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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Vs: Paul Not a Pharisee?
  • Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 04:51:19 -0600


Robert,

> Sakari Hakkinen wrote, "I am not at all convinced that
Paul was a Pharisee,
> for reasons I have written to the list some months (half a
> year?) ago." I would like to know his reasons but was
unable to find his
> posting in the archives.

In a follow-up note Sakari wrote as one of the data bits that left him unconvinced of Paul as Pharasee:
"Thirdly, the opponents of Paul, according to evidence, never said he was a Pharisee - they rejected him as an apostate what comes to Torah."

Hi Sakari,
Hope you are well, enjoying another winter in Finland.

Whether Paul had been or was still a Pharisee or not, of this evidence from supposed "opponents of Paul" I am unaware. Would you mind supplying some data?

Moreover, Paul as apostate runs against my reading of Paul or any other data of which I am aware. For example, as a circumcised person Paul could tell the Galatian gentiles considering circumcision that circumcised people are "indebted to keep/guard the whole Torah" (5:3). Seems to me a meaningless rhetorical point if his addressees know that he has the standing as circumcised that they desire, but without the obligation upon which he hangs his dissuasive point against them changing their state from gentiles to proselytes. How would you account for this kind of implication?

In a similar vein, Paul claims to have received disciplinary stripes from synagogue authorities (2 Cor. 11). This implies that these authorities saw his behavior (his non-circumcision inclusion of gentiles as full members as though proselytes; cf. Gal. 5:11) as wrong and dangerous, but nevertheless as reconcilable, not apostate. After all, Paul subordinated himself to their authority to punish him for this behavior. For such rights of discipline where exercised only within this voluntary (and minority) community--perhaps not always in Judea--at least in the Diaspora environments in which Paul worked. The world was Roman, not Jewish, and such treatment of a "former" Jewish person, especially if a Roman citizen, is difficult to square with Paul as apostate. It seems that Paul was still working within the confines of Jewish communal affairs, and his presence being accepted, albeit not without the expression of (extreme) dissatisfaction on some matters, by the authorities thereof.

Regards,
Mark Nanos
Kansas City





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