Re-Membering the New Covenant at Corinth: A Different Perspective on 2 Corinthians 3 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe) 9783161576874, 9783161576881, 316157687X

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Preface This work is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation that was defended at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) towards the end of December 2010. My doctoral supervisors were Prof. Dr. Reimund Bieringer and Prof. Dr. Didier Pollefeyt. My readers were Prof. Dr. Joseph Verheyden, Prof. Dr. William S. Campbell, and Prof. Dr. Sandra Hübenthal. I am grateful to all of them for their guidance and support at various times. I also acknowledge the Research Council of KU Leuven and the Research Foundation – Flanders who jointly funded the research project, “New Perspectives on Paul and the Jewish People,” within which this dissertation took shape. Prof. Dr. Friedrich Avemarie, of righteous memory, and Prof. Dr. Jörg Frey very kindly accepted this manuscript into the WUNT II series without any hesitation. I want to especially underline the encouragement I received from Prof. Avemarie on more than one occasion. He would have been happy to receive the manuscript without any substantial changes, but I still felt I needed time away from the dissertation in order to return to it and rework some parts. That period has taken somewhat longer than I imagined due to various projects, personal and professional, including an intercontinental move. My own research interests have broadened considerably in this time, but they have gifted me the necessary distance to redact the manuscript into the concise shape it now has. I am therefore grateful to the publishers for their patience and understanding, and to the persistent encouragement of close friends. I have been greatly aided by the technical assistance of Dr. Andrey Romanov and Dr. Blake Wassell, and to the expert and always helpful advice from the editorial staff at Mohr Siebeck. To my wife, Agnė, and three children, Jogailé, Ignas, and Mikas, I owe everything. And, inadequate as all studies must be, I nonetheless dedicate mine to the memory of my late father, Joseph Michael Nathan, zikhrono livrakha. Sydney, 19 February 2020

Emmanuel Nathan

Table of Contents Preface................................................................................................................ V List of Abbreviations...................................................................................... XIII

Introduction .....................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Context of This Study.....................................................5 1. Paul’s Jewishness and the Parting of the Ways or Was Paul the Founder of Christianity? ................................................................................................6 1.1 A New Perspective on Paul ...........................................................................7 1.2 The Parting of the Ways (and Some of Its Problems) ...................................8 2. The New Perspective on Paul: Differences and Divergences ....................... 12 3. The Present Study in Prospect....................................................................... 18

Chapter 2: The ‘New Perspective’ on 2 Cor 3 .................................... 21 1. Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology? .......................................................... 21 2. Two Covenants or One? ................................................................................ 24 3. Paul’s Use of the Covenant Motif in 2 Cor 3 ................................................ 26 4. The Concept of Covenant in Paul.................................................................. 33 5. Overview ....................................................................................................... 37

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Chapter 3: A Contextual Study of the Covenantal Contrasts in 2 Cor 3 ....................................................................................................... 39 1. The Issues at Hand ........................................................................................ 40 2. Paul, Moses and the History of Israel ........................................................... 41 2.1 Delimitation and the Main Argument ......................................................... 41 2.2 The Origins of Hafemann’s Argument: Windisch vs. Goettsberger (1924)..................................................................................... 42 2.2.1 On Ministry .............................................................................................. 43 2.2.2 The New Covenant ................................................................................... 44 2.2.3 The Law ................................................................................................... 46 2.2.4 On Israel and the Old Covenant ............................................................... 48 2.3 Hafemann’s Conclusion .............................................................................. 49 3. Hafemann’s Exegesis as Seen from the ‘Lutheran’ Perspective ................... 50 3.1 Hafemann, the New Perspective on Paul, and the Lutheran Critique.......... 51 3.2 Continuity and the Implicit Fear of Marcionism ......................................... 56 3.3 The Lutheran Rebuttal ................................................................................. 57 4. Overview ....................................................................................................... 59

Chapter 4: Exegetical Considerations on Paul, Moses, and the Veil in 2 Cor 3 ............................................................................... 62 1. Examining the Exegetical Options of καταργέω and τέλος in 2 Cor 3:7, 11, 13, and 14 .......................................................................... 63 1.1 2 Cor 3:7...................................................................................................... 64 1.2 2 Cor 3:11.................................................................................................... 67 1.3 2 Cor 3:13.................................................................................................... 69 1.4 2 Cor 3:14.................................................................................................... 71 2. Brief Considerations on κάλυμμα .................................................................. 72 3. Overview ....................................................................................................... 74

Chapter 5: Sociological Approaches to Identity Transformation ............................................................................................. 76

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1. Three Sociological Approaches in Pauline Studies....................................... 76 1.1 From Individual to Community (Troels Engberg-Pedersen) ....................... 76 1.2 Language and World-Construction (Edward Adams) ................................. 78 1.3 From Reform Movement to Sect (Francis Watson) .................................... 80 2. Identity Trans-/Formation in Paul ................................................................ 82 2.1 Corporate Christology and Community Construction (David Horrell) ........................................................................................... 82 2.2 The Creation, Transformation, and Retention of Multiple Identities in Christ (William Campbell) .......................................................................... 84 2.3 Paul’s Formation of Social Identity in Corinth (Brian Tucker) ................... 87 3. Overview ....................................................................................................... 89

Chapter 6: Four Trends on Paul’s Argument from Scripture in 2 Cor 3 with Implications for Identity Transformation ............... 92 1. Biblical Reasoning ........................................................................................ 93 2. Charismatic Exegesis .................................................................................... 95 3. Eschatological Exegesis ................................................................................ 98 4. Apocalyptic Discourse ................................................................................ 103 5. Overview ..................................................................................................... 108

Chapter 7: From Identity to Memory with a Preliminary Application to 2 Cor 3.............................................................................. 110 1. The Link between Identity and Memory ...................................................... 110 1.1 Creative Continuity with a Historic Past (Judith Lieu) ............................. 110 1.2 Shaping a Narrative Past (Samuel Byrskog) ............................................. 113 1.3 Identity and Mnemonic Contestation (Philip Esler) .................................. 115 2. Contesting the Mnemonic Tradition of Moses’ Glory in 2 Cor 3 ................ 117 2.1 The Lacunae of Intertextual Studies of 2 Cor 3 ........................................ 118 2.2 The Social Context behind 2 Cor 3 ........................................................... 120

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2.3 Reading Paul’s Use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as Constructing a Counter-Memory .................................................................................... 121 2.4 The Contestation and Colonization of Mnemonic Traditions in 2 Cor 3................................................................................................... 123 3. Overview ..................................................................................................... 124

Chapter 8: Social Memory and the Mnemonic Refraction Model ............................................................................................................ 126 1. Social Memory in Context .......................................................................... 126 2. Social Memory in New Testament Studies................................................... 128 2.1 Social Entrepreneurship (Minna Shkul) ................................................... 129 2.2 Structuring Early Christian Memory (Rafael Rodríguez) ........................ 130 2.3 The Mnemonic Refraction of Typological Categories (Anthony Le Donne) ................................................................................................. 133 3. Overview ..................................................................................................... 136

Chapter 9: Memory Refraction in 2 Cor 3 ......................................... 137 1. Two Aporias on Paul’s Inclusion of 2 Cor 3:7–18 ..................................... 137 1.1 Scriptural Allusions .................................................................................. 138 1.2 Reconstructing a Pre-existing Tradition ................................................... 141 2. The Mnemonic Cycles of καινὴ διαθήκη in the Corinthian Correspondence .......................................................................................... 147 3. The Typological Cycle of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 ...................................... 150 4. Overview ..................................................................................................... 153

Chapter 10: Identity Transformation in 2 Cor 3 ............................... 156 1. Paul as a Second Moses .............................................................................. 157 2. Moses as Person and Text ........................................................................... 158

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3. Moses as (the Pre-Transformed) Paul ........................................................ 159 3.1 “When Anyone Turns to the Lord” (2 Cor 3:16): Conversion and Transformation ................................................................................... 160 3.2 “Whenever Moses is Read” (2 Cor 3:15): No Transformation without Conversion ................................................................................... 163 4. Overview ..................................................................................................... 164

Chapter 11: From Heuristics back to Hermeneutics ....................... 165 1. Ideology and Utopia in 2 Cor 3 .................................................................. 166 1.1 The ‘Covenant or Creation?’ Line of Inquiry in Pauline Studies .............. 166 1.2 Covenant and Creation in 2 Cor 3 ............................................................. 167 1.3 Ideology and Memory in 2 Cor 3 .............................................................. 171 1.4 Paul Ricoeur’s Ideology and Utopia ......................................................... 172 1.5 Reckoning with the Reception History of 2 Cor 3 .................................... 174 2. The Present Study in Retrospect.................................................................. 177 General Conclusion ....................................................................................... 182 Bibliography.................................................................................................... 187 Index of References......................................................................................... 201 Index of Subjects and Names .......................................................................... 206

List of Abbreviations AB AGJU AGSU AJEC AnBib BBB BBR BETL BHT BibInt BJRL BJS BNTC BSac BTB BZ BZNW CBQ CBQMS CBR CRINT ETL EvT FB FRLANT HBT HTR ICC Int JBL JSJSup JSNT JSNTSup JSOTSup JSP JSPSup JTS LNTS

Anchor Bible Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Spätjudentums und Urchristentums Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Analecta biblica Bonner Biblische Beiträge Bulletin for Biblical Research Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Beiträge zur historischen Theologie Biblical Interpretation Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Brown Judaic Studies Black’s New Testament Commentaries Bibliotheca Sacra Biblical Theology Bulletin Biblische Zeitschrift Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly: Monograph Series Currents in Biblical Research Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Evangelische Theologie Forschung zur Bibel Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Horizons in Biblical Theology Harvard Theological Review International Critical Commentary Interpretation Journal of Biblical Literature Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies Library of New Testament Studies

XIV LSTS NedTT NIGTC NovT NovTSup NTS PSB RTR SBL SBLSymS SNTSMS STDJ SubBi TSAJ TZT WBC WMANT WUNT ZKT ZNW ZTK

List of Abbreviations The Library of Second Temple Studies Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift New International Greek Testament Commentary Novum Testamentum Supplements to Novum Testamentum New Testament Studies Princeton Seminary Bulletin Reformed Theological Review Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature: Symposium Series Society for New Testament Studies: Monograph Series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Subsidia biblica Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Introduction The present monograph arose out of a research project devoted to examining the relation between studies on 2 Cor 3:6–18 and the New Perspective on Paul, and contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. While this last aspect of the research project is not the primary focus of this work, it does hover in the background. The monograph contains eleven studies that reflect, in ever narrowing circles of focus, on the question of continuity and discontinuity that intersects the New Perspective on Paul and, more concretely, Pauline studies of the new covenant (καινὴ διαθήκη) in 2 Cor 3. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the research project within which this work was situated, our study does not follow the trajectory of a classical monograph in biblical studies. Instead it chooses to wrestle openly with issues of hermeneutics and heuristics, as will become clearer in this work. We commence with three chapters that are hermeneutical in nature. Chapter One traces the broad context of this study and situates contributors to the New Perspective on Paul (predominantly, E.P. Sanders and James Dunn) alongside their detractors from two camps, the ‘Lutheran’ (e.g., Stephen Westerholm) and the ‘radical new’ perspectives (e.g., Mark Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm). Chapter Two examines two proponents of the New Perspective on Paul (James Dunn and Ellen Christiansen) in order to trace if they have a common position with regard to the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3, given that studies of Galatians and Romans, where issues of ethnicity and justification abound, have been the main focus of New Perspective debates. Chapter Three then follows, by way of counter-balance, a non-New Perspective study (by Scott Hafemann) offering a contextual exegesis of the letter-Spirit contrast in 2 Cor 3. This, in turn, offers the occasion to compare his study against the New Perspective positions on 2 Cor 3 traced in Chapter Two. In order to address the question of continuity and discontinuity more precisely, we make our own turn to the text of 2 Cor 3:6–18 from Chapter Four onwards. Chapter Four identifies four verses (3:7, 11, 13, 14) where two highly ‘discontinuous’ terms, καταργέω (‘abrogated’) and τέλος (‘cessation’ or ‘goal’) are interrogated as to their exegetical options. In subsequently alternating between discussions on method and applications to the text (2 Cor 3:6, 7– 18), we allow for a gradual refinement of the question of continuity and dis-

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continuity. We do so first in terms of introducing the question of ‘identity transformation’, since this involves asking whether (a) one moves from one identity to another (in Paul’s case, from ‘Jewish’ to ‘Christian’) or (b) retains one’s former identity and in the process transforms it as a result of a new experience (in Paul’s case, his encounter with Christ). Chapter Five explores sociological approaches (Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Edward Adams, Francis Watson) to identity transformation (David Horrell, William Campbell, Brian Tucker) in search of a suitable method to gauge identity transformation in 2 Cor 3. Chapter Six is then a study that discerns four trends on Paul’s argument from Scripture in 2 Cor 3 and ends up interrogating their implications for identity transformation. In Chapter Seven we introduce the question of memory, building on the insight that the ‘construction of identity’ involves the re-membering of traditions in order to provide alternative foundational narratives. We therefore examine scholars who have drawn the link between both identity and memory (Judith Lieu, Samuel Byrskog, Philip Esler). Given the linking nature of the chapter, Chapter Seven also contains a brief application in social memory from the perspective of identity formation, more specifically, the function of counter-memories in the emergence of new identities. As a first exercise in memory theory, this application produces results which challenge a too-easy emphasis on Paul’s continuity with Judaism that is asserted by proponents of the radical new perspective (e.g., Mark Nanos and Paula Fredriksen) and those arguing for the ‘Ways that Never Parted’ (Adam Becker, Annette Yoshiko Reed et al.). Chapter Eight then explores social memory theory in its own right, moving from more general theoretical approaches (e.g., Jan and Aleida Assmann, Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher) to applications of the theory in New Testament studies (Minna Shkul, Rafael Rodríguez, Anthony Le Donne). It is ultimately Anthony Le Donne’s articulation of the ‘mnemonic refraction model’ that we find most useful to heuristically interrogate the question of Pauline continuity and discontinuity in 2 Cor 3. Chapter Nine presents our own application of the mnemonic refraction model to 2 Cor 3:6–18. In so doing, Chapter Nine demonstrates how social memory theory reframes the larger, and much harder to answer, question of Paul’s continuity or discontinuity with Judaism and, far more modestly by comparison, seeks instead to examine the ways in which Paul refracts, redeploys, and reconfigures existing traditions in service of local needs, among them the formation and transformation of character among his community at Corinth. Building on insights from the foregoing, we offer in Chapter Ten our own perspective on Paul’s ambivalent usage of Moses in 2 Cor 3:6–18. We argue that Paul’s narrative conflation of his own διακονία within a typological narrative of Moses’ glory represents none other than an evaluation of his own life prior to conversion in much the same way that he did in Phil 3:3–11. We then proceed to argue that this ‘turning’/conversion had implications for identity

Introduction

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transformation, both Paul’s and the Corinthians’, given that Paul had already articulated a mimetic programme for Corinthian emulation in 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1. In short, we contend that 2 Cor 3:6–18 represents not a negative assessment of Judaism or the Law, but rather a reflection on Paul’s own life prior to, during, and after conversion. It was only as a second step that the narrative in 2 Cor 3:6–18 came to be understood as representing a separation process from Judaism. That it was, and has been, understood that way is reflected upon in our final chapter. In Chapter Eleven we return to issues of hermeneutics by offering a hermeneutical reflection on the tension between ideology and utopia in 2 Cor 3, as argued from the hermeneutical arc of new covenant and new creation. In this hermeneutical reading we take seriously the unfortunate reception history that the covenantal contrasts have generated in Christian-Jewish encounter. But, in addition to acknowledging the unfortunate role that 2 Cor 3 has played in the history of that encounter, we also argue that by seeking out and affirming the utopian potentials of Paul’s language in that very same passage, we can hope that it leads to transformative action in the present.

Chapter 1

The Context of This Study The present study can be considered an examination of tradition and innovation in Paul, that is to say, an investigation into the extent to which Paul relies on traditions and then employs them to new ends. The concept that we are attempting to trace in this way is Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6, a term which he seems to contrast with παλαιὰ διαθήκη (the ‘old covenant’) in the same chapter (2 Cor 3:14). Instead of approaching the term καινὴ διαθήκη as a traditional word study, we shall be undertaking its investigation as a social concept and shall be doing so from the perspectives of social memory and identity. These perspectives will be fleshed out in coming chapters. In this chapter we outline the broader context of this study. Our study arose out of an interdisciplinary research project that examined the role of Paul’s theology in the process of early Christian self-definition in relation to contemporary Judaism. 1 Fitting within this larger project, our study devotes special attention to 2 Cor 3:6–18, a text which has not normally played a pivotal role in research on Paul’s relationship to the Jewish people, other than it being considered a passing reference by Paul, in the heat of an argument, that witnesses to his generally negative assessment of Judaism. The research question posed by this project is whether 2 Cor 3:6–18 is indeed a witness to the antithesis which Paul allegedly developed with regard to contemporary Judaism. The answer to this question would have significant implications for a crucial question in Jewish-Christian dialogue, namely whether Paul became the founder of Christianity in this process of separation while Jesus had stayed completely within the boundaries of Judaism. 2 1 It was jointly funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders and the Research Council of KU Leuven (principal investigators: Reimund Bieringer and Didier Pollefeyt). It resulted in two major publications: Reimund Bieringer and Didier Pollefeyt (eds.), Paul and Judaism: Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis and Jewish-Christian Relations, LNTS 463 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2012); and Reimund Bieringer, Emmanuel Nathan, Didier Pollefeyt, and Peter J. Tomson (eds.), Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism, CRINT 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 2 The innovative nature of this project was that it sought to critically evaluate the socalled ‘New Perspective on Paul’, which seemed to dissolve the tension between Paul and Judaism by understanding Paul as being in harmony with his Jewish background (although our study will nuance this understanding of the New Perspective on Paul). At the same time, the research project was also wary of deconstructing the New Perspective on Paul in order

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The above paragraph has articulated the research project’s aims in nuce that provided the outer frame for this study. In what follows, it will be important to distinguish between two issues that have tended to overlap in Pauline studies in the past but now are increasingly diverging from one another: the question of Paul’s Jewishness (initiated in many ways by the New Perspective on Paul) and the separation between Judaism and Christianity (the so-called Parting of the Ways).

1. Paul’s Jewishness and the Parting of the Ways or Was Paul the Founder of Christianity? 1. Paul’s Jewishness and the Parting of the Ways

Paul’s contribution to Christian theology can hardly be underestimated. It is in fact no exaggeration to say that for many he, and not Jesus, was the real founder of Christianity as a religion. Gerd Lüdemann, a modern exponent of such a view, put it aptly: The new religion required a doctrinal unity and the authority to enforce it; that in turn called for vision (and perhaps a vision) and the supreme self-assuredness to insist on its truth; and those, of course, were the spark and the fuel which powered the immense missionary effort that made Paul the founder of Christianity. 3

While Lüdemann credited the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on his understanding of Paul as the founder of Christianity, 4 most New Testament scholars would more readily admit the influence of Ferdinand Christian Baur, whose antithesis of ‘Petrinism’ and ‘Paulinism’ deeply shaped the way in which the emergence of primitive Christianity was viewed by more than a generation of biblical scholars. 5 to then simply reaffirm Christian identity against Judaism. For example, Seyoon Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul’s Gospel, WUNT I/140 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); Simon Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002); and Robert H. Gundry, The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations, WUNT I/178 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). The list could go on. 3 Gerd Lüdemann, Paul: The Founder of Christianity (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2002) 215. 4 Lüdemann, Paul: The Founder of Christianity, 227: “I would like to draw the reader’s attention again to Nietzsche, whose analysis has greatly helped me to understand Paul as the founder of Christianity.” This is then followed by a quote from Nietzsche’s The Dawn, sec. 68, where Paul is credited with both launching Christianity and removing it from its Jewish roots. 5 Ferdinand Christian Baur, “Die Christuspartei in der Korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz des petrinischen und paulinischen Christentums in der ältesten Kirche, der Apostel Petrus in Rom,” TZT 5 (1831) 61–206, and then further developed in Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen, 1853). See

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Baur posited a Hegelian clash between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism, reflected in the dispute between Petrine and Pauline parties. Paulinism gave Christianity its inner, spiritual and universal dimensions, whereas Petrine Christianity’s attachment to the formal, the external and the particular would be the reason why Jewish Christianity ultimately disappeared when the gospel spread among the Gentiles as a result of Paul’s spearheading and forward-thinking mission. It should also not be forgotten that Baur’s model served confessional ends. Petrine and Pauline Christianity reflected the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. As such, it remained a dominant paradigm in Protestant scholarship and the subsequent revisions to the model in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by such figures as Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Abrecht Ritschl, or the Religionsgeschichtliche school, did little to remove the basic dualistic scheme or the perception of the primitive church as ‘early Catholicism’. 6 But how justified is it to speak of Paul as the founder of Christianity? 1.1 A New Perspective on Paul A new way of understanding of Paul arrived in the second half of the twentieth century. This was in no small part caused by world events in the first half of the century. In the past thirty years, the recovery of Paul’s Jewishness (similar in trend to the rehabilitation of ‘Jesus the Jew’) has allowed Pauline scholars to place the theological statements in his letters within a matrix of his relationship to Second Temple Judaism. In what would become a seminal article, 7 Krister Stendahl argued that Luther’s introspective search for salvific grace, concentrating on the individual’s relation to God, had been read back into the mind of Paul, ignoring the apostle’s more social concerns of relations between Jews and Gentiles that had been made possible in Christ. Similarly, Paul’s critique of a Jewish legalistic ‘works-righteousness’ was really a reflection of Luther’s own battle against the Church’s reliance on paid-for indulgences. Stendahl’s article came to greater recognition in a 1976 reprint, 8 a year before another prominent figure, Ed Sanders, published a monumental work that highlighted the deleterious effects of reconstructing Judaism from Paul’s rhetorical also Robert Morgan, “The Significance of ‘Paulinism’,” Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honour of C.K. Barrett, ed. M.D. Hooker and S.G. Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982) 320–338. 6 See James D.G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM; Philadelphia, PA: Trinity International, 1991) 1–17 for an overview of the trends in modern biblical scholarship with regard to the origins of earliest Christianity. 7 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” HTR 56 (1963) 199–215. 8 Reprinted in, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1976) 78–96.

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presentation of it in his epistles. 9 The legalistic caricature of Judaism that emerged from an unbridgeable gulf between Law and Gospel would go on to treat Rabbinic Judaism as Spätjudentum, ‘late Judaism’, implying that once Christianity emerged, nothing further of serious note occurred in Judaism afterwards. Refuting this, Sanders set out to show that Judaism is an equally grace-filled religion by virtue of ‘covenantal nomism’, the notion that God elects Israel into his covenant as an act of grace (‘getting in’) while Israel obeys the commandments (‘staying in’) to remain faithful to that covenant. 10 Sanders’ legacy was further taken up by James Dunn when he proposed a ‘new perspective on Paul’. 11 Dunn saw himself in broad agreement with Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism. We shall have occasion to return to the distinction between Sanders and Dunn a bit later on. For now, though, it suffices to say that within this new perspective on Paul, Paul was no longer seen as separated from Judaism, a separation that only occurred at a much later date, in what was referred to as ‘the Parting of the Ways’. 1.2 The Parting of the Ways (and Some of Its Problems) The Parting of the Ways is a model used to describe the separation between Judaism and Christianity in 135 CE after the Bar Kochba revolt. Judith Lieu has traced the origin of this term back to a 1912 collection of essays by Foakes Jackson, entitled The Parting of the Roads: Studies in the Development of Judaism and Early Christianity. 12 James Dunn became one its leading proponents. In 1989 he convened a research symposium at the University of Durham devoted to the theme of the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism. Their conclusions showed that the parting of the ways was a long drawnout process but that the period of 70–135 was of particular importance. 13 With these findings Dunn went on to paint the portrait of the partings (plural) of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. He called attention to the significance of the crisis of 70 CE (which ended in the destruction of the Temple) but that 9 Ed P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM, 1977). 10 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 75: “Briefly put, covenantal nomism is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression.” 11 James D.G. Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” BJRL 65 (1983) 95–122. See also the collected essays in Id., The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays, WUNT I/185 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 12 Judith Lieu, “‘The Parting of the Ways’: Theological Construct or Historical Reality?” JSNT 56 (1994) 101–119, 101. 13 James D.G. Dunn, Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135. The Second Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (Durham, September, 1989), WUNT I/66 (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1992).

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it did not make a clear break between Judaism and emergent Christianity. This would happen in the period between the two Jewish revolts (66–70 and 132– 135 CE) such that “by the end of the second Jewish revolt, Christian and Jew were clearly distinct and separate.” 14 With the dating of the parting of the ways to 135 CE it was understandable that Paul no longer occupied a central role in the debate on Christianity’s origins. Yet, even for Dunn, Paul’s contribution retained significance. This will be something to come back to. While the Parting of the Ways became the quasi-standard model for explaining the split between Judaism and Christianity, it did not go unchallenged. Already in 1994 Judith Lieu critiqued the model for interpreting social phenomena with theological categories. It presented itself as a historical model but actually operated out of an apologetic agenda to maintain continuity between Israel and the Church. While the model was certainly more eirenic than the traditional typology of the Church superseding Israel, its aims were no less theological. This created a problem for historical analysis because the essentialist categories of ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ stem from an abstract and universal conception of religion in terms of doctrinal beliefs and affirmations. Consequently, it rendered the model unusable to consider specific and local instances of interactions between Jews, Christians and pagans in the early centuries of the Common Era. On the social and popular religious level these groups would not have understood that their ways had in fact ‘parted’. While the writings of the ‘theologians’ such as the Church Fathers or the Rabbis may have provided evidence of a polarizing rhetoric that demarcated what would become the acceptable boundaries of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Lieu questioned whether taking these at face value accurately represented what was happening on the ground. 15 Lieu’s critique was further taken up by Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed. 16 Convening a conference in 2002 at Princeton University to examine whether the parting of the ways was indeed a suitable heuristic model, their findings concurred that literary and archaeological data actually showed a far messier state of affairs on the ground than what the clear-cut narrative of the parting ways suggests (what Lieu has described as a ‘Y junction’ – two paths diverging from a common origin). They explained the present popularity of the

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his).

Dunn, The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism, 243 (emphasis

Her short case studies make this amply clear. They include pagan perceptions of Christian in relation to Jews, Jewish views of Christians/minim and the cultural interactions among religious groups in places like Phrygia. Lieu, “‘The Parting of the Ways’: Theological Construct or Historical Reality?,” 110–118. 16 Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (eds.), The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, TSAJ 95 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) esp. 1–33. 15

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parting model among scholars of early Christianity as a result of several developments that came about after the Second World War. These include the full realization of the horror of the Holocaust prompting scholars to research into the historical roots of anti-semitism, the shift away from Spätjudentum to an avid interest in what is now termed ‘early Judaism’, the burgeoning field of Jewish Studies, and the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls making interdisciplinary studies possible. As a repudiation of the supersessionism, and even anti-Judaism/semitism, that used to plague academic scholarship, the parting model fits well with contemporary ecumenical concerns to view Judaism and Christianity as legitimate religions in their own right. Similar to Lieu, however, Becker and Reed argued that the ecumenical concerns are ultimately not helpful for scholarship. The desire to see Judaism and Christianity as authentic and distinct has led to a division between the fields of ‘Patristics’ and ‘Rabbinics’, without any discussion between the two disciplines, thus replicating in the academy the isolation that Jews and Christians apparently had towards each other during that period. In their volume, however, the scholars maintain that social relations between Jews and Christians were more fluid and complex. As a result, the unilinear spatial metaphor of parting ways seems inadequate to describe such a state of affairs. While their publication did not propose a new model, they did point out other heuristic devices in existence: Philip Alexander’s ‘overlapping circles’, Daniel Boyarin’s ‘wave theory’, and Martin Goodman’s series of diagrams in their own volume. 17 For Becker and Reed the Parting of the Ways is a principle that needs to be proved rather than presupposed. It is their contention that the process of ‘parting’ continued to take place throughout Late Antiquity and even into the early Middle Ages. They were also quick to point out that, even though Dunn took a theological approach, even he had to concede that the parting, though inevitable from hindsight, may not have been perceived as such by those purportedly undergoing it. 18 There is no denying that there were problems with Dunn’s model. First of all, Lieu’s call for greater attention to specific and local analyses clashed with Dunn’s desire to see the big picture. 19 Then the explicit motivation to see Judaism and Christianity in strong continuity with one another has been evident

17 Philip Alexander, “‘The Parting of the Ways’ from the Perspective of Rabbinic Judaism,” Jews and Christians, 1–26; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of JudaeoChristianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) 1–33; Martin Goodman, “Modeling the ‘Parting of the Ways,’” The Ways That Never Parted, 119–129. 18 Becker and Reed, The Ways That Never Parted, 18 and n. 59 on the same page. 19 Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, i. The opening paragraph of the Preface confesses: “One of my besetting sins as a scholar (but perhaps it’s a strength!) is the desire to see the large picture … As a student of the New Testament and Christian beginnings I want to see

1. Paul’s Jewishness and the Parting of the Ways

11

on more than one occasion. This already stems from Dunn’s Calvinist tradition, which as one of the two main trends of the Reformation stressed the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, whereas its counterpart, Lutheranism, tended to emphasize the antithesis (discontinuity) between Law and Gospel. 20 Dunn’s post-Holocaust sensitivities also play a role in this. In his 1991 Henton Davies Lecture he was explicit on the need to challenge a strictly dialectical relation between Judaism and Christianity. Naturally, the starting point was Luther, in particular his conversion experience, which Luther then retrojected into Paul’s conversion experience (here following Stendahl’s reading of Luther’s introspective conscience). However, things began to go horribly wrong when Luther construed Paul’s conversion as a turning away from Judaism. Dunn continued: Unfortunately, however, the further corollary was drawn: that Judaism was the antithesis of Christianity, what Paul had been saved from. Such a view, of course, had been prominent in Christianity at least since the Epistle of Barnabas, and fitted well with the strong strand of anti-semitism which so disfigured Christianity’s attitude to Jews and Judaism in the Middle Ages, an attitude which Luther himself expressed in characteristic forthrightness in his infamous On the Jews and Their Lies. Tragically, however, it reinforced Christian suspicion, not to say hatred of Judaism, which was to reach its horrific outworking in the Holocaust. In scholarly circles the idea that Judaism was the antithesis of Christianity was expressed well through the middle of this century in the depiction of Judaism as simply the precursor of Christianity: so that pre-Christian Judaism was simply ‘late Judaism’ (where this left the Judaism of the next nineteen centuries was a question not even considered). 21

The strong emphasis on continuity meant that Dunn disagreed with Sanders’ characterization of Christianity and Judaism as distinct patterns of religion. 22 This is ironic given that Becker and Reed have critiqued Dunn’s parting of the ways model for reinforcing precisely such a notion of the two religions. It is at this point that we must return to the differences between Sanders and Dunn and examine more closely the divergences within the so-called New Perspective on Paul. how it all fits together … Like a painter on a large canvas, I need to step back time and again to check how the fine detail of particular parts blends into the whole.” 20 See James D.G. Dunn, “Did Paul Have A Covenant Theology? Reflections on Romans 9.4 and 11.27,” The Concept of the Covenant in Second Temple Period, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C.R. de Roo, SJSJ 71 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2003) 287–307, 287: “The tension is already reflected in the two principal streams of the Reformation which both drew their theological inspiration from Paul: is ‘covenant’ a means of expressing continuity between Old Testament and New (with Calvin)? or does it succumb to the antithesis between law and gospel (new covenant) so paradigmatic for Lutheran theology?” 21 James D.G. Dunn, “The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith,” JTS 43 (1992) 1–22, 5. 22 Dunn, “The Justice of God,” 6: “E.P. Sanders, for all that he has undermined other pejorative stereotypes, as we shall see, has not helped at this point by characterizing Christianity and Judaism as distinct forms or patterns of religion.”

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2. The New Perspective on Paul: Differences and Divergences

2. The New Perspective on Paul

It is important to point out that the New Perspective on Paul cannot be considered a monolithic movement. The term itself is strictly associated with the 1983 article by James Dunn, in which Dunn both expressed his indebtedness to and, at the same time, his critique of E.P. Sanders. While Dunn saw himself in broad sympathy with Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism, the difference between them lay in the fact that Sanders had merely concentrated on correcting a Pauline misrepresentation of Judaism. While Dunn acknowledges Sanders’ contribution to scholarship by formulating Second Temple Judaism in terms of covenantal nomism, he found that Sanders failed to then sufficiently account for Paul’s disagreement with Judaism. Sanders was chiefly concerned with comparing patterns of religion. The pattern of Judaism in Paul’s time was covenantal nomism. However, in light of his Christ experience, Paul ‘transferred’ from covenantal nomism (i.e., Judaism) to another pattern of religion, namely, participatory union (with Christ). Thus, there was nothing wrong with Judaism per se; it has merely been overtaken by events with Christ. “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.” 23 Yet, for Dunn, this simply made Paul erratic: The Lutheran Paul has been replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and greatness of Judaism’s covenant theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not Christianity. 24

Paul’s problem with Judaism, according to Dunn, was that its identity markers (food laws, circumcision, Sabbath observance) were functioning as ethnic ‘badges of covenant membership’, denoting race and nation. “Covenant works had become too closely identified as Jewish observances, covenant righteousness, as national righteousness.” 25 Dunn’s Paul, unlike Sanders’, continued to stay within the Jewish covenant, but advocated its broadening to also include Gentile members without need of ethnic identity markers. This distinction between Sanders and Dunn is crucial because the two scholars are sometimes indiscriminately viewed as forming one united front, often by critics of the New Perspective on Paul. 26 Francis Watson has astutely commented: Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552 (emphasis his). Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” 101. 25 Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” 114 (emphasis his). 26 For instance, Charles H. Talbert, “Paul, Judaism, and the Revisionists,” CBQ 63 (2001) 1–22; Stephen Westerholm, “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five,” Justification and Variegated Nomism. Vol. II: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D.A. Carson et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004) 1–38; Gerd Theissen, “The New Perspective on Paul and Its Limits: Some Psychological Considerations,” PSB 28 (2007) 64– 85. These authors, although aware that the term ‘new perspective on Paul’ was coined by 23 24

2. The New Perspective on Paul

13

It is ironic, then, that Sanders and Dunn are both commonly seen as representatives of a single ‘New Perspective on Paul’. The reality is that a repudiation of Sanders’ reading of Paul is integral to the New Perspective as Dunn conceived it. Sanders’ ‘covenantal nomism’ concept is an essential building block of this New Perspective, but he cannot represent a shared perspective on Paul when his own perspective on Paul has been so unceremoniously rejected. 27

Surveyors of the New Perspective on Paul, however, are well aware of the differences between Sanders and Dunn, and we shall list some of them. Before proceeding, however, one needs to bear in mind that these surveys are not neutral. They are often situated within an interpretive framework that first describes the New Perspective’s contribution to Pauline studies and then goes on to list its limitations in order to show that scholarship now needs to move beyond the New Perspective on Paul. So, for instance, Stephen Westerholm has accurately observed that Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism displayed a Paul leaving Judaism, not out of critique, but simply because Paul had transferred over to Christianity. This presentation, already unsatisfactory to Dunn as we have seen, initiated a whole variety of reactions that were dissatisfied with Sanders’ position. A major thrust of Sanders’s work, then, is that Paul’s rejection of Judaism was not triggered by, nor did it trigger, a substantial critique of his former faith. In the wake of his work, some scholars have gone further, concluding that Paul had no critique of Judaism. Others agree with Sanders that Paul’s critique was not a matter of substance. Still others make more of the ‘further factor’ that Sanders did allow and see in Paul a critique of Judaism for its alleged ethnocentricity. 28

Westerholm’s sentence is descriptive and illuminating, but one should also note its heuristic purpose. It introduced the four groupings into which Westerholm then summarized and classified 32 different monographs that have interacted with Sanders’ understanding of Judaism and Paul over the previous quarter century. We list the groupings and some of the more prominent names (1) Paul finds no flaw in Judaism: Neil Elliott, Lloyd Gaston, Stanley Stowers; (2)

Dunn, nonetheless include Sanders in its ambit, particularly because the new perspective relies on covenantal nomism as describing the Judaism known to Paul. Talbert (p. 4): “As a result of Sanders’s work on Paul and ancient Judaism there has been a shift in the way the Apostle is read.” Westerholm (p. 1): “The ‘new perspective on Paul’ is hardly still in its childhood: a quarter century has passed since it came to birth through the labors of E.P. Sanders, and nearly as long since it was christened by James D.G. Dunn.” Theissen (p. 65): “In the new perspective on Paul, the basic structure of the Jewish religion is said to be ‘covenantal nomism’.” 27 Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, revised and expanded edition (Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2007) 9 (emphasis his). 28 Stephen Westerholm, “The ‘New Perspective at Twenty-Five’,” 3.

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a Paul whose critique is not of substance: Francis Watson, 29 Terence Donaldson; (3) Paul finds Judaism ethnocentric: N.T. Wright, James Dunn, Bruce Longenecker, John Barclay, William Campbell, Daniel Boyarin; (4) Paul finds Judaism reliant on human works: Heikki Räisänen, Frank Thielman, Peter Stuhlmacher, Mark Seifrid, Seyoon Kim. The fourth position represents what other surveys would consider the traditional or ‘Lutheran’ perspective that is staunchly opposed to the New Perspective on Paul (although it is somewhat surprising to see Räisänen’s work counted among them given his positive and enthusiastic reception of Sanders’ work). Westerholm did not situate his own work 30 among the given categories but he too is considered by others as falling within this traditional perspective. 31 By contrast to this traditional perspective, there are surveys which felt that the New Perspective on Paul did not go far enough. The New Perspective was thus being pressed on two fronts. 32 On this second front, a survey such as that by Kathy Ehrensperger concurred that “Sanders ended his book with a Paul who is breaking with Judaism although he himself had no intention to do so.” 33 In presenting Dunn’s position, she saw Dunn as offering a corrective to Sanders’ inconsistency. Instead of Sanders’ transfer from one pattern of religion to

One needs to point out that Westerholm was commenting on the 1986 version of Francis Watson’s Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach, SNTSMS 56 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). By 2007, three years after Westerholm’s article appeared, Watson had revised and expanded his 1986 monograph, and republished it under the revised title Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, in order to set the record straight concerning his objections to the New Perspective on Paul. One can perhaps trace these objections from 2001 when Watson presented a paper to the British New Testament Conference, entitled “Not the New Perspective.” Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2004) already reflected his revised perspective on Paul. 30 Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The ‘Lutheran’ Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). Westerholm does, however, mention and summarize this work in his concluding observations. Id., “The ‘New Perspective at TwentyFive’,” 37. 31 See Magnus Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul: A Student’s Guide to Recent Scholarship (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009) 184–192 who lists Westerholm as defending an ‘explicitly Lutheran Paul’ among the survey of scholars who reassert traditional Protestant readings of Paul in opposition to the New Perspective on Paul. 32 See Bruce W. Longenecker, “On Critiquing the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul: A Case Study,” ZNW 96 (2005) 263–271, 264: “But the ‘new perspective’ is finding itself in a situation of a double-squeeze. While being challenged to reformulate itself in relation to an even newer ‘perspective’, it continues to be challenged to reformulate itself in relation to more traditional perspectives as well.” 33 Kathy Ehrensperger, That We May Be Mutually Encouraged: Feminism and the New Perspective in Pauline Studies (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2004) 36. Chapter 4 of her book (pp. 123–160) is entitled “Paul – Beyond the New Perspective.” 29

2. The New Perspective on Paul

15

another, Dunn’s emphasis on ethnocentrism meant that for Paul “[t]he covenant is thus not abandoned but broadened, as in the time of fulfilment it should not be defined by ethnic boundaries and narrowness.” 34 In similar vein, William Campbell agreed that Dunn correctly noted that Sanders still retained the traditional antithesis between Paul and his Jewish heritage. “Dunn ... accuses Sanders of posing an antithesis between faith in Christ and Paul’s Jewish heritage thus creating an abrupt discontinuity between the new movement and the religion of Israel.” 35 For Campbell, however, Dunn’s position was not really much of an advance on Sanders’ because, as John Gager had pointed out, the “emphasis on Jewish ethnic pride reverts to the outmoded, unhistorical dichotomy between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism.” 36 For Campbell, this simply replaced Sanders’ antithesis with another, namely that Gentile Christian identity was to be the norm and any specific Jewish-Christian identity should gradually disappear. His observation returns us to a point made in the previous section, that even though Paul no longer occupies a central role in the Parting of the Ways, for people like Dunn he was still significant because it was Paul who set in motion the ‘gentilization’ of the Church as, for example, at the so-called ‘Antioch incident’ (Gal 2:11–14; cf. Acts 15). On this Dunn has stated quite clearly: “Paul’s stand at Antioch and thereafter made a parting of the ways inevitable, and already probably a factor for the churches of his foundation.” 37 Campbell’s assessment of Dunn is echoed in the extensive survey by Magnus Zetterholm: In Dunn’s reconstruction, the Protestant opposition between the law and the gospel is certainly done away with, but only replaced by a new one – between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism, which, in effect, is between Jewish and Christian identity. 38

Zetterholm helpfully situated Sanders and Dunn along a spectrum of ‘new perspective’ actors. The forerunners were: (1) Krister Stendahl, who provided one of the earliest post-war exegetical reorientations necessary in Protestant scholarship; and (2) E.P. Sanders who supplied the prerequisite to the new perspective – a new view of Judaism. Then followed (3) Heikki Räisänen who adopted Sanders’ definition of ancient Judaism as covenantal nomism. Zetterholm thus placed Räisänen squarely in the ‘new perspective’ camp (unlike Westerholm above who placed him among the traditionalists). Nonetheless, Zetterholm acknowledged that Räisänen differed significantly from Sanders on the matter

Ehrensperger, That We May Be Mutually Encouraged, 38. William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2006) 28. 36 John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 49. 37 Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, 139 (emphasis his). 38 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 117. 34 35

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of Paul’s view of Torah, since central to Räisänen’s argument was Paul’s inconsistency: “Paul’s thought on the law is full of difficulties and inconsistencies.” 39 Towards the end of that spectrum was (4) James Dunn, naturally credited with the actual New Perspective on Paul. The final name on the spectrum, however, went to (5) N. T. Wright, who in fact preceded Dunn by a few years with ideas that eventually were coined by Dunn as the ‘new perspective’. Zetterholm labeled Wright as presenting a ‘consistent Paul’ who, unlike Räisänen’s inconsistent Paul, can be read coherently against a backdrop of Jewish theology, controlling stories, and imperial ideology. It is in fact Wright who moved Dunn’s new perspective into a ‘fresh perspective’. 40 At the same time, for Zetterholm, even though Dunn’s and Wright’s works offer challenging alternatives to the traditional Lutheran understandings of Paul, they did not really move beyond them because they continued to presuppose the same premises. Thus, Dunn’s Paul has abandoned important aspects of the Torah. Wright’s Paul remains within a Judaism stripped of most of its hallmarks, so redefined that ethnicity no longer matters, and ‘Israel’ becomes designated for Jews and non-Jews fused together into a third entity, indeed no longer pagan, but not really Jewish either, at least not from the standpoint of most Jews in antiquity. 41

Zetterholm has also surveyed other trends in Pauline interpretation, particularly those involved in what he termed the ‘radical new perspective’, scholars who find that the New Perspective on Paul did not go far enough with respect to Paul’s Jewishness (among them Lloyd Gaston, Peter Tomson, Stanley Stowers, Mark Nanos, Caroline Johnson Hodge) and so prosecute their studies on the premise that Paul did not break with Judaism. It is clear by the end of his survey that Zetterholm had sided with this latter group of scholars 42 and so it is from this end of the spectrum that Zetterholm assessed the New Perspective on Paul as occupying a median position between the traditional perspective and the ‘radical new perspective’. 43 Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983) 1. The title of one of Wright’s latest works, viz. Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005). 41 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 125–126. 42 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 239: “The truth about Paul, I would assume, lurks somewhere within the radical new perspective.” 43 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 125: “While the new perspective most likely still represents a radical challenge to normative Christian theology, it is today probably justified to speak of it as representing an exegetical middle position.” The tripartite scheme of traditional, new and ‘radical new’ that emerges from Zetterholm’s analysis recalls the way that proponents of pluralism developed the classification of what they perceived to be the three main stances of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism in interreligious dialogue. See Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1982). 39 40

2. The New Perspective on Paul

17

This section was necessary to trace the differences between Sanders and Dunn who are sometimes confused as representing one united ‘new perspective’ on Paul. Sanders presented Paul as transferring from one pattern of religion (covenantal nomism) to another (participatory union), leaving Judaism behind as a result. By contrast, Dunn viewed Paul as critiquing Judaism for its ethnocentrism but still remaining within the Jewish covenant. All the same, though, by emphasizing universalism over against ethnocentric particularism, Dunn’s Paul paved the way for the gentilization of Christianity and the eventual removal of any traces of Jewish identity. It is this last point that explains why Sanders and Dunn are both viewed, from a particular perspective, as still maintaining the traditional (Lutheran) separation between Judaism and Christianity. Highlighting the differences between Sanders and Dunn has also brought another element to light, namely, that the New Perspective on Paul has found itself critiqued on two fronts, one by traditionalists who defend the established positions of Protestant exegesis and, the other, by advocates who wish to go further than the New Perspective on Paul in terms of Paul’s (continuing) Jewishness. It is this latter ‘radical new perspective’ that disputes Paul’s role, no matter how limited or nuanced, in the eventual parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. And yet, despite the inroads made by this latter group, 44 the issue of articulating what precisely was new for Paul in Christ has continued to persist in mainstream Pauline scholarship. Examples have included the claims that Paul reconfigured Torah by applying its primordial and eschatological aspects onto Christ instead, that he read Israel’s scriptures with the hermeneutics of faith in Christ, and that he was engaged in identity transformation. 45 These treatments, nuanced though they are with respect to Paul’s (continuing) relationship with Judaism, only reinforce the impression that Pauline scholars have continued, like Dunn, to ascribe some role, however limited, to Paul in the eventual Parting of the Ways and the founding of later Christianity. 46 See, for instance, the contributions in the Special Issue Paul between Jews and Christians, BibInt 13/3 (2005) 221–315, edited by Mark D. Nanos, and also Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (eds.), Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015). 45 Stephan K. Davis, The Antithesis of the Ages: Paul’s Reconfiguration of Torah, CBQMS 33 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America Press, 2002); Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2004); William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, LNTS 322 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2006). 46 Consider Jörg Frey’s conclusion in, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World / Judische Identität in der griechisch-römischen Welt, ed. Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz and Stephanie Gripentrog, AJEC/AGJU 71 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2007) 285–321, 321: “Even though Paul relentlessly worked for the unity of Jewish and 44

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3. The Present Study in Prospect

3. The Present Study in Prospect

It is opportune at this point to outline our own stance vis-à-vis the New Perspective on Paul. Our study proposes to adopt what can be termed a ‘cautiously sympathetic’ view of the New Perspective on Paul. 47 It does so in order not to pre-judge the New Perspective before our study has run its course. In addition, we will only concentrate on a particular aspect of the New Perspective on Paul. We do not intend in this study to offer an assessment of the New Perspective on Paul in its entirety. We will not, for example, further belabour the issue of covenantal or forensic understandings of δικαιοσύνη. 48 Neither will we debate the adequacy of Sanders’ covenantal nomism to accurately describe the Common Judaism of Paul’s time. 49 Instead, we will investigate Paul’s language of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 for clues as to whether his use indeed contributes to the later self-understanding of Christianity as members of a new covenant that replaces the old. More on this will be fleshed out in the coming chapters, but we can already mention that our decision to concentrate on Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 allows us to examine a passage that is not usually the battlefield for the more polemical debates between the different ‘perspectives’. At the same time, the traditional view of Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 as implying a negative assessment of Judaism will offer us the opportunity to evaluate which ‘new perspective’ position can best be said to obtain here, (1) a Paul who is breaking with Judaism (Sanders) or (2) a Paul who holds to a renewed covenant that is enlarged to include Gentiles (Dunn). As such, in terms of the New Perspective on Paul, our study can be portrayed as the attempt to chart a position somewhere between Sanders (discontinuity) and Dunn (continuity) with respect to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3.

Gentile Christians, it may well be the case that he actually contributed more to the later split between the increasingly Gentile church and Jewish Christianity.” 47 Though different in content, we adopt a stance towards the New Perspective on Paul similar to that followed by David J. Southall, Rediscovering Righteousness in Romans: Personified dikaiosynē within Metaphoric and Narratorial Settings, WUNT II/240 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 6: “I seek to move beyond this impasse [between the New Perspective and its opponents] by providing a critique of Dunn’s view of δικαιοσύνη from within a New Perspective paradigm.” 48 The many studies that have done so are documented and discussed in Michael F. Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective, Paternoster Biblical Monographs (Milton Keynes/Waynesboro: Paternoster, 2007) 113–154. 49 It has been heavily debated, albeit from a mostly critical point of view, in the two volumes of Justification and Variegated Nomism (vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism; vol. 2: The Paradoxes of Paul), ed. D.A. Carson et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001 and 2004).

3. The Present Study in Prospect

19

This attempt to chart a position between Sanders and Dunn will be aided by a conceptual tool developed by another ‘new perspective’ thinker: reconfiguration. Building upon Sanders’ transfer terminology, Terence Donaldson has argued that Paul’s conversion represents his transfer between convictions. His Damascus experience represented a transfer of allegiance from one convictional world to another, a personal and cognitive shift in which he gave up one set of world-structuring convictions and embraced another. 50

There are three stages to this process: (1) an initial set of convictions, (2) a disjunctive experience, and (3) a set of convictions in which selected elements from the initial set are reorganized around a new center (reconfiguration). 51 Reconfiguration means that “Paul did not so much abandon his native convictional world as reconstruct it around a new center.” 52 As such, reconfiguration straddles a position between continuity and discontinuity. Comparing reconfiguration to what occurs in Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts, 53 Donaldson states: “On the one hand, paradigms are sharply disjunctive and discontinuous. […] Yet, at the same time there is continuity. […] In a paradigm shift, the old field of knowledge is reconfigured, not abandoned.” 54 As a conceptual tool, reconfiguration can thus help us to navigate the seeming impasse between Sanders’ discontinuity with Judaism and Dunn’s continuity. Furthermore, Donaldson’s language of reconfiguration has trickled into the literature on Paul, even when not specifically dialoguing with Donaldson. 55 William Campbell, who does dialogue with Donaldson (among others), disagrees with him on a specific point that Paul’s gentile Christ-followers should be regarded as proselytes in a reconfigured Israel, 56 but Campbell’s own depiction of the relativization of things in Christ and the transformation of those

50 Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997) 304. 51 Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 295. 52 Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 297. 53 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1962). 54 Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 304. 55 To give just two examples from literature that we shall refer to more extensively later on in this study: Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998) 182: “These untraditional features of Paul’s perceptions emerge due to a fundamental reconfiguration of his worldview.” And, as already alluded to earlier, Stephan K. Davis argues that Paul reconfigured Torah by applying its primordial and eschatological aspects onto Christ instead. Davis, The Antithesis of the Ages: Paul’s Reconfiguration of Torah. Neither author references Donaldson’s use of the term. 56 Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, 59.

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in Christ, can be considered similar to a process of reconfiguration. 57 In interfacing with issues of identity transformation, reconfiguration, as a conceptual tool, will be of interest to us in light of the language of transformation to be found in the pericope of 2 Cor 3:7–18 (μεταμορφούμεθα in v. 18). Lastly, Donaldson’s tripartite stage of conversion bears similarities to a sociological model employed by Troels Engberg-Pedersen in his Paul and the Stoics. 58 Engberg-Pedersen’s model links the phenomenon of conversion ‘conceptualized as a story’ to the formation of community (from ‘I’ to ‘We’), an aspect certainly worth our consideration, particularly in view of Paul’s role as founder and the supplier of founding narratives to the Corinthian community. We shall have occasion to revisit this model in our fifth chapter. Now that we have concluded laying out the broad sweep that forms the context of our study, we narrow our focus and turn to the spectrum of continuity and discontinuity as it pertains to the study of 2 Cor 3.

Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, 167: “From this discussion of Paul’s reversal of Corinthian values, it is clear that in such societies, resocialization represents a major transition to the values of the new creation, and the reconfiguration which life in Christ entails.” Also, p. 168: “Somewhat in contrast to the above example, the relativization of all things in Christ and the resulting transformation of those in Christ, need not imply an abandonment of Israel-centered convictions, but as with all convictions, these must be revised in the light of the Christ-event. [...] Paul’s convictions, though radically revised in Christ, were by no means completely abandoned.” This is then followed by a footnote to Donaldson’s work. 58 Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) 33–44. 57

Chapter 2

The ‘New Perspective’ on 2 Cor 3 In order to address the question of continuity and discontinuity in 2 Cor 3, we undertake in this chapter an examination of what might be considered the ‘New Perspective’ approach to 2 Cor 3. But we must commence this chapter with a preliminary question: did Paul have a covenant theology to begin with?

1. Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?

1. Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?

The question itself was the title of a book chapter by James Dunn. 1 We will concentrate on Dunn’s remarks on the Corinthian correspondence, the only place where Paul speaks of a ‘new covenant’ (1 Cor 11:25 and 2 Cor 3:6) and an ‘old covenant’ (2 Cor 3:14). This was striking for Dunn, since one would have thought that Galatians and Romans, by virtue of the topics they deal with, would be more concerned about the relation between the old and new covenants, and so Dunn decided to investigate whether the use of ‘new covenant’ in the Corinthian correspondence was of particular significance. Dunn quickly dismissed the significance of this usage in 1 Cor owing to its employment in a quotation by Paul: “In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (11:25). Paul only introduced the language of a new covenant because the tradition mentioned it (11:23: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed…”) and not because it formed a crucial aspect of his theologizing. Dunn concluded that for 1 Cor “we have confirmation that ‘covenant’ was not a primary category for Paul, and even that the link between his gospel and the idea of the ‘new covenant’ lay somewhat on the periphery of his thought.” 2 Dunn next proceeeded to see whether this picture changed in 2 Cor. As already mentioned, 2 Cor contrasted a ‘new covenant’ (3:6) with the ‘old covenant’ (3:14). This contrast was further heightened by two other antitheses, 1 James D.G. Dunn, “Did Paul Have A Covenant Theology? Reflections on Romans 9.4 and 11.27” The Concept of the Covenant in Second Temple Period, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C.R. de Roo, SJSJ 71 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003) 287–307. 2 Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 297.

