Corpus-Paul

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: moon-ryul jung [mailto:moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr]
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 1999 5:36 PM
> To: Corpus-paul
> Subject: RE:(To Liz) Sanders misunderstood
>
>
> Dear Liz,
>
> I am learning a  lot from you.
Thank you. And I from you, and from everyone on this list.

 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. )
Oops, sorry.  I have it now. Let me try to explain it.  This is the quote
you refer to:  "The argument [of Paul] is that one need not be Jewish to be
"righteous" and is thus against the standard Jewish view that accepting and
living by the law is a sign and condition of favored status. This is the
position which, independently of paul, we can know to have characterized
Judaism and the position which Paul attacks."

This discussion is in the context of what it means to be righteous and who
is righteous and what is required to be righteous. It is the standard Jewish
view that only that person is righteous who obeys the laws.  This is the
position which Paul attacks.  Paul argues you are made righteous not by what
you do, but by your faith in God.

Sanders also says that Paul also attacks the Jewish view that you don't have
to accept the totality of the law to part of the covenanted people.  To the
Jew, to be part of the elect (which is not a Jewish term, but the one
Sanders uses) you must accept the yoke of the commandments.  To the Jew
there is only one covenant, and that is God's covenant with Israel. To be
part of that covenant you must accept God's right to command and his right
to punish disobedience to those commands.

Now there is confusion here between what it means to be righteous and what
it means to be part of God's covenanted relationship with Israel. These are
not the same thing.  The righteous person, the tsaddik, must be part of
Israel, and keep the commandments to be considered righteous.  The
unrighteous Jew is also part of Israel, will also inherit the world to come.
This is the whole point of Sanders' book Paul and Palestinian Judaism.
Judaism disagrees with Paul, you are righteous only if you obey the
commandments.  If you are not righteous, and you don't atone for your
transgressions, God slaps you around a bit.

<snipping here (got that, Jeffrey?)>

> 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.

Liz here:
I'm totally confused. I have Sanders' book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism,
where he defines "covenantal nomism" (p. 75).  I quote, "Covenantal nomism
is the view that one's place in God's plan is established on the basis of
the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man
his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for
transgression."

This is absolutely true and correct, insofar as I understand it. I don't
understand what it has to do with getting in, or staying in, or getting out.
This is simply a definition of the covenant, of what the covenant means, or
ought to mean, to the Jew.  The proper response to the grace of being in a
covenanted relationship with God is doing what God commands. An *improper*
response is not doing what God commands.  If you don't do what God commands,
if you exhibit an improper response, then bad things happen. When you do
what God commands, good things happen.

[Liz continues:]

Sanders defines covenantal nomism again on p. 236 of Paul and Palestinian
Judaism.  Here may lie the source of confusion. Sanders states that the
rabbis believed in the enduring validity of the covenant relationship and
that God has provided for the salvation of all faithful members of Israel.
But then Sanders defines Israel as being  "all those who maintain their
place in the covenant by obedience and by employing the means of atonement
provided by the covenant, especially repentance, for transgression."  This
is covenantal nomism.

But to understand Sanders here you need to understand what he means when he
says "all the means of atonement provided by the covenant."  Sanders spends
a great deal of time and attention and space addressing the role and means
of atonement.  According to Sanders, a major means of atonement which the
rabbis believed was death. Death atoned. Another means was the Day of
Atonement. The Day of Atonement atones whether or not you go to shule, and
repent or fast, etc. The day itself atones.  Repentance is not the only
means.

Just skimming now, on p. 234 Sanders says "Saying that the covenant was
given on the condition of obedience might seem to imply that the Rabbis
believed that disobedience would lead God to revoke the covenant promises,
so that the election, in effect, had constantly to be *earned.*  In fact, we
found those passages never to imply such a view (which is, indeed, totally
absent from Rabbinic literature)."

Sanders then states (p. 234) "a man must confess the commandments in order
to retain his position in the covenant, denial of the right of God to give
commandments indicates denial of the election." I'm not sure I understand
what he means here.  It may be that Sanders thinks that if you disavow the
covenant you are not in it any more. On the other hand, it may be that
Sanders  means something different by "position in the covenant."  It may
not refer to in or out of the covenant, but ones position *in* it. It seems
to me that denial of the right of God to give commandments is simply a sin,
like any other sin, and is simply punished if not atoned for. The people who
reportedly reversed their circumcision were certainly still viewed as Jews.

 However, it may be that Sanders is saying that if you deny the right of God
to command, then you disavow the covenant, and in that case you are out of
it. If so,  what Sanders is stressing here is that it is not God who
determines whether a person is in or out of the covenant, but the individual
himself.  This is crucial.  The only way a person is out of the covenant is
by disavowing it.


>
>
> Another quote from p. lxxii: [Moon quoting Dunn]
>
> 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?

If I understand correctly, Dunn is not talking here about the ordinary
person.  Dunn refers to the person who would be viewed as *righteous," the
tsaddik.  In order to be viewed as  righteous, you must uphold the
commandments, not the least the sabbath and the dietary laws.  However, you
don't have to be righteous to be in the covenant. Jewish tradition teaches
that the world is maintained because of 12 righteous men (probably they mean
Jews tho).  This is based on the Sodom and Gomorrah story.  If there had
been 12 righteous men in Sodom, it woudn't have been destroyed.  So there is
a category of person known as the Tsaddik, the righteous person.  The rest
of us are not tsaddiks.  (This is as I said above. This may be where the
difficulty lies.)

The point of this is a profound disagreement with Paul.  To the Jew, a
person is defined as righteous if he keeps the law, including the so-called
particularistic laws, the sabbath and the dietary laws, the holidays,e tc.,
the very laws that Paul disavows.  To the Jew, it is not faith in God that
makes one righteous, but obedience to the laws, all of them.  Further, to
the Jew it is well within man's capability to obey the whole of the law.
Deuteronomy 30:11 is interpreted as the whole of torah, "it is not too hard
for you."

But, again in disagreement with Paul, being righteous or being a tsaddik is
not required for membership in the covenant.  It is simply that if you sin,
you will be punished by God. God's right to punish exists because of the
covenantal relationship.

> [Moon here]
> 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..."
I don't understand Paul's view of the law, or of Judaism, well enough, and I
shouldn't comment on this.  But I will speculate anyway. I think Paul
expected a new covenant would be written on the heart of those accepting
Christ.  The person would be righteoused by God, and would obey the law
automatically. He would obey the law automatically because God had written
it on his heart.  In this way, obedience is the fruit of accepting Christ.

But this is certainly not the thought in Judaism. One obeys the law because
he decides to make the effort. He decides this way because he feels
personally commanded to by God.

In any case, Sanders says that Paul's only objection to Judaism is that
there is no room in it for Christ.  To Sanders (in PPJ) this is Paul's only
objection, it isn't Christian.

>
> [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.
I don't understand what you are asking here. But yes, Judaism believes that
God requires obedience to the whole of the law. If you don't obey it, you
get punished. The punishments are listed in Deuteronomy 28ff.

I hope this helped.
Liz
>
> Respectfully
> Moon-ryul Jung
> Assistant Professor
> Dept of Computer Science
> Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea
>

 Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu