Corpus-Paul

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

Dear Anders,
I had noted:
>"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. ...
>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."
>

To which you replied:
>Let's do some of that cultural and contextual anchoring right now.  I asked
>the question in our language, or rather using an american expression "he is
>a nice guy." What people mean by that I guess differs, but it would
>probably be something about a likeable person, someone one who like to be
>around, polite, not offensive, well-mannered.  Then I ask whether Paul fits
>our definition of being a nice guy.  Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. I am
>inclined to the latter. Maybe there is something wrong with our definition
>or maybe it is OK not to be a nice guy.
>
>The reason I am asking this question is that in the last few years I have
>met several people who plainly say that they do not like Paul. Some
>therefore stay out of Pauline studies. It is their modern opinion about him
>coulored by our modern context. Often these people are women who do not
>like the way Paul treats other people.
>
>So I consider our present context to be a valid context for asking whether
>we like Paul or whether we do not.  The historical context of course is
>also a valid context to ask the question in. What did Paul's conversation
>partners think of him?  Did they like the way he represented them and
>treated them in discussions?  Did they think he was a nice guy?

I think that the common dislike of Paul, especially the intensity expressed
among many "western" people, who may or may not have first made an effort
to at least engage his statements in context, is largely a result of the
failure to engage him cross-culturally. And I think it is also a result of
traditional exegesis of him, perhaps largely because it often fails in this
same area to first ask what this language meant for those who used and
read/heard it, before asking what it means for ourselves, or could mean if
engaged with a cross-cultural sensitivity. That is not to dismiss the fact
that one might still decide Paul was not a nice guy, or that they don't
like him; just to note that it is not a decision that many people have the
"right" to make about him otherwise.

Actually, I think this is important, for it can easily misconstrue or
trivialize a voice that might be otherwise of value for those involved. For
example, Neil Elliott has argued that Paul has been domesticated by the
interpretive tradition, when he might rather be a spokesperson for those of
more counter-cultural agendas (Liberating Paul, Orbis). And I have argued
that Jewish views of Paul have been constructed largely from Christian
interpretive traditions that I believe often misrepresent him in terms of
his historical Jewish voice. Thus that liberationist or Jewish people
generally dislike Paul does not necessarily reflect an opinion about the
historical Paul, although this distinction is too often missed. And this
dismissal can be an important part of forming an opinion not just about
Paul, but about the viability of this whole system of beliefs shared by him
and others.

One point I was trying to get at is that one's concept of another, their
image, if you will, is not a static issue. Within a culture, one might be
known in very different ways by different people and groups at the same
time and general location, and even differently by them at different times.
Much depends on what aspects of them they are exposed to, and what their
own interests are in relation to that person and their actions. For
example, how often are figures that are "liked" or at least "praised"
publicly, regarded otherwise by those who may know them well, such as
family, business associates, neighbors (perhaps whom they have quarreled
with over a boundary between yards, or parked junk along the fence-line
of), and on and on. Or vice-versa, publicly disliked or scorned, but
well-liked and admired by those who know them best.

Thus it seems to me that we must not only attend to reading what we have of
Paul, or of others about Paul, with great cultural and contextual concern,
but we must also attain to the nature of this information. Again, we have
correspondence of a certain kind only (not his dinner invitations, but
often responses to highly disconcerting developments among those he hoped
could make better judgments without such "reminders"; like someone
overhearing our comments to our own perplexing teenagers at times, versus
those to our precious little toddlers).

As to his own cultural context, it is surely of importance for making a
judgment about Paul to consider what a "nice" person might have been like
in a radical movement like this. We are not dealing with a bureaucrat
representing the status-quo after all. Several major areas have been
considered by classicists, anthropologists, and Biblical scholars in such
areas as the communal shape of their personality. The agonistic nature of
interaction, the values, the norms, the goals, of the time in general, and
then of this coalition, and then of this leading figure, must at least be
considered.

It seems to me that until Paul is considered on such a map in context, then
related to a map of our own context, that no such judgment of him is
warranted. For example, I suggest that when this is done, that Paul will be
found most often on the side of the marginal. This Paul might be then
reconsidered with respect to how he might be expected to stand on the
rights of women or others who have been marginalized in our (supposedly all
too often in this regard) post-enlightenment cultures. It is arguably
possible that it was his own radical policies on behalf of women, e.g.,
breaking down traditional cultural status lines, that led to the kind of
"problems" that we have traces of his interaction with as new unforeseen
developments took place. I think his policy of maintaining differences but
not discrimination is extraordinarily complex when put to the test, and
easily misunderstood or abused from either side of the differences that
remain.

But judgments of another must also be cross-cultural within both Paul's and
our own times. What is considered nice in a person and their social
interaction in Scandinavia or the US, e.g., is very different than what is
considered nice in the southern Mediterranean, Israeli, or Arab cultures,
to name just the cultural divide of our own time, not that which would need
to be bridged across the centuries. I would think that there are some
examples of this difference between Scandinavia and the US that you have
had to negotiate in order to be perceived or understood in the way you
desire, or at least to correspond with how your comments and actions would
be likely taken in the other culture. I find this between New York and
Kansas City, for example, in both business and personal (even family)
dealings.

For example, it is nice for a stranger to gaze upon and compliment
another's baby in general in US culture, but in many others this behavior
is threatening to the health and very life of that mother's baby, i.e.,
anything but nice. So when a compliment comes from a stranger, the mother
might be seen spitting upon their own baby (even asking that you do the
same), and describing how ugly they are, and wisking them away. If that is
what your praise provoked, or even if you just witnessed part or all of the
exchange, what judgment would you render? Would you consider that they were
engaged in saving their child's life from fear of your perhaps envious eye?
(spitting and denial being two common methods among the many protective
measures available). That they may fear that you begrudge them this child
(e.g., since you perhaps can't have one yourself), and thus calling
attention to this child so that it will be "seen" and their good fortune
"brought down" by the great "leveling eye"? Without prior knowledge or
investigation of this mother's cultural system, I suggest that you would
misjudge her as anything but nice. (I have read stories of grown children
who were resentful of having been victims of such parental behavior within
such systems, thinking that their parents were not nice and had damaged
their self-esteem in child-rearing, because the children did not know of or
understand this system, perhaps having themselves been raised in a
different culture: "mom always told everyone that I had an ugly nose and no
talent, and even spit on me from time to time").

It is a Paul engaged in just such kinds of measures that we meet in the
extant letters, I believe (e.g., the ironic rebuke of his children in
Galatians in order to protect them from powerful forces of "peer pressure";
thus he asks them if he is now their enemy for telling them the truth. Any
parents ever used that line with their teenagers?). And that is why the
various judgments of Paul without attention to these cross-cultural
considerations have generally struck me as off-target. Am I communicating?

Regards,
Mark Nanos
University of St. Andrews
and Kansas City, Missouri