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Chapter 2: The ‘New Perspective’

death-life (3:6–7) and condemnation-righteousness (3:9). Equally decisive was Paul’s use of καταργέω in 3:7, 11, and 13, a term “to indicate the current status (in Paul’s eyes) of the old covenant.” 3 While Dunn conceded that the term was not entirely clear, it did carry the sense of rendering something ineffective, thereby implying that the old covenant had been abolished in favour of the new. “The language certainly seems, at first glance, to support a fairly straightforward supersessionist covenant theology.” 4 Dunn, however, questioned this conclusion as too hasty. He maintained that covenant was not the primary category, and that in fact it was the issue of ministry – of Paul versus that of Moses – which was at stake in the context (διακονέω 3:3; διακονία 3:7, 8, 9 (2x), 4:1; διάκονος 3:6), in addition to the question of sufficiency for ministry (ἱκανός 2:16, 3:5; ἱκανότης 3:5; ἱκανόω 3:6). Dunn surmised that the reason why Paul introduced the covenantal contrast was because other ministers were relying on Moses as an authoritative figure, thus leading Paul to invoke the text of Exod 34:29–35 on the descent of Moses from Mount Sinai with the second set of tablets (a text which itself mentioned the covenant, cf. Exod 34:10, 12, 15, 27–28), in the run-up to the pericope that Paul relied on to answer his opponents. In other words, Paul seems to have introduced the talk of covenant and the contrast of new covenant/old covenant not because it was a primary feature of his own theology and gospel, but because it was a way of countering a glorification of Moses’s ministry which sought to denigrate his own. 5

Additionally, Dunn noted that the contrast between covenants was not really as stark as might at first appear. Both ministries contained glory and Moses was treated as a prototypical Christian convert (Dunn’s reading of ἐπιστρέψῃ in 3:16) whose unveiled face reflected glory in the way that believers were transformed into the same image from glory to glory (3:18). Second, Dunn recalled the uncertainty in the use of καταργέω on what precisely had been set aside. Third, Dunn stated that the use of ‘new covenant’ in Jer 31:31–34 (= Jer 38:31–34 LXX), on which Paul is surmised to be relying in 2 Cor 3, never signified a different covenant but, in fact, indicated a more effective keeping of the Law. Fourth, Paul never used the word ‘law’ (νόμος) in the passage. Instead, he used the term γράμμα, which should not be taken as a synonym for νόμος. “The term γράμμα focuses rather on the law as written, visible to sight in the written letter. […] γράμμα, in other words, is the law, the Torah, misunderstood as to scope and continuing relevance.” 6 For Dunn, then, the old covenant is not synonymous with Law but represented rather its misunderstanding, Israel’s inability to understand the temporary nature of the Mosaic epoch. By Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 297. Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 298. 5 Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 299. 6 Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 300. 3 4

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contrast, the new covenant was the Law operating in the heart, as promised by the prophets (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) and intended by God. Paul’s use of covenant terminology in 2 Corinthians is therefore similar to Dunn’s findings on 1 Cor: In short, once again we see that talk of covenant is not central to Paul’s theologizing, nor a point of distinctiveness within Second Temple Judaism. Consequently, any conclusion that 2 Corinthians 3 implies a strong gospel/law antithesis in Paul’s theology is at best premature and probably misconceived. 7

There is a certain momentum to these findings, such that by the end of his article Dunn concluded that (1) Paul’s usage of the term ‘covenant’ was casual; (2) its use was determined by Israel’s scriptures, which centred on the issue of Israel’s self-understanding; and (3) Paul’s talk of covenant referred to Israel primarily and as such, “Paul’s covenant theology is an in-house contribution to Israel’s understanding of itself as God’s covenant people.” 8 Dunn’s comments on 2 Cor 3 largely echoed what can be found in his earlier work, The Theology of Paul the Apostle. 9 There Dunn saw the covenantal contrast as a contrast between epochs. 10 In examining the very negative language used of the old covenant, Dunn maintained that their force was meant “to substantiate the principal claim: that the old covenant has been surpassed and replaced by something better.” 11 That is because Christ’s coming had inaugurated a new and eschatological epoch. This being said, Dunn went on to highlight, as he would do in the article just discussed, that the contrast was primarily between the ministries of Moses and Paul, and equally that the absence of νόμος was deliberate. The use of γράμμα pointed to the limited and temporary scope of the Mosaic epoch, which Israel failed to understand and, as a consequence, gave the ‘letter’ its killing character. This usage was consistent with Paul’s other writings. In short, the law as gramma in 2 Corinthians 3 matches the Sinai of slavery in Galatians 4 and the law as the ally of sin in Romans 5. In each case the focus is on the negative side of the law’s role in the epoch which stretched from Moses to Christ. And in each case the implication is that that epoch has come to an end. 12

In sum, while Dunn was careful to nuance his statements on the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 in terms of διακονία, he still leaves the impression that the Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 301. Dunn, “Did Paul Have a Covenant Theology?,” 307. 9 James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998) 147–150. 10 This is because it forms part of the section, “§6.5: A relationship whose time is past,” pp.143–150, whose focus is on the Pauline understanding of freedom from the law in terms of a change of epochs. 11 Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 148. 12 Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 149–150. 7 8

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Chapter 2: The ‘New Perspective’

old covenant has been replaced by the new (‘the old covenant has been surpassed and replaced by something better’). Even though he has pointed out that Jeremiah’s use of ‘new covenant’ was not meant to signify a different covenant, one is unsure whether that still applied to Paul’s usage. We are therefore left to enquire whether Dunn considered Paul as adhering to a notion of two covenants or one.

2. Two Covenants or One?

2. Two Covenants or One?

This too is the title of a book chapter by Dunn 13 principally devoted to the question of the interdependence of Jewish and Christian identity. Programmatic in nature, this chapter explored the larger thesis that Christianity cannot understand itself except as an expression of Judaism; that Judaism is not true to itself unless it recognizes Christianity as a legitimate expression of its own heritage; and that, equally, Christianity is not true to itself unless it recognizes that Judaism is a legitimate expression of that same common heritage. 14

Its motivation was ecumenical 15 but geared towards examining the relationships between Jews and Christians in the early centuries of the Common Era. It is from this perspective that Dunn examined Paul, the ‘apostle of the heretics’, at the end of his article, to which we now turn. Because Paul stood at the overlap between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Judaism’, he was often accused of being the one responsible for causing the split between the two ways. Dunn questioned whether this common perception of Paul was justified and set out to prove that it was in fact far from self-evident. He first pointed out that Paul did not really speak in terms of ‘Judaism’ or ‘Christianity’ but in terms of Israel (as with Rom 9–11) and that his distancing use of ‘the Jews’ in 1 Thess 2:14–16 must be counterbalanced by his more positive statements in Romans. More important to our purposes, Dunn engaged the question of whether Paul really did encourage a theology of two covenants. Here he acknowledged that the use of plural forms in Galatians and Romans seemed to lean in favour of James D.G. Dunn, “Two Covenants or One? The Interdependence of Jewish and Christian Identity,” Geschichte – Tradition – Reflexion. FS Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hubert Cancik et al., vol. III: Frühes Christentum, ed. Hermann Lichtenberger (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996) 97–122. 14 Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 97. 15 Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 97: “Coming to the subject as a Christian, I do not apologise for having a strongly twentieth century motivation in pursuing this thesis […] For one thing, the question of Jewish/Christian relationships has, quite properly, assumed a central place in Christian theology and ecumenical discussion in the second half of the twentieth century (the post-Holocaust period).” 13

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this. Furthermore, talk of the ‘new covenant’ in the Corinthian correspondence, with its sharp contrast in 2 Cor 3 only served to reinforce this view. Yet once more Dunn contested this view on Paul. “He does not say, as does the Epistle of Barnabas, that the covenant is ours and not theirs. He does not say, as does Hebrews, that the covenant with Israel is obsolete and finished.” 16 As for Paul’s talk of a new covenant, Dunn already here insisted that, in line with Jer 31:31– 34 and later Jewish writings (including Qumran), it was understood as the way to more effectively fulfil the old covenant. The strong polemical tone to Paul’s language in Gal 3–4 and 2 Cor 3 cannot however be gainsaid. In response to this, Dunn set out to show that the thrust and nature of the polemic needed to be carefully considered. With respect to 2 Cor 3 he pointed out (as we have already seen) that the covenantal contrast should really be considered as one between two modes of ministry and that “the terms ‘covenant’, ‘law’ (which does not actually appear), διακονία and γράμμα are not to be taken as a sequence of synonyms.” 17 What this meant for Dunn was that the “continuity of covenants in function and purpose is still a fundamental part of Paul’s presuppositions at this point” 18 and reinforces his conclusion that it is “Paul who most forceably answers our original question: not two covenants, two religions, two different peoples (Jews and Christians) but one covenant, one religion, one people, Israel.” 19 Now to the question of whether Paul adhered to the notion of a single or double covenant for Jews and non-Jews. According to Dunn, while covenant may have existed on the periphery of Paul’s thought, nonetheless, Paul would have believed this covenant was the same covenant that was made between God and his people Israel. Its newness in the epoch inaugurated by Christ only resided in its mode of ministry, and was geared towards a more effective fulfilment of the ‘old’ covenant. Dunn made this conclusion on the unimportance of covenant to Paul’s thought based on the scarcity of its usage in the Pauline correspondence. But, while this may be statistically sound, it is worth bearing in mind the caution raised by William Campbell in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: The above references [the eight occurrences of διαθήκη in the Proto-Pauline letters] may indicate that covenant was not a dominant theme in Paul’s theology, but there is little agreement on this issue. It may be argued that what is generally presumed need not always be explicitly stated. 20

Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 115. Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 117. 18 Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 117. 19 Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 118. 20 William S. Campbell, “Covenant and New Covenant,” Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, ed. Gerald Hawthorne et al. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1993) 179 16 17

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As we shall shortly see, if one were to apply a different methodology, another consideration of Paul’s covenant theology comes into view. For the moment, though, we must ask ourselves whether it is not so much that covenant was peripheral to Paul as it was to Dunn. Dunn’s primary concern had mostly been on Paul and the Law, in line with the aims of his New Perspective. The question of Paul and the Law has usually directed its attention to the Letters to the Galatians and the Romans. 21 It therefore is useful to briefly consider a more comprehensive study of the covenant motif in early Judaism and Paul. 22

3. Paul’s Use of the Covenant Motif in 2 Cor 3

3. Paul’s Use of the Covenant Motif in 2 Cor 3

We will only seek to ascertain Christiansen’s conclusions with regard to Paul’s use of covenant in 2 Cor. However, it is worthwhile to briefly consider the overall aim of her project. Her analysis of covenant was primarily a study of ritual boundaries as identity markers in early Judaism and Paul, so it is this perspective that she ultimately used in her analysis of covenant as a term for identity in the Pauline letters. In her introduction, she acknowledged the infrequent use of διαθήκη in the New Testament. Yet, for her, it was obvious that the New Testament authors drew on the LXX and Hebrew backgrounds of ‫ברית‬ and that the “relatively narrow textual basis for the terminology does not in itself indicate that the covenant concept was not part of early Christian teaching, only that is has not been preserved.” 23 What she did caution against was, on the one hand, a conceptual scheme that has traditionally viewed two covenants in terms of a historical development, with an old covenant superseded by one that was new and better; this, she maintained, has led to anti-Judaism and was not defensible on the strength of the evidence in the New Testament corpus. The other approach, equally problematic in her opinion, was to use a salvation-historical scheme of promise and fulfilment that saw the covenant in continuation from Old Testament to New, but which in fact entailed reading the Old Testament in light of the Christ event. In response to this, ecumenical dialogue has sought to maintain the feasibility of two covenants coexisting in diversity and tension. An alternative, and one which Christiansen would explore in her study, was to reconsider the one covenant paradigm, but this time

And one might note here that Dunn had already written two major commentaries on these two epistles James D.G. Dunn, Romans, WBC 38 (Dallas, TX: Word, 1988) and Galatians, BNTC (London: A&C Black, 1993). 22 Ellen Juhl Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul: A Study of Ritual Boundaries as Identity Markers, AGJU 27 (Leiden: Brill, 1995). It should be noted that this work is the published version of Christiansen’s dissertation under Dunn’s supervision. 23 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 10. 21

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on an abstract level of a universal and non-exclusive divine covenant that comprised complementary aspects of promise and obligation. With this in mind, Christiansen surveyed the covenant motif in early Judaism up to the letters of Paul. Her study revealed that there was a change from ethno-centric to particularistic self-understanding, made clear by the shift in emphasis, from covenant valid for all Israel to covenant applied to part of Israel. In the texts I analysed there was no interest in the Gentiles, the concern being with Jewish identity. 24

This changed, however, with Paul, according to Christiansen, and her study went on to investigate whether the same two issues of covenant identity and ritual boundaries also occurred in the Pauline letters. Her study continued through an analysis of Rom, Gal and 2 Cor. On her choice of a non-chronological sequence, she noted: By not following the chronological order of Paul’s letters, I have the advantage that I can raise the question of identity from the point of view of it being related to theological reflections as well as to social belonging. Furthermore, from the perspective of self-understanding the order in which the letters were originally written is of less importance. 25

The main problem for Christiansen when it came to Paul was that covenant was not among his most central ideas, basing herself, as Dunn did, on the infrequency of the term διαθήκη in the Pauline letters. She argued that Paul reused and reinterpreted the covenant term in light of the Christ event. It was God’s raising of Jesus that changed the perspective for Paul, which raised the question, for Christiansen, whether this resulted in a radical redefinition of identity. “Does this shift mean that ethnocentricity is no longer a foundation for the covenant relationship?” 26 It is this question that guided her analysis of the Pauline texts that deal with covenant. We turn now to her analysis of 2 Cor 3. What first confronted her were the stark contrasting terms, prompting the following series of questions she would set out to answer: What purpose do the qualifications ‘new’ and ‘old’ serve in relation to the covenant? And in relation to this, What validity does covenant have in its aspect as ‘old’? Or in its aspect as ‘new’? What does the γράμμα-πνεῦμα contrast mean? How is this related to identity in general? To ‘new’ and ‘old’ in particular? What is Paul’s concern when drawing on ‘glory’ from Exodus 34? Finally, Is Paul concerned with present self-understanding in terms of ethnocentricity as opposed to universality? Alternatively expressed, Is the ecclesiological identity widened or narrowed in comparison to the Jewish background? 27

Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 209. Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 212. 26 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 212. 27 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 250. 24 25

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Chapter 2: The ‘New Perspective’

As part of her analysis she acknowledged the wider context of 2 Cor 2:14–7:4 in which Paul was engaged in a defence of his apostolic authority. She chose as her delimitation within this the narrower context of 3:1–4:6, 28 in which Paul contrasted his ministry with that of Moses. Here the question for Christiansen was whether “the ‘new’ covenant is a replacement of the old in terms of having a different function, or ‘new’ means renewal in terms of restoration, fulfilment, reinforcement, or reestablishment of the original value and function.” 29 As part of the background to Paul’s debate, Christiansen noted that the apostle was engaged in self-defence over the issue of ‘letters of recommendation’, already introduced in the preceding section of 2 Cor 2:14–17. This explained Paul’s polemical tone and the heavy contrast language he employed. His reliance on the Old Testament passages, in Christiansen’s view, had however to be seen in terms of giving shape to identity. That is why Paul alluded to the Sinai event. One should also note that Christiansen was seeking to examine the ramifications for church identity stemming from Paul’s use of covenant terminology in 2 Cor 3. Christiansen also chose not to engage the question of whether this terminology had been forced on Paul because his opponents were using it, mainly because, of the conjectural nature of reconstructing the opponents’ arguments. Christiansen’s next finding was that the contrast between new and old covenants was really one between ministries, and that Paul’s use of both was not meant to be mutually exclusive, since the use of ‘old covenant’ in 3:14 was only employed because ‘new covenant’ was mentioned in 3:6. In this she resisted a tendency among scholars to view the covenant in terms of substitution or replacement. Instead, Christiansen highlighted the prophetic hope (in the Hebrew Bible) for renewal that Paul relied on. She interpreted this hope as one for a new relationship with God and argued that “[s]imilar hopes are found in the intertestamental writings, sometimes as a new existence within history, sometimes as a new creation after an apocalyptic destruction has taken place.” 30 Christiansen would therefore reconsider the opposition of new-old, since “[t]he values of ‘new’ and ‘old’ in the New Testament need to be seen in the perspective that ‘new’ is not necessarily better than ‘old’.” 31 For her, then,

We have so far opted for the canonical division of 2 Cor 3 (vv. 1–18) in order to sidestep the issue of delimitation for now. It is sufficient for the moment to say that we agree with Christiansen on the wider context of 2:14–7:4 but opt instead for the immediate context of 2:14–4:6 following Jan Lambrecht, “Structure and Line of Thought in 2 Cor. 2,14–4,6,” Biblica 64 (1983) 344–380. Reprinted in Studies on 2 Corinthians, ed. Reimund Bieringer and Jan Lambrecht, BETL 112 (Leuven: Leuven University Press – Peeters, 1994) 257–293 (293–294: Additional Note). 29 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 251. 30 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 254. 31 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 256. 28

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Paul’s usage of ‘new’ did not imply replacement but rather eschatological renewal. “Paul defines ‘new’ in terms of its quality, hence not from the past, but from the eschaton.” 32 Christiansen thus chose to disagree with the large scholarly consensus on the use of ‘old covenant’ as a negative term. Instead, she viewed 2 Cor 3 as an attempt to use the covenant affirmatively, much as it was used in Romans. The Sinai story that Paul drew on in 2 Cor 3 was a reminder of Israel’s identity. The covenant relationship articulated in the Sinai story, according to Christiansen, had become associated with national unity, which then served as the reason to exclude other peoples from this relationship with Israel’s God. What Paul then did was to change the perspective; by focusing on God’s presence in glory, it testified to the validity of the covenant relationship “but if the covenant relationship builds on the law as its leading principle, or is limited to ethnic Israel, covenant becomes ethno-centric: not invalid, but too narrow, leaving aside the potential for a universal relationship.” 33 Christiansen supported this understanding by looking to Paul’s use of καινὴ κτίσις in 2 Cor 5:17. She saw Paul’s interpretation of ‘new’ as tied to his theology of creation. This occurred ‘in Christ’ (2 Cor 5:19) and so the Sinai story had to be read with a Christological key. Without it, “its real meaning remains hidden, its potential for inclusiveness never comes to fruition and it may be reduced to a death relationship that has no value.” 34 Having argued that new covenant indicates eschatological renewal rather than temporal replacement, Christiansen next analysed the life and death character of γράμμα and πνεῦμα respectively and along similar lines contended (1) that Paul was here using two existential categories, (2) not with a time aspect in mind, and (3) that life and death were not a case of either-or, but rather bothand choices. It referred to a fundamental condition shared by all humans, which should thus be seen as correlated, instead of opposing, principles. “Consequently γράμμα and πνεῦμα should be seen as two existential principles to which both the Jewish and the Christian community are subject, as long as human life is ‘not yet’ the new creation.” 35 Once again, for Christiansen, replacement was not the issue, but rather the quality of humanity’s relationship with God. Moses’ vocation had merely been to mediate a covenant relationship limited to Israel. The difference between Paul’s and Moses’ ministries, then, was that for Moses the people of Israel were the goal of God’s salvation whereas Paul’s ministry was directed to the world, proclaiming a message of reconciliation in order to restore humanity’s relationship with God. The contrast resided in the fact that God’s power over death had not yet been revealed to Moses and, in this way, Paul’s ministry was one that proclaimed life. “The Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 257. Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 258. 34 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 259. 35 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 261–262. 32 33

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hope for resurrection, based in the Christ events, points forward to a restoration of creation, a new world order.” 36 As a final step, Christiansen turned to the issue of covenant and glory in light of 2 Cor 3:7–18’s reliance (the so-called ‘midrash’) on Exod 34:29–35. The word δόξα was central here, and even though Christiansen conceded that there was no identification of covenant and glory, she maintained that the context pointed to a relation between the two. “This then raises the question, what constitutes the covenant relationship in its original intention? God present as glory? Or covenant based on the principle of law? Or, covenant as promise?” 37 Christiansen argued that Paul was preparing for a definition of glory as a mark of present and future identity, and that it was from a future greater glory that he looked back on an already accepted greatness of the past. In this way the past Sinai event serves as a foundation for a hope of a fuller experience of glory in the future. By using eschatology as a corrective factor, Sinai has importance as origin, but glory has Christ and Spirit as orientation, Christ being the model, the Spirit proof. Thus the temporal aspect of Sinai is less important; rather glory becomes the purpose of humanity or creation. 38

This only goes to show that Paul, for Christiansen, was addressing a Christian community and its coming to terms with the past. For them it became important to affirm the validity of the past experience of glory, yet, at the same time, to see this particular glory as no longer having the same significance in light of the Christ event. As a result, a time aspect cannot be denied. But, for Christiansen, this should not too easily lead to reading it in terms of linear covenants within a replacement scheme. “It is only in retrospect one can conclude that the glory of Christ was greater than what was before, not the other way. From the perspective of Christ there is a ‘ministry of condemnation’.” 39 This did not mean, however, that the covenant had no effect or power for that would have meant Paul was denying God’s revelation in history. For Christiansen, Paul was defining identity from an eschatological perspective. Only from the eschaton can one speak of a termination but this would only happen when the renewal of creation took place through transformation to the glory of Christ (2 Cor 3:18).

Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 263. Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 264–265. 38 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 266. 39 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 267. Here again we see Christiansen struggling not to read the text in a way that could possibly be construed as anti-Jewish. For a critique of such forced readings see in particular, Richard H. Bell, The Irrevocable Call of God: An Inquiry into Paul’s Theology of Israel, WUNT I/184 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), who sees such readings as ‘selling out’ the Christian message (pp. 414–417). We will deal in greater detail with his critique in our third chapter. 36 37

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This means covenant identity is no longer the same and can no longer be the same, because both present and past identity are shaped, not primarily from a past event, as for instance the Sinai encounter with God, but primarily from a glory that has quality and visible focus in Christ. 40

Summing up, then, Christiansen main contention was that the ethno-centric covenant had become too limited to accommodate Paul’s notion of a new relationship. This, argued Christiansen, was why Paul only seemed to mention the covenant in passing. For Paul, covenant as relationship was granted a new dimension in Christ, read now from an eschatological perspective in terms of renewal and not in terms of replacement. What emerged was a universal covenant whose particularism – indeed, identity marks – were now defined by faith in Christ. The implication of covenant being eschatologically based for Christian identity is that there are different ways of relating to the same God. Christian identity is based on faith, marked by the Spirit and has δόξα of the Spirit and Christ as its goal and purpose. 41

It is also worth noting Christiansen’s overall findings on the covenant motif in Paul’s letters. Christ was the hermeneutical key for Paul to interpret one’s relationship with God. He saw the covenant relationship as valid but reinterpreted it by emphasising a new dimension. In this understanding replacement was not a helpful model to explain Paul’s thought, given that “Paul never uses the term ‘covenant’ as a designation for the Christian community.” 42 In Christiansen’s opinion, Paul found the term ‘covenant’ inadequate owing to its ethno-centric limitations. Having Gentiles and the mission to the Gentile world as scope, Paul proclaims a relationship with God in universal rather than ethnic terms. When he uses ethnic categories, he states that they are limited in value, or even, when reinterpreted through Christ, of no value. 43

Thus it was that Paul added a new dimension to the covenant relationship in terms of the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, ‘church of God’, one no longer tied to national boundaries. The above study, as a sustained consideration of the covenant motif in Paul, stands in contrast to Dunn’s rather fleeting comments on the subject, but we must concede that its conclusions are hardly divergent from Dunn’s own. In fact, as an analysis geared towards the question of identity markers and ritual boundaries, it buttressed Dunn’s claim that Paul’s problem with Judaism was that its identity markers (food laws, circumcision, Sabbath observance) were functioning as ‘badges of covenant membership’ 44 betokening race and nation. Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 269. Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 269. 42 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 270. 43 Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 271. 44 Cf. Dunn, “The New Perspective,” 108. 40 41

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“Covenant works had become too closely identified as Jewish observances, covenant righteousness, as national righteousness.” 45 For Dunn, Paul held that it was righteousness through faith in Christ which was the more fundamental identity marker. Christiansen helped push this insight further through her own observations on the ecclesial relationship that provided the new identity markers ‘in Christ’ beyond that of the ethno-centric Sinai covenant relationship. It would be safe to say, therefore, that Christiansen and Dunn belong to the same school of thought, namely, the New Perspective on Paul. It was also clear that both Dunn and Christiansen displayed a sensitivity to anti-Judaism that has been informed by contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. In order to test whether their findings have been faithful to the texts in their original contexts, we will, in the next chapter, compare their findings with a contextual exegesis of the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 that was not similarly indebted to the New Perspective on Paul. Before doing so, however, two methodological points are in order. The first of these was raised in a comparative study of ‘new covenant’ at Qumran and in Paul. 46 Thomas Blanton has critiqued Christiansen’s work for employing dichotomizing tendencies that end up obscuring the results of her sociological analysis. She proceeded from the primary dichotomy of universalism = positive vs. particularism = negative. Her theological agenda then construed Christianity as this universalistic religion over against a particularistic Judaism, thus recasting the familiar dichotomy of a religion of grace versus works. Thus, although sociologically Christianity exhibited social boundaries, they were not endemic to Christianity; the boundaries were imposed from outside, by non-Christians who failed to see Christianity as the universal religion it was. Christianity ends up being cast once more as the superior religion, something which Christiansen’s own stated sensitivity to contemporary Jewish-Christian relations would have wanted to avoid. The substance of Blanton’s methodological critique of Christiansen was that she had not applied with equal rigour the sociological analysis she applied to treatment of the Jewish sources, switching imperceptibly to a theological treatment when arriving at the Pauline texts in her study. “Christiansen insulates Christianity from sociological analysis. […] Christiansen formulates her conclusions in such a way as to escape the implications of her sociological method, in preference for her theological outlook.” 47 Had she applied her sociological method to the Pauline texts, suggested Blanton, she would have found an equally particularistic Christianity. Hence, even with so devoted a follower of the New Perspective on Paul as Christiansen, she seemed to have inadvertently Dunn, “The New Perspective,” 114. Thomas R. Blanton IV, Constructing a New Covenant: Discursive Strategies in the Damascus Document and Second Corinthians, WUNT II/233 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). 47 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 11. 45 46

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reintroduced the Baurian antithesis of particularism and universalism, which the new paradigm had ostensibly sought to replace. The correction, proposed by Blanton, was to avoid confusing sociology with theology. His own project set out to examine how the term ‘new covenant’ was deployed within discourses that attempted to influence the perceptions of certain target audiences. Another methodological problem that arose in both Dunn’s and Christiansen’s analyses on covenant in Paul was highlighted by Scott Hahn in his survey of covenant research from 1994 to 2004. 48 He noted two studies in 2003 that looked at the concept of covenant in Paul. One of them was the article by Dunn that we have already discussed. Dunn limits himself to examination of uses of the word διαθήκη in the Pauline corpus and concludes that ‘Paul’s use of the term “covenant” is surprisingly casual (p. 306), and Paul’s limited covenant thought is at best an ‘in-house contribution to Israel’s understanding of itself as God’s covenant people’ (p.307). 49

Standing in contrast to this, a study by Stanley Porter, 50 appearing in the same volume as that of Dunn’s (in fact their chapters follow one another), employed a different methodology and arrived at the opposite conclusion.

4. The Concept of Covenant in Paul

4. The Concept of Covenant in Paul

Briefly summarized, Porter argued that one cannot link a concept such as ‘covenant’ to just one lexical term (διαθήκη). Instead, one should examine an entire semantic domain associated with the concept. It is because this is not emphasised enough in Pauline studies that “the concept of covenant is relatively neglected in the study of Pauline thought.” 51 The numerical occurrence of the word διαθήκη (eight; nine if one counts the Deutero-Pauline Eph 2:12) pales in comparison to the use of other terminology employed by Paul. For Porter, this kind of approach is symptomatic of the major linguistic problem of equating words and concepts. James Barr’s critique of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament highlighted the problems of equating a given lexical item with a corresponding concept. Applying this to the concept of covenant in Paul, Porter pointed out that equating the word διαθήκη with covenant presented two problems: (1) it may include instances in which

Scott Hahn, “Covenant in the Old and New Testaments: Some Current Research (1994– 2004),” CBR 3/2 (2005) 263–292. 49 Hahn, “Covenant in the Old and New Testaments,” 281–282. 50 Stanley E. Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” The Concept of the Covenant in Second Temple Period, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C.R. de Roo, JSJSup 71 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2003) 269–285. 51 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 271. 48

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διαθήκη did not refer to the technical theological concept of covenant as defined in New Testament scholarship; (2) it may also exclude other words that, even though not part of the lexical definition, were part of the group of words used by Paul to refer to covenant. Porter highlighted the development of the concept of semantic fields or domains, holding it to be a major step forward in lexicographical research. He drew upon the Louw-Nida semantic domain lexicon 52 in order to approach the evidence on Paul’s concept of covenant from a different perspective. Before doing so, Porter helpfully articulated his understanding of covenant: I assume for the sake of discussion here that what is meant by covenant in most discussions is the salvific relationship established between God and his people. This is predicated upon some degree of continuity between the Old Testament era, with its agreements between God and various individuals, and the New Testament era, in which God is seen as relating to his people in the light of these agreements and on the basis of the Christ-event. 53

Based on this broad definition, Porter set out to investigate whether all of Paul’s uses of διαθήκη referred to the concept of covenant, in line with problem (1) outlined above, namely whether some instances of Paul’s usage of the term fell outside consideration of the theological understanding of ‘covenant’. Looking to the Louw-Nida semantic domain lexicon he found that διαθήκη was classified under two different domains, (34) – Association 54 and (57) – Possess, Transfer, Exchange. 55 Domain (57) fell outside consideration because it did not include a Pauline example. Within domain (34), διαθήκη was listed twice. It was listed in (34.43), which is defined as “to make a solemn agreement involving reciprocal benefits and responsibilities – ‘to make a covenant, to covenant together, making of a covenant.’” 56 Under this definition it included Rom 11:27 (“I will make this covenant with them when I take away their sins”). The second listing was (34.44), which is defined as “the verbal content of an agreement between two persons specifying reciprocal benefits and responsibilities – ‘covenant, pact.’” 57 Under this definition it included Gal 3:15 (“no one can break or add to a covenant which is in effect between people”). By means of this simple exercise alone Porter wished to demonstrate that a single definition of διαθήκη was not sufficient for all the New Testament evidence and that LouwNida showed greater sensitivity to this issue than other lexicons did. Based on their careful differentiation of semantic sub-domains, Porter went on to argue

E.A. Nida and J.P. Louw, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2 vols. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988). 53 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 276. 54 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 448f. 55 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 558f. 56 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 452. 57 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 452. 52

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that the occurrences of διαθήκη in Gal 3:15 and 17 carried the meaning of testament or will and therefore fell outside consideration of the theological use of covenant. 58 In line with problem (2), that of whether Paul used different words to refer to covenant, Porter next explored other words in Louw-Nida’s semantic domain (34) to see whether any of them occurred in the vicinity of Paul’s usage of διαθήκη. He discovered sub-domain (34.46) δικαιόω, δικαίωσις, δικαιοςύνη: “to cause someone to be in a proper or right relation with someone else – ‘to put right with, to cause to be in a right relationship with,’” which Louw-Nida consider “more probable that Paul uses these expressions in the context of the covenant relation rather than in the context of legal procedures.” 59 This, together with sub-domain (34.47) δίκαιος – “pertaining to being in a right relationship with someone,” 60 signified for Porter that the “discussion of ‘covenant in Paul’ can be expanded so that it becomes part of some of the major conceptual and theological categories in Pauline studies since Luther, up to and including the present.” 61 Demonstrating how this might be expanded, Porter highlighted that the concept of covenant in terms of the use of δικ- words (δικαιόω, δικαίωσις, δικαιοςύνη) was evident in Romans as early as Rom 1:17, when Paul stated as the opening theme to his letter that the “righteousness (δικαιοςύνη) of God is revealed through faith for faith.” Similarly, in Galatians the use of διαθήκη and δικ- words dominates chapter 3 in the discussion of the covenant in relation to Abraham. Likewise, and of interest to our purposes, it is significant that between the two uses of διαθήκη in 2 Cor. 3:6 and 14 occurs the use of δικαιοςύνη in 2 Cor. 3:9. This single usage provides further strength to the contrast in covenants articulated in this passage, especially in vv. 7–11, with v. 9 contrasting the ministry of condemnation with that of righteousness. 62

On the issue of διακονία, however, Porter was unable to make a similar association to covenant as he did with δικαιοςύνη. “In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul speaks of various forms of ministry, some of them good and some of them bad, some of them abstract and some of them personal, but all of them ways in which these entities serve or function. However, in none of them does it appear that ministry or service is itself to be equated with the concept of covenant.” 63 This

But see Scott Hahn, “Covenant, oath and the Aqedah: Διαθήκη in Galatians 3:15–18,” CBQ 67 (2005) 79–100 for a dissenting view. 59 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 452. 60 Nida and Louw, Greek-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 453. 61 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 282. 62 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 283. 63 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 284. 58

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seemed to be confirmed by the placement of διακον-words in a number of different semantic domains in the Louw-Nida lexicon but not really within the same vicinity as διαθήκη. Porter’s findings were not to argue that covenant language was the centre of Paul’s thought nor even that it was a dominant semantic category. “However, if significant terminology shares a semantic sub-domain, the relation between the concepts needs to be explored fully” 64 since it might lead to newer exegetical and theological insights. His article therefore serves as a methodological counterbalance to Dunn’s and Christiansen’s analyses of covenant in Paul explored thus far. It should also be noted that Porter was not alone in his conclusions. The insight that the concept of covenant may be more significant for Pauline thought than has typically been recognized was already signalled by N.T. Wright in The Climax of the Covenant who made a stronger claim: Though it is unfashionable to use covenantal categories in Paul, I believe, as is already clear in this book, that they are actually central; and, moreover, they are habitually expressed in forensic language, i.e. using the root δικ-. This point must be simply asserted here, since there is no room to spell it out as could be done; were I to amplify it, I would return at once to Galatians 3, and work back to Romans 8 via 2 Corinthians 3, Romans 2 and Romans 4. Δικαιοςύνη, I suggest, can often be translated, more or less, as ‘covenant membership’. 65

One other important consideration is whether the New Perspective on Paul emphasises continuity between old and new covenants because of an implicit fear that its converse, discontinuity between the covenants, could be misconstrued as anti-Judaism. Porter seemed to suspect this was the case in mentioning that the traditional view of the concept of covenant in Paul – one that emphasizes a number of elements of discontinuity between the old and new covenants, even if certain commonalities are maintained – seem to move contrary to the so-called New Perspective on Paul. 66

The theological implications of a semantic domain connection between covenant and δικαιοςύνη language would be that it could facilitate a swing back to the discontinuity model of the classical Lutheran antithesis between Gesetz und Evangelium (Law and Gospel) and a reassertion of Luther’s Rechtfertigungslehre (the doctrine on justification). 67 The New Perspective on Paul has tended

Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 285. N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991) 203. 66 Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” 270. 67 Porter’s comment on p.282, n.39 says much: “The evidence that I have cited in this paper pushes me to suggest that the semantic field of covenant or, better, relational language is much larger than previously explored, so much so that it might include justification language.” 64 65

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to characterise Luther’s reading on Paul as a misreading. 68 However, in objection to this, some voices (usually traditionalist) would acknowledge that Luther’s relationship to Judaism was far from ideal, and yet appeal against dismissing Luther’s contribution altogether. “Luther’s bad handling of Paul’s relationship to Judaism does not necessarily mean that the great Reformer misinterpreted Paul.” 69 These will be issues to examine in in the next chapter.

5. Overview

5. Overview

In our endeavour to explore the covenantal contrasts in 2 Corinthians 3 between ‘new’ and ‘old’, this chapter has investigated the preliminary question whether Paul had a covenant theology. In the event that he did, we also asked the question whether Paul grappled with a notion of one or two covenants. Dunn and Christiansen were both of the opinion that covenant lay on the periphery of Paul’s thought and that, when he did employ the term, it was in order to reinterpret it in terms of a new dimension to the relationship with God in Christ. A high emphasis on continuity was evident in both their writings in seeking to emphasise the one covenant, now made universal for all humanity. The motivation for this seems to have been ecumenical, and both Dunn and Christiansen were at pains to show that replacement and supersessionist categories did insufficient justice to the evidence gleaned from the New Testament texts themselves. As to the question of the contrasts in 2 Corinthians 3, our principal focus, both Dunn and Christiansen found that these should be understood in terms of the two modes of ministry, Paul’s and Moses’, that were being contrasted polemically because Paul felt pressed to defend his apostolic authority. Methodologically, however, we questioned at the end of this chapter whether the linkage of word to concept justified Dunn’s and Christiansen’s conclusions with respect to the insignificance of covenant to Paul’s thought. Our reading of Porter’s position suggested that the area of semantic-domain methodology delivered a different conclusion on Paul’s covenant language, making it less easy to dismiss covenant as peripheral to Paul’s thought. It might also lead to a reconsideration of Paul’s justification language, something that the New Perspective on Paul has tended to characterise as a misreading of Paul by Luther. It might First articulated by Krister Stendahl (viewed by Dunn as the forerunner to the New Perspective) in 1963, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” HTR 56 (1963) 199–215. Stendahl critiqued Luther for introducing into our reading of Paul an introspective conscience obsessed with sinfulness that had more to do with Western thinking than perhaps Paul himself. See also Dunn, “The New Perspective,” especially 95–103. 69 Frank Thielman, Paul and The Law: A Contextual Approach (Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 1994) 46. 68

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then indicate a swing back in favour of a ‘Lutheran’ discontinuity between old and new covenants (as opposed to a ‘Calvinist’ emphasis on continuity). However, such considerations must remain tentative. What has been lacking till now is a full-length exegetical consideration of the passage in 2 Cor 3, since Dunn and Christiansen may have been susceptible to their ecumenical motivations colouring their exegetical preferences. That is why the focus of our next chapter will centre upon one definitive study on 2 Cor 3 that will act as a counterbalance.

Chapter 3

A Contextual Study of the Covenantal Contrasts in 2 Cor 3 Our previous chapter has intimated that there are problems if one approaches the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 with a preconceived notion of Paul’s covenant theology. We thus turn our attention to a contextual exegesis of the chapter and adopt as our guide Scott J. Hafemann, whose Paul, Moses and the History of Israel (hereafter PMHI) is a thoroughgoing study of the letter/Spirit contrast in 2 Cor 3. 1 The advantage here is that his study offered a comprehensive analysis of Paul’s larger argumentation in 3:4–18. 2 Hafemann’s work also had the distinction of not being driven by the New Perspective on Paul, even though he acknowledged its impact on Pauline studies, 3 and so it will be fruitful to see what results his exegesis has delivered, specifically with regard to the focus of

1 Scott J. Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel: The Letter/Spirit Contrast and the Argument from Scripture in 2 Corinthians 3, WUNT I/81 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995). Given that we will depend extensively on Hafemann’s exegesis, page references to quotes from his work will appear in the main text of our chapter. In addition to familiarizing ourselves with the arguments of Hafemann’s study, we have also had recourse to his other works pertaining to 2 Cor. Hafemann, “The Glory and Veil of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–14: An Example of Paul’s Contextual Exegesis of the OT – A Proposal,” HBT 14 (1992) 31–49; “Corinthians, Letters to the,” Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, ed. Gerald Hawthorne et al. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1993) 164–179; “Paul’s Argument from the Old Testament and Christology in 2 Cor 1–9: The Salvation-History/Restoration Structure of Paul’s Apologetic,” The Corinthian Correspondence, ed. Reimund Bieringer, BETL 125 (Leuven: Leuven University Press – Peeters, 1996) 277–303; “The ‘Temple of the Spirit’ as the Inaugural Fulfilment of the New Covenant within the Corinthian Correspondence,” Ex Auditu 12 (1996) 29–42; “The Spirit of the New Covenant, the Law and the Temple of God’s Presence: Five Theses on Qumran Self-Understanding and the Contours of Paul’s Thought,” Evangelium. Schriftauslegung. Kirche. FS Peter Stuhlmacher zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Jostein Ådna et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997) 172–189; “Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in 2 Corinthians,” Int 52 (1998) 246–257; 2 Corinthians: The NIV Application Commentary, The NIV Application Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000) 156–172. 2 Since then, two following studies are of note: Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3, NovTSup 159 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and Michael Cover, Lifting the Veil: 2 Corinthians 3:7–18, BZNW 210 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). 3 See Hafemann, PMHI, 7–16 (“The Paradigm Shift in Pauline Studies”).

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our own study, the covenantal contrasts of 3:6 and 3:14. Yet, that is not to say that the task will be easy. Richard Hays has aptly commented: Unfortunately, 2 Corinthians 3, though squeezed and prodded by generations of interpreters, has remained one of the more inscrutable reflections of a man who had already gained the reputation among his near-contemporaries for writing letters that were ‘hard to understand’ (2 Peter 3:16). It is hard to escape the impression that, to this day, when 2 Corinthians 3 is read a veil lies over our minds. 4

1. The Issues at Hand

1. The Issues at Hand

It is important to set out as briefly as possible what we aim to achieve in this chapter. In our previous chapter, we discovered that the contrasts in 2 Cor 3 were primarily of two ministries, as opposed to two covenants. This chapter will first investigate whether that claim can be supported on the basis of the evidence. Second, we will examine whether Paul’s use of the term διαθήκη is merely incidental or in fact constitutive to his argumentation in 2 Cor 3. This will express itself in the question, ‘how new is the ‘new covenant’?’ Third, we shall enquire into whether the stark antitheses of this chapter do represent a critique on the ‘Law’, despite the conspicuous absence of the term νόμος. Fourth, we must also investigate to what extent the ‘old covenant’, ‘Moses’, and ‘the people of Israel’ are being critiqued. This will be an enquiry into the level of discontinuity that Paul (as seen through the eyes of Hafemann) posits between the old and new covenants. Alternatively, if there is continuity, what then accounts for the negative statements being made by Paul? 2 Cor 3, more specifically vv. 6–18, describes a series of stark contrasts: letter and spirit (v.6), what ‘kills’ against what ‘gives life’ (v.6), ministry of death (v.7) versus ministry of the spirit (v.8), the ministry of condemnation and the ministry of justification (v.9), what was set aside (τὸ καταργούμενον) against the permanent (τὸ μένον) (v.11) and a new covenant (v.6) versus the old covenant (v.14). These contrasts have been understood in different ways. The five most common views are: 5 (1) The difference between literal and spiritual senses. This harks back to Origen and his development of the allegorical method. (2) The text as written and the Spirit as interpreter. This is known as the hermeneutical reading. (3) The legalistic misuse of the Law versus the Holy Spirit. In this reading, ‘letter’ stands for legalism, whereas ‘Spirit’ refers to the proper understanding and use of the Law (empowered by the Holy Spirit). (4)

4 Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 1989) 123. 5 See Randall C. Gleason, “Paul’s Covenantal Contrasts in 2 Corinthians 3:1–11,” BSac 154 (1997) 61–79, esp. 70–77.

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The difference between outward conformity and inward obedience to the Mosaic Law. In this reading there is no end to the Mosaic Law and ‘spirit’ refers not to the Holy Spirit, but instead to the ability to keep the Law. (5) The Old Covenant versus the New Covenant. Here Paul’s antitheses are viewed as a contrast between two covenants: ‘letter’ signifies living by the Law under the old covenant (which now comes to an end) while ‘spirit’ denotes living by the Holy Spirit under the New Covenant. As we shall attempt to show, Hafemann’s analysis of the letter/Spirit contrast in 2 Cor 3 comes closest to the fourth view, with some differences.

2. Paul, Moses and the History of Israel

2. Paul, Moses and the History of Israel

2.1 Delimitation and the Main Argument The passage that Hafemann focused on in PMHI is 2 Cor 3:4–18, although he did see this as fitting within the argumentation of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6. 6 The wider framework for this was 2 Cor 2:14–7:4, in which Paul made an apology for his apostolic ministry. 7 In Hafemann’s view, the overall theme was the genuine nature of Paul’s role as a mediatory agent between God and his people. Then, within 2 Cor 3:4–18, the issue was specifically whether Paul’s ministry of suffering could be integrated with his ministry of the Spirit. For Hafemann, the letter/Spirit contrast (3:6) was an integral component of Paul’s apology for the 6 In a previous work of his, Hafemann saw his study of 2 Cor 2:14–3:3 as preparatory to a second work on 2 Cor 3:4–4:6 (what is now PMHI). Hafemann, Suffering and the Spirit. An Exegetical Study of II Cor. 2:14–3:3 within the Context of the Corinthian Correspondence, WUNT II/19 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986) 1. 7 Within 2 Cor 2:14–7:4, the passage of 6:14–7:1 is usually disputed as to Pauline authorship. But see in this regard Jan Lambrecht, “The Fragment of 2 Corinthians vi 14–vii 1: A Plea for its Authenticity,” Miscellanea Neotestamentica II, ed. T. Baarda et al., NovTSup 48 (Leiden: Brill, 1978) 143–161. Reprinted in Studies on 2 Corinthians, ed. R. Bieringer and J. Lambrecht, BETL 112 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994) 531–549. Also, Reimund Bieringer, “2 Korinther 6,14–7,1 im Kontext des 2. Korintherbriefes. Forschungsüberblick und Versuch eines eigenen Zugangs,” Studies on 2 Corinthians, 551–570. It also needs to be noted that one’s view of Paul’s covenant theology, as well as his use of covenantal terms in 3:6–18, can play a role in arguing for (or against) the authenticity and contextual integrity of 6:14–7:1. See for instance, William J. Webb, Returning Home: New Covenant and Second Exodus as the Context for 2 Corinthians 6.14–7.1, JSNTSup 85 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993). While we will not be treating the passage of 6:14–7:1 in this study, we will state that we are inclined to accept its authenticity and integrity, and have dealt with that issue elsewhere. See: Emmanuel Nathan, “Truth and Prejudice: A Theological Reflection on Biblical Exegesis,” ETL 83 (2007) 281–318, and Emmanuel Nathan, “Fragmented Theology in 2 Corinthians: The Unsolved Puzzle of 6:14–7:1,” Theologizing in the Corinthian Conflict: Studies in Exegesis and Theology of 2 Corinthians, ed. R. Bieringer, M. Ibita, D. Kurek-Chomycz, and T. Vollmer, Biblical Tools and Studies 16 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013) 211–228.

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legitimacy of his apostolic ministry of the Spirit. Similarly, Paul’s argumentation in 2 Cor 3:7–18 was to be seen as an expression of his self-understanding as an apostle. Hafemann’s main contention was that 2 Cor. 3:6 is not a detached and dogmatic theological maxim to be read first and foremost as part of Paul’s larger ‘view of the Law’. […] This is not to deny that the letter/Spirit contrast has significance for understanding Paul’s view of the Law. Certainly it does. But its significance is to be derived from its use in the context of 2 Cor. 2:14-4:6, not taken apart from it (PMHI 33).

Hafemann would in fact go on to show that 2 Cor 3:6, a key text in the traditional Law/Gospel debate, did not constitute a Pauline critique on the Law, or even of legalism. Instead, Paul’s view on the Law was thoroughly positive. Hafemann also rejected attempts by the New Perspective on Paul to view the ‘letter’ as a reference to sociological or ritual misuses of the Law, arguing that such a view on the Law did not occur in 2 Cor 3. In addition to this, Hafemann would argue that Paul carefully used and alluded to the Scriptural passages (Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Exodus) in 2 Cor 3:4–18, and was faithful to their original contexts. 2.2 The Origins of Hafemann’s Argument: Windisch vs. Goettsberger (1924) In PMHI 255–263, Hafemann has traced the influence of Hans Windisch’s 1924 commentary (Der Zweite Korintherbrief) on twentieth century studies of 2 Cor. It was Windisch’s legacy to characterise 2 Cor 3:7–18 as a freely constructed ‘midrash’ prompted by the polemical circumstances between Paul and his opponents at Corinth. For Windisch, Paul’s use of Exod 34:29–35 (underlying the statement in 2 Cor 3:7–18) constituted a radical departure from the tradition because Paul was maintaining that the glory of Moses’ face faded (καταργέω), something that the original Exodus passage (even in its LXX translation) lacked. As a result, for Windisch and the scholarly consensus that followed him, Paul reinterpreted his tradition according to his new-found Christian convictions. In contrast to Windisch, Johann Goettsberger proposed (also in 1924) that the subject of the καταργέω-sayings in 2 Cor 3:7, 11 and 13 was the old covenant and not the glory on Moses’ face. The deficiency of the old covenant was that, unlike the new, it granted intermittent rather than constant access to God’s glory. Thus, Paul was not reinterpreting the Exodus passage, since there too the Israelites could not see the glory at all times but only when Moses spoke God’s word (Exod 34:33, 35). Goettsberger’s position, however, won little support and Windisch’s view on the ‘Christian midrash’ became exegetical orthodoxy among scholars. It diverted attention away from the text, however, and generated source critical theories on the pre-Pauline and Pauline elements of the passage. In addition, discussion became mired in the unresolved debate on

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the identity of Paul’s opponents. Hafemann’s solution to this was that “we must first interpret 3:7–18 on its own terms as Paul’s perspective, as free as possible from any preconceived notion concerning the nature of Paul’s opposition in Corinth” (PMHI 262). Despite acknowledging the flaws of Goettsberger’s exegesis, 8 Hafemann’s own exegesis can be considered an attempt to revive Goettsberger’s main point of continuity between Paul and his Old Testament sources. At the same time, Hafemann has resisted reading 2 Cor 3:7–18 simply as restatements of the letter/Spirit contrast, since, for him, these tended to be coloured by preconceptions concerning Paul’s view on the Law. Instead, for Hafemann, Paul’s purpose in 2 Cor 3:7–18 was to show that, in contrast to the ministry of Moses. It is therefore worth considering Hafemann’s position on διακονία. 2.2.1 On Ministry 2 Cor 3:6a indicated that Paul was the servant (διάκονος) of the New Covenant (PMHI 110–119). Hafemann here followed John N. Collins’ understanding that διακον-terminology referred to the function of proclaiming the Gospel as a spokesman and that in 2 Cor 2:14–6:13, this terminology dealt specifically with Paul’s role as a medium of revelation. 9 “The designation ‘servant’ (διάκονος) refers to his own particular activity of service which he exercises as an apostle, i.e. the proclamation of the gospel as the revelation of God and the mediation of God’s Spirit” (PMHI 110–111). For Hafemann, the διάκονοι were not a special class of people. Instead, the term διάκονος emphasised the function or act of mediation. “In the context of 2 Cor. 3, therefore, Paul’s uses of διάκονος to describe himself points to his role or function as an apostle, rather than to his authority as apostle per se” (PMHI 112–113). The point, for Hafemann, was that Paul recognized that his service was directly under God’s sovereignty and that God alone was responsible for the effectiveness of this ministry. Paul’s ministry was a result of God’s unilateral action. He had been called and made sufficient by God to be a mediator of the Spirit. [T]he activity primarily in view in the context of 2 Cor. 3 is Paul’s corresponding role as a mediator of the Spirit (cf. 3:3), which is now further defined in terms of Paul’s having been called and made sufficient to be in service of the new covenant (PMHI 113).

What Hafemann was making evident here was that Paul’s talk of covenant (2 Cor 3:4–18) fell within an already preceding context of ministry (2 Cor 2:14– 3:3).

Hafemann, PMHI, 256: “There are serious problems with it lexically and exegetically.” John N. Collins, DIAKONIA: Reinterpreting the Ancient Sources (New York/Oxford: OUP, 1990) 195–215. 8 9

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In referring to himself as a ‘servant of the new covenant,’ Paul emphasizes that he has been called to perform those activities that are in accord with the new covenant ministry of the Spirit as already experienced by the Corinthians as a result of Paul’s apostolic ministry of suffering and proclamation of the Gospel (PMHI 114).

In sum, then, Paul’s new covenant ministry was a ministry of the Spirit and vice versa. “Paul ‘serves’ or ‘delivers’ (διακονηθεῖσα) the ‘letter of Christ’ (= the conversion of the Corinthians) by means of the Spirit (3:3b) as a ‘servant’ (διάκονος) of the new covenant” (PMHI 145). It was thus within the context of διακονία that Paul introduced the subject of the new covenant. 2.2.2 The New Covenant Although Paul introduced the term καινὴ διαθήκη within the context of διακονία, his use of ‘new covenant’ without explanation presupposed that the Corinthians were familiar with it. The occurrence of καινὴ διαθήκη already in 1 Cor 11:25 implied for Hafemann that the Corinthians, in their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, were well aware that the ‘new covenant’ had been inaugurated by Jesus’ death and that through his death they had become members of this covenant. The link between the ‘new covenant’ and the death of Christ in 1 Cor. 11:25 thus made it evident to the Corinthians that the ‘new covenant,’ like its counterpart in the history of Israel, inaugurates a relationship between God and his people that is wholly initiated by God’s act of redemption (PMHI 121).

As with Paul’s ministry, so too the covenant was the result of a unilateral action on God’s part. The new covenant that Paul administered had been inaugurated by Christ’s atoning death, which had made possible the reception of the Spirit with a renewed heart. One should note here the difference in Hafemann’s position to that of Dunn and Christiansen who, as we saw in our previous chapter, both dismissed 1 Cor 11:25 from consideration since they maintained that Paul only introduced the language of a new covenant there because the tradition mentioned it. Hafemann has noticed that this was also true of E.P. Sanders’ position in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: Sanders recognizes that Paul uses the term ‘new covenant’ in 1 Cor 11:25 and 2 Cor 3:6 to describe the community which Christ has established by his death, but he does not take its content seriously, relegating Paul’s references to ‘traditional Christian terminology’ that can be reinterpreted and subsumed under the ‘new creation’ motif (p. 514). But this is to prejudice the text in favor of one’s theory and to drive a wedge between covenant and eschatology in Paul’s thought where none exists, since as Paul’s admonitions in 1 Cor 11 itself reflect, his ‘participationist eschatology’ is expressed within a covenant framework (PMHI 121 n.101).

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We will return to the differences between Hafemann and Dunn (and, indeed, Sanders) later on in this chapter, but this already presignals Hafemann’s disagreement with exegesis driven by preconceived theories on Paul. For Hafemann, the new covenant in 2 Cor 3:6 was inextricably tied to the ongoing discussion of ministry (2:14–7:4), the death of Christ (1 Cor 11:25, cf. 1 Cor 15:3– 4) and the Old Testament prophecies. Paul’s development of the implications of the cross, resurrection and Spirit in the Corinthian correspondence meant that his use of new covenant language in 2 Cor 3 was neither unreflective nor simply a ‘catch-word’ reference to its Old Testament backdrop. 10 Hafemann’s stress on the unilateral action of God was important to his thesis that God’s initiative was essential in understanding covenant. By the use of the word ‘covenant’ to translate διαθήκη in 1 Cor. 11:25 and 2 Cor. 3:6, therefore, there is no intention to imply any ‘agreement’ or ‘treaty’ or ‘Bund’ that is mutually initiated, arranged, disposed, or carried out. (PMHI 123–124)

However, once initiated, the covenant carried with it stipulations and, for Hafemann, this meant that the new covenant also carried with it stipulations in the Law which must be kept in order for the covenant to be maintained by God. “For Paul, as for the Sinai covenant before him, obedience to the Law is the inextricable result of trusting in God’s promises” (PMHI 125–126). What must be noted is that Hafemann did not equate covenant with law. Rather, obedience to the law was the response a partner gave within a covenant initiated by God. It is this distinction that would make it possible for Hafemann to retain a positive view on the Law while maintaining the abolition of the old covenant. It will also be evident that Hafemann considered Paul’s use of covenant terminology to be quite central to his argument in 2 Cor 3:4–18. This placed him in contrast to Erich Gräßer, 11 who did not see the covenant structure as constitutive for the New Testament writings owing to the infrequency of their lexical occurrence and his conviction that the Christological and eschatological focus of the New Testament texts rendered the Old Testament covenantal structure inadequate as a paradigm. For Hafemann, that would be to assume a radical discontinuity between Israel and the Church in which the Christology and the eschatological perspective of the New Testament writings were

The mention of ‘catch-word’ links is a reference to Carol K. Stockhausen’s study, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant: The Exegetical Substructure of II Cor. 3,1– 4,6, AnBib 116 (Rome: PIB, 1989). For a shorter version see id., “2 Corinthians 3 and the Principles of Pauline Exegesis,” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. C.A. Evans and J.A. Sanders, JSNTSup 83 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993) 143–164. 11 Erich Gräßer, Der Alte Bund im Neuen. Exegetische Studien zur Israelfrage im Neuen Testament, WUNT I/35 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985). 10

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no longer concerned with the history of Israel or the fulfillment of the OT covenant […] In [Gräßer’s] view, 3:6 and 14 present a ‘schroffe Antithetik von Mosediatheke und Christusdiatheke’ (p. 78). This present work is a response to such a perspective (PMHI 128, n.117).

In fact, in his conclusion, Hafemann would go on to endorse N.T. Wright’s argument in The Climax of the Covenant that covenant theology was ‘one of the main clues, usually neglected, for understanding Paul’ (PMHI 443, quoting N.T. Wright, Climax, xi). It need hardly be said, then, that here too is another difference between Hafemann and Dunn on the centrality of covenant to Paul’s thought. The next question that must be asked is, ‘what in fact makes the new covenant new?’ Here Hafemann first looks to its parallel usage in Jer 38:31–34 LXX and discovers that there the essential difference between this new covenant and the Sinai covenant is not that a new type of covenant or a new content within the covenant will be established, but that the new covenant will not be broken like the previous one, in spite of the fact that under the Sinai covenant God was faithful to his covenant commitments; i.e. although he was a ‘husband’ to them (PMHI 130).

At the same time, Hafemann agreed with Christoph Levin’s insight that the newness of the Jeremian covenant lay in its radical break with the past, while not being new in terms of structure, content or purpose. 12 This would allow Hafemann to speak of old and new covenants (plural), the former being abolished and replaced by the latter. The contrast between the two covenants is a contrast between the two different conditions of the people who are brought into these covenants and their correspondingly different responses to the same Law. (PMHI 133)

Accordingly, our next section looks at how Hafemann viewed Paul’s position on the Law. 2.2.3 The Law Hafemann maintained that Paul found no problem with the Law since, in line with the Jewish traditions of Paul’s day, the Law signified the holy, just and good expression of God’s covenantal will. The problem, rather, was with the people themselves and here Paul would have stood in continuity with Ezekiel (2 Cor 3:3) and Jeremiah (2 Cor 3:6) who insisted that Israel’s hearts were hardened and in need of transformation by the Spirit in order to remain faithful to the covenant. “Apart from the transforming work of the Spirit, the letter Christoph Levin, Die Verheißung des neuen Bundes in ihrem theologiegeschichtlichen Zusammenhang ausgelegt, FRLANT 137 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985). See Hafemann, PMHI, 129, n.121: “The covenant promised in Jer. 31 is thus ‘new’ in the sense that it is a radical break with the past, but it is not new in its structure, content, or purpose. In this latter case it is a ‘renewal’.” 12

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‘kills.’ […] The Law declares God’s will but is powerless to enable people to keep it” (PMHI 180, 181). This was ultimately the difference between the old and new covenants. In support of his claim that the Law was blameless, Hafemann highlighted the conspicuous absence of the term νόμος. Paul chose instead to use the term γράμμα (‘letter’), which, according to Hafemann, emphasised the nature of the Law as the written expression of God’s will. Moreover, when read against the prophetic background underlying 2 Cor 3:3 and 3:6 (Ezekiel and Jeremiah), it signified the Law as the merely written, the Law that had not been incorporated into the heart by the Spirit. The letter/Spirit contrast therefore did not signify the termination of the Law (contrary to those who posited a divide between Law and Gospel). At the same time, and clearly refuting both E.P. Sanders and James Dunn’s New perspective, Hafemann maintained that γράμμα is also not a designation of a particular use or misuse, interpretation, or subset of the Law whether that be a divine intention in the Law to kill, a Jewish or ‘Hellenistic-Jewish’ perversion of the Law into legalism or works-righteousness, or merely those ceremonial aspects of the Law which created distinctions between Jew and Gentile in contrast to the abiding moral law (PMHI 170).

Instead, Hafemann understood the letter/Spirit contrast as Law without the Spirit (γράμμα) and Law with the Spirit (πνεῦμα), as experienced by the two covenant peoples, Israel and the Church, and ministered to them by Moses and Paul respectively. Moses was called to mediate the Law to a stiff-necked people under the Law who could not obey it. Paul is called to mediate the Spirit now being poured out as a result of the cross of Christ to a people whose hearts are being transformed to obey the covenant stipulations of the Law (PMHI 173).

The ‘letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive’ thus described the difference in function between old and new covenants. They did not indicate two distinct ways of relating to God, since what distinguished the ministry of the new covenant was that the Spirit enabled the keeping of the same Law by transforming the heart. The contrast between letter and Spirit was an eschatological contrast between two ages, the ‘old’ in which obedience was commanded but could not be attained, and the ‘new’ in which obedience to the Law was now achieved because hearts had been transformed. 13 The problem for Paul, according to 13 Hafemann notes the similarity to Qumran eschatology but also points out the difference between them: for Paul the coming of the messiah preceded the outpouring of the Spirit and the establishment of the new covenant community, whereas for Qumran the new covenant community exists before the messiah’s coming. In this sense the Qumran community would not have considered the new age as having yet dawned (Hafemann, PMHI 163–164). For a more in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences between Paul’s thought and that of Qumran, see Hafemann, “The Spirit of the New Covenant,” 172–189. See also Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, chs. 3 and 4, 104–185, for an analysis of Qumran texts

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Hafemann, was thus not the Law, nor even the content of the old covenant, but instead the hardness of Israel’s hearts. 2.2.4 On Israel and the Old Covenant But this was not just Paul’s problem. Hafemann argued that Paul’s reference to Israel’s hardened condition in 2 Cor 3:14 was, in fact, consistent with the motif of Israel’s ‘stiff neck’ to be found throughout canonical (Old Testament) and post-biblical literature. For Hafemann, the key point that Paul wished to make by employing this motif was that “Israel’s rejection of his Gospel is no argument against the validity of Paul’s message, or the legitimacy of his ministry as a revelation of the glory of God” (PMHI 367–368). In fact, through this Paul extended an implicit warning to the Corinthians: if they rejected Paul’s message and ministry, then they were hardened like Israel. Paul’s reference to ‘reading’ the old covenant in 2 Cor 3:14b did not then indicate a hermeneutical veiling of the ‘hidden’ or ‘real’ meaning of the Sinai covenant. Neither did it mean that the Law was inadequate. Rather, Israel is not able to respond to the Law morally because of her ‘heart of stone.’ […] The problem signified by the veil is thus not a cognitive inability due to the lack of a spiritual endowment, but an inescapable volitional inability as a result of a hardened heart untouched by the Spirit’s transforming power. It is not that Israel cannot understand the meaning of the old covenant, as if it were an esoteric secret to be unlocked by a special gnostic revelation, but that she will not accept it as true for her and cannot submit to it (PMHI 374).

It therefore meant that the ‘veil’ in 2 Cor 3:14b had the same function as the ‘letter’ in 2 Cor 3:6. Israel’s ‘stiff-necked’ condition veiled her from being able to respond to the stipulations of the Sinai covenant. Her condition was one of Law without the Spirit. This, again, for Hafemann, was what entailed the difference between the covenants. Paul can refer to the Sinai covenant as ‘old’ covenant only because he is convinced that the ‘new’ covenant has been inaugurated. The designation ‘old’ is not a pejorative evaluation of the character of the Sinai covenant, but a temporal and eschatological designation of its fulfillment. As we have seen in chapter two, the Sinai covenant is abolished and replaced by the new, not because its message was inferior, but because it was broken by Israel (PMHI 378–379).

Because Hafemann understood Paul’s use of ‘veil’ (κάλυμμα) as a metonym for ‘hardness of heart’, he argued that Paul would have interpreted its occurrence in Exod 34:29–35 as already signifying the ultimate replacement of the (Temple Scroll, Damascus Document and Community Rule). Studies of the covenant concept at Qumran can also be found in Porter and Roo (eds.), The Concept of the Covenant in Second Temple Period: Craig A. Evans, “Covenant in the Qumran Literature,” 55–80; Martin G. Abegg, “The Covenant of the Qumran Sectarians,” 81–97; Michael O. Wise, “The Concept of a New Covenant in the Teacher Hymns from Qumran [1QHa X–XVII],” 99–128.

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Sinai covenant due to Israel’s sin with the golden calf (Exod 32). For, although the covenant was renewed with Moses’ ascent up Mount Sinai again to receive the second set of tablets (Exod 33), Israel’s hearts remained ‘stiff-necked,’ so that the covenant could not be kept. From its very beginning, therefore, the old covenant of the Law without the Spirit implicitly looked forward to the time when the Law would encounter a people whose hearts had been changed and empowered to keep God’s covenant. (PMHI 442)

That was why Paul turned to the narrative of Exod 32–34 in 2 Cor 3:7–18 since, in Hafemann’s eyes, it was the paradigmatic text within the Old Testament canon to illustrate the problem with the Sinai covenant, as outlined in Jer 31(38 LXX) and Ezek 36, and alluded to by Paul in 2 Cor 3:3–6. “Thus, in turning to Exodus 32-34, Paul was merely following the logic of the Scriptures themselves” (PMHI 446). This veil of hard-heartedness could only be abolished (Hafemann’s reading of καταργεῖται in 3:14c) by the new covenant inaugurated by Christ. There was no power to do so under the Sinai covenant. That was what made the Sinai covenant ‘old’. Israel’s rejection of the gospel administered by Paul, then, “is destined (by God!) to continue throughout the dawning of the new age, since the very one whom they reject is the only one who can remove their blindness. Only in Christ can the heart of stone be removed by the Spirit” (PMHI 381). It also explained Paul’s confidence (2 Cor 3:4 πεποίθησις) and boldness (2 Cor 3:12 παρρησία) as an apostle, since his ministry, unlike that of Moses, brought life to those whose hearts have been transformed. 2.3 Hafemann’s Conclusion Hafemann’s study set out to demonstrate that 2 Cor 3 (vv.6, 7–18) should not be viewed as maintaining negative statements about the Law. Instead, its view on the Law was thoroughly positive. The letter/Spirit contrast was meant to express the two functions of the Law’s reception – with (= life) or without (= death) the Spirit – within a ‘salvation-history’ framework. In both cases, though, obedience to the Law was a required response from the side of the covenant people. What ties this history together is not a contrast between the Law (or some derivation of it) and the Gospel, but the contrast between not encountering and encountering the glory of God, or between the absence and presence of God’s Spirit among and within his covenant people. This is the contrast which is represented in the respective ministries of Moses and Paul on the one hand, and in the distinct nature of Israel under the old covenant over against those Jews and Gentiles who now make up the new covenant people of God (PMHI 439– 440).

Furthermore, Hafemann argued throughout that Paul’s view of the letter/Spirit contrast and his understanding of their respective ministries in 2 Cor 3:6–18

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were derived from a careful, contextual, reading of Exod 34:29–35 in accordance with its original canonical intention as elaborated upon by Ezek (36:25– 27) and Jer (38[LXX]:31–34). “Admittedly, this is an ‘extremely conservative’ conclusion, and one that is put forth on the basis of the very passage that has most often been seen to be the clearest example of Paul’s distinctively Christian, non-contextual hermeneutic” (PMHI 453). For Hafemann, however, what mattered most was not whether a conclusion was ‘conservative,’ (read: traditionalist), “but whether it best fits the evidence” (PMHI 453, n.33). Paul’s argument, in Hafemann’s view, was that the new covenant promised in Jer 31(38 LXX) and Ezek 36 had already been established in Christ. The reason that the Sinai covenant could no longer be operative was because “any return to the ‘old’ as the basis of one’s relationship to God would be a fundamental denial of the validity of God’s present activity in Christ” (PMHI 440). It was not the structure of the covenant relationship that had changed but rather the condition of the heart as a result of Christ’s work and the power of the Spirit. Viewed from this perspective, 2 Cor. 3, as part of the wider context of 2 Cor. 3-7, like Gal. 3-4 (!), presents a thoroughgoing ‘positive’ view of the Law within both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ covenants. Paul’s discussion of Ex. 32-34 makes it clear that from the beginning of Israel’s history the problem was not the Law which was given to Israel or the old covenant per se, but the nature of the Israel which was given to the Law and with whom the covenant was made (PMHI 441).

Israel’s experience of the Law under the old covenant was devoid of the Spirit. In Hafemann’s reading of Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 3:7–18, those (of Israel) who continued to reject the Gospel did so because they remained hardened to God’s will as already evidenced by Israel’s sin with the golden calf and her continuous history of rebellion against the Sinai covenant. On the other hand, their rejection of the Gospel in no way placed the validity of Paul’s ministry in doubt.

3. Hafemann’s Exegesis as Seen from the ‘Lutheran’ Perspective

3. Hafemann’s Exegesis as Seen from the ‘Lutheran’ Perspective

Hafemann’s study of the letter/Spirit contrast, which we briefly summarized in this chapter, exerted some influence on biblical scholarship in the decade after it first appeared. 14 In fact one of his detractors grudgingly admitted that Hafemann’s interpretation of ‘Law with Spirit’ had been steadily gaining ground, Two examples indebted to Hafemann’s study have been William R. Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade? A Reexamination of καταργέω in 2 Corinthians 3:7–18,” BBR 10/1 (2000) 1–15, who agrees that Hafemann’s reading of καταργέω as ‘rendering ineffective’ best fits the context of 2 Cor 3:7–18, and William J. Dumbrell, “The Newness of the New Covenant: The Logic of the Argument in 2 Corinthians 3,” RTR 61 (2002) 62–84, who 14

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something he feels should be challenged. 15 In the following paragraphs we shall examine the weaknesses of Hafemann’s exegesis, at the same time bringing it into critical dialogue with, and comparison against, the positions examined in chapter one. We shall especially attempt to bring his insights into critical dialogue with the position of Dunn and the New Perspective on Paul. Hafemann’s study served as an exegetical counterbalance to the studies by Dunn and Christiansen examined in our previous chapter. In order to achieve that, we shall approach the issue through the lense of a Lutheran critique on Hafemann’s position. 3.1 Hafemann, the New Perspective on Paul and the Lutheran Critique Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, it will be recalled, was meant as a critique of the traditional Lutheran understanding of the letter/Spirit contrast in terms of Law vs. Gospel. It should not come as a surprise, then, that a refutation to Hafemann would seek to restore the Law/Gospel antithesis. Sigurd Grindheim placed Hafemann’s position among those who chose not to view the letter and spirit contrast dialectically but in continuum. This continuum sees the law as externally written on stone tablets in the old covenant, while the new covenant results in the law being internally inscribed on the hearts of the believers. The new covenant is thus the enablement by the spirit to keep the old covenant law. Among the studies that support this position he lists the works of Carol K. Stockhausen, N.T. Wright, Scott J. Hafemann and Martin Hasitschka. 16 Grindheim noted a similar interpretation that takes the letter as a reference to the defective understanding of law, the law as merely written. Here he listed the works of Jacob Kremer, Karl Kertelge, Jens Schröter and James Dunn. 17 Both

continues the dialogue (and critique) that Hafemann initiated with him in Paul Moses and the History of Israel: “It will be clear how much this essay is indebted to Hafemann’s excellent research notwithstanding that this paper will reach slightly different results to Hafemann” (p. 63, n.3). 15 Sigurd Grindheim, “The Law Kills but the Gospel Gives Life: The Letter-Spirit Dualism in 2 Corinthians 3.5–18,” JSNT 84 (2000) 97–115. 16 Carol Kern Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant: The Exegetical Substructure of II Cor. 3,1-4,6, AnBib 116 (Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1989); Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 1991; Hafemann, PMHI, 1995; Martin Hasitschka, “‘Diener eines neuen Bundes’. Skizze zum Selbstverständnis des Paulus in 2Kor,” ZKT 121 (1999) 291–299. 17 Jacob Kremer, “Denn der Buchstabe tötet, der Geist aber macht lebdendig. Methodologische und hermeneutische Erwägung zu 2Kor 3,6b,” Begegnung mit dem Wort. FS Heinrich Zimmerman, ed. Josef Zmijewski and Ernst Nellessen, BBB 53 (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1980) 219–250; Karl Kertelge, “Buchstabe und Geist nach 2Kor 3,” Paul and the Mosaic Law, ed. James D.G. Dunn, WUNT I/89 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996) 117–130; Jens Schröter, “Schriftauslegung und Hermeneutik in 2 Korinther 3. Ein Beitrag zur Frage

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of these interpretations fell, for Grindheim, under the label of ‘Letter plus Spirit’ since both saw the function of the spirit as enabling the believer to keep the law. Grindheim contested this ‘continuum’ reading of the letter/Spirit contrast and went on to argue that its traditional understanding in terms of the Law/Gospel ‘dialectic’ was the better reading. What made Grindheim’s argument problematic, however, was the parallel he drew between the ‘letter’ (γράμμα) of 2 Cor 3:6 with the ‘handwriting’ (χειρόγραφον) of Col 2:14, an epistle generally regarded as Deutero-Pauline, but which he regarded as Pauline. 18 His conclusion, however, was decidedly Lutheran: The results of this investigation pertain to the Pauline understanding of justification, and to the understanding of how the hearts of men and women are changed, so that their conformity to the will of God is something that comes from the inside and not from a law imposed from the outside. 19

A more straightforward Lutheran dialectical reading (avoiding the thorny problem of authorship in the deutero-Paulines) would be one by Frank Thielman. 20 Grindheim enlisted Thielman’s study among those who support the ‘better’ reading “that the term γράμμα and the characteristics killing and condemnation are employed here to characterize the Mosaic covenant as such, a covenant that is now obsolete.” 21 Indeed, for Thielman, the new covenant was not a reestablishment of the old covenant. [M]any differences exist between the two communities defined by the two covenants. If the Corinthian believers are not Gentiles, neither are they Jews but the ‘church of God’. […] No longer the Mosaic covenant but this new covenant – the ‘law of Christ’ – is now the ‘law of God’. 22

Two observations from the foregoing should be noted and responded to. The first is that Grindheim’s analysis of Hafemann and Dunn falling within a Letter-Spirit ‘continuum’ (as opposed to Law/Gospel dialectic) confirms Dunn’s der Schriftbenutzung des Paulus,” NovT 40 (1998) 231–275; Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 1998, p.149. 18 Grindheim, “The Law Kills,” 103, n.20. 19 Grindheim, “The Law Kills,” 114. See also his website www.sigurdgrindheim.com outlining his Lutheran background and, of note, his disagreement with the New Perspective on Paul. “Nevertheless, as do many others, I believe that the new perspective underestimates the fundamental change that the cross of Christ made in Paul’s thinking. While the cross represents for Paul the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel, it also represents the condemnation of all self-righteousness, for Jews and Gentiles alike, and reveals the righteousness that is found in Jesus Christ.” 20 Thielman, “Old Covenant and New in the Corinthian Letters: The Paradox Explained,” Paul and the Law, 100–118. 21 Grindheim, “The Law Kills,” 102, with reference to Thielman in the footnote to this sentence (n. 15). 22 Thielman, Paul and the Law, 118.

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statement on the persistence of two main approaches in Reformation thought – Calvinism, which stresses the continuity between Old and New Testaments, and Lutheranism, which places the emphasis on the discontinuity (antithesis or dialectic) between Law and Gospel. Second, Grindheim lumped both Hafemann and Dunn together within a ‘Letter plus Spirit’ interpretation, essentially collapsing any real distinction between them. This needs refuting and affords us the opportunity to compare and contrast Hafemann against Dunn. With respect to the first observation, Grindheim was justified in seeing both Hafemann and Dunn as contesting a Lutheran ‘divide’ between Law and Gospel. As already mentioned, this was the main driving force of Hafemann’s study of the letter/Spirit contrast in PMHI. In addition, Hafemann has been forthcoming about his Calvinist roots elsewhere. In his NIV Application Commentary to 2 Corinthians, in the midst of expressing his ambivalence to ‘postmodernism’, he wrote: And there is no doubt that a black or feminist or socialist or freewill reading of the text may uncover aspects of the author’s original intention that my white, male, Calvinist reading has missed (though it may obscure it all the more!). 23

As for Dunn, he would certainly oppose an antithesis of Law to Gospel, given that he defends the continuity of covenant between God and Israel (now extended to all humankind in Christ). However, that is where the similarity ends. Grindheim has ignored a crucial distinction between Hafemann and Dunn when he lumped them together within a ‘Letter plus Spirit’ interpretation. The main difference that divided them was their understanding of the covenant framework operating in 2 Cor 3. Hafemann operated with a two-covenant framework in mind, whereas Dunn held firmly to a one-covenant paradigm. Both maintained a linear continuum of salvation history, with Christ’s death marking a turning of ages between old and new. However, for Dunn, the new was merely a renewal of the same covenant, whereas, for Hafemann, there was a radical break with the past. Christ’s death inaugurated both a new age of salvation history and a new covenant. The Sinai covenant was abolished and replaced by the new and its designation of ‘old’ was a “temporal and eschatological designation of its fulfilment” (PMHI 378). This was because the old covenant failed to provide access to God’s glory. The new covenant people by contrast now encountered the glory of God en masse and unobstructed (2 Cor 3:16, 18: “but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. […] And all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord…”). Yet, if there was so much ‘discontinuity’ between the old and new covenants, why then was Hafemann not in the same camp as those who see the old-

23

Hafemann, 2 Corinthians: The NIV Application Commentary, 169.

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new covenant contrast in terms of the Law/Gospel antithesis? 24 The answer to this is that Hafemann preserved continuity by retaining a positive view on the Law. The covenants changed but the Law did not. As shown earlier, Hafemann rejected viewing the letter/Spirit contrast as “a detached and dogmatic theological maxim to be read first and foremost as part of Paul’s larger ‘view of the Law’” (PMHI 33). This might also be a reason why Hafemann did not follow up on the semantic link between διαθήκη-δικαιοσύνη since, as we have argued in the previous chapter, a focus on δικαιοσύνη would tend in the direction of Luther’s Rechtfertigungslehre and mark a swing too much in favour of the Lutheran discontinuity between Law and Gospel. For Hafemann, πνεῦμα represents the Law retained and kept with the aid of the Spirit under the auspices of the new covenant (‘Law with Spirit’). For Dunn, on the other hand, the contrast was actually between two modes of ministries and not two covenants. Because he held to the continuity of the one covenant, the Law could, in a sense, be sacrificed. γράμμα, then, referred to the Law misunderstood, the Jewish clinging to a privileged position under the Law. This status of privilege would lead to abuses and an obsession with externals (food laws, circumcision and Sabbath observance among others). It furthermore created a boundary that protected ethnic Israel against contamination from outside. But this privileged status was only meant to be temporary. The over-emphasis on the ‘fleshly’, on the merely visible externals of the Law (γράμμα), was now set aside because God’s purpose was to make the covenant experience universally available to all people (‘Israel according to the Spirit’) through an internalization of the Law on the heart by the Spirit (πνεῦμα). 25 In this scenario of continuity and broadening of the covenant, the new covenant was a renewed covenant. Schematically, then, Hafemann and Dunn compare against each other as follows:

24 This being the fifth possible view on the contrasts in 2 Cor 3 as enumerated by Randall Gleason and the position he ended up defending. Gleason, “Paul’s Covenantal Contrasts,” 75–79. 25 A short paraphrase of Dunn, “§6.5: A relationship whose time is past,” The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 143–150 and id., “Two Covenants or One?,” 117–120 already examined in the previous chapter.

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A. Hafemann’s Two Covenants Framework God

Christ’s death

Old covenant Moses (mediator)

(radical break)

Christ and the Spirit New covenant Paul (mediator)

Similar Covenants  Israel (stubborn heart)

Glory

 Christians (transformed heart) πνεῦμα = Law with Spirit

γράμμα = Law without Spirit

Two covenants but only the new is now valid: “This is the contrast which is represented in the respective ministries of Moses and Paul on the one hand, and the distinct nature of Israel under the old covenant over against those Jews and Gentiles who now make up the new covenant people of God” (PMHI 440 emphasis added).

B. Dunn’s One Covenant Framework

Same Covenant

Mosaic ministry Temporary

Israel according to flesh (ethnic) γράμμα = externals of the Law

Christ (renewal)

Pauline ministry Permanent

God’s Purpose

Israel according to spirit (all) πνεῦμα = internalization of the Law

One and the same covenant, now renewed and made available to all: “It is Paul who most forceably answers our original question: not two covenants, two religions, two different peoples (Jews and Christians), but one covenant, one religion, one people, Israel” (“Two Covenants or One?,” 118, emphasis added).

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3.2 Continuity and the Implicit Fear of Marcionism The question continues to linger: why does Hafemann for all his discontinuity between covenants still come down on the side of continuity? As we have demonstrated, while he may have defended the abolition of the old covenant, he still ended up retaining the Law and, so doing, preserved continuity between the covenants along a salvation-historical continuum. One must also not forget that for Hafemann, the old and new covenants were similar in structure (initiated by God, responded to with Law observance) and content (encountering God’s glory). We suggest that a possible fear of Marcionism implicitly lurks beneath the surface of Hafemann’s exegetical manoeuvring. Admittedly, only glimpses of this are to be discerned in his 460 page study. At the conclusion of Part One of his study (‘The Letter/Spirit Contrast within the Context of Paul’s Apostolic Calling’) he noted: “Thus, Windisch declares that, taken by itself, the letter/Spirit contrast in 3:6 is a ‘genuinely “marcionite”’ antithesis. That this is not the case must be demonstrated” (PMHI 185). This for him set the stage for Part Two of his work, in which he argued for the necessity of 2 Cor 3:7–18 confirming the meaning and function of the letter/Spirit contrast. Then in the conclusion to PMHI, when summing up his main argument that the letter/Spirit contrast could no longer be understood in terms of the traditional view of Paul’s critique on the Law, he added: Nor must we conclude with N.T. Wright that Paul’s view presents a constant ‘paradox’ in that Paul is ‘consistently undermining the traditional Jewish view of election, and establishing a new view of the people of God … without, apparently, going the whole way into (what we have come to call) a Marcionite position. (PMHI 443, quoting Wright’s The Climax of the Covenant, 14).

We should also not forget Hafemann’s strenuous objection to the radical discontinuity of Erich Gräßer’s ‘schroffe Antithetik von Mosediatheke und Christusdiatheke’. In the case of Dunn, he was aware that it was Paul who was at one and the same time the hero of Marcion, who pushed the antithesis between old covenant and new to its extreme, and the bête noire of the Jewish Christians who stand behind the pseudo-Clementines, as being both traitor to his people and apostate from his ancestral religion. 26

We have also noted previously Dunn’s twentieth-century post-Holocaust sensibilities that ended up driving his ecumenically sensitive exegesis. As in Hafemann’s case, the fear of Marcionism was implicit. There is no denying, however, that Dunn was operating out of an explicit motivation to see Judaism and Christianity in strong continuity with one another. This is none more evident

26

Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 113.

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than in his essay on “Two Covenants or One?,” which he ended on a note of insistence: “If I am right, the importance and urgency of the present challenge consists simply in this: that neither Judaism nor Christianity can be true to itself without a fuller recognition of the other, and of the other’s place within its own self-understanding.” 27

The question might be raised here whether the New Perspective on Paul emphasised continuity between old and new covenants because of an implicit fear that its obverse, discontinuity between the covenants, leads to or may be associated with anti-Judaism. The following author, as a proponent of the Lutheran discontinuity between Law and Gospel, indicates the reverse side of the same question. 3.3 The Lutheran Rebuttal In a chapter entitled “Paul: Antisemite or Philosemite?” 28 Richard Bell has drawn a crucial distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Judaism. Anti-semitism is an indiscriminate, irrational and negative attitude towards the Jewish people based on prejudice and should not be condoned. Being critical of the Jewish religion and its practices, however, was a form of critique that, according to Bell, was the attitude Paul held towards the Jewish religion of his day. Bell maintained that this Pauline ‘critique’ was in fact motivated out of the deepest sense of philo-semitism, since Paul continued to affirm Israel’s abiding election and remained deeply concerned for their ultimate salvation. Likewise, Bell has argued that “Christian theology, properly done, is inevitably supercessionist. For if Christ is central to Christian theology, it is inevitable that the law of Moses will be relativized and Christianity will supersede Judaism.” 29 He therefore held a dim view of those who lacked the courage of their Christian convictions and ‘compromise Christ’ by selling out the gospel for misplaced reasons of sensitivity towards the Jews. Bell reiterated that to criticize Judaism did not mean to criticize the Jewish people but rather to make a theological point, best exemplified in terms of the Lutheran antithesis of Law vs. Gospel. Needless to say, this placed Bell ideologically at odds with the New Perspective on Paul. “I do not think we do the Jewish people any favours by abandoning the traditional Protestant understanding of Paul’s critique of Israel’s religion and by adopting the ‘new perspective’.” 30 His reasons for doing so, however, were that even the New Perspective on Paul must supply a reason to account for the negativity of Paul’s critique.

Dunn, “Two Covenants or One?,” 119. Bell, The Irrevocable Call, Ch. 11, 408–422. 29 Bell, The Irrevocable Call, 417. 30 Bell, The Irrevocable Call, 420. 27 28

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The upshot of this is that Judaism is criticized for something: it can be for works-righteousness or national righteousness. Jews themselves are criticized for negative legalism or they are criticized for ‘ethnic restrictiveness’. Bouncing around the term ‘antisemitism’ does not help. One simply needs to ask which particular view corresponds to reality. 31

While Bell represents perhaps an extreme view of the Lutheran position, one must concede his point that E.P. Sanders, Dunn and Hafemann do concur that Paul is critiquing something. Sanders found Paul’s critique of Judaism to be a misrepresentation but could not offer a sufficient reason for why Paul still chose to break with Judaism, except to say simply that it was not Christianity. 32 Dunn and Hafemann filled this void with very different answers. Dunn’s proposal, as seen above, was that Paul objected to national righteousness exemplified in social and ritual ‘badges’ that trumpeted covenant membership. That was why, for Dunn, the externals of the Law (γράμμα) were replaced by an internalization of the Law on the heart (πνεῦμα) in 2 Cor 3. Hafemann, on the other hand, went one step further. Paul did not critique Judaism. Neither did he critique the Law, nor even its perversion into ritual observances. Hafemann’s Paul was not critiquing a theological system in 2 Cor 3. What he was critiquing, however, was the condition of Israel’s heart, their hard-heartedness. Furthermore, their rejection of the Gospel indicated a volitional inability to accept Christ and the new covenant he had inaugurated. Israel’s current rejection of Christ means that as a nation she continues under the same condition that has characterized her history ever since the golden calf (3:13-15). In this regard, God’s promises concerning Israel’s restoration still await fulfillment, while the church suffers the pain of being separated from her own spiritual ancestry. Even more painful is that Israel’s rejection of Christ sometimes calls into question the truth of the gospel itself, in this case as taught and embodied in Paul’s ministry. Faced with Israel’s unbelief, Christians often wonder if the gospel of salvation in Christ alone as the Messiah is just as true and necessary for the Jews, the descendants of Israel, as it is for Gentiles. Paul’s argument for the legitimacy of his boldness in 3:12-15, as harsh as it may appear in our age of pluralism, is intended to silence such doubts. 33

Such a sentiment, quoted at length, leaves it hard to ignore the impression that Hafemann was actually closer to Bell than at first assumed. While Hafemann may have rejected the Lutheran Law/Gospel antithesis, his Bible commentary on 2 Cor arrived at a conclusion surprisingly similar to Bell’s. What this meant was that Hafemann retained a positive view on the Law, but in its place substituted a negative assessment of Israel’s rejection of Christ. The question we

Bell, The Irrevocable Call, 421. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552: “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.” Sanders later clarified this position by saying that Paul attacked viewing observance of the law as a sign and condition of favoured status. E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1983) 45–48. 33 Hafemann, 2 Corinthians: The NIV Application Commentary, 165. 31 32

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raised prior to this section is therefore in need of urgent updating: does a paradigm of continuity between the covenants (in Hafemann’s case this is both in terms of their linear succession in salvation history and the continued observance of the Law) necessarily imply a positive view on Judaism? Bell would argue that Paul, in abandoning his former Judaism, represented the authentic Christian position. The question not entertained by Bell or Hafemann, though, was whether discontinuity between the covenants necessarily had to be understood as anti-Judaism. 34

4. Overview

4. Overview

At the beginning of this chapter, we set ourselves four questions to guide us in perusing Hafemann’s study of the letter/Spirit contrast in 2 Cor 3. Having done so, we are now in a position to present our findings. (1) Was the contrast in 2 Cor 3 primarily one of ministries or covenants? First and foremost, for Hafemann, the contrast was that of the letter and Spirit. Furthermore, he conceded that 2 Cor 3:4–18 took place within a larger context of Paul’s apology for his apostolic ministry. Yet, contrary to Dunn (and Christiansen), there was not one covenant, one religion, one people, Israel. There were two covenants, old and new. Hence, the contrast was primarily one of covenants, but the contrast was evidenced in terms of their effects, which had to do with their different ministries. (2) Was Paul’s use of the term διαθήκη merely incidental or in fact constitutive of his argumentation in 2 Cor 3? In contrast to Dunn, Christiansen, Sanders and Gräßer, Hafemann considered Paul’s covenant terminology central to the argumentation of 2 Cor 3 and, indeed, Paul’s theology. Of importance was Paul’s previous use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 1 Cor 11:25, something Hafemann held to be of theological significance for Paul (the inauguration of the new covenant by Christ’s death), compared to Dunn and Christiansen who dismissed it as merely being words received from the tradition. Hafemann did not end up following N.T. Wright’s and Stanley Porter’s observations on the semantic relation between διαθήκη-δικαιοσύνη (although he did quote approvingly from Wright). Instead, one could make the argument that Hafemann discerned a semantic relation (in 2 Cor 3:4–18 at least) between δόξα, διακονία and διαθήκη. This was because both the old and new covenants functioned to allow access to God’s glory, as administered by their respective ‘ministers’, Moses and Paul. But, if both covenants mediate glory, wherein did the newness of the new covenant lie? Here Hafemann replied that the two covenants did not differ as to structure (initiated by God, responded to by obedience to Law) or

34

We will offer our own response to this question at the end of chapter ten.

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content (access to God’s glory), but that they differed in terms of their functioning. The old covenant was unable to effect obedience to the Law; it could only command it. The new covenant, by contrast, enabled the keeping of the Law because of the changed heart. This transformation was effected by the Spirit, mediated by Paul’s apostolic ministry (which was both a ministry of the Spirit and a ministry of the new covenant). (3) Given that 2 Cor 3 contained such stark antitheses of letter-Spirit, deathlife, condemnation-justification, did it represent the overarching antithesis of Law vs. Gospel as traditionally understood? Here, as we have seen, Hafemann was in agreement with Dunn (or rather, vice versa, since Hafemann’s 1995 study preceded Dunn’s articles [1996, 1998, 2003]) in noting the conspicuous absence of the term νόμος and Paul’s preference for the term γράμμα. Against Dunn, however, γράμμα was not the Law misunderstood. For Hafemann, it represented Law without the Spirit. This was because Hafemann maintained that obedience to the Law remained a covenant stipulation, even in the new covenant. Hafemann’s understanding of covenant was a unilateral action on God’s part, responded to in turn by the covenant people in terms of obedience to the Law. That was why, for Hafemann, 2 Cor 3 did not represent the termination of the Law (contra the Lutheran position) nor, at the same time, a critique on the Law for its negative effects (contra the New Perspective on Paul). (4) What was the extent of dis/continuity between the old and new covenants? As we saw in our previous chapter, Dunn and Christiansen strongly emphasised continuity, such that for them only one covenant exists, the same covenant that was made between God and Israel. The new covenant was hence a ‘renewed’ covenant, its newness marked out by its mode of ministry. The strongly negative contrast language had thus more to do with the polemical thrust of Paul’s argumentation against his opponents than being seriously meant. However, as a term of identity, Paul used covenant only to apply to ethnic Israel. The discontinuity for them then lay in the fact that Paul bypassed talk on covenant in favour of a new, more universal, reality, the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, when applying this to his churches. For Hafemann, however, the new covenant constituted a radical eschatological break with the past, resulting in the abolition, replacement and fulfilment of the old covenant. Even though the covenants were similar in content and structure, their effects were different owing to the new eschatological epoch that Christ’s death has inaugurated. The crucial distinction in Hafemann’s argument was that while there were two covenants, only one covenant was true and valid, namely, the one newly inaugurated by Christ. Because the talk on covenant was tied to the issue of the legitimacy of Paul’s ministry of the Gospel, there could be no discussion of validity residing in another ministry. From the eschatological perspective that Paul introduced, the covenant of Sinai was now old and obsolete. Israel’s rejection of the Gospel thus indicated the hardness of their hearts. Yet, in this discontinuity lies also continuity, in that both covenants mediated access to God’s glory and

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required obedience to the Law from their covenant peoples. The difference between the covenants was that in the new, this obedience could be achieved, owing to the transformation of the heart effected by the Spirit that Paul, as a minister of this new covenant, dispensed to those who sought life and not death. Finally, we listed at the beginning of this chapter five common ways of understanding the antitheses in 2 Cor 3. Hafemann’s position was clearly not to be categorised among the first three, namely (1) the allegorical reading, (2) the hermeneutical reading, or (3) the legalistic critique of the Law. Hafemann most easily fits within position (4): the distinction between outward conformity and inward obedience to the Mosaic Law. In this reading there is no end to the Mosaic Law and ‘spirit’ refers not to the Holy Spirit but instead to the ability to keep the Law. The difference for Hafemann, though, is that the spirit does refer to the Holy Spirit who transforms the heart and thereby enables the covenant people to keep the Law. A further difference is also that the problem is not so much outward conformity and inward obedience, but rather that complete obedience was not possible under the Sinai covenant because it did not have the power to transform. Obedience to the Law in the new covenant will thus not only be inwardly. Hafemann did not fall within position (5) the Old Covenant versus the New Covenant, because this position represented a reiteration of the classical Law/Gospel antithesis that Hafemann rejected. At the same time, however, Hafemann did see a contrast between the two covenants and, as mentioned above, the new replaced and fulfilled the old. Having traced positions indebted to the New Perspective on Paul (Dunn and Christiansen) and not (Hafemann) with respect to 2 Cor 3, we see that both positions seem ‘discontinuity’ averse, out of a perceived sense of stressing continuity in order to avoid an implicit form of Marcionism. It has therefore come time to make our own turn to the text in order to investigate further a perhaps too easy emphasis on continuity. In our next chapter, we focus hermeneutically, and exegetically, on two highly ‘discontinuous’ terms, καταργέω and τέλος, and their function in 2 Cor 3:7–18.

Chapter 4

Exegetical Considerations on Paul, Moses, and the Veil in 2 Cor 3 The question might be asked why it was necessary to first reproduce the findings of studies on 2 Cor 3 in light of their dependence on, or divergence from, the New Perspective on Paul. The reason for this is simple. All studies on 2 Cor 3 (or any biblical passage for that matter), are situated within a certain history of interpretation. What our study has merely sought to do is to be explicit about the ideological undercurrents motivating two types of perspectives on the apostle Paul before we attempt a perspective of our own. Given that the highly antithetical language of 2 Cor 3 of contrasting an ‘old covenant’ with a ‘new covenant’ has at times been understood as representing the break between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’, the focus of our study is to view these terms as hermeneutical keys within a history of interpretation of Christianity’s origins and its later self-understanding. As a case in point, E.P. Sanders has mentioned that Paul offered something of an evaluation of Judaism in 2 Cor 3 (another passage being Phil 3:3–11). 1 In order to examine this claim further, we take as our starting point the position of Hans Windisch. In his influential 1924 commentary on 2 Cor, Windisch characterized the section of 2 Cor 3:7–18 as a ‘christlicher Midrasch’ where “Christentum und Judentum, nicht Paulinismus und Judaismus, sind die größten Gegensätze” and whose “Stoff ist unabhängig von der brieflichen Situation konzipiert”. 2 There are three important aspects to this position. 3 First, Windisch maintained that Paul radically reinterpreted the Exodus narrative of Moses’ glory. In this Paul’s καταργέω-sayings in vv. 7, 11, 13 and 14 were central to the thesis that Paul adapted the Exodus account. For Windisch these were ‘targumic-like entries’ which ran counter to the biblical narrative. Related to this, Paul’s use of τέλος in v. 13 referred to the glory on Moses’ face that was coming to an end, such that the veil serves the purpose of Moses willfully

Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 137. Hans Windisch, Der Zweite Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924) 112. 3 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 257. 1 2

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hiding this fact from the Israelites. Second, this meant that Paul’s reinterpretation was a Christian midrash. The fact that it was Christian was because Paul’s experience of Christ allowed him to, as it were, read Scripture against the grain. Lastly, and what has made the most impact on studies of this passage, Windisch’s insight that 3:7–18 was only loosely connected to its immediate epistolary context, has led scholars to search for a pre-Pauline tradition and Vorlage. We can mention in this context the essay by Siegfried Schulz on Moses’ veil, 4 and in more recent times the monograph by Linda Belleville on a possible Moses-Δόξα tradition. 5 So influential has been the legacy of Windisch that all future studies of 2 Cor 3:7–18 have in some way acted as responsa to his position. This will become evident when we examine more closely the various exegetical options that exist when considering Paul’s use of καταργέω and τέλος in this passage.

1. Examining the Exegetical Options of καταργέω and τέλος in 2 Cor 3:7, 11, 13 and 14 1. Examining the Exegetical Options of καταργέω and τέλος

We need to bear in mind a tension that confronts us when reading 2 Cor 3:7– 18, which increases the difficulty of its interpretation: Paul seems to have been making contradictory statements. For instance, the ministry of ‘death’ (θανάτου) and ‘condemnation’ (κατακρίσεως) was also at the same time ‘glorious’. 6 Second, Paul presented Moses both as representing the old covenant (3:13, 15) and as the example for unhindered access to divine glory (3:16, 18). 7 Third, Paul compares his sufficiency (ἱκανός cf. 2:16, 3:5, 6) to that of Moses but then also contrasts his ministry against Moses’ (3:13). 8 These tensions are reflected when examining the exegetical options with regard to Paul’s use of καταργέω and τέλος in 3:7–18. The four verses in question are: Siegfried Schulz, “Die Decke des Moses. Untersuchungen zu einer vorpaulinischen Überlieferung in II Cor 3.7–18,” ZNW 49 (1958) 1–30. 5 Linda L. Belleville, Reflections of Glory: Paul’s Polemical Use of the Moses-Doxa Tradition in 2 Corinthians 3.1–18, JSNTSup 52 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991). On pp. 20–23 Belleville lists additional form-critical approaches that have sought to reconstruct the Vorlage. 6 Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 138: “Paul does not explain how it is that something which condemns and kills can be glorious. He is caught here as elsewhere between two convictions, but here there is no struggle to resolve them; he states them both as facts.” 7 Hays, Echoes, 144: “Moses prefigures Christian experience, but he is not a Christian. He is both the paradigm for Christians' direct experience of the Spirit and the symbol for the old covenant to which that experience is set in anthithesis.” 8 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 34: “if Paul’s authority as an apostle is based in some sense on the parallel between his sufficiency and the sufficiency of Moses, it is also equally supported by the contrast between his διακονία and the διακονία of Moses”. 4

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7 Εἰ δὲ ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ τὴν καταργουμένην, … 11 εἰ γὰρ τὸ καταργούμενον διὰ δόξης, πολλ ῷ μᾶλλ ον τὸ μένον ἐν δόξῃ. 13 καὶ οὐ καθάπερ Μωϋσῆς ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου. 14 ἀλλ ὰ ἐπωρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν. ἄχρι γὰρ τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης μένει μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον, ὅτι ἐν Χριστῷ καταργεῖται, …

Καταργέω is rare in both extra-biblical Greek and the LXX. In the New Testament it is used almost exclusively by Paul. His usage (in the undisputed letters) accounts for 22 of the 27 occurrences in the New Testament, with its highest concentration (4x) in 2 Cor 3:7–18, prompting its consideration as a terminus technicus. 9 Determining its meaning, then, will be crucial for the interpretation of the passage. The simplex ἀργέω translates “be out of action,” while the compound καταργέω in the active voice renders “cause to be out of action.” In the passive it means “cease,” or “pass away.” 10 1.1 2 Cor 3:7 In 2 Cor 3:7, τὴν καταργουμένην is a feminine attributive present participle expressing repeated action in the past. 11 It modifies τὴν δόξαν, which in its immediate sense can be understood as referring to the glory on Moses’ face, but some will choose to understand this as referring to the entire Mosaic dispensation, in light of the later change to a neuter substantival participle τὸ καταργούμενον in vv. 11 and 13. 12

9 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 309: “Indeed, Paul’s frequent and consistent use of καταργέω sayings warrants its consideration as a Pauline terminus technicus to express the meaning of the coming and return of Christ in relationship to the structures of this world on the one hand, and its significance for the effects of those structures on the other. Καταργέω becomes for Paul a theological designation in which the turn of the ages is expressed in terms of what the gospel does and does not abolish and what does and does not continue to be effective or operate as a result. Paul’s characteristic use of the term therefore poses in itself the question of the continuity and discontinuity between this age and the age to come.” 10 Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005) 284. 11 Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 285. 12 Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 285. “It might also be noted at this point that since the verb καταργέομαι appears as a neuter substantival participle in vv. 11 and 13 in reference to the era and order of the old covenant, it is relatively insignificant that Paul attaches the participle καταργουμένη to δόξα, not διακονία. The glory on Moses’ face sym-

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Grammatically, the form of a present participle is identical in the middle and the passive voice. 13 Thus, one can translate it either as “coming to an end” or “being abolished” (the NRSV opts for “set aside”). Yet, it is more likely to be passive since in v. 14 καταργέω is certainly passive and this is also assumed to be the case in vv. 11 and 13. 14 While many English versions translate the verb with “fading” (e.g. RSV, NIV, NEB, NASB, JB, NAB, REB), it should be noted that there is no lexical evidence for καταργέω to be translated this way. 15 Rather, to translate καταργέω as “render ineffective” fits all Pauline and New Testament contexts. Paul was consistent in using it to refer to something invalidated or replaced. 16 Furthermore, other than in 2 Cor 3:7–18, the notion of a gradual diminishing of some former reality was never suggested, 17 since the semantic field of καταργέω appears to be the realm of legal process rather than visual imagery. 18 It is owing to Hans Windisch and Siegfried Schulz that καταργέω has been translated in this context to mean “fading.” 19 The participle is seen to convey Moses’ negative critique of the Law because it is taken as synonymous with the neuter substantival participle τὸ καταργούμενον. One speaks then of “the derogatory addition of τὴν καταργουμένην …” 20 Since Exod 34:29–35 does not refer to Moses’ glory fading, Paul not only went beyond the biblical text, but seems to have intentionally misread it in light of his apologetic concerns (the defence of his ministry) and supposed Christian presuppositions. Yet a problem arises: if Paul was engaged in a debate with rivals at Corinth who were accusing him of preaching a ‘veiled gospel’ (2 Cor 4:3), would it not weaken Paul’s position if he was basing his argument on his own fanciful reading of the Exodus narrative? In order to avoid this conclusion, two options are bolizes the whole Mosaic dispensation, including its διαθήκη and its διακονία.” But, Friedrich Avemarie disagrees: “A vanishing radiance could certainly also be a hint at a vanishing covenant, but nothing is suggestive of this.” Friedrich Avemarie, “The Notion of a ‘New Covenant’ in 2 Corinthians 3: Its Function in Paul’s Argument and Its Jewish Background,” Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism, ed. R. Bieringer et al., CRINT 14 (Brill: Leiden, 2014) 59–78, p. 74. 13 Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994) vol. 1, 243, n. 362. 14 Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 243 points out that in Rom 6:6, 7:6 and Gal 5:4 it is also passive. 15 See Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 286–309 and William R. Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade? A Reexamination of καταργέω in 2 Corinthians 3:718.” BBR 10.1 (2000) 3–5. 16 Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians, AB 32A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984) 203. 17 Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade?,” 5. 18 Hays, Echoes, 134. 19 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 286. 20 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 286, quoting Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, WBC 40 (Waco, TX: Word, 1986) 62.

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available. One either posits that there existed such a tradition of a fading glory and then seeks to recover this 21 or one suggests that καταργουμένην in v. 7, because of its present tense, should not be read as referring to the time of Moses, but to Paul’s day. In this reading, Paul was asserting that it was now the case that the glory of the Law or ministry of Moses is “passing away.” 22 (This seems to be the reading offered by the NRSV translation: “a glory now set aside”). We reserve comment with respect to the first option of an existing tradition, but with respect to the second, it is argued that the time reference of the ὥστεclause is determined by the main verb of the previous εἰ δέ-clause. This verb, the aorist ἐγενήθη “took place”, signifies that the entire protasis is referring to the time of Moses. Hence, τὴν καταργουμένην, is most easily read as referring to the glory in Moses’ day, so “was being annulled”. Besides, Paul indicates a change of time explicitly in 2 Cor 3:14b, 15 (τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας; ἕως σήμερον when he switches from Moses’ time to his own. 23 To resolve the issue of translating τὴν καταργουμένην in 3:7, one can begin by arguing that the emphasis here was not its time reference but that it is passive. 24 On asking who or what is causing the action, if one claims that it is the veil of Moses, it explains in a natural way why the glory of Moses’ face was “being rendered inoperative” (Hafemann) or “hindered” (Baker). One would not need to leave the time frame of the Exodus narrative which Paul is using, nor would one here in v. 7 need to posit that Paul has read against the Exodus text and introduced a notion of Moses’ glory “fading.” So – to summarize – already in v. 7 several exegetical decisions need to be taken that influence the interpretation of καταργέω. One must: (1) decide whether it is synonymous with its neuter form (in later verses) with regard to its referent; (2) decide whether to interpret it as passive or middle; (3) choose between emphasizing its voice or its tense; and (4) opt for either its usual meaning of “rendering ineffective” or an exceptional meaning of “fading.”

Most recently done by Belleville in Reflections of Glory. Needless to say, she is a proponent of the reading of καταργέω as “fading.” 22 See Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant, 87, n.3. 23 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 300 and Furnish, II Corinthians, 203. 24 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 311. 21

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1.2 2 Cor 3:11 In v. 11, the participle has become neuter and a substantive (as opposed to it being feminine and attributive in v. 7). Thus, whereas τὴν καταργουμένην referred specifically to the glory on Moses’ face in v. 7, here τὸ καταργούμενον could be understood in more general terms. 25 This is bolstered by another neuter substantive participle in v. 10 τὸ δεδοξασμένον). 26 As can be expected, the referent of τὸ καταργούμενον is a matter of debate. It could refer to the Law, the ministry of Moses, or the old covenant. Minimalists would prefer to still see it as referring to the glory on Moses’ face. 27 Maximalists, on the other hand, would go so far as to argue that because the participle is an abstract substantive, “it could refer to the old economy in general or the whole religious system based on the law.” 28 Yet the maximalist view seems a little extreme in this case. For those arguing that in v. 11 we see a reference to the Law, it must be pointed out that the Law is here viewed as synonymous with the Mosaic ministry, or dispensation, being treated by Paul. 29 A close link is then drawn to τὸ δεδοξασμένον in v. 10, understood as “[the Law] which was [given] in glory”. The discussion will then turn on what aspect of the Law in v. 11 is τὸ καταργούμενον (“being nullified”) and τὸ μένον (“remaining”). It has been argued that what is abolished is obedience to the Law’s precepts and what remains is the Law’s witness to Christ, since Paul evidently still uses scripture. 30 Alternatively, one can decide to let the ambiguity in Paul’s argumentation stand: the Law remains because it can be read correctly in Christ, but it also passes away because it cannot save and only brings death and condemnation. 31

25 Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 291 sees an allusion to Moses’ face in the accompanying prepositional phrase: “Whereas in 3:7 the allusion to the Mosaic order is secondary, here in 3:11 the Mosaic economy is the focus, with Moses’ face alluded to by the phrase διὰ δόξης.” 26 Furnish, II Corinthians, 205. 27 Avemarie, “The Notion of a ‘New Covenant’ in 2 Corinthians 3,” 11: “This is now indeed a formulation which seems to lend strong support to the assumption that Paul is thinking of a cessation of the Sinai covenant. … Quite a different interpretation results if we take καταργούμενον to refer here to what it refers also in vv. 7 and 13, namely to the radiance of the face of Moses.” 28 Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 290 citing Barrett. 29 Since one would otherwise have anticipated a masculine form in order to justify a reference to ὁ νόμος. 30 See Sanders’ discussion of Hooker’s position in Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 139. 31 Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 139: “Hooker’s explanation highlights, rather, a true ambiguity in Paul’s position. … We see, rather, the two sides of a dilemma.”

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However, while the Law may be in view through the metonymic use of “Moses” in v. 15 (ἡνίκα ἂν ἀναγινώσκηται Μωϋσῆς), the lack of any explicit mention to νόμος in this passage makes a reference to the Law unlikely. What is more likely, though, is that Paul has in view the ministry of Moses, on the basis that Paul moves to a neuter gender so as to encompass what is said in v. 7a (ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, “the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stones took place in glory”). Thus, “Paul is thinking of the Mosaic ministry with its attendant glory as being in the process of diminishment or decay rather than either Moses’ facial splendor or the old covenant alone.” 32 Paul’s use of the neuter participle instead of the feminine encourages one to suppose that Paul was thinking now in general theological terms of what was being nullified, and this may have included the old covenant and its ministry. 33 Interestingly, it is the broadening scope of the neuter participle that then encourages some to read the more specific feminine participle in v. 7 τὴν καταργουμένην as “Paul’s retrospective judgment on that which the radiance on Moses’s face symbolized. It is a theological afterthought, just as is his description – in the same sentence – of the old covenant as offering a ‘ministry of death.’” 34 2 Cor 3:11 can also lend itself to the impression that Paul was referring to the abolition of the old covenant. In this reading τὸ καταργούμενον is understood as referring to the Mosaic covenant, with its antithesis, τὸ μένον, referring in a general way to the new covenant. 35 There is discussion as to whether the difference in prepositional phrases (διὰ δόξης – ἐν δόξῃ) points to what distinguishes the two covenants. 36 In general, though, the neuter participle is understood more broadly than just encompassing the ministry of Moses, but becomes a metonymy for the entire old covenant, including its glory, results and theological purpose. 37 The Sinai covenant “was continually being hindered” (τὸ καταργούμενον, 3:11) from establishing God’s presence among his people. To summarize, the options for τὸ καταργούμενον in v.11 differ with regard to their referent. It could refer to the glory on Moses’ face, or to the Law, the ministry of Moses, or the entire Mosaic covenant. What is clear, though, is that here there is no discussion on rendering καταργέω with “fading.” Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 203. For instance, Hays, Echoes, 135. 34 Hays, Echoes, 135. 35 Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 252–253. 36 Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 252–253. Thrall lists Allo, Klöpper, Bachmann, Plummer, Hughes, Prümm and Collange as seeing some kind of distinction. She thinks not. Neither does Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 291. 37 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 329–330. 32 33

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1.3 2 Cor 3:13 The issue of translating “fading” returns, however, in 2 Cor 3:13. Here there is also a neuter substantive participle like in v. 11, albeit in the genitive case, τοῦ καταργουμένου. The arguments on its referent are thus familiar. It can refer to the glory on Moses’ face, 38 the ministry of Moses, 39 or the entire Mosaic covenant. 40 An argument in favour of the radiance of Moses’ face is the terminological parallelism noted between 3:7 and 3:13, since one can then suppose that Paul still had in mind the splendour of Moses’ face: 7 μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ τὴν καταργουμένην 13 μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου

However, the shift from feminine in v. 7 to neuter, as we have seen for v. 11, is used to argue that Paul broadened his scope from the glory of Moses’ face to ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου in v. 7a. It was therefore the ministry of Moses and its glory that was in view through Paul’s use of the neuter in v. 11 and 13. 41 As mentioned, too, others choose to see the neuter even more broadly as referring to the Mosaic covenant as a whole. More problematic than τοῦ καταργουμένου, though, is the presence of the noun τέλος in 3:13. “All interpreters recognize τέλος as the key on which all else hinges in understanding the significance of καταργέω and what Paul is

Avemarie, “The Notion of a ‘New Covenant’ in 2 Corinthians 3,” 74: “nothing in the text requires such an allegorical reading, and taken literally, it is again the radiance of Moses’ face that is ‘vanishing’.” 39 Furnish, II Corinthians, 207: “Not just the radiant splendor of Moses’ face was being annulled, which would require a feminine participle as in v. 7, nor the law specifically, which would require a masculine form; rather, and comprehensively, the entire ministry of the old covenant.” 40 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 355: “The repetition of the neuter form of the participle in 3:13 recalls its earlier inclusive referent to the old covenant as a whole, with its results and underlying theological purpose (3:9-10), rather than referring solely to the glory of God on Moses’ face as in 3:7b. In 3:13b, Paul once again intends to assert that Moses’ veil kept the old covenant ministry from accomplishing what it would have had it not been stopped by this covering.” 41 Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 203. Belleville resists seeing the neuter as too broad or too restrictive. “Some maintain that by τοῦ καταργουμένου has in view God’s entire revelation in the OT, or the whole Jewish religious system. But Paul’s use of παλαιᾶς διαθήκης in v. 14 suggests that he is thinking more narrowly in terms of the Mosaic covenant. Yet not the old covenant per se but the old covenant viewed specifically from the standpoint of its ministerial role, as the parallelism between ἡ διακονία and τοῦ καταργουμένου vv. 7ff implies. Others think in terms of the old covenant to condemn. But Paul’s shift to the neuter points to a more comprehensive notion.” 38

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trying to get at in the passage as a whole.” 42 Interpreters are caught between translating τέλος here with “goal” or “cessation.” Some of the reasons for preferring τέλος in 2 Cor 3.13 to mean “goal” is that it is supposed that Paul was thinking of: (1) Christ as the fulfilment of the Mosaic law, (2) the messianic glory of the pre-existent Christ, (3) the surpassing of the old covenant by the new, (4) the abolition of the old covenant and the inauguration of the new, or (5) the purpose of the Law as an expression of the will of God in the history of the people. 43 By contrast, the following arguments are put forward to support the rendering of τέλος with “end”: (1) One ‘understands’ an intention or purpose, but here one ‘sees’ the glory; (2) εἰς τὸ τέλος has a counterpart in the phrase ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν (3:18), suggesting that the contrast is between decrease and increase; (3) the participial construction τοῦ καταργουμένου (v. 13) is parallel to τὴν καταργουμένην (v. 7), where it is argued that one witnesses a “fading” glory; (4) τέλος in conjunction with ἀτενίσαι εἰς as “looking down to” produces a more unified picture – one of looking down to the end of a diminishing splendor; (5) τέλος in the temporal phrases εἰς τέλος, ἕως τέλους, μεχρι τέλους, and ἄρχι τέλους in the New Testament is always used in the sense of “end” – or in the case of adverbial counterparts, “completely”, “continually” – and not “goal.” 44

Yet, it has been pointed out that those who prefer the rendering of τέλος with “end” need to assume that Paul thought of the glory on Moses’ face as fading. 45 They share the belief that the veil concealed from Israel the symbolic evidence of the transitory character of the old covenant. More recent arguments for choosing τέλος as “goal” are as follows: (1) The normal meaning of the Greek word τέλος is teleological. (2) Rom 10:4 (τέλος γὰρ νόμου Χριστός) must be construed to mean that Christ is the goal and culmination of the Law. (3) Patristic interpreters understood the phrase in this way. (4) καταργουμένου in v. 13 cannot be read as a reference to fading glory. If Paul were still thinking about the visual image of the glory, he would use the feminine participle καταργουμένη. Instead, carrying the neuter participle over from verse 11, he repeats his descriptive characterization of the old covenant ministry.

Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade?,” 12. As enumerated by Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 201. 44 For a critical assessment of Belleville’s position, see Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade?,” 12. 45 Hays, Echoes, 136–140. 42 43

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(5) The internal logic of 2 Cor 3 favours this reading. What is seen when the veil is removed? The glory of God. Moses’ veil conceals not the absence but the presence of glory. (6) Windisch and followers assume that Moses was hiding a fading glory. It suggests for them that the real point of the figure is the obsolescence of the old covenant and the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, themes not readily pertinent to Paul’s self-defence against the charges of other Christian apostles.

As one can see, the interpretation of τέλος is closely tied up with the interpretation of καταργέω and each side has its proponents. Perhaps to problematize this even further, agreement on the rendering of καταργέω does not imply agreement on the reliance of Rom 10:4 as a supporting argument for τέλος. For instance, Scott Hafemann states: Unlike Rom. 10:4, the τέλος in 2 Cor. 3:13b takes place within the time frame of Moses’s activity, rather than referring to the future time of Christ. For this reason, in the present context Paul explicitly does not identify the τέλος of the old covenant with Christ, as he does in Rom. 10:4, even though the two statements are related theologically. 46

We shall briefly return to this after our final consideration of 3:14. 1.4 2 Cor 3:14 This verse is noteworthy for the first known use of the phrase ἡ παλαιὰ διαθήκη, believed to be a Pauline innovation. In v. 15 there is a parallel reference to “Moses” being read, and the metonymic use of Moses confirms that ἡ παλαιὰ διαθήκη is the Mosaic covenant. 47 The last occurrence of καταργέω, καταργεῖται (3. sg. pres. pass. ind.) in 3:14, is ambiguous because one needs to decide what its implied subject is. There are three options: 48 (1) If the subject is taken to be the glory of the Mosaic covenant (vv. 7, 13), then the verb will mean “is in the process of fading.” (2) If the subject is the old covenant, the sense will be “is abrogated”, “is abolished”, “is being annulled”, or “is set aside.” (3) Alternatively, if κάλυμμα is the subject, the verb may mean “is set aside”, “is … abolished”, or “is … removed.”

The principal reason for preferring κάλυμμα as the subject is that after τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα … μένει, and then the neuter μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον which naturally refers back to κάλυμμα, the reader would be hard pressed to envisage a change

Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 358. So Furnish, II Corinthians, 208. 48 Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 304. 46 47

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of subject with καταργεῖται. 49 Thus the veil, and not the covenant, is being abolished.

2. Brief Considerations on κάλυμμα

2. Brief Considerations on κάλυμμα

It is pointed out that Paul’s interpretation of the veil motif is unique and his interpretation has been understood in various ways: 50 (1) Paul may have seen this act of concealment as educational and preparatory. (2) The results of Moses’ actions were not all intentioned by him. (3) Moses’ conduct was occasioned by the Israelites so that Moses is free from blame. Moses is here regarded as concealing not the glory as such but its destined abolition. (4) Paul’s view of Moses is determined by what his opponents were saying. They accused him of preaching a veiled gospel. (5) Paul saw Moses as acting out of motives of reverence. (6) Paul used the veiled face of the lawgiver as a warning to his readers not to allow themselves to be deceived by his opponents. (7) Moses pointed forward to Christ.

Of these, positions (3) and (4) are worth commenting on because they are diametrically opposed to one another. With respect to (3), κάλυμμα has been understood as a metonymy for “the hard heartedness that continues to characterize those outside of Christ and which, when removed by the power of the Spirit, makes a Spirit-empowered obedience to the Law of God possible.” 51 This veil of hard-heartedness could only be abolished (Hafemann’s reading of καταργεῖται in 3:14c) by the new covenant inaugurated by Christ. There was no power to do so under the Sinai covenant. It was Moses therefore who mercifully shielded the Israelites from being judged owing to the hardness of their Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 304: “If the old covenant were, in fact, the subject of καταργεῖται, we would have expected Paul to write κατήργηται (‘has been annulled,’ ‘is void’) or κατηργήθη (‘was abrogated’).” See also Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 266: “the subject is most naturally to be supplied from that of the participle, which must be the κάλυμμα.” So too Avemarie, “The Notion of a ‘New Covenant’ in 2 Corinthians 3,” 12: “Thus, it is the veil rather than the covenant which in v.14 is said to vanish in Christ.” Furnish, II Corinthians, 210, on the other hand, is persuaded by the overall context to opt for the abrogation of the old covenant. 50 Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 258. 51 Scott J. Hafemann, “The Glory and Veil of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–14: An Example of Paul’s Contextual Exegesis of the OT – A Proposal,” HBT 14 (1992) 43. 49

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hearts. From this perspective, Paul was offering a contextual reading of Exod 34:29–35 in accordance with the original intention of the biblical text. Taken this way, Hafemann's position represents the repudiation of Windisch and the rehabilitation, albeit in nuanced form, of the position put forward by Johann Goettsberger. 52 By contrast, it has been argued that the radiance on Moses’ face being abolished, and the implied end of the law, are likely to have been Pauline formulations since they are consistent with Paul’s view in Gal 3:23–4:11 and Rom 10:4. “According to Paul, the law remained in effect until Christ ended it.” 53 In this reading, Paul’s use of 2 Cor 3:13b can be read alongside Rom 10:4 (contra Hafemann). For someone like Thomas Blanton, 2 Cor 3:7–18 represents a theological narrative that speaks of a physical and ideological move out of the synagogue into the house-church. Paul’s narrative is one in which Moses as representative of the law is superseded by Christ. It is Blanton’s view that Paul redeployed the motif of Moses’ veil in order to delegitimize the ideology and praxis of his rivals who preached that under the new covenant the spirit enabled perfect observance of the law. Rather than attack his opponents headon, Paul undermined their ideology of the primacy of the Mosaic Law. By way of an exegetical inversion Paul constructs a discourse that transposes the charges against him of falsifying God’s word and preaching a veiled gospel (cf. 2 Cor 4:2–3) onto Moses instead and, by extension, onto the opponents advocating Torah observance. Needless to say, Blanton represents a revival, in modified form, of the position of Windisch. Both positions, Hafemann’s and Blaton’s, it should be noted, are firmly situated within the latest trend of Pauline scholarship that no longer sees 2 Cor 3:7–18 as offering a negative assessment of Judaism. For instance, Hafemann’s position does away with the need to reconstruct the identity and theology of the opponents since Paul’s argument follows the inner logic of the Jewish scriptures. 54 Blanton, on the other hand, does reconstruct the ideology of the opponents but argues to see early pre-70 CE ‘Christianity’ as a Jewish sect characterized by internal division on the matter of Torah observance. Paul and his rivals were struggling to promote their own often mutually exclusive ideological views. Yet both positions lead to implications that are strikingly similar. These are: (1) Even though Hafemann points out that νόμος was never explicitly mentioned in 2 Cor, and argues against looking to the use of τέλος in Rom 10:4 as 52 Johann Goettsberger, “Die Hülle des Moses nach Exod 34 und 2 Kor 3,” BZ 16 (1924) 1–17. See Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 255–265. 53 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 220. 54 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 360: “There is no reason to suppose that v.13 represents the view of Paul’s opponents rather than that of Exod. 34:29ff. itself as read by Paul.”

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a parallel for 2 Cor 3:13b, nonetheless he did concede, as seen earlier, that the two statements are related theologically. “It is precisely because Moses had to veil the purpose (τέλος) of the glory of the old covenant from Israel due to their hard hearts (2 Cor. 3:13b) that Christ must become the τέλος of the Law (Rom. 10:4).” 55 (2) As for Blanton, even though he maintains that Paul’s proclamation of a law-free ministry was in fact a minority position, one must reckon with the fact that if Paul’s view became in time the majority position, this only renders the apostle’s contribution to the later ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity all the more significant. Viewed from that perspective, 2 Cor 3:7– 18, as the theological narrative that speaks of a physical and ideological move out of the synagogue into the house-church, would then occupy an important place in this separation process. Both these considerations bring us back, at least for now, to the statement by Ed Sanders that “when Paul speaks in a direct way about the two dispensations (2 Corinthians 3)…, his thought is dominated by the surpassing value of life in Christ.” 56

3. Overview

3. Overview

To summarize the contribution thus far, Paul’s use of καταργέω and τέλος continues to vex and frustrate exegetes, particularly with regard to their referents. In v. 7, the feminine attributive present participle is understood in its immediate sense as referring to the glory on/of Moses’ face. The change to a neuter substantive participle in vv. 11 and 13 seems to broaden the scope to something more general, but here one can choose to see it more immediately as referring to the διακονία of Moses, but then what this διακονία implies is also unclear. In v. 13 we also have the problem of τέλος, which acts as a hinge on which the understanding of καταργέω depends, but then here we are caught between the option of rendering it as “goal” or “end.” The choice for end/cessation requires a reading of Moses’ glory fading, something not necessarily required when translating καταργέω. The reading of “goal” however places a huge reliance on Paul’s later use of τέλος in Rom 10:4 and here there is discussion as to whether that is a legitimate parallel to 2 Cor 3:13. Finally, in v. 14 we are frustrated by what is the implied subject of καταργεῖται. Is it the glory of the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant, or just the veil? Here, in a limited, restricted, sense it seems to be the veil.

55 56

Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 358. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 140.

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The sheer ambiguity of καταργέω and τέλος, together with locating their referents, contributes to the uncertainty of what exactly Paul means. Even though Paul can, and should, be appreciated within his Jewish matrix, 57 we believe that this ambiguity helps to contribute to the later understanding of the old covenant that is abolished. This will be something to return to in later chapters. For now, though, even though our examination of καταργέω and τέλος stemmed from a hermeneutical concern to question a too easy emphasis on continuity that seemed to emanate from an irenic model arising out of presentday ecumenical concerns to maintain positive Jewish-Christian relations, it has at the same time provided the impetus to go in search of more appropriate heuristic models with which to gauge the level of continuity, or discontinuity, behind Paul’s covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3. This will be pursued in the ensuing chapters of this study.

57 See for instance the position taken by Serge Ruzer, Mapping the New Testament: Early Christian Writings as a Witness for Jewish Biblical Exegesis, Jewish and Christian Perspectives 13 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 215–241 (ch. 8: “The New Covenant, the Reinterpretation of Scripture and Collective Messiahship”).

Chapter 5

Sociological Approaches to Identity Transformation As already mentioned at the beginning of our first chapter, we are engaging in a social concept study of Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. Our brief allusion to a sociological model of conversion at the end of chapter one, together with the methodological critique raised by Thomas Blanton of Ellen Juhl Christiansen’s study of covenant in Judaism and Paul, allows us to move into the introduction of social-scientific approaches in this chapter. In listing the approaches, it will not be our purpose to give extensive treatments or detailed summaries of the studies (or authors) themselves, but merely to concentrate on the points that our own method will rely upon. We commence with three sociological studies that raise interesting points for our own study.

1. Three Sociological Approaches in Pauline Studies

1. Three Sociological Approaches in Pauline Studies

1.1 From Individual to Community (Troels Engberg-Pedersen) Since we mentioned his work already in our first chapter, we take a look first at the comparative study of Paul and the Stoics by Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Of interest to us is his sociological model of conversion, which we now examine in closer detail. 1 Engberg-Pedersen has offered a heuristic model that he argues can suitably be applied to Paul and Stoicism, but at the same time cautions that it should not be understood as reducing either Pauline or Stoic thought to these abstractions. The model seeks to portray the transference of identity that occurs once a change in perception has taken place. It plots three points, labelled I→X→S, on a horizontal-vertical axis representing time (horizontal) and space (vertical). I is a stage that represents the individual person before the change in perception. She or he is still concerned with the self. But, as a result of being struck by X, the individual comes to identify with X and may even come to see her/himself as belonging to, or participating in X. X can stand for God/Christ (in Paul) or reason (in Stoicism). As a result of the encounter with X, the individual moves to another stage, S, where the individual now understands her/himself as part of a community, and instead of seeking

1

Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 33–44.

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self-fulfilment as before, now seeks to fulfil the desires of the community. Engberg-Pedersen terms this a movement from ‘I’ to ‘We’. Of particular interest to our own study is Engberg-Pedersen’s insight that conversion is conceptualized as a story in time (before-now-after). 2 This point will become pertinent when we examine Paul’s role in supplying founding narratives to his communities. Engberg-Pedersen has argued that there will be elements of exclusion and inclusion from the earlier pre-conversion state. What this means is that the new conversion experience brings about a reinterpretation of one’s pre-conversion existence. It is similar in that regard to Terence Donaldson’s ‘reconfiguration’ of Paul’s convictional world encountered earlier (in our first chapter). It should be noted, though, that in terms of identity there is also a transfer to something different. An individual transfers from having been a non-member to now being a member of the S-group. This move entails being ‘taken over’ by something (X – God, Christ, or reason) and ‘relinquishing’ one’s former self in the process. Engberg-Pedersen has argued that it is an uncompromising change. “For the change to have come about at all, it must be an all or nothing affair. It is hard to see how a thing, A, may be said to be ‘taken over’ by another thing, B, if A or parts of A are still independently there after change.” 3 Certainly with regard to identity formation, this insight will be of interest whether this transference of identity signals a break with one’s former existence. Engberg-Pedersen also anticipates certain criticisms of his model. (1) Is it not anachronistic to portray Paul as overly concerned about the individual and his/her soul? To this Engberg-Pedersen has responded that his model charts a transition from individual to group and is thus, ultimately, a community-oriented model. Furthermore, he finds it equally anachronistic to argue that premoderns did not have a sense of the individual. More importantly, the characterization of the I-stage is in relation to the S-stage, namely, that from the perspective of the S-stage/group, the individual is claimed to have been concerned only with self prior to conversion. (2) Paul’s ‘I’ is not always autobiographical or experiential. It can also be a generic or diatribal ‘I’. To this, Engberg-Pedersen has responded that the model should not be mistaken for describing the psychological process of conversion. It merely describes the logical form and content of conversion, not what actually happens in that process. Thus, neither does the I→X→S-model saddle Paul with a form of individualism which either could not be his or is unlikely to have been it, nor does it imply any return to the naive, directly (auto)biographical and psychological readings of an earlier age. 4

Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 36. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 40. 4 Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 43. 2 3

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Three methodological points derived from Engberg-Pedersen’s model can be directly related to our own study of the Corinthian case. The first is the notion of a transfer between states which, although not linked by Engberg-Pedersen, reminds us of Sanders’ transfer terminology encountered in the previous chapter. Second, and flowing directly from the first, are the possibilities to use Engberg-Pedersen’s ‘transference of identity’ to think in terms of ‘transformation of identity’, and whether one’s past identity is reconfigured or completely altered in the process. This question will persist throughout our study, and we shall already revert to it in our next section on identity formation in Paul. Lastly, despite the methodological problems of focusing on the individual, the community-oriented feature of Engberg-Pedersen’s model is of direct relevance to our own study, particularly as we attempt to look at Paul’s involvement in the founding and formation of communities. We agree with Engberg-Pedersen that Paul was offering his addressees an understanding of themselves as part of the specific way of life he was directing them to live out. 5 1.2 Language and World-Construction (Edward Adams) A second study is the social constructionist treatment by Edward Adams of Paul’s cosmological language. 6 Adams has relied on the conceptual framework supplied by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966), and Peter Berger’s The Social Reality of Religion (1969), who argued that social worlds and symbolic universes are constructed through language. To this end Adams has examined Paul’s use of the words κόσμος and κτίσις as to how this language contributes to the social ‘world-construction’ of Pauline Christianity. 7 Adams has also relied on another sociological framework in order to gauge the social functions that Paul’s usage of the terms κόσμος and κτίσις are intended to have within the communities addressed (their desired ‘response to the world’). Adams makes use of the church-sect typology, developed by Ernst Troeltsch in 1931 and later refined by Werner Stark (1967) and Bryan Wilson

5 Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 43: “Here as elsewhere he is offering them a way of understanding themselves as part of presenting them with a vision of a specific form of life that aims to draw them into.” 6 Edward Adams, Constructing the World: A Study in Paul’s Cosmological Language (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). 7 Adams, Constructing the World, 6: “The recent concern to understand the New Testament texts within Berger’s framework of social worlds and symbolic universes provides one of the stimuli for the present study. Viewing Paul’s letter-writing activity as a mode of worldbuilding, this project seeks to investigate how he uses the terms κόσμος and κτίσις within his epistles to try to construct the social and symbolic worlds of his readers. In doing so, it attempts to illuminate the larger phenomenon of world-creation in (what may be broadly termed) Pauline Christianity.”

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(1973). 8 They have been introduced into New Testament studies by various scholars (among others, Wayne Meeks, Francis Watson, Philip Esler), but Adams was also aware that its usefulness as a heuristic application has been questioned. Adams’ response to this has been that the problem is not the typology itself but rather its misapplication as a model to fit all contexts. Instead, Adams has adopted Robert Jewett’s insight on a coherent relationship between Paul’s language and the specific historical situations he is addressing. This means that Paul’s language changes, or that terms can even slip into disuse, when situations change. Adams’ study has argued that Paul used κόσμος in 1 Cor and κόσμος and κτίσις in Rom to construct contrasting perspectives of the world. In 1 Cor, Paul used κόσμος to construct a negative view of the physical world. In terms of the church-sect typology, the ‘response to the world’ that Paul advocated can be considered as ‘sectarian’. In Rom, by contrast, Paul used κόσμος and κτίσις to develop a positive understanding of the world as God’s creation. Here the response to the world is ‘church-type’. The contrasting outcomes are because of the different situations that Paul was addressing. Paul assessed the Corinthian situation as one of social and ideological compromise with the surrounding values, which he felt should be combated with a radical, sectarian-like response. Since the situation in Rome had seen tensions with the civic authorities, Paul counseled the community there to adopt an accommodating approach to society around them in order to ensure their congregation’s survival. Paul’s involvement in world-construction, then, was a dynamic and ongoing process. 9 Three methodological points from Adams’ study are useful for our own. The first is Adams’ thesis that Paul was involved in the ‘world-construction’ of ‘Pauline Christianity’. We shall see too in our next section on Paul and identity that it is now commonplace to also speak of Paul’s role in ‘identity construction’. Second, Adams has helped us to see how lexemes can function in the making of social worlds and symbolic universes. This will be our own approach to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη. Third, Adams’ findings show how words can have different functions depending on their context, and that this therefore cautions against inferring the same meaning or function from other contexts. Our methodological decision to focus exclusively on the term καινὴ διαθήκη (as opposed to all Paul’s uses of diaqhvkh), and its function in the Corinthian context, flows directly from this consideration.

8 Adams, Constructing the World, 12: “The renewed interest in New Testament attitudes to the world generated by the recent application of church-sect typology is another stimulus for the present study. In investigating Paul’s uses of the terms κόσμος and κτίσις, there will be special consideration given to the question, To what extent is Paul employing these terms to inculcate in his audiences a certain ‘response to the world’?” 9 Adams, Constructing the World, 239–247.

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1.3 From Reform Movement to Sect (Francis Watson) The third sociological approach is that of Francis Watson in his 2007 revised and expanded edition of Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective. In it, Watson argued that Paul was advocating a ‘sectarian’ separation from ‘Judaism’ (which Watson takes to be the Pharisaism that Paul has left behind) rather than a broadening of the covenant to include uncircumcised Gentiles. In this, Watson admitted that his position differed sharply from the New Perspective on Paul. 10 Watson has relied on two sociological models. 11 The first, concerned with Paul’s socio-historical context, is that of the transformation of reform movements into sects. New religious movements which start out as reform movements within an existing community usually transform into a sect when opposition is encountered. This happens when the reform movement starts clearly demarcate itself from the parent community. Watson argues that this is what happens in Paul’s communities. The second sociological model, concerned with the texts arising out of the socio-historical context, is that of legitimating ideologies. A sectarian group requires a framework that justifies its existence and maintains group cohesion. This framework tends to involve the following: (1) the denunciation of opponents; (2) the use of antitheses to create an ‘us’ versus ‘them’; and (3) a reinterpretation of religious traditions. Watson argues that is what can be found in Paul’s texts on Judaism and the law. Watson’s two sociological models are intended to emphasize the direct relation between the socio-historical context and Paul’s theological reflections in his writings, which is the following: the social reality underlying Paul’s discussions of Judaism and the law is his creation of Gentile Christian communities in sharp distinction from the Jewish community. His theological reflection legitimates the separation of church from synagogue. 12

For Watson, then, Paul was directly involved in the Parting of the Ways and the polemical nature of ideological legitimation means that the parting is not 10 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 21: “It is argued here that Paul advocates a ‘sectarian’ separation between the Christian community and ‘Judaism,’ rather than an inclusive understanding of the one people of God as encompassing even uncircumcised Gentiles. This emphasis on separation contrasts starkly with the New Perspective’s tendency to play down antithesis and controversy in quest of a more irenical account of Paul’s relation to his Jewish contemporaries” (emphasis his). Also, a bit further, on p. 24: “With its emphasis on sect-like ‘separation,’ this book parts company with the apologetic concerns characteristic of the New Perspective. It does not argue that Paul remained a loyal and orthodox Jew but was misunderstood by generations of Gentile readers. [...] It does not assume that he was motivated by a concern for social inclusion remarkably similar to our own.” 11 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 51–56. 12 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 51 (emphasis his).

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ambiguous or indifferent. It reflected an intense argument about scriptural interpretation, which both unites and divides. In relying on scriptural argumentation, Paul was indeed deeply bound up with his Jewish background. Yet, the content of that argumentation also witnessed to the space that eventually divided him and his communities from the parent Jewish religious community. 13 Three methodological points from Watson’s study will resurface in our own. Watson’s interaction (or disagreement) with the New Perspective on Paul, particularly in relation to the issue of Paul’s role in the Parting of the Ways is also, as we have outlined in our first chapter, the broader context within which our own study is situated. Our study agrees with Watson’s methodological point that Paul’s writings cannot be examined apart from their socio-historical context. The question of whether Paul was involved in a gradual separation from Judaism therefore needs to be examined with due attention to the situational nature of Paul’s writings. For that reason we are opting to focus on the Corinthian case in this study. The second point is Watson’s attention to the role of ideology in the process of legitimating a group. We shall return to this issue later in this study, particularly when we view 2 Cor 3 as a discursive strategy in the ideological legitimation of Paul’s authority. The third point that our study will take up is the question of the form and content of Paul’s scriptural interpretation. This issue will resurface in our study, particularly with regard to the question of Paul’s hermeneutics of ‘letter and spirit’ in 2 Cor 3, and the debate on whether Paul’s argument from scripture differed from, or was similar to, treatments of scripture by Paul’s contemporaries.

13 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 21–22: “This separation of the sectarian group from the parent religious community is accompanied by an ‘ideology’ that legitimates its separate existence, explaining to the group’s members why it is that separation is unavoidably necessary, and doing so in part on scriptural terrain shared with the group’s opponents. This separation is not a mere parting of the ways within a pluralistic environment, resulting perhaps in mutual indifference. On the contrary, this is separation in the form of an ongoing argument about scriptural interpretation, an attempt to show that the true sense of scripture – the one that attests the truth of the gospel – belongs to us’ rather than to ‘them.’ It is the nature of an argument that it both divides and unites. Underlying the division is the share concern; yet precisely this shared concern is the precondition for polemical antithesis. To speak along these lines of separation or alienation from a parent religion community is fully compatible with Paul’s (characteristically Jewish) scriptural argumentation. The term ‘separation’ simply represents the distance that makes it possible and necessary for the argument to occur.”

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2. Identity Trans-/Formation in Paul

2. Identity Trans-/Formation in Paul

The authors discussed in our previous section already touched on issues of identity and its construction. They therefore provide a smooth transition to the present section in which we look at specific studies on identity formation in Paul that are pertinent to our own study. 2.1 Corporate Christology and Community Construction (David Horrell) Aware of David Horrell’s extensive publications on issues of emerging Christian identity and the use social-scientific methods in New Testament studies, 14 we have chosen to focus our attention on an essay by Horrell that argues that Paul’s corporate Christology had concrete implications for his construction of Christian community. 15 As to be expected, Horrell employs a social-scientific perspective. Horrell concentrates on the phrase “no longer Jew or Greek,” which appears in Gal 3:26–29, 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:9–11, and which, Horrell argues, rely on baptismal tradition. Also common to these passages was an emphasis on unity in Christ. Similarly, another ritual for the Christian movement, the Lord’s Supper, saw Paul emphasize unity and oneness of body. Thus, “[t]his oneness in Christ, which baptism initiates and the Lord’s Supper celebrates, is most vividly and profoundly expressed in Paul’s notion of the community as the body of Christ.” 16 The next question that occupies Horrell is in what way this ‘corporate Christology’ redefined and restructured existing identities. He points out that the phrase ἐν Χριστῷ was unique to the Pauline corpus (except for three instances in 1 Peter that possibly indicated Pauline influence). Likewise, the notion of the congregation as body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12, 27) was also unique to Paul. Next, Paul’s stance at Antioch (Gal 2:11–14) concerning table fellowship indicated that his corporate Christology was controversial to others, since Paul’s position, that the distinction between Jew and Gentile had been done away in Christ, was clearly unacceptable to the ‘people from James’, Among them the following: David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999); Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004); After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2009); Becoming Christian: Essays on the First Letter of Peter and the Making of Christian Identity (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). 15 David G. Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’: Paul’s Corporate Christology and the Construction of Christian Community,” Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole, ed. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 321–344. 16 Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’,” 328. 14

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who were objecting on grounds of dietary regulations to re-establish the distinctiveness of the two groups. Horrell has argued that further hints of Paul’s controversial Christology may be found in 2 Cor. Agreeing with a sentiment of Graham Stanton, Horrell pointed out that it was particularly in 2 Cor 5:16 that Paul articulated the new perspective that Christians attain in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. “Christ is the one in whose death all have participated, the one ‘in’ whom all believers are no longer to be regarded κατὰ σάρκα no longer, we may suggest, regarded as Jew and Gentile, but together καινὴ κτίσις ἐν Χριστῷ.” 17 Horrell has contended that Paul’s own statements about himself attested to this ‘new perspective’. Paul still retained a sense of his Jewish identity but Christ had become the all-defining centre of his now redefined identity. It would seem accurate to conclude that Paul remains conscious of his identity as a Jew but that this identity is no longer defining – or at least is radically redefined – in the light of his new identity as ἄνθρωπος ἐν Χριστῷ. 18

In view of Paul’s own transformed identity in Christ, Horrell argued that Paul saw Christian identity as a redefined Jewish identity. For, although seen objectively, that is to say, viewed from the outside, that Paul was engaging in constructing the identity and social practice of a new social grouping, nonetheless Paul himself would have seen the Church as Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ πνεῦμα, (a term that Horrell admits is not attested in Paul’s writings) or Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ (Gal 6:16, yet which Horrell also admits is a much-disputed phrase). In view of all this, it must be said that Gentile converts who are ‘in Christ’ are, for Paul, as much a part of (a redefined) Israel as are Christian Jews [...] They are all equally part of the Israel of God, but an Israel whose identity and practice are redefined, reconfigured around Christ and not Torah. 19

Three methodological points from Horrell’s essay are worth incorporating into our study. The first is his point that the social sciences have allowed us to see that theological symbols and ideas can serve to construct identity, but that only exegesis of the text can indicate the specific ways in which this identity construction happens. This interaction between relevant texts, and the social realities they reflect, will be conducted in coming chapters of this study. Second, Horrell has pointed out how identity terms not only shape and structure social interaction, but can also fundamentally redefine identity and social practice, such that previous patterns of identity-forming conduct are superseded. Our study will go on to explore the ways in which Paul employed the term καινὴ διαθήκη in the 2 Cor 3, not just to shape and structure social interaction, but also to redefine its previous use as merely a reference to the Lord’s Supper or Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’,” 332. Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’,” 334. 19 Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’,” 341–342. 17 18

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an intertextual echo of Jeremiah’s use in Jer 31/38 LXX. Third, Horrell has been able to show that Paul remained in continuity with his Jewish identity, but at the same time his self-understanding had been, to use Donaldson’s term encountered previously, reconfigured and recentred around Christ. Horrell’s insights on the role that Paul’s corporate Christology played in structuring the social interaction of his communities will be further explored in our own study, particularly in light of the ἐν Χριστῷ phrase to be found in 2 Cor 3:14. 2.2 The Creation, Transformation and Retention of Multiple Identities in Christ (William Campbell) William Campbell’s 2006 book on Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity has questioned the traditional view that Paul’s Gentile mission was the catalyst for Christianity’s separation from Judaism. Campbell pointed out, as others have done, that this traditional view tends to argue backwards from later events. Thus, for example, the ‘Antioch incident’ itself was too early to actually mark the Parting of the Ways. Yet, it did indicate the beginning of two separate Christ communities, which, exacerbated by the weight of Antioch’s troubled history of relations between Gentiles and Jews (already dating back to the times of the Maccabeans), would lead in later decades to Ignatius appropriating the Pauline legacy and stating that “it is utterly absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism” (Magnesians 10:3). It is this later misuse of Paul that leads, argues Campbell, to Christian anti-Judaism. It is only when Paul is misused and misrepresented in ideologies that often have their origin in political and cultural factors rather than in his theology that he can become an instrument in promoting or facilitating an anti-Jewish identity for gentile Christ-followers. 20

Rather than hold the apostle Paul responsible for either anti-Judaism or the Parting of the Ways, 21 Campbell has argued that Paul desired communities who encompassed people of diverse identities. And, while Campbell agreed that Paul was the architect of Gentile identity in Christ, he insisted that Paul did not intend to universalize this identity to usurp Jewish identity in the process. “The retention of one’s particularity in Christ, whether as Jew or gentile, is a fundamental plank in our understanding of the process of identity-construction as Christ-followers.” 22

Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 83. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 51: “As we have demonstrated, historically and theologically there is no need to locate anti-Judaism in Paul nor to attribute the parting of the ways to his explicit instigation. Anti-Judaism could and did develop in differing circumstances and at a later date without his express authorization” (emphasis his). 22 Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 56. 20 21

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Campbell maintained that Paul’s construction of identity in Christ was never formulated in reaction to Judaism. The social distinctiveness that Paul envisioned for his communities came about because Paul was encouraging his communities to undergo a separation from their previous ways of life as pagans. Nonetheless, it was a resocialization process that modelled itself on the life of Abraham. Thus, the distinct identity that Paul provided his communities was still reliant on a Jewish symbolic universe. And, while Gentiles had to renounce fundamental aspects of their former way of life, Paul did not expect this same renunciation from Jews who came to faith in Christ. In their case, Paul propounded a transformation of identity from a Christological perspective. As with Paul’s own experience of Christ, this entailed a re-evaluation of one’s self-understanding in the context of one’s Jewish heritage. Thus, although one can speak of Paul’s ‘creation’ of Gentile identity in Christ, Paul envisioned rather a ‘transformation’ of Jewish identity in Christ, an identity that was reconfigured instead of simply obliterated. Paul’s experience of Christ was therefore not a template for one undifferentiated identity in Christ. “In this respect Paul is the paradigm only for those whose former life was in Judaism rather than for gentile Christ-followers. Paul is an Israelite but gentiles are not Israelites despite being in Christ.” 23 Campbell’s argument that Paul stood for the retention of distinct identities in Christ then turned to the examination of potential models of ‘church’ that Paul envisioned. Here Campbell disagreed with the notion of the Church as a ‘third entity’, neither Jew nor Greek, on grounds that it ascribed too much discontinuity between the Church and Israel, and also that it seemed to place Christ-followers in a neutral zone devoid of any cultural roots. Neither was Campbell satisfied with the model of the Church as a ‘New Israel’ because it ends up displacing historic Israel. A similar limitation pertained to the model of the Church as a ‘redefined Israel’ that included Gentiles, because it ultimately leaves no room for diversity, i.e. for Jewish followers of Christ to maintain their convictions regarding food-laws, etc. Campbell proposed therefore a model of the Church and Israel as separate but related entities. We must continue then to stress that the ‘church’ in Paul’s perspective is inseparably related to Israel [...] But however related to Israel, the church is not Israel; Israel’s identity is unique and cannot be taken over by gentile Christ-followers, or even completely shared by them. [...] all Christ-followers have a shared identity in that all of them are together one in Christ, but oneness is not sameness and they differ in that some are and remain Israelites and some are of gentile extraction. 24

Some methodological observations are in order. First, Campbell’s use of the universal and the particular operate at various levels in his book. There is (1) the argument that one cannot universalize Paul’s communities to represent the 23 24

Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 89. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 170.

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whole Church 25; (2) the notion that one should not universalize one identity over against another (in this case, universalize Gentile identity and eradicate Jewish particularity in the process); (3) the statement that Paul’s experience of Christ should not be universalized 26; and (4) that Paul’s writings should not be seen as universal generalized principles, but rather represent reactions to particular and specific contexts. 27 On this last point, Campbell was even willing to venture that given the diversity of situations in each local context, “Paul operates as a flexible pragmatist under the control of the gospel, rather than as an ideologist seeking conformity to some universal concept.” 28 We shall return to this issue when discussing the notion of social entrepreneurship (in chapter eight). Second, it is clear that Campbell’s reading of Paul differed sharply from that of Francis Watson above. Whereas Watson defended a ‘sectarian’ Paul who initiated a break-away from Pharisaic Judaism, Campbell resolutely opted for a non-sectarian reading of Paul. 29 Campbell also differed from David Horrell’s notion of those in Christ as a ‘redefined Israel’. As already mentioned, Campbell has opted to see the Church and Israel as separate but distinct entities. Third, more than anyone, Campbell came closest to answering, or at least nuancing, the questions of continuity and discontinuity in Paul that forms the larger context of our own study. Campbell’s emphasis, however, on the Church and Israel as separate but distinct realities is problematic for the following reasons. (1) In warning, rightly in our opinion, against the dangers of Christian theological presuppositions that have skewed older exegesis of Paul’s letters, one should perhaps also ask whether Campbell’s reading of history is not itself laden with presuppositions, which mirror today’s reality of multi-ethnic, multicultural and pluralistic societies. That they do is not in itself problematic, but it does raise the question whether Campbell’s ‘two ways’ reading of Paul accurately reflected Paul’s own sentiments. (2) Campbell brings a much-needed caution against universalizing Gentile identity over against Jewish identity. But, could it be that he ends up just universalizing Jewish identity? Even though Campbell maintains that Jews and Gentiles remained separate and distinct in Christ, he also argues that Gentile identity is related to, and dependent on, Jewish identity. This would imply that Jewish identity is the primary category through which Gentile identity in Christ is to be understood. It should be pointed out that such a notion of a ‘Christianity’ that remains strictly within Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 71. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 88. 27 Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 92. 28 Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Idenitty, 84. 29 Campbell has outlined his reasons for doing so on pp. 46–50. His main disagreement was with James Dunn’s interpretation of the Antioch incident, but his disagreement would extend a fortiori to Watson as well. 25 26

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the bounds of Judaism has been taken up with greater polemical force by other members of the ‘radical new perspective’ (discussed in our first chapter) who plead for a Torah-observant Paul whose mission was in fact to judaize the Gentiles. 30 But, again, it is not so clear if this reading of Paul is exegetically superior to the interpretations it attempts to replace. 31 2.3 Paul’s Formation of Social Identity in Corinth (Brian Tucker) Studying identity formation in Paul has been greatly aided by the use of social identity theory, and one would be remiss not to mention here the work of Philip F. Esler, who has mostly applied it to Galatians and Romans. 32 We shall examine his work later on in this study (in chapter seven), alongside authors who make the link between identity and memory. We choose instead to focus here on a study that has applied social identity theory to the Corinthian context, which is of direct interest to our own study. J. Brian Tucker has studied Paul’s formation of social identity in 1 Cor 1– 4. 33 Using social identity theory to read 1 Cor 1–4, Tucker set out to show that Paul was addressing issues of group belonging and the social implications of the gospel message. Key to Tucker’s thesis is the argument that Paul’s use of ἐν Χριστῷ in 1 Cor 1–4 structured the identity of the Corinthian Christ-followers. For this, Tucker has relied on an observation from James Dunn that Paul used ἐν Χριστῷ in three ways: objectively, subjectively, and in reference to his ministry. Taking this insight further in the direction of identity formation, Tucker argued that in 1 Cor 1–4, “ἐν Χριστῷ is a key corporate ordering principle that integrates objective, subjective and ongoing ministry components in 30 Some examples: Mark Nanos, “A Torah-Observant Paul: What Difference Could it Make for Christian/Jewish Relations Today?,” paper delivered to the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations, June 4-6, 2005; Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian (New York: HarperOne, 2009); Paula Fredriksen, “Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel,” NTS 56 (2010) 232–252. And, also, Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm (eds.), Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015). 31 See, for instance, the critical assessments by Terence L. Donaldson, “Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul,” JSNT 29 (2006) 27–54; and Bruce W. Longenecker, “On Israel’s God and God’s Israel: Assessing Supersessionism in Paul,” JTS 58 (2007) 26–44. See also Terence Donaldson, “Paul within Judaism: A Critical Evaluation from a ‘New Perspective’ Perspective,” Paul within Judaism, 277–302. 32 Philip F. Esler, Galatians, New Testament Readings (London: Routledge, 1998); Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003). In this Esler is indebted to the work of social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner, who introduced the conceptual frameworks of social identity and self-categorization theory in the 1970s and 80s. 33 J. Brian Tucker, You Belong to Christ: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick/Wipf and Stock, 2010).

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relation to social identity formation.” 34 Then, with social identity theory, Tucker argued that Paul’s use of ἐν Χριστῷ created a salient identity for the Corinthian Christ-followers. Identity salience indicates the way in which various identities can interact based on changing social circumstances. Applied to the Corinthian context, this meant that “[e]xisting social identities were to be reevaluated and reprioritized based on the social implications of the gospel, but were not to be opposed or dismissed as insignificant ‘in Christ’ unless they contradicted the gospel.” 35 Thus, Paul was exhorting the Corinthians to consider ‘belonging to Christ’ as their primary social identification. Yet, Paul did not seek to obliterate their previous social, ethnic, or cultural identities. In this, Tucker has adopted William Campbell’s particularistic approach to identity and shown how in the Corinthian case identity was transformed rather than changed from one identity to another. Having briefly outlined Tucker’s approach, we offer a few methodological remarks. First, while Tucker’s study clearly builds on the work of William Campbell in adopting a particularistic approach to identity, the application of social identity theory to 1 Cor is uniquely his own contribution, especially since studies had hitherto focused on Rom and Gal, owing to the issues of ethnic identity that arise in these epistles. Tucker thus showed how social identity theory can have a broader application beyond just ethnicity. This bodes well for our own option to approach Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη from the perspectives of identity and memory, a term not caught up with issues of ethnicity (and hence, not explored in terms of social identity). What remains to be seen is whether a particularistic identity approach can still be upheld when καινὴ διαθήκη finds itself embedded in stark antithetical language in 2 Cor 3. That is something that will be explored in the rest of our study. Also, Turner’s socialscientific approach contrasts sharply with an explicitly non-theoretical approach to ‘social identity’ undertaken by Henry Nguyen in his study of Christian identity in Corinth. 36 Nguyen’s study, alongside another study of identity transformation in Gal, will return a bit later for discussion. 37 The question that will be asked then is whether it is indeed necessary to have an explicit theoretical approach to identity before assessing the exegetical evidence in Paul’s letters. Tucker’s argument for a salient ἐν Χριστῷ social identity further nuances the observations made by David Horrell and William Campbell on ἐν Χριστῷ already seen previously and makes it heuristically possible to apply it further Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 82. Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 268. 36 V. Henry T. Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth: A Comparative Study of 2 Corinthians, Epictetus and Valerius Maximus, WUNT II/243 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 37 Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). 34 35

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in the Corinthian context, something we set out to do in our own study. Tucker has also helpfully noted a crucial distinction between Horrell’s and Campbell’s approaches to identity formation. At the same time, he has offered his own resolution to their differences in approach. In Horrell’s view, theology is seen to precede identity formation. This is a distinction between his work and that of Campbell who understands identity to be a precursor to theology. It may be argued, however, that there is a contrapuntal interaction between identity and theology such that a fine distinction may be unhelpful. 38

A similar reciprocal interaction will be seen to occur when discussing the matter of ideology and theology in Paul. Finally, Tucker has argued that in 1 Cor 4:1–21, Paul employed a pedagogical approach of empowerment in order to show the Corinthians how to remove themselves from some of the more harmful aspects of their continuing Roman identity. It is particularly Tucker’s analysis of μίμησις 39 that we will further explore in our own study.

1.

3. Overview

3. Overview

The sociological approaches to Paul’s identity formation and transformation presented in this chapter form a good methodological basis for the rest of this study. The analysis of different sociological models applied to Pauline studies actually aids us in approaching 2 Cor 3 from, if not a new, then, a rather different perspective. Before doing so, however, it is worth enumerating some of the implications of these sociological approaches for our own study. (1) Engberg-Pedersen’s ‘transference of identity’ encourages us both to think in terms of ‘transformation of identity’ and to question whether one’s past identity is reconfigured or completely altered in the process. (2) As we attempt to look at Paul’s involvement in the founding and formation of communities, the community-oriented feature of Engberg-Pedersen’s model is of direct relevance to our own study. Another important observation is that Paul offered his addressees an understanding of themselves as part of the specific way of life he is directing them to live out. (3) Adams’ thesis that Paul was involved in the ‘world-construction’ of Pauline Christianity will be reflected in our study on Paul and identity, where we will also speak of Paul’s role in ‘identity construction’. (4) Our own approach to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη will rely on Adams’ observation that lexemes can function in the making of social worlds and symbolic universes. 38 39

Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 85. Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 260f.

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(5) Adams’ findings on how words can have different functions depending on their context and that this should caution against inferring the same meaning or function from other contexts has caused our methodological decision to focus exclusively on the term καινὴ διαθήκη (as opposed to all Paul’s uses of διαθήκη) and its function in the Corinthian context. (6) Our study agrees with Watson’s methodological point that Paul’s writings cannot be examined apart from their socio-historical context. The question of whether Paul was involved in a gradual separation from Judaism therefore needs to be examined with due attention to the situational nature of Paul’s writings. For that reason we are opting to focus on the Corinthian case in this study. (7) We shall discuss later the role of ideology in the process of legitimating a group (Watson), particularly when we view 2 Cor 3 as a discursive strategy in the ideological legitimation of Paul’s authority. (8) Our study will also take up the question of the form and content of Paul’s scriptural interpretation (Watson). This issue will resurface in our study particularly with regard to the question of Paul’s hermeneutics of ‘letter and spirit’ in 2 Cor 3, and the debate on whether Paul’s argument from scripture differed from, or was similar to, treatments of scripture by Paul’s contemporaries. (9) Horrell’s insight that the social sciences allow us to see that theological symbols and ideas can serve to construct identity needs to be balanced by his own observation that only exegesis of the text can indicate the specific ways in which this identity construction happened. (10) In this study we shall go on to explore the ways in which Paul employs the term καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3, not just to shape and structure social interaction, but also to redefine its previous use as merely a reference to the Lord’s Supper or an intertextual echo of Jeremiah’s use in Jer 31/38 LXX. It will be done within a context of exploring how identity terms not only shape and structure social interaction, but can also fundamentally redefine identity and social practice, such that previous patterns of identity-forming conduct are superseded (Horrell). (11) Additionally, Horrell’s statements on the role that Paul’s corporate Christology played in structuring the social interaction of his communities will also be explored in our own study, particularly in light of the ἐν Χριστῷ phrase to be found in 2 Cor 3:14. (12) Campbell’s use of the universal and the particular operate at various levels in his book. Of importance is his emphasis that Paul’s writings should not be seen as universal generalized principles, but rather as reactions to particular and specific contexts. The situational nature of Paul’s writings will resurface in our own study, particularly when discussing the social context behind 2 Cor 3. (13) Campbell’s accentuation on the Church and Israel as separate but distinct realities is provocatively problematic. Yet, he comes closest to answering,

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or at least nuancing, the larger questions of continuity and discontinuity in Paul against which our own study is set. (14) By applying social identity theory to 1 Cor, Tucker has shown how the theory can have a broader application beyond just ethnicity. This bodes well for our option to approach Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη from the perspectives of identity and memory, a term not caught up with issues of ethnicity (and hence, not explored in terms of social identity). What remains to be seen is whether a particularistic identity approach can still be upheld when καινὴ διαθήκη finds itself embedded in stark antithetical language in 2 Cor 3. That is something that will be explored in the rest of our study. (15) Turner’s social-scientific approach contrasts sharply with an explicitly non-theoretical approach to ‘social identity’ undertaken by Henry Nguyen in his study of Christian identity in Corinth. As a result, we shall be discussing later in this study whether it is indeed necessary to have an explicit theoretical approach to identity before assessing the exegetical evidence in Paul’s letters. (16) Tucker’s argument for a salient ἐν Χριστῷ social identity further nuances the observations made by David Horrell and William Campbell on ἐν Χριστῷ already seen previously and makes it heuristically possible to apply it further in the Corinthian context. Tucker’s observation about a contrapuntal interaction between identity and theology in Paul, as a contrast to a fine distinction between those two, will occur again in our discussion on the matter of ideology and theology in Paul. (17) Tucker’s argument that in 1 Cor 4:1–21 Paul employed a pedagogical approach of empowerment in order to show the Corinthians how to remove themselves from some of the more harmful aspects of their continuing Roman identity will be explored in our own study of 2 Cor 3, with special attention to Tucker’s analysis of μίμησις. Having listed the above implications for viewing identity formation and transformation in 2 Cor 3, we pause for a moment, and look back to the text to see whether Paul’s argument from scripture has implications for identity transformation.

Chapter 6

Four Trends on Paul’s Argument from Scripture in 2 Cor 3 with Implications for Identity Transformation In its history of interpretation, the letter/Spirit contrast of 2 Cor 3:6 has given rise to the notion that Paul is articulating a hermeneutical principle, in distinguishing between literal and spiritual senses of scripture, at least as far back as Origen and the introduction of the allegorical method. 1 Another trend in the history of interpretation saw in the letter/Spirit contrast an antithesis between Law and Grace, notably Augustine, and then later championed as the opposition between Law and Gospel by Luther and the Reformation. The hermeneutical issue resurfaced in the last century with the studies of Ehrhard Kamlah, Ernst Käsemann, Peter Stuhlmacher, and Dietrich-Alex Koch. 2 The present section classifies and assesses four trends 3 and discerns how each successive trend builds upon, or responds to weaknesses in, the one preceding it. As with the previous chapter, these are not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive treatments. Rather, they serve a heuristic purpose in clarifying our own approach to dealing with the issues of ‘continuity’ and ‘discontinuity’ in 2 Cor 3.

For a helpful survey of the history of interpretation of the letter/Spirit contrast, see Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 1–35. For Early Church interpretations, see Thomas Schmeller, “2 Kor 3,1-4,6 bei Markion und Tertullian,” Neutestamentliche Exegese. Grenzüberschreitungen. FS Joachim Gnilka, ed. Thomas Schmeller (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2008) 154–169. 2 Ehrhard Kamlah, “‘Buchstabe und Geist’. Die Bedeutung dieser Antithese für die altestamentliche Exegese des Apostels Paulus,” EvT 14 (1954) 276–282; Ernst Käsemann, “Geist und Buchstabe,” Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969) 237–285; Peter Stuhlmacher, “Historische Kritik und theologische Schriftauslegung,” Schriftauslegung auf der Wege zur biblischen Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975) 59–127. Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums. Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus, BHT 69 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969). One can also mention in more recent years the following: Andreas Lindemann, “Biblische Hermeneutik des Paulus. Beobachtungen zu 2Kor 3,” Wort und Dienst 23 (1995) 125–151; Jens Schröter, “Schriftauslegung und Hermeneutik in 2 Korinther 3. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Schriftbenutzung des Paulus,” NovT 40 (1998) 231– 275. 3 By trend we mean a set of affinities that we are arguing certain works display when approaching Paul’s argument from scripture in 2 Cor 3. These trends are neither exhaustive nor intended to reduce the authors discussed to the models employed, but they do serve a heuristic purpose. 1

1. Biblical Reasoning

1. Biblical Reasoning

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1. Biblical Reasoning

This trend proceeds with the premise that Paul was a meticulous exegete of scripture and that scripture itself supplied Paul with the means to understand aspects of his new experience in Christ, a kind of ‘scriptural reasoning.’ 4 Two foremost proponents of this trend have been Scott Hafemann and Francis Watson. 5 In Ant. 20:264–265, Josephus stated that the Jews of his day only favoured those “who have an exact knowledge of the law and are capable of interpreting the meaning of the Holy Scriptures.” This statement was used by Scott Hafemann at the end of his extensive study of the letter/Spirit in 2 Cor 3:6f as a concluding word in support of his argument that Paul was a skilled exegete of Israel’s scriptures. 6 Paul’s use of the letter/Spirit contrast and the contrast of ministries were derived from a careful, contextual reading of Exod 34:29–35, both in accordance with its original canonical intention and in line with the further elaborations given to it by Ezek (36:25–27) and Jer (38[LXX]:31–34). A similar argument has been made by Francis Watson. Paul was a wellversed reader of the Pentateuch, carefully attuned to its gaps and anomalies, which he then exploited with the hermeneutics of Christian faith. For instance, Philo too can be seen as guided by the careful reading of scripture, albeit with a different, and opposing, hermeneutical orientation to the text than Paul. In the Exodus episode of the Golden Calf, Philo sought to emphasize the Levitical zeal for God’s honour in the wake of the Israelites’ apostasy (Mos. 2:271–272).

4 Not to be confused with how the term ‘scriptural reasoning’ is employed by such authors as David Ford and Peter Ochs. Peter Ochs, “‘It Has Been Taught’: Scripture in Theological and Religious Studies,” Fields of Faith, ed. D. Ford, R. Muers, and J. Soskice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5 Scott J. Hafemann, already encountered previously, in Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel. Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T&T Clark, 2004), specifically pp. 273–313 (ch. 6) where Watson treats 2 Cor 3 in examining Philo’s and Paul’s readings of Exodus. A variation on these studies, but closely tied to them, are those which argue that Paul was intimately familiar with existing extra-biblical traditions and well-versed in the exegetical principles of his day. Examples would be: Carol Kern Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant: The Exegetical Substructure of II Cor. 3,1–4,6, AnBib 116 (Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1989); Linda L. Belleville, Reflections of Glory: Paul’s Polemical Use of the Moses-Doxa Tradition in 2 Corinthians 3.1–18, JSNTSup 52 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). See also their shorter articles, Carol K. Stockhausen, “2 Corinthians 3 and the Principles of Pauline Exegesis,” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and J.A. Sanders, JSNTSup 83 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 143–164 and Linda L. Belleville, “Tradition or Creation? Paul’s Use of the Exodus 34 Tradition in 2 Corinthians 3.7–18,” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, 165–186. 6 Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, 459.

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Paul, however, was preoccupied with another aspect, one arising from a problem that the Exodus text itself presents, namely that Moses only veiled himself when not communicating God’s commandments. This opened the way for Paul to ‘solve’ the dilemma by imputing that the glory was in fact fading and that Moses represented a sentence of death, an interpretation clearly influenced by the a posteriori standpoint of faith in Christ. Yet Paul did not just read scripture in light of Christ; more importantly, he discerned Christ in light of scripture. The witness from scripture was itself constitutive of this realization. 7 There are several problems with Hafemann and Watson’s readings, which previous critics have not failed to point out. Hafemann emphasized so much continuity between Paul and his scriptural antecedents that the main project of examining the contrasts in 2 Cor 3:6–18, and Pauline exegetical innovation, was severely jeopardized. Paul is cast as an apostle of Heilsgeschichte whose views strongly mirror those of Reformed theology. 8 Similarly, Watson’s reading of Paul seems to have ignored the contingency of Paul’s letters and does not pay any heed to the social contexts in which they were written, or to whom, thus leaving an impression of a ‘decontextualized’ Paul, even one that was strongly Lutheran. 9 In addition, both treatments of Paul have presumed a high level of literacy on the part of Paul, but the question may be asked whether Paul’s addressees would have been sufficiently knowledgeable to grasp all the various echoes that Paul was alluding to. 10 In light of these critiques, it is worth examining a second trend that has been used to understand Paul’s hermeneutics in 2 Cor 3.

7 Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 277: “It is the narratives of the Torah itself that lead him to claim that ‘the letter kills’ (2 Cor. 3.6).” 8 Mark D. Given, Paul’s True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning and Deception in Greece and Rome, Emory Studies in Early Christianity 7 (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001) 119. 9 Douglas A. Campbell, “An Evangelical Paul: A Response to Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith,” JSNT 28 (2006) 337–351; Christopher D. Stanley, “A Decontextualized Paul? A Response to Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith,” JSNT 28 (2006) 353–362. Watson was given the opportunity to respond to these essays and his reply immediately follows theirs. Francis Watson, “Paul the Reader: An Authorial Apologia,” JSNT 28 (2006) 363–373. 10 See Christopher D. Stanley, “Paul’s Use of Scripture: Why the Audience Matters,” As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, ed. Stanley Porter and Christopher D. Stanley, SBLSymS 50 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2008) 125–155. More polemically on the matter of (il)literacy, Philip F. Esler, “Paul’s Contestation of Israel’s (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3,” BTB 36 (2006) 23–34, 28.

2. Charismatic Exegesis

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2. Charismatic Exegesis

There has been a growing interest in exploring Paul’s mysticism. 11 Alan Segal has argued that the background to Paul’s description of believers beholding (or reflecting) the glory of the Lord in 2 Cor 3:18 was the Merkabah vision mentioned in Ezek 1:28. 12 Similarly intrigued by mysticism has been Sze-Kar Wan’s essay on Paul and Philo’s charismatic exegesis. 13 The definition of charismatic exegesis was supplied by David Aune as ‘inspired eschatological commentary.’ 14 Three factors contributed to this type of exegesis: a belief in the continuation of prophecy, dependence on a written sacred text, and the expectation of end times. Yet somehow this category does not fit well when it comes to Philo, a non-eschatological and non-messianic writer who nonetheless did sometimes claim that his commentaries were inspired, – or Paul, who rarely claimed his exegesis was inspired despite his use of apocalyptic and mystical motifs. Wan therefore proceeded to examine both authors to see whether scripture functions in their ecstatic experiences, and if so, whether these experiences affect their exegesis. 15 In four passages Philo has spoken of his own experience (Migr. 34–35, Spec. 3:1–6, Somn. 2:250–254 and Cher. 27–28), which Wan then investigated as to whether they depicted ecstatic experiences connected to scriptural exegesis. The first, Migr. 34–35, did not represent such an experience, while the allegory presented in the third, Somn. 2:250–254 should, according to Wan, not be classified as ‘spiritual exegesis’ (as Rudolf Meyer did). Nonetheless, in the second For example, Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: the Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Markus Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Christianity, WUNT II/36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990); Carey C. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric, NovTSup 69 (Leiden: Brill, 1992); James M. Scott, “The Triumph of God in 2 Cor 2,14: Additional Evidence of Merkabah Mysticism in Paul,” NTS 42 (1996) 260–81; Christopher Rowland and Christoper R.A. Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, CRINT 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2009); also, Teresa Kuo-Yu Tsui, “Transformation through the Divine Glory in Christ’s Death and Resurrection: Rom 6:5 and Phil 3:10,21 in Light of Pauline Mysticism,” Louvain Studies 34/1 (2009) 65–80. 12 Segal, Paul the Convert, 60. 13 Sze-Kar Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis: Philo and Paul Compared,” The Studio Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, vol. 6, ed. David T. Runia, BJS 299 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1994) 54–82. Wan carefully distinguishes ecstasy from mysticism (p. 56, n. 13) but for the purposes of the present study, the two may be taken to be mutually dependent since, as Wan himself points out, both categories presuppose some kind of consciousness alteration. 14 David Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983) 339, cited by Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 55. 15 By nuancing Aune’s definition of charismatic exegesis in this way, it seemed justified to consider charismatic exegesis as a separate model from eschatological interpretation. 11

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passage, Spec. 3:1–6, there was a link between ecstasy and exegesis, and here exegesis was presented as the outcome of ecstasy rather than its precondition. Finally, the fourth passage, Cher. 27–28 was a definite example of charismatic exegesis, and was unique not only among the passages surveyed, but also the extant corpus of Philo. Philo’s ecstatic experience resulted in the specific exegesis of a text. Despite its single occurrence in Philo, Wan suspected that the practice of charismatic exegesis was more common than it has been recorded. Wan then examined the ecstatic experience of Paul in 2 Cor 3:1–4:6. Important for Wan were three things, which for him were beyond dispute regardless of the hypotheses on their causes: (1) Paul was involved in an exegetical debate, (2) Paul’s attitude to Moses was positive in 2 Cor 3:7–18, even if his purpose was to outshine him eventually, and (3) Paul referred to his conversion and that of fellow believers (2 Cor 3:16–18; 4:6). Paul’s retelling of the Exodus story probably relied upon a Hellenistic-Jewish mystical tradition in which a vision of the divine resulted in the progressive transformation of the seer (2 Cor 3:18). Paul’s familiarity with this mystical Mosaic tradition explained why his presentation of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 bore similarities to Philo’s Moses. Wan contended that not only the tradition, but also the method of primary ecstatic inspiration, was available to Paul and Philo, and used by both. As a result, similar to Philo, “[w]hat Paul is arguing in vv. 15–16 is that one must read Scripture in light of one’s mystical experience.” 16 Yet, two major differences remained between Paul and Philo. The first was Paul’s claim that the believer’s immediate experience was superior to that of Moses, something Philo would never claim. Earlier, when discussing Somn. 2:250–254 and Philo’s use of ὑπηχεῖν (2:252), Wan had ventured: “Philo does not appear to use the same terms to describe his ecstatic experience and the inspiration of Moses and he never calls himself ‘prophet,’ reserving it strictly for Moses.” 17 Second, Philo would never identify the glory of God with a historical person. Thus, in content but not in form, Philo and Paul differed substantially. Considering the comparisons of Paul and Philo in both trends, it is perhaps opportune to consider the difference in their approaches. Theological and charismatic exegesis, when placed alongside one another, struggle with a fundamental question when attempting to understand Paul: did his exegesis precede his religious (or ecstatic) experience or was it the outcome of that experience? The biblical reasoning trend would hold that scripture is itself constitutive of meaning and thus free of “a priori dogmatic commitments” 18 or “new-found Christian presuppositions,” 19 which not only means that Paul’s exegesis (or Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 78. Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 65. 18 Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 274. 19 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 452. 16 17

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hermeneutics) took place without the lenses of religious experience, but that they also in some sense precipitated it. Wan’s analysis of Philo’s and Paul’s ecstatic experiences would militate against such a view: “In both Philo and Paul, there is a formal adherence to the canonical authority of scripture, but it is constantly threatened to be undermined by their personal experiences.” 20 Thus, in a charismatic exegesis trend, it would be Paul’s ecstatic (mystical) experience that preceded and controlled his exegesis. 21 As was done for the previous trend, it is worth mentioning some of the present trend’s weaknesses. Firstly, because of its preoccupation with mysticism, for which Hellenistic Jewish parallels abound, it does not explicitly link the phenomenon of charismatic exegesis to the notion of the new covenant, for which Palestinian Jewish parallels can be found, most notably from the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus, where the new covenant’s eschatological and messianic setting also had implications for the interpretation of scripture. This will be addressed when discussing the next trend. Second, the emphasis on personal ecstatic experience focuses an enormous amount of attention on the individual but tends to miss a communal dimension in the process. 22 While this may hold true for Philo, one wonders whether this can be applied to Paul in the Corinthian setting. In light of the charges brought against Paul that his gospel was veiled (cf. 2 Cor 4:3), what would Paul have to gain by highlighting such an individual esoteric experience? He had already charged his opponents with being καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “peddlers of God’s word” (2:17). In what way would Paul be different? Furthermore, while Paul may have had mystical leanings, he also maintained a certain reserve. In 2 Cor 11:13 he polemically demonized the super/pseudo apostles for disguising (μετασχηματιζόμενοι) themselves as true apostles of Christ, thus highlighting

Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 79. This would coalesce with the view espoused by E.P. Sanders in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM, 1977) 442f., namely that Paul only diagnosed humanity’s plight as requiring universal redemption after converting to the conviction that Christ was the universal saviour. Equally, and perhaps not surprisingly, the view of Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery, 155–156: “Paul (not unlike some of his Jewish contemporaries) believes that the interpretation of the Scriptures is sealed and concealed until the time of their prophetic realization, i.e. (in his case) in Christ and the gospel. For the Christian interpreter, the true meaning of the OT has only now been uncovered in Christ (2 Cor 3:12-18, etc.). In this way, although the ‘new’ is explained and defined by appeal to the ‘old’, revelation in the Torah must now be read altogether in light of the revelation in Christ.” 22 This despite Wan’s awareness (p. 74) that, in the polemical situation of 2 Cor 3, Paul was appealing to the shared experience of the eschatological Spirit he had in common with the Corinthian believers (2 Cor 3:16–18). 20 21

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that Paul was aware of the dangers of false transformation. 23 With these critiques in mind, we turn now to another trend, eschatological exegesis.

3. Eschatological Exegesis

3. Eschatological Exegesis

It should perhaps not be surprising that Paul’s eschatology did not surface in the last trend, since Philo was generally perceived to be a non-eschatological and non-messianic writer. This lack is made up for by a comparative analysis such as Serge Ruzer’s, who has argued that Paul’s exegesis is best compared to the exegetical techniques presented in the Damascus Document (CD-A, 4Q266, 4Q270) and the Habakkuk Pesher (1QpHab 7). 24 The starting point of Ruzer’s comparison is that at the time of Qumran and Paul, the concept of the new covenant (‫ברית חדשה‬/καινὴ διαθήκη), first mentioned in Jer 31:31–34 MT (38:31–34 LXX), had come to entail a radical reinterpretation of the Torah. In the Damascus Document, for instance, the new covenant included determination of “the exact interpretation of the Torah for the age of wickedness” (‫)כפרוש התורה הקץ‬, and was juxtaposed to the covenant of the “first ones” (‫)ברית הרישונים‬, whose interpretation only lasted until “the arrival of the completion of the end” (‫( )עד שלום הקץ‬CD-A 6:11–19; 1:4; 6:1– 3; 4:8 // 4Q266 iii 2:17–25; ii 1:9–10; iii 2:9–11). Similarly, in the Habakkuk Pesher, the new covenant (1QpHab 1:3) was linked to interpretation (‫)פשר‬. These interpretations were not revealed to Habakkuk (“[God] did not let him know the end of the age”, ‫ )גמר הקץ‬but only to the Teacher of Righteousness “to whom God has disclosed all the mysteries of the words of his servants, the prophets” (1QpHab 7:1.4–5). Here the interpreter outranked even the biblical prophet. Ruzer went on to argue that this eschatological connection between the new covenant and hermeneutics was also to be found in 2 Cor 3. In his mention of 23 This insight is taken from Edith M. Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse: Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Intertextuality in 2 Corinthians,” The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in the New Testament, ed. Duane F. Watson, SBLSymS 14 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2002) 113–135, 125 n.18. Her article will be dealt with in more detail when discussing apocalyptic discourse. 24 Serge Ruzer, “The New Covenant, the Reinterpretation of Scripture and Collective Messiahship,” Mapping the New Testament: Early Christian Writings as a Witness for Jewish Biblical Exegesis, Jewish and Christian Perspectives 13 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 215–241 (ch. 8). Despite Ruzer’s awareness of Scott Hafemann’s main work, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, which he quotes from approvingly, he appeared unaware of another work by Hafemann that was more apropros to his own. See Scott J. Hafemann, “The Spirit of the New Covenant, the Law, and the Temple of God’s Presence: Five Theses on Qumran’s SelfUnderstanding and the Contours of Paul’s Thought,” Evangelium. Schriftauslegung. Kirche. FS Peter Stuhlmacher. eds. Jostein Ådna, Scott J. Hafemann and Otfried Hofius (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997) 172–189.

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καινὴ διαθήκη (3:6), τέλος 25 (3:13) and τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης (3:14), Paul, like the Damascus Document and Habakkuk Pesher, presented the new covenant as offering a new, ultimate, interpretation of Torah that differed from pre-eschatological, older, interpretations. What Paul had in common with these Qumran documents was the claim to interpret the eschatological meaning of the old Torah, which at the same time presupposed the Torah’s continuing validity. Thus, contrary to first impressions, Paul’s new covenant did not in fact abrogate the Torah; it merely enhanced it with a messianic interpretation which was hitherto lacking, namely, that Jesus was the Messiah and the time was now ripe for people’s hearts to be imbued with the Spirit. According to Ruzer, then, Paul’s issue was not with Moses as giver of the Torah, but rather with Moses as its interpreter. 26 Given the eschatological times within which Paul and his communities located themselves, it was Paul who claimed being entrusted with the ultimate messianic reinterpretation of Scripture. A critique on the earlier trend, one might concede, is that it was preoccupied with Hellenistic Jewish material, but it should be noted that Ruzer’s own arguments are structurally similar to Wan’s because both trends employ the comparative method. Wan too had pointed out Paul’s positive appreciation of Moses. In addition, Wan was also aware that Paul’s depiction of the believer’s apprehension of the deeper meaning of the Mosaic text (surpassing even Moses’) was similar to what is found in 1QpHab 7. It remains to be said that Ruzer’s use of the Qumran sources appears somewhat eclectic and perhaps motivated to overturn a theologically supersessionist reading of Paul’s letter/Spirit contrast as Law versus Gospel. 27 His reading should therefore be placed alongside two other independent studies that also compare the Damascus Document and 2 Cor 3.

25 Ruzer, “The New Covenant,” 255: “Possibly the τέλος of 2 Corinthians 3:13 should then be understood, in light of the Qumranic idiom ‫ גמר הקץ‬from 1QpHab 7:2, as denoting the ultimate meaning of the Holy Writ to the end of time.” But see Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery, 47 who connects ‫ גמר הקץ‬rather to 1 Cor 10:11 (τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰώνων) and Gal 4:4 (τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου). Also, for τέλος in Rom 10:4 (often compared with the τέλος in 2 Cor 3:13), Bockmuehl argues that the Semitic equivalent is ‫ גמר‬rather than ‫קץ‬, and not both (p. 151 n. 113). 26 It is worth noting the contrast here to Watson’s reading. Watson maintained that Paul articulated the unpalatable truth that his contemporaries (Philo, Josephus) would not, namely that the giving of the Torah was inherently problematic because it resulted in the deaths of apostate Israelites, leaving Paul to argue that the Torah/Moses represented a sentence of death and that the ‘letter kills’. 27 E.g., Ruzer, “The New Covenant,” 224: “Suffice it to note that a number of scholars have argued convincingly that both Paul’s general tendency and his stance in the passage under discussion are a far cry from the supersessionist negation of the Torah.” Or p. 226: “Judging, however, by the recurrent use of the substitution and/or supersession language in scholarly analysis of 2 Corinthians 3:12-18, the undeniably polemical tone of the passage

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The first is a short article by Albert Hogeterp, who has argued that “an eschatological horizon of expectation may provide an important clue for the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:4-18.” 28 Like Ruzer, Hogeterp surveyed documents from the Qumran corpus, specifically the Damascus Document and the Habakkuk Pesher, and found that the revelatory and eschatological dimensions they ascribed to the new covenant are what likely distinguished it from the ritual aspects of the usual covenant ceremony and its renewal. In fact, Hogeterp went on further to suggest that the new covenant, as an adopted prophetic notion, acquired special significance for apocalyptically minded Palestinian Jewish groups, and that this apocalyptic imagination was relevant for the understanding of Paul’s theology, an insight that will be pursued in the next section. Turning to the intertexts behind 2 Cor 3:4–18, Hogeterp acknowledged that Paul offered a resistant interpretation of the Exodus story. This was because he had come to associate the Mosaic ministry with the death and condemnation that followed the people’s breaking of the covenant at the first giving of the Law. In contrast, Paul’s ministry of the new covenant was enabled by direct revelation. “The revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord is the hermeneutical key for understanding the old covenant in Paul’s gospel.” 29 For Hogeterp, Paul’s contrast between old and new covenants was actually already present in Jeremiah’s pericope (Jer 31/38LXX:31–34) which contrasted the new covenant with the previous “covenant which they broke” (v. 32). Finally, Hogeterp examined tradition-historical elements and argued that Paul’s first use of new covenant in 1 Cor 11:25 was set within an eschatological expectation of the second coming of Christ. He makes the case for an inaugurated eschatology 30 in 2 Cor 3:4–18, based on the observations that (1) Paul already used another Exodus story previously in 1 Cor 10:1–3 to “instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages (τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰώνων) have come” (1 Cor 10:11); (2) that the mention of the life-giving Spirit (2 Cor 3:6) recalled Paul’s characterization of Christ as the Last Adam has been effective in obscuring the fact that in Paul’s reasoning here the new covenant is counterposed not to the Torah but to its ‘insufficiently messianic’ interpretation.” 28 Albert L.A. Hogeterp, “The Eschatological Setting of the Covenant in 2 Cor 3:4–18,” Theologizing in the Corinthian Conflict: Studies in the Exegesis and Theology of 2 Corinthians, ed. R. Bieringer et al., Biblical Tools and Studies 16 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013) 131– 144. It is worth emphasizing that despite striking similarities, Hogeterp reached these conclusions independently of Ruzer’s analysis. 29 Hogeterp, “The Eschatological Setting,” 139. 30 Consider, by contrast that Hafemann has argued there was a difference between Paul’s inaugurated eschatology and Qumran’s. Hafemann, “The Spirit of the New Covenant, the Law, and the Temple of God’s Presence,” 187: “Both sets of communities can be classified as sectarian, messianic movements that viewed themselves as preparatory for the age to come. In the Qumran writings, this inauguration is coming about proleptically through their own lives of faithful obedience to the Law, now properly interpreted by the Teacher of Righteousness and his community. But for Paul, Jesus, as the Messiah, is the one who inaugurates the new covenant reality.”

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who became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45); and (3) that the motif of progressive transformation in 2 Cor 3:18 cohered with Paul’s depiction of fellowship with Christ as a new creation. Like Ruzer, Hogeterp also concluded that Paul did not see the Law as abrogated. “[I]n our view the understanding of the old covenant which predominates 2 Corinthians 3:4-18 is that it is enhanced and surpassed by the new covenant, but not terminated in Paul’s theological perspective.” 31 As a Christian Jew, Paul was situated firmly within the matrix of Second Temple Judaism, and 2 Cor saw him embroiled in a conflict with rival missionaries. It is clear that Hogeterp’s independent analysis largely cohered with that of Ruzer. Another, more detailed, study of the term ‘new covenant’ in the Damascus Document and 2 Cor is, of course, that by Thomas Blanton. 32 His was an indepth study of ‘discursive strategies’, the ways in which discourses construct taxonomies reflecting group struggles. Regarding the Damascus Document, Blanton has found that its use of ‫ ברית חדשה‬served to legitimize Essene claims to priestly authority against the Hasmonean high priesthood, as well as claims to halakhic authority in interpretation against the Pharisaic sect. “According to the logic of D, being a party to God’s ‘new covenant’ meant accepting the contentious interpretation of the Torah that was advocated by the Essene sect.” 33 Blanton has thus highlighted the function of ‫ ברית חדשה‬in inter-sectarian polemics. Turning to 2 Cor, Blanton argued that Paul’s construal of the new covenant was very different from the Essenes’. Rather than proposing a contentious interpretation of Torah, Paul instead preached a law-free gospel for Gentile converts to the Christian movement. Paul’s use of the phrase καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor was meant to delegitimize the ideology of his opponents who preached that under the new covenant the spirit enabled perfect observance of the law. 34 Paul therefore constructed a discourse that transferred the charges about his veiled gospel (cf. 2 Cor 4:2–3) onto Moses instead and, by extension, onto Paul’s opponents who advocated Torah observance. In Paul’s construction, it was no longer the law that mediated the covenant between God and humans, but rather Christ. “Paul’s modification is explicitly to remove from this covenantal theology any association it may have had with the Torah.” 35 The narrative, then,

Hogeterp, “The Eschatological Setting,” 144. Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, already encountered earlier. 33 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 104. 34 This would contradict the position of Hafemann in Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 439–444, for whom it was Paul who maintained that the spirit enabled the observance of Torah. The problem of the old covenant was its inability to achieve obedience to the Law. The new covenant, by contrast, enabled the keeping of the Law because of the transformation of the heart effected by the spirit. 35 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 223. 31 32

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in 2 Cor 3:7–18 was one in which Moses as representative of the law was superseded by Christ, reflecting the physical break-away that Corinthian Christians were meant to enact out of the synagogue to house-churches. But, for Blanton, this was not yet an indication of the ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity. ‘Christians’ in the years prior to 70 CE were still very much a Jewish sect of the Late Second Temple Period, and thus Paul’s construal of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor was also a witness to inter-sectarian Jewish polemics. On the matter of Torah, however, it should be clear that Blanton’s analysis differed from Ruzer’s. 36 There is much to commend the trend of eschatological exegesis. Certainly, its parallels to the Qumran material are compelling, and provide important clues to understanding Paul’s eschatology and hermeneutics. Its weakness, though, is that because authoritative interpretation is a significant motif in the Damascus Document and other Qumran writings, the comparative analysis threatens to make this motif the centre of Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 3, and risks obscuring the specific Pauline context in which this interpretation was located. To avoid this, Blanton’s analysis has done well, therefore, to pay heed to the specific polemical contexts of the Damascus Document and 2 Cor. As noted earlier too, both the charismatic and eschatological exegesis trends employ the comparative method. It is the nature of such analyses, much like their predecessors, 37 to be engaged in the comparison of patterns of religion. Thus, Wan could state: “There is material but not structural difference between the thoughts of Philo and Paul” 38 while Ruzer, in similar vein, could write: Although the content of the exegesis suggested by Paul differs substantially from that in the Damascus Document, as well as that in Pesher Habakkuk, all three traditions make use of and relate to the basic hermeneutic pattern of revealed interpretation of the Torah outlined above. 39

The comparative analyses usually set themselves up in opposition to a perceived theological bias in exegetical studies. For instance, Blanton’s investigation, as already mentioned previously, began by critiquing Ellen Christiansen’s study of the covenant in Judaism and Paul for switching imperceptibly from a sociological analysis of Jewish texts to a theological treatment when dealing

36 And naturally, Hafemann’s. Cf. Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 459: “we have sought to demonstrate that Paul had no ‘problem’ with the Law, nor did he reread the Scriptures with a distinctively Christian presupposition in order to make his case concerning Christ and the new covenant ministry of the Spirit.” 37 One can think here of W.D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: SPCK, 1948), and Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. 38 Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 75. 39 Ruzer, “The New Covenant,” 229.

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with Pauline texts. 40 Blanton was right to critique a sociological study for not living up to its portended claims. But, the fear of theological bias seems to work adversely against examining the specific content of these writings which, even after comparative analysis, continue to be theological texts. The following trend, apocalyptic discourse, which we will next look at, incorporates elements from the previous trends. It is closest in comparison to the eschatological trend (as already intuited by Hogeterp above). It will, in fact, be our argument that Paul’s hermeneutics in 2 Cor 3 are best located within the framework of apocalyptic eschatology.

4. Apocalyptic Discourse

4. Apocalyptic Discourse

Reticence toward ‘apocalyptic(ism)’ has to do with the problems surrounding its definition. It is a “weasel word,” as Edith Humphrey has frankly admitted, 41 unable to be pinned down on its exact meaning. The early enthusiasm 42 concerning its usage has undergone serious refinement, 43 even minimalist reduction to a literary genre, 44 but nowadays generally includes the following eight Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 7–14, here 12. Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse,” 113: “Whatever our definition of the weasel word ‘apocalyptic,’ this letter [= 2 Corinthians] is replete with it.” 42 See E. Käsemann, “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie,” ZTK 57 (1960) 162–185, who declared that apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology (p. 180), and followed this up in id., “Zum Thema der urchristlichen Apokalyptik,” ZTK 59 (1962) 275–284 and “Paulus und der Frühkatholizismus,” ZTK 60 (1963) 75–89. But already in his day there were critical calls for precise definition of the term: Gerhard Ebeling, “Der Grund christlicher Theologie,” ZTK 58 (1961) 227–244; E. Fuchs, “Über die Aufgabe einer christlichen Theologie,” ZTK 58 (1961) 245–276; and R. Bultmann, “Ist die Apokalyptik die Mutter der christlichen Theologie?” Apophoreta. FS Ernst Haenchen, BZNW 30 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964) 64–69, who dissented from Käsemann by saying that eschatology, not apocalyptic, was the mother of early Christian theology (p. 69). 43 J.J. Collins (ed.), Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Semeia 14 (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1979). D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Proceedings of the International Conference on Apocalypticism. Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983). A.Y. Collins (ed.), Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting, Semeia 36 (Decatur, GA: Scholars, 1986). J.J. Collins and J.H. Charlesworth (eds.), Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium, JSPSup 9 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991). J.J. Collins (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. vol. 1: The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity (New York: Continuum, 1998). 44 Florentino García-Martínez, “Is Jewish Apocalyptic the Mother of Christian Theology?” Qumranica Minora I: Qumran Origins and Apocalypticism, ed. Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, STDJ 63 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 129–151, p. 146: “From the pan-apocalyptic of the sixties there is a shift to the elimination of apocalyptic in the seventies. Fortunately, already during the same congress in Uppsala and in later publications of the eighties the way has 40 41

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points: 45 (1) temporal dualism (this age and the age to come); (2) pessimism, otherworldly hope and discontinuity between the two ages; (3) the division of history into periods according to a predestined plan; (4) the imminent expectation of the establishment of God’s kingdom and the overthrow of earthly conditions; (5) a cosmic, universal scope, in which the individual is no longer viewed as part of merely a local entity and the end to come will be catastrophic on a universal scale; (6) a paradisiacal reward for the faithful remnant after the catastrophe; (7) the role of angels and demons to explain historical or end time events; (8) the arrival of a new royal mediator. In addition to the foregoing, apocalyptic discourse “reconfigures time and space both in the realm of the world and the body in the light of God’s future intervening judgment.” 46 First, Humphrey acknowledged that Paul wrote letters and not apocalypses. Yet, she argued that Paul was familiar with the apocalyptic tradition and that 2 Cor was informed by this perspective. 47 For apocalyptic discourse she turned to three passages from 2 Cor, namely, 2:14–4:18, 6:1–7:4, 12:1–12, and examined each for their intertextures, on three levels: oral-scribal, cultural/historical and social (borrowing the terminology of Vernon Robbins). 48 We will mainly concentrate on her findings regarding 2 Cor 2:14–4:18. A first remark is that she defended this delimitation instead of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6 (the more usual delimitation) on grounds that 2 Cor 4:7–18 summed up Paul’s discussion on δόξα and anticipated the eschatological concerns of 2 Cor 5. For Humphrey, 2 Cor 2:14–4:18 witnessed Paul retelling, recontextualizing and reconfiguring the Exodus narrative about Moses’ descent from Sinai. That retelling was selective because Paul’s purpose was to instruct the Corinthians been opened to a new understanding of apocalyptic, which is the predominant one today […] we cannot resign ourselves to the reduction of apocalyptic to a simple literary genre, convinced that without apocalyptic it is impossible to understand apocalypse.” 45 Vincent P. Branick, “Apocalyptic Paul?” CBQ 47 (1985) 664–675, 665 n. 3 and David E. Aune, “Apocalypticism,” Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, ed. Gerald Hawthorne et al. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1993) 25–35, 27. 46 This is the working definition of apocalyptic discourse within the volume, Duane F. Watson (ed.) The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in the New Testament, ed. Duane F. Watson, SBLSymS 14 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2002). To this Humphrey has added “– but also in the light of past, present, and future salvation and in view of the impinging reality of other mysterious worlds, both heavenly and infernal.” Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse,” 113–135, 113. 47 In this Humphrey includes such matters as the collection, the exhortation to ethical living and apostolic ministry. More specifically, she points out dualistic terms (2:14–17), echoes of merkabah mysticism, the contrast of godly and worldly grief, Paul’s apostolic rhetoric in terms of comic battle (10:3–6), etc. (p. 115). 48 Vernon K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation (Valley Forge: Trinity, 1996) and id., The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society and Ideology (New York: Routledge, 1996).

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rather than to rehearse the history of Israel. In this retelling, Paul’s point was not simply that Moses’ face faded but, more importantly, that the Torah was to be set aside. 49 Paul had recontextualized the narrative because his credentials as an apostle were at stake and he desired that the Corinthians be made keenly aware of this. The narrative was reconfigured through Paul’s use of Moses both as a positive and negative model. This allowed Paul to establish the unfading glory of the new covenant and still maintain glory in the old. Paul’s retelling, recontextualization and reconfiguration were geared toward two ends: (1) restoring his relationship with the Corinthians 50 and (2) providing a new narrative about God’s people. “Paul is not simply advancing an apology for his ministry but setting forth a new perspective into which he is inviting his readers to place themselves.” 51 This new perspective operated as a counternarrative to the existing Exodus story of the Israelites’ faithlessness. Open hearts and faces (2:14, 3:2, 4:2), and equal access to God’s glory, are what characterize the new people of God. This last point touches upon the question of identity. Humphrey has argued that the apocalyptic perspective which Paul shaped for his Corinthian readers was marked by three axes: (1) a spatial axis that situates the earthly world in relation to the divine world (and its shadow); (2) a temporal axis that plots primordial and significant events along a linear movement toward the eschaton; and (3) an axis of ‘identity’ which traverses both spatial and temporal axes and produces a dramatic vision of life as the people of God. Lest it seem that Paul was merely a pre-fabricated apocalyptic thinker without nuances of his own, Humphrey also pointed out Paul’s ambivalences and restraints. The first was Paul’s restraint in casting himself as a new Moses since, for Humphrey, this role belongs to Christ. 52 Second, Moses was both role model and inverse model, an early indication that Paul was ambivalent

49 Humphrey would thus agree with Blanton’s analysis of Paul’s position on the Torah in 2 Cor 3. 50 It is perhaps worth mentioning that Ivar Vegge has argued that the portrait of reconciliation in 2 Cor was more idealized than real. This lends greater weight to the notion that Paul’s strategy in 2 Cor 3 was not just one of cutting off opponents, but equally, and perhaps more strongly, to win over the Corinthians to his side. See: Ivar Vegge, 2 Corinthians – a Letter about Reconciliation: A Psychagogical, Epistolographical and Rhetorical Analysis, WUNT II/239 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 51 Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse,” 122. Cf. a similar statement by Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 74: “over against a position that elevates the status of Moses, Paul seeks to strengthen the apostolic bond between himself and the believers by appealing to the shared common experience of the eschatological Spirit.” As mentioned earlier, Wan did not pay enough attention to this communal dimension when discussing charismatic exegesis. 52 As already seen in her position that the Torah was set aside (by Christ presumably). Humphrey’s position is thus contrary to Ruzer, who saw a comparison between Paul and Moses in the line of 1QpHab 7, which sees the interpreter as outranking the prophet.

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towards visionary experience. This was further evidenced in Paul’s distant echoes of Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot and God’s glory in 2 Cor 3:18 and 4:6. Humphrey argued that Paul was reluctant to cite his own ecstatic visions as authoritative proofs. In this, she critiqued Alan Segal for glossing over this fact, since in 2 Cor 11:13–15 Paul showed awareness of the dangers of suspect transformation. Third, Humphrey highlighted that Paul’s apocalyptic discourse carried with it a subversion of values. Humphrey applied this to 2 Cor 6:8–10, but it should be noted here that the motif of subversion has also been applied by Henry Nguyen, in arguing for the subversive role of the Christ-like identity that Paul propounded in 2 Cor, particularly 2 Cor 3–5 and 10–13. 53 Fourth, for Humphrey, Paul was capable in 2 Cor 12:1–12 of reconfiguring even the apocalyptic genre itself since Paul seems not to have conformed with the formal features of apocalypse in providing an interpretation of his visionary and revelatory experience: “we receive little more than an ‘apparatus’ of a revelation and are given, instead, an ‘un-vision,’ and ‘un-audition,’ and an ‘un-interpretation.’” 54 In fact, the vision was followed by the visitation of a demonic ‘angel’ (12:7), the thorn in the flesh. A moment of supreme apocalypse had suddenly turned to anti-apocalypse. Paul’s apocalyptic discourse was thus ambivalent. Humphrey’s article, though mainly focused on the nature of apocalyptic discourse, raises two significant points worth pursuing for the setting of Paul’s scriptural hermeneutics in 2 Cor 3 within an apocalyptic framework. The first is her acknowledgment that there was a vertical dimension to Paul’s letters, namely that his writings spoke of a God who intervenes in human history. The second is her recognition that the apocalyptic framework included issues of social identity. Nevertheless, her admission that Paul’s apocalyptic discourse was ambivalent, impels us to look at another study, which both situates hermeneutics within a larger programme of identity transformation and an apocalyptic eschatological framework. 55

Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, esp. 152–214 (ch. 6). Nguyen’s work is primarily a study of the notion of persona/πρόσωπον. Nguyen’s main argument is that Paul put forward an internalized ἐν καρδίᾳ perspective to critique a preoccupation with superficial externals (πρόσωπον) that prevailed in Roman Corinth. 54 Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse,” 132. 55 Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). Longenecker notes (p. 22) the terminological and methodological problems associated with the adjective ‘apocalyptic’, and therefore opts to replace it with the adjective ‘eschatological’. But he could just as well have used the term ‘apocalyptic eschatology’. See Aune, “Apocalypticism,” 26: “Apocalyptic eschatology, a type of eschatology that is found in apocalypses or is similar to the eschatology of apocalypses, characterized by the tendency to view reality from the perspective of divine sovereignty (e.g., the eschatologies of the Qumran Community, Jesus and Paul).” Cf. also Albert 53

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Longenecker’s study has analysed Paul’s letter to the Galatians from an apocalyptic perspective and delved into what impact this perspective would have on identity transformation. 56 For Longenecker, the substance of Paul’s argument in Gal was that God’s intervening action in human history through the Christ event compelled the Galatians to model their lives on Christ. Paul thus provided the Galatians autobiographical details at the beginning of the epistle as a witness to Christ’s transforming work in his own life, in order to set the programme of the rest of the epistle. As to the setting of hermeneutics within this larger apocalyptic framework of identity transformation, Longenecker’s comments on Paul’s use of scripture in Gal are apropos to Paul’s use of scripture in 2 Cor 3: Paul is all too well aware that scripture can be read in ways that support different definitions of identity and lifestyle. For this reason, his hermeneutical programme is rooted in the more fundamental issue of character, with Christ-like, cruciform character as a presupposition for proper readings of scripture. This, for Paul, is the prerequisite for valid Christian readings of scripture, a hermeneutical priority that results from God’s triumphant power transforming people by the Spirit to conform to the likeness of the son of God. 57

Needless to say, this position on scriptural interpretation runs counter to that of the biblical reasoning trend surveyed earlier. Although Longenecker’s analysis pertains to Gal, his comments could equally apply to the hermeneutical setting of 2 Cor 3. Already Käsemann had argued that Paul’s letter/Spirit contrast was determined by the eschatological transformation of creation through the Christ event. 58 Richard Hays situated Paul’s hermeneutics within a larger, ecclesiological, framework:

Hogeterp, Expectations of the End: A Comparative Traditio-Historical Study of Eschatological, Apocalyptic and Messianic Ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, STDJ 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2009) 340: “While eschatology stands for the beliefs and expectations about the final age in general, ‘apocalyptic eschatology’ could be taken to stand for a revealed, predestinarian perspective on the final age that entails a judgemental solution to cosmic dualism between good and evil.” For more on apocalyptic eschatology, see: Martinus C. de Boer, The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, JSNTSup 22 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988); id., “Paul and Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology,” Apocalyptic and the New Testament. FS J. Louis Martyn, ed. Joel Marcus and Marion L. Soards, JSNTSup 24 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989) 169–190; id., “Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology,” The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. John J. Collins and Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 2000) 345–383. 56 The main impetus to Longenecker’s study was J.C. Beker’s influential Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1980). 57 Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God, 170–171. 58 Käsemann, “Geist und Buchstabe,” as noted by Gerd Theissen in Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, transl. John P. Galvin (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987) 144, n. 10 on Paul’s interpretation of 2 Cor 3.

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The community of the church becomes the place where the meaning of Israel’s Scriptures is enfleshed. […] In Paul’s new covenant hermeneutic, there is no true reading without moral transformation, and there is no moral transformation without true reading. […] The discrimen that governs interpretation of Scripture, then, is the metaphor of the eschatological covenant community being transformed by the power of the Spirit into the image of Christ. Any reading of Scripture with this discrimen is a true reading. 59

The terminological disadvantages surrounding the use of apocalyptic(ism) have already been highlighted at the start of this section. In addition, even Paul has been shown to be ambivalent toward apocalyptic discourse. We submit, though, that an apocalyptic framework is still instructive in understanding Paul’s use of scripture in 2 Cor 3, particularly in situating it within a larger programme of identity transformation. 60 A possible way forward in the discussion can already be made through use of the term ‘apocalyptic eschatology’ instead of apocalyptic discourse. This would allow insights from the eschatological trend to be integrated alongside an analysis of the apocalyptic imagery to be found in 2 Cor 3:4–18 and its immediate context (2:17–4:6). Here one can already briefly mention the triumphal procession and dualism of life and death in 2:14–17, the language of παρρησία, ἐν Χριστῷ (3:1–18), the two aeons (4:1–6), creation (4:4, 6), and of course, the motif of transformation itself, the εἰκών, and the notion of reflecting or beholding (κατοπτριζόμενοι) the δόξα of God (3:18). These would be the beginning intuitions that an apocalyptic programme of ‘the triumph of Christ and the transformation of identity’ might be found behind Paul’s argument from scripture in 2 Cor 3.

5. Overview

5. Overview

In this chapter we have surveyed four interpretive trends of studies of Paul’s argument from scripture in 2 Cor 3. The movement from biblical reasoning to apocalyptic discourse has served the heuristic purpose of this study to argue for the further examination of apocalyptic perspectives behind Paul’s thought in 2 Cor 3. 61 In addition, the present study finds that the dimensions of apocalyptic eschatology might enhance the already existing insights gained from the

59 Richard B. Hays, “A Letter from Christ,” Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 1989) 122–153 (ch. 4), 152. 60 Here it would be worth integrating insights from Nguyen’s study, Christian Identity in Corinth, along with social scientific studies on the question of ‘social identity’, e.g., David G. Horrell, “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’: Paul’s Corporate Christology and the Construction of Christian Community,” Christology, Controversy and Community. FS David R. Catchpole, ed. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 321–344. 61 At the time of writing this chapter, the respective studies by Paul Duff and Michael Cover had not yet appeared in print: Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context

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eschatological and apocalyptic discourse trends. Perhaps they would also go some way towards reducing the scepticism that remains in some sectors toward the study of apocalyptic in Paul. 62 Much of that scepticism, however, might simply stem from the gap, hermeneutical in itself, of nineteen and a half centuries separating our contemporary world from Paul’s. 63 Such considerations, though, will have to be kept in abeyance, as we shift, in our next chapter, from questions of identity to memory.

of 2 Corinthians 3, NovTSup 159 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and Michael Cover, Lifting the Veil: 2 Corinthians 3:7–18, BZNW 210 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). 62 Notably Branick, “Apocalyptic Paul?” and R. Barry Matlock, Unveiling the Apocalyptic Paul: Paul’s Interpreters and the Rhetoric of Criticism, JSNTSup 127 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). 63 Humphrey, “Ambivalent Apocalypse,” 135: “The resistant reader of the twenty-first century may refuse to place Paul’s rhetoric, apocalyptic or otherwise, within Paul’s proffered metanarrative.”

Chapter 7

From Identity to Memory with a Preliminary Application to 2 Cor 3 1. The Link between Identity and Memory

1. The Link between Identity and Memory

In this chapter we examine three authors who have recognized a link between identity and memory. We will proceed from the general to the particular. Thus, we commence with an author who has examined Christian identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world, then look to an author who has studied identity and memory in the Gospels, and finally, to someone who has recognized these issues in Paul. Again, as done previously, these authors are representative of lines of inquiry that help to frame our own negotiation of issues that arise in 2 Cor 3. At the end of the chapter, we then offer a preliminary application of these approaches towards the biblical text that preoccupies our own study. 1.1 Creative Continuity with a Historic Past (Judith Lieu) In her work on emerging Christian identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world, Judith Lieu recognized the role that memory played in the creation and maintenance of identity, devoting a full chapter on history, memory and tradition. 1 It is worth first noting her definition of identity that will help situate her discussion on memory. “[W]e may begin with a rudimentary definition of identity, that it involves ideas of boundedness, of sameness and difference, of continuity, perhaps of a degree of homogeneity, and of recognition by self and by others.” 2 It is this stress on continuity that permeates Lieu’s reflections on memory. “Without continuity there can be no identity, and it is continuity over time, with all its inherent ambiguities of change and sameness, that offers the greatest challenges and the greatest rewards.” 3 It is memory that helps to create a history that offers continuity with the past, and an ensuing identity that flows from it. Nonetheless, the inherent ambiguity that attaches itself to this construction of continuity means that memory will unavoidably be selective in nature, and perhaps even deliberately so. 1 Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 62–97. 2 Lieu, Christian Identity, 12. 3 Lieu, Christian Identity, 62.

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If the discovery/recovery of history through which identity is constructed involves a remembering, this is necessarily selective and is driven by multiple needs and concerns. Inevitably, then, it also involves a forgetting, a forgetting that is not accidental amnesia but a deliberate ‘not remembering’, or perhaps a ‘remembering otherwise’. 4

In order to maintain this delicate balance between remembering rightly and otherwise, Lieu relied on the conceptual framework of ‘invented tradition’, the title of a collaborative work by historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. 5 She admits that though this phrase has nowadays come to stand for creative remembering when it comes to representing the past, Hobsbawm’s own definitive essay applies it rather to ‘a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature’; these ‘seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.’ 6

Thus, for Lieu, creative remembering is part of the attempt to establish continuity with the historic past, what for her is as an integral element in the construction and maintenance of identity. Yet, Lieu was also aware that creative remembering can result in radical retellings of the past. She cited as an example Paul’s use of the Abraham genealogy in Gal and recognized that his exegesis had spawned others of its kind. Not simply a mere retelling of the past or proof-texting, [m]ore subversive is his reidentification of the narrative of Sarah and Hagar, where he totally inverts the Jewish story of descent from the child promised to Sarah and of the exclusion of Ishmael [...] These interpretative moves prepared the way for similar ones by subsequent writers that belong as much to the history of exegesis of scriptural text as to the rewriting of the past. 7

This rewriting of the past points to underlying issues of identity negotiation. “It is not simply what is remembered but how it is remembered that is both sustained by and defines identity; in this case conflicting perceptions of identity are inseparable from conflicting modes of remembering.” 8 Given that Lieu was examining Christian identity as it emerged from the middle of the second century CE onwards, she focused her discussion on the function of the apologetics used by Church figures of the time. “[A]pologetic, the justification of

Lieu, Christian Identity, 64. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 6 Lieu, Christian Identity, 70, quoting from Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 1. 7 Lieu, Christian Identity, 79–80. 8 Lieu, Christian Identity, 83. 4 5

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oneself in the face of the doubts of the ‘other’, also builds up the group’s own sense of identity, securing it against alternative constructions.” 9 Lieu’s conclusion was that identity is neither invented nor discovered in relation to events of the historic past. At best, there is both coherence and rupture, both continuity and discontinuity with the past. We may at the end of this exploration question the antithesis between invention and discovery. [...] What has remained constant in different settings is the continual engagement with the need to trace a thread from the past to the experienced realities of the present, both through coherence and through rupture, resulting in stories that are never stable, and never closed. 10

Even though the time period of Lieu’s examination, second century CE and onwards, is located outside the domain of our own study on Paul, the following methodological observations are still of use to our own study. First, her recognition of a connection between identity and memory is of crucial importance to us. Her reliance on the ‘invention of tradition’ as argued for by Hobsbawm and Ranger will also find affinities with another author who we shall shortly be examining in our next section on social memory. We shall, however, have to bring this sympathetic reading of invented tradition into dialogue with more critical receptions to this approach. Lieu’s reliance on invented tradition was in many ways tempered by her understanding of continuity with the past, which allowed her to seek a middle path between ‘invention’ and ‘discovery’, that is to say, a middle ground between the controlling hold of tradition and the creative pull of innovation that new movements experience in relation to their parent groups. This delicate balance between tradition and innovation is what our study on Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 will ultimately seek to strike. Second, Lieu was acutely aware that conflict situations provided the occasion for identity negotiation and group formation around an emerging collective memory. 11 In this, she has also shown that the past is not a neutral zone of interest, but a lively field of contest between groups who are seeking legitimacy in the process. While Lieu’s insights in this particular study may seem somewhat general and lacking in heuristic applicability, they have nonetheless paved the way for more detailed studies on the role of ideology, legitimation, and distortion in historical theological conflicts.

9 Lieu, Christian Identity, 86. A similar point has been made by Daniel Boyarin with regard to the rise of Rabbinic Judaism in the face of a Christian other. Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 10 Lieu, Christian Identity, 97. 11 Jürgen K. Zangenberg has briefly touched on how this insight can be applied to Paul in: “Collective Memory and Group Formation: Paul’s Methods of Christological Conflict Control,” NedTT 62 (2008) 271–283.

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1.2 Shaping a Narrative Past (Samuel Byrskog) Samuel Byrskog, as befitting the Scandinavian School’s interest in orality, had already published on issues pertaining to oral history in the Gospels, and within that the tension between history and narrative. 12 His interest has also turned to dimensions of memory in the field of Gospels studies. 13 For our purposes, we look at two articles in which Byrskog has drawn the connection between identity and memory. 14 In a volume exploring early Christian identity, Byrskog has argued that the identity-forming dynamic in the Gospels was one of instilling a sense of belonging to a common narrative past. But, to this Byrskog has also added insights from social memory, which, he contende, offered a new perspective on the emergence and formation of early Christian identity in the Gospels. A social memory approach studies the way that groups use shared memories to construct and negotiate identity. Thus, by being socialized into a group’s memories, an individual comes to identify with the group’s collective past as part of the process of acquiring a social identity. Social memory offered a new perspective of looking at emerging Christian identity in the Gospels as a ‘mnemonic identity’ that was acquired on the basis of early Christians negotiating their sense of belonging to a common narrative past. Of interest to our own study is Byrskog’s observation that the Jesus tradition was remembered by early Christians through performative and narrative dimensions. To be sure, the mnemonic situation is never uniform. What is of importance, however, is that the situation – whether we think of it as deliberate work with tradition or as closely related to other internal and external activities of the early Churches – can be seen as a recurrent mnemonic kind of event that influenced the way certain people cared about, performed and narrated the Jesus tradition. [...] Those who participated in the kind of mnemonic Sitz im Leben envisioned above cultivated their social memory and identity by integrating various items from and about the past into brief and more extensive patterns of narrativity when dealing with the Jesus tradition and the Gospels. To the extent that they synchronized and celebrated the tradition in joint acts of co-remembering within the larger community of believers, their social memory and identity encompass traces of a broader Christian sense of belonging to that common narrative past. 15

12 Samuel Byrskog, Story as History – History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History, WUNT I/123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 13 For instance, Werner Kelber and Samuel Byrskog (eds.), Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). 14 Samuel Byrskog, “Memory and Identity in the Gospels: A New Perspective,” Exploring Early Christian Identity, ed. Bengt Holmberg, WUNT I/226 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 33–57; Id., “A New Quest for the Sitz im Leben: Social Memory, the Jesus Tradition and the Gospel of Matthew,” NTS 52 (2006) 319–336. 15 Byrskog, “Memory and Identity in the Gospels,” 44.

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These comments are of direct interest to us when we argue in our study that Paul was both a shaper and contributor to the Corinthians’ common narrative past, particularly in his narrating of the Jesus tradition in 1 Cor 11 within the context of the Lord’s Supper, where Paul first used the term καινὴ διαθήκη. In addition, the ritual, performative, and ethical dimensions that were meant to accompany the act of co-remembering the Lord’s Supper among the Corinthian Christ-followers would have aided their sense of belonging to that common narrative past. We shall go on to argue that Paul’s role in shaping that common narrative past would have emboldened Paul to rely on the term καινὴ διαθήκη as a source of identification with him when stemming off opposition from rivals in 2 Cor 3. Byrskog’s interest in social memory was already apparent in an earlier article of his in 2006. In this article he applied insights from social memory to the quest for the Sitz im Leben that has preoccupied scholars of the Gospels for so long. He relied for this on the conceptual framework supplied by the cognitive sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel from his work on sociobiographical memory, which recognizes the mnemonic character of socialization. 16 Byrskog focused his attention on Zerubavel’s point that group socialization involves being initiated into the plot structures that the community uses to narrate its past. These entail both remembering and forgetting. It is from Zerubavel that Byrskog has adopted the vocabulary of terms such as ‘mnemonic community’, ‘mnemonic traditions’, ‘mnemonic socialization’, and ‘mnemonic battles’. Applying this then to emerging Christianity in the Gospels, Byrskog argued that [t]he early Christian groups can be seen as emerging mnemonic communities that negotiated their sense of belonging in relation to the larger mnemonic environment of the Jewish people. There was a mnemonic battle over what to remember and what to forget. In this process, the social memory was an effective means of control and identity formation. 17

It is within this identity forming process that ‘mimetic occasions of co-remembering’ such as the rituals of baptism and the Lord’s Supper would have helped synchronize the believers’ own time (their ‘present’) with that of the remembered past and fostered in them a sense of belonging. Crucial to this belonging were narrativity and historical continuity, both because they helped believers identify themselves as part of a shared narrative past. The social memory learns to remember and narrate the past according to conventional plot structures and mnemonic patterns. It narrativizes history and gives social meaning to it by

16 Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 17 Byrskog, “A New Quest for the Sitz im Leben,” 323.

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positioning past events in relation to each other. The socialization into the mnemonic community provides patterns that help each individual mentally to string such events into coherent, culturally meaningful narratives. 18

Aside from showing a reciprocal connection between identity and memory, Byrskog’s work on narrativity has helped to show that the social memory of groups is a narrative memory, one that has plot structures and a controlling mechanism that both chooses to remember and forget events in service of a storied past. Yet, lest one thinks that this past was merely a construct rooted in the group’s present, Byrskog has also argued that social memory seeks to maintain historical continuity in order to be able to offer plausibility and a sense of meaningful belonging to the group’s members. Mutatis mutandis, we shall be arguing that a similar process was at work in Paul’s involvement with the social memory of his Corinthian community. 1.3 Identity and Mnemonic Contestation (Philip Esler) Byrskog’s primary occupation with issues in the Gospels and Jesus traditions will need extrapolation in order to make an application to Paul and his letters. But, we will go on to show that his insights on memory and identity are helpful and useful to our own study on similar issues in 2 Cor 3. By contrast, Philip Esler has been directly involved in studying issues of identity in Paul. As already mentioned earlier, he has been a proponent of social identity theory in Pauline studies and applied himself in that regard to both Gal and Rom. In this section we will, however, highlight the areas in which Esler has been instrumental in making the connection between identity and memory when it comes to Paul. Although using social identity theory in Conflict and Identity in Romans, Esler had already begun to highlight the areas where identity and memory interacted with one another. This was particularly evident when setting out his case that Paul used the Patriarch Abraham as a prototype of group identity in Rom 4. Prototypes are outstanding figures from the past that a social group sets out to emulate because they typify the central tendency of the group. 19 Two things occur: social groups attach their identities to these prototypes and, in Byrskog, “A New Quest for the Sitz im Leben,” 325. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 171–194. Esler makes a terminological distinction between the use of ‘prototype’ and ‘exemplar’ that need not detain us here. Briefly put, exemplars are historical figures who are considered by the group as ideal members while prototypes are imagined ideal members of the group. The reason for their interchangeability in scholarly discussion is that for some historical groups, particularly in Antiquity, real historical figures were appropriated into the group’s imagined ideals. In the case of Abraham, whose historical existence is difficult to determine, Esler has chosen to use the term ‘prototype’ while recognizing that both Jewish and Christian groups would have considered Abraham a real historical figure and thus viewed him as an exemplar. 18 19

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emulating them, the memory of the prototypes lives on among the group. However, this ‘memory of the past’ is not a neutral affair since prototypes are made to suit the needs of identity construction in the present. Esler argued that this is how one must view Paul’s reinterpretation of Israel’s scriptures to serve the particular local needs of his churches and addressees. Thus, in Rom 4, Paul presented Abraham as a figure who incorporated both Jewish and non-Jewish identity because Paul’s interest was to re-categorize these distinct identities into the new identity in Christ. Paul went about this by interpreting the Abraham narratives from Israel’s scriptures in such a way as to justify that both groups could claim common ancestry from Abraham. Esler pointed out that this contrasted sharply with Paul’s different use of Abraham in his letter to the Galatians where Abraham was in fact a contested prototype of identity, given the attempt by Paul’s judaizing opponents to portray Abraham as the prototype of circumcised identity. The Galatian case clearly illustrated how collective memories of the past have different versions on opposite sides of a conflict. Taking up this last point, Esler has looked at Paul’s use of Abraham in Gal, this time using social memory as a theoretical framework. 20 Esler argued that Paul offered a counter-exegesis of Abraham in Gal 3 that was aimed at cutting off his opponents’ reliance on Abraham’s circumcision as exemplary for descent status. Contesting this, Paul demonstrated that faith in Christ was the only way to share in Abrahamic descent. Paul based himself on the fact that Abraham’s faith was mentioned prior to his circumcision in the Genesis narratives (Gen 15–17). Similarly, Paul offered his own novel interpretation of the singular word “seed” that God used whenever making a promise to Abraham; Paul claimed that the seed was in fact Christ and anyone in Christ. Creative as Paul’s exegesis in Gal was, Esler also noted that it was extraordinarily anti-Jewish (or, ‘anti-Judean’, to use Esler’s term) in that it denied any continuing role for Jewish identity. This was because Paul had to fend off a Judean mnemonic socialization trumping circumcision by introducing his own mnemonic tradition that prioritized faith. In the process, however, Paul ended up overstating his case by arguing that only faith in Christ could allow for Abrahamic descent. But, Esler pointed out, Paul drew back from this extreme position when composing Rom. As already seen above, Esler argued that Paul worked Abraham into the collective memory of the Christ-followers in Rome by emphasizing a common ancestry for both Jewish and non-Jewish Christbelievers, and this time without the sharp antithetical shape to his argument in Galatians. This not only demonstrates that prototypical figures are malleable, 20 Philip F. Esler, “Paul’s Contestation of Israel’s (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3,” BTB 36/1 (2006) 23–34. This volume of the Biblical Theology Bulletin was devoted to the topic of social memory theory in biblical studies and all the contributions in this volume reflected this theme.

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but also that those who use them to influence groups modulate their processing of the past to take into account ever-changing circumstances in the present. Esler’s insights on contested pasts have also continued into his exploration of collective memory in Heb. 21 There he argued that the author of Hebrews created a rival version of the collective memory of Israel, a counter-memory, in order to mark a transition from an old to new order. This new mnemonic tradition situated members of the Christ movement within an existing story from which they had sprung, but at the same time left out elements that no longer could be reconciled with their new experiences. Esler showed how the author of Heb constructed this counter-memory by (1) highlighting certain aspects of Jewish/Israelite history, (2) suppressing one or other prominent features, and (3) introducing conspicuous new ones. 22 Although the case in Heb is not directly related to Paul, Esler’s tripartite analysis of the construction of counter-memories offers a useful heuristic in order to examine Paul’s use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as a probable counter-narrative/memory, given the polemical context of the passage in the setting of 2 Cor. Esler’s studies on social identity in Paul, as well as his forays into social memory, have shown the intricate interrelationship between identity and memory, particularly when claiming the past within conflict situations. His observations on the use of Abraham as a prototype for in-group identity will be worth pursuing when examining whether Paul’s use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 was meant as an antitype (a prototype’s negative counterpart). But, it is especially his insights on the construction of rival versions of the past, countermemories, which will be of direct benefit to our study on Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. A preliminary application of these insights will, in fact, be the focus of our next section.

2. Contesting the Mnemonic Tradition of Moses’ Glory in 2 Cor 3

2. Contesting the Mnemonic Tradition of Moses’ Glory

This section is an exploration into whether recent work on counter-memory can be applied to Paul’s statements on Moses in 2 Cor 3. We commence by showing the lacunae in previous studies of this passage and then use the sociological insights from Blanton’s study to provide the framework within which to argue that Paul was constructing a counter-memory on Moses. We then integrate insights from Philip Esler on the contestation of mnemonic traditions.

21 Philip F. Esler, “Collective Memory and Hebrews 11: Outlining a New Investigative Framework,” Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher, Semeia 52 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005) 151–171. 22 Esler, “Collective Memory and Hebrews 11,” 159.

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2.1 The Lacunae of Intertextual Studies of 2 Cor 3 As already mentioned in chapter three, the stark contrasts of 2 Cor 3:6–18 have been understood in different ways, but what is generally agreed to be at stake is Paul’s apology for his apostolic ministry to the Corinthians coupled with his polemics against opponents who are mere “peddlers of God’s word” (2:17) and rely on their letters of recommendation (3:1). Of interest to us in this section is Paul’s introduction of Moses, the glory on his face, and the veil. Past studies of this passage have usually dealt with intertextual parallels. Some treatments of this passage, for instance those by Richard Hays, N.T. Wright and Francis Watson, 23 already encountered earlier, are situated within programmatic approaches to Paul. So, for Hays, it was the search for echoes of scripture in Paul, in Wright it was the presentation of Paul as a covenantal theologian who experienced Christ as the climax of God’s covenant with Creation and Israel, and for Watson it was a Paul who read Israel’s scriptures with the hermeneutics of faith. These projects have much in common with one another, discerning narrative grids within which to understand Paul theologically and relying heavily on intertextuality to prove Paul’s skillful knowledge and use of scripture. Sympathetic as we are to intertextuality, it is perhaps worth wondering whether the careful unearthing of distant echoes perhaps obscures the fact that a message would have needed to be sufficiently clear and communicative, especially in a culture more attuned to the ear than the eye, the spoken word and not the written. If literacy at that time was only to be found among a tiny minority of people, then societies would have been residually oral/aural. In missing this fact, proponents of intertextuality tend to assume Paul accessed scripture in much the same way as those living in a culture of the printed word. 24 The problems of seeing too much intertextuality at work in Paul become apparent when one considers the more in-depth studies on 2 Cor 3, which we have also treated in previous chapters. Here it is only worth recalling that someone like Carol Stockhausen, who extensively analyzed the exegetical substructure of 2 Cor 3:1–4:6, also concluded, much as Hays did, that scripture played a crucial role in Paul’s argumentation and hermeneutics. 25 Unlike Hays though, who emphasized Paul’s exegetical freedom in offering unpredictable intuitive readings that could not be systematized, Stockhausen actually discerned principles behind Pauline exegesis that she then distilled and went on to apply to

Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 122–153; Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 175–192; Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 273–313. 24 Philip F. Esler, “Paul’s Contestation of Israel’s (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3,” BTB 36 (2006) 23–34, 28. 25 Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant. 23

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Galatians. 26 The thrust of Stockhausen’s argument was that, even if Paul intertexted part of a scriptural narrative (for instance, the glory on Moses’ face in Exod 34:29–35), Paul nonetheless had the whole narrative in view (in this case, Moses’ calling from Exod 4 to its glorious climax in Exod 34). A more serious version of such an argument would be Scott Hafemann’s. Hafemann’s systematic and contextual exegesis of the intertexts Ezek 36:25– 27, Jer 38:31–34 LXX and Exod 34:29–35 were in function of arguing that the scriptural texts controlled Paul (and not the other way around), in accordance no less with their original canonical intention. And, as already mentioned, Hafemann’s Paul has ended up strongly resembling a Reformed theologian of Heilsgeschichte. A similar critique has been leveled at Francis Watson by Douglas Campbell, 27 despite Watson’s claim that Paul was offering a counterreading to the existing Jewish readings of Pentateuchal narratives of his day. 28 The focus of this section is specifically Paul’s referral to Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18. In this context it is worthwhile mentioning Linda Belleville’s study of Paul’s polemical use of a presumed Moses-Doxa tradition. 29 Belleville has correctly pointed out that the Exodus narrative does not (a) mention the glory on Moses’ face fading; (b) suggest that the Israelites were unable to look at Moses’ face; (c) causally link the donning of the veil to this inability to gaze at Moses; and (d) provide a motive for the veiling. The earlier form-critical attempts to account for Paul’s innovations have been to see them as resulting from: (i) Paul’s own fanciful invention; (ii) an existing Jewish midrash that Paul Christianizes; or (iii) Paul’s reaction to a midrash that his opponents were using. Belleville disagreed with these form-critical approaches and advanced her own search for a ‘Moses-Doxa tradition’ in extrabiblical usage to then be able to gauge the uniqueness (and creativity) of Paul’s statements surrounding Moses. She exhaustively examined the Targumim, Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Qumran, the Samaritan documents, Rabbinic literature, and finally the Zohar where she found her closest parallel to Paul’s argument, but so enthusiastic was her discovery that she did not consider its relatively late date for consideration against Paul. What was, however, more disconcerting, methodologically, was that Belleville collated the extrabiblical literature from disparate sources, in order to reconstruct a presumed existing haggadah that was actually shaped along the contours of the Pauline presentation in 2 Cor 3:7–18. But, then, even when 26 Carol K. Stockhausen, “2 Corinthians 3 and the Principles of Pauline Exegesis,” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and J.A. Sanders, JSNTSup 83/1 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993) 143–164. 27 Douglas A. Campbell, “An Evangelical Paul: A Response to Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith,” JSNT 28 (2006) 337–351. 28 Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 219: “Paul’s own reading may be characterized as a counter-reading, a reading directed against a prior reading in which Abraham is not seen primarily as the addressee of the divine promise.” 29 Belleville, Reflections of Glory.

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finding this existing Moses-Doxa tradition, Belleville still had to concede that there were six distinctively Pauline accents in 2 Cor that differ from it. So, when all was said and done, it was really the Pauline innovation “in the application of these traditions to the Mosaic covenant and to his contemporary situation that Paul’s original contribution is made.” 30 We shall shortly return to these six Pauline innovations because Belleville’s isolation of these additions is more usefully served in arguing for Paul’s construction of a counter-memory, where innovation is a key component. But this first needs to be placed within a social context that is helpfully provided by Thomas Blanton’s study of the passage. 2.2 The Social Context behind 2 Cor 3 It is worth recalling that Thomas Blanton’s study of the discursive strategy behind Paul’s use of the term ‘new covenant’ (already encountered previously) had argued that Paul ‘redeployed’ the motif of Moses’ veil’ by means of an exegetical inversion. 31 Paul’s attempt to delegitimize the ideology of his rivals was to create a narrative that deflected the charges brought against him of falsifying God’s word and preaching a veiled gospel. It is, of course, highly ironical that Paul defended himself against these charges by offering an interpretation of the Exodus text that ran exactly counter to its plain sense. Yet, here it is useful to bear in mind the strategy Paul used. Pau legitimized his own ideology by delegitimizing that of his opponents. Blanton’s analysis echoes Esler’s argument that what was at stake in such cases was not really the theological argument, but rather who had the most persuasive way of interpreting scripture for the purposes of serving group identity. 32 In fact, this, for Blanton, was precisely the social situation that gave rise to the text of 2 Cor 3:7–18, which was the presentation in the form of a theological narrative, of the physical and ideological translocation that Paul himself had encouraged the Corinthian Christians to enact, the movement from synagogue preaching to the Pauline gospel. 33

Paul’s starkly antithetical narrative, in which Moses as representative of the law was superseded by Christ, was in fact the story of the Corinthian community’s physical movement out of the synagogue and into the house-church.

Linda L. Belleville, “Tradition or Creation? Paul’s Use of the Exodus 34 Tradition in 2 Corinthians 3.7–18,” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, 165–186, 185. 31 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 218f. 32 Esler, “Paul’s Contestation,” 30. 33 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 228. 30

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2.3 Reading Paul’s Use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as Constructing a Counter-Memory Blanton’s findings provide for a possible wider sociological context within which to read Paul’s use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as constructing a countermemory for in-group purposes. Rather than enter into the theoretical discussion on what counter-memory is, 34 we would like to suggest a practical way of determining whether we are dealing with a counter-memory in 2 Cor 3:7–18. We argued earlier that Philip Esler’s tripartite analysis of the construction of counter-memories offered a useful heuristic in determining the ways a countermemory (1) highlights certain aspects of history; (2) suppresses one or other prominent feature; and (3) introduces conspicuous new ones. 35 This pattern, we now show, can be discerned in Paul’s use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18. (1) Highlighting certain aspects of history: In mentioning the Exodus episode of the glory on Moses’ face and the veil, Paul gave prominence to an otherwise closing section to the larger episode of the second giving of the law in Exod 34. Given the narrative of the Golden Calf and its consequences (Exod 32:1 to 34:35), the episode of Moses’ veil was really a footnote (seven verses) in comparison to the preceding 86 verses of narrative concerned with the breaking of the covenant and its restoration. Moses’ shining face did not have any prominence in the canonical writings and, given that we are unable to gauge Paul’s dependence on extrabiblical sources with certainty, this further emphasizes the factor of Pauline ‘highlighting’. (2) Suppressing one or other prominent feature: What Paul thus suppressed or omitted in his selective usage was the mediatory role of Moses in the second giving of the law after the Israelites’ sin in worshiping the Golden Calf. As a result, Paul diverged from the larger narrative dynamic of dis/obedience that permeated the Israelite story of ‘exile and return’. Paul characterized the Israelites’ inability to gaze at Moses as a hardening of mind, which continued to his day. Yet, hardened and veiled minds were hardly equivalent to the sin of idolatry and disobedience that the Exodus narrative recorded. Less importantly, Paul also ignored that the biblical passage mentioned that Moses first spoke to 34 See for instance Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. and intro. Donald F. Bouchard, transl. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977). We will encounter Foucault again in our next chapter. 35 Esler, “Collective Memory and Hebrews 11,” 159: “the author of Hebrews has been very selective in those figures from, and features of, Israelite history he chooses to mention in Heb 11. For example, he omits God’s giving of the law to Moses on Sinai, does not name anyone after David, and ignores the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE and the Babylonian captivity. He also highlights certain aspects of that history and introduces conspicuous new features (such as Abraham’s belief in resurrection [11:19] and Joseph’s foretelling of the exodus [11:22])” (italics ours).

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the Israelites and only then put on the veil (Exod 34:33). Paul omitted mention of Aaron and the elders of the congregation who were the first to approach Moses before the rest of the Israelites (Exod 34:31–32). To us this implies two things: first, that Paul was not basing himself on a word-for-word recounting of the Golden Calf episode, or even of the veil account, strengthening the case against his presumed rigorous intertextual dependence; second, Paul likely omitted these details because they were not important to him. Figures from the past can be actively seized and re-deployed. 36 In omitting (suppressing?) the larger original narrative context in which the shining face of Moses and the veil was located, Paul was actively re-deploying Moses to new ends. (3) Introducing conspicuous new elements: So, if Paul highlighted certain features and suppressed others, what conspicuous new features did he introduce? These would be (a) that the glory on Moses’ face was fading; (b) the suggestion that the Israelites were unable to look at Moses’ face (since in Exodus they saw Moses and, though afraid, still approached him); (c) the connection between this inability to look at Moses and the donning of the veil; and (d) the motive for that veiling. To be sure, Linda Belleville had already noticed these features, but in doing so she claimed, mistakenly in our view, that “Paul assumes his readers’ knowledge of these features [of an existing Moses-Doxa tradition] and builds his arguments on them.” 37 From a collective memory perspective this is unnecessary. Paul’s claim to interpret (and fashion) memories about Moses did not need to depend on his readers’ knowledge of the traditions, but merely their trust that Paul had the authoritative interpretation of them. In the Corinthian case, where opponents had been trying to steal his community from him, the claims about Paul’s authority were precisely what was in dispute, and explains the polemical tone of his letter in seeking to counteract his adversaries’ claims about him. 38 In sum, the tripartite structure/heuristic of highlighting, suppressing and innovating, has helped to make a case that Paul is constructing a counter-memory of Moses for in-group purposes. This counter-memory allows for the in-group to accept the six Pauline ‘innovations’, which we mentioned earlier that Belleville had isolated: (1) Paul alone saw the waning of Moses’ glory as implying the same for the old/Mosaic covenant; (2) Paul was the only one to suggest that the veil prevented the Israelites from seeing that the glory was ending; (3) thus, for Paul, Moses’ action displayed a lack of openness; (4) Paul synchronized the veiling in Moses’ time with the veiling of the old covenant in Paul’s time; Esler, “Paul’s Contestation,” 29, paraphrasing Jan Assmann. Belleville, “Tradition or Creation?,” 166. 38 On the issue and identity of Paul’s opponents at Corinth, see: Jerry L. Sumney, Identifying Paul’s Opponents: The Question of Method in 2 Corinthians, JSNTSup 40 (Sheffield; JSOT, 1990). Blanton offered his own riposte to Sumney, together with separate hypothesis on their identity, in Constructing a New Covenant, 107–180. 36 37

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(5) Paul imputed dulled perceptions and veiled minds to his contemporaries who still ‘read Moses’; and (6) it was only the spirit who unveiled and set minds free. 39 2.4 The Contestation and Colonization of Mnemonic Traditions in 2 Cor 3 Along the lines of what Esler has argued for Gal 3, namely, that Paul was creating a new mnemonic tradition regarding Abraham in order to defeat the one being advocated by his opponents, 40 we would argue that in 2 Cor 3 Paul was similarly contesting the mnemonic tradition of Moses advocated by his rivals at Corinth. According to Eviatar Zerubavel, ‘mnemonic tradition’ concerns not only what is remembered, but also how it is to be remembered. 41 Since memory is a field of lively social contest, the focus of contestation, then, is very often not conflicting accounts of what actually happened in the past so much as the question of who or what is entitled to speak for that past in the present. […] In these debates the contest is often over how truth can best be conveyed, rather than what actually happened. 42

It should also be remembered that the past is reconstructed in light of present events. In Gal, Paul reconstructed the Abraham memory in light of the judaizing mission to the Galatian community. Similarly, we would argue that Paul reconstructed the memory of Moses in light of his conflict with opponents in Corinth, and his strained relations with his Corinthian community (cf. 2 Cor 1:15–2:13; Paul’s deferred visit and the ill-will ensuing from a punishment meted out to an offender were but two indications of the underlying tensions between Paul and his community). 43 Paul offered to the Galatians (in Gal 3) a counter-exegesis of Abraham that rendered ineffective any reliance on Abraham’s circumcision as exemplary for descent status. 44 Similarly, in 2 Cor 3, Paul’s counter-narrative of the radiance on Moses’ face being abolished implied that those who still clung to Torah adherence had not yet realized that the law had ended. In fact, Paul maintained that one could not “turn to the Lord” (2 Cor 3:16) without removing the veil of Belleville, “Tradition or Creation?,” 185. Esler, “Paul’s Contestation,” 23–34. 41 Zerubavel, Time Maps, 3–5. 42 Katherine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory, Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 1. 43 On the issue of the conflict at Corinth between Paul and his community, see: Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995); T.J. Burke and J.K. Elliott (eds.), Paul and the Corinthians: Studies on a Community in Conflict. FS M. Thrall, NovTSup 109 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2003). 44 Esler, “Paul’s Contestation,” 29–32. 39 40

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ignorance. Paul left a stark choice: law-bound with Moses or law-free with the Lord. Just as Paul’s exegesis was extraordinarily anti-Judean in Gal 3, to the extent that it denied Judeans Abrahamic descent, so too was Paul’s relegation of the Mosaic Law in 2 Cor 3. Esler has noted that this illustrates how far someone contesting a dominant memory may go. In the case of Gal 3, Paul fended off Judean mnemonic socialization and reinforced the mnemonic tradition he was constructing by denying any continuing role for the Mosaic covenant. Luckily, for Esler, in the case of Abraham, Paul drew back from this extreme position when writing to the community in Rome. In Rom 4, as Esler pointed out, 45 Paul worked Abraham into the collective memory of the Christ-followers, but without the sharp antithetical shape to his argument in Gal 3. Yet, the Pauline construction in 2 Cor 3, it might be argued, coheres not just with Paul’s view in Gal 3:23–4:11, but also Paul’s statement in Rom 10:4, namely, that Christ was the τέλος of the law. On this latter point, it is worth recalling what we mentioned in chapter four, namely, that the ambiguity Paul’s usage of τέλος (and of καταργέω) contributes to the uncertainty of what exactly Paul meant. And, it is this ambiguity and uncertainty in Paul’s usage, we argue, that contributes to the later Christian understanding of the old covenant as abolished and superseded.

3. Overview

3. Overview

The three authors surveyed in the first part of this chapter have recognized a clear connection between identity and memory in their work. For Judith Lieu, this came through her understanding of continuity with the past, and her reliance on the conceptual framework of ‘invented tradition.’ Samuel Byrskog likewise argued that social memory seeks to maintain historical continuity in order to be able to offer plausibility and a sense of meaningful belonging to a group’s narrative past. For Byrskog, after all, the social memory of groups is a narrative memory, one that has plot structures and a controlling mechanism that both chooses to remember and forget events in service of a storied past. Finally, Philip Esler’s insights on the construction of rival versions of the past complemented Lieu’s statements that conflict situations provide the occasion for identity negotiation and group formation around an emerging collective memory. Similar to Esler, Lieu had argued that the past is not a neutral zone of mere recovery, but a lively field of contest between groups who are seeking legitimacy in the process. Although these authors have seen the interrelationship between identity and memory, it would be fair to say that they have viewed memory as a sub-set of 45

Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 171–194.

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the larger issue of identity negotiation. That is largely because the authors’ main interest has been in issues of identity (in early Christianity, the Gospels, Pauline Christianity, etc.). In our next chapter, we will examine memory as a conceptual framework in its own right, where the issues touched upon by Lieu, Byrskog and Esler can be dealt with in greater depth and clarity. To nonetheless see the intersection of identity and memory at work in 2 Cor 3, we attempted a preliminary application of our own. Having done so, our application has allowed us to view Paul’s use of Exod 34:29–35 in 2 Cor 3:7– 18 as constructing a counter-narrative and memory, which simultaneously refuted his opponents and supplied his community with a ‘mnemonic tradition’ to understand their transition out of the synagogue and into the house-church. It is argued that the early ‘Christianity’ of pre-70 CE should more accurately be described as a Jewish sect characterized by internal division on the matter of Torah observance. Paul’s view that Gentile converts were accepted as full members of the church without having to adhere to precepts of the Torah was diametrically opposed to that of his rivals. His position on a law-free ministry would in fact have been a minority position among his contemporaries. 46 If one considers that Paul’s view became in time the majority position, he can be said to have initiated a collective memory that diverged from Torah observance. It must also then be said that he played a role in the ‘collective forgetting’ of Torah adherence within emergent Christianity. The counter-narrative of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, and the function it had in the contestation, modification and legitimization of memories for in-group purposes, will then be seen to occupy an important place in contributing to the later ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity. Our next remaining chapters will demonstrate how.

46

Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 231–232.

Chapter 8

Social Memory and the Mnemonic Refraction Model 1. Social Memory in Context

1. Social Memory in Context

It was the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs whose studies on the social dimension of memory introduced the concept of collective memory to sociology. 1 He is credited with establishing a connection between a social group and collective memory. It is the shared memory of the past that explains a group’s continuity. In this way, memories, rather than merely reproducing the past, are products of the present. That being said, Halbwachs did not elaborate a theoretical foundation to the notion of collective memory or provide a clear definition, which meant that the concept did not have an immediate heuristic use. Furthermore, as a student of Émile Durkheim, Halbwachs subordinated the individual to the social framework and accordingly emphasized the collective nature of social consciousness. His understanding of collective memory, however, seemed to fall prey to social determinism, particularly because he considered social identity to be primary and fixed, dictating and determining the content of collective memory. 2 These critiques notwithstanding, Halbwachs has secured his place as the father of social memory studies. Since his time, social memory has undergone much theoretical refinement. Among these has been the work of the French historian Pierre Nora. Whereas Halbwachs had maintained a distinction between memory and history, Nora considered this distinction a false dichotomy. His monumental work on lieux de mémoire (sites, or realms, of memory) 3 has paved the way for historiographical interest in social memory. 4 Mention should also be made of the work of Jan and Aleida Assmann 5 who have built upon Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: F. Alcan, 1925); La topographie légendaire des évangiles en terre sainte. Étude de mémoire collective (Paris: Presses de Universitaires de France, 1941). 2 See Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead/Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2003) 50–56 on Halbwachs. 3 Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, vols. 1–3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992). 4 See Anthony Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009) 45–47 on Nora. 5 Among others: Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: C.H. Beck, 1992); Religion und 1

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Halbwachs’ notion of memory as a social process and investigate how identity is both constructed and maintained within a mnemonic community. They have further refined Halbwachs’ notion of collective memory by distinguishing between kommunikatives and kulturelles Gedächtnis as subsets of Halbwachs’ collective memory, 6 and this distinction has been particularly important for studies in cultural memory. 7

kulturelles Gedächtnis. Zehn Studien (München: C.H. Beck, 2000); “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. A. Erll and A. Nünning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008) 109–118. Aleida Assmann, “Wie wahr sind Erinnerungen?” Das soziale Gedächtnis. Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradierung, ed. H. Welzer (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001) 103–122. Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft. Grundbegriffe, Themen, Fragestellungen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2006); “Canon and Archive,” Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, 97–108. 6 See Sandra Huebenthal, “Social and Cultural Memory in Biblical Exegesis,” Cultural Memory in Biblical Exegesis, ed. P. Carstens, N.P. Lemche and T.B. Hasselbalch (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013) 175–199 on the reasons for this distinction. Huebenthal’s retention of the German terms rather than their English counterparts of ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural’ memory is also deliberate, as explained in the next footnote. 7 At the same time, it contributes to terminological confusion between German and Anglo-Saxon scholarship on memory. See, for instance, Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 43, n. 8: “The terms ‘social memory’ and ‘collective memory’ have slightly different nuances. Halbwachs used the qualifier sociaux to describe the ways that group ideologies inform individual memories. Collective memory, rather, was used to connote memories shared and passed down by groups. As these concepts are given to overlap, the terms ‘collective’ and ‘social’ are often used synonymously in current discussions. In fact, they are currently used synonymously with such frequency that their nuances vary from author to author. Of later, another term, ‘cultural memory’ has gained considerable currency. The implied distinction here simply broadens the scope of collective memory and implies a longterm cultural tradition; this should be contrasted with ‘communicative memory,’ which implies a short-term orally communicated memory (meaning within three generations).” Responding to this proliferation of terms, Sandra Huebenthal has shown that a difference exists between the German usage of sozial, kulturelle, kommunikativ, and the English ‘social’, ‘cultural’, and ‘communicative’. Huebenthal, “Social and Cultural Memory in Biblical Exegesis,” 184–187.

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Questions of memory had already begun to filter into biblical studies, even if from different perspectives. 8 Concerted efforts since then have gone into theorizing social memory for biblical studies. 9 Since our present study is interested in the heuristic applicability of social memory theory to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3, we shall take a look at three monographs in New Testament studies that have applied aspects of social memory in their research.

2. Social Memory in New Testament Studies

2. Social Memory in New Testament Studies

Before proceeding, it is worth bearing in mind Samuel Byrskog’s warning that “[t]he study of social memory has been described as a non-paradigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise.” 10 It is therefore wise to reiterate the key preoccupation of our study that was mentioned at the beginning of our first chapter, namely, that our study on Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in the 2 Cor 3 can be considered an examination of tradition and innovation in Paul, that is to say, an investigation of the extent to which Paul relied on traditions and then employed them to new ends. As in Judith Lieu’s case seen earlier, the challenge here is whether one can find a middle ground between the controlling hold of tradition and the creative pull of innovation that new (religious) movements 8 Among them: Jens Schröter, Erinnerung an Jesu Worte: Studien zur Rezeption der Logienüberlieferung in Markus, Q und Thomas, WMANT 76 (Neukirchen/Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997); Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmisson in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity with Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity, transl. Eric J. Sharpe (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998) [a two-in-one reprint of his earlier 1961 and 1964 volumes]; James D.G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making. Vol. 1: Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003); Doron Mendels, Memory in Jewish, Christian and Pagan Societies of the Graeco-Roman World, LSTS 40 (London: T&T Clark, 2004); Ronald S. Hendel, Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Stephen C. Barton et al. (eds.), Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: The Fifth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium (Durham, September 2004), WUNT I/212 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). 9 Some early contributors: Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (eds.), Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, Semeia 52 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005); Mario I. Aguilar, “The Archaeology of Memory and the Issue of Colonialism: Mimesis and the Controversial Tribute to Caesar in Mark 12:13–17,” BTB 35/2 (2005) 60–66; Dennis C. Duling, “Presenting the Issue: Social Memory and Biblical Studies: Theory, Method, and Application,” BTB 36/1 (2006) 2–4; Jeffrey K. Olick, “Products, Process, and Practices: A NonReificatory Approach to Collective Memory,” BTB 36/1 (2006) 5–14; Werner H. Kelber, “The Generative Force of Memory: Early Christian Traditions as Processes of Remembering,” BTB 36/1 (2006) 15–22; Rivita H. Williams, “Social Memory and the Didachē,” BTB 36/1 (2006) 35–39. 10 Byrskog, “A New Quest for the Sitz im Leben,” 322.

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experience in relation to their parent groups. In seeking that delicate balance between tradition and innovation, we attempt to show how social memory theory can be helpful in that exploration. 2.1 Social Entrepreneurship (Minna Shkul) Minna Shkul has offered a social-scientific reading of the ways in which the author of Eph provided ideological and social paradigms to shape the emerging Christian identity of the Ephesian community, while still situating them within a Jewish symbolic universe. 11 Her main focus was social entrepreneurship, which covered a variety of social processes, among them the work done on reputational entrepreneurship by sociologists Barry Schwartz and Gary Alan Fine. 12 A reputational entrepreneur helps to bring a person’s greatness to public attention. Shkul argued that this is what the author of Ephesians did to the reputations of Christ and Paul in the epistle. In this she also followed the majority consensus that the epistle was deutero-Pauline and not written by Paul. She demonstrated that using existing reputations was not uncommon in early Christian writings. One sees this in the Christian appropriation of Israelite figures such as Moses and Abraham to enhance the reputation of Christ or his followers. This reputational enhancement need not only be positive, since the reputational entrepreneur is responsible for both providing prototypes and antitypes. Here Shkul’s work has considerable overlaps with Esler’s work on Abraham as a prototype for in-group identity in Rom. Along with his work, her insights will be worth pursuing further when examining Paul’s negative characterization of Moses’ reputation in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as the cultivation of a possible antitype. Among the social processes and methods that Shkul relied on were insights from social memory. 13 This is because she recognized that ideological shaping is an important element of social memory. The social context that shapes memories of the past always involves some creative projection or selective filtering in the present. At the same time, Shkul was aware that theorists of social memory are divided between emphasizing memory’s inventive and creative dimensions (Hobsbawm and Ranger among others) or, rather, the authentic core of traditions behind those memories (she cited Wayne Meeks as an exam-

Minna Shkul, Reading Ephesians: Exploring Social Entrepeneurship in the Text, LNTS 408 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2009). 12 See Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago. IL: Chicago University Press, 2000); Gary Alan Fine, Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, the Inept and the Controversial (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 13 Shkul, Reading Ephesians, 62–70. 11

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ple from biblical studies). Shkul’s own study appears to work with both dimensions. In turning her attention to reputational entrepreneurship, 14 she recognized that the enhancement of reputations required certain communal and structural dynamics to gain acceptance. “The success of any proposed interpretation of the past or a construction of a reputation depends on the likelihood of the community to accept it within their cultural and ideological paradigms.” 15 This observation assisted Shkul’s later argument that the author of Eph situated his audience of Christ-followers within a Jewish symbolic universe. At the same time, an equal reliance on Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ‘invented tradition’ allowed Shkul to see the author’s creativity at work when providing the social and ideological legitimation for the community’s emerging Christian identity. Thus, although complementing Judith Lieu’s reliance on Hobsbawm and Ranger seen earlier, Shkul’s work may at the same time appear methodologically diffuse in its approach. The next study to be considered has wrestled similarly with the ambiguities of reputational entrepreneurship, but seeks to place a greater emphasis on its plausibility structures. 2.2 Structuring Early Christian Memory (Rafael Rodríguez) Like Shkul, the study by Rafael Rodríguez has also examined reputational entrepreneurship, but with a more extensive embedding in social memory theory, which served as its overarching framework. 16 His was a study of the remembrance of Jesus from the perspectives of tradition, performance and text. In using social memory as the framing theory, Rodríguez first of all recognized the discontinuity effect that occurs when remembering the past. As with other memory theorists, Rodríguez accepted the common approach to collective memory, which views the past as a social construction shaped by concerns in the present usually involving group membership and identity. Yet, Rodríguez maintained that this was only one aspect of the dynamics of social memory: to maintain that social memory only reconfigures the past in light of present needs is to view the function of social memory merely from a ‘presentist’ perspective. Nonetheless, social memory’s rootedness in the present does raise questions as to its reliability in recalling events and figures from the past. To this, Rodríguez responded that demonstrating the concerns of the present does not mean that social memory’s representation of the past as past was invalid.

Shkul, Reading Ephesians, 70–75. Shkul, Reading Ephesians, 72. 16 Rafael Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text, LNTS 407 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010). It is not hard to see that social memory applications have found their niche in Jesus and Gospels studies, given that these studies involve negotiating the tension between history and memory (cf. the quests for the historical Jesus). 14 15

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That the expression of the past is selective does not mean that an alien past is made to fit an incongruent present [...] Memory, in other words, precedes the legitimizing actions of ideological interests even as it plays an important legitimizing role. 17

Here we might observe the different in approach between Rodríguez and Shkul. Whereas for Shkul ideological legitimation is the key motivation for the reputational entrepreneur to invoke the remembrance of things past, for Rodríguez it is memory’s stability in the face of social change that ensures its plausibility and acceptance. Analyses of social memory have to take into account how stable images persist through time and social change, and how, as images of the past develop, evolve, shift and fluctuate, they frequently remain recognizable nevertheless. 18

Even though Rodríguez admitted that rival versions of the past have to do with control over the past, the paradox was that “the more contested the past becomes the more salient and resistant to change it may be”. 19 In seeking to emphasize memory’s concern to establish plausibility with the past, Rodríguez may have been seeking to stave off some of the perception that still attaches itself to memory’s unreliability to reproduce the past, as opposed to history’s more objective and descriptive claim to reconstruct past events. At the same time, Rodríguez was calling for the recognition that social memory is simultaneously contingent and continuous. This recalls Lieu’s earlier articulation of the happy medium sought between the controlling hold of tradition and the creative pull of invention. What one should bear in mind is that this search for a median position follows upon two previous shifts since Halwachs’ introduction of collective memory. 20 The first approach was the ‘presentist’ perspective, itself a reaction to the perceived social determinism of Halbwachs’ notion of collective memory. It is largely represented by Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ‘invention of tradition’ (already discussed earlier), which argued that invented memories served the purposes of those in power. Thus, the production of traditions serves to legitimize and stabilize political orders in the present (hence ‘presentist’). In reaction to this perspective, another approach to memory was born: the ‘popular memory’ approach. 21 Heavily influenced by the Marxist critique of power and Michel

Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory, 54. Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory, 63. 19 Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory, 61. 20 For a more extensive treatment of what follows, see Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead/Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2003) 56–74, on which this overview is based. 21 Popular Memory Group, “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics and Method,” Making Histories: Studies in History Making and Politics, ed. R. Johnson et al. (London: Hutchinson, 1982) 205–252. 17 18

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Foucault’s formulation of counter-memories, 22 this group maintained that memories are not only socially dictated from above but also constructed from ‘below’ – at the level of the masses. It asserts a public with the agency to offer their own versions of the past. These counter-memories, as alternative narratives of the past, are discursive practices through which dominant memories can be constantly challenged and revised. Their renditions will either bear sharp contrast or close similarity to the dominant representation of the past. The main point, however, is that the public has the freedom and agency to contest dominant memory, even if the dynamics of domination mean that certain memories will continue to be marginalized and excluded. The problem with the ‘popular memory’ approach is that it fails to explain why some memories but not others are incorporated into public memory. It assumes that conflict is the natural state of society and hence dismisses the possibility that the negotiation of memory can be both consensual and contentious. In addition, memory is only viewed as something to be manipulated by either the dominant elite or the popular masses. Challenging these shortcomings is the ‘dynamics of memory’ approach: 23 it views collective memory as an ongoing process of negotiation and denies that complete control rests with actors in the present to refashion the past according to their own interests. Moreover, the distortion of memory can occur for various reasons and not merely out of manipulative concerns. The dynamics of memory approach therefore locates memory between the imposition of ideology and the voluntary search for alternative ways of understanding experience. It furthermore argues that the past has a resistance to total manipulation. Rather than argue that it is only the present which shapes the past, the dynamics of memory approach argues that the past is important in shaping the present because it is seen to match and articulate present feelings. The activity of recollection establishes a relationship with events in the past. It does this through a process of narrativization, a narrative representation of the past, which serves towards the construction of a narrative identity. The dialectic relation between past and present is therefore constantly in a process of transformation because people’s identities and recollections will change through time. As opposed to Halbwachs’ notion of a stable identity, a temporal dimension to identity is therefore introduced. People are no longer viewed as socially determined automatons, but neither are they so completely voluntaristic that they can manipulate history to their own ends. Thus, in adopting the dynamics of memory approach in his own study, Rodríguez has attempted to reconcile the permanent and the changing in its Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. This approach is used by theorists like Barry Schwartz (Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory), whose work has influenced social memory approaches in biblical studies, certainly in north America. 22 23

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vision of the past, what we have termed the tension between tradition and innovation. We now turn to how this tension can be held together successfully when social memory theory is applied to typological categories. 2.3 The Mnemonic Refraction of Typological Categories (Anthony Le Donne) Anthony Le Donne’s study of the historical Jesus was principally a study in Jesus historiography. 24 His study contained excellent theoretical sections on the issue of hermeneutics and history, and the relationship between history and memory. 25 But it is his adaptation of social memory to the use of typological categories 26 that renders the theory heuristically useful, certainly for our purposes in relation to Paul’s use of the term καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. The first thing that Le Donne embraced was the distortive nature of memory. Distortion is a term that borrowed from the domains of neurology and psychology, but is used by social memory theorists to emphasize the selective nature of memory. 27 Yet this does not mean that distortion is a deliberate attempt to pervert the truth. Every act of remembering involves a distortion of some kind. It simply happens every time we remember. Nonetheless, in order to avoid the negative association that distortion has with ‘false memory’, Le Donne has opted to use the term ‘refraction’. There are four types of refraction/distortion suggested by Michael Schudson 28 that Le Donne has adopted in his own study, to which he has added a fifth. These are: (1) distanciation: the past recedes into obscurity owing to distance in time; (2) instrumentalization: when memories are put to work in light of present needs; (3) conventionalization: when memories comply with social conventions; (4) narrativization; when past events are given a story to make them interesting; and, added by Le Donne, (5) articulation: that memories comply with language conventions. 29 Le Donne’s approach to social memory is highly compatible with the dynamics of memory approach surveyed above. His study of the historiographical Jesus can therefore be understood to srike that delicate balance between the permanent/continuous and the changing/contingent aspects of memory. Distortion, or refraction, suggests the selective/contingent element of memory. At the same time, Le Donne’s adaptation of social memory needs continuity to work. Anthony Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). 25 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 17–39 (ch. 2), and 41–64 (ch. 3) respectively. 26 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 65–92 (ch. 4). 27 See the contributions in Daniel L. Schacter (ed.), Memory Distortion: How the Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1995). 28 Michael Schudson, “Dynamics of Distortion in Collective Memory,” Memory Distortion, 346–364. 29 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 52. 24

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What is vital to this model [of the mnemonic cycle] is the concept of mnemonic continuity. In order for successive memory refractions to be thought of as a ‘trajectory,’ there is little room for dramatic refractions. Once a perception has been localized within a particular mnemonic category, the refractions thereafter will constitute only incremental modifications to that category. 30

Le Donne’s comments mirror Lieu’s sentiments on the continuity of identity over time encountered earlier. Both of them need continuity to ensure a stability of identity (Lieu) or memory (Le Donne) to be heuristically workable. This corresponds to the study of tradition, since, in fact, traditions are never invented ex nihilo. In order to achieve credibility, an emerging tradition needs resemblance to a prior, established, tradition so as to gain acceptance into the mainstream. The successful invention of tradition requires a close proximity to the older tradition so that its reception into the society is a smooth one. The conditions by which a tradition can be reinvented are particularly narrow. Innovative reinterpretation of tradition is only successful to the extent to which it is accepted. 31

As can be seen, crucial to Le Donne’s mnemonic continuity is that individual memories need to negotiate their entry into the public domain in order to gain acceptance. If a particular individual memory is not rendered plausibly in social dialogue, it will be corrected and in some cases rejected. [...] Thus, collective memory creates ‘social frameworks’ in which individual memories must be localized if they are to have meaning. 32

One such way of localization is through narrative representation. Mnemonic refractions are articulated into narratives that follow stereotypical patterns. Le Donne offered examples from Johann Kessler and John Bunyan who structured their biographies on biblical accounts, the Emmaus episode for the former, and the conversion of Paul for the latter. These examples show that, as humans, we structure our own stories along the lines of stories that have preceded us. In the cases of Bunyan and Kessler the narrativization of their personal stories were localized within, and given meaning by, the legendary stories of their religious heritage. [...] Remembering is a process of imaginative reinforcement that integrates specific images evoked in the present into particular frames associated with the past. 33

This, argued Le Donne, was the function of typology and set the stage for him to delve into the mnemonic refraction of typological categories. Le Donne has established a heuristic model, the mnemonic cycle, in order to account for the localization of a new perception within a previous mnemonic category. He has plotted four points along this cycle (visually captured on a Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 72. Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 58. 32 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 48. 33 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 56. 30 31

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diagram of a circle): (1) the prior mnemonic category of significance; (2) a trajectory of refraction that made it possible for (3) a contemporary perception to be integrated along its path, such that (4) the new perception can successfully be localized into the existing previous category. The clockwise direction of steps indicated an ongoing process of movement. The mnemonic cycle indicated a synchronic refraction and localization in time. Having argued, though, that there is mnemonic continuity over time, Le Donne further sketched a linear trajectory through time, which visually resembled a coil of several constantly refracting mnemonic cycles. This diachronic dimension converts the mnemonic cycle into a spiral that thereby evades it from collapsing into a vicious circle turning on itself. 34 Le Donne then went on to argue that typological localization, that is to say, the narrative compliance of new mnemonic traditions with religious metanarratives or historical archetypes, analogously followed the steps of the mnemonic cycle and spiral. 35 As an example, Le Donne demonstrated how the typological cycle worked when applied to the Matthean description of John the Baptist as a new Elijah (Matt 11:12–13). In the account, the Matthean Jesus relied on (1) the narrative of Elijah’s ascension in 2 Kgs 2 as a vehicle for meaning; (2) there was already an established trajectory of the Elijah tradition that had seen the prophet refracted in an eschatological light (e.g., Mal 4:5–6); (3) the figure of John the Baptist was thus a historical figure important to the Jesus movement that was being incorporated into the existing typological figure of Elijah; (4) the Matthean Jesus offered to his hearers the synthesis of John the Baptist as a new Elijah, thereby localizing the new perception into an existing tradition. At the same time, if John the Baptist was indeed accepted as the new Elijah, then it also forced a re-reading of Mal 4:5–6 in a different light henceforward (which is, in fact, how Christian theology came to understand Malachi’s prediction of Elijah’s coming). 36 Le Donne then examined the heuristic possibilities of charting mnemonic refraction by setting up a system of ‘triangulation’ that helps to establish the

Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 66 fig. 4.2 and 71 fig. 4.3. See Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 78 fig. 4.4 and 79 fig. 4.5. 36 An analogous case would be the immortalization of a military hero, Yoseph Trumpeldor (1880–1920), by the modern pre-statehood Zionist movement. Trumpeldor was recast as a modern-day Bar Kochba (d. 135 CE), a common practice of commemoration by reaching back into one’s ‘golden age’ for archetypes. At the same time, as a result of Trumpeldor’s integration, the legend of Bar Kochba itself underwent revision, in light of the association made with Trumpeldor’s death defending Tel Hai from attack. See Yael Zerubavel, “The Historical, the Legendary and the Incredible: Invented Tradition and Collective Memory in Israel,” Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. J.R. Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) 105–125, and discussed by Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 56–59. 34 35

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most plausible intersection between established trajectories. 37 This is particularly helpful for diverging interpretations, or traditions, in the various Gospels. For instance, in Le Donne’s example, his triangulation helps to visualise the divergence in interpretation between Matthew, who applied the Elijah typology to John the Baptist, and the Fourth Gospel, which reacts to it. For the purposes of our study, however, which primarily attempts to chart the mnemonic refractions to Paul’s own use of καινὴ διαθήκη in the 2 Cor 3, the complex processes involved in charting extended triangulations need not detain us here.

3. Overview

3. Overview

In this chapter we have briefly surveyed three applications of social memory in New Testament studies to see how they have wrestled with the problematic of tradition and innovation. As in our previous chapter, we proceeded from the general to the particular. First, Minna Shkul relied on the conceptual framework of invented tradition to argue for social entrepreneurship on the part of the author of Eph to socialize the Ephesian community into a new mnemonic identity and set of practices. Second, Rafael Rodríguez offered a corrective to the notion that reputational entrepreneurship was only innovative and argued that it was in fact structured by plausibility and tradition. Third, Anthony Le Donne’s work on typology has allowed for a useful heuristic to be employed on the mnemonic refraction that typological categories undergo when used by new and emerging social groups. There is sometimes the risk that social memory theory looks askance at historical-critical endeavours as overly positivistic. The three authors mentioned in this chapter have wrestled honestly with the tension that exists between history’s and memory’s differing concerns. In particular, Le Donne has developed a workable heuristic model that answers to both interests. He has done more than just indicate that memory’s creativity need not imply that it is pure fabrication. Le Donne has, in fact, laid memory open to historical inquiry. “The historian’s aim is to account for the earliest mnemonic refractions of a memorystory.” 38 The historian can help to distinguish between traditions that have originated in memory (of previous traditions), a memory whose historical trajectory can be charted, and traditions that are simply being invented anew. In this way, Le Donne has nuanced the search for the middle position between tradition and innovation, and as such, his model of mnemonic and typological refraction becomes heuristically attractive to apply in our next chapter.

37 38

Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 86, fig. 4.6. Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 87.

Chapter 9

Memory Refraction in 2 Cor 3 In this chapter we will use Le Donne’s mnemonic cycle to argue that Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 built directly on previous categories he had employed in 1 Cor. At the same time, it will be argued that Paul’s refraction of the term in 2 Cor 3 into an antithetical new covenant that is in opposition to the Mosaic ‘old covenant’, contributes to its later reception history of a new covenant that has superseded the old, which, we will go on to argue, can already be seen from usage in Heb where the adjectives used are ‘new’ (καινός) and ‘first’ (πρῶτος) (Heb 8:7–13; 9:15–22; 12:24). But we commence by discussing two aporias that have dogged theories behind the inclusion of 2 Cor 3:7–18 within its larger epistolary framework.

1. Two Aporias on Paul’s Inclusion of 2 Cor 3:7–18

1. Two Aporias

In chapter four we noted how modern scholarship on 2 Cor 3:7–18 has been influenced by the position of Hans Windisch. Since it is not immediately clear why Paul introduced talk on Moses’ veil, the easiest solution has been to maintain that Paul’s argument in 3:7–18 constituted a digression from his central argument, which was the defence of his ministry from the criticism of his rivals. There is then no need to account for Paul’s use of Moses within its immediate context other than to argue that here Paul launched into an abstract comparison of two dispensations. 1 The new scholarship on Paul’s relationship to Judaism has significantly altered our understanding and treatment of this passage. 2 More recent scholarship sees it not as a digression but as having an integral role within Paul’s argument, namely the defence of his ministry. So, if 2 Cor 3:7–18 is not to be considered an excursus, then some way must be found to account for Paul’s inclusion of it here in this unit of discourse. In line with the common thread that runs through our study, it is possible to characterize the exegetical options taken as dividing along the lines of continuity and discontinuity. Lambrecht, “Structure and Line of Thought,” 259. Although we have already seen that, for E.P. Sanders, Paul offered something of an evaluation of Judaism in 2 Cor 3. Cf. E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1983) 137. 1 2

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We return to a problem, already mentioned in chapter four, if one chooses to discount Paul’s Christological hermeneutic, which would allow Paul to wilfully read Scripture against the grain. Namely, if Paul was engaged in a debate with rivals at Corinth who were accusing him of preaching a ‘veiled gospel’ (2 Cor 4:3), would it not weaken Paul’s position if he was basing his argument on his own fanciful reading of the Exodus narrative? Two alternatives are then possible: (1) one looks for scriptural allusions that Paul was relying on, which would have motivated him to introduce Moses, or (2) one reconstructs the tradition about Moses that Paul was attacking/refuting when responding to opponents. The difference is one of apologetics or polemics, since in the former case Paul was merely drawing on scriptural elements from his own background to defend his ministry, whereas in the latter case Paul was actively responding to and attacking an already existing tradition held by his opponents. 1.1 Scriptural Allusions The following table outlines the scriptural allusions (Exod 31:18; Ezek 36:26– 27; Jer 31/38:31, 33; Exod 34:29, 33–34) that can be identified with relative certainty: 3 2 Cor 3

Likely scriptural allusions (LXX)

v. 3 3 φανερούμενοι ὅτι ἐστὲ ἐπιστολὴ Χριστοῦ διακονηθεῖσα ὑφʼ ἡμῶν, ἐγγ εγραμμένη οὐ μέλανι ἀλλὰ πνεύματι θεοῦ ζῶντος, οὐκ ἐν πλαξὶν λιθίναις ἀλλʼ ἐν πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις.

Exod 31:18 18 καὶ ἔδωκεν Μωυσεῖ ἡνίκα κατέπαυσεν λαλῶν αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῷ Σινα τὰς δύο πλάκας τοῦ μαρτυρίου πλάκας λιθίνας γεγραμμένας τῷ δακτύλῳ τοῦ θεοῦ

v. 6 6 ὃς καὶ ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος· τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ.

Jer 38:31, 33 (= 31:31, 33 MT) 31 ἰδοὺ ἡμέραι ἔρχονται, φησὶν κύριος καὶ διαθήσομαι τῷ οἴκῳ Ισραηλ καὶ τῷ οἴκῳ Ιουδα διαθήκην καινήν, ... ὅτι αὕτη ἡ διαθήκη ἣν διαθήσομαι τῷ οἴκῳ Ισραηλ μετὰ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας, φησὶν κύριος Διδοὺς δώσω νόμους μου εἰς τὴν διάνοιαν

Ezek 36:26–27 26 καὶ δώσω ὑμῖν καρδίαν καινὴν καὶ πνεῦμα καινὸν δώσω ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ ἀφελῶ τὴν καρδίαν τὴν λιθίνην ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς ὑμῶν καὶ δώσω ὑμῖν καρδίαν σαρκίνην 27 καὶ τὸ πνεῦμά μου δώσω ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ ποιήσω ἵνα ἐν τοῖς δικαιώμασίν μου πορεύησθε καὶ τὰ κρίματά μου φυλάξησθε καὶ ποιήσητε.

Based on “The Old and the New in 2 Corinthians 3-5,” (Fig. 11-1) in Kevin Quast, Reading the Corinthian Correspondence (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1994) 118. 3

1. Two Aporias

2 Cor 3

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Likely scriptural allusions (LXX) αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπὶ καρδίας αὐτῶν γράψω αὐτούς καὶ ἔσομαι αὐτοῖς εἰς θεόν καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔσονταί μοι εἰς λαόν·

vv. 7, 12–13, 16 7 Εἰ δὲ ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ τὴν καταργουμένην, …

12 Ἔχοντες οὖν τοιαύτην ἐλπίδα πολλῇ παρρησίᾳ χρώμεθα, 13 καὶ οὐ καθάπερ Μωϋσῆς ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου. … 16 ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα.

Exod 34:29–35 29 ὡς δὲ κατέβαινεν Μωυσῆς ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους καὶ αἱ δύο πλάκες ἐπὶ τῶν χειρῶν Μωυσῆ καταβαίνοντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους Μωυσῆς οὐκ ᾔδει ὅτι δεδόξασται ἡ ὄψις τοῦ χρώματος τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ λαλεῖν αὐτὸν αὐτῷ. 30 καὶ εἶδεν Ααρων καὶ πάντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι Ισραηλ τὸν Μωυσῆν καὶ ἦν δεδοξασμένη ἡ ὄψις τοῦ χρώματος τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν ἐγγίσαι αὐτου. 31 καὶ ἐκάλεσεν αὐτοὺς Μωυσῆς καὶ ἐπεστράφησαν πρὸς αὐτὸν Ααρων καὶ πάντες οἱ ἄρχοντες τῆς συναγωγῆς καὶ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς Μωυσῆς. 32 καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα προσῆλθον πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ καὶ ἐνετείλατο αὐτοῖς πάντα ὅσα ἐλάλησεν κύριος πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ὄρει Σινα. 33 καὶ ἐπειδὴ κατέπαυσεν λαλῶν πρὸς αὐτούς ἐπέθηκεν ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ κάλυμμα. 34 ἡνίκα δ᾽ ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο Μωυσῆς ἔναντι κυρίου λαλεῖν αὐτῷ περιῃρεῖτο τὸ κάλυμμα ἕως τοῦ ἐκπορεύεσθαι καὶ ἐξελθὼν ἐλάλει πᾶσιν τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ ὅσα ἐνετείλατο αὐτῷ κύριος, 35 καὶ εἶδον οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ τὸ πρόσωπον Μωυσῆ ὅτι δεδόξασται καὶ περιέθηκεν Μωυσῆς κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἑαυτοῦ ἕως ἂν εἰσέλθῃ συλλαλεῖν αὐτῷ.

Needless to say, identifying the scriptural allusions does not yet account for Paul’s shift from letters of recommendation in 2 Cor 3:1 to a consideration of the old and new covenants with their respective ministers in 3:6–18. One can do this by either positing that Paul adopted scriptural techniques like hookword associations or that the scriptural texts themselves controlled Paul’s movements. These would be the options taken by Carol Stockhausen and Scott Hafemann, whose approaches have already been referred to earlier. What recommends this practice is that Paul’s knowledge of Israel’s scriptures is undisputed and that this kind of scriptural exegesis was also prevalent in Paul’s time. 4 However, the problem that exists in identifying scriptural allusions is

4 In addition to the gezerah shavah, or hook-word, techniques in 2 Cor 3:1–6, Stockhausen also demonstrated that Paul was using two other exegetical methods in 3:7–18, the kal va-homer inference and the pesher interpretation (Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the

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that, unlike direct quotations, they must always remain somewhat hypothetical. One swiftly reaches the aporia of scriptural sleuthing, however, since there is no end to finding allusions, 5 raising fears that, if taken to an extreme, the spectre of parallelomania, the mere accumulation of parallels, is never far away. 6 Furthermore, the existence of parallels does not in itself prove that Paul was aware of them. They may in fact just point to the existence of commonly held beliefs. As has already been pointed out, too, the unearthing of scriptural allusions tends to be caught up with the inner workings of Paul’s own mind, but at the possible cost of ignoring their effect on Paul’s target audience. For, even if intricate allusions may indeed have been intended by Paul, how sure can we be that Paul’s audience would have been able to grasp their significance? Here, the digression argument would carry the same implication: namely, Paul launched into an abstract comparison of two dispensations, but then was momentarily distracted from his main argument through his own doing when the ‘letters written on the heart’ in 2 Cor 3:3 caused Paul to associate this with Jeremiah’s new covenant promise in 2 Cor 3:6, which then triggered Paul to consider the old covenant engraved on stone tablets in 2 Cor 3:7f. This means Glory of the New Covenant, 71–153). For further literature, see also: Pasquale Basta, Gezerah Shawah. Storia, forme e metodi dell’ analogia biblica, SubBi 26 (Rome: PIB, 2006); Pasquale Basta, Abramo in Romani 4: L’analogia dell’agire divino nella ricerca esegetica di Paolo, AnBib 168 (Rome: PIB, 2007); Friedrich Avemarie, “Interpreting Scripture through Scripture: Exegesis Based on Lexematic Association in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pauline Epistles,” Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament, ed. Florentino García-Martínez, STDJ 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2009) 83–102. 5 Some examples: Scott Hafemann, “Paul’s Argument from the Old Testament and Christology in 2 Cor 1–9,” The Corinthian Correspondence, ed. R. Bieringer, BETL 125 (Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 1996) 277–303, esp. 283–286 lists the following scriptural references within 2 Cor 3: v. 3: Exod 31:18, 32:15; Deut 9:10–11; Prov 7:3; Ezek 11:19, 36:26; v. 6: Jer 31:31–34; v. 7: Exod 34:30; v. 9: Deut 27:26; v. 10: Exod 34:29–30, 35; v. 13: Exod 34:33, 35; v. 16: Exod 34:34; v. 18: Exod 16:7, 10; 24:17. Carol Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant, 146 identifies allusions to Isa 6:9–10, 29:10–12 and Deut 29:2–4 behind Paul’s usage in 2 Cor 3:14–15 alone. See also the discussion in William Webb, Returning Home, 85 n. 5 about the addition of Prov 3:3; 7:3 and Jer 17:1 to the already existing consensus of Jer 31(38):31; Ezek 11:19 and 36:26–27 behind 2 Cor 3:3–6. David Renwick, Paul, The Temple, and the Presence of God, BJS 224 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1991) 113–120 insists that Hag 2:9 (LXX) is central to understanding Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 3:10 that Moses’ glory was of no value. 6 Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” JBL 81 (1962) 1–13.

