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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Corpus-Paul] The Symbolic Paul
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:01:12 -0700 (PDT)

List members --

On the XTalk list I recently wrote a review for a
delightful new book called _The Symbolic Jesus:
Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction
of a Contemporary Identity_ by William Arnal, which
deals with current agendas in Jesus-scholarship,
relating particularly to the issue of Jesus'
Jewishness. For me the book is timely, because I'd
been thinking about these very issues as I wrestled
with writing an outline of Romans. I won't repeat my
entire review, but just briefly describe it before
applying some of Bill's findings to what I see going
on in the Pauline field.

Arnal believes the issue of Jesus' Jewishness is a
scholarly red herring, and that the acrimony tied to
this issue communicates, however obliquely, various
agendas which are irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Scholars aggressive about Jesus' Jewishness may be
driven by:

(1) -- the agenda to save one's scholarly soul
from the legacy of German Lutherans. Sanders,
Fredriksen, Vermes, etc. have paved the way to a new
and distinctive Anglo-American scholarship, free of
Bultmannian influence. (pp 41-47)
(2) -- the intent to save one's political soul
from any taint of the Holocaust. The Jewish Jesus
approaches a stereotype modern Jews, thereby
reclaiming (or insulating) Christianity from
complicity in the Shoah. (pp 47-55)
(3) -- the need to keep one's religious
sensibilities intact. A Jewish Jesus, ironically,
helps maintain a distinctive Christian identity and
can even reinforce supersessionism (in cases like
Wright and Witherington). (pp 56-69)
(4) -- the goal to preserve one's cultural
identity in the face of postmodernism. A Jesus who
believed in Torah, the temple, and purity is a
formidable weapon against the erosion of social
identities, in effect insisting upon cultural
stability. (pp 69-72)

The result is that historical-Jesus scholarship "uses
the figure of Jesus as a screen or symbol on which to
project contemporary cultural debates," (p 5) similar
to, yet different from, the agendas Schweitzer warned
against a century ago.

Arnal distinguishes between a "Jewish Jesus" camp and
"non-Jewish Jesus" camp (though he thinks these labels
are problematic, which is a significant point of his
book), and I will use "Jewish Paul" and "anti-Jewish
Paul" by way of analogy. The former camp would include
Stendahl, Davies, Gager, Segal, Nanos, Dunn, and
Wright, while the latter includes Sanders, Raisanen,
Esler, Watson, and Maccoby. This oversimplifies
things, but will hopefully be useful enough for the
following discussion.

FROM SANDERS TO DUNN

We know how Sanders got the academy to dispense with
an antiquated scholarship which viewed Judaism as
inherently defective, arguing that Paul never saw it
as such: Judaism simply wasn't Christianity, and the
new age made everything else seem worthless in
comparison. But Sanders continues to be criticized for
failing to make an **appealing** image out of Paul.
Dunn will serve as a critic here: "Sanders remained
[too] impressed by the difference between Paul's
pattern of religious thought and that of
Judaism...[concluding] that Paul's religion could be
understood only as a basically different system from
that of his fellow Jews...The Lutheran Paul has been
replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul who abandons Judaism
simply because it is not Christianity...I must confess
that I find Sanders' Paul little more convincing (and
much less attractive) than the Lutheran Paul." (Jesus,
Paul, and the Law, pp 186f)

Dunn wants an attractive Paul, and argues that Paul
was not so anti-law as even Sanders thinks, just
anti-works -- that is, the law understood and
practiced in such a way as to to prevent Gentiles from
enjoying it in full measure as Gentiles. This set the
tone for what would come to define the "New
Perspective on Paul", a perspective nicely summarized
by Francis Watson (who sharply criticizes it):

"Paul leaves God's covenant with Israel intact,
denounces Gentile anti-Semitism, and even believes
that there will come a day when all Israel will be
saved. If, in the heat of controversy, he occasionally
said things that imply a negative view of Israel or
the law, these do not represent the main trend of his
thought...The antithesis of faith and works is about
the scope of God's saving action. It has nothing to do
with the old Protestant contrast of divine grace and
human effort [which depends on caricatures of an
inferior and legalistic Judaism]." ("Not the New
Perspective")

Paul therefore did not end up knocking down the Judaic
pillars of election and law (as scholars like Sanders,
Raisanen, Esler, and Watson maintain). He maintained
both (Dunn, Davies, Stendahl, Wright), while shifting
or adjusting their scope.

