Corpus-Paul

[thevoidboy AT sprynet.com (J. Amador)]

I am new to this list, so please forgive my interruption of the discussion.
I hope you would allow me a couple of quick responses to some of the
fascinating material I've just read from Ray Pickett:

>My working understanding of Judaism here is that there is a continuum.
>At one end are those Jews who fairly assimilated to the culture and at
>the other end are the more"conservative" Jews. The problem of eating
>idol meat in 1 Cor. and Rom. is an interesting window on this, but
>that's another story. "Apostate" may be a little strong, but when Paul
>says that circumcision and other works of the law don't matter any more,
>only new creation (6:15), it strikes me that strict Torah observant Jews
>would seen that as crossing a line. A modern analogy would be baptism.
>There are all kinds of heated debates about baptism, and all the
>disagreement notwithstanding no one says of a group who thinks
>differently about it that they are not Christian. But if someone says
>baptism isn't important, then there are serious questions raised as to
>whether or not that is still "Christian".

Um, I'm a Quaker.  I don't believe baptism is important.  In fact, it is a
trait of most Quakers that such rituals are terribly UNimportant.  I wonder
if that means you find my Quakerism "non-Christian".

Furthermore, I believe your argument from analogy holds, i.e., that on the
basis of your argument, my counterargument further undermines the main
argumentative point - it is not necessarily the case that Paul's views on
circumcision would render him somehow "un-Jewish".  Possibly to some very
conservative types, but I wonder just how "possibly"

>Whether they are interlopers from outside of Galatia or conservative
>Jews from the local synagogue, I am having a difficult time seeing how
>more conservative Jews would have perceived these pauline communities as
>Jewish by their definition.

I take it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but you are supposing the
problem with the Galatian communities (note the plural address in the
beginning of the letter - "to the churchES") is a problem of outsiders?  I
wonder.  I have not read Munck's work (cited by Jeff Peterson), but as a
rhetorician, the more I read Paul, the more dissociative his arguments
appear.  By 'dissociative' I am referring to the work of Chaim Perelman
(_The New Rhetoric_) in which he identifies a broad rhetorical strategy in
argumentation in which a rhetoric address the accusation of "apparent"
contradictions  by revealing a deeper "reality" at which all such
contradictions in harmony with one another.  Such argumentation is
frequently used in circumstances where a rhetor finds him/herself engaged
in debates fostered by misunderstanding and misapprehension.

In other words, Paul is arguing, essentially, against himself.  He is
continually working to clarify, restate, retract, reconceptualize his
"message" in light of unanticipated responses to its reception.  Such a
situation does not need "opponents"; indeed, in Paul's case, it comes out
of adherants who are going "too far" for Paul (or, sometimes, not far
enough).

What is this "message"?  Something which, when reconstructed, needs to take
into account the very important point made by Mark Nanos in the following:

>Paul argues, e.g., in the passages cited (like Rom. 3:29-30), the logical
>deduction of his view that if God is One, then God is God of gentiles as
>well as Jews, because this is a salient argument according to Jewish
>sensibilities. He offers a way to understand Israelites' confession of the
>Shema--Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. He takes this
>to mean that the Lord of Israel is also the Creator God of all humankind,
>and thus that the restoration of a particular people Israel is in the
>service of the universal restoration of all humankind. But Paul seems to
>assume that this develops a shared premise with other Jewish people and
>belief systems, even if not applied to the situation at hand in the same
>way by them. The difference is how the current situation does or does not
>indicate this to be the case, according to the expectations he seeks to
>demonstrate from shared premises, i.e., Scripture and the expectation of
>God's work on behalf of Israel and all of creation.

In answer to Moon-Ryul Jung's question "why did Paul criticize the law"
ultimately depends on the argumentative (and not just rhetorical) context
in which such criticism plays a part.  It is too much a habit of Pauline
scholarship to try to extract an essential "theology" or Pauline "core" of
thought with respect to the Law, rather than immerse his thought into the
context of the argumentative trajectory he is tracing. The argumentative
criticism of the law in Galatians differs greatly than that of Corinthians
or Romans, even if one can trace a "development" through them.

Thanks for allowing me to interject.




TheVoidBoy AT sprynet.com
J.D.H. Amador, Ph.D.
Dept of Humanities
Santa Rosa Junior College
Santa Rosa, CA