Corpus-Paul

["Roy E. Ciampa" <Roy_Ciampa AT compuserve.com>]

I would like to piggy-back on Jon's support of my reference to 4QMMT
(thanks) and respond to Jerry's  comment regarding the relevance of 4QMMT
for our understanding of "works of the law" in Paul.  Also I want to
clarify a point I made regarding Liz's comment about whether or not Jews
might have thought it wrong to share a meal with Gentiles even if the food
were kosher.

First, regarding 4QMMT, Jerry suggests "It is a rather large leap from a
use of a somewhat similar expression in a different language in _one_
document of a quite sectarian group to the idea 
that this expression was current in the vernacular of the larger population
and has moved to Greek-speaking Jews AND that whatever they meant is what
Paul meant."

I find it curious that people scoured the Rabbinic literature in search of
this precise expression (the one they used to translate the Greek into
Hebrew) and when it is found in a context that just HAPPENS to discuss
JUSTIFICATION by means of these works of the law someone (you Jerry!) could
suggest that it is a "large leap" to consider it relevant.  I point out
that 4QMMT was not meant primarily for internal consumption within the
Qumran community, but appears to be a document prepared to persuade people
outside the community of the correctness of their views.  In that context
it describes its contents as "works of the law" as though the reader(s)
(outside the community) will know what they mean by that expression.  Of
course, Paul does the same in Romans, when he writes to a church he has not
founded and which he has never visited, he expects them to know what he
means by the expression "works of the law".  Now we have found a document
(the only non-Pauline document in antiquity) which seems to give a very
good idea of what was meant by the expression and it refers to a concept
that came to be known as halakha.  The fact that Qumran is a sectarian
community suggests that their halakha or "works of the law" may be
distinctive (as would be the halakhic standards of various Jewish movements
of the period), but hardly suggests that no one else would know what they
were talking about.  
        I guess I might be excussed for suggesting that I prefer the very
clear and relevant linguistic and literary background to the expression
"works of the law" that I find in 4QMMT to the absolute lack of literary
support for any other view which might be promoted.  Especially since it
makes very good sense in the context of Galatians 2:11ff.  Despite the
differences of opinion about the exact nature of the problem that lead
Jewish believers to stop eating with Gentile believers it would seem most
likely that it would be considered some sort of halakhic problem - the very
issue dealt with in 4QMMT.

I want to clarify my response to Liz's suggestion that:

"the issue of table fellowship with uncircumcised Christians is not the
issue of fellowship, with which there is no problem, but the issue of
eating
non-kosher food."

I responded with an argument that for many Jews in the Second Temple Period
it may well have been a problem to eat with Gentiles even if they were
eating kosher food.  I quoted later Rabbinic materials to show that even
some of that material suggests that 1) the problem of eating with Gentiles
went beyond the issue of kosher vs. non-kosher food, and 2) the argument of
the text reveals that more than one position was being promoted at the time
and the author was condemning those who held a different view.  (I suggest
the halakhic situation in the Second Temple Period was much less
homogenized than later Rabbinic material might suggest.  It seems to me
that the NT provides some important information regarding halakhic debates
of the period.)  

In fact, I do not doubt that dietary issues, and not simply the issue of
eating with Gentiles, were behind the problem in Antioch (as my fuller and
more nuanced argument in my book suggests).  I did not mean to suggest that
the issue in Antioch was necessarily simply that of Jews and Gentiles
eating together, but I was reacting to Liz's assertion that it was
universally accepted among Second Temple Jews that it was OK to eat with
Gentiles as long as you were careful to eat kosher food.  That comment, and
a later one regarding "the standard Jewish position" makes me wonder if the
halakhic clarity of later Rabbinic times and sources are perhaps being read
into the NT period.

In response to Jerry's question:

"what were "those from James" upset about?"

I think the clearest answer I would give (here following Dunn's commentary,
p. 121ff.) is that the (halakhic) conditions which were considered
acceptable to the Jewish Christians in Antioch were thought to be too loose
by those coming from Jerusalem.  That is, as is implied in the later text
cited in my earlier message (t. Abod. Zar. 4:6; b. Abod. Zar. 8a) we are
dealing with a situation where more than one halakhic standard was being
used.  That of "those from James" was stricter than that of the Jewish
Christians of Antioch.  I think the varying standards that might have been
found among Jewish Christians could have gone anywhere from "it is now OK
to eat non-kosher food with Gentiles (because we are no longer under the
Law of Moses)" to "Jews should not eat with Gentiles (even if they are
believers)" with dozens of other possible intermediate positions (e.g., we
can eat with them if we serve the food, or if we bring our own food, or if
they promise to serve kosher food, or if they promise not to serve food
that had been offered to idols, or ....).

Take care,

        Roy

Roy_Ciampa AT compuserve.com