Corpus-Paul

["Neil Elliott" <elliott AT igc.org>]

Jeffrey Gibson raised provocative questions (okay, weeks ago!)
in response, partially, to Martinus de Jonge's suggestions
regarding Paul's "dying for us" language.

De Jonge's suggestions:  (1) background of "dying for others"
language is reflection on martyrdom, e.g. 4 Macc.; (2) context
for that is moments of national crisis; (3) such martyrdoms
express the "way of zeal."

(My initial reactions--without having read De Jonge--are to
say (1) yes, correct (2) yes, correct (3) I need to be shown
that the "zeal" tradition so zealously (!) documented by
Hengel, and to such theological point, is really at work
in texts like 4 Macc.  I see very different ideologies at
work.

Jeffrey asks (1) should we question interpretations of Paul's
language as implying the divine "necessity" of a death to
bring about atonement?  I would say YES, ABSOLUTELY.  Both
Tom Wright and Paula Fredriksen have--in very different ways--
shown that the logic of early Christian "atoning-death" theologies
was not that of "plight to solution," i.e., "how will God ever
save us from our sins given the temporariness and inherent
inadequacy of the Temple cultus?"  That is the logic of Hebrews,
but Hebrews (I would say) has no relation to the logic informing
the earliest reflections on Jesus' death.

There is (of course!) room for more conversation around either
Wright's or Fredriksen's work!

Jeffrey further asks (2) whether Paul's dying-for-others language
should be read 
   [a] as "hammered out in the midst of impending national crises,"
       (initially I'd say YES, DEFINITELY);
   [b] "carried out between Paul and advocates of zeal,
   [c] regarding the nature of true faithfulness to the God of
       Israel,
   [d] intended to counter the 'politics of holiness'" championed
       by other Jews as a couner to Roman imperialism.

I would DISTINGUISH [a] through [d] as separate questions.  "Zeal"
[b] would involve us in wrangling over Hengel's book on the Zealots,
which I find much too sweeping--Hengel gloms lots of different
material together into one huge ideology of "zeal" which then becomes
a ready foil for Jesus.  The "politics of holiness," similarly, is
Borg's sweeping characterization of the Judean culture that Jesus'
"politics of compassion" was opposed to.  Both these are useful
for Christian theologizing, but are they satisfactory as 
generalizing descriptions of Judean political theology?

Some initial thoughts!  Anyone interested?

Neil Elliott