Corpus-Paul

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

on 1/31/05 6:37 AM, Loren Rosson at rossoiii AT yahoo.com wrote:


>> I now have another question: Esler says on p286 that
> "for
>> Paul there was no one between Abraham and Christ who
> pursued
>> righteousness by faith." ... "The centuries between
> Moses
>> and Christ comprised a period of unrelieved gloom.
> 
>[snip.... Those who believe God raised Christ from the
> dead have the same faith Abraham did; no one else
> between the time of Abraham and Christ had this
> measure of faith. This is why scholars like Luz,
> Martyn, and Esler are probably correct. Esler cites
> Martyn: "the corporate people of Israel was a dance
> sat out by the covenantal promise as it waited for
> Christ" (p 193). And he later notes that while Paul
> would agree that God fulfilled the promises to Abraham
> in Christ, he is careful in 4:11 to delete the word
> "covenant" itself from the Gen 17:11 (p 286).

Loren,
I think you and the trio you mention ought to read the Tanak some time (and
maybe Rom 9:4-5, real carefully, word for word) and ask yourselves whether
Paul could possibly think that way about the texts that tell of heroes of
the faith and of righteousness (some don't even die, their faith is so
great, for crying out loud), when it is those texts by which he legitimates
his entire scheme. I hear Baur, et al, and the web they have woven for
limiting what Paul could as a "Christian" (however labeled) believe,
supposing anything before Christ (or outside of Christ) to be the
opposite--good old in-group boundary maintenance "tendencies"; but I don't
hear Paul, who was unlike them, a member of their out-group too. I think
they have some explaining to do even about Paul's own self-witness to
righteousness according to Torah--"blameless" seems neither without
righteousness and faith, nor a state of unrelieved gloom (Phil. 3).

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