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  • From: Zeba Crook <zeba.crook AT utoronto.ca>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Does True Historian = Objective Historian?
  • Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 11:18:28 -0400


Antonio Jerez wrote:

> As modern, liberal Christians, living in a post-holocaust world it is
> natural that
> neither Gager or Stendahl have much use of a Paul (or any other early
> Christian
> writer) who teaches that the New Convenant has replaced the Old Covenant.
> This is
> political correctness at its worst and has little to do with working as a
> true
> historian.

Interpretation does not happen independently of the social context of the
interpreter.
This means that Stendahl's conclusions may well have been guided by social
forces, but
so were the pre-war interpreters who never questioned the picture of an anti
Jewish
Paul (a picture that was easily exaggerated into a Jew hating Paul).
Likewise, recent
scholars who claim that Paul was in fact anti Jewish (or at least had a
problem with
Judaism) are able to do so only because of social forces, either because they
themselves are Jewish (like Boyarin), who are less vulnerable to charges of
anti-Semitism, or because as we get further away from the holocaust its
control
diminishes, or because anti-Semitism is so uncommon now (in most sectors of
society).
Either way, recent scholarship is no less and no more objective historically
than is
previous scholarship; we simply are working under new presuppositions.

Zeba Crook

--
Zeba Antonin Crook, PhD (Cand)
University of St. Michael's College
81 St. Mary Street
Toronto, Ontario
M4Y 1R5






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