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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>
  • To: Corpus Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Paul on Authorities
  • Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:55:20 -0500

Jim,
Just a few comments below yours. Thanks for the discussion of my work! I
look forward to learning from your dissertation.

on 6/16/05 10:54 AM, jblanken AT ccat.sas.upenn.edu at
jblanken AT ccat.sas.upenn.edu wrote:
>
>> From that dissertation, 4 reasons I see government, not synagogue,
>> authorities
> in view in Rom 13. (I haven't changed from the Greek font to ASCII code.)
>
>
> "First, as noted above, the entire passage is filled with standard
> Hellenistic
> administrative and tax language.71 If Paul wanted to address attitudes
> toward
> secular government, he would have been hard pressed to use more appropriate
> language.

Mark: The same goes for the language to use about the governing role of
synagogue authorities.

> "Additionally, even though fovbo", “fear, terror” (13:3) and mavcairan,
> “sword”
> (13:4) are not standard language when discussing secular government, “fear,”
> “terror” and the threat of the “sword” make more sense in the context of a
> secular government known for its military and conquest than in the context
> of
> synagogue authorities. The use of fovbo" and mavcairan is telling. Nanos
> does
> address “the problem of the ‘sword’” (310-314), but he seems to lack
> confidence
> in his proposal (“Paul could have intended the usage of ‘sword’
> figuratively .
> . .” 313, my emphasis). The use of “terror” and “sword” pose no problem
> when
> one sees the ejxousiva as the political authorities.

Mark: I don't think I lack confidence in my proposal. I was offering several
options I think are stronger than the standard ones (and I favored my
suggestions of the sword as "symbol of power" options over my suggestion of
the figurative for "the word of God" option). (Swords were not used on tax
evaders in Rome by Roman authorities any more than in synagogues to
discipline, but symbolizes the power to punish, which synagogue authorities
held, as witness by Paul's own self-claimed experience of suffering such
punishment by the 39 stripes, 5 times.) I sought to offer the entire
discussion of Rom 13 as an example of what approaching Romans in new ways as
addressed to synagogue subgroups might reveal, and to do so with humility,
not least because I am suggesting new options that seem to be unexplored in
a couple of thousand years of exegesis of this passage. Which makes "more
sense" is in the eye of the beholder, if the language is flexible enough to
be argued to either conclusion.

> "Also, Paul’s advice is one of the traditional Jewish responses to the
> problem
> of foreign rule.

Mark: Yet as I discuss (and more could be made of this point), this language
in (other) Jewish texts (since I assume Paul's to be a Jewish text too)
generally can be quite easily understood to have expressed either political
expedience, misinformation, or even irony; in any case, not to have lost
sight of the fact that other nations ruling over Israel represents something
other than the divine order of life on earth as it "ought" to be (being used
nevertheless by God to his purpose). But Paul's language is seemingly so
transparent about the "oughtness" of this authority without expressing that
distance.

> While many object that Paul could not have said such things
> during Nero’s reign, two observations discussed above serve to lessen the
> difficulties. First, Nero’s reign looked very different in its first five
> years than it looks in hindsight. As mentioned earlier, Nero began his
> reign
> in peace and was compared favorably to Augustus who is said to have ruled
> through bloodshed.72

Mark: I have seen this argued (most recently in Witherington's commentary on
Romans), but I just don't buy it to express Paul's point of view (and I
cannot emphasize enough how naïve I find this argument for a Judean under
Roman rule). He is well aware of proclaiming one crucified under Rome, with
the tragic events in Alexandria for the Jewish community just a few years
before Nero, with the arrogance of Rome under Nero as everyone else, with
his own experiences of suffering, with compliance of some Jewish communal
leaders to the compromise of Judaism according to most Judean's standards
for the rule of the people of God, and so on.

> Also, the understanding that even foreign tyrants were
> put in place by God was so deeply a part of Jewish tradition that, as has
> been
> noted above, Habakkuk says essentially the same thing when the abuse of
> power
> was much more obvious and much more raw.73 Though Habakkuk’s response is
> more
> difficult to understand than Paul’s, Habakkuk’s response is not seen as an
> impossibility. Neither should Paul’s response be seen as an impossibility.

Mark: I don't think this grasps Habakkuk's probable meaning, or Paul's.
Anyway, possibilities does not rule out what I have proposed as possible,
and argued as probable.

> "Finally, Nanos is right that Paul’s seemingly unconditional counsel to
> submit
> to political authorities is troubling, but Nanos’ proposed solution seems to
> merely shift this same obligation to Gentile Christians to submit
> unconditionally to Jewish synagogue authority. It is hard to see how Nanos’
> proposal is any less troubling when coming from Paul.

Mark: First, I follow Yoder in understanding the issue not to be "to submit"
but "to subordinate," and thus, to allow room for less than perfect examples
of rule, but the call to suffer for failure to comply. Second, that Jewish
communal leadership is "ordained by God" in the kind of unguarded language
Paul seems to employ makes "more sense," to me at least, of synagogue
authorities than Roman ones.

> A far better solution
> is
> to understand that Paul’s counsel is neither unconditional nor exhaustive,
> but
> here specifically limited to the expressly mentioned taxes and attitude, as
> argued above."

Mark: This is what Yoder argued, and now Neil Elliott, and although I like
it much better than the alternatives, I just don't see that Paul's language
expresses this as I wish I could believe it to. To your first point above,
Paul could have chosen much better language to make this kind of limited
point. But he speaks of right and wrong, for example, which at least one can
see him claiming that synagogue authorities should represent, but hardly
Roman rulers who claim (or are claimed) to be divine (and worship other
divinities than the One God) while crushing those who will not serve Rome
according to Rome's terms.

Regards,
Mark
--
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
Rockhurst University
Co-Moderator
http://home.comcast.net/~nanosmd/





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