Corpus-Paul

[Billy Evans <biblewje AT comcast.net>]

on 10/15/02 9:28 AM, Mark D. Nanos at nanosmd AT comcast.net wrote:

> 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
Good work Mark:

For those who might like to study the views of Claude Montefiore see the
most recent issue of HUCA, vols 70-71 (1999-2000)pp. 405-428.  According to
the article Paul never discussed rabbinic Judaism in the first place (424).
According to Montefiore, Langton says, "There was even one element of moral
worth in Paul's objection to justification by works that was worth
salvaging.  According to Montefiore, the apostle had taught that one failed
to win righteousness by fulfilling the Law because one could never fulfill
it; worse still, one failed to win righteousness even if one did the Law.
In spite of his recognition that 'no Jew ever looked at the Law from this
point of view," Montefiore admitted that he felt there was, indeed, a danger
that "works righteousness" could lead to self-righteousnessand self-delusion
(p425)."

My own professor at HUC Ellis Rivkin told me that Jews should regard the
apostle Paul as just as inspired as Moses.  I was amazed that Professor had
most of Paul memorized and was miles away from the misguided teaching that
Paul was anti-Semitic and taught a new kind of faith.


-- 
William "Billy" J Evans Jr-Nashville
Doctorate Rabbinics, Dead Sea Scrolls, Targums at Hebrew Union College
Doctorate in NT at University of So. Africa