Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - John Gager's "Reinventing Paul"

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: John Gager's "Reinventing Paul"
  • Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 07:39:54 -0700 (PDT)


I'm wondering if any list members have read John
Gager’s "Reinventing Paul" yet. It basically
synthesizes the arguments of Stendahl, Gaston, and
Stowers and makes them accessible on a popular level.
Gager hammers home the point that Paul had nothing
against the law in so far as how it related to the
Jewish people, that all negative devaluations of the
Torah found in Galatians and Romans applied to
Gentiles and Gentiles alone. Thus, for instance, in
Rom. 7:14-25, Paul speaks not autobiographically, but
rather plays on the rhetoric of Gentile traditions
(like Eurpides' Medea who, about to slay her children,
wails, "I know that what I’m about to do is evil, but
passion is stronger than reasoned reflection") in
order to convince Gentiles how hopeless it would be
for them to try living under a foreign law.

For the particularly negative devaluations found in
Galatians, Gager draws heavily on Gaston’s work,
suggesting that when Paul speaks of the law as a
"curse" in Gal. 3:13, he speaks of it as a curse for
Gentiles only. (He notes parallels in IV Ezra 7:20-24
and Exodus Rabbah 5:9 speaking of the Torah as giving
life to the Jewish people, but dealing death and
curses for Gentiles.) Likewise, to make sense of the
difficult and convoluted argument of Gal. 4:22-5:1,
Gager notes that many Jewish texts connect the giving
of the law at Sinai with Gentiles (such as Jubilees
15:28-32), in contrasting the election of Jews apropos
Isaac and the covenant with Abraham with the
non-election of Gentiles apropos Ishmael and the
covenant from Sinai.

The most controversial aspect of the book probably
lies in Stendahl’s famous "two-path" plan of salvation
with regards to Rom. 9-11. Gager writes that for Paul
Israel would be saved apart from the Christ (Rom.
11:25-27), that Paul taught salvation through Christ
only as a "special path" for Gentiles (see p. 146).
But it is difficult to imagine a first-century Jew
like Paul to believe that most of Israel would be
saved apart from her own messiah. Stendahl's view
makes Paul Jewish by twentieth century standards, but
perhaps not very Jewish by first-century standards.

But on the whole I’m encouraged by Gager’s book. He
sets Paul firmly within the "new perspective",
interacting with a genuine and non-legalistic Judaism.
I'm wondering how other list-members feel about the
book, or about the key Pauline texts which strongly
devalue the Torah.

Loren Rosson III,
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page