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  • From: Jeff Peterson <peterson AT austingrad.edu>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Is Judaism a Missionary Religion
  • Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 10:38:28 -0500

Cameron,

It's a good question, as are all questions of the form, What in earliest Christianity was continuous with second-temple Judaism and what was discontinuous? And a priori there's no problem asserting the possibility that 2T Judaism engaged in significant active proselytizing among gentiles, which rabbinic Judaism then curtailed. But history isn't finally written a priori, it's written on the basis of sources. My problem comes when you get down to combing the sources for evidence that 2T Jews went actively recruited gentile adherents, as the early Christians did; what I think you find is evidence that Jews (a) sought to favorably influence gentile perceptions; and (b) by and large welcomed those gentiles among the many attracted to eastern cults in the Hellentistic Roman era who found their way to the door of the synagogue. (As I've noted, I look forward to testing this thesis against the evidence collected and interpreted by John Dixon.)

A more promising link between ancient Judaism and early Christianity may be found in scriptural interpretation. Early Christians read the Scriptures in much the same was as the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, as inspired oracles disclosing the consummation of God's saving purpose that he would soon bring about. The prophets and psalms anticipate a number of times the pilgrimage of the gentiles to Jerusalem and the extension of Yahweh's sovereignty and his cult over all the nations. At least one text describes -- or can be read as describing, which is just as good for the composers of pesher and midrash! -- an embassy of Jews commissioned by God to rescue the nations from impending divine wrath (Isa 66:18-24). Rainer Riesner has argued with some plausibility that this text is the source of Paul's missionary self-understanding, and indeed of his westward missionary itenerary (PAUL'S EARLY PERIOD).

Jeff Peterson




On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 02:48 AM, Cameron VanEpps wrote:

Thanks for your response Jeffrey,

but my question really does not stem from a difference between propaganda and missionary outreach, but Paul's undying desire to proselytize. It seems a bit strange to me that at no point did he question his new "calling." Can we simply understand his "being sent out" under the pretense that he realized a new Judaism and so felt the need to proclaim it? Because of the early church's close ties to Judaism, it seems as if this idea of proselytization might have already been an established idea, although packaged differently due to the obvious theological differences. I am not saying Judaism had anything quite like the Apostles, but it makes you wonder how come Peter, Barnabas, those to whom Galatians is written against, and Paul, to mention a few, began to do as they did. Certainly an easy answer is because it was something rather in common with what they were used to under their old mindset.

Cameron P. VanEpps
215 W. Illinois St.
Bellingham, WA 98225
phone: (360) 715-8873
cell: (360) 319-6653

On Sunday, August 17, 2003, at 09:02 AM, corpus-paul-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

It's important to distinguish between propaganda on behalf of the
Jewish people (fostering favorable perceptions of Jews among gentiles)
and missionary outreach (aimed at the conversion of gentiles). The
second temple affords a number of examples of the former (e.g.,
literary sources such as Josephus' Against Apion and Philo's Embassy to
Gaius), but precious little evidence for the latter, although effective
propaganda did have the byproduct that some gentiles were so favorably
influenced as to seek out association with the Jewish people.

Good places to begin reading on this are Martin Goodman's MISSION AND
CONVERSION and Scot McKnight's LIGHT AMONG THE GENTILES. Hope this is
helpful.

Jeff Peterson


Jeffrey Peterson
Austin Graduate School of Theology
Austin, Texas



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Jeffrey Peterson
Austin Graduate School of Theology
Austin, Texas



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