation in altered form of an antithesis that he perceived between the two prior to "Damascus." But I don't think this particular attempt will work.

Pax,
Terry Donaldson
Wycliffe College
Toronto

The approach, then, is problematic. But


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