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that Paul only resumed his main argument again in 2 Cor 4:1. 7 But, how sure can we be that this would have made sense to Paul’s audience? Another issue is the optimistic claim that if one analyzes Paul’s scriptural allusions within their original contexts, it will help to explain Paul’s reliance on them. The problem here is that moving directly from scriptural referent to Paul’s usage risks leapfrogging the intervening reception history of these texts before reaching Paul’s own time. 8 It is not without warrant, then, that the alternative position of accounting for Paul’s introduction of Moses is more attuned to the situation in Paul’s day, namely, his dealing with opponents. 1.2 Reconstructing a Pre-existing Tradition The second alternative, as mentioned, to account for Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 is to set about reconstructing the supposed tradition of opponents to whom Paul was responding. We have already encountered Linda Belleville’s reconstruction of the so-called ‘Moses-Doxa’ tradition that Paul and his opponents were relying on. 9 The merit of Belleville’s approach is that she interfaced with Second Temple Jewish literature in order to investigate whether a tradition on Moses’ glory existed. Her findings were the following: An examination of biblical and extra-biblical uses of the Moses-Δόξα tradition in Paul’s day shows that in 2 Cor. 3.12-18 Paul neither provides a wholly creative interpretation of Exod. 34.28-35 – as some have claimed – nor depends for his interpretation on any existing, single unit of tradition – as others have maintained. The evidence indicates, rather, that Paul is

Pointed out by Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 147. Florentino García-Martínez, “Emerging Christianity and Second Temple Judaism: A ‘Qumranic’ Perspective,” Revista Catalana de Teologia 29 (2004) 255–267 argued that the Qumran materials offered an invaluable resource for understanding emerging Christianity because they give witness to the continuing evolution of theological ideas and legal norms during the intervening centuries between the writing of the last book of the Hebrew Bible and the deposit of the manuscripts in the caves around Qumran. In the process, this data can help to trace trajectories, not necessarily of dependence, to theological ideas in New Testament writings where hitherto they had only been compared to the Hebrew Bible for lack of intervening evidence. Consider in this context the monograph of Thomas Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant. 9 There are of course long-established precedents to Belleville’s own work, among them: Siegfried Schulz, “Die Decke des Moses. Untersuchungen zu einer vorpaulinischen Überlieferung in II Cor 3.7–18,” ZNW 49 (1958) 1–30; Gerhard Friedrich, “Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korintherbrief,” Abraham unser Vater. Juden und Christen im Gespräch über die Bibel. FS O. Michel, ed. O. Betz, AGSU 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1963) 181–215; Dieter Georgi, Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korintherbrief, WMANT 11 (Neukirchen/Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964) 274–282; Tadashi Saito, Die Mosevorstellungen im Neuen Testament, Europäische Hochschulschriften 29, Theologie 100 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1977); Michael Theobald, Die überströmende Gnade. Studien zu einem paulinischen Motivfeld, FB 22 (Würzburg: Echter, 1982) 204–208. 7 8

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drawing on a wide range of Moses-Δόξα traditions, which he utilizes in accordance with the accepted exegetical methodologies of his day. 10

Two proposals since Belleville’s study are also worth considering in this regard. 11 (1) George van Kooten 12 argued that in 2 Cor 3 Paul was offering an antisophistic polemic on Moses’ glory. Van Kooten identified Paul’s opponents as Christians of Jewish background (based on information from 2 Cor 10–13). Furthermore, van Kooten deduced sophistic tendencies behind Paul’s criticism of καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “peddlers of God’s word” in 2 Cor 2:17. Plato had similarly critiqued sophists in this way in the Protagoras. Paul’s criticism of letters of recommendation in 2 Cor 3:1 further fitted the sophistic atmosphere of self-commendation that Paul was opposing. Paul’s introduction of Moses in 3:7–18, however, still raised the question why he did so: Paul’s exegesis of Ex 34 in 2 Cor 3 hinges on two key words, ‘gramma’ and ‘glory’. The first term ‘gramma’ emerges from a description Paul gives of the practice, current among his sophistic opponents, of using written letters of recommendation. Strangely, these written letters somehow develop into the Mosaic grammata, which are characterized as ‘glorious’ because of the ‘glory’ of their author, Moses. Here a link is being forged between sophistic letters of recommendation and a particular understanding of Moses and his grammata. But what exactly is this link? Why does Paul choose to link Moses with ‘glory’? The train of thought running through 2 Cor can be apprehended more easily, I shall suggest, if we compare this to the way in which Moses was understood as a glorious, powerful figure by authors such as Philo and Josephus. 13

Looking at Philo’s and Josephus’ writings on Moses, van Kooten discerned that they felt impelled to exaggerate Moses’ strength and glory in order to refute the negative portrayal of Moses by pagan authors of the time (e.g., Tacitus and Juvenal). This helped elevate Moses to the figure of a theios aner, a divine

Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 297. Two more recent works, Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth, and Michael Cover, Lifting the Veil, were not yet published when our study was first written. They will be briefly discussed at the end of chapter eleven. 12 George H. van Kooten, “Why Did Paul Include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3?” The Significance of Sinai: Traditions about Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity, ed. George J. Brooke, Hindy Najman and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Themes in Biblical Narrative: Jewish and Christian Traditions 12 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2008) 149–181; Id., “Paul’s Anti-Sophistic Interpretation of the Narrative of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3: Moses’ Strength, Well-being and (Transitory) Glory, according to Philo, Josephus, Paul, and the Corinthian Sophists,” Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity, WUNT I/232 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 313–339. 13 van Kooten, “Paul’s Anti-Sophistic Interpretation,” 325. 10 11

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man. The Jewish Christian opponents of Paul would have done likewise. Differently than Philo and Josephus, however, the opponents then implemented Moses’ superhuman stature as a benchmark for outward performance within the Christian community, no longer simply as a polemical tool against pagan portrayals. Paul therefore opposed their presentation of Moses with his own notion of the inner man against this sophist stress on outward performance. This explained Paul’s own negative portrayal of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18: Paul needs to confront the portraits of Moses current among the Christian sophists at Corinth, designed as they are to compete with general Greek culture. There might be a justifiable apologetic concern behind those portraits. Yet, in Paul’s view, they are very dangerous inasmuch as they also – implicitly and perhaps only inadvertently – change the attitudes within the Christian communities with regard to the importance of outward, rhetorical competence and bodily, physical strength and performance. 14

It is perhaps interesting to note here that the study by Henry Nguyen, 15 discussed previously, argued somewhat similarly to van Kooten that Paul was advancing an internalized ἐν καρδία perspective in order to critique a supposed sophistic preoccupation in Roman Corinth with πρόσωπον, which Nguyen understood to be superficial externals. This will be something to come back to in our next chapter. (2) The second proposal is by Thomas Blanton in an article published after his monograph. 16 In this, Blanton sought to revise the view held by Jerry Sumney 17 that Paul’s missionary rivals were pneumatics. Blanton surveyed early Jewish discussions of covenant renewal and uncovered a cluster of motifs in Jer, Ezek, Jub and 1QS (Community Rule), which pertained to new covenant, perfect obedience to the Torah, and the transformation of human intentionality. In addition, Blanton examined the Letter to the Hebrews, which discusses the new covenant in Heb 8:7–13, and found that, apart from Christ’s sacrificial blood (rather than the holy spirit), which effects the transformation of human intentionality, it too shared the motifs of covenant renewal in common with Jer, Ezek, Jub and 1QS. Arguing that there was thus a degree of stability in the motifs involved, Blanton articulated five elements of what he termed the ‘covenant renewal theologoumenon’ in Second Temple Judaism: (1) Failure to obey the covenant incurred the curses of breaking the covenant.

van Kooten, “Paul’s Anti-Sophistic Interpretation,” 335. Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth. 16 Thomas R. Blanton IV, “Spirit and Covenant Renewal: A Theologoumenon of Paul’s Opponents in 2 Corinthians,” JBL 129 (2010) 129–151. 17 Sumney, Identifying Paul’s Opponents. Blanton recognized that Sumney was by no means the only one to hold this view. Others have included: Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann, Dieter Georgi; and more recently, Victor Paul Furnish, Hans-Josef Klauck, Ralph Martin, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Udo Schnelle, and Calvin Roetzel. 14 15

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(2) This necessitated a renewal of the covenant. (3) The new covenant was ratified through forgiveness of sin or removal of iniquity. (4) The spirit enabled the perfect observance of the law and thereby precluded its being broken. (5) As a result, the new covenant had eternal validity.

Blanton argued that Paul alluded to this covenant renewal theologoumenon when he used the language of Jer 31:33 and Ezek 36:26–27 in 2 Cor 3:2–6. As to the contention, made by Victor Paul Furnish, that Paul’s reference to the new covenant harked back to his own use of it in 1 Cor 11, Blanton opined differently: In answer to Furnish, we may note that Paul’s use of the phrase ‘new covenant’ (διαθήκη καινή) in 2 Cor 3:4 has quite different connotations than it does in 1 Cor 11:25, which connects the phrase with the Eucharistic meal. There is no trace of this connection in 2 Cor 3:6. The fact that ‘new covenant’ (διαθήκη καινή) appears without reference to the eucharistic tradition indicates that in chs. 3-4, Paul draws on a strand of tradition distinct from that which underlies 1 Cor 11:25. In 2 Cor 3:6, the ‘new covenant’ (διαθήκη καινή) is associated with ‘letter’ [of the law] and ‘spirit’ (γράμμα and πνεῦμα). The juxtaposition of the terms ‘spirit,’ ‘letter [of the law]’ and ‘new covenant’ does not occur in the eucharistic tradition that Paul had inherited, but it is a defining feature of the covenant renewal theologoumenon. The associations that Paul makes with the phrase ‘new covenant’ therefore underwent a significant shift between the writing of 1 Corinthians 11 and 2 Corinthians 3-4. 18

Blanton sided rather with others such as Annie Jaubert, Mathias Rissi, and Jerome Murphy O’Connor in maintaining that Paul’s discussion of the new covenant in 2 Cor 3 owed itself to the opponents. Blanton furthermore insisted that even though the terms νόμος and περιτομή were missing from 2 Cor, unlike their use in Gal, nonetheless Paul’s metonymic use of Moses in 2 Cor 3:15 for Torah indicated that the Law was under discussion at Corinth and, “[t]he second giving of the law, narrated in Exodus 34, thus constitutes a prototype for covenant renewal.” 19 Consistent with his position in his monograph, 20 Blanton argued that the opponents’ proposal of the covenant renewal theologoumenon ran counter to Paul’s law-free gospel to the Gentiles (Blanton’s reading of ‘freedom’ in 2 Cor 3:13 and Paul’s opposition to the ‘other gospel’ mentioned in 2 Cor 11:4). As to the identity of the opponents, then, [t]he ‘agents of righteousness’ were not ‘pneumatics’ in the sense in which Sumney, Furnish, and Georgi use the term (i.e., those to whom the spirit imparts visions, revelations, and perhaps the ability to perform miracles). They were rather something a little less spectacular: individuals striving to mediate the renewed covenant between God and humans. 21 Blanton, “Spirit and Covenant Renewal,” 143. Blanton, “Spirit and Covenant Renewal,” 145. 20 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 203f. 21 Blanton, “Spirit and Covenant Renewal,” 151. 18 19

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It should not come as a surprise that Blanton’s conclusion is diametrically opposite from Scott Hafemann’s in Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel. We have already traced some of their differences at the end of chapter four. Here it is worth reiterating that Hafemann held that the spirit enabled the perfect observance of the law and that this was Paul’s position, unlike Blanton who maintained that this was the position of the opponents. It is also not surprising that Blanton resisted seeing continuity of the καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 with Paul’s prior use of the term in 1 Cor 11:25. Sini Hulmi has already reached a similar conclusion that the polemical situation at Corinth caused Paul to change his position drastically from 1 Cor. 22 We view this as the inevitable consequence of the reconstruction approach, namely that Paul’s argumentation is detached from previous usage, and tied more closely to the contingencies of each changing situation. The strength of the ‘reconstruction of tradition’ approach is that it takes the conflict situation in 2 Cor seriously. The evidence of opponents at Corinth is itself undisputed. Reconstructions that look for parallels in Second Temple literature, whether Hellenistic or Palestinian Jewish, are strengthened by the fact that Moses was a topic of discussion in Second Temple times. 23 The problem with all reconstructions of a pre-existing tradition, however, is that they involve some level of mirror-reading, 24 and as such, must also remain hypothetical, as hypothetical as those who look for scriptural allusions as the key to understanding Paul in 2 Cor 3. We have thus reached an aporia similar to the previous 22 Sini Hulmi, Paulus und Mose. Argumentation und Polemik in 2 Kor 3, Schriften der Finnischen Exegetischen Gesellschaft 77 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999) 197: “Das angespannte Bild des Mose in 2 Kor 3 und die Unterschiede zu dem Mose-Bild in 1 Kor 10 lassen sich am leichtesten erklären, wenn man Paulus’ Briefe situationsbezogen betrachtet. Paulus antwortete mit seinem Brief und mit dem Kapitel 2 Kor 3, das zu seinem Brief gehörte, auf eine bestimmte Situation. Seine Gedanken und seine Ausdrucksweise sind eng mit der konkreten Welt verbunden, auf die er mit seinen Briefen reagierte. Die Situation bewirkt dabei, daß Paulus die ihm bekannten jüdischen Themen über Mose auch in 2 Kor 3 uninterpretiert.” 23 We have already encountered the works of Sze-Kar Wan and Francis Watson in chapter six of this study, who similarly look to Philo and Josephus to understand Paul’s use of Moses in 2 Cor 3. Sze-Kar Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis: Philo and Paul Compared”; Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 273–313. Among those we have seen who look to Palestinian Jewish motifs would be Friedrich Avemarie, Albert Hogeterp and Serge Ruzer. Mention can also be made of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Glory Reflected on the Face of Christ (2 Cor 3:7–4:6),” According to Paul: Studies in the Theology of the Apostle (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1993) 64–79. 24 John G. Barclay, “Mirror-reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test-Case,” JSNT 31 (1987) 73–93. Blanton himself is aware of the dangers of the mirror-reading technique but, on this point, agrees with the methodology adopted by Jerry Sumney, that “the mirror technique may be used only when there is prior information to substantiate a point” (Blanton, “Spirit and Covenant Renewal,” 134).

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approach. Furthermore, if it was polemics that coloured Paul’s argument in 2 Cor 3:7–18, then it becomes key to identify the opponents to whom Paul was reacting. The identity of these opponents has been the subject of relentless debate, without a consensus being reached. 25 Thus, the enterprise of reconstructing a tradition only makes one unknown dependent on another unknown. At the same time, as already pointed out, proponents of Paul’s polemics are keen to detach Paul’s argumentation from his previous usage in 1 Cor, in order to see Paul’s response as a specific reaction to the current situation of 2 Cor. But it does run the risk of adding to the portrait of an inconsistent Paul. 26 Furthermore, it is not entirely convincing to all that Paul was simply involved with polemics in 2 Cor 3:7–18. 27 At best, Paul was involved in both, apologetics and polemics. 28 Having looked at the two aporias that confront us when considering Paul’s argumentation and introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, how shall we move 25 For a fuller list of the possible identifications of opponents, see David Hellholm, “Moses as διάκονος of the παλαιὰ διαθήκη – Paul as διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη: Argumenta amplificationis in 2 Cor 2,14–4,6,” ZNW 99 (2008) 247–289, pp. 286–287: “The following alternatives as to the opposition to Paul have been put forward: (1) Non-Christian opposition: (a) They are Jews from the synagogue; (b) They are Non-Christian Jews in Corinth; (2) Internal Christian opposition from intruders: (c) Paul’s opponents are Judaistic anti-pauline emissaries from Jerusalem; (d) Group of Hellenists around Stephen; (e) Conservative but Non-Judaistic Jewish-Christian opponents from Jerusalem; (f) Petrine Christians (both in 1st and 2nd Corinthians); (h) Hellenistic Jewish-Christian divine men, θεῖοι ἄνδρες; (i) Hellenistic Jewish-Christian itinerant preachers (as Abraham’s children); (3) Internal Christian opposition (mainly): (j) Opposition to Paul’s actions and appearances in connection with the monetary collection.” 26 Recall Räisänen, Paul and the Law 1: “Paul’s thought on the law is full of difficulties and inconsistencies.” 27 Assessing the question of polemics in 2 Cor 3:7–18, by considering Michael Theobald’s analysis of ‘super-abundance’ and alternative structure of 3:7–11, 4:7–15, and 4:16– 18 (Michael Theobald, Die überströmende Gnade. Studien zu einem paulinischen Motivfeld, FB 22 (Würzburg: Echter, 1982) 167–239), Lambrecht finds as follows: “Theobald’s polemical interpretation of 3,7-18 will certainly meet with opposition. To be sure, no one denies the existence of Paul’s opponents, and the presence in 2,14-4,15 of both an apologetical and polemical tone manifest in 2,17; 3:1; 4,2-5 and probably more hidden in 4,7-15. But what about 3,7-18? Theobald’s refusal to see, especially in 3,10-11 and 3,13-16 a comparison of two ministries, i.e., the opposition between the old Jewish religion and Christianity in its eschatological newness, makes his entire explanation unlikely. In our opinion, the whole of 3,7-18 functions as an excursus on 3,6. Paul here thinks first of the unbelieving non-Christian Jews whom he opposes to the Christians” (Lambrecht, “Structure and Line of Thought in 2 Cor 2,14–4,6,” 291). 28 This is the position taken by David Hellholm, “Moses as διάκονος of the παλαιὰ διαθήκη – Paul as διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη,” 287: “That Paul here is only apologetic seems to me to distort the facts; the frequent occurrence of antitheses and corrections is the first indication that Paul is not only apologetic but indeed also polemical in this letter fragment, as is also the case in the ‘letter of tears’ (10,1–13,10).”

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beyond this impasse? The problem is not simply that the passage has elements of polemics and apologetics, and that it is difficult to isolate which is which. Neither is the issue one where we must from the beginning decide if we are going to prioritize the mens auctoris (in this case, Paul) or the impact upon the target audience (the Corinthian community). The aporias simply show us what can happen when either pole is taken to extremes: restrictive continuity on one end, radical discontinuity on the other. Yet, the purpose of this chapter is not to trivialize either approach, since both have contributed to furthering our understanding of Paul’s argumentation in 2 Cor 3. Rather, we are in search of something that might integrate both approaches into one that is more holistic. In our opinion, the model of mnemonic refraction, as articulated by Le Donne, and seen in our previous chapter, can help to incorporate these results into one comprehensive heuristic framework. To this we now turn.

2. The Mnemonic Cycles of καινὴ διαθήκη in the Corinthian Correspondence

2. The Mnemonic Cycles of καινὴ διαθήκη

In what follows, we first look at Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 in terms of Le Donne’s mnemonic cycle. 29 That is to say, we consider καινὴ διαθήκη as the mnemonic category of significance (A). Eschatological interpretations of the new covenant were current at the time that Paul wrote 2 Cor (including, but not limited to, those held by the Qumran community). 30 We consider this the trajectory of refraction (B). Paul, however, offered a surprising twist to the new covenant, by setting it in opposition to an ‘old covenant’ (παλαιὰ διαθήκη [2 Cor 3:14]). This is the new perspective that Paul offered (C). It resulted in a reconsideration of the term καινὴ διαθήκη in light of this antithesis to an old covenant. This, to use Le Donne’s terminology, is called the process of localization (D). Relying, then, on Le Donne’s model, the mnemonic cycle can be visualized as follows:

Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 66, fig. 4.1; also 259, fig. 9.1. Since we also here take into consideration the eschatological interpretation given to it by the communities of Christ followers (cf. Luke 22:16, 18; Mark 14:24–25; Matt 26:28– 29). We have already referred to authors in this study who have pointed out the eschatological setting of the new covenant at Qumran (e.g., Friedrich Avemarie, Thomas Blanton, Albert Hogeterp, Serge Ruzer). 29 30

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This is because unlike 1 Cor 11:25, Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 is not embedded in a narrative tradition of the Lord’s Supper or engaged in resolving a dispute about divisions and proper behaviour at the common meal. It is therefore suggested that Paul’s usage in 2 Cor underwent a ‘significant shift’ between the writing of 1 Cor 11 and 2 Cor 3, namely the arrival of opponents in Corinth who challenged Paul’s legitimacy. So, the question becomes: was Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 and his ensuing discourse on Moses’ fading glory in 3:7–18 merely a one-time polemical response to opponents? In what follows, we will argue that Paul’s use of Moses in 3:7–18 in fact underwent a typological refraction from a prior use in 1 Cor 10, and that when this is considered alongside the mnemonic cycles of καινὴ διαθήκη in both epistles, helps make the case for a continuous mnemonic trajectory rather than simply one dramatic shift.

3. The Typological Cycle of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18

3. The Typological Cycle of Moses

As seen in chapter eight, Le Donne had argued that typologies, which usually express themselves in narrative form so that they can integrate new mnemonic traditions within existing religious metanarratives, can be plotted along similar lines of the mnemonic cycle. 36 In the case of 2 Cor 3:7–18, Moses is the typological category of significance (A). The trajectory of interpretation would be contemporary traditions about a glorified Moses, which, as we have seen, are attested to in the writings of Philo and Josephus (B). Paul’s new perspective is to situate Moses within a contrast of ‘ministries’ (διακονία) (C). This results in a reconsideration of Moses in light of this contrast of ministries. This is termed the synthesis in the typological cycle (D). The typological cycle of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 can be visualized as follows:

36

See Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 78, fig. 4.4 and p. 261, fig. 9.2.

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Adam-Christ typology also operated in 2 Cor, is evident in 2 Cor 3:18 and 2 Cor 4:4. “The glory of this Christ (2 Cor 3.18, 4.4), thus, is the glory of the second Adam, just as the first Adam was God’s image and glory (1 Cor 11.7).” 39 That Paul incorporated echoes from his own usage in 1 Cor 15:45 has been argued for Paul’s use of the ‘life-giving spirit’ (πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ) in 2 Cor 3:6c. 40 Similarly, Paul incorporated changes to his use of Moses in light of the Adam-Christ typology he had developed. He refracted the Moses typology in a new way, no longer in comparison with Christ, but in comparison with himself, as minister/apostle, relativizing the position of Moses in the process. The discussion on sufficiency in ministry, brought on by the situation at Corinth at the time of writing 2 Cor, provided Paul the opportunity to localize his new understanding of Moses within another, thematically related, Exodus narrative. 41 With Paul as διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη and Moses, by implication, διάκονος of the παλαιὰ διαθήκη, Paul’s typological refraction of Moses to accommodate the Adam-Christ typology, directly impacted the mnemonic cycle of καινὴ διαθήκη in the process, which was now refracted in light of the antithesis to παλαιὰ διαθήκη. The argument that Paul was portraying himself as a ‘second Moses’ in 2 Cor 3:7–18 has already been made on other grounds. 42 In our view, an examination van Kooten, “Paul’s Anti-Sophistic Interpretation,” 338. John W. Yates, The Spirit and Creation in Paul, WUNT II/251 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 110: “This description of the spirit as ‘life-giving’does not, however, come from Ezekiel 36. […] Although ‘spirit’ and ‘life’ are joined together in the tradition of the placement of πνεῦμα as the subject of ζῳοποιεῖ is probably original to Paul. […] Paul echoes his own description from 1 Cor 15:45 … Paul’s development of Gen 2:7 in that passage appears to have been his own, and the phrase πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν is surely distinctive. This is a phrase that would have been familiar to Paul’s Corinthian readers, and strikingly so as it occurred at a climactic point in an earlier letter to them.” 41 As Hickling, “Paul’s Use of Exodus,” 367–368 has pointed out: “Paul has used material at the beginning and the end respectively of a single continuous section of the text of Exodus, namely 32,1–34,35. The modern critical student identifies these chapters as a single unit. But some of the reasons suggesting this identification would surely be noticed by an attentive reader at any period in history. […] Paul will surely have read them as a discrete, continuous section of the sacred text.” 42 Peter R. Jones, The Apostle Paul: A Second Moses According to II Corinthians 2:14– 4:7 (PhD Thesis; Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1973) 373: “Paul functions within the Christian community of the New Covenant in an analogous fashion to a figure widely held to have played the role of a second Moses within the eschatological wilderness community of the New Covenant in the ‘Land of Damascus.’ Both are guided by an experience of divine glory and by the revelation of the eschatological ‘mystery’. These two factors of their mission give birth to the end-time community of the Spirit and the New Covenant which in the wilderness prepares for the coming of the Lord. Such a consciousness demands the presence of a second Moses figure, even if Paul or the Teacher of Righteousness had given no explicit indications of the same. But significantly the second Moses which does emerge from their writings is one radically qualified by the Isaianic second Moses, the ebed 39 40

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of Paul’s typological refraction of Moses would go towards supporting such a claim. We will return to this point in our next chapter when discussing identity transformation in 2 Cor 3.

4. Overview

4. Overview

We summarize our findings as follows. From the perspective of the memory refraction model developed by Le Donne, two noteworthy events can be observed in 2 Cor 3. First, there was the mnemonic refraction of Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 from his prior use in 1 Cor 11:25. Second, there was a typological refraction of Moses from a prior use in 1 Cor 10:1–13, where Moses was on par with Christ (1 Cor 10:2), towards a relativization of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, where Moses was now cast in comparison to Paul. We have argued that this was because Paul was seeking to integrate his new understanding of Moses in light of the Adam-Christ typology he had developed in 1 Cor 15. As a result of this typological refraction, a mnemonic refraction was then set in motion between the mnemonic cycle of καινὴ διαθήκη in 1 Cor 11:25 and that of 2 Cor 3:6. The two processes, one simply mnemonic, the other typological, explain why it is possible to direct one’s attention to either Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6a, most notably as a hermeneutical study of the letter/spirit antithesis brought on by 2 Cor 3:6b, or as a study on Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18. They are two cycles that, having different settings in 1 Cor, now come to overlap in 2 Cor. One could argue that the eschatological statements found in 1 Cor 10:11 (εἰς οὓς τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰώνων κατήντηκεν), 1 Cor 11:26 (ἄχρι οὗ ἔλθῃ) and 1 Cor 15:24 (εἶτα τὸ τέλος), 43 colluded to find a synthesis in the eschatological setting of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6. 44 Given this state of refraction, we argue for a mnemonic trajectory of continuity, at least visible from 1 Cor 11 onwards, as an early Christian reflection on the significance of καινὴ διαθήκη. Even though it has been argued that the later reflection on the new covenant in Heb seems to rely more heavily on the Last Supper accounts, given the close association of the motifs of death-blood(vicarious) expiation/forgiveness and covenant, 45 nonetheless Paul’s refraction Jahweh. It therefore appears that the picture of the second Moses which may be derived from II Cor. 2:14–4:7 is substantially verified as conforming to a common tradition. Thus it follows that Paul is not functioning in an ad hoc manner as an apostle of Christ, but is consciously drawing upon the notions of the second Moses to qualify fundamentally the exercise of his apostolic ministry.” 43 As identified by Hogeterp, Expectations of the End, 215–217. 44 Cf. Hogeterp, “The Eschatological Setting of the Covenant in 2 Cor 3:4–18.” 45 Susanne Lehne, The New Covenant in Hebrews, JSNTSup 44 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990) 90.

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use in 1 Cor 11:23–26 as some have argued it to be. We believe that a judicious use of Le Donne’s mnemonic and typological refraction model has allowed us to integrate insights from both intertextuality approaches and reconstruction of tradition approaches surveyed earlier, avoiding the aporias we highlighted that a one-sided use of either approach can lead to. 49 In ‘refracting’ mnemonic traditions, Paul was helping to shape the narrative past of his Corinthian community, and this can be expected to have had implications for their identity formation and transformation, since the manner in which a memory is refracted within a social group also indicates the lines along which their identity will be structured. In stating this, we indicate that the role of memory is not simply a sub-set to the larger issue of identity negotiation, but a conceptual framework in its own right, whose results do have direct bearings on questions of identity. Similarly, the method we have employed here reframes the larger, and much harder to answer, question of Paul’s continuity or discontinuity with Judaism and, far more modestly by comparison, seeks instead to have examined the ways in which Paul refracts, redeploys, and reconfigures existing traditions in service of local needs, among them the formation and transformation of character among his community at Corinth. It is to this latter subject of identity transformation that we turn in our next chapter.

49 One can also view this exercise (namely, to look for an explanation from within Paul’s own writings) as an application of the principle of Ockham’s Razor, namely that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem).

Chapter 10

Identity Transformation in 2 Cor 3 In the previous chapter we applied Anthony Le Donne’s mnemonic refraction model to the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 and discerned that in fact two refractions were taking place. One was mnemonic, and it refracted Paul’s previous use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 1 Cor 11:25, situated within the context of the Lord’s Supper, into one in 2 Cor 3:6 that was now placed antithetically opposite a παλαιὰ διαθήκη (2 Cor 3:14). At the same time, a second refraction was taking place, this one typological, brought on by Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, which refracted Paul’s previous use of Moses in 1 Cor 10:2 where, placed prefiguratively on a par with the baptismal Christ, Paul now relativized Moses’ stature in terms of διακονία, introducing a correspondence with Paul’s own status as a διάκονος of the new covenant inaugurated by Christ (2 Cor 3:6). This terminology, no doubt brought on by the challenges to Paul’s apostolic ministry, also served the purposes of Paul’s own relativization of Moses in light of the Adam-Christ typology he had introduced in 1 Cor 15 and would continue to use in 2 Cor (we see this in 2 Cor 3:18, 4:4, and 4:6). Methodologically, the mnemonic refraction model introduced continuities with Paul’s own prior usage of terms. 1 This helped us to refine our earlier considerations solely on the basis of mnemonic contestation which, while still pertinent, needed to also reckon with the weaknesses of merely an ‘invented tradition’ approach. In this chapter, we shall argue that relativizing Moses in terms of διακονία not only casts Paul as a second Moses but, more importantly, recasts Moses as the pre-Christian Paul. In this reading, Moses came to represent Paul before his ‘turning’ to the Lord. That this turning/conversion had implications for identity transformation will be argued based on a consideration of the motif of transformation found in 2 Cor 3:18 and the mimetic programme that was developed by Paul in 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1.

1 Yates, The Spirit and Creation in Paul, 113 using his own analysis of inter- and intratextual echoes of Paul’s allusions has argued along similar lines: “The background to 2 Cor. 3, therefore, is less specifically an identifiable text as it is a tradition with specific textual tools already appropriated and developed by Paul.”

1. Paul as Second Moses

1. Paul as Second Moses

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1. Paul as a Second Moses

We have argued that Paul’s typological refraction of Moses in terms of διακονία introduced a correspondence with Paul’s own status as a διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη. This lends support to the view that Paul was portraying himself as a ‘second Moses’ in 2 Cor 3:7–18. We briefly mention two proponents of such a view. (1) Peter Jones, in his examination of 2 Cor 2:14–4:7, argued that Paul characterized his apostolic ministry as a second Moses, both in analogy to Moses (2 Cor 2:14–3:6; 4:5–7) and in contrast to him (2 Cor 3:7–4:4). Jones then embarked on an investigation of Second Temple materials from Qumran, Hellenistic Jewish, Rabbinic and Samaritan literature and found that there were many second Moses expectations held by eschatologically-minded groups. These mostly divided between messianic/royal and non-messianic prophetic types. Of these, the latter non-messianic second Moses traditions held at Qumran were most similar to Paul’s portrayal, particularly that of the Teacher of Righteousness who, like Paul, compared and contrasted himself with Moses. In addition, Jones argued that Paul was also heavily influenced by the Isaianic ebed Jahweh, who was also believed to be the second Moses in certain Jewish circles. “Paul’s awareness of fulfilling the mission of the Servant is further evidence of his conscious assumption of the role of the second Moses.” 2 (2) Carol Stockhausen, in her examination of the exegetical substructure of 2 Cor 3:1–4:6, has also considered Paul as a second Moses. Her analysis of 2 Cor 3:1–18 showed the importance of Moses as counterpart, role model and foil for Paul. “The argument of II Corinthians 3 as a whole now appears based on Moses and several stories about his life and activity prototypical for Christian life and the activity of the Christian minister or apostle.” 3 Yet, she too was of the opinion that Paul adjusted the Moses model through the use of prophetic texts in order to more easily allow a contemporization with Paul’s own time, among them Ezekiel and Isaiah. 4

Jones, The Apostle Paul: A Second Moses, 376. Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant, 153. On pp. 169–175 Stockhausen reflects on Paul as a second Moses in 2 Cor 4:1–6. In sum, “II Cor. 3:1–4:6, is in fact a reflection of some aspect of Moses’ actions in Exodus, particularly Exodus 33-34” (p. 172). 4 Stockhausen, Moses’ Veil and the Glory of the New Covenant, 153: “For example, because the promised new covenant has arrived with its gift of the spirit, Paul no longer must display the humility of his predecessor Moses. Moses could not reveal everything. Paul may. Paul need not veil his face and may behave with the boldness and freedom characteristic of the full-fledged member of Greek society. Furthermore, Paul knows through the prophet Isaiah that the ‘sons of Israel’ were not only hampered in their vision of the glory of the old covenant, but still possess hardened hearts which cannot understand the glory of the new. 2 3

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2. Moses as Person and Text

2. Moses as Person and Text

To assert that Paul portrayed himself as a second Moses should not obscure us to the fact that the problem confronting all exegetical studies of 2 Cor 3:7–18 is that Paul casts himself as both similar and dissimilar to Moses in this passage. For instance, commenting on the dissimile in 2 Cor 3:12–18, Richard Hays was only too aware of opposing crosscurrents: On the surface, Moses is a figure not like Paul, because he is veiled and mysterious, not disclosing all that he knows. […] By contrast, Paul has nothing to hide […] Below the surface, however, the current flows in the opposite direction, because Moses did, after all, encounter God face to face. Thus he becomes a symbol of unveiling as well as of veiling. The seductive power of the metaphor exerts so much pressure on Paul’s exposition of the figure that in verse 16-18 Paul finds himself writing that he and other Christians are more like Moses than unlike him. 5

For Hays, Paul’s reliance on Moses was not just a straightforward reliance on stories of Moses in Exodus. It was in fact a complex parable that defied explanation in terms of an allegorical scheme. In 2 Cor 3:13–15 Moses appeared to represent the old covenant, but in 2 Cor 3:16–18 he seemed to be a paradigm for Christian believers. Herein lay the tension: Moses was both person and text, with differing significance to each dimension. “Moses prefigures Christian experience, but he is not a Christian. He is both the paradigm for the Christian’s direct experience of the Spirit and the symbol for the old covenant to which that experience is set in anthithesis.” 6 For Hays, the only solution was the metaphorical route. By means of metaphorical fusion Moses, the man, was transfigured into Torah, the text. The power of metaphor is that it can unleash multiple senses. And so, for Hays, the metaphor could end on a positive note with Moses as paradigm rather than foil. When Paul mentioned in 2 Cor 3:18 that “all of us are being transformed,” it signified, for Hays, that “this we must encompass Moses, Israel, Paul, the Corinthians, and all future readers who participate in this turning – experience freedom and begin to be transformed.” 7 While one might agree that Hays has managed to articulate the tension aptly, his foray into metaphor, as an attempt to resolve that tension, might not be

These ‘hardened minds’ in Israel stand in direct contrast to the soft and fleshly hearts promised by Ezekiel and given to Paul, which are able to receive the spirit which unveils and reveals and enlivens. In Moses’ day, according to II Cor. 3:14, it had not been revealed that in Christ the covenant, ministry and glory of Moses would be brought to an end (μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον, ὅτι ἐν Χριστῷ καταργεῖται). This is what unbelieving, veiled Israel could not see in Moses’ day and still cannot see in Paul’s.” 5 Hays, Echoes, 142–143. 6 Hays, Echoes, 144. 7 Hays, Echoes, 145.

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persuasive to many. 8 It will be recalled that in our previous chapter we argued that the overlapping of two processes, one simply mnemonic (of καινὴ διαθήκη), the other typological (on Moses), explained why it was possible to direct one’s attention to either Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6a, most notably as a hermeneutical study of the letter/spirit antithesis brought on by 2 Cor 3:6b, or as a study on Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18. In what follows we will argue that the overlapping of these two cycles means that Paul’s double uses of Moses both as person and as text should be retained without seeking to harmonize them.

3. Moses as (the Pre-Transformed) Paul

3. Moses as (the Pre-Transformed) Paul

In his discussion on narrative localization, Le Donne had argued that mnemonic refractions are articulated into narratives that follow stereotypical patterns. In chapter eight, we mentioned Le Donne’s examples from Johann Kessler and John Bunyan who structured their biographies on biblical accounts. Le Donne also then went on to discuss the immortalization of a contemporary Jewish military hero of the Zionist movement, Yoseph Trumpeldor (1880–1920) who was recast in modern Israeli consciousness as a modern-day Bar Kochba (d. 135 CE). However, his point there was to show that the conflation did not only run in one direction. “When Trumpeldor’s generation evoked Bar Kochba to interpret his character, they inevitably reinterpreted Bar Kochba in light of Trumpeldor. Israel had to reinvent her tradition (however slightly) to accommodate for the new addition of Trumpeldor.” 9 We take up this insight with regard to Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, and press the point a little further as follows. First, it should be recalled that the typological refraction of Moses in terms of διακονία introduced a cor-

8 Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994) feels that Hays let Paul off the supersessionist hook too easily: “Thus, the move of the modern readers of Paul, such as Hays, who deny the allegorical and supersessionist movement of Paul’s text is ultimately not convincing” (p. 104). Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 180 n. 20 felt that Hays did not give any attention to Paul’s argument on boldness: “Hays 1989, 142f., reads the passage [3:12-17] as though a submerged parallel between Moses and Paul breaks out from under the argued contrast. I think this puts it, if anything, the wrong way round, and helps to explain why Hays does not, in my view, give sufficient weight to Paul’s argument about ‘boldness’, which does not appear (for instance) in his otherwise fine summary of the thrust of the passage.” 9 Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 58 commenting on Yael Zerubavel, “The Historical, the Legendary and the Incredible: Invented Tradition and Collective Memory in Israel,” Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. J.R. Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) 105–125.

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respondence with Paul’s own status as a διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη. Second, as a result of this conflation, Paul inevitably reinterpreted Moses in light of his own experience. Third, this then resulted in a Moses whose contours, in particular, his διακονία, resembled those of the pre-‘Christian’ Paul, that is to say, his life before coming to Christ. Viewed this way, Paul’s narrative conflation of his own διακονία within a typological narrative of Moses’ glory represents none other than an evaluation of his own life prior to ‘conversion’ in much the same way that he did in Phil 3:3–11. 10 This is not to argue that the narrative of Moses’ fading glory should be seen merely as an allegory on Paul’s own pre-‘Christian’ life. 11 We do contend, however, that the divergences of Paul’s retelling from the original Exodus narrative in particular, and the negative characterization of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7– 18 in general, can be better explained in terms of the negative characterization Paul had come to consider his former ministry/life prior to ‘turning to the Lord’. 3.1 “When Anyone Turns to the Lord” (2 Cor 3:16): Conversion and Transformation At 2 Cor 3:16 Paul removed reference to Moses where one would have been expected. 2 Cor 3:15 had just spoken of the veil lying upon contemporary Israelites’ minds whenever ‘Moses’ was read. Sze-Kar Wan has helpfully drawn up a synopsis of the original text that Paul was alluding to in 2 Cor 3:16: 12

10 It will be recalled that Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 137 had already made a similar observation, albeit from a different perspective: “In two passages Paul directly compares, in an evaluative way, the old dispensation and the new. These passages are 2 Cor. 3:4-18 and Phil. 3:3-11.” 11 In what follows, our uses of the term ‘Christian’ or ‘pre-Christian’ are not meant to be anachronistic but merely short-hand stitial references to Paul’s life prior to, and subsequent to, being ‘in Christ’. We similarly understand Paul’s own reference to his ‘earlier life in Judaism’ (τὴν ἐμὴν ἀναστροφήν ποτε ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, Gal 1:13) in this way, as his life prior to following Christ. 12 Sze-Kar Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 77. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 268 agrees that Paul is loosely quoting or paraphrasing Ex 34:34 but cautions that there are several differences between the two texts, which have led some to claim that Paul is not here relying on the Old Testament text at all. She dismisses this.

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LXX Exod 34:34

2 Cor 3:16

ἡνίκα δ᾽ ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο Μωυσῆς ἔναντι κυρίου λαλεῖν αὐτῷ περιῃρεῖτο τὸ κάλυμμα ἕως τοῦ ἐκπορεύεσθαι

ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα.

Wan argued that by removing references to specific actions of Moses, Paul had turned the biblical text into a general statement about encountering the Lord. The change from the more general εἰσπορεύεσθαι to ἐπιστρέφειν, the more technical term for conversion, further underlined Paul’s concern to shift the focus to ‘Christian conversion’ or ecstatic experience, but what enabled Paul to state this with confidence was most likely his own conversion experience. 13 We would agree with Wan that 2 Cor 3:16 is a reference to Paul’s own conversion experience. At the same time, it need not follow that this conversion be linked to an ecstatic experience. Here are three ways of analyzing Paul’s conversion: (1) in terms of mystical experience, (2) from a psychological perspective, and (3) in terms of a sociological explanation. The first is synonymous with Alan Segal, for whom 2 Cor 3:18–4:6 was a key text for Paul’s use of mystical vocabulary. 14 The second was defended by Gerd Theissen and his reading of 2 Cor 3:4–4:6 includes text, tradition and psychological analyses. 15 The third option has been proposed by Troels Engberg-Pedersen, whose sociological model of conversion we surveyed earlier in chapter five. EngbergPedersen, however, only applied his model to Philippians, Galatians and Romans. 16 We have already listed in chapter six our reservations to the mystical approach to Paul owing to its over-emphasis on the individual at the cost of communal dimensions. With regard to the psychological approach, apart from its speculations on the inner workings of a person’s psyche, it is also susceptible to anachronistically applying modern categories to what are distinctively pre-

Sze-Kar Wan, “Charismatic Exegesis,” 77. Cf. Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) 310, who agreed that ἐπιστρέφειν was a quasi-technical term for conversion. So too does Furnish, II Corinthians, 211, but who argued that it was arbitrary to suggest that Paul had his own conversion specifically in mind. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 271 maintained that the subject was Moses, but Moses seen as the type of the Christian convert. Against the conversion reading, Martin, 2 Corinthians, 70 preferred to see the verse in its simple sense, “whenever there is a turning to the Lord.” 14 Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990) 58–61. 15 Gerd Theissen in Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, transl. John P. Galvin (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987) 117–175. 16 Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 81–292. 13

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modern and ancient texts. Engberg-Pedersen’s sociological approach to conversion, in our view, at least offers some heuristic applicability that may be of help to us. Here it is worth recalling elements from Engberg-Pedersen’s model that were discussed earlier. The first is his insight that conversion is conceptualized as a story in time (before-now-after). The narrative on Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 is such a story, where ‘before’ is represented by the veiled Moses, ‘now’ is the moment of turning, and ‘after’ is the moment of transformation once the veil has been removed upon turning. Engberg-Pedersen further argued that the new conversion experience brings about a reinterpretation of one’s pre-conversion existence. We asserted that this was similar to Terence Donaldson’s ‘reconfiguration’ of Paul’s convictional world. It can be argued now that Paul’s conversion brought about a reinterpretation/reconfiguration of his pre-conversion existence, typologically represented by the Mosaic διακονία, a διακονία of death and condemnation (2 Cor 3:7, 9). In terms of identity, Engberg-Pedersen had argued that the individual transfers between states of membership. One is ‘taken over’ by something (God, Christ, or reason) and ‘relinquishes’ one’s former self in the process. EngbergPedersen argued that it is an uncompromising change, an all or nothing affair. Certainly, the Mosaic διακονία, characterized as being one of death and condemnation, in comparison to the διακονία of righteousness (and life by implication, cf. 2 Cor 3:6c πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ) would lend itself to such a view. But, Paul did maintain that this same Mosaic διακονία came ἐν δόξῃ “in glory”. And, when transformation takes place in 2 Cor 3:18, it is a change ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν “from glory to glory”. In that sense, Paul’s own understanding challenges Engberg-Pedersen’s notion that transference of identity signals a break with one’s former existence. 17 It is for this reason that rather than speak of ‘transference of identity’, we prefer to think in terms of ‘transformation of identity’ and maintain that one’s past identity is reconfigured rather than completely altered in the process. Nonetheless, the community-oriented feature of Engberg-Pedersen’s model of conversion is still pertinent, since we agree with Engberg-Pedersen that Paul See Frey, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” 321: “Paul never converted from ‘Judaism’ to ‘Christianity’. If – in spite of Paul’s preference for the calling terminology – the term ‘conversion’ may be used for his Damascus experience, it may be seen as a conversion from one type of Judaism to another.” Pace Paul Brooks Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory’: Paul’s Appeal to the Experience of His Readers in 2 Corinthians 3:18,” JBL 127 (2008) 759– 780, who takes the expression ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν to mean a radical change from death to life, based on an earlier argument he developed that the Gentiles knew the Law but were under sentence of condemnation and death for not observing it (Cf. Paul Brooks Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death: Gentile Condemnation and Letters of Recommendation in 2 Cor 3:6–18,” NovT 46 (2004) 313–337). 17

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was offering his addressees an understanding of themselves as part of the specific way of life he was directing them to live out. So, for example, when applying the model to the Philippian case, Engberg-Pedersen found that the Philippians required an explicit exhortation from Paul to become co-imitators of him (Συμμιμηταί μου γίνεσθε, ἀδελφοί, καὶ σκοπεῖτε τοὺς οὕτω περιπατοῦντας καθὼς ἔχετε τύπον ἡμᾶς). 18 In the Corinthian case, we would argue that a similar mimetic programme was initiated by Paul in 1 Cor 4:16 (μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε) and 1 Cor 11:1 (μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε, καθὼς κἀγὼ Χριστοῦ). 19 Likewise, as Jan Lambrecht has pointed out, with respect to the metamorphosis of 2 Cor 3:18: We might note that Paul himself appears to be a clear example of such a metamorphosis. He had been a fanatical Pharisee, persecuting the young church. His metamorphosis was not only some inner change, nor simply an external change. It was both. 20

3.2 “Whenever Moses is Read” (2 Cor 3:15): No Transformation without Conversion We have so far argued that the portrayal of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 represented Paul’s understanding of his former life prior to it being transformed ‘in Christ’. What then of the mention of Moses in 2 Cor 3:15? Here we would maintain that the metonymic force of Moses = Torah/Law stands. Would this not make Paul appear inconsistent in his usage, since all other instances of Moses have been read up till now as an implicit reference to Paul’s ‘pre-conversion’ life? To this, we might give a fourfold response. First, it would be welcome at this point to recall Morna Hooker’s comment that Paul’s inconsistency would not have been unlike our own, human, inconsistencies in logical argumentation. From our point of view, his [= Paul’s] exposition is inconsistent. His arguments do not stand up logically, and he juxtaposes conflicting images and interpretations of the biblical text. Yet I have no doubt whatever that from his point of view, Paul’s argument seemed proper and acceptable. […] In our terms, Paul’s own arguments about glory do not hold together; in his terms, both are valid interpretations of the text of Exod. 34. New Testament scholars perhaps need to take warning from this example of one of the dangers into which we easily

Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 114: “[T]hat is, imitators of him who join with him in what he is himself imitating, and that they take him as their model (typos).” A similar argument is developed along different lines by Bruce Longenecker on the purpose of Paul’s autobiography in Galatians. See Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God, 149. 19 As highlighted by Nguyen, Christian Identity at Corinth, 191 who chooses to connect this imitation motif to Paul’s suffering and afflictions in 2 Cor. Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 260f connects the mimesis motif of 1 Cor 4:16 more closely to Paul’s programme of social identity formation in 1 Cor 1–4. 20 Jan Lambrecht, “Transformation in 2 Corinthians 3,18,” Studies on 2 Corinthians, 305. 18

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fall when we interpreting Paul, the danger of presupposing that all his exegesis will be consistent, and furthermore, that his form of consistency will be similar to our own. 21

Second, it is clear that from the sense of 2 Cor 3:15 that the reading of Moses was by contemporaries of Paul, and thus the metonym of Moses for Torah/Law makes sense here. Furthermore, it is also clear that this reading of the Law/Moses was by non-believing Jews who had not yet encountered Christ in the way that Paul had. Third, we should recall that there were two mnemonic processes at work in 2 Cor 3:6, 7–18, one the mnemonic cycle of καινὴ διαθήκη, and the other, the typological cycle of Moses. Their overlapping could have easily caused a conflation of the two terms with one another. This seems confirmed by the fact that 2 Cor 3:14 and 3:15 are both thematically linked by reading, one of the παλαιὰ διαθήκη (3:14), the other of Moses. And, fourth, both Moses, as person (= the pre-converted Paul) and Moses, as text (= Torah) are covered with a veil until it is removed through turning to Christ. The problem then was not Torah, as such, but rather an unconverted mind that was unable to understand its true significance in Christ. It then follows, too, that the transformation of identity, at least for Paul, only occurs after one has turned to the Lord (= Christ).

4. Overview

4. Overview

This chapter has argued that the typological refraction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7– 18 would lead Paul not only to cast himself as a second Moses but, more importantly, recast Moses as the ‘pre-Christian’ Paul, the Paul prior to his being ‘in Christ’. In this reading, Moses came to represent Paul before his ‘turning’ to the Lord. That this turning/conversion had implications for identity transformation was argued on the basis of Engberg-Pedersens’ sociological model of conversion, Paul’s own mimetic programme developed by him in 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1, and the Pauline motif of transformation in 2 Cor 3:18. In short, we have argued that 2 Cor 3 (in particular, vv. 6–18) represents not a negative assessment of Judaism or the Law tout court, but rather a reflection on Paul’s own life prior to, during, and after turning to Christ (in short, conversion). It can, thus, only be as a later move that the narrative in 2 Cor 3:6–18 was understood as representing a separation process from ‘Judaism’. But, that it was, and has been, understood in this way will be reflected on in our next, and final, chapter.

21 Morna D. Hooker, “Beyond the Things that Are Written? St. Paul’s Use of Scripture,” From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 139–154, esp. 150–151.

Chapter 11

From Heuristics back to Hermeneutics At the end of chapter four we argued that Paul’s ambiguous use of the terms καταργέω and τέλος in 2 Cor 3:7–18, together with the exegetical difficulty of locating their referents, contributed to the hermeneutical uncertainty of what exactly Paul means. We further contended that this ambiguity helped pave the way for an understanding in later times that the old covenant had been abolished. We then moved through applications of method in search of a heuristic framework to gauge what level of ‘discontinuity’ can be ascribed to Paul’s antithetical opposition between καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 and παλαιὰ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:14. First we discerned that Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 functioned as a counter-memory to legitimate a separation process from synagogue attendance to house-church assemblies that he was encouraging his Corinthian followers to undergo. This at least brought pause to accepting the general assertion by most proponents of the ‘radical new perspective’ that Paul never set in motion a ‘parting of the ways’ and that his mission to the Gentiles should solely be understood as an interesting variant of the variegated Judaisms extant in his day. As we proceeded to refine our heuristic apparatus we did, however, find the principle of continuity over time to be useful in charting trajectories and plotting the incremental changes brought on by socio-historical conditions that incurred refractions in understanding as new categories of signifance were introduced to previously existing categories. Integrating these insights into our considerations of Paul’s re-membering of traditions and his mimetic programme of identity transformation, we came to the conclusion that 2 Cor 3:6–18 did not represent Paul’s negative assessment of Judaism or the Law as such, but rather a reflection on his own life prior to, during, and after turning to Christ. It could only then be later in time that the narrative in 2 Cor 3:6–18 came to be understood as representing a separation process from ‘Judaism’. Nonetheless, our study would be incomplete if we did not reflect on the potential of Paul’s statements in 2 Cor 3:6–18 to have indirectly contributed to this ‘parting of the ways’. As a hermeneutical reflection, we shall focus on a tension between ideology and utopia in 2 Cor 3, and view this from the hermeneutical arc of new covenant and new creation. In this hermeneutical reading, we take seriously the unfortunate reception history that the covenantal contrasts have generated in later Christian-Jewish encounters.

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1. Ideology and Utopia in 2 Cor 3

1. Ideology and Utopia in 2 Cor 3

In what follows, we discern a dialectical relation between the concepts of covenant and creation in 2 Cor 3 that can benefit from interacting with Paul Ricoeur’s insights on ideology and utopia. We commence by presenting a line of inquiry in Pauline studies that stems from a desire to systematize Paul’s writings under one rubric: either covenant or creation. Within this line of inquiry, we shall examine 2 Cor as an epistle in which the semantic domains of covenant and creation are closely linked. We will particlarly focus on the interplay between these two concepts in 2 Cor 3. After examining the pendulum swing of exegetical opinions on this passage, we establish that a reciprocal relation between covenant and creation can be pursued. This makes way for Paul Ricoeur’s dialectical insights on ideology and utopia, but not before examining the role of ideology and memory in 2 Cor 3. Since ideology contains pathological dimensions, we also survey some of the checkered reception history of this Pauline passage. We conclude by offering a contemporary reflection that, in the spirit of Ricoeur, seeks to resist the distortions of ideology by affirming the utopian potentials of 2 Cor 3, and in doing so, hopes to move from ancient text to transformative action in the present. 1.1 The ‘Covenant or Creation?’ Line of Inquiry in Pauline Studies There exists in Pauline studies a line of inquiry that seems to play off Paul’s language of (new) covenant against his language of (new) creation. Often the question centres around which of these conceptual worlds was more fundamental to Paul. Ernst Käsemann held quite strongly that new creation was the primary category. 1 Even E.P. Sanders, as a forerunner of the New Perspective on Paul, maintained that Paul (and Christianity after him) transcended Jewish covenantal categories with the concept of new creation. 2 By contrast, scholars of Ernst Käsemann, “The Righteousness of God in Paul,” New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W.J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969) 178: “Paul, unlike the community of the days immediately after Easter, does not base his thinking on the conception of the renewed covenant and the holy remnant, or at least only does so rarely as a makeshift expedient. For him Christ is definitely not, as for instance, in Matthew’s Nativity story, the second Moses; he is the second Adam and, in this role, brings in the new covenant and the new creation. In so far as this is so, God’s righteousness cannot now for Paul be primarily the divine covenant-faithfulness towards Israel.” 2 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 514: “The heart of Paul’s thought is not that one ratifies and agrees to a covenant offered by God, and remaining in it on the condition of proper behaviour; but that one dies with Christ, obtaining new life and the initial transformation which leads to the resurrection and ultimate transformation, that one is a member of the body of Christ and one Spirit with him, and that one remains so unless one breaks the participatory union by forming another.” Ellen Christiansen, despite her study of the function of covenant in Judaism and Paul, argued that Christian identity was actually expressed in 1

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the opposite persuasion would insist that covenant was Paul’s fundamental concept. W.D. Davies argued that Paul saw himself in categories taken directly from the Exodus story. Anyone who wished to be a Christ-believer had, like the Israelites of old, to experience the New Exodus in order to stand at the New Sinai and enter into the New Covenant that Paul administered. 3 N.T Wright portrayed Paul as proclaiming Christ as the ‘climax of the covenant’. 4 The above views tend to be concerned with Paul’s writings as a whole. The trend since then, though, has been to move Pauline studies away from the search for that elusive ‘centre’ to Paul’s thought, giving greater emphasis to indepth studies of Paul’s individual letters. 5 Still, even from this narrower focus, it is possible to pursue the question of creation and covenant in Paul’s letters. 2 Cor is an undisputed Pauline epistle (leaving aside the question of partition theories), where new covenant (καινὴ διαθήκη) and new creation (καινὴ κτίσις) are mentioned within close proximity to one another (2 Cor 3:6; 5:17), located in a unit of discourse generally considered to be Paul’s apology for his ministry, 2 Cor 2:14–7:4 (with 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 most often disputed as to Pauline authenticity 6). 1.2 Covenant and Creation in 2 Cor 3 7 2 Cor is sometimes considered Paul’s most personal letter. 8 In it we witness an apostle not altogether secure in how his readers, the Corinthians, will react. Whereas in 1 Cor Paul was writing to bring about a much-needed sense of unity to a community divided by internal conflicts, in 2 Cor we get the picture that

terms of the new creation occurring in the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, where “Christian identity is primarily expressed in terms of ‘belonging to’ or ‘being in’ Christ or ‘having received’ the Spirit, never as being in the covenant.” Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism and Paul, 271. 3 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 225, 251. 4 Wright, The Climax of the Covenant. 5 Cf. David Hay and Elizabeth E. Johnson (eds.), Pauline Theology. Volume IV: Looking Back, Pressing On, SBLSymS 4 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1997); Stanley E. Porter, “Is There a Center to Paul’s Theology? An Introduction to the Study of Paul and his Theology,” Paul and His Theology, ed. S.E. Porter, Pauline Studies 3 (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2006) 1– 19. 6 But, see Lambrecht, “The Fragment of 2 Corinthians vi 14–vii 1: A Plea for its Authenticity.” This point has already been addressed earlier in our study (chapter three). 7 As already pointed out previously, we take 2 Cor 3 as a convenient shorthand reference and agree with those who delimit the unit of discourse more accurately as 2 Cor 2:14–4:6. This explains why our structural comments below also consider terms that occur in 2 Cor 4:1–6. 8 Jan Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 8 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999) 1.

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this time Paul himself was the cause of the problem. 9 As an epistle, 2 Cor thus has a more apologetic and polemical tone, apologetic because Paul was defending the legitimacy of his apostleship that had been called into question, and polemical because rivals who had come to Corinth were casting aspersions on Paul’s character. 10 In Paul’s eyes, these opponents were mere “peddlers of God’s word” (2 Cor 2:17) who relied on letters of recommendation (2 Cor 3:1). Paul’s use of new covenant language in 2 Cor 3 thus occurred amidst his need to wean the Corinthians away from rivals and rally them back behind him, their founder. Yet, here too, scholarly debate tends to follow a pendulum swing of opinion as to whether covenant is indeed the dominant framework with which to understand Paul in this passage. Scott Hafemann argued that (second) exodus typology and the new covenant motif formed the framework to Paul’s thinking in 2 Cor 2:14–7:4. 11 Thus, from this perspective, new creation should be viewed as the “extension of the more primary and fundamental new covenant and second exodus themes.” 12 John Yates, on the other hand, in his study of spirit and creation in Paul, has argued the reverse. 13 For Yates, Paul’s mention of the life-giving spirit in 2 Cor 3 had a broader context than its immediate antithetical contrast between ministries and covenants. “The belief in a dawning new creation is in fact the principal context in which this description must be understood, standing over that of ministry and covenant. This is to reverse Hafemann’s framework.” 14

9 It is generally surmised that not much time elapsed between the writing of 1 and 2 Cor (between one and two years). One also has to consider that Paul’s ‘letter of tears’ (referred to in 2 Cor 2:3–4) was probably written between 1 and 2 Cor. Jan Lambrecht, while acknowledging that the dating of these letters must remain uncertain, has dated all three letters to the year 54 CE. Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, 4. On the conflicts at Corinth, see: Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth; Burke and Elliot, Paul and the Corinthians. 10 The identity of these opponents has always been the subject of much debate and need not detain us here. The fact that Paul’s opponents needed letters of introduction proves that they were not from Corinth while Paul, on the other hand, had no need of such because, as he wrote to the Corinthians, “you yourselves are our letter” (2 Cor 3:2), thus reminding them who their founder was. In our previous chapter, we have listed David Hellholm’s enumeration of the possible identities of the opponents. David Hellholm, “Moses as διάκονος of the παλαιὰ διαθήκη – Paul as διάκονος of the καινὴ διαθήκη.” 11 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel. Hafemann in turn relying on two studies preceding him: G.K. Beale, “The Old Testament Background of Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5–7 and Its Bearing on the Literary Problem of 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1,” NTS 35 (1989) 550–581; William J. Webb, Returning Home: New Covenant and Second Exodus as the Context for 2 Corinthians 6.14-7.1, JSNTSup 85 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993). 12 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 430 n. 289. 13 John W. Yates, The Spirit and Creation in Paul, WUNT II/251 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 106–124. 14 Yates, The Spirit and Creation in Paul, 124.

