Corpus-Paul

["moon-ryul jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Liz,

I am learning a  lot from you. According to you, 
I misunderstood Sanders about the place of the law in Judaism 
(By the way, the quotations in my post
to you are from Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, not from
PPJ, as I said explicitly. ) According to your view, 
Dunn who wrote a lot on the new perspective also seemed to misunderstand
Sanders, as far as I read Dunn. I would like to verify it.
Let me summarize your view, first.

[Liz]
Sanders stresses (p.180-182, and in fact everywhere) the Rabbinic dictum
"All Israelites have a share in the world to come." Sanders states that to
be considered an Israelite you have to identify as one, not actively 
reject
it (p. 147, paperback).

Sanders points out (p. 149) that the purpose of the rabbinic dictum "All
Israelites have a share in the world to come" is to make clear that it is
not those who follow the law who have a share, or those for whom the 
number
of commandments followed is greater than the number of their 
transgressions,
but *all* Israelites.

[N. T. Wright]
> "Keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a covenantal
> scheme. God took the initiative, when he made a covenant with Judaism ...
> God's grace thus precedes everything that people (specifically,
> Jews) do in
> response. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response
> to grace - not, in other workds, in order to *get* into the covenant
> people,

[Liz]
This is correct up to here.

>but to *stay* in.

[Liz]
This is not correct. The Jew does not keep the covenant in order to "stay"
in. The Jew is in. He keeps the law because he is *commanded* to keep it.
God commands, and God rewards and God punishes, and God offers the
opportunity to repent. But all these, the rewards and the punishments, are
out of the covenantal relationship. Being punished by God for
transgressions is part of the covenant. This is stressed by Sanders.
Sanders states that the only way a Jew can get out of the covenant is to
disavow it, to apostasize. I wouldn't agree even with that.


Let me quote Dunn from his Word Biblical Commentary on Romans. 

[Dunn, p. lxv]
As Sanders clearly demonstrated clearly enough, Judaism's whole religious
self-understanding was based on the premise of grace - that God
had freely chosen Israel and made his ccovemant with Israel, to be their 
God and they his people. This covenant relationship was regulated by the
law, not as a way of entering the covenant , or of gaining merit, but 
as the way of living within the covenant; and that included the 
provision of sacrifice and atonement for those who confessed their sins
and thus repented. Paul himself indicates the attitude clearly
by his citation of Lev 18:5 in Rom 10:5 -"the person who does these
things [what the law requires] shall live by them'. This attitude
Sanders characterized by the now well known phrase "covenantal nomism" -
that is, "THE MAINTENANCE OF STATUS" among the chosen people of God
by observing the law given by God as part of that covenant relationship.


Another quote from p. lxxii:

Paul regularly warns against the "works of the law", not as "good works"
in general or any attempt by the individual to amass merit for himself, 
but rather as that pattern of obedience by which the "righteous"
MAINTAIN their status within the people of the covenant, as evidenced not
least by their dedication on such sensitive "test" issues as sabbath and 
food laws. 

Do these quotatoins imply that Dunn misunderstood Sanders? Or 
Is the expression "MAINTENANCE of status" ambiguous enough to mean
what you said?
 
Also about the issue whether Paul differed from Judaism with respect
to the "requirement" of doing the law, you and Dunn disagree. Let me
quote Dunn [p. lxvi]:

[Dunn]
Just as puzzling from a different angle is the fact that the "covenantal
nomism" of Palestinian Judaism as described by Sanders bears a striking
similarity to what has been commonly understood as the religion of Paul
himself (good works as the fruit of God's prior acceptance by grace)! 
What, then, can it be to which Paul is objecting?

[Sanders]
In fact, Sanders said, PPJ, p. 543, that 
".... on the point that which many have found the decisive contrast
between Paul and Judaism - grace and works - Paul is in 
agreement with Palestian Judaism..." 

[Moon]
Yes, Paul criticised some Jews for not doing the law, but only for
giving lip service to it. But does it mean that the official Judaism
did not require doing of the law? According to the above quotation from
Sanders, it does not seem so. 

Respectfully
Moon-ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea