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  • From: "Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul's persecution of the Church
  • Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 14:32:41 -0400


Vince,

Your assumption that "His [Paul's] dispute with them [the Jerusalem group]
before {the council in Jerusalem] could not have been over their policy of
converting Gentiles since they did not accept Gentiles without circumcision
until the Jerusalem council" is indicated to be a false asumption, on a good
deal of evidence, but especially because it contradicts Acts 10:34-11:18.
Furthermore, it presumes that the council in Jerusalem had been called for
some reason *other* than finally to settle the issue of whether or not
Paul's numerous uncircumcised adult male Gentile "converts" to the (at that
time) Jesus sect of Jews were actually converts, or, contrariwise, whether
they would have to become circumcised in order to become converts and thus
true followers of the Jew, Jesus. In other words, your false assumption
would make it impossible to understand the reason why Paul was being called
to Jerusalem, and consequently impossible to understand Acts 15 and
Galatians 2, both of which are about this conflict concerning whether or not
circumcision was to be held to be obligatory.

In Galatians 2:2, Paul said that what was at stake for him in this conflict
was nothing less than the success or failure of his life's work since his
conversion to this Jewish sect 17 years earlier. His life's work, according
to Galatians 2:8, was to convert as many Gentiles as possible. After 17
years of his evangelizing, he probably had thousands of uncircumcised adult
male Gentiles as "converts," but this was, after all, a Jewish sect up to
that point, and the covenant-forming commandment, Genesis 17:14, required
all of these men to become circumcised. Inasmuch as there did not at that
time exist anaesthesia, nor antibiotics, this would have required subjecting
all of these men to an excruciating, and also dangerous, elective medical
operation. In Philippians 3:2, Paul called it cutting into the body, and
said that only dogs would demand that this be done to his men. When Paul
said in Galatians 2:2 that the success or failure of his life's work was on
the line here, he would there have feared that, if circumcision would be
ruled to be a prerequisite to these men's being accepted into this Jewish
sect, then quite possibly all or most of them would decide to quit, and
Paul's life's work would go up in smoke.

So, I think that it is very important to understand how and why this medical
issue of circumcision finally came to a head in Paul's 17th year of
evangelizing. Paul wanted the only obligatory initiation-ritual to be
baptism, which some Jewish sects of that time considered to be obligatory
for Gentile proselytes, especially because it was so easy and safe. However,
all Jewish sects considered circumcision to be an obligatory
initiation-ritual for Gentile males on the basis of the covenant-forming
commandment Genesis 17:14, and the question to be decided at the council in
Jerusalem was whether the Jesus sect was going to break with that policy,
and with the covenant-forming commandment, and hold circumcision to be not
necessary, even though, according to Genesis 17:14, it clearly was
necessary.

That's what the council in Jerusalem was all about. Unlike, say, the food
laws, the commandment that males must become circumcised was a real terror
for any adult Gentile male in that era. A jewish infant 8 days old didn't
even know what was happening to him, but these adult Gentile males would
have known, quite well, and they'd have had the option to say no. Paul
therefore had very real reason to fear for the very success of his life's
work, and so to resist the imposition of the covenant.

Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net





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