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  • From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT mailhost.chi.ameritech.net>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 14:09:13 -0500


Edgar Krentz wrote:

> Jeff Gibson wrote:
>
> >Inspired by Jonathan Ryder's question regarding what works exist on the
> >issue of what in Paul is "pre-Pauline", I have been reading the very
> >book I recommended to him, A.M. Hunter's _Paul and His Predecessors_.
> >An up shot of this is that I have been struck by something Hunter says
> >with regard to the question of whether or not the "doctrine" of
> >justification was something which Paul's *peculium*. Hunter argues that
> >it was NOT. His grounds for his conclusion are four considerations:

[snip]

> >Now what ever may be made of each of these arguments or the assumptions
> >behind them, they nevertheless point up something that I had not really
> >given much thought to (possibly because of not reading widely enough),
> >namely, that "justification" is historically NOT strictly a Pauline
> >doctrine. It is not original to Paul.
> >
> >So two questions. Is Hunter's thesis (which he notes was adumbrated by
> >Weiss in his _History of Primitive Christianity_, p. 231) that the
> >justification is not "Pauline" sound?
> >
> >Second, if it is sound, to whom or to what do we attribute its origin?
>
> Jeff, the concept is of DIKAIOSYNE QEOU is certainly present at Qumran.
> TEhe zedakah I..H is there in the OT (cf Hab 2:4). See Kaesemann on Romans
> 1:17, et al.
>

Perhaps I was unclear. What I thought Hunter was claiming -- and certainly
what *I*
was trying to say -- is that there seems to be grounds for saying that what
we take to
be **Paul's** "doctrine" of justification, namely, that Gentiles as well as
Jews
become or are recognized as the people of God not through "works of the Law"
but
through/by imitating the faithfulness of Jesus, **was not original to
Paul**, that
the "Christian" form of the doctrine was something he inherited and/or was
already
known among believers "before" Paul.

Yours,

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT ameritech.net






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