Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>]

In the midst of a post Chris Cutler wrote:

>Certainly Paul's mission to the gentiles was to create a catholic (small c)
>church and to this end he was prepared to sacrifice certain dietary and
>ritualistic principles.

Chris,
I am not convinced that Paul did sacrifice "certain dietary and ritualistic
principles," so I find the assumption of "certainly" although expressing a
widely held view, certainly questionable. What makes you so certain that he
did?
>
>How often have we seen in any new community a difference of opinion between
>those whose overriding objective is to keep strictly to the founding
>principles, and those who wish to broaden the appeal of the group to
>attract more members? IMO Paul was firmly in the latter camp.

The interesting thing is that Paul is the one who is limiting the appeal in
Galatians. E.g., he is the one calling Peter at Antioch to conform strictly
with the founding principles, although the other side of the matter is not
broadening, but limiting in a different way. And he is the one denying to
the Galatians that they can have both Christ-identity and proselyte
identity.

I don't see the juxtaposition is in any kind of particular versus universal
appeal, but two ways to go about how the particular is to function within
the universal; two rival ways to do Judaism on the matter of gentile
inclusion. Was it really a quantification move--more members--versus less
members on the other view, that separated Paul? That is, is Paul really
about expediency while the others were about principle, which seems to be
implied in your juxtaposition? Or two ways of seeing how their
interpretation of the principles informed their choices?

By the way, I find the use of this language of nice guys ill-conceived
without a great deal of cultural and contextual anchoring, at the very
least. That is not to say one may not speak of such things, but that these
are relative terms, and what they are relative to must be spelled out in
order to make any comparative sense. This would need to consider at least
what was nice in their culture, sub-cultures, time, place, and the context
of our information; also the way in which to render such a decision would
need to be cross-cultural, attending to our own cultural codes. And the
nature of the information upon which such judgments are being made would
need to be qualified, i.e., what is the context of the language that you
are making your decision based upon? His dinner invitations might read a
little different than his letters to these (at times quite striking open
behaviors for Christ-believing) communities. Opinions about what is nice
are often different, to name but a few, from gender to gender, age group to
age group, occupation to occupation, city to rural, region to region,
country to country; not to mention across the divide of time. An aweful lot
of our own cultural baggage is betrayed by our judgment upon another as
nice or not!

Would not the more relevant question to begin with be: What did the various
people with whom Paul engaged seem to think about him, and in what terms
would they choose to express their opinion of his character?

Regards,
Mark Nanos

Kansas City and
University of St. Andrews