Corpus-Paul

["Mark Goodacre" <M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk>]

Terry

Thanks for those useful comments and apologies for this delayed 
reply.  I hadn't thought of Hooker's statement as linking to the Deut 
21.22-23 / Gal. 3 context but now see that she makes this very link 
on the previous page of the book, p. 43, "According to the law, 
criminals who were condemned to death and who were hung on a tree 
were under the curse of God, and so became a curse to the land (Deut. 
21.22-23).  How, then, could God have allowed his chosen anointed one 
to have been crucified, branded by the law as an offence to God 
himself, and a source of infection to others?  We can imagine Paul 
*before* his conversion, indignantly rejecting Christian claims for 
Jesus and quoting Deuteronomy 21."

I am sure you are right that there are problems with this view, and 
note Prof. Maccoby's comments that this interpretation of Deut. 21:22-
23 is not found in any Jewish source of the period.  Indeed, even if 
Hooker et al were right about this, I struggle to see how we can go 
to the next stage with her and imagine that Paul saw this as a 
"demonstration of the fact that righteousness before God . . .  does 
not depend on obedience to the law" (p. 44).  Even if the pre-
Christian Paul was inclined to focus on Deut. 21.22-23, it is very 
difficult to see this construed in the way Hooker does, as -- for 
Paul -- effectively branding Jesus as himself "a lawbreaker, an 
offence to God".  There are so many ways in which Jesus' death could 
be construed, as martyrdom, suffering servant, paschal offering etc., 
that would suggest that the link made here is unlikely.

Mark
-----------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre                 mailto:M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk
  Dept of Theology                  tel: +44 121 414 7512
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