Corpus-Paul

["Hyam Maccoby" <h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk>]

Eric Zuesse wrote:

>Peter had temporized in the argument sufficiently to have been able to sit
down peaceably to lunch or dinner with those uncircumcised men, ignoring
that this was in violation of the principle enunciated in Exodus 12:48
prohibiting such ceremonial dining with non-circumcised men. >

This is totally wrong.  Exodus 12:48 refers to only one meal in the year,
the Passover meal, in which uncircumcised men are forbidden to partake.
Circumcised Jews may share meals with Gentiles at any other meal, provided
that they do not eat any forbidden kind of food that may happen to be on the
table.  A good example of this is the case of Daniel, who shared meals with
Gentiles but confined himself to vegetarian food(Daniel 1).

This point is very relevant to the case of Peter at Antioch.  When he shared
meals with uncircumcised men he was not breaking any Jewish law, so when he
broke away from the table it was not because he had suddenly reverted from
law-breaking to law-keeping.  It must have been because he realised that
Paul was contravening the agreement reached at the Jerusalem Council and
that it was time to make a final break with Paul.  I have argued this in
full in THE MYTHMAKER.  There is no reason whatever to think that James
changed his mind about the conclusions reached at the Jerusalem Council, but
every reason to think that Paul did not abide by these conclusions.

Hyam Maccoby










____________________________________________________________________________
_________


Dr.Hyam Maccoby
Research Professor
Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds.LS2
Direct lines: tel. +44 (0)113 268 1972
                   fax +44 (0)113 268 0041
e-mail: h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk




----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>
To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 2:13 PM
Subject: [corpus-paul] Re: Jerusalem conference


> Re: Robert Brenchley's:
>
> > There's nothing in Acts to suggest that Paul went off from Jerusalem
with
> a
> > chip on his shoulder, and that's exactly the impression I get from
> Galatians.
>
> I agree with your inference from Galatians 2:11-21 that Paul was very
> disturbed against the leaders, but I see no indication from Galatians that
> "Paul went off from Jerusalem with a chip on his shoulder."
>
> Paul said in 2:10 that he did not. We have no reason to believe otherwise.
>
> The friction clearly occurred *soon after* he got back to Antioch.
Although
> Paul (2:10) had gotten his way at the council in Jerusalem, James right
> afterwards (2:11-12) changed his mind and sent first Peter, and then (to
> arrive in Antioch later the same day) other "agents from James," all
telling
> Paul that his uncircumcised Gentile male "converts" were *not* really
> converts after all, and had to become circumcised in order to become real
> members of the Jesus-sect of Jews.
>
> Peter had temporized in the argument sufficiently to have been able to sit
> down peaceably to lunch or dinner with those uncircumcised men, ignoring
> that this was in violation of the principle enunciated in Exodus 12:48
> prohibiting such ceremonial dining with non-circumcised men. When caught
in
> this violation by James's follow-up team who reiterated the importance of
> adhering to Genesis 17:14, Peter jumped back from the table and repeated,
> this time in front of James's backup team, that Paul's men had to become
> circumcised. Then (2:13) Paul's immediate superior, Barnabas, fell into
line
> behind James's order, and so, too, did everyone present except Paul's
> uncircumcised men. This was the beginning of Christianity.
>
> James had changed his mind because of the unequivocal nature of Genesis
> 17:14. Furthermore, Genesis 17:13 had, equally unequivocally, said that
the
> covenant that God would be having with the Jews would be everlasting.
17:13
> also said that the way in which a man would sign on the dotted line to
> become one of God's people would be by his being circumcised. In 17:24,
> Abraham complied with this, the first of God's commandments,  thus signed
> God's covenant or agreement on the dotted line, and became the first of
> God's people, the first "Jew."
>
> Paul's Genesis 15:6 argument, given in Galatians 3:1-10, was therefore
> false: the covenant had not yet been signed by the time of Genesis 15:6;
> God's acceptance of Abraham there was consequently purely tentative. God
had
> not yet by then even so much as offered the covenant. God's acceptance of
> Abraham in 15:6 meant simply that God expressed there his confidence that
> Abraham was the sort of man He would want to offer His covenant with. In
> Genesis 17:2 God promised to offer Abraham and his people a covenant; in
> 17:13-14 God did so; and in 17:24-27, Abraham and his people signed it.
>
> We, today, may think that all of this was myth, but Jesus's followers then
> did not; as believing Jews, they thought that this was history, not myth.
> This history was, in fact, their religion, and the core of it was their
> obedience to God's commandments, the Law, the core of the Torah.
>
> You refer to Paul's "chip on his shoulder."
>
> Let's explore now: what did that "chip" really consist of?
>
> Consider Galatians 2:2 saying that the matter that was to be debated at
the
> council in Jerusalem would determine the success or failure of Paul's
life's
> work in the past and in the present. What could he possibly have been
> referring to?
>
> According to 1:18 and 2:1, he had been accumulating uncircumcised male
> "converts" for 17 years. An evangelist's success was measured by the
number
> of his converts. These "converts" by Paul were now all at stake in the
> decision that James would come up with. That's what Paul was referring to
in
> 2:2.
>
> Circumcision was the issue in 2:3-5 leading up to the council-meeting.
> Circumcision was also the issue in this very letter, Galatians, as
indicated
> in its 5:2-12. That is why circumcision was also the unnamed issue behind
> its own 1:6-9: Paul was terrified here because one or more of his Galatian
> "converts" had bolted from his group and joined James's organization by
> becoming circumcised. There was now the very real possibility that others
> would follow and that Paul would thus lose all or most of what he had
spent,
> even by the time of just the Jerusalem conference, already 17 years
building
> up.
>
> However, Paul and James were both in a real bind, and therefore could not
> afford to become public, overt, and explicit, about their conflict:
>
> James could not publicly excommunicate Paul and Paul's men, because of the
> severe poverty of James's followers and their growing dependence upon the
> financial support that was coming in increasingly from Paul's collections
> since Paul's Gentile followers were far more wealthy and powerful than the
> pitifully poor and politically vulnerable Jewish followers of that man
whom
> Rome had executed for sedition. Furthermore, James's own "success" was, by
> now, largely dependent upon Paul, because Paul was the best salesman
James's
> organization ever had. If Paul's men were to be excommunicated, then
James's
> group would have instantly become virtually annihilated, since the
disciples
> and other followers of Jesus were simply dying off.
>
> Paul, likewise, was dependent upon James for the respectability as being
> "Jewish" that was essential to Paul's own claim to be a follower of the
> Jewish mashiach. Paul and his followers had to gradually and subtly
redefine
> that "Christ" as non-political and as a Christian instead of as a Jew.
>
> By the time that Paul's follower who wrote Matthew 16:18 was writing, it
was
> already so long after Jesus's death that it was now possible to assert
that
> Jesus Himself had started Christianity. Paul wasn't able to assert such a
> thing when Paul was alive, because when Paul was writing, there were
people
> still living who had known the actual Jesus and who would have declared
Paul
> publicly a liar, and who would have had recognized authority to do so. But
> by the time that the Gospel writers were writing, such people had died
off.
>
> What do you think? This is how I reconstruct Christianity's start. I would
> like to know the reactions to this reconstruction from other participants.
>
> Best,
> Eric Zuesse
> cettel AT shoreham.net
>
>
>
>
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