FROM DUNN TO NANOS

But while scholars like Dunn have made great strides
in a "Jewish friendly" direction, they haven't gone
far enough in the minds of some. Mark Nanos has
written a penetrating essay in which he criticizes
such scholars who go out of their way to portray Paul
in "Jewish pleasing" terms, only to undercut their own
agenda without even realizing they are doing so. (The
essay may be found here:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/nanosmd/SBL-03-Inter-Christian-Prob.pdf
) For all their noble efforts, Dunn, Martyn, etc.
continue to portray a Paul who devalues Judaism in
some way. For instance, they maintain that Paul's
conflict was with Christian Judaism, which simply
perpetuates negative evaluations of non-Christian
Judaism **all the more**. Nanos writes:

"The position grants itself to express unihibited
negative evaluations of Christ-believing Jewishness,
which logically extends all the more to the Jewishness
of those who do not even share the bond of
Christ-faith."

Nanos, by contrast, has argued that Romans and
Galatians show Paul as having non-Christian Jews in
view, and that Paul's fellow Christian Jews (Peter,
James, etc) were on the same page with him -- indeed
that they agreed with Paul's circumcision-free gospel
(applied to Gentiles), and were far less stingy with
Gentiles than usually assumed of these "typically
Jewish" Christians, against whom the "exceptional
Paul" shines more brightly.

Nanos moreover believes that Paul, above all else,
"upheld the Jewish notion that, although social and
biological differences remain in the present age, the
discrimination usually associated with them should not
prevail, just as is expected to be the case in the age
to come. This seems to be a sensible and noble ideal
for how to approach each other in [today's]
Jewish/Christian relations' terms, whether sharing
Paul's belief that this age has dawned in Jesus Christ
or not." (above essay)

This is clearly a Paul who would find welcome in our
postmodern and increasing secular age, and who could
get along well enough with Jewish folk like Nanos or
Unitarians like myself.

IN ANOTHER ARENA: THE "EVANGELICAL JEW"

Paul's Jewishness is invoked with as much insistence
in evangelical quarters. The following summary
introduces a webpage on the site of list member Tim
Gallant (at http://www.rabbisaul.com/ ):

"Paul is a Jew. After all the nonsense spouted in 19th
century German theology, modern scholarship has
finally come back round to the point that orthodoxy
knew all along. The story that Paul tells is the story
of Israel and her collision with her destiny and
fulfillment. When the Apostle Paul writes, we are not
encountering the originator of a new religion. We are
encountering a true Jew, whose faith remains truly
Jewish. We are encountering Rabbi Saul."

Evangelical Christianity is thereby reinforced by
using "Rabbinic Judaism", no less, as a pillar (see
agenda (3) above). Christianity is "truly Jewish".
This puts one in mind of contemporary Jews-for-Jesus,
and it was hardly suprising when Gallant's email
moniker ("Rabbi Saul") elicited objections from a
fellow (Jewish) list member. Indeed, some of the
debate on C-P between Nanos and Gallant has shown a
clear need to "save Paul from the other side" by
appealing, significantly, to his Jewishness.

RESULTS, QUESTIONS

I should note that I am in no way making any
assessments about how right or wrong any of the above
scholars are in their interpretations of Paul. As it
so happens, I have learned from many of them. I think
Sanders and Esler are profoundly right that Paul ended
up knocking down the Judaic pillars of election and
law; I think Dunn is right that Paul was (at least
initially) concerned with the "scope" of God's saving
activity more than anything else in saying "not by
law"; I think Nanos' particular interpretation of the
"weak" and "strong" in Rome (Rom 14-15) is spot-on.
I'm simply noting the agendas themselves, often
clearly and candidly stated, often surfacing in the
heat of debate, and wondering if not said agendas end
up coloring an overall portrait of the apostle which
has been predetermined in advance.

I can't help but agree with Arnal when he writes:

"Until and unless Christianity is able to find a mode
of self-definition that does not require a
supersessionist theology or a strong contradistinction
to Judaism it will never be able to shed its intrinsic
tendency to anti-Judaism. We will not -- cannot --
save Christianity from anti-Semitism, nor agguage our
guilt, by making [Jesus or Paul] into an honorary
Jew." (p 53)

The question of Paul's Jewishness is fascinating and
certainly matters for purposes of historical inquiry
(and certainly for our purposes here on Corpus Paul),
but the point of my rather long post is that it often
seems to matter, even more so, for other reasons. As
with Jesus (so Arnal), the figure of the historical
Paul has become a screen or symbol on which to project
contemporary cultural debates, with the apostle's
"Jewishness" a hot-button issue masking (or
communicating openly) agendas. But should the merits
or demerits of Christianity depend on Paul's
Jewishness?

And to close with a couple of questions for Arnal
himself (who has recently joined the C-P list): Would
you, Bill, say that the historical Paul is as
historically insignificant as the historical Jesus?
That debate on the Jewish question of Paul is as
"illegitimate, and full of empty rhetoric and
ideological puffery" (as you put it on the XTalk list
yesterday) as the debate on such for Jesus?

What say others?

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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