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  • From: "Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Musings on Pauline studies in general...
  • Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 16:09:55 -0400


Steve,

How refreshing it is to see a posting (from you sent June 10, 3:28 PM) that
deals on a meta-level with the various theories of Paul. It brings these
exchanges here on c-p down to earth, into a very real and authentic context,
and, I think, a context of the unspoken agendas that lie behind all such
scholarly research and theorizing.

Clark M. Williamson, in his very fine1993 work A GUEST IN THE HOUSE OF
ISRAEL: POST-HOLOCAUST CHURCH THEOLOGY, championed the New Perspective on
Paul as being a needed corrective to the former view of Paul as
supersessionist towards Judaism. I agree with Williamson that this is the
real motivation behind the New Perspective, but I think that nonetheless the
New Perspective distorts Paul, who was authentically supersessionist,
anti-Judaic, and anti-Semitic. I think that saying that a problem does not
exist is a very bad way to try to solve any problem, because it is avoiding
it rather than even trying authentically to solve it.

There is, as you have well observed, also a strong feminist thrust in trying
to present a Paul who wasn't misogynist, but I don't think that that is
constructive, nor scientific, either.

What disturbs me about such unspoken agendas is when they thus transform
"research" into serving religion instead of serving the actual science of
religion. Where does religious scholarship end and religious ministry begin?
For example, Krister Stendahl went back and forth between the two
professions, and his work in ministry and in scholarship fed off of each
other and into each other; is this really sound? It's called a revolving
door in any other fields.

Best,
Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net





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