Corpus-Paul

[Jeff Peterson <peterson AT mail.ics.edu>]

>Stevan Davies wrote
>>  "The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith
>> he once tried to destroy."
>> If this isn't a conversion what would be?

Steve makes an important point. Stendahl has convinced many to avoid using
_conversion_ in reference to Paul, since the word suggests abandoning one
religion for another (e.g., Judaism for Christianity, or Hinduism for
Buddhism); this doesn't fit Paul's case, since he remained devoted to the
God of Israel, whose Son he now held Jesus to be. But clearly Paul's
adherence to Jesus involved conscious entry of a subgroup of Jews, those
devoted to the Nazarene; his acceptance of the call to preach Jesus was
thus much like the entry of a Jew into an intra-Jewish sect or party --
e.g., initiates into the _Yahad_ described in the Community Rule and other
DSS. I'm not sure _conversion_ is the best word to describe this;
"party/sectarian affiliation" may perhaps be better. Still, it's something
more than an individual prophetic call involving no shift in religious
identity or affiliation, as  Stendahl suggests.

It would be especially interesting if Paul continued to think of himself as
a Pharisee who now preached Jesus; Luke so depicts him (Acts 23:6), but
it's less clear from Phil 3:4ff whether his status as "Pharisee in
accordance with Torah" (v. 5, end) is something Paul abandoned for the sake
of preaching Christ (as the immediately following "persecutor of the church
in accordance with zeal" and "blameless in accordance with righteousness in
Torah," v. 6), or whether (like the immediately preceding "circumcised the
eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
Hebrews," v. 5) Pharisaic allegiance continues to mark Paul the preacher,
as it had Paul the persecutor. The parallel constructions with KATA which
the phrase in question inaugurates might suggest the former interpretation.

Jeff

------------------------------------
Jeffrey Peterson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Institute for Christian Studies
Austin, Texas, USA
------------------------------------