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The seeming impasse, of course, is that either covenant predominates in 2 Cor 3, or creation, but not both. Against such an either-or position, it is worthwhile picking up an insight from N.T. Wright, who asserted that, in fact, covenant and creation were inextricably linked for Paul. 15 Starting with the Old Testament, Wright pointed out that the Hebrew Bible contained a theology of creation and covenant which can be summed up as: “the creator God is the covenant God, and vice versa.” 16 It was a salvation historical story that moved from universal to particular, and then back to the universal. God covenants with a specific human family, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order that they and their descendants might undo the sin of Adam (universal humanity), and from which in time flows the idea of Israel’s mission (particular), to be a light to the Gentiles (back to the universal). This framework which, Wright argued, formed the ‘deep implicit narrative’ of the entire Old Testament, would then also inform the theology of Second Temple Jewish movements and Paul’s own theology. 17 From a structural point of view, it is possible to argue that while covenant is heavily present in 2 Cor 3, nonetheless elements of creation can already be discerned. 18 For, even though new creation language is mainly concentrated in 2 Cor 5:11–21, it also has a sphere of influence that reaches back to 2 Cor 2:16 (‘a fragrance from life to life’) and can be seen to operate in 2 Cor 3:16–4:6. First, one would emphasize the close parallels that exist between 2:14–3:6 and 5:11–13. Next, one would argue that the mention of πνεῦμα in 2 Cor 3:3; 3:6; 3:18; 5:5 allows for a connecting bridge between these two passages, what has been termed a ‘pneumatological drift’. 19 It has also been argued that the complex of terms ζωή (2 Cor 2:16; 4:10–11; 5:4, 15), δόξα (2 Cor 3:7–4:6) and εἰκών (2 Cor 3:18; 4:4) form a part of Paul’s theology of creation/consummation. 20 Beyond this, there is also the thematic affinity of ‘creation’ language in 2 Cor 4:6 and 5:17. Both passages have been argued to rely on Isaianic traditions. The passage 2 Cor in 4:6 seems to be drawing on Gen 1:3 (the creation N.T. Wright, “Creation and Covenant,” Paul in Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005) 21–39. 16 Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 24. 17 Wright then went on to examine what he considered to be three central Pauline passages where this theology of creation and covenant can be discerned: the Christological hymn of Col 1:15–20, the discussion on death and resurrection in 1 Cor 15 and the sequence of thought in Rom 1–11. Perhaps surprising is that he did not examine the more obvious choice of 2 Cor 3–5, except to mention that “[i]t would be interesting to explore the way in which, in 2 Corinthians 3–5, the theology of new covenant works its way through to new creation in 5.17” (Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 33). 18 Our structural comments have been kept deliberately brief. For a more extensive analysis, see Moyer V. Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, SNTSMS 119 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 133–187. 19 Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, 151. 20 Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, 157. 15

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of light) amplified by Isa 9:1 (the people walking in darkness who see a great light). Structural affinities can also be drawn between 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4 and 4:6. Viewed as parallel, they help make the case for a ‘motif of transformation’. 21 In 2 Cor 3:18, believers are being transformed (μεταμορφούμεθα) from glory to glory into the εἰκών of the Lord. In 4:4, the glory of Christ (τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ) is the εἰκών of God. Then, in 2 Cor 4:6, the glory of God is in the face of Christ (τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ [Ἰησοῦ] Χριστοῦ). If the condition and location of this transformation is to be ἐν Χριστῷ, ‘in Christ’ (2 Cor 3:14 and 5:17), then the element of ‘conversion’ plays a key role. This then focuses interest on Paul’s choice of ἐπιστρέψῃ in 2 Cor 3:16 (instead of using the εἰσεπορεύετο that is found in Exod 34:34 he is alluding to) and the argument that ἐπιστρέφω was a technical term for conversion. Interestingly, a ‘gnomic’ structural parallel can also be made between 3:16 and 5:17a: 22 2 Cor 3:16

2 Cor 5:17ª

ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα.

ὥστε εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις

This parallel is strengthened if one makes the case that transformation constituted an inner renewal, for which arguments are then marshalled that new covenant language is marked out by an emphasis on the interior (the ἐν καρδίᾳ, ‘in/on the heart,’ perspective that the prophets, particularly Jeremiah and Ezekiel, spoke of). The antitheses between internal and external (2 Cor 3:1–3; 3:6; 4:6–7; 4:16; 4:18; 5:7; 5:12) would then be seen to display this emphasis on the interiority of transformation. Interiority and antithesis will go on to play a vital role in 2 Cor 5:11–21. In sum, God’s new covenant work in the hearts of believers can thus be a clue to Paul’s understanding of the phrase ‘new creation’, since καινὴ κτίσις relates to the inner working of the spirit. 23 In this way, new covenant and new creation imply one another structurally in 2 Cor 3–5, and hence, Wright’s relational understanding of creation and covenant can also be pursued specifically in 2 Cor 3. We would also argue that this intuition of the reciprocal interdependence of creation and covenant can, in fact, be further complemented by Paul Ricoeur’s

Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, 153–161. Hubbard, New Creation in Paul’s Letters and Thought, 178. 23 The interiority of that transformation as it relates to identity has been studied by Henry Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth, and already encountered earlier in our study. 21 22

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dialectical insights on ideology and utopia. But, before doing so, we first integrate the social-scientific findings of the ideological strategy behind Paul’s use of the term καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. 1.3 Ideology and Memory in 2 Cor 3 As already seen previously, Thomas Blanton’s social-scientific analysis of the ‘Pauline redeployment of the motif of Moses’ veil’ in 2 Cor 3, 24 argued that Paul was attempting to delegitimize the ideology and praxis of his rivals, who preached that under the new covenant the spirit enables perfect observance of the law. Taking Blanton’s findings on 2 Cor 3 further, we have argued that Paul was engaged in “mnemonic contestation,” the contestation and modification of a foundational memory to serve in-group purposes. Paul deliberately modified a foundational Jewish memory surrounding the glory of Moses in light of the situation he was faced with at Corinth. This was analogous to what Paul did with Abraham in Gal when he refashioned the memory of Abraham in light of his disputation with opponents in the Galatian community regarding the issue of circumcision. 25 Paul supplied his Corinthian community with a narrative identity based on Exodus traditions (we see this already in 1 Cor 5:5–8; 10:1– 13; 15:20) because they were culturally and religiously significant for him. These traditions were, however, reshaped by the Christ event and informed by the Corinthian context. The same holds true for Paul’s use of the term καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. It does not just hark back to Jeremiah’s use of the term (Jer 31 (38 LXX):31–34) but also, and equally importantly, to Paul’s prior use of the term in 1 Cor 11:23–26. 26 There Paul had reminded the Corinthians of the tradition of the Lord’s Supper that he received in order to foster community togetherness. As Stephen Barton has pointed out, the Corinthian Christians are a group “short on shared narrative and corporate memory.” 27 Paul, as their founder, had therefore helped to situate the Corinthian common meal within the tradition of remembrance embodied in the Jesus tradition. The shared narrative and corporate memory thus acted to control and correct Corinthian ‘divisions’ and abuses (1 Blanton, Constructing a New Covenant, 218–230. We are, of course, aware of the difference between the Galatian and Corinthian contexts, as well as Paul’s more extensive treatment of Abraham in Gal (and subsequently Rom) as opposed to his passing reference to Moses in 2 Cor 3 (and in general). 26 Yates, The Spirit and Creation in Paul, 110–113, for instance, has argued that to understand Paul’s association of ‘spirit’ with ‘life’ in 2 Cor 3:6 (τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ), one must also factor in Paul’s use of ‘life-giving spirit’ (πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν) in 1 Cor 15:45. We would argue that a similar approach can be taken with Paul’s previous use of καινὴ διαθήκη in the Corinthian correspondence, viz. 1 Cor 11:25. 27 Stephen C. Barton, “Memory and Remembrance in Paul,” Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: The Fifth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium (Durham, September 2004), ed. S.C. Barton et al., WUNT I/212 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 333. 24 25

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Cor 11:17–22) for it reminded them of their common identity, namely, that they were members of the one body of Jesus (1 Cor 12:12–31). When matters then became polemical in 2 Cor, we would argue that Paul’s depiction of himself as a competent minister of the new covenant was a mnemonic device to remind the Corinthians of his founding role in supplying them that shared narrative upon which they built their corporate memory. In this way, Paul’s new covenant language in 2 Cor 3 served the ideological purpose of regaining the Corinthians under his authority. 1.4 Paul Ricoeur’s Ideology and Utopia The relation between ideology and utopia (and the role that memory plays within this relation) has been noted by the French philosopher and hermeneut, Paul Ricoeur. 28 As a dialectical thinker, Ricoeur would usually commence from a series of oppositions and then demonstrate how these oppositions must be held together in tension. For Ricoeur, this tension is almost always a creative one. In the case of ideology and utopia, he has argued that these concepts are held together in what he termed the ‘social imaginary’. It is the imagination which allows individual members to identify themselves as part of a social group. These imaginative acts reinforce one another from two ends, one by justifying a social order (ideology), and the other by challenging it and suggesting alternatives (utopia). The first movement integrates members into their communities, while the second propels them towards transformation. The relation between ideology and utopia is therefore dialectical, in a dynamic sense, what Andrea Ritivoi refers to as having “centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape social life.” 29 Integration is not possible without transformation, but also the reverse is true. In this way, the circle of ideology and utopia eludes being trapped in its own circularity and goes on to become a spiral. 30 As already mentioned, ideology serves to preserve a sense of social integration. It does this by linking a community to some past founding event through an act of memory. Utopia, by contrast, attempts a projection out of time, a radical break into the future. Without ideology the group would be without an 28 Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Chicago University Press, 1986); Id., From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (London: Athlone, 1991). Ricoeur subsequently moved to the ethical implications of memory (and forgetting) in his later works: Id., “Memory and Forgetting,” Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London/New York: Routledge, 1999) 5–11. Id., Memory, History and Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2004). 29 Andrea Deciu Ritivoi, Paul Ricoeur: Tradition and Innovation in Rhetorical Theory, Rhetoric in the Modern Era (Albany. NY: SUNY, 2006) 52. 30 Ricoeur, Lectures, 314.

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origin; but, without utopia it would be without a project. It is when they are cut off from each other that each pole develops its respective pathologies. The pathologies of ideology are: (1) distortion, (2) dissimulation and (3) domination. (1) Ideology functions in a conservative fashion, which means that new events are presented as something typical, in categories borrowed from the past, but this ends up distorting the past because of its reshaping by present experience. (2) Ideology swallows up the gap between present and past, which results in justifying the status quo because it pretends that nothing has changed. The distinction between what is and what ought to be is thus erased. (3) Ideology places a claim to authority through persuasive and coercive strategies of legitimization. To avoid the pathologies of ideology, a society must also incorporate the utopian dimensions of the imagination, a projection in which a community expresses its aspirations for a better world. Richard Kearney has worded this aptly: “If one can say, therefore, that without the backward look a culture is deprived of its memory, without the forward look it is deprived of its dreams.” 31 For Ricoeur, the imaginaire of reaffirmation is a discourse of ideology over against which the discourse of utopia, as imaginaire of rupture, “remains critical of the powers that be out of fidelity to an ‘elsewhere,’ to a society that is not-yet.” 32 Yet, we cannot, and must not, deny that utopia has pathologies too. If utopia does not fulfill its critical function of creating distance and leading to concerted action, it can lead instead to escapism. 33 Inasmuch as ideology, the drive to identity, needs to incorporate the criticism coming from utopia, so too utopia, the push towards emancipation, needs to have brakes placed upon it from ideology. “We must confront who we may be by who we are.” 34 Utopia is therefore not simply a radical break with the past. It has a duty to realize the ‘unfulfilled potential of the past’ as Ricoeur himself has noted: To the idea of defatalizing the past, I would add the idea of rescuing an unkept promise. For people of the past had hopes and projects, many of which were unfulfilled; a good number of our utopias would be empty if we could not fill them with promises of people of the past that were undelivered, thwarted, or destroyed. Basically, every period is surrounded by an 31 Richard Kearney, On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva, Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) 87. 32 Paul Ricoeur, “The Creativity of Language,” Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage. ed. Richard Kearney (Manchester: Manchester University, 1984) 30. 33 An escapism, it should be noted, not without its dangerous potential to turn violent and itself become ideological. It is for this reason that Ricoeur maintained the need for both concepts to be kept in critical dialetical relation with one another so that they avoided being distorted by their respective dangerous pathologies. But, see too, our final section in this chapter. 34 As worded by George Taylor in: Ricoeur, Lectures, xxxiii (Editor’s Introduction).

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aura of hopes that were not fulfilled; it is this aura that permits renewals in the future, and perhaps this is how utopia could be cured of its congenital illness – believing that one can start over from zero: utopia is instead a rebirth. 35

It is the function of utopia to constantly be engaged in the exploration of the possible. George Taylor, more strongly, has articulated it thus: “The utopia is not only a dream, though, for it is a dream that wants to be realized.” 36 In his essays and interviews, Ricoeur has pointed out the violence and exclusion that can occur if ideology takes on its pathological forms. 37 To resist the reduction of the social imaginary to ideological distortion he argued instead for an affirmation of its utopian potentials. In this way, utopia fulfills its critical function and resists its own pathological tendency towards escapism and eventually becoming trapped in a ‘dystopian’ ideological distortion of its own. 1.5 Reckoning with the Reception History of 2 Cor 3 Ricoeur’s dialectical thoughts on ideology and utopia can complement the reciprocal relation between covenant and creation we have highlighted in 2 Cor 3, and the unsuccessful attempts on the part of exegetes to maintain the delicate balance between these semantic domains instead of playing off one against the other. From a Ricoeurian perspective, we would say that 2 Cor 3 is bound by a social imagination of what it means to be ‘in Christ’ (2 Cor 3:14). Within that, ‘new covenant’ represents the integrative dimensions of the ideological pole, in which Paul’s polemical struggle with opponents occasioned him to cast the debate in light of typical categories from the Exodus covenant story (with amplifications from Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Lord’s Supper traditions). 38 The polemical context of 2 Cor 3 created the conditions for ideological statements, which acted to harness and foster community identity and memory. 39 35 Paul Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) 125. 36 Ricoeur, Lectures, xxi (Editor’s Introduction). 37 For instance, Paul Ricoeur, “Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe,” The Hermeneutics of Action, ed. Richard Kearney, Philosophy and Social Criticism (London: Sage, 1996) 3–13. Id., “Imagination, Testimony and Trust,” On Paul Ricoeur, 151–156. 38 Both typical and typological, in the sense used by Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus, 41–64. And also, Id., “Theological Memory Distortion in the Jesus Tradition: A Study in Social Memory Theory,” Memory in the Bible and Antiquity, 163–177. 39 In an examination of the Pseudo-Clementines, Joseph Verheyden has shown how anathemizing texts against opponents no longer have the goal of convincing the other side. Rather, they take on the function of helping to establish the group’s identity over against the entity that is being demonized. Joseph Verheyden, “The Demonization of the Opponent in Early Christian Literature: The Case of the Pseudo-Clementines,” Religious Polemics in Context: Papers Presented to the Second International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) Held at Leiden, 27–28 April 2000, ed. T.L. Hettema and A. van der Kooij, Studies in Theology and Religion 11 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004) 330–

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If ‘new covenant’ represents the integrative dimensions of the ideological pole, then ‘new creation’ represents the transformative and emancipatory dimensions of the utopian pole that can, in their critical function, to use Ricoeur’s terms, challenge the pathological tendencies of ideology and suggest alternatives. It has been suggested that 2 Cor 5:17 contains Paul’s most eloquent articulation of his apocalyptic, ‘new creation’ epistemology resulting from his conversion. This transformative moment has reconfigured Paul’s sense both of time and place-in-time and re-orients him towards the future. 40 As already pointed out, a ‘motif of transformation’ is seen to be working in the structural affinities between 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4 and 4:6. Looking more closely at 2 Cor 3:18, one notices that this transformation is already underway (“And all of us … are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory”). That ‘utopian’ transformative dimension to Paul’s language is all too in need of affirmation when one considers the pathological tendencies that his ideological language gave way to in history. The stark antitheses of 2 Cor 3 have contributed to a Wirkungsgeschichte of a “schroffe Antithetik von Mosediatheke und Christusdiatheke,” 41 which has deeply impacted Christianity’s self-understanding. Joseph Ratzinger once mentioned that “[t]he strict antithesis between the two Covenants, the Old and the New, that Paul develops in 2 Cor 3 has fundamentally marked Christian thought ever since.” 42 And, one must grant that this strict antithesis has been far from felicitous. Marcion saw in 2 Cor 3:1–4:6 evidence of the strongest discontinuity possible between God the Creator and the Lawgiver “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). Tertullian’s reaction was to launch a counter-offensive that emphasized the continuity between the covenants, yet the tendency towards discontinuity never really disappeared. It resurfaced in Augustine’s De spiritu et littera and Luther’s later distinction between Gesetz und Evangelium. 43 In the Middle Ages visible portrayals of this antithesis could be seen etched in sculptures and stained glass windows

359, esp. 356–357. While the Pseudo-Clementines are an extreme case, one can somewhat analogously assume that the strong language Paul used throughout 2 Cor to disparage his opponents (in 2:14–4:6, but also 11:1–15) does not serve the purpose of winning them over, but rather to convince the Corinthians to break association with them. 40 Barton, “Memory and Remembrance in Paul,” 328. 41 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 128 n. 117, quoting from Erich Gräßer, Der Alte Bund im Neuen. Exegetische Studien zur Israelfrage im Neuen Testament, WUNT I/35 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985). 42 Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions – One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1999) 54. 43 Cf. Thomas Schmeller, “2 Kor 3,1–4,6 bei Markion und Tertullian,” Neutestamentliche Exegese. Grenzüberschreitungen. FS Joachim Gnilka, ed. T. Schmeller (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2008) 154–169.

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depicting a victorious Ecclesia looking on at a bowed, downcast, and blindfolded Synagoga. 44 The terrible events of the twentieth century have led scholars to wrestle with the potential anti-Judaism of 2 Cor 3. 45 Even if Paul’s argument was part of an intra-mural debate in his time, nonetheless the antithetical structure of his argumentation contributed to their anti-nomistic interpretation in history. 46 Gerhard Dautzenberg has acknowledged that this dangerous potential is still presented by the text today. 47 As mentioned before, 2 Cor 3:7–18 signified in narrative form a separation process from synagogue to house-church. Paul’s antithetical language in 2 Cor 3 more broadly, enhanced by its original polemical context, allowed the notion of new covenant, already common in Second Temple Jewish usage, to be remembered. That is to say, it afforded the members of the fledgling Jesus movement a new corporate identity and founding memory for self-understanding, at a time when the term ‘Christian’ had yet to be used as an identity marker. 48 On the possible connection between Paul’s portrayal of the veil in 2 Cor 3 and the blindfolded Synagoga, see: Wolfgang Seiferth, Synagoge und Kirche im Mittelalter (München: Kösel, 1964); Heinz Schreckenberg, Die Juden in der Kunst Europas. Ein historischer Bildatlas (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1996); Brian Britt, “Concealment, Revelation, and Gender: The Veil of Moses in the Bible and in Christian Art,” Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text, JSOTSup 402 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2004) 82–115. 45 Just to name a few: M.J. Cook, “The Ties That Blind: An Exposition of II Corinthians 3:12–4:6 and Romans 11:7–10,” When Jews and Christians Meet: Papers Presented at the Second Bronstein Colloquium on Judaeo-Christian Studies, ed. J.J. Petuchowski (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1988) 125–139; Peter von der Osten-Sacken,“Die Decke des Mose. Zur Exegese und Hermeneutik von Geist und Buchstabe in 2. Korinther 3,” Die Heiligkeit der Tora. Studien zum Gesetz bei Paulus (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1989) 87–115; Gerhard Dautzenberg, “Alter und neuer Bund nach 2Kor 3,” „Nun steht aber diese Sache im Evangelium...“ Zur Frage nach den Anfängen des christlichen Antijudaismus, ed. Rainer Kampling (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1999) 229–249. 46 To recall Jörg Frey again in, “Paul’s Jewish Identity,” 321: “Even though Paul relentlessly worked for the unity of Jewish and Gentile Christians, it may well be the case that he actually contributed more to the later split between the increasingly Gentile church and Jewish Christianity.” 47 Dautzenberg, “Alter und neuer Bund nach 2Kor 3,” 248–249: “Das eigentliche Problem von 2Kor 3 ist die antithetische Denk- und Argumentationsform, der Paulus hier folgt. Sie geht vom gegenwärtigen christlichen Heilsstand aus, führt dann aber fast zwanghaft zur Negierung jüdischer Positionen. [...] H.-J. Schoeps hat vor Jahrzehnten festgestellt: ,Alle extremen Sätze der paulinischen Gesetzestheorie, wie daß das Gesetz Zorn schafft (Röm 4,15), zur Sünde reizt (Röm 7,7), die eigentliche Kraft der Sünde erst bewirkt (1Kor 15,56), und noch vermehrt (Gal 3,19), im Dienst des Todes steht (2Kor 3,7) usw., haben sich antinomistisch ausbeuten lassen’. In dieser Gefahr steht die christliche Theologie bis heute.” 48 On the use of the term ‘Christian’ and other designations used for, and by, early followers of the Jesus movement, see the excellent study of Paul Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 44

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The ideological potential of 2 Cor 3 towards social integration of a community would have played a role in the eventual parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, however unintended. The utopian potentials of Paul’s new creation language in 2 Cor 5, but already present in 2 Cor 3, are thus an invitation, a demand even, to remember the new covenant differently. Away from the antinomian memories of 2 Cor 3 in history, their memory can become instead a ‘dangerous memory’, in the sense employed by Johann Baptist Metz, memories of human suffering grasped by an inbreaking memory of the future. 49 A visual example of this would be Joshua Koffman’s sculpture of Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time, commissioned by, and unveiled at St Joseph’s University (Philadelphia, PA) to mark the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council declaration that ushered in a new era of Catholic-Jewish relations. 50

2. The Present Study in Retrospect

2. The Present Study in Retrospect

This chapter has reflected seriously on the unfortunate reception history that the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 have generated in later Christian-Jewish encounters. It has chosen to do so by framing these covenantal contrasts within 49 Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society. Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury, 1980). On the connection between Metz and interruption, see e.g., Lieven Boeve, God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval (New York: Continuum, 2007). On Metz and Ricoeur’s uses of memory as a concept, see: Maria Duffy, Paul Ricoeur’s Pedagogy of Pardon: A Narrative Theory of Memory and Forgetting (London: Continuum, 2009), 46–77, esp. 61–67. 50 As depicted on the cover of Philip A. Cunningham, Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). The description of the sculpture on the inside cover is worth quoting in full: “One of the most transformative texts of the Second Vatican Council was its 1965 declaration on the relationship of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions, known by its opening Latin words as Nastra Aetate (‘In Our Time’). It repudiated centuries of Christian claims that Jews were blind enemies of God whose spiritual life was obsolete. This contemptuous teaching had been depicted on many medieval churches by the female figures of Church (Ecclesia) and Synagogue (Synagoga), the former crowned and victorious, the latter defeated and blindfolded, her crown fallen at her feet. Nostra Aetate repudiated such images. It declared that Jews are beloved by an ever-faithful God whose promises are irrevocable, and called for dialogue between Christians and Jews. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, Saint Joseph’s University commissioned an original sculpture by Joshua Koffman entitled Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time. Today Synagoga and Ecclesia are able to learn about God from each other. As Pope Francis has written: ‘Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples. There exists a rich complementarity between the Church and the Jewish people that allows us to help one another mine the riches of God’s word’ [Evangelii Gaudium, 2013]. The cover photo shows the full-size day version of the sculpture, which will be cast in bronze.”

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a hermeneutical and dialectical tension of ideological and utopian concerns. Within this hermeneutical tension, it has been possible to situate and identify the potential (but not direct cause) of Paul’s statements in 2 Cor 3:6–18 in contributing to the later ‘parting of the ways’ between later Judaism and Christianity. Now would also be an opportune moment to place the larger frame of our study in retrospect. It will be recalled that, at the beginning of this study (in chapter one), we set out, as our prospect, the investigation of Paul’s language of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 for clues as to whether his use indeed contributed to the later selfunderstanding of Christianity as members of a new covenant that replaced the old. As this was itself a hermeneutical question, our methodology throughout the present study can, in retrospect, be seen to have retained this hermeneutical lens, engaging perspectives from different disciplines, even when interrogating them as to their heuristic applicability. In terms of the New Perspective on Paul, within which we situated the prospect of our study, it is important now to consider, in retrospect, the New Perspective on Paul as a cultural moment in time. It originated in the latter half of the twentieth century and set about dismantling Christian theological presuppositions that had coloured the reading and understanding of Paul’s texts for centuries if not millennia. Necessary as this correction was, and important in retrieving the Jewishness of Paul (comparable to the retrieval of the Jewishness of Jesus), the New Perspective on Paul has faced the double squeeze of, on the one hand, being ‘discontinuity’ averse from proponents who discern in Paul the articulation of new theological insights that would later become foundational for Christianity and, on the other, not being sufficiently ‘continuity’minded for those who situate Paul within his Jewish context, alongside other Second Temple Jewish movements. As a cultural moment in time, the New Perspective on Paul has itself been overtaken by newer approaches to the study of Paul and his letters. 51 Within the diverse domain of studies of 2 Cor, too, it would be remiss, in this context, not to mention the studies of Paul Duff and Michael Cover, which have respectively moved the understanding of 2 Cor 3, and vv. 7–18 in particular, beyond the concerns of the New Perspective on Paul. 52 Duff’s in-depth study has For example, Nanos and Zetterholm (eds.), Paul within Judaism; Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia (eds.), Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016); Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston (eds.), Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016). For a survey of other contemporary approaches, see: Joseph A. Marchal (ed.), Studying Paul’s Letters: Contemporary Perspectives and Methods (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012). 52 Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3, NovTSup 159 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Michael Cover, Lifting the Veil: 2 Corinthians 3:7–18 in Light of Jewish Homiletic and Commentary Traditions, BZNW 210 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). 51

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demonstrated that Paul’s allusions to Moses in 2 Cor 3 made sense within the context of Paul’s larger apologetic argument. For Duff, Paul’s rhetoric in this section (2 Corinthians 3) does not disparage the Torah and, with the exception of 3:13, the apostle speaks only positively of Moses. Indeed, both Moses and the Torah function as positive examples in his argument. It should also be noted that Paul does not make the claim here (either implicitly or explicitly) that Israel has been replaced by the ἐκκλησία. Although Israel functions for Paul as a negative model in 2 Corinthians 3 (as she does in 1 Cor 10:1-11), the apostle in no way intended to demonstrate that the deity’s ‘new covenant’ with the gentiles was meant to take the place of God’s original covenant with Israel. Read from this perspective, the negative labels that the apostle applies to Moses’ ministry (‘the ministry of death’ and ‘the ministry of condemnation’) are concerned not with Israel’s condemnation but rather with the negative effects of Moses’ ministry on the gentiles – specifically the Corinthian gentiles – prior to their conversion. 53

Even though our study has taken a different trajectory to, and arrived at other conclusions than, Duff’s (especially with regard to identity transformation and the impulses of Paul’s language in 2 Cor 3 towards the later separation process between Judaism and Christianity), nonetheless there is nothing in our study that is substantially at odds with Duff’s findings. Michael Cover’s study of 2 Cor 3:7–18 in light of Jewish homiletic and commentary traditions has more closely pursued the similarities between Paul and Philo, and their contemporaries. Yet, here too our study can resonate well with Cover’s comments on the abiding tension within this Pauline passage. We are left, then, with a genuine tension in Paul’s thought. On the one hand, as I have argued in this study, Paul is deeply indebted to his Jewish education and to Jewish commentary traditions, which he found quite amenable to his Gospel message. His use of a kind of Mosaic exemplarity in 2 Cor 3:16–18 as a pattern of Christian transformation stands within the footprint of the kinds of traditions found in Philo’s Allegorical Commentary. Whether Paul learned these traditions in his advanced Jewish education or in conversation with Alexandrian ministers in Corinth, they signal his desire not to reject the Jewish origins of his Gospel. Paul’s construal of his own renewed-covenant ministry in continuity with that of Jeremiah, with an assist from the Moses of Exodus 34, mirrors the same exegetical logic underlying the Palestinian three-year lectionary cycle. On the other hand, Paul does not accept these traditions wholesale without transforming them in light of his messianism. In his selection of Exodus 34 and his emphasis on Moses’ veiled and unveiled visage, Paul recalibrates the Moses tradition according to the exigencies of the Corinthian crisis. Paul’s ministry is explicitly ‘not like Moses’ (2 Cor 3:12) – yet this does not constitute an absolute rejection of the Hellenistic Jewish understanding of Mosaic exemplarity; Rather, Paul’s ‘not like Moses’ is ‘dialectical negation’ that ought to be understood, in a Jeremianic sense (LXX Jer 38:32), as an eschatological reorientation of Jewish tradition, of the sort found in Jesus’ halakhic teaching as well.” 54

53 54

Duff, Moses in Corinth, 16. Cover, Lifting the Veil, 296–297.

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Cover’s observation, reproduced above in full, indicates the enduring value of maintaining a balance between situating Paul within the Jewish practices of his day and giving due attention to what Cover has termed Paul’s messianism and eschatological reorientation of Jewish tradition, and others (as already seen in our own study) have considered the ‘Christological’ hermeneutics that informed Paul’s worldview after his encounter with Christ. Our study of the New Perspective on Paul as embracing within itself this very tension can thus be of help here. Our study should, after all, be seen as offering a retrospective assessment on the New Perspective on Paul now that its cultural moment has passed. At the outset of our study (in chapter one), we set ourselves the prospect of charting a position somewhere between Sanders (discontinuity) and Dunn (continuity) with respect to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3. Now, in retrospect, we can affirm our intuitions that Terence Donaldson’s model of the ‘reconfiguration of Paul’s convictional world’ best captures the middle ground of this dialectical tension. To speak of a dialectical tension is also to return us to the hermeneutical preoccupation of this chapter, namely, framing the covenantal contrasts of 2 Cor 3 within a hermeneutical and dialectical tension of its ideological and utopian dimensions. One might argue, however, that the unfortunate reception history that the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3 have generated in later ChristianJewish encounters are ample evidence that the Christian triumphalist ideology of the new covenant has overpowered any positive utopia of a new creation, both in Paul’s theology and in later church history. Perhaps, even more blisteringly, it could be argued that the new covenant, while simply a polemical or apologetic device for Paul, eventually became the de facto assumed utopia of Christianity (namely, Christians are members of the new covenant that has superseded the old covenant, i.e., Jews and Judaism). That there is evidence of this slide from the text into the real world, to disastrous effect, has been argued by Leonard Rutgers in his study of early Christian identity formation in Late Antiquity: In recent years, the notion of the hermeneutic Jew has gained great popularity, and it hardly needs stressing that this sensible notion ties in well with even more recent, explicitly postmodern views that consider history to be essentially textual in nature. In the essays that follow, I take a nuanced position on this issue, for I believe that the Jews who surface in the writings of the early Church were both hermeneutic and real. As I try to point out throughout, images – no matter how exegetical or textual in origin they might be – often had the sideeffect of spilling over into reality and hence of determining the actual historical reality of Jewish-Christian relationships. For that reason, I believe that the binary opposition ‘hermeneutic versus real’ is far too static to do justice to the complex and dynamic nature of JewishChristian relations in Antiquity. […] In addition to theologically displacing Judaism, late antique Christian thinkers felt that, in order to bring early Christian identity formation full circle, they also and concurrently had

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to physically replace the Jews of their own day and age. And so it happened that in Antioch a synagogue was appropriated and turned into a martyrial shrine, in Constantinople a law was passed that sought to badger Jewish self-confidence through the legal harassing of their sacred language, and in other parts of the Roman empire synagogues were transformed into early Christian churches after Christian preaching had stirred up much violence against Jews who had been the longtime neighbors to the communities that now assailed them. By the late fourth century it was not ‘the letter that killeth’ – to use a well-known Pauline passage frequently projected by early Christians onto the Jews – it was the Christians’ own belligerent rhetoric that did. 55

In function then, if not in content, the insistence on Paul’s Jewishness, and his continuing indebtedness to his Jewish traditions, serves a positive purpose similar to our identification of Paul’s proleptic ‘new creation’ language within the antithetical covenantal contrasts of 2 Cor 3. That is to say, both can be considered as hermeneutical moves that open a horizon, against which the ideological (and utopian) distortions that Paul’s writings have been subjected to can be interrupted and reimagined.

Leonard V. Rutgers, Making Myths: Jews in Early Christian Identity Formation (Leuven: Peeters, 2009) 6, 124. 55

General Conclusion The present study has been structured into three parts: hermeneutics, heuristics, and then back to hermeneutics. In what follows, we give our rationale for structuring our study in this way. Our study was driven by a hermeneutical question: did the covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3, in which Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6 is set in antithesis to a παλαιὰ διαθήκη (2 Cor 3:14), lie at the origin of the later selfunderstanding of Christianity as members of a new covenant that replaced the old and, in this way, contribute to the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity? More broadly, then, our question turned on hermeneutical considerations of Paul’s continuity, or discontinuity, with his life in Judaism after his having turned to Christ. In other words: was Paul the founder of formative ‘Christianity,’ even if we nuance the term ‘Christianity’ as a breakaway sect or reform movement within Paul’s contemporary Judaism? Can Paul be said to have set in motion the eventual ‘parting of the ways?’ Are there patterns of thought that can at least give evidence to this? These questions brought us face to face with the contributions of the New Perspective on Paul, which in the latter half of the twentieth century began a slow dismantling of the Christian theological presuppositions with which Pauline literature had been read for centuries, even in the domain of so-called (mainly Protestant) historical-critical exegesis of Paul’s epistles. We therefore encountered James Dunn’s deconstruction of the Hegelian antithesis employed by Ferdinand Christian Baur between the universal and the particular, in which the universality of ‘Paulinism’ was set in opposition to the restrictive and legalistic particularism of ‘Petrinism’. Along with Krister Stendahl and E.P. Sanders, Dunn placed Paul more firmly within a Jewish matrix of understanding. Dunn himself situated the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity from 135 CE onwards (after the Bar Kochba revolt). But the spotlight was itself turned on Dunn’s notion of Paul’s ‘broadening of the covenant with Israel’ to include Gentiles beyond the ethnic restrictions of Jewish identity markers of covenant membership (circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath observance). This was found to reinforce precisely the dichotomy of Jewish particularism and Christian universalism that Dunn had sought to replace.

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Our decision, then, to concentrate on Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3 allowed us to examine a passage that was not usually the locus of New Perspective debates, given its lack of explicit reference to νόμος, issues of ethnicity (like circumcision or food laws), or debates on δικαιοσύνη. As we traced New Perspective on Paul (Dunn and Christiansen) and non-New Perspective on Paul (Hafemann) positions on 2 Cor 3, we came to the conclusion that both positions seemed ‘discontinuity’ averse, out of a perceived sense of stressing continuity in order to avoid an implicit form of Marcionism. In making our own turn to the text, therefore, we deliberately chose to focus on two highly ‘discontinuous’ terms, καταργέω (‘abrogated’) and τέλος (‘cessation’ or ‘goal’) in order to question the too easy emphasis on continuity that seemed to emanate from an irenic model arising out of present-day ecumenical concerns to maintain positive Jewish-Christian relations. As such, our exegetical considerations of καταργέω, τέλος and κάλυμμα in 2 Cor 3:7–18 still stemmed from a hermeneutical concern, but at the same provided the impetus to go in search of more appropriate heuristic models with which to gauge the level of continuity, or discontinuity, behind Paul’s covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3. We therefore proceeded to traverse through sociological approaches, particularly those concerned with identity formation. Having entered into heuristic mode, we deemed it worthwhile to intersect each theoretical consideration with a more practical application to 2 Cor 3, in order to see how each heuristic refinement impacted our consideration of the text. In this way we moved onwards to social memory theory and offered first a reading of 2 Cor 3 that paid more attention to its discontinuous effect, namely, the ideological translocation from synagogue to house-church. In this, the language of 2 Cor 3:6–18 came to be seen as a ‘counter-memory’ that furnishes alternative founding narratives of a fledgling movement, be it sect or reform movement. As we continued to refine our methodological considerations of social memory theory, however, we discerned the heuristic value of continuity over time. Its value resides in the fact that it builds in a stability, which allows one to chart trajectories of memory (or, perhaps more usefully, tradition) and plot incremental changes that socio-historical conditions have added to existing categories of significance. Applying the mnemonic refraction model of Anthony Le Donne to our passage, we were able to discern in fact two cycles, one mnemonic, the other typological, each with refractions from prior usage in 1 Cor (Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 1 Cor 11:25 and his use of Moses in 1 Cor 10:2). Their overlapping in 2 Cor 3 helped to explain why it was possible to direct one’s attention to either Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3:6a, most notably as a hermeneutical study of the letter/spirit antithesis brought on by 2 Cor 3:6b, or as a study on Paul’s introduction of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18, and the usual investigation of Paul’s reliance upon, or possible refutation of, a supposedly pre-existing Moses-Doxa tradition. We argued instead that in ‘refracting’ mnemonic traditions, Paul was helping to shape the narrative past of his

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Corinthian community. Paul’s agency in this, as founder of the Corinthian community, had implications for their identity formation and transformation, since the manner in which a memory is refracted within a social group also indicates the lines along which their identity would be structured. In so doing, we have demonstrated how social memory theory reframes the larger, and much harder to answer, question of Paul’s continuity or discontinuity with Judaism and, far more modestly by comparison, seeks instead to examine the ways in which Paul refracted, redeployed, and reconfigured existing traditions in service of local needs, among them the formation and transformation of character among his community at Corinth. Building on these insights, we then offered our own perspective on Paul’s ambivalent usage of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18. We argued that Paul’s narrative conflation of his own διακονία within a typological narrative of Moses’ glory represented an evaluation of his own life prior to conversion in much the same way that he did in Phil 3:3–11. We contended that the divergences of Paul’s retelling from the original Exodus narrative in particular, and the negative characterization of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 in general, could be better explained in terms of the negative characterization Paul had come to consider his own former ministry/life prior to ‘turning to the Lord’. We then proceeded to argue that this ‘turning’/conversion had implications for identity transformation, both Paul’s and the Corinthians’, given that Paul had already articulated a mimetic programme for Corinthian emulation in 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1. In short, we contended that 2 Cor 3:7–18 should not be characterized as a negative assessment of Judaism or the Law, but rather a reflection on Paul’s own life prior to, during, and after conversion. In this we added nuance to the findings of Blanton’s study of the ideological language of 2 Cor 3 that the narrative mirrors an already undertaken separation process from out of synagogue to house-church. However, that the ambiguity of Paul’s language in this passage (already argued for from our analysis of καταργέω and τέλος) would eventually allow itself to be understood as representing and fully warranting this separation process, is ultimately the point in our study at which we came full circle and returned to hermeneutical considerations on continuity and discontinuity. We did so this time taking seriously, and wrestling with, the unfortunate reception history of Paul’s covenantal contrasts in 2 Cor 3. Ultimately, we argued that Paul’s proleptic ‘new creation’ language offers a horizon against which the ideological (and even utopian) distortions that Paul’s own antithetical language of new and old covenant are susceptible to, can be interrupted and reimagined. As an assessment of the New Perspective on Paul, our own study, which has attempted to chart a position somewhere between Sanders (discontinuity) and Dunn (continuity) with respect to Paul’s use of καινὴ διαθήκη in 2 Cor 3, we can offer the following conclusion: from a heuristic perspective, even though the New Perspective on Paul still operated with a theological (rather than

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purely sociological) approach, it was still attractive heuristically because it recognized Paul’s continuity with the Judaism of his time, but was also willing to venture that Paul articulated something new in his letters arising from his newfound convictions. The New Perspective on Paul model that is best suited to capture this tension is the ‘reconfiguration’ model of Terence Donaldson. To recall his own reliance on the paradigm shift model of Thomas Kuhn, On the one hand, paradigms are sharply disjunctive and discontinuous. […] Yet, at the same time there is continuity. […] In a paradigm shift, the old field of knowledge is reconfigured, not abandoned. 1

Needless to say, Donaldson’s model has been complemented and updated by other sociological approaches, of which the most useful for our purposes have been a combination of social identity and memory theories. This study has demonstrated that the social-scientific approach to biblical texts has been of enormous help to the advancement of biblical exegesis, being likewise critical and historical in its aims, but with a constantly developing and refining set of heuristic tools with which to interrogate the biblical text, as is proper to any scientific approach. We have also been upfront about the hermeneutical options behind each of these choices. As such, it is a study informed equally by both hermeneutics and heuristics, an exercise that thus distinguishes this study from other studies of 2 Cor 3. It is our conviction that both dimensions, the hermeneutical and the heuristic, are mutually beneficial when applied to biblical texts. There is sometimes the perception that hermeneutical questions posed of the biblical text, while having their place, usually detract from the main task of biblical studies, which is to be engaged in the historical retrieval of the origins of texts or their reception. Fortunately, however, most biblical scholars today would recognize that we do not engage in exegesis without hermeneutical presuppositions. And we would find ourselves in further agreement with those who share the view that a proper understanding of biblical texts cannot occur without a critical and historical appreciation of their situatedness in time, and their reception through time. Finally, we have also shown that these two approaches, the hermeneutical and the heuristic, can be integrated within one arc, not unlike the arc articulated by Paul Ricoeur, 2 whose maxim, “expliquer plus c’est comprendre mieux (“to explain more is to understand better”),” 3 has informed our own study. But it is perhaps to another philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, that we owe both the

Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 304. Dan R. Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur: New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001) 56–78. 3 Paul Ricoeur, “Esquisse de conclusion,” Exégèse et herméneutique, ed. Roland Barthes, Paul Beauchamp, and Henri Brouillard; Parole de Dieu 6 (Paris: Seuil, 1971) 288. 1 2

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hermeneutical and the heuristic urge to understand Paul’s covenantal contrasts of 2 Cor 3 better. If by the meaning of a text we understand the mens auctoris, that is, the ‘actual’ horizon of understanding of the original Christian writers, then we do the New Testament authors a false honor. Their honor should lie precisely in the fact that they proclaim something that surpasses their own horizon of understanding – even if they are named John or Paul. 4

4 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Martin Heidegger and Marburg Theology (1964),” Philosophical Hermeneutics, transl. and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA/London: University of California Press, 1976) 210.

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Index of References Old Testament Genesis 1:3 2:7 15–17 Exodus 4 16:7 16:10 24:17 31:1–6 31:18 32–34 32 32:1–34:35 32:1 32:6 32:15 33–34 33 34 34:10 34:12 34:15 34:27 34:28–35 34:28 34:29–35 34:29–30 34:29 34:30 34:31–32 34:33 34:34

169 152 116 119 140 140 140 151 138, 140 49 49 152 121 151 140 138, 157 49 28, 119, 121, 144, 163, 179 22 22 22 22 141 22 22, 30, 42, 48, 50, 65, 73, 93, 119, 125, 139, 151 140 73, 138 140 122 42, 122, 140 140, 161, 170

34:35

42, 121, 140

Deuteronomy 9:10–11 27:26 29:2–4

140 140 140

2 Kings 2

135

Proverbs 3:3 7:3

140 140

Isaiah 6:9–10 9:1 29:10–12

140 170 140

Jeremiah (LXX) 17:1 31:31 (MT) 38 38:31–34 Ezekiel 1:28 11:19 36 36:25–27 36:26–27 36:26

140 148 49 50, 93, 119, 138– 139, 140, 154, 171 95 140 49, 50, 152 50, 93, 119 138, 140, 144 140

202 Haggai (LXX) 2:9

Index of References Malachi 4:5–6

140

135

New Testament Matthew 11:12–13 26:28–29 26:28

135 147 149

Mark 14:24–25 14:24

147 149

Luke 22:16 22:18 22:19–20 22:20

147 147 148 149

Acts 15

15

Romans 1–11 1:17 2 4 4:15 5 6:6 7:6 7:7 8 9–11 10:4 11:27 1 Corinthians 1–4 4:1–21 4:16 5:5–8 10

169 35 36 36, 115, 116, 124 176 23, 36 65 65 176 36 24 70, 71, 73, 74, 99, 124 34 87, 163 89, 91 3, 156, 163, 164, 184 171 151

10:1–13 10:1–11 10:1–3 10:2

151, 153, 171 151, 179 100 151, 153, 156, 183

10:7 10:11 10:16–17 10:21 11

11:26 11:27–34 12:12–31 12:12 12:13 12:27 15 15:3–4 15:20 15:22 15:24 15:42–50 15:45 15:56

151 99, 100, 151, 153 151 151 114, 144, 150, 151, 153 3, 156, 163, 164, 184 152 148 148, 171–172 148, 149, 155, 171 21 21, 44, 45, 59, 100, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 153, 156, 171, 183 153 148 172 82 82 82 153, 156, 169 45 171 151 153 151 101, 152, 171 176

2 Corinthians 1:15–2:13 2:3–4 2:14–7:4

123 168 28, 41, 45, 167, 168

11:1 11:7 11:17–34 11:17–22 11:23–26 11:23 11:25

Index of References 2:14–6:13 2:14–4:18 2:14–4:15 2:14–4:7 2:14–4:6 2:14–3:6 2:14–3:3 2:14–17 2:14 2:16 2:17–4:6 2:17 3–5 3–4 3:1–4:6 3:1–18 3:1–6 3:1–3 3:1 3:2–6 3:2 3:3–11 3:3–6 3:3 3:4–4:6 3:4–18 3:4 3:5 3:6–18 3:6–7 3:6

3:7–4:6

43 104 146 157 41, 42, 104, 153, 167, 175 157, 169 41, 43 28, 104, 108 105 22, 63, 169 108 97, 118, 142, 146, 168 106, 169, 170 50, 144 28, 96, 118, 157, 175 28, 108, 157 139 170 118, 139, 142, 146, 168 144 105, 168 160 49, 140 22, 46, 47, 138, 140, 169 41, 161 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 59, 100, 101, 108, 160 49, 144 22, 63 1, 2, 3, 5, 40, 49, 94, 118, 139, 148, 164, 165, 178, 183 22 1, 5, 21, 22, 28, 35, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 56, 63, 92, 93, 101, 138, 140, 144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 156, 159, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171, 182, 183 169

3:7–4:4 3:7–18

3:7–11 3:7

3:8 3:9 3:10 3:11 3:12–18 3:12–13 3:12 3:13–15 3:13 3:14–15 3:14

3:15 3:16–4:6 3:16–18 3:16 3:18–4:6 3:18

4:1–6 4:1 4:2–5 4:2–3

203 157 1, 20, 30, 42, 43, 49, 50, 56, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73, 74, 96, 102, 117, 119, 120, 121–123, 125, 129, 137–147, 150– 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 176, 178, 179, 183, 184 35, 146 1, 22, 40, 42, 62– 64, 64–66, 67, 69, 71, 139, 140, 162, 176 22, 40 22, 35, 40, 162 67, 140 1, 22, 40, 42, 62– 64, 67–68, 69, 74 97, 99, 141, 158 139 49, 179 158 1, 22, 42, 62–64, 69–71, 74, 99, 144, 179 140 1, 5, 21, 28, 35, 40, 48, 49, 62–64, 66, 71–72, 74, 84. 90, 147, 156, 164, 165, 170, 174, 182 63, 68, 71, 144, 160, 163–164 169 96, 97, 158, 179 22, 53, 63, 123, 139, 160–163, 170 161 20, 22, 30, 53, 63, 95, 101, 106, 108, 152, 156, 158, 162, 164, 169, 170, 175 108, 157 22, 141 146 73, 101

204 4:2 4:3 4:4

Index of References

4:7–18 4:7–15 4:10–11 4:16–18 4:16 4:18 5 5:4 5:5 5:7 5:11–21 5:11–13 5:12 5:15 5:16 5:17 5:19 6:1–7:4 6:8–10 6:14–7:1 10–13 10:3–6 11:1–15 11:4 11:13–15 11:13 12:1–12

105 65, 97, 138 108, 152, 156, 169, 170, 175 157 170 96, 106, 108, 156, 169, 170, 175 104 146 169 146 170 170 104, 177 169 169 170, 175 169, 170 169 170 169 83 29, 167, 169, 170 29 104 106 167 106, 142 104 175 144 106 97 104, 106

Galatians 1:13 2:1–14 2:11–14 3–4 3 3:15 3:17

160 15 82 25 36, 116, 123, 124 34, 35 35

4:5–7 4:6–7 4:6

3:19 3:23–4:11 3:26–29 4 4:4 4:21–31 5:4 6:16

176 73, 124 82 23, 154 99 154 65 83

Ephesians 2:12

33

Philippians 3:3–11

2, 62, 160, 184

Colossians 1:15–20 2:14 3:9–11

169 52 82

1 Thessalonians 2:14–16

24

Hebrews 7:20–22 8:1–7 8:6 8:7–13 8:7 8:13 9:1 9:15–22 9:18 10:15–18 11 11:19 11:22 12 12:24

154 154 154 137, 143 154 154 154 137, 154 154 154 121 121 121 154 137, 154

2 Peter 3:6

40

205

Index of References

Philo Mos. 2:271–272

93

Somn. 2:250–254

95, 96

Migr. 34–35

95

Cher. 27–28

95, 96

Spec. 3:1–6

95, 96

Josephus Ant. 20:264–265

93

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QpHab 1:3 7 7:1.4–5 7:2

98 99, 105 98 99

CD–A 1:4

98

4:8 6:1–3 6:11–19

98 98 98

4Q266 ii 1:9–10 iii 2.9–11 iii 2.17–25

98 98 98

Early Christian Literature Ignatius, Magnesians 10:3 84

Index of Subjects and Names Abraham 35, 85, 111, 115–117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 129, 146, 167, 171 Adam 100, 151–153, 156, 166, 169 Adams, Edward 2, 78–79, 89–90 Byrskog, Samuel 2, 113–115, 124, 125, 128 Campbell, William 2, 14, 15, 19, 20, 84–91 Christianity 5–13, 17, 18, 24, 32, 56–58, 62, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, 84, 86, 89, 102, 114, 125, 141, 146, 162, 166, 175–180, 182 Christology 45, 82–84, 90 Community 20, 29–31, 44, 47, 76–82, 89, 100, 108, 113–115, 122–125, 127, 129, 130, 136, 143, 147–149, 152, 155, 162, 166, 167, 171–174, 177, 184 Conversion 2, 3, 11, 19, 20, 44, 76, 77, 96, 134, 157, 160–164, 170, 175, 179, 184 Corinth 2, 42, 43, 65, 87–91, 106, 122, 123, 138, 143–146, 150, 152, 155, 168, 171, 179, 184 Creation 3, 20, 28, 29, 30, 44, 78–80, 84, 85, 101, 107, 108, 110, 118, 165–170, 174, 175, 177, 180, 181, 184 Donaldson, Terence 19, 20, 84, 87, 162, 180, 185 Dunn, James 1, 8–19, 21–27, 31–33, 36–38, 44–47, 51–56, 58–61, 86, 87, 180, 182–184 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 2, 20, 76–78, 89, 161–164

Esler, Philip 2, 79, 87, 115–117, 120, 121, 123–125, 129 Glory 2, 12, 22, 27, 29–31, 42, 48, 49, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62–72, 74, 94–96, 105–106, 117–125, 140–142, 150, 152, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 170, 171, 175, 184 Hafemann, Scott 1, 39–61, 63, 64, 69, 71–73, 93, 94, 98, 100–102, 119, 139, 145, 168, 175, 183 Hermeneutics 1, 3, 17, 81, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106, 107, 118, 133, 165–181, 182, 185 Horrell, David 2, 82–84, 86, 88–91 Identity 2, 6, 12, 15, 17, 20, 24, 26–32, 43, 60, 73, 76–91, 92–109, 110–117, 120, 124–127, 129, 130, 132, 134, 136, 144, 146, 153, 155, 156–164, 165–168, 171–174, 176, 179, 180, 182–185 Ideology 3, 16, 73, 81, 89–91, 101, 112, 120, 132, 165–177, 180 Israel 8, 9, 15–17, 19, 20, 22–25, 27, 29, 33, 40, 41–50, 52–55, 57–60, 70, 74, 83, 85–87, 90, 93, 105, 108, 116– 118, 139, 157–159, 166, 169, 177, 179, 182 Jewishness 6–12, 16, 178, 181 Judaism 2, 3, 5–19, 23, 24, 26, 31, 32, 36, 37, 56–59, 62, 71, 73, 74, 76, 80, 81, 84–87, 90, 101, 102, 112, 125, 137, 143, 155, 160, 162, 164–166, 176–180, 182, 184, 185

Index of Subjects and Names Law 3, 8, 11, 15, 16, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 36, 39–61, 65–70, 72–74, 80, 85, 92, 93, 99–102, 120, 121, 123–125, 144–146, 162–165, 171, 181, 184 Le Donne, Anthony 2, 127, 133–137, 147–150, 153, 155, 156, 159, 183 Lieu, Judith 2, 8, 9, 10, 110–112, 124– 125, 128, 130, 131, 134 Marcionism 56–57, 183 Memory 2, 5, 87, 88, 91, 109–155, 165– 166, 171–174, 176, 177, 183–185 Moses 2, 22, 23, 28, 29, 37, 40–59, 62– 75, 94, 96, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 117–125, 129, 137, 138, 140, 141– 146, 150–154, 156–166, 171, 179, 183, 184 Narrative 2, 3, 9, 20, 49, 62, 65, 66, 73, 74, 94, 101, 104, 105, 109, 111, 113–115, 116–125, 132, 134, 135, 138, 150, 155, 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 169, 171, 176, 183, 184 New perspective 1, 2, 5, 6, 7–19, 21–39, 42, 47, 51–56, 57, 60–62, 80, 81, 83, 87, 105, 113, 147–151, 165, 166, 178, 180, 182–185 Parting of the ways 6–11, 15, 17, 74, 80, 81, 84, 102, 125, 165, 177, 178, 182

207

Reception history 3, 137, 141, 165, 166, 174–177, 180, 184 Refraction 2, 126–157, 159, 164, 165, 183 Ricoeur, Paul 166, 170, 172–175, 177, 185 Rodríguez, Rafael 2, 130–133, 136 Sanders, Ed 1, 7, 8, 11–15, 17–19, 44, 45, 47, 58, 62, 67, 74, 78, 137, 160, 166, 180, 182, 184 Shkul, Minna 2, 129–131, 136 Social-scientific 76, 82, 91, 129, 171, 185 Sociological 2, 32, 42, 76–91, 102, 103, 117, 121, 161, 162, 164, 183, 185 Stendahl, Krister 7, 11, 15, 37, 182 Transformation 2, 3, 17, 19, 20, 30, 46, 60, 61, 76–91, 92–109, 132, 143, 153, 155–166, 170, 172, 175, 179, 184 Tucker, Brian 2, 87–89, 91, 163 Typology 9, 78, 79, 134, 136, 151–153, 156, 168 Veil 40, 48, 49, 53, 62–75, 118–123, 137, 157, 160, 162, 164, 171, 176 Watson, Francis 2, 12, 14, 79, 80–81, 86, 90, 93, 94, 99, 118, 119, 145