Corpus-Paul

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

on 1/12/05 1:15 PM, Jim West at jwest AT highland.net wrote:

> My difficulty is not that Paul had one set of standards for Jews and
> another for Gentiles... oh wait, yes, it is after all just exactly
> that.  If Torah is relativized, as you suggest, then which parts must
> observant jewish Christians observe?  And which parts not?  And who decides?

Jim,
This is actually clear and interesting, although the tone of your questions
strikes me as incredulous that anyone would suppose that there might be
answers worth pursuing. I am just such a fool.

On your first statement: It would seem to me to be wrong if there is only
one standard and it was the one for non-Jews applied to Jews or of Jews
applied to non-Jews. But wait, there is plenty of evidence in Paul's letters
and in Acts that Jewish standards did have priority, but yet not entirely
applied to non-Jews as if Jews. Shall we use Jewish texts, or Homer?

What Torah regulations will be observed, and what not? you ask, and who
decides? Great questions. I do not see them as obstructions to the
proposition that Torah continued to apply, but messy and interesting, making
for just the kind of strange communal developments and texts of which we are
aware. What would happen if instead of assuming that there were no issues
along these lines we instead hypothesized their probable existence--since
this was after all a movement that was begun by Jewish people for whom
Torah's centrality could not be a priori dismissed--and tried to tease them
out?

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
Rockhurst University
Co-Moderator
http://home.comcast.net/~nanosmd/