Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>]

Jürg_Buchegger wrote:

> The origin of the now fameous expression "new
> perspective on Paul" is
> normally credited to Dunns 1982 lecture (=1983
> article). While researching
> for my dissertation I think I came across the
> note somewhere, that Sanders
> himself has already used the expression "new
> perspective"! 

Jürg,
You might find the quote you are after in Sanders, Paul and Pal. Judaism, p.
496: "It is my own view that Paul did not so much misunderstand the role of
the law in Judaism as gain a new perspective which led him to declare the
law abolished." That is still different than Dunn's statement in the article
you cite, but a possible source of the dilemma.

Loren wrote:
 
> I believe Dunn was the first to use the term "new
> perspective" in academic writing, though I may be
> wrong. Of course, Stendahl and Sanders (in different
> ways) are the ones who actually launched the "new
> perspective".

Loren,
I hope it is not unbecoming to note that the basic argument of "the" "new"
perspective was made long ago (at least in the 1800's) by "outsiders" to
Pauline study, but their contribution was largely ignored "until" the
contributions of Davies, Stendahl, Sanders, et al., although Moore got some
notice, and later Schoeps, in different directions. Sanders notes that
Jewish scholars have made the basic observations about the nature of first
century Judaism being very different than Paul (ostensibly, at least in the
traditional Christian construction) portrayed it to be. [tracing these
earlier developments among various interpretive communities would make a
good thesis topic, if someone is searching...]

Perhaps a sampling of examples I have handy would be of interest from merely
one of the available sources. In his 1892 Hibbert Lectures, the Jewish
scholar C. G. Montefiore wrote many comments worthy of citation (note:
Sander's does not quote from this source, but a later Montefiore work that
stressed a different angle), including arguments from the primary sources
that are not cited below.

1. On whether the issue was more social than theological, from which Dunn
works toward his argument for ethnocentric exclusivism as the problem:

p. 481: "Where these evil results of legalism became discernible, they were
apparently due, not to the legalism as such, but to the ceremonial law.
Humility, not pride, was the mark of post-exilic Judaism. Where pride comes
in, it is owing, not to a consciousness of having individually fulfilled the
law, but to a comparison and contrast between Jew and heathen, or between
law-observer and law-breaker."

[with the above nuance to his use of legalism in mind...:
p. 548: "On the religious side, the chief and permanent defect of legalism
was its emphasized nationalism. Orthodox Judaism can never utterly overcome
this defect; for though it has ceased to teach that God loves the Jews more
than he loves the Gentiles, or deals with them according to a different
measure, its law, the embodiment of its religion, the medium of its
communion with god, and the source of its highest bliss, remains--and must
remain--purely national or sectarian. And yet, for critics of every school,
there is no getting over the fact that some of the highest possibilities of
religion have been evoked and conditioned by the law. . . . It was the law
which made God near; it was the law which brought him home; it was the law
by which his sanctifying presence was felt within the heart. It was the law
which cleansed the religious motive of sordidness and egoism. It was the law
under and through which that potent goal of human purpose was devised, the
sanctification of God..."

2. On whether getting in or staying in (ala Sanders), and having a good
consciousness of being righteous yet a sinner before God (ala Stendahl):

p. 482: "If anything, Jews were somewhat too confident of their assured
participation in the blessedness of eternal life; all Israelites, except
very exceptional and determined sinners, were believed to have their share
in it. Yet within their own community, the Jews, upon the whole, preserved a
happy mean between pride and despair: righteous as compared with the
heathen, they felt themselves sinners before God. If God, indeed, were to
bear transgressions in mind, no man could stand before him, and religion
would be impossible. Blithe, though humble, is Israel's hope, because with
God there is forgiveness."

3. On universalism (ala Davies): p. 156: "it was the prophets of the eighth
century [earlier he wrote, "the seed was sown by Moses... the ground was
watered by Samuel, by Nathan and Gad, by Elijah and Micaiah...] who began to
teach the doctrine--so strange to antiquity--that a single God of one people
might become the One God of all. Thus the prophets point forward on the one
hand to the Law, which sought by definite enactment and discipline to help
on the schooling of the holy nation, living apart and consecrate to God, and
on the other hand to the Apostle of Tarsus, who carried the universalist
idea so nearly to its final and practical conclusion."

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
313 NE Landings Dr.
Lee's Summit, MO 64064
USA
nanosmd AT comcast.net